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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf 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..f2930ea --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #51913 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51913) diff --git a/old/51913-0.txt b/old/51913-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 5b10a4a..0000000 --- a/old/51913-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8125 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Carter, and Other People, by Don Marquis - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Carter, and Other People - -Author: Don Marquis - -Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51913] -Last Updated: March 13, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - - - -CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE - -By Don Marquis - -D. Appleton and Co. - -1921 - - - - -FOREWORD - -|I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the editors of several -magazines for permission to reprint the following stories in book form. -“Carter” was originally published in _Harpers Monthly Magazine_ under -the title “The Mulatto.” - -“Death and Old Man Murtrie” was printed in The New _Republic_; others -were first brought out in _Everybody's Magazine, Short Stories, Putnam's -Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post_. “The Penitent” was originally -printed in _The Pictorial Review_, with the title “The Healer and -the Penitent.” The plot of this story is taken from two poems, one by -Browning and one by Owen Meredith. Happening to read these two poems, -one after the other, I was struck by the fact that Owen Meredith had -unwittingly written what was in effect a continuation of a situation -invented by Browning; the plot of the one poem, telescoped into the plot -of the other, made in effect a complete short story. I pasted the two -situations together, so to speak, inventing an ending of my own, and had -a short story which neither Browning nor Owen Meredith could claim as -his-and which I scarcely have the nerve to claim as mine. And yet this -story, taken piecemeal from the two poets, gave me more trouble than -anything else I ever tried to write; it was all there, apparently; but -to transpose the story into a modern American setting was a difficult -job. It is my only essay in conscious plagiarism-I hate to call it -plagiarism, but what else could one call it?--and I give you my word -that it is easier to invent than to plagiarize. - -The one-act play, “Words and Thoughts,” was written ten years ago-in -1911-and has been offered to every theatrical manager in America, and -refused by them all. I still believe in it as a thing that could be -acted with effect, and I am determined to get it read, even if I -cannot get it produced. The fact that it has been going the rounds of -theatrical managers for ten years is no indication that it has ever been -read. - -Don Marquis - -New York - - - - -I.-Carter - -|Carter was not exactly a negro, but he was a “nigger.” Seven drops of -his blood out of every eight were Caucasian. The eighth, being African, -classified him. The white part of him despised and pitied the black -part. The black part hated the white part. Consequently, wherever Carter -went he carried his own hell along inside of him. - -Carter began to learn that he was a nigger very early in life. Nigger -children are not left long in doubt anywhere, and especially in the -South. Carter first saw the light--and the shadows--of day in Atlanta. -The color line itself, about which one hears so much talk, seemed to run -along one end of the alley in which he was born. It was an alley with a -gutter and a great deal of mud in it. At the corner, where it gave into -a little narrow street not much better than an alley itself, the mud was -the thickest, deepest, and best adapted to sculptural purposes. But in -the little street lived a number of white families. They were most -of them mill hands, and a numerous spawn of skinny children, little -“crackers,” with faces white and sad even from babyhood, disputed the -mud with the nigger children. Nigger babies of five, four, three, and -even two, understood quite well that this most desirable mud, even -though it was in the nigger alley, was claimed by the white babies as -_their_ mud. It was in every way a more attractive sort of mud than -any in the little street proper; and juvenile race riots were of almost -hourly occurrence--skirmishes in which the very dogs took part. For the -dogs grasped the situation as clearly as did the children; a “nigger” - dog, even though he may have started in life as a white man's dog, soon -gets a certain look about him. - -So there was no chance for Carter to escape the knowledge that he was -a nigger. But it was with a thrill that he perceived in his youthful -excursions from the home alley, that he was sometimes mistaken for a -white child. He was so white in color that one could not tell he was a -nigger at a casual glance. - -As he grew up, he made another discovery that elated and embittered him -still more. He found out who his father was--or rather, who his father -had been, since he never saw that gentleman. The white blood in Carter's -veins was no common ichor. Because white people seldom speak of these -things it does not follow that they are not known pretty generally among -the negroes. They are, in fact, discussed. - -Carter went to school; he made the further discovery that he had -brains--“white man's brains” is the way he put it to himself. Given the -opportunity, he told himself, he could go as far as the average white -man--perhaps further than the average. The white man's standard, nigger -though he was, was still the standard by which he must measure himself. -But the opportunity! Even as the youth prepared himself for it he -perceived, hopelessly, that it would be denied him. - -As he matured he began to feel a strange, secret pride in that -white family whose blood he shared. He familiarized himself with its -genealogy. There is many a courtier who cannot trace his ancestry as -far back as Carter could. One of his forebears had signed Magna Charta; -several had fought in the Revolutionary War. There had been a United -States Senator in the family, and a Confederate General. At times, -feeling the vigorous impulse of hereditary instinct and ambitions, -Carter looked upon himself as all white man, but never for long, nor to -any purpose. The consciousness of his negro blood pulled him down again. - -But, as he grew up, he ceased to herd with black negroes; he scorned -them. He crept about the world cursing it and himself--an unfortunate -and bitter creature that had no place; unfortunate and bitter, cursed -with an intellect, denied that mitigation that might have come with a -full share of the negro jovialty of disposition, forever unreconciled. - -There was one member of that white family from which he drew so much of -his blood whom Carter particularly admired. Willoughby Howard was about -Carter's own age, and he was Carter's half-brother. Howard did not -distinguish Carter from any other mulatto; probably did not know of his -existence. But as Howard reached manhood, and, through virtue of his -wealth and standing and parts, began to attain an excellent place in -the world, his rise was watched by Carter with a strange intensity of -emotion. Carter in some occult way identified himself with the career of -Willoughby Howard--sometimes he almost worshiped Willoughby Howard, -and then he hated him; he envied him and raged over him with the same -breath. - -But mostly, as the isolation of his own condition, ate into his soul, -he raged over himself; he pitied himself; he hated himself. Out of the -turmoil of his spirit arose the one despairing cry, Oh, to be white, -white, _white!_ - -Many a night he lay awake until daybreak, measuring the slow minutes -with the ceaseless iteration of that useless prayer: Only to be white! O -God, for _one little year of being white!_ - -Fruitless hours of prayers and curses! - -Carter went North. He went to New York. But the North, which affects to -promise so much to the negro, in a large, loose, general way, does not -perform in the same degree. There was only one thing which Carter would -have thanked any one for performing; it was the one thing that could -never be performed--he wanted to be made white. Sometimes, indeed, from -the depths of his despair, he cried out that he wanted to be altogether -black; but in his soul he did not really want that. - -Nevertheless, at several different periods he yielded to temptation -and “went over to the whites.” In the South he could not have done -this without discovery, in spite of the color of his skin. But in the -Northern cities, with their enormous numbers of aliens, all more or less -strange to the American eye, Carter found no great difficulty in passing -as white. He “looked a little foreign” to the casual glance; that was -all. - -But if there was no great difficulty in it, there was no great -satisfaction in it, either. In fact, it only made him the more bitter. -Others might think him a white man, but he knew that he was a nigger. - -The incident which sent him back South, resolved to be a nigger, and to -live and die among the niggers, might not have affected another in his -condition just as it did Carter. But to him it showed conclusively that -his destiny was not a matter of environment so much as a question of -himself. - -He fell in love. The girl was a waitress in a cheap restaurant near the -barber shop where Carter worked. She was herself a product of the -East Side, struggling upward from the slums; partly Italian, with some -Oriental strain in her that had given the least perceptible obliqueness -to her eyes--one of those rare hybrid products which give the thinker -pause and make him wonder what the word “American” will signify a -century from now; a creature with very red lips and very black eyebrows; -she seemed to know more than she really did; she had a kind of naïve -charm, a sort of allurement, without actual beauty; and her name had -been Anglicized into Mary. - -And she loved Carter. This being, doomed from the cradle to despair, had -his moment of romance. But even in his intoxication there was no hope; -his elation was embittered and perplexed. He was tempted not to tell the -girl that he was a nigger. But if he married her, and did not tell her, -perhaps the first child would tell her. It might look more of a nigger -than he did. - -But if he told her, would she marry a nigger? He decided he would tell -her. Perhaps his conscience had less to do with this decision than the -fatalism of his temperament. - -So he made his revelation one Sunday evening, as they walked along the -boardwalk from Coney Island to Brighton. To him, it was a tremendous -moment. For days he had been revolving in his mind the phrases he -would use; he had been rehearsing his plea; in his imagination he saw -something spectacular, something histrionic, in his confession. - -“Mary,” he said, as they sat down on a bench on the beach, “there is -something I think I ought to tell you before we get married.” - -The girl turned toward him her big, sleepy, dark eyes, which always -seemed to see and understand so much more than they really did, and -looked away again. - -“I ought to tell you,” he said--and as he said it, staring out to sea, -he was so imposed upon by the importance of the moment to himself that -he almost felt as if the sea listened and the waves paused--“I ought to -tell you that I have negro blood in my veins.” - -She was silent. There was a moment before he dared look at her; he could -not bear to read his doom in her eyes. But finally he did muster up -courage enough to turn his head. - -The girl was placidly chewing gum and gazing at an excursion vessel that -was making a landing at one of the piers. - -He thought she had not heard. “Mary,” he repeated, “I have negro blood -in my veins.” - -“Uh-huh,” said she. “I gotcha the first time, Steve! Say, I wonder if we -couldn't take the boat back to town? Huh? Whatcha say?” - -He looked at her almost incredulous. She had understood, and yet she -had not shrunk away from him! He examined her with a new interest; his -personal drama, in which she, perforce, must share, seemed to have made -no impression upon her whatsoever. - -“Do you mean,” he said, hesitatingly, “that it will--that it won't make -any difference to you? That you can marry me, that you _will_ marry me, -in spite of--of--in spite of what I am?” - -“Gee! but ain't you the solemn one!” said the girl, taking hold of her -gum and “stringing” it out from her lips. “Whatcha s'pose I care for a -little thing like that?” - -He had looked for a sort of dramatic “situation”; and, behold, there was -none! There was none simply because the girl had no vantage point from -which to look at his life and hers. He had negro blood in his veins--and -she simply did not care one way or the other! - -He felt no elation, no exultation; he believed that she _should_ have -cared; whether her love was great enough to pardon that in him or not, -she should have felt it as a thing that _needed_ pardon. - -As he stared at the girl, and she continued to chew her gum, he swiftly -and subtly revised his estimate of her; and in his new appraisement -there was more than a tinge of disgust. And for a moment he became -altogether a white man in his judgment of the thing that was happening; -he looked at the situation as a patrician of the South might have looked -at it; the seven eighths of his blood which was white spoke: - -“By God!” he said, suddenly leaping to his feet and flinging aside the -startled hand which the girl put out toward him, “I can't have anything -to do with a woman who'd marry a nigger!” - -So Carter went back to Atlanta. And, curiously enough, he stepped from -the train almost into the midst of a strange and terrible conflict of -which the struggle in his individual breast was, in a sense, the type -and the symbol. - -It was a Saturday night in September, an evening on which there began -a memorable and sanguinary massacre of negroes; an event which has been -variously explained and analyzed, but of which, perhaps, the underlying -causes will never be completely understood. - -There was riot in the streets, a whirlwind of passion which lashed the -town and lifted up the trivial souls of men and spun them round and -round, and passed and left the stains of blood behind. White men were -making innocent negroes suffer for the brutal crimes of guilty negroes. -It had been a hot summer; scarcely a day had passed during July and -August without bringing to the newspapers from somewhere in Georgia -a report of a negro assault upon some white woman. A blind, -undiscriminating anger against the whole negro race had been growing and -growing. And when, on that Saturday afternoon, the newspapers reported -four more crimes, in rapid succession, all in or near Atlanta, the -cumulative rage burst into a storm. - -There was no danger for Carter in the streets; more than a hasty glance -was necessary to spy out his negro taint. He stood in a doorway, in the -heart of the business district of the town, and watched the wild work -that went on in a large, irregular plaza, where five streets come -together and all the car lines in the place converge. From this roughly -triangular plaza leads Decatur Street, at one time notorious throughout -the South for its negro dives and gambling-dens. - -Now and then Carter could hear the crack of a pistol, close at hand -or far away; and again some fleeing negro would start from a place of -temporary concealment, at the approach of a mob that beat its way along -a street, and make a wild dash for safety, as a rabbit startled from the -sedge-grass scurries to the brush. There was not one mob, but several; -the different bands united, split up, and reunited, as the shifting -winds of madness blew. The plaza, with arc lights all about it, was -the brilliantly illuminated stage on which more than one scene of that -disgusting melodrama was played out; from some dim hell of gloom and -clamor to the north or east would rush a shouting group that whirled -and swayed beneath the lights, dancing like flecks of soot in their -brightness, to disappear in the gloom again, shouting, cursing, and -gesticulating, down one of the thoroughfares to the west or south. And -to Carter, in whose heart there waxed a fearful turmoil of emotions, -even as the two races clashed along the echoing streets, there was a -strange element of unreality about it all; or, rather, the night was -dreadful with that superior reality which makes so much more vivid than -waking life the intense experience of dreams. Carter thrilled; he shook; -he was torn with terror and pity and horror and hatred. - -No white man felt all that Carter felt that night; nor yet any negro. -For he was both, and he was neither; and he beheld that conflict which -was forever active in his own nature dramatized by fate and staged with -a thousand actors in the lighted proscenium at his feet. - -This thought struck Carter himself, and he turned toward another man who -had paused in the doorway, with no clear intention, but perhaps with the -vague impulse of addressing him, as a point of solid contact and relief -from the sense of hurrying nightmare that possessed both the streets and -his own spirit. - -Startled, he saw that the other man was Willoughby Howard. Carter -hesitated, and then advanced a step. But whatever he had to say was -interrupted by a crowd that swept past them from Decatur Street in -pursuit of a panting negro. The fleeing colored man was struck a dozen -times; he fell at the street corner near them, and the mob surged -on again into the darkness beyond, already in full chase of another -quarry--all but one man, who left the mob and ran back as if to assure -himself that the prostrate negro was really dead. - -This was a short man, a very short man, a dwarf with a big head too -heavy for him, and little bandy legs--legs so inadequate that he wabbled -like an overfed poodle when he ran. Carter had seen him twice before -that night, dodging in and out among the feet of the rioters like an -excited cur, stumbling, falling, trodden upon; a being with bloodshot -eyes and matted hair, hoarse voice and menacing fist, drunken and -staggering with blood lust; the very Gnome of Riot himself come up from -some foul cave and howling in the streets. “Kill them! Kill them!” - he would cry, and then shake with cackling laughter. But he was only -valiant when there was; no danger. As he approached the negro who lay -upon the ground, and bent over him, Willoughby Howard stepped down -from the doorway and aimed a blow at the creature with a cane. The blow -missed, but the dwarf ran shrieking down Decatur Street. - -Howard bent over the negro. The negro stirred; he was not dead. Howard -turned toward Carter and said: - -“He's alive! Help me get him out of the street.” - -Together they lifted the wounded man, moving him toward the curbstone. -He groaned and twisted, and they laid him down. Howard poured whisky -into him from a pocket flask, and a little later he managed to struggle -to a sitting posture on the curb, looking up at them with dazed eyes and -a bloody face. - -Howard took his slow gaze from the negro and covered his face with his -hands. - -Carter watched him. - -Of all men in the world this was the one whom Carter most honored and -most loved--honored and loved, while he envied; he was the only man, -perhaps, that could have touched Carter through his crust of bitterness. -Carter listened with strained attention for what Howard would say, as if -with some premonition that the words would be the cue for the most vital -action of his life. - -“My God! My God!” said Willoughby Howard, “will this thing never stop?” - And then he straightened himself and turned toward the shadow into which -Carter had retired, and there was the glow and glory of a large idea on -his face; the thought of a line of men never lacking, when once aroused, -in the courage to do and die for a principle or a human need. “There is -one way,” he cried, stretching out his hands impulsively to Carter, and -not knowing to whom or to what manner of man he spoke--“there is one way -to make them pause and think! If two of us white men of the better class -offer our lives for these poor devils--die in their defense!--the mob -will halt; the crowd will think; we can end it! Will you do it, with me? -Will you do it?” - -Two of us white men of the better class! Willoughby Howard had taken him -for a white man! - -It was like an accolade. A light blazed through the haunted caverns of -his soul; he swelled with a vast exultation. - -Willoughby Howard had taken him for a white man! Then, by God, he would -be one! Since he was nothing in this life, he could at least die--and in -his death he would be a white man! Nay, more:--he would die shoulder to -shoulder with one of that family whose blood he shared. He would show -that he, too, could shed that blood for an idea or a principle! For -humanity! At the thought he could feel it singing in his veins. Oh, to -be white, white, white! The dreams and the despairs of all his miserable -and hampered life passed before him in a whirl, and now the cry was -answered! - -“Yes,” he said, lifting his head, and rising at that instant into a -larger thing than he had ever been, “I will stand by you. I will die -with you.” And under his breath he added--“my brother.” - -They had not long to wait. In the confused horror of that night things -happened quickly. Even as Carter spoke the wounded negro struggled to -his feet with a scarce articulate cry of alarm, for around the corner -swept a mob, and the dwarf with matted hair was in the lead. He had come -back with help to make sure of his job. - -With the negro cowering behind them, the white man and the mulatto -stepped forth to face the mob. Their attitude made their intention -obvious. - -“Don't be a damned fool, Willoughby Howard,” said a voice from the -crowd, “or you may get hurt yourself.” And with the words there was a -rush, and the three were in the midst of the clamoring madness, the mob -dragging the negro from his two defenders. - -“Be careful--don't hurt Willoughby Howard!” said the same voice again. -Willoughby turned, and, recognizing the speaker as an acquaintance, with -a sudden access of scorn and fury and disgust, struck him across the -mouth. The next moment his arms were pinioned, and he was lifted and -flung away from the negro he had been fighting to protect by half a -dozen men. - -“You fools! You fools!” he raged, struggling toward the center of -the crowd again, “you're killing a white man there. An innocent white -man------ Do you stop at nothing? You're killing a _white man_, I say!” - -“White man?” said the person whom he had struck, and who appeared to -bear him little resentment for the blow. “Who's a white man? Not Jerry -Carter here! He wasn't any white man. I've known him since he was a -kid--he was just one of those yaller niggers.” - -And Carter heard it as he died. - - - - -II--Old Man Murtrie - -|Old Man Murtrie never got any fresh air at all, except on Sundays on -his way to and from church. He lived, slept, cooked and ate back of the -prescription case in his little dismal drug store in one of the most -depressing quarters of Brooklyn. The store was dimly lighted by gas and -it was always damp and suggested a tomb. Drifting feebly about in the -pale and cold and faintly greenish radiance reflected from bottles and -show cases, Old Man Murtrie with his bloodless face and dead white hair -and wisps of whisker was like a ghost that has not managed to get free -from the neighborhood of a sepulcher where its body lies disintegrating. - -People said that Old Man Murtrie was nearly a hundred years old, -but this was not true; he was only getting along towards ninety. The -neighborhood, however, seemed a little impatient with him for not dying. -Some persons suggested that perhaps he really had been dead for a long -time, and did not know it. If so, they thought, it might be kind to tell -him about it. - -But Old Man Murtrie was not dead, any more than he was alive. And Death -himself, who has his moments of impatience, began to get worried about -Old Man Murtrie. It was time, Death thought, that he was dead, since he -looked so dead; and Death had said so, both to God and to the Devil. - -“But I don't want to garner him, naturally,” Death would say, “till -I know which one of you is to have him. He's got to go somewhere, you -know.” - -God and Death and the Devil used to sit on the prescription counter in -a row, now and then, and watch Old Man Murtrie as he slept in his humble -little cot back there, and discuss him. - -God would look at Old Man Murtrie's pale little Adam's Apple sticking up -in the faint gaslight, and moving as he snored--moving feebly, for even -his snores were feeble--and say, with a certain distaste: - -“I don't want him. He can't get into Heaven.” - -And the Devil would look at his large, weak, characterless nose;--a -nose so big that it might have suggested force on any one but Old Man -Murtrie--and think what a sham it was, and how effectually all its -contemptible effort to be a real nose was exposed in Old Man Murtrie's -sleep. And the Devil would say: - -“I don't want him. He can't get into Hell.” - -And then Death would say, querulously: “But he can't go on living -forever. My reputation is suffering.” - -“You should take him,” the Devil would say to God. “He goes to church -on Sunday, and he is the most meek and pious and humble and prayerful -person in all Brooklyn, and perhaps in all the world.” - -“But he takes drugs,” God would say. “You should take him, because he is -a drug fiend.” - -“He takes drugs,” the Devil would admit, “but that doesn't make him a -_fiend_. You have to do something besides take drugs to be a fiend. You -will permit me to have my own notions, I am sure, on what constitutes a -fiend.” - -“You ought to forgive him the drugs for the sake of his piety,” the -Devil would say. “And taking drugs is his only vice. He doesn't drink, -or smoke tobacco, or use profane language, or gamble. And he doesn't run -after women.” - -“You ought to forgive him the piety for the sake of the drugs,” God -would tell the Devil. - -“I never saw such a pair as you two,” Death would say querulously. -“Quibble, quibble, quibble!--while Old Man Murtrie goes on and on -living! He's lived so long that he is affecting death rates and -insurance tables, all by himself, and you know what that does to my -reputation.” - -And Death would stoop over and run his finger caressingly across Old Man -Murtrie's throat, as the Old Man slept. Whereupon Old Man Murtrie would -roll over on his back and moan in his sleep and gurgle. - -“He has wanted to be a cheat all his life,” God would say to the Devil. -“He has always had the impulse to give short weight and substitute -inferior drugs in his prescriptions and overcharge children who were -sent on errands to his store. If that isn't sin I don't know what sin -is. You should take him.” - -“I admit he has had those impulses,” the Devil would say to God. “But -he has never yielded to them. In my opinion having those impulses and -conquering them makes him a great deal more virtuous than if he'd never -had 'em. No one who is as virtuous as all that can get into Hell.” - -“I never saw such a pair,” Death would grumble. “Can't you agree with -each other about anything?” - -“He didn't abstain from his vices because of any courage,” God would -say. “He abstained simply because he was afraid. It wasn't virtue in -him; it was cowardice.” - -“The fear of the Lord,” murmured the Devil, dreamily, “is the beginning -of all wisdom.” - -“But not necessarily the end of it,” God would remark. - -“Argue, argue, argue,” Death would say, “and here's Old Man Murtrie -still alive! I'm criticized about the way I do my work, but no one has -any idea of the vacillation and inefficiency I have to contend with! I -never saw such a pair as you two to vacillate!” - -Sometimes Old Man Murtrie would wake up and turn over on his couch and -see God and Death and the Devil sitting in a row on the prescription -counter, looking at him. But he always persuaded himself that it was -a sort of dream, induced by the “medicine” he took; and he would take -another dose of his “medicine” and go back to sleep again. He never -spoke to them when he waked, but just lay on his cot and stared at them; -and if they spoke to him he would pretend to himself that they had not -spoken. For it was absurd to think that God and Death and the Devil -could really be sitting there, in the dim greenish gaslight, among all -the faintly radiant bottles, talking to each other and looking at him; -and so Old Man Murtrie would not believe it. - -When he first began taking his “medicine” Old Man Murtrie took it in the -form of a certain patent preparation which was full of opium. He wanted -the opium more and more after he started, but he pretended to himself -that he did not know there was much opium in that medicine. Then, when a -federal law banished that kind of medicine from the markets, he took to -making it for his own use. He would not take opium outright, for that -would be to acknowledge to himself that he was an opium eater; he -thought eating opium was a sin, and he thought of himself as sinless. -But to make the medicine with the exact formula that its manufacturers -had used, before they had been compelled to shut up shop, and use it, -did not seem to him to be the same thing at all as being an opium eater. -And yet, after the law was passed, abolishing the medicine, he would not -sell to any one else what he made for himself; his conscience would not -allow him to do so. Therefore, he must have known that he was eating -opium at the same time he tried to fool himself about it. - -God and the Devil used to discuss the ethics of this attitude towards -the “medicine,” and Old Man Murtrie would sometimes pretend to be asleep -and would listen to them. - -“He knows it is opium all right,” God would say. “He is just lying to -himself about it. He ought to go to Hell. No one that lies to himself -that way can get into Heaven.” - -“He's pretending for the sake of society in general and for the sake of -religion,” the Devil would say. “If he admitted to himself that it was -opium and if he let the world know that he took opium, it might bring -discredit on the church that he loves so well. He might become a -stumbling block to others who are seeking salvation, and who seek it -through the church. He is willing to sacrifice himself so as not to -hamper others in their religious life. For my part, I think it is highly -honorable of him, and highly virtuous. No person as moral as that in his -instincts can get into Hell.” - -“Talk, talk, talk!” Death would say. “The trouble with you two is that -neither one of you wants Old Man Murtrie around where you will have to -look at him through all eternity, and each of you is trying to put it on -moral grounds.” - -And Old Man Murtrie kept on living and praying and being pious and -wanting to be bad and not daring to and taking his medicine and being -generally as ineffectual in the world either for good or evil as a -butterfly in a hurricane. - -But things took a turn. There was a faded-looking blonde woman with -stringy hair by the name of Mable who assisted Old Man Murtrie in the -store, keeping his books and waiting on customers, and so forth. She was -unmarried, and one day she announced to him that she was going to have a -child. - -Old Man Murtrie had often looked at her with a recollection, a dim and -faint remembrance, of the lusts of his youth and of his middle age. -In his youth and middle age he had lusted after many women, but he had -never let any of them know it, because he was afraid, and he had called -his fears virtue, and had really believed that he was virtuous. - -“Whom do you suspect?” asked Old Man Murtrie, leering at Mable like a -wraith blown down the ages from the dead adulteries of ruined Babylon. - -“Who?” cried Mable, an unlessoned person, but with a cruel, instinctive -humor. “Who but you!” - -She had expected Old Man Murtrie to be outraged at her ridiculous joke, -and, because she was unhappy herself, had anticipated enjoying his -astounded protests. But it was she who was astounded. Old Man Murtrie's -face was blank and his eyes were big for a moment, and then he chuckled; -a queer little cackling chuckle. And when she went out he opened the -door for her and cocked his head and cackled again. - -It gave Mable an idea. She reflected that he took so much opium that he -might possibly be led to believe the incredible, and she might get some -money out of him. So the next evening she brought her mother and her -brother to the store and accused him. - -Old Man Murtrie chuckled and... _and admitted it!_ Whether he believed -that it could be true or not, Mable and her people were unable to -determine. But they made the tactical error of giving him his choice -between marriage and money, and he chose matrimony. - -And then Old Man Murtrie was suddenly seized with a mania for -confession. God and Death and the Devil used to listen to him nights, -and they wondered over him, and began to change their minds about him, a -little. He confessed to the officials of his church. He confessed to all -the people whom he knew. He insisted on making a confession, a public -confession, in the church itself and asking for the prayers of the -preacher and congregation for his sin, and telling them that he was -going to atone by matrimony, and asking for a blessing on the wedding. - -And one night, full of opium, while he-was babbling about it in his -sleep, God and Death and the Devil sat on the prescription counter again -and looked at him and listened to his ravings and speculated. - -“I'm going to have him,” said the Devil. “Any one who displays such -conspicuous bad taste that he goes around confessing that he has ruined -a woman ought to go to Hell.” - -“You don't want him for that reason,” said God. “And you know you don't. -You want him because you admire the idea of adultery, and think that now -he is worthy of a place in Hell. You are rather entertained by Old Man -Murtrie, and want him around now.” - -“Well,” said the Devil, “suppose I admit that is true! Have you any -counter claim?” - -“Yes,” said God. “I am going to take Old Man Murtrie into Heaven. He -knows he is not the father of the child that is going to be born, but he -has deliberately assumed the responsibility lest it be born fatherless, -and I think that is a noble act.” - -“Rubbish!” said the Devil. “That isn't the reason you want him. You want -him because of the paternal instinct he displays. It flatters you!” - -“Well,” said God, “why not? The paternal instinct is another name for -the great creative force of the universe. I have been known by many -names in many countries... they called me Osiris, the All-Father, in -Egypt, and they called me Jehovah in Palestine, and they called me -Zeus and Brahm... but always they recognized me as the Father. And this -instinct for fatherliness appeals to me. Old Man Murtrie shall come to -Heaven.” - -“Such a pair as you two,” said Death, gloomily, “I never did see! -Discuss and discuss, but never get anywhere! And all the time Old Man -Murtrie goes on living.” - -And then Death added: - -“Why not settle this matter once and for all, right now? Why not wake -Old Man Murtrie up and let him decide?” - -“Decide?” asked the Devil. - -“Yes,--whether he wants to go to Hell or to Heaven.” - -“I imagine,” said God, “that if we do that there can be no question as -to which place he would rather go to.” - -“Oh, I don't know,” said the Devil. “Some people come to Hell quite -willingly. I've been to Heaven myself, you know, and I can quite -understand why. Are you afraid to have Old Man Murtrie make the choice?” - -“Wake him up, Death, wake him up,” said God. “It's unusual to allow -people to know that they are making their own decision--though all of -them, in a sense, do make it--but wake him up, Death, and we'll see.” - -So Death prodded Old Man Murtrie in the ribs, and they asked him. For a -long time he thought it was only opium, but when he finally understood -that it was really God and Death and the Devil who were there, and that -it was really they who had often been there before, he was very much -frightened. He was so frightened he couldn't choose. - -“I'll leave it to you, I'll leave it to you,” said Old Man Murtrie. “Who -am I that I should set myself up to decide?” - -“Well,” said God, getting a little angry, perhaps, “if you don't want to -go to Heaven, Murtrie, you don't have to. But you've been, praying to go -to Heaven, and all that sort of thing, for seventy or eighty years, and -I naturally thought you were in earnest. But I'm through with you... you -can go to Hell.” - -“Oh! Oh! Oh!” moaned Old Man Murtrie. - -“No,” said the Devil, “I've changed my mind, too. My distaste for -Murtrie has returned to me. I don't want him around. I won't have him in -Hell.” - -“See here, now!” cried Death. “You two are starting it all over again. -I won't have it, so I won't! You aren't fair to Murtrie, and you aren't -fair to me! This matter has got to be settled, and settled to-night!” - -“Well, then,” said God, “settle it. I've ceased to care one way or -another.” - -“I will not,” said Death, “I know my job, and I stick to my job. One of -you two has got to settle it.” - -“Toss a coin,” suggested the Devil, indifferently. - -Death looked around for one. - -“There's a qu-qu-quarter in m-m-my t-t-trousers' p-p-pocket,” stammered -Old Man Murtrie, and then stuck his head under the bedclothes and -shivered as if he had the ague. - -Death picked up Murtrie's poor little weazened trousers from the floor -at the foot of the cot, where they lay sprawled untidily, and shook them -till the quarter dropped out. - -He picked it up. - -“Heads, he goes to Heaven. Tails, he goes to Hell,” said Death, and -tossed the coin to the ceiling. Murtrie heard it hit the ceiling, and -started. He heard it hit the floor, and bounce, and jingle and spin and -roll and come to rest. And he thrust his head deeper under the covers -and lay there quaking. He did not dare look. - -“Look at it, Murtrie,” said Death. - -“Oh! Oh! Oh!” groaned Murtrie, shaking the cot. - -But Death reached over and caught him by the neck and turned his face so -that he could not help seeing. And Old Man Murtrie looked and saw that -the coin had fallen with the side up that sent him to---- - -But, really, why should I tell you? Go and worry about your own soul, -and let Old Man Murtrie's alone. - - - - -III.--Never Say Die - -|There seemed nothing left but suicide. - -But how? In what manner? By what method? Mr. Gooley lay on his bed and -thought--or tried to think. The pain in his head, which had been there -ever since the day after he had last eaten, prevented easy and coherent -thought. - -It had been three days ago that the pain left his stomach and went into -his head. Hunger had become a cerebral thing, he told himself. His body -had felt hunger so long that it refused to feel it any longer; it had -shifted the burden to his brain. - -“It has passed the buck to my mind, my stomach has,” murmured Mr. Gooley -feebly. And the mind, less by the process of coherent and connected -thought than by a sudden impulsive pounce, had grasped the idea of -suicide. - -“Not with a knife,” considered Mr. Gooley. He had no knife. He had no -money to buy a knife. He had no strength to go down the three flights -of stairs in the cheap Brooklyn lodging house where he lay, and borrow a -knife from the landlady who came and went vaguely in the nether regions, -dim and damp and dismal. - -“Not with a knife,” repeated Mr. Gooley. And a large cockroach, which -had been crawling along the footpiece of the old-fashioned wooden bed, -stopped crawling at the words as if it understood, and turned about and -looked at him. - -Mr. Gooley wondered painfully, for it was a pain even to wonder about -anything, why this cockroach should remind him of somebody who was -somehow connected with a knife, and not unpleasantly connected with a -knife. The cockroach stood up on the hindmost pair of his six legs, and -seemed to put his head on one side and motion with his front legs at Mr. -Gooley. - -“I get you,” said Mr. Gooley, conscious that his mind was wandering from -the point, and willing to let it wander. “I know who you are! You were -Old Man Archibald Hammil, the hardware merchant back in Mapletown, where -I was a kid, before you dried up and turned into a cockroach.” And Mr. -Gooley wept a few weak tears. For old Archibald Hammil, the village -hardware merchant, had sold him the first knife he had ever owned. -His father had taken him into Hammil's store to buy it on his seventh -birthday, for a present, and it had had a buckhorn handle and two -blades. Again he saw Old Man Hammil in his dingy brown clothes, looking -at him, with his head on one side, as this cockroach was doing. Again -he felt his father pat him on the head, and heard him say always to -remember to whittle _away_ from himself, never _toward_ himself. And he -saw himself, shy and flushed and eager, a freckle-faced boy as good and -as bad as most boys, looking up at his father and wriggling and wanting -to thank him, and not knowing how. That was nearly forty years ago--and -here he was, a failure and starving and------ - -_Why_ had he wanted a knife? Yes, he remembered now! To kill himself -with. - -“It's none of your damned business, Old Man Hammil,” he said to the -cockroach, which was crawling back and forth on the footboard, and -pausing every now and then to look at him with disapproval. - -Old Man Hammil had had ropes in his store, too, and guns and pistols, -he remembered. He hadn't thought of Old Man Hammi's store in many years; -but now he saw it, and the village street outside it, and the place -where the stores left off on the street and the residences began, and -berry bushes, and orchards, and clover in the grass--the random bloom, -the little creek that bounded the town, and beyond the creek the open -country with its waving fields of oats and rye and com. His head hurt -him worse. He would go right back into Old Man Hammil's store and get a -rope or a gun and end that pain. - -But _that_ was foolish, too. There wasn't any store. There was only Old -Man Hammil here, shrunk to the size of a cockroach, in his rusty brown -suit, looking at him from the footboard of the bed and telling him in -pantomime not to kill himself. - -“I will too!” cried Mr. Gooley to Old Man Hammil. And he repeated, “It's -none of _your_ damned business!” - -But how? Not with a knife. He had none. Not with a gun. He had none. Not -with a rope. He had none. He thought of his suspenders. But they would -never hold him. - -“Too weak, even for me,” muttered Mr. Gooley. “I have shrunk so I -don't weigh much more than Old Man Hammil there, but even at that those -suspenders would never do the business.” - -How did people kill themselves? He must squeeze his head till the pain -let up a little, so he could think. Poison! That was it--yes, poison! -And then he cackled out a small, dry, throaty laugh, his Adam's apple -fluttering in his weazened throat under his sandy beard. Poison! He -_hadn't_ any poison. He hadn't any money with which to buy poison. - -And then began a long, broken and miserable debate within himself. If he -had money enough with which to buy poison, would he go and buy poison? -Or go and buy a bowl of soup? It was some moments before Mr. Gooley -decided. - -“I'd be game,” he said. “I'd buy the soup. I'd give myself that one more -chance. I must remember while I'm killing myself, that I'm not killing -myself because I _want_ to. I'm just doing it because I've _got_ to. I'm -not romantic. I'm just all in. It's the end; that's all.” - -Old Man Hammil, on the footboard of the bed, permitted himself a series -of gestures which Mr. Gooley construed as applause of this resolution. -They angered Mr. Gooley, those gestures. - -“You shut up!” he told the cockroach, although that insect had not -spoken, but only made signs. “This is none of your damned business, Old -Man Hammil!” - -Old Man Hammil, he remembered, had always been a meddlesome old -party--one of the village gossips, in fact. And that set him to thinking -of Mapletown again. - -The mill pond near the schoolhouse would soon be freezing over, and -the boys would be skating on it--it was getting into December. And they -would be going into Old Man Hammil's store for skates and straps and -heel plates and files. And he remembered his first pair of skates, and -how his father had taught him the proper way to keep them sharp with a -file. He and the old dad had always been pretty good pals, and---- - -Good God! Why _should_ he be coming back to that? And to Old Man -Hammil's store? It was that confounded cockroach there, reminding him of -Old Man Hammil, that had done it. He wanted to die decently and quietly, -and as quickly as might be, without thinking of all these things. -He didn't want to lie there and die of starvation, he wanted to kill -himself and be done with it without further misery--and it was a part -of the ridiculous futility of his life, his baffled and broken and -insignificant life, that he couldn't even kill himself competently--that -he lay there suffering and ineffectual and full of self-pity, a prey to -memories and harassing visions of the past, all mingled with youth and -innocence and love, without the means of a quick escape. It was that -damned cockroach, looking like Old Man Hammil, the village hardware -merchant, that had brought back the village and his youth to him, and -all those intolerable recollections. - -He took his dirty pillow and feebly menaced the cockroach. Feeble as the -gesture was, the insect took alarm. It disappeared from the footboard -of the bed. A minute later, however, he saw it climbing the wall. It -reached the ceiling, and crawled to the center of the room. Mr. Goo-ley -watched it. He felt as if he, too, could crawl along the ceiling. He had -the crazy notion of trying. After all, he told himself light-headedly, -Old Cockroach Hammil up there on the ceiling had been friendly--the only -friendly thing, human or otherwise, that had made overtures to him in -many, many months. And he had scared Cockroach Hammil away! He shed some -more maudlin tears. - -What was the thing doing now? He watched as the insect climbed on to -the gas pipe that came down from the ceiling. It descended the rod and -perched itself on the gas jet. From this point of vantage it began once -more to regard Mr. Gooley with a singular intentness. - -Ah! Gas! That was it! What a fool he had been not to think of it sooner! -That was the way people killed themselves! Gas! - -Mr. Gooley got himself weakly out of bed. He would get the thing over as -quickly as possible now. It would be damnably unpleasant before he lost -consciousness, no doubt, and painful. But likely not more unpleasant and -painful than his present state. And he simply could not bear any more of -those recollections, any more visions. - -He turned his back on the cockroach, which was watching him from the -gas jet, and went methodically to work. The window rattled; between the -upper and lower sashes there was a crevice a quarter of an inch wide. He -plugged it with paper. There was a break in the wall of his closet; the -plaster had fallen away, and a chink allowed the cockroaches from his -room easy access to the closet of the adjoining room. He plugged that -also, and was about to turn his attention to the keyhole, when there -came a knock on his door. - -Mr. Gooley's first thought was: “What can any one want with a dead man?” - For he looked upon himself as already dead. There came a second knock, -more peremptory than the first, and he said mechanically, “Come in!” It -would have to be postponed a few minutes, that was all. - -The door opened, and in walked his landlady. She was a tall and bulky -and worried-looking woman, who wore a faded blond wig that was always -askew, and Mr. Gooley was afraid of her. Her wig was more askew than -usual when she entered, and he gathered from this that she was angry -about something--why the devil must she intrude her trivial mundane -anger upon himself, a doomed man? It was not seemly. - -“Mr. Gooley,” she began severely, without preamble, “I have always -looked on you as a gentleman.” - -“Yes?” he murmured dully. - -“But you ain't,” she continued. “You ain't no better than a cheat.” - -He shrugged his shoulders patiently. He supposed that she was right -about it. He owed her three weeks' room rent, and he was going to die -and beat her out of it. But he couldn't help it. - -“It ain't the room rent,” she went on, as if vaguely cognizant of the -general trend of his thoughts. “It ain't the room rent alone. You either -pay me that or you don't pay me that, and if you don't, out you go. But -while you are here, you must conduct yourself as a gentleman should!” - -“Well,” murmured Mr. Gooley, “haven't I?” - -And the cockroach, perched on the gas jet above the landlady's head, and -apparently listening to this conversation, moved several of his legs, as -if in surprise. - -“You have not!” said the landlady, straightening her wig. - -“What have I done, Mrs. Hinkley?” asked Mr. Gooley humbly. And Old -Cockroach Hammil from his perch also made signs of inquiry. - -“What have you done! What have you done!” cried Mrs. Hinkley. “As if the -man didn't know what he had done I You've been stealin' my gas, that's -what you have been doin'--stealin', I say, and there's no other word for -it!” - -Mr. Gooley started guiltily. He had not been stealing her gas, but it -came over him with a shock for the first time that that was what he -had, in effect, been planning to do. The cockroach, as if it also felt -convicted of sin, gave the gas jet a glance of horror and moved up the -rod to the ceiling, where it continued to listen. - -“Stealin'!” repeated Mrs. Hinkley. “That's what it is, nothin' else -but stealin'. You don't ever stop to think when you use one of them gas -plates to cook in your room, Mr. Gooley--which it is expressly forbid -and agreed on that no cooking shall be done in these rooms when they're -rented to you--that it's my gas you're using, and that I have to pay for -it, and that it's just as much stealin' as if you was to put your hand -into my pocket-book and take my money!” - -“Cooking? Gas plate?” muttered Mr. Gooley. “Don't say you ain't got -one!” cried Mrs. Hinkley. “You all got 'em! Every last one of you! Don't -you try to come none of your sweet innocence dodges over me. I know -you, and the whole tribe of you! I ain't kept lodgers for thirty years -without knowing the kind of people they be! 'Gas plate! Gas plate!' says -you, as innocent as if you didn't know what a gas plate was! You got it -hid here somewheres, and I ain't going to stir from this room until I -get my hands on it and squash it under my feet! Come across with it, Mr. -Gooley, come across with it!” - -“But I _haven't_ one,” said Mr. Gooley, very ill and very weary. “You -can look, if you want to.” - -And he lay back upon the bed. The cockroach slyly withdrew himself from -the ceiling, came down the wall, and crawled to the foot of the bed -again. If Mrs. Hinkley noticed him, she said nothing; perhaps it was not -a part of her professional policy to draw attention to cockroaches on -the premises. She stood and regarded Mr. Gooley for some moments, while -he turned his head away from her in apathy. Her first anger seemed to -have spent itself. But finally, with a new resolution, she said: “And -look I will! You got one, or else that blondined party in the next room -has lied.” - -She went into the closet and he heard her opening his trunk. She pulled -it into the bedroom and examined the interior. It didn't take long. She -dived under the bed and drew out his battered suitcase, so dilapidated -that he had not been able to get a quarter for it at the pawnshop, but -no more dilapidated than his trunk. - -She seemed struck, for the first time since her entrance, with the utter -bareness of the room. Outside of the bed, one chair, the bureau, and -Mr. Cooley's broken shoes at the foot of the bed, there was absolutely -nothing in it. - -She sat down in the chair beside the bed. “Mr. Gooley,” she said, “you -_ain't_ got any gas plate.” - -“No,” he said. - -“Mr. Gooley,” she said, “you got _nothing at all._ - -“No,” he said, “nothing.” - -“You had a passel of books and an overcoat five or six weeks ago,” she -said, “when you come here. It was seein' them books, and knowing what -you was four or five years ago, when you lived here once before, that -made me sure you was a gentleman.” - -Mr. Gooley made no reply. The cockroach on the foot of the bed also -seemed to be listening to see if Mrs. Hinkley had anything more to say, -and suspending judgment. - -“Mr. Gooley,” said the landlady, “I beg your pardon. You was lied on by -one that has a gas plate herself, and when I taxed her with it, and took -it away from her, and got rid of her, she had the impudence to say she -thought it was _allowed_, and that everybody done it, and named you as -one that did.” - -Mrs. Hinkley paused, but neither Mr. Gooley nor the cockroach had -anything to contribute to the conversation. - -“Gas,” continued Mrs. Hinkley, “is gas. And gas costs money. I hadn't -orter jumped on you the way I did, Mr. Gooley, but gas plates has got -to be what you might call corns on my brain, Mr. Gooley. They're my -sensitive spot, Mr. Gooley. If I was to tell you the half of what I have -had to suffer from gas plates during the last thirty years, Mr. Gooley, -you wouldn't believe it! There's them that will cheat you one way and -there's them that will cheat you another, but the best of them will -cheat you with gas plates, Mr. Gooley. With the exception of yourself, -Mr. Gooley, I ain't had a lodger in thirty years that wouldn't rob me -on the gas. Some don't think it's stealin', Mr. Gooley, when they steal -gas. And some of 'em don't care if it is. But there ain't none of 'em -ever thinks what a _landlady_ goes through with, year in and year out.” - -She paused for a moment, and then, overcome with self-pity, she began to -sniffle. - -“And my rent's been raised on me again, Mr. Gooley! And I'm a month -behind! And if I ain't come across with the two months, the old month -and the new, by day after to-morrow, out I goes; and it means the -poorhouse as fur as I can see, because I don't know anything else but -keeping lodgers, and I got no place to go!” - -She gathered her apron up and wiped her eyes and nose with it. The -cockroach on the footboard wiped his front set of feet across his face -sympathetically. - -“I got it all ready but fifteen dollars,” continued Mrs. Hinkley, “and -then in comes the gas bill this morning with _arrears_ onto it. It is -them _arrears_, Mr. Gooley, that always knocks me out! If it wasn't for -them arrears, I could get along. And now I got to pay out part of the -rent money onto the gas bill, with them arrears on it, or the gas will -be shut off this afternoon.” - -The pain in Mr. Gooley's head was getting worse. He wished she would go. -He hated hearing her troubles. But she continued: - -“It's the way them arrears come onto the bill, Mr. Gooley, that has got -me sore. About a week before you come here again to live, Mr. Gooley, -there was a fellow stole fifteen dollars worth of my gas all at once. He -went and killed himself, Mr. Gooley, and he used my gas to do it with. -It leaked out of two jets for forty-eight hours up on the top floor, -before the door was busted in and the body was found, and it came -to fifteen dollars, and all on account of that man's cussedness, Mr. -Gooley, I will likely get turned out into the street, and me sixty years -old and no place to turn.” - -Mr. Gooley sat up in bed feebly and looked at her. She _was_ in real -trouble--in about as much trouble as he was. The cockroach walked -meditatively up and down the footboard, as if thinking it over very -seriously. - -Mrs. Hinkley finally rose. - -“Mr. Gooley,” she said, regarding him sharply, “you look kind o' done -up!” - -“Uh-huh,” said Mr. Gooley. - -She lingered in the room for a few seconds more, irresolutely, and then -departed. - -Mr. Gooley thought. Gas was barred to him now. He couldn't bring himself -to do it with gas. There was still a chance that the old woman might -get hold of the gas money and the rent money, too, and go on for a few -years, but if he selfishly stole twelve or fifteen dollars' worth of gas -from her this afternoon it might be just the thing that would plunge her -into immediate destitution. At any rate, it was, as she had said, like -stealing money from her pocketbook. He thought of what her life as a -rooming-house keeper must have been, and pitied her. He had known many -rooming houses. The down-and-outers know how to gauge the reality and -poignancy of the troubles of the down-and-out. No, he simply could not -do it with gas. - -He must think of some other method. He was on the fourth floor. He might -throw himself out of the window onto the brick walk at the back of the -building, and die. He shuddered as he thought of it. To jump from a -twentieth story, or from the top of the Woolworth Tower, to a certain -death is one thing. To contemplate a fall of three or four stories that -may maim you without killing you, is another. - -Nevertheless, he would do it. He pulled the paper out of the crevice -between the window sashes, opened the window and looked down. He saw the -back stoop and there was a dirty mop beside it; there was an ash can, -and there were two garbage cans there. And there was a starved cat that -sat and looked up at him. He had a tremor and drew back and covered his -face with his hands as he thought of that cat--that knowing cat, that -loathsome, that obscene cat. - -He sat down on the edge of the bed to collect his strength and summon -his resolution. The cockroach had crawled to the head of the bed and -seemed to wish to partake of his thoughts. - -“Damn you, Old Archibald Hammil!” he cried. And he scooped the cockroach -into his hand with a sudden sweep and flung it out of the window. The -insect fell without perceptible discomfort, and at once began to climb -up the outside wall again, making for the window. - -The door opened and Mrs. Hinkley entered, her face cleft with a grin, -and a tray in her hands. - -“Mr. Gooley,” she said, setting it on the wash-stand, “I'll bet you -ain't had nothing to eat today!” - -On the tray was a bowl of soup, a half loaf of bread with a long keen -bread knife, a pat of butter, a boiled egg and a cup of coffee. - -“No, nor yesterday, either,” said Mr. Gooley, and he looked at the soup -and at the long keen bread knife. - -“Here's something else I want to show you, Mr. Gooley,” said the -landlady, dodging out of the door and back in again instantly. She bore -in her hands this time a surprising length of flexible gas tubing, and a -small nickel-plated pearl-handled revolver. - -“You see that there gas tubing?” she said. - -“That is what that blondined party in the next room had on to her gas -plate--the nerve of her! Strung from the gas jet clear across the room -to the window sill. And when I throwed her out, Mr. Gooley, she wouldn't -pay her rent, and I took this here revolver to part pay it. What kind of -a woman is it, Mr. Gooley, that has a revolver in her room, and a loaded -one, too?” - -Just then the doorbell rang in the dim lower regions, and she left the -room to answer it. - -And Mr. Gooley sat and looked at the knife, with which he might so -easily stab himself, and at the gas cord, with which he might so easily -hang himself, and at the loaded revolver, with which he might so easily -shoot himself. - -He looked also at the bowl of soup. - -He had the strength to reflect--a meal is a meal. But _after_ that meal, -what? Penniless, broken in health, friendless, a failure--why prolong it -for another twenty-four hours? A meal would prolong it, but that was -all a meal _would_ do--and after that would come the suffering and the -despair and the end to be faced all over again. - -Was he man enough to take the pistol and do it now? - -Or did true manhood lie the other way? Was he man enough to drink the -soup, and dare to live and hope? - -Just then the cockroach, which had climbed into the window and upon the -washstand, made for the bowl of soup. - -“Here!” cried Mr. Gooley, grabbing the bowl in both hands, “Old Man -Hammil! Get away from that soup!” - -And the bowl being in his hands, he drank. - -“What do you mean by Old Man Hammil?” - -It was Mrs. Hinkley who spoke. She stood again in the doorway, with a -letter in her hands and a look of wonder on her face. - -Mr. Gooley set down the soup bowl. By an effort of the will he had -only drunk half the liquid. He had heard somewhere that those who are -suffering from starvation had better go slow at first when they get hold -of food again. And he already felt better, warmed and resurrected, from -the first gulp. - -“What,” demanded the landlady, “do you mean by yelling out about Old Man -Hammil?” - -“Why,” said Mr. Gooley, feeling foolish, and looking it, “I was talking -to that cockroach there. He looks sort of like some one I knew when I -was a kid, by the name of Hammil--Archibald Hammil.” - -“_Where_ was you a kid?” asked Mrs. Hinkley. - -“In a place called Mapletown--Mapletown, Illinois,” said Mr. Gooley. -“There's where I knew Old Man Hammil.” - -“Well,” said the landlady, “when you go back there you won't see him. -He's dead. He died a week ago. This letter tells it. I was his niece. -And the old man went and left me his hardware store. I never expected -it. But all his kids is dead--it seems he outlived 'em all, and he was -nearly ninety when he passed away.” - -“Well,” said Mr. Gooley, “I don't remember you.” - -“You wouldn't,” said the landlady. “You must have been in short pants -when I ran away from home and married the hardware drummer. But I'll bet -you the old-timers in that burg still remembers it against me!” - -“The kids will be coming into that store about now to get their skates -sharpened,” said Mr. Gooley, looking at the boiled egg. - -“Uh-huh!” said Mrs. Hinkley. “Don't you want to go back home and help -sharpen 'em? I'm goin' back and run that there store, and I'll need a -clerk, I suppose.” - -“Uh-huh,” said Mr. Gooley, breaking the eggshell. - -The cockroach, busy with a crumb on the floor, waved his three starboard -legs genially at Mr. Gooley and Mrs. Hinkley--as if, in fact, he were -winking with his feet. - - - - -IV.--McDermott - -|McDermott had gone over with a cargo of mules. The animals were -disembarked at a Channel port, received by officers of that grand -organization which guesses right so frequently, the Quartermaster Corps, -and started in a southerly direction, in carload lots, toward the Toul -sector of the Western Front. McDermott went with one of the carloads -in an unofficial capacity. He had no business in the war zone. But the -Quartermaster Corps, or that part of it in charge of his particular car, -was in no mood to be harsh toward any one who seemed to understand the -wants and humors of mules and who was willing to associate with them. -And so, with his blue overalls and his red beard, McDermott went along. - -“I'll have a look at the war,” said McDermott, “and if I like it, I'll -jine it.” - -“And if you don't like it,” said the teamster to whom he confided his -intention, “I reckon you'll stop it?” - -“I dunno,” replied McDermott, “as I would be justified in stoppin' a -good war. The McDermotts has niver been great hands f'r stoppin' wars. -The McDermotts is always more like to be startin' wars.” - -McDermott got a look at the war sooner than any one, including the high -command of the Entente Allies, would have thought likely--or, rather, -the war got a look at McDermott. The carload of mules, separated from -its right and proper train, got too far eastward at just the time -the Germans got too far westward. It was in April, 1918, that, having -entered Hazebrouck from the north, McDermott and his mules left it -again, bound eastward. They passed through a turmoil of guns and -lorries, Scotchmen and ambulances, Englishmen, tanks and ammunition -wagons, Irishmen, colonials and field kitchens, all moving slowly -eastward, and came to a halt at a little village where they should not -have been at all, halfway between the northern rim of the forest of -Nieppe and Bailleul. - -The mules did not stay there long. - -“I'll stretch me legs a bit,” said McDermott, climbing off the car -and strolling toward a Grande Place surrounded by sixteenth-century -architecture. And just then something passed over the Renaissance roofs -with the scream of one of Dante's devils, struck McDermott's car of -mules with a great noise and a burst of flame, and straightway created a -situation in which there was neither car nor mules. - -For a minute it seemed to McDermott that possibly there was no -McDermott, either. When McDermott regained consciousness of McDermott, -he was sitting on the ground, and he sat there and felt of himself for -many seconds before he spoke or rose. Great guns he had been hearing for -hours, and a rattle and roll of small-arms fire had been getting nearer -all that day; but it seemed to McDermott that there was something quite -vicious and personal about the big shell that had separated him forever -from his mules. Not that he had loved the mules, but he loved McDermott. - -“Mules,” said he, still sitting on the ground, but trying to get his -philosophy of life on to its legs again, “is here wan minute an' gawn -the nixt. Mules is fickle an' untrustworthy animals. Here was thim -mules, wigglin' their long ears and arsk-in' f'r Gawd's sake c'u'd they -have a dhrink of wather, an' promisin' a lifelong friendship--but where -is thim mules now?” - -He scratched his red head as he spoke, feeling-of an old scar under the -thick thatch of hair. The wound had been made some years previously -with a bung starter, and whenever McDermott was agitated he caressed it -tenderly. - -He got up, turned about and regarded the extraordinary Grande Place. -There had once been several pretty little shops about it, he could see, -with pleasant courtyards, where the April sun was trying to bring green -things into life again, but now some of these were in newly made and -smoking ruins. The shell that had stricken McDermott's mules from the -roster of existence had not been the only one to fall into the village -recently. - -But it was neither old ruins nor new ruins that interested McDermott -chiefly. It was the humanity that flowed through the Grande Place in a -feeble trickle westward, and the humanity that stayed there. - -Women and old men went by with household treasures slung in bundles or -pushed before them in carts and perambulators, and they were wearing -their best clothes, as if they were going to some village fête, instead -of into desolation and homelessness; the children whom they carried, or -who straggled after them, were also in their holiday best. Here was an -ancient peasant with a coop of skinny chickens on a barrow; there was a -girl in a silk gown carrying something in a bed quilt; yonder was a boy -of twelve on a bicycle, and two things were tied to the handlebars--a -loaf of bread and a soldier's bayonet. Perhaps it had been his father's -bayonet. Quietly they went westward; their lips were dumb and their -faces showed their souls were dumb, too. A long time they had heard the -battle growling to the eastward; and now the war was upon them. It was -upon them, indeed; for as McDermott gazed, another shell struck full -upon a bell-shaped tower that stood at the north side of the Grande -Place and it leaped up in flames and fell in dust and ruin, all gone but -one irregular point of masonry that still stuck out like a snaggle tooth -from a trampled skull. - -These were the ones that were going, and almost the last of the -dreary pageant disappeared as McDermott watched. But those who stayed -astonished him even more by their strange actions and uncouth postures. - -“Don't tell me,” mumbled McDermott, rubbing his scar, “that all thim -sojers is aslape!” - -But asleep they were. To the east and to the north the world was one rip -and rat-a-tat of rifle and machine-gun fire--how near, McDermott could -not guess--and over the village whined and droned the shells, of -great or lesser caliber; here was one gate to a hell of noise, and the -buildings stirred and the budding vines in the courtyards moved and -the dust itself was agitated with the breath and blast of far and near -concussions; but yet the big open Place itself was held in the grip of a -grotesque and incredible slumber. - -Sprawled in the gutters, collapsed across the doorsills, leaning against -the walls, slept that portion of the British army; slept strangely, -without snoring. In the middle of the Grande Place there was a young -lieutenant bending forward across the wreck of a motor car; he had tried -to pluck forth a basket from the tonneau and sleep had touched him with -his fingers on the handle. And from the eastern fringes of the village -there entered the square, as actors enter upon a stage, a group of -a dozen men, with their arms linked together, swaying and dazed and -stumbling. At first McDermott thought that wounded were being helped -from the field. But these men were not wounded; they were walking in -their sleep, and the group fell apart, as McDermott looked at them, and -sank severally to the cobblestones. Scotchmen, Canadians, English, torn -and battered remnants of many different commands, they had striven with -their guns and bodies for more than a week to dam the vast, rising wave -of the German attack--day melting into night and night burning into day -again, till there was no such thing as time to them any longer; there -were but two things in the world, battle and weariness, weariness and -battle. - -McDermott moved across the square unchallenged. He had eaten and slept -but little for two days himself, and he made instinctively for the open -door of an empty inn, to search for food. In the doorway he stumbled -across a lad who roused and spoke to him. - -“Jack,” said the boy, looking at him with red eyes out of an old, worn -face, “have you got the makin's?” - -He was in a ragged and muddied Canadian uniform, but McDermott guessed -that he was an American. - -“I have that,” said McDermott, producing papers and tobacco. But the boy -had lapsed into slumber again. McDermott rolled the cigarette for him, -placed it between his lips, waked him and lighted it for him. - -The boy took a puff or two, and then said dreamily: “And what the hell -are you doin' here with them blue overalls on?” - -“I come to look at the war,” said McDermott. - -The soldier glanced around the Grande Place, and a gleam of deviltry -flashed through his utter exhaustion. “So you come to see the war, huh? -Well, don't you wake it now. It's restin'. But if you'll take a chair -and set down, I'll have it--called--for--you--in--in--in 'n 'our--or -so------” - -His voice tailed off into sleep once more; he mangled the cigarette, the -tobacco mingling with the scraggly beard about his drawn mouth; his head -fell forward upon his chest. McDermott stepped past him into the Hôtel -Faucon, as the inn had called itself. He found no food, but he found -liquor there. - -“Frinch booze,” said McDermott, getting the cork out of a bottle of -brandy and sniffing it; “but booze is booze!” - -And more booze is more booze, especially upon an empty stomach. It was -after the fourth drink that McDermott pulled his chair up to one of the -open windows of the inn and sat down, with the brandy beside him. - -“I'm neglictin' that war I come all this way to see,” said McDermott. - -The Grande Place, still shaken by the tremendous and unceasing -pulsations of battle, far and near, was beginning to wake up. A fresh, -or, at least, a fresher, battalion was arriving over the spur line of -railroad along which McDermott's mules had been so mistakenly shunted, -and was moving eastward through the town to the firing line. The men -whom McDermott had seen asleep were rising at the word of command; -taking their weapons, falling in, and staggering back to the -interminable battle once more. - -“I dunno,” mused McDermott, as the tired men straggled past, “whether I -want to be afther j'inin' that war or not. It makes all thim lads that -slapey! I dunno phwat the devil it is, the Frinch booze bein' so close -to me, inside, or that war so close to me, outside, but I'm gittin' -slapey m'silf.” - -It was, likely, the brandy. There had not been a great deal of French -brandy in McDermott's previous experience, and he did not stint himself. -It was somewhere between the ninth and the fifteenth swallows of it that -McDermott remarked to himself, rubbing the scar on his head: - -“I w'u'd jine that war now, if I c'u'd be sure which way it had wint!” - -And then he slid gently out of his chair and went to sleep on the floor -just inside the open window of the Hôtel Fauçon. - -The war crept closer and took another look at McDermott. As the warm -golden afternoon waned, the British troops, fighting like fiends for -every inch of ground, exacting a ghastly toll of lives from the Germans, -were forced back into the eastern outskirts of the town. There, with -rifle and machine gun, from walls, trees, courtyards, roofs and ruins, -they held the advancing Germans for an hour. But they were pushed back -again, doggedly establishing themselves in the houses of the Grande -Place. Neither British nor Germans were dropping shells into that -village now, each side fearful of damaging its own men. - -A British subaltern with a machine gun and two private soldiers entered -the inn and were setting the gun up at McDermott's window when a -German bullet struck the officer and he fell dead across the slumbering -McDermott. Nevertheless, the gun was manned and fought for half an hour -above McDermott, who stirred now and then, but did not waken. Just at -dusk an Irish battalion struck the Germans on the right flank of their -assaulting force, a half mile to the north of the village, rolled them -back temporarily, and cleared the village of them. This counter attack -took the firing line a good thousand yards eastward once more. - -McDermott roused, crawled from beneath the body of the British officer, -and viewed it with surprise. “That war has been here ag'in an' me -aslape,” said McDermott. “I might jine that war if I c'u'd ketch up wid -it--but 'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gawn ag'in! An' how c'u'd I jine it -wid no weapons, not even a good thick club to m' hands?” - -He foraged and found a piece of sausage that he had overlooked in his -former search, ate it greedily and then stood in the doorway, listening -to the sound of the firing. It was getting dark and northward toward -Messines and Wytschaete and southward for more miles than he could guess -the lightning of big guns flickered along the sky. - -“Anny way I w'u'd go,” mused McDermott, “I w'u'd run into that war if I -was thryin' to dodge ut. And anny wray I w'u'd go, I w'u'd miss that war -if I was thryin' to come up wid ut. An' till I make up me mind which wan -I want to do, here will I sthay.” - -He opened another bottle of brandy, and drank and cogitated. Whether it -was the cogitation or the drinks or the effect of the racket of war, his -head began to ache dully. When McDermott's scar ached, it was his custom -to take another drink. After a while there came a stage at which, if it -still ached, he at least ceased to feel it aching any more. - -“The hotel here,” he remarked, “is filled wid hospitality and midical -tratement, and where bet-ther c'u'd I be?” - -And presently, once more, a deep sleep overtook him. A deeper, more -profound sleep, indeed, than his former one. And this time the war came -still nearer to McDermott. - -The British were driven back again and again occupied the town, the -Germans in close pursuit. From house to house and from wall to wall -the struggle went on, with grenade, rifle and bayonet. A German, with -a Scotchman's steel in his chest, fell screaming, back through the open -window, and his blood as he died soaked McDermott's feet. But McDermott -slept. Full night came, thick and cloudy, and both sides sent up -floating flares. The square was strewn with the bodies of the dead and -the bodies of the maimed in increasing numbers; the wounded groaned and -whimpered in the shadows of the trampled Place, crawling, if they still -could crawl, to whatever bit of broken wall seemed to offer momentary -shelter and praying for the stretcher bearers to be speedy. But still -McDermott slept. - -At ten o'clock that night two Englishmen once more brought a machine gun -into the Hôtel Fauçon; they worked the weapon for twenty minutes from -the window within ten feet of which McDermott now lay with his brandy -bottle beside him. Once McDermott stirred; he sat up sleepily on the -floor and murmured: “An' where is that war now? Begad, an' I don't -belave there is anny war!” - -And he rolled over and went to sleep again. The men with the machine gun -did not notice him; they were too busy. A moment later one of them sank -with a bullet through his heart. His comrade lasted a little longer, and -then he, too, went down, a wound in his lungs. It took him some weary -minutes to choke and bleed to death, there in that dark place, upon the -floor, among the dead men and McDermott's brandy bottles and the heap -of ammunition he had brought with him. Hist struggle did not wake -McDermott. - -By midnight the British had been driven back until they held the houses -at the west end of the town and the end of the spur railroad that came -eastward from Hazebrouck. The Germans were in the eastern part of the -village, and between was a “no man's land,” of which the Grande Place -was a part. What was left of the Hôtel Faucon, with the sleeping -McDermott in it, was toward the middle of the south side of the square. -In the streets to the north and south of the Place patrols still clashed -with grenade and bayonet and rifle, but the Germans attempted no further -advance in any force after midnight. No doubt they were bringing up more -men; no doubt, with the first morning light, they would move forward a -regiment or two, possibly even a division, against the British who -still clung stubbornly to the western side of the town. All the way from -Wytschaete south to Givenchy the battle-line was broken up into many -little bitter struggles of this sort, the British at every point facing -great odds. - -When dawn came, there came with it a mist. And three men of a German -patrol, creeping from house to house and ruin to ruin along the south -side of that part of “no man's land” which was the Grande Place, entered -the open door of the Hôtel Fauçon. - -One of them stepped upon McDermott's stomach, where he lay sleeping and -dreaming of the war he had come to look at. - -McDermott, when he had been drinking, was often cross. And especially -was he cross if, when sleeping off his liquor, some one purposely or -inadvertently interfered with his rightful and legitimate rest. When -this coarse and heavy-footed intruder set his boot, albeit unwittingly, -upon McDermott's stomach, McDermott sat up with a bellow of rage, -instinctively and instantaneously grabbed the leg attached to the boot, -rose as burning rocks rise from a volcano, with the leg in his hands, -upset the man attached to the leg, and jumped with two large feet -accurately upon the back of that person's neck. Whereupon the Boche went -to Valhalla. McDermott, though nearer fifty than forty years old, was a -barroom fighter of wonderful speed and technique, and this instinctive -and spontaneous maneuver was all one motion, just as it is all one -motion when a cat in a cellar leaps over a sack of potatoes, lands upon -a rat, and sinks her teeth into a vital spot. The second German and -the third German hung back an instant toward the door, and then came -on toward the moving shadow in the midst of shadows. For their own good -they should have come on without hanging back that second; but perhaps -their training, otherwise so efficient, did not include barroom tactics. -Their hesitation gave McDermott just the time he needed, for when he -faced them he had the first German's gun in his hands. - -“No war,” said McDermott, “can come into me slapin' chamber and stand on -me stomach like that, and expict me to take it peaceful!” - -With the words he fired the first German's rifle into the second -German. The third German, to the rear of the second one, fired his gun -simultaneously, but perhaps he was a hit flurried, for he also fired -directly into the second German, and there was nothing the second German -could do but die; which he did at once. McDermott leaped at the third -German with his rifle clubbed just as the man pressed the trigger again. -The bullet struck McDermott's rifle, splintered the butt of it and -knocked it from his hands; but a second later McDermott's hands were on -the barrel of the German's gun and the two of them were struggling for -it. - -There is one defect in the German military system, observers say: the -drill masters do not teach their men independent thinking; perhaps the -drill-masters do not have the most promising material to work upon. -At any rate, it occurred to McDermott to kick the third German in the -stomach while the third German was still thinking of nothing else than -trying to depress the gun to shoot or bayonet McDermott. Thought and -kick were as well coordinated as if they had proceeded from one of -McDermott's late mules. - -The Boche went to the floor of the Hôtel Faucon with a groan. “Gott!” he -said. - -“A stomach f'r a stomach,” said Mc-Dermott, standing over him with the -rifle. “Git up!” - -The German painfully arose. - -“Ye are me prisoner,” said McDermott, “an' the furst wan I iver took. -Hould up y'r hands! Hould thim up, I say! Not over y'r stomach, man, but -over y'r head!” - -The Boche complied hurriedly. - -“I see ye understhand United States,” said McDermott. “I was afraid ye -might not, an' I w'u'd have to shoot ye.” - -“_Kamerad!_” exclaimed the man. - -“Ye are no comrade av mine,” said McDermott, peering at the man's face -through the eery halflight of early morning, “an' comrade av mine ye -niver was! I know ye well! Ye are Goostave Schmidt b' name, an' wanst ye -tinded bar in a dive down b' the Brooklyn wather front!” - -The man stared at McDermott in silence for a long minute, and then -recollection slowly came to him. - -“MagDermodd!” he said. “Batrick MagDermodd!” - -“The same,” said McDermott. - -“_Gott sei dank!_” said the German. “I haf fallen into der hands of -a friend.” And with the beginning of a smile he started to lower his -hands. - -“Put thim up!” cried McDermott. “Don't desave y'silf! Ye are no fri'nd -av mine!” - -The smile faded, and something like a look of panic took its place on -the German's face. - -“Th' last time I saw ye, ye was in bad company, f'r ye was alone,” said -McDermott. “An' I come over here lookin' f'r ye, an' I find ye in bad -company ag'in!” - -“Looking?” said the German with quite sincere perplexity. “You gome here -_looking_ for me?” - -The wonder on the man's face at this unpremeditated jest of his having -crossed the Atlantic especially to look for Gustave Schmidt titillated -McDermott's whole being. But he did not laugh, and he let the German -wonder. “And phwy sh'u'd I not?” he said. - -The German thought intensely for a while. “Why _should_ you gome all der -vay agross der Adlandic looking for _me?_” he said finally. - -“Ye have a short mimory,” said McDermott. “Ye do not recollict the time -ye hit me on the head wid a bung starter whin I was too soused to defind -m'silf? The scar is there yet, bad luck to ye!” - -“But dot was nudding,” said the German. “Dot bung-starder business was -all a bart of der day's vork.” - -“But ye cript up behint me,” said McDermott; “an' me soused!” - -“But dot was der bractical vay to do it,” said the German. “Dot was -nuddings at all, dot bung-starder business. I haf forgodden it long -ago!” - -“The McDermotts remimber thim compliments longer,” said McDermott. “An' -b' rights I sh'u'd give ye wan good clout wid this gun and be done wid -ye. But I'm thinkin' I may be usin' ye otherwise.” - -“You gome all der vay agross der Adlandic yoost because I hit you on der -head mit a bung starder?” persisted the German, still wondering. “Dot, -MagDermodd, I cannot belief--_Nein!_” - -“And ye tore up y'r citizenship papers and come all the way across -the Atlantic just to jine this gang av murtherin' child-killers,” said -McDermott. “That I c'n belave! Yis!” - -“But I haf not dorn up my American cidizen papers--_Nein!_” exclaimed -the German, earnestly. “Dose I haf kept. I gome across to fight for mein -Faderland--dot vas orders. _Ja!_ But mein American cidizenship papers I -haf kept, and ven der war is ofer I shall go back to Brooklyn and once -more an American citizen be, undill der next war. _Ja!_ You haf not -understood, but dot is der vay of it. _Ja!_” - -“Goostave,” said McDermott, “ye have too many countries workin' f'r ye. -But y'r takin' ordhers from m'silf now--do ye get that? C'n ye play that -musical insthrumint there by the window?” - -“_Ja!_” said Gustave. “Dot gun I can vork. Dot is der Lewis machine gun. -Id is not so good a gun as our machine gun, for our machine gun haf been -a colossal sugcess, but id is a goot gun.” - -“Ye been fightin' f'r the Kaiser f'r three or four years, Goostave,” - said McDermott, menacing him with his rifle, “but this mornin' I'll be -afther seein' that ye do a bit av work f'r thim citizenship papers, an', -later, ye can go to hell, if ye like, an' naturalize y'rsilf in still a -third country. Ye will shoot Germans wid that gun till I get the hang -av the mechanism m'silf. And thin I will shoot Germans wid that gun. But -furst, ye will give me that fancy tin soup-bowl ye're wearin'.” - -Gustave handed over his helmet. McDermott put it on his red head. - -“I've been thinkin',” said McDermott, “will I jine this war, or will I -not jine it. An' the only way ye c'n tell do ye like a thing or do ye -not is to thry it wance. Wid y'r assistance, Goostave, I'll thry it this -mornin', if anny more av it comes my way.” - -More of it was coming his way. The Germans, tired of trifling with the -small British force which held the village, had brought up the better -part of a division during the night and were marshaling the troops for -their favorite feat of arms, an overwhelming frontal attack _en masse_. -The British had likewise received reinforcements, drawing from the north -and from the south every man the hard-pressed lines could spare. But -they were not many, perhaps some three thousand men in all, to resist -the massed assault, with the railroad for its objective, which would -surely come with dawn. If troops were needed in the village they were -no less needed on the lines that flanked it. The little town, which -had been the scene of so much desperate skirmishing the day before and -during the first half of the night, was now about to become the ground -of something like a battle. - -“There's a French division on the way,” said the British colonel in -command in the village to one of his captains. “If we can only hold them -for an hour----” - -He did not finish the sentence. As he spoke the German bombardment, -precedent to the infantry attack, began to comb the western fringes -of the town and the railroad line behind, searching for the -hurriedly-digged and shallow trenches, the improvised dugouts, the -shell holes, the cellars and the embankments where the British lay. The -British guns to the rear of the village made answer, and the uproar tore -the mists of dawn to tatters. A shell fell short, into the middle of the -Grande Place, and McDermott saw the broken motor car against which the -sleeping lieutenant had leaned the day before vanish into nothingness; -and then a house directly opposite the Hôtel Fauçon jumped into flame -and was no more. Looking out across the back of the stooping Gustave at -the window, McDermott muttered, “I dunno as I w'u'd want to jine that -war.” And then he bellowed in Gustave Schmidt's ear: “Cut loose! Cut -loose wid y'rgun! Cut loose!” - -“I vill not!” shrieked Gustave. “Mein Gott! Dat is mein own regiment!” - -“Ye lie!” shouted McDermott. “Ye will!” He thrust a bit of bayonet into -the fleshiest part of the German's back. - -“I vill! I vill!” cried Gustave. - -“Ye will that,” said McDermott, “an' the less damned nonsinse I hear -from ye about y'r own rigimint the betther f'r ye! Ye're undher me -own ordhers till I c'n make up me mind about this war.” The mists were -rising. In the clearing daylight at the eastern end of the square, as if -other clouds were moving forward with a solid front, appeared the first -gray wave of the German infantry. Close packed, shoulder to shoulder, -three deep, they came, almost filling the space from side to side of the -Grande Place, moving across that open stretch against the British fire -with a certain heavy-footed and heavy-brained contempt of everything -before them. Ten steps, and the British machine guns and rifles caught -them. The first wave, or half of it, went down in a long writhing -windrow, across the east end of the square, and in the instant that he -saw it squirm and toss before the trampling second wave swept over it -and through it, the twisting gray-clad figures on the stones reminded -McDermott of the heaps of heaving worms he used to see at the bottom of -his bait-can when he went fishing as a boy. - -“Hold that nozzle lower, Goostave!” he yelled to his captive. “Spray -thim! Spray thim! Ye're shootin' over their heads, ye lumberin' -Dutchman, ye!” - -“_Gott!_” cried Gustave, as another jab of the bayonet urged him to his -uncongenial task. - -And then McDermott made one of the few errors of his military career. -Whether it was the French brandy he had drunk to excess the night -before, or whether it was the old bung-starter wound on his head, which -always throbbed and jumped when he became excited, his judgment deserted -him for an instant. For one instant he forgot that there must be no -instants free from the immediate occupation of guiding and directing -Gustave. - -“Let me see if I can't work that gun m'self,” he cried. - -As he relaxed his vigilance, pushing the German to one side, the Boche -suddenly struck him upon the jaw. McDermott reeled and dropped his -rifle; before he could recover himself, the German had it. The weapon -swung upward in the air and--just then a shell burst outside the open -window of the Hôtel Fauçon. - -Both men were flung from their feet by the concussion. For a moment -everything was blank to McDermott. And then, stretching out his hand to -rise, his fingers encountered something smooth and hard upon the floor. -Automatically his grasp closed over it and he rose. At the same instant -the German struggled to his feet, one hand behind his back, and the -other extended, as if in entreaty. - -“_Kamerad_,” he whined, and even as he whined he lurched nearer and -flung at McDermott a jagged, broken bottle. McDermott ducked, and -the dagger-like glass splintered on his helmet. And then McDermott -struck--once. Once was enough. The Boche sank to the floor without a -groan, lifeless. McDermott looked at him, and then, for the first time, -looked at what he held in his own hand, the weighty thing which he had -wielded so instinctively and with such ferocity. It was the bung starter -of the Hôtel Fauçon. - -“Goostave niver knowed what hit him,” said McDermott. And if there had -been any one to hear, in all that din, a note of regret that Gustave -never knew might have been remarked in his voice. - -McDermott turned his attention to the machine gun, which, with its -tripod, had been knocked to the floor. He squatted, with his head below -the level of the window sill, and looked it over. - -“'Tis not broken,” he decided, after some moments of examination. “Did -Goostave do it so? Or did he do it so?” He removed his helmet and rubbed -the scar under his red hair reflectively. “If I was to make up me mind -to jine that war,” mused McDermott, “this same w'u'd be a handy thing to -take wid me. It w'u'd that! Now, did that Goostave that used to be here -pull this pretty little thingumajig so? Or did he pull it so? Ihaveut! -He pulled it so! And thim ca'tridges, now--do they feed in so? Or do -they feed in so? 'T w'u'd be a handy thing, now, f'r a man that had anny -intintions av jinin' the war to know about all thim things!” - -And, patiently, McDermott studied the mechanism, while the red sunlight -turned to yellow in the Grande Place outside, and the budding green -vines withered along the broken walls, and the stones ran blood, and the -Hôtel Fauçon began to fall to pieces about his ears. McDermott did not -hurry; he felt that there was no need to hurry; he had not yet made up -his mind whether he intended to participate in this war. By the time he -had learned how to work that machine gun, and had used it on the Germans -for a while, he thought, he might be vouchsafed some light on that -particular subject. It was one of McDermott's fixed beliefs that he -was an extremely cautious sort of man, though many of his acquaintances -thought of him differently, and he told himself that he must not get too -far into this war until he was sure that it was going to be congenial. -So far, it promised well. - -And also, McDermott, as he puzzled over the machine gun, was not quite -the normal McDermott. He was, rather, a supernormal McDermott. He had -been awakened rudely from an alcoholic slumber and he had been rather -busy ever since; so many things had taken place in his immediate -neighborhood, and were still taking place, that he was not quite sure -of their reality. As he sat on the floor and studied the weapon, he was -actually, from moment to moment, more than half convinced that he was -dreaming--he might awaken and find that that war had eluded him again. -Perhaps he is scarcely to be chided for being in what is sometimes known -as a state of mind. - -And while McDermott was looking at the machine gun, the British -commander prayed, as a greater British commander before him had prayed -one time, for assistance, only this one did not pray for night or -Blucher as Wellington had done. Night was many hours beyond all -hope and would probably bring its own hell when it came, and as for -Prussians, there were too many Prussians now. His men would hold on; -they had been holding on for epic days and unbelievable nights, and they -would still hold while there was breath in their bodies, and when their -bodies were breathless they would hold one minute more. But--God! For -Foch's _poilus!_ There is a moment which is the ultimate moment; the -spirit can drag the body until--until spirit and body are wrenched into -two things. No longer. His men could die in their tracks; they were -dying where they stood and crouched and lay, by dozens and by scores and -by heroic hundreds--but when they were dead, who would bar the way to -Hazebrouck, and beyond Hazebrouck, to the channel ports? - -That way was all but open now, if the enemy but realized it. Any moment -they might discover it. A half-mile to the south of the village the line -was so thinly held that one strong, quick thrust must make a gap. Let -the enemy but fling a third of the troops he was pounding to pieces in -the bloody streets of the town, in the torn fields that flanked it, and -in the shambles of the Grande Place that was the center of this action, -at that weak spot, and all was over. But with a fury mechanical, -insensate, the Germans still came on in direct frontal attacks. - -The British had slain and slain and slain, firing into the gray masses -until the water boiled in the jackets of the machine guns. Five attacks -had broken down in the Grande Place itself--and now a sixth was forming. -Should he still hold fast, the colonel asked himself, or should he -retire, saving what machine guns he might, and flinging a desperate -detachment southward in the attempt to make a stronger right flank? But -to do that might be the very move that would awaken the Germans to their -opportunity there. So long as they pounded, pounded at his center, he -would take a toll of them, at least--but the moment was coming-- - -“I have ut!” cried McDermott, and mounted his gun at the window. - -“It is time to retire,” said the British colonel, and was about to give -the order. - -“Right in their bloody backs,” said McDermott to himself. - -And so it was. For the sixth advance of the German masses had carried -them well into the Grande Place. McDermott, crouched at his window, cut -loose with his gun at pointblank range as the first wave, five men deep, -passed by him, splashing along the thick ranks from behind as one might -sweep a garden hose down a row of vegetables. Taken thus in the rear, -ambushed, with no knowledge of the strength of the attacking force -behind them, the German shock troops swayed and staggered, faced about -and fell and broke. For right into the milling herd of them, and -into the second advancing wave, the British poured their bullets. The -colonel, who had been about to order a retreat, ordered a charge, -and before the stampeded remnant of the first two waves could recover -themselves the British were on them with grenades and bayonets, flinging -them back into the third wave, just advancing to their support, in a -bleeding huddle of defeat. - -McDermott saw the beginning of that charge, and with his bung starter in -his hand he rushed from the door to join it. But he did not see the -end of it, nor did he see the _poilus_, as they came slouching into the -village five minutes later to give the repulse weight and confirmation, -redolent of onions and strange stews, but with their bayonets--those -bayonets that are part of the men who wield them, living things, -instinct with the beautiful, straight, keen soul of France herself. - -McDermott did not see them, for some more of the Hôtel Fauçon had fallen -on him, crushing one of his ankles and giving him a clout on the head. - -“Whoever it was turned loose that machine gun from the inn window, did -the trick,” said the colonel, later. “It's hardly too much to say that -he blocked the way to Hazebrouck--for the time, at least, if one man can -be said to have done such a thing--what's that?” - -“That” was McDermott, who was being carried forth, unconscious, to an -ambulance. It was his blue overalls that had occasioned the colonel's -surprise. He was neither French nor British nor German; palpably he was -a civilian, and a civilian who had no business there. And in his hand he -clasped a bung starter. His fingers were closed over it so tightly that -in the base hospital later they found difficulty in taking it away from -him. - -Owing, no doubt, to the blow on his head, McDermott was unable to recall -clearly anything that had taken place from the moment he had first -fallen asleep under the influence of French brandy until he awakened in -the hospital nearly four weeks later. During this period there had been -several intervals of more open-eyed dreaming, succeeded by lapses into -profound stupor; but even in these open-eyed intervals, McDermott -had not been himself. It was during one of these intervals that a -representative of the French Government bestowed the Croix de Guerre -upon McDermott, for it had been learned that he was the man behind the -machine gun that had turned the tide of combat. - -McDermott, his eyes open, but his mind in too much of a daze even to -wonder what the ceremony was about, sat in a wheel chair, and in company -with half a dozen other men selected for decoration, listened to a brief -oration in very good French, which he could not have understood had he -been normal. In answer he muttered in a low tone, rubbing his broken and -bandaged head: “I think maybe I will jine that war, afther all!” - -The French officer assumed that McDermott had spoken some sort of -compliment to France and kissed McDermott on both cheeks, in front -of the hospital staff, several American reporters, and as much of the -French army as qould be spared to do honor to the occasion. The _Croix -de Guerre_ made no impression upon McDermott, but the kiss briefly -arrested his wandering consciousness, and he cried out, starting up in -his chair and menacing the officer: “Where is me bung starter?” Then he -fainted. - -A good many thousands of people in France and England and America -learned from the newspapers the story of the nondescript in the blue -overalls, who had behaved so gallantly at the crucial moment of a -crucial fight. But McDermott never did. He seldom read newspapers. No -one had been able to learn his name, so the reporters had given him a -name. They called him “Dennis.” And it was “Dennis” who got the fame and -glory. McDermott would not have identified himself with Dennis had he -seen the newspapers. When he awakened from his long, broken stupor, with -its intervals of dazed halfconsciousness, the first thing he did was to -steal away from that hospital; he left without having heard of Dennis or -of the decoration of Dennis. - -There was one thing that he had experienced that did live hazily and -confusedly in his memory, however, although he could not fix it in its -relationship to any other thing. And that was the fact that he had met -Gustave Schmidt. Three or four months after he slipped away from the -hospital--a period of unchronicled wanderings, during which he had tried -unsuccessfully to enlist several times--he limped into a saloon on the -Brooklyn water front and asked Tim O'Toole, the proprietor, for his -usual. He had just got back to Brooklyn, and he carried his earthly -possessions in a bundle wrapped in brown paper. - -“I hear Yordy Crowley isn't givin' his racket this year,” said -McDermott, laying his bundle on the bar and pouring out his drink. - -“He is not,” said Tim. “He is in France helpin' out thim English.” - -“Yordy will make a good sojer,” said McDermott. “He is a good man of his -fists.” - -“The Irish is all good sojers,” said Mr. O'Toole, sententiously. “There -was that man Dinnis, now, that was in all av the papers.” - -“I did not hear av him,” said McDermott. “An' phwat did he do?” - -“He licked th' entire German army wan morn-in',” said O'Toole, “an' -saved England, an' the Quane of France kissed him for it. 'Twas in all -the papers. Or, maybe,” said Mr. O'Toole, “it was the King av Belg'um -kissed him for ut. Anny-way wan of thim foreign powers kissed him wid -the whole world lookin' on.” - -“An' phwat did this Dinnis do thin?” asked McDermott. - -“He attimpted to assault the person that kissed him,” said O'Toole. -“Maybe 'twas the King av Italy. 'Twas in all the papers at th' time. -Some wan told me ye were in France y'rsilf, Paddy.” - -“I was that,” said McDermott. “I wint wid mules.” - -“Did ye see annything av the war?” - -“I did not,” said McDermott. “Divil a bit of ut, barrin' a lot o' -racket an' a big roarin' divil av a stame-boiler thing that come bustin' -through th' air an' took away the mules that was me passport. But I come -near seein' some av ut, wan time.” - -“An' how was it that ye come near it, an' missed it?” inquired Tim. - -“I wint to slape,” said McDermott. “The war was slapin', an' I laid -m'silf down b' the side av ut an' took a nap, too. Later, I woke up in -the hospital, some wan havin' stipped on me whilst I was slapin', or -somethin'. They was afther keep-in' me in th' hospital indefinite, an' -I slipped away wan mornin', dodgin' the orderlies an' nurses, or I might -have been there yet eatin' jelly an' gettin' me face washed f'r me. An' -afther I got back here I thried to jine that war, but th' Amurrican Army -w'u'd not have me.” - -“And phwy not?” - -“Because av me fut.” - -“And how did ye hurt y'r fut?” - -“Divil a bit do I know how,” said McDermott. “I'm tellin' ye 'twas done -whilst I was aslape. I remimber gettin' soused in wan av thim Frinch -barrooms, an' I w'u'd think it was a mule stipped on me fut whin I was -slapin' off me souse, excipt that thim mules was gone before I got me -souse.” - -“An' ye saw naught av the war?” Tim was distinctly disappointed. - -“But little of ut, but little of ut,” said McDermott. “But, Timmy,--wan -thing I did whilst I was in France.” - -“An' phwat was that?” - -“I avened up an ould grudge,” said McDermott. He put away a second -drink, rolling it over his tongue with satisfaction. “Do ye mind that -Goostave Schmidt that used to kape bar acrost the strate? Ye do! Do ye -mind th' time he hit me wid th' bung starter? Ye do!” - -“Phwat thin?” - -“Well, thin,” said McDermott, “I met up wid him ag'in in wan av thim -Frinch barrooms. I do not remimber phwat he said to me nor phwat I said -to him, for I was soused, Timmy. But wan word led to another, an' I give -him as good as he sint, an' 'twas wid a bung starter, too. I brung it -back wid me as a sooveneer av me travels in France.” - -And, undoing his brown paper bundle, McDermott fished forth from among -his change of socks and shirts and underwear the bung starter of the -Hôtel Fauçon and laid it upon the bar for his friend's inspection. -Something else in the bundle caught O'Toole's eye. - -“An' phwat is that thing ye have there?” asked Tim. - -“Divil a bit do I know phwat,” said McDermott, picking the article up -and tossing it carelessly upon the bar. “'Twas layin' by me cot in -the hospital, along wid m' bung starter an' me clothes whin I come to -m'silf, an' whin I made me sneak from that place I brung it along.” - -It was the _Croix de Guerre_. - - - - -V.--Looney the Mutt - -|Looney had but one object in life, one thought, one conscious motive -of existence--to find Slim again. After he found Slim, things would be -different, things would be better, somehow. Just how, Looney did not -know. - -Looney did not know much, anyhow. Likely he would never have known much, -in the most favorable circumstances. And the circumstances under which -he had passed his life were scarcely conducive to mental growth. He -could remember, vaguely, that he had not always been called Looney -Hogan. There had been a time when he was called Kid Hogan. Something had -happened inside his head one day, and then there had come a period of -which he remembered nothing at all; after that, when he could remember -again, he was not Kid any more, but Looney. Perhaps some one had hit him -on the head. People were always hitting him, before he knew Slim. And -now that Slim was gone, people were always hitting him again. When he -was with Slim, Slim had not let people hit him--often. So he must find -Slim again; Slim, who was the only God he had ever known. - -In the course of time he became known, in his own queer world, from -Baltimore to Seattle, from Los Angeles to Boston, as Slim's Lost -Mutt, or as Looney the Mutt. Looney did not resent being called a -dog, particularly, but he never called himself “The Mutt”; he stuck to -“Looney”; Slim had called him Looney, and Looney must, therefore, be -right. - -The humors of Looney's world are not, uniformly, kindly humors. Giving -Looney the Mutt a “bum steer” as to Slim's whereabouts was considered a -legitimate jest. - -“Youse ain't seen Slim Matchett anywheres?” he would ask of hobo or -wobbly, working stiff or yeggman, his faded pale-blue eyes peering from -his weather-worn face with the same anxious intensity, the same eager -hope, as if he had not asked the question ten thousand times before. - -And the other wanderer, if he were one that knew of Looney the Mutt and -Looney's quest would answer, like as not: - -“Slimmy de Match? Uh-huh! I seen Slim last mont' in Chi. He's lookin' -fer youse, Looney.” One day the Burlington Crip, who lacked a hand, and -who looked so mean that it was of common report that he had got sore at -himself and bitten it off, varied the reply a bit by saying: - -“I seen Slim las' week, an' he says: 'Where t' hell's dat kid o' mine? -Youse ain't seen nuttin' o' dat kid o' mine, has you, Crip? Dat kid o' -mine give me de slip, Crip. He lammistered, and I ain't seen him since. -If youse gets yer lamps on dat kid o' mine, Crip, give him a wallop on -his mush fer me, an' tell him to come an' find me an' I'm gonna give him -another one.'” - -Looney stared and wondered and grieved. It hurt him especially that Slim -should think that he, Looney, had run away from Slim; he agonized anew -that he could not tell Slim at once that such was not the truth. And he -wondered and grieved at the change that must have taken place in Slim, -who now promised him “a wallop on the mush.” For Slim had never struck -him. It was Slim who had always kept other people from striking him. -It was Slim who had, upon occasion, struck other people to protect -him--once, in a hangout among the lakeside sand dunes south of Chicago, -Slim had knifed a man who had, by way of jovial byplay to enliven a dull -afternoon, flung Looney into the fire. - -It never occurred to Looney to doubt, entirely, these bearers of -misinformation. He was hunting Slim, and of course, he thought, Slim -was hunting Looney. His nature was all credulity. Such mind as the boy -possessed--he was somewhere in his twenties, but had the physique of -a boy--was saturated with belief in Slim, with faith in Slim, and he -thought that all the world must admire Slim. He did not see why any one -should tell lies that might increase Slim's difficulties, or his own. - -There was a big red star he used to look at nights, when he slept in the -open, and because it seemed to him bigger and better and more splendid -than any of the other stars he took to calling it Slim's star. It was a -cocky, confident-looking star; it looked as if it would know how to take -care of itself, and Slim had been like that. It looked good-natured, -too, and Slim had been that way. When Looney had rustled the scoffin's -for Slim, Slim had always let him have some of the best chow--or almost -always. And he used to talk to that star about Slim when he was alone. -It seemed sympathetic. And although he believed the hoboes were telling -him the truth when they said that they had seen Slim, it was apparent -even to his intelligence that they had no real sympathy with his quest. - -Once he did find a certain sympathy, if no great understanding. He -worked a week, one Spring, for a farmer in Indiana. The farmer wished -to keep him, for that Summer at least, for Looney was docile, willing -enough, and had a natural, unconscious tact with the work-horses. Looney -was never afraid of animals, and they were never afraid of him. Dogs -took to him, and the instant liking of dogs had often stood him in good -stead in his profession. - -“Why won't you stay?” asked the farmer. - -“Slim's lookin' fer me, somewheres,” said Looney. And he told the farmer -about Slim. The farmer, having perceived Looney's mental twilight, and -feeling kindly toward the creature, advanced an argument that he thought -might hold him. - -“Slim is just as likely to find you if you stay in one place, as if you -go travelin' all over the country,” he said. - -“Huh-uh,” said Looney. “He ain't, Mister. It's this way, Mister: every -time I stop long any-, wheres, Slim, he passes me by.” - -And then he continued, after a pause: “Slim, he was always good to me, -Mister. I kinda want to be the one that finds Slim, instead of just -stayin' still an' waitin' to be found.” - -They were standing in the dusk by the barn, and the early stars were -out. Looney told him about Slim's star. - -“I want to be the guy that does the findin',” went on Looney presently, -“because I was the guy that done the losin'. One night they was five or -six of us layin' under a lot of railroad ties we had propped up against -a fence to keep the weather off, an' we figgered on hoppin' a train fer -Chi that night. Well, the train comes along, but I'm asleep. See? The -rest of t' gang gits into an empty in de dark, an' I don't wake up. I -s'pose Slim he t'inks I'm wit' t' gang, but I don't wake up under them -ties till mornin'. I went to Chi soon's I could, but I ain't never -glommed him since, Mister. I didn't find him dere. An' dat's t' way I -lost Slim, Mister.” - -“Maybe,” suggested the farmer, “he is dead.” - -“Nit,” said Looney. “He ain't dead. If Slim was croaked or anything, I'd -be wised up to it. Look at that there star. Dat is Slim's star, like I -told youse. If Slim had been bumped off, or anything, Mister, that star -wouldn't be shinin' that way, Mister.” - -And he went back to his own world--his world--which was a succession of -freight and cattle cars, ruinous sheds and shelters in dubious suburbs -near to railroad sidings, police stations, workhouses, jails, city -missions, transient hangouts in bedraggled clumps of wood, improvised -shacks, shared with others of his kind in vacant lots in sooty -industrial towns, chance bivouacs amidst lumber piles and under dripping -water tanks, lucky infrequent lodgings in slum hotels that used to -charge fifteen cents for a bed and now charge a quarter, golden moments -in vile barrooms and blind tigers, occasional orgies in quarries or -gravel pits or abandoned tin-roofed tool houses, uneasy, loiterings -and interrupted slumbers in urban parks and the squares or outskirts of -villages. Sometimes he worked, as he had with the Indiana farmer, with -the wheat harvesters of the Northwest, or the snow shovelers of the -metropoli, or the fruit gatherers of California; but more often he -loafed, and rustled grub and small coin from the charitably disposed. - -It all seemed the natural way of life to Looney. He could not remember -anything else. He viewed the people of the world who did not live so, -and whom he saw to be the majority, as strange, unaccountable beings -whom he could never hope to understand; he vaguely perceived that they -were stronger than he and his ever-hiking clan, and he knew that they -might do unpleasant things to him with their laws and their courts -and their strength, but he bore them no rancor, unlike many of his -associates. - -He had no theories about work or idleness; he accepted either as it -came; he had little conscious thought about anything, except finding -Slim again. And one thing worried him: Slim, who was supposed to be -looking for Looney, even as Looney was looking for Slim, left no mark. -He was forever looking for it, searching for the traces of Slim's -knife--a name, a date, a destination, a message bidding Looney to follow -or to wait--on freight sheds and water tanks, and known and charted -telegraph poles and the tool houses of construction gangs. But Slim, -always just ahead of him, as he thought, continually returning and -passing him, ever receding in the distance, left no mark, no wanderer's -pateran, behind. Looney left his own marks everywhere, but, strangely -enough, it seemed that Slim never saw them. Looney remembered that one -time when he and Slim were together Slim had wished to meet and confer -with the Burlington Crip, and had left word to that effect, penciled and -carved and sown by the speech of the mouth, from the Barbary Coast to -the Erie Basin. And the Burlington Crip, with his snaggle teeth and his -stump where a hand had been, had joined them on the Brooklyn waterfront -within two months. It had been simple, and Looney wondered why Slim -omitted this easy method of communication. Perhaps Slim was using it and -Looney was not finding the marks. He knew himself for stupid, and set -his failure down to that, never to neglect on Slim's part. For Slim was -Slim, and Slim could do no wrong. - -His habit of searching for some scratched or written word of Slim's -became known to his whole section of the underworld, and furnished -material for an elaboration of the standing jest at his expense. When -ennui descended upon some chance gathering in one of the transient -hangouts--caravanserai as familiar to the loose-foot, casual guests, -from coast to coast, as was ever the Blackstone in Chicago or the -Biltmore in New York to those who read this simple history--it was -customary for some wag to say: - -“Looney, I seen a mark that looked like Slim's mark on a shed down in -Alexandria, Virginny, right by where the Long Bridge starts over to -Washington.” - -And it might be that Looney would start at once, without a word, for -Alexandria. Therein lay the cream of this subtle witticism, for its -perpetrators--in Looney's swift departures. - -Or it might be that Looney would sit and ponder, his washed-out eyes -interrogating the speaker in a puzzled fashion, but never doubting. And -then the jester would say, perhaps: “Why don't you get a move onto you, -Looney? You're gonna miss Slim again.” - -And Looney would answer, perchance: “Slim, he ain't there now. The' was -one of them wobblies' bump-off men sayin' he seen Slim in Tacoma two -weeks ago, an' Slim was headin' this way. I'm gonna wait fer him a while -longer.” - -But he never waited long. He could never make himself. As he had told -the Indiana farmer, he was afraid to wait long. It was the Burlington -Crip who had made him afraid to do that. The Crip had told him one time: -“Looney, Slim went through here last night, while youse was asleep over -on that lumber pile. I forgets youse is lookin' fer him or I'd a tipped -him off youse was here.” - -Slim had been within a hundred yards of him, and he had been asleep and -had never known! What would Slim think, if he knew that? So thereafter -he was continually tortured by the fancy that Slim might be passing -him in the night; or that Slim, while he himself was riding the rods -underneath a railway car, might be on the blind baggage of that very -train, and would hop off first and be missed again. From day to day he -became more muddled and perplexed trying to decide whether it would be -better to choose this route or that, whether it would be better to stop -here a week, or go yonder with all possible speed. And from month to -month he developed more and more the questing, peering, wavering manner -of the lost dog that seeks its master. - -Looney was always welcome In the hang-outs of the wandering underworld. -Not only was he a source of diversion, a convenient butt, but few could -rustle grub so successfully. His meager frame and his wistfulness, his -evident feebleness of intellect, drew alms from the solvent population, -and Looney faithfully brought his takings to the hangouts and was -dispatched again for more. Servant and butt he was to such lords as the -Burlington Crip and the English Basher. But he did not mind so long as -he was not physically maltreated--as he often was. The occasional -crimes of his associates, the occasional connection of some of them with -industrial warfare here and there, Looney sometimes participated in; but -he never understood. If he were told to do so and so, for the most part -he did it. If he were asked to do too much, or was beaten up for his -stupidity, and he was always stupid, he quietly slunk away at his first -opportunity. - -The English Basher was a red-faced savage with fists as hard and rough -as tarred rope; and he conceived the idea that Looney should be his kid, -and wait upon him, even as he had been Slim's kid. Looney, afraid of the -man, for a time seemed to acquiesce. But the Basher had reckoned without -Looney's faculty for blundering. - -He dispatched Looney one day, ostensibly to bum a handout, but in -reality to get the lay of a certain house in a suburb near Cincinnati, -which the Basher meditated cracking the next convenient night. Looney -returned with the food but without the information. He had been willing -enough, for he admired yeggmen and all their ways and works, and was -withheld by no moral considerations from anything he was asked to do; -but he had bungled. He had been in the kitchen, he had eaten his own -scoffin's there, he had talked with the cook for twenty minutes, he had -even brought up from the cellar a scuttle of coal for the kitchen range -to save the cook's back, but he actually knew less about that house, its -plan, its fastenings, its doors and basement windows than the Basher had -been able to gather with a single stroke of the eye as he loitered down -the street. - -“Cripes! Whadje chin about with the kitchen mechanic all dat time, you?” - demanded the Basher. - -“She was stringin' me along,” said Looney humbly, “an' I spilled to her -about me an' Slim.” - -“Slim! ------ -------- yer, I've a mind t' croak yer!” cried the Basher. - -And he nearly did it, knocking the boy down repeatedly, till finally -Looney lay still upon the ground. - -“'S'elp me,” said the Basher, “I've a mind to give yer m' boots! You -get up an' beat it! An' if I ever gets my lamps onto you again I _will_ -croak you, by Gawd, an' no mistake!” - -Looney staggered to his feet and hobbled to a safe distance. And then, -spitting out a broken tooth, he dared to mutter: “If Slimmy was here, -he'd see de color o' youse insides, Slimmy would. Slimmy, he knifed a -yegg oncet wot done less'n dat t'me!” - -It was only a week or two after he left the Basher that Looney's faith -in Slim's star was tested again. Half a dozen of the brotherhood were -gathered about a fire in a gravel pit in northern Illinois, swapping -yarns and experiences and making merry. It was a tremendous fire, and -lighted up the hollow as if it were the entrance to Gehenna, flinging -the grotesque shadows of the men against the overhanging embankments, -and causing the inhabitants of a village a mile or so away to wonder -what farmer's haystack was aflame. The tramps were wasting five times -the wood they needed, after their fashion. They had eaten to repletion, -and they were wasting the left-over food from their evening gorge; they -had booze; they were smoking; they felt, for the hour, at peace with the -world. - -“Wot ever _did_ become of dat Slim?” asked the Burlington Crip, who -happened to be of the party, looking speculatively at Looney. Even the -sinister Crip, for the nonce, was not toting with him his usual mordant -grouch. - -Looney was tending the fire, while he listened to tales of the spacious -days of the great Johnny Yegg himself, and other Titans of the road who -have now assumed the state of legendary heroes; and he was, as usual, -saying nothing. - -“Slim? Slimmy t' Match wot Looney here's been tailin' after fer so -long?” said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was bumped off in Paterson -t'ree or four years ago.” - -“He wasn't neither,” spoke up Looney. “Tex, here, seen him in Chi last -mont'.” - -And, indeed, Tex had told Looney so. But now, thus directly appealed -to, Tex answered nothing. And for the first time Looney began to get -the vague suspicion that these, his friends, might have trifled with him -before. Certainly they were serious now. He looked around the sprawled -circle and sensed that their manner was somehow different from the -attitude with which they had usually discussed his quest for Slim. - -“Bumped off?” said Tex. “How?” - -“A wobbly done it,” said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was scabbin'. -Strike-breakin'. And they was some wobblies there helpin' on the strike. -See? An' this wobbly bumps Slim off.” - -“He didn't neither,” said Looney again. - -“T' hell he didn't? He said he did,” said the San Diego Kid pacifically. -“Is a guy gonna say he's bumped off a guy unless he's bumped him off?” - -Looney, somewhat shaken, withdrew from the group to seek comfort from -the constellations; and particularly from that big, red star, the -apparent king of stars, which he had come to think of as Slim's star, -and vaguely, as Slim's mascot. It was brighter and redder than ever -that night, Looney thought, and sitting on a discarded railroad tie and -staring at the planet, Looney gradually recovered his faith. - -“He ain't neither been bumped off, Slim ain't,” he muttered, “an' I'm -gonna find him yet.” - -And Slim had not been bumped off, however sincere the San Diego Kid may -have been in his belief. - -It was some months later that Looney did find him in a little city in -Pennsylvania--or found some one that looked like him. - -Looney had dropped from a freight train early in the morning, had -rustled himself some grub, had eaten two good meals and had part of a -day's sleep, and now, just as dark was coming on, and the street lamps -were being lighted, was loafing aimlessly on the platform of the railway -depot. He purposed to take a train south that night, when it became so -dark that he could crawl into an empty in the yards without too much -danger of being seen and he was merely putting in the time until full -night came on. - -While he was standing idly so, an automobile drew up beside the station -platform and an elegantly dressed and slender man of about thirty got -out. He assisted from the car a woman and a small child, and they made -toward the door of the waiting room. - -“Slim!” cried Looney, rushing forward. - -For this was Slim--it must be Slim--it was Slimmy the Match in every -feature--and yet, the car!--the clothes--the woman--the baby--the -prosperity----- _Was_ it Slim? - -“Slim!” cried Looney again, his heart leaping in his meager body. “It's -me, Slim! It's Looney! I've got youse again, Slim! Gawd! I've found -yuh!” - -The woman hastily snatched the child up into her arms, with a suppressed -scream, and recoiled. - -The man made no sound, but he, too, drew back a step, not seeming to see -Looney's outstretched hand. - -But he did see it--he saw more than that. He saw, as if they were -flashed before him at lightning speed upon a cinema screen, a dozen -scenes of a wild and reckless and indigent youth that he had thought was -dead forever; he saw these roughneck years suddenly leap alive and -stalk toward him again, toward him and his; he saw his later years of -industry, his hard-won success, his position so strenuously battled for, -his respectability that was become so dear to him, all his house of -life so laboriously builded, crumbling before the touch of this torn and -grotesque outcast that confronted and claimed him, this wavering, -dusty lunatic whom he dimly remembered. If his wife knew--if her people -knew--if the business men of this town were to know---- - -He shuddered and turned sick, and then with a sudden recovery he took -his child from its mother and guided her before him into the waiting -room. - -Looney watched them enter, in silence. He stood dazed for a moment, -and then he slowly turned and walked down the railroad track beyond the -limits of the town. There, upon a spot of turf beside the right of -way, he threw himself upon his face and sobbed and moaned, as a -broken-hearted child sobs, as a dog moans upon its master's grave. - -But after a while he looked up. Slim's star was looking down at him, red -and confident and heartening as ever. He gazed at it a long time, and -then an idea took form in his ruined brain and he said aloud: - -“Now, dat wasn't _really_ Slim! I been lookin' fer Slim so long I t'ink -I see Slim where he ain't! Dat was jus' some guy wot looks like Slimmy. -Slimmy, he wouldn't never of gone back on an old pal like dat!” - -The rumble of an approaching train caught his ears. He got to his feet -and prepared to board it. - -“Slim, he's waitin' fer me somewheres,” he told the star. “I may be -kinda looney about some t'ings, but I knows Slim, an' dey ain't no -yellow streak nowheres in Slim!” - -And with unshaken loyalty Looney the Mutt boarded the train and set off -upon his endless quest anew. - - - - -VI--Kale - -|See that old fellow there?” asked Ed the waiter. “Well, his fad is -money.” - -The old fellow indicated--he must have been nearly eighty--sat eating -corned beef and cabbage in a little booth in a certain delightful, -greasy old chophouse in downtown New York. It was nearly time to close -the chophouse for that day for it was almost eleven o'clock at night; it -was nearly time to close the chophouse forever, for it was the middle of -June, 1919. In a couple of weeks the wartime prohibition act would be in -force, and Ed and I had been discussing what effect it would have upon -our respective lives. - -There was no one else in the place at the time except the cashier and -the old man whose fad was money, and so Ed had condescended toward me, -as a faithful customer, and was sitting down to have a drink with me. - -“His fad is money?” I questioned, glancing at the old gentleman, who -seemed to be nothing extraordinary as regards face or manner or attire. -He had a long, bony New Englandish head and a short, white, well-trimmed -beard; he was finishing his nowise delicate food with gusto. “I should -say,” I added, “that his fad was corned beef and cabbage.” - -“That's one of his fads,” admitted Ed the waiter, “and I don't know but -that it's as strong in him as his money fad. At any rate, I've never -seen him without one or the other was near him, and both in large -quantities.” - -We had been conversing in a mumble, so that our voices should not carry -to the old gentleman. And now Ed dropped his voice still lower and -whispered: - -“That's Old Man Singleton.” - -I looked at him with a renewed interest. Every one knew who Old Man -Singleton was, and many persons liked to guess how much he was worth. -Ostensibly he had retired, leaving to his two sons the management of the -Singleton banking business, with its many ramifications; but actually -he kept his interest in the concern and was reputed to be coaching his -grandsons in the ways of the world, and especially that part of the -world known as “The Street.” - -Starting out as a New England villager who hated poverty because his -family had always known it, he had come to New York as a lad of twenty, -with red knitted mittens on his osseous hands, and he had at once -removed the mittens and put the hands to work gathering money; it was -rumored that the hands had never turned loose any of the garnered coin; -it was even said by some persons that he still had the same pair of -mittens. - -The details of his rise I cannot give; he had achieved his ambition -to be one of the very rich men of America because the ambition was so -strong within him. - -“Of course his fad is money,” I muttered to Ed the waiter. “Everybody -knows that Old Man Singleton's fad is money.” - -Ed was about to reply, when Mr. Singleton looked up and motioned for his -check. Ed brought it, and gave the old gentleman his hat and his stick -and his change. - -“I hope everything was all right,” Mr. Singleton said Ed, palpably -bidding for recognition and a tip. - -“Eh? said Singleton, looking blankly at Ed You know me, hey? I don't -recall you. Yes, everything was all right, thank you.” He gave the -waiter a dime and passed out, after another blank, fumbling look at Ed, -and a shake of his head. There was something feeble and wandering in the -old fellow's manner; his memory was going; it was obvious that before -long the rest of him would follow his memory. He shouldn't be allowed to -go around this way alone at night,” murmured Ed, watching the door -through which he had made his exit. “But I suppose he's as bull-headed -as ever about doing what he pleases, even if his legs are shaky.” - -“He didn't know you,” I hinted, for I wished to learn all that Ed knew -about Old Man Singleton. - -Ed is a person who has been in the world nearly fifty years; he has had -some very unusual acquaintances and experiences. It is never safe to -predict just what Ed will know and what he will not know. One afternoon, -after I had known Ed for about a year, I was attempting to argue some -scientific point with a friend who was lunching with me, and Ed, who was -waiting on us and listening, remarked: “I beg your pardon, sir, but it -wasn't in _The Descent of Man_ that Darwin said that; it was in _The -Origin of Species_.” - -And yet, if you deduce from that remark that Ed knows a great deal about -modern science, you will be mistaken; as likely as not he could quote -pages of Marcus Aurelius to you, and at the same time he might pronounce -“Euripides” as if the last two syllables were one, riming with “hides”; -his reading, like his life, has been elective. - -“He doesn't recall you,” I repeated. - -“And that's ingratitude,” said Ed, “if he only knew it. I saved the old -man's life once.” - -And Ed limped over to the table and resumed his seat opposite me. He -has a bullet under one kneecap, and at times it makes him very lame. He -would never tell me how it came there; to this day I do not know. - -“From what did you save his life?” I asked. “From a man,” said Ed -moodily. “From a man who had a notion to bean him one night. And to this -day I ask myself: 'Did I do right, or did I do wrong?'” - -“Tell me about it,” I insisted, - -“Drink up,” said Ed, manipulating the Scotch bottle and the siphon of -seltzer. “This is one of the last highballs you'll ever have, unless -you sneak around and take it on the sly. I don't know that I should have -another one myself; it settles in this damned knee of mine if I get a -little too much.” - -“Tell me when, where and how you knew Old Man Singleton,” I demanded -again. - -“This knee of mine,” went on Ed, disregarding me, “is a hell of a -handicap. We were talking about prohibition--what's prohibition going to -do to me? Hey? It puts me out of a job in a barroom like this the first -thing. And what else can I do? With this game leg, you can see me going -on the stage as a Russian dancer, can't you? Or digging trenches to lay -gas pipes in, or carrying a Hod? Huh? And I can't even get a job in a -swell restaurant uptown; they don't want any gamelegged waiters sticking -around, falling over the chairs. This was about the only kind of a joint -and the only kind of a job I was fit for, this chop-house thing down -here, and it's going to close in two weeks. What then? Be somebody's -housemaid? I can't see it. I don't wish anybody any bad luck, but I -hope the guy that put over this prohibition thing gets stiff in all his -joints and lives forever.” - -I sympathized and waited, and finally he began. “Old Man Singleton's -fad,” said Ed, “as I re marked before, is money. And as you remarked, -another of his fads is corned beef and cabbage--especially cabbage. He -will eat corned beef with his cabbage, and like it; or he will eat pork -with his cabbage, and like it; or he will eat cabbage without either; it -is the cabbage he likes--or kale. In fact, you could reduce his two fads -to one, and say what he likes is kale--kale in the slang sense of money, -and kale that is cabbage. And all his life he has been stuffing himself -with kale. - -“His fad is kale that he can see and feel and handle and show and carry -about with him. Not merely money in the bank and stocks and bonds and -property and real estate, but actual cash. He likes to carry it with -him, and he does carry it with him. I guess he likes the feel of it in -his billfolder, and the thought that he has got it on him--on him, the -poor boy that came out of New England with the red knitted mittens on -that everybody has heard so much about. I can understand the way -he feels about it; with a folder full of thousand-dollar and -ten-thousand-dollar bills he feels safe, somehow; feels like he'll never -have to go back to that little New England town and saw cordwood and -shovel snow again. - -“He's got it on him now, that folder, and I'll bet you on it. That's -what I meant when I said it wasn't safe for him to be trotting about -this way after night. For if I know it, it stands to reason others know -it, too. - -“What you want to know is, how I know it. Well, I was not always what I -am now. Once I was quite a bird and wore dress suits and went to the -Metropolitan Opera and listened to Caruso as he jumped his voice from -peak to peak. Yes, sir, I know every darned acoustic in that place! They -weren't my dress suits that I wore, but they fit me. Once I moved in the -circles of the idle rich, though they didn't know it, and helped 'em -spend the unearned increment they wrung from the toil of the downtrodden -laboring man. - -“Once, to come down to brass tacks, I was a butler's companion. It is -an office you won't find listed in the social directory, but it existed, -for me at least. The butler in the case was a good friend of mine by the -name of Larry Hodgkins, and being part Irish, he was an ideal English -butler. Larry and his mother were in the employ of the Hergsheimers, a -wealthy Jewish family--you know who they are if you read the financial -pages or the Sunday supplements. Mrs. Hodgkins was the housekeeper and -Larry was the butler, and when the Hergsheimers were traveling Larry and -his mother stayed in the New York house as caretakers and kept things -shipshape. And let me give you a tip, by the way: if you ever take a -notion to quit the writing game and go into domestic service, plant -yourself with a rich Hebrew family. They want things done right, -but they are the most liberal people on earth, especially to Gentile -servants. - -“This Hergsheimer was Jacob Hergsheimer, and he was in right socially in -New York, as well as financially; he had put himself across into the -big time socially because, if you ask me, he belonged there; all the -Hergsheimers didn't get across, but this one did. His New York house is -uptown, between the sixties and the eighties, east of the Park, and -he wants it kept so he can drop into it with his family and a flock of -servants at any hour of the day or night, from any part of the earth, -without a minute's notice, and give a dinner party at once, if he feels -like it, and he frequently feels like it. - -“It was Mrs. Hodgkins's and Larry's job to keep the fire from going -out in the boilers, so to speak, and a head of steam on, so that the -domestic ship could sail in any direction on receipt of orders by wire, -wireless or telephone. They were permanent there, but Jake Hergsheimer -and his family, as far as I could make out, never got more than an -average of about three months' use a year out of that mansion. - -“This time I am speaking of was nearly ten years ago. I was a waiter in -an uptown restaurant, and both my legs were good then; Larry and I -were old pals. The Jake Hergsheimers were sailing around the world in a -yacht, and would be at it for about a year, as far as Larry knew, and -he asked me up to live with him. I accepted; and believe me, the eight -months I put in as Jake Hergsheimer's guest were _some_ eight months. -Not that Jake knew about it; but if he had known it, he wouldn't have -cared. This Jake was a real human being. - -“And his clothes fit me; just as if I had been measured for them. He had -what you might call an automatic tailor, Jake did. Every six weeks, rain -or shine, that tailor delivered a new suit of clothes to the Hergsheimer -house, and he sent in his bill once a year, so Larry the butler told me. -Some people go away and forget to stop the milk; and when Jake sailed -for the other side of the world he forgot to tell anybody to stop the -tailor. Larry didn't feel as if it were any part of his duty to stop -him; for Larry liked that tailor. He made Larry's clothes, too. - -“And I didn't see where it was up to me to protest. As I said, Jake's -garments might have been made for me. In fact, a great many of them -_were_ made for me. There were at least fifteen suits of clothes that -had never been worn in that house, made to my measure and Jake's, when -I became butler's companion in the establishment, and they kept right -on coming. Also, there was a standing order for orchestra seats at the -Metropolitan. Jake had a box every second Thursday, or something like -that, but when he really wanted to hear the music and see the show he -usually sat in the orchestra. Not only did his business suits fit me, -but his dress clothes fit me, too. - -“I used to go often, with a lady's maid that had the same access to -clothing as I did. She was part of a caretaking staff also. Being a -writing person, you have, of course, only viewed New York's society and -near-society from the outside, and no doubt you have been intimidated by -the haughty manners of the servants. Well, when you get close to swells -and really know them personally, you will find they are human, too. - -“A butler on duty is a swelled-up proposition, because he has to be that -way. But take him as you find him among his peers, and he quits acting -like the Duke of Westminster Abbey, and is real sociable. This Larry -person, for instance, could distend himself like a poisoned pup and -make a timid millionaire feel like the sleeves of his undershirt must be -showing below his cuffs; but in our little select circle Larry was the -life of the party. - -“Being, as I said before, an outsider, you likely don't realize how -many of those big swell millionaires' cribs uptown are in the hands of -caretakers like Larry and his mother and me the best part of the year. -Well, they are; and there's a social life goes on in them that don't -ever get into the papers. The parties we had that year in Jake's house -would have done Jake himself good, if Jake could have got an invitation -to them. But Jake was absent, though his cellar and his grocers were -at our service; and he never questioned a bill, Larry said. There were -twelve or fifteen hand-picked servants in our little social circle that -year, and before I left there I could begin to understand how these -débutantes feel at the end of the season--sort of tired and bored and -willing to relax and go in for work and rest and athletics for a change. - -“I had only been butler's companion for a few weeks when Old Man -Singleton dropped in one evening--yes, sir, Old Lemuel Singleton -himself. He came to see the butler's mother, Mrs. Hodgkins. He had known -her a good many years before, when he was wearing those red mittens and -sawing wood up in that New England town and she was somebody's Irish -cook. And he had run across her again, after he became a millionaire, -down here in New York City. He was tickled to see her, and he didn't -care a darn if she was Jake Hergsheimer's housekeeper. She could cook -cabbage and kale better than any one else in the world, and he used to -come and sit with her, and talk about that little old town up there, and -indulge in his favorite dissipation. - -“Old Man Singleton has had what you call the social entrée in New York -for a good many years; for so long that some of his children, and -all his grandchildren, were born with it. But he never took it very -seriously himself. He has been an in-and-outer, you might say. If he saw -Mrs. Hodgkins around Jake's house, he would call her Mary and ask her -how folks were up home in front of Jake and his wife and a whole bunch -of guests, just as soon as not. - -“And his sons and his daughters and his grandchildren never could get -him out of those ways; he always was bull-headed about doing what he -pleased, so Mrs. Hodgkins told me, and he always will be. And the old -lady liked to see him and chin with him and cook for him; and believe -me, she was some cook when she set herself to it. Not merely kale, but -everything. She didn't cook for the Hergsheimers--they had a chef for -that--but they missed it by not having her. Victuals was old Mary's -middle name, and she could rustle up some of the best grub you ever -threw your lip over. - -“At first, Old Man Singleton and Mrs. Hodgkins didn't mix much with -us younger folks when we pulled a party. It wasn't that we were too -aristocratic for them, for off duty, as I said before, butlers and other -swells can be as easy and jolly as common people. But they seemed too -antiquated, if you get me; they were living too much in the past. - -“And then, one night, I discovered what Old Man Singleton's fad -was--kale. Money. Big money. Big money on his person. It was this way: -Larry and I wanted to go downtown and have a little fun, but neither -of us had any cash in hand. Larry had a check for one hundred and fifty -dollars which Jake Hergsheimer had sent him, but all the tradesmen we -knew were closed at that hour, and there wasn't any way to cash it, -unless Old Man Singleton could. - -“'Mr. Singleton,' says Larry to the old man, who was sitting down to a -mess of pork and kale with Mrs. Hodgkins, 'maybe you can cash this for -me.' And he handed him the check. - -“The old man stopped eating and put his glasses on and pulled a -billfolder out of his pocket, with a kind of pleased smile on his face. - -“'Let me see,' he says, taking out the bills, and running them over with -his fingers; 'let me see.' - -“I nearly dropped dead. There wasn't a bill in there of lower -denomination than one thousand dollars; and most of them were -ten-thousand-dol-lar bills. - -“'No, Larry,' says the old man, 'I'm afraid I can't, afraid I -can't--haven't got the change.' - -“And while we stood there and looked, he smoothed and patted those -bills, and folded and refolded them, and then put them back into his -pocket, and patted the pocket. - -“'Mary,' he says to the old woman with a grin, 'that's quite a lot of -money for little Lem Singleton to be carrying around in his pocket, -isn't it?' “'It is that, Lemuel,' said the old lady, 'and I should think -you'd be afraid of leaving it out of the bank.' - -“'Well, Mary,' says the old man, 'I kind o' like to have it around me -all the time--uh--huh! a little bit where I can put my hands on it, all -the time. I used to carry gold; but I gave that up; it's too heavy, for -what it's worth. But I like it, Mary; I used to look at that gold and -say to myself, “Well, there's one thing you got, Lem Singleton, they -never thought you'd get when you left home! And they aren't going to -take it away from you, either!” It was a long time before I could make -paper seem as real to me as gold. But it does now.' - -“And what does the old bird do but take it out of his pocket again and -crinkle it through his fingers and smooth it out again and pet it and do -everything but kiss it. Larry and I stood looking at him with our eyes -sticking out, and he looked at us and laughed. It came to me all of a -sudden that he liked to come where we servants were because he could -pull that kind of thing in front of us, but that he was sort of lost -among the swell-society bunch because he didn't dare pull it there and -didn't feel so rich among them. - -“'My God, Larry,' I said, when we were outside the house, 'did you -notice how much kale the old man had there?' - -“'Uh-huh,' said Larry. 'Mother always cooks a lot for him.' - -“'Wake up, Stupid,' I said. 'I don't mean cabbage. I mean money. There -must have been nearly two hundred thousand dollars in that roll!' - -“'He always has around one hundred thousand dollars on him, at least,' -says Larry. 'And I've seen him flash as high as a quarter of a million.' - -“'Well,' I says, 'something ought to be done about it.' - -“'What do you mean, Ed?' says he. - -“'Oh, nothing,' I said. - -“We walked over to get the L train downtown, saying nothing, and then -finally Larry remarked: “'Electricity is a great thing, Ed.' - -“'I never said it wasn't,' says I. - -“'It's a great thing,' says Larry, 'but when you sit on it, sit on -it right. For instance, I'd a darned sight rather sit in one of these -electric trains than in that electric chair up at Sing Sing.' - -“'Who said anything about an electric chair?' I asked him. - -“'Nobody said anything,' says Larry, 'but you're thinking so darned loud -I can get you.' - -“'Piffle, peanuts and petrification,' I said. 'Take care of your own -thoughts, and I'll skim the fat off of mine myself.' - -“Well, as I said, after that we got better acquainted, the old man and -I. I paid more attention to him. He interested me more. I've always -been interested in science of all kinds, and the year I spent in Jake -Hergsheimer's house I cut the leaves of a lot of books in his library -and gave them the once over. I was always interested in psychology, even -before the word got to be a headliner in the Sunday supplements, and I -took a good deal of pleasure that winter trying to get inside of Old -Man Singleton's mind. I must say, I never got very far in, at that. My -general conclusion at the end is what it was at the beginning--his fad -is kale. - -“And he loved to show it, you could see that. Not that he pulled it -every time he happened to be at one of our parties. Often he would drop -in that winter from some swell social event at one of the big houses -uptown, where he had been a guest, and eat some of old Mary's chow, and -never intimate by word or look that he had all that kale on him. And -then again he'd come among us, diked out in the soup and fish, and flash -the roll, for no other reason that I know except he enjoyed seeing us -get the blind staggers, which we always did. And then he'd fuss with it -and pet it and go into a dream over it, and wake up again and grin and -talk about life with old Mary. And they agreed about life; you never -heard two more moral persons exchange views. It was sometimes as good as -a Sunday-school to listen to them for half an hour. - -“One night, when they had been gassing for a while, they sort of got my -goat, and I said to him: - -“'Mr. Singleton, does it ever strike you as a little peculiar that you -should have so much money and so many other people, such as myself, none -at all?' - -“'No, Ed,' he says. 'No, it doesn't. That's the Lord's way, Ed! Money is -given as a sacred trust by the Lord to them that are best fitted to have -and to hold.' - -“'Meaning,' I asked him, 'that if you were ever to let loose of any of -it, it might work harm in the world?' - -“He chewed over that for quite a while, as if he saw something personal -in it, and he gave me a ten-dollar bill for a Christmas present. He -isn't as stingy as some people say he is; he just looks so stingy that -if he was the most liberal man on earth he would get the reputation of -being stingy. - -“The lady's maid that I used to go to the opera with quit me a little -while after Christmas. She and I were walking around the promenade -between the acts one night at the Metropolitan and Larry was with -us, when a fellow stopped Larry and spoke to him. I could see the guy -looking at the girl and me as he and Larry talked. Later, Larry told me -that it was one of Jake Hergsheimer's friends, and he had been a little -bit surprised to see Larry at the opera all diked out, and he had wanted -to know who the girl was. - -“Well, anyhow, she never went to the opera with me after that; but a few -weeks later I saw her at a cabaret with Jake's friend. It was a grief to -me; but I got into some real trouble, or let it get into me, about -the same time, and that helped take the sting off. I had once been -married--but there's no use going into all that. Anyhow, when the -marriage kind o' wore off, my own folks took my wife's side of the case -and she went to live with them. My old dad was sick, and they needed -money, and my wife wrote to me that she was willing to let bygones be -bygones and accept some money from me, and that my parents felt the same -way, and there was a kid, too, that my folks were bringing up. - -“Well, I was desperate for some way to get hold of some cash and send -to them. In the end, I took one of Jake Hergsheimer's silver vases and -hocked it and sent the money, and got it out of hock two or three months -later; but in the meantime there was a spell when I was so hard pressed -it looked to me like I would actually have to do something dishonest to -get that money. - -“One night, before Jake Hergsheimer came to my rescue and lent me that -silver vase, if you want to call it that, I was sitting alone in the -house thinking what a failure in life I was, and how rotten it was to -have a wife and kid and parents all set against me, and drinking some of -Jake's good booze, and getting more and more low in my mind, when there -came a ring at the front doorbell. The butler was out, and old Mary was -asleep way up in the top of the house, at the back, and wouldn't hear. - -“'I'll bet,' I said to myself, 'that's Old Man Singleton nosing around -for his cabbage.' And I made up my mind I wouldn't let him in--he could -ring till he froze to death on the front steps, and I wouldn't. It was -a blustery, snowy January night, with new snow over the old ice -underneath, and I says to myself, 'It's a wonder the old coot don't slip -down and bust some of those big New England bones of his. And I wouldn't -care much if he did.' - -“But he kept on ringing, and finally I thought I'd better go and let him -in. I didn't have any ulterior notions when I went up the stairs from -the servants' dining room and made for the front door. But the minute I -clapped eyes on him I thought of all that kale in his pocket. - -“I opened the front door, but outside of that was an iron grille. It had -a number of fastenings, but the final one was a short, heavy iron bar -that lay in two sockets, one on each side of the opening. - -“I lifted the bar and swung the grille open. - -“'Ha! Hum!' said he, and sneezed. 'It's you, Ed, is it?' - -“And, snuffing and sneezing, he passed in front of me. - -“And as he passed by me that bar said something to my hand. And the hand -raised up. It wasn't any of my doings, it was all the hand and the bar. -It raised up, that bar did, right behind the old man's head. He stopped -just outside the front door and flapped his big bony feet on a rug -that was there, to get the snow off his shoes, and while he flapped and -sneezed that bar was right over the old man's brain-box. - -“'Well,' I said to myself, 'here is your chance to be an honest man and -a prosperous man, reunited with your wife and your kid and your folks -at home, and not have to borrow anything from Jake Hergsheimer's -collection--just one little tap on the old man's head, and down he goes, -and he's got anywhere from one hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty -thousand dollars in his clothes.' - -“'Yes,' said myself to me, 'one little tap, and maybe you kill him. What -then? The electric chair, huh?' - -“'Hell!' I said to myself. 'Take a chance! The old man has so much money -that what he has in his pocket means nothing to him one way or another. -Larry's gone till morning, and the old woman won't wake for a long time. -It means a little bit of a headache for Old Lemuel here, and it means -your chance to lead an honest life hereafter and be a useful citizen and -take care of those you have been neglecting.' - -“'Yes,' said myself to me, 'it's more moral to do it, and make your life -over, but you never have been one for morality in the past. Besides, -you'd kill him.' - -“And I might have killed him, boss. I wasn't sure of it then, but I've -been sure of it since then. I was that strung up that I would have hit -too hard. - -“And yet, I might _not_ have done so! I might have hit him just enough -to put him out and make my get-away, and I might have led an honest life -since then. - -“But at the moment I couldn't do it. I saw, all of a sudden, something -funny. I saw the old man stamping his feet and getting the snow off, and -I thought of him as a dead man, and I says to myself: 'How damned funny -for a dead man to stamp the snow off his feet!' And I laughed. - -“'Heh? Heh? What did you say, Ed?' says the old man, and turns around. - -“I dropped the iron bar to my side, and that dead man came up out of the -grave. - -“'Nothing, Mr. Singleton,' I said. 'I was just going to say, go on in, -and I'll get a brush and clean the snow off of you.' - -“I said I saved his life from a man one time. Well, I was the man I -saved his life from. - -“He went on in, and I barred the grille and locked the door, and we went -on down to the dining room. I was shaking, and still I wasn't easy in my -mind. I told him there wasn't anybody home but me, and he said he'd take -a drop of Jake's brandy. And while I was opening a bottle of it for him, -what does he do but pull out that billfolder. - -“'For God's sake, Mr. Singleton,' I said, turning weak and sitting down -in a chair all of a sudden, 'put that money up.' - -“He sat there and sipped his brandy and talked, but I didn't hear what -he was saying. I just looked at him, and kept saying to myself, should I -have done it? Or should I have let him go by? - -“Boss, that was nearly ten years ago, and I've been asking myself that -question from time to time ever since. Should I have done it? Was it -moral to refuse that chance to make my life over again? You know me, -kid. You know some of me, at least. You know I don't hold much by -morals. If I was to tell you how I got that bullet under my kneecap, -you'd know me better than _you_ do. If I had hit him just right and made -my get-away, I would have led a different life. - -“And I wouldn't now be 'waiting for my death sentence. For that's -practically what this prohibition thing means to me. I can't work at -anything but this. And this is through with. And I'm through with. I'm a -bum from now on. There's no use kidding myself; I'm a bum. - -“And yet, often, I'm glad I didn't do it.” - -Ed brooded in silence for a while. - -And then I said, “It's strange he didn't know you.” - -“It's been ten years,” said Ed, “and you saw that the old man's got -to the doddering stage. He likely wouldn't know his own children if he -didn't see them every day or two.” - -“I suppose,” I said, “that the old man feels he is ending his days in a -very satisfactory manner--the national prohibition thing triumphant, and -all that.” - -“How do you mean?” asked Ed. - -“Don't you know?” I said. “Why, Old Man Singleton, it is said, helped -to finance the fight, and used his money and his influence on other big -money all over the country in getting next to doubtful politicians and -putting the thing through the state legislatures. I don't mean there -was anything crooked about it anywhere, but he was one of the bunch that -represented organized power, and put the stunt across while the liquor -interests were still saying national prohibition could never come.” - -“The hell he did!” said Ed. “I didn't know he was mixed up with it. I -never saw him take a drink, now that I remember, except the brandy on -the night I saved his life.” - -“Old Man Singleton,” I said, “is credited with having had more to do -with it than any other one person, by those who are on the inside.” - -“The old coot!” said Ed. And then added wryly: “I hope he gets as stiff -in his knee joint as I am and lives forever! He's made a bum of me!” - -It was three or four weeks after my talk with Ed that I read in the -papers of a peculiar accident of which Old Man Singleton had been the -victim. A head of cabbage, he said, had fallen out of a tree and hit him -on his own head one evening as he was walking alone in Central Park. He -had been dazed by the blow for a moment; and when he regained his feet -a considerable sum of money which he had been carrying was gone. He was -sure that he had been struck by a head of cabbage, for a head of cabbage -lay on the pathway near him when he was helped to his feet. He did not -pretend to be able to say how a head of cabbage could have gotten into -one of the park trees. - -The police discredited his story, pointing out that likely the old -man, who was near-sighted, had blundered against a tree in the dusk and -struck his head. The head of cabbage, they told the reporters, could -have had nothing to do with it; it could not have come into contact with -his head at all, unless, indeed, some one had put it into a sack and -swung it on him like a bludgeon; and this, the police said, was too -absurd to be considered. For why should a crook use a head of cabbage, -when the same results might have been attained with the more usual -blackjack, stick or fist? - -Old Man Singleton was not badly hurt; and as regarded the loss of the -money, he never said, nor did his family ever say, just how large the -sum was. Mr. Singleton had the vague impression that after the cabbage -fell out of the tree and hit him he had been helped to his feet by a man -who limped and who said to him: “Kale is given to them that can best use -it, to have and to hold.” - -He did not accuse this person, who disappeared before he was thoroughly -himself again, of having found the money which had evidently dropped -from his pocket when the cabbage fell from the tree and hit him, but -he was suspicious, and he thought the police were taking the matter too -lightly; he criticized the police in an interview given to the papers. -The police pointed out the irrelevance of the alleged words of the -alleged person who limped, and intimated that Mr. Singleton was -irrational and should be kept at home evenings; as far as they were -concerned, the incident was closed. - -But I got another slant at it, as Ed might have said. Last winter I was -talking at my club with a friend just back from Cuba, where the rum is -red and joy is unconfined. - -“I met a friend of yours,” he said, “by the name of Ed down there, who -is running a barroom and seems to be quite a sport in his way. Sent his -regards to you. Must have made it pay--seems to have all kinds of money. -Named his barroom 'The Second Thought.' Asked him why. He said nobody -knew but himself, and he was keeping it a secret--though you might -guess. Wants you to come down. Sent you a message. Let's see: what was -it? Oh, yes! Cryptic! Very cryptic! Wrote it down--here it is: '_Kale! -Kale! The gang's all here_.' Make anything out of it? I can't.” - -I could, though I didn't tell him what. But I shall not visit Ed in -Cuba; I consider him an immoral person. - - - - -VII--Bubbles - - -I - -|Tommy Hawkins was not so sober that you could tell it on him. Certainly -his friend Jack Dobson, calling on him one dreary winter evening--an -evening of that winter before John Barleycorn cried maudlin tears into -his glass and kissed America good-by--would never have guessed it from -Tommy's occupation. Presenting himself at Tommy's door and finding it -unlocked, Jack had gone on in. A languid splashing guided him to the -bathroom. In the tub sat Tommy with the water up to his shoulders, -blowing soap bubbles. - -“You darned old fool!” said Jack. “Aren't you ever going to grow up, -Tommy?” - -“Nope,” said Tommy placidly. “What for?” Sitting on a chair close by -the bathtub was a shallow silver dish with a cake of soap and some -reddish-colored suds in it. Tommy had bought the dish to give some one -for a wedding present, and then had forgotten to send it. - -“What makes the suds red?” asked Jack. - -“I poured a lot of that nose-and-throat spray stuff into it,” explained -Tommy. “It makes them prettier. Look!” - -As a pipe he was using a piece of hollow brass curtain rod six or eight -inches long and of about the diameter of a fat lead pencil. He soused -this thing in the reddish suds and manufactured a bubble with elaborate -care. With a graceful gesture of his wet arm he gently waved the rod -until the bubble detached itself. It floated in the air for a moment, -and the thin, reddish integument caught the light from the electric -globe and gave forth a brief answering flash as of fire. Then the bubble -suddenly and whimsically dashed itself against the wall and was no more, -leaving a faint, damp, reddish trace upon the white plaster. - -“Air current caught it,” elucidated Tommy with the air of a circus -proprietor showing off pet elephants. In his most facetious moments -Tommy was wont to hide his childish soul beneath an exterior of serious -dignity. “This old dump is full of air currents. They come in round -the windows, come in round the doors, come right in through the -walls. Damned annoying, too, for a scientist making experiments with -bubbles--starts a bubble and never knows which way it's going to jump. -I'm gonna complain to the management of this hotel.” - -“You're going to come out of that bathtub and get into your duds,” said -Jack. “That water's getting cool now, and between cold water and air -currents you'll have pneumonia the first thing you know--you poor silly -fish, you.” - -“Speaking of fish,” said Tommy elliptically, “there's a bottle of -cocktails on the mantel in the room there. Forgot it for a moment. Don't -want to be inhospitable, but don't drink all of it.” - -“It's all gone,” said Dobson a moment later. - -“So?” said Tommy in surprise. “That's the way with cocktails. Here -one minute and gone the next--like bubbles. Bubbles! Life's like that, -Jack!” He made another bubble with great solemnity, watched it float and -dart and burst. “Pouf!” he said. “Bubbles! Bubbles! Life's like that!” - -“You're an original philosopher, you are,” said Jack, seizing him by the -shoulders. “You're about as original as a valentine. Douse yourself -with cold water and rub yourself down and dress. Come out of it, kid, or -you'll be sick.” - -“If I get sick,” said Tommy, obeying, nevertheless, “I won't have to go -to work to-morrow.” - -“Why aren't you working to-day?” asked his friend, working on him with a -coarse towel. - -“Day off,” said Tommy. - -“Day off!” rejoined Dobson. “Since when has the _Morning Despatch_ -been giving two days off a week to its reporters? You had your day off -Tuesday, and this is Thursday.” - -“Is it?” said Tommy. “I always get Tuesday and Thursday mixed. Both -begin with a T. Hey, Jack, how's that? Both begin with a T! End with a -tea party! Good line, hey, Jack? Tuesday and Thursday both begin with -a T and end with a tea party. I'm gonna write a play round that, Jack. -Broadway success! Letters a foot high! Royalties for both of us! I won't -forget you, Jack! You suggested the idea for the plot, Jack. Drag you -out in front of the curtain with me when I make my speech. 'Author! -Author!' yells the crowd. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' says I, 'here is the -obscure and humble person who set in motion the train of thought that -led to my writing this masterpiece. Such as he is, I introduce him to -you.'” - -“Shut up!” said Jack, and continued to lacerate Tommy's hide with the -rough towel. “Hold still! Now go and get into your clothes.” And as -Tommy began to dress he regarded that person darkly. “You're a brilliant -wag, you are! It's a shame the way the copy readers down on the -_Despatch_ keep your best things out of print, you splattering -supermudhen of journalism, you! You'll wake up some morning without any -more job than a kaiser.” And as Tommy threaded himself into the mystic -maze of his garments Mr. Dobson continued to look at him and mutter -disgustedly, “Bubbles!” - -Not that he was afraid that Tommy would actually lose his job. If it had -been possible for Tommy to lose his job that must have happened years -before. But Tommy wrote a certain joyous type of story better than any -other person in New York, and his facetiousness got him out of as many -scrapes as it got him into. He was thirty years old. At ninety he would -still be experimenting with the visible world in a spirit of random -eagerness, joshing everything in it, including himself. He looked -exactly like the young gentleman pictured in a widely disseminated -collar advertisement. He enjoyed looking that way, and occasionally he -enjoyed talking as if he were exactly that kind of person. He loved to -turn his ironic levity against the character he seemed to be, much as -the mad wags who grace the column of F. P. A. delight in getting their -sayings across accompanied by a gentle satirical fillip at all mad -waggery. - -“Speaking of bubbles,” he suddenly chuckled as he carefully adjusted his -tie in the collar that looked exactly like the one in the advertisement, -“there's an old party in the next room that takes 'em more seriously -than you do, Jack.” - -The old downtown hotel in which Tommy lived had once been a known and -noted hostelry, and persons from Plumville, Pennsylvania, Griffin, -Georgia, and Galva, Illinois, still stopped there when in New York, -because their fathers and mothers had stopped there on their wedding -journeys perhaps. It was not such a very long way from the Eden Musee, -when there was an Eden Musee. Tommy's room had once formed part of a -suite. The bathroom which adjoined it had belonged jointly to another -room in the suite. But now these two rooms were always let separately. -Still, however, the bathroom was a joint affair. When Tommy wished to -bathe he must first insure privacy by hooking on the inside the door -that led into the bathroom from the chamber beyond. - -“Old party in the next room?” questioned Jack. - -“Uh-huh,” said Tommy, who had benefited by his cold sluicing and his -rubdown. “I gave him a few bubbles for his very own--through the keyhole -into his room, you know. Poked that brass rod through and blew the -bubble in his room. Detached it with a little jerk and let it float. -Seemed more sociable, you know, to let him in on the fun. Never be -stingy with your pleasures, Jack. Shows a mean spirit--a mean soul. Why -not cheer the old party up with soap bubbles? Cost little, bubbles -do. More than likely he's a stranger in New York. Unfriendly city, he -thinks. Big city. Nobody thinks of him. Nobody cares for him. Away from -home. Winter day. Melancholy. Well, I say, give him a bubble now and -then. Shows some one is thinking of him. Shows the world isn't so -thoughtless and gloomy after all. Neighborly sort of thing to do, Jack. -Makes him think of his youth--home--mother's knee--all that kind of -thing, Jack. Cheers him up. Sat in the tub there and got to thinking -of him. Almost cried, Jack, when I thought how lonely the old man must -be--got one of these old man's voices. Whiskers. Whiskers deduced from -the voice. So I climbed out of the tub every ten or fifteen minutes all -afternoon and gave the old man a bubble. Rain outside--fog, sleet. Dark -indoors. Old man sits and thinks nobody loves him. Along comes a bubble. -Old man gets happy. Laughs. Remembers his infancy. Skies clear. You -think I'm a selfish person, Jack? I'm not. I'm a Samaritan. Where will -we eat?” - -“You are a darned fool,” said Jack. “You say he took them seriously? -What do you mean? Did he like 'em?” - -“Couldn't quite make out,” said Tommy. “But they moved him. Gasped every -now and then. Think he prayed. Emotion, Jack. Probably made him think -of boyhood's happy days down on the farm. Heard him talking to himself. -Think he cried. Went to bed anyhow with his clothes on and pulled the -covers over his head. Looked through the keyhole and saw that. Gray -whiskers sticking up, and that's all. Deduced the whiskers from the -voice, Jack. Let's give the old party a couple more bubbles and then go -eat. It's been an hour since he's had one. Thinks I'm forgetting him, no -doubt.” - -So they gave the old man a couple of bubbles, poking the brass rod -through the keyhole of the door. - -The result was startling and unexpected. First there came a gasp from -the other room, a sort of whistling release of the breath, and an -instant later a high, whining, nasal voice. - -“Oh, God! God! Again! You meant it, then, God! You meant it!” - -The two young men started back and looked at each other in wonderment. -There was such a quivering agony, such an utter groveling terror in this -voice from the room beyond that they were daunted. - -“What's eating him?” asked Dobson, instinctively dropping his tones to a -whisper. - -“I don't know,” said Tommy, temporarily subdued. “Sounds like that last -one shell-shocked him when it exploded, doesn't it?” - -But Tommy was subdued only for a moment. - -As they went out into the corridor he giggled and remarked, “Told you he -took 'em seriously, Jack.” - - - -II - -“Seriously” was a word scarcely strong enough for the way in which the -old party in the room beyond had taken it, though he had not, in fact, -seen the bubble. He had only seen a puff of smoke coming apparently from -nowhere, originating in the air itself, as it seemed to him, manifesting -itself, materializing itself out of nothing, and floating in front of -the one eye which was peeping fearfully out of the huddled bedclothing -which he had drawn over himself. He had lain quaking on the bed, waiting -for this puff of smoke for an hour or more, hoping against hope that it -would not come, praying and muttering, knotting his bony hands in the -whiskers that Tommy had seen sticking up from the coverings, twisting -convulsively. - -Tommy had whimsically filled the bubble, as he blew it, with smoke -from his cigarette. He had in like manner, throughout the afternoon and -early-evening, filled all the bubbles that he had given the old man -with cigarette or pipe smoke. The old party had not been bowled over -by anything in Tommy's tobacco. He had not noticed that the smoke was -tobacco smoke, for he had been smoking a pipe himself the greater part -of the day, and had not aired out the room. It was neither bubbles nor -tobacco that had flicked a raw spot on his soul. It was smoke. - - - -III - -Bubbles! They seemed to be in Tommy's brain. Perhaps it was the -association of ideas that made him think of champagne. At any rate he -declared that he must have some, and vetoed his friend's suggestion that -they dine--as they frequently did--at one of the little Italian table -d'hote places in Greenwich Village. - -“You're a bubble and I'm a bubble and the world is a bubble,” Tommy -was saying a little later as he watched the gas stirring in his golden -drink. - -They had gone to the genial old Brevoort, which was--but why tell -persons who missed the Brevoort in its mellower days what they missed, -and why cause anguished yearnings in the bosoms of those who knew it -well? - -“Tommy,” said his friend, “don't, if you love me, hand out any more of -your jejune poeticism or musical-comedy philosophy. I'll agree with you -that the world is a bubble for the sake of argument, if you'll change -the record. I want to eat, and nothing interferes with my pleasure in -a meal so much as this line of pseudocerebration that you seem to have -adopted lately.” - -“Bubbles seem trivial things, Jack,” went on Tommy, altogether -unperturbed. “But I have a theory that there aren't any trivial things. -I like to think of the world balancing itself on a trivial thing. Look -at the Kaiser, for instance. A madman. Well, let's say there's been a -blood clot in his brain for years--a little trivial thing the size of a -pin point, Jack. It hooks up with the wrong brain cell; it gets into -the wrong channel, and--pouf! The world goes to war. A thousand million -people are affected by it--by that one little clot of blood no bigger -than a pin point that gets into the wrong channel. An atom! A planet -balanced on an atom! A star pivoting on a molecule!” - -“Have some soup,” said his friend. - -“Bubbles! Bubbles and butterflies!” continued Tommy. “Some day, Jack, -I'm going to write a play in which a butterfly's wing brushes over an -empire.” - -“No, you're not,” said Jack. “You're just going to talk about it and -think you're writing it and peddle the idea round to everybody you know, -and then finally some wise guy is going to grab it off and really write -it. You've been going to write a play ever since I knew you.” - -“Yes, I am; I'm really going to write that play.” - -“Well, Tommy,” said Jack, looking round the chattering dining room, -“this is a hell of a place to do it in!” - -“Meaning, of course,” said Tommy serenely, “that it takes more than a -butterfly to write a play about a butterfly.” - -“You get me,” said his friend. And then after a pause he went on with -sincerity in his manner: “You know I think you could write the play, -Tommy. But unless you get to work on some of your ideas pretty soon, and -buckle down to them in earnest, other people will continue to write your -plays--and you will continue to josh them and yourself, and your friends -will continue to think that you could write better plays if you would -only do it. People aren't going to take you seriously, Tommy, till you -begin to take yourself a little seriously. Why, you poor, futile, silly, -misguided, dear old mutt, you! You don't even have sense enough--you -don't have the moral continuity, if you follow me--to stay sore at a man -that does you dirt! Now, do you?” - -“Oh, I don't know about that,” said Tommy a little more seriously. - -“Well now, do you?” persisted his friend. “I don't say it's good -Christian doctrine not to forgive people. It isn't. But I've seen people -put things across on you, Tommy, and seen you laugh it off and let 'em -be friends with you again inside of six weeks. I couldn't do it, and -nine-tenths of the fellows we know couldn't do it; and in the way you -do it it shouldn't be done. You should at least remember, even if you do -forgive; remember well enough not to get bit by the same dog again. With -you, old kid, it's all a part of your being a butterfly and a bubble. -It's no particular virtue in you. I wouldn't talk to you like a Dutch -uncle if I didn't think you had it in you to make good. But you've got -to be prodded.” - -“There's one fellow that did me dirt,” said Tommy musingly, “that I've -never taken to my bosom again.” - -“What did you do to him?” asked his friend. “Beat him to death with -a butterfly's wing, Tommy, or blow him out of existence with a soap -bubble?” - -“I've never done anything to him,” said Tommy soberly. “And I don't -think I ever would do anything to him. I just remember, that's all. If -he ever gets his come-uppance, as they say in the rural districts, it -won't be through any act of mine. Let life take revenge for me. I never -will.” - -“I suppose you're right,” said Dobson. “But who was this guy? And what -did he do to you?” - - - -IV - -“He was--and is--my uncle,” said Tommy, “and he did about everything -to me. Listen! You think I do nothing but flitter, flutter, frivol and -flivver! And you may be right, and maybe I never will do anything else. -Maybe I never will be anything but a kid. - -“I was young when I was born. No, that's not one of my silly lines, -Jack. I mean it seriously. I was young when I was born. I was born with -a jolly disposition. But this uncle of mine took it out of me. I'll say -he did! The reason I'm such a kid now, Jack, is because I had to grow up -when I was about five years old, and I stayed grown up until I was -seventeen or eighteen. I never had a chance to be a boy. If I showed any -desire to be it was knocked out of me on the spot. And if I live two -hundred years, and stay nineteen years old all that time, Jack, I won't -any more than make up for the childhood I missed--that was stolen from -me. Frivol? I could frivol a thousand years and not dull my appetite. I -want froth, Jack: froth and bubbles! - -“This old uncle of mine--he wasn't so old in years when I first knew -him, but in his soul he was as old as the overseers who whipped the -slaves that built Cheops' pyramid, and as sandy and as flinty--hated me -as soon as he saw me. He hated me before he saw me. He would have hated -me if he had never seen me, because I was young and happy and careless. - -“I was that, when I went to live with him--young and happy and careless. -I was five years old. He was my father's brother, Uncle Ezra was, and he -beat my father out of money in his dirty, underhanded way. Oh, nothing -illegal! At least, I suppose not. Uncle Ezra was too cautious to do -anything that might be found out on him. There was nothing that my -mother could prove, at any rate, and my father had been careless and had -trusted him. When my father died my mother was ill. He gave us a home, -Uncle Ezra did. She had to live somewhere; she had to have a roof over -her head and attention of some sort. She had no near relations, and I -had to be looked after. - -“So she and I went into his house to live. It was to be temporary. We -were to move as soon as she got better. But she did not live long. I -don't remember her definitely as she was before we went to live with -Uncle Ezra. I can only see her as she lay on a bed in a dark room before -she died. It was a large wooden bed, with wooden slats and a straw -mattress. I can see myself sitting on a chair by the head of the bed and -talking to her. My feet did not reach to the floor by any means; they -only reached to the chair rungs. I can't remember what she said or what -I said. All I remember of her is that she had very bright eyes and that -her arms were thin. I remember her arms, but not her face, except the -eyes. I suppose she used to reach her arms out to me. I think she -must have been jolly at one time, too. There is a vague feeling, a -remembrance, that before we went to Uncle Ezra's she was jolly, and -that she and I laughed and played together in some place where there was -red-clover bloom. - -“One day when I was siting on the chair, the door opened and Uncle Ezra -came in. There was some man with him that was, I suppose, a doctor. -I can recall Uncle Ezra's false grin and the way he put his hand on my -head--to impress the doctor, I suppose--and the way I pulled away from -him. For I felt that he disliked me, and I feared and hated him. - -“Yes, Uncle Ezra gave us a home. I don't know how much you know about -the rural districts, Jack. But when an Uncle Ezra in a country town -gives some one a home he acquires merit. This was a little town in -Pennsylvania that Pm talking about, and Uncle Ezra was a prominent -citizen--deacon in the church and all that sort of thing. Truly rural -drama stuff, Jack, but I can't help that--it's true. Uncle Ezra had a -reputation for being stingy and mean. Giving us a home was a good card -for him to play. My mother had a little money, and he stole that, too, -when she died. - -“I suppose he stole it legally. I don't know. It wasn't much. No one had -any particular interest in looking out for me, and nobody would want to -start anything in opposition to Uncle Ezra in that town if it could be -helped anyhow. He didn't have the whole village and the whole of the -farming country round about sewed up, all by himself, but he was one -of the little group that did. There's a gang like that in every country -town, I imagine. He was one of four or five big ducks in that little -puddle--lent money, took mortgages and all that kind of thing you read -about. I don't know how much he is worth now, counting what he has -been stealing all his life. But it can't be a staggering sum. He's too -cowardly to plunge or take a long chance. He steals and saves and grinds -in a little way. He is too mean and small and blind and limited in his -intelligence to be a big, really successful crook, such as you will find -in New York City. - -“When my mother died, of course, I stayed with Uncle Ezra. I suppose -everybody said how good it was of him to keep me, and that it showed a -soft and kindly spot in his nature after all, and that he couldn't be so -hard as he had the name of being. But I don't see what else could have -been done with me, unless he had taken me out and dropped me in the mill -pond like a blind cat. Sometimes I used to wish he had done that. - -“It isn't hard to put a five-year-old kid in the wrong, so as to make it -appear--even to the child himself--that he is bad and disobedient. Uncle -Ezra began that way with me. I'm not going into details. This isn't a -howl; it's merely an explanation. But he persecuted me in every way. He -put me to work before I should have known what work was--work too hard -for me. He deviled me and he beat me, he clothed me like a beggar and he -fed me like a dog, he robbed me of childhood and of boyhood. I won't go -over the whole thing. - -“I never had decent shoes, or a hat that wasn't a rag, and I never went -to kid parties or anything, or even owned so much as an air rifle of my -own. The only pair of skates I ever had, Jack, I made for myself out of -two old files, with the help of the village blacksmith--and I got licked -for that. Uncle Ezra said I had stolen the files and the straps. They -belonged to him. - -“But there's one thing I remember with more of anger than any other. He -used to make me kneel down and pray every night before I went to bed, -in his presence; and sometimes he would pray with me. He was a deacon in -the church. There are plenty of them on the square--likely most of them -are. But this one was the kind you used to see in the old-fashioned -melodramas. Truly rural stuff, Jack. He used to be quite a shark at -prayer himself, Uncle Ezra did. I can remember how he looked when he -prayed, with his eyes shut and his Adam's apple bobbing up and down and -the sound whining through his nose. - -“The only person that was ever human to me was a woman I called Aunt -Lizzie. I don't know really what relation she wras to me; a distant -cousin of Uncle Ezra's, I think. She was half blind and she was deaf, -and he bullied her and made her do all the housework. She was bent -nearly double with drudgery. He had given her a home, too. She didn't -dare be very good to me. He might find it out, and then we both would -catch it. She baked me some apple dumplings once on one of my birthdays. -I was nine years old. And he said she had stolen the apples and flour -from him; that he had not ordered her to make any apple dumplings, -and it was theft; and he made me pray for her, and made her pray for -herself, and he prayed for both of us in family prayers every day for a -week. - -“I was nearly eighteen when I ran away. I might have done it sooner, but -I was small for my age, and I was cowed. I didn't dare to call my soul -my own, and I had a reputation for being queer, too. For I used to grin -and laugh at things no one else thought were funny--when Uncle Ezra -wasn't round. I suppose people in that town thought it was odd that I -could laugh at all. No one could understand how I had a laugh left in -me. But when I was alone I used to laugh. I used to laugh at myself -sometimes because I was so little and so queer. When I was seventeen I -wasn't much bigger than a thirteen-year-old kid should be. I packed a -lot of growing into the years between seventeen and twenty-one. - -“When I ran away Aunt Lizzie gave me eighty-seven cents, all in nickels -and pennies, and there were two or three of those old-fashioned two-cent -pieces in it, too, that she had had for God knows how long. It was -all she had. I don't suppose he ever paid her anything at all, and the -wonder was she had that much. I told her that when I got out into the -world and made good I would come and get her, but she shivered all over -with fright at the idea of daring to leave. I have sent her things from -time to time in the last ten years--money, and dresses I have bought -for her, and little things I thought she would like. But I don't know -whether he let her have them or not I never got any letter from her at -all. I don't even know whether she can write, to tell the truth, and she -wouldn't dare get one of the neighbors to write for her. But if I ever -make any real money, Jack, I am going to go and get her, whether she -dares to come away or not. - -“Well, when I left, the thing I wanted to do was go to school. Uncle -Ezra hadn't given me time to go to school much. But I tramped to a -town where there was a little fresh-water college that had its own prep -school attached, and I did the whole seven years of prep school and -college in five years. You see, I had a lot of bounce in me. The minute -I got away from Uncle Ezra the whole world brightened up for me. The -clouds rolled by and life looked like one grand long joke, and I turned -into a kid. I romped through that prep school and that college, and made -my own living while I was doing it, and laughed all the time and loved -the world and everything in it, and it came as easy to me as water comes -to a duck. I came on down here to New York and was lucky enough to get a -chance as a reporter, and I've been romping ever since. - -“I don't want to do anything but romp. Of course, I want to write some -good stuff some day, but I want to keep romping while I write it, and I -want it to be stuff that has a romp in it, too. You say I romp so much -I'm never serious. Well, I do have some serious moments, too. I have -a dream that keeps coming to me. I dream that I'm back in that little -town, and that I'm Uncle Ezra's slave again, and that I can't get away. - -“Sometimes the dream takes the form of Uncle Ezra coming here to New -York to get me, and I know that I've got to go back with him to that -place, and I wake up sweating and crying like an eight-year-old kid. If -he ever really came it would put a crimp into me, Jack. - -“You say I'm a butterfly. And I say, yes, Jack, thank God I am! I used -to be a grubworm, and now I'm a butterfly, praise heaven! - -“Well, that's the guy I hold the grudge against, and that's why I'm fool -enough to rush into every pleasure I can find. I don't know that I'll -ever change. And as for the man, I don't ever want to see him. I don't -know that I'd ever do anything to him if I did--beat him to death with -a butterfly's wing, or blow him up with a soap bubble, as you suggested. -Let him alone. He'll punish himself. He is punished by being what he is. -I wouldn't put a breath into the scale one way or the other--not even a -puff of cigarette smoke.” - -He blew a breath of cigarette smoke luxuriously out of his nose as he -finished, and then he remarked, “Let's go somewhere and dance.” - -“Nazimova is doing Ibsen uptown,” suggested Jack, “and I have a couple -of tickets. Let's go and see Ibsen lb a little.” - -“Nope,” said Tommy. “Ibsen's got too much sense. I want something silly. -Me for a cabaret, or some kind of a hop garden.” - - - -V - -But sometimes in this ironical world it happens that we have already -beaten a man to death with a butterfly's wing, slain him with a bubble, -sent him whirling into the hereafter on a puff of smoke, even as we are -saying that such a thing is foreign to our thoughts. - -The old party in the room next to Tommy's at the hotel had arrived the -day before, with an umbrella, a straw suitcase and a worried eye on -either side his long, white, chalkish, pitted nose. He seemed chilly -in spite of his large plum-colored overcoat, of a cut that has survived -only in the rural districts. He wore a salient, assertive beard, that -had once been sandy and was now almost white, but it was the only -assertive thing about him. His manner was far from aggressive. - -An hour after he had been shown to his room he appeared at the desk -again and inquired timidly of the clerk, “There's a fire near here?” - -“Little blaze in the next block. Doesn't amount to anything,” said the -clerk. - -“I heard the--the engines,” said the guest apologetically. - -“Doesn't amount to anything,” said the clerk again. And then, “Nervous -about fire?” - -The old party seemed startled. - -“Who? Me? Why should I be nervous about fire? No! No! No!” He beat a -sudden retreat. “I was just asking--just asking,” he threw back over his -shoulder. - -“Old duck's scared of fire and ashamed to own it,” mused the clerk, -watching him out of the lobby. - -The old party went back to his room, and there one of the first -things he saw was a copy of the Bible lying on the bureau. There is an -organization which professes for its object the placing of a Bible in -every hotel room in the land. The old party had his own Bible with him. -As if reminded of it by the one on the bureau, he took it out of -his suitcase and sat down and began to turn the leaves like a person -familiar with the book--and like a person in need of comfort, as indeed -he was. - -There was a text in Matthew that he sought--where was it? Somewhere in -the first part of Matthew's gospel--ah, here it is: The twelfth chapter -and the thirty-first verse: - -“All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men....” - -There is a terrible reservation in the same verse. He kept his eyes from -it, and read the first part over and over, forming the syllables with -his lips, but not speaking aloud. - -“All manner of sin--all manner of sin-------” - -And then, as if no longer able to avoid it, he yielded his consciousness -to the latter clause of the verse: - -“But the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto -men.” - -What was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost? Could what he had done be -construed as that? Probably if one lied to God in his prayers, that was -blasphemy against the Holy Ghost--one form of it. And had he been lying -to God these last two weeks when he had said over and over again in his -prayers that it was all a mistake? It hadn't been all a mistake, but the -worst part of it had been a mistake. - -He went out for his dinner that evening, but he was in again before ten -o'clock. He could not have slept well. At two o'clock in the morning he -appeared in front of the desk. - -He had heard fire engines again. - -“See here,” said the night clerk, appraising him, as the day clerk had -done, as a rube who had been seldom to the city and was nervous about -fire, “you don't need to be worried. If anything should happen near here -we'd get all the guests out in a jiffy.” - -The old party returned to his room. He was up early the next morning and -down to breakfast before the dining room was open. - -He did not look as if he had had much rest. The morning hours he devoted -to reading his Bible in his room. Perhaps he found comfort in it. At -noon he seemed a bit more cheerful. He asked the clerk the way to the -Eden Musee, and was surprised to learn that that place of amusement had -been closed for a year or two. The clerk recommended a moving-picture -house round the corner. But it had begun to rain and snow and sleet -all together; the sky was dark and the wind was rising; the old party -elected not to go out after all. - -He went back to his room once more, and his black fear and melancholy -descended upon him again, and the old debate began to weave through his -brain anew. For two weeks he had been fleeing from the debate and from -himself. He had come to New York to get away from it, but it was no -good. Just when he had made up his mind that God had forgiven him, and -was experiencing a momentary respite, some new doubt would assail him -and the agony would begin again. - -The old debate--he had burned the store, with the living quarters over -it, to get the insurance money, after having removed a part of the -insured goods, but he did not regard that as an overwhelming sin. It -wasn't right, of course, in one way. And yet in another way it was -merely sharp business practice, so he told himself. For a year before -that, when one of his buildings had burned through accident, he had been -forced to accept from the same insurance company less than was actually -due him as a matter of equity. Therefore, to make money out of that -company by a shrewd trick was in a way merely to get back his own again. -It wasn't the sort of thing that a deacon in the church would care to -have found out on him, of course. It was wrong in a sense. But it was -the wrong that it had led to that worried him. - -It was the old woman's death that worried him. He hadn't meant to burn -her to death, God knows! He hadn't known she was in the building. - -He had sent her on a week's visit to another town, to see a surprised -cousin of his own, and it had been distinctly understood that she was -not to return until Saturday. But some time on Friday evening she must -have crept back home and gone to bed in her room. He had not known she -was there. - -“I didn't know! I didn't know!” - -There were times when he gibbered the words to himself by the hour. - -It was at midnight that he had set fire to the place. The old woman was -deaf. Even when the flames began to crackle she could not have heard -them. She had had no more chance than a rat in a trap. The old fool! It -was her own fault! Why had she not obeyed him? Why had she come creeping -back, like a deaf old half-blind tabby cat, to die in the flames? It -was her own fault! When he thought of the way she had returned to kill -herself there were moments when he cursed and hated her. - -But had she killed herself? Back and forth swung the inner argument. At -times he saw clearly enough that this incident joined on without a break -to the texture of his whole miserable life; when he recognized that, -though it might be an accident in a strictly literal sense that the old -woman was dead, yet it was the sort of accident for which his previous -existence had been a preparation. Even while he fiercely denied -his guilt, or talked of it in a seizure of whining prayer that was -essentially a lying denial, he knew that guilt there was. - -Would he be forgiven? There were comforting passages in the Bible. He -switched on the rather insufficient electric light, which was all the -old hotel provided, for the day was too dark to read without that help, -and turned the pages of the New Testament through and through again. - -At three o'clock in the afternoon he was sitting on the edge of his bed, -with the book open in front of him and his head bowed, almost dozing. -His pipe, with which he had filled the room with the fumes of tobacco, -had fallen to the floor. Perhaps it was weariness, but for a brief -period his sharper sense of fear had been somewhat stilled again. Maybe -it was going to be like this--a gradual easing off of the strain in -answer to his prayers. He had asked God for an answer as to whether -he should be forgiven, and God was answering in this way, so he told -himself. God was going to let him get some sleep, and maybe when he woke -everything would be all right again--bearable at least. - -So he mused, half asleep. - -And then all at once he sprang wide awake again, and his terror wakened -with him. For suddenly in front of his half-shut eyes, coming from -nowhere in particular, there passed a puff of smoke! - -What could it mean? He had asked God for an answer. He had been lulled -for a moment almost into something like peace, and--now--this puff of -smoke! Was it a sign? Was it God's answer? - -He sat up on the edge of the bed, rigid, in a cold, still agony of -superstitious fright. He dared not move or turn his head. He was afraid -that he would see--something--if he looked behind him. He was afraid -that he would in another moment hear something--a voice! - -He closed his eyes. He prayed. He prayed aloud. His eyes once closed, -he scarcely dared open them again. After seme minutes he began to tell -himself that perhaps he had been mistaken; perhaps he had not seen smoke -at all. Perhaps even if he had seen smoke it was due to some explicable -cause, and not meant for him. - -He greatly dared. He opened his eyes. And drifting lazily above the -white pillow at the head of the bed was another puff of smoke. - -He rocked back and forth upon the bed, with his arms up as if to shield -his head from a physical blow, and then he passed in a moment from the -quakings of fear to a kind of still certainty of doom. God was angry at -him. God was telling him so. God would send the devil for him. There -was no further doubt. He would go to hell--to hell! To burn forever! -Forever--even as the old woman had burned for a quarter of an hour. He -began to search through the pages of the Bible again, not for words of -comfort this time, but in a morbid ecstasy of despair, for phrases about -hell, for verses that mentioned fire and flames. - -He did not need the concordance. He knew his Bible well, and his fear -helped him. Consciousness and subconsciousness joined to guide his -fingers and eyes in the quest. - -“Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming,” he -read in Isaiah, and he took it to himself. - -“Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and -ye shall be melted in the midst thereof,” he read in Ezekiel. - -He had a literal imagination, and he had a literal belief, and at every -repetition of the word “fire” the flesh cringed and crawled on his -bones. God! To burn! How it must hurt! - -“And the God that answereth by fire, let Him be God,” met his eyes in -the first book of Kings. - -And it all meant him. Now and then over his shoulder would float another -little puff of smoke; and once, lifting his head suddenly from poring -over the book, he thought he saw something that moved and glinted like a -traveling spark, and was gone. - -He began to feel himself in hell already. This was the foretaste, that -was all. Would he begin to burn even before he died? Did this smoke -presage something of that kind? Would flames physically seize upon him, -and would he burn, even as the old woman had burned? - -Suddenly in his hysteria there came a revulsion--a revolt. Having -reached the nethermost depths of despair, he began to move upward a -little. His soul stirred and took a step and tried to climb. He began to -pray once more. After all, the Good Book did promise mercy! He began to -dare to pray again. And he prayed in a whisper that now and then broke -into a whine--a strange prayer, characteristic of the man. - -“Oh, God,” he cried, “you promise forgiveness in that book there, and -I'm gonna hold you to it! I'm gonna hold you to it! It's down there in -black and white, your own words, God, and I'm gonna hold you to it! It's -a contract, God, and you ain't the kind of a man, God, to go back on a -contract that's down in black and white!” - -Thus he prayed, with a naïve, unconscious blasphemy. And after long -minutes of this sort of thing his soul dared take another step. A -faint, far glimmering of hope came to him where he groveled. For he was -groveling on the bed now, with the covers pulled up to his head and his -hand upon the open Bible. He found the courage to peer from beneath the -covers at intervals as he prayed and muttered, and minutes passed with -no more smoke. Had the smoke ceased? The sound of his own murmuring -voice began to reassure him. The smoke had certainly ceased! It had been -twenty minutes since he had seen it--half an hour! - -What could it mean? That God was hearkening to his prayer? - -An hour went by, and still there was no more sign of smoke. He prayed -feverishly, he gabbled, as if by the rapidity of his utterance and the -repeated strokes of his words he were beating back and holding at bay -the smoke that was God's warning and the symbol of his displeasure. And -the smoke had ceased to come! He was to be forgiven! He was winning! His -prayers were winning for him! At least God was listening! - -Yes, that must be it. God was listening now. The smoke had come as a -warning; and he had, upon receiving this warning, repented. God had not -meant, after all, that he was doomed irrevocably. God had meant that, -to be forgiven, his repentance must be genuine, must be thorough--and -it was thorough now. Now it was genuine! And the smoke had ceased! The -smoke had been a sign, and he had heeded the sign, and now if he kept up -his prayers and lived a good life in the future he was to be forgiven. -He would not have to burn in hell after all. - -The minutes passed, and he prayed steadily, and every minute that went -by and brought no further sign of the smoke built up in him a little -more hope, another grain of confidence. - -An hour and a quarter, and he almost dared be sure that he was -forgiven--but he was not quite sure. If he could only be quite sure! He -wallowed on the bed, and his hand turned idly the pages of the Bible, -lying outside on the coverlet. - -More than an hour had gone by. Could he accept it as an indication that -God had indeed heard him? He shifted himself upon the bed, and stared -up at the ceiling through a chink in the covers as if through and beyond -the ceiling he were interrogating heaven. - -And lying so, there came a damp touch upon his hand, soft and chill and -silent, as if it were delicately and ironically brushed by the kiss of -Death. A sudden agony numbed his hand and arm. With the compulsion of -hysteria, not to be resisted, his head lifted and he sat up and looked. -Over the Bible and his hand that lay upon the open page there floated -again a puff of smoke, and faintly staining his Angers and the paper -itself was something moist and red. It stained his Angers and it marked -with red for his straining sight this passage of Isaiah: - -“The earth also shall disclose her blood.” - -It was then he cried out, “Oh, God! God! Again! You meant it, then, God! -You meant it.” - -It was nearly midnight when Tommy and his friend Dobson returned to the -hotel. “Your paper's been trying to get you for an hour, Mr. Hawkins,” - said the night clerk when they came in. “Story right in the next room to -yours. Old party in there hanged himself.” - -“So?” said Tommy. “Ungrateful old guy, he is! I put in the afternoon -trying to cheer him up a little.” - -“Did you know him?” asked the clerk. - -“Nope,” said Tommy, moving toward the elevator. - -But a few moments later, confronted with the grotesque spectacle in the -room upstairs, he said, “Yes--I--I know him. Jack! Jack! Get me out of -here, Jack! It's Uncle Ezra, Jack! He's--he's come for me!” - -As has been remarked before, sometimes even a bubble may be a mordant -weapon. - - - - -VIII.--The Chances of the Street - - -|Merriwether Buck had lost all his money. Also his sisters', and his -cousins', and his aunts'. - -“At two o'clock sharp I will shoot myself,” said Merriwether Buck. - -He caressed a ten-shot automatic pistol in the right-hand pocket of his -coat as he loitered up Broadway. He was light-headed. He had had nothing -to eat for forty-eight hours. - -“How I hate you!” said Merriwether Buck, comprehensively to the city in -general. “If nine pistol shots would blot you out, I'd do it!” - -Very melodramatic language, this, for a well-brought-up young man; and -thus indicating that he was light-headed, indeed. And as for the city, -it continued to roar and rattle and honk and rumble and squeak and bawl -and shuffle and thunder and grate in the same old way--supreme in its -confidence that nine pistol shots could not, by any possibility, blot -it out. That is one of the most disconcerting things about a city; you -become enraged at it, and the city doesn't even know it. Unless you -happen to be Nero it is very difficult to blot them out satisfactorily. - -It was one o'clock. Merriwether Buck crossed the street at Herald Square -and went over and stood in front of the big newspaper office. A portly -young fellow with leaden eyes came out of the building and stood -meditatively on the curb with his hands in the pockets of clothing that -clamored shrilly of expense. - -“Excuse me,” said Merriwether Buck, approaching him, “but are you, by -any chance, a reporter?” - -“Uh,” grunted the young man, frigidly affirmative. - -“I can put you in the way of a good story,” said Merriwether Buck, -obeying an impulse: We may live anonymously but most of us like to feel -that it will make a little stir when we die. - -“Huh,” remarked the reporter. - -“At two o'clock,” persisted Merriwether Buck, “I am going to shoot -myself.” - -The reporter looked bored; his specialty was politics. - -“Are you anybody in particular?” he asked, discouragingly. - -“No,” confessed Merriwether Buck. It didn't seem to be worth while to -mention that he was one of the Bucks of Bucktown, Merriwether County, -Georgia. - -“I thought,” said the reporter, with an air of rebuke, “that you said it -was a _good_ story.” - -“I am, at least, a human being,” said Merriwether Buck, on the -defensive. - -“They're cheap, hereabout,” returned the other, in the manner of a -person who has estimated a good many assorted lots. - -“You are callous,” said Merriwether Buck. “Callous to the soul! What are -you, but--but--Why, you are New York incarnate! That is what you are! -And I think I will shoot you first!” - -“I don't want to be a spoil sport,” said the reporter, “but I'm afraid I -can't allow it. I have a rather important assignment.” - -Merriwether played with the little automatic pistol in his pocket. It -was not any regard for the consequences that deterred him from shooting -the portly young man. But in his somewhat dizzy brain a fancy was taking -shape; a whim worked in him. He drew his hand empty from the pocket, and -that reporter came up out of the grave. - -“I am hungry,” said Merriwether Buck, in obedience to the whim. - -“Now that you remind me of it,” said the other, his lack-luster -eyes lighting up a little, “so am I!” And he crossed the street and -disappeared through the swinging doors of a café. - -Callous, leaden-eyed young man! epitome of this hard town! So cried the -spirit of Merriwether Buck; and then he spoke aloud, formulating his -idea: - -“New York, you are on trial. You are in the balances. I give you an -hour. If I'm asked to lunch by two o'clock, all right. If not, I will -kill myself, first carefully shooting down the most prosperous citizens, -and as many of 'em as I can reach. New York, it's up to you!” - -The idea of playing it out that way tickled him to the heart; he had -always loved games of chance. One man or woman out of all the prosperous -thousands in the streets might save another prosperous half-dozen; -might save as many as he could otherwise reach with nine shots from his -pistol, for he would reserve the tenth for himself. Otherwise, there -should be a sacrifice; he would offer up a blood atonement for the pagan -city's selfishness. Giddy and feverish, and drunk with the sense of his -power to slay, he beheld himself as a kind of grotesque priest--and he -threw back his head and laughed at the maniac conceit. - -A woman who was passing turned at the sound, and their eyes met. She -smiled. Merriwether Buck was good to look at. So was she. She was of -that type of which men are certain at once, without quite knowing why; -while women are often puzzled, saying to themselves: “After all, it may -be only her rings.” - -“Pardon me,” said Merriwether Buck, overtaking her, “but you and I are -to lunch together, aren't we?” - -“I like your nerve!” said she. And she laughed. It was evident that she -did like it. “Where?” she asked briefly, falling into step beside him. - -“Wherever you like,” said Merriwether. “I leave that to you, as I'm -depending on you to pay the check.” - -She began a doubtful laugh, and then, seeing that it wasn't a joke, -repeated: - -“I like your nerve!” And it was now evident that she didn't like it. - -“See here,” he said, speaking rapidly, “my clothes look all right yet, -but I'm broke. I'm hungry. I haven't had anything to eat since day -before yesterday. I'm not kidding you; it's true. You looked like a good -fellow to me, and I took a chance. Hunger” (as he spoke it he seemed to -remember having heard the remark before), “hunger makes one a judge of -faces; I gambled on yours.” - -She wasn't complimented; she regarded him with a manner in which scorn -and incredulity were blended; Merriwether Buck perceived that, for some -reason or other, she was insulted. - -“Don't,” she said, “don't pull any of that sentimental stuff on me. I -thought you was a gentleman!” - -And she turned away from him. He took a step in pursuit and started to -renew his plea; for he was determined to play his game square and give -the directing deities of the city a fair chance to soften whatsoever -random heart they would. - -“Beat it!” she shrilled, “beat it, you cheap grafter, or I'll call a -cop!” - -And Merriwether beat it; nor' by nor'west he beat it, as the street -beats it; as the tides beat. The clock on the Times building marked 1.20 -as he paused by the subway station there. In forty minutes--just the -time it takes to hook your wife's dress or put a girdle round the -world--Merri-wether Buck would be beating it toward eternity, shooing -before him a flock of astonished ghosts of his own making. Twenty -minutes had gone by and whatever gods they be that rule New York had -made no sign; perhaps said gods were out at lunch or gone to Coney -Island. Twice twenty minutes more, and---- - -But no. It is all over now. It must be. There emerges from the subway -station one who is unmistakably a preacher. The creases of his face -attest a smiling habit; no doubt long years of doing good have given it -that stamp; the puffs of white hair above the temples add distinction to -benignity. - -“I beg your pardon,” said Merriwether Buck, “but are you a minister?” - -“Eh?” said the reverend gentleman, adjusting a pair of gold-rimmed -eyeglasses. “Yes,” he said pleasantly, “I am,” and he removed the -glasses and put them back on once again, as he spoke. Somehow, the way -he did it was a benediction. - -“I am hungry,” said Merriwether. - -“Dear me!” said the reverend gentleman. “I shouldn't have thought it.” - -“Will you ask me to lunch?” - -“Eh?” It was an embarrassing question; but the gentleman was all -good nature. His air indicated that he did not intend to let his -own embarrassment embarrass Merriwether too much. “My dear man, you -know--really----” He placed a shapely hand upon Merriwether's shoulder, -rallyingly, almost affectionately, and completed the sentence with a -laugh. - -“It's charity I'm asking for,” said Merriwether. - -“Oh!” For some reason he seemed vastly relieved. “Have you been--but, -dear me, are you sure you aren't joking?” - -“Yes; sure.” - -“And have you--ahem!--have you sought aid from any institution; any -charitable organization, you know?” - -“But no,” said Merriwether, who had instinctively eliminated charitable -organizations, free lunches and police stations from the terms of his -wager, “I thought----” - -“My, my, my,” hummed the reverend gentleman, interrupting him. He -produced his card case and took a card therefrom. “I am going,” he said, -writing on the card with a pencil, “to give you my card to the secretary -of the Combined Charities. Excellent system they have there. You'll be -investigated, you know,” he said brightly, as if that were an especial -boon he was conferring, “your record looked into--character and -antecedents and all that sort of thing!” - -“And fed?” asked Merriwether. - -“Oh, indeed!” And he handed over the card as if he were giving -Merriwether the keys to the city--but not too gross and material a city -either; Merriwether felt almost as if he were being baptized. - -“But,” said Merriwether Buck, “I wanted _you_ to feed me!” - -“Oh, my dear man!” smiled the minister, “I _am_ doing it, you know. I'm -a subscriber--do _all_ my charitable work this way. Saves time. Well, -good-by.” And he nodded cheerily. - -“But,” said Merriwether Buck, “aren't you interested in me personally? -Don't you want to hear my story?” - -“Story? Story?” hummed the other. “Indeed, but they'll learn your story -there! They have the most excellent system there; card system; cases -and case numbers, you know--Stories, bless you! Hundreds and hundreds of -stories! Big file cases! You'll be number so-and-so. Really,” he said, -with a beaming enthusiasm, “they have a _wonderful_ system. Well, -good-by!” There was a touch of finality in his pleasant tone, but -Merriwether caught him by the sleeve. - -“See here,” he said, “haven't you even got any _curiosity_ about -me? Don't you even want to know why I'm hungry? Can't you find time -_yourself_ to listen to the tale?” - -“Time,” said the reverend gentleman, “_time_ is just what I feel the -lack of--feel it sadly, at moments like these, sadly.” He sighed, but it -was an optimistic, good-humored sort of sigh. “But I tell you what you -do.” He drew forth another card and scribbled on it. “If you want to -tell me your story so very badly--(dear me, what remarkable situations -the clerical life lets one in for!)--so _very_ badly, take this card -to my study about 3.30. You'll find my stenographer there and you can -dictate it to her; she'll type it out. Yes, indeed, she'll type it out! -Well, _good_-by!” - -And with a bright backward nod he was off. - -It was 1.25. There were thirty-five minutes more of life. Merriwether -Buck gave the reverend gentleman's cards to a seedy individual who -begged from him, with the injunction to go and get himself charitably -Bertilloned like a gentleman and stop whining, and turned eastward on -Forty-second Street. If you have but thirty-five minutes of life, why -not spend them on Fifth Avenue, where sightly things abound?--indeed -if you happen to be a homicidal maniac of some hours standing, like -Merriwether Buck, Fifth Avenue should be good hunting ground; the very -place to mark the fat and greasy citizens of your sacrifice. - -Time, the only patrician, will not step lively for the pert subway -guards of human need, nor yet slacken pace for any bawling traffic cop -of man's desire; he comes of an old family too proud to rush, too proud -to wait; a fine old fellow with a sense of his own value. Time walked -with Merriwether Buck as he loitered up Fifth Avenue, for the old -gentleman loves to assist personally at these little comedies, -sometimes; with Death a hang-dog third. Not even a fly-cop took note of -the trio, although several, if they robbed a jewelry store or anything -like that, would tell the reporters later that they had noticed -something suspicious at the time. And the patron deities of New York -City might have been over in Hoboken playing pinochle for all the heed -_they_ took. - -Which brings us to Sixty-fifth Street and 1.58 o'clock and the presence -of the great man, all at once. - -When Merriwether Buck first saw him, Meriwether Buck gasped. He couldn't -believe it. And, indeed, it was a thing that might not happen again this -year or next year or in five years--J. Dupont Evans, minus bulwark or -attendant, even minus his habitual grouch, walking leisurely toward him -like any approachable and common mortal. Merriwether Buck might well be -incredulous. But it was he; the presentment of that remarkable face has -been printed a hundred thousand times; it is as well known to the world -at large as Uncle Pete Watson's cork leg is on the streets of Prairie -Centre, Ill.; it is unmistakable. - -To have J. Dupont Evans at the point of a pistol might almost intoxicate -some sane and well-fed men, and Merriwether Buck was neither. J. Dupont -Evans--the wealth of Croesus would be just one cracked white chip in the -game he plays. But at this moment his power and his importance had been -extraordinarily multiplied by circumstances. The chances of the street -had tumbled down a half dozen banks--(well did Merriwether Buck know -that, since it had ruined him)--and financial panic was in the air; -an epochal and staggering disaster threatened; and at this juncture a -president in no wise humble had publicly confessed his own impotence and -put it up to J. Dupont Evans to avert, to save, to reassure. - -Merriwether Buck had not dreamed of this; in the crook of his trigger -finger lay, not merely the life of a man, but the immediate destiny of a -nation. - -He grasped the pistol in his pocket, and aimed it through the cloth. - -“Do you know what time it is?” he asked J. Dupont Evans, politely -enough. - -It was only a second before the man answered. But in that second -Merriwether Buck, crazily exalted, and avid of the sensation he was -about to create, had a swift vision. He saw bank after bank come -crashing down; great railroad systems ruined; factories closed and -markets stagnant; mines shut and crops ungathered in the fields; ships -idle at the wharves; pandemonium and ruin everywhere. - -“Huh?” said J. Dupont Evans, gruffly, removing an unlighted cigar from -his mouth. He looked at Merriwether Buck suspiciously, and made as if to -move on. But he thought better of it the next instant, evidently, for -he pulled out a plain silver watch and said grudgingly: “Two minutes -of two.” And then, in a tone less unpleasant, he asked: “Have you got a -match, young man?” - -Merriwether fumbled in his vest pocket. In a minute and a half he would -perfunctorily ask this man for lunch, and then he would kill him. But he -would give him a match first--for Merriwether Buck was a well-brought-up -young man. As he fumbled he picked out the exact spot on the other's -waistcoat where he would plant the bullet. But the idea of a man on the -edge of the grave lighting a cigar tickled him so that he laughed aloud -as he held out the matches. - -“What can I do with these?” snorted J. Dupont Evans. “They are the sort -that light only on their own box.” From his glance one might have gained -the impression that he thought Merriwether Buck a fool. - -“Great principle that,” said Merriwether Buck, cackling with hysteria. -It was so funny that a dead man should want to smoke a cigar! He would -let him play he was alive for fifty seconds longer. - -“Principle?” said Evans. “Principle? What Principle?” - -“Well,” said Merriwether, with the random argumentativeness of insanity, -“it _is_ a great principle. Apply that principle to some high explosive, -for instance, and you have no more battleship flare-backs--no premature -mine blasts----” - -“Say,” the other suddenly interrupted, “are you an inventor?” - -“Yes,” lied Merriwether Buck, glibly, although he had never given five -seconds' thought to the subject of high explosives in his life. “That's -how I know. I've invented an explosive more powerful than dynamite. But -it won't explode by contact with fire, like powder. Won't explode with a -jar, like dynamite. Won't freeze, like dynamite. Only one way to explode -it--you've got to bring it into contact with a certain other chemical -the same as scratching one of these matches on its own box.” - -“The deuce, young man!” said the other. “There's a fortune in it! Is it -on the market at all?” - -“No,” said Merriwether Buck, raising his pistol hand slightly and -thrusting it a bit forward, under the mask of his coat pocket, “no money -to start it going.” - -“Hum,” mused the other. “I tell you what you do, young man. You come -along to lunch with me and we'll talk the thing over--money and all.” - -And the directing deities of New York struck twice on all the city -clocks, and striking, winked. - - - - -IX.--The Professor's Awakening - -|How I ever come to hit such a swell-looking house for a handout I never -knew. Not that there was anything so gaudy about it, neither, as far as -putting up a bluff at being a millionaire's mansion went, which I found -out afterwards it was, or pretty near that at any rate. But it was just -about the biggest house in that Illinois town, and it's mostly that kind -o' place with them naked iron heathens in the front yard and a brick -stable behind that it ain't no use to go up against unless you're -looking for a lemon. If you need real food and need it sudden and ain't -prospecting around town for no other kind of an opening you better make -for the nearest public works like a canal being dug, or a railroad gang. -Hit the little tin dinner buckets, men that does the unskilled labor -on jobs like that, except Swedes and Dagos, knowing what it is to be -up against it themselves now and then and not inclined to ask no fool -questions. - -Well, I went around to the back door, and Biddy Malone she lets me in. I -found out that was her name afterwards, but as soon as I seen her face -I guessed if her name wasn't Bridget it was Nora. It's all in the -first look they give you after they open the door. If that look's right -they're coming across and you'll get some kind of a surprise for your -digestive ornaments and you don't need to make no fool breaks about -sawing wood neither. I makes my little talk and Biddy she says come in; -and into the kitchen I went. - -“It's Minnesota you're working towards,” says Biddy, pouring me out a -cup of coffee. - -She was thinking of the wheat harvest where there's thousands makes for -every fall. But not for me, I never did like to work for none of them -Scandiluvian Swedes and Norwegians that gets into the field before -daylight and stays at it so long the hired men got to milk the cows by -moonlight. They got no sense of proportion, them Gusses and Oles ain't. - -“I been across the river into I'way,” I says, “working at my trade, and -I'm going back to Chicago to work at it some more.” - -“And what may your trade be?” says Biddy, sizing me up careful. I seen I -made a hit somehow or she wouldn't of asked me in the first place was -I going to the wheat harvest, but would of just supposed I was a hobo, -which I ain't. I got a lot of trades when I want to use one, and as a -regular thing I rather work at one of them for a while, too, but can't -stand it very long on account of not feeling right to stay in one place -too long, especially in the summer. When I seen I made a hit with Biddy -I thinks I'll hand her a good one she never heard tell of before. - -“I'm an agnostic by trade,” I says. I spotted that one in a Carnegie -library one time and that was the first chance I ever had to spring it. - -“I see,” says Biddy. And she opened her eyes and mouth to once. I seen -she didn't see, but I didn't help her none. She would of rather killed -herself than let on she didn't see. Most of the Irish is like that -whether they is kitchen mechanics or what. After a while she says, -pouring me out some more coffee and handing me a little glass jar full -of watermelon rinds boiled in with molasses and things, she says: - -“And ain't that the dangerous thing to work at, though!” - -“It is,” I says, and says nothing further. - -She sets down and folds her arms like she was thinking about it, -watching my hands all the time as if she was looking for scars where -something slipped when I done that agnostic work. Finally she says with -a sigh: - -“Sure, and it's dangerous! Me brother Patrick was kilt at it in the old -country. He was the most vinturesome lad of thim all!” - -She was putting up a stiff front, and for a minute I don't know whether -she's stringing me or I'm stringing her. The Irish is like that. So -being through eating I says: - -“Did it fly up and hit him?” - -She looks at me scornful and tosses her chin up and says: - -“No. He fell off of it. And I'm thinking you don't know what one of them -is, after!” - -“What is it, then?” says I. - -“Then you _don't_ know,” says she; and the next thing I knew I'd been -eased out the back door and she was grinning at me through the crack of -it with superiousness all over her face. - -So I was walking slow around towards the front thinking to myself how -the Irish was a great people; and shall I go to Chicago and maybe get a -job sailing on the lakes till navigation closes, or shall I go back to -Omaha and work in the railroad yards again, which I don't like much, or -shall I go on down to Saint Looey just to see what's doing. And then I -thinks: “Billy, you was a fool to let that circus walk off and leave -you asleep with nothing over you but a barb wire fence this morning, and -what are you going to do now? First thing you know you'll be a regular -hobo, which some folks can't distinguish you ain't now.” And then I -thinks I'll go down to the river and take a swim and lazy around in the -grass a while and think things over and maybe something will happen. -Anyways, you can always join the army. And just when I was thinking that -I got by one of them naked stone heathens that was squirting water out -of a sea shell and a guy comes down the front steps on the jump and nabs -me by the coat collar. I seen he was a doctor or else a piano tuner by -the satchel he dropped when he grabbed me. - -“Did you come out of this house?” he says. - -“I did,” I says, wondering what next. - -“Back in you goes,” he says, marching me towards the front steps. -“They've got smallpox in there.” - -I liked to a-jumped loose when he said that, but he twisted my coat -collar and dug his thumbs into my neck and I seen they wasn't no use -pulling back. If a guy that's knocking around mixes up with one of the -solid citizens the magistrate's going to give him the worst of it on -principle. I ain't no hobo and never was, and never traveled much with -none of them professional bums, but there has been times I had hard work -making some people believe it. I seen I couldn't jerk away and I seen I -couldn't fight and so I went along. He rung the door bell, and I says: - -“Smallpox ain't no inducement to me, doc.” - -“No?” says he. And the door opened, and in we went. The girl that opened -it, she drew back when she seen me. - -“Tell Professor Booth that Dr. Wilkins wants to see him,” says the doc, -not letting loose of me. - -And we stood there saying nothing till the per-fessor come in, which he -did slow and absent-minded. When he seen me he stopped and took off a -pair of thick glasses that was split in two like a mended show case, so -he could see me better, and he says: - -“What is that you have there, Dr. Wilkins?” - -“A guest for you,” says Dr. Wilkins, grinning all over himself. “I -caught him leaving the house, and you being under quarantine and me -being secretary to the board of health, I'll have to ask you to keep him -here until we can get Miss Margery on her feet again,” he says. Or they -was words to that effect, as the lawyers asks you. - -“Dear me,” says Perfessor Booth, kind o' helplesslike. - -And he put his glasses on and took them off again, and come up close and -looked at me like I was one of them amphimissourian specimens in a free -museum. “Dear me,” he says, looking worrieder and worrieder all the -time. And then he went to the foot of the stairs and pipes out in a -voice that was so flat-chested and bleached-out it would a-looked just -like him if you could a-saw it--“Estelle,” he says, “O Estelle!” - -I thinks the perfessor is one of them folks that can maybe do a lot -of high-class thinking, but has got to have some one tell 'em what the -answer is. But I doped him out wrong as I seen later on. - -Estelle, she come down stairs looking like she was the perfessor's big -brother. I found out later she was his old maid sister. She wasn't no -spring chicken, Estelle wasn't, and they was a continuous grin on her -face. I figgered it must of froze there years and years ago. They was -a kid about ten or eleven years old come along down with her, that had -hair down to its shoulders and didn't look like it knowed whether it was -a girl or a boy. Miss Estelle, she looks me over in a way that makes me -shiver, while the doctor and the per-fessor jaws about whose fault it is -the smallpox sign ain't been hung out. And when she was done listening -she says to the perfessor: “You had better go back to your laboratory.” - And the perfessor he went along out, and the doctor with him. - -“What are you going to do with him, Aunt Estelle?” the kid asks her. - -“What would _you_ suggest, William Dear?” asks his aunt. I ain't feeling -very comfortable, and I was getting all ready just to natcherally bolt -out the front door now the doctor was gone. Then I thinks it mightn't be -no bad place to stay in fur a couple o' days, even risking the smallpox. -Fur I had ricolected I couldn't ketch it nohow, having been vaccinated -a few months before in Terry Hutt by compulsory medical advice, me being -temporary engaged in repair work on the city pavements through a mistake -in the police court. - -William Dear looks at me when his aunt put it up to him just as solemn -as if it was the day of judgment and his job was separating the fatted -calves from the goats and the prodigals, and he says: - -“Don't you think, Aunt Estelle, we better cut his hair and bathe him and -get him some clothes the first thing?” - -“William is my friend,” thinks I, and I seen right off he was one of -them serious kids that you can't tell what is going on inside their -heads. - -So she calls James, which was the butler, and James he buttled me into a -bathroom the like of which I never see before; and he buttled me into a -suit of somebody's clothes and into a room at the top of the house next -to his'n, and then he come back and buttled a razor and a comb and brush -at me; him being the most mournful-looking fat man I ever seen, and he -informs me that me not being respectable I will eat alone in the kitchen -after the servants is done. People has made them errors about me before. -And I looks around the room and I thinks to myself that this is all -right so far as it has went. But is these four walls, disregarding -the rest of the house, to be my home, and them only? Not, thinks I, if -little Billy knows it. It was not me that invited myself to become the -guest of this family; and if I got to be a guest I be damned if I don't -be one according to Hoyle's rules of etiquette or I'll quit the job. -Will I stay in this one room? Not me. Suppose the perfessor takes it -next? And then William Dear? And suppose when William Dear gets through -with it he gives it to Aunt Estelle? Am I to waste the golden hours -when, maybe, my country needs me, just for accommodation? But I thinks -it's all right for a day or two and then I'll leave my regrets and go on -down to Saint Looey or somewheres. And then James he buttles back into -the room like a funeral procession and says the perfessor says he wants -to see me in the laboratory. - -That was a big room and the darndest looking room I ever see, and it -smelt strong enough to chase a Hungarian pig sticker out of a Chicago -slaughter house. It smelt like a drug store had died of old age and got -buried in a glue factory. I never seen so much scientific effusions and -the things to hold 'em in mixed up in one place before. They must of -been several brands of science being mixed up there all to once. They -was dinky little stoves, they was glass jars of all shapes and sizes -labeled with Dago names standing around on shelves like in one of them -Dutch delicatessen stores; they was straight glass tubes and they was -glass tubes that had the spinal contortions; they was bones and they -was whole skeletons, and they was things that looked like whisky stills; -they was a bookcase full of bugs and butterflies against one wall; they -was chunks of things that might have been human for all I know floating -around in vats like pickled pork in a barrel; they was beer schooners -with twisted spouts to them; they was microscopes and telescopes and -twenty-seven shapes and sizes of knives; they was crates of stuff that -was unpacked and crates that wasn't; and they was tables with things -just piled and spilled over 'em, every which way, and the looks of -everything was dirty on account of the perfessor not allowing any one in -there but himself and Miss Estelle and William. And whether you knowed -anything about them different brands of science or not you could see the -perfessor was one of them nuts that's always starting to do things and -then leaving them go and starting something else. It looked as if the -operating room of an emergency hospital and a blacksmith shop and a -people's free museum and a side show full of freaks, snakes and oneeyed -calves had all gone out and got drunk together, all four of them, and -wandered into a cremation plant to sleep off that souse; and when they -woke up they couldn't tell which was which nor nothing else except -they had a bad taste in their mouth and was sentenced to stay there -unseparated and unhappy and unsociable in each other's company for -evermore. And every time you turned around you stepped on something new, -and if you saw a rat or a lizard or a spider you better let him alone -for how was you going to tell he was dead or alive till he crawled up -you? - -The perfessor, he was setting over by a window, and he pushed out -another chair for me and he says sit down. - -“You are a gentleman of leisure?” he says, with a grin; or words to that -effect. - -“I work at that sometimes,” I told him, “although it ain't rightly my -trade.” - -“Biddy Malone says you're an agnostic,” he says, looking at me close. -It won't do, I thinks, to spring none of them agnostic gags on him, so I -says nothing. - -“I'm one myself,” he says. - -“Regular,” I asks him, “or just occasional?” He kind o' grins again, and -I thinks: “Billy, you're making a hit somehow.” - -Then he says, like he was apologizing to someone about something: “Being -interested in sociology and the lower classes in general, I sent for you -to get some first-hand observations on your train of mind,” he says. Or -it was words like them. “I'm a sociologist,” he says. - -I seen I made a hit before and I thinks I'll push my luck, so I swells -up and says: - -“I'm a kind of sociologist myself.” - -“Hum,” he says, thoughtful-like. “Indeed? And your itinerant mode of -subsistence is persecuted in pursuit of your desire to study knowledge -of the human specimen and to observe wisdom as to the ways they live -in the underworld,” he says. Or it was words to that effect. I wish I'd -a-had him wrote them words down. Then I'd a-had 'em just right now. I -seen a bunch of good words help a man out of a hole before this. Words -has always been more or less my admiration; you can never tell what one -of them long gazaboos is going to do till you spring it on somebody. So -I says: - -“That's me, perfessor. I likes to float around and see what's doing.” - -Then he tells me that sociology was how the criminal classes and the -lower classes in general was regarded by the scientific classes, only -it's a difficult brand of science to get next to, he says, on account -of the lower classes like me being mostly broke out with environment he -says, unbeknownst even to theirselves. He's not what you would call a -practicing sociologist all the time, being afraid, I suppose, he would -catch it if he got too close to it; he's just one of the boys that -writes about it, so as both the lower classes and the scientific classes -won't make no bad breaks, he says. - -But what he wants of me just now ain't got nothing to do with that, he -says. He's been making experiments with all kinds of canned victuals, -that is put up with acid that eats holes in your stomach, he says, and -so long as I'm going to be a guest he's going to mix some of them acids -in my chuck and weigh me after each meal. He says I'll start slow and -easy and there won't be nothing dangerous about it. He's been practicing -on William Dear and Miss Estelle, which I suppose it was the acids got -into her smile, but he's going to give them a rest, them being naturally -delicate. I ain't got no kick, I thinks, and I'm going to leave this -place in a day or two anyhow. Besides, I always was intrusted in -scientific things and games of chance of all kinds. - -But I didn't leave in a few days, and the first thing I knew I'd been -there a week. I had pretty much the run of the house, and I eat my meals -with Biddy Malone, the only uncomfortable feature of being a guest being -that Miss Estelle, soon as she found out I was an agnostic (whatever -brand of science that is, which I never found out to this day, just -having come across the word accidental), she begun to take charge of my -religion and intellectuals and things like that. She used to try to cure -the perfessor, too, but she had to give it up for a bad job, Biddy says. - -Biddy, she says Mrs. Booth's been over to her mother's while this -smallpox has been going on; which I hadn't knowed they was a Mrs. Booth -before. And Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay there, too. -They's been a lot of talk, anyhow, Biddy says, about Mrs. Booth and some -musician fellow around town. But Biddy she likes Mrs. Booth, and even if -it was so who could blame her? - -Things ain't right around that house since Miss Estelle's been there, -which the perfessor's science, though worrying to the nerves, ain't cut -much ice till about four years ago when Miss Estelle come. - -But Mrs. Booth she's getting where she can't stand it much longer, Biddy -says. I didn't blame her none for feeling sore about things. - -You can't expect a woman that's pretty and knows it, and ain't more'n -thirty-two or three years old, and don't look it, to be interested in -mummies and pickled snakes and the preservation of the criminal classes -and chemical profusions, not _all_ the time. And maybe when she'd ask -the perfessor if he wasn't going to take her to the opera he'd ask her -did she know them Germans had invented a newfangled disease or that it -was a mistake about them Austrians hiding their heads in the sand when -they are scared, which any fool that's ever seen 'em working around a -coal mine ought to of knowed. It wouldn't a-been so bad if the perfessor -had just picked out one brand of science and stuck to it. She could -a-got used to any one kind and knowed what to expect. But maybe this -week the perfessor's bug would be ornithography, and he'd be chasing -sparrows all over the front lawn; and next week it would be geneology -and he'd be trying to grow bananas on a potato vine. Then, he'd get -worried about the nigger problem in the south, and settle it all -up scientific and explain how ethnology done the whole damn thing, -lynchings and all, and it never could be straightened out till it was -done scientific. Every new gag that come out the perfessor took up with -it, Biddy says; one time he'd be fussing around with gastronomy through -a telescope and the next he'd be putting astrology into William's -breakfast food. - -They was a row on all the time about the kids, which they hadn't been -till Miss Estelle come. Mrs. Booth she said they could kill their own -selves if they wanted to, but she had more right than anybody to say -what went into William's digestive ornaments, and she didn't want him -brought up scientific nohow, but just human. He was always making notes -on William, which was how William come to take so little interest in -life after a while. But Miss Estelle, she egged him on. She seen he -didn't have no sense about his money, which had been left to him when -he was a sure enough perfessor in a college before he quit and went nuts -and everything begun to go wrong between him and Mrs. Booth, so Miss -Estelle she took to running his money herself; but she seen likewise -that when it come to writing articles about William's insides and -intellectuals the perfessor he was a genius. Well, maybe he was; but -Biddy wouldn't let him try none of them laboratory gags on her though -she just as soon be hypnotized and telepathed as not just to humor him. -Miss Estelle, she eat what the perfessor give her, and after a while -she says she'll take charge of the children's education herself, their -mother being a frivolous young thing, and it was too bad, she says, a -genius like him couldn't a-mar-ried a noble woman who would a-understood -his great work for humanity and sympathized with it. So while the -perfessor filled William and Miss Margery up on new discovered food and -weighed 'em and probed 'em and sterilized 'em and did everything else -but put 'em in glass bottles, Miss Estelle she laid out courses of -reading matter for them and tended to their religion and intellectuals -and things like that. I reckon they never was two kids more completely -educated, inside and out. It hadn't worked much on Miss Margery yet, her -being younger than William. But William took it hard and serious, being -more like his father's family, and it made bumps all over his head. I -reckon by the time William was ten years old he knew more than a whole -high school, and every time that boy cut his finger he just naturally -bled science. But somehow he wasn't very chipper, and whenever the -perfessor would notice that he and Miss Estelle would change treatment. -But Biddy liked William just the same, they hadn't spoiled his -disposition none; and she said he seen a lot of things his aunt never -would a-seen, William did. One day when I first was a guest I says to -his aunt, I says: - -“Miss Booth, William looks kind o' pale to me like he was getting too -much bringin' up to the square inch.” - -She acted like she didn't care for no outsiders butting in, but I -seen she'd noticed it, too, and she liked William, too, in a kind of -scientific sort of a way, and she says in a minute: - -“What do you suggest?” - -“Why,” says I, “what a kid like that needs is to roll around and play in -the dirt now and then, and yell and holler.” - -She went away like she was kind o' mad about it; but about an hour later -the perfessor sent word for me to come down to the labaratory, and Miss -Estelle was there. - -“We have decided that there is something in what you say,” says the -perfessor. “Even the crudest and most untrained intellectuals has now -and then a bright hunch from which us men of special knowledge may take -a suggestion,” he says, or words to that effect. And they was a whole -lot more, and they was more scientific than that. I didn't know I'd done -nothing important like that, but when he told me all about it in science -talk I seen I made a ten strike, though I should of thought anyone could -of saw all William needed was just to be allowed to be a little more -human. - -But what do you think--I never was so jarred in my life as I was the -next day. I seen Miss Estelle spreading an oilcloth on the floor, and -then the butler come in and poured a lot of nice, clean, sterilized dirt -on to it. And then she sent for William. - -“William Dear,” she says, “we have decided that what you need is more -recreation mixed in along with your intellectuals. You ought to romp and -play in the dirt, close to the soil and nature, as is right for a youth -of your age. For an hour each day right after you study your biology and -before you take up your Euclid you will romp and play in this dirt like -a child of nature, and frolic. You may now begin to frolic, William, and -James will gather up the dirt again for to-morrow's frolic.” Or it was -words to that effect. - -But William didn't frolic none. He seen things they didn't. He just -looked at that dirt, and he come the nearest to smiling I ever seen -William come; and then he come the nearest to getting mad I ever seen -William come. And then he says very serious: - -“Aunt Estelle,” he says, “I shall _not_ frolic. I have come to that -place in my discretions where my intellectuals got to work some for -theirselves. It is them intellectuals which you have trained that -refuses to be made ridiculous one hour each day between the biology -lesson and the Euclid lesson with sand.” Those was not William's exact -words, which he always had down as slick as his pa, but they was what he -meant. William was a serious kid, but he seen things his aunt never had -no idea of. And he never did frolic, neither, and all that nice clean -dirt had to be throwed out by the stable amongst the unscientific dirt -again. - -That was before Biddy Malone told me about why it was that the perfessor -and his wife didn't get along well, and as I was saying I didn't -blame her none, Miss Estelle having finally beat her out about her own -children, too; and she feeling she didn't scarcely own 'em no more, and -they hardly daring to kiss their own mamma with Miss Estelle in the room -because of germs, so Biddy says. Biddy, she says the perfessor is all -right, he's just a fool and don't mean no harm by his scientific gags, -but Miss Estelle she's a she-devil and takes that way to make herself -the boss of that house. If she wasn't there Mrs. Booth would have been -boss and never let the perfessor know it and things wouldn't a-been so -bad. Which shows that so long as every house got to have a boss it ain't -so much difference if it's a him or her so long as it ain't a relation. - -The perfessor always eats his dinner in one of them coats with the -open-face vest to it, and one night I thinks I will, too. When you is in -Rome you does like the Dagos does, I thinks. - -So I sends for James along before dinner time and I says: “Where is my -dinky clothes to eat dinner in?” I says. - -James he says I'm to continue to eat dinner by myself. Which is all -right, I tells him, but I'll do it in style or I'll quit the job. So he -goes and asks Miss Estelle, and she comes in with that lemon grin on, -but looking, too, like I done something to please her. - -“Is it true,” she says, “that already the effects of a refined -environment has overcome defections in early training and a misfortune -in ancestral hereditary?” she says. Or they was words to that effect. - -“It is true,” I says. And the perfessor's being too small she made James -give me his'n. But when I seen all that shirt front it made me feel -kind of uncomfortable, too. So I takes them off again and puts on my old -striped sweater and puts on the vest and coat over that, and the effect -of them red stripes running crossways is something gorgeous with one of -them open-face vests over it. - -So after I eat I don't want to go to bed and I gets a box of the -perfessor's cigars and goes into the library and thinks I'll see if he's -got anything fit to read. I dig around for a while among them shelves, -and most everything is one brand of science or other, but finally I got -hold of a little book that was real interesting. That was the damndest -book! It was all in rhyme, with the explanations of the rhyme printed in -real talk down the sides so as you could tell where you was at and what -it was about. It's about an Ancient Mariner. The nut that wrote it he's -never been sailing none, I bet; but he can make you feel like you been -going against the hop in one of them Chink joints. Of course, there -ain't nothing real literary about it like one of them Marie Corelli -stories I read once and it ain't got the excitement of a good Bill Hart -movie or a Nick Carter story, but I got real interested in it. The I-man -of that story he was a Jonah to the whole ship. He seen an albatross -circling around, and he up with his air gun and give him his'n. It -wasn't for nothing to eat, but just to be a-shooting. And from that on -everybody gets as sick of living as a bunch of Chicago factory hands -when another savings bank busts, and they all falls down and curses him. -And the snakes wiggles all over the top of the water like I seen 'em one -time when they cleaned out a reservoir where one of them prairie towns -gets its drinking water from. And the Ancient Mariner he tries to die -and can't make it; and their ghosts is whizzing all around that ship and -they go by him in the moonlight like a puff of steam goes by you on a -frosty morning out of an engine-room manhole. And there's a moral to -that story, too. I bet the fellow that doped that out had been on an -awful bat. I like to of talked with that nut. They was a fellow named -Looney Hogan use to have them phoney hunches, and he use to tell me what -he saw after he had 'em. Looney was awful good company and I use to like -to hear him tell what he seen and what he thinks he seen, but he walked -off of a grain barge up to Duluth when he was asleep one night and he -never did wake up. - -Sitting there thinking of the awful remarkable things that is, and the -ones that isn't, and the ones that maybe is and maybe isn't, and the -nuts that is phoney about some things and not about others, and how two -guys can look at the same thing and when you ask them about it both has -seen different things, I must a-went to sleep. And I must a-slept a long -time there, and pretty soon in my sleep I heard two voices and then I -wakes up sudden and still hears them, low and quicklike, in the room -that opens right off from the library with a pair of them sliding doors -like is on to a boxcar. One was a woman's voice, and not Miss Estelle's, -and she says like she was choked up: - -“But I _must_ see them before we go, Henry.” - -And the other was a man's voice, and it wasn't no one around our house. - -“But, my God!” he says, “suppose you catch it yourself, Jane!” - -I set up straight then, and I would of give a good deal to see through -that door, because Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name. - -“You mean suppose _you_ get it,” she says. I like to of seen the look -she must of give him to fit in with the way she says that _you_. He -didn't say nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down -some, and she says, low and slow: “Henry, wouldn't you love me if I -_did_ get it? Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?” - -“Oh, of course,” he says, “of course I would. Nothing can change the way -I feel. _You_ know that.” He said it quick enough, all right, just the -way they do in a show, but it sounded _too much_ like it does on the -stage to of suited me if _I'd_ been her. I seen folks overdo them little -talks before this. - -I listens some more, and then I see how it is. This is that musician -feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with -him all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that. -They may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em -don't like the kids. I thinks to myself: “It must be late. I bet they -was already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here -first so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She just simply couldn't -get by. But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see -Margery with that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night? -And even if she tries just to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot -he'll wake up and she'll be ketched at it.” - -And then I thinks, suppose she _is_ ketched at it? What of it? Ain't a -woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, -even if they is a quarantine on to it, and see her kids? And if she is -ketched seeing them, how would anyone know she was going to run off? And -ain't she got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring -her over from her mother's house, even if it is a little late? - -Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby -I better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated -me purty white. And then I thinks: “I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle. -So fur as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's -coming to him, nohow. And as fur _her_, you got to let some people find -out what they want fur theirselves. Anyhow, where do _I_ come in at?” - -But I want to get a look at her and Henry, anyhow. So I eases off my -shoes, careful-like, and I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors, -and I puts my eye down to the little crack. The talk is going backward -and forward between them two, him wanting her to come away quick, and -her undecided whether to risk seeing the kids. And all the time she's -kind o' hoping mebby she will be ketched if she tries to see the kids, -and she's begging off fur more time ginerally. - -Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none when I seen her. She -was a peach. - -And I couldn't blame her so much, either, when I thought of Miss Estelle -and all them scientifics of the perfessor's strung out fur years and -years world without end. - -Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she wouldn't. I seen right -off that Henry wouldn't do. It takes a man with a lot of gumption to -keep a woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it when he's married -to her. But it takes a man with twicet as much to make her feel right -when they ain't married. This feller wears one of them little, brown, -pointed beards fur to hide where his chin ain't. And his eyes is too -much like a woman's. Which is the kind that gets the biggest piece of -pie at the lunch counter and fergits to thank the girl as cuts it big. -She was setting in front of a table, twisting her fingers together, and -he was walking up and down. I seen he was mad and trying not to show it, -and I seen he was scared of the smallpox and trying not to show that, -too. And just about that time something happened that kind o' jolted me. - -They was one of them big chairs in the room where they was that has got -a high back and spins around on itself. It was right acrost from me, on -the other side of the room, and it was facing the front window, which -was a bow window. And that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy. -First I thought she wasn't turning. Then I seen she was. But Jane and -Henry didn't. They was all took up with each other in the middle of the -room, with their back to it. - -Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little more, that chair -does. Will she squeak, I wonders? - -“Don't you be a fool, Jane,” says the Henry feller. - -Around she comes three hull inches, that there chair, and nary a squeak. - -“A fool?” asks Jane, and laughs. “And I'm not a fool to think of going -with you at all, then?” - -That chair, she moved six inches more and I seen the calf of a leg and -part of a crumpled-up coat tail. - -“But I _am_ going with you, Henry,” says Jane. And she gets up just like -she is going to put her arms around him. - -But Jane don't. Fur that chair swings clear around and there sets the -perfessor. He's all hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his eyes -like he's just woke up recent, and he's got a grin on to his face that -makes him look like his sister Estelle looks all the time. - -“Excuse me,” says the perfessor. - -They both swings around and faces him. I can hear my heart bumping. Jane -never says a word. The man with the brown beard never says a word. But -if they felt like me they both felt like laying right down there and -having a fit. They looks at him and he just sets there and grins at -them. - -But after a while Jane, she says: - -“Well, now you _know!_ What are you going to do about it?” - -Henry, he starts to say something, too. But---- - -“Don't start anything,” says the perfessor to him. “_You_ aren't going -to do anything.” Or they was words to that effect. - -“Professor Booth,” he says, seeing he has got to say something or else -Jane will think the worse of him, “I am----” - -“Shut up,” says the perfessor, real quiet. “I'll tend to you in a minute -or two. _You_ don't count for much. This thing is mostly between me and -my wife.” - -When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something -into him beside science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised -herself. But she says nothing, except: - -“What are you going to do, Frederick?” And she laughs one of them mean -kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a -little more, and says: “What _can_ you do, Frederick?” - -Frederick, he says, not excited a bit: - -“There's quite a number of things I _could_ do that would look bad when -they got into the newspapers. But it's none of them, unless one of you -forces it on to me.” Then he says: - -“You _did_ want to see the children, Jane?” - -She nodded. - -“Jane,” he says, “can't you see I'm the better man?” - -The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and -he didn't want to see her go. “Look at him,” he says, pointing to the -feller with the brown beard, “he's scared stiff right now.” - -Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way -like Henry was, and the perfessor's voice sounding like you was chopping -ice every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no -blood on the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making -up his mind about something, too. Jane, she says: - -“_You_ a better man? _You?_ You think you've been a model husband just -because you've never beaten me, don't you?” - -“No,” says the perfessor, “I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been -a worse fool, maybe, than if I _had_ beaten you.” Then he turns to Henry -and he says: - -“Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in -the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me.” With which he gets -up and trots out, and I heard him running down stairs to his labertory. - -Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane -a-looking at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some -kind of a strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't -do it. And Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects -it. And me, I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, “What is -that there perfessor up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one -else. He is looney, that perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too. I -wonder if they is anyone that ain't looney sometimes? I been around the -country a good 'eal, too, and seen and hearn of some awful remarkable -things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or less looney when -the _search us the femm_ comes into the case. Which is a Dago word I got -out'n a newspaper and it means: Who was the dead gent's lady friend?' -And we all set and sweat and got the fidgets waiting fur that perfessor -to come back. - -“Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin on to his face and a pill -box in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and -chilly: “Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science. -All the same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she -isn't worth fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I -made 'em myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it -gets to working well--which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken. -The other one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one, -I keep her. If I get it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait -long enough after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town.” - -Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of -it. When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek -on the inside like a piece of sandpaper. He was scared, Henry was. - -“But _you_ know which is which,” Jane sings out. “The thing's not fair!” - -“That is the reason my dear Jane is going to shuffle these pills around -each other herself,” says the perfessor, “and then pick out one for him -and one for me. _You_ don't know which is which, Jane. And as he is the -favorite, he is going to get the first chance. If he gets the one I want -him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live after taking it. -In that fifteen minutes he will please to walk so far from my house that -he won't die near it and make a scandal. I won't have a scandal without -I have to. Everything is going to be nice and quiet and respectable. The -effect of the poison is similar to heart failure. No one can tell the -difference on the corpse. There's going to be no blood anywhere. I will -be found dead in my house in the morning with heart failure, or else he -will be picked up dead in the street, far enough away so as to make no -talk.” Or they was words to that effect. - -He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that perfessor is. I wonder -if I better jump in and stop the hull thing. Then I thinks: “No, it's -between them three.” Beside, I want to see which one is going to get -that there loaded pill. I always been intrusted in games of chance of -all kinds, and when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm sorry I -been misjudging him all this time. - -Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard and quick. - -“I won't touch 'em,” she says. “I refuse to be a party to any murder of -that kind.” - -“Huh? You do?” says the perfessor. “But the time when you might have -refused has gone by. You have made yourself a party to it already. -You're really the _main_ party to it. - -“But do as you like,” he goes on. “I'm giving him more chance than I -ought to with those pills. I might shoot him, and I would, and then face -the music, if it wasn't for mixing the children up in the scandal, Jane. -If you want to see him get a fair chance, Jane, you've got to hand out -these pills, one to him and then one to me. _You_ must kill one or the -other of us, or else _I'll_ kill _him_ the other way. And _you_ had -better pick one out for him, because _I_ know which is which. Or else -let him pick one out for himself,” he says. - -Henry, he wasn't saying nothing. I thought he had fainted. But he -hadn't. I seen him licking his lips. I bet Henry's mouth was all dry -inside. - -Jane, she took the box and she went round in front of Henry and she -looked at him hard. She looked at him like she was thinking: “Fur God's -sake, spunk up some, and take one if it _does_ kill you!” Then she says -out loud: “Henry, if you die I will die, too!” - -And Henry, he took one. His hand shook, but he took it out'n the box. If -she had of looked like that at me mebby I would of took one myself. Fur -Jane, she was a peach, she was. But I don't know whether I would of or -not. When she makes that brag about dying, I looked at the perfessor. -What she said never fazed him. And I thinks agin: “Mebby I better jump -in now and stop this thing.” And then I thinks agin: “No, it is between -them three and Providence.” Beside, I'm anxious to see who is going -to get that pill with the science in it. I gets to feeling just like -Providence hisself was in that there room picking out them pills with -his own hands. And I was anxious to see what Providence's ideas of right -and wrong was like. So fur as I could see they was all three in the -wrong, but if I had of been in there running them pills in Providence's -place I would of let them all off kind o' easy. - -Henry, he ain't eat his pill yet. He is just looking at it and shaking. - -The perfessor reaches for his watch, and don't find none. Then he -reaches over and takes Henry's watch, and opens it, and lays it on the -table. “A quarter past one,” he says. “Mr. Murray, are you going to make -me shoot you after all? I didn't want any blood nor any scandal,” he -says. “It's up to you,” he says, “whether you want to take that pill and -get your even chance, or whether you want to get shot. The shooting way -is sure, but looks bad in the papers. The pill way don't implicate any -one,” he says. “Which?” And he pulls a gun. - -Henry he looks at the gun. - -Then he looks at the pill. - -Then he swallows the pill. - -The perfessor puts his'n into his mouth. But he don't swallow it. He -looks at the watch, and he looks at Henry. “Sixteen minutes past one,” - he says. “_Mr. Murray will be dead at exactly fourteen minutes to two_. -I got the harmless one. I can tell by the taste of the chemicals.” - -And he put the pieces out into his hand to show that he chewed his'n -up, not being willing to wait fifteen minutes for a verdict from his -digestive ornaments. Then he put 'em back into his mouth and chewed 'em -and swallowed 'em down like it was coughdrops. - -Henry has got sweat breaking out all over his face, and he tries to make -fur the door, but he falls down on to a sofa. - -“This is murder,” he says, weaklike. And he tries to get up agin, but -this time he falls to the floor in a dead faint. - -“It's a dern short fifteen minutes,” I thinks to myself. “That perfessor -must of put more science into Henry's pill than he thought he did fur it -to of knocked him out this quick. It ain't skeercly three minutes.” - -When Henry falls the woman staggers and tries to throw herself on top -of him. The corners of her mouth was all drawed down, and her eyes was -turned up. But she don't yell none. She can't. She tries, but she just -gurgles in her throat. The perfessor won't let her fall acrost Henry. He -ketches her. “Sit up, Jane,” he says, with that Estelle look on to his -face, “and let us have a talk.” - -She looks at him with no more sense in her face than a piece of putty -has got. But she can't look away from him. - -And I'm kind o' paralyzed, too. If that feller laying on the floor -had only jest kicked oncet, or grunted, or done something, I could of -loosened up and yelled, and I would of. I just _needed_ to fetch a yell. -But Henry ain't more'n dropped down there till I'm feeling just like -he'd _always_ been there, and I'd _always_ been staring into that room, -and the last word anyone spoke was said hundreds and hundreds of years -ago. - -“You're a murderer,” says Jane in a whisper, looking at the perfessor in -that stare-eyed way. “You're a _murderer,_” she says, saying it like she -was trying to make herself feel sure he really was one. - -“Murder!” says the perfessor. “Did you think I was going to run any -chances for a pup like him? He's scared, that's all. He's just fainted -through fright. He's a coward. Those pills were both just bread and -sugar. He'll be all right in a minute or two. I've just been showing -you that the fellow hasn't got nerve enough nor brains enough for a fine -woman like you, Jane,” he says. - -Then Jane begins to sob and laugh, both to oncet, kind o' wildlike, her -voice clucking like a hen does, and she says: - -“It's worse then, it's worse! It's worse for me than if it were a -murder! Some farces can be more tragic than any tragedy ever was,” she -says. Or they was words to that effect. - -And if Henry had of been really dead she couldn't of took it no harder -than she begun to take it now when she saw he was alive, but just wasn't -no good. But I seen she was taking on fur herself now more'n fur Henry. -Women is made unlike most other animals in many ways. When they is -foolish about a man they can stand to have that man killed a good 'eal -better than to have him showed up ridiculous right in front of them. -They will still be crazy about the man that's killed, but they don't -never forgive the lobster. I seen that work out before this. You can be -most any thing else and get away with it, but if you're a lobster it's -all off even if you can't help being a lobster. And when the perfessor -kicks Henry in the ribs and he comes to and sneaks out, Jane she never -even looks at him. - -“Jane,” says the perfessor, when she quiets down some, “you got a lot to -forgive me. But do you s'pose I learned enough sense so we can make a go -of it if we start over again?” - -But Jane never said nothing. - -“Jane,” he says, “Estelle is going back to New England to stay there for -good.” - -She begins to take a little interest then. “Did Estelle tell you so?” - she says. - -“No,” says the perfessor, “Estelle don't know it yet. But she is. I'm -going to tell her in the mornin'.” - -But she still hates him. She's making herself. She wouldn't of been a -female woman if she'd of been coaxed that easy. Pretty soon she says, -“I'm going upstairs and go to bed. I'm tired.” And she went out looking -like the perfessor was a perfect stranger. - -After she left the perfessor set there quite a while and he was looking -tired out, too; and there wasn't no mistake about me. I was asleep all -through my legs, and I kept a wondering to myself, suppose them pills -had one of them been loaded sure enough, which one would of got it? And -when the perfessor leaves I says to myself, I reckon I better light a -rag. So I goes to the front window and opens it easy; but I thinks -about Henry's watch on the table, every one else having forgot it, and I -thinks I better hunt him up and give it to him. - -And then I thinks why should I give him pain, for that watch will always -remind him of an unpleasant time he once had. - -And if it hadn't been for me sitting in that window looking at that -watch I wouldn't a-been writing this, for I wouldn't of been in jail -now. - -I tried to explain my intentions was all right, but the police says -it ain't natural to be seen coming out of a front window at two in the -morning in a striped sweater and a dinky dinner suit with a gold watch -in your hand; if you are hunting the owner you are doing it peculiar. - -One of them reporters he says to me to write the truth about how I got -into jail; nobody else never done it and stuck to facts. But this is -the truth so help me; it was all on account of that watch, which my -intentions with regard to was perfectly honorable, and all that goes -before leads up to that watch. There wasn't no larceny about it; it was -just another mistake on the part of the police. If I'd of been stealing -wouldn't I stole the silverware a week before that? - -The more I travel around the more dumb people I see that can't -understand how an honest and upright citizen can get into circumstantial -evidence and still be a honest and upright citizen. - - - - -X.--The Penitent - - -|You, who are not married,” said the penitent, “cannot know--can never -realize----” - -He hesitated, his glance wandering over the evidences of luxury, the -hints of Oriental artistry, the esthetic effectiveness of Dr. Eustace -Beaulieu's studio. - -“Proceed,” said Dr. Beaulieu, suavely. “What I may know is not the -important thing. You do not address yourself to me, but through me -to that principle of Harmony in the Cosmos which is Spirit--Ultimate -Spirit--which we call God. All that I can do is assist you to get into -Accord with the Infinite again, help you to vibrate in unison with the -Cosmic All.” - -“You are right; I do not look to you,” said the penitent, “for ease of -mind or spirit.” And a fleeting half-smile showed in his eyes, as if -some ulterior thought gave a certain gusto to the manner in which he -stressed the pronoun _you_. But the rest of his scarred and twisted -face was expressionless, beneath the thick mask of a heavy gray-streaked -beard that grew almost to his eyes. - - * Author's Note: “The Penitent” was suggested by two poems, - “A Forgiveness,” by Browning, and “The Portrait,” by Owen - Meredith. - -Dr. Eustace Beaulieu was the leader--nay, the founder--of one of the -many, many cults that have sprung up in New York City and elsewhere in -America during the past three or four decades. An extraordinary number -of idle, well-to-do women gathered at his studio two or three times a -week, and listened to his expositions of ethics _de luxe_, served with -just the proper dash of Oriental mysticism and European pseudoscience. -He was forty, he was handsome, with magnetic brown eyes and the long -sensitive fingers of a musician; he was eloquent, he was persuasive, he -was prosperous. - -When he talked of the Zend-Avesta, when he spoke of the Vedantic -writings, when he touched upon the Shinto worship of the Nipponese, when -he descanted upon the likeness of the Christian teachings to the tenets -of Buddhism, when he revealed the secrets of the Yogi philosophy, when -he hinted his knowledge of the priestly craft of older Egypt and of -later Eleusis, his feminine followers thrilled in their seats as a -garden of flowers that is breathed upon by a Summer wind--they vibrated -to his words and his manner and his restrained fervor with a faint -rustling of silken garments and a delicate fragrance of perfume. - -Men were not, as a rule, so enthusiastic concerning Dr. Eustace Beaulieu -and his cult; there were few of them at his lectures, there were few of -them enrolled in the classes where he inducted his followers into the -more subtle phases of ethics, where he led them to the higher planes -of occultism, for a monetary consideration; few of them submitted -themselves to him for the psychic healing that was one of his major -claims to fame. And this scarred and bearded stranger, who limped, was -one of the very few men who had ever intimated a desire to bare his soul -to Dr. Beaulieu, to tell his story and receive spiritual ministration, -in the manner of the confessional. These confessionals, after the public -lectures, had been recently introduced by Dr. Beaulieu, and they were -giving him, he felt, a firmer grip upon his flock--his disciples, he did -not hesitate to call them. - -“I repeat,” said the penitent--if he was a repentant man, indeed--“no -bachelor can know what love really is. He cannot conceive of what the -daily habit of association with a woman who seems made for him, and for -him alone, may mean to a man. My love for my wife was almost worship. -She was my wife indeed, I told myself, and she it was for whom I worked. - -“For I did work, worked well and unselfishly. Every man must have -some work. Some do it from necessity, but I did it because I loved -the work--and the woman--and thus I gained a double reward. I was a -politician, and something more. I think I may say that I was a patriot, -too. The inheritor of wealth and position, I undertook to clear the city -in which I lived, and which my forefathers had helped to build, of -the ring of grafters who were making the name of the town a byword -throughout the nation. The details of that long and hard strife are not -pertinent. I fought with something more than boldness and determination; -I fought with a joy in every struggle, because I fought for something -more than the world knew. The world could not see that my inspiration -was in my home; that in the hours of battle my blood sang joyously with -the thought of--her! Was it any wonder that I worked well? - -“One day, as I sat in my office downtown, the thought of her drew me so -strongly that I determined to surprise her by coming home unexpectedly -early. It was summer, and we were living in our country home, an -old-fashioned stone residence a couple of miles from the outskirts of -the city. The house was situated at the edge of a park that was, indeed, -almost virgin forest, for the whole estate had been in my family for -nearly a hundred years. - -“I determined to surprise my wife, and at the same time to take the rare -relaxation of a suburban walk. I was soon outside the city limits, and -through the zone where vacant lots broaden into fields; and then I left -the road, cutting across the fields and finally plunging into the woods -on my own place. Thus it was that I approached the house from the rear -and came suddenly out of the timber into my own orchard. I seldom walked -from town, and it was a good long hour before my usual time of arrival, -although in that sheltered and woody place the dusk was already -gathering in. - -“As I entered the orchard a man made a hurried exit from a vine-wreathed -pergola where my wife often sat to read, cast one look at me, cleared -the orchard fence, and made off through the woods, disappearing at once -among the boles of the trees. - -“He had not turned his full face toward me at any time, but had shielded -it with an upflung arm; from the moment he broke cover until his -disappearance there had passed less time than it takes to tell it, and I -was scarcely to be blamed if I was left guessing as to his identity, for -the moment. For the moment, I say. - -“There had been so much fright in his manner that I stood and looked -after him. The thought came to me that perhaps here was a man who had -had an affair with one of my servants. I turned toward the pergola and -met--my wife! - -“She was a beautiful woman, always more beautiful in her moments of -excitement. She confronted me now with a manner which I could not help -but admire. I trusted her so that she might readily have passed off a -much more anomalous situation with an easy explanation. But in her face -I read a deliberate wish to make me feel the truth. - -“I looked at her long, and she returned the gaze unflinchingly. And -I recognized her look for what it was. She had cast off the chains of -deceit. Her glance was a sword of hatred, and the first open thrust of -the blade was an intense pleasure to her. We both knew all without a -word. - -“I might have killed her then. But I did not. I turned and walked toward -the house; she followed me, and I opened the door; she preceded me -inside. She paused again, as if gathering all her forces for a struggle; -but I passed her in silence, and went upstairs to my own room. - -“And then began a strange period in my life. Shortly after this episode -came a partial triumph of the reform element in my city; the grafters -were ousted, and I found myself with more than a local reputation, and -thrust into an office. My life was now even more of a public matter than -before. We entertained largely. We were always in the public eye. Before -our guests and in public we were always all that should be. But when -the occasion was past, we would drop the mask, turn from each other with -dumb faces, and go each our severed ways. - -“For a year this sort of life kept up. I still worked; but now I worked -to forget. When I allowed myself to think of her at all, it was always -as of some one who was dead. Or so I told myself, over and over again, -until I believed it. - -“One day there was a close election. I was the successful candidate. I -was to go to Congress. All evening and far into the night my wife and -I played our parts well. But when the last congratulation had been -received, and the last speech made, and the last friend had gone, and -we were alone with each other once more, she turned to me with a look -something like the one she had met me with on that summer evening a year -before. - -“'I want to speak with you,' she said. - -“'Yes?' - -“They were the first words we had exchanged in that year, when not -compelled by the necessities. - -“'What do you wish to speak about?' I asked her. - -“'You know,' she said, briefly. And I did know. There was little use -trying to deny it. - -“'Why have you asked me no questions?' she said. - -“I would have made another attempt to pass the situation over without -going into it, but I saw that that would be impossible. She had reached -the place where she must speak. I read all this in her face. And looking -at her closely with the first candid glance I had given her in that -year, I saw that she had changed greatly, but she was still beautiful. - -“'I did not choose to open the subject with you,' I said; 'I thought -that you would explain when you could stand it no longer. Evidently that -time has come. You were to me like a dead person. If the dead have any -messages for me, they must bring them to me unsolicited. It was not my -place to hunt among the tombs.' - -“'No,' she said, 'let us be honest, since it is the last talk we may -ever have together. Let us be frank with each other, and with ourselves. -I was not like a dead person to you. The dead are dead, and I am not. -You asked me no questions because you disdained me so. You despised -me so--and it was sweet to you to make me feel the full weight of your -scorn through this silence. It was better than killing me. Is that not -the real reason?' - -“'Yes,' I admitted, 'that is it. That is the truth.' “'Listen,' she -said, 'it would surprise you--would it not--to learn that I still love -you--that I have loved you all along--that you are the only man I have -ever really loved--that I love you now? All that is incredible to you, -is it not?' - -“'Yes,' I said, 'it is. You must pardon me, but--it is incredible to -me.' - -“'Well, it is true,' she said, and paused a moment. 'And I can tell you -why it is true, and why--why--the--the other was true, too. You--you -do not understand women,' she said. 'Sometimes I think if you were a -smaller man, in some ways, you would understand them better. Sometimes -I think that you are too--too big, somehow--ever to make a woman happy. -Not too self-centered; you are not consciously selfish; you never mean -to be. But you give, give, give the riches of your nature to people--to -the world at large--instead of to those who should share them. - -“'Oh, I know--the fault is all mine! Another kind of woman--the right -kind for you--the kind you thought I was--would not have asked for all -that was a necessity for me; would have been big enough to have done -without it; would have lost herself in your love for all humanity. That -is the kind of woman you thought I was. And I tried to be. But I wasn't. -I wasn't that big. - -“'I did sympathize with your work; I could understand it; I loved to -hear you tell about it. But I loved it because it was you that told -me about it. You didn't see that! You thought I was a goddess. It was -enough for your nature to worship me; to set me upon a pedestal and to -call me your inspiration; oh, you treated me well--you were faithful -to me--you were generous! But you neglected me in a way that men do not -understand; that some men will never understand. While you were giving -your days and your nights, and every fiber of your brain and body, to -what you called the cause of the people, you more and more forgot you -had a wife. Again and again and again I tried to win you back to -what you were when I married you--to the time when your cause was not -all--but you wouldn't see; I couldn't make you feel. - -“'Then I thought I would show you that other men were not such fools as -to overlook what was wasted on you. But you never noticed; you trusted -me too much; you were too much engrossed. And then I began to hate you. -I loved you more than I ever did before, and at the same time I hated -you. Can you understand that? Do you see how women can hate and love at -the same time? Well, they can. - -“'At last--for I was a fool--I took a lover!” - -“'What was his name?' I broke in. - -“'His name?' she cried; 'that does not matter! What matter if there was -one of them, or two of them. That is nothing!--the name is nothing--they -were nothing--nothing but tools; the symbols of my rage, of my hatred -for you; whether I loved or hated you, you were all--always.' - -“'They were merely convenient clubs with which to murder my honor in the -dark--is that it?' I said. - -“'Yes,' she said, 'that is it, if you choose to put it so.' And she -spoke with a humility foreign to her nature. - -“'And what now?' I asked. - -“'Now,' she said, 'now that I have spoken; now that I have told you -everything; now that I have told you that I have gone on loving you more -and more and more--now--I am going to die.' - -“'You have not asked me to forgive you,' I said. - -“'No,' she replied. 'For what is forgiveness? I do not know exactly what -that word means. It is supposed to wipe out something that has happened, -is it not?--to make things the same as they were before! But it does not -do that. That which has happened, has happened; and you and I know it.' - -“'You had better live,' I said; 'I no longer consider you worthless. I -feel that you are worthy of my anger now.' - -“Her face cleared almost into something like joy. - -“'I have told the truth, and I raise myself from the depths of your -scorn to the place where you can feel a hot rage against me?' she asked. - -“'Yes,' I said. And the light on her face was like that of which some -women are capable when they are told that they are beloved. - -“'And if I die?' she asked. - -“'Who knows but that you might climb by it?' I said. 'Who knows but what -your death might turn my anger to love again?' And with that I turned -and left her there. - -“That night I sat all night in my study, and in the morning they brought -me the news that she was dead. She must have used some poison. What, I -do not know; and the physicians called it heart-failure. But what is the -matter, Doctor?” - -“Nothing, nothing!” said Dr. Beaulieu. And he motioned for the narrator -to proceed. But there were beads of perspiration upon the healer's -forehead, and a pallor overspread his face. - -“I had condemned her to death,” the penitent went on, “and she had been -her own executioner. She had loved me; she had sinned against me; -but she had always loved me; she had hated the flesh that sinned, and -scorned it as much as I; her life was intolerable and she had been her -own executioner. - -“The revulsion of feeling came. I loved her again; now that I had lost -her. All that day I shut myself up, seeing no one; refusing to look -at the dozens of telegrams that came pouring in from friends and -acquaintances, thinking--thinking--thinking---- - -“Night came again; and with it the word that the best friend I had was -in the house; a friend of my college days, who had stood shoulder to -shoulder with me in many a fight, then and since. He had come to be -under the same roof with me in the hour of my bitterest bereavement, -was the word he sent--how bitter now, he did not know. But -he did not intrude upon the privacy of my grief. And I sat -thinking--thinking--thinking-- - -“Suddenly the idea came to me that I would go upstairs to the chamber -where she was, and look at her once more. Quietly I stole up the stairs, -and through the hushed, dim house, on into the gloomy room, lighted only -by the candles at the head and foot of the curtained couch on which she -lay. - -“In the room beyond, the watchers sat. I stole softly across the floor -so as not to attract their attention; there was no one in the room -with the body. I approached the couch, and with my hand put by the -curtain---- - -“Then I dropped it suddenly. I remembered a locket which she had -formerly worn that had always had my picture in it, in the early days -of our married life; a locket that had never left her neck, waking or -sleeping. And I wondered---- - -“I wondered something about women which no one has ever been able to -tell me; not even a woman. I wondered if any light o' love had ever been -able to make her feel anything like _real_ love, after all! I wondered -if she had ever hugged the thought of her sin to her bosom, even as -she had at first hugged the thought of our real love--hers and mine. I -wondered if she had ever carried about with her a sentimental reminder -of her lover, of any lover, as she had once done of her husband--and how -long ago! I wondered how important a thing it had seemed to her, after -all! She had reconciled herself to herself, with her death, and made -me love her again. And I wondered to how great an extent she had -ever fooled a lover into thinking she loved him! There are depths and -contradictions and cross-currents in the souls of women that even women -do not know, far less men--I wondered whose picture was in that locket! - -“I thrust my hand through the curtains of the bed again, and then jumped -back. - -“I had felt something warm there. - -“Did she live, after all? - -“At the same instant I heard a movement on the other side of the bed. I -went around. - -“My best friend was removing his hand from the curtains on the other -side, and in his hand was the locket. It was his hand that I had felt. - -“We stared at each other. I spoke first, and in a whisper, so that the -others in the next room, who had come to watch, should not hear. - -“'I came for that,' I said. - -“'The locket? So did I,” he said. And then added quite simply, 'My -picture is in it.' - -“'You lie!' I whispered, shaken by a wind of fury. And yet I knew that -perhaps he did not lie, that what he said might well be true. Perhaps -that was the cause of my fury. - -“His face was lined with a grief and weariness terrible to behold. To -look at him you would have thought that there was nothing else in the -world for him except grief. It was a great grief that made him careless -of everything else. - -“'It is my picture,' he said. 'She loved me.' - -“'I say that you lie,' I repeated. 'She may have played with you--but -she never loved any one but me--in her heart she never did!' - -“'You!' And because he whispered, hissing out the words, they seemed to -gain in intensity of scorn. 'You! She hated you! You who neglected her, -you with your damned eternal politics, you who could never understand -her--love? You who could never give her the things a woman needs and -must have--the warmth--the color--the romance--the poetry of life! -You!--with your cold-blooded humanitarianism! I tell you, she loved -_me!_ Why should I hesitate to avow it to you? It is the sweetest -thing on earth to me, that she loved me! She turned from you to me -because----' - -“'Don't go into all that,' I said. 'I heard all about that last -night--from her! Open the locket, and let us see whose face is there!' - -“He opened it, and dropped the locket. He reeled against the wall, with -his hands over his face, as if he had been struck a physical blow. - -“I picked the toy up and looked at it. - -“The face in the locket was neither his face nor mine. It was the face -of--of the man who ran from the pergola and vaulted over the orchard -wall into the woods that summer night a year earlier; the man whom I had -not, for the moment, recognized. - -“We stood there, this man who had been my best friend and I, with the -locket between us, and I debated whether to strike him down----” - -The narrator paused. And then he said, fixing Dr. Beaulieu with an -intent gaze: - -“Should I have struck him down? You, who are a teacher of ethics, -who set yourself up to be, after a fashion, a preacher, a priest, a -spiritual director, tell me, would I have been justified if I had killed -him?” - -Dr. Beaulieu seemed to shrink, seemed to contract and grow smaller, -physically, under the other man's look. He opened his mouth as if to -articulate, but for a second or two no word came. And then, regaining -something of his usual poise, he said, although his voice was a bit -husky: - -“No! It is for the Creator of life to take life, and no other. Hatred -and strife are disharmony, and bring their own punishment by throwing -the soul out of unity with the spirit of love which rules the universe.” - -It sounded stereotyped and emotionless, even in Dr. Beaulieu's own ears, -as he said it; there was a mocking gleam in the eyes of the other man -that spoke of a far more vital and genuine emotion. Dr. Beaulieu licked -his lips and there came a knot in his forehead; beads of perspiration -stood out upon his brow. - -“You were right,” said Dr. Beaulieu, “in not striking him down. You were -right in sparing him.” - -The bearded man laughed. “I did not say that I spared him,” he said. - -Dr. Beaulieu looked a question; a question that, perhaps, he dared -not utter; or at least that he did not care to utter. He had dropped -completely his rôle of spiritual counselor; he regarded his visitor with -an emotion that might have been horror and might have been terror, -or might have been a mixture of the two. The visitor replied to the -unspoken interrogation in the healer's manner. - -“I did not strike him down. Neither did I spare him. I waited and I--I -used him. I know how to wait; I am of the nature that can wait. It was -years before fate drew all things together for my purpose, and gave him -into my hands--fate, assisted by myself. - -“I waited, and I used him. The details are not pertinent for it is not -his story that I am telling. I piloted him to the brink of destruction, -and then--then, I saved him.” - -“You saved him?” Dr. Beaulieu was puzzled; but his fear, if fear it was, -had not abated. There was a frank menace, now, in his visitor's air. And -the healer seemed to be struggling, as he listened to the tale, to force -some reluctant brain-cell to unlock and give its stored memories to his -conscious mind. - -“I saved him. I saved him to be my creature. I broke him, and I saved -him. I made him my slave, my dog, my--my anything I choose to have him. -I have work for him to do.” - -Again the man paused, looking about the rich profusion of Dr. Beaulieu's -studio. There was a table in the room which contained a number of curios -from Eastern lands. The visitor suddenly rose from his chair and picked -from among them a thin, keen-bladed dagger. It was a beautiful weapon, -of some Oriental make; beautiful in its lines; beautiful with the sullen -fire of many jewels blazing in its hilt--an evil levin that got into the -mind and led the thoughts astray even as the dainty deadliness of -the whole tool seduced the hand to grasp and strike. As his visitor, -strangely breaking the flow of his narrative, examined and handled the -thing, Dr. Beaulieu shuddered. - -“The man is as much my tool,” said the visitor slowly, “as this dagger -would be your tool, Dr. Beaulieu, if you chose to thrust it into my -breast--or into your own.” - -He laid the dagger down on the table, and resumed his seat. Dr. Beaulieu -said nothing, but he found it difficult to withdraw his eyes from his -visitor's steady stare. Slumped and sagged within his chair, he said -nothing. Presently the visitor went on. - -“I had a fancy, Dr. Beaulieu; I had a fancy! It suited me to make my -revenge a less obvious thing than striking down the old friend who had -betrayed my love and confidence, a less obvious thing than striking down -the other man--the man whose face was in the locket.” - -As he spoke he took from his pocket a locket. He opened it, and gazed -upon the face. The healer half rose from his chair, and then sank back, -with a hoarse, inarticulate murmur. His face had turned livid, and he -trembled in every limb. It was evident that the missing scene which he -had sought before had suddenly been flashed upon the cinema screen of -his recollection. He remembered, now---- - -“It was my fancy, Dr. Beaulieu, to make one of them take revenge upon -the other, that I might thus be revenged upon them both.” - -He suddenly rose, and forced the locket into the healer's nerveless -grasp. - -“That face--look at it!” he cried, towering over the collapsed figure -before him. - -Compelled by a will stronger than his own, Dr. Beaulieu looked. It -was the counterfeit presentment of himself within. It fell from his -trembling fingers and rolled upon the floor. The cultist buried his face -in his hands. - -The other man stepped back and regarded him sardonically for a moment or -two. - -“I should not wonder,” he said, “if the man who used to be my best -friend would pay you a visit before long--perhaps in an hour, perhaps in -a week, perhaps in a month.” - -He picked up the dagger again, and toyed with it. - -“This thing,” he said, impersonally, trying the point upon his finger, -“is sharp. It would give a quick death, a sure death, an almost painless -death, if one used it against another man--or against one's self.” - -And without another word he turned and left the room. - -Dr. Beaulieu sat and listened to his retreating footsteps. And, long -after they had ceased to sound, Dr. Beaulieu still sat and listened. -Perhaps he was listening for some one to come, now that the bearded -man had left. He sat and listened, and presently he reached over to the -table and picked up the dagger that the visitor had laid down with its -handle toward him. He pressed its point against his finger, as the other -man had done. It was sharp. It would give, as the fellow had said, “a -quick death, a sure death, an almost painless death.” - -And as he whispered these words he was still -listening--listening--waiting for some one to come---- - - - - -XI.--The Locked Box - - - -I - -|It was a small, oblong affair, not more than three inches wide or deep, -by twice that much in length, made of some dark, hard wood; brass bound -and with brass lock and brass hinges; altogether such a box as a woman -might choose to keep about her room for any one of a half dozen possible -uses. - -Clarke did not remember that he had ever seen it prior to his -unexpectedly early return from a western trip of a month's duration. -He thought he would give his wife a pleasant surprise, so he did not -telephone the news of his arrival to the house, but went home and -entered her room unannounced. As he came in his wife hastily slipped -something into the box, locked it, and put it into one of the drawers -of her desk. Then she came to meet him, and he would not have thought -of the matter at all had it not been for just the slightest trace of -confusion in her manner. - -She was glad to see him. She always was after his absences, but it -seemed to him that she was exceptionally so this time. She had never -been a demonstrative woman; but it seemed to Clarke that she came nearer -that description on the occasion of this home-coming than ever before. -They had a deal to say to each other, and it was not until after dinner -that the picture of his wife hurriedly disposing of the box crossed -Clarke's consciousness again. Even then he mentioned it casually because -they were talked out of more important topics rather than because of any -very sharp curiosity. He asked her what it was; what was in it. - -“Oh, nothing!--nothing of any importance--nothing at all,” she said; -and moved over to the piano and began one of his favorite airs. And he -forgot the box again in an instant. She had always been able to make -Clarke forget things, when she wanted to. But the next day it suddenly -came to him, out of that nowhere-in-particular from which thoughts come -to mortals, that she had been almost as much confused at his sudden -question as she had at his previous sudden entrance. - -Clarke was not a suspicious person; not even a very curious one, as a -rule. But it was so evident to him that there was something in that -box which his wife did not wish him to see that he could not help but -wonder. Always frank with her, and always accustomed to an equal -candor on her part, it occurred to him that he would ask her again, in -something more than a casual way, and that she would certainly tell him, -at the same time clearing up her former hesitation. But no!--why should -he ask her? That would be to make something out of nothing; this was a -trifle, and not worth thinking about. But he continued thinking about -it, nevertheless.... - -Ah, he had it! What a chump he had been, not to guess it sooner! His -birthday was only ten days off, and his wife had been planning to -surprise him with a remembrance of some sort. Of course! That accounted -for the whole thing. - -With this idea in his head, he said nothing more about the box, but -waited. And when dinner was over and they sat before the fire together, -on the evening of the anniversary, he still forbore to mention it, -expecting every moment that the next she would present him with the -token. But as the evening wore away, with no sign on her part, he -finally broke an interval of silence with the remark: - -“Well, dear, don't keep me guessing any longer! Bring it to me!” - -“Guessing? Bring you--what?” And he could see that she was genuinely -puzzled. - -“Why, my birthday present.” - -“Why, my dear boy! And did you expect one? And I had forgotten! -Positively forgotten--it _is_ your birthday, isn't it, Dickie! If I had -only known you _wanted_ one--------” And she came up and kissed him, -with something like contrition, although his birthday had never been one -of the sentimental anniversaries which she felt bound to observe with -gifts. - -“Don't feel bad about it--I don't care, you know--really,” he said. -“Only, I thought you had something of the sort in that brass-bound -box--that was the only reason I mentioned it.” - -“Brass-bound box--why, no, I--I forgot it. I'm ashamed of myself, but I -forgot the date entirely!” - -But she volunteered no explanation of what the box contained, although -the opportunity was so good a one. - -And Clarke wondered more than ever. - -What could it be? The letters of some former sweetheart? Well, all girls -had sweethearts before they married, he supposed; at least all men did. -He had had several himself. There was nothing in that. And he would not -make an ass of himself by saying any more about it. - -Only... he could not remember any old sweethearts that he wouldn't have -told Agnes all about, if she had asked him. He had no secrets from her. -But she had a secret from him... innocent enough, of course. But still, -a secret. There was none of those old sweethearts of his whose letters -he cared to keep after five years of marriage. And there was no... But, -steady! Where were his reflections leading him? Into something very like -suspicion? Positively, yes; to the verge of it. Until Agnes got ready to -tell him all about it, he would forget that damned box! - -And if she never got ready, why, that was all right, too. She was his -wife, and he loved her... and that settled it. - -Perhaps that should have settled it, but it did not. Certain -healthy-looking, fleshy specimens of humanity are said to succumb the -quickest to pneumonia, and it may be that the most ingenuous natures -suffer the most intensely with suspicion, when once thoroughly -inoculated. - - - -II - -|Clarke fought against it, cursing his own baseness. But the very effort -necessary to the fight showed him the persistence of the thing itself. -He loved his wife, and trusted her, he told himself over and over again, -and in all their relations hitherto there had never been the slightest -deviation from mutual confidence and understanding. What did he suspect? -He could not have told himself. He went over their life together in his -mind. In the five years of their married life, he could not have helped -but notice that men were attracted to her. Of course they were. That was -natural. She was a charming woman. He quite approved of it; it reflected -credit upon him, in a way. He was not a Bluebeard of a husband, to lock -a wife up and deny her the society proper to her years. And her -very catholicity of taste, the perfect frankness of her enjoyment of -masculine attention, had but served to make his confidence all the more -complete. True, he had never thought she loved him as much as he loved -her... but now that he came to think of it, was there not a warmer -quality to her affection since his return from this last trip west? Was -there not a kind of thoughtfulness, was there not a watchful increase in -attentiveness, that he had always missed before? Was she not making love -to him every day now; just as he had always made love to her before? -Were not the parts which they had played for the five years of their -married life suddenly reversed? They were! Indeed they were! And what -did that mean? What did that portend? Did the brass-bound box have aught -to do with that? What was the explanation of this change? - -The subtle imp of suspicion turned this matter of the exchanged rôles -into capital. Clarke, still ashamed of himself for doing it, began -covertly to watch his wife; to set traps of various kinds for her. He -said nothing more about the box, but within six months after the first -day upon which he had seen it, it became the constant companion of his -thoughts. - -_What_ did he suspect? Not even now could he have said. He suspected -nothing definite; vaguely, he suspected anything and everything. If -his wife noticed his changed manner towards her, she made no sign. -If anything, her efforts to please him, her attentiveness, her -thoughtfulness in small things, increased. - - - -III - -|There came a day when he could stand this self-torture no longer, -he thought. He came home from his office--Clarke was a partner in a -prosperous real-estate concern--at an hour when he thought his wife not -yet returned from an afternoon of call making, determined to end the -matter once for all. - -He went to her room, found the key to her desk, and opened the drawer. -He found the box, but It was locked, and he began rummaging through the -drawers, and among the papers and letters therein, for the key. - -Perhaps she carried it with her. Very well, then, he would break it -open! With the thing in his hand he began to look around for something -with which to force the fastenings, and was about deciding that he would -take it down to the basement, and use the hatchet, when he heard a step. -He turned, just as his wife entered the room. - -Her glance traveled from the box in his hand to the ransacked desk, and -rested there inquiringly for a moment. Strangely enough, in view of the -fact that he felt himself an injured husband and well within his rights, -it was Clarke who became confused, apologetic, and evasive under her -gaze. He essayed a clumsy lie: - -“Agnes,” he began, indicating the desk, “I--I got a bill to-day from -Meigs and Horner, for those furs, you know--I was sure that the -account had been settled--that you had paid them, and had shown me the -receipt--that you had paid them from your allowance, you know--and I -thought I would come home and look up the receipt.” - -It was very lame; and very lamely done, at that, as he felt even while -he was doing it. But it gave him an opportunity of setting the box down -on the desk almost in a casual manner, as if he had picked it up quite -casually, while he began to tumble the papers again with his hands. - -“The receipt is here,” she said; and got it for him. - -The box lay between them, but they did not look at it, nor at each -other, and they both trembled with agitation. - -Each knew that the thoughts of the other were on nothing except that -little locked receptacle of wood and brass, yet neither one referred -to it; and for a full half minute they stood with averted faces, and -fumbling hands, and played out the deception. - -Finally she looked full at him, and drew a long breath, as if the -story were coming now; and there was in her manner a quality of -softness--almost of sentimentality, Clarke felt. She was getting ready -to try and melt him into a kind of sympathy for her frailty, was she! -Well, that would not work with him! And with the receipted bill waving -in his hand, he made it the text of a lecture on extravagance, into -which he plunged with vehemence. - -Why did he not let her speak? He would not admit the real reason to -himself, just then. But in his heart he was afraid to have her go on. -Afraid, either way it turned. If she were innocent of any wrong, he -would have made an ass of himself--and much worse than an ass. If she -were guilty, she might melt him into a weak forgiveness in spite of -her guilt! No, she must not speak... not now! If she were innocent, how -could he confess his suspicions to her and acknowledge his baseness? And -besides... women were so damned clever... whatever was in that box, she -might fool him about it, somehow! - -And then, “Good God!” he thought, “I have got to the place where I hug -my suspicion to me as a dearer thing than my love, have I? Have I got so -low as that?” - -While these thoughts raced and rioted through his mind, his lips -were feverishly pouring out torrents in denunciation of feminine -extravagance. Even as he spoke he felt the black injustice of his -speech, for he had always encouraged his wife, rather than otherwise, in -the expenditure of money; his income was a good one; and the very furs -which formed the text of his harangue he had helped her select and even -urged upon her. - -It was their first quarrel, if that can be called a quarrel which has -only one side to it. For she listened in silence, with white lips -and hurt eyes, and a face that was soon set into a semblance of hard -indifference. He stormed out of the room, ashamed of himself, and -feeling that he had disgraced the name of civilization. - - - -IV - -|Ashamed of himself, indeed; but before the angel of contrition could -take full possession of his nature, the devil of suspicion, the imp of -the box, regained its place. - -For why had she not answered him? She knew he cared nothing about the -trivial bill, the matter of the furs, he told himself. Why had she not -insisted on a hearing, and told him about the box? She knew as well as -he that that was what he had broken into her desk to get! - -Justice whispered that she had been about to speak, and that he had -denied her the chance. But the imp of the box said that an honest woman -would have _demanded_ the chance--would have persisted until she got it! -And thus, his very shame, and anger at himself, were cunningly turned -and twisted by the genius of the brass-bound box into a confirmation of -his suspicions. - -V - -|Suspicions? Nay, convictions! Beliefs. Certainties! - -They were certainties, now! Certainties to Clarke's mind, at least. For -in a month after this episode he had become a silent monomaniac on the -subject of the brass-bound box. He felt shame no longer. She was guilty. -Of just what, he did not know. But guilty. Guilty as Hell itself, he -told himself, rhetorically, in one of the dumb rages which now became so -frequent with him. - -_Guilty--guilty--guilty_--the clock on the mantelpiece ticked off many -dragging hours of intolerable minutes to that tune, while Clarke lay -awake and listened. _Guilty--guilty--guilty_--repeat any word often -enough, and it will hypnotize you. _Guilty--guilty--guilty_--so he and -the clock would talk to each other, back and forth, the whole night -through. If any suggestions of his former, more normal habits of thought -came to him now it was they that were laughed out of court; it was they -that were flung away and scorned as traitors. - -She was guilty. But he would be crafty! He would be cunning. He would -make no mistake. He would allow her no subterfuge. He would give her no -chance to snare him back into a condition of half belief. There should -be no juggling explanations. They were clever as the devil, women were! -But this one should have no chance to fool him again. She had fooled him -too long already. - -And she kept trying to fool him. Shortly after his outburst over the -furs, she began again a series of timid advances which would have struck -him as pathetic had he not known that her whole nature was corroded and -corrupted with deceit, with abominable deceit. She was trying to make -him believe that she did not know why he was angry and estranged, was -she? He would show her! He hated her now, with that restless, burning -intensity of hatred known only to him who has injured another. A hatred -that consumed his own vitality, and made him sick in soul and body. The -little sleep he got was passed in uneasy dreams of his revenge; and his -waking hours were devoted to plots and plans of the form which it should -take. Oh, but she had been cunning to fool him for so long; but she -should see! She should see! When the time for action came, she should -see! - - - -VI - -|Something, one tense and feverish midnight, when he lay in his bed -snarling and brooding and chuckling--a kind of snapping sense in some -remote interior chamber of his brain, followed by a nervous shock that -made him sit upright--warned him that the time for action was at hand. -What is it that makes sinners, at provincial revival meetings, suddenly -aware that the hours of dalliance are past and the great instant that -shall send them to “the mourners' bench” is at hand? Somehow, they seem -to know! And, somehow, Clarke felt an occult touch and knew that his -time for action had arrived. - -He did not care what came afterwards. Any jury in the world, so he told -himself, ought to acquit him of his deed, when they once knew his story; -when they once looked at the damning evidence of her guilt which she -had hidden away for so long in the brass-bound box. But if they did not -acquit him, that was all right, too. His work in the world would have -been done; he would have punished a guilty woman. He would have shown -that all men are not fools. - -But he did not spend a great deal of thought on how other people would -regard what he was about to do. As he crept down the hall with the knife -in his hand, his chief sensation was a premonitory itch, a salty tang -of pleasure in the doing of the deed itself. When hatred comes in where -love has gone out, there may be a kind of voluptuary delight in the act -of murder. - -Very carefully he opened the door of her room. And then he smiled to -himself, and entered noisily; for what was the need of being careful -about waking up a woman who was already dead? He did not care whether he -killed her in her sleep or not;--indeed, if she wakened and begged for -her life, he thought it might add a certain zest to the business. He -should enjoy hearing her plead. He would not mind prolonging things. - -But things were not prolonged. His hand and the muscles of his forearm -had tensed so often with the thought, with the idea, that the first blow -went home. She never waked. - - - -VII - -|He got the box, and opened it. - -Inside was a long envelope, and written on that were the words: - -“To be opened by my husband only after my death.” - -That time had come! - -Within the envelope was a letter. It was dated on the day of his return -from his western trip, a few months before. He read: - -“Dick, I love you! - -“Does it seem strange to you that I should write it down? - -“Listen, Dickie dear--I _had_ to write it! I couldn't tell you when I -was alive--but I just had to tell you, too. And now that I am dead, what -I say will come to you with all of its sweetness increased; and all -of its bitterness left out! It will, now that I am dead--or if you die -first, you will never see this. This is from beyond the grave to you, -Dickie dear, to make all your life good to you afterwards! - -“Now, listen, dear, and don't be hard on me. - -“When I married you, Dickie, I _didn't_ love you! You were wild about -me. But I only _liked_ you very much. It wasn't really love. It wasn't -what you _deserved_. But I was only a girl, and you were the first man, -and I didn't know things; I didn't know what I _should have_ felt. - -“Later, when I realized how very much you cared, I was ashamed of -myself. I grew to see that I had done wrong in marrying you. Wrong to -both of us. For no woman should marry a man she doesn't love. And I was -ashamed, and worried about it. You were so good to me! So sweet--and you -never suspected that I didn't care like I should. And because you were -so good and sweet to me, I felt _worse_. And I made up my mind you -should _never_ know! That I would be everything to you any woman could -be. I tried to be a good wife. Wasn't I, Dickie, even then? - -“But I prayed and prayed and prayed. 'O God,' I used to say, 'let me -love him like he loves me!' It was five years, Dickie, and I _liked_ you -more, and _admired_ you more, and saw more in you that was worth while, -every week; but still, no miracle happened. - -“And then one morning _a miracle did happen!_ - -“It was when you were on that trip West. I had gone to bed thinking how -kind and dear you were. I missed you, Dickie dear, and _needed_ you. And -when I woke up, there was a change over the world. I felt so different, -somehow. It had come! Wasn't it wonderful, Dickie?--it had come! And I -sang all that day for joy. I could hardly wait for you to come home so -that I could tell you. I loved you, loved you, loved you, Dickie, _as -you deserved!_ My prayers had been answered, somehow--or maybe it was -what any woman would do just living near you and being with you. - -“And then I saw _I couldn't tell you, after all!_ - -“For if I told you I loved you now, that would be to tell you that for -five years _I hadn't loved you_, Dickie! - -“And how would _that_ make you feel? Wouldn't that have been like a -knife, Dickie? - -“Oh, I wanted you to know! _How_ I wanted you to know! But, you see, I -couldn't tell you, could I, dear, without telling the other, too? I just -_had_ to save you from that! And I just had to make you feel it, somehow -or other. And I _will_ make you feel it, Dickie! - -“But I can't tell you. Who knows what ideas you might get into your head -about those five years, if I told you now? Men are so queer, and they -can be so stupid sometimes! And I can't bear to think of losing one -smallest bit of your love... not now! It would _kill_ me! - -“But I want you to know, sometime. And so I'm writing you--it's my first -love letter--the first real one, Dickie. If _you_ die first, I'll tell -you in Heaven. And if _I_ die first, you'll understand! - -“Agnes.” - - - - -XII.--Behind the Curtain - -|It was as dark as the belly of the fish that swallowed Jonah. A -drizzling rain blanketed the earth in chill discomfort. As I splashed -and struggled along the country road, now in the beaten path, and now -among the wet weeds by its side, I had never more heartily yearned -for the dullness and comforts of respectability. Here was I with more -talents in my quiver, it pleased me to think, than nine out of ten of -the burghers I had left sleeping snug and smug in the town a few miles -behind; with as much real love of humanity as the next man, too; and yet -shivering and cursing my way into another situation that might well mean -my death. And all for what? For fame or riches? No, for little more than -a mere existence, albeit free from responsibility. Indeed, I was all but -ready to become an honest man then and there, to turn back and give -up the night's adventure, had but my imagination furnished me with the -picture of some occupation whereby I might gain the same leisure and -independence as by what your precisians call thieving. - -With the thought I stumbled off the road again, and into a narrow gully -that splashed me to the knees with muddy water. Out of that, I walked -plump into a hedge, and when I sought to turn from it at right angles, I -found myself still following its line. This circumstance showed me that -I was come unaware upon the sharp turn of the road which marked the -whereabouts of the house that was my object. Following the hedge, I -found the entrance to the graveled driveway within a hundred yards of -my last misstep, and entered the grounds. I groped about me for a space, -not daring to show a light, until presently a blacker bulk, lifting -itself out of the night's comprehensive blackness, indicated the -house itself, to my left and a bit in front of me. I left the moist -gravel--for there is nothing to be gained on an expedition of this -sort by advertising the size and shape of your boots to a morbidly -inquisitive public--and reached the shelter of the veranda by walking -across the lawn. - -There, being out of eyeshot from the upper windows, I risked a gleam -from my pocket lantern, one of those little electric affairs that are -occasionally useful to others than night watchmen. Two long French -windows gave on the veranda; and, as I knew, both of them opened from -the reception hall. A bit of a way with the women is not amiss in my -profession; and the little grayeyed Irish maid, who had told me three -weeks before of old man Rolfe's stinginess and brutality towards the -young wife whom he had cooped up here for the past four years, had also -given me, bit by bit, other information more valuable than she could -guess. So, thanks to the maid, I was aware that the safe where the Rolfe -jewels were kept--and often a substantial bit of money as well--was -situated in the library; which was just beyond the hall and connected -with it by a flight of four or five steps. This safe was my objective -point. - -The wooden window shutters were but the work of a moment; and the window -fastenings themselves of only a few minutes more. (I flatter myself that -I have a very coaxing way with window fasteners.) The safe itself would -give me the devil's own trouble, I knew. It was really a job for two -men, and I ached all over to be at it, to be safely through with it, and -away, a good hour before sunrise. - -The window opened noiselessly enough, and I stepped within and set my -little satchel full of necessary tools upon the floor. But the damp -weather had swelled the woodwork, and as I closed the window again, -though I pushed it ever so gently, it gave forth a noise something -between a grunt and a squeak. - -And as pat as the report of a pistol to the pressure of the trigger came -the answer--a sound of a quickly-caught breath from the warm dimness of -the room. I made no motion; though the blood drummed desperately through -my brain and my scalp tingled with apprehension and excitement. - -For ten, for twenty, for thirty seconds I stood so; and then the silence -was broken by the unmistakable rustle of a woman's skirts. The sound -came softly towards me through the darkness. It was my turn to let loose -my held breath with a gasp, and in another moment I should have been -through the window and running for it; when a woman's whisper halted me. - -“Is that you, Charles? And why did you not rap upon the shutter?” - -So some one called Charles was expected? Then, ticked off my thoughts -almost automatically, the lady somewhere near me in the dark might have -her own reasons for not caring to alarm the house just then! The thought -steadied me to action. - -“Shh,” I whispered, feeling behind me for the window, and gradually -opening it again. “S-h-h! No, it is not Charles”--and I put one foot -backward across the sill. “It is not Charles, but Charles has sent me to -say----” - -Click!--went something by the window, and the room was flooded with -sudden brilliance from a dozen electric globes. And again, click!--and -I looked with blinking eyes at the muzzle of a cocked pistol held by the -most beautiful, the most be-jeweled, the most determined-looking young -woman it has ever been my lot to meet. - -“Who are you?” she asked in a voice that was at once hoarse and sweet. -“Who are you? And what do you want? And where is Charles?” - -As I stood there dripping moisture upon the oiled floor, with my hands -in the air--they had gone up quite involuntarily--I must have been the -very picture of idiocy and discomfiture. I wondered if Charles, whoever -the devil Charles might be, was always welcomed with a cocked pistol. -Probably not; but, I wondered, how did she happen to have a pistol with -her? I wondered why neck, breast, hair, arms, and hands should be ablaze -with the diamonds that accentuated her lithe and vivid loveliness. I -wondered why, now that she saw I was not Charles, she did not alarm the -house. I wondered everything; but nothing to the point. And as I stood -wondering she repeated: - -“Who are you? And what do you want?” - -“Madame,” I stammered, my jarred brain fastening upon the sentence she -had interrupted, “Charles sent me to--to say to you----” - -“Charles who?” she asked. And as tense as was her face, a gleam of -merriment shot through her eyes. “Charles who?” she repeated. - -Charles was not one of the points upon which the Irish maid had given me -information. - -The lady with the pistol considered for a moment. “You are not very -clever, are you?” she said. - -“If you will pardon me,” I said, “I think I had better be going. I seem -to have mistaken the house.” - -“You at least seem to have mistaken the proper manner in which to enter -it,” she returned. - -“Why, as to the mode of entrance,” I said, “I might plead that the -mistake appears to have been less in that than in the person who -employed it.” - -I could not resist the retort. A dull red crept slowly up her neck and -face; a pallid, olive-tinted face, beautiful in itself, beautiful for -its oval contour and broad brow, and frame of black hair; beautiful in -itself, and yet dominated and outdone by the lustrous, restless beauty -of the dark eyes wherewith she held me more surely captive than by -virtue of the pistol. - -“You will come in,” she said, “and sit there.” She indicated a seat -beside a central table. “But first you will kindly let me have whatever -weapons you may possess.” She took my revolver, examined it, and put her -own in the breast of her gown. “Now you may put your hands down,” she -said, “your arms must ache by now. Sit down.” - -I sat. She stood and looked at me for a moment. - -“I am wondering what you are going to do with me,” I ventured. - -In all of her quick actions, and in the tones of her voice, there was -evident a most unnatural sort of strain. She may well have been excited; -that was only to be expected in the circumstances. But the repressed -excitement in this woman's manner was not that of a woman who is forcing -herself to keep her courage up; not that of a woman who would like to -scream; but a steadier nervous energy which seemed to burn in her like a -fire, to escape from her finger tips, and almost to crackle in her -hair; an intensity that was vibrant. I marveled. Most women would have -screamed at the advent of a man in the dead of night; screamed and -fainted. Or the ones who would not, and who were armed as she, would -ordinarily have been inclined to shoot, and at once; or immediately to -have given the alarm. She had done none of these things. She had merely -taken me captive. She had set me down in a chair at the center of the -room. She had not roused the house. And now she stood looking at me with -a trace of abstraction in her manner; looking at me, for the moment, -less as if I were a human being than as if I were a factor in some -mathematical problem which it was the immediate task of that active, -high-keyed brain of hers to solve. And there was a measure of irony in -her glance, as if she alone tasted and enjoyed some ulterior jest. - -“I am wondering,” I repeated, “what you are going to do with me.” - -She sat down at the opposite side of the table before she replied. - -“I believe,” she said slowly, “that I have nearly made up my mind what -to do with you.” - -“Well?” I asked. - -But she said nothing, and continued to say nothing. I looked at her and -her diamonds--the diamonds I had come after!--and wondered again why she -was wearing them; wondered why she had tricked herself out as for -some grand entertainment. And as the ignominious result of my night's -expedition pressed more sharply against my pride I could have strangled -her through sheer disappointment and mortification. The pistol she held -was the answer to that impulse. But what was the answer to her hesitancy -in alarming the house? Why did she not give me up and be done with me? - -At the farther end of the room was a long red curtain, which covered the -entrance to a sitting-room or parlor, as I guessed; and by the side -of the curtain hung an old-fashioned bell cord, also of red, which -I supposed to communicate with the servants' quarters. It were easy -enough, now that she had taken the whip hand of me so cleverly, to pull -that rope, to set the bell jangling, to rouse the house. Why did she not -do so? - -Was she a mad woman? There was that in her inexplicable conduct, and in -her highly-wrought, yet governed, mood, as she sat in brooding silence -across the table from me, to make the theory plausible. Brooding she -was, and studying me, I thought; yet watchful, too. For at any least -motion of mine her hand tightened slightly upon the pistol. We sat -thus while the slow seconds lengthened into intolerable minutes; and I -steamed with sweat, and fidgeted. Nor was I set more at my ease by her -long searching glances. In fact, my overthrow had been so instant and -so complete that my scattered wits had never drawn themselves together -again; I continued as one in a haze; as a person half under the power -of the hypnotist; as a mouse must feel after the first blow of the cat's -paw. And yet one idea began to loom clearly out of that haze and possess -me--the idea that she desired the alarm to be given as little as I did -myself. - -But there was no light in that. It was easy to understand why she -did not wish the house aroused while she still believed me to be -Charles--whoever Charles might be. But now?--it was too much for me. -I could not find a justification in reason for my belief; and yet the -conviction grew. - -She broke the silence with a question that might have been put with full -knowledge of my thought. - -“You are still wondering why I do not give you up?” she said. - -I nodded. She leaned towards me across the table, and if ever the demons -of mockery danced through a woman's eyes it was then; and her lips -parted in a kind of silent laughter. - -She touched the diamonds about her throat. - -“It was these you came after?” - -I nodded again. Evidently speech was of no avail with this lady. She -asked questions at her will, and reserved the right of answering none. - -“Tell me,” she said, “Why are you a thief? Why do you steal?” - -“'Convey, the wise it call,'” I quoted. “Accident, or fate, or destiny, -I suppose,” I went on, wondering more than ever at the question, but -with a fluttering hope. Perhaps the lady (in spite of Charles--such -things have been!) was an amateur sociologist, a crank reformer, or -something of that sort. There had been no mockery in her tone when -she asked the question; instead, I thought, a kind of pity. “Fate, -or destiny,” I went on, “or what you please, 'There is a destiny that -shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,'” I quoted again, in my -best actor manner. - -“Why,” she said, “you are a man with some air of better things about -you. You quote Shakespeare as if he were an old friend. And yet, you are -a thief! Tell me,” she continued, “tell me--I dare say there were many -struggles against that destiny?” There was a note almost of eagerness -in her voice, as if she were a leniently-inclined judge who would fain -search out and put in the mouth of a condemned man some plausible plea -for the exercise of clemency. “Come--were there not?--I dare say there -were--circumstances of uncommon bitterness that forced you to become -what I see you? And even now you hate the thing you are?” - -“Why, as to that,” I said, possessed of the sudden whim to be honest -with myself for once, “I am afraid that I can complain of no bitterer -usage at the hands of the world than can the majority of those who reap -where they have not sowed. When I think of it all, I am used to putting -it to myself that my life is devoted to a kind of private warfare -against the unjust conditions of a hypocritical social order.” - -“Warfare!” she flouted, hard and brilliant as one of her own diamonds -again. “And you could justify it, too, could you not?” - -And then she asked me: “Have you ever killed a man?” - -“Why, no,” said I, “but I have tried to.” - -“He lived?--and you were sorry that he lived?” - -“No,” I said, quite out of my depths in all this moral quibbling, “I was -glad he lived.” - -“And yet you hated him?” - -“I would have taken his life in a rage,” I said. “He had wronged me as -greatly as one man can wrong another.” - -“And yet you were glad he lived? My dear thief----” - -“Higgins is the name,” said I. “You may call me Higgins.” - -“My dear Higgins,” she went on, “you are inconsistent. You attempt to -slay a man in what I should judge to have been a not ignoble passion. -It may have been an anger that did you credit. And yet you are not -bold enough to face the thought of killing him. You are glib with -justifications of your thievery; and perhaps that is also because you -are too much of a coward to look steadily at it. You creep along a mean -and despicable path in life, contentedly, it seems to me, with a dead -soul. You are what you are because there is nothing positive in you for -either good or evil. You are negative; you were better dead. Yes, better -dead!” - -Why should I have felt as if she were seeking self-justification in -advance for some death she planned for me? Certainly, my life, or death, -was not hers to give or take; she might give me up, and probably would. -But just as certainly she had made me feel, as she passed her judgment -upon me, that she was likely to turn executioner as well as judge. My -doubts as to her sanity returned. - -“Still,” I said, for the sake of saying something, “if I killed a man, I -should not like to think about it, even if he deserved death.” - -“Even if he deserved death?” she repeated, and sprang up, as if the -phrase had touched her. “You make yourself the judge, you do, of when -a man 'deserves' to lose his wealth. Come, what is your idea of when he -deserves to die?” - -Up and down the room she swept; yet still watchful. And the emotion -which she had so long suppressed burst out into a poisonous lovely bloom -that suffused her being with an awful beauty. - -“When does he deserve to die?” she repeated. “Listen to me. I knew -a woman once--no matter where--no matter when--who was sold--sold! I -say--by the sordid devil she called her father, to the veriest beast -that ever trod this earth. Her beauty--for she had beauty--her wit--for -wit she had--became this husband's chattels before she turned her -twentieth year. She would never have loved him, but she would have been -faithful to him--she was faithful to him, in fact, in spite of all his -drunkenness and bestiality--and abuse! It was not neglect alone that she -had to complain of--she had never looked for understanding or sympathy. -But she had not looked for abuse. Abuse, I say, and worse than abuse. -Before she had been married a year she knew what it was, not only to -feel the weight of a heavy hand and to hide the bruises from her maid, -but to see other women brought into her very house. Pah!--hate? She -hated him? Hate is not the word. She became a live coal. But she never -cried out; she found strength to smile at him even when he beat her; she -was proud enough for that. It pleased him, in his hellish humor, and -because she was made to shine, to cage her in a country house, and there -to taunt her that although she was sold to him she got little of what -money may buy. And still she smiled at him, and still her hatred grew -through all the weeks and months until it filled her whole being. And -then--love came. For God has ordained that love may enter even Hell. -Love, I say; and she loved this lover of hers with a passion that was -measured only by the degree in which she hated her husband. And she -would have left with him; but on the very night they would have flown -together her lord and master-----” - -She said the words with an indescribable spluttering sneer, sidewise -from her mouth. It is so a lioness may snarl and spit before she leaps. - -“Her--lord and master--found it out, and waited up to catch them; and -coming upon her alone, taunted her. Taunted her, and struck her----” - -“Look!” she cried, and tore the diamonds from her breast, and rent the -laces, and wrenched the fastenings apart. A new red weal that seemed to -throb and pulse with her respiration stood out from the whiteness of her -bosom. - -“Tell me,” she whispered hoarsely, “would it have been murder if she had -killed that man? Which were the more courageous thing--to kill him, or -to step back into her living hell? If she had killed him, would she have -regretted it?” - -I know not what I might have answered; but at that instant three raps -sounded distinctly upon the window-shutter. I leaped to my feet. Then -Charles had come! - -An instant she stood as if stricken to a statue in mid-rage. - -And then she cried out, and there was a furious triumph in her voice--a -kind of joy that matched itself to, and blended with, the fierce and -reckless beauty of her shaken jewels, possessed her. - -“Charles,” she cried, “come in! Come in!” - -Slowly the window opened and a man entered. He drew back in amaze at the -sight of me, and turned to her with an air that was all one question. - -“I thought you would never come,” she said. - -He was a big blond man, and as he turned from the one to the other of -us, with his helpless, inquiring face, and eyes that blinked from the -outer darkness, he looked oddly like a sleepy schoolboy who has been -awakened from an afternoon nap by the teacher's ruler. - -“Katherine,” he finally stammered, “what is this? Who is this man?” He -passed his hand across his forehead as one may do who doubts whether or -not he dreams; and walked towards the table. - -“Charles,” she said, “I have shot the old man.” I have seen a beef -stricken on the head with a mallet look at its executioner with big eyes -for an instant before the quivering in its limbs set in and it sank to -the ground. So this Charles looked with wide, stupid eyes, and shivered, -and dropped the great bulk of him into a chair. His head sank upon his -hand. But finally he looked up, and spoke in a confused voice, as if -through a mist. “Good God, Katherine, what do you mean?” - -“I mean,” she said, framing the words slowly, as one speaks a lesson to -a child, “I mean that I have killed the old man.” - -And moving swiftly across the room she flung back the heavy red curtain -at the end of it; and I saw the answer to my many questionings. - -The body lay upon its back, with one arm bent, the hand across the -chest, and the fingers spread wide. The face was that of a man of sixty -or thereabouts, but, indeed, so deeply lined and wrinkled and pouched -with evil living that the age even in life must have been hard to -determine. Blood was coagulating about a bullet wound in the temple, -and there were powder burns on the forehead. The shot had been fired at -close range, evidently from the weapon with which I had been confronted -on my entrance; and the sound had been so muffled in the curtain that it -was little wonder that the servants in the rooms above, and across the -house, had not heard it. He had a monstrous nose, that man upon the -floor, and it must have been a red nose in life; but now it was of a -bluish-white color, like the skin of an old and scrawny fowl. That, and -the thin, drawn-up legs, and the big flabby paunch of the thing, robbed -the sight, for me, of all the solemnity which (we are taught) exudes -from the presence of death. It made me sick; and yet I cackled with -sheer hysteria, too; or rather my strained nerves jarred and laughed, if -not myself. It was too damned grotesque. - -Herself, she did not look at it. She looked at the man called Charles; -and he, with a shudder, lifted his slow gaze from the thing behind the -curtain to her face. - -She was the first to speak, and the terrible joy with which she had bade -Charles to enter still dominated her accents. - -“Don't you understand, Charles? This man,” and she indicated me with the -pistol, “this man takes the blame of this. He is a thief. He came just -after--just afterwards. And I held him for your coming. Don't you see? -Don't you see? His presence clears us of this deed!” - -“_Us?_” queried Charles. - -“Not _us?_” she asked. - -“My God, Katherine,” he burst forth, “why did you do this thing? And -you would heap murder on murder! Why, why, why did you do it? Why splash -this blood upon our love? A useless thing to do! We might have--we might -have------” - -He broke down and sobbed. And then: “God knows the old man never did me -any harm,” he said. “And she'd accuse the thief, too!” he cried a moment -later, with a kind of wondering horror. - -“Listen, Charles,” she said, and moved towards him; and yet with a -sidelong glance she still took heed of me. “Listen, and understand -me. We must act quickly--but after it happened it was necessary that I -should see you before we could act. This man came to rob; here is his -pistol, and in that satchel by the window are his tools, no doubt. He -may tell what wild tale he will; but who will believe him? You go as you -came; I give him up--and we--we wait awhile, and then the rest of life -is ours.” - -I suppose that it is given to few men to hear their death plotted in -their presence. But I had come to the pass by this time where it struck -me as an impersonal thing. I listened; but somehow the full sense of -what she said, as affecting me, did not then impinge upon my brain with -waking force. I stood as if in a trance; I stood and looked on at those -two contending personalities, that were concerned just now with the -question of my life or death, as if I were a spectator in a theater--as -if it were someone else of whom they spoke. - -“Go,” she cried to Charles again, “and I will give him up.” - -“Katherine,” he said, “and you would do this thing?” - -“Why?” she retorted, “what is this man's life beside mine? His soul is -dead! I tell you, Charles, that I have come through Hell alive to gain -one ray of happiness! But go!--and leave the rest to me.” - -And she grasped the bell cord and pulled it. Pulled it again and again. -The sound wandered crazily through what remote corridors I know not. - -She made a step towards him. He leaped to his feet with an oath, with -loathing in his eyes, shrank back from her, and held out a hand as if to -ward off some unclean thing. - -Bewilderment lined her face. She groped to understand. And then, as the -full significance of his gesture came home to her, she winced and swayed -as if from a blow; and the pistol dropped from her loosened grasp to the -floor. - -“You--you abandon me?” she said slowly. “You desert me, then? Love, -Love, think how I have loved you that I did this thing! And is what I -have suffered--what I have done--still to purchase--nothing?” - -She pleaded for my death; but I hope that I shall never again see on any -human face the look of despair that was on hers. I pitied her! - -Heavy feet on the stairway woke me from my trance. Unregarded of them -both I grasped my pistol from the floor and sprang for the window. A -door opened somewhere above, and a voice asked: - -“You rang, Ma'am?” - -From without the window I looked back into the room. She stood with -outstretched hands--hands that reached upward from the pit of torment, -my fancy told me--and pleaded for a little love. “In all this world is -there no little ray of love for me?”--it was so my imagination rather -than my hearing translated the slight movement of her lips. And while -she and the man called Charles stood thus at gaze with one another, the -servant spoke again from the stairway. - -“You rang?” he asked. - -She slowly straightened. She steadied herself. And with her eyes still -fixed upon those of Charles she cried: - -“Yes, yes, I rang, Jones! Your master is--dead. Your master's murdered! -And there, there,” and she stabbed an accusing finger at her erstwhile -lover, “there is the man who murdered him!” - -And then I turned from the window and ran from that house; and as I ran -I saw the Dawn, like a wild, fair woman, walk up the eastern sky with -blood-stained feet. - - - - -XIII.--Words and Thoughts - -[A Play in One Act] - -Characters: - -Cousin Fanny Hemlock - -John Speaker - -Mary Speaker - -John Thinker - -Mary Thinker - -Maid - -Period, the present. Place, any American city. - -The Scene _represents two drawing rooms, exact duplicates, furnished -alike to the smallest detail. Either room might be the reflection of the -other in a mirror. Each occupies half of the stage. The division line -between them is indicated, towards the hack of the stage, by two pianos, -which sit hack to back at the center of the hack drop. This division -is carried by the pianos a quarter or a third of the way towards the -footlights. The division is further suggested, towards the front of the -stage, hy a couple of settees or couches, which also sit back to back._ - -John Speaker and Mary Speaker _remain all the time in the room at the -right of the stage. They are not aware of_ John Thinker _and_ Mary -Thinker, _who are, throughout the play, in the room at the left. The_ -Thinkers, _however, are aware of the_ Speakers. - -_In make-up, looks, dress, etc., the two_Johns _are precisely alike. -The same is true of_ Mary Speaker and Mary Thinker. _The_ Johns _are -conventional-looking, prosperous Americans of from 38 to 40 years of -age. The two_ Marys _are a few years younger._ - -Cousin Fanny Hemlock _is a dried-up, querulous old woman of seventy._ - -_The Curtain, on rising, discovers the two_ Johns _and the two_ Marys. -_It is between 7 and 8 in the evening; they are all in evening dress, -and are preparing to go out, putting on their gloves, etc., etc._ - -John Speaker [_Picking up over coat._] - -Are you ready, Mary dear? - -Mary Speaker [_Holding out a gloved hand._] - -Quite, John dear. Button this for me, won't you, love? - -John Speaker [_Busy with glove._] - -It's been nearly a year, hasn't it, since we've been out together of -an evening? I'm afraid Cousin Fanny is terribly trying on you at times, -Mary. - -Mary Speaker - -You know, John, I don't consider her a trial. I _love_ Cousin Fanny. - -John Thinker - -[_Busy with Mary Thinker's glove._] - -The old cat's letting us off to-night, for a wonder, Mary. She's a -horrible affliction! - -Mary Thinker [_Passionately._] - -Affliction is no word. She makes my life a living hell! I hate her! - -John Speaker - -[_Helping Mary Speaker on with coat, which action is simultaneously -imitated hy John and Mary Thinker._] - -Well, we must bear with her gently, Mary. I am afraid poor Cousin Fanny -will not be with us many more years. - -John Thinker [_To Mary Thinker._] - -One comfort is she'll die before long! - -Mary Speaker [_To John Speaker._] - -Oh, John, you don't think Cousin Fanny's going to die, do you? - -Mary Thinker [_To John Thinker._] - -Don't fool yourself about her dying soon, John. There's no such luck! - -[_Enter Maid through door in right back to John and Mary Speaker, -who look up. John and Mary Thinker also notice entrance of Maid and -listen._] - -Maid - -[_To Mary Speaker._] - -Miss Hemlock sent me to inquire whether you were going out to-night. - -Mary Thinker [_To John Thinker, quickly._] - -The old cat's up to something! - -Mary Speaker [_To Maid_.] - -Yes. We were just starting. Does Miss Hemlock want anything? I will go -to her if she wishes to speak with me. - -Maid - -She said, in case you were going out, that I was to tell you _not_ to do -so. - -Mary Speaker - -_Not_ to do so? - -Maid - -Yes, ma'am; that's what she said. She said in case you were getting -ready to go out, you were to change your plans and stop at home. - -John Speaker [_To Maid._] - -Not to do so? But, surely, there must be some mistake! - -[_Maid shakes her head slowly, deliberately, looking fixedly at John -Speaker; and while she is doing so John Thinker says to Mary Thinker_:] - -John Thinker - -Some malicious idea is working in her head tonight! - -Maid - -[_To John Speaker._] - -No, sir, no mistake. She said very plainly and distinctly that you were -not to go out tonight. - -[_Maid bows and exits._] - -John Speaker - -Cousin Fanny is not so well to-night, I'm afraid, dear, or she would -certainly have put her request in some other way. - -Mary Speaker - -If I didn't love Cousin Fanny, John, I would be tempted to believe that -she deliberately tries at times to annoy us. - -John Speaker - -Cousin Fanny is old, and we must remember that she is very fond of us. -We will have to bear with her. - -[_John Speaker takes his top coat and his wife's coat> and lays them on -a chair, while John Thinker, who has been frowning and brooding, flings -himself into chair and says to Mary Thinker_:] - -John Thinker - -For cold-blooded, devilish nerve in a man's own house, Cousin Fanny -certainly takes the cake, Mary! - -Mary Thinker - -She gets more spiteful every day. She knows her power, and the more -childish she gets the more delight she takes in playing tyrant. - -John Thinker - -Cheer up, it isn't forever! If she doesn't change her will before she -dies, it means fifteen thousand dollars a year. That's worth a little -trouble! - -Mary Thinker - -You're away at your office all day. I'm here at home with her. It is I -who catch all the trouble! - -John Thinker - -Well, after all, she's more nearly related to you, Mary, than she is to -me. - -Mary Thinker - -She's my mother's third cousin, if you call _that_ near! - -John Thinker - -Well, then, she's my father's fifth cousin, if you call _that_ near! - -Mary Speaker - -What were you thinking of, John, dear? - -John Speaker - -Nothing... nothing, Mary... except that - -Cousin Fanny is a poor, lonely old soul, after all. - -Mary Speaker - -Poor, lonely old woman, indeed--it's odd, isn't it, that she is related -to both you and me, John? - -John Speaker - -She's closer to you than to me, Mary. - -Mary Speaker - -You couldn't call a fourth or fifth cousin very near, John. - -John Speaker - -It almost seems as if you were trying to deny the blood tie, Mary! - -Mary Speaker - -No, John, dear, blood is thicker than water. - -John Speaker Thicker than water! - -John Thinker - -Relations are the most unpleasant persons on earth. I hate cousins. - -Mary Thinker - -Especially cousins who are also cousins-in-law! John Speaker - -But even if she were only _my_ relation, Mary, and not related to _you_ -at all, I know enough of your sweet nature to know that she would always -be welcome in our home in spite of her little idiosyncrasies. - -[_Enter Cousin Fanny, to John and Mary Speaker, through door right hack. -She coughs as she steps forward, leaning on a cane, and puts her hand to -her chest, stop-ping. Then as she comes forward, she stumbles. John and -Mary Speaker leap forward, put their arms behind her, and, supporting -and leading her, conduct her tenderly down stage to chair at center of -room they are in. John and Mary Thinker, near together at table in their -room, lean forward eagerly and watch this entrance, and when the old -woman stumbles, John Thinker says to Mary Thinker, nudging her:_] - -John Thinker - -You see? - -Mary Thinker - -See what? - -John Thinker - -She totters! - -Mary Thinker - -She stumbled. - -John Thinker - -She's getting weaker. - -[_Mary Speaker tenderly kisses Cousin Fanny, as Mary Thinker says_:] - -Mary Thinker - -Weaker! She'll live to be a hundred and ten! - -John Thinker - -Not she! - -Mary Thinker - -The mean kind always do! - -John Speaker - -[_Tenderly, to Cousin Fanny, arranging cushion behind her._] - -Can't I get you a wrap, Cousin Fanny? - -Mary Speaker - -Don't you feel a draught, Cousin Fanny? - -Mary Thinker - -[_Bitterly, frowning at other group_.] - -No draught will ever harm her! - -Cousin Fanny - -[_To John Speaker, sneeringly; petulantly._] You're mighty anxious -about a _wrap_, John! But you were thinking of going out and leaving me -practically alone in the house. - -John Speaker [_Deprecatingly._ ] - -But, Cousin Fanny---- - -Cousin Fanny [_Interrupting_.] - -Don't deny it! Don't take the trouble to deny it! Don't lie about it! -You can't lie to me! Don't I see your evening clothes? And Mary, too! -Both of you were going out--_both_ of you! - -Mary Speaker - -Cousin Fanny, we gave it up when we learned that you wanted us to stop -at home with you. Didn't we, John? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_Querulously, childishly, shrilly._] - -Don't deny it, Mary, don't deny it! Don't excuse yourself! I can see you -were going out! I can see your evening clothes! - -Mary Speaker - -We'll go and change to something else, won't we, John? - -[_She is going, as she speaks, but Cousin Fanny cries out_:] - -Cousin Fanny - -Stop! - -[_Mary Speaker stops, and Cousin Fanny continues_:] - -Don't take them off. I don't want you to take them off. What do you want -to take them off for? Are they too good for _me_ to see? Are they too -grand for me to look at? Ain't I as good as any one you'd find if you -went out? Heh? - -Mary Speaker - -Cousin Fanny, I didn't mean that. I meant---- - -Cousin Fanny [_Interrupting._] - -I know what you meant! Don't tell me what you meant, Mary. You meant to -slip out and leave me here alone, both of you. It's lucky I caught you -in time. It's lucky I have money! It's lucky I don't have to put up with -the treatment most old folks get. I'd starve, if I were poor! I'd die of -hunger and neglect! - -[_She begins to cry, and Mary Speaker says_:] - -Mary Speaker No, no, no, Cousin Fanny! - -[_Mary Speaker soothes her, in pantomime, and pets her, trying to take -her hands away from her face, Cousin Fanny resisting, like a spoiled and -spiteful child. John Speaker, behind Cousin Fanny and his wife, walks -up and down, with his eyes on them, running his hand nervously and -excitedly through his hair. While this pantomime goes on, John and Mary -Thinker are watching and saying _:] - -John Thinker - -This is to be one of Cousin Fanny's pleasant evenings! - -Mary Thinker - -This happens a dozen times a day. - -John Thinker She's not really crying. - -Mary Thinker - -Pretence! She works it up to be unpleasant. - -John Thinker The old she-devil! - -John Speaker - -[_Taking Cousin Fanny's hand._] - -You know, Cousin Fanny, that we try to do our duty by you. - -Cousin Fanny [_Flinging his hand off._] - -You try to do your duty by my money! I know! - -I see! You talk of love and duty, but it's my money you want! But I may -fool you--I may fool you yet. It's not too late to change my will. It's -not too late to leave it all to charity! - -[_She speaks these lines with a cunning leer, and John Thinker, nudging -Mary Thinker and pointing to her, says:_] - -John Thinker The old cat is capable of it, too! - -John Speaker [_To Cousin Fanny_.] - -If you should leave your money to charity, Cousin Fanny, you would find -it made no difference with us. You know blood is thicker than water, -Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny [_Shrewdly, maliciously_.] - -So is sticky flypaper! - -John Speaker - -Come, come, you don't doubt the genuineness of our affection, do you, -Cousin Fanny? You've known me from my boyhood, Cousin Fanny, and you've -lived with us for ten years. You ought to know us by this time! You -ought to know us in ten years! - -Mary Thinker Ten years of torture! - -John Thinker It can't last much longer! - -John Speaker - -[_Who has taken her hand again, and has been patting it as a -continuation of his last speech, and looking at her fondly_.] - -You trust us, don't you, Cousin Fanny? You really are sure of our -affection, aren't you? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_To John Speaker. She shows that she really is willing to be convinced; -she searches their faces wistfully; she is pathetically eager._ ] - -John, John, you really _do_ care for me, don't you? [_She takes a hand -of each._] - -It isn't _all_ on account of my money, is it? If you knew I hadn't a -cent, you'd still be good to me, wouldn't you? - -John Speaker and Mary Speaker [_Together._] - -Yes, yes, Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny - -If I lost it all; if I told you I'd lost it all, you'd be just the same, -wouldn't you? - -[_John Speaker and Mary Speaker exchange glances over her head, and John -Speaker drops her hand, while John Thinker grabs Mary Thinker excitedly -by the arm and says quickly_:] - -John Thinker - -My God, you don't suppose she's really _lost_ it, do you? - -Mary Thinker - -No! This is just one of her cunning spells now. She can be as crafty as -a witch. - -Cousin Fanny - -If I hadn't a cent you'd still care for me, wouldn't you, Mary? - -Mary Speaker - -Why, Cousin Fanny, you know I would! - -Cousin Fanny - -But I'm hard on you at times. I'm unjust. I don't mean to be spiteful, -but I _am_ spiteful. When we get old we get suspicious of people. We get -suspicious of everybody. And suspicion makes us spiteful and unjust. I -know I'm not easy to live with, Mary. - -Mary Speaker [_Kissing Cousin Fanny._] - -You get such strange notions, Cousin Fanny! - -John Thinker - -And such true ones, Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny - -Tell me the truth, Mary. You find me a trial, Mary. You and John find me -a trial! - -Mary Speaker and John Speaker [_Together._ ] - -Never, Cousin Fanny! - -Mary Thinker and John Thinker [_Together._ ] - -Always, Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny And that is the truth? - -John Speaker, John Thinker, Mary Speaker and Mary Thinker [_All -together._ ] - -And that is the truth, Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny - -You don't know how suspicious one gets! - -Mary Speaker [_Petting her_.] - -But suspicion never stays long in your good heart, Cousin Fanny. There's -no room for it there, I know. But don't you think you'd better go to bed -now? Let me call the maid. - -Cousin Fanny - -[_Rousing up in chair; suspicion and meanness all awake again_.] - -To bed? Why to bed? Why do you want to pack me off to bed? I know! I -know why! You want me to go to bed so you two can talk about me. So you -can talk me over! So you can speculate on how long I will live. I know -you! I know what you talk about when I'm not around! I know what you've -been waiting and hoping for the last ten years! - -[_Begins to cry._] - -Well, you won't have long to wait now. The time's almost come! I feel -it's almost here. You'll get the money soon enough! - -Mary Speaker [_Soothing her_.] - -There, there, Cousin Fanny, don't go on like this! - -You know it isn't true--you know you'll live ten years yet! - -[_John Speaker runs his hands through his hair and looks silently at -Mary Speaker, and John Thinker, with the same gesture, says to Mary -Thinker_:] - -John Thinker - -If I thought she'd live ten years yet----! - -[_Pauses._] - -Mary Thinker - -Well, if you thought she'd live ten years yet----? - -John Thinker [_With a gesture of de pair._ ] - -My God--ten years like the last ten years! Ten years! Talk about earning -money! If it hasn't been earned ten times over! - -Mary Thinker - -[_Fiercely._] - -You see it mornings and evenings. I have it all day long, and every -day. I've had it for ten years. I go nowhere, I see no one. I have no -pleasures. I have no friends; I've lost my friends. I'm losing my youth. -I'm losing my looks. I'm losing my very soul. I'm shedding my life's -blood drop by drop to keep that querulous fool alive--just merely alive! -I'm tired of it! I'm sick of it! I'm desperate! I'm dying from her, I -tell you! - -Mary Speaker - -[_Still soothing Cousin Fanny, but speaking with one hand nervously -clutching her own head as she does so_.] - -Come, come, Cousin Fanny--you'd better go to bed now! - -Cousin Fanny - -I won't go to bed yet! I want my medicine. It's time for my medicine -now. I won't go to bed till I've had my sleeping tablets. - -John Speaker - -Where are they, Cousin Fanny? - -Cousin Fanny - -On top of the bookcase there. The small phial. [_John Speaker goes to -the bookcase and begins to rummage for phial, while John Thinker says, -meditatively_:] - -John Thinker - -I suppose if one ever gave her the wrong medicine by mistake it would be -called by some ugly name! - -Mary Thinker - -People like her never get the wrong medicine given to them, and never -take it by mistake themselves. - -John Speaker [_Finding bottle; examining it_.] - -See here, Cousin Fanny, didn't you have one of these about an hour ago? -Didn't I see you take one of them right after dinner? - -Cousin Fanny [_Peevishly._] - -I don't know. I don't remember. I want one now, anyhow. My nerves are on -the jump. You have got all my nerves on the jump. I'll take one, and nap -here in the chair. - -John Speaker [_To Mary Speaker_.] - -She took one about an hour ago. I don't think it's quite right to let -her have another so soon. They have a powerful depressing effect on the -heart. - -Mary Speaker Let me see which ones they are. - -[_John Speaker holds the bottle out towards Mary Speaker, in front of -Cousin Fanny. Cousin Fanny snatches it with a sudden motion, and laughs -childishly. John Speaker and Mary Speaker look at each other inquiringly -over her head._] - -John Speaker - -She really shouldn't have another one now, I'm afraid, dear. It might be -pretty serious. [_To Cousin Fanny_.] - -You _did_ take one right after dinner, didn't you, Cousin Fanny? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_Hugging bottle to her very excitedly_.] - -No! No! I tell you I didn't! I _will_ take one! You don't want me to get -to sleep! You don't want me to get any rest! You want me to die! - -John Thinker I _know_ that she _did_ have one. - -Mary Speaker [_To John Speaker_.] - -What can you do, dear? - -John Speaker - -[_Taking hold of Cousin Fanny's hands, and trying to take phial -gently_.] - -See here, Cousin Fanny, you must be reasonable... you mustn't be -stubborn about this. You can't have another tablet now. It's dangerous. -It might even kill you! - -John Thinker - -It _would_ kill her as certainly as she sits there. John Speaker - -Come, come, Cousin Fanny... it might be dangerous. - -Mary Speaker - -John, don't struggle with her! Don't you know if you struggle with her -it is likely to prove fatal? The doctor says the _least_ strain will -prove fatal. - -Cousin Fanny [_Whimpering and struggling._] - -Let me have it! Let me alone! Let go of my hands! You want to kill me! -You want me to die so you can get my money! - -John Speaker [_Releasing her._] - -No! No! No! Cousin Fanny... Come, be reasonable! - -[_He reaches for her hands again, and she grabs his hand and bites it. -He draws back and says_:] - -Damn! - -[_Nurses his hand._] - -Mary Speaker - -Did she bite you? - -John Speaker - -Yes. - -[_Nurses his hand, and Mary Speaker examines it, while Cousin Fanny -pulls cork from phial with teeth, and John Thinker says_:] - -John Thinker - -The old viper has teeth yet! - -Mary Thinker - -She is a cat... she is a she-devil... she is a witch... she has a bad -heart.... - -John Speaker - -[_To Mary Speaker, pointing to Cousin Fanny, who is shaking tablet out -of bottle; she drops one and gropes for it, and shakes another more -carefully, with air of childish triumph._] - -Mary, what _can_ I do? She _will_ have it! And if I struggle with her -it will kill her! She is too weak to struggle! It will kill her to -struggle! And if I let her take the tablet it may do her harm! - -Mary Speaker - -Perhaps the tablet won't do her any harm, John. - -John Thinker - -It will kill her as surely as she sits there. I know it will and _you_ -know it will. - -John Speaker - -Maybe it won't hurt her, Mary... but we can never tell.... I'm afraid... -I'm afraid it really _might_ harm her.... - -Cousin Fanny [_Putting tablet into her mouth_.] - -There! I'm going to sleep, now.... I'm going to sleep in spite of you. -You hate me--both of you hate me--but you can't prevent me going to -sleep! - -Mary Speaker - -She's taken it, John. Do you suppose she really _did_ have one before? - -John Speaker [To Cousin Fanny.] - -Cousin Fanny, you _didn't_ have one before, did you? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_She has closed her eyes; she opens them and rocks back and forth, -laughing foolishly_.] - -Yes! - -John Speaker - -[_Taking out handkerchief; mopping fore-head_.] - -I don't believe she did. She says she did, but she doesn't know. - -Cousin Fanny [_Rocking and laughing sillily._] - -Yes, I did! You know I did! - -John Speaker - -She doesn't know.... She doesn't know whether she did or not.... She -hasn't really been right in her mind for a long time. I don't think she -had one before. - -[_As he speaks Cousin Fanny ceases rocking and leans hack in her chair, -closing her eyes. From this time on the two Johns and the two Marys -stare at her intently, never taking their eyes off of her while they -speak._] - -John Thinker - -She _did_ have one before. - -Mary Thinker - -I _know_ she did. - -John Thinker - -Will she die? Will I see her die? I should hate to see her die! - -John Speaker - -She _would_ have that tablet... she WOULD have it. If I had taken it -away from her by force it would have killed her; the struggle would have -killed her. - -John Thinker - -Will I see her die? Will she die? - -John Speaker - -I let her have it to save her life... it was to save her life that I -quit struggling with her. - -John Thinker - -If she dies... but _will_ she die? - -Mary Thinker - -She will die! - -Cousin Fanny - -[_Rousing from her lethargy slightly; open-ing her eyes._] - -John... Mary.... You really love me, don't you? Don't you? You really... -really... - -[_Sinks back, with head slightly on one side and eyes closed again; does -not move after this._] - -Mary Speaker - -[_They all speak with lowered voices now._] She is asleep. She really -needed the tablet. It was a mercy she got it. She was nervous and -overwrought, and it has put her to sleep. - -John Speaker - -Yes, it was a mercy she got it. She was nervous and overwrought, and it -has put her to sleep. - -... And you know, Mary, she _would_ have t... if I had _struggled_ with -her, she would have _died!_ A struggle would have killed her. - -John Thinker - -And now she will die because there was no struggle. - -Mary Thinker - -She will die. - -John Speaker - -Is she breathing quite naturally, Mary? - -Mary Speaker Quite. Quite naturally. - -Mary Thinker _Death_ is quite natural. - -John Thinker And she is dying. - -John Speaker - -Well, if she had struggled and died... if she had died through any fault -of mine... I would always have reproached myself.... - -Mary Speaker - -You have nothing to reproach yourself for. You need never reproach -yourself with regard to her.... - -John Thinker - -She was old. She was very old. She will be better dead. - -Mary Thinker She is not quite dead. - -John Speaker - -I don't like the way she is breathing.... She is scarcely breathing.... -She doesn't seem to be breathing at all! - -Mary Speaker Old people breathe very quietly. - -Mary Thinker Old people die very quietly. - -John Thinker And she is dying. - -Mary Thinker - -She is dead! - -John Thinker - -Mary... Mary... is she breathing at all? Mary Speaker - -Call the maid.... Send for the doctor.... Call the maid! - -John Thinker It is too late for any doctor. - -Mary Thinker - -Too late! - -John Speaker - -Mary, Mary.... My God... she can't be _dead!_ - -Mary Speaker [_Bending above her._] - -John, dear... try to bear it bravely... but... but I'm afraid she is.... -Poor Cousin Fanny has left us! - -John Speaker - -[_Rapidly_.] - -Poor Cousin Fanny.... Poor Cousin Fanny.... Poor Cousin Fanny.... - -John Thinker - -Fifteen thousand a year... fifteen thousand a year.... Why do I think of -that?... But I can't help it.... I can't help thinking of it.... - -Mary Speaker I'll go get the maid. - -[_Going_.] - -John Speaker - -Stop.... Wait, Mary.... Don't call her yet... get her presently.... I -don't want to be alone just now.... I'm in a kind of fog.... - -[_Lights go out as he says this; he continues in the darkness._] - -I'm all in the dark. - -[_Lights on again_.] - -[_In the interim, which is very short, Cousin Fanny has gone over to the -room on the left in which are John and Mary Thinker, and sits in chair -corresponding to one which she has just left._] - -[_She is silent and motionless, but her head is lifted; her eyes are -open; she is alive again. When lights go on again, John and Mary Speaker -still stand before chair she has left as if she were in it; it is -apparent that they believe themselves to be still looking at the old -woman._] - -Mary Speaker - -Nonsense... all in the dark?... What do you mean by all in the dark? - -John Speaker - -Nothing... nothing now. It has passed.... - -[Pointing to chair where Cousin Fanny was.] She died with a smile on her -face! - -John Thinker - -But she isn't there.... Cousin Fanny isn't there. - -... She's here.... She's over here with us... over here with _us_! - -Mary Thinker - -Here with us... over here, forever, now. - -Mary Speaker - -[_Holding John Speaker's hand and gazing at vacant chair_.] - -How beautiful she looks! She is at rest, now! She is better off so. -Better dead. She is better at peace! - -John Thinker - -[_Violently; starting towards other room_.] - -My God. I'm going to stop it... stop it... stop that lying... stop it -at any cost.... I'm going to stop that pretending... that damned -pretending.... - -Mary Thinker - -[_Quickly getting in front of him; holding him back._] - -What are you going to do? - -John Thinker - -Stop it, I tell you.... Tell the truth... stop that pretense.... - -[_Moves towards the other room. As he does so, Mary Speaker and John -Speaker, for the first time become aware of John and Mary Thinker, and -shrink back in terror and alarm, clinging together, confused, convicted, -abject, retreating, powerless; Cousin Fanny leaps in front of John -Thinker at same instant, and bars him back, saying:_] - -Cousin Fanny - -Stop! - -John Thinker - -Why? I _will_ stop this pretense... Why not? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_All four of the others lean forward and hang eagerly upon her words_.] - -You must not. It can't be done. It is the foundation upon which your -society rests. It is necessary..._ over there!_ - -CURTAIN - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Carter, and Other People, by Don Marquis - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE *** - -***** This file should be named 51913-0.txt or 51913-80.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/9/1/51913/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Carter, and Other People - -Author: Don Marquis - -Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51913] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - - - -CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE - -By Don Marquis - -D. Appleton and Co. - -1921 - - - - -FOREWORD - -|I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the editors of several -magazines for permission to reprint the following stories in book form. -"Carter" was originally published in _Harpers Monthly Magazine_ under -the title "The Mulatto." - -"Death and Old Man Murtrie" was printed in The New _Republic_; others -were first brought out in _Everybody's Magazine, Short Stories, Putnam's -Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post_. "The Penitent" was originally -printed in _The Pictorial Review_, with the title "The Healer and -the Penitent." The plot of this story is taken from two poems, one by -Browning and one by Owen Meredith. Happening to read these two poems, -one after the other, I was struck by the fact that Owen Meredith had -unwittingly written what was in effect a continuation of a situation -invented by Browning; the plot of the one poem, telescoped into the plot -of the other, made in effect a complete short story. I pasted the two -situations together, so to speak, inventing an ending of my own, and had -a short story which neither Browning nor Owen Meredith could claim as -his-and which I scarcely have the nerve to claim as mine. And yet this -story, taken piecemeal from the two poets, gave me more trouble than -anything else I ever tried to write; it was all there, apparently; but -to transpose the story into a modern American setting was a difficult -job. It is my only essay in conscious plagiarism-I hate to call it -plagiarism, but what else could one call it?--and I give you my word -that it is easier to invent than to plagiarize. - -The one-act play, "Words and Thoughts," was written ten years ago-in -1911-and has been offered to every theatrical manager in America, and -refused by them all. I still believe in it as a thing that could be -acted with effect, and I am determined to get it read, even if I -cannot get it produced. The fact that it has been going the rounds of -theatrical managers for ten years is no indication that it has ever been -read. - -Don Marquis - -New York - - - - -I.-Carter - -|Carter was not exactly a negro, but he was a "nigger." Seven drops of -his blood out of every eight were Caucasian. The eighth, being African, -classified him. The white part of him despised and pitied the black -part. The black part hated the white part. Consequently, wherever Carter -went he carried his own hell along inside of him. - -Carter began to learn that he was a nigger very early in life. Nigger -children are not left long in doubt anywhere, and especially in the -South. Carter first saw the light--and the shadows--of day in Atlanta. -The color line itself, about which one hears so much talk, seemed to run -along one end of the alley in which he was born. It was an alley with a -gutter and a great deal of mud in it. At the corner, where it gave into -a little narrow street not much better than an alley itself, the mud was -the thickest, deepest, and best adapted to sculptural purposes. But in -the little street lived a number of white families. They were most -of them mill hands, and a numerous spawn of skinny children, little -"crackers," with faces white and sad even from babyhood, disputed the -mud with the nigger children. Nigger babies of five, four, three, and -even two, understood quite well that this most desirable mud, even -though it was in the nigger alley, was claimed by the white babies as -_their_ mud. It was in every way a more attractive sort of mud than -any in the little street proper; and juvenile race riots were of almost -hourly occurrence--skirmishes in which the very dogs took part. For the -dogs grasped the situation as clearly as did the children; a "nigger" -dog, even though he may have started in life as a white man's dog, soon -gets a certain look about him. - -So there was no chance for Carter to escape the knowledge that he was -a nigger. But it was with a thrill that he perceived in his youthful -excursions from the home alley, that he was sometimes mistaken for a -white child. He was so white in color that one could not tell he was a -nigger at a casual glance. - -As he grew up, he made another discovery that elated and embittered him -still more. He found out who his father was--or rather, who his father -had been, since he never saw that gentleman. The white blood in Carter's -veins was no common ichor. Because white people seldom speak of these -things it does not follow that they are not known pretty generally among -the negroes. They are, in fact, discussed. - -Carter went to school; he made the further discovery that he had -brains--"white man's brains" is the way he put it to himself. Given the -opportunity, he told himself, he could go as far as the average white -man--perhaps further than the average. The white man's standard, nigger -though he was, was still the standard by which he must measure himself. -But the opportunity! Even as the youth prepared himself for it he -perceived, hopelessly, that it would be denied him. - -As he matured he began to feel a strange, secret pride in that -white family whose blood he shared. He familiarized himself with its -genealogy. There is many a courtier who cannot trace his ancestry as -far back as Carter could. One of his forebears had signed Magna Charta; -several had fought in the Revolutionary War. There had been a United -States Senator in the family, and a Confederate General. At times, -feeling the vigorous impulse of hereditary instinct and ambitions, -Carter looked upon himself as all white man, but never for long, nor to -any purpose. The consciousness of his negro blood pulled him down again. - -But, as he grew up, he ceased to herd with black negroes; he scorned -them. He crept about the world cursing it and himself--an unfortunate -and bitter creature that had no place; unfortunate and bitter, cursed -with an intellect, denied that mitigation that might have come with a -full share of the negro jovialty of disposition, forever unreconciled. - -There was one member of that white family from which he drew so much of -his blood whom Carter particularly admired. Willoughby Howard was about -Carter's own age, and he was Carter's half-brother. Howard did not -distinguish Carter from any other mulatto; probably did not know of his -existence. But as Howard reached manhood, and, through virtue of his -wealth and standing and parts, began to attain an excellent place in -the world, his rise was watched by Carter with a strange intensity of -emotion. Carter in some occult way identified himself with the career of -Willoughby Howard--sometimes he almost worshiped Willoughby Howard, -and then he hated him; he envied him and raged over him with the same -breath. - -But mostly, as the isolation of his own condition, ate into his soul, -he raged over himself; he pitied himself; he hated himself. Out of the -turmoil of his spirit arose the one despairing cry, Oh, to be white, -white, _white!_ - -Many a night he lay awake until daybreak, measuring the slow minutes -with the ceaseless iteration of that useless prayer: Only to be white! O -God, for _one little year of being white!_ - -Fruitless hours of prayers and curses! - -Carter went North. He went to New York. But the North, which affects to -promise so much to the negro, in a large, loose, general way, does not -perform in the same degree. There was only one thing which Carter would -have thanked any one for performing; it was the one thing that could -never be performed--he wanted to be made white. Sometimes, indeed, from -the depths of his despair, he cried out that he wanted to be altogether -black; but in his soul he did not really want that. - -Nevertheless, at several different periods he yielded to temptation -and "went over to the whites." In the South he could not have done -this without discovery, in spite of the color of his skin. But in the -Northern cities, with their enormous numbers of aliens, all more or less -strange to the American eye, Carter found no great difficulty in passing -as white. He "looked a little foreign" to the casual glance; that was -all. - -But if there was no great difficulty in it, there was no great -satisfaction in it, either. In fact, it only made him the more bitter. -Others might think him a white man, but he knew that he was a nigger. - -The incident which sent him back South, resolved to be a nigger, and to -live and die among the niggers, might not have affected another in his -condition just as it did Carter. But to him it showed conclusively that -his destiny was not a matter of environment so much as a question of -himself. - -He fell in love. The girl was a waitress in a cheap restaurant near the -barber shop where Carter worked. She was herself a product of the -East Side, struggling upward from the slums; partly Italian, with some -Oriental strain in her that had given the least perceptible obliqueness -to her eyes--one of those rare hybrid products which give the thinker -pause and make him wonder what the word "American" will signify a -century from now; a creature with very red lips and very black eyebrows; -she seemed to know more than she really did; she had a kind of nave -charm, a sort of allurement, without actual beauty; and her name had -been Anglicized into Mary. - -And she loved Carter. This being, doomed from the cradle to despair, had -his moment of romance. But even in his intoxication there was no hope; -his elation was embittered and perplexed. He was tempted not to tell the -girl that he was a nigger. But if he married her, and did not tell her, -perhaps the first child would tell her. It might look more of a nigger -than he did. - -But if he told her, would she marry a nigger? He decided he would tell -her. Perhaps his conscience had less to do with this decision than the -fatalism of his temperament. - -So he made his revelation one Sunday evening, as they walked along the -boardwalk from Coney Island to Brighton. To him, it was a tremendous -moment. For days he had been revolving in his mind the phrases he -would use; he had been rehearsing his plea; in his imagination he saw -something spectacular, something histrionic, in his confession. - -"Mary," he said, as they sat down on a bench on the beach, "there is -something I think I ought to tell you before we get married." - -The girl turned toward him her big, sleepy, dark eyes, which always -seemed to see and understand so much more than they really did, and -looked away again. - -"I ought to tell you," he said--and as he said it, staring out to sea, -he was so imposed upon by the importance of the moment to himself that -he almost felt as if the sea listened and the waves paused--"I ought to -tell you that I have negro blood in my veins." - -She was silent. There was a moment before he dared look at her; he could -not bear to read his doom in her eyes. But finally he did muster up -courage enough to turn his head. - -The girl was placidly chewing gum and gazing at an excursion vessel that -was making a landing at one of the piers. - -He thought she had not heard. "Mary," he repeated, "I have negro blood -in my veins." - -"Uh-huh," said she. "I gotcha the first time, Steve! Say, I wonder if we -couldn't take the boat back to town? Huh? Whatcha say?" - -He looked at her almost incredulous. She had understood, and yet she -had not shrunk away from him! He examined her with a new interest; his -personal drama, in which she, perforce, must share, seemed to have made -no impression upon her whatsoever. - -"Do you mean," he said, hesitatingly, "that it will--that it won't make -any difference to you? That you can marry me, that you _will_ marry me, -in spite of--of--in spite of what I am?" - -"Gee! but ain't you the solemn one!" said the girl, taking hold of her -gum and "stringing" it out from her lips. "Whatcha s'pose I care for a -little thing like that?" - -He had looked for a sort of dramatic "situation"; and, behold, there was -none! There was none simply because the girl had no vantage point from -which to look at his life and hers. He had negro blood in his veins--and -she simply did not care one way or the other! - -He felt no elation, no exultation; he believed that she _should_ have -cared; whether her love was great enough to pardon that in him or not, -she should have felt it as a thing that _needed_ pardon. - -As he stared at the girl, and she continued to chew her gum, he swiftly -and subtly revised his estimate of her; and in his new appraisement -there was more than a tinge of disgust. And for a moment he became -altogether a white man in his judgment of the thing that was happening; -he looked at the situation as a patrician of the South might have looked -at it; the seven eighths of his blood which was white spoke: - -"By God!" he said, suddenly leaping to his feet and flinging aside the -startled hand which the girl put out toward him, "I can't have anything -to do with a woman who'd marry a nigger!" - -So Carter went back to Atlanta. And, curiously enough, he stepped from -the train almost into the midst of a strange and terrible conflict of -which the struggle in his individual breast was, in a sense, the type -and the symbol. - -It was a Saturday night in September, an evening on which there began -a memorable and sanguinary massacre of negroes; an event which has been -variously explained and analyzed, but of which, perhaps, the underlying -causes will never be completely understood. - -There was riot in the streets, a whirlwind of passion which lashed the -town and lifted up the trivial souls of men and spun them round and -round, and passed and left the stains of blood behind. White men were -making innocent negroes suffer for the brutal crimes of guilty negroes. -It had been a hot summer; scarcely a day had passed during July and -August without bringing to the newspapers from somewhere in Georgia -a report of a negro assault upon some white woman. A blind, -undiscriminating anger against the whole negro race had been growing and -growing. And when, on that Saturday afternoon, the newspapers reported -four more crimes, in rapid succession, all in or near Atlanta, the -cumulative rage burst into a storm. - -There was no danger for Carter in the streets; more than a hasty glance -was necessary to spy out his negro taint. He stood in a doorway, in the -heart of the business district of the town, and watched the wild work -that went on in a large, irregular plaza, where five streets come -together and all the car lines in the place converge. From this roughly -triangular plaza leads Decatur Street, at one time notorious throughout -the South for its negro dives and gambling-dens. - -Now and then Carter could hear the crack of a pistol, close at hand -or far away; and again some fleeing negro would start from a place of -temporary concealment, at the approach of a mob that beat its way along -a street, and make a wild dash for safety, as a rabbit startled from the -sedge-grass scurries to the brush. There was not one mob, but several; -the different bands united, split up, and reunited, as the shifting -winds of madness blew. The plaza, with arc lights all about it, was -the brilliantly illuminated stage on which more than one scene of that -disgusting melodrama was played out; from some dim hell of gloom and -clamor to the north or east would rush a shouting group that whirled -and swayed beneath the lights, dancing like flecks of soot in their -brightness, to disappear in the gloom again, shouting, cursing, and -gesticulating, down one of the thoroughfares to the west or south. And -to Carter, in whose heart there waxed a fearful turmoil of emotions, -even as the two races clashed along the echoing streets, there was a -strange element of unreality about it all; or, rather, the night was -dreadful with that superior reality which makes so much more vivid than -waking life the intense experience of dreams. Carter thrilled; he shook; -he was torn with terror and pity and horror and hatred. - -No white man felt all that Carter felt that night; nor yet any negro. -For he was both, and he was neither; and he beheld that conflict which -was forever active in his own nature dramatized by fate and staged with -a thousand actors in the lighted proscenium at his feet. - -This thought struck Carter himself, and he turned toward another man who -had paused in the doorway, with no clear intention, but perhaps with the -vague impulse of addressing him, as a point of solid contact and relief -from the sense of hurrying nightmare that possessed both the streets and -his own spirit. - -Startled, he saw that the other man was Willoughby Howard. Carter -hesitated, and then advanced a step. But whatever he had to say was -interrupted by a crowd that swept past them from Decatur Street in -pursuit of a panting negro. The fleeing colored man was struck a dozen -times; he fell at the street corner near them, and the mob surged -on again into the darkness beyond, already in full chase of another -quarry--all but one man, who left the mob and ran back as if to assure -himself that the prostrate negro was really dead. - -This was a short man, a very short man, a dwarf with a big head too -heavy for him, and little bandy legs--legs so inadequate that he wabbled -like an overfed poodle when he ran. Carter had seen him twice before -that night, dodging in and out among the feet of the rioters like an -excited cur, stumbling, falling, trodden upon; a being with bloodshot -eyes and matted hair, hoarse voice and menacing fist, drunken and -staggering with blood lust; the very Gnome of Riot himself come up from -some foul cave and howling in the streets. "Kill them! Kill them!" -he would cry, and then shake with cackling laughter. But he was only -valiant when there was; no danger. As he approached the negro who lay -upon the ground, and bent over him, Willoughby Howard stepped down -from the doorway and aimed a blow at the creature with a cane. The blow -missed, but the dwarf ran shrieking down Decatur Street. - -Howard bent over the negro. The negro stirred; he was not dead. Howard -turned toward Carter and said: - -"He's alive! Help me get him out of the street." - -Together they lifted the wounded man, moving him toward the curbstone. -He groaned and twisted, and they laid him down. Howard poured whisky -into him from a pocket flask, and a little later he managed to struggle -to a sitting posture on the curb, looking up at them with dazed eyes and -a bloody face. - -Howard took his slow gaze from the negro and covered his face with his -hands. - -Carter watched him. - -Of all men in the world this was the one whom Carter most honored and -most loved--honored and loved, while he envied; he was the only man, -perhaps, that could have touched Carter through his crust of bitterness. -Carter listened with strained attention for what Howard would say, as if -with some premonition that the words would be the cue for the most vital -action of his life. - -"My God! My God!" said Willoughby Howard, "will this thing never stop?" -And then he straightened himself and turned toward the shadow into which -Carter had retired, and there was the glow and glory of a large idea on -his face; the thought of a line of men never lacking, when once aroused, -in the courage to do and die for a principle or a human need. "There is -one way," he cried, stretching out his hands impulsively to Carter, and -not knowing to whom or to what manner of man he spoke--"there is one way -to make them pause and think! If two of us white men of the better class -offer our lives for these poor devils--die in their defense!--the mob -will halt; the crowd will think; we can end it! Will you do it, with me? -Will you do it?" - -Two of us white men of the better class! Willoughby Howard had taken him -for a white man! - -It was like an accolade. A light blazed through the haunted caverns of -his soul; he swelled with a vast exultation. - -Willoughby Howard had taken him for a white man! Then, by God, he would -be one! Since he was nothing in this life, he could at least die--and in -his death he would be a white man! Nay, more:--he would die shoulder to -shoulder with one of that family whose blood he shared. He would show -that he, too, could shed that blood for an idea or a principle! For -humanity! At the thought he could feel it singing in his veins. Oh, to -be white, white, white! The dreams and the despairs of all his miserable -and hampered life passed before him in a whirl, and now the cry was -answered! - -"Yes," he said, lifting his head, and rising at that instant into a -larger thing than he had ever been, "I will stand by you. I will die -with you." And under his breath he added--"my brother." - -They had not long to wait. In the confused horror of that night things -happened quickly. Even as Carter spoke the wounded negro struggled to -his feet with a scarce articulate cry of alarm, for around the corner -swept a mob, and the dwarf with matted hair was in the lead. He had come -back with help to make sure of his job. - -With the negro cowering behind them, the white man and the mulatto -stepped forth to face the mob. Their attitude made their intention -obvious. - -"Don't be a damned fool, Willoughby Howard," said a voice from the -crowd, "or you may get hurt yourself." And with the words there was a -rush, and the three were in the midst of the clamoring madness, the mob -dragging the negro from his two defenders. - -"Be careful--don't hurt Willoughby Howard!" said the same voice again. -Willoughby turned, and, recognizing the speaker as an acquaintance, with -a sudden access of scorn and fury and disgust, struck him across the -mouth. The next moment his arms were pinioned, and he was lifted and -flung away from the negro he had been fighting to protect by half a -dozen men. - -"You fools! You fools!" he raged, struggling toward the center of -the crowd again, "you're killing a white man there. An innocent white -man------ Do you stop at nothing? You're killing a _white man_, I say!" - -"White man?" said the person whom he had struck, and who appeared to -bear him little resentment for the blow. "Who's a white man? Not Jerry -Carter here! He wasn't any white man. I've known him since he was a -kid--he was just one of those yaller niggers." - -And Carter heard it as he died. - - - - -II--Old Man Murtrie - -|Old Man Murtrie never got any fresh air at all, except on Sundays on -his way to and from church. He lived, slept, cooked and ate back of the -prescription case in his little dismal drug store in one of the most -depressing quarters of Brooklyn. The store was dimly lighted by gas and -it was always damp and suggested a tomb. Drifting feebly about in the -pale and cold and faintly greenish radiance reflected from bottles and -show cases, Old Man Murtrie with his bloodless face and dead white hair -and wisps of whisker was like a ghost that has not managed to get free -from the neighborhood of a sepulcher where its body lies disintegrating. - -People said that Old Man Murtrie was nearly a hundred years old, -but this was not true; he was only getting along towards ninety. The -neighborhood, however, seemed a little impatient with him for not dying. -Some persons suggested that perhaps he really had been dead for a long -time, and did not know it. If so, they thought, it might be kind to tell -him about it. - -But Old Man Murtrie was not dead, any more than he was alive. And Death -himself, who has his moments of impatience, began to get worried about -Old Man Murtrie. It was time, Death thought, that he was dead, since he -looked so dead; and Death had said so, both to God and to the Devil. - -"But I don't want to garner him, naturally," Death would say, "till -I know which one of you is to have him. He's got to go somewhere, you -know." - -God and Death and the Devil used to sit on the prescription counter in -a row, now and then, and watch Old Man Murtrie as he slept in his humble -little cot back there, and discuss him. - -God would look at Old Man Murtrie's pale little Adam's Apple sticking up -in the faint gaslight, and moving as he snored--moving feebly, for even -his snores were feeble--and say, with a certain distaste: - -"I don't want him. He can't get into Heaven." - -And the Devil would look at his large, weak, characterless nose;--a -nose so big that it might have suggested force on any one but Old Man -Murtrie--and think what a sham it was, and how effectually all its -contemptible effort to be a real nose was exposed in Old Man Murtrie's -sleep. And the Devil would say: - -"I don't want him. He can't get into Hell." - -And then Death would say, querulously: "But he can't go on living -forever. My reputation is suffering." - -"You should take him," the Devil would say to God. "He goes to church -on Sunday, and he is the most meek and pious and humble and prayerful -person in all Brooklyn, and perhaps in all the world." - -"But he takes drugs," God would say. "You should take him, because he is -a drug fiend." - -"He takes drugs," the Devil would admit, "but that doesn't make him a -_fiend_. You have to do something besides take drugs to be a fiend. You -will permit me to have my own notions, I am sure, on what constitutes a -fiend." - -"You ought to forgive him the drugs for the sake of his piety," the -Devil would say. "And taking drugs is his only vice. He doesn't drink, -or smoke tobacco, or use profane language, or gamble. And he doesn't run -after women." - -"You ought to forgive him the piety for the sake of the drugs," God -would tell the Devil. - -"I never saw such a pair as you two," Death would say querulously. -"Quibble, quibble, quibble!--while Old Man Murtrie goes on and on -living! He's lived so long that he is affecting death rates and -insurance tables, all by himself, and you know what that does to my -reputation." - -And Death would stoop over and run his finger caressingly across Old Man -Murtrie's throat, as the Old Man slept. Whereupon Old Man Murtrie would -roll over on his back and moan in his sleep and gurgle. - -"He has wanted to be a cheat all his life," God would say to the Devil. -"He has always had the impulse to give short weight and substitute -inferior drugs in his prescriptions and overcharge children who were -sent on errands to his store. If that isn't sin I don't know what sin -is. You should take him." - -"I admit he has had those impulses," the Devil would say to God. "But -he has never yielded to them. In my opinion having those impulses and -conquering them makes him a great deal more virtuous than if he'd never -had 'em. No one who is as virtuous as all that can get into Hell." - -"I never saw such a pair," Death would grumble. "Can't you agree with -each other about anything?" - -"He didn't abstain from his vices because of any courage," God would -say. "He abstained simply because he was afraid. It wasn't virtue in -him; it was cowardice." - -"The fear of the Lord," murmured the Devil, dreamily, "is the beginning -of all wisdom." - -"But not necessarily the end of it," God would remark. - -"Argue, argue, argue," Death would say, "and here's Old Man Murtrie -still alive! I'm criticized about the way I do my work, but no one has -any idea of the vacillation and inefficiency I have to contend with! I -never saw such a pair as you two to vacillate!" - -Sometimes Old Man Murtrie would wake up and turn over on his couch and -see God and Death and the Devil sitting in a row on the prescription -counter, looking at him. But he always persuaded himself that it was -a sort of dream, induced by the "medicine" he took; and he would take -another dose of his "medicine" and go back to sleep again. He never -spoke to them when he waked, but just lay on his cot and stared at them; -and if they spoke to him he would pretend to himself that they had not -spoken. For it was absurd to think that God and Death and the Devil -could really be sitting there, in the dim greenish gaslight, among all -the faintly radiant bottles, talking to each other and looking at him; -and so Old Man Murtrie would not believe it. - -When he first began taking his "medicine" Old Man Murtrie took it in the -form of a certain patent preparation which was full of opium. He wanted -the opium more and more after he started, but he pretended to himself -that he did not know there was much opium in that medicine. Then, when a -federal law banished that kind of medicine from the markets, he took to -making it for his own use. He would not take opium outright, for that -would be to acknowledge to himself that he was an opium eater; he -thought eating opium was a sin, and he thought of himself as sinless. -But to make the medicine with the exact formula that its manufacturers -had used, before they had been compelled to shut up shop, and use it, -did not seem to him to be the same thing at all as being an opium eater. -And yet, after the law was passed, abolishing the medicine, he would not -sell to any one else what he made for himself; his conscience would not -allow him to do so. Therefore, he must have known that he was eating -opium at the same time he tried to fool himself about it. - -God and the Devil used to discuss the ethics of this attitude towards -the "medicine," and Old Man Murtrie would sometimes pretend to be asleep -and would listen to them. - -"He knows it is opium all right," God would say. "He is just lying to -himself about it. He ought to go to Hell. No one that lies to himself -that way can get into Heaven." - -"He's pretending for the sake of society in general and for the sake of -religion," the Devil would say. "If he admitted to himself that it was -opium and if he let the world know that he took opium, it might bring -discredit on the church that he loves so well. He might become a -stumbling block to others who are seeking salvation, and who seek it -through the church. He is willing to sacrifice himself so as not to -hamper others in their religious life. For my part, I think it is highly -honorable of him, and highly virtuous. No person as moral as that in his -instincts can get into Hell." - -"Talk, talk, talk!" Death would say. "The trouble with you two is that -neither one of you wants Old Man Murtrie around where you will have to -look at him through all eternity, and each of you is trying to put it on -moral grounds." - -And Old Man Murtrie kept on living and praying and being pious and -wanting to be bad and not daring to and taking his medicine and being -generally as ineffectual in the world either for good or evil as a -butterfly in a hurricane. - -But things took a turn. There was a faded-looking blonde woman with -stringy hair by the name of Mable who assisted Old Man Murtrie in the -store, keeping his books and waiting on customers, and so forth. She was -unmarried, and one day she announced to him that she was going to have a -child. - -Old Man Murtrie had often looked at her with a recollection, a dim and -faint remembrance, of the lusts of his youth and of his middle age. -In his youth and middle age he had lusted after many women, but he had -never let any of them know it, because he was afraid, and he had called -his fears virtue, and had really believed that he was virtuous. - -"Whom do you suspect?" asked Old Man Murtrie, leering at Mable like a -wraith blown down the ages from the dead adulteries of ruined Babylon. - -"Who?" cried Mable, an unlessoned person, but with a cruel, instinctive -humor. "Who but you!" - -She had expected Old Man Murtrie to be outraged at her ridiculous joke, -and, because she was unhappy herself, had anticipated enjoying his -astounded protests. But it was she who was astounded. Old Man Murtrie's -face was blank and his eyes were big for a moment, and then he chuckled; -a queer little cackling chuckle. And when she went out he opened the -door for her and cocked his head and cackled again. - -It gave Mable an idea. She reflected that he took so much opium that he -might possibly be led to believe the incredible, and she might get some -money out of him. So the next evening she brought her mother and her -brother to the store and accused him. - -Old Man Murtrie chuckled and... _and admitted it!_ Whether he believed -that it could be true or not, Mable and her people were unable to -determine. But they made the tactical error of giving him his choice -between marriage and money, and he chose matrimony. - -And then Old Man Murtrie was suddenly seized with a mania for -confession. God and Death and the Devil used to listen to him nights, -and they wondered over him, and began to change their minds about him, a -little. He confessed to the officials of his church. He confessed to all -the people whom he knew. He insisted on making a confession, a public -confession, in the church itself and asking for the prayers of the -preacher and congregation for his sin, and telling them that he was -going to atone by matrimony, and asking for a blessing on the wedding. - -And one night, full of opium, while he-was babbling about it in his -sleep, God and Death and the Devil sat on the prescription counter again -and looked at him and listened to his ravings and speculated. - -"I'm going to have him," said the Devil. "Any one who displays such -conspicuous bad taste that he goes around confessing that he has ruined -a woman ought to go to Hell." - -"You don't want him for that reason," said God. "And you know you don't. -You want him because you admire the idea of adultery, and think that now -he is worthy of a place in Hell. You are rather entertained by Old Man -Murtrie, and want him around now." - -"Well," said the Devil, "suppose I admit that is true! Have you any -counter claim?" - -"Yes," said God. "I am going to take Old Man Murtrie into Heaven. He -knows he is not the father of the child that is going to be born, but he -has deliberately assumed the responsibility lest it be born fatherless, -and I think that is a noble act." - -"Rubbish!" said the Devil. "That isn't the reason you want him. You want -him because of the paternal instinct he displays. It flatters you!" - -"Well," said God, "why not? The paternal instinct is another name for -the great creative force of the universe. I have been known by many -names in many countries... they called me Osiris, the All-Father, in -Egypt, and they called me Jehovah in Palestine, and they called me -Zeus and Brahm... but always they recognized me as the Father. And this -instinct for fatherliness appeals to me. Old Man Murtrie shall come to -Heaven." - -"Such a pair as you two," said Death, gloomily, "I never did see! -Discuss and discuss, but never get anywhere! And all the time Old Man -Murtrie goes on living." - -And then Death added: - -"Why not settle this matter once and for all, right now? Why not wake -Old Man Murtrie up and let him decide?" - -"Decide?" asked the Devil. - -"Yes,--whether he wants to go to Hell or to Heaven." - -"I imagine," said God, "that if we do that there can be no question as -to which place he would rather go to." - -"Oh, I don't know," said the Devil. "Some people come to Hell quite -willingly. I've been to Heaven myself, you know, and I can quite -understand why. Are you afraid to have Old Man Murtrie make the choice?" - -"Wake him up, Death, wake him up," said God. "It's unusual to allow -people to know that they are making their own decision--though all of -them, in a sense, do make it--but wake him up, Death, and we'll see." - -So Death prodded Old Man Murtrie in the ribs, and they asked him. For a -long time he thought it was only opium, but when he finally understood -that it was really God and Death and the Devil who were there, and that -it was really they who had often been there before, he was very much -frightened. He was so frightened he couldn't choose. - -"I'll leave it to you, I'll leave it to you," said Old Man Murtrie. "Who -am I that I should set myself up to decide?" - -"Well," said God, getting a little angry, perhaps, "if you don't want to -go to Heaven, Murtrie, you don't have to. But you've been, praying to go -to Heaven, and all that sort of thing, for seventy or eighty years, and -I naturally thought you were in earnest. But I'm through with you... you -can go to Hell." - -"Oh! Oh! Oh!" moaned Old Man Murtrie. - -"No," said the Devil, "I've changed my mind, too. My distaste for -Murtrie has returned to me. I don't want him around. I won't have him in -Hell." - -"See here, now!" cried Death. "You two are starting it all over again. -I won't have it, so I won't! You aren't fair to Murtrie, and you aren't -fair to me! This matter has got to be settled, and settled to-night!" - -"Well, then," said God, "settle it. I've ceased to care one way or -another." - -"I will not," said Death, "I know my job, and I stick to my job. One of -you two has got to settle it." - -"Toss a coin," suggested the Devil, indifferently. - -Death looked around for one. - -"There's a qu-qu-quarter in m-m-my t-t-trousers' p-p-pocket," stammered -Old Man Murtrie, and then stuck his head under the bedclothes and -shivered as if he had the ague. - -Death picked up Murtrie's poor little weazened trousers from the floor -at the foot of the cot, where they lay sprawled untidily, and shook them -till the quarter dropped out. - -He picked it up. - -"Heads, he goes to Heaven. Tails, he goes to Hell," said Death, and -tossed the coin to the ceiling. Murtrie heard it hit the ceiling, and -started. He heard it hit the floor, and bounce, and jingle and spin and -roll and come to rest. And he thrust his head deeper under the covers -and lay there quaking. He did not dare look. - -"Look at it, Murtrie," said Death. - -"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned Murtrie, shaking the cot. - -But Death reached over and caught him by the neck and turned his face so -that he could not help seeing. And Old Man Murtrie looked and saw that -the coin had fallen with the side up that sent him to---- - -But, really, why should I tell you? Go and worry about your own soul, -and let Old Man Murtrie's alone. - - - - -III.--Never Say Die - -|There seemed nothing left but suicide. - -But how? In what manner? By what method? Mr. Gooley lay on his bed and -thought--or tried to think. The pain in his head, which had been there -ever since the day after he had last eaten, prevented easy and coherent -thought. - -It had been three days ago that the pain left his stomach and went into -his head. Hunger had become a cerebral thing, he told himself. His body -had felt hunger so long that it refused to feel it any longer; it had -shifted the burden to his brain. - -"It has passed the buck to my mind, my stomach has," murmured Mr. Gooley -feebly. And the mind, less by the process of coherent and connected -thought than by a sudden impulsive pounce, had grasped the idea of -suicide. - -"Not with a knife," considered Mr. Gooley. He had no knife. He had no -money to buy a knife. He had no strength to go down the three flights -of stairs in the cheap Brooklyn lodging house where he lay, and borrow a -knife from the landlady who came and went vaguely in the nether regions, -dim and damp and dismal. - -"Not with a knife," repeated Mr. Gooley. And a large cockroach, which -had been crawling along the footpiece of the old-fashioned wooden bed, -stopped crawling at the words as if it understood, and turned about and -looked at him. - -Mr. Gooley wondered painfully, for it was a pain even to wonder about -anything, why this cockroach should remind him of somebody who was -somehow connected with a knife, and not unpleasantly connected with a -knife. The cockroach stood up on the hindmost pair of his six legs, and -seemed to put his head on one side and motion with his front legs at Mr. -Gooley. - -"I get you," said Mr. Gooley, conscious that his mind was wandering from -the point, and willing to let it wander. "I know who you are! You were -Old Man Archibald Hammil, the hardware merchant back in Mapletown, where -I was a kid, before you dried up and turned into a cockroach." And Mr. -Gooley wept a few weak tears. For old Archibald Hammil, the village -hardware merchant, had sold him the first knife he had ever owned. -His father had taken him into Hammil's store to buy it on his seventh -birthday, for a present, and it had had a buckhorn handle and two -blades. Again he saw Old Man Hammil in his dingy brown clothes, looking -at him, with his head on one side, as this cockroach was doing. Again -he felt his father pat him on the head, and heard him say always to -remember to whittle _away_ from himself, never _toward_ himself. And he -saw himself, shy and flushed and eager, a freckle-faced boy as good and -as bad as most boys, looking up at his father and wriggling and wanting -to thank him, and not knowing how. That was nearly forty years ago--and -here he was, a failure and starving and------ - -_Why_ had he wanted a knife? Yes, he remembered now! To kill himself -with. - -"It's none of your damned business, Old Man Hammil," he said to the -cockroach, which was crawling back and forth on the footboard, and -pausing every now and then to look at him with disapproval. - -Old Man Hammil had had ropes in his store, too, and guns and pistols, -he remembered. He hadn't thought of Old Man Hammi's store in many years; -but now he saw it, and the village street outside it, and the place -where the stores left off on the street and the residences began, and -berry bushes, and orchards, and clover in the grass--the random bloom, -the little creek that bounded the town, and beyond the creek the open -country with its waving fields of oats and rye and com. His head hurt -him worse. He would go right back into Old Man Hammil's store and get a -rope or a gun and end that pain. - -But _that_ was foolish, too. There wasn't any store. There was only Old -Man Hammil here, shrunk to the size of a cockroach, in his rusty brown -suit, looking at him from the footboard of the bed and telling him in -pantomime not to kill himself. - -"I will too!" cried Mr. Gooley to Old Man Hammil. And he repeated, "It's -none of _your_ damned business!" - -But how? Not with a knife. He had none. Not with a gun. He had none. Not -with a rope. He had none. He thought of his suspenders. But they would -never hold him. - -"Too weak, even for me," muttered Mr. Gooley. "I have shrunk so I -don't weigh much more than Old Man Hammil there, but even at that those -suspenders would never do the business." - -How did people kill themselves? He must squeeze his head till the pain -let up a little, so he could think. Poison! That was it--yes, poison! -And then he cackled out a small, dry, throaty laugh, his Adam's apple -fluttering in his weazened throat under his sandy beard. Poison! He -_hadn't_ any poison. He hadn't any money with which to buy poison. - -And then began a long, broken and miserable debate within himself. If he -had money enough with which to buy poison, would he go and buy poison? -Or go and buy a bowl of soup? It was some moments before Mr. Gooley -decided. - -"I'd be game," he said. "I'd buy the soup. I'd give myself that one more -chance. I must remember while I'm killing myself, that I'm not killing -myself because I _want_ to. I'm just doing it because I've _got_ to. I'm -not romantic. I'm just all in. It's the end; that's all." - -Old Man Hammil, on the footboard of the bed, permitted himself a series -of gestures which Mr. Gooley construed as applause of this resolution. -They angered Mr. Gooley, those gestures. - -"You shut up!" he told the cockroach, although that insect had not -spoken, but only made signs. "This is none of your damned business, Old -Man Hammil!" - -Old Man Hammil, he remembered, had always been a meddlesome old -party--one of the village gossips, in fact. And that set him to thinking -of Mapletown again. - -The mill pond near the schoolhouse would soon be freezing over, and -the boys would be skating on it--it was getting into December. And they -would be going into Old Man Hammil's store for skates and straps and -heel plates and files. And he remembered his first pair of skates, and -how his father had taught him the proper way to keep them sharp with a -file. He and the old dad had always been pretty good pals, and---- - -Good God! Why _should_ he be coming back to that? And to Old Man -Hammil's store? It was that confounded cockroach there, reminding him of -Old Man Hammil, that had done it. He wanted to die decently and quietly, -and as quickly as might be, without thinking of all these things. -He didn't want to lie there and die of starvation, he wanted to kill -himself and be done with it without further misery--and it was a part -of the ridiculous futility of his life, his baffled and broken and -insignificant life, that he couldn't even kill himself competently--that -he lay there suffering and ineffectual and full of self-pity, a prey to -memories and harassing visions of the past, all mingled with youth and -innocence and love, without the means of a quick escape. It was that -damned cockroach, looking like Old Man Hammil, the village hardware -merchant, that had brought back the village and his youth to him, and -all those intolerable recollections. - -He took his dirty pillow and feebly menaced the cockroach. Feeble as the -gesture was, the insect took alarm. It disappeared from the footboard -of the bed. A minute later, however, he saw it climbing the wall. It -reached the ceiling, and crawled to the center of the room. Mr. Goo-ley -watched it. He felt as if he, too, could crawl along the ceiling. He had -the crazy notion of trying. After all, he told himself light-headedly, -Old Cockroach Hammil up there on the ceiling had been friendly--the only -friendly thing, human or otherwise, that had made overtures to him in -many, many months. And he had scared Cockroach Hammil away! He shed some -more maudlin tears. - -What was the thing doing now? He watched as the insect climbed on to -the gas pipe that came down from the ceiling. It descended the rod and -perched itself on the gas jet. From this point of vantage it began once -more to regard Mr. Gooley with a singular intentness. - -Ah! Gas! That was it! What a fool he had been not to think of it sooner! -That was the way people killed themselves! Gas! - -Mr. Gooley got himself weakly out of bed. He would get the thing over as -quickly as possible now. It would be damnably unpleasant before he lost -consciousness, no doubt, and painful. But likely not more unpleasant and -painful than his present state. And he simply could not bear any more of -those recollections, any more visions. - -He turned his back on the cockroach, which was watching him from the -gas jet, and went methodically to work. The window rattled; between the -upper and lower sashes there was a crevice a quarter of an inch wide. He -plugged it with paper. There was a break in the wall of his closet; the -plaster had fallen away, and a chink allowed the cockroaches from his -room easy access to the closet of the adjoining room. He plugged that -also, and was about to turn his attention to the keyhole, when there -came a knock on his door. - -Mr. Gooley's first thought was: "What can any one want with a dead man?" -For he looked upon himself as already dead. There came a second knock, -more peremptory than the first, and he said mechanically, "Come in!" It -would have to be postponed a few minutes, that was all. - -The door opened, and in walked his landlady. She was a tall and bulky -and worried-looking woman, who wore a faded blond wig that was always -askew, and Mr. Gooley was afraid of her. Her wig was more askew than -usual when she entered, and he gathered from this that she was angry -about something--why the devil must she intrude her trivial mundane -anger upon himself, a doomed man? It was not seemly. - -"Mr. Gooley," she began severely, without preamble, "I have always -looked on you as a gentleman." - -"Yes?" he murmured dully. - -"But you ain't," she continued. "You ain't no better than a cheat." - -He shrugged his shoulders patiently. He supposed that she was right -about it. He owed her three weeks' room rent, and he was going to die -and beat her out of it. But he couldn't help it. - -"It ain't the room rent," she went on, as if vaguely cognizant of the -general trend of his thoughts. "It ain't the room rent alone. You either -pay me that or you don't pay me that, and if you don't, out you go. But -while you are here, you must conduct yourself as a gentleman should!" - -"Well," murmured Mr. Gooley, "haven't I?" - -And the cockroach, perched on the gas jet above the landlady's head, and -apparently listening to this conversation, moved several of his legs, as -if in surprise. - -"You have not!" said the landlady, straightening her wig. - -"What have I done, Mrs. Hinkley?" asked Mr. Gooley humbly. And Old -Cockroach Hammil from his perch also made signs of inquiry. - -"What have you done! What have you done!" cried Mrs. Hinkley. "As if the -man didn't know what he had done I You've been stealin' my gas, that's -what you have been doin'--stealin', I say, and there's no other word for -it!" - -Mr. Gooley started guiltily. He had not been stealing her gas, but it -came over him with a shock for the first time that that was what he -had, in effect, been planning to do. The cockroach, as if it also felt -convicted of sin, gave the gas jet a glance of horror and moved up the -rod to the ceiling, where it continued to listen. - -"Stealin'!" repeated Mrs. Hinkley. "That's what it is, nothin' else -but stealin'. You don't ever stop to think when you use one of them gas -plates to cook in your room, Mr. Gooley--which it is expressly forbid -and agreed on that no cooking shall be done in these rooms when they're -rented to you--that it's my gas you're using, and that I have to pay for -it, and that it's just as much stealin' as if you was to put your hand -into my pocket-book and take my money!" - -"Cooking? Gas plate?" muttered Mr. Gooley. "Don't say you ain't got -one!" cried Mrs. Hinkley. "You all got 'em! Every last one of you! Don't -you try to come none of your sweet innocence dodges over me. I know -you, and the whole tribe of you! I ain't kept lodgers for thirty years -without knowing the kind of people they be! 'Gas plate! Gas plate!' says -you, as innocent as if you didn't know what a gas plate was! You got it -hid here somewheres, and I ain't going to stir from this room until I -get my hands on it and squash it under my feet! Come across with it, Mr. -Gooley, come across with it!" - -"But I _haven't_ one," said Mr. Gooley, very ill and very weary. "You -can look, if you want to." - -And he lay back upon the bed. The cockroach slyly withdrew himself from -the ceiling, came down the wall, and crawled to the foot of the bed -again. If Mrs. Hinkley noticed him, she said nothing; perhaps it was not -a part of her professional policy to draw attention to cockroaches on -the premises. She stood and regarded Mr. Gooley for some moments, while -he turned his head away from her in apathy. Her first anger seemed to -have spent itself. But finally, with a new resolution, she said: "And -look I will! You got one, or else that blondined party in the next room -has lied." - -She went into the closet and he heard her opening his trunk. She pulled -it into the bedroom and examined the interior. It didn't take long. She -dived under the bed and drew out his battered suitcase, so dilapidated -that he had not been able to get a quarter for it at the pawnshop, but -no more dilapidated than his trunk. - -She seemed struck, for the first time since her entrance, with the utter -bareness of the room. Outside of the bed, one chair, the bureau, and -Mr. Cooley's broken shoes at the foot of the bed, there was absolutely -nothing in it. - -She sat down in the chair beside the bed. "Mr. Gooley," she said, "you -_ain't_ got any gas plate." - -"No," he said. - -"Mr. Gooley," she said, "you got _nothing at all._ - -"No," he said, "nothing." - -"You had a passel of books and an overcoat five or six weeks ago," she -said, "when you come here. It was seein' them books, and knowing what -you was four or five years ago, when you lived here once before, that -made me sure you was a gentleman." - -Mr. Gooley made no reply. The cockroach on the foot of the bed also -seemed to be listening to see if Mrs. Hinkley had anything more to say, -and suspending judgment. - -"Mr. Gooley," said the landlady, "I beg your pardon. You was lied on by -one that has a gas plate herself, and when I taxed her with it, and took -it away from her, and got rid of her, she had the impudence to say she -thought it was _allowed_, and that everybody done it, and named you as -one that did." - -Mrs. Hinkley paused, but neither Mr. Gooley nor the cockroach had -anything to contribute to the conversation. - -"Gas," continued Mrs. Hinkley, "is gas. And gas costs money. I hadn't -orter jumped on you the way I did, Mr. Gooley, but gas plates has got -to be what you might call corns on my brain, Mr. Gooley. They're my -sensitive spot, Mr. Gooley. If I was to tell you the half of what I have -had to suffer from gas plates during the last thirty years, Mr. Gooley, -you wouldn't believe it! There's them that will cheat you one way and -there's them that will cheat you another, but the best of them will -cheat you with gas plates, Mr. Gooley. With the exception of yourself, -Mr. Gooley, I ain't had a lodger in thirty years that wouldn't rob me -on the gas. Some don't think it's stealin', Mr. Gooley, when they steal -gas. And some of 'em don't care if it is. But there ain't none of 'em -ever thinks what a _landlady_ goes through with, year in and year out." - -She paused for a moment, and then, overcome with self-pity, she began to -sniffle. - -"And my rent's been raised on me again, Mr. Gooley! And I'm a month -behind! And if I ain't come across with the two months, the old month -and the new, by day after to-morrow, out I goes; and it means the -poorhouse as fur as I can see, because I don't know anything else but -keeping lodgers, and I got no place to go!" - -She gathered her apron up and wiped her eyes and nose with it. The -cockroach on the footboard wiped his front set of feet across his face -sympathetically. - -"I got it all ready but fifteen dollars," continued Mrs. Hinkley, "and -then in comes the gas bill this morning with _arrears_ onto it. It is -them _arrears_, Mr. Gooley, that always knocks me out! If it wasn't for -them arrears, I could get along. And now I got to pay out part of the -rent money onto the gas bill, with them arrears on it, or the gas will -be shut off this afternoon." - -The pain in Mr. Gooley's head was getting worse. He wished she would go. -He hated hearing her troubles. But she continued: - -"It's the way them arrears come onto the bill, Mr. Gooley, that has got -me sore. About a week before you come here again to live, Mr. Gooley, -there was a fellow stole fifteen dollars worth of my gas all at once. He -went and killed himself, Mr. Gooley, and he used my gas to do it with. -It leaked out of two jets for forty-eight hours up on the top floor, -before the door was busted in and the body was found, and it came -to fifteen dollars, and all on account of that man's cussedness, Mr. -Gooley, I will likely get turned out into the street, and me sixty years -old and no place to turn." - -Mr. Gooley sat up in bed feebly and looked at her. She _was_ in real -trouble--in about as much trouble as he was. The cockroach walked -meditatively up and down the footboard, as if thinking it over very -seriously. - -Mrs. Hinkley finally rose. - -"Mr. Gooley," she said, regarding him sharply, "you look kind o' done -up!" - -"Uh-huh," said Mr. Gooley. - -She lingered in the room for a few seconds more, irresolutely, and then -departed. - -Mr. Gooley thought. Gas was barred to him now. He couldn't bring himself -to do it with gas. There was still a chance that the old woman might -get hold of the gas money and the rent money, too, and go on for a few -years, but if he selfishly stole twelve or fifteen dollars' worth of gas -from her this afternoon it might be just the thing that would plunge her -into immediate destitution. At any rate, it was, as she had said, like -stealing money from her pocketbook. He thought of what her life as a -rooming-house keeper must have been, and pitied her. He had known many -rooming houses. The down-and-outers know how to gauge the reality and -poignancy of the troubles of the down-and-out. No, he simply could not -do it with gas. - -He must think of some other method. He was on the fourth floor. He might -throw himself out of the window onto the brick walk at the back of the -building, and die. He shuddered as he thought of it. To jump from a -twentieth story, or from the top of the Woolworth Tower, to a certain -death is one thing. To contemplate a fall of three or four stories that -may maim you without killing you, is another. - -Nevertheless, he would do it. He pulled the paper out of the crevice -between the window sashes, opened the window and looked down. He saw the -back stoop and there was a dirty mop beside it; there was an ash can, -and there were two garbage cans there. And there was a starved cat that -sat and looked up at him. He had a tremor and drew back and covered his -face with his hands as he thought of that cat--that knowing cat, that -loathsome, that obscene cat. - -He sat down on the edge of the bed to collect his strength and summon -his resolution. The cockroach had crawled to the head of the bed and -seemed to wish to partake of his thoughts. - -"Damn you, Old Archibald Hammil!" he cried. And he scooped the cockroach -into his hand with a sudden sweep and flung it out of the window. The -insect fell without perceptible discomfort, and at once began to climb -up the outside wall again, making for the window. - -The door opened and Mrs. Hinkley entered, her face cleft with a grin, -and a tray in her hands. - -"Mr. Gooley," she said, setting it on the wash-stand, "I'll bet you -ain't had nothing to eat today!" - -On the tray was a bowl of soup, a half loaf of bread with a long keen -bread knife, a pat of butter, a boiled egg and a cup of coffee. - -"No, nor yesterday, either," said Mr. Gooley, and he looked at the soup -and at the long keen bread knife. - -"Here's something else I want to show you, Mr. Gooley," said the -landlady, dodging out of the door and back in again instantly. She bore -in her hands this time a surprising length of flexible gas tubing, and a -small nickel-plated pearl-handled revolver. - -"You see that there gas tubing?" she said. - -"That is what that blondined party in the next room had on to her gas -plate--the nerve of her! Strung from the gas jet clear across the room -to the window sill. And when I throwed her out, Mr. Gooley, she wouldn't -pay her rent, and I took this here revolver to part pay it. What kind of -a woman is it, Mr. Gooley, that has a revolver in her room, and a loaded -one, too?" - -Just then the doorbell rang in the dim lower regions, and she left the -room to answer it. - -And Mr. Gooley sat and looked at the knife, with which he might so -easily stab himself, and at the gas cord, with which he might so easily -hang himself, and at the loaded revolver, with which he might so easily -shoot himself. - -He looked also at the bowl of soup. - -He had the strength to reflect--a meal is a meal. But _after_ that meal, -what? Penniless, broken in health, friendless, a failure--why prolong it -for another twenty-four hours? A meal would prolong it, but that was -all a meal _would_ do--and after that would come the suffering and the -despair and the end to be faced all over again. - -Was he man enough to take the pistol and do it now? - -Or did true manhood lie the other way? Was he man enough to drink the -soup, and dare to live and hope? - -Just then the cockroach, which had climbed into the window and upon the -washstand, made for the bowl of soup. - -"Here!" cried Mr. Gooley, grabbing the bowl in both hands, "Old Man -Hammil! Get away from that soup!" - -And the bowl being in his hands, he drank. - -"What do you mean by Old Man Hammil?" - -It was Mrs. Hinkley who spoke. She stood again in the doorway, with a -letter in her hands and a look of wonder on her face. - -Mr. Gooley set down the soup bowl. By an effort of the will he had -only drunk half the liquid. He had heard somewhere that those who are -suffering from starvation had better go slow at first when they get hold -of food again. And he already felt better, warmed and resurrected, from -the first gulp. - -"What," demanded the landlady, "do you mean by yelling out about Old Man -Hammil?" - -"Why," said Mr. Gooley, feeling foolish, and looking it, "I was talking -to that cockroach there. He looks sort of like some one I knew when I -was a kid, by the name of Hammil--Archibald Hammil." - -"_Where_ was you a kid?" asked Mrs. Hinkley. - -"In a place called Mapletown--Mapletown, Illinois," said Mr. Gooley. -"There's where I knew Old Man Hammil." - -"Well," said the landlady, "when you go back there you won't see him. -He's dead. He died a week ago. This letter tells it. I was his niece. -And the old man went and left me his hardware store. I never expected -it. But all his kids is dead--it seems he outlived 'em all, and he was -nearly ninety when he passed away." - -"Well," said Mr. Gooley, "I don't remember you." - -"You wouldn't," said the landlady. "You must have been in short pants -when I ran away from home and married the hardware drummer. But I'll bet -you the old-timers in that burg still remembers it against me!" - -"The kids will be coming into that store about now to get their skates -sharpened," said Mr. Gooley, looking at the boiled egg. - -"Uh-huh!" said Mrs. Hinkley. "Don't you want to go back home and help -sharpen 'em? I'm goin' back and run that there store, and I'll need a -clerk, I suppose." - -"Uh-huh," said Mr. Gooley, breaking the eggshell. - -The cockroach, busy with a crumb on the floor, waved his three starboard -legs genially at Mr. Gooley and Mrs. Hinkley--as if, in fact, he were -winking with his feet. - - - - -IV.--McDermott - -|McDermott had gone over with a cargo of mules. The animals were -disembarked at a Channel port, received by officers of that grand -organization which guesses right so frequently, the Quartermaster Corps, -and started in a southerly direction, in carload lots, toward the Toul -sector of the Western Front. McDermott went with one of the carloads -in an unofficial capacity. He had no business in the war zone. But the -Quartermaster Corps, or that part of it in charge of his particular car, -was in no mood to be harsh toward any one who seemed to understand the -wants and humors of mules and who was willing to associate with them. -And so, with his blue overalls and his red beard, McDermott went along. - -"I'll have a look at the war," said McDermott, "and if I like it, I'll -jine it." - -"And if you don't like it," said the teamster to whom he confided his -intention, "I reckon you'll stop it?" - -"I dunno," replied McDermott, "as I would be justified in stoppin' a -good war. The McDermotts has niver been great hands f'r stoppin' wars. -The McDermotts is always more like to be startin' wars." - -McDermott got a look at the war sooner than any one, including the high -command of the Entente Allies, would have thought likely--or, rather, -the war got a look at McDermott. The carload of mules, separated from -its right and proper train, got too far eastward at just the time -the Germans got too far westward. It was in April, 1918, that, having -entered Hazebrouck from the north, McDermott and his mules left it -again, bound eastward. They passed through a turmoil of guns and -lorries, Scotchmen and ambulances, Englishmen, tanks and ammunition -wagons, Irishmen, colonials and field kitchens, all moving slowly -eastward, and came to a halt at a little village where they should not -have been at all, halfway between the northern rim of the forest of -Nieppe and Bailleul. - -The mules did not stay there long. - -"I'll stretch me legs a bit," said McDermott, climbing off the car -and strolling toward a Grande Place surrounded by sixteenth-century -architecture. And just then something passed over the Renaissance roofs -with the scream of one of Dante's devils, struck McDermott's car of -mules with a great noise and a burst of flame, and straightway created a -situation in which there was neither car nor mules. - -For a minute it seemed to McDermott that possibly there was no -McDermott, either. When McDermott regained consciousness of McDermott, -he was sitting on the ground, and he sat there and felt of himself for -many seconds before he spoke or rose. Great guns he had been hearing for -hours, and a rattle and roll of small-arms fire had been getting nearer -all that day; but it seemed to McDermott that there was something quite -vicious and personal about the big shell that had separated him forever -from his mules. Not that he had loved the mules, but he loved McDermott. - -"Mules," said he, still sitting on the ground, but trying to get his -philosophy of life on to its legs again, "is here wan minute an' gawn -the nixt. Mules is fickle an' untrustworthy animals. Here was thim -mules, wigglin' their long ears and arsk-in' f'r Gawd's sake c'u'd they -have a dhrink of wather, an' promisin' a lifelong friendship--but where -is thim mules now?" - -He scratched his red head as he spoke, feeling-of an old scar under the -thick thatch of hair. The wound had been made some years previously -with a bung starter, and whenever McDermott was agitated he caressed it -tenderly. - -He got up, turned about and regarded the extraordinary Grande Place. -There had once been several pretty little shops about it, he could see, -with pleasant courtyards, where the April sun was trying to bring green -things into life again, but now some of these were in newly made and -smoking ruins. The shell that had stricken McDermott's mules from the -roster of existence had not been the only one to fall into the village -recently. - -But it was neither old ruins nor new ruins that interested McDermott -chiefly. It was the humanity that flowed through the Grande Place in a -feeble trickle westward, and the humanity that stayed there. - -Women and old men went by with household treasures slung in bundles or -pushed before them in carts and perambulators, and they were wearing -their best clothes, as if they were going to some village fte, instead -of into desolation and homelessness; the children whom they carried, or -who straggled after them, were also in their holiday best. Here was an -ancient peasant with a coop of skinny chickens on a barrow; there was a -girl in a silk gown carrying something in a bed quilt; yonder was a boy -of twelve on a bicycle, and two things were tied to the handlebars--a -loaf of bread and a soldier's bayonet. Perhaps it had been his father's -bayonet. Quietly they went westward; their lips were dumb and their -faces showed their souls were dumb, too. A long time they had heard the -battle growling to the eastward; and now the war was upon them. It was -upon them, indeed; for as McDermott gazed, another shell struck full -upon a bell-shaped tower that stood at the north side of the Grande -Place and it leaped up in flames and fell in dust and ruin, all gone but -one irregular point of masonry that still stuck out like a snaggle tooth -from a trampled skull. - -These were the ones that were going, and almost the last of the -dreary pageant disappeared as McDermott watched. But those who stayed -astonished him even more by their strange actions and uncouth postures. - -"Don't tell me," mumbled McDermott, rubbing his scar, "that all thim -sojers is aslape!" - -But asleep they were. To the east and to the north the world was one rip -and rat-a-tat of rifle and machine-gun fire--how near, McDermott could -not guess--and over the village whined and droned the shells, of -great or lesser caliber; here was one gate to a hell of noise, and the -buildings stirred and the budding vines in the courtyards moved and -the dust itself was agitated with the breath and blast of far and near -concussions; but yet the big open Place itself was held in the grip of a -grotesque and incredible slumber. - -Sprawled in the gutters, collapsed across the doorsills, leaning against -the walls, slept that portion of the British army; slept strangely, -without snoring. In the middle of the Grande Place there was a young -lieutenant bending forward across the wreck of a motor car; he had tried -to pluck forth a basket from the tonneau and sleep had touched him with -his fingers on the handle. And from the eastern fringes of the village -there entered the square, as actors enter upon a stage, a group of -a dozen men, with their arms linked together, swaying and dazed and -stumbling. At first McDermott thought that wounded were being helped -from the field. But these men were not wounded; they were walking in -their sleep, and the group fell apart, as McDermott looked at them, and -sank severally to the cobblestones. Scotchmen, Canadians, English, torn -and battered remnants of many different commands, they had striven with -their guns and bodies for more than a week to dam the vast, rising wave -of the German attack--day melting into night and night burning into day -again, till there was no such thing as time to them any longer; there -were but two things in the world, battle and weariness, weariness and -battle. - -McDermott moved across the square unchallenged. He had eaten and slept -but little for two days himself, and he made instinctively for the open -door of an empty inn, to search for food. In the doorway he stumbled -across a lad who roused and spoke to him. - -"Jack," said the boy, looking at him with red eyes out of an old, worn -face, "have you got the makin's?" - -He was in a ragged and muddied Canadian uniform, but McDermott guessed -that he was an American. - -"I have that," said McDermott, producing papers and tobacco. But the boy -had lapsed into slumber again. McDermott rolled the cigarette for him, -placed it between his lips, waked him and lighted it for him. - -The boy took a puff or two, and then said dreamily: "And what the hell -are you doin' here with them blue overalls on?" - -"I come to look at the war," said McDermott. - -The soldier glanced around the Grande Place, and a gleam of deviltry -flashed through his utter exhaustion. "So you come to see the war, huh? -Well, don't you wake it now. It's restin'. But if you'll take a chair -and set down, I'll have it--called--for--you--in--in--in 'n 'our--or -so------" - -His voice tailed off into sleep once more; he mangled the cigarette, the -tobacco mingling with the scraggly beard about his drawn mouth; his head -fell forward upon his chest. McDermott stepped past him into the Htel -Faucon, as the inn had called itself. He found no food, but he found -liquor there. - -"Frinch booze," said McDermott, getting the cork out of a bottle of -brandy and sniffing it; "but booze is booze!" - -And more booze is more booze, especially upon an empty stomach. It was -after the fourth drink that McDermott pulled his chair up to one of the -open windows of the inn and sat down, with the brandy beside him. - -"I'm neglictin' that war I come all this way to see," said McDermott. - -The Grande Place, still shaken by the tremendous and unceasing -pulsations of battle, far and near, was beginning to wake up. A fresh, -or, at least, a fresher, battalion was arriving over the spur line of -railroad along which McDermott's mules had been so mistakenly shunted, -and was moving eastward through the town to the firing line. The men -whom McDermott had seen asleep were rising at the word of command; -taking their weapons, falling in, and staggering back to the -interminable battle once more. - -"I dunno," mused McDermott, as the tired men straggled past, "whether I -want to be afther j'inin' that war or not. It makes all thim lads that -slapey! I dunno phwat the devil it is, the Frinch booze bein' so close -to me, inside, or that war so close to me, outside, but I'm gittin' -slapey m'silf." - -It was, likely, the brandy. There had not been a great deal of French -brandy in McDermott's previous experience, and he did not stint himself. -It was somewhere between the ninth and the fifteenth swallows of it that -McDermott remarked to himself, rubbing the scar on his head: - -"I w'u'd jine that war now, if I c'u'd be sure which way it had wint!" - -And then he slid gently out of his chair and went to sleep on the floor -just inside the open window of the Htel Fauon. - -The war crept closer and took another look at McDermott. As the warm -golden afternoon waned, the British troops, fighting like fiends for -every inch of ground, exacting a ghastly toll of lives from the Germans, -were forced back into the eastern outskirts of the town. There, with -rifle and machine gun, from walls, trees, courtyards, roofs and ruins, -they held the advancing Germans for an hour. But they were pushed back -again, doggedly establishing themselves in the houses of the Grande -Place. Neither British nor Germans were dropping shells into that -village now, each side fearful of damaging its own men. - -A British subaltern with a machine gun and two private soldiers entered -the inn and were setting the gun up at McDermott's window when a -German bullet struck the officer and he fell dead across the slumbering -McDermott. Nevertheless, the gun was manned and fought for half an hour -above McDermott, who stirred now and then, but did not waken. Just at -dusk an Irish battalion struck the Germans on the right flank of their -assaulting force, a half mile to the north of the village, rolled them -back temporarily, and cleared the village of them. This counter attack -took the firing line a good thousand yards eastward once more. - -McDermott roused, crawled from beneath the body of the British officer, -and viewed it with surprise. "That war has been here ag'in an' me -aslape," said McDermott. "I might jine that war if I c'u'd ketch up wid -it--but 'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gawn ag'in! An' how c'u'd I jine it -wid no weapons, not even a good thick club to m' hands?" - -He foraged and found a piece of sausage that he had overlooked in his -former search, ate it greedily and then stood in the doorway, listening -to the sound of the firing. It was getting dark and northward toward -Messines and Wytschaete and southward for more miles than he could guess -the lightning of big guns flickered along the sky. - -"Anny way I w'u'd go," mused McDermott, "I w'u'd run into that war if I -was thryin' to dodge ut. And anny wray I w'u'd go, I w'u'd miss that war -if I was thryin' to come up wid ut. An' till I make up me mind which wan -I want to do, here will I sthay." - -He opened another bottle of brandy, and drank and cogitated. Whether it -was the cogitation or the drinks or the effect of the racket of war, his -head began to ache dully. When McDermott's scar ached, it was his custom -to take another drink. After a while there came a stage at which, if it -still ached, he at least ceased to feel it aching any more. - -"The hotel here," he remarked, "is filled wid hospitality and midical -tratement, and where bet-ther c'u'd I be?" - -And presently, once more, a deep sleep overtook him. A deeper, more -profound sleep, indeed, than his former one. And this time the war came -still nearer to McDermott. - -The British were driven back again and again occupied the town, the -Germans in close pursuit. From house to house and from wall to wall -the struggle went on, with grenade, rifle and bayonet. A German, with -a Scotchman's steel in his chest, fell screaming, back through the open -window, and his blood as he died soaked McDermott's feet. But McDermott -slept. Full night came, thick and cloudy, and both sides sent up -floating flares. The square was strewn with the bodies of the dead and -the bodies of the maimed in increasing numbers; the wounded groaned and -whimpered in the shadows of the trampled Place, crawling, if they still -could crawl, to whatever bit of broken wall seemed to offer momentary -shelter and praying for the stretcher bearers to be speedy. But still -McDermott slept. - -At ten o'clock that night two Englishmen once more brought a machine gun -into the Htel Fauon; they worked the weapon for twenty minutes from -the window within ten feet of which McDermott now lay with his brandy -bottle beside him. Once McDermott stirred; he sat up sleepily on the -floor and murmured: "An' where is that war now? Begad, an' I don't -belave there is anny war!" - -And he rolled over and went to sleep again. The men with the machine gun -did not notice him; they were too busy. A moment later one of them sank -with a bullet through his heart. His comrade lasted a little longer, and -then he, too, went down, a wound in his lungs. It took him some weary -minutes to choke and bleed to death, there in that dark place, upon the -floor, among the dead men and McDermott's brandy bottles and the heap -of ammunition he had brought with him. Hist struggle did not wake -McDermott. - -By midnight the British had been driven back until they held the houses -at the west end of the town and the end of the spur railroad that came -eastward from Hazebrouck. The Germans were in the eastern part of the -village, and between was a "no man's land," of which the Grande Place -was a part. What was left of the Htel Faucon, with the sleeping -McDermott in it, was toward the middle of the south side of the square. -In the streets to the north and south of the Place patrols still clashed -with grenade and bayonet and rifle, but the Germans attempted no further -advance in any force after midnight. No doubt they were bringing up more -men; no doubt, with the first morning light, they would move forward a -regiment or two, possibly even a division, against the British who -still clung stubbornly to the western side of the town. All the way from -Wytschaete south to Givenchy the battle-line was broken up into many -little bitter struggles of this sort, the British at every point facing -great odds. - -When dawn came, there came with it a mist. And three men of a German -patrol, creeping from house to house and ruin to ruin along the south -side of that part of "no man's land" which was the Grande Place, entered -the open door of the Htel Fauon. - -One of them stepped upon McDermott's stomach, where he lay sleeping and -dreaming of the war he had come to look at. - -McDermott, when he had been drinking, was often cross. And especially -was he cross if, when sleeping off his liquor, some one purposely or -inadvertently interfered with his rightful and legitimate rest. When -this coarse and heavy-footed intruder set his boot, albeit unwittingly, -upon McDermott's stomach, McDermott sat up with a bellow of rage, -instinctively and instantaneously grabbed the leg attached to the boot, -rose as burning rocks rise from a volcano, with the leg in his hands, -upset the man attached to the leg, and jumped with two large feet -accurately upon the back of that person's neck. Whereupon the Boche went -to Valhalla. McDermott, though nearer fifty than forty years old, was a -barroom fighter of wonderful speed and technique, and this instinctive -and spontaneous maneuver was all one motion, just as it is all one -motion when a cat in a cellar leaps over a sack of potatoes, lands upon -a rat, and sinks her teeth into a vital spot. The second German and -the third German hung back an instant toward the door, and then came -on toward the moving shadow in the midst of shadows. For their own good -they should have come on without hanging back that second; but perhaps -their training, otherwise so efficient, did not include barroom tactics. -Their hesitation gave McDermott just the time he needed, for when he -faced them he had the first German's gun in his hands. - -"No war," said McDermott, "can come into me slapin' chamber and stand on -me stomach like that, and expict me to take it peaceful!" - -With the words he fired the first German's rifle into the second -German. The third German, to the rear of the second one, fired his gun -simultaneously, but perhaps he was a hit flurried, for he also fired -directly into the second German, and there was nothing the second German -could do but die; which he did at once. McDermott leaped at the third -German with his rifle clubbed just as the man pressed the trigger again. -The bullet struck McDermott's rifle, splintered the butt of it and -knocked it from his hands; but a second later McDermott's hands were on -the barrel of the German's gun and the two of them were struggling for -it. - -There is one defect in the German military system, observers say: the -drill masters do not teach their men independent thinking; perhaps the -drill-masters do not have the most promising material to work upon. -At any rate, it occurred to McDermott to kick the third German in the -stomach while the third German was still thinking of nothing else than -trying to depress the gun to shoot or bayonet McDermott. Thought and -kick were as well coordinated as if they had proceeded from one of -McDermott's late mules. - -The Boche went to the floor of the Htel Faucon with a groan. "Gott!" he -said. - -"A stomach f'r a stomach," said Mc-Dermott, standing over him with the -rifle. "Git up!" - -The German painfully arose. - -"Ye are me prisoner," said McDermott, "an' the furst wan I iver took. -Hould up y'r hands! Hould thim up, I say! Not over y'r stomach, man, but -over y'r head!" - -The Boche complied hurriedly. - -"I see ye understhand United States," said McDermott. "I was afraid ye -might not, an' I w'u'd have to shoot ye." - -"_Kamerad!_" exclaimed the man. - -"Ye are no comrade av mine," said McDermott, peering at the man's face -through the eery halflight of early morning, "an' comrade av mine ye -niver was! I know ye well! Ye are Goostave Schmidt b' name, an' wanst ye -tinded bar in a dive down b' the Brooklyn wather front!" - -The man stared at McDermott in silence for a long minute, and then -recollection slowly came to him. - -"MagDermodd!" he said. "Batrick MagDermodd!" - -"The same," said McDermott. - -"_Gott sei dank!_" said the German. "I haf fallen into der hands of -a friend." And with the beginning of a smile he started to lower his -hands. - -"Put thim up!" cried McDermott. "Don't desave y'silf! Ye are no fri'nd -av mine!" - -The smile faded, and something like a look of panic took its place on -the German's face. - -"Th' last time I saw ye, ye was in bad company, f'r ye was alone," said -McDermott. "An' I come over here lookin' f'r ye, an' I find ye in bad -company ag'in!" - -"Looking?" said the German with quite sincere perplexity. "You gome here -_looking_ for me?" - -The wonder on the man's face at this unpremeditated jest of his having -crossed the Atlantic especially to look for Gustave Schmidt titillated -McDermott's whole being. But he did not laugh, and he let the German -wonder. "And phwy sh'u'd I not?" he said. - -The German thought intensely for a while. "Why _should_ you gome all der -vay agross der Adlandic looking for _me?_" he said finally. - -"Ye have a short mimory," said McDermott. "Ye do not recollict the time -ye hit me on the head wid a bung starter whin I was too soused to defind -m'silf? The scar is there yet, bad luck to ye!" - -"But dot was nudding," said the German. "Dot bung-starder business was -all a bart of der day's vork." - -"But ye cript up behint me," said McDermott; "an' me soused!" - -"But dot was der bractical vay to do it," said the German. "Dot was -nuddings at all, dot bung-starder business. I haf forgodden it long -ago!" - -"The McDermotts remimber thim compliments longer," said McDermott. "An' -b' rights I sh'u'd give ye wan good clout wid this gun and be done wid -ye. But I'm thinkin' I may be usin' ye otherwise." - -"You gome all der vay agross der Adlandic yoost because I hit you on der -head mit a bung starder?" persisted the German, still wondering. "Dot, -MagDermodd, I cannot belief--_Nein!_" - -"And ye tore up y'r citizenship papers and come all the way across -the Atlantic just to jine this gang av murtherin' child-killers," said -McDermott. "That I c'n belave! Yis!" - -"But I haf not dorn up my American cidizen papers--_Nein!_" exclaimed -the German, earnestly. "Dose I haf kept. I gome across to fight for mein -Faderland--dot vas orders. _Ja!_ But mein American cidizenship papers I -haf kept, and ven der war is ofer I shall go back to Brooklyn and once -more an American citizen be, undill der next war. _Ja!_ You haf not -understood, but dot is der vay of it. _Ja!_" - -"Goostave," said McDermott, "ye have too many countries workin' f'r ye. -But y'r takin' ordhers from m'silf now--do ye get that? C'n ye play that -musical insthrumint there by the window?" - -"_Ja!_" said Gustave. "Dot gun I can vork. Dot is der Lewis machine gun. -Id is not so good a gun as our machine gun, for our machine gun haf been -a colossal sugcess, but id is a goot gun." - -"Ye been fightin' f'r the Kaiser f'r three or four years, Goostave," -said McDermott, menacing him with his rifle, "but this mornin' I'll be -afther seein' that ye do a bit av work f'r thim citizenship papers, an', -later, ye can go to hell, if ye like, an' naturalize y'rsilf in still a -third country. Ye will shoot Germans wid that gun till I get the hang -av the mechanism m'silf. And thin I will shoot Germans wid that gun. But -furst, ye will give me that fancy tin soup-bowl ye're wearin'." - -Gustave handed over his helmet. McDermott put it on his red head. - -"I've been thinkin'," said McDermott, "will I jine this war, or will I -not jine it. An' the only way ye c'n tell do ye like a thing or do ye -not is to thry it wance. Wid y'r assistance, Goostave, I'll thry it this -mornin', if anny more av it comes my way." - -More of it was coming his way. The Germans, tired of trifling with the -small British force which held the village, had brought up the better -part of a division during the night and were marshaling the troops for -their favorite feat of arms, an overwhelming frontal attack _en masse_. -The British had likewise received reinforcements, drawing from the north -and from the south every man the hard-pressed lines could spare. But -they were not many, perhaps some three thousand men in all, to resist -the massed assault, with the railroad for its objective, which would -surely come with dawn. If troops were needed in the village they were -no less needed on the lines that flanked it. The little town, which -had been the scene of so much desperate skirmishing the day before and -during the first half of the night, was now about to become the ground -of something like a battle. - -"There's a French division on the way," said the British colonel in -command in the village to one of his captains. "If we can only hold them -for an hour----" - -He did not finish the sentence. As he spoke the German bombardment, -precedent to the infantry attack, began to comb the western fringes -of the town and the railroad line behind, searching for the -hurriedly-digged and shallow trenches, the improvised dugouts, the -shell holes, the cellars and the embankments where the British lay. The -British guns to the rear of the village made answer, and the uproar tore -the mists of dawn to tatters. A shell fell short, into the middle of the -Grande Place, and McDermott saw the broken motor car against which the -sleeping lieutenant had leaned the day before vanish into nothingness; -and then a house directly opposite the Htel Fauon jumped into flame -and was no more. Looking out across the back of the stooping Gustave at -the window, McDermott muttered, "I dunno as I w'u'd want to jine that -war." And then he bellowed in Gustave Schmidt's ear: "Cut loose! Cut -loose wid y'rgun! Cut loose!" - -"I vill not!" shrieked Gustave. "Mein Gott! Dat is mein own regiment!" - -"Ye lie!" shouted McDermott. "Ye will!" He thrust a bit of bayonet into -the fleshiest part of the German's back. - -"I vill! I vill!" cried Gustave. - -"Ye will that," said McDermott, "an' the less damned nonsinse I hear -from ye about y'r own rigimint the betther f'r ye! Ye're undher me -own ordhers till I c'n make up me mind about this war." The mists were -rising. In the clearing daylight at the eastern end of the square, as if -other clouds were moving forward with a solid front, appeared the first -gray wave of the German infantry. Close packed, shoulder to shoulder, -three deep, they came, almost filling the space from side to side of the -Grande Place, moving across that open stretch against the British fire -with a certain heavy-footed and heavy-brained contempt of everything -before them. Ten steps, and the British machine guns and rifles caught -them. The first wave, or half of it, went down in a long writhing -windrow, across the east end of the square, and in the instant that he -saw it squirm and toss before the trampling second wave swept over it -and through it, the twisting gray-clad figures on the stones reminded -McDermott of the heaps of heaving worms he used to see at the bottom of -his bait-can when he went fishing as a boy. - -"Hold that nozzle lower, Goostave!" he yelled to his captive. "Spray -thim! Spray thim! Ye're shootin' over their heads, ye lumberin' -Dutchman, ye!" - -"_Gott!_" cried Gustave, as another jab of the bayonet urged him to his -uncongenial task. - -And then McDermott made one of the few errors of his military career. -Whether it was the French brandy he had drunk to excess the night -before, or whether it was the old bung-starter wound on his head, which -always throbbed and jumped when he became excited, his judgment deserted -him for an instant. For one instant he forgot that there must be no -instants free from the immediate occupation of guiding and directing -Gustave. - -"Let me see if I can't work that gun m'self," he cried. - -As he relaxed his vigilance, pushing the German to one side, the Boche -suddenly struck him upon the jaw. McDermott reeled and dropped his -rifle; before he could recover himself, the German had it. The weapon -swung upward in the air and--just then a shell burst outside the open -window of the Htel Fauon. - -Both men were flung from their feet by the concussion. For a moment -everything was blank to McDermott. And then, stretching out his hand to -rise, his fingers encountered something smooth and hard upon the floor. -Automatically his grasp closed over it and he rose. At the same instant -the German struggled to his feet, one hand behind his back, and the -other extended, as if in entreaty. - -"_Kamerad_," he whined, and even as he whined he lurched nearer and -flung at McDermott a jagged, broken bottle. McDermott ducked, and -the dagger-like glass splintered on his helmet. And then McDermott -struck--once. Once was enough. The Boche sank to the floor without a -groan, lifeless. McDermott looked at him, and then, for the first time, -looked at what he held in his own hand, the weighty thing which he had -wielded so instinctively and with such ferocity. It was the bung starter -of the Htel Fauon. - -"Goostave niver knowed what hit him," said McDermott. And if there had -been any one to hear, in all that din, a note of regret that Gustave -never knew might have been remarked in his voice. - -McDermott turned his attention to the machine gun, which, with its -tripod, had been knocked to the floor. He squatted, with his head below -the level of the window sill, and looked it over. - -"'Tis not broken," he decided, after some moments of examination. "Did -Goostave do it so? Or did he do it so?" He removed his helmet and rubbed -the scar under his red hair reflectively. "If I was to make up me mind -to jine that war," mused McDermott, "this same w'u'd be a handy thing to -take wid me. It w'u'd that! Now, did that Goostave that used to be here -pull this pretty little thingumajig so? Or did he pull it so? Ihaveut! -He pulled it so! And thim ca'tridges, now--do they feed in so? Or do -they feed in so? 'T w'u'd be a handy thing, now, f'r a man that had anny -intintions av jinin' the war to know about all thim things!" - -And, patiently, McDermott studied the mechanism, while the red sunlight -turned to yellow in the Grande Place outside, and the budding green -vines withered along the broken walls, and the stones ran blood, and the -Htel Fauon began to fall to pieces about his ears. McDermott did not -hurry; he felt that there was no need to hurry; he had not yet made up -his mind whether he intended to participate in this war. By the time he -had learned how to work that machine gun, and had used it on the Germans -for a while, he thought, he might be vouchsafed some light on that -particular subject. It was one of McDermott's fixed beliefs that he -was an extremely cautious sort of man, though many of his acquaintances -thought of him differently, and he told himself that he must not get too -far into this war until he was sure that it was going to be congenial. -So far, it promised well. - -And also, McDermott, as he puzzled over the machine gun, was not quite -the normal McDermott. He was, rather, a supernormal McDermott. He had -been awakened rudely from an alcoholic slumber and he had been rather -busy ever since; so many things had taken place in his immediate -neighborhood, and were still taking place, that he was not quite sure -of their reality. As he sat on the floor and studied the weapon, he was -actually, from moment to moment, more than half convinced that he was -dreaming--he might awaken and find that that war had eluded him again. -Perhaps he is scarcely to be chided for being in what is sometimes known -as a state of mind. - -And while McDermott was looking at the machine gun, the British -commander prayed, as a greater British commander before him had prayed -one time, for assistance, only this one did not pray for night or -Blucher as Wellington had done. Night was many hours beyond all -hope and would probably bring its own hell when it came, and as for -Prussians, there were too many Prussians now. His men would hold on; -they had been holding on for epic days and unbelievable nights, and they -would still hold while there was breath in their bodies, and when their -bodies were breathless they would hold one minute more. But--God! For -Foch's _poilus!_ There is a moment which is the ultimate moment; the -spirit can drag the body until--until spirit and body are wrenched into -two things. No longer. His men could die in their tracks; they were -dying where they stood and crouched and lay, by dozens and by scores and -by heroic hundreds--but when they were dead, who would bar the way to -Hazebrouck, and beyond Hazebrouck, to the channel ports? - -That way was all but open now, if the enemy but realized it. Any moment -they might discover it. A half-mile to the south of the village the line -was so thinly held that one strong, quick thrust must make a gap. Let -the enemy but fling a third of the troops he was pounding to pieces in -the bloody streets of the town, in the torn fields that flanked it, and -in the shambles of the Grande Place that was the center of this action, -at that weak spot, and all was over. But with a fury mechanical, -insensate, the Germans still came on in direct frontal attacks. - -The British had slain and slain and slain, firing into the gray masses -until the water boiled in the jackets of the machine guns. Five attacks -had broken down in the Grande Place itself--and now a sixth was forming. -Should he still hold fast, the colonel asked himself, or should he -retire, saving what machine guns he might, and flinging a desperate -detachment southward in the attempt to make a stronger right flank? But -to do that might be the very move that would awaken the Germans to their -opportunity there. So long as they pounded, pounded at his center, he -would take a toll of them, at least--but the moment was coming-- - -"I have ut!" cried McDermott, and mounted his gun at the window. - -"It is time to retire," said the British colonel, and was about to give -the order. - -"Right in their bloody backs," said McDermott to himself. - -And so it was. For the sixth advance of the German masses had carried -them well into the Grande Place. McDermott, crouched at his window, cut -loose with his gun at pointblank range as the first wave, five men deep, -passed by him, splashing along the thick ranks from behind as one might -sweep a garden hose down a row of vegetables. Taken thus in the rear, -ambushed, with no knowledge of the strength of the attacking force -behind them, the German shock troops swayed and staggered, faced about -and fell and broke. For right into the milling herd of them, and -into the second advancing wave, the British poured their bullets. The -colonel, who had been about to order a retreat, ordered a charge, -and before the stampeded remnant of the first two waves could recover -themselves the British were on them with grenades and bayonets, flinging -them back into the third wave, just advancing to their support, in a -bleeding huddle of defeat. - -McDermott saw the beginning of that charge, and with his bung starter in -his hand he rushed from the door to join it. But he did not see the -end of it, nor did he see the _poilus_, as they came slouching into the -village five minutes later to give the repulse weight and confirmation, -redolent of onions and strange stews, but with their bayonets--those -bayonets that are part of the men who wield them, living things, -instinct with the beautiful, straight, keen soul of France herself. - -McDermott did not see them, for some more of the Htel Fauon had fallen -on him, crushing one of his ankles and giving him a clout on the head. - -"Whoever it was turned loose that machine gun from the inn window, did -the trick," said the colonel, later. "It's hardly too much to say that -he blocked the way to Hazebrouck--for the time, at least, if one man can -be said to have done such a thing--what's that?" - -"That" was McDermott, who was being carried forth, unconscious, to an -ambulance. It was his blue overalls that had occasioned the colonel's -surprise. He was neither French nor British nor German; palpably he was -a civilian, and a civilian who had no business there. And in his hand he -clasped a bung starter. His fingers were closed over it so tightly that -in the base hospital later they found difficulty in taking it away from -him. - -Owing, no doubt, to the blow on his head, McDermott was unable to recall -clearly anything that had taken place from the moment he had first -fallen asleep under the influence of French brandy until he awakened in -the hospital nearly four weeks later. During this period there had been -several intervals of more open-eyed dreaming, succeeded by lapses into -profound stupor; but even in these open-eyed intervals, McDermott -had not been himself. It was during one of these intervals that a -representative of the French Government bestowed the Croix de Guerre -upon McDermott, for it had been learned that he was the man behind the -machine gun that had turned the tide of combat. - -McDermott, his eyes open, but his mind in too much of a daze even to -wonder what the ceremony was about, sat in a wheel chair, and in company -with half a dozen other men selected for decoration, listened to a brief -oration in very good French, which he could not have understood had he -been normal. In answer he muttered in a low tone, rubbing his broken and -bandaged head: "I think maybe I will jine that war, afther all!" - -The French officer assumed that McDermott had spoken some sort of -compliment to France and kissed McDermott on both cheeks, in front -of the hospital staff, several American reporters, and as much of the -French army as qould be spared to do honor to the occasion. The _Croix -de Guerre_ made no impression upon McDermott, but the kiss briefly -arrested his wandering consciousness, and he cried out, starting up in -his chair and menacing the officer: "Where is me bung starter?" Then he -fainted. - -A good many thousands of people in France and England and America -learned from the newspapers the story of the nondescript in the blue -overalls, who had behaved so gallantly at the crucial moment of a -crucial fight. But McDermott never did. He seldom read newspapers. No -one had been able to learn his name, so the reporters had given him a -name. They called him "Dennis." And it was "Dennis" who got the fame and -glory. McDermott would not have identified himself with Dennis had he -seen the newspapers. When he awakened from his long, broken stupor, with -its intervals of dazed halfconsciousness, the first thing he did was to -steal away from that hospital; he left without having heard of Dennis or -of the decoration of Dennis. - -There was one thing that he had experienced that did live hazily and -confusedly in his memory, however, although he could not fix it in its -relationship to any other thing. And that was the fact that he had met -Gustave Schmidt. Three or four months after he slipped away from the -hospital--a period of unchronicled wanderings, during which he had tried -unsuccessfully to enlist several times--he limped into a saloon on the -Brooklyn water front and asked Tim O'Toole, the proprietor, for his -usual. He had just got back to Brooklyn, and he carried his earthly -possessions in a bundle wrapped in brown paper. - -"I hear Yordy Crowley isn't givin' his racket this year," said -McDermott, laying his bundle on the bar and pouring out his drink. - -"He is not," said Tim. "He is in France helpin' out thim English." - -"Yordy will make a good sojer," said McDermott. "He is a good man of his -fists." - -"The Irish is all good sojers," said Mr. O'Toole, sententiously. "There -was that man Dinnis, now, that was in all av the papers." - -"I did not hear av him," said McDermott. "An' phwat did he do?" - -"He licked th' entire German army wan morn-in'," said O'Toole, "an' -saved England, an' the Quane of France kissed him for it. 'Twas in all -the papers. Or, maybe," said Mr. O'Toole, "it was the King av Belg'um -kissed him for ut. Anny-way wan of thim foreign powers kissed him wid -the whole world lookin' on." - -"An' phwat did this Dinnis do thin?" asked McDermott. - -"He attimpted to assault the person that kissed him," said O'Toole. -"Maybe 'twas the King av Italy. 'Twas in all the papers at th' time. -Some wan told me ye were in France y'rsilf, Paddy." - -"I was that," said McDermott. "I wint wid mules." - -"Did ye see annything av the war?" - -"I did not," said McDermott. "Divil a bit of ut, barrin' a lot o' -racket an' a big roarin' divil av a stame-boiler thing that come bustin' -through th' air an' took away the mules that was me passport. But I come -near seein' some av ut, wan time." - -"An' how was it that ye come near it, an' missed it?" inquired Tim. - -"I wint to slape," said McDermott. "The war was slapin', an' I laid -m'silf down b' the side av ut an' took a nap, too. Later, I woke up in -the hospital, some wan havin' stipped on me whilst I was slapin', or -somethin'. They was afther keep-in' me in th' hospital indefinite, an' -I slipped away wan mornin', dodgin' the orderlies an' nurses, or I might -have been there yet eatin' jelly an' gettin' me face washed f'r me. An' -afther I got back here I thried to jine that war, but th' Amurrican Army -w'u'd not have me." - -"And phwy not?" - -"Because av me fut." - -"And how did ye hurt y'r fut?" - -"Divil a bit do I know how," said McDermott. "I'm tellin' ye 'twas done -whilst I was aslape. I remimber gettin' soused in wan av thim Frinch -barrooms, an' I w'u'd think it was a mule stipped on me fut whin I was -slapin' off me souse, excipt that thim mules was gone before I got me -souse." - -"An' ye saw naught av the war?" Tim was distinctly disappointed. - -"But little of ut, but little of ut," said McDermott. "But, Timmy,--wan -thing I did whilst I was in France." - -"An' phwat was that?" - -"I avened up an ould grudge," said McDermott. He put away a second -drink, rolling it over his tongue with satisfaction. "Do ye mind that -Goostave Schmidt that used to kape bar acrost the strate? Ye do! Do ye -mind th' time he hit me wid th' bung starter? Ye do!" - -"Phwat thin?" - -"Well, thin," said McDermott, "I met up wid him ag'in in wan av thim -Frinch barrooms. I do not remimber phwat he said to me nor phwat I said -to him, for I was soused, Timmy. But wan word led to another, an' I give -him as good as he sint, an' 'twas wid a bung starter, too. I brung it -back wid me as a sooveneer av me travels in France." - -And, undoing his brown paper bundle, McDermott fished forth from among -his change of socks and shirts and underwear the bung starter of the -Htel Fauon and laid it upon the bar for his friend's inspection. -Something else in the bundle caught O'Toole's eye. - -"An' phwat is that thing ye have there?" asked Tim. - -"Divil a bit do I know phwat," said McDermott, picking the article up -and tossing it carelessly upon the bar. "'Twas layin' by me cot in -the hospital, along wid m' bung starter an' me clothes whin I come to -m'silf, an' whin I made me sneak from that place I brung it along." - -It was the _Croix de Guerre_. - - - - -V.--Looney the Mutt - -|Looney had but one object in life, one thought, one conscious motive -of existence--to find Slim again. After he found Slim, things would be -different, things would be better, somehow. Just how, Looney did not -know. - -Looney did not know much, anyhow. Likely he would never have known much, -in the most favorable circumstances. And the circumstances under which -he had passed his life were scarcely conducive to mental growth. He -could remember, vaguely, that he had not always been called Looney -Hogan. There had been a time when he was called Kid Hogan. Something had -happened inside his head one day, and then there had come a period of -which he remembered nothing at all; after that, when he could remember -again, he was not Kid any more, but Looney. Perhaps some one had hit him -on the head. People were always hitting him, before he knew Slim. And -now that Slim was gone, people were always hitting him again. When he -was with Slim, Slim had not let people hit him--often. So he must find -Slim again; Slim, who was the only God he had ever known. - -In the course of time he became known, in his own queer world, from -Baltimore to Seattle, from Los Angeles to Boston, as Slim's Lost -Mutt, or as Looney the Mutt. Looney did not resent being called a -dog, particularly, but he never called himself "The Mutt"; he stuck to -"Looney"; Slim had called him Looney, and Looney must, therefore, be -right. - -The humors of Looney's world are not, uniformly, kindly humors. Giving -Looney the Mutt a "bum steer" as to Slim's whereabouts was considered a -legitimate jest. - -"Youse ain't seen Slim Matchett anywheres?" he would ask of hobo or -wobbly, working stiff or yeggman, his faded pale-blue eyes peering from -his weather-worn face with the same anxious intensity, the same eager -hope, as if he had not asked the question ten thousand times before. - -And the other wanderer, if he were one that knew of Looney the Mutt and -Looney's quest would answer, like as not: - -"Slimmy de Match? Uh-huh! I seen Slim last mont' in Chi. He's lookin' -fer youse, Looney." One day the Burlington Crip, who lacked a hand, and -who looked so mean that it was of common report that he had got sore at -himself and bitten it off, varied the reply a bit by saying: - -"I seen Slim las' week, an' he says: 'Where t' hell's dat kid o' mine? -Youse ain't seen nuttin' o' dat kid o' mine, has you, Crip? Dat kid o' -mine give me de slip, Crip. He lammistered, and I ain't seen him since. -If youse gets yer lamps on dat kid o' mine, Crip, give him a wallop on -his mush fer me, an' tell him to come an' find me an' I'm gonna give him -another one.'" - -Looney stared and wondered and grieved. It hurt him especially that Slim -should think that he, Looney, had run away from Slim; he agonized anew -that he could not tell Slim at once that such was not the truth. And he -wondered and grieved at the change that must have taken place in Slim, -who now promised him "a wallop on the mush." For Slim had never struck -him. It was Slim who had always kept other people from striking him. -It was Slim who had, upon occasion, struck other people to protect -him--once, in a hangout among the lakeside sand dunes south of Chicago, -Slim had knifed a man who had, by way of jovial byplay to enliven a dull -afternoon, flung Looney into the fire. - -It never occurred to Looney to doubt, entirely, these bearers of -misinformation. He was hunting Slim, and of course, he thought, Slim -was hunting Looney. His nature was all credulity. Such mind as the boy -possessed--he was somewhere in his twenties, but had the physique of -a boy--was saturated with belief in Slim, with faith in Slim, and he -thought that all the world must admire Slim. He did not see why any one -should tell lies that might increase Slim's difficulties, or his own. - -There was a big red star he used to look at nights, when he slept in the -open, and because it seemed to him bigger and better and more splendid -than any of the other stars he took to calling it Slim's star. It was a -cocky, confident-looking star; it looked as if it would know how to take -care of itself, and Slim had been like that. It looked good-natured, -too, and Slim had been that way. When Looney had rustled the scoffin's -for Slim, Slim had always let him have some of the best chow--or almost -always. And he used to talk to that star about Slim when he was alone. -It seemed sympathetic. And although he believed the hoboes were telling -him the truth when they said that they had seen Slim, it was apparent -even to his intelligence that they had no real sympathy with his quest. - -Once he did find a certain sympathy, if no great understanding. He -worked a week, one Spring, for a farmer in Indiana. The farmer wished -to keep him, for that Summer at least, for Looney was docile, willing -enough, and had a natural, unconscious tact with the work-horses. Looney -was never afraid of animals, and they were never afraid of him. Dogs -took to him, and the instant liking of dogs had often stood him in good -stead in his profession. - -"Why won't you stay?" asked the farmer. - -"Slim's lookin' fer me, somewheres," said Looney. And he told the farmer -about Slim. The farmer, having perceived Looney's mental twilight, and -feeling kindly toward the creature, advanced an argument that he thought -might hold him. - -"Slim is just as likely to find you if you stay in one place, as if you -go travelin' all over the country," he said. - -"Huh-uh," said Looney. "He ain't, Mister. It's this way, Mister: every -time I stop long any-, wheres, Slim, he passes me by." - -And then he continued, after a pause: "Slim, he was always good to me, -Mister. I kinda want to be the one that finds Slim, instead of just -stayin' still an' waitin' to be found." - -They were standing in the dusk by the barn, and the early stars were -out. Looney told him about Slim's star. - -"I want to be the guy that does the findin'," went on Looney presently, -"because I was the guy that done the losin'. One night they was five or -six of us layin' under a lot of railroad ties we had propped up against -a fence to keep the weather off, an' we figgered on hoppin' a train fer -Chi that night. Well, the train comes along, but I'm asleep. See? The -rest of t' gang gits into an empty in de dark, an' I don't wake up. I -s'pose Slim he t'inks I'm wit' t' gang, but I don't wake up under them -ties till mornin'. I went to Chi soon's I could, but I ain't never -glommed him since, Mister. I didn't find him dere. An' dat's t' way I -lost Slim, Mister." - -"Maybe," suggested the farmer, "he is dead." - -"Nit," said Looney. "He ain't dead. If Slim was croaked or anything, I'd -be wised up to it. Look at that there star. Dat is Slim's star, like I -told youse. If Slim had been bumped off, or anything, Mister, that star -wouldn't be shinin' that way, Mister." - -And he went back to his own world--his world--which was a succession of -freight and cattle cars, ruinous sheds and shelters in dubious suburbs -near to railroad sidings, police stations, workhouses, jails, city -missions, transient hangouts in bedraggled clumps of wood, improvised -shacks, shared with others of his kind in vacant lots in sooty -industrial towns, chance bivouacs amidst lumber piles and under dripping -water tanks, lucky infrequent lodgings in slum hotels that used to -charge fifteen cents for a bed and now charge a quarter, golden moments -in vile barrooms and blind tigers, occasional orgies in quarries or -gravel pits or abandoned tin-roofed tool houses, uneasy, loiterings -and interrupted slumbers in urban parks and the squares or outskirts of -villages. Sometimes he worked, as he had with the Indiana farmer, with -the wheat harvesters of the Northwest, or the snow shovelers of the -metropoli, or the fruit gatherers of California; but more often he -loafed, and rustled grub and small coin from the charitably disposed. - -It all seemed the natural way of life to Looney. He could not remember -anything else. He viewed the people of the world who did not live so, -and whom he saw to be the majority, as strange, unaccountable beings -whom he could never hope to understand; he vaguely perceived that they -were stronger than he and his ever-hiking clan, and he knew that they -might do unpleasant things to him with their laws and their courts -and their strength, but he bore them no rancor, unlike many of his -associates. - -He had no theories about work or idleness; he accepted either as it -came; he had little conscious thought about anything, except finding -Slim again. And one thing worried him: Slim, who was supposed to be -looking for Looney, even as Looney was looking for Slim, left no mark. -He was forever looking for it, searching for the traces of Slim's -knife--a name, a date, a destination, a message bidding Looney to follow -or to wait--on freight sheds and water tanks, and known and charted -telegraph poles and the tool houses of construction gangs. But Slim, -always just ahead of him, as he thought, continually returning and -passing him, ever receding in the distance, left no mark, no wanderer's -pateran, behind. Looney left his own marks everywhere, but, strangely -enough, it seemed that Slim never saw them. Looney remembered that one -time when he and Slim were together Slim had wished to meet and confer -with the Burlington Crip, and had left word to that effect, penciled and -carved and sown by the speech of the mouth, from the Barbary Coast to -the Erie Basin. And the Burlington Crip, with his snaggle teeth and his -stump where a hand had been, had joined them on the Brooklyn waterfront -within two months. It had been simple, and Looney wondered why Slim -omitted this easy method of communication. Perhaps Slim was using it and -Looney was not finding the marks. He knew himself for stupid, and set -his failure down to that, never to neglect on Slim's part. For Slim was -Slim, and Slim could do no wrong. - -His habit of searching for some scratched or written word of Slim's -became known to his whole section of the underworld, and furnished -material for an elaboration of the standing jest at his expense. When -ennui descended upon some chance gathering in one of the transient -hangouts--caravanserai as familiar to the loose-foot, casual guests, -from coast to coast, as was ever the Blackstone in Chicago or the -Biltmore in New York to those who read this simple history--it was -customary for some wag to say: - -"Looney, I seen a mark that looked like Slim's mark on a shed down in -Alexandria, Virginny, right by where the Long Bridge starts over to -Washington." - -And it might be that Looney would start at once, without a word, for -Alexandria. Therein lay the cream of this subtle witticism, for its -perpetrators--in Looney's swift departures. - -Or it might be that Looney would sit and ponder, his washed-out eyes -interrogating the speaker in a puzzled fashion, but never doubting. And -then the jester would say, perhaps: "Why don't you get a move onto you, -Looney? You're gonna miss Slim again." - -And Looney would answer, perchance: "Slim, he ain't there now. The' was -one of them wobblies' bump-off men sayin' he seen Slim in Tacoma two -weeks ago, an' Slim was headin' this way. I'm gonna wait fer him a while -longer." - -But he never waited long. He could never make himself. As he had told -the Indiana farmer, he was afraid to wait long. It was the Burlington -Crip who had made him afraid to do that. The Crip had told him one time: -"Looney, Slim went through here last night, while youse was asleep over -on that lumber pile. I forgets youse is lookin' fer him or I'd a tipped -him off youse was here." - -Slim had been within a hundred yards of him, and he had been asleep and -had never known! What would Slim think, if he knew that? So thereafter -he was continually tortured by the fancy that Slim might be passing -him in the night; or that Slim, while he himself was riding the rods -underneath a railway car, might be on the blind baggage of that very -train, and would hop off first and be missed again. From day to day he -became more muddled and perplexed trying to decide whether it would be -better to choose this route or that, whether it would be better to stop -here a week, or go yonder with all possible speed. And from month to -month he developed more and more the questing, peering, wavering manner -of the lost dog that seeks its master. - -Looney was always welcome In the hang-outs of the wandering underworld. -Not only was he a source of diversion, a convenient butt, but few could -rustle grub so successfully. His meager frame and his wistfulness, his -evident feebleness of intellect, drew alms from the solvent population, -and Looney faithfully brought his takings to the hangouts and was -dispatched again for more. Servant and butt he was to such lords as the -Burlington Crip and the English Basher. But he did not mind so long as -he was not physically maltreated--as he often was. The occasional -crimes of his associates, the occasional connection of some of them with -industrial warfare here and there, Looney sometimes participated in; but -he never understood. If he were told to do so and so, for the most part -he did it. If he were asked to do too much, or was beaten up for his -stupidity, and he was always stupid, he quietly slunk away at his first -opportunity. - -The English Basher was a red-faced savage with fists as hard and rough -as tarred rope; and he conceived the idea that Looney should be his kid, -and wait upon him, even as he had been Slim's kid. Looney, afraid of the -man, for a time seemed to acquiesce. But the Basher had reckoned without -Looney's faculty for blundering. - -He dispatched Looney one day, ostensibly to bum a handout, but in -reality to get the lay of a certain house in a suburb near Cincinnati, -which the Basher meditated cracking the next convenient night. Looney -returned with the food but without the information. He had been willing -enough, for he admired yeggmen and all their ways and works, and was -withheld by no moral considerations from anything he was asked to do; -but he had bungled. He had been in the kitchen, he had eaten his own -scoffin's there, he had talked with the cook for twenty minutes, he had -even brought up from the cellar a scuttle of coal for the kitchen range -to save the cook's back, but he actually knew less about that house, its -plan, its fastenings, its doors and basement windows than the Basher had -been able to gather with a single stroke of the eye as he loitered down -the street. - -"Cripes! Whadje chin about with the kitchen mechanic all dat time, you?" -demanded the Basher. - -"She was stringin' me along," said Looney humbly, "an' I spilled to her -about me an' Slim." - -"Slim! ------ -------- yer, I've a mind t' croak yer!" cried the Basher. - -And he nearly did it, knocking the boy down repeatedly, till finally -Looney lay still upon the ground. - -"'S'elp me," said the Basher, "I've a mind to give yer m' boots! You -get up an' beat it! An' if I ever gets my lamps onto you again I _will_ -croak you, by Gawd, an' no mistake!" - -Looney staggered to his feet and hobbled to a safe distance. And then, -spitting out a broken tooth, he dared to mutter: "If Slimmy was here, -he'd see de color o' youse insides, Slimmy would. Slimmy, he knifed a -yegg oncet wot done less'n dat t'me!" - -It was only a week or two after he left the Basher that Looney's faith -in Slim's star was tested again. Half a dozen of the brotherhood were -gathered about a fire in a gravel pit in northern Illinois, swapping -yarns and experiences and making merry. It was a tremendous fire, and -lighted up the hollow as if it were the entrance to Gehenna, flinging -the grotesque shadows of the men against the overhanging embankments, -and causing the inhabitants of a village a mile or so away to wonder -what farmer's haystack was aflame. The tramps were wasting five times -the wood they needed, after their fashion. They had eaten to repletion, -and they were wasting the left-over food from their evening gorge; they -had booze; they were smoking; they felt, for the hour, at peace with the -world. - -"Wot ever _did_ become of dat Slim?" asked the Burlington Crip, who -happened to be of the party, looking speculatively at Looney. Even the -sinister Crip, for the nonce, was not toting with him his usual mordant -grouch. - -Looney was tending the fire, while he listened to tales of the spacious -days of the great Johnny Yegg himself, and other Titans of the road who -have now assumed the state of legendary heroes; and he was, as usual, -saying nothing. - -"Slim? Slimmy t' Match wot Looney here's been tailin' after fer so -long?" said the San Diego Kid. "Slim, he was bumped off in Paterson -t'ree or four years ago." - -"He wasn't neither," spoke up Looney. "Tex, here, seen him in Chi last -mont'." - -And, indeed, Tex had told Looney so. But now, thus directly appealed -to, Tex answered nothing. And for the first time Looney began to get -the vague suspicion that these, his friends, might have trifled with him -before. Certainly they were serious now. He looked around the sprawled -circle and sensed that their manner was somehow different from the -attitude with which they had usually discussed his quest for Slim. - -"Bumped off?" said Tex. "How?" - -"A wobbly done it," said the San Diego Kid. "Slim, he was scabbin'. -Strike-breakin'. And they was some wobblies there helpin' on the strike. -See? An' this wobbly bumps Slim off." - -"He didn't neither," said Looney again. - -"T' hell he didn't? He said he did," said the San Diego Kid pacifically. -"Is a guy gonna say he's bumped off a guy unless he's bumped him off?" - -Looney, somewhat shaken, withdrew from the group to seek comfort from -the constellations; and particularly from that big, red star, the -apparent king of stars, which he had come to think of as Slim's star, -and vaguely, as Slim's mascot. It was brighter and redder than ever -that night, Looney thought, and sitting on a discarded railroad tie and -staring at the planet, Looney gradually recovered his faith. - -"He ain't neither been bumped off, Slim ain't," he muttered, "an' I'm -gonna find him yet." - -And Slim had not been bumped off, however sincere the San Diego Kid may -have been in his belief. - -It was some months later that Looney did find him in a little city in -Pennsylvania--or found some one that looked like him. - -Looney had dropped from a freight train early in the morning, had -rustled himself some grub, had eaten two good meals and had part of a -day's sleep, and now, just as dark was coming on, and the street lamps -were being lighted, was loafing aimlessly on the platform of the railway -depot. He purposed to take a train south that night, when it became so -dark that he could crawl into an empty in the yards without too much -danger of being seen and he was merely putting in the time until full -night came on. - -While he was standing idly so, an automobile drew up beside the station -platform and an elegantly dressed and slender man of about thirty got -out. He assisted from the car a woman and a small child, and they made -toward the door of the waiting room. - -"Slim!" cried Looney, rushing forward. - -For this was Slim--it must be Slim--it was Slimmy the Match in every -feature--and yet, the car!--the clothes--the woman--the baby--the -prosperity----- _Was_ it Slim? - -"Slim!" cried Looney again, his heart leaping in his meager body. "It's -me, Slim! It's Looney! I've got youse again, Slim! Gawd! I've found -yuh!" - -The woman hastily snatched the child up into her arms, with a suppressed -scream, and recoiled. - -The man made no sound, but he, too, drew back a step, not seeming to see -Looney's outstretched hand. - -But he did see it--he saw more than that. He saw, as if they were -flashed before him at lightning speed upon a cinema screen, a dozen -scenes of a wild and reckless and indigent youth that he had thought was -dead forever; he saw these roughneck years suddenly leap alive and -stalk toward him again, toward him and his; he saw his later years of -industry, his hard-won success, his position so strenuously battled for, -his respectability that was become so dear to him, all his house of -life so laboriously builded, crumbling before the touch of this torn and -grotesque outcast that confronted and claimed him, this wavering, -dusty lunatic whom he dimly remembered. If his wife knew--if her people -knew--if the business men of this town were to know---- - -He shuddered and turned sick, and then with a sudden recovery he took -his child from its mother and guided her before him into the waiting -room. - -Looney watched them enter, in silence. He stood dazed for a moment, -and then he slowly turned and walked down the railroad track beyond the -limits of the town. There, upon a spot of turf beside the right of -way, he threw himself upon his face and sobbed and moaned, as a -broken-hearted child sobs, as a dog moans upon its master's grave. - -But after a while he looked up. Slim's star was looking down at him, red -and confident and heartening as ever. He gazed at it a long time, and -then an idea took form in his ruined brain and he said aloud: - -"Now, dat wasn't _really_ Slim! I been lookin' fer Slim so long I t'ink -I see Slim where he ain't! Dat was jus' some guy wot looks like Slimmy. -Slimmy, he wouldn't never of gone back on an old pal like dat!" - -The rumble of an approaching train caught his ears. He got to his feet -and prepared to board it. - -"Slim, he's waitin' fer me somewheres," he told the star. "I may be -kinda looney about some t'ings, but I knows Slim, an' dey ain't no -yellow streak nowheres in Slim!" - -And with unshaken loyalty Looney the Mutt boarded the train and set off -upon his endless quest anew. - - - - -VI--Kale - -|See that old fellow there?" asked Ed the waiter. "Well, his fad is -money." - -The old fellow indicated--he must have been nearly eighty--sat eating -corned beef and cabbage in a little booth in a certain delightful, -greasy old chophouse in downtown New York. It was nearly time to close -the chophouse for that day for it was almost eleven o'clock at night; it -was nearly time to close the chophouse forever, for it was the middle of -June, 1919. In a couple of weeks the wartime prohibition act would be in -force, and Ed and I had been discussing what effect it would have upon -our respective lives. - -There was no one else in the place at the time except the cashier and -the old man whose fad was money, and so Ed had condescended toward me, -as a faithful customer, and was sitting down to have a drink with me. - -"His fad is money?" I questioned, glancing at the old gentleman, who -seemed to be nothing extraordinary as regards face or manner or attire. -He had a long, bony New Englandish head and a short, white, well-trimmed -beard; he was finishing his nowise delicate food with gusto. "I should -say," I added, "that his fad was corned beef and cabbage." - -"That's one of his fads," admitted Ed the waiter, "and I don't know but -that it's as strong in him as his money fad. At any rate, I've never -seen him without one or the other was near him, and both in large -quantities." - -We had been conversing in a mumble, so that our voices should not carry -to the old gentleman. And now Ed dropped his voice still lower and -whispered: - -"That's Old Man Singleton." - -I looked at him with a renewed interest. Every one knew who Old Man -Singleton was, and many persons liked to guess how much he was worth. -Ostensibly he had retired, leaving to his two sons the management of the -Singleton banking business, with its many ramifications; but actually -he kept his interest in the concern and was reputed to be coaching his -grandsons in the ways of the world, and especially that part of the -world known as "The Street." - -Starting out as a New England villager who hated poverty because his -family had always known it, he had come to New York as a lad of twenty, -with red knitted mittens on his osseous hands, and he had at once -removed the mittens and put the hands to work gathering money; it was -rumored that the hands had never turned loose any of the garnered coin; -it was even said by some persons that he still had the same pair of -mittens. - -The details of his rise I cannot give; he had achieved his ambition -to be one of the very rich men of America because the ambition was so -strong within him. - -"Of course his fad is money," I muttered to Ed the waiter. "Everybody -knows that Old Man Singleton's fad is money." - -Ed was about to reply, when Mr. Singleton looked up and motioned for his -check. Ed brought it, and gave the old gentleman his hat and his stick -and his change. - -"I hope everything was all right," Mr. Singleton said Ed, palpably -bidding for recognition and a tip. - -"Eh? said Singleton, looking blankly at Ed You know me, hey? I don't -recall you. Yes, everything was all right, thank you." He gave the -waiter a dime and passed out, after another blank, fumbling look at Ed, -and a shake of his head. There was something feeble and wandering in the -old fellow's manner; his memory was going; it was obvious that before -long the rest of him would follow his memory. He shouldn't be allowed to -go around this way alone at night," murmured Ed, watching the door -through which he had made his exit. "But I suppose he's as bull-headed -as ever about doing what he pleases, even if his legs are shaky." - -"He didn't know you," I hinted, for I wished to learn all that Ed knew -about Old Man Singleton. - -Ed is a person who has been in the world nearly fifty years; he has had -some very unusual acquaintances and experiences. It is never safe to -predict just what Ed will know and what he will not know. One afternoon, -after I had known Ed for about a year, I was attempting to argue some -scientific point with a friend who was lunching with me, and Ed, who was -waiting on us and listening, remarked: "I beg your pardon, sir, but it -wasn't in _The Descent of Man_ that Darwin said that; it was in _The -Origin of Species_." - -And yet, if you deduce from that remark that Ed knows a great deal about -modern science, you will be mistaken; as likely as not he could quote -pages of Marcus Aurelius to you, and at the same time he might pronounce -"Euripides" as if the last two syllables were one, riming with "hides"; -his reading, like his life, has been elective. - -"He doesn't recall you," I repeated. - -"And that's ingratitude," said Ed, "if he only knew it. I saved the old -man's life once." - -And Ed limped over to the table and resumed his seat opposite me. He -has a bullet under one kneecap, and at times it makes him very lame. He -would never tell me how it came there; to this day I do not know. - -"From what did you save his life?" I asked. "From a man," said Ed -moodily. "From a man who had a notion to bean him one night. And to this -day I ask myself: 'Did I do right, or did I do wrong?'" - -"Tell me about it," I insisted, - -"Drink up," said Ed, manipulating the Scotch bottle and the siphon of -seltzer. "This is one of the last highballs you'll ever have, unless -you sneak around and take it on the sly. I don't know that I should have -another one myself; it settles in this damned knee of mine if I get a -little too much." - -"Tell me when, where and how you knew Old Man Singleton," I demanded -again. - -"This knee of mine," went on Ed, disregarding me, "is a hell of a -handicap. We were talking about prohibition--what's prohibition going to -do to me? Hey? It puts me out of a job in a barroom like this the first -thing. And what else can I do? With this game leg, you can see me going -on the stage as a Russian dancer, can't you? Or digging trenches to lay -gas pipes in, or carrying a Hod? Huh? And I can't even get a job in a -swell restaurant uptown; they don't want any gamelegged waiters sticking -around, falling over the chairs. This was about the only kind of a joint -and the only kind of a job I was fit for, this chop-house thing down -here, and it's going to close in two weeks. What then? Be somebody's -housemaid? I can't see it. I don't wish anybody any bad luck, but I -hope the guy that put over this prohibition thing gets stiff in all his -joints and lives forever." - -I sympathized and waited, and finally he began. "Old Man Singleton's -fad," said Ed, "as I re marked before, is money. And as you remarked, -another of his fads is corned beef and cabbage--especially cabbage. He -will eat corned beef with his cabbage, and like it; or he will eat pork -with his cabbage, and like it; or he will eat cabbage without either; it -is the cabbage he likes--or kale. In fact, you could reduce his two fads -to one, and say what he likes is kale--kale in the slang sense of money, -and kale that is cabbage. And all his life he has been stuffing himself -with kale. - -"His fad is kale that he can see and feel and handle and show and carry -about with him. Not merely money in the bank and stocks and bonds and -property and real estate, but actual cash. He likes to carry it with -him, and he does carry it with him. I guess he likes the feel of it in -his billfolder, and the thought that he has got it on him--on him, the -poor boy that came out of New England with the red knitted mittens on -that everybody has heard so much about. I can understand the way -he feels about it; with a folder full of thousand-dollar and -ten-thousand-dollar bills he feels safe, somehow; feels like he'll never -have to go back to that little New England town and saw cordwood and -shovel snow again. - -"He's got it on him now, that folder, and I'll bet you on it. That's -what I meant when I said it wasn't safe for him to be trotting about -this way after night. For if I know it, it stands to reason others know -it, too. - -"What you want to know is, how I know it. Well, I was not always what I -am now. Once I was quite a bird and wore dress suits and went to the -Metropolitan Opera and listened to Caruso as he jumped his voice from -peak to peak. Yes, sir, I know every darned acoustic in that place! They -weren't my dress suits that I wore, but they fit me. Once I moved in the -circles of the idle rich, though they didn't know it, and helped 'em -spend the unearned increment they wrung from the toil of the downtrodden -laboring man. - -"Once, to come down to brass tacks, I was a butler's companion. It is -an office you won't find listed in the social directory, but it existed, -for me at least. The butler in the case was a good friend of mine by the -name of Larry Hodgkins, and being part Irish, he was an ideal English -butler. Larry and his mother were in the employ of the Hergsheimers, a -wealthy Jewish family--you know who they are if you read the financial -pages or the Sunday supplements. Mrs. Hodgkins was the housekeeper and -Larry was the butler, and when the Hergsheimers were traveling Larry and -his mother stayed in the New York house as caretakers and kept things -shipshape. And let me give you a tip, by the way: if you ever take a -notion to quit the writing game and go into domestic service, plant -yourself with a rich Hebrew family. They want things done right, -but they are the most liberal people on earth, especially to Gentile -servants. - -"This Hergsheimer was Jacob Hergsheimer, and he was in right socially in -New York, as well as financially; he had put himself across into the -big time socially because, if you ask me, he belonged there; all the -Hergsheimers didn't get across, but this one did. His New York house is -uptown, between the sixties and the eighties, east of the Park, and -he wants it kept so he can drop into it with his family and a flock of -servants at any hour of the day or night, from any part of the earth, -without a minute's notice, and give a dinner party at once, if he feels -like it, and he frequently feels like it. - -"It was Mrs. Hodgkins's and Larry's job to keep the fire from going -out in the boilers, so to speak, and a head of steam on, so that the -domestic ship could sail in any direction on receipt of orders by wire, -wireless or telephone. They were permanent there, but Jake Hergsheimer -and his family, as far as I could make out, never got more than an -average of about three months' use a year out of that mansion. - -"This time I am speaking of was nearly ten years ago. I was a waiter in -an uptown restaurant, and both my legs were good then; Larry and I -were old pals. The Jake Hergsheimers were sailing around the world in a -yacht, and would be at it for about a year, as far as Larry knew, and -he asked me up to live with him. I accepted; and believe me, the eight -months I put in as Jake Hergsheimer's guest were _some_ eight months. -Not that Jake knew about it; but if he had known it, he wouldn't have -cared. This Jake was a real human being. - -"And his clothes fit me; just as if I had been measured for them. He had -what you might call an automatic tailor, Jake did. Every six weeks, rain -or shine, that tailor delivered a new suit of clothes to the Hergsheimer -house, and he sent in his bill once a year, so Larry the butler told me. -Some people go away and forget to stop the milk; and when Jake sailed -for the other side of the world he forgot to tell anybody to stop the -tailor. Larry didn't feel as if it were any part of his duty to stop -him; for Larry liked that tailor. He made Larry's clothes, too. - -"And I didn't see where it was up to me to protest. As I said, Jake's -garments might have been made for me. In fact, a great many of them -_were_ made for me. There were at least fifteen suits of clothes that -had never been worn in that house, made to my measure and Jake's, when -I became butler's companion in the establishment, and they kept right -on coming. Also, there was a standing order for orchestra seats at the -Metropolitan. Jake had a box every second Thursday, or something like -that, but when he really wanted to hear the music and see the show he -usually sat in the orchestra. Not only did his business suits fit me, -but his dress clothes fit me, too. - -"I used to go often, with a lady's maid that had the same access to -clothing as I did. She was part of a caretaking staff also. Being a -writing person, you have, of course, only viewed New York's society and -near-society from the outside, and no doubt you have been intimidated by -the haughty manners of the servants. Well, when you get close to swells -and really know them personally, you will find they are human, too. - -"A butler on duty is a swelled-up proposition, because he has to be that -way. But take him as you find him among his peers, and he quits acting -like the Duke of Westminster Abbey, and is real sociable. This Larry -person, for instance, could distend himself like a poisoned pup and -make a timid millionaire feel like the sleeves of his undershirt must be -showing below his cuffs; but in our little select circle Larry was the -life of the party. - -"Being, as I said before, an outsider, you likely don't realize how -many of those big swell millionaires' cribs uptown are in the hands of -caretakers like Larry and his mother and me the best part of the year. -Well, they are; and there's a social life goes on in them that don't -ever get into the papers. The parties we had that year in Jake's house -would have done Jake himself good, if Jake could have got an invitation -to them. But Jake was absent, though his cellar and his grocers were -at our service; and he never questioned a bill, Larry said. There were -twelve or fifteen hand-picked servants in our little social circle that -year, and before I left there I could begin to understand how these -dbutantes feel at the end of the season--sort of tired and bored and -willing to relax and go in for work and rest and athletics for a change. - -"I had only been butler's companion for a few weeks when Old Man -Singleton dropped in one evening--yes, sir, Old Lemuel Singleton -himself. He came to see the butler's mother, Mrs. Hodgkins. He had known -her a good many years before, when he was wearing those red mittens and -sawing wood up in that New England town and she was somebody's Irish -cook. And he had run across her again, after he became a millionaire, -down here in New York City. He was tickled to see her, and he didn't -care a darn if she was Jake Hergsheimer's housekeeper. She could cook -cabbage and kale better than any one else in the world, and he used to -come and sit with her, and talk about that little old town up there, and -indulge in his favorite dissipation. - -"Old Man Singleton has had what you call the social entre in New York -for a good many years; for so long that some of his children, and -all his grandchildren, were born with it. But he never took it very -seriously himself. He has been an in-and-outer, you might say. If he saw -Mrs. Hodgkins around Jake's house, he would call her Mary and ask her -how folks were up home in front of Jake and his wife and a whole bunch -of guests, just as soon as not. - -"And his sons and his daughters and his grandchildren never could get -him out of those ways; he always was bull-headed about doing what he -pleased, so Mrs. Hodgkins told me, and he always will be. And the old -lady liked to see him and chin with him and cook for him; and believe -me, she was some cook when she set herself to it. Not merely kale, but -everything. She didn't cook for the Hergsheimers--they had a chef for -that--but they missed it by not having her. Victuals was old Mary's -middle name, and she could rustle up some of the best grub you ever -threw your lip over. - -"At first, Old Man Singleton and Mrs. Hodgkins didn't mix much with -us younger folks when we pulled a party. It wasn't that we were too -aristocratic for them, for off duty, as I said before, butlers and other -swells can be as easy and jolly as common people. But they seemed too -antiquated, if you get me; they were living too much in the past. - -"And then, one night, I discovered what Old Man Singleton's fad -was--kale. Money. Big money. Big money on his person. It was this way: -Larry and I wanted to go downtown and have a little fun, but neither -of us had any cash in hand. Larry had a check for one hundred and fifty -dollars which Jake Hergsheimer had sent him, but all the tradesmen we -knew were closed at that hour, and there wasn't any way to cash it, -unless Old Man Singleton could. - -"'Mr. Singleton,' says Larry to the old man, who was sitting down to a -mess of pork and kale with Mrs. Hodgkins, 'maybe you can cash this for -me.' And he handed him the check. - -"The old man stopped eating and put his glasses on and pulled a -billfolder out of his pocket, with a kind of pleased smile on his face. - -"'Let me see,' he says, taking out the bills, and running them over with -his fingers; 'let me see.' - -"I nearly dropped dead. There wasn't a bill in there of lower -denomination than one thousand dollars; and most of them were -ten-thousand-dol-lar bills. - -"'No, Larry,' says the old man, 'I'm afraid I can't, afraid I -can't--haven't got the change.' - -"And while we stood there and looked, he smoothed and patted those -bills, and folded and refolded them, and then put them back into his -pocket, and patted the pocket. - -"'Mary,' he says to the old woman with a grin, 'that's quite a lot of -money for little Lem Singleton to be carrying around in his pocket, -isn't it?' "'It is that, Lemuel,' said the old lady, 'and I should think -you'd be afraid of leaving it out of the bank.' - -"'Well, Mary,' says the old man, 'I kind o' like to have it around me -all the time--uh--huh! a little bit where I can put my hands on it, all -the time. I used to carry gold; but I gave that up; it's too heavy, for -what it's worth. But I like it, Mary; I used to look at that gold and -say to myself, "Well, there's one thing you got, Lem Singleton, they -never thought you'd get when you left home! And they aren't going to -take it away from you, either!" It was a long time before I could make -paper seem as real to me as gold. But it does now.' - -"And what does the old bird do but take it out of his pocket again and -crinkle it through his fingers and smooth it out again and pet it and do -everything but kiss it. Larry and I stood looking at him with our eyes -sticking out, and he looked at us and laughed. It came to me all of a -sudden that he liked to come where we servants were because he could -pull that kind of thing in front of us, but that he was sort of lost -among the swell-society bunch because he didn't dare pull it there and -didn't feel so rich among them. - -"'My God, Larry,' I said, when we were outside the house, 'did you -notice how much kale the old man had there?' - -"'Uh-huh,' said Larry. 'Mother always cooks a lot for him.' - -"'Wake up, Stupid,' I said. 'I don't mean cabbage. I mean money. There -must have been nearly two hundred thousand dollars in that roll!' - -"'He always has around one hundred thousand dollars on him, at least,' -says Larry. 'And I've seen him flash as high as a quarter of a million.' - -"'Well,' I says, 'something ought to be done about it.' - -"'What do you mean, Ed?' says he. - -"'Oh, nothing,' I said. - -"We walked over to get the L train downtown, saying nothing, and then -finally Larry remarked: "'Electricity is a great thing, Ed.' - -"'I never said it wasn't,' says I. - -"'It's a great thing,' says Larry, 'but when you sit on it, sit on -it right. For instance, I'd a darned sight rather sit in one of these -electric trains than in that electric chair up at Sing Sing.' - -"'Who said anything about an electric chair?' I asked him. - -"'Nobody said anything,' says Larry, 'but you're thinking so darned loud -I can get you.' - -"'Piffle, peanuts and petrification,' I said. 'Take care of your own -thoughts, and I'll skim the fat off of mine myself.' - -"Well, as I said, after that we got better acquainted, the old man and -I. I paid more attention to him. He interested me more. I've always -been interested in science of all kinds, and the year I spent in Jake -Hergsheimer's house I cut the leaves of a lot of books in his library -and gave them the once over. I was always interested in psychology, even -before the word got to be a headliner in the Sunday supplements, and I -took a good deal of pleasure that winter trying to get inside of Old -Man Singleton's mind. I must say, I never got very far in, at that. My -general conclusion at the end is what it was at the beginning--his fad -is kale. - -"And he loved to show it, you could see that. Not that he pulled it -every time he happened to be at one of our parties. Often he would drop -in that winter from some swell social event at one of the big houses -uptown, where he had been a guest, and eat some of old Mary's chow, and -never intimate by word or look that he had all that kale on him. And -then again he'd come among us, diked out in the soup and fish, and flash -the roll, for no other reason that I know except he enjoyed seeing us -get the blind staggers, which we always did. And then he'd fuss with it -and pet it and go into a dream over it, and wake up again and grin and -talk about life with old Mary. And they agreed about life; you never -heard two more moral persons exchange views. It was sometimes as good as -a Sunday-school to listen to them for half an hour. - -"One night, when they had been gassing for a while, they sort of got my -goat, and I said to him: - -"'Mr. Singleton, does it ever strike you as a little peculiar that you -should have so much money and so many other people, such as myself, none -at all?' - -"'No, Ed,' he says. 'No, it doesn't. That's the Lord's way, Ed! Money is -given as a sacred trust by the Lord to them that are best fitted to have -and to hold.' - -"'Meaning,' I asked him, 'that if you were ever to let loose of any of -it, it might work harm in the world?' - -"He chewed over that for quite a while, as if he saw something personal -in it, and he gave me a ten-dollar bill for a Christmas present. He -isn't as stingy as some people say he is; he just looks so stingy that -if he was the most liberal man on earth he would get the reputation of -being stingy. - -"The lady's maid that I used to go to the opera with quit me a little -while after Christmas. She and I were walking around the promenade -between the acts one night at the Metropolitan and Larry was with -us, when a fellow stopped Larry and spoke to him. I could see the guy -looking at the girl and me as he and Larry talked. Later, Larry told me -that it was one of Jake Hergsheimer's friends, and he had been a little -bit surprised to see Larry at the opera all diked out, and he had wanted -to know who the girl was. - -"Well, anyhow, she never went to the opera with me after that; but a few -weeks later I saw her at a cabaret with Jake's friend. It was a grief to -me; but I got into some real trouble, or let it get into me, about -the same time, and that helped take the sting off. I had once been -married--but there's no use going into all that. Anyhow, when the -marriage kind o' wore off, my own folks took my wife's side of the case -and she went to live with them. My old dad was sick, and they needed -money, and my wife wrote to me that she was willing to let bygones be -bygones and accept some money from me, and that my parents felt the same -way, and there was a kid, too, that my folks were bringing up. - -"Well, I was desperate for some way to get hold of some cash and send -to them. In the end, I took one of Jake Hergsheimer's silver vases and -hocked it and sent the money, and got it out of hock two or three months -later; but in the meantime there was a spell when I was so hard pressed -it looked to me like I would actually have to do something dishonest to -get that money. - -"One night, before Jake Hergsheimer came to my rescue and lent me that -silver vase, if you want to call it that, I was sitting alone in the -house thinking what a failure in life I was, and how rotten it was to -have a wife and kid and parents all set against me, and drinking some of -Jake's good booze, and getting more and more low in my mind, when there -came a ring at the front doorbell. The butler was out, and old Mary was -asleep way up in the top of the house, at the back, and wouldn't hear. - -"'I'll bet,' I said to myself, 'that's Old Man Singleton nosing around -for his cabbage.' And I made up my mind I wouldn't let him in--he could -ring till he froze to death on the front steps, and I wouldn't. It was -a blustery, snowy January night, with new snow over the old ice -underneath, and I says to myself, 'It's a wonder the old coot don't slip -down and bust some of those big New England bones of his. And I wouldn't -care much if he did.' - -"But he kept on ringing, and finally I thought I'd better go and let him -in. I didn't have any ulterior notions when I went up the stairs from -the servants' dining room and made for the front door. But the minute I -clapped eyes on him I thought of all that kale in his pocket. - -"I opened the front door, but outside of that was an iron grille. It had -a number of fastenings, but the final one was a short, heavy iron bar -that lay in two sockets, one on each side of the opening. - -"I lifted the bar and swung the grille open. - -"'Ha! Hum!' said he, and sneezed. 'It's you, Ed, is it?' - -"And, snuffing and sneezing, he passed in front of me. - -"And as he passed by me that bar said something to my hand. And the hand -raised up. It wasn't any of my doings, it was all the hand and the bar. -It raised up, that bar did, right behind the old man's head. He stopped -just outside the front door and flapped his big bony feet on a rug -that was there, to get the snow off his shoes, and while he flapped and -sneezed that bar was right over the old man's brain-box. - -"'Well,' I said to myself, 'here is your chance to be an honest man and -a prosperous man, reunited with your wife and your kid and your folks -at home, and not have to borrow anything from Jake Hergsheimer's -collection--just one little tap on the old man's head, and down he goes, -and he's got anywhere from one hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty -thousand dollars in his clothes.' - -"'Yes,' said myself to me, 'one little tap, and maybe you kill him. What -then? The electric chair, huh?' - -"'Hell!' I said to myself. 'Take a chance! The old man has so much money -that what he has in his pocket means nothing to him one way or another. -Larry's gone till morning, and the old woman won't wake for a long time. -It means a little bit of a headache for Old Lemuel here, and it means -your chance to lead an honest life hereafter and be a useful citizen and -take care of those you have been neglecting.' - -"'Yes,' said myself to me, 'it's more moral to do it, and make your life -over, but you never have been one for morality in the past. Besides, -you'd kill him.' - -"And I might have killed him, boss. I wasn't sure of it then, but I've -been sure of it since then. I was that strung up that I would have hit -too hard. - -"And yet, I might _not_ have done so! I might have hit him just enough -to put him out and make my get-away, and I might have led an honest life -since then. - -"But at the moment I couldn't do it. I saw, all of a sudden, something -funny. I saw the old man stamping his feet and getting the snow off, and -I thought of him as a dead man, and I says to myself: 'How damned funny -for a dead man to stamp the snow off his feet!' And I laughed. - -"'Heh? Heh? What did you say, Ed?' says the old man, and turns around. - -"I dropped the iron bar to my side, and that dead man came up out of the -grave. - -"'Nothing, Mr. Singleton,' I said. 'I was just going to say, go on in, -and I'll get a brush and clean the snow off of you.' - -"I said I saved his life from a man one time. Well, I was the man I -saved his life from. - -"He went on in, and I barred the grille and locked the door, and we went -on down to the dining room. I was shaking, and still I wasn't easy in my -mind. I told him there wasn't anybody home but me, and he said he'd take -a drop of Jake's brandy. And while I was opening a bottle of it for him, -what does he do but pull out that billfolder. - -"'For God's sake, Mr. Singleton,' I said, turning weak and sitting down -in a chair all of a sudden, 'put that money up.' - -"He sat there and sipped his brandy and talked, but I didn't hear what -he was saying. I just looked at him, and kept saying to myself, should I -have done it? Or should I have let him go by? - -"Boss, that was nearly ten years ago, and I've been asking myself that -question from time to time ever since. Should I have done it? Was it -moral to refuse that chance to make my life over again? You know me, -kid. You know some of me, at least. You know I don't hold much by -morals. If I was to tell you how I got that bullet under my kneecap, -you'd know me better than _you_ do. If I had hit him just right and made -my get-away, I would have led a different life. - -"And I wouldn't now be 'waiting for my death sentence. For that's -practically what this prohibition thing means to me. I can't work at -anything but this. And this is through with. And I'm through with. I'm a -bum from now on. There's no use kidding myself; I'm a bum. - -"And yet, often, I'm glad I didn't do it." - -Ed brooded in silence for a while. - -And then I said, "It's strange he didn't know you." - -"It's been ten years," said Ed, "and you saw that the old man's got -to the doddering stage. He likely wouldn't know his own children if he -didn't see them every day or two." - -"I suppose," I said, "that the old man feels he is ending his days in a -very satisfactory manner--the national prohibition thing triumphant, and -all that." - -"How do you mean?" asked Ed. - -"Don't you know?" I said. "Why, Old Man Singleton, it is said, helped -to finance the fight, and used his money and his influence on other big -money all over the country in getting next to doubtful politicians and -putting the thing through the state legislatures. I don't mean there -was anything crooked about it anywhere, but he was one of the bunch that -represented organized power, and put the stunt across while the liquor -interests were still saying national prohibition could never come." - -"The hell he did!" said Ed. "I didn't know he was mixed up with it. I -never saw him take a drink, now that I remember, except the brandy on -the night I saved his life." - -"Old Man Singleton," I said, "is credited with having had more to do -with it than any other one person, by those who are on the inside." - -"The old coot!" said Ed. And then added wryly: "I hope he gets as stiff -in his knee joint as I am and lives forever! He's made a bum of me!" - -It was three or four weeks after my talk with Ed that I read in the -papers of a peculiar accident of which Old Man Singleton had been the -victim. A head of cabbage, he said, had fallen out of a tree and hit him -on his own head one evening as he was walking alone in Central Park. He -had been dazed by the blow for a moment; and when he regained his feet -a considerable sum of money which he had been carrying was gone. He was -sure that he had been struck by a head of cabbage, for a head of cabbage -lay on the pathway near him when he was helped to his feet. He did not -pretend to be able to say how a head of cabbage could have gotten into -one of the park trees. - -The police discredited his story, pointing out that likely the old -man, who was near-sighted, had blundered against a tree in the dusk and -struck his head. The head of cabbage, they told the reporters, could -have had nothing to do with it; it could not have come into contact with -his head at all, unless, indeed, some one had put it into a sack and -swung it on him like a bludgeon; and this, the police said, was too -absurd to be considered. For why should a crook use a head of cabbage, -when the same results might have been attained with the more usual -blackjack, stick or fist? - -Old Man Singleton was not badly hurt; and as regarded the loss of the -money, he never said, nor did his family ever say, just how large the -sum was. Mr. Singleton had the vague impression that after the cabbage -fell out of the tree and hit him he had been helped to his feet by a man -who limped and who said to him: "Kale is given to them that can best use -it, to have and to hold." - -He did not accuse this person, who disappeared before he was thoroughly -himself again, of having found the money which had evidently dropped -from his pocket when the cabbage fell from the tree and hit him, but -he was suspicious, and he thought the police were taking the matter too -lightly; he criticized the police in an interview given to the papers. -The police pointed out the irrelevance of the alleged words of the -alleged person who limped, and intimated that Mr. Singleton was -irrational and should be kept at home evenings; as far as they were -concerned, the incident was closed. - -But I got another slant at it, as Ed might have said. Last winter I was -talking at my club with a friend just back from Cuba, where the rum is -red and joy is unconfined. - -"I met a friend of yours," he said, "by the name of Ed down there, who -is running a barroom and seems to be quite a sport in his way. Sent his -regards to you. Must have made it pay--seems to have all kinds of money. -Named his barroom 'The Second Thought.' Asked him why. He said nobody -knew but himself, and he was keeping it a secret--though you might -guess. Wants you to come down. Sent you a message. Let's see: what was -it? Oh, yes! Cryptic! Very cryptic! Wrote it down--here it is: '_Kale! -Kale! The gang's all here_.' Make anything out of it? I can't." - -I could, though I didn't tell him what. But I shall not visit Ed in -Cuba; I consider him an immoral person. - - - - -VII--Bubbles - - -I - -|Tommy Hawkins was not so sober that you could tell it on him. Certainly -his friend Jack Dobson, calling on him one dreary winter evening--an -evening of that winter before John Barleycorn cried maudlin tears into -his glass and kissed America good-by--would never have guessed it from -Tommy's occupation. Presenting himself at Tommy's door and finding it -unlocked, Jack had gone on in. A languid splashing guided him to the -bathroom. In the tub sat Tommy with the water up to his shoulders, -blowing soap bubbles. - -"You darned old fool!" said Jack. "Aren't you ever going to grow up, -Tommy?" - -"Nope," said Tommy placidly. "What for?" Sitting on a chair close by -the bathtub was a shallow silver dish with a cake of soap and some -reddish-colored suds in it. Tommy had bought the dish to give some one -for a wedding present, and then had forgotten to send it. - -"What makes the suds red?" asked Jack. - -"I poured a lot of that nose-and-throat spray stuff into it," explained -Tommy. "It makes them prettier. Look!" - -As a pipe he was using a piece of hollow brass curtain rod six or eight -inches long and of about the diameter of a fat lead pencil. He soused -this thing in the reddish suds and manufactured a bubble with elaborate -care. With a graceful gesture of his wet arm he gently waved the rod -until the bubble detached itself. It floated in the air for a moment, -and the thin, reddish integument caught the light from the electric -globe and gave forth a brief answering flash as of fire. Then the bubble -suddenly and whimsically dashed itself against the wall and was no more, -leaving a faint, damp, reddish trace upon the white plaster. - -"Air current caught it," elucidated Tommy with the air of a circus -proprietor showing off pet elephants. In his most facetious moments -Tommy was wont to hide his childish soul beneath an exterior of serious -dignity. "This old dump is full of air currents. They come in round -the windows, come in round the doors, come right in through the -walls. Damned annoying, too, for a scientist making experiments with -bubbles--starts a bubble and never knows which way it's going to jump. -I'm gonna complain to the management of this hotel." - -"You're going to come out of that bathtub and get into your duds," said -Jack. "That water's getting cool now, and between cold water and air -currents you'll have pneumonia the first thing you know--you poor silly -fish, you." - -"Speaking of fish," said Tommy elliptically, "there's a bottle of -cocktails on the mantel in the room there. Forgot it for a moment. Don't -want to be inhospitable, but don't drink all of it." - -"It's all gone," said Dobson a moment later. - -"So?" said Tommy in surprise. "That's the way with cocktails. Here -one minute and gone the next--like bubbles. Bubbles! Life's like that, -Jack!" He made another bubble with great solemnity, watched it float and -dart and burst. "Pouf!" he said. "Bubbles! Bubbles! Life's like that!" - -"You're an original philosopher, you are," said Jack, seizing him by the -shoulders. "You're about as original as a valentine. Douse yourself -with cold water and rub yourself down and dress. Come out of it, kid, or -you'll be sick." - -"If I get sick," said Tommy, obeying, nevertheless, "I won't have to go -to work to-morrow." - -"Why aren't you working to-day?" asked his friend, working on him with a -coarse towel. - -"Day off," said Tommy. - -"Day off!" rejoined Dobson. "Since when has the _Morning Despatch_ -been giving two days off a week to its reporters? You had your day off -Tuesday, and this is Thursday." - -"Is it?" said Tommy. "I always get Tuesday and Thursday mixed. Both -begin with a T. Hey, Jack, how's that? Both begin with a T! End with a -tea party! Good line, hey, Jack? Tuesday and Thursday both begin with -a T and end with a tea party. I'm gonna write a play round that, Jack. -Broadway success! Letters a foot high! Royalties for both of us! I won't -forget you, Jack! You suggested the idea for the plot, Jack. Drag you -out in front of the curtain with me when I make my speech. 'Author! -Author!' yells the crowd. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' says I, 'here is the -obscure and humble person who set in motion the train of thought that -led to my writing this masterpiece. Such as he is, I introduce him to -you.'" - -"Shut up!" said Jack, and continued to lacerate Tommy's hide with the -rough towel. "Hold still! Now go and get into your clothes." And as -Tommy began to dress he regarded that person darkly. "You're a brilliant -wag, you are! It's a shame the way the copy readers down on the -_Despatch_ keep your best things out of print, you splattering -supermudhen of journalism, you! You'll wake up some morning without any -more job than a kaiser." And as Tommy threaded himself into the mystic -maze of his garments Mr. Dobson continued to look at him and mutter -disgustedly, "Bubbles!" - -Not that he was afraid that Tommy would actually lose his job. If it had -been possible for Tommy to lose his job that must have happened years -before. But Tommy wrote a certain joyous type of story better than any -other person in New York, and his facetiousness got him out of as many -scrapes as it got him into. He was thirty years old. At ninety he would -still be experimenting with the visible world in a spirit of random -eagerness, joshing everything in it, including himself. He looked -exactly like the young gentleman pictured in a widely disseminated -collar advertisement. He enjoyed looking that way, and occasionally he -enjoyed talking as if he were exactly that kind of person. He loved to -turn his ironic levity against the character he seemed to be, much as -the mad wags who grace the column of F. P. A. delight in getting their -sayings across accompanied by a gentle satirical fillip at all mad -waggery. - -"Speaking of bubbles," he suddenly chuckled as he carefully adjusted his -tie in the collar that looked exactly like the one in the advertisement, -"there's an old party in the next room that takes 'em more seriously -than you do, Jack." - -The old downtown hotel in which Tommy lived had once been a known and -noted hostelry, and persons from Plumville, Pennsylvania, Griffin, -Georgia, and Galva, Illinois, still stopped there when in New York, -because their fathers and mothers had stopped there on their wedding -journeys perhaps. It was not such a very long way from the Eden Musee, -when there was an Eden Musee. Tommy's room had once formed part of a -suite. The bathroom which adjoined it had belonged jointly to another -room in the suite. But now these two rooms were always let separately. -Still, however, the bathroom was a joint affair. When Tommy wished to -bathe he must first insure privacy by hooking on the inside the door -that led into the bathroom from the chamber beyond. - -"Old party in the next room?" questioned Jack. - -"Uh-huh," said Tommy, who had benefited by his cold sluicing and his -rubdown. "I gave him a few bubbles for his very own--through the keyhole -into his room, you know. Poked that brass rod through and blew the -bubble in his room. Detached it with a little jerk and let it float. -Seemed more sociable, you know, to let him in on the fun. Never be -stingy with your pleasures, Jack. Shows a mean spirit--a mean soul. Why -not cheer the old party up with soap bubbles? Cost little, bubbles -do. More than likely he's a stranger in New York. Unfriendly city, he -thinks. Big city. Nobody thinks of him. Nobody cares for him. Away from -home. Winter day. Melancholy. Well, I say, give him a bubble now and -then. Shows some one is thinking of him. Shows the world isn't so -thoughtless and gloomy after all. Neighborly sort of thing to do, Jack. -Makes him think of his youth--home--mother's knee--all that kind of -thing, Jack. Cheers him up. Sat in the tub there and got to thinking -of him. Almost cried, Jack, when I thought how lonely the old man must -be--got one of these old man's voices. Whiskers. Whiskers deduced from -the voice. So I climbed out of the tub every ten or fifteen minutes all -afternoon and gave the old man a bubble. Rain outside--fog, sleet. Dark -indoors. Old man sits and thinks nobody loves him. Along comes a bubble. -Old man gets happy. Laughs. Remembers his infancy. Skies clear. You -think I'm a selfish person, Jack? I'm not. I'm a Samaritan. Where will -we eat?" - -"You are a darned fool," said Jack. "You say he took them seriously? -What do you mean? Did he like 'em?" - -"Couldn't quite make out," said Tommy. "But they moved him. Gasped every -now and then. Think he prayed. Emotion, Jack. Probably made him think -of boyhood's happy days down on the farm. Heard him talking to himself. -Think he cried. Went to bed anyhow with his clothes on and pulled the -covers over his head. Looked through the keyhole and saw that. Gray -whiskers sticking up, and that's all. Deduced the whiskers from the -voice, Jack. Let's give the old party a couple more bubbles and then go -eat. It's been an hour since he's had one. Thinks I'm forgetting him, no -doubt." - -So they gave the old man a couple of bubbles, poking the brass rod -through the keyhole of the door. - -The result was startling and unexpected. First there came a gasp from -the other room, a sort of whistling release of the breath, and an -instant later a high, whining, nasal voice. - -"Oh, God! God! Again! You meant it, then, God! You meant it!" - -The two young men started back and looked at each other in wonderment. -There was such a quivering agony, such an utter groveling terror in this -voice from the room beyond that they were daunted. - -"What's eating him?" asked Dobson, instinctively dropping his tones to a -whisper. - -"I don't know," said Tommy, temporarily subdued. "Sounds like that last -one shell-shocked him when it exploded, doesn't it?" - -But Tommy was subdued only for a moment. - -As they went out into the corridor he giggled and remarked, "Told you he -took 'em seriously, Jack." - - - -II - -"Seriously" was a word scarcely strong enough for the way in which the -old party in the room beyond had taken it, though he had not, in fact, -seen the bubble. He had only seen a puff of smoke coming apparently from -nowhere, originating in the air itself, as it seemed to him, manifesting -itself, materializing itself out of nothing, and floating in front of -the one eye which was peeping fearfully out of the huddled bedclothing -which he had drawn over himself. He had lain quaking on the bed, waiting -for this puff of smoke for an hour or more, hoping against hope that it -would not come, praying and muttering, knotting his bony hands in the -whiskers that Tommy had seen sticking up from the coverings, twisting -convulsively. - -Tommy had whimsically filled the bubble, as he blew it, with smoke -from his cigarette. He had in like manner, throughout the afternoon and -early-evening, filled all the bubbles that he had given the old man -with cigarette or pipe smoke. The old party had not been bowled over -by anything in Tommy's tobacco. He had not noticed that the smoke was -tobacco smoke, for he had been smoking a pipe himself the greater part -of the day, and had not aired out the room. It was neither bubbles nor -tobacco that had flicked a raw spot on his soul. It was smoke. - - - -III - -Bubbles! They seemed to be in Tommy's brain. Perhaps it was the -association of ideas that made him think of champagne. At any rate he -declared that he must have some, and vetoed his friend's suggestion that -they dine--as they frequently did--at one of the little Italian table -d'hote places in Greenwich Village. - -"You're a bubble and I'm a bubble and the world is a bubble," Tommy -was saying a little later as he watched the gas stirring in his golden -drink. - -They had gone to the genial old Brevoort, which was--but why tell -persons who missed the Brevoort in its mellower days what they missed, -and why cause anguished yearnings in the bosoms of those who knew it -well? - -"Tommy," said his friend, "don't, if you love me, hand out any more of -your jejune poeticism or musical-comedy philosophy. I'll agree with you -that the world is a bubble for the sake of argument, if you'll change -the record. I want to eat, and nothing interferes with my pleasure in -a meal so much as this line of pseudocerebration that you seem to have -adopted lately." - -"Bubbles seem trivial things, Jack," went on Tommy, altogether -unperturbed. "But I have a theory that there aren't any trivial things. -I like to think of the world balancing itself on a trivial thing. Look -at the Kaiser, for instance. A madman. Well, let's say there's been a -blood clot in his brain for years--a little trivial thing the size of a -pin point, Jack. It hooks up with the wrong brain cell; it gets into -the wrong channel, and--pouf! The world goes to war. A thousand million -people are affected by it--by that one little clot of blood no bigger -than a pin point that gets into the wrong channel. An atom! A planet -balanced on an atom! A star pivoting on a molecule!" - -"Have some soup," said his friend. - -"Bubbles! Bubbles and butterflies!" continued Tommy. "Some day, Jack, -I'm going to write a play in which a butterfly's wing brushes over an -empire." - -"No, you're not," said Jack. "You're just going to talk about it and -think you're writing it and peddle the idea round to everybody you know, -and then finally some wise guy is going to grab it off and really write -it. You've been going to write a play ever since I knew you." - -"Yes, I am; I'm really going to write that play." - -"Well, Tommy," said Jack, looking round the chattering dining room, -"this is a hell of a place to do it in!" - -"Meaning, of course," said Tommy serenely, "that it takes more than a -butterfly to write a play about a butterfly." - -"You get me," said his friend. And then after a pause he went on with -sincerity in his manner: "You know I think you could write the play, -Tommy. But unless you get to work on some of your ideas pretty soon, and -buckle down to them in earnest, other people will continue to write your -plays--and you will continue to josh them and yourself, and your friends -will continue to think that you could write better plays if you would -only do it. People aren't going to take you seriously, Tommy, till you -begin to take yourself a little seriously. Why, you poor, futile, silly, -misguided, dear old mutt, you! You don't even have sense enough--you -don't have the moral continuity, if you follow me--to stay sore at a man -that does you dirt! Now, do you?" - -"Oh, I don't know about that," said Tommy a little more seriously. - -"Well now, do you?" persisted his friend. "I don't say it's good -Christian doctrine not to forgive people. It isn't. But I've seen people -put things across on you, Tommy, and seen you laugh it off and let 'em -be friends with you again inside of six weeks. I couldn't do it, and -nine-tenths of the fellows we know couldn't do it; and in the way you -do it it shouldn't be done. You should at least remember, even if you do -forgive; remember well enough not to get bit by the same dog again. With -you, old kid, it's all a part of your being a butterfly and a bubble. -It's no particular virtue in you. I wouldn't talk to you like a Dutch -uncle if I didn't think you had it in you to make good. But you've got -to be prodded." - -"There's one fellow that did me dirt," said Tommy musingly, "that I've -never taken to my bosom again." - -"What did you do to him?" asked his friend. "Beat him to death with -a butterfly's wing, Tommy, or blow him out of existence with a soap -bubble?" - -"I've never done anything to him," said Tommy soberly. "And I don't -think I ever would do anything to him. I just remember, that's all. If -he ever gets his come-uppance, as they say in the rural districts, it -won't be through any act of mine. Let life take revenge for me. I never -will." - -"I suppose you're right," said Dobson. "But who was this guy? And what -did he do to you?" - - - -IV - -"He was--and is--my uncle," said Tommy, "and he did about everything -to me. Listen! You think I do nothing but flitter, flutter, frivol and -flivver! And you may be right, and maybe I never will do anything else. -Maybe I never will be anything but a kid. - -"I was young when I was born. No, that's not one of my silly lines, -Jack. I mean it seriously. I was young when I was born. I was born with -a jolly disposition. But this uncle of mine took it out of me. I'll say -he did! The reason I'm such a kid now, Jack, is because I had to grow up -when I was about five years old, and I stayed grown up until I was -seventeen or eighteen. I never had a chance to be a boy. If I showed any -desire to be it was knocked out of me on the spot. And if I live two -hundred years, and stay nineteen years old all that time, Jack, I won't -any more than make up for the childhood I missed--that was stolen from -me. Frivol? I could frivol a thousand years and not dull my appetite. I -want froth, Jack: froth and bubbles! - -"This old uncle of mine--he wasn't so old in years when I first knew -him, but in his soul he was as old as the overseers who whipped the -slaves that built Cheops' pyramid, and as sandy and as flinty--hated me -as soon as he saw me. He hated me before he saw me. He would have hated -me if he had never seen me, because I was young and happy and careless. - -"I was that, when I went to live with him--young and happy and careless. -I was five years old. He was my father's brother, Uncle Ezra was, and he -beat my father out of money in his dirty, underhanded way. Oh, nothing -illegal! At least, I suppose not. Uncle Ezra was too cautious to do -anything that might be found out on him. There was nothing that my -mother could prove, at any rate, and my father had been careless and had -trusted him. When my father died my mother was ill. He gave us a home, -Uncle Ezra did. She had to live somewhere; she had to have a roof over -her head and attention of some sort. She had no near relations, and I -had to be looked after. - -"So she and I went into his house to live. It was to be temporary. We -were to move as soon as she got better. But she did not live long. I -don't remember her definitely as she was before we went to live with -Uncle Ezra. I can only see her as she lay on a bed in a dark room before -she died. It was a large wooden bed, with wooden slats and a straw -mattress. I can see myself sitting on a chair by the head of the bed and -talking to her. My feet did not reach to the floor by any means; they -only reached to the chair rungs. I can't remember what she said or what -I said. All I remember of her is that she had very bright eyes and that -her arms were thin. I remember her arms, but not her face, except the -eyes. I suppose she used to reach her arms out to me. I think she -must have been jolly at one time, too. There is a vague feeling, a -remembrance, that before we went to Uncle Ezra's she was jolly, and -that she and I laughed and played together in some place where there was -red-clover bloom. - -"One day when I was siting on the chair, the door opened and Uncle Ezra -came in. There was some man with him that was, I suppose, a doctor. -I can recall Uncle Ezra's false grin and the way he put his hand on my -head--to impress the doctor, I suppose--and the way I pulled away from -him. For I felt that he disliked me, and I feared and hated him. - -"Yes, Uncle Ezra gave us a home. I don't know how much you know about -the rural districts, Jack. But when an Uncle Ezra in a country town -gives some one a home he acquires merit. This was a little town in -Pennsylvania that Pm talking about, and Uncle Ezra was a prominent -citizen--deacon in the church and all that sort of thing. Truly rural -drama stuff, Jack, but I can't help that--it's true. Uncle Ezra had a -reputation for being stingy and mean. Giving us a home was a good card -for him to play. My mother had a little money, and he stole that, too, -when she died. - -"I suppose he stole it legally. I don't know. It wasn't much. No one had -any particular interest in looking out for me, and nobody would want to -start anything in opposition to Uncle Ezra in that town if it could be -helped anyhow. He didn't have the whole village and the whole of the -farming country round about sewed up, all by himself, but he was one -of the little group that did. There's a gang like that in every country -town, I imagine. He was one of four or five big ducks in that little -puddle--lent money, took mortgages and all that kind of thing you read -about. I don't know how much he is worth now, counting what he has -been stealing all his life. But it can't be a staggering sum. He's too -cowardly to plunge or take a long chance. He steals and saves and grinds -in a little way. He is too mean and small and blind and limited in his -intelligence to be a big, really successful crook, such as you will find -in New York City. - -"When my mother died, of course, I stayed with Uncle Ezra. I suppose -everybody said how good it was of him to keep me, and that it showed a -soft and kindly spot in his nature after all, and that he couldn't be so -hard as he had the name of being. But I don't see what else could have -been done with me, unless he had taken me out and dropped me in the mill -pond like a blind cat. Sometimes I used to wish he had done that. - -"It isn't hard to put a five-year-old kid in the wrong, so as to make it -appear--even to the child himself--that he is bad and disobedient. Uncle -Ezra began that way with me. I'm not going into details. This isn't a -howl; it's merely an explanation. But he persecuted me in every way. He -put me to work before I should have known what work was--work too hard -for me. He deviled me and he beat me, he clothed me like a beggar and he -fed me like a dog, he robbed me of childhood and of boyhood. I won't go -over the whole thing. - -"I never had decent shoes, or a hat that wasn't a rag, and I never went -to kid parties or anything, or even owned so much as an air rifle of my -own. The only pair of skates I ever had, Jack, I made for myself out of -two old files, with the help of the village blacksmith--and I got licked -for that. Uncle Ezra said I had stolen the files and the straps. They -belonged to him. - -"But there's one thing I remember with more of anger than any other. He -used to make me kneel down and pray every night before I went to bed, -in his presence; and sometimes he would pray with me. He was a deacon in -the church. There are plenty of them on the square--likely most of them -are. But this one was the kind you used to see in the old-fashioned -melodramas. Truly rural stuff, Jack. He used to be quite a shark at -prayer himself, Uncle Ezra did. I can remember how he looked when he -prayed, with his eyes shut and his Adam's apple bobbing up and down and -the sound whining through his nose. - -"The only person that was ever human to me was a woman I called Aunt -Lizzie. I don't know really what relation she wras to me; a distant -cousin of Uncle Ezra's, I think. She was half blind and she was deaf, -and he bullied her and made her do all the housework. She was bent -nearly double with drudgery. He had given her a home, too. She didn't -dare be very good to me. He might find it out, and then we both would -catch it. She baked me some apple dumplings once on one of my birthdays. -I was nine years old. And he said she had stolen the apples and flour -from him; that he had not ordered her to make any apple dumplings, -and it was theft; and he made me pray for her, and made her pray for -herself, and he prayed for both of us in family prayers every day for a -week. - -"I was nearly eighteen when I ran away. I might have done it sooner, but -I was small for my age, and I was cowed. I didn't dare to call my soul -my own, and I had a reputation for being queer, too. For I used to grin -and laugh at things no one else thought were funny--when Uncle Ezra -wasn't round. I suppose people in that town thought it was odd that I -could laugh at all. No one could understand how I had a laugh left in -me. But when I was alone I used to laugh. I used to laugh at myself -sometimes because I was so little and so queer. When I was seventeen I -wasn't much bigger than a thirteen-year-old kid should be. I packed a -lot of growing into the years between seventeen and twenty-one. - -"When I ran away Aunt Lizzie gave me eighty-seven cents, all in nickels -and pennies, and there were two or three of those old-fashioned two-cent -pieces in it, too, that she had had for God knows how long. It was -all she had. I don't suppose he ever paid her anything at all, and the -wonder was she had that much. I told her that when I got out into the -world and made good I would come and get her, but she shivered all over -with fright at the idea of daring to leave. I have sent her things from -time to time in the last ten years--money, and dresses I have bought -for her, and little things I thought she would like. But I don't know -whether he let her have them or not I never got any letter from her at -all. I don't even know whether she can write, to tell the truth, and she -wouldn't dare get one of the neighbors to write for her. But if I ever -make any real money, Jack, I am going to go and get her, whether she -dares to come away or not. - -"Well, when I left, the thing I wanted to do was go to school. Uncle -Ezra hadn't given me time to go to school much. But I tramped to a -town where there was a little fresh-water college that had its own prep -school attached, and I did the whole seven years of prep school and -college in five years. You see, I had a lot of bounce in me. The minute -I got away from Uncle Ezra the whole world brightened up for me. The -clouds rolled by and life looked like one grand long joke, and I turned -into a kid. I romped through that prep school and that college, and made -my own living while I was doing it, and laughed all the time and loved -the world and everything in it, and it came as easy to me as water comes -to a duck. I came on down here to New York and was lucky enough to get a -chance as a reporter, and I've been romping ever since. - -"I don't want to do anything but romp. Of course, I want to write some -good stuff some day, but I want to keep romping while I write it, and I -want it to be stuff that has a romp in it, too. You say I romp so much -I'm never serious. Well, I do have some serious moments, too. I have -a dream that keeps coming to me. I dream that I'm back in that little -town, and that I'm Uncle Ezra's slave again, and that I can't get away. - -"Sometimes the dream takes the form of Uncle Ezra coming here to New -York to get me, and I know that I've got to go back with him to that -place, and I wake up sweating and crying like an eight-year-old kid. If -he ever really came it would put a crimp into me, Jack. - -"You say I'm a butterfly. And I say, yes, Jack, thank God I am! I used -to be a grubworm, and now I'm a butterfly, praise heaven! - -"Well, that's the guy I hold the grudge against, and that's why I'm fool -enough to rush into every pleasure I can find. I don't know that I'll -ever change. And as for the man, I don't ever want to see him. I don't -know that I'd ever do anything to him if I did--beat him to death with -a butterfly's wing, or blow him up with a soap bubble, as you suggested. -Let him alone. He'll punish himself. He is punished by being what he is. -I wouldn't put a breath into the scale one way or the other--not even a -puff of cigarette smoke." - -He blew a breath of cigarette smoke luxuriously out of his nose as he -finished, and then he remarked, "Let's go somewhere and dance." - -"Nazimova is doing Ibsen uptown," suggested Jack, "and I have a couple -of tickets. Let's go and see Ibsen lb a little." - -"Nope," said Tommy. "Ibsen's got too much sense. I want something silly. -Me for a cabaret, or some kind of a hop garden." - - - -V - -But sometimes in this ironical world it happens that we have already -beaten a man to death with a butterfly's wing, slain him with a bubble, -sent him whirling into the hereafter on a puff of smoke, even as we are -saying that such a thing is foreign to our thoughts. - -The old party in the room next to Tommy's at the hotel had arrived the -day before, with an umbrella, a straw suitcase and a worried eye on -either side his long, white, chalkish, pitted nose. He seemed chilly -in spite of his large plum-colored overcoat, of a cut that has survived -only in the rural districts. He wore a salient, assertive beard, that -had once been sandy and was now almost white, but it was the only -assertive thing about him. His manner was far from aggressive. - -An hour after he had been shown to his room he appeared at the desk -again and inquired timidly of the clerk, "There's a fire near here?" - -"Little blaze in the next block. Doesn't amount to anything," said the -clerk. - -"I heard the--the engines," said the guest apologetically. - -"Doesn't amount to anything," said the clerk again. And then, "Nervous -about fire?" - -The old party seemed startled. - -"Who? Me? Why should I be nervous about fire? No! No! No!" He beat a -sudden retreat. "I was just asking--just asking," he threw back over his -shoulder. - -"Old duck's scared of fire and ashamed to own it," mused the clerk, -watching him out of the lobby. - -The old party went back to his room, and there one of the first -things he saw was a copy of the Bible lying on the bureau. There is an -organization which professes for its object the placing of a Bible in -every hotel room in the land. The old party had his own Bible with him. -As if reminded of it by the one on the bureau, he took it out of -his suitcase and sat down and began to turn the leaves like a person -familiar with the book--and like a person in need of comfort, as indeed -he was. - -There was a text in Matthew that he sought--where was it? Somewhere in -the first part of Matthew's gospel--ah, here it is: The twelfth chapter -and the thirty-first verse: - -"All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men...." - -There is a terrible reservation in the same verse. He kept his eyes from -it, and read the first part over and over, forming the syllables with -his lips, but not speaking aloud. - -"All manner of sin--all manner of sin-------" - -And then, as if no longer able to avoid it, he yielded his consciousness -to the latter clause of the verse: - -"But the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto -men." - -What was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost? Could what he had done be -construed as that? Probably if one lied to God in his prayers, that was -blasphemy against the Holy Ghost--one form of it. And had he been lying -to God these last two weeks when he had said over and over again in his -prayers that it was all a mistake? It hadn't been all a mistake, but the -worst part of it had been a mistake. - -He went out for his dinner that evening, but he was in again before ten -o'clock. He could not have slept well. At two o'clock in the morning he -appeared in front of the desk. - -He had heard fire engines again. - -"See here," said the night clerk, appraising him, as the day clerk had -done, as a rube who had been seldom to the city and was nervous about -fire, "you don't need to be worried. If anything should happen near here -we'd get all the guests out in a jiffy." - -The old party returned to his room. He was up early the next morning and -down to breakfast before the dining room was open. - -He did not look as if he had had much rest. The morning hours he devoted -to reading his Bible in his room. Perhaps he found comfort in it. At -noon he seemed a bit more cheerful. He asked the clerk the way to the -Eden Musee, and was surprised to learn that that place of amusement had -been closed for a year or two. The clerk recommended a moving-picture -house round the corner. But it had begun to rain and snow and sleet -all together; the sky was dark and the wind was rising; the old party -elected not to go out after all. - -He went back to his room once more, and his black fear and melancholy -descended upon him again, and the old debate began to weave through his -brain anew. For two weeks he had been fleeing from the debate and from -himself. He had come to New York to get away from it, but it was no -good. Just when he had made up his mind that God had forgiven him, and -was experiencing a momentary respite, some new doubt would assail him -and the agony would begin again. - -The old debate--he had burned the store, with the living quarters over -it, to get the insurance money, after having removed a part of the -insured goods, but he did not regard that as an overwhelming sin. It -wasn't right, of course, in one way. And yet in another way it was -merely sharp business practice, so he told himself. For a year before -that, when one of his buildings had burned through accident, he had been -forced to accept from the same insurance company less than was actually -due him as a matter of equity. Therefore, to make money out of that -company by a shrewd trick was in a way merely to get back his own again. -It wasn't the sort of thing that a deacon in the church would care to -have found out on him, of course. It was wrong in a sense. But it was -the wrong that it had led to that worried him. - -It was the old woman's death that worried him. He hadn't meant to burn -her to death, God knows! He hadn't known she was in the building. - -He had sent her on a week's visit to another town, to see a surprised -cousin of his own, and it had been distinctly understood that she was -not to return until Saturday. But some time on Friday evening she must -have crept back home and gone to bed in her room. He had not known she -was there. - -"I didn't know! I didn't know!" - -There were times when he gibbered the words to himself by the hour. - -It was at midnight that he had set fire to the place. The old woman was -deaf. Even when the flames began to crackle she could not have heard -them. She had had no more chance than a rat in a trap. The old fool! It -was her own fault! Why had she not obeyed him? Why had she come creeping -back, like a deaf old half-blind tabby cat, to die in the flames? It -was her own fault! When he thought of the way she had returned to kill -herself there were moments when he cursed and hated her. - -But had she killed herself? Back and forth swung the inner argument. At -times he saw clearly enough that this incident joined on without a break -to the texture of his whole miserable life; when he recognized that, -though it might be an accident in a strictly literal sense that the old -woman was dead, yet it was the sort of accident for which his previous -existence had been a preparation. Even while he fiercely denied -his guilt, or talked of it in a seizure of whining prayer that was -essentially a lying denial, he knew that guilt there was. - -Would he be forgiven? There were comforting passages in the Bible. He -switched on the rather insufficient electric light, which was all the -old hotel provided, for the day was too dark to read without that help, -and turned the pages of the New Testament through and through again. - -At three o'clock in the afternoon he was sitting on the edge of his bed, -with the book open in front of him and his head bowed, almost dozing. -His pipe, with which he had filled the room with the fumes of tobacco, -had fallen to the floor. Perhaps it was weariness, but for a brief -period his sharper sense of fear had been somewhat stilled again. Maybe -it was going to be like this--a gradual easing off of the strain in -answer to his prayers. He had asked God for an answer as to whether -he should be forgiven, and God was answering in this way, so he told -himself. God was going to let him get some sleep, and maybe when he woke -everything would be all right again--bearable at least. - -So he mused, half asleep. - -And then all at once he sprang wide awake again, and his terror wakened -with him. For suddenly in front of his half-shut eyes, coming from -nowhere in particular, there passed a puff of smoke! - -What could it mean? He had asked God for an answer. He had been lulled -for a moment almost into something like peace, and--now--this puff of -smoke! Was it a sign? Was it God's answer? - -He sat up on the edge of the bed, rigid, in a cold, still agony of -superstitious fright. He dared not move or turn his head. He was afraid -that he would see--something--if he looked behind him. He was afraid -that he would in another moment hear something--a voice! - -He closed his eyes. He prayed. He prayed aloud. His eyes once closed, -he scarcely dared open them again. After seme minutes he began to tell -himself that perhaps he had been mistaken; perhaps he had not seen smoke -at all. Perhaps even if he had seen smoke it was due to some explicable -cause, and not meant for him. - -He greatly dared. He opened his eyes. And drifting lazily above the -white pillow at the head of the bed was another puff of smoke. - -He rocked back and forth upon the bed, with his arms up as if to shield -his head from a physical blow, and then he passed in a moment from the -quakings of fear to a kind of still certainty of doom. God was angry at -him. God was telling him so. God would send the devil for him. There -was no further doubt. He would go to hell--to hell! To burn forever! -Forever--even as the old woman had burned for a quarter of an hour. He -began to search through the pages of the Bible again, not for words of -comfort this time, but in a morbid ecstasy of despair, for phrases about -hell, for verses that mentioned fire and flames. - -He did not need the concordance. He knew his Bible well, and his fear -helped him. Consciousness and subconsciousness joined to guide his -fingers and eyes in the quest. - -"Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming," he -read in Isaiah, and he took it to himself. - -"Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and -ye shall be melted in the midst thereof," he read in Ezekiel. - -He had a literal imagination, and he had a literal belief, and at every -repetition of the word "fire" the flesh cringed and crawled on his -bones. God! To burn! How it must hurt! - -"And the God that answereth by fire, let Him be God," met his eyes in -the first book of Kings. - -And it all meant him. Now and then over his shoulder would float another -little puff of smoke; and once, lifting his head suddenly from poring -over the book, he thought he saw something that moved and glinted like a -traveling spark, and was gone. - -He began to feel himself in hell already. This was the foretaste, that -was all. Would he begin to burn even before he died? Did this smoke -presage something of that kind? Would flames physically seize upon him, -and would he burn, even as the old woman had burned? - -Suddenly in his hysteria there came a revulsion--a revolt. Having -reached the nethermost depths of despair, he began to move upward a -little. His soul stirred and took a step and tried to climb. He began to -pray once more. After all, the Good Book did promise mercy! He began to -dare to pray again. And he prayed in a whisper that now and then broke -into a whine--a strange prayer, characteristic of the man. - -"Oh, God," he cried, "you promise forgiveness in that book there, and -I'm gonna hold you to it! I'm gonna hold you to it! It's down there in -black and white, your own words, God, and I'm gonna hold you to it! It's -a contract, God, and you ain't the kind of a man, God, to go back on a -contract that's down in black and white!" - -Thus he prayed, with a nave, unconscious blasphemy. And after long -minutes of this sort of thing his soul dared take another step. A -faint, far glimmering of hope came to him where he groveled. For he was -groveling on the bed now, with the covers pulled up to his head and his -hand upon the open Bible. He found the courage to peer from beneath the -covers at intervals as he prayed and muttered, and minutes passed with -no more smoke. Had the smoke ceased? The sound of his own murmuring -voice began to reassure him. The smoke had certainly ceased! It had been -twenty minutes since he had seen it--half an hour! - -What could it mean? That God was hearkening to his prayer? - -An hour went by, and still there was no more sign of smoke. He prayed -feverishly, he gabbled, as if by the rapidity of his utterance and the -repeated strokes of his words he were beating back and holding at bay -the smoke that was God's warning and the symbol of his displeasure. And -the smoke had ceased to come! He was to be forgiven! He was winning! His -prayers were winning for him! At least God was listening! - -Yes, that must be it. God was listening now. The smoke had come as a -warning; and he had, upon receiving this warning, repented. God had not -meant, after all, that he was doomed irrevocably. God had meant that, -to be forgiven, his repentance must be genuine, must be thorough--and -it was thorough now. Now it was genuine! And the smoke had ceased! The -smoke had been a sign, and he had heeded the sign, and now if he kept up -his prayers and lived a good life in the future he was to be forgiven. -He would not have to burn in hell after all. - -The minutes passed, and he prayed steadily, and every minute that went -by and brought no further sign of the smoke built up in him a little -more hope, another grain of confidence. - -An hour and a quarter, and he almost dared be sure that he was -forgiven--but he was not quite sure. If he could only be quite sure! He -wallowed on the bed, and his hand turned idly the pages of the Bible, -lying outside on the coverlet. - -More than an hour had gone by. Could he accept it as an indication that -God had indeed heard him? He shifted himself upon the bed, and stared -up at the ceiling through a chink in the covers as if through and beyond -the ceiling he were interrogating heaven. - -And lying so, there came a damp touch upon his hand, soft and chill and -silent, as if it were delicately and ironically brushed by the kiss of -Death. A sudden agony numbed his hand and arm. With the compulsion of -hysteria, not to be resisted, his head lifted and he sat up and looked. -Over the Bible and his hand that lay upon the open page there floated -again a puff of smoke, and faintly staining his Angers and the paper -itself was something moist and red. It stained his Angers and it marked -with red for his straining sight this passage of Isaiah: - -"The earth also shall disclose her blood." - -It was then he cried out, "Oh, God! God! Again! You meant it, then, God! -You meant it." - -It was nearly midnight when Tommy and his friend Dobson returned to the -hotel. "Your paper's been trying to get you for an hour, Mr. Hawkins," -said the night clerk when they came in. "Story right in the next room to -yours. Old party in there hanged himself." - -"So?" said Tommy. "Ungrateful old guy, he is! I put in the afternoon -trying to cheer him up a little." - -"Did you know him?" asked the clerk. - -"Nope," said Tommy, moving toward the elevator. - -But a few moments later, confronted with the grotesque spectacle in the -room upstairs, he said, "Yes--I--I know him. Jack! Jack! Get me out of -here, Jack! It's Uncle Ezra, Jack! He's--he's come for me!" - -As has been remarked before, sometimes even a bubble may be a mordant -weapon. - - - - -VIII.--The Chances of the Street - - -|Merriwether Buck had lost all his money. Also his sisters', and his -cousins', and his aunts'. - -"At two o'clock sharp I will shoot myself," said Merriwether Buck. - -He caressed a ten-shot automatic pistol in the right-hand pocket of his -coat as he loitered up Broadway. He was light-headed. He had had nothing -to eat for forty-eight hours. - -"How I hate you!" said Merriwether Buck, comprehensively to the city in -general. "If nine pistol shots would blot you out, I'd do it!" - -Very melodramatic language, this, for a well-brought-up young man; and -thus indicating that he was light-headed, indeed. And as for the city, -it continued to roar and rattle and honk and rumble and squeak and bawl -and shuffle and thunder and grate in the same old way--supreme in its -confidence that nine pistol shots could not, by any possibility, blot -it out. That is one of the most disconcerting things about a city; you -become enraged at it, and the city doesn't even know it. Unless you -happen to be Nero it is very difficult to blot them out satisfactorily. - -It was one o'clock. Merriwether Buck crossed the street at Herald Square -and went over and stood in front of the big newspaper office. A portly -young fellow with leaden eyes came out of the building and stood -meditatively on the curb with his hands in the pockets of clothing that -clamored shrilly of expense. - -"Excuse me," said Merriwether Buck, approaching him, "but are you, by -any chance, a reporter?" - -"Uh," grunted the young man, frigidly affirmative. - -"I can put you in the way of a good story," said Merriwether Buck, -obeying an impulse: We may live anonymously but most of us like to feel -that it will make a little stir when we die. - -"Huh," remarked the reporter. - -"At two o'clock," persisted Merriwether Buck, "I am going to shoot -myself." - -The reporter looked bored; his specialty was politics. - -"Are you anybody in particular?" he asked, discouragingly. - -"No," confessed Merriwether Buck. It didn't seem to be worth while to -mention that he was one of the Bucks of Bucktown, Merriwether County, -Georgia. - -"I thought," said the reporter, with an air of rebuke, "that you said it -was a _good_ story." - -"I am, at least, a human being," said Merriwether Buck, on the -defensive. - -"They're cheap, hereabout," returned the other, in the manner of a -person who has estimated a good many assorted lots. - -"You are callous," said Merriwether Buck. "Callous to the soul! What are -you, but--but--Why, you are New York incarnate! That is what you are! -And I think I will shoot you first!" - -"I don't want to be a spoil sport," said the reporter, "but I'm afraid I -can't allow it. I have a rather important assignment." - -Merriwether played with the little automatic pistol in his pocket. It -was not any regard for the consequences that deterred him from shooting -the portly young man. But in his somewhat dizzy brain a fancy was taking -shape; a whim worked in him. He drew his hand empty from the pocket, and -that reporter came up out of the grave. - -"I am hungry," said Merriwether Buck, in obedience to the whim. - -"Now that you remind me of it," said the other, his lack-luster -eyes lighting up a little, "so am I!" And he crossed the street and -disappeared through the swinging doors of a caf. - -Callous, leaden-eyed young man! epitome of this hard town! So cried the -spirit of Merriwether Buck; and then he spoke aloud, formulating his -idea: - -"New York, you are on trial. You are in the balances. I give you an -hour. If I'm asked to lunch by two o'clock, all right. If not, I will -kill myself, first carefully shooting down the most prosperous citizens, -and as many of 'em as I can reach. New York, it's up to you!" - -The idea of playing it out that way tickled him to the heart; he had -always loved games of chance. One man or woman out of all the prosperous -thousands in the streets might save another prosperous half-dozen; -might save as many as he could otherwise reach with nine shots from his -pistol, for he would reserve the tenth for himself. Otherwise, there -should be a sacrifice; he would offer up a blood atonement for the pagan -city's selfishness. Giddy and feverish, and drunk with the sense of his -power to slay, he beheld himself as a kind of grotesque priest--and he -threw back his head and laughed at the maniac conceit. - -A woman who was passing turned at the sound, and their eyes met. She -smiled. Merriwether Buck was good to look at. So was she. She was of -that type of which men are certain at once, without quite knowing why; -while women are often puzzled, saying to themselves: "After all, it may -be only her rings." - -"Pardon me," said Merriwether Buck, overtaking her, "but you and I are -to lunch together, aren't we?" - -"I like your nerve!" said she. And she laughed. It was evident that she -did like it. "Where?" she asked briefly, falling into step beside him. - -"Wherever you like," said Merriwether. "I leave that to you, as I'm -depending on you to pay the check." - -She began a doubtful laugh, and then, seeing that it wasn't a joke, -repeated: - -"I like your nerve!" And it was now evident that she didn't like it. - -"See here," he said, speaking rapidly, "my clothes look all right yet, -but I'm broke. I'm hungry. I haven't had anything to eat since day -before yesterday. I'm not kidding you; it's true. You looked like a good -fellow to me, and I took a chance. Hunger" (as he spoke it he seemed to -remember having heard the remark before), "hunger makes one a judge of -faces; I gambled on yours." - -She wasn't complimented; she regarded him with a manner in which scorn -and incredulity were blended; Merriwether Buck perceived that, for some -reason or other, she was insulted. - -"Don't," she said, "don't pull any of that sentimental stuff on me. I -thought you was a gentleman!" - -And she turned away from him. He took a step in pursuit and started to -renew his plea; for he was determined to play his game square and give -the directing deities of the city a fair chance to soften whatsoever -random heart they would. - -"Beat it!" she shrilled, "beat it, you cheap grafter, or I'll call a -cop!" - -And Merriwether beat it; nor' by nor'west he beat it, as the street -beats it; as the tides beat. The clock on the Times building marked 1.20 -as he paused by the subway station there. In forty minutes--just the -time it takes to hook your wife's dress or put a girdle round the -world--Merri-wether Buck would be beating it toward eternity, shooing -before him a flock of astonished ghosts of his own making. Twenty -minutes had gone by and whatever gods they be that rule New York had -made no sign; perhaps said gods were out at lunch or gone to Coney -Island. Twice twenty minutes more, and---- - -But no. It is all over now. It must be. There emerges from the subway -station one who is unmistakably a preacher. The creases of his face -attest a smiling habit; no doubt long years of doing good have given it -that stamp; the puffs of white hair above the temples add distinction to -benignity. - -"I beg your pardon," said Merriwether Buck, "but are you a minister?" - -"Eh?" said the reverend gentleman, adjusting a pair of gold-rimmed -eyeglasses. "Yes," he said pleasantly, "I am," and he removed the -glasses and put them back on once again, as he spoke. Somehow, the way -he did it was a benediction. - -"I am hungry," said Merriwether. - -"Dear me!" said the reverend gentleman. "I shouldn't have thought it." - -"Will you ask me to lunch?" - -"Eh?" It was an embarrassing question; but the gentleman was all -good nature. His air indicated that he did not intend to let his -own embarrassment embarrass Merriwether too much. "My dear man, you -know--really----" He placed a shapely hand upon Merriwether's shoulder, -rallyingly, almost affectionately, and completed the sentence with a -laugh. - -"It's charity I'm asking for," said Merriwether. - -"Oh!" For some reason he seemed vastly relieved. "Have you been--but, -dear me, are you sure you aren't joking?" - -"Yes; sure." - -"And have you--ahem!--have you sought aid from any institution; any -charitable organization, you know?" - -"But no," said Merriwether, who had instinctively eliminated charitable -organizations, free lunches and police stations from the terms of his -wager, "I thought----" - -"My, my, my," hummed the reverend gentleman, interrupting him. He -produced his card case and took a card therefrom. "I am going," he said, -writing on the card with a pencil, "to give you my card to the secretary -of the Combined Charities. Excellent system they have there. You'll be -investigated, you know," he said brightly, as if that were an especial -boon he was conferring, "your record looked into--character and -antecedents and all that sort of thing!" - -"And fed?" asked Merriwether. - -"Oh, indeed!" And he handed over the card as if he were giving -Merriwether the keys to the city--but not too gross and material a city -either; Merriwether felt almost as if he were being baptized. - -"But," said Merriwether Buck, "I wanted _you_ to feed me!" - -"Oh, my dear man!" smiled the minister, "I _am_ doing it, you know. I'm -a subscriber--do _all_ my charitable work this way. Saves time. Well, -good-by." And he nodded cheerily. - -"But," said Merriwether Buck, "aren't you interested in me personally? -Don't you want to hear my story?" - -"Story? Story?" hummed the other. "Indeed, but they'll learn your story -there! They have the most excellent system there; card system; cases -and case numbers, you know--Stories, bless you! Hundreds and hundreds of -stories! Big file cases! You'll be number so-and-so. Really," he said, -with a beaming enthusiasm, "they have a _wonderful_ system. Well, -good-by!" There was a touch of finality in his pleasant tone, but -Merriwether caught him by the sleeve. - -"See here," he said, "haven't you even got any _curiosity_ about -me? Don't you even want to know why I'm hungry? Can't you find time -_yourself_ to listen to the tale?" - -"Time," said the reverend gentleman, "_time_ is just what I feel the -lack of--feel it sadly, at moments like these, sadly." He sighed, but it -was an optimistic, good-humored sort of sigh. "But I tell you what you -do." He drew forth another card and scribbled on it. "If you want to -tell me your story so very badly--(dear me, what remarkable situations -the clerical life lets one in for!)--so _very_ badly, take this card -to my study about 3.30. You'll find my stenographer there and you can -dictate it to her; she'll type it out. Yes, indeed, she'll type it out! -Well, _good_-by!" - -And with a bright backward nod he was off. - -It was 1.25. There were thirty-five minutes more of life. Merriwether -Buck gave the reverend gentleman's cards to a seedy individual who -begged from him, with the injunction to go and get himself charitably -Bertilloned like a gentleman and stop whining, and turned eastward on -Forty-second Street. If you have but thirty-five minutes of life, why -not spend them on Fifth Avenue, where sightly things abound?--indeed -if you happen to be a homicidal maniac of some hours standing, like -Merriwether Buck, Fifth Avenue should be good hunting ground; the very -place to mark the fat and greasy citizens of your sacrifice. - -Time, the only patrician, will not step lively for the pert subway -guards of human need, nor yet slacken pace for any bawling traffic cop -of man's desire; he comes of an old family too proud to rush, too proud -to wait; a fine old fellow with a sense of his own value. Time walked -with Merriwether Buck as he loitered up Fifth Avenue, for the old -gentleman loves to assist personally at these little comedies, -sometimes; with Death a hang-dog third. Not even a fly-cop took note of -the trio, although several, if they robbed a jewelry store or anything -like that, would tell the reporters later that they had noticed -something suspicious at the time. And the patron deities of New York -City might have been over in Hoboken playing pinochle for all the heed -_they_ took. - -Which brings us to Sixty-fifth Street and 1.58 o'clock and the presence -of the great man, all at once. - -When Merriwether Buck first saw him, Meriwether Buck gasped. He couldn't -believe it. And, indeed, it was a thing that might not happen again this -year or next year or in five years--J. Dupont Evans, minus bulwark or -attendant, even minus his habitual grouch, walking leisurely toward him -like any approachable and common mortal. Merriwether Buck might well be -incredulous. But it was he; the presentment of that remarkable face has -been printed a hundred thousand times; it is as well known to the world -at large as Uncle Pete Watson's cork leg is on the streets of Prairie -Centre, Ill.; it is unmistakable. - -To have J. Dupont Evans at the point of a pistol might almost intoxicate -some sane and well-fed men, and Merriwether Buck was neither. J. Dupont -Evans--the wealth of Croesus would be just one cracked white chip in the -game he plays. But at this moment his power and his importance had been -extraordinarily multiplied by circumstances. The chances of the street -had tumbled down a half dozen banks--(well did Merriwether Buck know -that, since it had ruined him)--and financial panic was in the air; -an epochal and staggering disaster threatened; and at this juncture a -president in no wise humble had publicly confessed his own impotence and -put it up to J. Dupont Evans to avert, to save, to reassure. - -Merriwether Buck had not dreamed of this; in the crook of his trigger -finger lay, not merely the life of a man, but the immediate destiny of a -nation. - -He grasped the pistol in his pocket, and aimed it through the cloth. - -"Do you know what time it is?" he asked J. Dupont Evans, politely -enough. - -It was only a second before the man answered. But in that second -Merriwether Buck, crazily exalted, and avid of the sensation he was -about to create, had a swift vision. He saw bank after bank come -crashing down; great railroad systems ruined; factories closed and -markets stagnant; mines shut and crops ungathered in the fields; ships -idle at the wharves; pandemonium and ruin everywhere. - -"Huh?" said J. Dupont Evans, gruffly, removing an unlighted cigar from -his mouth. He looked at Merriwether Buck suspiciously, and made as if to -move on. But he thought better of it the next instant, evidently, for -he pulled out a plain silver watch and said grudgingly: "Two minutes -of two." And then, in a tone less unpleasant, he asked: "Have you got a -match, young man?" - -Merriwether fumbled in his vest pocket. In a minute and a half he would -perfunctorily ask this man for lunch, and then he would kill him. But he -would give him a match first--for Merriwether Buck was a well-brought-up -young man. As he fumbled he picked out the exact spot on the other's -waistcoat where he would plant the bullet. But the idea of a man on the -edge of the grave lighting a cigar tickled him so that he laughed aloud -as he held out the matches. - -"What can I do with these?" snorted J. Dupont Evans. "They are the sort -that light only on their own box." From his glance one might have gained -the impression that he thought Merriwether Buck a fool. - -"Great principle that," said Merriwether Buck, cackling with hysteria. -It was so funny that a dead man should want to smoke a cigar! He would -let him play he was alive for fifty seconds longer. - -"Principle?" said Evans. "Principle? What Principle?" - -"Well," said Merriwether, with the random argumentativeness of insanity, -"it _is_ a great principle. Apply that principle to some high explosive, -for instance, and you have no more battleship flare-backs--no premature -mine blasts----" - -"Say," the other suddenly interrupted, "are you an inventor?" - -"Yes," lied Merriwether Buck, glibly, although he had never given five -seconds' thought to the subject of high explosives in his life. "That's -how I know. I've invented an explosive more powerful than dynamite. But -it won't explode by contact with fire, like powder. Won't explode with a -jar, like dynamite. Won't freeze, like dynamite. Only one way to explode -it--you've got to bring it into contact with a certain other chemical -the same as scratching one of these matches on its own box." - -"The deuce, young man!" said the other. "There's a fortune in it! Is it -on the market at all?" - -"No," said Merriwether Buck, raising his pistol hand slightly and -thrusting it a bit forward, under the mask of his coat pocket, "no money -to start it going." - -"Hum," mused the other. "I tell you what you do, young man. You come -along to lunch with me and we'll talk the thing over--money and all." - -And the directing deities of New York struck twice on all the city -clocks, and striking, winked. - - - - -IX.--The Professor's Awakening - -|How I ever come to hit such a swell-looking house for a handout I never -knew. Not that there was anything so gaudy about it, neither, as far as -putting up a bluff at being a millionaire's mansion went, which I found -out afterwards it was, or pretty near that at any rate. But it was just -about the biggest house in that Illinois town, and it's mostly that kind -o' place with them naked iron heathens in the front yard and a brick -stable behind that it ain't no use to go up against unless you're -looking for a lemon. If you need real food and need it sudden and ain't -prospecting around town for no other kind of an opening you better make -for the nearest public works like a canal being dug, or a railroad gang. -Hit the little tin dinner buckets, men that does the unskilled labor -on jobs like that, except Swedes and Dagos, knowing what it is to be -up against it themselves now and then and not inclined to ask no fool -questions. - -Well, I went around to the back door, and Biddy Malone she lets me in. I -found out that was her name afterwards, but as soon as I seen her face -I guessed if her name wasn't Bridget it was Nora. It's all in the -first look they give you after they open the door. If that look's right -they're coming across and you'll get some kind of a surprise for your -digestive ornaments and you don't need to make no fool breaks about -sawing wood neither. I makes my little talk and Biddy she says come in; -and into the kitchen I went. - -"It's Minnesota you're working towards," says Biddy, pouring me out a -cup of coffee. - -She was thinking of the wheat harvest where there's thousands makes for -every fall. But not for me, I never did like to work for none of them -Scandiluvian Swedes and Norwegians that gets into the field before -daylight and stays at it so long the hired men got to milk the cows by -moonlight. They got no sense of proportion, them Gusses and Oles ain't. - -"I been across the river into I'way," I says, "working at my trade, and -I'm going back to Chicago to work at it some more." - -"And what may your trade be?" says Biddy, sizing me up careful. I seen I -made a hit somehow or she wouldn't of asked me in the first place was -I going to the wheat harvest, but would of just supposed I was a hobo, -which I ain't. I got a lot of trades when I want to use one, and as a -regular thing I rather work at one of them for a while, too, but can't -stand it very long on account of not feeling right to stay in one place -too long, especially in the summer. When I seen I made a hit with Biddy -I thinks I'll hand her a good one she never heard tell of before. - -"I'm an agnostic by trade," I says. I spotted that one in a Carnegie -library one time and that was the first chance I ever had to spring it. - -"I see," says Biddy. And she opened her eyes and mouth to once. I seen -she didn't see, but I didn't help her none. She would of rather killed -herself than let on she didn't see. Most of the Irish is like that -whether they is kitchen mechanics or what. After a while she says, -pouring me out some more coffee and handing me a little glass jar full -of watermelon rinds boiled in with molasses and things, she says: - -"And ain't that the dangerous thing to work at, though!" - -"It is," I says, and says nothing further. - -She sets down and folds her arms like she was thinking about it, -watching my hands all the time as if she was looking for scars where -something slipped when I done that agnostic work. Finally she says with -a sigh: - -"Sure, and it's dangerous! Me brother Patrick was kilt at it in the old -country. He was the most vinturesome lad of thim all!" - -She was putting up a stiff front, and for a minute I don't know whether -she's stringing me or I'm stringing her. The Irish is like that. So -being through eating I says: - -"Did it fly up and hit him?" - -She looks at me scornful and tosses her chin up and says: - -"No. He fell off of it. And I'm thinking you don't know what one of them -is, after!" - -"What is it, then?" says I. - -"Then you _don't_ know," says she; and the next thing I knew I'd been -eased out the back door and she was grinning at me through the crack of -it with superiousness all over her face. - -So I was walking slow around towards the front thinking to myself how -the Irish was a great people; and shall I go to Chicago and maybe get a -job sailing on the lakes till navigation closes, or shall I go back to -Omaha and work in the railroad yards again, which I don't like much, or -shall I go on down to Saint Looey just to see what's doing. And then I -thinks: "Billy, you was a fool to let that circus walk off and leave -you asleep with nothing over you but a barb wire fence this morning, and -what are you going to do now? First thing you know you'll be a regular -hobo, which some folks can't distinguish you ain't now." And then I -thinks I'll go down to the river and take a swim and lazy around in the -grass a while and think things over and maybe something will happen. -Anyways, you can always join the army. And just when I was thinking that -I got by one of them naked stone heathens that was squirting water out -of a sea shell and a guy comes down the front steps on the jump and nabs -me by the coat collar. I seen he was a doctor or else a piano tuner by -the satchel he dropped when he grabbed me. - -"Did you come out of this house?" he says. - -"I did," I says, wondering what next. - -"Back in you goes," he says, marching me towards the front steps. -"They've got smallpox in there." - -I liked to a-jumped loose when he said that, but he twisted my coat -collar and dug his thumbs into my neck and I seen they wasn't no use -pulling back. If a guy that's knocking around mixes up with one of the -solid citizens the magistrate's going to give him the worst of it on -principle. I ain't no hobo and never was, and never traveled much with -none of them professional bums, but there has been times I had hard work -making some people believe it. I seen I couldn't jerk away and I seen I -couldn't fight and so I went along. He rung the door bell, and I says: - -"Smallpox ain't no inducement to me, doc." - -"No?" says he. And the door opened, and in we went. The girl that opened -it, she drew back when she seen me. - -"Tell Professor Booth that Dr. Wilkins wants to see him," says the doc, -not letting loose of me. - -And we stood there saying nothing till the per-fessor come in, which he -did slow and absent-minded. When he seen me he stopped and took off a -pair of thick glasses that was split in two like a mended show case, so -he could see me better, and he says: - -"What is that you have there, Dr. Wilkins?" - -"A guest for you," says Dr. Wilkins, grinning all over himself. "I -caught him leaving the house, and you being under quarantine and me -being secretary to the board of health, I'll have to ask you to keep him -here until we can get Miss Margery on her feet again," he says. Or they -was words to that effect, as the lawyers asks you. - -"Dear me," says Perfessor Booth, kind o' helplesslike. - -And he put his glasses on and took them off again, and come up close and -looked at me like I was one of them amphimissourian specimens in a free -museum. "Dear me," he says, looking worrieder and worrieder all the -time. And then he went to the foot of the stairs and pipes out in a -voice that was so flat-chested and bleached-out it would a-looked just -like him if you could a-saw it--"Estelle," he says, "O Estelle!" - -I thinks the perfessor is one of them folks that can maybe do a lot -of high-class thinking, but has got to have some one tell 'em what the -answer is. But I doped him out wrong as I seen later on. - -Estelle, she come down stairs looking like she was the perfessor's big -brother. I found out later she was his old maid sister. She wasn't no -spring chicken, Estelle wasn't, and they was a continuous grin on her -face. I figgered it must of froze there years and years ago. They was -a kid about ten or eleven years old come along down with her, that had -hair down to its shoulders and didn't look like it knowed whether it was -a girl or a boy. Miss Estelle, she looks me over in a way that makes me -shiver, while the doctor and the per-fessor jaws about whose fault it is -the smallpox sign ain't been hung out. And when she was done listening -she says to the perfessor: "You had better go back to your laboratory." -And the perfessor he went along out, and the doctor with him. - -"What are you going to do with him, Aunt Estelle?" the kid asks her. - -"What would _you_ suggest, William Dear?" asks his aunt. I ain't feeling -very comfortable, and I was getting all ready just to natcherally bolt -out the front door now the doctor was gone. Then I thinks it mightn't be -no bad place to stay in fur a couple o' days, even risking the smallpox. -Fur I had ricolected I couldn't ketch it nohow, having been vaccinated -a few months before in Terry Hutt by compulsory medical advice, me being -temporary engaged in repair work on the city pavements through a mistake -in the police court. - -William Dear looks at me when his aunt put it up to him just as solemn -as if it was the day of judgment and his job was separating the fatted -calves from the goats and the prodigals, and he says: - -"Don't you think, Aunt Estelle, we better cut his hair and bathe him and -get him some clothes the first thing?" - -"William is my friend," thinks I, and I seen right off he was one of -them serious kids that you can't tell what is going on inside their -heads. - -So she calls James, which was the butler, and James he buttled me into a -bathroom the like of which I never see before; and he buttled me into a -suit of somebody's clothes and into a room at the top of the house next -to his'n, and then he come back and buttled a razor and a comb and brush -at me; him being the most mournful-looking fat man I ever seen, and he -informs me that me not being respectable I will eat alone in the kitchen -after the servants is done. People has made them errors about me before. -And I looks around the room and I thinks to myself that this is all -right so far as it has went. But is these four walls, disregarding -the rest of the house, to be my home, and them only? Not, thinks I, if -little Billy knows it. It was not me that invited myself to become the -guest of this family; and if I got to be a guest I be damned if I don't -be one according to Hoyle's rules of etiquette or I'll quit the job. -Will I stay in this one room? Not me. Suppose the perfessor takes it -next? And then William Dear? And suppose when William Dear gets through -with it he gives it to Aunt Estelle? Am I to waste the golden hours -when, maybe, my country needs me, just for accommodation? But I thinks -it's all right for a day or two and then I'll leave my regrets and go on -down to Saint Looey or somewheres. And then James he buttles back into -the room like a funeral procession and says the perfessor says he wants -to see me in the laboratory. - -That was a big room and the darndest looking room I ever see, and it -smelt strong enough to chase a Hungarian pig sticker out of a Chicago -slaughter house. It smelt like a drug store had died of old age and got -buried in a glue factory. I never seen so much scientific effusions and -the things to hold 'em in mixed up in one place before. They must of -been several brands of science being mixed up there all to once. They -was dinky little stoves, they was glass jars of all shapes and sizes -labeled with Dago names standing around on shelves like in one of them -Dutch delicatessen stores; they was straight glass tubes and they was -glass tubes that had the spinal contortions; they was bones and they -was whole skeletons, and they was things that looked like whisky stills; -they was a bookcase full of bugs and butterflies against one wall; they -was chunks of things that might have been human for all I know floating -around in vats like pickled pork in a barrel; they was beer schooners -with twisted spouts to them; they was microscopes and telescopes and -twenty-seven shapes and sizes of knives; they was crates of stuff that -was unpacked and crates that wasn't; and they was tables with things -just piled and spilled over 'em, every which way, and the looks of -everything was dirty on account of the perfessor not allowing any one in -there but himself and Miss Estelle and William. And whether you knowed -anything about them different brands of science or not you could see the -perfessor was one of them nuts that's always starting to do things and -then leaving them go and starting something else. It looked as if the -operating room of an emergency hospital and a blacksmith shop and a -people's free museum and a side show full of freaks, snakes and oneeyed -calves had all gone out and got drunk together, all four of them, and -wandered into a cremation plant to sleep off that souse; and when they -woke up they couldn't tell which was which nor nothing else except -they had a bad taste in their mouth and was sentenced to stay there -unseparated and unhappy and unsociable in each other's company for -evermore. And every time you turned around you stepped on something new, -and if you saw a rat or a lizard or a spider you better let him alone -for how was you going to tell he was dead or alive till he crawled up -you? - -The perfessor, he was setting over by a window, and he pushed out -another chair for me and he says sit down. - -"You are a gentleman of leisure?" he says, with a grin; or words to that -effect. - -"I work at that sometimes," I told him, "although it ain't rightly my -trade." - -"Biddy Malone says you're an agnostic," he says, looking at me close. -It won't do, I thinks, to spring none of them agnostic gags on him, so I -says nothing. - -"I'm one myself," he says. - -"Regular," I asks him, "or just occasional?" He kind o' grins again, and -I thinks: "Billy, you're making a hit somehow." - -Then he says, like he was apologizing to someone about something: "Being -interested in sociology and the lower classes in general, I sent for you -to get some first-hand observations on your train of mind," he says. Or -it was words like them. "I'm a sociologist," he says. - -I seen I made a hit before and I thinks I'll push my luck, so I swells -up and says: - -"I'm a kind of sociologist myself." - -"Hum," he says, thoughtful-like. "Indeed? And your itinerant mode of -subsistence is persecuted in pursuit of your desire to study knowledge -of the human specimen and to observe wisdom as to the ways they live -in the underworld," he says. Or it was words to that effect. I wish I'd -a-had him wrote them words down. Then I'd a-had 'em just right now. I -seen a bunch of good words help a man out of a hole before this. Words -has always been more or less my admiration; you can never tell what one -of them long gazaboos is going to do till you spring it on somebody. So -I says: - -"That's me, perfessor. I likes to float around and see what's doing." - -Then he tells me that sociology was how the criminal classes and the -lower classes in general was regarded by the scientific classes, only -it's a difficult brand of science to get next to, he says, on account -of the lower classes like me being mostly broke out with environment he -says, unbeknownst even to theirselves. He's not what you would call a -practicing sociologist all the time, being afraid, I suppose, he would -catch it if he got too close to it; he's just one of the boys that -writes about it, so as both the lower classes and the scientific classes -won't make no bad breaks, he says. - -But what he wants of me just now ain't got nothing to do with that, he -says. He's been making experiments with all kinds of canned victuals, -that is put up with acid that eats holes in your stomach, he says, and -so long as I'm going to be a guest he's going to mix some of them acids -in my chuck and weigh me after each meal. He says I'll start slow and -easy and there won't be nothing dangerous about it. He's been practicing -on William Dear and Miss Estelle, which I suppose it was the acids got -into her smile, but he's going to give them a rest, them being naturally -delicate. I ain't got no kick, I thinks, and I'm going to leave this -place in a day or two anyhow. Besides, I always was intrusted in -scientific things and games of chance of all kinds. - -But I didn't leave in a few days, and the first thing I knew I'd been -there a week. I had pretty much the run of the house, and I eat my meals -with Biddy Malone, the only uncomfortable feature of being a guest being -that Miss Estelle, soon as she found out I was an agnostic (whatever -brand of science that is, which I never found out to this day, just -having come across the word accidental), she begun to take charge of my -religion and intellectuals and things like that. She used to try to cure -the perfessor, too, but she had to give it up for a bad job, Biddy says. - -Biddy, she says Mrs. Booth's been over to her mother's while this -smallpox has been going on; which I hadn't knowed they was a Mrs. Booth -before. And Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay there, too. -They's been a lot of talk, anyhow, Biddy says, about Mrs. Booth and some -musician fellow around town. But Biddy she likes Mrs. Booth, and even if -it was so who could blame her? - -Things ain't right around that house since Miss Estelle's been there, -which the perfessor's science, though worrying to the nerves, ain't cut -much ice till about four years ago when Miss Estelle come. - -But Mrs. Booth she's getting where she can't stand it much longer, Biddy -says. I didn't blame her none for feeling sore about things. - -You can't expect a woman that's pretty and knows it, and ain't more'n -thirty-two or three years old, and don't look it, to be interested in -mummies and pickled snakes and the preservation of the criminal classes -and chemical profusions, not _all_ the time. And maybe when she'd ask -the perfessor if he wasn't going to take her to the opera he'd ask her -did she know them Germans had invented a newfangled disease or that it -was a mistake about them Austrians hiding their heads in the sand when -they are scared, which any fool that's ever seen 'em working around a -coal mine ought to of knowed. It wouldn't a-been so bad if the perfessor -had just picked out one brand of science and stuck to it. She could -a-got used to any one kind and knowed what to expect. But maybe this -week the perfessor's bug would be ornithography, and he'd be chasing -sparrows all over the front lawn; and next week it would be geneology -and he'd be trying to grow bananas on a potato vine. Then, he'd get -worried about the nigger problem in the south, and settle it all -up scientific and explain how ethnology done the whole damn thing, -lynchings and all, and it never could be straightened out till it was -done scientific. Every new gag that come out the perfessor took up with -it, Biddy says; one time he'd be fussing around with gastronomy through -a telescope and the next he'd be putting astrology into William's -breakfast food. - -They was a row on all the time about the kids, which they hadn't been -till Miss Estelle come. Mrs. Booth she said they could kill their own -selves if they wanted to, but she had more right than anybody to say -what went into William's digestive ornaments, and she didn't want him -brought up scientific nohow, but just human. He was always making notes -on William, which was how William come to take so little interest in -life after a while. But Miss Estelle, she egged him on. She seen he -didn't have no sense about his money, which had been left to him when -he was a sure enough perfessor in a college before he quit and went nuts -and everything begun to go wrong between him and Mrs. Booth, so Miss -Estelle she took to running his money herself; but she seen likewise -that when it come to writing articles about William's insides and -intellectuals the perfessor he was a genius. Well, maybe he was; but -Biddy wouldn't let him try none of them laboratory gags on her though -she just as soon be hypnotized and telepathed as not just to humor him. -Miss Estelle, she eat what the perfessor give her, and after a while -she says she'll take charge of the children's education herself, their -mother being a frivolous young thing, and it was too bad, she says, a -genius like him couldn't a-mar-ried a noble woman who would a-understood -his great work for humanity and sympathized with it. So while the -perfessor filled William and Miss Margery up on new discovered food and -weighed 'em and probed 'em and sterilized 'em and did everything else -but put 'em in glass bottles, Miss Estelle she laid out courses of -reading matter for them and tended to their religion and intellectuals -and things like that. I reckon they never was two kids more completely -educated, inside and out. It hadn't worked much on Miss Margery yet, her -being younger than William. But William took it hard and serious, being -more like his father's family, and it made bumps all over his head. I -reckon by the time William was ten years old he knew more than a whole -high school, and every time that boy cut his finger he just naturally -bled science. But somehow he wasn't very chipper, and whenever the -perfessor would notice that he and Miss Estelle would change treatment. -But Biddy liked William just the same, they hadn't spoiled his -disposition none; and she said he seen a lot of things his aunt never -would a-seen, William did. One day when I first was a guest I says to -his aunt, I says: - -"Miss Booth, William looks kind o' pale to me like he was getting too -much bringin' up to the square inch." - -She acted like she didn't care for no outsiders butting in, but I -seen she'd noticed it, too, and she liked William, too, in a kind of -scientific sort of a way, and she says in a minute: - -"What do you suggest?" - -"Why," says I, "what a kid like that needs is to roll around and play in -the dirt now and then, and yell and holler." - -She went away like she was kind o' mad about it; but about an hour later -the perfessor sent word for me to come down to the labaratory, and Miss -Estelle was there. - -"We have decided that there is something in what you say," says the -perfessor. "Even the crudest and most untrained intellectuals has now -and then a bright hunch from which us men of special knowledge may take -a suggestion," he says, or words to that effect. And they was a whole -lot more, and they was more scientific than that. I didn't know I'd done -nothing important like that, but when he told me all about it in science -talk I seen I made a ten strike, though I should of thought anyone could -of saw all William needed was just to be allowed to be a little more -human. - -But what do you think--I never was so jarred in my life as I was the -next day. I seen Miss Estelle spreading an oilcloth on the floor, and -then the butler come in and poured a lot of nice, clean, sterilized dirt -on to it. And then she sent for William. - -"William Dear," she says, "we have decided that what you need is more -recreation mixed in along with your intellectuals. You ought to romp and -play in the dirt, close to the soil and nature, as is right for a youth -of your age. For an hour each day right after you study your biology and -before you take up your Euclid you will romp and play in this dirt like -a child of nature, and frolic. You may now begin to frolic, William, and -James will gather up the dirt again for to-morrow's frolic." Or it was -words to that effect. - -But William didn't frolic none. He seen things they didn't. He just -looked at that dirt, and he come the nearest to smiling I ever seen -William come; and then he come the nearest to getting mad I ever seen -William come. And then he says very serious: - -"Aunt Estelle," he says, "I shall _not_ frolic. I have come to that -place in my discretions where my intellectuals got to work some for -theirselves. It is them intellectuals which you have trained that -refuses to be made ridiculous one hour each day between the biology -lesson and the Euclid lesson with sand." Those was not William's exact -words, which he always had down as slick as his pa, but they was what he -meant. William was a serious kid, but he seen things his aunt never had -no idea of. And he never did frolic, neither, and all that nice clean -dirt had to be throwed out by the stable amongst the unscientific dirt -again. - -That was before Biddy Malone told me about why it was that the perfessor -and his wife didn't get along well, and as I was saying I didn't -blame her none, Miss Estelle having finally beat her out about her own -children, too; and she feeling she didn't scarcely own 'em no more, and -they hardly daring to kiss their own mamma with Miss Estelle in the room -because of germs, so Biddy says. Biddy, she says the perfessor is all -right, he's just a fool and don't mean no harm by his scientific gags, -but Miss Estelle she's a she-devil and takes that way to make herself -the boss of that house. If she wasn't there Mrs. Booth would have been -boss and never let the perfessor know it and things wouldn't a-been so -bad. Which shows that so long as every house got to have a boss it ain't -so much difference if it's a him or her so long as it ain't a relation. - -The perfessor always eats his dinner in one of them coats with the -open-face vest to it, and one night I thinks I will, too. When you is in -Rome you does like the Dagos does, I thinks. - -So I sends for James along before dinner time and I says: "Where is my -dinky clothes to eat dinner in?" I says. - -James he says I'm to continue to eat dinner by myself. Which is all -right, I tells him, but I'll do it in style or I'll quit the job. So he -goes and asks Miss Estelle, and she comes in with that lemon grin on, -but looking, too, like I done something to please her. - -"Is it true," she says, "that already the effects of a refined -environment has overcome defections in early training and a misfortune -in ancestral hereditary?" she says. Or they was words to that effect. - -"It is true," I says. And the perfessor's being too small she made James -give me his'n. But when I seen all that shirt front it made me feel -kind of uncomfortable, too. So I takes them off again and puts on my old -striped sweater and puts on the vest and coat over that, and the effect -of them red stripes running crossways is something gorgeous with one of -them open-face vests over it. - -So after I eat I don't want to go to bed and I gets a box of the -perfessor's cigars and goes into the library and thinks I'll see if he's -got anything fit to read. I dig around for a while among them shelves, -and most everything is one brand of science or other, but finally I got -hold of a little book that was real interesting. That was the damndest -book! It was all in rhyme, with the explanations of the rhyme printed in -real talk down the sides so as you could tell where you was at and what -it was about. It's about an Ancient Mariner. The nut that wrote it he's -never been sailing none, I bet; but he can make you feel like you been -going against the hop in one of them Chink joints. Of course, there -ain't nothing real literary about it like one of them Marie Corelli -stories I read once and it ain't got the excitement of a good Bill Hart -movie or a Nick Carter story, but I got real interested in it. The I-man -of that story he was a Jonah to the whole ship. He seen an albatross -circling around, and he up with his air gun and give him his'n. It -wasn't for nothing to eat, but just to be a-shooting. And from that on -everybody gets as sick of living as a bunch of Chicago factory hands -when another savings bank busts, and they all falls down and curses him. -And the snakes wiggles all over the top of the water like I seen 'em one -time when they cleaned out a reservoir where one of them prairie towns -gets its drinking water from. And the Ancient Mariner he tries to die -and can't make it; and their ghosts is whizzing all around that ship and -they go by him in the moonlight like a puff of steam goes by you on a -frosty morning out of an engine-room manhole. And there's a moral to -that story, too. I bet the fellow that doped that out had been on an -awful bat. I like to of talked with that nut. They was a fellow named -Looney Hogan use to have them phoney hunches, and he use to tell me what -he saw after he had 'em. Looney was awful good company and I use to like -to hear him tell what he seen and what he thinks he seen, but he walked -off of a grain barge up to Duluth when he was asleep one night and he -never did wake up. - -Sitting there thinking of the awful remarkable things that is, and the -ones that isn't, and the ones that maybe is and maybe isn't, and the -nuts that is phoney about some things and not about others, and how two -guys can look at the same thing and when you ask them about it both has -seen different things, I must a-went to sleep. And I must a-slept a long -time there, and pretty soon in my sleep I heard two voices and then I -wakes up sudden and still hears them, low and quicklike, in the room -that opens right off from the library with a pair of them sliding doors -like is on to a boxcar. One was a woman's voice, and not Miss Estelle's, -and she says like she was choked up: - -"But I _must_ see them before we go, Henry." - -And the other was a man's voice, and it wasn't no one around our house. - -"But, my God!" he says, "suppose you catch it yourself, Jane!" - -I set up straight then, and I would of give a good deal to see through -that door, because Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name. - -"You mean suppose _you_ get it," she says. I like to of seen the look -she must of give him to fit in with the way she says that _you_. He -didn't say nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down -some, and she says, low and slow: "Henry, wouldn't you love me if I -_did_ get it? Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?" - -"Oh, of course," he says, "of course I would. Nothing can change the way -I feel. _You_ know that." He said it quick enough, all right, just the -way they do in a show, but it sounded _too much_ like it does on the -stage to of suited me if _I'd_ been her. I seen folks overdo them little -talks before this. - -I listens some more, and then I see how it is. This is that musician -feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with -him all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that. -They may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em -don't like the kids. I thinks to myself: "It must be late. I bet they -was already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here -first so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She just simply couldn't -get by. But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see -Margery with that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night? -And even if she tries just to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot -he'll wake up and she'll be ketched at it." - -And then I thinks, suppose she _is_ ketched at it? What of it? Ain't a -woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, -even if they is a quarantine on to it, and see her kids? And if she is -ketched seeing them, how would anyone know she was going to run off? And -ain't she got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring -her over from her mother's house, even if it is a little late? - -Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby -I better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated -me purty white. And then I thinks: "I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle. -So fur as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's -coming to him, nohow. And as fur _her_, you got to let some people find -out what they want fur theirselves. Anyhow, where do _I_ come in at?" - -But I want to get a look at her and Henry, anyhow. So I eases off my -shoes, careful-like, and I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors, -and I puts my eye down to the little crack. The talk is going backward -and forward between them two, him wanting her to come away quick, and -her undecided whether to risk seeing the kids. And all the time she's -kind o' hoping mebby she will be ketched if she tries to see the kids, -and she's begging off fur more time ginerally. - -Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none when I seen her. She -was a peach. - -And I couldn't blame her so much, either, when I thought of Miss Estelle -and all them scientifics of the perfessor's strung out fur years and -years world without end. - -Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she wouldn't. I seen right -off that Henry wouldn't do. It takes a man with a lot of gumption to -keep a woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it when he's married -to her. But it takes a man with twicet as much to make her feel right -when they ain't married. This feller wears one of them little, brown, -pointed beards fur to hide where his chin ain't. And his eyes is too -much like a woman's. Which is the kind that gets the biggest piece of -pie at the lunch counter and fergits to thank the girl as cuts it big. -She was setting in front of a table, twisting her fingers together, and -he was walking up and down. I seen he was mad and trying not to show it, -and I seen he was scared of the smallpox and trying not to show that, -too. And just about that time something happened that kind o' jolted me. - -They was one of them big chairs in the room where they was that has got -a high back and spins around on itself. It was right acrost from me, on -the other side of the room, and it was facing the front window, which -was a bow window. And that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy. -First I thought she wasn't turning. Then I seen she was. But Jane and -Henry didn't. They was all took up with each other in the middle of the -room, with their back to it. - -Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little more, that chair -does. Will she squeak, I wonders? - -"Don't you be a fool, Jane," says the Henry feller. - -Around she comes three hull inches, that there chair, and nary a squeak. - -"A fool?" asks Jane, and laughs. "And I'm not a fool to think of going -with you at all, then?" - -That chair, she moved six inches more and I seen the calf of a leg and -part of a crumpled-up coat tail. - -"But I _am_ going with you, Henry," says Jane. And she gets up just like -she is going to put her arms around him. - -But Jane don't. Fur that chair swings clear around and there sets the -perfessor. He's all hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his eyes -like he's just woke up recent, and he's got a grin on to his face that -makes him look like his sister Estelle looks all the time. - -"Excuse me," says the perfessor. - -They both swings around and faces him. I can hear my heart bumping. Jane -never says a word. The man with the brown beard never says a word. But -if they felt like me they both felt like laying right down there and -having a fit. They looks at him and he just sets there and grins at -them. - -But after a while Jane, she says: - -"Well, now you _know!_ What are you going to do about it?" - -Henry, he starts to say something, too. But---- - -"Don't start anything," says the perfessor to him. "_You_ aren't going -to do anything." Or they was words to that effect. - -"Professor Booth," he says, seeing he has got to say something or else -Jane will think the worse of him, "I am----" - -"Shut up," says the perfessor, real quiet. "I'll tend to you in a minute -or two. _You_ don't count for much. This thing is mostly between me and -my wife." - -When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something -into him beside science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised -herself. But she says nothing, except: - -"What are you going to do, Frederick?" And she laughs one of them mean -kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a -little more, and says: "What _can_ you do, Frederick?" - -Frederick, he says, not excited a bit: - -"There's quite a number of things I _could_ do that would look bad when -they got into the newspapers. But it's none of them, unless one of you -forces it on to me." Then he says: - -"You _did_ want to see the children, Jane?" - -She nodded. - -"Jane," he says, "can't you see I'm the better man?" - -The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and -he didn't want to see her go. "Look at him," he says, pointing to the -feller with the brown beard, "he's scared stiff right now." - -Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way -like Henry was, and the perfessor's voice sounding like you was chopping -ice every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no -blood on the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making -up his mind about something, too. Jane, she says: - -"_You_ a better man? _You?_ You think you've been a model husband just -because you've never beaten me, don't you?" - -"No," says the perfessor, "I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been -a worse fool, maybe, than if I _had_ beaten you." Then he turns to Henry -and he says: - -"Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in -the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me." With which he gets -up and trots out, and I heard him running down stairs to his labertory. - -Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane -a-looking at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some -kind of a strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't -do it. And Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects -it. And me, I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, "What is -that there perfessor up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one -else. He is looney, that perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too. I -wonder if they is anyone that ain't looney sometimes? I been around the -country a good 'eal, too, and seen and hearn of some awful remarkable -things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or less looney when -the _search us the femm_ comes into the case. Which is a Dago word I got -out'n a newspaper and it means: Who was the dead gent's lady friend?' -And we all set and sweat and got the fidgets waiting fur that perfessor -to come back. - -"Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin on to his face and a pill -box in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and -chilly: "Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science. -All the same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she -isn't worth fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I -made 'em myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it -gets to working well--which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken. -The other one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one, -I keep her. If I get it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait -long enough after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town." - -Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of -it. When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek -on the inside like a piece of sandpaper. He was scared, Henry was. - -"But _you_ know which is which," Jane sings out. "The thing's not fair!" - -"That is the reason my dear Jane is going to shuffle these pills around -each other herself," says the perfessor, "and then pick out one for him -and one for me. _You_ don't know which is which, Jane. And as he is the -favorite, he is going to get the first chance. If he gets the one I want -him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live after taking it. -In that fifteen minutes he will please to walk so far from my house that -he won't die near it and make a scandal. I won't have a scandal without -I have to. Everything is going to be nice and quiet and respectable. The -effect of the poison is similar to heart failure. No one can tell the -difference on the corpse. There's going to be no blood anywhere. I will -be found dead in my house in the morning with heart failure, or else he -will be picked up dead in the street, far enough away so as to make no -talk." Or they was words to that effect. - -He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that perfessor is. I wonder -if I better jump in and stop the hull thing. Then I thinks: "No, it's -between them three." Beside, I want to see which one is going to get -that there loaded pill. I always been intrusted in games of chance of -all kinds, and when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm sorry I -been misjudging him all this time. - -Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard and quick. - -"I won't touch 'em," she says. "I refuse to be a party to any murder of -that kind." - -"Huh? You do?" says the perfessor. "But the time when you might have -refused has gone by. You have made yourself a party to it already. -You're really the _main_ party to it. - -"But do as you like," he goes on. "I'm giving him more chance than I -ought to with those pills. I might shoot him, and I would, and then face -the music, if it wasn't for mixing the children up in the scandal, Jane. -If you want to see him get a fair chance, Jane, you've got to hand out -these pills, one to him and then one to me. _You_ must kill one or the -other of us, or else _I'll_ kill _him_ the other way. And _you_ had -better pick one out for him, because _I_ know which is which. Or else -let him pick one out for himself," he says. - -Henry, he wasn't saying nothing. I thought he had fainted. But he -hadn't. I seen him licking his lips. I bet Henry's mouth was all dry -inside. - -Jane, she took the box and she went round in front of Henry and she -looked at him hard. She looked at him like she was thinking: "Fur God's -sake, spunk up some, and take one if it _does_ kill you!" Then she says -out loud: "Henry, if you die I will die, too!" - -And Henry, he took one. His hand shook, but he took it out'n the box. If -she had of looked like that at me mebby I would of took one myself. Fur -Jane, she was a peach, she was. But I don't know whether I would of or -not. When she makes that brag about dying, I looked at the perfessor. -What she said never fazed him. And I thinks agin: "Mebby I better jump -in now and stop this thing." And then I thinks agin: "No, it is between -them three and Providence." Beside, I'm anxious to see who is going -to get that pill with the science in it. I gets to feeling just like -Providence hisself was in that there room picking out them pills with -his own hands. And I was anxious to see what Providence's ideas of right -and wrong was like. So fur as I could see they was all three in the -wrong, but if I had of been in there running them pills in Providence's -place I would of let them all off kind o' easy. - -Henry, he ain't eat his pill yet. He is just looking at it and shaking. - -The perfessor reaches for his watch, and don't find none. Then he -reaches over and takes Henry's watch, and opens it, and lays it on the -table. "A quarter past one," he says. "Mr. Murray, are you going to make -me shoot you after all? I didn't want any blood nor any scandal," he -says. "It's up to you," he says, "whether you want to take that pill and -get your even chance, or whether you want to get shot. The shooting way -is sure, but looks bad in the papers. The pill way don't implicate any -one," he says. "Which?" And he pulls a gun. - -Henry he looks at the gun. - -Then he looks at the pill. - -Then he swallows the pill. - -The perfessor puts his'n into his mouth. But he don't swallow it. He -looks at the watch, and he looks at Henry. "Sixteen minutes past one," -he says. "_Mr. Murray will be dead at exactly fourteen minutes to two_. -I got the harmless one. I can tell by the taste of the chemicals." - -And he put the pieces out into his hand to show that he chewed his'n -up, not being willing to wait fifteen minutes for a verdict from his -digestive ornaments. Then he put 'em back into his mouth and chewed 'em -and swallowed 'em down like it was coughdrops. - -Henry has got sweat breaking out all over his face, and he tries to make -fur the door, but he falls down on to a sofa. - -"This is murder," he says, weaklike. And he tries to get up agin, but -this time he falls to the floor in a dead faint. - -"It's a dern short fifteen minutes," I thinks to myself. "That perfessor -must of put more science into Henry's pill than he thought he did fur it -to of knocked him out this quick. It ain't skeercly three minutes." - -When Henry falls the woman staggers and tries to throw herself on top -of him. The corners of her mouth was all drawed down, and her eyes was -turned up. But she don't yell none. She can't. She tries, but she just -gurgles in her throat. The perfessor won't let her fall acrost Henry. He -ketches her. "Sit up, Jane," he says, with that Estelle look on to his -face, "and let us have a talk." - -She looks at him with no more sense in her face than a piece of putty -has got. But she can't look away from him. - -And I'm kind o' paralyzed, too. If that feller laying on the floor -had only jest kicked oncet, or grunted, or done something, I could of -loosened up and yelled, and I would of. I just _needed_ to fetch a yell. -But Henry ain't more'n dropped down there till I'm feeling just like -he'd _always_ been there, and I'd _always_ been staring into that room, -and the last word anyone spoke was said hundreds and hundreds of years -ago. - -"You're a murderer," says Jane in a whisper, looking at the perfessor in -that stare-eyed way. "You're a _murderer,_" she says, saying it like she -was trying to make herself feel sure he really was one. - -"Murder!" says the perfessor. "Did you think I was going to run any -chances for a pup like him? He's scared, that's all. He's just fainted -through fright. He's a coward. Those pills were both just bread and -sugar. He'll be all right in a minute or two. I've just been showing -you that the fellow hasn't got nerve enough nor brains enough for a fine -woman like you, Jane," he says. - -Then Jane begins to sob and laugh, both to oncet, kind o' wildlike, her -voice clucking like a hen does, and she says: - -"It's worse then, it's worse! It's worse for me than if it were a -murder! Some farces can be more tragic than any tragedy ever was," she -says. Or they was words to that effect. - -And if Henry had of been really dead she couldn't of took it no harder -than she begun to take it now when she saw he was alive, but just wasn't -no good. But I seen she was taking on fur herself now more'n fur Henry. -Women is made unlike most other animals in many ways. When they is -foolish about a man they can stand to have that man killed a good 'eal -better than to have him showed up ridiculous right in front of them. -They will still be crazy about the man that's killed, but they don't -never forgive the lobster. I seen that work out before this. You can be -most any thing else and get away with it, but if you're a lobster it's -all off even if you can't help being a lobster. And when the perfessor -kicks Henry in the ribs and he comes to and sneaks out, Jane she never -even looks at him. - -"Jane," says the perfessor, when she quiets down some, "you got a lot to -forgive me. But do you s'pose I learned enough sense so we can make a go -of it if we start over again?" - -But Jane never said nothing. - -"Jane," he says, "Estelle is going back to New England to stay there for -good." - -She begins to take a little interest then. "Did Estelle tell you so?" -she says. - -"No," says the perfessor, "Estelle don't know it yet. But she is. I'm -going to tell her in the mornin'." - -But she still hates him. She's making herself. She wouldn't of been a -female woman if she'd of been coaxed that easy. Pretty soon she says, -"I'm going upstairs and go to bed. I'm tired." And she went out looking -like the perfessor was a perfect stranger. - -After she left the perfessor set there quite a while and he was looking -tired out, too; and there wasn't no mistake about me. I was asleep all -through my legs, and I kept a wondering to myself, suppose them pills -had one of them been loaded sure enough, which one would of got it? And -when the perfessor leaves I says to myself, I reckon I better light a -rag. So I goes to the front window and opens it easy; but I thinks -about Henry's watch on the table, every one else having forgot it, and I -thinks I better hunt him up and give it to him. - -And then I thinks why should I give him pain, for that watch will always -remind him of an unpleasant time he once had. - -And if it hadn't been for me sitting in that window looking at that -watch I wouldn't a-been writing this, for I wouldn't of been in jail -now. - -I tried to explain my intentions was all right, but the police says -it ain't natural to be seen coming out of a front window at two in the -morning in a striped sweater and a dinky dinner suit with a gold watch -in your hand; if you are hunting the owner you are doing it peculiar. - -One of them reporters he says to me to write the truth about how I got -into jail; nobody else never done it and stuck to facts. But this is -the truth so help me; it was all on account of that watch, which my -intentions with regard to was perfectly honorable, and all that goes -before leads up to that watch. There wasn't no larceny about it; it was -just another mistake on the part of the police. If I'd of been stealing -wouldn't I stole the silverware a week before that? - -The more I travel around the more dumb people I see that can't -understand how an honest and upright citizen can get into circumstantial -evidence and still be a honest and upright citizen. - - - - -X.--The Penitent - - -|You, who are not married," said the penitent, "cannot know--can never -realize----" - -He hesitated, his glance wandering over the evidences of luxury, the -hints of Oriental artistry, the esthetic effectiveness of Dr. Eustace -Beaulieu's studio. - -"Proceed," said Dr. Beaulieu, suavely. "What I may know is not the -important thing. You do not address yourself to me, but through me -to that principle of Harmony in the Cosmos which is Spirit--Ultimate -Spirit--which we call God. All that I can do is assist you to get into -Accord with the Infinite again, help you to vibrate in unison with the -Cosmic All." - -"You are right; I do not look to you," said the penitent, "for ease of -mind or spirit." And a fleeting half-smile showed in his eyes, as if -some ulterior thought gave a certain gusto to the manner in which he -stressed the pronoun _you_. But the rest of his scarred and twisted -face was expressionless, beneath the thick mask of a heavy gray-streaked -beard that grew almost to his eyes. - - * Author's Note: "The Penitent" was suggested by two poems, - "A Forgiveness," by Browning, and "The Portrait," by Owen - Meredith. - -Dr. Eustace Beaulieu was the leader--nay, the founder--of one of the -many, many cults that have sprung up in New York City and elsewhere in -America during the past three or four decades. An extraordinary number -of idle, well-to-do women gathered at his studio two or three times a -week, and listened to his expositions of ethics _de luxe_, served with -just the proper dash of Oriental mysticism and European pseudoscience. -He was forty, he was handsome, with magnetic brown eyes and the long -sensitive fingers of a musician; he was eloquent, he was persuasive, he -was prosperous. - -When he talked of the Zend-Avesta, when he spoke of the Vedantic -writings, when he touched upon the Shinto worship of the Nipponese, when -he descanted upon the likeness of the Christian teachings to the tenets -of Buddhism, when he revealed the secrets of the Yogi philosophy, when -he hinted his knowledge of the priestly craft of older Egypt and of -later Eleusis, his feminine followers thrilled in their seats as a -garden of flowers that is breathed upon by a Summer wind--they vibrated -to his words and his manner and his restrained fervor with a faint -rustling of silken garments and a delicate fragrance of perfume. - -Men were not, as a rule, so enthusiastic concerning Dr. Eustace Beaulieu -and his cult; there were few of them at his lectures, there were few of -them enrolled in the classes where he inducted his followers into the -more subtle phases of ethics, where he led them to the higher planes -of occultism, for a monetary consideration; few of them submitted -themselves to him for the psychic healing that was one of his major -claims to fame. And this scarred and bearded stranger, who limped, was -one of the very few men who had ever intimated a desire to bare his soul -to Dr. Beaulieu, to tell his story and receive spiritual ministration, -in the manner of the confessional. These confessionals, after the public -lectures, had been recently introduced by Dr. Beaulieu, and they were -giving him, he felt, a firmer grip upon his flock--his disciples, he did -not hesitate to call them. - -"I repeat," said the penitent--if he was a repentant man, indeed--"no -bachelor can know what love really is. He cannot conceive of what the -daily habit of association with a woman who seems made for him, and for -him alone, may mean to a man. My love for my wife was almost worship. -She was my wife indeed, I told myself, and she it was for whom I worked. - -"For I did work, worked well and unselfishly. Every man must have -some work. Some do it from necessity, but I did it because I loved -the work--and the woman--and thus I gained a double reward. I was a -politician, and something more. I think I may say that I was a patriot, -too. The inheritor of wealth and position, I undertook to clear the city -in which I lived, and which my forefathers had helped to build, of -the ring of grafters who were making the name of the town a byword -throughout the nation. The details of that long and hard strife are not -pertinent. I fought with something more than boldness and determination; -I fought with a joy in every struggle, because I fought for something -more than the world knew. The world could not see that my inspiration -was in my home; that in the hours of battle my blood sang joyously with -the thought of--her! Was it any wonder that I worked well? - -"One day, as I sat in my office downtown, the thought of her drew me so -strongly that I determined to surprise her by coming home unexpectedly -early. It was summer, and we were living in our country home, an -old-fashioned stone residence a couple of miles from the outskirts of -the city. The house was situated at the edge of a park that was, indeed, -almost virgin forest, for the whole estate had been in my family for -nearly a hundred years. - -"I determined to surprise my wife, and at the same time to take the rare -relaxation of a suburban walk. I was soon outside the city limits, and -through the zone where vacant lots broaden into fields; and then I left -the road, cutting across the fields and finally plunging into the woods -on my own place. Thus it was that I approached the house from the rear -and came suddenly out of the timber into my own orchard. I seldom walked -from town, and it was a good long hour before my usual time of arrival, -although in that sheltered and woody place the dusk was already -gathering in. - -"As I entered the orchard a man made a hurried exit from a vine-wreathed -pergola where my wife often sat to read, cast one look at me, cleared -the orchard fence, and made off through the woods, disappearing at once -among the boles of the trees. - -"He had not turned his full face toward me at any time, but had shielded -it with an upflung arm; from the moment he broke cover until his -disappearance there had passed less time than it takes to tell it, and I -was scarcely to be blamed if I was left guessing as to his identity, for -the moment. For the moment, I say. - -"There had been so much fright in his manner that I stood and looked -after him. The thought came to me that perhaps here was a man who had -had an affair with one of my servants. I turned toward the pergola and -met--my wife! - -"She was a beautiful woman, always more beautiful in her moments of -excitement. She confronted me now with a manner which I could not help -but admire. I trusted her so that she might readily have passed off a -much more anomalous situation with an easy explanation. But in her face -I read a deliberate wish to make me feel the truth. - -"I looked at her long, and she returned the gaze unflinchingly. And -I recognized her look for what it was. She had cast off the chains of -deceit. Her glance was a sword of hatred, and the first open thrust of -the blade was an intense pleasure to her. We both knew all without a -word. - -"I might have killed her then. But I did not. I turned and walked toward -the house; she followed me, and I opened the door; she preceded me -inside. She paused again, as if gathering all her forces for a struggle; -but I passed her in silence, and went upstairs to my own room. - -"And then began a strange period in my life. Shortly after this episode -came a partial triumph of the reform element in my city; the grafters -were ousted, and I found myself with more than a local reputation, and -thrust into an office. My life was now even more of a public matter than -before. We entertained largely. We were always in the public eye. Before -our guests and in public we were always all that should be. But when -the occasion was past, we would drop the mask, turn from each other with -dumb faces, and go each our severed ways. - -"For a year this sort of life kept up. I still worked; but now I worked -to forget. When I allowed myself to think of her at all, it was always -as of some one who was dead. Or so I told myself, over and over again, -until I believed it. - -"One day there was a close election. I was the successful candidate. I -was to go to Congress. All evening and far into the night my wife and -I played our parts well. But when the last congratulation had been -received, and the last speech made, and the last friend had gone, and -we were alone with each other once more, she turned to me with a look -something like the one she had met me with on that summer evening a year -before. - -"'I want to speak with you,' she said. - -"'Yes?' - -"They were the first words we had exchanged in that year, when not -compelled by the necessities. - -"'What do you wish to speak about?' I asked her. - -"'You know,' she said, briefly. And I did know. There was little use -trying to deny it. - -"'Why have you asked me no questions?' she said. - -"I would have made another attempt to pass the situation over without -going into it, but I saw that that would be impossible. She had reached -the place where she must speak. I read all this in her face. And looking -at her closely with the first candid glance I had given her in that -year, I saw that she had changed greatly, but she was still beautiful. - -"'I did not choose to open the subject with you,' I said; 'I thought -that you would explain when you could stand it no longer. Evidently that -time has come. You were to me like a dead person. If the dead have any -messages for me, they must bring them to me unsolicited. It was not my -place to hunt among the tombs.' - -"'No,' she said, 'let us be honest, since it is the last talk we may -ever have together. Let us be frank with each other, and with ourselves. -I was not like a dead person to you. The dead are dead, and I am not. -You asked me no questions because you disdained me so. You despised -me so--and it was sweet to you to make me feel the full weight of your -scorn through this silence. It was better than killing me. Is that not -the real reason?' - -"'Yes,' I admitted, 'that is it. That is the truth.' "'Listen,' she -said, 'it would surprise you--would it not--to learn that I still love -you--that I have loved you all along--that you are the only man I have -ever really loved--that I love you now? All that is incredible to you, -is it not?' - -"'Yes,' I said, 'it is. You must pardon me, but--it is incredible to -me.' - -"'Well, it is true,' she said, and paused a moment. 'And I can tell you -why it is true, and why--why--the--the other was true, too. You--you -do not understand women,' she said. 'Sometimes I think if you were a -smaller man, in some ways, you would understand them better. Sometimes -I think that you are too--too big, somehow--ever to make a woman happy. -Not too self-centered; you are not consciously selfish; you never mean -to be. But you give, give, give the riches of your nature to people--to -the world at large--instead of to those who should share them. - -"'Oh, I know--the fault is all mine! Another kind of woman--the right -kind for you--the kind you thought I was--would not have asked for all -that was a necessity for me; would have been big enough to have done -without it; would have lost herself in your love for all humanity. That -is the kind of woman you thought I was. And I tried to be. But I wasn't. -I wasn't that big. - -"'I did sympathize with your work; I could understand it; I loved to -hear you tell about it. But I loved it because it was you that told -me about it. You didn't see that! You thought I was a goddess. It was -enough for your nature to worship me; to set me upon a pedestal and to -call me your inspiration; oh, you treated me well--you were faithful -to me--you were generous! But you neglected me in a way that men do not -understand; that some men will never understand. While you were giving -your days and your nights, and every fiber of your brain and body, to -what you called the cause of the people, you more and more forgot you -had a wife. Again and again and again I tried to win you back to -what you were when I married you--to the time when your cause was not -all--but you wouldn't see; I couldn't make you feel. - -"'Then I thought I would show you that other men were not such fools as -to overlook what was wasted on you. But you never noticed; you trusted -me too much; you were too much engrossed. And then I began to hate you. -I loved you more than I ever did before, and at the same time I hated -you. Can you understand that? Do you see how women can hate and love at -the same time? Well, they can. - -"'At last--for I was a fool--I took a lover!" - -"'What was his name?' I broke in. - -"'His name?' she cried; 'that does not matter! What matter if there was -one of them, or two of them. That is nothing!--the name is nothing--they -were nothing--nothing but tools; the symbols of my rage, of my hatred -for you; whether I loved or hated you, you were all--always.' - -"'They were merely convenient clubs with which to murder my honor in the -dark--is that it?' I said. - -"'Yes,' she said, 'that is it, if you choose to put it so.' And she -spoke with a humility foreign to her nature. - -"'And what now?' I asked. - -"'Now,' she said, 'now that I have spoken; now that I have told you -everything; now that I have told you that I have gone on loving you more -and more and more--now--I am going to die.' - -"'You have not asked me to forgive you,' I said. - -"'No,' she replied. 'For what is forgiveness? I do not know exactly what -that word means. It is supposed to wipe out something that has happened, -is it not?--to make things the same as they were before! But it does not -do that. That which has happened, has happened; and you and I know it.' - -"'You had better live,' I said; 'I no longer consider you worthless. I -feel that you are worthy of my anger now.' - -"Her face cleared almost into something like joy. - -"'I have told the truth, and I raise myself from the depths of your -scorn to the place where you can feel a hot rage against me?' she asked. - -"'Yes,' I said. And the light on her face was like that of which some -women are capable when they are told that they are beloved. - -"'And if I die?' she asked. - -"'Who knows but that you might climb by it?' I said. 'Who knows but what -your death might turn my anger to love again?' And with that I turned -and left her there. - -"That night I sat all night in my study, and in the morning they brought -me the news that she was dead. She must have used some poison. What, I -do not know; and the physicians called it heart-failure. But what is the -matter, Doctor?" - -"Nothing, nothing!" said Dr. Beaulieu. And he motioned for the narrator -to proceed. But there were beads of perspiration upon the healer's -forehead, and a pallor overspread his face. - -"I had condemned her to death," the penitent went on, "and she had been -her own executioner. She had loved me; she had sinned against me; -but she had always loved me; she had hated the flesh that sinned, and -scorned it as much as I; her life was intolerable and she had been her -own executioner. - -"The revulsion of feeling came. I loved her again; now that I had lost -her. All that day I shut myself up, seeing no one; refusing to look -at the dozens of telegrams that came pouring in from friends and -acquaintances, thinking--thinking--thinking---- - -"Night came again; and with it the word that the best friend I had was -in the house; a friend of my college days, who had stood shoulder to -shoulder with me in many a fight, then and since. He had come to be -under the same roof with me in the hour of my bitterest bereavement, -was the word he sent--how bitter now, he did not know. But -he did not intrude upon the privacy of my grief. And I sat -thinking--thinking--thinking-- - -"Suddenly the idea came to me that I would go upstairs to the chamber -where she was, and look at her once more. Quietly I stole up the stairs, -and through the hushed, dim house, on into the gloomy room, lighted only -by the candles at the head and foot of the curtained couch on which she -lay. - -"In the room beyond, the watchers sat. I stole softly across the floor -so as not to attract their attention; there was no one in the room -with the body. I approached the couch, and with my hand put by the -curtain---- - -"Then I dropped it suddenly. I remembered a locket which she had -formerly worn that had always had my picture in it, in the early days -of our married life; a locket that had never left her neck, waking or -sleeping. And I wondered---- - -"I wondered something about women which no one has ever been able to -tell me; not even a woman. I wondered if any light o' love had ever been -able to make her feel anything like _real_ love, after all! I wondered -if she had ever hugged the thought of her sin to her bosom, even as -she had at first hugged the thought of our real love--hers and mine. I -wondered if she had ever carried about with her a sentimental reminder -of her lover, of any lover, as she had once done of her husband--and how -long ago! I wondered how important a thing it had seemed to her, after -all! She had reconciled herself to herself, with her death, and made -me love her again. And I wondered to how great an extent she had -ever fooled a lover into thinking she loved him! There are depths and -contradictions and cross-currents in the souls of women that even women -do not know, far less men--I wondered whose picture was in that locket! - -"I thrust my hand through the curtains of the bed again, and then jumped -back. - -"I had felt something warm there. - -"Did she live, after all? - -"At the same instant I heard a movement on the other side of the bed. I -went around. - -"My best friend was removing his hand from the curtains on the other -side, and in his hand was the locket. It was his hand that I had felt. - -"We stared at each other. I spoke first, and in a whisper, so that the -others in the next room, who had come to watch, should not hear. - -"'I came for that,' I said. - -"'The locket? So did I," he said. And then added quite simply, 'My -picture is in it.' - -"'You lie!' I whispered, shaken by a wind of fury. And yet I knew that -perhaps he did not lie, that what he said might well be true. Perhaps -that was the cause of my fury. - -"His face was lined with a grief and weariness terrible to behold. To -look at him you would have thought that there was nothing else in the -world for him except grief. It was a great grief that made him careless -of everything else. - -"'It is my picture,' he said. 'She loved me.' - -"'I say that you lie,' I repeated. 'She may have played with you--but -she never loved any one but me--in her heart she never did!' - -"'You!' And because he whispered, hissing out the words, they seemed to -gain in intensity of scorn. 'You! She hated you! You who neglected her, -you with your damned eternal politics, you who could never understand -her--love? You who could never give her the things a woman needs and -must have--the warmth--the color--the romance--the poetry of life! -You!--with your cold-blooded humanitarianism! I tell you, she loved -_me!_ Why should I hesitate to avow it to you? It is the sweetest -thing on earth to me, that she loved me! She turned from you to me -because----' - -"'Don't go into all that,' I said. 'I heard all about that last -night--from her! Open the locket, and let us see whose face is there!' - -"He opened it, and dropped the locket. He reeled against the wall, with -his hands over his face, as if he had been struck a physical blow. - -"I picked the toy up and looked at it. - -"The face in the locket was neither his face nor mine. It was the face -of--of the man who ran from the pergola and vaulted over the orchard -wall into the woods that summer night a year earlier; the man whom I had -not, for the moment, recognized. - -"We stood there, this man who had been my best friend and I, with the -locket between us, and I debated whether to strike him down----" - -The narrator paused. And then he said, fixing Dr. Beaulieu with an -intent gaze: - -"Should I have struck him down? You, who are a teacher of ethics, -who set yourself up to be, after a fashion, a preacher, a priest, a -spiritual director, tell me, would I have been justified if I had killed -him?" - -Dr. Beaulieu seemed to shrink, seemed to contract and grow smaller, -physically, under the other man's look. He opened his mouth as if to -articulate, but for a second or two no word came. And then, regaining -something of his usual poise, he said, although his voice was a bit -husky: - -"No! It is for the Creator of life to take life, and no other. Hatred -and strife are disharmony, and bring their own punishment by throwing -the soul out of unity with the spirit of love which rules the universe." - -It sounded stereotyped and emotionless, even in Dr. Beaulieu's own ears, -as he said it; there was a mocking gleam in the eyes of the other man -that spoke of a far more vital and genuine emotion. Dr. Beaulieu licked -his lips and there came a knot in his forehead; beads of perspiration -stood out upon his brow. - -"You were right," said Dr. Beaulieu, "in not striking him down. You were -right in sparing him." - -The bearded man laughed. "I did not say that I spared him," he said. - -Dr. Beaulieu looked a question; a question that, perhaps, he dared -not utter; or at least that he did not care to utter. He had dropped -completely his rle of spiritual counselor; he regarded his visitor with -an emotion that might have been horror and might have been terror, -or might have been a mixture of the two. The visitor replied to the -unspoken interrogation in the healer's manner. - -"I did not strike him down. Neither did I spare him. I waited and I--I -used him. I know how to wait; I am of the nature that can wait. It was -years before fate drew all things together for my purpose, and gave him -into my hands--fate, assisted by myself. - -"I waited, and I used him. The details are not pertinent for it is not -his story that I am telling. I piloted him to the brink of destruction, -and then--then, I saved him." - -"You saved him?" Dr. Beaulieu was puzzled; but his fear, if fear it was, -had not abated. There was a frank menace, now, in his visitor's air. And -the healer seemed to be struggling, as he listened to the tale, to force -some reluctant brain-cell to unlock and give its stored memories to his -conscious mind. - -"I saved him. I saved him to be my creature. I broke him, and I saved -him. I made him my slave, my dog, my--my anything I choose to have him. -I have work for him to do." - -Again the man paused, looking about the rich profusion of Dr. Beaulieu's -studio. There was a table in the room which contained a number of curios -from Eastern lands. The visitor suddenly rose from his chair and picked -from among them a thin, keen-bladed dagger. It was a beautiful weapon, -of some Oriental make; beautiful in its lines; beautiful with the sullen -fire of many jewels blazing in its hilt--an evil levin that got into the -mind and led the thoughts astray even as the dainty deadliness of -the whole tool seduced the hand to grasp and strike. As his visitor, -strangely breaking the flow of his narrative, examined and handled the -thing, Dr. Beaulieu shuddered. - -"The man is as much my tool," said the visitor slowly, "as this dagger -would be your tool, Dr. Beaulieu, if you chose to thrust it into my -breast--or into your own." - -He laid the dagger down on the table, and resumed his seat. Dr. Beaulieu -said nothing, but he found it difficult to withdraw his eyes from his -visitor's steady stare. Slumped and sagged within his chair, he said -nothing. Presently the visitor went on. - -"I had a fancy, Dr. Beaulieu; I had a fancy! It suited me to make my -revenge a less obvious thing than striking down the old friend who had -betrayed my love and confidence, a less obvious thing than striking down -the other man--the man whose face was in the locket." - -As he spoke he took from his pocket a locket. He opened it, and gazed -upon the face. The healer half rose from his chair, and then sank back, -with a hoarse, inarticulate murmur. His face had turned livid, and he -trembled in every limb. It was evident that the missing scene which he -had sought before had suddenly been flashed upon the cinema screen of -his recollection. He remembered, now---- - -"It was my fancy, Dr. Beaulieu, to make one of them take revenge upon -the other, that I might thus be revenged upon them both." - -He suddenly rose, and forced the locket into the healer's nerveless -grasp. - -"That face--look at it!" he cried, towering over the collapsed figure -before him. - -Compelled by a will stronger than his own, Dr. Beaulieu looked. It -was the counterfeit presentment of himself within. It fell from his -trembling fingers and rolled upon the floor. The cultist buried his face -in his hands. - -The other man stepped back and regarded him sardonically for a moment or -two. - -"I should not wonder," he said, "if the man who used to be my best -friend would pay you a visit before long--perhaps in an hour, perhaps in -a week, perhaps in a month." - -He picked up the dagger again, and toyed with it. - -"This thing," he said, impersonally, trying the point upon his finger, -"is sharp. It would give a quick death, a sure death, an almost painless -death, if one used it against another man--or against one's self." - -And without another word he turned and left the room. - -Dr. Beaulieu sat and listened to his retreating footsteps. And, long -after they had ceased to sound, Dr. Beaulieu still sat and listened. -Perhaps he was listening for some one to come, now that the bearded -man had left. He sat and listened, and presently he reached over to the -table and picked up the dagger that the visitor had laid down with its -handle toward him. He pressed its point against his finger, as the other -man had done. It was sharp. It would give, as the fellow had said, "a -quick death, a sure death, an almost painless death." - -And as he whispered these words he was still -listening--listening--waiting for some one to come---- - - - - -XI.--The Locked Box - - - -I - -|It was a small, oblong affair, not more than three inches wide or deep, -by twice that much in length, made of some dark, hard wood; brass bound -and with brass lock and brass hinges; altogether such a box as a woman -might choose to keep about her room for any one of a half dozen possible -uses. - -Clarke did not remember that he had ever seen it prior to his -unexpectedly early return from a western trip of a month's duration. -He thought he would give his wife a pleasant surprise, so he did not -telephone the news of his arrival to the house, but went home and -entered her room unannounced. As he came in his wife hastily slipped -something into the box, locked it, and put it into one of the drawers -of her desk. Then she came to meet him, and he would not have thought -of the matter at all had it not been for just the slightest trace of -confusion in her manner. - -She was glad to see him. She always was after his absences, but it -seemed to him that she was exceptionally so this time. She had never -been a demonstrative woman; but it seemed to Clarke that she came nearer -that description on the occasion of this home-coming than ever before. -They had a deal to say to each other, and it was not until after dinner -that the picture of his wife hurriedly disposing of the box crossed -Clarke's consciousness again. Even then he mentioned it casually because -they were talked out of more important topics rather than because of any -very sharp curiosity. He asked her what it was; what was in it. - -"Oh, nothing!--nothing of any importance--nothing at all," she said; -and moved over to the piano and began one of his favorite airs. And he -forgot the box again in an instant. She had always been able to make -Clarke forget things, when she wanted to. But the next day it suddenly -came to him, out of that nowhere-in-particular from which thoughts come -to mortals, that she had been almost as much confused at his sudden -question as she had at his previous sudden entrance. - -Clarke was not a suspicious person; not even a very curious one, as a -rule. But it was so evident to him that there was something in that -box which his wife did not wish him to see that he could not help but -wonder. Always frank with her, and always accustomed to an equal -candor on her part, it occurred to him that he would ask her again, in -something more than a casual way, and that she would certainly tell him, -at the same time clearing up her former hesitation. But no!--why should -he ask her? That would be to make something out of nothing; this was a -trifle, and not worth thinking about. But he continued thinking about -it, nevertheless.... - -Ah, he had it! What a chump he had been, not to guess it sooner! His -birthday was only ten days off, and his wife had been planning to -surprise him with a remembrance of some sort. Of course! That accounted -for the whole thing. - -With this idea in his head, he said nothing more about the box, but -waited. And when dinner was over and they sat before the fire together, -on the evening of the anniversary, he still forbore to mention it, -expecting every moment that the next she would present him with the -token. But as the evening wore away, with no sign on her part, he -finally broke an interval of silence with the remark: - -"Well, dear, don't keep me guessing any longer! Bring it to me!" - -"Guessing? Bring you--what?" And he could see that she was genuinely -puzzled. - -"Why, my birthday present." - -"Why, my dear boy! And did you expect one? And I had forgotten! -Positively forgotten--it _is_ your birthday, isn't it, Dickie! If I had -only known you _wanted_ one--------" And she came up and kissed him, -with something like contrition, although his birthday had never been one -of the sentimental anniversaries which she felt bound to observe with -gifts. - -"Don't feel bad about it--I don't care, you know--really," he said. -"Only, I thought you had something of the sort in that brass-bound -box--that was the only reason I mentioned it." - -"Brass-bound box--why, no, I--I forgot it. I'm ashamed of myself, but I -forgot the date entirely!" - -But she volunteered no explanation of what the box contained, although -the opportunity was so good a one. - -And Clarke wondered more than ever. - -What could it be? The letters of some former sweetheart? Well, all girls -had sweethearts before they married, he supposed; at least all men did. -He had had several himself. There was nothing in that. And he would not -make an ass of himself by saying any more about it. - -Only... he could not remember any old sweethearts that he wouldn't have -told Agnes all about, if she had asked him. He had no secrets from her. -But she had a secret from him... innocent enough, of course. But still, -a secret. There was none of those old sweethearts of his whose letters -he cared to keep after five years of marriage. And there was no... But, -steady! Where were his reflections leading him? Into something very like -suspicion? Positively, yes; to the verge of it. Until Agnes got ready to -tell him all about it, he would forget that damned box! - -And if she never got ready, why, that was all right, too. She was his -wife, and he loved her... and that settled it. - -Perhaps that should have settled it, but it did not. Certain -healthy-looking, fleshy specimens of humanity are said to succumb the -quickest to pneumonia, and it may be that the most ingenuous natures -suffer the most intensely with suspicion, when once thoroughly -inoculated. - - - -II - -|Clarke fought against it, cursing his own baseness. But the very effort -necessary to the fight showed him the persistence of the thing itself. -He loved his wife, and trusted her, he told himself over and over again, -and in all their relations hitherto there had never been the slightest -deviation from mutual confidence and understanding. What did he suspect? -He could not have told himself. He went over their life together in his -mind. In the five years of their married life, he could not have helped -but notice that men were attracted to her. Of course they were. That was -natural. She was a charming woman. He quite approved of it; it reflected -credit upon him, in a way. He was not a Bluebeard of a husband, to lock -a wife up and deny her the society proper to her years. And her -very catholicity of taste, the perfect frankness of her enjoyment of -masculine attention, had but served to make his confidence all the more -complete. True, he had never thought she loved him as much as he loved -her... but now that he came to think of it, was there not a warmer -quality to her affection since his return from this last trip west? Was -there not a kind of thoughtfulness, was there not a watchful increase in -attentiveness, that he had always missed before? Was she not making love -to him every day now; just as he had always made love to her before? -Were not the parts which they had played for the five years of their -married life suddenly reversed? They were! Indeed they were! And what -did that mean? What did that portend? Did the brass-bound box have aught -to do with that? What was the explanation of this change? - -The subtle imp of suspicion turned this matter of the exchanged rles -into capital. Clarke, still ashamed of himself for doing it, began -covertly to watch his wife; to set traps of various kinds for her. He -said nothing more about the box, but within six months after the first -day upon which he had seen it, it became the constant companion of his -thoughts. - -_What_ did he suspect? Not even now could he have said. He suspected -nothing definite; vaguely, he suspected anything and everything. If -his wife noticed his changed manner towards her, she made no sign. -If anything, her efforts to please him, her attentiveness, her -thoughtfulness in small things, increased. - - - -III - -|There came a day when he could stand this self-torture no longer, -he thought. He came home from his office--Clarke was a partner in a -prosperous real-estate concern--at an hour when he thought his wife not -yet returned from an afternoon of call making, determined to end the -matter once for all. - -He went to her room, found the key to her desk, and opened the drawer. -He found the box, but It was locked, and he began rummaging through the -drawers, and among the papers and letters therein, for the key. - -Perhaps she carried it with her. Very well, then, he would break it -open! With the thing in his hand he began to look around for something -with which to force the fastenings, and was about deciding that he would -take it down to the basement, and use the hatchet, when he heard a step. -He turned, just as his wife entered the room. - -Her glance traveled from the box in his hand to the ransacked desk, and -rested there inquiringly for a moment. Strangely enough, in view of the -fact that he felt himself an injured husband and well within his rights, -it was Clarke who became confused, apologetic, and evasive under her -gaze. He essayed a clumsy lie: - -"Agnes," he began, indicating the desk, "I--I got a bill to-day from -Meigs and Horner, for those furs, you know--I was sure that the -account had been settled--that you had paid them, and had shown me the -receipt--that you had paid them from your allowance, you know--and I -thought I would come home and look up the receipt." - -It was very lame; and very lamely done, at that, as he felt even while -he was doing it. But it gave him an opportunity of setting the box down -on the desk almost in a casual manner, as if he had picked it up quite -casually, while he began to tumble the papers again with his hands. - -"The receipt is here," she said; and got it for him. - -The box lay between them, but they did not look at it, nor at each -other, and they both trembled with agitation. - -Each knew that the thoughts of the other were on nothing except that -little locked receptacle of wood and brass, yet neither one referred -to it; and for a full half minute they stood with averted faces, and -fumbling hands, and played out the deception. - -Finally she looked full at him, and drew a long breath, as if the -story were coming now; and there was in her manner a quality of -softness--almost of sentimentality, Clarke felt. She was getting ready -to try and melt him into a kind of sympathy for her frailty, was she! -Well, that would not work with him! And with the receipted bill waving -in his hand, he made it the text of a lecture on extravagance, into -which he plunged with vehemence. - -Why did he not let her speak? He would not admit the real reason to -himself, just then. But in his heart he was afraid to have her go on. -Afraid, either way it turned. If she were innocent of any wrong, he -would have made an ass of himself--and much worse than an ass. If she -were guilty, she might melt him into a weak forgiveness in spite of -her guilt! No, she must not speak... not now! If she were innocent, how -could he confess his suspicions to her and acknowledge his baseness? And -besides... women were so damned clever... whatever was in that box, she -might fool him about it, somehow! - -And then, "Good God!" he thought, "I have got to the place where I hug -my suspicion to me as a dearer thing than my love, have I? Have I got so -low as that?" - -While these thoughts raced and rioted through his mind, his lips -were feverishly pouring out torrents in denunciation of feminine -extravagance. Even as he spoke he felt the black injustice of his -speech, for he had always encouraged his wife, rather than otherwise, in -the expenditure of money; his income was a good one; and the very furs -which formed the text of his harangue he had helped her select and even -urged upon her. - -It was their first quarrel, if that can be called a quarrel which has -only one side to it. For she listened in silence, with white lips -and hurt eyes, and a face that was soon set into a semblance of hard -indifference. He stormed out of the room, ashamed of himself, and -feeling that he had disgraced the name of civilization. - - - -IV - -|Ashamed of himself, indeed; but before the angel of contrition could -take full possession of his nature, the devil of suspicion, the imp of -the box, regained its place. - -For why had she not answered him? She knew he cared nothing about the -trivial bill, the matter of the furs, he told himself. Why had she not -insisted on a hearing, and told him about the box? She knew as well as -he that that was what he had broken into her desk to get! - -Justice whispered that she had been about to speak, and that he had -denied her the chance. But the imp of the box said that an honest woman -would have _demanded_ the chance--would have persisted until she got it! -And thus, his very shame, and anger at himself, were cunningly turned -and twisted by the genius of the brass-bound box into a confirmation of -his suspicions. - -V - -|Suspicions? Nay, convictions! Beliefs. Certainties! - -They were certainties, now! Certainties to Clarke's mind, at least. For -in a month after this episode he had become a silent monomaniac on the -subject of the brass-bound box. He felt shame no longer. She was guilty. -Of just what, he did not know. But guilty. Guilty as Hell itself, he -told himself, rhetorically, in one of the dumb rages which now became so -frequent with him. - -_Guilty--guilty--guilty_--the clock on the mantelpiece ticked off many -dragging hours of intolerable minutes to that tune, while Clarke lay -awake and listened. _Guilty--guilty--guilty_--repeat any word often -enough, and it will hypnotize you. _Guilty--guilty--guilty_--so he and -the clock would talk to each other, back and forth, the whole night -through. If any suggestions of his former, more normal habits of thought -came to him now it was they that were laughed out of court; it was they -that were flung away and scorned as traitors. - -She was guilty. But he would be crafty! He would be cunning. He would -make no mistake. He would allow her no subterfuge. He would give her no -chance to snare him back into a condition of half belief. There should -be no juggling explanations. They were clever as the devil, women were! -But this one should have no chance to fool him again. She had fooled him -too long already. - -And she kept trying to fool him. Shortly after his outburst over the -furs, she began again a series of timid advances which would have struck -him as pathetic had he not known that her whole nature was corroded and -corrupted with deceit, with abominable deceit. She was trying to make -him believe that she did not know why he was angry and estranged, was -she? He would show her! He hated her now, with that restless, burning -intensity of hatred known only to him who has injured another. A hatred -that consumed his own vitality, and made him sick in soul and body. The -little sleep he got was passed in uneasy dreams of his revenge; and his -waking hours were devoted to plots and plans of the form which it should -take. Oh, but she had been cunning to fool him for so long; but she -should see! She should see! When the time for action came, she should -see! - - - -VI - -|Something, one tense and feverish midnight, when he lay in his bed -snarling and brooding and chuckling--a kind of snapping sense in some -remote interior chamber of his brain, followed by a nervous shock that -made him sit upright--warned him that the time for action was at hand. -What is it that makes sinners, at provincial revival meetings, suddenly -aware that the hours of dalliance are past and the great instant that -shall send them to "the mourners' bench" is at hand? Somehow, they seem -to know! And, somehow, Clarke felt an occult touch and knew that his -time for action had arrived. - -He did not care what came afterwards. Any jury in the world, so he told -himself, ought to acquit him of his deed, when they once knew his story; -when they once looked at the damning evidence of her guilt which she -had hidden away for so long in the brass-bound box. But if they did not -acquit him, that was all right, too. His work in the world would have -been done; he would have punished a guilty woman. He would have shown -that all men are not fools. - -But he did not spend a great deal of thought on how other people would -regard what he was about to do. As he crept down the hall with the knife -in his hand, his chief sensation was a premonitory itch, a salty tang -of pleasure in the doing of the deed itself. When hatred comes in where -love has gone out, there may be a kind of voluptuary delight in the act -of murder. - -Very carefully he opened the door of her room. And then he smiled to -himself, and entered noisily; for what was the need of being careful -about waking up a woman who was already dead? He did not care whether he -killed her in her sleep or not;--indeed, if she wakened and begged for -her life, he thought it might add a certain zest to the business. He -should enjoy hearing her plead. He would not mind prolonging things. - -But things were not prolonged. His hand and the muscles of his forearm -had tensed so often with the thought, with the idea, that the first blow -went home. She never waked. - - - -VII - -|He got the box, and opened it. - -Inside was a long envelope, and written on that were the words: - -"To be opened by my husband only after my death." - -That time had come! - -Within the envelope was a letter. It was dated on the day of his return -from his western trip, a few months before. He read: - -"Dick, I love you! - -"Does it seem strange to you that I should write it down? - -"Listen, Dickie dear--I _had_ to write it! I couldn't tell you when I -was alive--but I just had to tell you, too. And now that I am dead, what -I say will come to you with all of its sweetness increased; and all -of its bitterness left out! It will, now that I am dead--or if you die -first, you will never see this. This is from beyond the grave to you, -Dickie dear, to make all your life good to you afterwards! - -"Now, listen, dear, and don't be hard on me. - -"When I married you, Dickie, I _didn't_ love you! You were wild about -me. But I only _liked_ you very much. It wasn't really love. It wasn't -what you _deserved_. But I was only a girl, and you were the first man, -and I didn't know things; I didn't know what I _should have_ felt. - -"Later, when I realized how very much you cared, I was ashamed of -myself. I grew to see that I had done wrong in marrying you. Wrong to -both of us. For no woman should marry a man she doesn't love. And I was -ashamed, and worried about it. You were so good to me! So sweet--and you -never suspected that I didn't care like I should. And because you were -so good and sweet to me, I felt _worse_. And I made up my mind you -should _never_ know! That I would be everything to you any woman could -be. I tried to be a good wife. Wasn't I, Dickie, even then? - -"But I prayed and prayed and prayed. 'O God,' I used to say, 'let me -love him like he loves me!' It was five years, Dickie, and I _liked_ you -more, and _admired_ you more, and saw more in you that was worth while, -every week; but still, no miracle happened. - -"And then one morning _a miracle did happen!_ - -"It was when you were on that trip West. I had gone to bed thinking how -kind and dear you were. I missed you, Dickie dear, and _needed_ you. And -when I woke up, there was a change over the world. I felt so different, -somehow. It had come! Wasn't it wonderful, Dickie?--it had come! And I -sang all that day for joy. I could hardly wait for you to come home so -that I could tell you. I loved you, loved you, loved you, Dickie, _as -you deserved!_ My prayers had been answered, somehow--or maybe it was -what any woman would do just living near you and being with you. - -"And then I saw _I couldn't tell you, after all!_ - -"For if I told you I loved you now, that would be to tell you that for -five years _I hadn't loved you_, Dickie! - -"And how would _that_ make you feel? Wouldn't that have been like a -knife, Dickie? - -"Oh, I wanted you to know! _How_ I wanted you to know! But, you see, I -couldn't tell you, could I, dear, without telling the other, too? I just -_had_ to save you from that! And I just had to make you feel it, somehow -or other. And I _will_ make you feel it, Dickie! - -"But I can't tell you. Who knows what ideas you might get into your head -about those five years, if I told you now? Men are so queer, and they -can be so stupid sometimes! And I can't bear to think of losing one -smallest bit of your love... not now! It would _kill_ me! - -"But I want you to know, sometime. And so I'm writing you--it's my first -love letter--the first real one, Dickie. If _you_ die first, I'll tell -you in Heaven. And if _I_ die first, you'll understand! - -"Agnes." - - - - -XII.--Behind the Curtain - -|It was as dark as the belly of the fish that swallowed Jonah. A -drizzling rain blanketed the earth in chill discomfort. As I splashed -and struggled along the country road, now in the beaten path, and now -among the wet weeds by its side, I had never more heartily yearned -for the dullness and comforts of respectability. Here was I with more -talents in my quiver, it pleased me to think, than nine out of ten of -the burghers I had left sleeping snug and smug in the town a few miles -behind; with as much real love of humanity as the next man, too; and yet -shivering and cursing my way into another situation that might well mean -my death. And all for what? For fame or riches? No, for little more than -a mere existence, albeit free from responsibility. Indeed, I was all but -ready to become an honest man then and there, to turn back and give -up the night's adventure, had but my imagination furnished me with the -picture of some occupation whereby I might gain the same leisure and -independence as by what your precisians call thieving. - -With the thought I stumbled off the road again, and into a narrow gully -that splashed me to the knees with muddy water. Out of that, I walked -plump into a hedge, and when I sought to turn from it at right angles, I -found myself still following its line. This circumstance showed me that -I was come unaware upon the sharp turn of the road which marked the -whereabouts of the house that was my object. Following the hedge, I -found the entrance to the graveled driveway within a hundred yards of -my last misstep, and entered the grounds. I groped about me for a space, -not daring to show a light, until presently a blacker bulk, lifting -itself out of the night's comprehensive blackness, indicated the -house itself, to my left and a bit in front of me. I left the moist -gravel--for there is nothing to be gained on an expedition of this -sort by advertising the size and shape of your boots to a morbidly -inquisitive public--and reached the shelter of the veranda by walking -across the lawn. - -There, being out of eyeshot from the upper windows, I risked a gleam -from my pocket lantern, one of those little electric affairs that are -occasionally useful to others than night watchmen. Two long French -windows gave on the veranda; and, as I knew, both of them opened from -the reception hall. A bit of a way with the women is not amiss in my -profession; and the little grayeyed Irish maid, who had told me three -weeks before of old man Rolfe's stinginess and brutality towards the -young wife whom he had cooped up here for the past four years, had also -given me, bit by bit, other information more valuable than she could -guess. So, thanks to the maid, I was aware that the safe where the Rolfe -jewels were kept--and often a substantial bit of money as well--was -situated in the library; which was just beyond the hall and connected -with it by a flight of four or five steps. This safe was my objective -point. - -The wooden window shutters were but the work of a moment; and the window -fastenings themselves of only a few minutes more. (I flatter myself that -I have a very coaxing way with window fasteners.) The safe itself would -give me the devil's own trouble, I knew. It was really a job for two -men, and I ached all over to be at it, to be safely through with it, and -away, a good hour before sunrise. - -The window opened noiselessly enough, and I stepped within and set my -little satchel full of necessary tools upon the floor. But the damp -weather had swelled the woodwork, and as I closed the window again, -though I pushed it ever so gently, it gave forth a noise something -between a grunt and a squeak. - -And as pat as the report of a pistol to the pressure of the trigger came -the answer--a sound of a quickly-caught breath from the warm dimness of -the room. I made no motion; though the blood drummed desperately through -my brain and my scalp tingled with apprehension and excitement. - -For ten, for twenty, for thirty seconds I stood so; and then the silence -was broken by the unmistakable rustle of a woman's skirts. The sound -came softly towards me through the darkness. It was my turn to let loose -my held breath with a gasp, and in another moment I should have been -through the window and running for it; when a woman's whisper halted me. - -"Is that you, Charles? And why did you not rap upon the shutter?" - -So some one called Charles was expected? Then, ticked off my thoughts -almost automatically, the lady somewhere near me in the dark might have -her own reasons for not caring to alarm the house just then! The thought -steadied me to action. - -"Shh," I whispered, feeling behind me for the window, and gradually -opening it again. "S-h-h! No, it is not Charles"--and I put one foot -backward across the sill. "It is not Charles, but Charles has sent me to -say----" - -Click!--went something by the window, and the room was flooded with -sudden brilliance from a dozen electric globes. And again, click!--and -I looked with blinking eyes at the muzzle of a cocked pistol held by the -most beautiful, the most be-jeweled, the most determined-looking young -woman it has ever been my lot to meet. - -"Who are you?" she asked in a voice that was at once hoarse and sweet. -"Who are you? And what do you want? And where is Charles?" - -As I stood there dripping moisture upon the oiled floor, with my hands -in the air--they had gone up quite involuntarily--I must have been the -very picture of idiocy and discomfiture. I wondered if Charles, whoever -the devil Charles might be, was always welcomed with a cocked pistol. -Probably not; but, I wondered, how did she happen to have a pistol with -her? I wondered why neck, breast, hair, arms, and hands should be ablaze -with the diamonds that accentuated her lithe and vivid loveliness. I -wondered why, now that she saw I was not Charles, she did not alarm the -house. I wondered everything; but nothing to the point. And as I stood -wondering she repeated: - -"Who are you? And what do you want?" - -"Madame," I stammered, my jarred brain fastening upon the sentence she -had interrupted, "Charles sent me to--to say to you----" - -"Charles who?" she asked. And as tense as was her face, a gleam of -merriment shot through her eyes. "Charles who?" she repeated. - -Charles was not one of the points upon which the Irish maid had given me -information. - -The lady with the pistol considered for a moment. "You are not very -clever, are you?" she said. - -"If you will pardon me," I said, "I think I had better be going. I seem -to have mistaken the house." - -"You at least seem to have mistaken the proper manner in which to enter -it," she returned. - -"Why, as to the mode of entrance," I said, "I might plead that the -mistake appears to have been less in that than in the person who -employed it." - -I could not resist the retort. A dull red crept slowly up her neck and -face; a pallid, olive-tinted face, beautiful in itself, beautiful for -its oval contour and broad brow, and frame of black hair; beautiful in -itself, and yet dominated and outdone by the lustrous, restless beauty -of the dark eyes wherewith she held me more surely captive than by -virtue of the pistol. - -"You will come in," she said, "and sit there." She indicated a seat -beside a central table. "But first you will kindly let me have whatever -weapons you may possess." She took my revolver, examined it, and put her -own in the breast of her gown. "Now you may put your hands down," she -said, "your arms must ache by now. Sit down." - -I sat. She stood and looked at me for a moment. - -"I am wondering what you are going to do with me," I ventured. - -In all of her quick actions, and in the tones of her voice, there was -evident a most unnatural sort of strain. She may well have been excited; -that was only to be expected in the circumstances. But the repressed -excitement in this woman's manner was not that of a woman who is forcing -herself to keep her courage up; not that of a woman who would like to -scream; but a steadier nervous energy which seemed to burn in her like a -fire, to escape from her finger tips, and almost to crackle in her -hair; an intensity that was vibrant. I marveled. Most women would have -screamed at the advent of a man in the dead of night; screamed and -fainted. Or the ones who would not, and who were armed as she, would -ordinarily have been inclined to shoot, and at once; or immediately to -have given the alarm. She had done none of these things. She had merely -taken me captive. She had set me down in a chair at the center of the -room. She had not roused the house. And now she stood looking at me with -a trace of abstraction in her manner; looking at me, for the moment, -less as if I were a human being than as if I were a factor in some -mathematical problem which it was the immediate task of that active, -high-keyed brain of hers to solve. And there was a measure of irony in -her glance, as if she alone tasted and enjoyed some ulterior jest. - -"I am wondering," I repeated, "what you are going to do with me." - -She sat down at the opposite side of the table before she replied. - -"I believe," she said slowly, "that I have nearly made up my mind what -to do with you." - -"Well?" I asked. - -But she said nothing, and continued to say nothing. I looked at her and -her diamonds--the diamonds I had come after!--and wondered again why she -was wearing them; wondered why she had tricked herself out as for -some grand entertainment. And as the ignominious result of my night's -expedition pressed more sharply against my pride I could have strangled -her through sheer disappointment and mortification. The pistol she held -was the answer to that impulse. But what was the answer to her hesitancy -in alarming the house? Why did she not give me up and be done with me? - -At the farther end of the room was a long red curtain, which covered the -entrance to a sitting-room or parlor, as I guessed; and by the side -of the curtain hung an old-fashioned bell cord, also of red, which -I supposed to communicate with the servants' quarters. It were easy -enough, now that she had taken the whip hand of me so cleverly, to pull -that rope, to set the bell jangling, to rouse the house. Why did she not -do so? - -Was she a mad woman? There was that in her inexplicable conduct, and in -her highly-wrought, yet governed, mood, as she sat in brooding silence -across the table from me, to make the theory plausible. Brooding she -was, and studying me, I thought; yet watchful, too. For at any least -motion of mine her hand tightened slightly upon the pistol. We sat -thus while the slow seconds lengthened into intolerable minutes; and I -steamed with sweat, and fidgeted. Nor was I set more at my ease by her -long searching glances. In fact, my overthrow had been so instant and -so complete that my scattered wits had never drawn themselves together -again; I continued as one in a haze; as a person half under the power -of the hypnotist; as a mouse must feel after the first blow of the cat's -paw. And yet one idea began to loom clearly out of that haze and possess -me--the idea that she desired the alarm to be given as little as I did -myself. - -But there was no light in that. It was easy to understand why she -did not wish the house aroused while she still believed me to be -Charles--whoever Charles might be. But now?--it was too much for me. -I could not find a justification in reason for my belief; and yet the -conviction grew. - -She broke the silence with a question that might have been put with full -knowledge of my thought. - -"You are still wondering why I do not give you up?" she said. - -I nodded. She leaned towards me across the table, and if ever the demons -of mockery danced through a woman's eyes it was then; and her lips -parted in a kind of silent laughter. - -She touched the diamonds about her throat. - -"It was these you came after?" - -I nodded again. Evidently speech was of no avail with this lady. She -asked questions at her will, and reserved the right of answering none. - -"Tell me," she said, "Why are you a thief? Why do you steal?" - -"'Convey, the wise it call,'" I quoted. "Accident, or fate, or destiny, -I suppose," I went on, wondering more than ever at the question, but -with a fluttering hope. Perhaps the lady (in spite of Charles--such -things have been!) was an amateur sociologist, a crank reformer, or -something of that sort. There had been no mockery in her tone when -she asked the question; instead, I thought, a kind of pity. "Fate, -or destiny," I went on, "or what you please, 'There is a destiny that -shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,'" I quoted again, in my -best actor manner. - -"Why," she said, "you are a man with some air of better things about -you. You quote Shakespeare as if he were an old friend. And yet, you are -a thief! Tell me," she continued, "tell me--I dare say there were many -struggles against that destiny?" There was a note almost of eagerness -in her voice, as if she were a leniently-inclined judge who would fain -search out and put in the mouth of a condemned man some plausible plea -for the exercise of clemency. "Come--were there not?--I dare say there -were--circumstances of uncommon bitterness that forced you to become -what I see you? And even now you hate the thing you are?" - -"Why, as to that," I said, possessed of the sudden whim to be honest -with myself for once, "I am afraid that I can complain of no bitterer -usage at the hands of the world than can the majority of those who reap -where they have not sowed. When I think of it all, I am used to putting -it to myself that my life is devoted to a kind of private warfare -against the unjust conditions of a hypocritical social order." - -"Warfare!" she flouted, hard and brilliant as one of her own diamonds -again. "And you could justify it, too, could you not?" - -And then she asked me: "Have you ever killed a man?" - -"Why, no," said I, "but I have tried to." - -"He lived?--and you were sorry that he lived?" - -"No," I said, quite out of my depths in all this moral quibbling, "I was -glad he lived." - -"And yet you hated him?" - -"I would have taken his life in a rage," I said. "He had wronged me as -greatly as one man can wrong another." - -"And yet you were glad he lived? My dear thief----" - -"Higgins is the name," said I. "You may call me Higgins." - -"My dear Higgins," she went on, "you are inconsistent. You attempt to -slay a man in what I should judge to have been a not ignoble passion. -It may have been an anger that did you credit. And yet you are not -bold enough to face the thought of killing him. You are glib with -justifications of your thievery; and perhaps that is also because you -are too much of a coward to look steadily at it. You creep along a mean -and despicable path in life, contentedly, it seems to me, with a dead -soul. You are what you are because there is nothing positive in you for -either good or evil. You are negative; you were better dead. Yes, better -dead!" - -Why should I have felt as if she were seeking self-justification in -advance for some death she planned for me? Certainly, my life, or death, -was not hers to give or take; she might give me up, and probably would. -But just as certainly she had made me feel, as she passed her judgment -upon me, that she was likely to turn executioner as well as judge. My -doubts as to her sanity returned. - -"Still," I said, for the sake of saying something, "if I killed a man, I -should not like to think about it, even if he deserved death." - -"Even if he deserved death?" she repeated, and sprang up, as if the -phrase had touched her. "You make yourself the judge, you do, of when -a man 'deserves' to lose his wealth. Come, what is your idea of when he -deserves to die?" - -Up and down the room she swept; yet still watchful. And the emotion -which she had so long suppressed burst out into a poisonous lovely bloom -that suffused her being with an awful beauty. - -"When does he deserve to die?" she repeated. "Listen to me. I knew -a woman once--no matter where--no matter when--who was sold--sold! I -say--by the sordid devil she called her father, to the veriest beast -that ever trod this earth. Her beauty--for she had beauty--her wit--for -wit she had--became this husband's chattels before she turned her -twentieth year. She would never have loved him, but she would have been -faithful to him--she was faithful to him, in fact, in spite of all his -drunkenness and bestiality--and abuse! It was not neglect alone that she -had to complain of--she had never looked for understanding or sympathy. -But she had not looked for abuse. Abuse, I say, and worse than abuse. -Before she had been married a year she knew what it was, not only to -feel the weight of a heavy hand and to hide the bruises from her maid, -but to see other women brought into her very house. Pah!--hate? She -hated him? Hate is not the word. She became a live coal. But she never -cried out; she found strength to smile at him even when he beat her; she -was proud enough for that. It pleased him, in his hellish humor, and -because she was made to shine, to cage her in a country house, and there -to taunt her that although she was sold to him she got little of what -money may buy. And still she smiled at him, and still her hatred grew -through all the weeks and months until it filled her whole being. And -then--love came. For God has ordained that love may enter even Hell. -Love, I say; and she loved this lover of hers with a passion that was -measured only by the degree in which she hated her husband. And she -would have left with him; but on the very night they would have flown -together her lord and master-----" - -She said the words with an indescribable spluttering sneer, sidewise -from her mouth. It is so a lioness may snarl and spit before she leaps. - -"Her--lord and master--found it out, and waited up to catch them; and -coming upon her alone, taunted her. Taunted her, and struck her----" - -"Look!" she cried, and tore the diamonds from her breast, and rent the -laces, and wrenched the fastenings apart. A new red weal that seemed to -throb and pulse with her respiration stood out from the whiteness of her -bosom. - -"Tell me," she whispered hoarsely, "would it have been murder if she had -killed that man? Which were the more courageous thing--to kill him, or -to step back into her living hell? If she had killed him, would she have -regretted it?" - -I know not what I might have answered; but at that instant three raps -sounded distinctly upon the window-shutter. I leaped to my feet. Then -Charles had come! - -An instant she stood as if stricken to a statue in mid-rage. - -And then she cried out, and there was a furious triumph in her voice--a -kind of joy that matched itself to, and blended with, the fierce and -reckless beauty of her shaken jewels, possessed her. - -"Charles," she cried, "come in! Come in!" - -Slowly the window opened and a man entered. He drew back in amaze at the -sight of me, and turned to her with an air that was all one question. - -"I thought you would never come," she said. - -He was a big blond man, and as he turned from the one to the other of -us, with his helpless, inquiring face, and eyes that blinked from the -outer darkness, he looked oddly like a sleepy schoolboy who has been -awakened from an afternoon nap by the teacher's ruler. - -"Katherine," he finally stammered, "what is this? Who is this man?" He -passed his hand across his forehead as one may do who doubts whether or -not he dreams; and walked towards the table. - -"Charles," she said, "I have shot the old man." I have seen a beef -stricken on the head with a mallet look at its executioner with big eyes -for an instant before the quivering in its limbs set in and it sank to -the ground. So this Charles looked with wide, stupid eyes, and shivered, -and dropped the great bulk of him into a chair. His head sank upon his -hand. But finally he looked up, and spoke in a confused voice, as if -through a mist. "Good God, Katherine, what do you mean?" - -"I mean," she said, framing the words slowly, as one speaks a lesson to -a child, "I mean that I have killed the old man." - -And moving swiftly across the room she flung back the heavy red curtain -at the end of it; and I saw the answer to my many questionings. - -The body lay upon its back, with one arm bent, the hand across the -chest, and the fingers spread wide. The face was that of a man of sixty -or thereabouts, but, indeed, so deeply lined and wrinkled and pouched -with evil living that the age even in life must have been hard to -determine. Blood was coagulating about a bullet wound in the temple, -and there were powder burns on the forehead. The shot had been fired at -close range, evidently from the weapon with which I had been confronted -on my entrance; and the sound had been so muffled in the curtain that it -was little wonder that the servants in the rooms above, and across the -house, had not heard it. He had a monstrous nose, that man upon the -floor, and it must have been a red nose in life; but now it was of a -bluish-white color, like the skin of an old and scrawny fowl. That, and -the thin, drawn-up legs, and the big flabby paunch of the thing, robbed -the sight, for me, of all the solemnity which (we are taught) exudes -from the presence of death. It made me sick; and yet I cackled with -sheer hysteria, too; or rather my strained nerves jarred and laughed, if -not myself. It was too damned grotesque. - -Herself, she did not look at it. She looked at the man called Charles; -and he, with a shudder, lifted his slow gaze from the thing behind the -curtain to her face. - -She was the first to speak, and the terrible joy with which she had bade -Charles to enter still dominated her accents. - -"Don't you understand, Charles? This man," and she indicated me with the -pistol, "this man takes the blame of this. He is a thief. He came just -after--just afterwards. And I held him for your coming. Don't you see? -Don't you see? His presence clears us of this deed!" - -"_Us?_" queried Charles. - -"Not _us?_" she asked. - -"My God, Katherine," he burst forth, "why did you do this thing? And -you would heap murder on murder! Why, why, why did you do it? Why splash -this blood upon our love? A useless thing to do! We might have--we might -have------" - -He broke down and sobbed. And then: "God knows the old man never did me -any harm," he said. "And she'd accuse the thief, too!" he cried a moment -later, with a kind of wondering horror. - -"Listen, Charles," she said, and moved towards him; and yet with a -sidelong glance she still took heed of me. "Listen, and understand -me. We must act quickly--but after it happened it was necessary that I -should see you before we could act. This man came to rob; here is his -pistol, and in that satchel by the window are his tools, no doubt. He -may tell what wild tale he will; but who will believe him? You go as you -came; I give him up--and we--we wait awhile, and then the rest of life -is ours." - -I suppose that it is given to few men to hear their death plotted in -their presence. But I had come to the pass by this time where it struck -me as an impersonal thing. I listened; but somehow the full sense of -what she said, as affecting me, did not then impinge upon my brain with -waking force. I stood as if in a trance; I stood and looked on at those -two contending personalities, that were concerned just now with the -question of my life or death, as if I were a spectator in a theater--as -if it were someone else of whom they spoke. - -"Go," she cried to Charles again, "and I will give him up." - -"Katherine," he said, "and you would do this thing?" - -"Why?" she retorted, "what is this man's life beside mine? His soul is -dead! I tell you, Charles, that I have come through Hell alive to gain -one ray of happiness! But go!--and leave the rest to me." - -And she grasped the bell cord and pulled it. Pulled it again and again. -The sound wandered crazily through what remote corridors I know not. - -She made a step towards him. He leaped to his feet with an oath, with -loathing in his eyes, shrank back from her, and held out a hand as if to -ward off some unclean thing. - -Bewilderment lined her face. She groped to understand. And then, as the -full significance of his gesture came home to her, she winced and swayed -as if from a blow; and the pistol dropped from her loosened grasp to the -floor. - -"You--you abandon me?" she said slowly. "You desert me, then? Love, -Love, think how I have loved you that I did this thing! And is what I -have suffered--what I have done--still to purchase--nothing?" - -She pleaded for my death; but I hope that I shall never again see on any -human face the look of despair that was on hers. I pitied her! - -Heavy feet on the stairway woke me from my trance. Unregarded of them -both I grasped my pistol from the floor and sprang for the window. A -door opened somewhere above, and a voice asked: - -"You rang, Ma'am?" - -From without the window I looked back into the room. She stood with -outstretched hands--hands that reached upward from the pit of torment, -my fancy told me--and pleaded for a little love. "In all this world is -there no little ray of love for me?"--it was so my imagination rather -than my hearing translated the slight movement of her lips. And while -she and the man called Charles stood thus at gaze with one another, the -servant spoke again from the stairway. - -"You rang?" he asked. - -She slowly straightened. She steadied herself. And with her eyes still -fixed upon those of Charles she cried: - -"Yes, yes, I rang, Jones! Your master is--dead. Your master's murdered! -And there, there," and she stabbed an accusing finger at her erstwhile -lover, "there is the man who murdered him!" - -And then I turned from the window and ran from that house; and as I ran -I saw the Dawn, like a wild, fair woman, walk up the eastern sky with -blood-stained feet. - - - - -XIII.--Words and Thoughts - -[A Play in One Act] - -Characters: - -Cousin Fanny Hemlock - -John Speaker - -Mary Speaker - -John Thinker - -Mary Thinker - -Maid - -Period, the present. Place, any American city. - -The Scene _represents two drawing rooms, exact duplicates, furnished -alike to the smallest detail. Either room might be the reflection of the -other in a mirror. Each occupies half of the stage. The division line -between them is indicated, towards the hack of the stage, by two pianos, -which sit hack to back at the center of the hack drop. This division -is carried by the pianos a quarter or a third of the way towards the -footlights. The division is further suggested, towards the front of the -stage, hy a couple of settees or couches, which also sit back to back._ - -John Speaker and Mary Speaker _remain all the time in the room at the -right of the stage. They are not aware of_ John Thinker _and_ Mary -Thinker, _who are, throughout the play, in the room at the left. The_ -Thinkers, _however, are aware of the_ Speakers. - -_In make-up, looks, dress, etc., the two_Johns _are precisely alike. -The same is true of_ Mary Speaker and Mary Thinker. _The_ Johns _are -conventional-looking, prosperous Americans of from 38 to 40 years of -age. The two_ Marys _are a few years younger._ - -Cousin Fanny Hemlock _is a dried-up, querulous old woman of seventy._ - -_The Curtain, on rising, discovers the two_ Johns _and the two_ Marys. -_It is between 7 and 8 in the evening; they are all in evening dress, -and are preparing to go out, putting on their gloves, etc., etc._ - -John Speaker [_Picking up over coat._] - -Are you ready, Mary dear? - -Mary Speaker [_Holding out a gloved hand._] - -Quite, John dear. Button this for me, won't you, love? - -John Speaker [_Busy with glove._] - -It's been nearly a year, hasn't it, since we've been out together of -an evening? I'm afraid Cousin Fanny is terribly trying on you at times, -Mary. - -Mary Speaker - -You know, John, I don't consider her a trial. I _love_ Cousin Fanny. - -John Thinker - -[_Busy with Mary Thinker's glove._] - -The old cat's letting us off to-night, for a wonder, Mary. She's a -horrible affliction! - -Mary Thinker [_Passionately._] - -Affliction is no word. She makes my life a living hell! I hate her! - -John Speaker - -[_Helping Mary Speaker on with coat, which action is simultaneously -imitated hy John and Mary Thinker._] - -Well, we must bear with her gently, Mary. I am afraid poor Cousin Fanny -will not be with us many more years. - -John Thinker [_To Mary Thinker._] - -One comfort is she'll die before long! - -Mary Speaker [_To John Speaker._] - -Oh, John, you don't think Cousin Fanny's going to die, do you? - -Mary Thinker [_To John Thinker._] - -Don't fool yourself about her dying soon, John. There's no such luck! - -[_Enter Maid through door in right back to John and Mary Speaker, -who look up. John and Mary Thinker also notice entrance of Maid and -listen._] - -Maid - -[_To Mary Speaker._] - -Miss Hemlock sent me to inquire whether you were going out to-night. - -Mary Thinker [_To John Thinker, quickly._] - -The old cat's up to something! - -Mary Speaker [_To Maid_.] - -Yes. We were just starting. Does Miss Hemlock want anything? I will go -to her if she wishes to speak with me. - -Maid - -She said, in case you were going out, that I was to tell you _not_ to do -so. - -Mary Speaker - -_Not_ to do so? - -Maid - -Yes, ma'am; that's what she said. She said in case you were getting -ready to go out, you were to change your plans and stop at home. - -John Speaker [_To Maid._] - -Not to do so? But, surely, there must be some mistake! - -[_Maid shakes her head slowly, deliberately, looking fixedly at John -Speaker; and while she is doing so John Thinker says to Mary Thinker_:] - -John Thinker - -Some malicious idea is working in her head tonight! - -Maid - -[_To John Speaker._] - -No, sir, no mistake. She said very plainly and distinctly that you were -not to go out tonight. - -[_Maid bows and exits._] - -John Speaker - -Cousin Fanny is not so well to-night, I'm afraid, dear, or she would -certainly have put her request in some other way. - -Mary Speaker - -If I didn't love Cousin Fanny, John, I would be tempted to believe that -she deliberately tries at times to annoy us. - -John Speaker - -Cousin Fanny is old, and we must remember that she is very fond of us. -We will have to bear with her. - -[_John Speaker takes his top coat and his wife's coat> and lays them on -a chair, while John Thinker, who has been frowning and brooding, flings -himself into chair and says to Mary Thinker_:] - -John Thinker - -For cold-blooded, devilish nerve in a man's own house, Cousin Fanny -certainly takes the cake, Mary! - -Mary Thinker - -She gets more spiteful every day. She knows her power, and the more -childish she gets the more delight she takes in playing tyrant. - -John Thinker - -Cheer up, it isn't forever! If she doesn't change her will before she -dies, it means fifteen thousand dollars a year. That's worth a little -trouble! - -Mary Thinker - -You're away at your office all day. I'm here at home with her. It is I -who catch all the trouble! - -John Thinker - -Well, after all, she's more nearly related to you, Mary, than she is to -me. - -Mary Thinker - -She's my mother's third cousin, if you call _that_ near! - -John Thinker - -Well, then, she's my father's fifth cousin, if you call _that_ near! - -Mary Speaker - -What were you thinking of, John, dear? - -John Speaker - -Nothing... nothing, Mary... except that - -Cousin Fanny is a poor, lonely old soul, after all. - -Mary Speaker - -Poor, lonely old woman, indeed--it's odd, isn't it, that she is related -to both you and me, John? - -John Speaker - -She's closer to you than to me, Mary. - -Mary Speaker - -You couldn't call a fourth or fifth cousin very near, John. - -John Speaker - -It almost seems as if you were trying to deny the blood tie, Mary! - -Mary Speaker - -No, John, dear, blood is thicker than water. - -John Speaker Thicker than water! - -John Thinker - -Relations are the most unpleasant persons on earth. I hate cousins. - -Mary Thinker - -Especially cousins who are also cousins-in-law! John Speaker - -But even if she were only _my_ relation, Mary, and not related to _you_ -at all, I know enough of your sweet nature to know that she would always -be welcome in our home in spite of her little idiosyncrasies. - -[_Enter Cousin Fanny, to John and Mary Speaker, through door right hack. -She coughs as she steps forward, leaning on a cane, and puts her hand to -her chest, stop-ping. Then as she comes forward, she stumbles. John and -Mary Speaker leap forward, put their arms behind her, and, supporting -and leading her, conduct her tenderly down stage to chair at center of -room they are in. John and Mary Thinker, near together at table in their -room, lean forward eagerly and watch this entrance, and when the old -woman stumbles, John Thinker says to Mary Thinker, nudging her:_] - -John Thinker - -You see? - -Mary Thinker - -See what? - -John Thinker - -She totters! - -Mary Thinker - -She stumbled. - -John Thinker - -She's getting weaker. - -[_Mary Speaker tenderly kisses Cousin Fanny, as Mary Thinker says_:] - -Mary Thinker - -Weaker! She'll live to be a hundred and ten! - -John Thinker - -Not she! - -Mary Thinker - -The mean kind always do! - -John Speaker - -[_Tenderly, to Cousin Fanny, arranging cushion behind her._] - -Can't I get you a wrap, Cousin Fanny? - -Mary Speaker - -Don't you feel a draught, Cousin Fanny? - -Mary Thinker - -[_Bitterly, frowning at other group_.] - -No draught will ever harm her! - -Cousin Fanny - -[_To John Speaker, sneeringly; petulantly._] You're mighty anxious -about a _wrap_, John! But you were thinking of going out and leaving me -practically alone in the house. - -John Speaker [_Deprecatingly._ ] - -But, Cousin Fanny---- - -Cousin Fanny [_Interrupting_.] - -Don't deny it! Don't take the trouble to deny it! Don't lie about it! -You can't lie to me! Don't I see your evening clothes? And Mary, too! -Both of you were going out--_both_ of you! - -Mary Speaker - -Cousin Fanny, we gave it up when we learned that you wanted us to stop -at home with you. Didn't we, John? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_Querulously, childishly, shrilly._] - -Don't deny it, Mary, don't deny it! Don't excuse yourself! I can see you -were going out! I can see your evening clothes! - -Mary Speaker - -We'll go and change to something else, won't we, John? - -[_She is going, as she speaks, but Cousin Fanny cries out_:] - -Cousin Fanny - -Stop! - -[_Mary Speaker stops, and Cousin Fanny continues_:] - -Don't take them off. I don't want you to take them off. What do you want -to take them off for? Are they too good for _me_ to see? Are they too -grand for me to look at? Ain't I as good as any one you'd find if you -went out? Heh? - -Mary Speaker - -Cousin Fanny, I didn't mean that. I meant---- - -Cousin Fanny [_Interrupting._] - -I know what you meant! Don't tell me what you meant, Mary. You meant to -slip out and leave me here alone, both of you. It's lucky I caught you -in time. It's lucky I have money! It's lucky I don't have to put up with -the treatment most old folks get. I'd starve, if I were poor! I'd die of -hunger and neglect! - -[_She begins to cry, and Mary Speaker says_:] - -Mary Speaker No, no, no, Cousin Fanny! - -[_Mary Speaker soothes her, in pantomime, and pets her, trying to take -her hands away from her face, Cousin Fanny resisting, like a spoiled and -spiteful child. John Speaker, behind Cousin Fanny and his wife, walks -up and down, with his eyes on them, running his hand nervously and -excitedly through his hair. While this pantomime goes on, John and Mary -Thinker are watching and saying _:] - -John Thinker - -This is to be one of Cousin Fanny's pleasant evenings! - -Mary Thinker - -This happens a dozen times a day. - -John Thinker She's not really crying. - -Mary Thinker - -Pretence! She works it up to be unpleasant. - -John Thinker The old she-devil! - -John Speaker - -[_Taking Cousin Fanny's hand._] - -You know, Cousin Fanny, that we try to do our duty by you. - -Cousin Fanny [_Flinging his hand off._] - -You try to do your duty by my money! I know! - -I see! You talk of love and duty, but it's my money you want! But I may -fool you--I may fool you yet. It's not too late to change my will. It's -not too late to leave it all to charity! - -[_She speaks these lines with a cunning leer, and John Thinker, nudging -Mary Thinker and pointing to her, says:_] - -John Thinker The old cat is capable of it, too! - -John Speaker [_To Cousin Fanny_.] - -If you should leave your money to charity, Cousin Fanny, you would find -it made no difference with us. You know blood is thicker than water, -Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny [_Shrewdly, maliciously_.] - -So is sticky flypaper! - -John Speaker - -Come, come, you don't doubt the genuineness of our affection, do you, -Cousin Fanny? You've known me from my boyhood, Cousin Fanny, and you've -lived with us for ten years. You ought to know us by this time! You -ought to know us in ten years! - -Mary Thinker Ten years of torture! - -John Thinker It can't last much longer! - -John Speaker - -[_Who has taken her hand again, and has been patting it as a -continuation of his last speech, and looking at her fondly_.] - -You trust us, don't you, Cousin Fanny? You really are sure of our -affection, aren't you? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_To John Speaker. She shows that she really is willing to be convinced; -she searches their faces wistfully; she is pathetically eager._ ] - -John, John, you really _do_ care for me, don't you? [_She takes a hand -of each._] - -It isn't _all_ on account of my money, is it? If you knew I hadn't a -cent, you'd still be good to me, wouldn't you? - -John Speaker and Mary Speaker [_Together._] - -Yes, yes, Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny - -If I lost it all; if I told you I'd lost it all, you'd be just the same, -wouldn't you? - -[_John Speaker and Mary Speaker exchange glances over her head, and John -Speaker drops her hand, while John Thinker grabs Mary Thinker excitedly -by the arm and says quickly_:] - -John Thinker - -My God, you don't suppose she's really _lost_ it, do you? - -Mary Thinker - -No! This is just one of her cunning spells now. She can be as crafty as -a witch. - -Cousin Fanny - -If I hadn't a cent you'd still care for me, wouldn't you, Mary? - -Mary Speaker - -Why, Cousin Fanny, you know I would! - -Cousin Fanny - -But I'm hard on you at times. I'm unjust. I don't mean to be spiteful, -but I _am_ spiteful. When we get old we get suspicious of people. We get -suspicious of everybody. And suspicion makes us spiteful and unjust. I -know I'm not easy to live with, Mary. - -Mary Speaker [_Kissing Cousin Fanny._] - -You get such strange notions, Cousin Fanny! - -John Thinker - -And such true ones, Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny - -Tell me the truth, Mary. You find me a trial, Mary. You and John find me -a trial! - -Mary Speaker and John Speaker [_Together._ ] - -Never, Cousin Fanny! - -Mary Thinker and John Thinker [_Together._ ] - -Always, Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny And that is the truth? - -John Speaker, John Thinker, Mary Speaker and Mary Thinker [_All -together._ ] - -And that is the truth, Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny - -You don't know how suspicious one gets! - -Mary Speaker [_Petting her_.] - -But suspicion never stays long in your good heart, Cousin Fanny. There's -no room for it there, I know. But don't you think you'd better go to bed -now? Let me call the maid. - -Cousin Fanny - -[_Rousing up in chair; suspicion and meanness all awake again_.] - -To bed? Why to bed? Why do you want to pack me off to bed? I know! I -know why! You want me to go to bed so you two can talk about me. So you -can talk me over! So you can speculate on how long I will live. I know -you! I know what you talk about when I'm not around! I know what you've -been waiting and hoping for the last ten years! - -[_Begins to cry._] - -Well, you won't have long to wait now. The time's almost come! I feel -it's almost here. You'll get the money soon enough! - -Mary Speaker [_Soothing her_.] - -There, there, Cousin Fanny, don't go on like this! - -You know it isn't true--you know you'll live ten years yet! - -[_John Speaker runs his hands through his hair and looks silently at -Mary Speaker, and John Thinker, with the same gesture, says to Mary -Thinker_:] - -John Thinker - -If I thought she'd live ten years yet----! - -[_Pauses._] - -Mary Thinker - -Well, if you thought she'd live ten years yet----? - -John Thinker [_With a gesture of de pair._ ] - -My God--ten years like the last ten years! Ten years! Talk about earning -money! If it hasn't been earned ten times over! - -Mary Thinker - -[_Fiercely._] - -You see it mornings and evenings. I have it all day long, and every -day. I've had it for ten years. I go nowhere, I see no one. I have no -pleasures. I have no friends; I've lost my friends. I'm losing my youth. -I'm losing my looks. I'm losing my very soul. I'm shedding my life's -blood drop by drop to keep that querulous fool alive--just merely alive! -I'm tired of it! I'm sick of it! I'm desperate! I'm dying from her, I -tell you! - -Mary Speaker - -[_Still soothing Cousin Fanny, but speaking with one hand nervously -clutching her own head as she does so_.] - -Come, come, Cousin Fanny--you'd better go to bed now! - -Cousin Fanny - -I won't go to bed yet! I want my medicine. It's time for my medicine -now. I won't go to bed till I've had my sleeping tablets. - -John Speaker - -Where are they, Cousin Fanny? - -Cousin Fanny - -On top of the bookcase there. The small phial. [_John Speaker goes to -the bookcase and begins to rummage for phial, while John Thinker says, -meditatively_:] - -John Thinker - -I suppose if one ever gave her the wrong medicine by mistake it would be -called by some ugly name! - -Mary Thinker - -People like her never get the wrong medicine given to them, and never -take it by mistake themselves. - -John Speaker [_Finding bottle; examining it_.] - -See here, Cousin Fanny, didn't you have one of these about an hour ago? -Didn't I see you take one of them right after dinner? - -Cousin Fanny [_Peevishly._] - -I don't know. I don't remember. I want one now, anyhow. My nerves are on -the jump. You have got all my nerves on the jump. I'll take one, and nap -here in the chair. - -John Speaker [_To Mary Speaker_.] - -She took one about an hour ago. I don't think it's quite right to let -her have another so soon. They have a powerful depressing effect on the -heart. - -Mary Speaker Let me see which ones they are. - -[_John Speaker holds the bottle out towards Mary Speaker, in front of -Cousin Fanny. Cousin Fanny snatches it with a sudden motion, and laughs -childishly. John Speaker and Mary Speaker look at each other inquiringly -over her head._] - -John Speaker - -She really shouldn't have another one now, I'm afraid, dear. It might be -pretty serious. [_To Cousin Fanny_.] - -You _did_ take one right after dinner, didn't you, Cousin Fanny? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_Hugging bottle to her very excitedly_.] - -No! No! I tell you I didn't! I _will_ take one! You don't want me to get -to sleep! You don't want me to get any rest! You want me to die! - -John Thinker I _know_ that she _did_ have one. - -Mary Speaker [_To John Speaker_.] - -What can you do, dear? - -John Speaker - -[_Taking hold of Cousin Fanny's hands, and trying to take phial -gently_.] - -See here, Cousin Fanny, you must be reasonable... you mustn't be -stubborn about this. You can't have another tablet now. It's dangerous. -It might even kill you! - -John Thinker - -It _would_ kill her as certainly as she sits there. John Speaker - -Come, come, Cousin Fanny... it might be dangerous. - -Mary Speaker - -John, don't struggle with her! Don't you know if you struggle with her -it is likely to prove fatal? The doctor says the _least_ strain will -prove fatal. - -Cousin Fanny [_Whimpering and struggling._] - -Let me have it! Let me alone! Let go of my hands! You want to kill me! -You want me to die so you can get my money! - -John Speaker [_Releasing her._] - -No! No! No! Cousin Fanny... Come, be reasonable! - -[_He reaches for her hands again, and she grabs his hand and bites it. -He draws back and says_:] - -Damn! - -[_Nurses his hand._] - -Mary Speaker - -Did she bite you? - -John Speaker - -Yes. - -[_Nurses his hand, and Mary Speaker examines it, while Cousin Fanny -pulls cork from phial with teeth, and John Thinker says_:] - -John Thinker - -The old viper has teeth yet! - -Mary Thinker - -She is a cat... she is a she-devil... she is a witch... she has a bad -heart.... - -John Speaker - -[_To Mary Speaker, pointing to Cousin Fanny, who is shaking tablet out -of bottle; she drops one and gropes for it, and shakes another more -carefully, with air of childish triumph._] - -Mary, what _can_ I do? She _will_ have it! And if I struggle with her -it will kill her! She is too weak to struggle! It will kill her to -struggle! And if I let her take the tablet it may do her harm! - -Mary Speaker - -Perhaps the tablet won't do her any harm, John. - -John Thinker - -It will kill her as surely as she sits there. I know it will and _you_ -know it will. - -John Speaker - -Maybe it won't hurt her, Mary... but we can never tell.... I'm afraid... -I'm afraid it really _might_ harm her.... - -Cousin Fanny [_Putting tablet into her mouth_.] - -There! I'm going to sleep, now.... I'm going to sleep in spite of you. -You hate me--both of you hate me--but you can't prevent me going to -sleep! - -Mary Speaker - -She's taken it, John. Do you suppose she really _did_ have one before? - -John Speaker [To Cousin Fanny.] - -Cousin Fanny, you _didn't_ have one before, did you? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_She has closed her eyes; she opens them and rocks back and forth, -laughing foolishly_.] - -Yes! - -John Speaker - -[_Taking out handkerchief; mopping fore-head_.] - -I don't believe she did. She says she did, but she doesn't know. - -Cousin Fanny [_Rocking and laughing sillily._] - -Yes, I did! You know I did! - -John Speaker - -She doesn't know.... She doesn't know whether she did or not.... She -hasn't really been right in her mind for a long time. I don't think she -had one before. - -[_As he speaks Cousin Fanny ceases rocking and leans hack in her chair, -closing her eyes. From this time on the two Johns and the two Marys -stare at her intently, never taking their eyes off of her while they -speak._] - -John Thinker - -She _did_ have one before. - -Mary Thinker - -I _know_ she did. - -John Thinker - -Will she die? Will I see her die? I should hate to see her die! - -John Speaker - -She _would_ have that tablet... she WOULD have it. If I had taken it -away from her by force it would have killed her; the struggle would have -killed her. - -John Thinker - -Will I see her die? Will she die? - -John Speaker - -I let her have it to save her life... it was to save her life that I -quit struggling with her. - -John Thinker - -If she dies... but _will_ she die? - -Mary Thinker - -She will die! - -Cousin Fanny - -[_Rousing from her lethargy slightly; open-ing her eyes._] - -John... Mary.... You really love me, don't you? Don't you? You really... -really... - -[_Sinks back, with head slightly on one side and eyes closed again; does -not move after this._] - -Mary Speaker - -[_They all speak with lowered voices now._] She is asleep. She really -needed the tablet. It was a mercy she got it. She was nervous and -overwrought, and it has put her to sleep. - -John Speaker - -Yes, it was a mercy she got it. She was nervous and overwrought, and it -has put her to sleep. - -... And you know, Mary, she _would_ have t... if I had _struggled_ with -her, she would have _died!_ A struggle would have killed her. - -John Thinker - -And now she will die because there was no struggle. - -Mary Thinker - -She will die. - -John Speaker - -Is she breathing quite naturally, Mary? - -Mary Speaker Quite. Quite naturally. - -Mary Thinker _Death_ is quite natural. - -John Thinker And she is dying. - -John Speaker - -Well, if she had struggled and died... if she had died through any fault -of mine... I would always have reproached myself.... - -Mary Speaker - -You have nothing to reproach yourself for. You need never reproach -yourself with regard to her.... - -John Thinker - -She was old. She was very old. She will be better dead. - -Mary Thinker She is not quite dead. - -John Speaker - -I don't like the way she is breathing.... She is scarcely breathing.... -She doesn't seem to be breathing at all! - -Mary Speaker Old people breathe very quietly. - -Mary Thinker Old people die very quietly. - -John Thinker And she is dying. - -Mary Thinker - -She is dead! - -John Thinker - -Mary... Mary... is she breathing at all? Mary Speaker - -Call the maid.... Send for the doctor.... Call the maid! - -John Thinker It is too late for any doctor. - -Mary Thinker - -Too late! - -John Speaker - -Mary, Mary.... My God... she can't be _dead!_ - -Mary Speaker [_Bending above her._] - -John, dear... try to bear it bravely... but... but I'm afraid she is.... -Poor Cousin Fanny has left us! - -John Speaker - -[_Rapidly_.] - -Poor Cousin Fanny.... Poor Cousin Fanny.... Poor Cousin Fanny.... - -John Thinker - -Fifteen thousand a year... fifteen thousand a year.... Why do I think of -that?... But I can't help it.... I can't help thinking of it.... - -Mary Speaker I'll go get the maid. - -[_Going_.] - -John Speaker - -Stop.... Wait, Mary.... Don't call her yet... get her presently.... I -don't want to be alone just now.... I'm in a kind of fog.... - -[_Lights go out as he says this; he continues in the darkness._] - -I'm all in the dark. - -[_Lights on again_.] - -[_In the interim, which is very short, Cousin Fanny has gone over to the -room on the left in which are John and Mary Thinker, and sits in chair -corresponding to one which she has just left._] - -[_She is silent and motionless, but her head is lifted; her eyes are -open; she is alive again. When lights go on again, John and Mary Speaker -still stand before chair she has left as if she were in it; it is -apparent that they believe themselves to be still looking at the old -woman._] - -Mary Speaker - -Nonsense... all in the dark?... What do you mean by all in the dark? - -John Speaker - -Nothing... nothing now. It has passed.... - -[Pointing to chair where Cousin Fanny was.] She died with a smile on her -face! - -John Thinker - -But she isn't there.... Cousin Fanny isn't there. - -... She's here.... She's over here with us... over here with _us_! - -Mary Thinker - -Here with us... over here, forever, now. - -Mary Speaker - -[_Holding John Speaker's hand and gazing at vacant chair_.] - -How beautiful she looks! She is at rest, now! She is better off so. -Better dead. She is better at peace! - -John Thinker - -[_Violently; starting towards other room_.] - -My God. I'm going to stop it... stop it... stop that lying... stop it -at any cost.... I'm going to stop that pretending... that damned -pretending.... - -Mary Thinker - -[_Quickly getting in front of him; holding him back._] - -What are you going to do? - -John Thinker - -Stop it, I tell you.... Tell the truth... stop that pretense.... - -[_Moves towards the other room. As he does so, Mary Speaker and John -Speaker, for the first time become aware of John and Mary Thinker, and -shrink back in terror and alarm, clinging together, confused, convicted, -abject, retreating, powerless; Cousin Fanny leaps in front of John -Thinker at same instant, and bars him back, saying:_] - -Cousin Fanny - -Stop! - -John Thinker - -Why? I _will_ stop this pretense... Why not? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_All four of the others lean forward and hang eagerly upon her words_.] - -You must not. It can't be done. It is the foundation upon which your -society rests. It is necessary..._ over there!_ - -CURTAIN - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Carter, and Other People, by Don Marquis - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE *** - -***** This file should be named 51913-8.txt or 51913-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/9/1/51913/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Carter, and Other People - -Author: Don Marquis - -Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51913] -Last Updated: March 13, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - -</pre> - - <div style="height: 8em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h1> - CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE - </h1> - <h2> - By Don Marquis - </h2> - <h4> - D. Appleton and Co. - </h4> - <h5> - 1921 - </h5> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <p> - <b>CONTENTS</b> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_FORE"> FOREWORD </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I.-Carter </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II—Old Man Murtrie </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III.—Never Say Die </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV.—McDermott </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V.—Looney the Mutt </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI—Kale </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII—Bubbles </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII.—The Chances of the Street </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX.—The Professor's Awakening </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> X.—The Penitent </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XI.—The Locked Box </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XII.—Behind the Curtain </a> - </p> - <p class="toc"> - <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIII.—Words and Thoughts </a> - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_FORE" id="link2H_FORE"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - FOREWORD - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> wish to - acknowledge my indebtedness to the editors of several magazines for - permission to reprint the following stories in book form. “Carter” was - originally published in <i>Harpers Monthly Magazine</i> under the title - “The Mulatto.” - </p> - <p> - “Death and Old Man Murtrie” was printed in The New <i>Republic</i>; others - were first brought out in <i>Everybody's Magazine, Short Stories, Putnam's - Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post</i>. “The Penitent” was originally - printed in <i>The Pictorial Review</i>, with the title “The Healer and the - Penitent.” The plot of this story is taken from two poems, one by Browning - and one by Owen Meredith. Happening to read these two poems, one after the - other, I was struck by the fact that Owen Meredith had unwittingly written - what was in effect a continuation of a situation invented by Browning; the - plot of the one poem, telescoped into the plot of the other, made in - effect a complete short story. I pasted the two situations together, so to - speak, inventing an ending of my own, and had a short story which neither - Browning nor Owen Meredith could claim as his-and which I scarcely have - the nerve to claim as mine. And yet this story, taken piecemeal from the - two poets, gave me more trouble than anything else I ever tried to write; - it was all there, apparently; but to transpose the story into a modern - American setting was a difficult job. It is my only essay in conscious - plagiarism-I hate to call it plagiarism, but what else could one call it?—and - I give you my word that it is easier to invent than to plagiarize. - </p> - <p> - The one-act play, “Words and Thoughts,” was written ten years ago-in - 1911-and has been offered to every theatrical manager in America, and - refused by them all. I still believe in it as a thing that could be acted - with effect, and I am determined to get it read, even if I cannot get it - produced. The fact that it has been going the rounds of theatrical - managers for ten years is no indication that it has ever been read. - </p> - <p> - Don Marquis - </p> - <p> - New York - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - I.-Carter - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>arter was not - exactly a negro, but he was a “nigger.” Seven drops of his blood out of - every eight were Caucasian. The eighth, being African, classified him. The - white part of him despised and pitied the black part. The black part hated - the white part. Consequently, wherever Carter went he carried his own hell - along inside of him. - </p> - <p> - Carter began to learn that he was a nigger very early in life. Nigger - children are not left long in doubt anywhere, and especially in the South. - Carter first saw the light—and the shadows—of day in Atlanta. - The color line itself, about which one hears so much talk, seemed to run - along one end of the alley in which he was born. It was an alley with a - gutter and a great deal of mud in it. At the corner, where it gave into a - little narrow street not much better than an alley itself, the mud was the - thickest, deepest, and best adapted to sculptural purposes. But in the - little street lived a number of white families. They were most of them - mill hands, and a numerous spawn of skinny children, little “crackers,” - with faces white and sad even from babyhood, disputed the mud with the - nigger children. Nigger babies of five, four, three, and even two, - understood quite well that this most desirable mud, even though it was in - the nigger alley, was claimed by the white babies as <i>their</i> mud. It - was in every way a more attractive sort of mud than any in the little - street proper; and juvenile race riots were of almost hourly occurrence—skirmishes - in which the very dogs took part. For the dogs grasped the situation as - clearly as did the children; a “nigger” dog, even though he may have - started in life as a white man's dog, soon gets a certain look about him. - </p> - <p> - So there was no chance for Carter to escape the knowledge that he was a - nigger. But it was with a thrill that he perceived in his youthful - excursions from the home alley, that he was sometimes mistaken for a white - child. He was so white in color that one could not tell he was a nigger at - a casual glance. - </p> - <p> - As he grew up, he made another discovery that elated and embittered him - still more. He found out who his father was—or rather, who his - father had been, since he never saw that gentleman. The white blood in - Carter's veins was no common ichor. Because white people seldom speak of - these things it does not follow that they are not known pretty generally - among the negroes. They are, in fact, discussed. - </p> - <p> - Carter went to school; he made the further discovery that he had brains—“white - man's brains” is the way he put it to himself. Given the opportunity, he - told himself, he could go as far as the average white man—perhaps - further than the average. The white man's standard, nigger though he was, - was still the standard by which he must measure himself. But the - opportunity! Even as the youth prepared himself for it he perceived, - hopelessly, that it would be denied him. - </p> - <p> - As he matured he began to feel a strange, secret pride in that white - family whose blood he shared. He familiarized himself with its genealogy. - There is many a courtier who cannot trace his ancestry as far back as - Carter could. One of his forebears had signed Magna Charta; several had - fought in the Revolutionary War. There had been a United States Senator in - the family, and a Confederate General. At times, feeling the vigorous - impulse of hereditary instinct and ambitions, Carter looked upon himself - as all white man, but never for long, nor to any purpose. The - consciousness of his negro blood pulled him down again. - </p> - <p> - But, as he grew up, he ceased to herd with black negroes; he scorned them. - He crept about the world cursing it and himself—an unfortunate and - bitter creature that had no place; unfortunate and bitter, cursed with an - intellect, denied that mitigation that might have come with a full share - of the negro jovialty of disposition, forever unreconciled. - </p> - <p> - There was one member of that white family from which he drew so much of - his blood whom Carter particularly admired. Willoughby Howard was about - Carter's own age, and he was Carter's half-brother. Howard did not - distinguish Carter from any other mulatto; probably did not know of his - existence. But as Howard reached manhood, and, through virtue of his - wealth and standing and parts, began to attain an excellent place in the - world, his rise was watched by Carter with a strange intensity of emotion. - Carter in some occult way identified himself with the career of Willoughby - Howard—sometimes he almost worshiped Willoughby Howard, and then he - hated him; he envied him and raged over him with the same breath. - </p> - <p> - But mostly, as the isolation of his own condition, ate into his soul, he - raged over himself; he pitied himself; he hated himself. Out of the - turmoil of his spirit arose the one despairing cry, Oh, to be white, - white, <i>white!</i> - </p> - <p> - Many a night he lay awake until daybreak, measuring the slow minutes with - the ceaseless iteration of that useless prayer: Only to be white! O God, - for <i>one little year of being white!</i> - </p> - <p> - Fruitless hours of prayers and curses! - </p> - <p> - Carter went North. He went to New York. But the North, which affects to - promise so much to the negro, in a large, loose, general way, does not - perform in the same degree. There was only one thing which Carter would - have thanked any one for performing; it was the one thing that could never - be performed—he wanted to be made white. Sometimes, indeed, from the - depths of his despair, he cried out that he wanted to be altogether black; - but in his soul he did not really want that. - </p> - <p> - Nevertheless, at several different periods he yielded to temptation and - “went over to the whites.” In the South he could not have done this - without discovery, in spite of the color of his skin. But in the Northern - cities, with their enormous numbers of aliens, all more or less strange to - the American eye, Carter found no great difficulty in passing as white. He - “looked a little foreign” to the casual glance; that was all. - </p> - <p> - But if there was no great difficulty in it, there was no great - satisfaction in it, either. In fact, it only made him the more bitter. - Others might think him a white man, but he knew that he was a nigger. - </p> - <p> - The incident which sent him back South, resolved to be a nigger, and to - live and die among the niggers, might not have affected another in his - condition just as it did Carter. But to him it showed conclusively that - his destiny was not a matter of environment so much as a question of - himself. - </p> - <p> - He fell in love. The girl was a waitress in a cheap restaurant near the - barber shop where Carter worked. She was herself a product of the East - Side, struggling upward from the slums; partly Italian, with some Oriental - strain in her that had given the least perceptible obliqueness to her eyes—one - of those rare hybrid products which give the thinker pause and make him - wonder what the word “American” will signify a century from now; a - creature with very red lips and very black eyebrows; she seemed to know - more than she really did; she had a kind of naïve charm, a sort of - allurement, without actual beauty; and her name had been Anglicized into - Mary. - </p> - <p> - And she loved Carter. This being, doomed from the cradle to despair, had - his moment of romance. But even in his intoxication there was no hope; his - elation was embittered and perplexed. He was tempted not to tell the girl - that he was a nigger. But if he married her, and did not tell her, perhaps - the first child would tell her. It might look more of a nigger than he - did. - </p> - <p> - But if he told her, would she marry a nigger? He decided he would tell - her. Perhaps his conscience had less to do with this decision than the - fatalism of his temperament. - </p> - <p> - So he made his revelation one Sunday evening, as they walked along the - boardwalk from Coney Island to Brighton. To him, it was a tremendous - moment. For days he had been revolving in his mind the phrases he would - use; he had been rehearsing his plea; in his imagination he saw something - spectacular, something histrionic, in his confession. - </p> - <p> - “Mary,” he said, as they sat down on a bench on the beach, “there is - something I think I ought to tell you before we get married.” - </p> - <p> - The girl turned toward him her big, sleepy, dark eyes, which always seemed - to see and understand so much more than they really did, and looked away - again. - </p> - <p> - “I ought to tell you,” he said—and as he said it, staring out to - sea, he was so imposed upon by the importance of the moment to himself - that he almost felt as if the sea listened and the waves paused—“I - ought to tell you that I have negro blood in my veins.” - </p> - <p> - She was silent. There was a moment before he dared look at her; he could - not bear to read his doom in her eyes. But finally he did muster up - courage enough to turn his head. - </p> - <p> - The girl was placidly chewing gum and gazing at an excursion vessel that - was making a landing at one of the piers. - </p> - <p> - He thought she had not heard. “Mary,” he repeated, “I have negro blood in - my veins.” - </p> - <p> - “Uh-huh,” said she. “I gotcha the first time, Steve! Say, I wonder if we - couldn't take the boat back to town? Huh? Whatcha say?” - </p> - <p> - He looked at her almost incredulous. She had understood, and yet she had - not shrunk away from him! He examined her with a new interest; his - personal drama, in which she, perforce, must share, seemed to have made no - impression upon her whatsoever. - </p> - <p> - “Do you mean,” he said, hesitatingly, “that it will—that it won't - make any difference to you? That you can marry me, that you <i>will</i> - marry me, in spite of—of—in spite of what I am?” - </p> - <p> - “Gee! but ain't you the solemn one!” said the girl, taking hold of her gum - and “stringing” it out from her lips. “Whatcha s'pose I care for a little - thing like that?” - </p> - <p> - He had looked for a sort of dramatic “situation”; and, behold, there was - none! There was none simply because the girl had no vantage point from - which to look at his life and hers. He had negro blood in his veins—and - she simply did not care one way or the other! - </p> - <p> - He felt no elation, no exultation; he believed that she <i>should</i> have - cared; whether her love was great enough to pardon that in him or not, she - should have felt it as a thing that <i>needed</i> pardon. - </p> - <p> - As he stared at the girl, and she continued to chew her gum, he swiftly - and subtly revised his estimate of her; and in his new appraisement there - was more than a tinge of disgust. And for a moment he became altogether a - white man in his judgment of the thing that was happening; he looked at - the situation as a patrician of the South might have looked at it; the - seven eighths of his blood which was white spoke: - </p> - <p> - “By God!” he said, suddenly leaping to his feet and flinging aside the - startled hand which the girl put out toward him, “I can't have anything to - do with a woman who'd marry a nigger!” - </p> - <p> - So Carter went back to Atlanta. And, curiously enough, he stepped from the - train almost into the midst of a strange and terrible conflict of which - the struggle in his individual breast was, in a sense, the type and the - symbol. - </p> - <p> - It was a Saturday night in September, an evening on which there began a - memorable and sanguinary massacre of negroes; an event which has been - variously explained and analyzed, but of which, perhaps, the underlying - causes will never be completely understood. - </p> - <p> - There was riot in the streets, a whirlwind of passion which lashed the - town and lifted up the trivial souls of men and spun them round and round, - and passed and left the stains of blood behind. White men were making - innocent negroes suffer for the brutal crimes of guilty negroes. It had - been a hot summer; scarcely a day had passed during July and August - without bringing to the newspapers from somewhere in Georgia a report of a - negro assault upon some white woman. A blind, undiscriminating anger - against the whole negro race had been growing and growing. And when, on - that Saturday afternoon, the newspapers reported four more crimes, in - rapid succession, all in or near Atlanta, the cumulative rage burst into a - storm. - </p> - <p> - There was no danger for Carter in the streets; more than a hasty glance - was necessary to spy out his negro taint. He stood in a doorway, in the - heart of the business district of the town, and watched the wild work that - went on in a large, irregular plaza, where five streets come together and - all the car lines in the place converge. From this roughly triangular - plaza leads Decatur Street, at one time notorious throughout the South for - its negro dives and gambling-dens. - </p> - <p> - Now and then Carter could hear the crack of a pistol, close at hand or far - away; and again some fleeing negro would start from a place of temporary - concealment, at the approach of a mob that beat its way along a street, - and make a wild dash for safety, as a rabbit startled from the sedge-grass - scurries to the brush. There was not one mob, but several; the different - bands united, split up, and reunited, as the shifting winds of madness - blew. The plaza, with arc lights all about it, was the brilliantly - illuminated stage on which more than one scene of that disgusting - melodrama was played out; from some dim hell of gloom and clamor to the - north or east would rush a shouting group that whirled and swayed beneath - the lights, dancing like flecks of soot in their brightness, to disappear - in the gloom again, shouting, cursing, and gesticulating, down one of the - thoroughfares to the west or south. And to Carter, in whose heart there - waxed a fearful turmoil of emotions, even as the two races clashed along - the echoing streets, there was a strange element of unreality about it - all; or, rather, the night was dreadful with that superior reality which - makes so much more vivid than waking life the intense experience of - dreams. Carter thrilled; he shook; he was torn with terror and pity and - horror and hatred. - </p> - <p> - No white man felt all that Carter felt that night; nor yet any negro. For - he was both, and he was neither; and he beheld that conflict which was - forever active in his own nature dramatized by fate and staged with a - thousand actors in the lighted proscenium at his feet. - </p> - <p> - This thought struck Carter himself, and he turned toward another man who - had paused in the doorway, with no clear intention, but perhaps with the - vague impulse of addressing him, as a point of solid contact and relief - from the sense of hurrying nightmare that possessed both the streets and - his own spirit. - </p> - <p> - Startled, he saw that the other man was Willoughby Howard. Carter - hesitated, and then advanced a step. But whatever he had to say was - interrupted by a crowd that swept past them from Decatur Street in pursuit - of a panting negro. The fleeing colored man was struck a dozen times; he - fell at the street corner near them, and the mob surged on again into the - darkness beyond, already in full chase of another quarry—all but one - man, who left the mob and ran back as if to assure himself that the - prostrate negro was really dead. - </p> - <p> - This was a short man, a very short man, a dwarf with a big head too heavy - for him, and little bandy legs—legs so inadequate that he wabbled - like an overfed poodle when he ran. Carter had seen him twice before that - night, dodging in and out among the feet of the rioters like an excited - cur, stumbling, falling, trodden upon; a being with bloodshot eyes and - matted hair, hoarse voice and menacing fist, drunken and staggering with - blood lust; the very Gnome of Riot himself come up from some foul cave and - howling in the streets. “Kill them! Kill them!” he would cry, and then - shake with cackling laughter. But he was only valiant when there was; no - danger. As he approached the negro who lay upon the ground, and bent over - him, Willoughby Howard stepped down from the doorway and aimed a blow at - the creature with a cane. The blow missed, but the dwarf ran shrieking - down Decatur Street. - </p> - <p> - Howard bent over the negro. The negro stirred; he was not dead. Howard - turned toward Carter and said: - </p> - <p> - “He's alive! Help me get him out of the street.” - </p> - <p> - Together they lifted the wounded man, moving him toward the curbstone. He - groaned and twisted, and they laid him down. Howard poured whisky into him - from a pocket flask, and a little later he managed to struggle to a - sitting posture on the curb, looking up at them with dazed eyes and a - bloody face. - </p> - <p> - Howard took his slow gaze from the negro and covered his face with his - hands. - </p> - <p> - Carter watched him. - </p> - <p> - Of all men in the world this was the one whom Carter most honored and most - loved—honored and loved, while he envied; he was the only man, - perhaps, that could have touched Carter through his crust of bitterness. - Carter listened with strained attention for what Howard would say, as if - with some premonition that the words would be the cue for the most vital - action of his life. - </p> - <p> - “My God! My God!” said Willoughby Howard, “will this thing never stop?” - And then he straightened himself and turned toward the shadow into which - Carter had retired, and there was the glow and glory of a large idea on - his face; the thought of a line of men never lacking, when once aroused, - in the courage to do and die for a principle or a human need. “There is - one way,” he cried, stretching out his hands impulsively to Carter, and - not knowing to whom or to what manner of man he spoke—“there is one - way to make them pause and think! If two of us white men of the better - class offer our lives for these poor devils—die in their defense!—the - mob will halt; the crowd will think; we can end it! Will you do it, with - me? Will you do it?” - </p> - <p> - Two of us white men of the better class! Willoughby Howard had taken him - for a white man! - </p> - <p> - It was like an accolade. A light blazed through the haunted caverns of his - soul; he swelled with a vast exultation. - </p> - <p> - Willoughby Howard had taken him for a white man! Then, by God, he would be - one! Since he was nothing in this life, he could at least die—and in - his death he would be a white man! Nay, more:—he would die shoulder - to shoulder with one of that family whose blood he shared. He would show - that he, too, could shed that blood for an idea or a principle! For - humanity! At the thought he could feel it singing in his veins. Oh, to be - white, white, white! The dreams and the despairs of all his miserable and - hampered life passed before him in a whirl, and now the cry was answered! - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” he said, lifting his head, and rising at that instant into a larger - thing than he had ever been, “I will stand by you. I will die with you.” - And under his breath he added—“my brother.” - </p> - <p> - They had not long to wait. In the confused horror of that night things - happened quickly. Even as Carter spoke the wounded negro struggled to his - feet with a scarce articulate cry of alarm, for around the corner swept a - mob, and the dwarf with matted hair was in the lead. He had come back with - help to make sure of his job. - </p> - <p> - With the negro cowering behind them, the white man and the mulatto stepped - forth to face the mob. Their attitude made their intention obvious. - </p> - <p> - “Don't be a damned fool, Willoughby Howard,” said a voice from the crowd, - “or you may get hurt yourself.” And with the words there was a rush, and - the three were in the midst of the clamoring madness, the mob dragging the - negro from his two defenders. - </p> - <p> - “Be careful—don't hurt Willoughby Howard!” said the same voice - again. Willoughby turned, and, recognizing the speaker as an acquaintance, - with a sudden access of scorn and fury and disgust, struck him across the - mouth. The next moment his arms were pinioned, and he was lifted and flung - away from the negro he had been fighting to protect by half a dozen men. - </p> - <p> - “You fools! You fools!” he raged, struggling toward the center of the - crowd again, “you're killing a white man there. An innocent white man——— - Do you stop at nothing? You're killing a <i>white man</i>, I say!” - </p> - <p> - “White man?” said the person whom he had struck, and who appeared to bear - him little resentment for the blow. “Who's a white man? Not Jerry Carter - here! He wasn't any white man. I've known him since he was a kid—he - was just one of those yaller niggers.” - </p> - <p> - And Carter heard it as he died. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - II—Old Man Murtrie - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>ld Man Murtrie - never got any fresh air at all, except on Sundays on his way to and from - church. He lived, slept, cooked and ate back of the prescription case in - his little dismal drug store in one of the most depressing quarters of - Brooklyn. The store was dimly lighted by gas and it was always damp and - suggested a tomb. Drifting feebly about in the pale and cold and faintly - greenish radiance reflected from bottles and show cases, Old Man Murtrie - with his bloodless face and dead white hair and wisps of whisker was like - a ghost that has not managed to get free from the neighborhood of a - sepulcher where its body lies disintegrating. - </p> - <p> - People said that Old Man Murtrie was nearly a hundred years old, but this - was not true; he was only getting along towards ninety. The neighborhood, - however, seemed a little impatient with him for not dying. Some persons - suggested that perhaps he really had been dead for a long time, and did - not know it. If so, they thought, it might be kind to tell him about it. - </p> - <p> - But Old Man Murtrie was not dead, any more than he was alive. And Death - himself, who has his moments of impatience, began to get worried about Old - Man Murtrie. It was time, Death thought, that he was dead, since he looked - so dead; and Death had said so, both to God and to the Devil. - </p> - <p> - “But I don't want to garner him, naturally,” Death would say, “till I know - which one of you is to have him. He's got to go somewhere, you know.” - </p> - <p> - God and Death and the Devil used to sit on the prescription counter in a - row, now and then, and watch Old Man Murtrie as he slept in his humble - little cot back there, and discuss him. - </p> - <p> - God would look at Old Man Murtrie's pale little Adam's Apple sticking up - in the faint gaslight, and moving as he snored—moving feebly, for - even his snores were feeble—and say, with a certain distaste: - </p> - <p> - “I don't want him. He can't get into Heaven.” - </p> - <p> - And the Devil would look at his large, weak, characterless nose;—a - nose so big that it might have suggested force on any one but Old Man - Murtrie—and think what a sham it was, and how effectually all its - contemptible effort to be a real nose was exposed in Old Man Murtrie's - sleep. And the Devil would say: - </p> - <p> - “I don't want him. He can't get into Hell.” - </p> - <p> - And then Death would say, querulously: “But he can't go on living forever. - My reputation is suffering.” - </p> - <p> - “You should take him,” the Devil would say to God. “He goes to church on - Sunday, and he is the most meek and pious and humble and prayerful person - in all Brooklyn, and perhaps in all the world.” - </p> - <p> - “But he takes drugs,” God would say. “You should take him, because he is a - drug fiend.” - </p> - <p> - “He takes drugs,” the Devil would admit, “but that doesn't make him a <i>fiend</i>. - You have to do something besides take drugs to be a fiend. You will permit - me to have my own notions, I am sure, on what constitutes a fiend.” - </p> - <p> - “You ought to forgive him the drugs for the sake of his piety,” the Devil - would say. “And taking drugs is his only vice. He doesn't drink, or smoke - tobacco, or use profane language, or gamble. And he doesn't run after - women.” - </p> - <p> - “You ought to forgive him the piety for the sake of the drugs,” God would - tell the Devil. - </p> - <p> - “I never saw such a pair as you two,” Death would say querulously. - “Quibble, quibble, quibble!—while Old Man Murtrie goes on and on - living! He's lived so long that he is affecting death rates and insurance - tables, all by himself, and you know what that does to my reputation.” - </p> - <p> - And Death would stoop over and run his finger caressingly across Old Man - Murtrie's throat, as the Old Man slept. Whereupon Old Man Murtrie would - roll over on his back and moan in his sleep and gurgle. - </p> - <p> - “He has wanted to be a cheat all his life,” God would say to the Devil. - “He has always had the impulse to give short weight and substitute - inferior drugs in his prescriptions and overcharge children who were sent - on errands to his store. If that isn't sin I don't know what sin is. You - should take him.” - </p> - <p> - “I admit he has had those impulses,” the Devil would say to God. “But he - has never yielded to them. In my opinion having those impulses and - conquering them makes him a great deal more virtuous than if he'd never - had 'em. No one who is as virtuous as all that can get into Hell.” - </p> - <p> - “I never saw such a pair,” Death would grumble. “Can't you agree with each - other about anything?” - </p> - <p> - “He didn't abstain from his vices because of any courage,” God would say. - “He abstained simply because he was afraid. It wasn't virtue in him; it - was cowardice.” - </p> - <p> - “The fear of the Lord,” murmured the Devil, dreamily, “is the beginning of - all wisdom.” - </p> - <p> - “But not necessarily the end of it,” God would remark. - </p> - <p> - “Argue, argue, argue,” Death would say, “and here's Old Man Murtrie still - alive! I'm criticized about the way I do my work, but no one has any idea - of the vacillation and inefficiency I have to contend with! I never saw - such a pair as you two to vacillate!” - </p> - <p> - Sometimes Old Man Murtrie would wake up and turn over on his couch and see - God and Death and the Devil sitting in a row on the prescription counter, - looking at him. But he always persuaded himself that it was a sort of - dream, induced by the “medicine” he took; and he would take another dose - of his “medicine” and go back to sleep again. He never spoke to them when - he waked, but just lay on his cot and stared at them; and if they spoke to - him he would pretend to himself that they had not spoken. For it was - absurd to think that God and Death and the Devil could really be sitting - there, in the dim greenish gaslight, among all the faintly radiant - bottles, talking to each other and looking at him; and so Old Man Murtrie - would not believe it. - </p> - <p> - When he first began taking his “medicine” Old Man Murtrie took it in the - form of a certain patent preparation which was full of opium. He wanted - the opium more and more after he started, but he pretended to himself that - he did not know there was much opium in that medicine. Then, when a - federal law banished that kind of medicine from the markets, he took to - making it for his own use. He would not take opium outright, for that - would be to acknowledge to himself that he was an opium eater; he thought - eating opium was a sin, and he thought of himself as sinless. But to make - the medicine with the exact formula that its manufacturers had used, - before they had been compelled to shut up shop, and use it, did not seem - to him to be the same thing at all as being an opium eater. And yet, after - the law was passed, abolishing the medicine, he would not sell to any one - else what he made for himself; his conscience would not allow him to do - so. Therefore, he must have known that he was eating opium at the same - time he tried to fool himself about it. - </p> - <p> - God and the Devil used to discuss the ethics of this attitude towards the - “medicine,” and Old Man Murtrie would sometimes pretend to be asleep and - would listen to them. - </p> - <p> - “He knows it is opium all right,” God would say. “He is just lying to - himself about it. He ought to go to Hell. No one that lies to himself that - way can get into Heaven.” - </p> - <p> - “He's pretending for the sake of society in general and for the sake of - religion,” the Devil would say. “If he admitted to himself that it was - opium and if he let the world know that he took opium, it might bring - discredit on the church that he loves so well. He might become a stumbling - block to others who are seeking salvation, and who seek it through the - church. He is willing to sacrifice himself so as not to hamper others in - their religious life. For my part, I think it is highly honorable of him, - and highly virtuous. No person as moral as that in his instincts can get - into Hell.” - </p> - <p> - “Talk, talk, talk!” Death would say. “The trouble with you two is that - neither one of you wants Old Man Murtrie around where you will have to - look at him through all eternity, and each of you is trying to put it on - moral grounds.” - </p> - <p> - And Old Man Murtrie kept on living and praying and being pious and wanting - to be bad and not daring to and taking his medicine and being generally as - ineffectual in the world either for good or evil as a butterfly in a - hurricane. - </p> - <p> - But things took a turn. There was a faded-looking blonde woman with - stringy hair by the name of Mable who assisted Old Man Murtrie in the - store, keeping his books and waiting on customers, and so forth. She was - unmarried, and one day she announced to him that she was going to have a - child. - </p> - <p> - Old Man Murtrie had often looked at her with a recollection, a dim and - faint remembrance, of the lusts of his youth and of his middle age. In his - youth and middle age he had lusted after many women, but he had never let - any of them know it, because he was afraid, and he had called his fears - virtue, and had really believed that he was virtuous. - </p> - <p> - “Whom do you suspect?” asked Old Man Murtrie, leering at Mable like a - wraith blown down the ages from the dead adulteries of ruined Babylon. - </p> - <p> - “Who?” cried Mable, an unlessoned person, but with a cruel, instinctive - humor. “Who but you!” - </p> - <p> - She had expected Old Man Murtrie to be outraged at her ridiculous joke, - and, because she was unhappy herself, had anticipated enjoying his - astounded protests. But it was she who was astounded. Old Man Murtrie's - face was blank and his eyes were big for a moment, and then he chuckled; a - queer little cackling chuckle. And when she went out he opened the door - for her and cocked his head and cackled again. - </p> - <p> - It gave Mable an idea. She reflected that he took so much opium that he - might possibly be led to believe the incredible, and she might get some - money out of him. So the next evening she brought her mother and her - brother to the store and accused him. - </p> - <p> - Old Man Murtrie chuckled and... <i>and admitted it!</i> Whether he - believed that it could be true or not, Mable and her people were unable to - determine. But they made the tactical error of giving him his choice - between marriage and money, and he chose matrimony. - </p> - <p> - And then Old Man Murtrie was suddenly seized with a mania for confession. - God and Death and the Devil used to listen to him nights, and they - wondered over him, and began to change their minds about him, a little. He - confessed to the officials of his church. He confessed to all the people - whom he knew. He insisted on making a confession, a public confession, in - the church itself and asking for the prayers of the preacher and - congregation for his sin, and telling them that he was going to atone by - matrimony, and asking for a blessing on the wedding. - </p> - <p> - And one night, full of opium, while he-was babbling about it in his sleep, - God and Death and the Devil sat on the prescription counter again and - looked at him and listened to his ravings and speculated. - </p> - <p> - “I'm going to have him,” said the Devil. “Any one who displays such - conspicuous bad taste that he goes around confessing that he has ruined a - woman ought to go to Hell.” - </p> - <p> - “You don't want him for that reason,” said God. “And you know you don't. - You want him because you admire the idea of adultery, and think that now - he is worthy of a place in Hell. You are rather entertained by Old Man - Murtrie, and want him around now.” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” said the Devil, “suppose I admit that is true! Have you any - counter claim?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” said God. “I am going to take Old Man Murtrie into Heaven. He knows - he is not the father of the child that is going to be born, but he has - deliberately assumed the responsibility lest it be born fatherless, and I - think that is a noble act.” - </p> - <p> - “Rubbish!” said the Devil. “That isn't the reason you want him. You want - him because of the paternal instinct he displays. It flatters you!” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” said God, “why not? The paternal instinct is another name for the - great creative force of the universe. I have been known by many names in - many countries... they called me Osiris, the All-Father, in Egypt, and - they called me Jehovah in Palestine, and they called me Zeus and Brahm... - but always they recognized me as the Father. And this instinct for - fatherliness appeals to me. Old Man Murtrie shall come to Heaven.” - </p> - <p> - “Such a pair as you two,” said Death, gloomily, “I never did see! Discuss - and discuss, but never get anywhere! And all the time Old Man Murtrie goes - on living.” - </p> - <p> - And then Death added: - </p> - <p> - “Why not settle this matter once and for all, right now? Why not wake Old - Man Murtrie up and let him decide?” - </p> - <p> - “Decide?” asked the Devil. - </p> - <p> - “Yes,—whether he wants to go to Hell or to Heaven.” - </p> - <p> - “I imagine,” said God, “that if we do that there can be no question as to - which place he would rather go to.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I don't know,” said the Devil. “Some people come to Hell quite - willingly. I've been to Heaven myself, you know, and I can quite - understand why. Are you afraid to have Old Man Murtrie make the choice?” - </p> - <p> - “Wake him up, Death, wake him up,” said God. “It's unusual to allow people - to know that they are making their own decision—though all of them, - in a sense, do make it—but wake him up, Death, and we'll see.” - </p> - <p> - So Death prodded Old Man Murtrie in the ribs, and they asked him. For a - long time he thought it was only opium, but when he finally understood - that it was really God and Death and the Devil who were there, and that it - was really they who had often been there before, he was very much - frightened. He was so frightened he couldn't choose. - </p> - <p> - “I'll leave it to you, I'll leave it to you,” said Old Man Murtrie. “Who - am I that I should set myself up to decide?” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” said God, getting a little angry, perhaps, “if you don't want to - go to Heaven, Murtrie, you don't have to. But you've been, praying to go - to Heaven, and all that sort of thing, for seventy or eighty years, and I - naturally thought you were in earnest. But I'm through with you... you can - go to Hell.” - </p> - <p> - “Oh! Oh! Oh!” moaned Old Man Murtrie. - </p> - <p> - “No,” said the Devil, “I've changed my mind, too. My distaste for Murtrie - has returned to me. I don't want him around. I won't have him in Hell.” - </p> - <p> - “See here, now!” cried Death. “You two are starting it all over again. I - won't have it, so I won't! You aren't fair to Murtrie, and you aren't fair - to me! This matter has got to be settled, and settled to-night!” - </p> - <p> - “Well, then,” said God, “settle it. I've ceased to care one way or - another.” - </p> - <p> - “I will not,” said Death, “I know my job, and I stick to my job. One of - you two has got to settle it.” - </p> - <p> - “Toss a coin,” suggested the Devil, indifferently. - </p> - <p> - Death looked around for one. - </p> - <p> - “There's a qu-qu-quarter in m-m-my t-t-trousers' p-p-pocket,” stammered - Old Man Murtrie, and then stuck his head under the bedclothes and shivered - as if he had the ague. - </p> - <p> - Death picked up Murtrie's poor little weazened trousers from the floor at - the foot of the cot, where they lay sprawled untidily, and shook them till - the quarter dropped out. - </p> - <p> - He picked it up. - </p> - <p> - “Heads, he goes to Heaven. Tails, he goes to Hell,” said Death, and tossed - the coin to the ceiling. Murtrie heard it hit the ceiling, and started. He - heard it hit the floor, and bounce, and jingle and spin and roll and come - to rest. And he thrust his head deeper under the covers and lay there - quaking. He did not dare look. - </p> - <p> - “Look at it, Murtrie,” said Death. - </p> - <p> - “Oh! Oh! Oh!” groaned Murtrie, shaking the cot. - </p> - <p> - But Death reached over and caught him by the neck and turned his face so - that he could not help seeing. And Old Man Murtrie looked and saw that the - coin had fallen with the side up that sent him to—— - </p> - <p> - But, really, why should I tell you? Go and worry about your own soul, and - let Old Man Murtrie's alone. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - III.—Never Say Die - </h2> - <h3> - |There seemed nothing left but suicide. - </h3> - <p> - But how? In what manner? By what method? Mr. Gooley lay on his bed and - thought—or tried to think. The pain in his head, which had been - there ever since the day after he had last eaten, prevented easy and - coherent thought. - </p> - <p> - It had been three days ago that the pain left his stomach and went into - his head. Hunger had become a cerebral thing, he told himself. His body - had felt hunger so long that it refused to feel it any longer; it had - shifted the burden to his brain. - </p> - <p> - “It has passed the buck to my mind, my stomach has,” murmured Mr. Gooley - feebly. And the mind, less by the process of coherent and connected - thought than by a sudden impulsive pounce, had grasped the idea of - suicide. - </p> - <p> - “Not with a knife,” considered Mr. Gooley. He had no knife. He had no - money to buy a knife. He had no strength to go down the three flights of - stairs in the cheap Brooklyn lodging house where he lay, and borrow a - knife from the landlady who came and went vaguely in the nether regions, - dim and damp and dismal. - </p> - <p> - “Not with a knife,” repeated Mr. Gooley. And a large cockroach, which had - been crawling along the footpiece of the old-fashioned wooden bed, stopped - crawling at the words as if it understood, and turned about and looked at - him. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Gooley wondered painfully, for it was a pain even to wonder about - anything, why this cockroach should remind him of somebody who was somehow - connected with a knife, and not unpleasantly connected with a knife. The - cockroach stood up on the hindmost pair of his six legs, and seemed to put - his head on one side and motion with his front legs at Mr. Gooley. - </p> - <p> - “I get you,” said Mr. Gooley, conscious that his mind was wandering from - the point, and willing to let it wander. “I know who you are! You were Old - Man Archibald Hammil, the hardware merchant back in Mapletown, where I was - a kid, before you dried up and turned into a cockroach.” And Mr. Gooley - wept a few weak tears. For old Archibald Hammil, the village hardware - merchant, had sold him the first knife he had ever owned. His father had - taken him into Hammil's store to buy it on his seventh birthday, for a - present, and it had had a buckhorn handle and two blades. Again he saw Old - Man Hammil in his dingy brown clothes, looking at him, with his head on - one side, as this cockroach was doing. Again he felt his father pat him on - the head, and heard him say always to remember to whittle <i>away</i> from - himself, never <i>toward</i> himself. And he saw himself, shy and flushed - and eager, a freckle-faced boy as good and as bad as most boys, looking up - at his father and wriggling and wanting to thank him, and not knowing how. - That was nearly forty years ago—and here he was, a failure and - starving and——— - </p> - <p> - <i>Why</i> had he wanted a knife? Yes, he remembered now! To kill himself - with. - </p> - <p> - “It's none of your damned business, Old Man Hammil,” he said to the - cockroach, which was crawling back and forth on the footboard, and pausing - every now and then to look at him with disapproval. - </p> - <p> - Old Man Hammil had had ropes in his store, too, and guns and pistols, he - remembered. He hadn't thought of Old Man Hammi's store in many years; but - now he saw it, and the village street outside it, and the place where the - stores left off on the street and the residences began, and berry bushes, - and orchards, and clover in the grass—the random bloom, the little - creek that bounded the town, and beyond the creek the open country with - its waving fields of oats and rye and com. His head hurt him worse. He - would go right back into Old Man Hammil's store and get a rope or a gun - and end that pain. - </p> - <p> - But <i>that</i> was foolish, too. There wasn't any store. There was only - Old Man Hammil here, shrunk to the size of a cockroach, in his rusty brown - suit, looking at him from the footboard of the bed and telling him in - pantomime not to kill himself. - </p> - <p> - “I will too!” cried Mr. Gooley to Old Man Hammil. And he repeated, “It's - none of <i>your</i> damned business!” - </p> - <p> - But how? Not with a knife. He had none. Not with a gun. He had none. Not - with a rope. He had none. He thought of his suspenders. But they would - never hold him. - </p> - <p> - “Too weak, even for me,” muttered Mr. Gooley. “I have shrunk so I don't - weigh much more than Old Man Hammil there, but even at that those - suspenders would never do the business.” - </p> - <p> - How did people kill themselves? He must squeeze his head till the pain let - up a little, so he could think. Poison! That was it—yes, poison! And - then he cackled out a small, dry, throaty laugh, his Adam's apple - fluttering in his weazened throat under his sandy beard. Poison! He <i>hadn't</i> - any poison. He hadn't any money with which to buy poison. - </p> - <p> - And then began a long, broken and miserable debate within himself. If he - had money enough with which to buy poison, would he go and buy poison? Or - go and buy a bowl of soup? It was some moments before Mr. Gooley decided. - </p> - <p> - “I'd be game,” he said. “I'd buy the soup. I'd give myself that one more - chance. I must remember while I'm killing myself, that I'm not killing - myself because I <i>want</i> to. I'm just doing it because I've <i>got</i> - to. I'm not romantic. I'm just all in. It's the end; that's all.” - </p> - <p> - Old Man Hammil, on the footboard of the bed, permitted himself a series of - gestures which Mr. Gooley construed as applause of this resolution. They - angered Mr. Gooley, those gestures. - </p> - <p> - “You shut up!” he told the cockroach, although that insect had not spoken, - but only made signs. “This is none of your damned business, Old Man - Hammil!” - </p> - <p> - Old Man Hammil, he remembered, had always been a meddlesome old party—one - of the village gossips, in fact. And that set him to thinking of Mapletown - again. - </p> - <p> - The mill pond near the schoolhouse would soon be freezing over, and the - boys would be skating on it—it was getting into December. And they - would be going into Old Man Hammil's store for skates and straps and heel - plates and files. And he remembered his first pair of skates, and how his - father had taught him the proper way to keep them sharp with a file. He - and the old dad had always been pretty good pals, and—— - </p> - <p> - Good God! Why <i>should</i> he be coming back to that? And to Old Man - Hammil's store? It was that confounded cockroach there, reminding him of - Old Man Hammil, that had done it. He wanted to die decently and quietly, - and as quickly as might be, without thinking of all these things. He - didn't want to lie there and die of starvation, he wanted to kill himself - and be done with it without further misery—and it was a part of the - ridiculous futility of his life, his baffled and broken and insignificant - life, that he couldn't even kill himself competently—that he lay - there suffering and ineffectual and full of self-pity, a prey to memories - and harassing visions of the past, all mingled with youth and innocence - and love, without the means of a quick escape. It was that damned - cockroach, looking like Old Man Hammil, the village hardware merchant, - that had brought back the village and his youth to him, and all those - intolerable recollections. - </p> - <p> - He took his dirty pillow and feebly menaced the cockroach. Feeble as the - gesture was, the insect took alarm. It disappeared from the footboard of - the bed. A minute later, however, he saw it climbing the wall. It reached - the ceiling, and crawled to the center of the room. Mr. Goo-ley watched - it. He felt as if he, too, could crawl along the ceiling. He had the crazy - notion of trying. After all, he told himself light-headedly, Old Cockroach - Hammil up there on the ceiling had been friendly—the only friendly - thing, human or otherwise, that had made overtures to him in many, many - months. And he had scared Cockroach Hammil away! He shed some more maudlin - tears. - </p> - <p> - What was the thing doing now? He watched as the insect climbed on to the - gas pipe that came down from the ceiling. It descended the rod and perched - itself on the gas jet. From this point of vantage it began once more to - regard Mr. Gooley with a singular intentness. - </p> - <p> - Ah! Gas! That was it! What a fool he had been not to think of it sooner! - That was the way people killed themselves! Gas! - </p> - <p> - Mr. Gooley got himself weakly out of bed. He would get the thing over as - quickly as possible now. It would be damnably unpleasant before he lost - consciousness, no doubt, and painful. But likely not more unpleasant and - painful than his present state. And he simply could not bear any more of - those recollections, any more visions. - </p> - <p> - He turned his back on the cockroach, which was watching him from the gas - jet, and went methodically to work. The window rattled; between the upper - and lower sashes there was a crevice a quarter of an inch wide. He plugged - it with paper. There was a break in the wall of his closet; the plaster - had fallen away, and a chink allowed the cockroaches from his room easy - access to the closet of the adjoining room. He plugged that also, and was - about to turn his attention to the keyhole, when there came a knock on his - door. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Gooley's first thought was: “What can any one want with a dead man?” - For he looked upon himself as already dead. There came a second knock, - more peremptory than the first, and he said mechanically, “Come in!” It - would have to be postponed a few minutes, that was all. - </p> - <p> - The door opened, and in walked his landlady. She was a tall and bulky and - worried-looking woman, who wore a faded blond wig that was always askew, - and Mr. Gooley was afraid of her. Her wig was more askew than usual when - she entered, and he gathered from this that she was angry about something—why - the devil must she intrude her trivial mundane anger upon himself, a - doomed man? It was not seemly. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Gooley,” she began severely, without preamble, “I have always looked - on you as a gentleman.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes?” he murmured dully. - </p> - <p> - “But you ain't,” she continued. “You ain't no better than a cheat.” - </p> - <p> - He shrugged his shoulders patiently. He supposed that she was right about - it. He owed her three weeks' room rent, and he was going to die and beat - her out of it. But he couldn't help it. - </p> - <p> - “It ain't the room rent,” she went on, as if vaguely cognizant of the - general trend of his thoughts. “It ain't the room rent alone. You either - pay me that or you don't pay me that, and if you don't, out you go. But - while you are here, you must conduct yourself as a gentleman should!” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” murmured Mr. Gooley, “haven't I?” - </p> - <p> - And the cockroach, perched on the gas jet above the landlady's head, and - apparently listening to this conversation, moved several of his legs, as - if in surprise. - </p> - <p> - “You have not!” said the landlady, straightening her wig. - </p> - <p> - “What have I done, Mrs. Hinkley?” asked Mr. Gooley humbly. And Old - Cockroach Hammil from his perch also made signs of inquiry. - </p> - <p> - “What have you done! What have you done!” cried Mrs. Hinkley. “As if the - man didn't know what he had done I You've been stealin' my gas, that's - what you have been doin'—stealin', I say, and there's no other word - for it!” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Gooley started guiltily. He had not been stealing her gas, but it came - over him with a shock for the first time that that was what he had, in - effect, been planning to do. The cockroach, as if it also felt convicted - of sin, gave the gas jet a glance of horror and moved up the rod to the - ceiling, where it continued to listen. - </p> - <p> - “Stealin'!” repeated Mrs. Hinkley. “That's what it is, nothin' else but - stealin'. You don't ever stop to think when you use one of them gas plates - to cook in your room, Mr. Gooley—which it is expressly forbid and - agreed on that no cooking shall be done in these rooms when they're rented - to you—that it's my gas you're using, and that I have to pay for it, - and that it's just as much stealin' as if you was to put your hand into my - pocket-book and take my money!” - </p> - <p> - “Cooking? Gas plate?” muttered Mr. Gooley. “Don't say you ain't got one!” - cried Mrs. Hinkley. “You all got 'em! Every last one of you! Don't you try - to come none of your sweet innocence dodges over me. I know you, and the - whole tribe of you! I ain't kept lodgers for thirty years without knowing - the kind of people they be! 'Gas plate! Gas plate!' says you, as innocent - as if you didn't know what a gas plate was! You got it hid here - somewheres, and I ain't going to stir from this room until I get my hands - on it and squash it under my feet! Come across with it, Mr. Gooley, come - across with it!” - </p> - <p> - “But I <i>haven't</i> one,” said Mr. Gooley, very ill and very weary. “You - can look, if you want to.” - </p> - <p> - And he lay back upon the bed. The cockroach slyly withdrew himself from - the ceiling, came down the wall, and crawled to the foot of the bed again. - If Mrs. Hinkley noticed him, she said nothing; perhaps it was not a part - of her professional policy to draw attention to cockroaches on the - premises. She stood and regarded Mr. Gooley for some moments, while he - turned his head away from her in apathy. Her first anger seemed to have - spent itself. But finally, with a new resolution, she said: “And look I - will! You got one, or else that blondined party in the next room has - lied.” - </p> - <p> - She went into the closet and he heard her opening his trunk. She pulled it - into the bedroom and examined the interior. It didn't take long. She dived - under the bed and drew out his battered suitcase, so dilapidated that he - had not been able to get a quarter for it at the pawnshop, but no more - dilapidated than his trunk. - </p> - <p> - She seemed struck, for the first time since her entrance, with the utter - bareness of the room. Outside of the bed, one chair, the bureau, and Mr. - Cooley's broken shoes at the foot of the bed, there was absolutely nothing - in it. - </p> - <p> - She sat down in the chair beside the bed. “Mr. Gooley,” she said, “you <i>ain't</i> - got any gas plate.” - </p> - <p> - “No,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Gooley,” she said, “you got <i>nothing at all.</i> - </p> - <p> - “No,” he said, “nothing.” - </p> - <p> - “You had a passel of books and an overcoat five or six weeks ago,” she - said, “when you come here. It was seein' them books, and knowing what you - was four or five years ago, when you lived here once before, that made me - sure you was a gentleman.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Gooley made no reply. The cockroach on the foot of the bed also seemed - to be listening to see if Mrs. Hinkley had anything more to say, and - suspending judgment. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Gooley,” said the landlady, “I beg your pardon. You was lied on by - one that has a gas plate herself, and when I taxed her with it, and took - it away from her, and got rid of her, she had the impudence to say she - thought it was <i>allowed</i>, and that everybody done it, and named you - as one that did.” - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hinkley paused, but neither Mr. Gooley nor the cockroach had anything - to contribute to the conversation. - </p> - <p> - “Gas,” continued Mrs. Hinkley, “is gas. And gas costs money. I hadn't - orter jumped on you the way I did, Mr. Gooley, but gas plates has got to - be what you might call corns on my brain, Mr. Gooley. They're my sensitive - spot, Mr. Gooley. If I was to tell you the half of what I have had to - suffer from gas plates during the last thirty years, Mr. Gooley, you - wouldn't believe it! There's them that will cheat you one way and there's - them that will cheat you another, but the best of them will cheat you with - gas plates, Mr. Gooley. With the exception of yourself, Mr. Gooley, I - ain't had a lodger in thirty years that wouldn't rob me on the gas. Some - don't think it's stealin', Mr. Gooley, when they steal gas. And some of - 'em don't care if it is. But there ain't none of 'em ever thinks what a <i>landlady</i> - goes through with, year in and year out.” - </p> - <p> - She paused for a moment, and then, overcome with self-pity, she began to - sniffle. - </p> - <p> - “And my rent's been raised on me again, Mr. Gooley! And I'm a month - behind! And if I ain't come across with the two months, the old month and - the new, by day after to-morrow, out I goes; and it means the poorhouse as - fur as I can see, because I don't know anything else but keeping lodgers, - and I got no place to go!” - </p> - <p> - She gathered her apron up and wiped her eyes and nose with it. The - cockroach on the footboard wiped his front set of feet across his face - sympathetically. - </p> - <p> - “I got it all ready but fifteen dollars,” continued Mrs. Hinkley, “and - then in comes the gas bill this morning with <i>arrears</i> onto it. It is - them <i>arrears</i>, Mr. Gooley, that always knocks me out! If it wasn't - for them arrears, I could get along. And now I got to pay out part of the - rent money onto the gas bill, with them arrears on it, or the gas will be - shut off this afternoon.” - </p> - <p> - The pain in Mr. Gooley's head was getting worse. He wished she would go. - He hated hearing her troubles. But she continued: - </p> - <p> - “It's the way them arrears come onto the bill, Mr. Gooley, that has got me - sore. About a week before you come here again to live, Mr. Gooley, there - was a fellow stole fifteen dollars worth of my gas all at once. He went - and killed himself, Mr. Gooley, and he used my gas to do it with. It - leaked out of two jets for forty-eight hours up on the top floor, before - the door was busted in and the body was found, and it came to fifteen - dollars, and all on account of that man's cussedness, Mr. Gooley, I will - likely get turned out into the street, and me sixty years old and no place - to turn.” - </p> - <p> - Mr. Gooley sat up in bed feebly and looked at her. She <i>was</i> in real - trouble—in about as much trouble as he was. The cockroach walked - meditatively up and down the footboard, as if thinking it over very - seriously. - </p> - <p> - Mrs. Hinkley finally rose. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Gooley,” she said, regarding him sharply, “you look kind o' done up!” - </p> - <p> - “Uh-huh,” said Mr. Gooley. - </p> - <p> - She lingered in the room for a few seconds more, irresolutely, and then - departed. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Gooley thought. Gas was barred to him now. He couldn't bring himself - to do it with gas. There was still a chance that the old woman might get - hold of the gas money and the rent money, too, and go on for a few years, - but if he selfishly stole twelve or fifteen dollars' worth of gas from her - this afternoon it might be just the thing that would plunge her into - immediate destitution. At any rate, it was, as she had said, like stealing - money from her pocketbook. He thought of what her life as a rooming-house - keeper must have been, and pitied her. He had known many rooming houses. - The down-and-outers know how to gauge the reality and poignancy of the - troubles of the down-and-out. No, he simply could not do it with gas. - </p> - <p> - He must think of some other method. He was on the fourth floor. He might - throw himself out of the window onto the brick walk at the back of the - building, and die. He shuddered as he thought of it. To jump from a - twentieth story, or from the top of the Woolworth Tower, to a certain - death is one thing. To contemplate a fall of three or four stories that - may maim you without killing you, is another. - </p> - <p> - Nevertheless, he would do it. He pulled the paper out of the crevice - between the window sashes, opened the window and looked down. He saw the - back stoop and there was a dirty mop beside it; there was an ash can, and - there were two garbage cans there. And there was a starved cat that sat - and looked up at him. He had a tremor and drew back and covered his face - with his hands as he thought of that cat—that knowing cat, that - loathsome, that obscene cat. - </p> - <p> - He sat down on the edge of the bed to collect his strength and summon his - resolution. The cockroach had crawled to the head of the bed and seemed to - wish to partake of his thoughts. - </p> - <p> - “Damn you, Old Archibald Hammil!” he cried. And he scooped the cockroach - into his hand with a sudden sweep and flung it out of the window. The - insect fell without perceptible discomfort, and at once began to climb up - the outside wall again, making for the window. - </p> - <p> - The door opened and Mrs. Hinkley entered, her face cleft with a grin, and - a tray in her hands. - </p> - <p> - “Mr. Gooley,” she said, setting it on the wash-stand, “I'll bet you ain't - had nothing to eat today!” - </p> - <p> - On the tray was a bowl of soup, a half loaf of bread with a long keen - bread knife, a pat of butter, a boiled egg and a cup of coffee. - </p> - <p> - “No, nor yesterday, either,” said Mr. Gooley, and he looked at the soup - and at the long keen bread knife. - </p> - <p> - “Here's something else I want to show you, Mr. Gooley,” said the landlady, - dodging out of the door and back in again instantly. She bore in her hands - this time a surprising length of flexible gas tubing, and a small - nickel-plated pearl-handled revolver. - </p> - <p> - “You see that there gas tubing?” she said. - </p> - <p> - “That is what that blondined party in the next room had on to her gas - plate—the nerve of her! Strung from the gas jet clear across the - room to the window sill. And when I throwed her out, Mr. Gooley, she - wouldn't pay her rent, and I took this here revolver to part pay it. What - kind of a woman is it, Mr. Gooley, that has a revolver in her room, and a - loaded one, too?” - </p> - <p> - Just then the doorbell rang in the dim lower regions, and she left the - room to answer it. - </p> - <p> - And Mr. Gooley sat and looked at the knife, with which he might so easily - stab himself, and at the gas cord, with which he might so easily hang - himself, and at the loaded revolver, with which he might so easily shoot - himself. - </p> - <p> - He looked also at the bowl of soup. - </p> - <p> - He had the strength to reflect—a meal is a meal. But <i>after</i> - that meal, what? Penniless, broken in health, friendless, a failure—why - prolong it for another twenty-four hours? A meal would prolong it, but - that was all a meal <i>would</i> do—and after that would come the - suffering and the despair and the end to be faced all over again. - </p> - <p> - Was he man enough to take the pistol and do it now? - </p> - <p> - Or did true manhood lie the other way? Was he man enough to drink the - soup, and dare to live and hope? - </p> - <p> - Just then the cockroach, which had climbed into the window and upon the - washstand, made for the bowl of soup. - </p> - <p> - “Here!” cried Mr. Gooley, grabbing the bowl in both hands, “Old Man - Hammil! Get away from that soup!” - </p> - <p> - And the bowl being in his hands, he drank. - </p> - <p> - “What do you mean by Old Man Hammil?” - </p> - <p> - It was Mrs. Hinkley who spoke. She stood again in the doorway, with a - letter in her hands and a look of wonder on her face. - </p> - <p> - Mr. Gooley set down the soup bowl. By an effort of the will he had only - drunk half the liquid. He had heard somewhere that those who are suffering - from starvation had better go slow at first when they get hold of food - again. And he already felt better, warmed and resurrected, from the first - gulp. - </p> - <p> - “What,” demanded the landlady, “do you mean by yelling out about Old Man - Hammil?” - </p> - <p> - “Why,” said Mr. Gooley, feeling foolish, and looking it, “I was talking to - that cockroach there. He looks sort of like some one I knew when I was a - kid, by the name of Hammil—Archibald Hammil.” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Where</i> was you a kid?” asked Mrs. Hinkley. - </p> - <p> - “In a place called Mapletown—Mapletown, Illinois,” said Mr. Gooley. - “There's where I knew Old Man Hammil.” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” said the landlady, “when you go back there you won't see him. He's - dead. He died a week ago. This letter tells it. I was his niece. And the - old man went and left me his hardware store. I never expected it. But all - his kids is dead—it seems he outlived 'em all, and he was nearly - ninety when he passed away.” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” said Mr. Gooley, “I don't remember you.” - </p> - <p> - “You wouldn't,” said the landlady. “You must have been in short pants when - I ran away from home and married the hardware drummer. But I'll bet you - the old-timers in that burg still remembers it against me!” - </p> - <p> - “The kids will be coming into that store about now to get their skates - sharpened,” said Mr. Gooley, looking at the boiled egg. - </p> - <p> - “Uh-huh!” said Mrs. Hinkley. “Don't you want to go back home and help - sharpen 'em? I'm goin' back and run that there store, and I'll need a - clerk, I suppose.” - </p> - <p> - “Uh-huh,” said Mr. Gooley, breaking the eggshell. - </p> - <p> - The cockroach, busy with a crumb on the floor, waved his three starboard - legs genially at Mr. Gooley and Mrs. Hinkley—as if, in fact, he were - winking with his feet. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - IV.—McDermott - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>cDermott had gone - over with a cargo of mules. The animals were disembarked at a Channel - port, received by officers of that grand organization which guesses right - so frequently, the Quartermaster Corps, and started in a southerly - direction, in carload lots, toward the Toul sector of the Western Front. - McDermott went with one of the carloads in an unofficial capacity. He had - no business in the war zone. But the Quartermaster Corps, or that part of - it in charge of his particular car, was in no mood to be harsh toward any - one who seemed to understand the wants and humors of mules and who was - willing to associate with them. And so, with his blue overalls and his red - beard, McDermott went along. - </p> - <p> - “I'll have a look at the war,” said McDermott, “and if I like it, I'll - jine it.” - </p> - <p> - “And if you don't like it,” said the teamster to whom he confided his - intention, “I reckon you'll stop it?” - </p> - <p> - “I dunno,” replied McDermott, “as I would be justified in stoppin' a good - war. The McDermotts has niver been great hands f'r stoppin' wars. The - McDermotts is always more like to be startin' wars.” - </p> - <p> - McDermott got a look at the war sooner than any one, including the high - command of the Entente Allies, would have thought likely—or, rather, - the war got a look at McDermott. The carload of mules, separated from its - right and proper train, got too far eastward at just the time the Germans - got too far westward. It was in April, 1918, that, having entered - Hazebrouck from the north, McDermott and his mules left it again, bound - eastward. They passed through a turmoil of guns and lorries, Scotchmen and - ambulances, Englishmen, tanks and ammunition wagons, Irishmen, colonials - and field kitchens, all moving slowly eastward, and came to a halt at a - little village where they should not have been at all, halfway between the - northern rim of the forest of Nieppe and Bailleul. - </p> - <p> - The mules did not stay there long. - </p> - <p> - “I'll stretch me legs a bit,” said McDermott, climbing off the car and - strolling toward a Grande Place surrounded by sixteenth-century - architecture. And just then something passed over the Renaissance roofs - with the scream of one of Dante's devils, struck McDermott's car of mules - with a great noise and a burst of flame, and straightway created a - situation in which there was neither car nor mules. - </p> - <p> - For a minute it seemed to McDermott that possibly there was no McDermott, - either. When McDermott regained consciousness of McDermott, he was sitting - on the ground, and he sat there and felt of himself for many seconds - before he spoke or rose. Great guns he had been hearing for hours, and a - rattle and roll of small-arms fire had been getting nearer all that day; - but it seemed to McDermott that there was something quite vicious and - personal about the big shell that had separated him forever from his - mules. Not that he had loved the mules, but he loved McDermott. - </p> - <p> - “Mules,” said he, still sitting on the ground, but trying to get his - philosophy of life on to its legs again, “is here wan minute an' gawn the - nixt. Mules is fickle an' untrustworthy animals. Here was thim mules, - wigglin' their long ears and arsk-in' f'r Gawd's sake c'u'd they have a - dhrink of wather, an' promisin' a lifelong friendship—but where is - thim mules now?” - </p> - <p> - He scratched his red head as he spoke, feeling-of an old scar under the - thick thatch of hair. The wound had been made some years previously with a - bung starter, and whenever McDermott was agitated he caressed it tenderly. - </p> - <p> - He got up, turned about and regarded the extraordinary Grande Place. There - had once been several pretty little shops about it, he could see, with - pleasant courtyards, where the April sun was trying to bring green things - into life again, but now some of these were in newly made and smoking - ruins. The shell that had stricken McDermott's mules from the roster of - existence had not been the only one to fall into the village recently. - </p> - <p> - But it was neither old ruins nor new ruins that interested McDermott - chiefly. It was the humanity that flowed through the Grande Place in a - feeble trickle westward, and the humanity that stayed there. - </p> - <p> - Women and old men went by with household treasures slung in bundles or - pushed before them in carts and perambulators, and they were wearing their - best clothes, as if they were going to some village fête, instead of into - desolation and homelessness; the children whom they carried, or who - straggled after them, were also in their holiday best. Here was an ancient - peasant with a coop of skinny chickens on a barrow; there was a girl in a - silk gown carrying something in a bed quilt; yonder was a boy of twelve on - a bicycle, and two things were tied to the handlebars—a loaf of - bread and a soldier's bayonet. Perhaps it had been his father's bayonet. - Quietly they went westward; their lips were dumb and their faces showed - their souls were dumb, too. A long time they had heard the battle growling - to the eastward; and now the war was upon them. It was upon them, indeed; - for as McDermott gazed, another shell struck full upon a bell-shaped tower - that stood at the north side of the Grande Place and it leaped up in - flames and fell in dust and ruin, all gone but one irregular point of - masonry that still stuck out like a snaggle tooth from a trampled skull. - </p> - <p> - These were the ones that were going, and almost the last of the dreary - pageant disappeared as McDermott watched. But those who stayed astonished - him even more by their strange actions and uncouth postures. - </p> - <p> - “Don't tell me,” mumbled McDermott, rubbing his scar, “that all thim - sojers is aslape!” - </p> - <p> - But asleep they were. To the east and to the north the world was one rip - and rat-a-tat of rifle and machine-gun fire—how near, McDermott - could not guess—and over the village whined and droned the shells, - of great or lesser caliber; here was one gate to a hell of noise, and the - buildings stirred and the budding vines in the courtyards moved and the - dust itself was agitated with the breath and blast of far and near - concussions; but yet the big open Place itself was held in the grip of a - grotesque and incredible slumber. - </p> - <p> - Sprawled in the gutters, collapsed across the doorsills, leaning against - the walls, slept that portion of the British army; slept strangely, - without snoring. In the middle of the Grande Place there was a young - lieutenant bending forward across the wreck of a motor car; he had tried - to pluck forth a basket from the tonneau and sleep had touched him with - his fingers on the handle. And from the eastern fringes of the village - there entered the square, as actors enter upon a stage, a group of a dozen - men, with their arms linked together, swaying and dazed and stumbling. At - first McDermott thought that wounded were being helped from the field. But - these men were not wounded; they were walking in their sleep, and the - group fell apart, as McDermott looked at them, and sank severally to the - cobblestones. Scotchmen, Canadians, English, torn and battered remnants of - many different commands, they had striven with their guns and bodies for - more than a week to dam the vast, rising wave of the German attack—day - melting into night and night burning into day again, till there was no - such thing as time to them any longer; there were but two things in the - world, battle and weariness, weariness and battle. - </p> - <p> - McDermott moved across the square unchallenged. He had eaten and slept but - little for two days himself, and he made instinctively for the open door - of an empty inn, to search for food. In the doorway he stumbled across a - lad who roused and spoke to him. - </p> - <p> - “Jack,” said the boy, looking at him with red eyes out of an old, worn - face, “have you got the makin's?” - </p> - <p> - He was in a ragged and muddied Canadian uniform, but McDermott guessed - that he was an American. - </p> - <p> - “I have that,” said McDermott, producing papers and tobacco. But the boy - had lapsed into slumber again. McDermott rolled the cigarette for him, - placed it between his lips, waked him and lighted it for him. - </p> - <p> - The boy took a puff or two, and then said dreamily: “And what the hell are - you doin' here with them blue overalls on?” - </p> - <p> - “I come to look at the war,” said McDermott. - </p> - <p> - The soldier glanced around the Grande Place, and a gleam of deviltry - flashed through his utter exhaustion. “So you come to see the war, huh? - Well, don't you wake it now. It's restin'. But if you'll take a chair and - set down, I'll have it—called—for—you—in—in—in - 'n 'our—or so———” - </p> - <p> - His voice tailed off into sleep once more; he mangled the cigarette, the - tobacco mingling with the scraggly beard about his drawn mouth; his head - fell forward upon his chest. McDermott stepped past him into the Hôtel - Faucon, as the inn had called itself. He found no food, but he found - liquor there. - </p> - <p> - “Frinch booze,” said McDermott, getting the cork out of a bottle of brandy - and sniffing it; “but booze is booze!” - </p> - <p> - And more booze is more booze, especially upon an empty stomach. It was - after the fourth drink that McDermott pulled his chair up to one of the - open windows of the inn and sat down, with the brandy beside him. - </p> - <p> - “I'm neglictin' that war I come all this way to see,” said McDermott. - </p> - <p> - The Grande Place, still shaken by the tremendous and unceasing pulsations - of battle, far and near, was beginning to wake up. A fresh, or, at least, - a fresher, battalion was arriving over the spur line of railroad along - which McDermott's mules had been so mistakenly shunted, and was moving - eastward through the town to the firing line. The men whom McDermott had - seen asleep were rising at the word of command; taking their weapons, - falling in, and staggering back to the interminable battle once more. - </p> - <p> - “I dunno,” mused McDermott, as the tired men straggled past, “whether I - want to be afther j'inin' that war or not. It makes all thim lads that - slapey! I dunno phwat the devil it is, the Frinch booze bein' so close to - me, inside, or that war so close to me, outside, but I'm gittin' slapey - m'silf.” - </p> - <p> - It was, likely, the brandy. There had not been a great deal of French - brandy in McDermott's previous experience, and he did not stint himself. - It was somewhere between the ninth and the fifteenth swallows of it that - McDermott remarked to himself, rubbing the scar on his head: - </p> - <p> - “I w'u'd jine that war now, if I c'u'd be sure which way it had wint!” - </p> - <p> - And then he slid gently out of his chair and went to sleep on the floor - just inside the open window of the Hôtel Fauçon. - </p> - <p> - The war crept closer and took another look at McDermott. As the warm - golden afternoon waned, the British troops, fighting like fiends for every - inch of ground, exacting a ghastly toll of lives from the Germans, were - forced back into the eastern outskirts of the town. There, with rifle and - machine gun, from walls, trees, courtyards, roofs and ruins, they held the - advancing Germans for an hour. But they were pushed back again, doggedly - establishing themselves in the houses of the Grande Place. Neither British - nor Germans were dropping shells into that village now, each side fearful - of damaging its own men. - </p> - <p> - A British subaltern with a machine gun and two private soldiers entered - the inn and were setting the gun up at McDermott's window when a German - bullet struck the officer and he fell dead across the slumbering - McDermott. Nevertheless, the gun was manned and fought for half an hour - above McDermott, who stirred now and then, but did not waken. Just at dusk - an Irish battalion struck the Germans on the right flank of their - assaulting force, a half mile to the north of the village, rolled them - back temporarily, and cleared the village of them. This counter attack - took the firing line a good thousand yards eastward once more. - </p> - <p> - McDermott roused, crawled from beneath the body of the British officer, - and viewed it with surprise. “That war has been here ag'in an' me aslape,” - said McDermott. “I might jine that war if I c'u'd ketch up wid it—but - 'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gawn ag'in! An' how c'u'd I jine it wid no - weapons, not even a good thick club to m' hands?” - </p> - <p> - He foraged and found a piece of sausage that he had overlooked in his - former search, ate it greedily and then stood in the doorway, listening to - the sound of the firing. It was getting dark and northward toward Messines - and Wytschaete and southward for more miles than he could guess the - lightning of big guns flickered along the sky. - </p> - <p> - “Anny way I w'u'd go,” mused McDermott, “I w'u'd run into that war if I - was thryin' to dodge ut. And anny wray I w'u'd go, I w'u'd miss that war - if I was thryin' to come up wid ut. An' till I make up me mind which wan I - want to do, here will I sthay.” - </p> - <p> - He opened another bottle of brandy, and drank and cogitated. Whether it - was the cogitation or the drinks or the effect of the racket of war, his - head began to ache dully. When McDermott's scar ached, it was his custom - to take another drink. After a while there came a stage at which, if it - still ached, he at least ceased to feel it aching any more. - </p> - <p> - “The hotel here,” he remarked, “is filled wid hospitality and midical - tratement, and where bet-ther c'u'd I be?” - </p> - <p> - And presently, once more, a deep sleep overtook him. A deeper, more - profound sleep, indeed, than his former one. And this time the war came - still nearer to McDermott. - </p> - <p> - The British were driven back again and again occupied the town, the - Germans in close pursuit. From house to house and from wall to wall the - struggle went on, with grenade, rifle and bayonet. A German, with a - Scotchman's steel in his chest, fell screaming, back through the open - window, and his blood as he died soaked McDermott's feet. But McDermott - slept. Full night came, thick and cloudy, and both sides sent up floating - flares. The square was strewn with the bodies of the dead and the bodies - of the maimed in increasing numbers; the wounded groaned and whimpered in - the shadows of the trampled Place, crawling, if they still could crawl, to - whatever bit of broken wall seemed to offer momentary shelter and praying - for the stretcher bearers to be speedy. But still McDermott slept. - </p> - <p> - At ten o'clock that night two Englishmen once more brought a machine gun - into the Hôtel Fauçon; they worked the weapon for twenty minutes from the - window within ten feet of which McDermott now lay with his brandy bottle - beside him. Once McDermott stirred; he sat up sleepily on the floor and - murmured: “An' where is that war now? Begad, an' I don't belave there is - anny war!” - </p> - <p> - And he rolled over and went to sleep again. The men with the machine gun - did not notice him; they were too busy. A moment later one of them sank - with a bullet through his heart. His comrade lasted a little longer, and - then he, too, went down, a wound in his lungs. It took him some weary - minutes to choke and bleed to death, there in that dark place, upon the - floor, among the dead men and McDermott's brandy bottles and the heap of - ammunition he had brought with him. Hist struggle did not wake McDermott. - </p> - <p> - By midnight the British had been driven back until they held the houses at - the west end of the town and the end of the spur railroad that came - eastward from Hazebrouck. The Germans were in the eastern part of the - village, and between was a “no man's land,” of which the Grande Place was - a part. What was left of the Hôtel Faucon, with the sleeping McDermott in - it, was toward the middle of the south side of the square. In the streets - to the north and south of the Place patrols still clashed with grenade and - bayonet and rifle, but the Germans attempted no further advance in any - force after midnight. No doubt they were bringing up more men; no doubt, - with the first morning light, they would move forward a regiment or two, - possibly even a division, against the British who still clung stubbornly - to the western side of the town. All the way from Wytschaete south to - Givenchy the battle-line was broken up into many little bitter struggles - of this sort, the British at every point facing great odds. - </p> - <p> - When dawn came, there came with it a mist. And three men of a German - patrol, creeping from house to house and ruin to ruin along the south side - of that part of “no man's land” which was the Grande Place, entered the - open door of the Hôtel Fauçon. - </p> - <p> - One of them stepped upon McDermott's stomach, where he lay sleeping and - dreaming of the war he had come to look at. - </p> - <p> - McDermott, when he had been drinking, was often cross. And especially was - he cross if, when sleeping off his liquor, some one purposely or - inadvertently interfered with his rightful and legitimate rest. When this - coarse and heavy-footed intruder set his boot, albeit unwittingly, upon - McDermott's stomach, McDermott sat up with a bellow of rage, instinctively - and instantaneously grabbed the leg attached to the boot, rose as burning - rocks rise from a volcano, with the leg in his hands, upset the man - attached to the leg, and jumped with two large feet accurately upon the - back of that person's neck. Whereupon the Boche went to Valhalla. - McDermott, though nearer fifty than forty years old, was a barroom fighter - of wonderful speed and technique, and this instinctive and spontaneous - maneuver was all one motion, just as it is all one motion when a cat in a - cellar leaps over a sack of potatoes, lands upon a rat, and sinks her - teeth into a vital spot. The second German and the third German hung back - an instant toward the door, and then came on toward the moving shadow in - the midst of shadows. For their own good they should have come on without - hanging back that second; but perhaps their training, otherwise so - efficient, did not include barroom tactics. Their hesitation gave - McDermott just the time he needed, for when he faced them he had the first - German's gun in his hands. - </p> - <p> - “No war,” said McDermott, “can come into me slapin' chamber and stand on - me stomach like that, and expict me to take it peaceful!” - </p> - <p> - With the words he fired the first German's rifle into the second German. - The third German, to the rear of the second one, fired his gun - simultaneously, but perhaps he was a hit flurried, for he also fired - directly into the second German, and there was nothing the second German - could do but die; which he did at once. McDermott leaped at the third - German with his rifle clubbed just as the man pressed the trigger again. - The bullet struck McDermott's rifle, splintered the butt of it and knocked - it from his hands; but a second later McDermott's hands were on the barrel - of the German's gun and the two of them were struggling for it. - </p> - <p> - There is one defect in the German military system, observers say: the - drill masters do not teach their men independent thinking; perhaps the - drill-masters do not have the most promising material to work upon. At any - rate, it occurred to McDermott to kick the third German in the stomach - while the third German was still thinking of nothing else than trying to - depress the gun to shoot or bayonet McDermott. Thought and kick were as - well coordinated as if they had proceeded from one of McDermott's late - mules. - </p> - <p> - The Boche went to the floor of the Hôtel Faucon with a groan. “Gott!” he - said. - </p> - <p> - “A stomach f'r a stomach,” said Mc-Dermott, standing over him with the - rifle. “Git up!” - </p> - <p> - The German painfully arose. - </p> - <p> - “Ye are me prisoner,” said McDermott, “an' the furst wan I iver took. - Hould up y'r hands! Hould thim up, I say! Not over y'r stomach, man, but - over y'r head!” - </p> - <p> - The Boche complied hurriedly. - </p> - <p> - “I see ye understhand United States,” said McDermott. “I was afraid ye - might not, an' I w'u'd have to shoot ye.” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Kamerad!</i>” exclaimed the man. - </p> - <p> - “Ye are no comrade av mine,” said McDermott, peering at the man's face - through the eery halflight of early morning, “an' comrade av mine ye niver - was! I know ye well! Ye are Goostave Schmidt b' name, an' wanst ye tinded - bar in a dive down b' the Brooklyn wather front!” - </p> - <p> - The man stared at McDermott in silence for a long minute, and then - recollection slowly came to him. - </p> - <p> - “MagDermodd!” he said. “Batrick MagDermodd!” - </p> - <p> - “The same,” said McDermott. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Gott sei dank!</i>” said the German. “I haf fallen into der hands of a - friend.” And with the beginning of a smile he started to lower his hands. - </p> - <p> - “Put thim up!” cried McDermott. “Don't desave y'silf! Ye are no fri'nd av - mine!” - </p> - <p> - The smile faded, and something like a look of panic took its place on the - German's face. - </p> - <p> - “Th' last time I saw ye, ye was in bad company, f'r ye was alone,” said - McDermott. “An' I come over here lookin' f'r ye, an' I find ye in bad - company ag'in!” - </p> - <p> - “Looking?” said the German with quite sincere perplexity. “You gome here - <i>looking</i> for me?” - </p> - <p> - The wonder on the man's face at this unpremeditated jest of his having - crossed the Atlantic especially to look for Gustave Schmidt titillated - McDermott's whole being. But he did not laugh, and he let the German - wonder. “And phwy sh'u'd I not?” he said. - </p> - <p> - The German thought intensely for a while. “Why <i>should</i> you gome all - der vay agross der Adlandic looking for <i>me?</i>” he said finally. - </p> - <p> - “Ye have a short mimory,” said McDermott. “Ye do not recollict the time ye - hit me on the head wid a bung starter whin I was too soused to defind - m'silf? The scar is there yet, bad luck to ye!” - </p> - <p> - “But dot was nudding,” said the German. “Dot bung-starder business was all - a bart of der day's vork.” - </p> - <p> - “But ye cript up behint me,” said McDermott; “an' me soused!” - </p> - <p> - “But dot was der bractical vay to do it,” said the German. “Dot was - nuddings at all, dot bung-starder business. I haf forgodden it long ago!” - </p> - <p> - “The McDermotts remimber thim compliments longer,” said McDermott. “An' b' - rights I sh'u'd give ye wan good clout wid this gun and be done wid ye. - But I'm thinkin' I may be usin' ye otherwise.” - </p> - <p> - “You gome all der vay agross der Adlandic yoost because I hit you on der - head mit a bung starder?” persisted the German, still wondering. “Dot, - MagDermodd, I cannot belief—<i>Nein!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “And ye tore up y'r citizenship papers and come all the way across the - Atlantic just to jine this gang av murtherin' child-killers,” said - McDermott. “That I c'n belave! Yis!” - </p> - <p> - “But I haf not dorn up my American cidizen papers—<i>Nein!</i>” - exclaimed the German, earnestly. “Dose I haf kept. I gome across to fight - for mein Faderland—dot vas orders. <i>Ja!</i> But mein American - cidizenship papers I haf kept, and ven der war is ofer I shall go back to - Brooklyn and once more an American citizen be, undill der next war. <i>Ja!</i> - You haf not understood, but dot is der vay of it. <i>Ja!</i>” - </p> - <p> - “Goostave,” said McDermott, “ye have too many countries workin' f'r ye. - But y'r takin' ordhers from m'silf now—do ye get that? C'n ye play - that musical insthrumint there by the window?” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Ja!</i>” said Gustave. “Dot gun I can vork. Dot is der Lewis machine - gun. Id is not so good a gun as our machine gun, for our machine gun haf - been a colossal sugcess, but id is a goot gun.” - </p> - <p> - “Ye been fightin' f'r the Kaiser f'r three or four years, Goostave,” said - McDermott, menacing him with his rifle, “but this mornin' I'll be afther - seein' that ye do a bit av work f'r thim citizenship papers, an', later, - ye can go to hell, if ye like, an' naturalize y'rsilf in still a third - country. Ye will shoot Germans wid that gun till I get the hang av the - mechanism m'silf. And thin I will shoot Germans wid that gun. But furst, - ye will give me that fancy tin soup-bowl ye're wearin'.” - </p> - <p> - Gustave handed over his helmet. McDermott put it on his red head. - </p> - <p> - “I've been thinkin',” said McDermott, “will I jine this war, or will I not - jine it. An' the only way ye c'n tell do ye like a thing or do ye not is - to thry it wance. Wid y'r assistance, Goostave, I'll thry it this mornin', - if anny more av it comes my way.” - </p> - <p> - More of it was coming his way. The Germans, tired of trifling with the - small British force which held the village, had brought up the better part - of a division during the night and were marshaling the troops for their - favorite feat of arms, an overwhelming frontal attack <i>en masse</i>. The - British had likewise received reinforcements, drawing from the north and - from the south every man the hard-pressed lines could spare. But they were - not many, perhaps some three thousand men in all, to resist the massed - assault, with the railroad for its objective, which would surely come with - dawn. If troops were needed in the village they were no less needed on the - lines that flanked it. The little town, which had been the scene of so - much desperate skirmishing the day before and during the first half of the - night, was now about to become the ground of something like a battle. - </p> - <p> - “There's a French division on the way,” said the British colonel in - command in the village to one of his captains. “If we can only hold them - for an hour——” - </p> - <p> - He did not finish the sentence. As he spoke the German bombardment, - precedent to the infantry attack, began to comb the western fringes of the - town and the railroad line behind, searching for the hurriedly-digged and - shallow trenches, the improvised dugouts, the shell holes, the cellars and - the embankments where the British lay. The British guns to the rear of the - village made answer, and the uproar tore the mists of dawn to tatters. A - shell fell short, into the middle of the Grande Place, and McDermott saw - the broken motor car against which the sleeping lieutenant had leaned the - day before vanish into nothingness; and then a house directly opposite the - Hôtel Fauçon jumped into flame and was no more. Looking out across the - back of the stooping Gustave at the window, McDermott muttered, “I dunno - as I w'u'd want to jine that war.” And then he bellowed in Gustave - Schmidt's ear: “Cut loose! Cut loose wid y'rgun! Cut loose!” - </p> - <p> - “I vill not!” shrieked Gustave. “Mein Gott! Dat is mein own regiment!” - </p> - <p> - “Ye lie!” shouted McDermott. “Ye will!” He thrust a bit of bayonet into - the fleshiest part of the German's back. - </p> - <p> - “I vill! I vill!” cried Gustave. - </p> - <p> - “Ye will that,” said McDermott, “an' the less damned nonsinse I hear from - ye about y'r own rigimint the betther f'r ye! Ye're undher me own ordhers - till I c'n make up me mind about this war.” The mists were rising. In the - clearing daylight at the eastern end of the square, as if other clouds - were moving forward with a solid front, appeared the first gray wave of - the German infantry. Close packed, shoulder to shoulder, three deep, they - came, almost filling the space from side to side of the Grande Place, - moving across that open stretch against the British fire with a certain - heavy-footed and heavy-brained contempt of everything before them. Ten - steps, and the British machine guns and rifles caught them. The first - wave, or half of it, went down in a long writhing windrow, across the east - end of the square, and in the instant that he saw it squirm and toss - before the trampling second wave swept over it and through it, the - twisting gray-clad figures on the stones reminded McDermott of the heaps - of heaving worms he used to see at the bottom of his bait-can when he went - fishing as a boy. - </p> - <p> - “Hold that nozzle lower, Goostave!” he yelled to his captive. “Spray thim! - Spray thim! Ye're shootin' over their heads, ye lumberin' Dutchman, ye!” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Gott!</i>” cried Gustave, as another jab of the bayonet urged him to - his uncongenial task. - </p> - <p> - And then McDermott made one of the few errors of his military career. - Whether it was the French brandy he had drunk to excess the night before, - or whether it was the old bung-starter wound on his head, which always - throbbed and jumped when he became excited, his judgment deserted him for - an instant. For one instant he forgot that there must be no instants free - from the immediate occupation of guiding and directing Gustave. - </p> - <p> - “Let me see if I can't work that gun m'self,” he cried. - </p> - <p> - As he relaxed his vigilance, pushing the German to one side, the Boche - suddenly struck him upon the jaw. McDermott reeled and dropped his rifle; - before he could recover himself, the German had it. The weapon swung - upward in the air and—just then a shell burst outside the open - window of the Hôtel Fauçon. - </p> - <p> - Both men were flung from their feet by the concussion. For a moment - everything was blank to McDermott. And then, stretching out his hand to - rise, his fingers encountered something smooth and hard upon the floor. - Automatically his grasp closed over it and he rose. At the same instant - the German struggled to his feet, one hand behind his back, and the other - extended, as if in entreaty. - </p> - <p> - “<i>Kamerad</i>,” he whined, and even as he whined he lurched nearer and - flung at McDermott a jagged, broken bottle. McDermott ducked, and the - dagger-like glass splintered on his helmet. And then McDermott struck—once. - Once was enough. The Boche sank to the floor without a groan, lifeless. - McDermott looked at him, and then, for the first time, looked at what he - held in his own hand, the weighty thing which he had wielded so - instinctively and with such ferocity. It was the bung starter of the Hôtel - Fauçon. - </p> - <p> - “Goostave niver knowed what hit him,” said McDermott. And if there had - been any one to hear, in all that din, a note of regret that Gustave never - knew might have been remarked in his voice. - </p> - <p> - McDermott turned his attention to the machine gun, which, with its tripod, - had been knocked to the floor. He squatted, with his head below the level - of the window sill, and looked it over. - </p> - <p> - “'Tis not broken,” he decided, after some moments of examination. “Did - Goostave do it so? Or did he do it so?” He removed his helmet and rubbed - the scar under his red hair reflectively. “If I was to make up me mind to - jine that war,” mused McDermott, “this same w'u'd be a handy thing to take - wid me. It w'u'd that! Now, did that Goostave that used to be here pull - this pretty little thingumajig so? Or did he pull it so? Ihaveut! He - pulled it so! And thim ca'tridges, now—do they feed in so? Or do - they feed in so? 'T w'u'd be a handy thing, now, f'r a man that had anny - intintions av jinin' the war to know about all thim things!” - </p> - <p> - And, patiently, McDermott studied the mechanism, while the red sunlight - turned to yellow in the Grande Place outside, and the budding green vines - withered along the broken walls, and the stones ran blood, and the Hôtel - Fauçon began to fall to pieces about his ears. McDermott did not hurry; he - felt that there was no need to hurry; he had not yet made up his mind - whether he intended to participate in this war. By the time he had learned - how to work that machine gun, and had used it on the Germans for a while, - he thought, he might be vouchsafed some light on that particular subject. - It was one of McDermott's fixed beliefs that he was an extremely cautious - sort of man, though many of his acquaintances thought of him differently, - and he told himself that he must not get too far into this war until he - was sure that it was going to be congenial. So far, it promised well. - </p> - <p> - And also, McDermott, as he puzzled over the machine gun, was not quite the - normal McDermott. He was, rather, a supernormal McDermott. He had been - awakened rudely from an alcoholic slumber and he had been rather busy ever - since; so many things had taken place in his immediate neighborhood, and - were still taking place, that he was not quite sure of their reality. As - he sat on the floor and studied the weapon, he was actually, from moment - to moment, more than half convinced that he was dreaming—he might - awaken and find that that war had eluded him again. Perhaps he is scarcely - to be chided for being in what is sometimes known as a state of mind. - </p> - <p> - And while McDermott was looking at the machine gun, the British commander - prayed, as a greater British commander before him had prayed one time, for - assistance, only this one did not pray for night or Blucher as Wellington - had done. Night was many hours beyond all hope and would probably bring - its own hell when it came, and as for Prussians, there were too many - Prussians now. His men would hold on; they had been holding on for epic - days and unbelievable nights, and they would still hold while there was - breath in their bodies, and when their bodies were breathless they would - hold one minute more. But—God! For Foch's <i>poilus!</i> There is a - moment which is the ultimate moment; the spirit can drag the body until—until - spirit and body are wrenched into two things. No longer. His men could die - in their tracks; they were dying where they stood and crouched and lay, by - dozens and by scores and by heroic hundreds—but when they were dead, - who would bar the way to Hazebrouck, and beyond Hazebrouck, to the channel - ports? - </p> - <p> - That way was all but open now, if the enemy but realized it. Any moment - they might discover it. A half-mile to the south of the village the line - was so thinly held that one strong, quick thrust must make a gap. Let the - enemy but fling a third of the troops he was pounding to pieces in the - bloody streets of the town, in the torn fields that flanked it, and in the - shambles of the Grande Place that was the center of this action, at that - weak spot, and all was over. But with a fury mechanical, insensate, the - Germans still came on in direct frontal attacks. - </p> - <p> - The British had slain and slain and slain, firing into the gray masses - until the water boiled in the jackets of the machine guns. Five attacks - had broken down in the Grande Place itself—and now a sixth was - forming. Should he still hold fast, the colonel asked himself, or should - he retire, saving what machine guns he might, and flinging a desperate - detachment southward in the attempt to make a stronger right flank? But to - do that might be the very move that would awaken the Germans to their - opportunity there. So long as they pounded, pounded at his center, he - would take a toll of them, at least—but the moment was coming— - </p> - <p> - “I have ut!” cried McDermott, and mounted his gun at the window. - </p> - <p> - “It is time to retire,” said the British colonel, and was about to give - the order. - </p> - <p> - “Right in their bloody backs,” said McDermott to himself. - </p> - <p> - And so it was. For the sixth advance of the German masses had carried them - well into the Grande Place. McDermott, crouched at his window, cut loose - with his gun at pointblank range as the first wave, five men deep, passed - by him, splashing along the thick ranks from behind as one might sweep a - garden hose down a row of vegetables. Taken thus in the rear, ambushed, - with no knowledge of the strength of the attacking force behind them, the - German shock troops swayed and staggered, faced about and fell and broke. - For right into the milling herd of them, and into the second advancing - wave, the British poured their bullets. The colonel, who had been about to - order a retreat, ordered a charge, and before the stampeded remnant of the - first two waves could recover themselves the British were on them with - grenades and bayonets, flinging them back into the third wave, just - advancing to their support, in a bleeding huddle of defeat. - </p> - <p> - McDermott saw the beginning of that charge, and with his bung starter in - his hand he rushed from the door to join it. But he did not see the end of - it, nor did he see the <i>poilus</i>, as they came slouching into the - village five minutes later to give the repulse weight and confirmation, - redolent of onions and strange stews, but with their bayonets—those - bayonets that are part of the men who wield them, living things, instinct - with the beautiful, straight, keen soul of France herself. - </p> - <p> - McDermott did not see them, for some more of the Hôtel Fauçon had fallen - on him, crushing one of his ankles and giving him a clout on the head. - </p> - <p> - “Whoever it was turned loose that machine gun from the inn window, did the - trick,” said the colonel, later. “It's hardly too much to say that he - blocked the way to Hazebrouck—for the time, at least, if one man can - be said to have done such a thing—what's that?” - </p> - <p> - “That” was McDermott, who was being carried forth, unconscious, to an - ambulance. It was his blue overalls that had occasioned the colonel's - surprise. He was neither French nor British nor German; palpably he was a - civilian, and a civilian who had no business there. And in his hand he - clasped a bung starter. His fingers were closed over it so tightly that in - the base hospital later they found difficulty in taking it away from him. - </p> - <p> - Owing, no doubt, to the blow on his head, McDermott was unable to recall - clearly anything that had taken place from the moment he had first fallen - asleep under the influence of French brandy until he awakened in the - hospital nearly four weeks later. During this period there had been - several intervals of more open-eyed dreaming, succeeded by lapses into - profound stupor; but even in these open-eyed intervals, McDermott had not - been himself. It was during one of these intervals that a representative - of the French Government bestowed the Croix de Guerre upon McDermott, for - it had been learned that he was the man behind the machine gun that had - turned the tide of combat. - </p> - <p> - McDermott, his eyes open, but his mind in too much of a daze even to - wonder what the ceremony was about, sat in a wheel chair, and in company - with half a dozen other men selected for decoration, listened to a brief - oration in very good French, which he could not have understood had he - been normal. In answer he muttered in a low tone, rubbing his broken and - bandaged head: “I think maybe I will jine that war, afther all!” - </p> - <p> - The French officer assumed that McDermott had spoken some sort of - compliment to France and kissed McDermott on both cheeks, in front of the - hospital staff, several American reporters, and as much of the French army - as qould be spared to do honor to the occasion. The <i>Croix de Guerre</i> - made no impression upon McDermott, but the kiss briefly arrested his - wandering consciousness, and he cried out, starting up in his chair and - menacing the officer: “Where is me bung starter?” Then he fainted. - </p> - <p> - A good many thousands of people in France and England and America learned - from the newspapers the story of the nondescript in the blue overalls, who - had behaved so gallantly at the crucial moment of a crucial fight. But - McDermott never did. He seldom read newspapers. No one had been able to - learn his name, so the reporters had given him a name. They called him - “Dennis.” And it was “Dennis” who got the fame and glory. McDermott would - not have identified himself with Dennis had he seen the newspapers. When - he awakened from his long, broken stupor, with its intervals of dazed - halfconsciousness, the first thing he did was to steal away from that - hospital; he left without having heard of Dennis or of the decoration of - Dennis. - </p> - <p> - There was one thing that he had experienced that did live hazily and - confusedly in his memory, however, although he could not fix it in its - relationship to any other thing. And that was the fact that he had met - Gustave Schmidt. Three or four months after he slipped away from the - hospital—a period of unchronicled wanderings, during which he had - tried unsuccessfully to enlist several times—he limped into a saloon - on the Brooklyn water front and asked Tim O'Toole, the proprietor, for his - usual. He had just got back to Brooklyn, and he carried his earthly - possessions in a bundle wrapped in brown paper. - </p> - <p> - “I hear Yordy Crowley isn't givin' his racket this year,” said McDermott, - laying his bundle on the bar and pouring out his drink. - </p> - <p> - “He is not,” said Tim. “He is in France helpin' out thim English.” - </p> - <p> - “Yordy will make a good sojer,” said McDermott. “He is a good man of his - fists.” - </p> - <p> - “The Irish is all good sojers,” said Mr. O'Toole, sententiously. “There - was that man Dinnis, now, that was in all av the papers.” - </p> - <p> - “I did not hear av him,” said McDermott. “An' phwat did he do?” - </p> - <p> - “He licked th' entire German army wan morn-in',” said O'Toole, “an' saved - England, an' the Quane of France kissed him for it. 'Twas in all the - papers. Or, maybe,” said Mr. O'Toole, “it was the King av Belg'um kissed - him for ut. Anny-way wan of thim foreign powers kissed him wid the whole - world lookin' on.” - </p> - <p> - “An' phwat did this Dinnis do thin?” asked McDermott. - </p> - <p> - “He attimpted to assault the person that kissed him,” said O'Toole. “Maybe - 'twas the King av Italy. 'Twas in all the papers at th' time. Some wan - told me ye were in France y'rsilf, Paddy.” - </p> - <p> - “I was that,” said McDermott. “I wint wid mules.” - </p> - <p> - “Did ye see annything av the war?” - </p> - <p> - “I did not,” said McDermott. “Divil a bit of ut, barrin' a lot o' racket - an' a big roarin' divil av a stame-boiler thing that come bustin' through - th' air an' took away the mules that was me passport. But I come near - seein' some av ut, wan time.” - </p> - <p> - “An' how was it that ye come near it, an' missed it?” inquired Tim. - </p> - <p> - “I wint to slape,” said McDermott. “The war was slapin', an' I laid m'silf - down b' the side av ut an' took a nap, too. Later, I woke up in the - hospital, some wan havin' stipped on me whilst I was slapin', or - somethin'. They was afther keep-in' me in th' hospital indefinite, an' I - slipped away wan mornin', dodgin' the orderlies an' nurses, or I might - have been there yet eatin' jelly an' gettin' me face washed f'r me. An' - afther I got back here I thried to jine that war, but th' Amurrican Army - w'u'd not have me.” - </p> - <p> - “And phwy not?” - </p> - <p> - “Because av me fut.” - </p> - <p> - “And how did ye hurt y'r fut?” - </p> - <p> - “Divil a bit do I know how,” said McDermott. “I'm tellin' ye 'twas done - whilst I was aslape. I remimber gettin' soused in wan av thim Frinch - barrooms, an' I w'u'd think it was a mule stipped on me fut whin I was - slapin' off me souse, excipt that thim mules was gone before I got me - souse.” - </p> - <p> - “An' ye saw naught av the war?” Tim was distinctly disappointed. - </p> - <p> - “But little of ut, but little of ut,” said McDermott. “But, Timmy,—wan - thing I did whilst I was in France.” - </p> - <p> - “An' phwat was that?” - </p> - <p> - “I avened up an ould grudge,” said McDermott. He put away a second drink, - rolling it over his tongue with satisfaction. “Do ye mind that Goostave - Schmidt that used to kape bar acrost the strate? Ye do! Do ye mind th' - time he hit me wid th' bung starter? Ye do!” - </p> - <p> - “Phwat thin?” - </p> - <p> - “Well, thin,” said McDermott, “I met up wid him ag'in in wan av thim - Frinch barrooms. I do not remimber phwat he said to me nor phwat I said to - him, for I was soused, Timmy. But wan word led to another, an' I give him - as good as he sint, an' 'twas wid a bung starter, too. I brung it back wid - me as a sooveneer av me travels in France.” - </p> - <p> - And, undoing his brown paper bundle, McDermott fished forth from among his - change of socks and shirts and underwear the bung starter of the Hôtel - Fauçon and laid it upon the bar for his friend's inspection. Something - else in the bundle caught O'Toole's eye. - </p> - <p> - “An' phwat is that thing ye have there?” asked Tim. - </p> - <p> - “Divil a bit do I know phwat,” said McDermott, picking the article up and - tossing it carelessly upon the bar. “'Twas layin' by me cot in the - hospital, along wid m' bung starter an' me clothes whin I come to m'silf, - an' whin I made me sneak from that place I brung it along.” - </p> - <p> - It was the <i>Croix de Guerre</i>. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - V.—Looney the Mutt - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ooney had but one - object in life, one thought, one conscious motive of existence—to - find Slim again. After he found Slim, things would be different, things - would be better, somehow. Just how, Looney did not know. - </p> - <p> - Looney did not know much, anyhow. Likely he would never have known much, - in the most favorable circumstances. And the circumstances under which he - had passed his life were scarcely conducive to mental growth. He could - remember, vaguely, that he had not always been called Looney Hogan. There - had been a time when he was called Kid Hogan. Something had happened - inside his head one day, and then there had come a period of which he - remembered nothing at all; after that, when he could remember again, he - was not Kid any more, but Looney. Perhaps some one had hit him on the - head. People were always hitting him, before he knew Slim. And now that - Slim was gone, people were always hitting him again. When he was with - Slim, Slim had not let people hit him—often. So he must find Slim - again; Slim, who was the only God he had ever known. - </p> - <p> - In the course of time he became known, in his own queer world, from - Baltimore to Seattle, from Los Angeles to Boston, as Slim's Lost Mutt, or - as Looney the Mutt. Looney did not resent being called a dog, - particularly, but he never called himself “The Mutt”; he stuck to - “Looney”; Slim had called him Looney, and Looney must, therefore, be - right. - </p> - <p> - The humors of Looney's world are not, uniformly, kindly humors. Giving - Looney the Mutt a “bum steer” as to Slim's whereabouts was considered a - legitimate jest. - </p> - <p> - “Youse ain't seen Slim Matchett anywheres?” he would ask of hobo or - wobbly, working stiff or yeggman, his faded pale-blue eyes peering from - his weather-worn face with the same anxious intensity, the same eager - hope, as if he had not asked the question ten thousand times before. - </p> - <p> - And the other wanderer, if he were one that knew of Looney the Mutt and - Looney's quest would answer, like as not: - </p> - <p> - “Slimmy de Match? Uh-huh! I seen Slim last mont' in Chi. He's lookin' fer - youse, Looney.” One day the Burlington Crip, who lacked a hand, and who - looked so mean that it was of common report that he had got sore at - himself and bitten it off, varied the reply a bit by saying: - </p> - <p> - “I seen Slim las' week, an' he says: 'Where t' hell's dat kid o' mine? - Youse ain't seen nuttin' o' dat kid o' mine, has you, Crip? Dat kid o' - mine give me de slip, Crip. He lammistered, and I ain't seen him since. If - youse gets yer lamps on dat kid o' mine, Crip, give him a wallop on his - mush fer me, an' tell him to come an' find me an' I'm gonna give him - another one.'” - </p> - <p> - Looney stared and wondered and grieved. It hurt him especially that Slim - should think that he, Looney, had run away from Slim; he agonized anew - that he could not tell Slim at once that such was not the truth. And he - wondered and grieved at the change that must have taken place in Slim, who - now promised him “a wallop on the mush.” For Slim had never struck him. It - was Slim who had always kept other people from striking him. It was Slim - who had, upon occasion, struck other people to protect him—once, in - a hangout among the lakeside sand dunes south of Chicago, Slim had knifed - a man who had, by way of jovial byplay to enliven a dull afternoon, flung - Looney into the fire. - </p> - <p> - It never occurred to Looney to doubt, entirely, these bearers of - misinformation. He was hunting Slim, and of course, he thought, Slim was - hunting Looney. His nature was all credulity. Such mind as the boy - possessed—he was somewhere in his twenties, but had the physique of - a boy—was saturated with belief in Slim, with faith in Slim, and he - thought that all the world must admire Slim. He did not see why any one - should tell lies that might increase Slim's difficulties, or his own. - </p> - <p> - There was a big red star he used to look at nights, when he slept in the - open, and because it seemed to him bigger and better and more splendid - than any of the other stars he took to calling it Slim's star. It was a - cocky, confident-looking star; it looked as if it would know how to take - care of itself, and Slim had been like that. It looked good-natured, too, - and Slim had been that way. When Looney had rustled the scoffin's for - Slim, Slim had always let him have some of the best chow—or almost - always. And he used to talk to that star about Slim when he was alone. It - seemed sympathetic. And although he believed the hoboes were telling him - the truth when they said that they had seen Slim, it was apparent even to - his intelligence that they had no real sympathy with his quest. - </p> - <p> - Once he did find a certain sympathy, if no great understanding. He worked - a week, one Spring, for a farmer in Indiana. The farmer wished to keep - him, for that Summer at least, for Looney was docile, willing enough, and - had a natural, unconscious tact with the work-horses. Looney was never - afraid of animals, and they were never afraid of him. Dogs took to him, - and the instant liking of dogs had often stood him in good stead in his - profession. - </p> - <p> - “Why won't you stay?” asked the farmer. - </p> - <p> - “Slim's lookin' fer me, somewheres,” said Looney. And he told the farmer - about Slim. The farmer, having perceived Looney's mental twilight, and - feeling kindly toward the creature, advanced an argument that he thought - might hold him. - </p> - <p> - “Slim is just as likely to find you if you stay in one place, as if you go - travelin' all over the country,” he said. - </p> - <p> - “Huh-uh,” said Looney. “He ain't, Mister. It's this way, Mister: every - time I stop long any-, wheres, Slim, he passes me by.” - </p> - <p> - And then he continued, after a pause: “Slim, he was always good to me, - Mister. I kinda want to be the one that finds Slim, instead of just - stayin' still an' waitin' to be found.” - </p> - <p> - They were standing in the dusk by the barn, and the early stars were out. - Looney told him about Slim's star. - </p> - <p> - “I want to be the guy that does the findin',” went on Looney presently, - “because I was the guy that done the losin'. One night they was five or - six of us layin' under a lot of railroad ties we had propped up against a - fence to keep the weather off, an' we figgered on hoppin' a train fer Chi - that night. Well, the train comes along, but I'm asleep. See? The rest of - t' gang gits into an empty in de dark, an' I don't wake up. I s'pose Slim - he t'inks I'm wit' t' gang, but I don't wake up under them ties till - mornin'. I went to Chi soon's I could, but I ain't never glommed him - since, Mister. I didn't find him dere. An' dat's t' way I lost Slim, - Mister.” - </p> - <p> - “Maybe,” suggested the farmer, “he is dead.” - </p> - <p> - “Nit,” said Looney. “He ain't dead. If Slim was croaked or anything, I'd - be wised up to it. Look at that there star. Dat is Slim's star, like I - told youse. If Slim had been bumped off, or anything, Mister, that star - wouldn't be shinin' that way, Mister.” - </p> - <p> - And he went back to his own world—his world—which was a - succession of freight and cattle cars, ruinous sheds and shelters in - dubious suburbs near to railroad sidings, police stations, workhouses, - jails, city missions, transient hangouts in bedraggled clumps of wood, - improvised shacks, shared with others of his kind in vacant lots in sooty - industrial towns, chance bivouacs amidst lumber piles and under dripping - water tanks, lucky infrequent lodgings in slum hotels that used to charge - fifteen cents for a bed and now charge a quarter, golden moments in vile - barrooms and blind tigers, occasional orgies in quarries or gravel pits or - abandoned tin-roofed tool houses, uneasy, loiterings and interrupted - slumbers in urban parks and the squares or outskirts of villages. - Sometimes he worked, as he had with the Indiana farmer, with the wheat - harvesters of the Northwest, or the snow shovelers of the metropoli, or - the fruit gatherers of California; but more often he loafed, and rustled - grub and small coin from the charitably disposed. - </p> - <p> - It all seemed the natural way of life to Looney. He could not remember - anything else. He viewed the people of the world who did not live so, and - whom he saw to be the majority, as strange, unaccountable beings whom he - could never hope to understand; he vaguely perceived that they were - stronger than he and his ever-hiking clan, and he knew that they might do - unpleasant things to him with their laws and their courts and their - strength, but he bore them no rancor, unlike many of his associates. - </p> - <p> - He had no theories about work or idleness; he accepted either as it came; - he had little conscious thought about anything, except finding Slim again. - And one thing worried him: Slim, who was supposed to be looking for - Looney, even as Looney was looking for Slim, left no mark. He was forever - looking for it, searching for the traces of Slim's knife—a name, a - date, a destination, a message bidding Looney to follow or to wait—on - freight sheds and water tanks, and known and charted telegraph poles and - the tool houses of construction gangs. But Slim, always just ahead of him, - as he thought, continually returning and passing him, ever receding in the - distance, left no mark, no wanderer's pateran, behind. Looney left his own - marks everywhere, but, strangely enough, it seemed that Slim never saw - them. Looney remembered that one time when he and Slim were together Slim - had wished to meet and confer with the Burlington Crip, and had left word - to that effect, penciled and carved and sown by the speech of the mouth, - from the Barbary Coast to the Erie Basin. And the Burlington Crip, with - his snaggle teeth and his stump where a hand had been, had joined them on - the Brooklyn waterfront within two months. It had been simple, and Looney - wondered why Slim omitted this easy method of communication. Perhaps Slim - was using it and Looney was not finding the marks. He knew himself for - stupid, and set his failure down to that, never to neglect on Slim's part. - For Slim was Slim, and Slim could do no wrong. - </p> - <p> - His habit of searching for some scratched or written word of Slim's became - known to his whole section of the underworld, and furnished material for - an elaboration of the standing jest at his expense. When ennui descended - upon some chance gathering in one of the transient hangouts—caravanserai - as familiar to the loose-foot, casual guests, from coast to coast, as was - ever the Blackstone in Chicago or the Biltmore in New York to those who - read this simple history—it was customary for some wag to say: - </p> - <p> - “Looney, I seen a mark that looked like Slim's mark on a shed down in - Alexandria, Virginny, right by where the Long Bridge starts over to - Washington.” - </p> - <p> - And it might be that Looney would start at once, without a word, for - Alexandria. Therein lay the cream of this subtle witticism, for its - perpetrators—in Looney's swift departures. - </p> - <p> - Or it might be that Looney would sit and ponder, his washed-out eyes - interrogating the speaker in a puzzled fashion, but never doubting. And - then the jester would say, perhaps: “Why don't you get a move onto you, - Looney? You're gonna miss Slim again.” - </p> - <p> - And Looney would answer, perchance: “Slim, he ain't there now. The' was - one of them wobblies' bump-off men sayin' he seen Slim in Tacoma two weeks - ago, an' Slim was headin' this way. I'm gonna wait fer him a while - longer.” - </p> - <p> - But he never waited long. He could never make himself. As he had told the - Indiana farmer, he was afraid to wait long. It was the Burlington Crip who - had made him afraid to do that. The Crip had told him one time: “Looney, - Slim went through here last night, while youse was asleep over on that - lumber pile. I forgets youse is lookin' fer him or I'd a tipped him off - youse was here.” - </p> - <p> - Slim had been within a hundred yards of him, and he had been asleep and - had never known! What would Slim think, if he knew that? So thereafter he - was continually tortured by the fancy that Slim might be passing him in - the night; or that Slim, while he himself was riding the rods underneath a - railway car, might be on the blind baggage of that very train, and would - hop off first and be missed again. From day to day he became more muddled - and perplexed trying to decide whether it would be better to choose this - route or that, whether it would be better to stop here a week, or go - yonder with all possible speed. And from month to month he developed more - and more the questing, peering, wavering manner of the lost dog that seeks - its master. - </p> - <p> - Looney was always welcome In the hang-outs of the wandering underworld. - Not only was he a source of diversion, a convenient butt, but few could - rustle grub so successfully. His meager frame and his wistfulness, his - evident feebleness of intellect, drew alms from the solvent population, - and Looney faithfully brought his takings to the hangouts and was - dispatched again for more. Servant and butt he was to such lords as the - Burlington Crip and the English Basher. But he did not mind so long as he - was not physically maltreated—as he often was. The occasional crimes - of his associates, the occasional connection of some of them with - industrial warfare here and there, Looney sometimes participated in; but - he never understood. If he were told to do so and so, for the most part he - did it. If he were asked to do too much, or was beaten up for his - stupidity, and he was always stupid, he quietly slunk away at his first - opportunity. - </p> - <p> - The English Basher was a red-faced savage with fists as hard and rough as - tarred rope; and he conceived the idea that Looney should be his kid, and - wait upon him, even as he had been Slim's kid. Looney, afraid of the man, - for a time seemed to acquiesce. But the Basher had reckoned without - Looney's faculty for blundering. - </p> - <p> - He dispatched Looney one day, ostensibly to bum a handout, but in reality - to get the lay of a certain house in a suburb near Cincinnati, which the - Basher meditated cracking the next convenient night. Looney returned with - the food but without the information. He had been willing enough, for he - admired yeggmen and all their ways and works, and was withheld by no moral - considerations from anything he was asked to do; but he had bungled. He - had been in the kitchen, he had eaten his own scoffin's there, he had - talked with the cook for twenty minutes, he had even brought up from the - cellar a scuttle of coal for the kitchen range to save the cook's back, - but he actually knew less about that house, its plan, its fastenings, its - doors and basement windows than the Basher had been able to gather with a - single stroke of the eye as he loitered down the street. - </p> - <p> - “Cripes! Whadje chin about with the kitchen mechanic all dat time, you?” - demanded the Basher. - </p> - <p> - “She was stringin' me along,” said Looney humbly, “an' I spilled to her - about me an' Slim.” - </p> - <p> - “Slim! ——— ———— yer, I've a mind - t' croak yer!” cried the Basher. - </p> - <p> - And he nearly did it, knocking the boy down repeatedly, till finally - Looney lay still upon the ground. - </p> - <p> - “'S'elp me,” said the Basher, “I've a mind to give yer m' boots! You get - up an' beat it! An' if I ever gets my lamps onto you again I <i>will</i> - croak you, by Gawd, an' no mistake!” - </p> - <p> - Looney staggered to his feet and hobbled to a safe distance. And then, - spitting out a broken tooth, he dared to mutter: “If Slimmy was here, he'd - see de color o' youse insides, Slimmy would. Slimmy, he knifed a yegg - oncet wot done less'n dat t'me!” - </p> - <p> - It was only a week or two after he left the Basher that Looney's faith in - Slim's star was tested again. Half a dozen of the brotherhood were - gathered about a fire in a gravel pit in northern Illinois, swapping yarns - and experiences and making merry. It was a tremendous fire, and lighted up - the hollow as if it were the entrance to Gehenna, flinging the grotesque - shadows of the men against the overhanging embankments, and causing the - inhabitants of a village a mile or so away to wonder what farmer's - haystack was aflame. The tramps were wasting five times the wood they - needed, after their fashion. They had eaten to repletion, and they were - wasting the left-over food from their evening gorge; they had booze; they - were smoking; they felt, for the hour, at peace with the world. - </p> - <p> - “Wot ever <i>did</i> become of dat Slim?” asked the Burlington Crip, who - happened to be of the party, looking speculatively at Looney. Even the - sinister Crip, for the nonce, was not toting with him his usual mordant - grouch. - </p> - <p> - Looney was tending the fire, while he listened to tales of the spacious - days of the great Johnny Yegg himself, and other Titans of the road who - have now assumed the state of legendary heroes; and he was, as usual, - saying nothing. - </p> - <p> - “Slim? Slimmy t' Match wot Looney here's been tailin' after fer so long?” - said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was bumped off in Paterson t'ree or four - years ago.” - </p> - <p> - “He wasn't neither,” spoke up Looney. “Tex, here, seen him in Chi last - mont'.” - </p> - <p> - And, indeed, Tex had told Looney so. But now, thus directly appealed to, - Tex answered nothing. And for the first time Looney began to get the vague - suspicion that these, his friends, might have trifled with him before. - Certainly they were serious now. He looked around the sprawled circle and - sensed that their manner was somehow different from the attitude with - which they had usually discussed his quest for Slim. - </p> - <p> - “Bumped off?” said Tex. “How?” - </p> - <p> - “A wobbly done it,” said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was scabbin'. - Strike-breakin'. And they was some wobblies there helpin' on the strike. - See? An' this wobbly bumps Slim off.” - </p> - <p> - “He didn't neither,” said Looney again. - </p> - <p> - “T' hell he didn't? He said he did,” said the San Diego Kid pacifically. - “Is a guy gonna say he's bumped off a guy unless he's bumped him off?” - </p> - <p> - Looney, somewhat shaken, withdrew from the group to seek comfort from the - constellations; and particularly from that big, red star, the apparent - king of stars, which he had come to think of as Slim's star, and vaguely, - as Slim's mascot. It was brighter and redder than ever that night, Looney - thought, and sitting on a discarded railroad tie and staring at the - planet, Looney gradually recovered his faith. - </p> - <p> - “He ain't neither been bumped off, Slim ain't,” he muttered, “an' I'm - gonna find him yet.” - </p> - <p> - And Slim had not been bumped off, however sincere the San Diego Kid may - have been in his belief. - </p> - <p> - It was some months later that Looney did find him in a little city in - Pennsylvania—or found some one that looked like him. - </p> - <p> - Looney had dropped from a freight train early in the morning, had rustled - himself some grub, had eaten two good meals and had part of a day's sleep, - and now, just as dark was coming on, and the street lamps were being - lighted, was loafing aimlessly on the platform of the railway depot. He - purposed to take a train south that night, when it became so dark that he - could crawl into an empty in the yards without too much danger of being - seen and he was merely putting in the time until full night came on. - </p> - <p> - While he was standing idly so, an automobile drew up beside the station - platform and an elegantly dressed and slender man of about thirty got out. - He assisted from the car a woman and a small child, and they made toward - the door of the waiting room. - </p> - <p> - “Slim!” cried Looney, rushing forward. - </p> - <p> - For this was Slim—it must be Slim—it was Slimmy the Match in - every feature—and yet, the car!—the clothes—the woman—the - baby—the prosperity——- <i>Was</i> it Slim? - </p> - <p> - “Slim!” cried Looney again, his heart leaping in his meager body. “It's - me, Slim! It's Looney! I've got youse again, Slim! Gawd! I've found yuh!” - </p> - <p> - The woman hastily snatched the child up into her arms, with a suppressed - scream, and recoiled. - </p> - <p> - The man made no sound, but he, too, drew back a step, not seeming to see - Looney's outstretched hand. - </p> - <p> - But he did see it—he saw more than that. He saw, as if they were - flashed before him at lightning speed upon a cinema screen, a dozen scenes - of a wild and reckless and indigent youth that he had thought was dead - forever; he saw these roughneck years suddenly leap alive and stalk toward - him again, toward him and his; he saw his later years of industry, his - hard-won success, his position so strenuously battled for, his - respectability that was become so dear to him, all his house of life so - laboriously builded, crumbling before the touch of this torn and grotesque - outcast that confronted and claimed him, this wavering, dusty lunatic whom - he dimly remembered. If his wife knew—if her people knew—if - the business men of this town were to know—— - </p> - <p> - He shuddered and turned sick, and then with a sudden recovery he took his - child from its mother and guided her before him into the waiting room. - </p> - <p> - Looney watched them enter, in silence. He stood dazed for a moment, and - then he slowly turned and walked down the railroad track beyond the limits - of the town. There, upon a spot of turf beside the right of way, he threw - himself upon his face and sobbed and moaned, as a broken-hearted child - sobs, as a dog moans upon its master's grave. - </p> - <p> - But after a while he looked up. Slim's star was looking down at him, red - and confident and heartening as ever. He gazed at it a long time, and then - an idea took form in his ruined brain and he said aloud: - </p> - <p> - “Now, dat wasn't <i>really</i> Slim! I been lookin' fer Slim so long I - t'ink I see Slim where he ain't! Dat was jus' some guy wot looks like - Slimmy. Slimmy, he wouldn't never of gone back on an old pal like dat!” - </p> - <p> - The rumble of an approaching train caught his ears. He got to his feet and - prepared to board it. - </p> - <p> - “Slim, he's waitin' fer me somewheres,” he told the star. “I may be kinda - looney about some t'ings, but I knows Slim, an' dey ain't no yellow streak - nowheres in Slim!” - </p> - <p> - And with unshaken loyalty Looney the Mutt boarded the train and set off - upon his endless quest anew. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VI—Kale - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ee that old fellow - there?” asked Ed the waiter. “Well, his fad is money.” - </p> - <p> - The old fellow indicated—he must have been nearly eighty—sat - eating corned beef and cabbage in a little booth in a certain delightful, - greasy old chophouse in downtown New York. It was nearly time to close the - chophouse for that day for it was almost eleven o'clock at night; it was - nearly time to close the chophouse forever, for it was the middle of June, - 1919. In a couple of weeks the wartime prohibition act would be in force, - and Ed and I had been discussing what effect it would have upon our - respective lives. - </p> - <p> - There was no one else in the place at the time except the cashier and the - old man whose fad was money, and so Ed had condescended toward me, as a - faithful customer, and was sitting down to have a drink with me. - </p> - <p> - “His fad is money?” I questioned, glancing at the old gentleman, who - seemed to be nothing extraordinary as regards face or manner or attire. He - had a long, bony New Englandish head and a short, white, well-trimmed - beard; he was finishing his nowise delicate food with gusto. “I should - say,” I added, “that his fad was corned beef and cabbage.” - </p> - <p> - “That's one of his fads,” admitted Ed the waiter, “and I don't know but - that it's as strong in him as his money fad. At any rate, I've never seen - him without one or the other was near him, and both in large quantities.” - </p> - <p> - We had been conversing in a mumble, so that our voices should not carry to - the old gentleman. And now Ed dropped his voice still lower and whispered: - </p> - <p> - “That's Old Man Singleton.” - </p> - <p> - I looked at him with a renewed interest. Every one knew who Old Man - Singleton was, and many persons liked to guess how much he was worth. - Ostensibly he had retired, leaving to his two sons the management of the - Singleton banking business, with its many ramifications; but actually he - kept his interest in the concern and was reputed to be coaching his - grandsons in the ways of the world, and especially that part of the world - known as “The Street.” - </p> - <p> - Starting out as a New England villager who hated poverty because his - family had always known it, he had come to New York as a lad of twenty, - with red knitted mittens on his osseous hands, and he had at once removed - the mittens and put the hands to work gathering money; it was rumored that - the hands had never turned loose any of the garnered coin; it was even - said by some persons that he still had the same pair of mittens. - </p> - <p> - The details of his rise I cannot give; he had achieved his ambition to be - one of the very rich men of America because the ambition was so strong - within him. - </p> - <p> - “Of course his fad is money,” I muttered to Ed the waiter. “Everybody - knows that Old Man Singleton's fad is money.” - </p> - <p> - Ed was about to reply, when Mr. Singleton looked up and motioned for his - check. Ed brought it, and gave the old gentleman his hat and his stick and - his change. - </p> - <p> - “I hope everything was all right,” Mr. Singleton said Ed, palpably bidding - for recognition and a tip. - </p> - <p> - “Eh? said Singleton, looking blankly at Ed You know me, hey? I don't - recall you. Yes, everything was all right, thank you.” He gave the waiter - a dime and passed out, after another blank, fumbling look at Ed, and a - shake of his head. There was something feeble and wandering in the old - fellow's manner; his memory was going; it was obvious that before long the - rest of him would follow his memory. He shouldn't be allowed to go around - this way alone at night,” murmured Ed, watching the door through which he - had made his exit. “But I suppose he's as bull-headed as ever about doing - what he pleases, even if his legs are shaky.” - </p> - <p> - “He didn't know you,” I hinted, for I wished to learn all that Ed knew - about Old Man Singleton. - </p> - <p> - Ed is a person who has been in the world nearly fifty years; he has had - some very unusual acquaintances and experiences. It is never safe to - predict just what Ed will know and what he will not know. One afternoon, - after I had known Ed for about a year, I was attempting to argue some - scientific point with a friend who was lunching with me, and Ed, who was - waiting on us and listening, remarked: “I beg your pardon, sir, but it - wasn't in <i>The Descent of Man</i> that Darwin said that; it was in <i>The - Origin of Species</i>.” - </p> - <p> - And yet, if you deduce from that remark that Ed knows a great deal about - modern science, you will be mistaken; as likely as not he could quote - pages of Marcus Aurelius to you, and at the same time he might pronounce - “Euripides” as if the last two syllables were one, riming with “hides”; - his reading, like his life, has been elective. - </p> - <p> - “He doesn't recall you,” I repeated. - </p> - <p> - “And that's ingratitude,” said Ed, “if he only knew it. I saved the old - man's life once.” - </p> - <p> - And Ed limped over to the table and resumed his seat opposite me. He has a - bullet under one kneecap, and at times it makes him very lame. He would - never tell me how it came there; to this day I do not know. - </p> - <p> - “From what did you save his life?” I asked. “From a man,” said Ed moodily. - “From a man who had a notion to bean him one night. And to this day I ask - myself: 'Did I do right, or did I do wrong?'” - </p> - <p> - “Tell me about it,” I insisted, - </p> - <p> - “Drink up,” said Ed, manipulating the Scotch bottle and the siphon of - seltzer. “This is one of the last highballs you'll ever have, unless you - sneak around and take it on the sly. I don't know that I should have - another one myself; it settles in this damned knee of mine if I get a - little too much.” - </p> - <p> - “Tell me when, where and how you knew Old Man Singleton,” I demanded - again. - </p> - <p> - “This knee of mine,” went on Ed, disregarding me, “is a hell of a - handicap. We were talking about prohibition—what's prohibition going - to do to me? Hey? It puts me out of a job in a barroom like this the first - thing. And what else can I do? With this game leg, you can see me going on - the stage as a Russian dancer, can't you? Or digging trenches to lay gas - pipes in, or carrying a Hod? Huh? And I can't even get a job in a swell - restaurant uptown; they don't want any gamelegged waiters sticking around, - falling over the chairs. This was about the only kind of a joint and the - only kind of a job I was fit for, this chop-house thing down here, and - it's going to close in two weeks. What then? Be somebody's housemaid? I - can't see it. I don't wish anybody any bad luck, but I hope the guy that - put over this prohibition thing gets stiff in all his joints and lives - forever.” - </p> - <p> - I sympathized and waited, and finally he began. “Old Man Singleton's fad,” - said Ed, “as I re marked before, is money. And as you remarked, another of - his fads is corned beef and cabbage—especially cabbage. He will eat - corned beef with his cabbage, and like it; or he will eat pork with his - cabbage, and like it; or he will eat cabbage without either; it is the - cabbage he likes—or kale. In fact, you could reduce his two fads to - one, and say what he likes is kale—kale in the slang sense of money, - and kale that is cabbage. And all his life he has been stuffing himself - with kale. - </p> - <p> - “His fad is kale that he can see and feel and handle and show and carry - about with him. Not merely money in the bank and stocks and bonds and - property and real estate, but actual cash. He likes to carry it with him, - and he does carry it with him. I guess he likes the feel of it in his - billfolder, and the thought that he has got it on him—on him, the - poor boy that came out of New England with the red knitted mittens on that - everybody has heard so much about. I can understand the way he feels about - it; with a folder full of thousand-dollar and ten-thousand-dollar bills he - feels safe, somehow; feels like he'll never have to go back to that little - New England town and saw cordwood and shovel snow again. - </p> - <p> - “He's got it on him now, that folder, and I'll bet you on it. That's what - I meant when I said it wasn't safe for him to be trotting about this way - after night. For if I know it, it stands to reason others know it, too. - </p> - <p> - “What you want to know is, how I know it. Well, I was not always what I am - now. Once I was quite a bird and wore dress suits and went to the - Metropolitan Opera and listened to Caruso as he jumped his voice from peak - to peak. Yes, sir, I know every darned acoustic in that place! They - weren't my dress suits that I wore, but they fit me. Once I moved in the - circles of the idle rich, though they didn't know it, and helped 'em spend - the unearned increment they wrung from the toil of the downtrodden - laboring man. - </p> - <p> - “Once, to come down to brass tacks, I was a butler's companion. It is an - office you won't find listed in the social directory, but it existed, for - me at least. The butler in the case was a good friend of mine by the name - of Larry Hodgkins, and being part Irish, he was an ideal English butler. - Larry and his mother were in the employ of the Hergsheimers, a wealthy - Jewish family—you know who they are if you read the financial pages - or the Sunday supplements. Mrs. Hodgkins was the housekeeper and Larry was - the butler, and when the Hergsheimers were traveling Larry and his mother - stayed in the New York house as caretakers and kept things shipshape. And - let me give you a tip, by the way: if you ever take a notion to quit the - writing game and go into domestic service, plant yourself with a rich - Hebrew family. They want things done right, but they are the most liberal - people on earth, especially to Gentile servants. - </p> - <p> - “This Hergsheimer was Jacob Hergsheimer, and he was in right socially in - New York, as well as financially; he had put himself across into the big - time socially because, if you ask me, he belonged there; all the - Hergsheimers didn't get across, but this one did. His New York house is - uptown, between the sixties and the eighties, east of the Park, and he - wants it kept so he can drop into it with his family and a flock of - servants at any hour of the day or night, from any part of the earth, - without a minute's notice, and give a dinner party at once, if he feels - like it, and he frequently feels like it. - </p> - <p> - “It was Mrs. Hodgkins's and Larry's job to keep the fire from going out in - the boilers, so to speak, and a head of steam on, so that the domestic - ship could sail in any direction on receipt of orders by wire, wireless or - telephone. They were permanent there, but Jake Hergsheimer and his family, - as far as I could make out, never got more than an average of about three - months' use a year out of that mansion. - </p> - <p> - “This time I am speaking of was nearly ten years ago. I was a waiter in an - uptown restaurant, and both my legs were good then; Larry and I were old - pals. The Jake Hergsheimers were sailing around the world in a yacht, and - would be at it for about a year, as far as Larry knew, and he asked me up - to live with him. I accepted; and believe me, the eight months I put in as - Jake Hergsheimer's guest were <i>some</i> eight months. Not that Jake knew - about it; but if he had known it, he wouldn't have cared. This Jake was a - real human being. - </p> - <p> - “And his clothes fit me; just as if I had been measured for them. He had - what you might call an automatic tailor, Jake did. Every six weeks, rain - or shine, that tailor delivered a new suit of clothes to the Hergsheimer - house, and he sent in his bill once a year, so Larry the butler told me. - Some people go away and forget to stop the milk; and when Jake sailed for - the other side of the world he forgot to tell anybody to stop the tailor. - Larry didn't feel as if it were any part of his duty to stop him; for - Larry liked that tailor. He made Larry's clothes, too. - </p> - <p> - “And I didn't see where it was up to me to protest. As I said, Jake's - garments might have been made for me. In fact, a great many of them <i>were</i> - made for me. There were at least fifteen suits of clothes that had never - been worn in that house, made to my measure and Jake's, when I became - butler's companion in the establishment, and they kept right on coming. - Also, there was a standing order for orchestra seats at the Metropolitan. - Jake had a box every second Thursday, or something like that, but when he - really wanted to hear the music and see the show he usually sat in the - orchestra. Not only did his business suits fit me, but his dress clothes - fit me, too. - </p> - <p> - “I used to go often, with a lady's maid that had the same access to - clothing as I did. She was part of a caretaking staff also. Being a - writing person, you have, of course, only viewed New York's society and - near-society from the outside, and no doubt you have been intimidated by - the haughty manners of the servants. Well, when you get close to swells - and really know them personally, you will find they are human, too. - </p> - <p> - “A butler on duty is a swelled-up proposition, because he has to be that - way. But take him as you find him among his peers, and he quits acting - like the Duke of Westminster Abbey, and is real sociable. This Larry - person, for instance, could distend himself like a poisoned pup and make a - timid millionaire feel like the sleeves of his undershirt must be showing - below his cuffs; but in our little select circle Larry was the life of the - party. - </p> - <p> - “Being, as I said before, an outsider, you likely don't realize how many - of those big swell millionaires' cribs uptown are in the hands of - caretakers like Larry and his mother and me the best part of the year. - Well, they are; and there's a social life goes on in them that don't ever - get into the papers. The parties we had that year in Jake's house would - have done Jake himself good, if Jake could have got an invitation to them. - But Jake was absent, though his cellar and his grocers were at our - service; and he never questioned a bill, Larry said. There were twelve or - fifteen hand-picked servants in our little social circle that year, and - before I left there I could begin to understand how these débutantes feel - at the end of the season—sort of tired and bored and willing to - relax and go in for work and rest and athletics for a change. - </p> - <p> - “I had only been butler's companion for a few weeks when Old Man Singleton - dropped in one evening—yes, sir, Old Lemuel Singleton himself. He - came to see the butler's mother, Mrs. Hodgkins. He had known her a good - many years before, when he was wearing those red mittens and sawing wood - up in that New England town and she was somebody's Irish cook. And he had - run across her again, after he became a millionaire, down here in New York - City. He was tickled to see her, and he didn't care a darn if she was Jake - Hergsheimer's housekeeper. She could cook cabbage and kale better than any - one else in the world, and he used to come and sit with her, and talk - about that little old town up there, and indulge in his favorite - dissipation. - </p> - <p> - “Old Man Singleton has had what you call the social entrée in New York for - a good many years; for so long that some of his children, and all his - grandchildren, were born with it. But he never took it very seriously - himself. He has been an in-and-outer, you might say. If he saw Mrs. - Hodgkins around Jake's house, he would call her Mary and ask her how folks - were up home in front of Jake and his wife and a whole bunch of guests, - just as soon as not. - </p> - <p> - “And his sons and his daughters and his grandchildren never could get him - out of those ways; he always was bull-headed about doing what he pleased, - so Mrs. Hodgkins told me, and he always will be. And the old lady liked to - see him and chin with him and cook for him; and believe me, she was some - cook when she set herself to it. Not merely kale, but everything. She - didn't cook for the Hergsheimers—they had a chef for that—but - they missed it by not having her. Victuals was old Mary's middle name, and - she could rustle up some of the best grub you ever threw your lip over. - </p> - <p> - “At first, Old Man Singleton and Mrs. Hodgkins didn't mix much with us - younger folks when we pulled a party. It wasn't that we were too - aristocratic for them, for off duty, as I said before, butlers and other - swells can be as easy and jolly as common people. But they seemed too - antiquated, if you get me; they were living too much in the past. - </p> - <p> - “And then, one night, I discovered what Old Man Singleton's fad was—kale. - Money. Big money. Big money on his person. It was this way: Larry and I - wanted to go downtown and have a little fun, but neither of us had any - cash in hand. Larry had a check for one hundred and fifty dollars which - Jake Hergsheimer had sent him, but all the tradesmen we knew were closed - at that hour, and there wasn't any way to cash it, unless Old Man - Singleton could. - </p> - <p> - “'Mr. Singleton,' says Larry to the old man, who was sitting down to a - mess of pork and kale with Mrs. Hodgkins, 'maybe you can cash this for - me.' And he handed him the check. - </p> - <p> - “The old man stopped eating and put his glasses on and pulled a billfolder - out of his pocket, with a kind of pleased smile on his face. - </p> - <p> - “'Let me see,' he says, taking out the bills, and running them over with - his fingers; 'let me see.' - </p> - <p> - “I nearly dropped dead. There wasn't a bill in there of lower denomination - than one thousand dollars; and most of them were ten-thousand-dol-lar - bills. - </p> - <p> - “'No, Larry,' says the old man, 'I'm afraid I can't, afraid I can't—haven't - got the change.' - </p> - <p> - “And while we stood there and looked, he smoothed and patted those bills, - and folded and refolded them, and then put them back into his pocket, and - patted the pocket. - </p> - <p> - “'Mary,' he says to the old woman with a grin, 'that's quite a lot of - money for little Lem Singleton to be carrying around in his pocket, isn't - it?' “'It is that, Lemuel,' said the old lady, 'and I should think you'd - be afraid of leaving it out of the bank.' - </p> - <p> - “'Well, Mary,' says the old man, 'I kind o' like to have it around me all - the time—uh—huh! a little bit where I can put my hands on it, - all the time. I used to carry gold; but I gave that up; it's too heavy, - for what it's worth. But I like it, Mary; I used to look at that gold and - say to myself, “Well, there's one thing you got, Lem Singleton, they never - thought you'd get when you left home! And they aren't going to take it - away from you, either!” It was a long time before I could make paper seem - as real to me as gold. But it does now.' - </p> - <p> - “And what does the old bird do but take it out of his pocket again and - crinkle it through his fingers and smooth it out again and pet it and do - everything but kiss it. Larry and I stood looking at him with our eyes - sticking out, and he looked at us and laughed. It came to me all of a - sudden that he liked to come where we servants were because he could pull - that kind of thing in front of us, but that he was sort of lost among the - swell-society bunch because he didn't dare pull it there and didn't feel - so rich among them. - </p> - <p> - “'My God, Larry,' I said, when we were outside the house, 'did you notice - how much kale the old man had there?' - </p> - <p> - “'Uh-huh,' said Larry. 'Mother always cooks a lot for him.' - </p> - <p> - “'Wake up, Stupid,' I said. 'I don't mean cabbage. I mean money. There - must have been nearly two hundred thousand dollars in that roll!' - </p> - <p> - “'He always has around one hundred thousand dollars on him, at least,' - says Larry. 'And I've seen him flash as high as a quarter of a million.' - </p> - <p> - “'Well,' I says, 'something ought to be done about it.' - </p> - <p> - “'What do you mean, Ed?' says he. - </p> - <p> - “'Oh, nothing,' I said. - </p> - <p> - “We walked over to get the L train downtown, saying nothing, and then - finally Larry remarked: “'Electricity is a great thing, Ed.' - </p> - <p> - “'I never said it wasn't,' says I. - </p> - <p> - “'It's a great thing,' says Larry, 'but when you sit on it, sit on it - right. For instance, I'd a darned sight rather sit in one of these - electric trains than in that electric chair up at Sing Sing.' - </p> - <p> - “'Who said anything about an electric chair?' I asked him. - </p> - <p> - “'Nobody said anything,' says Larry, 'but you're thinking so darned loud I - can get you.' - </p> - <p> - “'Piffle, peanuts and petrification,' I said. 'Take care of your own - thoughts, and I'll skim the fat off of mine myself.' - </p> - <p> - “Well, as I said, after that we got better acquainted, the old man and I. - I paid more attention to him. He interested me more. I've always been - interested in science of all kinds, and the year I spent in Jake - Hergsheimer's house I cut the leaves of a lot of books in his library and - gave them the once over. I was always interested in psychology, even - before the word got to be a headliner in the Sunday supplements, and I - took a good deal of pleasure that winter trying to get inside of Old Man - Singleton's mind. I must say, I never got very far in, at that. My general - conclusion at the end is what it was at the beginning—his fad is - kale. - </p> - <p> - “And he loved to show it, you could see that. Not that he pulled it every - time he happened to be at one of our parties. Often he would drop in that - winter from some swell social event at one of the big houses uptown, where - he had been a guest, and eat some of old Mary's chow, and never intimate - by word or look that he had all that kale on him. And then again he'd come - among us, diked out in the soup and fish, and flash the roll, for no other - reason that I know except he enjoyed seeing us get the blind staggers, - which we always did. And then he'd fuss with it and pet it and go into a - dream over it, and wake up again and grin and talk about life with old - Mary. And they agreed about life; you never heard two more moral persons - exchange views. It was sometimes as good as a Sunday-school to listen to - them for half an hour. - </p> - <p> - “One night, when they had been gassing for a while, they sort of got my - goat, and I said to him: - </p> - <p> - “'Mr. Singleton, does it ever strike you as a little peculiar that you - should have so much money and so many other people, such as myself, none - at all?' - </p> - <p> - “'No, Ed,' he says. 'No, it doesn't. That's the Lord's way, Ed! Money is - given as a sacred trust by the Lord to them that are best fitted to have - and to hold.' - </p> - <p> - “'Meaning,' I asked him, 'that if you were ever to let loose of any of it, - it might work harm in the world?' - </p> - <p> - “He chewed over that for quite a while, as if he saw something personal in - it, and he gave me a ten-dollar bill for a Christmas present. He isn't as - stingy as some people say he is; he just looks so stingy that if he was - the most liberal man on earth he would get the reputation of being stingy. - </p> - <p> - “The lady's maid that I used to go to the opera with quit me a little - while after Christmas. She and I were walking around the promenade between - the acts one night at the Metropolitan and Larry was with us, when a - fellow stopped Larry and spoke to him. I could see the guy looking at the - girl and me as he and Larry talked. Later, Larry told me that it was one - of Jake Hergsheimer's friends, and he had been a little bit surprised to - see Larry at the opera all diked out, and he had wanted to know who the - girl was. - </p> - <p> - “Well, anyhow, she never went to the opera with me after that; but a few - weeks later I saw her at a cabaret with Jake's friend. It was a grief to - me; but I got into some real trouble, or let it get into me, about the - same time, and that helped take the sting off. I had once been married—but - there's no use going into all that. Anyhow, when the marriage kind o' wore - off, my own folks took my wife's side of the case and she went to live - with them. My old dad was sick, and they needed money, and my wife wrote - to me that she was willing to let bygones be bygones and accept some money - from me, and that my parents felt the same way, and there was a kid, too, - that my folks were bringing up. - </p> - <p> - “Well, I was desperate for some way to get hold of some cash and send to - them. In the end, I took one of Jake Hergsheimer's silver vases and hocked - it and sent the money, and got it out of hock two or three months later; - but in the meantime there was a spell when I was so hard pressed it looked - to me like I would actually have to do something dishonest to get that - money. - </p> - <p> - “One night, before Jake Hergsheimer came to my rescue and lent me that - silver vase, if you want to call it that, I was sitting alone in the house - thinking what a failure in life I was, and how rotten it was to have a - wife and kid and parents all set against me, and drinking some of Jake's - good booze, and getting more and more low in my mind, when there came a - ring at the front doorbell. The butler was out, and old Mary was asleep - way up in the top of the house, at the back, and wouldn't hear. - </p> - <p> - “'I'll bet,' I said to myself, 'that's Old Man Singleton nosing around for - his cabbage.' And I made up my mind I wouldn't let him in—he could - ring till he froze to death on the front steps, and I wouldn't. It was a - blustery, snowy January night, with new snow over the old ice underneath, - and I says to myself, 'It's a wonder the old coot don't slip down and bust - some of those big New England bones of his. And I wouldn't care much if he - did.' - </p> - <p> - “But he kept on ringing, and finally I thought I'd better go and let him - in. I didn't have any ulterior notions when I went up the stairs from the - servants' dining room and made for the front door. But the minute I - clapped eyes on him I thought of all that kale in his pocket. - </p> - <p> - “I opened the front door, but outside of that was an iron grille. It had a - number of fastenings, but the final one was a short, heavy iron bar that - lay in two sockets, one on each side of the opening. - </p> - <p> - “I lifted the bar and swung the grille open. - </p> - <p> - “'Ha! Hum!' said he, and sneezed. 'It's you, Ed, is it?' - </p> - <p> - “And, snuffing and sneezing, he passed in front of me. - </p> - <p> - “And as he passed by me that bar said something to my hand. And the hand - raised up. It wasn't any of my doings, it was all the hand and the bar. It - raised up, that bar did, right behind the old man's head. He stopped just - outside the front door and flapped his big bony feet on a rug that was - there, to get the snow off his shoes, and while he flapped and sneezed - that bar was right over the old man's brain-box. - </p> - <p> - “'Well,' I said to myself, 'here is your chance to be an honest man and a - prosperous man, reunited with your wife and your kid and your folks at - home, and not have to borrow anything from Jake Hergsheimer's collection—just - one little tap on the old man's head, and down he goes, and he's got - anywhere from one hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand - dollars in his clothes.' - </p> - <p> - “'Yes,' said myself to me, 'one little tap, and maybe you kill him. What - then? The electric chair, huh?' - </p> - <p> - “'Hell!' I said to myself. 'Take a chance! The old man has so much money - that what he has in his pocket means nothing to him one way or another. - Larry's gone till morning, and the old woman won't wake for a long time. - It means a little bit of a headache for Old Lemuel here, and it means your - chance to lead an honest life hereafter and be a useful citizen and take - care of those you have been neglecting.' - </p> - <p> - “'Yes,' said myself to me, 'it's more moral to do it, and make your life - over, but you never have been one for morality in the past. Besides, you'd - kill him.' - </p> - <p> - “And I might have killed him, boss. I wasn't sure of it then, but I've - been sure of it since then. I was that strung up that I would have hit too - hard. - </p> - <p> - “And yet, I might <i>not</i> have done so! I might have hit him just - enough to put him out and make my get-away, and I might have led an honest - life since then. - </p> - <p> - “But at the moment I couldn't do it. I saw, all of a sudden, something - funny. I saw the old man stamping his feet and getting the snow off, and I - thought of him as a dead man, and I says to myself: 'How damned funny for - a dead man to stamp the snow off his feet!' And I laughed. - </p> - <p> - “'Heh? Heh? What did you say, Ed?' says the old man, and turns around. - </p> - <p> - “I dropped the iron bar to my side, and that dead man came up out of the - grave. - </p> - <p> - “'Nothing, Mr. Singleton,' I said. 'I was just going to say, go on in, and - I'll get a brush and clean the snow off of you.' - </p> - <p> - “I said I saved his life from a man one time. Well, I was the man I saved - his life from. - </p> - <p> - “He went on in, and I barred the grille and locked the door, and we went - on down to the dining room. I was shaking, and still I wasn't easy in my - mind. I told him there wasn't anybody home but me, and he said he'd take a - drop of Jake's brandy. And while I was opening a bottle of it for him, - what does he do but pull out that billfolder. - </p> - <p> - “'For God's sake, Mr. Singleton,' I said, turning weak and sitting down in - a chair all of a sudden, 'put that money up.' - </p> - <p> - “He sat there and sipped his brandy and talked, but I didn't hear what he - was saying. I just looked at him, and kept saying to myself, should I have - done it? Or should I have let him go by? - </p> - <p> - “Boss, that was nearly ten years ago, and I've been asking myself that - question from time to time ever since. Should I have done it? Was it moral - to refuse that chance to make my life over again? You know me, kid. You - know some of me, at least. You know I don't hold much by morals. If I was - to tell you how I got that bullet under my kneecap, you'd know me better - than <i>you</i> do. If I had hit him just right and made my get-away, I - would have led a different life. - </p> - <p> - “And I wouldn't now be 'waiting for my death sentence. For that's - practically what this prohibition thing means to me. I can't work at - anything but this. And this is through with. And I'm through with. I'm a - bum from now on. There's no use kidding myself; I'm a bum. - </p> - <p> - “And yet, often, I'm glad I didn't do it.” - </p> - <p> - Ed brooded in silence for a while. - </p> - <p> - And then I said, “It's strange he didn't know you.” - </p> - <p> - “It's been ten years,” said Ed, “and you saw that the old man's got to the - doddering stage. He likely wouldn't know his own children if he didn't see - them every day or two.” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose,” I said, “that the old man feels he is ending his days in a - very satisfactory manner—the national prohibition thing triumphant, - and all that.” - </p> - <p> - “How do you mean?” asked Ed. - </p> - <p> - “Don't you know?” I said. “Why, Old Man Singleton, it is said, helped to - finance the fight, and used his money and his influence on other big money - all over the country in getting next to doubtful politicians and putting - the thing through the state legislatures. I don't mean there was anything - crooked about it anywhere, but he was one of the bunch that represented - organized power, and put the stunt across while the liquor interests were - still saying national prohibition could never come.” - </p> - <p> - “The hell he did!” said Ed. “I didn't know he was mixed up with it. I - never saw him take a drink, now that I remember, except the brandy on the - night I saved his life.” - </p> - <p> - “Old Man Singleton,” I said, “is credited with having had more to do with - it than any other one person, by those who are on the inside.” - </p> - <p> - “The old coot!” said Ed. And then added wryly: “I hope he gets as stiff in - his knee joint as I am and lives forever! He's made a bum of me!” - </p> - <p> - It was three or four weeks after my talk with Ed that I read in the papers - of a peculiar accident of which Old Man Singleton had been the victim. A - head of cabbage, he said, had fallen out of a tree and hit him on his own - head one evening as he was walking alone in Central Park. He had been - dazed by the blow for a moment; and when he regained his feet a - considerable sum of money which he had been carrying was gone. He was sure - that he had been struck by a head of cabbage, for a head of cabbage lay on - the pathway near him when he was helped to his feet. He did not pretend to - be able to say how a head of cabbage could have gotten into one of the - park trees. - </p> - <p> - The police discredited his story, pointing out that likely the old man, - who was near-sighted, had blundered against a tree in the dusk and struck - his head. The head of cabbage, they told the reporters, could have had - nothing to do with it; it could not have come into contact with his head - at all, unless, indeed, some one had put it into a sack and swung it on - him like a bludgeon; and this, the police said, was too absurd to be - considered. For why should a crook use a head of cabbage, when the same - results might have been attained with the more usual blackjack, stick or - fist? - </p> - <p> - Old Man Singleton was not badly hurt; and as regarded the loss of the - money, he never said, nor did his family ever say, just how large the sum - was. Mr. Singleton had the vague impression that after the cabbage fell - out of the tree and hit him he had been helped to his feet by a man who - limped and who said to him: “Kale is given to them that can best use it, - to have and to hold.” - </p> - <p> - He did not accuse this person, who disappeared before he was thoroughly - himself again, of having found the money which had evidently dropped from - his pocket when the cabbage fell from the tree and hit him, but he was - suspicious, and he thought the police were taking the matter too lightly; - he criticized the police in an interview given to the papers. The police - pointed out the irrelevance of the alleged words of the alleged person who - limped, and intimated that Mr. Singleton was irrational and should be kept - at home evenings; as far as they were concerned, the incident was closed. - </p> - <p> - But I got another slant at it, as Ed might have said. Last winter I was - talking at my club with a friend just back from Cuba, where the rum is red - and joy is unconfined. - </p> - <p> - “I met a friend of yours,” he said, “by the name of Ed down there, who is - running a barroom and seems to be quite a sport in his way. Sent his - regards to you. Must have made it pay—seems to have all kinds of - money. Named his barroom 'The Second Thought.' Asked him why. He said - nobody knew but himself, and he was keeping it a secret—though you - might guess. Wants you to come down. Sent you a message. Let's see: what - was it? Oh, yes! Cryptic! Very cryptic! Wrote it down—here it is: '<i>Kale! - Kale! The gang's all here</i>.' Make anything out of it? I can't.” - </p> - <p> - I could, though I didn't tell him what. But I shall not visit Ed in Cuba; - I consider him an immoral person. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VII—Bubbles - </h2> - <h3> - I - </h3> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>ommy Hawkins was - not so sober that you could tell it on him. Certainly his friend Jack - Dobson, calling on him one dreary winter evening—an evening of that - winter before John Barleycorn cried maudlin tears into his glass and - kissed America good-by—would never have guessed it from Tommy's - occupation. Presenting himself at Tommy's door and finding it unlocked, - Jack had gone on in. A languid splashing guided him to the bathroom. In - the tub sat Tommy with the water up to his shoulders, blowing soap - bubbles. - </p> - <p> - “You darned old fool!” said Jack. “Aren't you ever going to grow up, - Tommy?” - </p> - <p> - “Nope,” said Tommy placidly. “What for?” Sitting on a chair close by the - bathtub was a shallow silver dish with a cake of soap and some - reddish-colored suds in it. Tommy had bought the dish to give some one for - a wedding present, and then had forgotten to send it. - </p> - <p> - “What makes the suds red?” asked Jack. - </p> - <p> - “I poured a lot of that nose-and-throat spray stuff into it,” explained - Tommy. “It makes them prettier. Look!” - </p> - <p> - As a pipe he was using a piece of hollow brass curtain rod six or eight - inches long and of about the diameter of a fat lead pencil. He soused this - thing in the reddish suds and manufactured a bubble with elaborate care. - With a graceful gesture of his wet arm he gently waved the rod until the - bubble detached itself. It floated in the air for a moment, and the thin, - reddish integument caught the light from the electric globe and gave forth - a brief answering flash as of fire. Then the bubble suddenly and - whimsically dashed itself against the wall and was no more, leaving a - faint, damp, reddish trace upon the white plaster. - </p> - <p> - “Air current caught it,” elucidated Tommy with the air of a circus - proprietor showing off pet elephants. In his most facetious moments Tommy - was wont to hide his childish soul beneath an exterior of serious dignity. - “This old dump is full of air currents. They come in round the windows, - come in round the doors, come right in through the walls. Damned annoying, - too, for a scientist making experiments with bubbles—starts a bubble - and never knows which way it's going to jump. I'm gonna complain to the - management of this hotel.” - </p> - <p> - “You're going to come out of that bathtub and get into your duds,” said - Jack. “That water's getting cool now, and between cold water and air - currents you'll have pneumonia the first thing you know—you poor - silly fish, you.” - </p> - <p> - “Speaking of fish,” said Tommy elliptically, “there's a bottle of - cocktails on the mantel in the room there. Forgot it for a moment. Don't - want to be inhospitable, but don't drink all of it.” - </p> - <p> - “It's all gone,” said Dobson a moment later. - </p> - <p> - “So?” said Tommy in surprise. “That's the way with cocktails. Here one - minute and gone the next—like bubbles. Bubbles! Life's like that, - Jack!” He made another bubble with great solemnity, watched it float and - dart and burst. “Pouf!” he said. “Bubbles! Bubbles! Life's like that!” - </p> - <p> - “You're an original philosopher, you are,” said Jack, seizing him by the - shoulders. “You're about as original as a valentine. Douse yourself with - cold water and rub yourself down and dress. Come out of it, kid, or you'll - be sick.” - </p> - <p> - “If I get sick,” said Tommy, obeying, nevertheless, “I won't have to go to - work to-morrow.” - </p> - <p> - “Why aren't you working to-day?” asked his friend, working on him with a - coarse towel. - </p> - <p> - “Day off,” said Tommy. - </p> - <p> - “Day off!” rejoined Dobson. “Since when has the <i>Morning Despatch</i> - been giving two days off a week to its reporters? You had your day off - Tuesday, and this is Thursday.” - </p> - <p> - “Is it?” said Tommy. “I always get Tuesday and Thursday mixed. Both begin - with a T. Hey, Jack, how's that? Both begin with a T! End with a tea - party! Good line, hey, Jack? Tuesday and Thursday both begin with a T and - end with a tea party. I'm gonna write a play round that, Jack. Broadway - success! Letters a foot high! Royalties for both of us! I won't forget - you, Jack! You suggested the idea for the plot, Jack. Drag you out in - front of the curtain with me when I make my speech. 'Author! Author!' - yells the crowd. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' says I, 'here is the obscure and - humble person who set in motion the train of thought that led to my - writing this masterpiece. Such as he is, I introduce him to you.'” - </p> - <p> - “Shut up!” said Jack, and continued to lacerate Tommy's hide with the - rough towel. “Hold still! Now go and get into your clothes.” And as Tommy - began to dress he regarded that person darkly. “You're a brilliant wag, - you are! It's a shame the way the copy readers down on the <i>Despatch</i> - keep your best things out of print, you splattering supermudhen of - journalism, you! You'll wake up some morning without any more job than a - kaiser.” And as Tommy threaded himself into the mystic maze of his - garments Mr. Dobson continued to look at him and mutter disgustedly, - “Bubbles!” - </p> - <p> - Not that he was afraid that Tommy would actually lose his job. If it had - been possible for Tommy to lose his job that must have happened years - before. But Tommy wrote a certain joyous type of story better than any - other person in New York, and his facetiousness got him out of as many - scrapes as it got him into. He was thirty years old. At ninety he would - still be experimenting with the visible world in a spirit of random - eagerness, joshing everything in it, including himself. He looked exactly - like the young gentleman pictured in a widely disseminated collar - advertisement. He enjoyed looking that way, and occasionally he enjoyed - talking as if he were exactly that kind of person. He loved to turn his - ironic levity against the character he seemed to be, much as the mad wags - who grace the column of F. P. A. delight in getting their sayings across - accompanied by a gentle satirical fillip at all mad waggery. - </p> - <p> - “Speaking of bubbles,” he suddenly chuckled as he carefully adjusted his - tie in the collar that looked exactly like the one in the advertisement, - “there's an old party in the next room that takes 'em more seriously than - you do, Jack.” - </p> - <p> - The old downtown hotel in which Tommy lived had once been a known and - noted hostelry, and persons from Plumville, Pennsylvania, Griffin, - Georgia, and Galva, Illinois, still stopped there when in New York, - because their fathers and mothers had stopped there on their wedding - journeys perhaps. It was not such a very long way from the Eden Musee, - when there was an Eden Musee. Tommy's room had once formed part of a - suite. The bathroom which adjoined it had belonged jointly to another room - in the suite. But now these two rooms were always let separately. Still, - however, the bathroom was a joint affair. When Tommy wished to bathe he - must first insure privacy by hooking on the inside the door that led into - the bathroom from the chamber beyond. - </p> - <p> - “Old party in the next room?” questioned Jack. - </p> - <p> - “Uh-huh,” said Tommy, who had benefited by his cold sluicing and his - rubdown. “I gave him a few bubbles for his very own—through the - keyhole into his room, you know. Poked that brass rod through and blew the - bubble in his room. Detached it with a little jerk and let it float. - Seemed more sociable, you know, to let him in on the fun. Never be stingy - with your pleasures, Jack. Shows a mean spirit—a mean soul. Why not - cheer the old party up with soap bubbles? Cost little, bubbles do. More - than likely he's a stranger in New York. Unfriendly city, he thinks. Big - city. Nobody thinks of him. Nobody cares for him. Away from home. Winter - day. Melancholy. Well, I say, give him a bubble now and then. Shows some - one is thinking of him. Shows the world isn't so thoughtless and gloomy - after all. Neighborly sort of thing to do, Jack. Makes him think of his - youth—home—mother's knee—all that kind of thing, Jack. - Cheers him up. Sat in the tub there and got to thinking of him. Almost - cried, Jack, when I thought how lonely the old man must be—got one - of these old man's voices. Whiskers. Whiskers deduced from the voice. So I - climbed out of the tub every ten or fifteen minutes all afternoon and gave - the old man a bubble. Rain outside—fog, sleet. Dark indoors. Old man - sits and thinks nobody loves him. Along comes a bubble. Old man gets - happy. Laughs. Remembers his infancy. Skies clear. You think I'm a selfish - person, Jack? I'm not. I'm a Samaritan. Where will we eat?” - </p> - <p> - “You are a darned fool,” said Jack. “You say he took them seriously? What - do you mean? Did he like 'em?” - </p> - <p> - “Couldn't quite make out,” said Tommy. “But they moved him. Gasped every - now and then. Think he prayed. Emotion, Jack. Probably made him think of - boyhood's happy days down on the farm. Heard him talking to himself. Think - he cried. Went to bed anyhow with his clothes on and pulled the covers - over his head. Looked through the keyhole and saw that. Gray whiskers - sticking up, and that's all. Deduced the whiskers from the voice, Jack. - Let's give the old party a couple more bubbles and then go eat. It's been - an hour since he's had one. Thinks I'm forgetting him, no doubt.” - </p> - <p> - So they gave the old man a couple of bubbles, poking the brass rod through - the keyhole of the door. - </p> - <p> - The result was startling and unexpected. First there came a gasp from the - other room, a sort of whistling release of the breath, and an instant - later a high, whining, nasal voice. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, God! God! Again! You meant it, then, God! You meant it!” - </p> - <p> - The two young men started back and looked at each other in wonderment. - There was such a quivering agony, such an utter groveling terror in this - voice from the room beyond that they were daunted. - </p> - <p> - “What's eating him?” asked Dobson, instinctively dropping his tones to a - whisper. - </p> - <p> - “I don't know,” said Tommy, temporarily subdued. “Sounds like that last - one shell-shocked him when it exploded, doesn't it?” - </p> - <p> - But Tommy was subdued only for a moment. - </p> - <p> - As they went out into the corridor he giggled and remarked, “Told you he - took 'em seriously, Jack.” - </p> - <h3> - II - </h3> - <p> - “Seriously” was a word scarcely strong enough for the way in which the old - party in the room beyond had taken it, though he had not, in fact, seen - the bubble. He had only seen a puff of smoke coming apparently from - nowhere, originating in the air itself, as it seemed to him, manifesting - itself, materializing itself out of nothing, and floating in front of the - one eye which was peeping fearfully out of the huddled bedclothing which - he had drawn over himself. He had lain quaking on the bed, waiting for - this puff of smoke for an hour or more, hoping against hope that it would - not come, praying and muttering, knotting his bony hands in the whiskers - that Tommy had seen sticking up from the coverings, twisting convulsively. - </p> - <p> - Tommy had whimsically filled the bubble, as he blew it, with smoke from - his cigarette. He had in like manner, throughout the afternoon and - early-evening, filled all the bubbles that he had given the old man with - cigarette or pipe smoke. The old party had not been bowled over by - anything in Tommy's tobacco. He had not noticed that the smoke was tobacco - smoke, for he had been smoking a pipe himself the greater part of the day, - and had not aired out the room. It was neither bubbles nor tobacco that - had flicked a raw spot on his soul. It was smoke. - </p> - <h3> - III - </h3> - <p> - Bubbles! They seemed to be in Tommy's brain. Perhaps it was the - association of ideas that made him think of champagne. At any rate he - declared that he must have some, and vetoed his friend's suggestion that - they dine—as they frequently did—at one of the little Italian - table d'hote places in Greenwich Village. - </p> - <p> - “You're a bubble and I'm a bubble and the world is a bubble,” Tommy was - saying a little later as he watched the gas stirring in his golden drink. - </p> - <p> - They had gone to the genial old Brevoort, which was—but why tell - persons who missed the Brevoort in its mellower days what they missed, and - why cause anguished yearnings in the bosoms of those who knew it well? - </p> - <p> - “Tommy,” said his friend, “don't, if you love me, hand out any more of - your jejune poeticism or musical-comedy philosophy. I'll agree with you - that the world is a bubble for the sake of argument, if you'll change the - record. I want to eat, and nothing interferes with my pleasure in a meal - so much as this line of pseudocerebration that you seem to have adopted - lately.” - </p> - <p> - “Bubbles seem trivial things, Jack,” went on Tommy, altogether - unperturbed. “But I have a theory that there aren't any trivial things. I - like to think of the world balancing itself on a trivial thing. Look at - the Kaiser, for instance. A madman. Well, let's say there's been a blood - clot in his brain for years—a little trivial thing the size of a pin - point, Jack. It hooks up with the wrong brain cell; it gets into the wrong - channel, and—pouf! The world goes to war. A thousand million people - are affected by it—by that one little clot of blood no bigger than a - pin point that gets into the wrong channel. An atom! A planet balanced on - an atom! A star pivoting on a molecule!” - </p> - <p> - “Have some soup,” said his friend. - </p> - <p> - “Bubbles! Bubbles and butterflies!” continued Tommy. “Some day, Jack, I'm - going to write a play in which a butterfly's wing brushes over an empire.” - </p> - <p> - “No, you're not,” said Jack. “You're just going to talk about it and think - you're writing it and peddle the idea round to everybody you know, and - then finally some wise guy is going to grab it off and really write it. - You've been going to write a play ever since I knew you.” - </p> - <p> - “Yes, I am; I'm really going to write that play.” - </p> - <p> - “Well, Tommy,” said Jack, looking round the chattering dining room, “this - is a hell of a place to do it in!” - </p> - <p> - “Meaning, of course,” said Tommy serenely, “that it takes more than a - butterfly to write a play about a butterfly.” - </p> - <p> - “You get me,” said his friend. And then after a pause he went on with - sincerity in his manner: “You know I think you could write the play, - Tommy. But unless you get to work on some of your ideas pretty soon, and - buckle down to them in earnest, other people will continue to write your - plays—and you will continue to josh them and yourself, and your - friends will continue to think that you could write better plays if you - would only do it. People aren't going to take you seriously, Tommy, till - you begin to take yourself a little seriously. Why, you poor, futile, - silly, misguided, dear old mutt, you! You don't even have sense enough—you - don't have the moral continuity, if you follow me—to stay sore at a - man that does you dirt! Now, do you?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I don't know about that,” said Tommy a little more seriously. - </p> - <p> - “Well now, do you?” persisted his friend. “I don't say it's good Christian - doctrine not to forgive people. It isn't. But I've seen people put things - across on you, Tommy, and seen you laugh it off and let 'em be friends - with you again inside of six weeks. I couldn't do it, and nine-tenths of - the fellows we know couldn't do it; and in the way you do it it shouldn't - be done. You should at least remember, even if you do forgive; remember - well enough not to get bit by the same dog again. With you, old kid, it's - all a part of your being a butterfly and a bubble. It's no particular - virtue in you. I wouldn't talk to you like a Dutch uncle if I didn't think - you had it in you to make good. But you've got to be prodded.” - </p> - <p> - “There's one fellow that did me dirt,” said Tommy musingly, “that I've - never taken to my bosom again.” - </p> - <p> - “What did you do to him?” asked his friend. “Beat him to death with a - butterfly's wing, Tommy, or blow him out of existence with a soap bubble?” - </p> - <p> - “I've never done anything to him,” said Tommy soberly. “And I don't think - I ever would do anything to him. I just remember, that's all. If he ever - gets his come-uppance, as they say in the rural districts, it won't be - through any act of mine. Let life take revenge for me. I never will.” - </p> - <p> - “I suppose you're right,” said Dobson. “But who was this guy? And what did - he do to you?” - </p> - <h3> - IV - </h3> - <p> - “He was—and is—my uncle,” said Tommy, “and he did about - everything to me. Listen! You think I do nothing but flitter, flutter, - frivol and flivver! And you may be right, and maybe I never will do - anything else. Maybe I never will be anything but a kid. - </p> - <p> - “I was young when I was born. No, that's not one of my silly lines, Jack. - I mean it seriously. I was young when I was born. I was born with a jolly - disposition. But this uncle of mine took it out of me. I'll say he did! - The reason I'm such a kid now, Jack, is because I had to grow up when I - was about five years old, and I stayed grown up until I was seventeen or - eighteen. I never had a chance to be a boy. If I showed any desire to be - it was knocked out of me on the spot. And if I live two hundred years, and - stay nineteen years old all that time, Jack, I won't any more than make up - for the childhood I missed—that was stolen from me. Frivol? I could - frivol a thousand years and not dull my appetite. I want froth, Jack: - froth and bubbles! - </p> - <p> - “This old uncle of mine—he wasn't so old in years when I first knew - him, but in his soul he was as old as the overseers who whipped the slaves - that built Cheops' pyramid, and as sandy and as flinty—hated me as - soon as he saw me. He hated me before he saw me. He would have hated me if - he had never seen me, because I was young and happy and careless. - </p> - <p> - “I was that, when I went to live with him—young and happy and - careless. I was five years old. He was my father's brother, Uncle Ezra - was, and he beat my father out of money in his dirty, underhanded way. Oh, - nothing illegal! At least, I suppose not. Uncle Ezra was too cautious to - do anything that might be found out on him. There was nothing that my - mother could prove, at any rate, and my father had been careless and had - trusted him. When my father died my mother was ill. He gave us a home, - Uncle Ezra did. She had to live somewhere; she had to have a roof over her - head and attention of some sort. She had no near relations, and I had to - be looked after. - </p> - <p> - “So she and I went into his house to live. It was to be temporary. We were - to move as soon as she got better. But she did not live long. I don't - remember her definitely as she was before we went to live with Uncle Ezra. - I can only see her as she lay on a bed in a dark room before she died. It - was a large wooden bed, with wooden slats and a straw mattress. I can see - myself sitting on a chair by the head of the bed and talking to her. My - feet did not reach to the floor by any means; they only reached to the - chair rungs. I can't remember what she said or what I said. All I remember - of her is that she had very bright eyes and that her arms were thin. I - remember her arms, but not her face, except the eyes. I suppose she used - to reach her arms out to me. I think she must have been jolly at one time, - too. There is a vague feeling, a remembrance, that before we went to Uncle - Ezra's she was jolly, and that she and I laughed and played together in - some place where there was red-clover bloom. - </p> - <p> - “One day when I was siting on the chair, the door opened and Uncle Ezra - came in. There was some man with him that was, I suppose, a doctor. I can - recall Uncle Ezra's false grin and the way he put his hand on my head—to - impress the doctor, I suppose—and the way I pulled away from him. - For I felt that he disliked me, and I feared and hated him. - </p> - <p> - “Yes, Uncle Ezra gave us a home. I don't know how much you know about the - rural districts, Jack. But when an Uncle Ezra in a country town gives some - one a home he acquires merit. This was a little town in Pennsylvania that - Pm talking about, and Uncle Ezra was a prominent citizen—deacon in - the church and all that sort of thing. Truly rural drama stuff, Jack, but - I can't help that—it's true. Uncle Ezra had a reputation for being - stingy and mean. Giving us a home was a good card for him to play. My - mother had a little money, and he stole that, too, when she died. - </p> - <p> - “I suppose he stole it legally. I don't know. It wasn't much. No one had - any particular interest in looking out for me, and nobody would want to - start anything in opposition to Uncle Ezra in that town if it could be - helped anyhow. He didn't have the whole village and the whole of the - farming country round about sewed up, all by himself, but he was one of - the little group that did. There's a gang like that in every country town, - I imagine. He was one of four or five big ducks in that little puddle—lent - money, took mortgages and all that kind of thing you read about. I don't - know how much he is worth now, counting what he has been stealing all his - life. But it can't be a staggering sum. He's too cowardly to plunge or - take a long chance. He steals and saves and grinds in a little way. He is - too mean and small and blind and limited in his intelligence to be a big, - really successful crook, such as you will find in New York City. - </p> - <p> - “When my mother died, of course, I stayed with Uncle Ezra. I suppose - everybody said how good it was of him to keep me, and that it showed a - soft and kindly spot in his nature after all, and that he couldn't be so - hard as he had the name of being. But I don't see what else could have - been done with me, unless he had taken me out and dropped me in the mill - pond like a blind cat. Sometimes I used to wish he had done that. - </p> - <p> - “It isn't hard to put a five-year-old kid in the wrong, so as to make it - appear—even to the child himself—that he is bad and - disobedient. Uncle Ezra began that way with me. I'm not going into - details. This isn't a howl; it's merely an explanation. But he persecuted - me in every way. He put me to work before I should have known what work - was—work too hard for me. He deviled me and he beat me, he clothed - me like a beggar and he fed me like a dog, he robbed me of childhood and - of boyhood. I won't go over the whole thing. - </p> - <p> - “I never had decent shoes, or a hat that wasn't a rag, and I never went to - kid parties or anything, or even owned so much as an air rifle of my own. - The only pair of skates I ever had, Jack, I made for myself out of two old - files, with the help of the village blacksmith—and I got licked for - that. Uncle Ezra said I had stolen the files and the straps. They belonged - to him. - </p> - <p> - “But there's one thing I remember with more of anger than any other. He - used to make me kneel down and pray every night before I went to bed, in - his presence; and sometimes he would pray with me. He was a deacon in the - church. There are plenty of them on the square—likely most of them - are. But this one was the kind you used to see in the old-fashioned - melodramas. Truly rural stuff, Jack. He used to be quite a shark at prayer - himself, Uncle Ezra did. I can remember how he looked when he prayed, with - his eyes shut and his Adam's apple bobbing up and down and the sound - whining through his nose. - </p> - <p> - “The only person that was ever human to me was a woman I called Aunt - Lizzie. I don't know really what relation she wras to me; a distant cousin - of Uncle Ezra's, I think. She was half blind and she was deaf, and he - bullied her and made her do all the housework. She was bent nearly double - with drudgery. He had given her a home, too. She didn't dare be very good - to me. He might find it out, and then we both would catch it. She baked me - some apple dumplings once on one of my birthdays. I was nine years old. - And he said she had stolen the apples and flour from him; that he had not - ordered her to make any apple dumplings, and it was theft; and he made me - pray for her, and made her pray for herself, and he prayed for both of us - in family prayers every day for a week. - </p> - <p> - “I was nearly eighteen when I ran away. I might have done it sooner, but I - was small for my age, and I was cowed. I didn't dare to call my soul my - own, and I had a reputation for being queer, too. For I used to grin and - laugh at things no one else thought were funny—when Uncle Ezra - wasn't round. I suppose people in that town thought it was odd that I - could laugh at all. No one could understand how I had a laugh left in me. - But when I was alone I used to laugh. I used to laugh at myself sometimes - because I was so little and so queer. When I was seventeen I wasn't much - bigger than a thirteen-year-old kid should be. I packed a lot of growing - into the years between seventeen and twenty-one. - </p> - <p> - “When I ran away Aunt Lizzie gave me eighty-seven cents, all in nickels - and pennies, and there were two or three of those old-fashioned two-cent - pieces in it, too, that she had had for God knows how long. It was all she - had. I don't suppose he ever paid her anything at all, and the wonder was - she had that much. I told her that when I got out into the world and made - good I would come and get her, but she shivered all over with fright at - the idea of daring to leave. I have sent her things from time to time in - the last ten years—money, and dresses I have bought for her, and - little things I thought she would like. But I don't know whether he let - her have them or not I never got any letter from her at all. I don't even - know whether she can write, to tell the truth, and she wouldn't dare get - one of the neighbors to write for her. But if I ever make any real money, - Jack, I am going to go and get her, whether she dares to come away or not. - </p> - <p> - “Well, when I left, the thing I wanted to do was go to school. Uncle Ezra - hadn't given me time to go to school much. But I tramped to a town where - there was a little fresh-water college that had its own prep school - attached, and I did the whole seven years of prep school and college in - five years. You see, I had a lot of bounce in me. The minute I got away - from Uncle Ezra the whole world brightened up for me. The clouds rolled by - and life looked like one grand long joke, and I turned into a kid. I - romped through that prep school and that college, and made my own living - while I was doing it, and laughed all the time and loved the world and - everything in it, and it came as easy to me as water comes to a duck. I - came on down here to New York and was lucky enough to get a chance as a - reporter, and I've been romping ever since. - </p> - <p> - “I don't want to do anything but romp. Of course, I want to write some - good stuff some day, but I want to keep romping while I write it, and I - want it to be stuff that has a romp in it, too. You say I romp so much I'm - never serious. Well, I do have some serious moments, too. I have a dream - that keeps coming to me. I dream that I'm back in that little town, and - that I'm Uncle Ezra's slave again, and that I can't get away. - </p> - <p> - “Sometimes the dream takes the form of Uncle Ezra coming here to New York - to get me, and I know that I've got to go back with him to that place, and - I wake up sweating and crying like an eight-year-old kid. If he ever - really came it would put a crimp into me, Jack. - </p> - <p> - “You say I'm a butterfly. And I say, yes, Jack, thank God I am! I used to - be a grubworm, and now I'm a butterfly, praise heaven! - </p> - <p> - “Well, that's the guy I hold the grudge against, and that's why I'm fool - enough to rush into every pleasure I can find. I don't know that I'll ever - change. And as for the man, I don't ever want to see him. I don't know - that I'd ever do anything to him if I did—beat him to death with a - butterfly's wing, or blow him up with a soap bubble, as you suggested. Let - him alone. He'll punish himself. He is punished by being what he is. I - wouldn't put a breath into the scale one way or the other—not even a - puff of cigarette smoke.” - </p> - <p> - He blew a breath of cigarette smoke luxuriously out of his nose as he - finished, and then he remarked, “Let's go somewhere and dance.” - </p> - <p> - “Nazimova is doing Ibsen uptown,” suggested Jack, “and I have a couple of - tickets. Let's go and see Ibsen lb a little.” - </p> - <p> - “Nope,” said Tommy. “Ibsen's got too much sense. I want something silly. - Me for a cabaret, or some kind of a hop garden.” - </p> - <h3> - V - </h3> - <p> - But sometimes in this ironical world it happens that we have already - beaten a man to death with a butterfly's wing, slain him with a bubble, - sent him whirling into the hereafter on a puff of smoke, even as we are - saying that such a thing is foreign to our thoughts. - </p> - <p> - The old party in the room next to Tommy's at the hotel had arrived the day - before, with an umbrella, a straw suitcase and a worried eye on either - side his long, white, chalkish, pitted nose. He seemed chilly in spite of - his large plum-colored overcoat, of a cut that has survived only in the - rural districts. He wore a salient, assertive beard, that had once been - sandy and was now almost white, but it was the only assertive thing about - him. His manner was far from aggressive. - </p> - <p> - An hour after he had been shown to his room he appeared at the desk again - and inquired timidly of the clerk, “There's a fire near here?” - </p> - <p> - “Little blaze in the next block. Doesn't amount to anything,” said the - clerk. - </p> - <p> - “I heard the—the engines,” said the guest apologetically. - </p> - <p> - “Doesn't amount to anything,” said the clerk again. And then, “Nervous - about fire?” - </p> - <p> - The old party seemed startled. - </p> - <p> - “Who? Me? Why should I be nervous about fire? No! No! No!” He beat a - sudden retreat. “I was just asking—just asking,” he threw back over - his shoulder. - </p> - <p> - “Old duck's scared of fire and ashamed to own it,” mused the clerk, - watching him out of the lobby. - </p> - <p> - The old party went back to his room, and there one of the first things he - saw was a copy of the Bible lying on the bureau. There is an organization - which professes for its object the placing of a Bible in every hotel room - in the land. The old party had his own Bible with him. As if reminded of - it by the one on the bureau, he took it out of his suitcase and sat down - and began to turn the leaves like a person familiar with the book—and - like a person in need of comfort, as indeed he was. - </p> - <p> - There was a text in Matthew that he sought—where was it? Somewhere - in the first part of Matthew's gospel—ah, here it is: The twelfth - chapter and the thirty-first verse: - </p> - <p> - “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men....” - </p> - <p> - There is a terrible reservation in the same verse. He kept his eyes from - it, and read the first part over and over, forming the syllables with his - lips, but not speaking aloud. - </p> - <p> - “All manner of sin—all manner of sin———-” - </p> - <p> - And then, as if no longer able to avoid it, he yielded his consciousness - to the latter clause of the verse: - </p> - <p> - “But the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.” - </p> - <p> - What was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost? Could what he had done be - construed as that? Probably if one lied to God in his prayers, that was - blasphemy against the Holy Ghost—one form of it. And had he been - lying to God these last two weeks when he had said over and over again in - his prayers that it was all a mistake? It hadn't been all a mistake, but - the worst part of it had been a mistake. - </p> - <p> - He went out for his dinner that evening, but he was in again before ten - o'clock. He could not have slept well. At two o'clock in the morning he - appeared in front of the desk. - </p> - <p> - He had heard fire engines again. - </p> - <p> - “See here,” said the night clerk, appraising him, as the day clerk had - done, as a rube who had been seldom to the city and was nervous about - fire, “you don't need to be worried. If anything should happen near here - we'd get all the guests out in a jiffy.” - </p> - <p> - The old party returned to his room. He was up early the next morning and - down to breakfast before the dining room was open. - </p> - <p> - He did not look as if he had had much rest. The morning hours he devoted - to reading his Bible in his room. Perhaps he found comfort in it. At noon - he seemed a bit more cheerful. He asked the clerk the way to the Eden - Musee, and was surprised to learn that that place of amusement had been - closed for a year or two. The clerk recommended a moving-picture house - round the corner. But it had begun to rain and snow and sleet all - together; the sky was dark and the wind was rising; the old party elected - not to go out after all. - </p> - <p> - He went back to his room once more, and his black fear and melancholy - descended upon him again, and the old debate began to weave through his - brain anew. For two weeks he had been fleeing from the debate and from - himself. He had come to New York to get away from it, but it was no good. - Just when he had made up his mind that God had forgiven him, and was - experiencing a momentary respite, some new doubt would assail him and the - agony would begin again. - </p> - <p> - The old debate—he had burned the store, with the living quarters - over it, to get the insurance money, after having removed a part of the - insured goods, but he did not regard that as an overwhelming sin. It - wasn't right, of course, in one way. And yet in another way it was merely - sharp business practice, so he told himself. For a year before that, when - one of his buildings had burned through accident, he had been forced to - accept from the same insurance company less than was actually due him as a - matter of equity. Therefore, to make money out of that company by a shrewd - trick was in a way merely to get back his own again. It wasn't the sort of - thing that a deacon in the church would care to have found out on him, of - course. It was wrong in a sense. But it was the wrong that it had led to - that worried him. - </p> - <p> - It was the old woman's death that worried him. He hadn't meant to burn her - to death, God knows! He hadn't known she was in the building. - </p> - <p> - He had sent her on a week's visit to another town, to see a surprised - cousin of his own, and it had been distinctly understood that she was not - to return until Saturday. But some time on Friday evening she must have - crept back home and gone to bed in her room. He had not known she was - there. - </p> - <p> - “I didn't know! I didn't know!” - </p> - <p> - There were times when he gibbered the words to himself by the hour. - </p> - <p> - It was at midnight that he had set fire to the place. The old woman was - deaf. Even when the flames began to crackle she could not have heard them. - She had had no more chance than a rat in a trap. The old fool! It was her - own fault! Why had she not obeyed him? Why had she come creeping back, - like a deaf old half-blind tabby cat, to die in the flames? It was her own - fault! When he thought of the way she had returned to kill herself there - were moments when he cursed and hated her. - </p> - <p> - But had she killed herself? Back and forth swung the inner argument. At - times he saw clearly enough that this incident joined on without a break - to the texture of his whole miserable life; when he recognized that, - though it might be an accident in a strictly literal sense that the old - woman was dead, yet it was the sort of accident for which his previous - existence had been a preparation. Even while he fiercely denied his guilt, - or talked of it in a seizure of whining prayer that was essentially a - lying denial, he knew that guilt there was. - </p> - <p> - Would he be forgiven? There were comforting passages in the Bible. He - switched on the rather insufficient electric light, which was all the old - hotel provided, for the day was too dark to read without that help, and - turned the pages of the New Testament through and through again. - </p> - <p> - At three o'clock in the afternoon he was sitting on the edge of his bed, - with the book open in front of him and his head bowed, almost dozing. His - pipe, with which he had filled the room with the fumes of tobacco, had - fallen to the floor. Perhaps it was weariness, but for a brief period his - sharper sense of fear had been somewhat stilled again. Maybe it was going - to be like this—a gradual easing off of the strain in answer to his - prayers. He had asked God for an answer as to whether he should be - forgiven, and God was answering in this way, so he told himself. God was - going to let him get some sleep, and maybe when he woke everything would - be all right again—bearable at least. - </p> - <p> - So he mused, half asleep. - </p> - <p> - And then all at once he sprang wide awake again, and his terror wakened - with him. For suddenly in front of his half-shut eyes, coming from nowhere - in particular, there passed a puff of smoke! - </p> - <p> - What could it mean? He had asked God for an answer. He had been lulled for - a moment almost into something like peace, and—now—this puff - of smoke! Was it a sign? Was it God's answer? - </p> - <p> - He sat up on the edge of the bed, rigid, in a cold, still agony of - superstitious fright. He dared not move or turn his head. He was afraid - that he would see—something—if he looked behind him. He was - afraid that he would in another moment hear something—a voice! - </p> - <p> - He closed his eyes. He prayed. He prayed aloud. His eyes once closed, he - scarcely dared open them again. After seme minutes he began to tell - himself that perhaps he had been mistaken; perhaps he had not seen smoke - at all. Perhaps even if he had seen smoke it was due to some explicable - cause, and not meant for him. - </p> - <p> - He greatly dared. He opened his eyes. And drifting lazily above the white - pillow at the head of the bed was another puff of smoke. - </p> - <p> - He rocked back and forth upon the bed, with his arms up as if to shield - his head from a physical blow, and then he passed in a moment from the - quakings of fear to a kind of still certainty of doom. God was angry at - him. God was telling him so. God would send the devil for him. There was - no further doubt. He would go to hell—to hell! To burn forever! - Forever—even as the old woman had burned for a quarter of an hour. - He began to search through the pages of the Bible again, not for words of - comfort this time, but in a morbid ecstasy of despair, for phrases about - hell, for verses that mentioned fire and flames. - </p> - <p> - He did not need the concordance. He knew his Bible well, and his fear - helped him. Consciousness and subconsciousness joined to guide his fingers - and eyes in the quest. - </p> - <p> - “Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming,” he read - in Isaiah, and he took it to himself. - </p> - <p> - “Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and ye - shall be melted in the midst thereof,” he read in Ezekiel. - </p> - <p> - He had a literal imagination, and he had a literal belief, and at every - repetition of the word “fire” the flesh cringed and crawled on his bones. - God! To burn! How it must hurt! - </p> - <p> - “And the God that answereth by fire, let Him be God,” met his eyes in the - first book of Kings. - </p> - <p> - And it all meant him. Now and then over his shoulder would float another - little puff of smoke; and once, lifting his head suddenly from poring over - the book, he thought he saw something that moved and glinted like a - traveling spark, and was gone. - </p> - <p> - He began to feel himself in hell already. This was the foretaste, that was - all. Would he begin to burn even before he died? Did this smoke presage - something of that kind? Would flames physically seize upon him, and would - he burn, even as the old woman had burned? - </p> - <p> - Suddenly in his hysteria there came a revulsion—a revolt. Having - reached the nethermost depths of despair, he began to move upward a - little. His soul stirred and took a step and tried to climb. He began to - pray once more. After all, the Good Book did promise mercy! He began to - dare to pray again. And he prayed in a whisper that now and then broke - into a whine—a strange prayer, characteristic of the man. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, God,” he cried, “you promise forgiveness in that book there, and I'm - gonna hold you to it! I'm gonna hold you to it! It's down there in black - and white, your own words, God, and I'm gonna hold you to it! It's a - contract, God, and you ain't the kind of a man, God, to go back on a - contract that's down in black and white!” - </p> - <p> - Thus he prayed, with a naïve, unconscious blasphemy. And after long - minutes of this sort of thing his soul dared take another step. A faint, - far glimmering of hope came to him where he groveled. For he was groveling - on the bed now, with the covers pulled up to his head and his hand upon - the open Bible. He found the courage to peer from beneath the covers at - intervals as he prayed and muttered, and minutes passed with no more - smoke. Had the smoke ceased? The sound of his own murmuring voice began to - reassure him. The smoke had certainly ceased! It had been twenty minutes - since he had seen it—half an hour! - </p> - <p> - What could it mean? That God was hearkening to his prayer? - </p> - <p> - An hour went by, and still there was no more sign of smoke. He prayed - feverishly, he gabbled, as if by the rapidity of his utterance and the - repeated strokes of his words he were beating back and holding at bay the - smoke that was God's warning and the symbol of his displeasure. And the - smoke had ceased to come! He was to be forgiven! He was winning! His - prayers were winning for him! At least God was listening! - </p> - <p> - Yes, that must be it. God was listening now. The smoke had come as a - warning; and he had, upon receiving this warning, repented. God had not - meant, after all, that he was doomed irrevocably. God had meant that, to - be forgiven, his repentance must be genuine, must be thorough—and it - was thorough now. Now it was genuine! And the smoke had ceased! The smoke - had been a sign, and he had heeded the sign, and now if he kept up his - prayers and lived a good life in the future he was to be forgiven. He - would not have to burn in hell after all. - </p> - <p> - The minutes passed, and he prayed steadily, and every minute that went by - and brought no further sign of the smoke built up in him a little more - hope, another grain of confidence. - </p> - <p> - An hour and a quarter, and he almost dared be sure that he was forgiven—but - he was not quite sure. If he could only be quite sure! He wallowed on the - bed, and his hand turned idly the pages of the Bible, lying outside on the - coverlet. - </p> - <p> - More than an hour had gone by. Could he accept it as an indication that - God had indeed heard him? He shifted himself upon the bed, and stared up - at the ceiling through a chink in the covers as if through and beyond the - ceiling he were interrogating heaven. - </p> - <p> - And lying so, there came a damp touch upon his hand, soft and chill and - silent, as if it were delicately and ironically brushed by the kiss of - Death. A sudden agony numbed his hand and arm. With the compulsion of - hysteria, not to be resisted, his head lifted and he sat up and looked. - Over the Bible and his hand that lay upon the open page there floated - again a puff of smoke, and faintly staining his Angers and the paper - itself was something moist and red. It stained his Angers and it marked - with red for his straining sight this passage of Isaiah: - </p> - <p> - “The earth also shall disclose her blood.” - </p> - <p> - It was then he cried out, “Oh, God! God! Again! You meant it, then, God! - You meant it.” - </p> - <p> - It was nearly midnight when Tommy and his friend Dobson returned to the - hotel. “Your paper's been trying to get you for an hour, Mr. Hawkins,” - said the night clerk when they came in. “Story right in the next room to - yours. Old party in there hanged himself.” - </p> - <p> - “So?” said Tommy. “Ungrateful old guy, he is! I put in the afternoon - trying to cheer him up a little.” - </p> - <p> - “Did you know him?” asked the clerk. - </p> - <p> - “Nope,” said Tommy, moving toward the elevator. - </p> - <p> - But a few moments later, confronted with the grotesque spectacle in the - room upstairs, he said, “Yes—I—I know him. Jack! Jack! Get me - out of here, Jack! It's Uncle Ezra, Jack! He's—he's come for me!” - </p> - <p> - As has been remarked before, sometimes even a bubble may be a mordant - weapon. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - VIII.—The Chances of the Street - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>erriwether Buck - had lost all his money. Also his sisters', and his cousins', and his - aunts'. - </p> - <p> - “At two o'clock sharp I will shoot myself,” said Merriwether Buck. - </p> - <p> - He caressed a ten-shot automatic pistol in the right-hand pocket of his - coat as he loitered up Broadway. He was light-headed. He had had nothing - to eat for forty-eight hours. - </p> - <p> - “How I hate you!” said Merriwether Buck, comprehensively to the city in - general. “If nine pistol shots would blot you out, I'd do it!” - </p> - <p> - Very melodramatic language, this, for a well-brought-up young man; and - thus indicating that he was light-headed, indeed. And as for the city, it - continued to roar and rattle and honk and rumble and squeak and bawl and - shuffle and thunder and grate in the same old way—supreme in its - confidence that nine pistol shots could not, by any possibility, blot it - out. That is one of the most disconcerting things about a city; you become - enraged at it, and the city doesn't even know it. Unless you happen to be - Nero it is very difficult to blot them out satisfactorily. - </p> - <p> - It was one o'clock. Merriwether Buck crossed the street at Herald Square - and went over and stood in front of the big newspaper office. A portly - young fellow with leaden eyes came out of the building and stood - meditatively on the curb with his hands in the pockets of clothing that - clamored shrilly of expense. - </p> - <p> - “Excuse me,” said Merriwether Buck, approaching him, “but are you, by any - chance, a reporter?” - </p> - <p> - “Uh,” grunted the young man, frigidly affirmative. - </p> - <p> - “I can put you in the way of a good story,” said Merriwether Buck, obeying - an impulse: We may live anonymously but most of us like to feel that it - will make a little stir when we die. - </p> - <p> - “Huh,” remarked the reporter. - </p> - <p> - “At two o'clock,” persisted Merriwether Buck, “I am going to shoot - myself.” - </p> - <p> - The reporter looked bored; his specialty was politics. - </p> - <p> - “Are you anybody in particular?” he asked, discouragingly. - </p> - <p> - “No,” confessed Merriwether Buck. It didn't seem to be worth while to - mention that he was one of the Bucks of Bucktown, Merriwether County, - Georgia. - </p> - <p> - “I thought,” said the reporter, with an air of rebuke, “that you said it - was a <i>good</i> story.” - </p> - <p> - “I am, at least, a human being,” said Merriwether Buck, on the defensive. - </p> - <p> - “They're cheap, hereabout,” returned the other, in the manner of a person - who has estimated a good many assorted lots. - </p> - <p> - “You are callous,” said Merriwether Buck. “Callous to the soul! What are - you, but—but—Why, you are New York incarnate! That is what you - are! And I think I will shoot you first!” - </p> - <p> - “I don't want to be a spoil sport,” said the reporter, “but I'm afraid I - can't allow it. I have a rather important assignment.” - </p> - <p> - Merriwether played with the little automatic pistol in his pocket. It was - not any regard for the consequences that deterred him from shooting the - portly young man. But in his somewhat dizzy brain a fancy was taking - shape; a whim worked in him. He drew his hand empty from the pocket, and - that reporter came up out of the grave. - </p> - <p> - “I am hungry,” said Merriwether Buck, in obedience to the whim. - </p> - <p> - “Now that you remind me of it,” said the other, his lack-luster eyes - lighting up a little, “so am I!” And he crossed the street and disappeared - through the swinging doors of a café. - </p> - <p> - Callous, leaden-eyed young man! epitome of this hard town! So cried the - spirit of Merriwether Buck; and then he spoke aloud, formulating his idea: - </p> - <p> - “New York, you are on trial. You are in the balances. I give you an hour. - If I'm asked to lunch by two o'clock, all right. If not, I will kill - myself, first carefully shooting down the most prosperous citizens, and as - many of 'em as I can reach. New York, it's up to you!” - </p> - <p> - The idea of playing it out that way tickled him to the heart; he had - always loved games of chance. One man or woman out of all the prosperous - thousands in the streets might save another prosperous half-dozen; might - save as many as he could otherwise reach with nine shots from his pistol, - for he would reserve the tenth for himself. Otherwise, there should be a - sacrifice; he would offer up a blood atonement for the pagan city's - selfishness. Giddy and feverish, and drunk with the sense of his power to - slay, he beheld himself as a kind of grotesque priest—and he threw - back his head and laughed at the maniac conceit. - </p> - <p> - A woman who was passing turned at the sound, and their eyes met. She - smiled. Merriwether Buck was good to look at. So was she. She was of that - type of which men are certain at once, without quite knowing why; while - women are often puzzled, saying to themselves: “After all, it may be only - her rings.” - </p> - <p> - “Pardon me,” said Merriwether Buck, overtaking her, “but you and I are to - lunch together, aren't we?” - </p> - <p> - “I like your nerve!” said she. And she laughed. It was evident that she - did like it. “Where?” she asked briefly, falling into step beside him. - </p> - <p> - “Wherever you like,” said Merriwether. “I leave that to you, as I'm - depending on you to pay the check.” - </p> - <p> - She began a doubtful laugh, and then, seeing that it wasn't a joke, - repeated: - </p> - <p> - “I like your nerve!” And it was now evident that she didn't like it. - </p> - <p> - “See here,” he said, speaking rapidly, “my clothes look all right yet, but - I'm broke. I'm hungry. I haven't had anything to eat since day before - yesterday. I'm not kidding you; it's true. You looked like a good fellow - to me, and I took a chance. Hunger” (as he spoke it he seemed to remember - having heard the remark before), “hunger makes one a judge of faces; I - gambled on yours.” - </p> - <p> - She wasn't complimented; she regarded him with a manner in which scorn and - incredulity were blended; Merriwether Buck perceived that, for some reason - or other, she was insulted. - </p> - <p> - “Don't,” she said, “don't pull any of that sentimental stuff on me. I - thought you was a gentleman!” - </p> - <p> - And she turned away from him. He took a step in pursuit and started to - renew his plea; for he was determined to play his game square and give the - directing deities of the city a fair chance to soften whatsoever random - heart they would. - </p> - <p> - “Beat it!” she shrilled, “beat it, you cheap grafter, or I'll call a cop!” - </p> - <p> - And Merriwether beat it; nor' by nor'west he beat it, as the street beats - it; as the tides beat. The clock on the Times building marked 1.20 as he - paused by the subway station there. In forty minutes—just the time - it takes to hook your wife's dress or put a girdle round the world—Merri-wether - Buck would be beating it toward eternity, shooing before him a flock of - astonished ghosts of his own making. Twenty minutes had gone by and - whatever gods they be that rule New York had made no sign; perhaps said - gods were out at lunch or gone to Coney Island. Twice twenty minutes more, - and—— - </p> - <p> - But no. It is all over now. It must be. There emerges from the subway - station one who is unmistakably a preacher. The creases of his face attest - a smiling habit; no doubt long years of doing good have given it that - stamp; the puffs of white hair above the temples add distinction to - benignity. - </p> - <p> - “I beg your pardon,” said Merriwether Buck, “but are you a minister?” - </p> - <p> - “Eh?” said the reverend gentleman, adjusting a pair of gold-rimmed - eyeglasses. “Yes,” he said pleasantly, “I am,” and he removed the glasses - and put them back on once again, as he spoke. Somehow, the way he did it - was a benediction. - </p> - <p> - “I am hungry,” said Merriwether. - </p> - <p> - “Dear me!” said the reverend gentleman. “I shouldn't have thought it.” - </p> - <p> - “Will you ask me to lunch?” - </p> - <p> - “Eh?” It was an embarrassing question; but the gentleman was all good - nature. His air indicated that he did not intend to let his own - embarrassment embarrass Merriwether too much. “My dear man, you know—really——” - He placed a shapely hand upon Merriwether's shoulder, rallyingly, almost - affectionately, and completed the sentence with a laugh. - </p> - <p> - “It's charity I'm asking for,” said Merriwether. - </p> - <p> - “Oh!” For some reason he seemed vastly relieved. “Have you been—but, - dear me, are you sure you aren't joking?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes; sure.” - </p> - <p> - “And have you—ahem!—have you sought aid from any institution; - any charitable organization, you know?” - </p> - <p> - “But no,” said Merriwether, who had instinctively eliminated charitable - organizations, free lunches and police stations from the terms of his - wager, “I thought——” - </p> - <p> - “My, my, my,” hummed the reverend gentleman, interrupting him. He produced - his card case and took a card therefrom. “I am going,” he said, writing on - the card with a pencil, “to give you my card to the secretary of the - Combined Charities. Excellent system they have there. You'll be - investigated, you know,” he said brightly, as if that were an especial - boon he was conferring, “your record looked into—character and - antecedents and all that sort of thing!” - </p> - <p> - “And fed?” asked Merriwether. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, indeed!” And he handed over the card as if he were giving Merriwether - the keys to the city—but not too gross and material a city either; - Merriwether felt almost as if he were being baptized. - </p> - <p> - “But,” said Merriwether Buck, “I wanted <i>you</i> to feed me!” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, my dear man!” smiled the minister, “I <i>am</i> doing it, you know. - I'm a subscriber—do <i>all</i> my charitable work this way. Saves - time. Well, good-by.” And he nodded cheerily. - </p> - <p> - “But,” said Merriwether Buck, “aren't you interested in me personally? - Don't you want to hear my story?” - </p> - <p> - “Story? Story?” hummed the other. “Indeed, but they'll learn your story - there! They have the most excellent system there; card system; cases and - case numbers, you know—Stories, bless you! Hundreds and hundreds of - stories! Big file cases! You'll be number so-and-so. Really,” he said, - with a beaming enthusiasm, “they have a <i>wonderful</i> system. Well, - good-by!” There was a touch of finality in his pleasant tone, but - Merriwether caught him by the sleeve. - </p> - <p> - “See here,” he said, “haven't you even got any <i>curiosity</i> about me? - Don't you even want to know why I'm hungry? Can't you find time <i>yourself</i> - to listen to the tale?” - </p> - <p> - “Time,” said the reverend gentleman, “<i>time</i> is just what I feel the - lack of—feel it sadly, at moments like these, sadly.” He sighed, but - it was an optimistic, good-humored sort of sigh. “But I tell you what you - do.” He drew forth another card and scribbled on it. “If you want to tell - me your story so very badly—(dear me, what remarkable situations the - clerical life lets one in for!)—so <i>very</i> badly, take this card - to my study about 3.30. You'll find my stenographer there and you can - dictate it to her; she'll type it out. Yes, indeed, she'll type it out! - Well, <i>good</i>-by!” - </p> - <p> - And with a bright backward nod he was off. - </p> - <p> - It was 1.25. There were thirty-five minutes more of life. Merriwether Buck - gave the reverend gentleman's cards to a seedy individual who begged from - him, with the injunction to go and get himself charitably Bertilloned like - a gentleman and stop whining, and turned eastward on Forty-second Street. - If you have but thirty-five minutes of life, why not spend them on Fifth - Avenue, where sightly things abound?—indeed if you happen to be a - homicidal maniac of some hours standing, like Merriwether Buck, Fifth - Avenue should be good hunting ground; the very place to mark the fat and - greasy citizens of your sacrifice. - </p> - <p> - Time, the only patrician, will not step lively for the pert subway guards - of human need, nor yet slacken pace for any bawling traffic cop of man's - desire; he comes of an old family too proud to rush, too proud to wait; a - fine old fellow with a sense of his own value. Time walked with - Merriwether Buck as he loitered up Fifth Avenue, for the old gentleman - loves to assist personally at these little comedies, sometimes; with Death - a hang-dog third. Not even a fly-cop took note of the trio, although - several, if they robbed a jewelry store or anything like that, would tell - the reporters later that they had noticed something suspicious at the - time. And the patron deities of New York City might have been over in - Hoboken playing pinochle for all the heed <i>they</i> took. - </p> - <p> - Which brings us to Sixty-fifth Street and 1.58 o'clock and the presence of - the great man, all at once. - </p> - <p> - When Merriwether Buck first saw him, Meriwether Buck gasped. He couldn't - believe it. And, indeed, it was a thing that might not happen again this - year or next year or in five years—J. Dupont Evans, minus bulwark or - attendant, even minus his habitual grouch, walking leisurely toward him - like any approachable and common mortal. Merriwether Buck might well be - incredulous. But it was he; the presentment of that remarkable face has - been printed a hundred thousand times; it is as well known to the world at - large as Uncle Pete Watson's cork leg is on the streets of Prairie Centre, - Ill.; it is unmistakable. - </p> - <p> - To have J. Dupont Evans at the point of a pistol might almost intoxicate - some sane and well-fed men, and Merriwether Buck was neither. J. Dupont - Evans—the wealth of Croesus would be just one cracked white chip in - the game he plays. But at this moment his power and his importance had - been extraordinarily multiplied by circumstances. The chances of the - street had tumbled down a half dozen banks—(well did Merriwether - Buck know that, since it had ruined him)—and financial panic was in - the air; an epochal and staggering disaster threatened; and at this - juncture a president in no wise humble had publicly confessed his own - impotence and put it up to J. Dupont Evans to avert, to save, to reassure. - </p> - <p> - Merriwether Buck had not dreamed of this; in the crook of his trigger - finger lay, not merely the life of a man, but the immediate destiny of a - nation. - </p> - <p> - He grasped the pistol in his pocket, and aimed it through the cloth. - </p> - <p> - “Do you know what time it is?” he asked J. Dupont Evans, politely enough. - </p> - <p> - It was only a second before the man answered. But in that second - Merriwether Buck, crazily exalted, and avid of the sensation he was about - to create, had a swift vision. He saw bank after bank come crashing down; - great railroad systems ruined; factories closed and markets stagnant; - mines shut and crops ungathered in the fields; ships idle at the wharves; - pandemonium and ruin everywhere. - </p> - <p> - “Huh?” said J. Dupont Evans, gruffly, removing an unlighted cigar from his - mouth. He looked at Merriwether Buck suspiciously, and made as if to move - on. But he thought better of it the next instant, evidently, for he pulled - out a plain silver watch and said grudgingly: “Two minutes of two.” And - then, in a tone less unpleasant, he asked: “Have you got a match, young - man?” - </p> - <p> - Merriwether fumbled in his vest pocket. In a minute and a half he would - perfunctorily ask this man for lunch, and then he would kill him. But he - would give him a match first—for Merriwether Buck was a - well-brought-up young man. As he fumbled he picked out the exact spot on - the other's waistcoat where he would plant the bullet. But the idea of a - man on the edge of the grave lighting a cigar tickled him so that he - laughed aloud as he held out the matches. - </p> - <p> - “What can I do with these?” snorted J. Dupont Evans. “They are the sort - that light only on their own box.” From his glance one might have gained - the impression that he thought Merriwether Buck a fool. - </p> - <p> - “Great principle that,” said Merriwether Buck, cackling with hysteria. It - was so funny that a dead man should want to smoke a cigar! He would let - him play he was alive for fifty seconds longer. - </p> - <p> - “Principle?” said Evans. “Principle? What Principle?” - </p> - <p> - “Well,” said Merriwether, with the random argumentativeness of insanity, - “it <i>is</i> a great principle. Apply that principle to some high - explosive, for instance, and you have no more battleship flare-backs—no - premature mine blasts——” - </p> - <p> - “Say,” the other suddenly interrupted, “are you an inventor?” - </p> - <p> - “Yes,” lied Merriwether Buck, glibly, although he had never given five - seconds' thought to the subject of high explosives in his life. “That's - how I know. I've invented an explosive more powerful than dynamite. But it - won't explode by contact with fire, like powder. Won't explode with a jar, - like dynamite. Won't freeze, like dynamite. Only one way to explode it—you've - got to bring it into contact with a certain other chemical the same as - scratching one of these matches on its own box.” - </p> - <p> - “The deuce, young man!” said the other. “There's a fortune in it! Is it on - the market at all?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” said Merriwether Buck, raising his pistol hand slightly and - thrusting it a bit forward, under the mask of his coat pocket, “no money - to start it going.” - </p> - <p> - “Hum,” mused the other. “I tell you what you do, young man. You come along - to lunch with me and we'll talk the thing over—money and all.” - </p> - <p> - And the directing deities of New York struck twice on all the city clocks, - and striking, winked. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - IX.—The Professor's Awakening - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ow I ever come to - hit such a swell-looking house for a handout I never knew. Not that there - was anything so gaudy about it, neither, as far as putting up a bluff at - being a millionaire's mansion went, which I found out afterwards it was, - or pretty near that at any rate. But it was just about the biggest house - in that Illinois town, and it's mostly that kind o' place with them naked - iron heathens in the front yard and a brick stable behind that it ain't no - use to go up against unless you're looking for a lemon. If you need real - food and need it sudden and ain't prospecting around town for no other - kind of an opening you better make for the nearest public works like a - canal being dug, or a railroad gang. Hit the little tin dinner buckets, - men that does the unskilled labor on jobs like that, except Swedes and - Dagos, knowing what it is to be up against it themselves now and then and - not inclined to ask no fool questions. - </p> - <p> - Well, I went around to the back door, and Biddy Malone she lets me in. I - found out that was her name afterwards, but as soon as I seen her face I - guessed if her name wasn't Bridget it was Nora. It's all in the first look - they give you after they open the door. If that look's right they're - coming across and you'll get some kind of a surprise for your digestive - ornaments and you don't need to make no fool breaks about sawing wood - neither. I makes my little talk and Biddy she says come in; and into the - kitchen I went. - </p> - <p> - “It's Minnesota you're working towards,” says Biddy, pouring me out a cup - of coffee. - </p> - <p> - She was thinking of the wheat harvest where there's thousands makes for - every fall. But not for me, I never did like to work for none of them - Scandiluvian Swedes and Norwegians that gets into the field before - daylight and stays at it so long the hired men got to milk the cows by - moonlight. They got no sense of proportion, them Gusses and Oles ain't. - </p> - <p> - “I been across the river into I'way,” I says, “working at my trade, and - I'm going back to Chicago to work at it some more.” - </p> - <p> - “And what may your trade be?” says Biddy, sizing me up careful. I seen I - made a hit somehow or she wouldn't of asked me in the first place was I - going to the wheat harvest, but would of just supposed I was a hobo, which - I ain't. I got a lot of trades when I want to use one, and as a regular - thing I rather work at one of them for a while, too, but can't stand it - very long on account of not feeling right to stay in one place too long, - especially in the summer. When I seen I made a hit with Biddy I thinks - I'll hand her a good one she never heard tell of before. - </p> - <p> - “I'm an agnostic by trade,” I says. I spotted that one in a Carnegie - library one time and that was the first chance I ever had to spring it. - </p> - <p> - “I see,” says Biddy. And she opened her eyes and mouth to once. I seen she - didn't see, but I didn't help her none. She would of rather killed herself - than let on she didn't see. Most of the Irish is like that whether they is - kitchen mechanics or what. After a while she says, pouring me out some - more coffee and handing me a little glass jar full of watermelon rinds - boiled in with molasses and things, she says: - </p> - <p> - “And ain't that the dangerous thing to work at, though!” - </p> - <p> - “It is,” I says, and says nothing further. - </p> - <p> - She sets down and folds her arms like she was thinking about it, watching - my hands all the time as if she was looking for scars where something - slipped when I done that agnostic work. Finally she says with a sigh: - </p> - <p> - “Sure, and it's dangerous! Me brother Patrick was kilt at it in the old - country. He was the most vinturesome lad of thim all!” - </p> - <p> - She was putting up a stiff front, and for a minute I don't know whether - she's stringing me or I'm stringing her. The Irish is like that. So being - through eating I says: - </p> - <p> - “Did it fly up and hit him?” - </p> - <p> - She looks at me scornful and tosses her chin up and says: - </p> - <p> - “No. He fell off of it. And I'm thinking you don't know what one of them - is, after!” - </p> - <p> - “What is it, then?” says I. - </p> - <p> - “Then you <i>don't</i> know,” says she; and the next thing I knew I'd been - eased out the back door and she was grinning at me through the crack of it - with superiousness all over her face. - </p> - <p> - So I was walking slow around towards the front thinking to myself how the - Irish was a great people; and shall I go to Chicago and maybe get a job - sailing on the lakes till navigation closes, or shall I go back to Omaha - and work in the railroad yards again, which I don't like much, or shall I - go on down to Saint Looey just to see what's doing. And then I thinks: - “Billy, you was a fool to let that circus walk off and leave you asleep - with nothing over you but a barb wire fence this morning, and what are you - going to do now? First thing you know you'll be a regular hobo, which some - folks can't distinguish you ain't now.” And then I thinks I'll go down to - the river and take a swim and lazy around in the grass a while and think - things over and maybe something will happen. Anyways, you can always join - the army. And just when I was thinking that I got by one of them naked - stone heathens that was squirting water out of a sea shell and a guy comes - down the front steps on the jump and nabs me by the coat collar. I seen he - was a doctor or else a piano tuner by the satchel he dropped when he - grabbed me. - </p> - <p> - “Did you come out of this house?” he says. - </p> - <p> - “I did,” I says, wondering what next. - </p> - <p> - “Back in you goes,” he says, marching me towards the front steps. “They've - got smallpox in there.” - </p> - <p> - I liked to a-jumped loose when he said that, but he twisted my coat collar - and dug his thumbs into my neck and I seen they wasn't no use pulling - back. If a guy that's knocking around mixes up with one of the solid - citizens the magistrate's going to give him the worst of it on principle. - I ain't no hobo and never was, and never traveled much with none of them - professional bums, but there has been times I had hard work making some - people believe it. I seen I couldn't jerk away and I seen I couldn't fight - and so I went along. He rung the door bell, and I says: - </p> - <p> - “Smallpox ain't no inducement to me, doc.” - </p> - <p> - “No?” says he. And the door opened, and in we went. The girl that opened - it, she drew back when she seen me. - </p> - <p> - “Tell Professor Booth that Dr. Wilkins wants to see him,” says the doc, - not letting loose of me. - </p> - <p> - And we stood there saying nothing till the per-fessor come in, which he - did slow and absent-minded. When he seen me he stopped and took off a pair - of thick glasses that was split in two like a mended show case, so he - could see me better, and he says: - </p> - <p> - “What is that you have there, Dr. Wilkins?” - </p> - <p> - “A guest for you,” says Dr. Wilkins, grinning all over himself. “I caught - him leaving the house, and you being under quarantine and me being - secretary to the board of health, I'll have to ask you to keep him here - until we can get Miss Margery on her feet again,” he says. Or they was - words to that effect, as the lawyers asks you. - </p> - <p> - “Dear me,” says Perfessor Booth, kind o' helplesslike. - </p> - <p> - And he put his glasses on and took them off again, and come up close and - looked at me like I was one of them amphimissourian specimens in a free - museum. “Dear me,” he says, looking worrieder and worrieder all the time. - And then he went to the foot of the stairs and pipes out in a voice that - was so flat-chested and bleached-out it would a-looked just like him if - you could a-saw it—“Estelle,” he says, “O Estelle!” - </p> - <p> - I thinks the perfessor is one of them folks that can maybe do a lot of - high-class thinking, but has got to have some one tell 'em what the answer - is. But I doped him out wrong as I seen later on. - </p> - <p> - Estelle, she come down stairs looking like she was the perfessor's big - brother. I found out later she was his old maid sister. She wasn't no - spring chicken, Estelle wasn't, and they was a continuous grin on her - face. I figgered it must of froze there years and years ago. They was a - kid about ten or eleven years old come along down with her, that had hair - down to its shoulders and didn't look like it knowed whether it was a girl - or a boy. Miss Estelle, she looks me over in a way that makes me shiver, - while the doctor and the per-fessor jaws about whose fault it is the - smallpox sign ain't been hung out. And when she was done listening she - says to the perfessor: “You had better go back to your laboratory.” And - the perfessor he went along out, and the doctor with him. - </p> - <p> - “What are you going to do with him, Aunt Estelle?” the kid asks her. - </p> - <p> - “What would <i>you</i> suggest, William Dear?” asks his aunt. I ain't - feeling very comfortable, and I was getting all ready just to natcherally - bolt out the front door now the doctor was gone. Then I thinks it mightn't - be no bad place to stay in fur a couple o' days, even risking the - smallpox. Fur I had ricolected I couldn't ketch it nohow, having been - vaccinated a few months before in Terry Hutt by compulsory medical advice, - me being temporary engaged in repair work on the city pavements through a - mistake in the police court. - </p> - <p> - William Dear looks at me when his aunt put it up to him just as solemn as - if it was the day of judgment and his job was separating the fatted calves - from the goats and the prodigals, and he says: - </p> - <p> - “Don't you think, Aunt Estelle, we better cut his hair and bathe him and - get him some clothes the first thing?” - </p> - <p> - “William is my friend,” thinks I, and I seen right off he was one of them - serious kids that you can't tell what is going on inside their heads. - </p> - <p> - So she calls James, which was the butler, and James he buttled me into a - bathroom the like of which I never see before; and he buttled me into a - suit of somebody's clothes and into a room at the top of the house next to - his'n, and then he come back and buttled a razor and a comb and brush at - me; him being the most mournful-looking fat man I ever seen, and he - informs me that me not being respectable I will eat alone in the kitchen - after the servants is done. People has made them errors about me before. - And I looks around the room and I thinks to myself that this is all right - so far as it has went. But is these four walls, disregarding the rest of - the house, to be my home, and them only? Not, thinks I, if little Billy - knows it. It was not me that invited myself to become the guest of this - family; and if I got to be a guest I be damned if I don't be one according - to Hoyle's rules of etiquette or I'll quit the job. Will I stay in this - one room? Not me. Suppose the perfessor takes it next? And then William - Dear? And suppose when William Dear gets through with it he gives it to - Aunt Estelle? Am I to waste the golden hours when, maybe, my country needs - me, just for accommodation? But I thinks it's all right for a day or two - and then I'll leave my regrets and go on down to Saint Looey or - somewheres. And then James he buttles back into the room like a funeral - procession and says the perfessor says he wants to see me in the - laboratory. - </p> - <p> - That was a big room and the darndest looking room I ever see, and it smelt - strong enough to chase a Hungarian pig sticker out of a Chicago slaughter - house. It smelt like a drug store had died of old age and got buried in a - glue factory. I never seen so much scientific effusions and the things to - hold 'em in mixed up in one place before. They must of been several brands - of science being mixed up there all to once. They was dinky little stoves, - they was glass jars of all shapes and sizes labeled with Dago names - standing around on shelves like in one of them Dutch delicatessen stores; - they was straight glass tubes and they was glass tubes that had the spinal - contortions; they was bones and they was whole skeletons, and they was - things that looked like whisky stills; they was a bookcase full of bugs - and butterflies against one wall; they was chunks of things that might - have been human for all I know floating around in vats like pickled pork - in a barrel; they was beer schooners with twisted spouts to them; they was - microscopes and telescopes and twenty-seven shapes and sizes of knives; - they was crates of stuff that was unpacked and crates that wasn't; and - they was tables with things just piled and spilled over 'em, every which - way, and the looks of everything was dirty on account of the perfessor not - allowing any one in there but himself and Miss Estelle and William. And - whether you knowed anything about them different brands of science or not - you could see the perfessor was one of them nuts that's always starting to - do things and then leaving them go and starting something else. It looked - as if the operating room of an emergency hospital and a blacksmith shop - and a people's free museum and a side show full of freaks, snakes and - oneeyed calves had all gone out and got drunk together, all four of them, - and wandered into a cremation plant to sleep off that souse; and when they - woke up they couldn't tell which was which nor nothing else except they - had a bad taste in their mouth and was sentenced to stay there unseparated - and unhappy and unsociable in each other's company for evermore. And every - time you turned around you stepped on something new, and if you saw a rat - or a lizard or a spider you better let him alone for how was you going to - tell he was dead or alive till he crawled up you? - </p> - <p> - The perfessor, he was setting over by a window, and he pushed out another - chair for me and he says sit down. - </p> - <p> - “You are a gentleman of leisure?” he says, with a grin; or words to that - effect. - </p> - <p> - “I work at that sometimes,” I told him, “although it ain't rightly my - trade.” - </p> - <p> - “Biddy Malone says you're an agnostic,” he says, looking at me close. It - won't do, I thinks, to spring none of them agnostic gags on him, so I says - nothing. - </p> - <p> - “I'm one myself,” he says. - </p> - <p> - “Regular,” I asks him, “or just occasional?” He kind o' grins again, and I - thinks: “Billy, you're making a hit somehow.” - </p> - <p> - Then he says, like he was apologizing to someone about something: “Being - interested in sociology and the lower classes in general, I sent for you - to get some first-hand observations on your train of mind,” he says. Or it - was words like them. “I'm a sociologist,” he says. - </p> - <p> - I seen I made a hit before and I thinks I'll push my luck, so I swells up - and says: - </p> - <p> - “I'm a kind of sociologist myself.” - </p> - <p> - “Hum,” he says, thoughtful-like. “Indeed? And your itinerant mode of - subsistence is persecuted in pursuit of your desire to study knowledge of - the human specimen and to observe wisdom as to the ways they live in the - underworld,” he says. Or it was words to that effect. I wish I'd a-had him - wrote them words down. Then I'd a-had 'em just right now. I seen a bunch - of good words help a man out of a hole before this. Words has always been - more or less my admiration; you can never tell what one of them long - gazaboos is going to do till you spring it on somebody. So I says: - </p> - <p> - “That's me, perfessor. I likes to float around and see what's doing.” - </p> - <p> - Then he tells me that sociology was how the criminal classes and the lower - classes in general was regarded by the scientific classes, only it's a - difficult brand of science to get next to, he says, on account of the - lower classes like me being mostly broke out with environment he says, - unbeknownst even to theirselves. He's not what you would call a practicing - sociologist all the time, being afraid, I suppose, he would catch it if he - got too close to it; he's just one of the boys that writes about it, so as - both the lower classes and the scientific classes won't make no bad - breaks, he says. - </p> - <p> - But what he wants of me just now ain't got nothing to do with that, he - says. He's been making experiments with all kinds of canned victuals, that - is put up with acid that eats holes in your stomach, he says, and so long - as I'm going to be a guest he's going to mix some of them acids in my - chuck and weigh me after each meal. He says I'll start slow and easy and - there won't be nothing dangerous about it. He's been practicing on William - Dear and Miss Estelle, which I suppose it was the acids got into her - smile, but he's going to give them a rest, them being naturally delicate. - I ain't got no kick, I thinks, and I'm going to leave this place in a day - or two anyhow. Besides, I always was intrusted in scientific things and - games of chance of all kinds. - </p> - <p> - But I didn't leave in a few days, and the first thing I knew I'd been - there a week. I had pretty much the run of the house, and I eat my meals - with Biddy Malone, the only uncomfortable feature of being a guest being - that Miss Estelle, soon as she found out I was an agnostic (whatever brand - of science that is, which I never found out to this day, just having come - across the word accidental), she begun to take charge of my religion and - intellectuals and things like that. She used to try to cure the perfessor, - too, but she had to give it up for a bad job, Biddy says. - </p> - <p> - Biddy, she says Mrs. Booth's been over to her mother's while this smallpox - has been going on; which I hadn't knowed they was a Mrs. Booth before. And - Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay there, too. They's been a - lot of talk, anyhow, Biddy says, about Mrs. Booth and some musician fellow - around town. But Biddy she likes Mrs. Booth, and even if it was so who - could blame her? - </p> - <p> - Things ain't right around that house since Miss Estelle's been there, - which the perfessor's science, though worrying to the nerves, ain't cut - much ice till about four years ago when Miss Estelle come. - </p> - <p> - But Mrs. Booth she's getting where she can't stand it much longer, Biddy - says. I didn't blame her none for feeling sore about things. - </p> - <p> - You can't expect a woman that's pretty and knows it, and ain't more'n - thirty-two or three years old, and don't look it, to be interested in - mummies and pickled snakes and the preservation of the criminal classes - and chemical profusions, not <i>all</i> the time. And maybe when she'd ask - the perfessor if he wasn't going to take her to the opera he'd ask her did - she know them Germans had invented a newfangled disease or that it was a - mistake about them Austrians hiding their heads in the sand when they are - scared, which any fool that's ever seen 'em working around a coal mine - ought to of knowed. It wouldn't a-been so bad if the perfessor had just - picked out one brand of science and stuck to it. She could a-got used to - any one kind and knowed what to expect. But maybe this week the - perfessor's bug would be ornithography, and he'd be chasing sparrows all - over the front lawn; and next week it would be geneology and he'd be - trying to grow bananas on a potato vine. Then, he'd get worried about the - nigger problem in the south, and settle it all up scientific and explain - how ethnology done the whole damn thing, lynchings and all, and it never - could be straightened out till it was done scientific. Every new gag that - come out the perfessor took up with it, Biddy says; one time he'd be - fussing around with gastronomy through a telescope and the next he'd be - putting astrology into William's breakfast food. - </p> - <p> - They was a row on all the time about the kids, which they hadn't been till - Miss Estelle come. Mrs. Booth she said they could kill their own selves if - they wanted to, but she had more right than anybody to say what went into - William's digestive ornaments, and she didn't want him brought up - scientific nohow, but just human. He was always making notes on William, - which was how William come to take so little interest in life after a - while. But Miss Estelle, she egged him on. She seen he didn't have no - sense about his money, which had been left to him when he was a sure - enough perfessor in a college before he quit and went nuts and everything - begun to go wrong between him and Mrs. Booth, so Miss Estelle she took to - running his money herself; but she seen likewise that when it come to - writing articles about William's insides and intellectuals the perfessor - he was a genius. Well, maybe he was; but Biddy wouldn't let him try none - of them laboratory gags on her though she just as soon be hypnotized and - telepathed as not just to humor him. Miss Estelle, she eat what the - perfessor give her, and after a while she says she'll take charge of the - children's education herself, their mother being a frivolous young thing, - and it was too bad, she says, a genius like him couldn't a-mar-ried a - noble woman who would a-understood his great work for humanity and - sympathized with it. So while the perfessor filled William and Miss - Margery up on new discovered food and weighed 'em and probed 'em and - sterilized 'em and did everything else but put 'em in glass bottles, Miss - Estelle she laid out courses of reading matter for them and tended to - their religion and intellectuals and things like that. I reckon they never - was two kids more completely educated, inside and out. It hadn't worked - much on Miss Margery yet, her being younger than William. But William took - it hard and serious, being more like his father's family, and it made - bumps all over his head. I reckon by the time William was ten years old he - knew more than a whole high school, and every time that boy cut his finger - he just naturally bled science. But somehow he wasn't very chipper, and - whenever the perfessor would notice that he and Miss Estelle would change - treatment. But Biddy liked William just the same, they hadn't spoiled his - disposition none; and she said he seen a lot of things his aunt never - would a-seen, William did. One day when I first was a guest I says to his - aunt, I says: - </p> - <p> - “Miss Booth, William looks kind o' pale to me like he was getting too much - bringin' up to the square inch.” - </p> - <p> - She acted like she didn't care for no outsiders butting in, but I seen - she'd noticed it, too, and she liked William, too, in a kind of scientific - sort of a way, and she says in a minute: - </p> - <p> - “What do you suggest?” - </p> - <p> - “Why,” says I, “what a kid like that needs is to roll around and play in - the dirt now and then, and yell and holler.” - </p> - <p> - She went away like she was kind o' mad about it; but about an hour later - the perfessor sent word for me to come down to the labaratory, and Miss - Estelle was there. - </p> - <p> - “We have decided that there is something in what you say,” says the - perfessor. “Even the crudest and most untrained intellectuals has now and - then a bright hunch from which us men of special knowledge may take a - suggestion,” he says, or words to that effect. And they was a whole lot - more, and they was more scientific than that. I didn't know I'd done - nothing important like that, but when he told me all about it in science - talk I seen I made a ten strike, though I should of thought anyone could - of saw all William needed was just to be allowed to be a little more - human. - </p> - <p> - But what do you think—I never was so jarred in my life as I was the - next day. I seen Miss Estelle spreading an oilcloth on the floor, and then - the butler come in and poured a lot of nice, clean, sterilized dirt on to - it. And then she sent for William. - </p> - <p> - “William Dear,” she says, “we have decided that what you need is more - recreation mixed in along with your intellectuals. You ought to romp and - play in the dirt, close to the soil and nature, as is right for a youth of - your age. For an hour each day right after you study your biology and - before you take up your Euclid you will romp and play in this dirt like a - child of nature, and frolic. You may now begin to frolic, William, and - James will gather up the dirt again for to-morrow's frolic.” Or it was - words to that effect. - </p> - <p> - But William didn't frolic none. He seen things they didn't. He just looked - at that dirt, and he come the nearest to smiling I ever seen William come; - and then he come the nearest to getting mad I ever seen William come. And - then he says very serious: - </p> - <p> - “Aunt Estelle,” he says, “I shall <i>not</i> frolic. I have come to that - place in my discretions where my intellectuals got to work some for - theirselves. It is them intellectuals which you have trained that refuses - to be made ridiculous one hour each day between the biology lesson and the - Euclid lesson with sand.” Those was not William's exact words, which he - always had down as slick as his pa, but they was what he meant. William - was a serious kid, but he seen things his aunt never had no idea of. And - he never did frolic, neither, and all that nice clean dirt had to be - throwed out by the stable amongst the unscientific dirt again. - </p> - <p> - That was before Biddy Malone told me about why it was that the perfessor - and his wife didn't get along well, and as I was saying I didn't blame her - none, Miss Estelle having finally beat her out about her own children, - too; and she feeling she didn't scarcely own 'em no more, and they hardly - daring to kiss their own mamma with Miss Estelle in the room because of - germs, so Biddy says. Biddy, she says the perfessor is all right, he's - just a fool and don't mean no harm by his scientific gags, but Miss - Estelle she's a she-devil and takes that way to make herself the boss of - that house. If she wasn't there Mrs. Booth would have been boss and never - let the perfessor know it and things wouldn't a-been so bad. Which shows - that so long as every house got to have a boss it ain't so much difference - if it's a him or her so long as it ain't a relation. - </p> - <p> - The perfessor always eats his dinner in one of them coats with the - open-face vest to it, and one night I thinks I will, too. When you is in - Rome you does like the Dagos does, I thinks. - </p> - <p> - So I sends for James along before dinner time and I says: “Where is my - dinky clothes to eat dinner in?” I says. - </p> - <p> - James he says I'm to continue to eat dinner by myself. Which is all right, - I tells him, but I'll do it in style or I'll quit the job. So he goes and - asks Miss Estelle, and she comes in with that lemon grin on, but looking, - too, like I done something to please her. - </p> - <p> - “Is it true,” she says, “that already the effects of a refined environment - has overcome defections in early training and a misfortune in ancestral - hereditary?” she says. Or they was words to that effect. - </p> - <p> - “It is true,” I says. And the perfessor's being too small she made James - give me his'n. But when I seen all that shirt front it made me feel kind - of uncomfortable, too. So I takes them off again and puts on my old - striped sweater and puts on the vest and coat over that, and the effect of - them red stripes running crossways is something gorgeous with one of them - open-face vests over it. - </p> - <p> - So after I eat I don't want to go to bed and I gets a box of the - perfessor's cigars and goes into the library and thinks I'll see if he's - got anything fit to read. I dig around for a while among them shelves, and - most everything is one brand of science or other, but finally I got hold - of a little book that was real interesting. That was the damndest book! It - was all in rhyme, with the explanations of the rhyme printed in real talk - down the sides so as you could tell where you was at and what it was - about. It's about an Ancient Mariner. The nut that wrote it he's never - been sailing none, I bet; but he can make you feel like you been going - against the hop in one of them Chink joints. Of course, there ain't - nothing real literary about it like one of them Marie Corelli stories I - read once and it ain't got the excitement of a good Bill Hart movie or a - Nick Carter story, but I got real interested in it. The I-man of that - story he was a Jonah to the whole ship. He seen an albatross circling - around, and he up with his air gun and give him his'n. It wasn't for - nothing to eat, but just to be a-shooting. And from that on everybody gets - as sick of living as a bunch of Chicago factory hands when another savings - bank busts, and they all falls down and curses him. And the snakes wiggles - all over the top of the water like I seen 'em one time when they cleaned - out a reservoir where one of them prairie towns gets its drinking water - from. And the Ancient Mariner he tries to die and can't make it; and their - ghosts is whizzing all around that ship and they go by him in the - moonlight like a puff of steam goes by you on a frosty morning out of an - engine-room manhole. And there's a moral to that story, too. I bet the - fellow that doped that out had been on an awful bat. I like to of talked - with that nut. They was a fellow named Looney Hogan use to have them - phoney hunches, and he use to tell me what he saw after he had 'em. Looney - was awful good company and I use to like to hear him tell what he seen and - what he thinks he seen, but he walked off of a grain barge up to Duluth - when he was asleep one night and he never did wake up. - </p> - <p> - Sitting there thinking of the awful remarkable things that is, and the - ones that isn't, and the ones that maybe is and maybe isn't, and the nuts - that is phoney about some things and not about others, and how two guys - can look at the same thing and when you ask them about it both has seen - different things, I must a-went to sleep. And I must a-slept a long time - there, and pretty soon in my sleep I heard two voices and then I wakes up - sudden and still hears them, low and quicklike, in the room that opens - right off from the library with a pair of them sliding doors like is on to - a boxcar. One was a woman's voice, and not Miss Estelle's, and she says - like she was choked up: - </p> - <p> - “But I <i>must</i> see them before we go, Henry.” - </p> - <p> - And the other was a man's voice, and it wasn't no one around our house. - </p> - <p> - “But, my God!” he says, “suppose you catch it yourself, Jane!” - </p> - <p> - I set up straight then, and I would of give a good deal to see through - that door, because Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name. - </p> - <p> - “You mean suppose <i>you</i> get it,” she says. I like to of seen the look - she must of give him to fit in with the way she says that <i>you</i>. He - didn't say nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down some, - and she says, low and slow: “Henry, wouldn't you love me if I <i>did</i> - get it? Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?” - </p> - <p> - “Oh, of course,” he says, “of course I would. Nothing can change the way I - feel. <i>You</i> know that.” He said it quick enough, all right, just the - way they do in a show, but it sounded <i>too much</i> like it does on the - stage to of suited me if <i>I'd</i> been her. I seen folks overdo them - little talks before this. - </p> - <p> - I listens some more, and then I see how it is. This is that musician - feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with him - all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that. They - may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em don't - like the kids. I thinks to myself: “It must be late. I bet they was - already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here first - so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She just simply couldn't get by. - But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see Margery with - that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night? And even if she - tries just to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot he'll wake up and - she'll be ketched at it.” - </p> - <p> - And then I thinks, suppose she <i>is</i> ketched at it? What of it? Ain't - a woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, even - if they is a quarantine on to it, and see her kids? And if she is ketched - seeing them, how would anyone know she was going to run off? And ain't she - got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring her over from - her mother's house, even if it is a little late? - </p> - <p> - Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby I - better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated me - purty white. And then I thinks: “I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle. So fur - as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's coming to - him, nohow. And as fur <i>her</i>, you got to let some people find out - what they want fur theirselves. Anyhow, where do <i>I</i> come in at?” - </p> - <p> - But I want to get a look at her and Henry, anyhow. So I eases off my - shoes, careful-like, and I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors, - and I puts my eye down to the little crack. The talk is going backward and - forward between them two, him wanting her to come away quick, and her - undecided whether to risk seeing the kids. And all the time she's kind o' - hoping mebby she will be ketched if she tries to see the kids, and she's - begging off fur more time ginerally. - </p> - <p> - Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none when I seen her. She - was a peach. - </p> - <p> - And I couldn't blame her so much, either, when I thought of Miss Estelle - and all them scientifics of the perfessor's strung out fur years and years - world without end. - </p> - <p> - Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she wouldn't. I seen right off - that Henry wouldn't do. It takes a man with a lot of gumption to keep a - woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it when he's married to her. - But it takes a man with twicet as much to make her feel right when they - ain't married. This feller wears one of them little, brown, pointed beards - fur to hide where his chin ain't. And his eyes is too much like a woman's. - Which is the kind that gets the biggest piece of pie at the lunch counter - and fergits to thank the girl as cuts it big. She was setting in front of - a table, twisting her fingers together, and he was walking up and down. I - seen he was mad and trying not to show it, and I seen he was scared of the - smallpox and trying not to show that, too. And just about that time - something happened that kind o' jolted me. - </p> - <p> - They was one of them big chairs in the room where they was that has got a - high back and spins around on itself. It was right acrost from me, on the - other side of the room, and it was facing the front window, which was a - bow window. And that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy. First I - thought she wasn't turning. Then I seen she was. But Jane and Henry - didn't. They was all took up with each other in the middle of the room, - with their back to it. - </p> - <p> - Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little more, that chair does. - Will she squeak, I wonders? - </p> - <p> - “Don't you be a fool, Jane,” says the Henry feller. - </p> - <p> - Around she comes three hull inches, that there chair, and nary a squeak. - </p> - <p> - “A fool?” asks Jane, and laughs. “And I'm not a fool to think of going - with you at all, then?” - </p> - <p> - That chair, she moved six inches more and I seen the calf of a leg and - part of a crumpled-up coat tail. - </p> - <p> - “But I <i>am</i> going with you, Henry,” says Jane. And she gets up just - like she is going to put her arms around him. - </p> - <p> - But Jane don't. Fur that chair swings clear around and there sets the - perfessor. He's all hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his eyes like - he's just woke up recent, and he's got a grin on to his face that makes - him look like his sister Estelle looks all the time. - </p> - <p> - “Excuse me,” says the perfessor. - </p> - <p> - They both swings around and faces him. I can hear my heart bumping. Jane - never says a word. The man with the brown beard never says a word. But if - they felt like me they both felt like laying right down there and having a - fit. They looks at him and he just sets there and grins at them. - </p> - <p> - But after a while Jane, she says: - </p> - <p> - “Well, now you <i>know!</i> What are you going to do about it?” - </p> - <p> - Henry, he starts to say something, too. But—— - </p> - <p> - “Don't start anything,” says the perfessor to him. “<i>You</i> aren't - going to do anything.” Or they was words to that effect. - </p> - <p> - “Professor Booth,” he says, seeing he has got to say something or else - Jane will think the worse of him, “I am——” - </p> - <p> - “Shut up,” says the perfessor, real quiet. “I'll tend to you in a minute - or two. <i>You</i> don't count for much. This thing is mostly between me - and my wife.” - </p> - <p> - When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something - into him beside science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised - herself. But she says nothing, except: - </p> - <p> - “What are you going to do, Frederick?” And she laughs one of them mean - kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a - little more, and says: “What <i>can</i> you do, Frederick?” - </p> - <p> - Frederick, he says, not excited a bit: - </p> - <p> - “There's quite a number of things I <i>could</i> do that would look bad - when they got into the newspapers. But it's none of them, unless one of - you forces it on to me.” Then he says: - </p> - <p> - “You <i>did</i> want to see the children, Jane?” - </p> - <p> - She nodded. - </p> - <p> - “Jane,” he says, “can't you see I'm the better man?” - </p> - <p> - The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and he - didn't want to see her go. “Look at him,” he says, pointing to the feller - with the brown beard, “he's scared stiff right now.” - </p> - <p> - Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way like - Henry was, and the perfessor's voice sounding like you was chopping ice - every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no blood on - the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making up his mind - about something, too. Jane, she says: - </p> - <p> - “<i>You</i> a better man? <i>You?</i> You think you've been a model - husband just because you've never beaten me, don't you?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” says the perfessor, “I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been a - worse fool, maybe, than if I <i>had</i> beaten you.” Then he turns to - Henry and he says: - </p> - <p> - “Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in - the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me.” With which he gets up - and trots out, and I heard him running down stairs to his labertory. - </p> - <p> - Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane a-looking - at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some kind of a - strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't do it. And - Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects it. And me, I'm - getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, “What is that there perfessor - up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one else. He is looney, that - perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too. I wonder if they is anyone - that ain't looney sometimes? I been around the country a good 'eal, too, - and seen and hearn of some awful remarkable things, and I never seen no - one that wasn't more or less looney when the <i>search us the femm</i> - comes into the case. Which is a Dago word I got out'n a newspaper and it - means: Who was the dead gent's lady friend?' And we all set and sweat and - got the fidgets waiting fur that perfessor to come back. - </p> - <p> - “Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin on to his face and a pill box - in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and chilly: - “Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science. All the - same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she isn't worth - fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I made 'em - myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it gets to - working well—which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken. The - other one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one, I keep - her. If I get it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait long enough - after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town.” - </p> - <p> - Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of it. - When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek on - the inside like a piece of sandpaper. He was scared, Henry was. - </p> - <p> - “But <i>you</i> know which is which,” Jane sings out. “The thing's not - fair!” - </p> - <p> - “That is the reason my dear Jane is going to shuffle these pills around - each other herself,” says the perfessor, “and then pick out one for him - and one for me. <i>You</i> don't know which is which, Jane. And as he is - the favorite, he is going to get the first chance. If he gets the one I - want him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live after taking - it. In that fifteen minutes he will please to walk so far from my house - that he won't die near it and make a scandal. I won't have a scandal - without I have to. Everything is going to be nice and quiet and - respectable. The effect of the poison is similar to heart failure. No one - can tell the difference on the corpse. There's going to be no blood - anywhere. I will be found dead in my house in the morning with heart - failure, or else he will be picked up dead in the street, far enough away - so as to make no talk.” Or they was words to that effect. - </p> - <p> - He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that perfessor is. I wonder if - I better jump in and stop the hull thing. Then I thinks: “No, it's between - them three.” Beside, I want to see which one is going to get that there - loaded pill. I always been intrusted in games of chance of all kinds, and - when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm sorry I been misjudging - him all this time. - </p> - <p> - Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard and quick. - </p> - <p> - “I won't touch 'em,” she says. “I refuse to be a party to any murder of - that kind.” - </p> - <p> - “Huh? You do?” says the perfessor. “But the time when you might have - refused has gone by. You have made yourself a party to it already. You're - really the <i>main</i> party to it. - </p> - <p> - “But do as you like,” he goes on. “I'm giving him more chance than I ought - to with those pills. I might shoot him, and I would, and then face the - music, if it wasn't for mixing the children up in the scandal, Jane. If - you want to see him get a fair chance, Jane, you've got to hand out these - pills, one to him and then one to me. <i>You</i> must kill one or the - other of us, or else <i>I'll</i> kill <i>him</i> the other way. And <i>you</i> - had better pick one out for him, because <i>I</i> know which is which. Or - else let him pick one out for himself,” he says. - </p> - <p> - Henry, he wasn't saying nothing. I thought he had fainted. But he hadn't. - I seen him licking his lips. I bet Henry's mouth was all dry inside. - </p> - <p> - Jane, she took the box and she went round in front of Henry and she looked - at him hard. She looked at him like she was thinking: “Fur God's sake, - spunk up some, and take one if it <i>does</i> kill you!” Then she says out - loud: “Henry, if you die I will die, too!” - </p> - <p> - And Henry, he took one. His hand shook, but he took it out'n the box. If - she had of looked like that at me mebby I would of took one myself. Fur - Jane, she was a peach, she was. But I don't know whether I would of or - not. When she makes that brag about dying, I looked at the perfessor. What - she said never fazed him. And I thinks agin: “Mebby I better jump in now - and stop this thing.” And then I thinks agin: “No, it is between them - three and Providence.” Beside, I'm anxious to see who is going to get that - pill with the science in it. I gets to feeling just like Providence - hisself was in that there room picking out them pills with his own hands. - And I was anxious to see what Providence's ideas of right and wrong was - like. So fur as I could see they was all three in the wrong, but if I had - of been in there running them pills in Providence's place I would of let - them all off kind o' easy. - </p> - <p> - Henry, he ain't eat his pill yet. He is just looking at it and shaking. - </p> - <p> - The perfessor reaches for his watch, and don't find none. Then he reaches - over and takes Henry's watch, and opens it, and lays it on the table. “A - quarter past one,” he says. “Mr. Murray, are you going to make me shoot - you after all? I didn't want any blood nor any scandal,” he says. “It's up - to you,” he says, “whether you want to take that pill and get your even - chance, or whether you want to get shot. The shooting way is sure, but - looks bad in the papers. The pill way don't implicate any one,” he says. - “Which?” And he pulls a gun. - </p> - <p> - Henry he looks at the gun. - </p> - <p> - Then he looks at the pill. - </p> - <p> - Then he swallows the pill. - </p> - <p> - The perfessor puts his'n into his mouth. But he don't swallow it. He looks - at the watch, and he looks at Henry. “Sixteen minutes past one,” he says. - “<i>Mr. Murray will be dead at exactly fourteen minutes to two</i>. I got - the harmless one. I can tell by the taste of the chemicals.” - </p> - <p> - And he put the pieces out into his hand to show that he chewed his'n up, - not being willing to wait fifteen minutes for a verdict from his digestive - ornaments. Then he put 'em back into his mouth and chewed 'em and - swallowed 'em down like it was coughdrops. - </p> - <p> - Henry has got sweat breaking out all over his face, and he tries to make - fur the door, but he falls down on to a sofa. - </p> - <p> - “This is murder,” he says, weaklike. And he tries to get up agin, but this - time he falls to the floor in a dead faint. - </p> - <p> - “It's a dern short fifteen minutes,” I thinks to myself. “That perfessor - must of put more science into Henry's pill than he thought he did fur it - to of knocked him out this quick. It ain't skeercly three minutes.” - </p> - <p> - When Henry falls the woman staggers and tries to throw herself on top of - him. The corners of her mouth was all drawed down, and her eyes was turned - up. But she don't yell none. She can't. She tries, but she just gurgles in - her throat. The perfessor won't let her fall acrost Henry. He ketches her. - “Sit up, Jane,” he says, with that Estelle look on to his face, “and let - us have a talk.” - </p> - <p> - She looks at him with no more sense in her face than a piece of putty has - got. But she can't look away from him. - </p> - <p> - And I'm kind o' paralyzed, too. If that feller laying on the floor had - only jest kicked oncet, or grunted, or done something, I could of loosened - up and yelled, and I would of. I just <i>needed</i> to fetch a yell. But - Henry ain't more'n dropped down there till I'm feeling just like he'd <i>always</i> - been there, and I'd <i>always</i> been staring into that room, and the - last word anyone spoke was said hundreds and hundreds of years ago. - </p> - <p> - “You're a murderer,” says Jane in a whisper, looking at the perfessor in - that stare-eyed way. “You're a <i>murderer,</i>” she says, saying it like - she was trying to make herself feel sure he really was one. - </p> - <p> - “Murder!” says the perfessor. “Did you think I was going to run any - chances for a pup like him? He's scared, that's all. He's just fainted - through fright. He's a coward. Those pills were both just bread and sugar. - He'll be all right in a minute or two. I've just been showing you that the - fellow hasn't got nerve enough nor brains enough for a fine woman like - you, Jane,” he says. - </p> - <p> - Then Jane begins to sob and laugh, both to oncet, kind o' wildlike, her - voice clucking like a hen does, and she says: - </p> - <p> - “It's worse then, it's worse! It's worse for me than if it were a murder! - Some farces can be more tragic than any tragedy ever was,” she says. Or - they was words to that effect. - </p> - <p> - And if Henry had of been really dead she couldn't of took it no harder - than she begun to take it now when she saw he was alive, but just wasn't - no good. But I seen she was taking on fur herself now more'n fur Henry. - Women is made unlike most other animals in many ways. When they is foolish - about a man they can stand to have that man killed a good 'eal better than - to have him showed up ridiculous right in front of them. They will still - be crazy about the man that's killed, but they don't never forgive the - lobster. I seen that work out before this. You can be most any thing else - and get away with it, but if you're a lobster it's all off even if you - can't help being a lobster. And when the perfessor kicks Henry in the ribs - and he comes to and sneaks out, Jane she never even looks at him. - </p> - <p> - “Jane,” says the perfessor, when she quiets down some, “you got a lot to - forgive me. But do you s'pose I learned enough sense so we can make a go - of it if we start over again?” - </p> - <p> - But Jane never said nothing. - </p> - <p> - “Jane,” he says, “Estelle is going back to New England to stay there for - good.” - </p> - <p> - She begins to take a little interest then. “Did Estelle tell you so?” she - says. - </p> - <p> - “No,” says the perfessor, “Estelle don't know it yet. But she is. I'm - going to tell her in the mornin'.” - </p> - <p> - But she still hates him. She's making herself. She wouldn't of been a - female woman if she'd of been coaxed that easy. Pretty soon she says, “I'm - going upstairs and go to bed. I'm tired.” And she went out looking like - the perfessor was a perfect stranger. - </p> - <p> - After she left the perfessor set there quite a while and he was looking - tired out, too; and there wasn't no mistake about me. I was asleep all - through my legs, and I kept a wondering to myself, suppose them pills had - one of them been loaded sure enough, which one would of got it? And when - the perfessor leaves I says to myself, I reckon I better light a rag. So I - goes to the front window and opens it easy; but I thinks about Henry's - watch on the table, every one else having forgot it, and I thinks I better - hunt him up and give it to him. - </p> - <p> - And then I thinks why should I give him pain, for that watch will always - remind him of an unpleasant time he once had. - </p> - <p> - And if it hadn't been for me sitting in that window looking at that watch - I wouldn't a-been writing this, for I wouldn't of been in jail now. - </p> - <p> - I tried to explain my intentions was all right, but the police says it - ain't natural to be seen coming out of a front window at two in the - morning in a striped sweater and a dinky dinner suit with a gold watch in - your hand; if you are hunting the owner you are doing it peculiar. - </p> - <p> - One of them reporters he says to me to write the truth about how I got - into jail; nobody else never done it and stuck to facts. But this is the - truth so help me; it was all on account of that watch, which my intentions - with regard to was perfectly honorable, and all that goes before leads up - to that watch. There wasn't no larceny about it; it was just another - mistake on the part of the police. If I'd of been stealing wouldn't I - stole the silverware a week before that? - </p> - <p> - The more I travel around the more dumb people I see that can't understand - how an honest and upright citizen can get into circumstantial evidence and - still be a honest and upright citizen. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - X.—The Penitent - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>ou, who are not - married,” said the penitent, “cannot know—can never realize——” - </p> - <p> - He hesitated, his glance wandering over the evidences of luxury, the hints - of Oriental artistry, the esthetic effectiveness of Dr. Eustace Beaulieu's - studio. - </p> - <p> - “Proceed,” said Dr. Beaulieu, suavely. “What I may know is not the - important thing. You do not address yourself to me, but through me to that - principle of Harmony in the Cosmos which is Spirit—Ultimate Spirit—which - we call God. All that I can do is assist you to get into Accord with the - Infinite again, help you to vibrate in unison with the Cosmic All.” - </p> - <p> - “You are right; I do not look to you,” said the penitent, “for ease of - mind or spirit.” And a fleeting half-smile showed in his eyes, as if some - ulterior thought gave a certain gusto to the manner in which he stressed - the pronoun <i>you</i>. But the rest of his scarred and twisted face was - expressionless, beneath the thick mask of a heavy gray-streaked beard that - grew almost to his eyes. - </p> -<pre xml:space="preserve"> - * Author's Note: “The Penitent” was suggested by two poems, - “A Forgiveness,” by Browning, and “The Portrait,” by Owen - Meredith. -</pre> - <p> - Dr. Eustace Beaulieu was the leader—nay, the founder—of one of - the many, many cults that have sprung up in New York City and elsewhere in - America during the past three or four decades. An extraordinary number of - idle, well-to-do women gathered at his studio two or three times a week, - and listened to his expositions of ethics <i>de luxe</i>, served with just - the proper dash of Oriental mysticism and European pseudoscience. He was - forty, he was handsome, with magnetic brown eyes and the long sensitive - fingers of a musician; he was eloquent, he was persuasive, he was - prosperous. - </p> - <p> - When he talked of the Zend-Avesta, when he spoke of the Vedantic writings, - when he touched upon the Shinto worship of the Nipponese, when he - descanted upon the likeness of the Christian teachings to the tenets of - Buddhism, when he revealed the secrets of the Yogi philosophy, when he - hinted his knowledge of the priestly craft of older Egypt and of later - Eleusis, his feminine followers thrilled in their seats as a garden of - flowers that is breathed upon by a Summer wind—they vibrated to his - words and his manner and his restrained fervor with a faint rustling of - silken garments and a delicate fragrance of perfume. - </p> - <p> - Men were not, as a rule, so enthusiastic concerning Dr. Eustace Beaulieu - and his cult; there were few of them at his lectures, there were few of - them enrolled in the classes where he inducted his followers into the more - subtle phases of ethics, where he led them to the higher planes of - occultism, for a monetary consideration; few of them submitted themselves - to him for the psychic healing that was one of his major claims to fame. - And this scarred and bearded stranger, who limped, was one of the very few - men who had ever intimated a desire to bare his soul to Dr. Beaulieu, to - tell his story and receive spiritual ministration, in the manner of the - confessional. These confessionals, after the public lectures, had been - recently introduced by Dr. Beaulieu, and they were giving him, he felt, a - firmer grip upon his flock—his disciples, he did not hesitate to - call them. - </p> - <p> - “I repeat,” said the penitent—if he was a repentant man, indeed—“no - bachelor can know what love really is. He cannot conceive of what the - daily habit of association with a woman who seems made for him, and for - him alone, may mean to a man. My love for my wife was almost worship. She - was my wife indeed, I told myself, and she it was for whom I worked. - </p> - <p> - “For I did work, worked well and unselfishly. Every man must have some - work. Some do it from necessity, but I did it because I loved the work—and - the woman—and thus I gained a double reward. I was a politician, and - something more. I think I may say that I was a patriot, too. The inheritor - of wealth and position, I undertook to clear the city in which I lived, - and which my forefathers had helped to build, of the ring of grafters who - were making the name of the town a byword throughout the nation. The - details of that long and hard strife are not pertinent. I fought with - something more than boldness and determination; I fought with a joy in - every struggle, because I fought for something more than the world knew. - The world could not see that my inspiration was in my home; that in the - hours of battle my blood sang joyously with the thought of—her! Was - it any wonder that I worked well? - </p> - <p> - “One day, as I sat in my office downtown, the thought of her drew me so - strongly that I determined to surprise her by coming home unexpectedly - early. It was summer, and we were living in our country home, an - old-fashioned stone residence a couple of miles from the outskirts of the - city. The house was situated at the edge of a park that was, indeed, - almost virgin forest, for the whole estate had been in my family for - nearly a hundred years. - </p> - <p> - “I determined to surprise my wife, and at the same time to take the rare - relaxation of a suburban walk. I was soon outside the city limits, and - through the zone where vacant lots broaden into fields; and then I left - the road, cutting across the fields and finally plunging into the woods on - my own place. Thus it was that I approached the house from the rear and - came suddenly out of the timber into my own orchard. I seldom walked from - town, and it was a good long hour before my usual time of arrival, - although in that sheltered and woody place the dusk was already gathering - in. - </p> - <p> - “As I entered the orchard a man made a hurried exit from a vine-wreathed - pergola where my wife often sat to read, cast one look at me, cleared the - orchard fence, and made off through the woods, disappearing at once among - the boles of the trees. - </p> - <p> - “He had not turned his full face toward me at any time, but had shielded - it with an upflung arm; from the moment he broke cover until his - disappearance there had passed less time than it takes to tell it, and I - was scarcely to be blamed if I was left guessing as to his identity, for - the moment. For the moment, I say. - </p> - <p> - “There had been so much fright in his manner that I stood and looked after - him. The thought came to me that perhaps here was a man who had had an - affair with one of my servants. I turned toward the pergola and met—my - wife! - </p> - <p> - “She was a beautiful woman, always more beautiful in her moments of - excitement. She confronted me now with a manner which I could not help but - admire. I trusted her so that she might readily have passed off a much - more anomalous situation with an easy explanation. But in her face I read - a deliberate wish to make me feel the truth. - </p> - <p> - “I looked at her long, and she returned the gaze unflinchingly. And I - recognized her look for what it was. She had cast off the chains of - deceit. Her glance was a sword of hatred, and the first open thrust of the - blade was an intense pleasure to her. We both knew all without a word. - </p> - <p> - “I might have killed her then. But I did not. I turned and walked toward - the house; she followed me, and I opened the door; she preceded me inside. - She paused again, as if gathering all her forces for a struggle; but I - passed her in silence, and went upstairs to my own room. - </p> - <p> - “And then began a strange period in my life. Shortly after this episode - came a partial triumph of the reform element in my city; the grafters were - ousted, and I found myself with more than a local reputation, and thrust - into an office. My life was now even more of a public matter than before. - We entertained largely. We were always in the public eye. Before our - guests and in public we were always all that should be. But when the - occasion was past, we would drop the mask, turn from each other with dumb - faces, and go each our severed ways. - </p> - <p> - “For a year this sort of life kept up. I still worked; but now I worked to - forget. When I allowed myself to think of her at all, it was always as of - some one who was dead. Or so I told myself, over and over again, until I - believed it. - </p> - <p> - “One day there was a close election. I was the successful candidate. I was - to go to Congress. All evening and far into the night my wife and I played - our parts well. But when the last congratulation had been received, and - the last speech made, and the last friend had gone, and we were alone with - each other once more, she turned to me with a look something like the one - she had met me with on that summer evening a year before. - </p> - <p> - “'I want to speak with you,' she said. - </p> - <p> - “'Yes?' - </p> - <p> - “They were the first words we had exchanged in that year, when not - compelled by the necessities. - </p> - <p> - “'What do you wish to speak about?' I asked her. - </p> - <p> - “'You know,' she said, briefly. And I did know. There was little use - trying to deny it. - </p> - <p> - “'Why have you asked me no questions?' she said. - </p> - <p> - “I would have made another attempt to pass the situation over without - going into it, but I saw that that would be impossible. She had reached - the place where she must speak. I read all this in her face. And looking - at her closely with the first candid glance I had given her in that year, - I saw that she had changed greatly, but she was still beautiful. - </p> - <p> - “'I did not choose to open the subject with you,' I said; 'I thought that - you would explain when you could stand it no longer. Evidently that time - has come. You were to me like a dead person. If the dead have any messages - for me, they must bring them to me unsolicited. It was not my place to - hunt among the tombs.' - </p> - <p> - “'No,' she said, 'let us be honest, since it is the last talk we may ever - have together. Let us be frank with each other, and with ourselves. I was - not like a dead person to you. The dead are dead, and I am not. You asked - me no questions because you disdained me so. You despised me so—and - it was sweet to you to make me feel the full weight of your scorn through - this silence. It was better than killing me. Is that not the real reason?' - </p> - <p> - “'Yes,' I admitted, 'that is it. That is the truth.' “'Listen,' she said, - 'it would surprise you—would it not—to learn that I still love - you—that I have loved you all along—that you are the only man - I have ever really loved—that I love you now? All that is incredible - to you, is it not?' - </p> - <p> - “'Yes,' I said, 'it is. You must pardon me, but—it is incredible to - me.' - </p> - <p> - “'Well, it is true,' she said, and paused a moment. 'And I can tell you - why it is true, and why—why—the—the other was true, too. - You—you do not understand women,' she said. 'Sometimes I think if - you were a smaller man, in some ways, you would understand them better. - Sometimes I think that you are too—too big, somehow—ever to - make a woman happy. Not too self-centered; you are not consciously - selfish; you never mean to be. But you give, give, give the riches of your - nature to people—to the world at large—instead of to those who - should share them. - </p> - <p> - “'Oh, I know—the fault is all mine! Another kind of woman—the - right kind for you—the kind you thought I was—would not have - asked for all that was a necessity for me; would have been big enough to - have done without it; would have lost herself in your love for all - humanity. That is the kind of woman you thought I was. And I tried to be. - But I wasn't. I wasn't that big. - </p> - <p> - “'I did sympathize with your work; I could understand it; I loved to hear - you tell about it. But I loved it because it was you that told me about - it. You didn't see that! You thought I was a goddess. It was enough for - your nature to worship me; to set me upon a pedestal and to call me your - inspiration; oh, you treated me well—you were faithful to me—you - were generous! But you neglected me in a way that men do not understand; - that some men will never understand. While you were giving your days and - your nights, and every fiber of your brain and body, to what you called - the cause of the people, you more and more forgot you had a wife. Again - and again and again I tried to win you back to what you were when I - married you—to the time when your cause was not all—but you - wouldn't see; I couldn't make you feel. - </p> - <p> - “'Then I thought I would show you that other men were not such fools as to - overlook what was wasted on you. But you never noticed; you trusted me too - much; you were too much engrossed. And then I began to hate you. I loved - you more than I ever did before, and at the same time I hated you. Can you - understand that? Do you see how women can hate and love at the same time? - Well, they can. - </p> - <p> - “'At last—for I was a fool—I took a lover!” - </p> - <p> - “'What was his name?' I broke in. - </p> - <p> - “'His name?' she cried; 'that does not matter! What matter if there was - one of them, or two of them. That is nothing!—the name is nothing—they - were nothing—nothing but tools; the symbols of my rage, of my hatred - for you; whether I loved or hated you, you were all—always.' - </p> - <p> - “'They were merely convenient clubs with which to murder my honor in the - dark—is that it?' I said. - </p> - <p> - “'Yes,' she said, 'that is it, if you choose to put it so.' And she spoke - with a humility foreign to her nature. - </p> - <p> - “'And what now?' I asked. - </p> - <p> - “'Now,' she said, 'now that I have spoken; now that I have told you - everything; now that I have told you that I have gone on loving you more - and more and more—now—I am going to die.' - </p> - <p> - “'You have not asked me to forgive you,' I said. - </p> - <p> - “'No,' she replied. 'For what is forgiveness? I do not know exactly what - that word means. It is supposed to wipe out something that has happened, - is it not?—to make things the same as they were before! But it does - not do that. That which has happened, has happened; and you and I know - it.' - </p> - <p> - “'You had better live,' I said; 'I no longer consider you worthless. I - feel that you are worthy of my anger now.' - </p> - <p> - “Her face cleared almost into something like joy. - </p> - <p> - “'I have told the truth, and I raise myself from the depths of your scorn - to the place where you can feel a hot rage against me?' she asked. - </p> - <p> - “'Yes,' I said. And the light on her face was like that of which some - women are capable when they are told that they are beloved. - </p> - <p> - “'And if I die?' she asked. - </p> - <p> - “'Who knows but that you might climb by it?' I said. 'Who knows but what - your death might turn my anger to love again?' And with that I turned and - left her there. - </p> - <p> - “That night I sat all night in my study, and in the morning they brought - me the news that she was dead. She must have used some poison. What, I do - not know; and the physicians called it heart-failure. But what is the - matter, Doctor?” - </p> - <p> - “Nothing, nothing!” said Dr. Beaulieu. And he motioned for the narrator to - proceed. But there were beads of perspiration upon the healer's forehead, - and a pallor overspread his face. - </p> - <p> - “I had condemned her to death,” the penitent went on, “and she had been - her own executioner. She had loved me; she had sinned against me; but she - had always loved me; she had hated the flesh that sinned, and scorned it - as much as I; her life was intolerable and she had been her own - executioner. - </p> - <p> - “The revulsion of feeling came. I loved her again; now that I had lost - her. All that day I shut myself up, seeing no one; refusing to look at the - dozens of telegrams that came pouring in from friends and acquaintances, - thinking—thinking—thinking—— - </p> - <p> - “Night came again; and with it the word that the best friend I had was in - the house; a friend of my college days, who had stood shoulder to shoulder - with me in many a fight, then and since. He had come to be under the same - roof with me in the hour of my bitterest bereavement, was the word he sent—how - bitter now, he did not know. But he did not intrude upon the privacy of my - grief. And I sat thinking—thinking—thinking— - </p> - <p> - “Suddenly the idea came to me that I would go upstairs to the chamber - where she was, and look at her once more. Quietly I stole up the stairs, - and through the hushed, dim house, on into the gloomy room, lighted only - by the candles at the head and foot of the curtained couch on which she - lay. - </p> - <p> - “In the room beyond, the watchers sat. I stole softly across the floor so - as not to attract their attention; there was no one in the room with the - body. I approached the couch, and with my hand put by the curtain—— - </p> - <p> - “Then I dropped it suddenly. I remembered a locket which she had formerly - worn that had always had my picture in it, in the early days of our - married life; a locket that had never left her neck, waking or sleeping. - And I wondered—— - </p> - <p> - “I wondered something about women which no one has ever been able to tell - me; not even a woman. I wondered if any light o' love had ever been able - to make her feel anything like <i>real</i> love, after all! I wondered if - she had ever hugged the thought of her sin to her bosom, even as she had - at first hugged the thought of our real love—hers and mine. I - wondered if she had ever carried about with her a sentimental reminder of - her lover, of any lover, as she had once done of her husband—and how - long ago! I wondered how important a thing it had seemed to her, after - all! She had reconciled herself to herself, with her death, and made me - love her again. And I wondered to how great an extent she had ever fooled - a lover into thinking she loved him! There are depths and contradictions - and cross-currents in the souls of women that even women do not know, far - less men—I wondered whose picture was in that locket! - </p> - <p> - “I thrust my hand through the curtains of the bed again, and then jumped - back. - </p> - <p> - “I had felt something warm there. - </p> - <p> - “Did she live, after all? - </p> - <p> - “At the same instant I heard a movement on the other side of the bed. I - went around. - </p> - <p> - “My best friend was removing his hand from the curtains on the other side, - and in his hand was the locket. It was his hand that I had felt. - </p> - <p> - “We stared at each other. I spoke first, and in a whisper, so that the - others in the next room, who had come to watch, should not hear. - </p> - <p> - “'I came for that,' I said. - </p> - <p> - “'The locket? So did I,” he said. And then added quite simply, 'My picture - is in it.' - </p> - <p> - “'You lie!' I whispered, shaken by a wind of fury. And yet I knew that - perhaps he did not lie, that what he said might well be true. Perhaps that - was the cause of my fury. - </p> - <p> - “His face was lined with a grief and weariness terrible to behold. To look - at him you would have thought that there was nothing else in the world for - him except grief. It was a great grief that made him careless of - everything else. - </p> - <p> - “'It is my picture,' he said. 'She loved me.' - </p> - <p> - “'I say that you lie,' I repeated. 'She may have played with you—but - she never loved any one but me—in her heart she never did!' - </p> - <p> - “'You!' And because he whispered, hissing out the words, they seemed to - gain in intensity of scorn. 'You! She hated you! You who neglected her, - you with your damned eternal politics, you who could never understand her—love? - You who could never give her the things a woman needs and must have—the - warmth—the color—the romance—the poetry of life! You!—with - your cold-blooded humanitarianism! I tell you, she loved <i>me!</i> Why - should I hesitate to avow it to you? It is the sweetest thing on earth to - me, that she loved me! She turned from you to me because——' - </p> - <p> - “'Don't go into all that,' I said. 'I heard all about that last night—from - her! Open the locket, and let us see whose face is there!' - </p> - <p> - “He opened it, and dropped the locket. He reeled against the wall, with - his hands over his face, as if he had been struck a physical blow. - </p> - <p> - “I picked the toy up and looked at it. - </p> - <p> - “The face in the locket was neither his face nor mine. It was the face of—of - the man who ran from the pergola and vaulted over the orchard wall into - the woods that summer night a year earlier; the man whom I had not, for - the moment, recognized. - </p> - <p> - “We stood there, this man who had been my best friend and I, with the - locket between us, and I debated whether to strike him down——” - </p> - <p> - The narrator paused. And then he said, fixing Dr. Beaulieu with an intent - gaze: - </p> - <p> - “Should I have struck him down? You, who are a teacher of ethics, who set - yourself up to be, after a fashion, a preacher, a priest, a spiritual - director, tell me, would I have been justified if I had killed him?” - </p> - <p> - Dr. Beaulieu seemed to shrink, seemed to contract and grow smaller, - physically, under the other man's look. He opened his mouth as if to - articulate, but for a second or two no word came. And then, regaining - something of his usual poise, he said, although his voice was a bit husky: - </p> - <p> - “No! It is for the Creator of life to take life, and no other. Hatred and - strife are disharmony, and bring their own punishment by throwing the soul - out of unity with the spirit of love which rules the universe.” - </p> - <p> - It sounded stereotyped and emotionless, even in Dr. Beaulieu's own ears, - as he said it; there was a mocking gleam in the eyes of the other man that - spoke of a far more vital and genuine emotion. Dr. Beaulieu licked his - lips and there came a knot in his forehead; beads of perspiration stood - out upon his brow. - </p> - <p> - “You were right,” said Dr. Beaulieu, “in not striking him down. You were - right in sparing him.” - </p> - <p> - The bearded man laughed. “I did not say that I spared him,” he said. - </p> - <p> - Dr. Beaulieu looked a question; a question that, perhaps, he dared not - utter; or at least that he did not care to utter. He had dropped - completely his rôle of spiritual counselor; he regarded his visitor with - an emotion that might have been horror and might have been terror, or - might have been a mixture of the two. The visitor replied to the unspoken - interrogation in the healer's manner. - </p> - <p> - “I did not strike him down. Neither did I spare him. I waited and I—I - used him. I know how to wait; I am of the nature that can wait. It was - years before fate drew all things together for my purpose, and gave him - into my hands—fate, assisted by myself. - </p> - <p> - “I waited, and I used him. The details are not pertinent for it is not his - story that I am telling. I piloted him to the brink of destruction, and - then—then, I saved him.” - </p> - <p> - “You saved him?” Dr. Beaulieu was puzzled; but his fear, if fear it was, - had not abated. There was a frank menace, now, in his visitor's air. And - the healer seemed to be struggling, as he listened to the tale, to force - some reluctant brain-cell to unlock and give its stored memories to his - conscious mind. - </p> - <p> - “I saved him. I saved him to be my creature. I broke him, and I saved him. - I made him my slave, my dog, my—my anything I choose to have him. I - have work for him to do.” - </p> - <p> - Again the man paused, looking about the rich profusion of Dr. Beaulieu's - studio. There was a table in the room which contained a number of curios - from Eastern lands. The visitor suddenly rose from his chair and picked - from among them a thin, keen-bladed dagger. It was a beautiful weapon, of - some Oriental make; beautiful in its lines; beautiful with the sullen fire - of many jewels blazing in its hilt—an evil levin that got into the - mind and led the thoughts astray even as the dainty deadliness of the - whole tool seduced the hand to grasp and strike. As his visitor, strangely - breaking the flow of his narrative, examined and handled the thing, Dr. - Beaulieu shuddered. - </p> - <p> - “The man is as much my tool,” said the visitor slowly, “as this dagger - would be your tool, Dr. Beaulieu, if you chose to thrust it into my breast—or - into your own.” - </p> - <p> - He laid the dagger down on the table, and resumed his seat. Dr. Beaulieu - said nothing, but he found it difficult to withdraw his eyes from his - visitor's steady stare. Slumped and sagged within his chair, he said - nothing. Presently the visitor went on. - </p> - <p> - “I had a fancy, Dr. Beaulieu; I had a fancy! It suited me to make my - revenge a less obvious thing than striking down the old friend who had - betrayed my love and confidence, a less obvious thing than striking down - the other man—the man whose face was in the locket.” - </p> - <p> - As he spoke he took from his pocket a locket. He opened it, and gazed upon - the face. The healer half rose from his chair, and then sank back, with a - hoarse, inarticulate murmur. His face had turned livid, and he trembled in - every limb. It was evident that the missing scene which he had sought - before had suddenly been flashed upon the cinema screen of his - recollection. He remembered, now—— - </p> - <p> - “It was my fancy, Dr. Beaulieu, to make one of them take revenge upon the - other, that I might thus be revenged upon them both.” - </p> - <p> - He suddenly rose, and forced the locket into the healer's nerveless grasp. - </p> - <p> - “That face—look at it!” he cried, towering over the collapsed figure - before him. - </p> - <p> - Compelled by a will stronger than his own, Dr. Beaulieu looked. It was the - counterfeit presentment of himself within. It fell from his trembling - fingers and rolled upon the floor. The cultist buried his face in his - hands. - </p> - <p> - The other man stepped back and regarded him sardonically for a moment or - two. - </p> - <p> - “I should not wonder,” he said, “if the man who used to be my best friend - would pay you a visit before long—perhaps in an hour, perhaps in a - week, perhaps in a month.” - </p> - <p> - He picked up the dagger again, and toyed with it. - </p> - <p> - “This thing,” he said, impersonally, trying the point upon his finger, “is - sharp. It would give a quick death, a sure death, an almost painless - death, if one used it against another man—or against one's self.” - </p> - <p> - And without another word he turned and left the room. - </p> - <p> - Dr. Beaulieu sat and listened to his retreating footsteps. And, long after - they had ceased to sound, Dr. Beaulieu still sat and listened. Perhaps he - was listening for some one to come, now that the bearded man had left. He - sat and listened, and presently he reached over to the table and picked up - the dagger that the visitor had laid down with its handle toward him. He - pressed its point against his finger, as the other man had done. It was - sharp. It would give, as the fellow had said, “a quick death, a sure - death, an almost painless death.” - </p> - <p> - And as he whispered these words he was still listening—listening—waiting - for some one to come—— - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XI.—The Locked Box - </h2> - <h3> - I - </h3> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was a small, - oblong affair, not more than three inches wide or deep, by twice that much - in length, made of some dark, hard wood; brass bound and with brass lock - and brass hinges; altogether such a box as a woman might choose to keep - about her room for any one of a half dozen possible uses. - </p> - <p> - Clarke did not remember that he had ever seen it prior to his unexpectedly - early return from a western trip of a month's duration. He thought he - would give his wife a pleasant surprise, so he did not telephone the news - of his arrival to the house, but went home and entered her room - unannounced. As he came in his wife hastily slipped something into the - box, locked it, and put it into one of the drawers of her desk. Then she - came to meet him, and he would not have thought of the matter at all had - it not been for just the slightest trace of confusion in her manner. - </p> - <p> - She was glad to see him. She always was after his absences, but it seemed - to him that she was exceptionally so this time. She had never been a - demonstrative woman; but it seemed to Clarke that she came nearer that - description on the occasion of this home-coming than ever before. They had - a deal to say to each other, and it was not until after dinner that the - picture of his wife hurriedly disposing of the box crossed Clarke's - consciousness again. Even then he mentioned it casually because they were - talked out of more important topics rather than because of any very sharp - curiosity. He asked her what it was; what was in it. - </p> - <p> - “Oh, nothing!—nothing of any importance—nothing at all,” she - said; and moved over to the piano and began one of his favorite airs. And - he forgot the box again in an instant. She had always been able to make - Clarke forget things, when she wanted to. But the next day it suddenly - came to him, out of that nowhere-in-particular from which thoughts come to - mortals, that she had been almost as much confused at his sudden question - as she had at his previous sudden entrance. - </p> - <p> - Clarke was not a suspicious person; not even a very curious one, as a - rule. But it was so evident to him that there was something in that box - which his wife did not wish him to see that he could not help but wonder. - Always frank with her, and always accustomed to an equal candor on her - part, it occurred to him that he would ask her again, in something more - than a casual way, and that she would certainly tell him, at the same time - clearing up her former hesitation. But no!—why should he ask her? - That would be to make something out of nothing; this was a trifle, and not - worth thinking about. But he continued thinking about it, nevertheless.... - </p> - <p> - Ah, he had it! What a chump he had been, not to guess it sooner! His - birthday was only ten days off, and his wife had been planning to surprise - him with a remembrance of some sort. Of course! That accounted for the - whole thing. - </p> - <p> - With this idea in his head, he said nothing more about the box, but - waited. And when dinner was over and they sat before the fire together, on - the evening of the anniversary, he still forbore to mention it, expecting - every moment that the next she would present him with the token. But as - the evening wore away, with no sign on her part, he finally broke an - interval of silence with the remark: - </p> - <p> - “Well, dear, don't keep me guessing any longer! Bring it to me!” - </p> - <p> - “Guessing? Bring you—what?” And he could see that she was genuinely - puzzled. - </p> - <p> - “Why, my birthday present.” - </p> - <p> - “Why, my dear boy! And did you expect one? And I had forgotten! Positively - forgotten—it <i>is</i> your birthday, isn't it, Dickie! If I had - only known you <i>wanted</i> one————” And she came - up and kissed him, with something like contrition, although his birthday - had never been one of the sentimental anniversaries which she felt bound - to observe with gifts. - </p> - <p> - “Don't feel bad about it—I don't care, you know—really,” he - said. “Only, I thought you had something of the sort in that brass-bound - box—that was the only reason I mentioned it.” - </p> - <p> - “Brass-bound box—why, no, I—I forgot it. I'm ashamed of - myself, but I forgot the date entirely!” - </p> - <p> - But she volunteered no explanation of what the box contained, although the - opportunity was so good a one. - </p> - <p> - And Clarke wondered more than ever. - </p> - <p> - What could it be? The letters of some former sweetheart? Well, all girls - had sweethearts before they married, he supposed; at least all men did. He - had had several himself. There was nothing in that. And he would not make - an ass of himself by saying any more about it. - </p> - <p> - Only... he could not remember any old sweethearts that he wouldn't have - told Agnes all about, if she had asked him. He had no secrets from her. - But she had a secret from him... innocent enough, of course. But still, a - secret. There was none of those old sweethearts of his whose letters he - cared to keep after five years of marriage. And there was no... But, - steady! Where were his reflections leading him? Into something very like - suspicion? Positively, yes; to the verge of it. Until Agnes got ready to - tell him all about it, he would forget that damned box! - </p> - <p> - And if she never got ready, why, that was all right, too. She was his - wife, and he loved her... and that settled it. - </p> - <p> - Perhaps that should have settled it, but it did not. Certain - healthy-looking, fleshy specimens of humanity are said to succumb the - quickest to pneumonia, and it may be that the most ingenuous natures - suffer the most intensely with suspicion, when once thoroughly inoculated. - </p> - <h3> - II - </h3> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>larke fought - against it, cursing his own baseness. But the very effort necessary to the - fight showed him the persistence of the thing itself. He loved his wife, - and trusted her, he told himself over and over again, and in all their - relations hitherto there had never been the slightest deviation from - mutual confidence and understanding. What did he suspect? He could not - have told himself. He went over their life together in his mind. In the - five years of their married life, he could not have helped but notice that - men were attracted to her. Of course they were. That was natural. She was - a charming woman. He quite approved of it; it reflected credit upon him, - in a way. He was not a Bluebeard of a husband, to lock a wife up and deny - her the society proper to her years. And her very catholicity of taste, - the perfect frankness of her enjoyment of masculine attention, had but - served to make his confidence all the more complete. True, he had never - thought she loved him as much as he loved her... but now that he came to - think of it, was there not a warmer quality to her affection since his - return from this last trip west? Was there not a kind of thoughtfulness, - was there not a watchful increase in attentiveness, that he had always - missed before? Was she not making love to him every day now; just as he - had always made love to her before? Were not the parts which they had - played for the five years of their married life suddenly reversed? They - were! Indeed they were! And what did that mean? What did that portend? Did - the brass-bound box have aught to do with that? What was the explanation - of this change? - </p> - <p> - The subtle imp of suspicion turned this matter of the exchanged rôles into - capital. Clarke, still ashamed of himself for doing it, began covertly to - watch his wife; to set traps of various kinds for her. He said nothing - more about the box, but within six months after the first day upon which - he had seen it, it became the constant companion of his thoughts. - </p> - <p> - <i>What</i> did he suspect? Not even now could he have said. He suspected - nothing definite; vaguely, he suspected anything and everything. If his - wife noticed his changed manner towards her, she made no sign. If - anything, her efforts to please him, her attentiveness, her thoughtfulness - in small things, increased. - </p> - <h3> - III - </h3> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here came a day - when he could stand this self-torture no longer, he thought. He came home - from his office—Clarke was a partner in a prosperous real-estate - concern—at an hour when he thought his wife not yet returned from an - afternoon of call making, determined to end the matter once for all. - </p> - <p> - He went to her room, found the key to her desk, and opened the drawer. He - found the box, but It was locked, and he began rummaging through the - drawers, and among the papers and letters therein, for the key. - </p> - <p> - Perhaps she carried it with her. Very well, then, he would break it open! - With the thing in his hand he began to look around for something with - which to force the fastenings, and was about deciding that he would take - it down to the basement, and use the hatchet, when he heard a step. He - turned, just as his wife entered the room. - </p> - <p> - Her glance traveled from the box in his hand to the ransacked desk, and - rested there inquiringly for a moment. Strangely enough, in view of the - fact that he felt himself an injured husband and well within his rights, - it was Clarke who became confused, apologetic, and evasive under her gaze. - He essayed a clumsy lie: - </p> - <p> - “Agnes,” he began, indicating the desk, “I—I got a bill to-day from - Meigs and Horner, for those furs, you know—I was sure that the - account had been settled—that you had paid them, and had shown me - the receipt—that you had paid them from your allowance, you know—and - I thought I would come home and look up the receipt.” - </p> - <p> - It was very lame; and very lamely done, at that, as he felt even while he - was doing it. But it gave him an opportunity of setting the box down on - the desk almost in a casual manner, as if he had picked it up quite - casually, while he began to tumble the papers again with his hands. - </p> - <p> - “The receipt is here,” she said; and got it for him. - </p> - <p> - The box lay between them, but they did not look at it, nor at each other, - and they both trembled with agitation. - </p> - <p> - Each knew that the thoughts of the other were on nothing except that - little locked receptacle of wood and brass, yet neither one referred to - it; and for a full half minute they stood with averted faces, and fumbling - hands, and played out the deception. - </p> - <p> - Finally she looked full at him, and drew a long breath, as if the story - were coming now; and there was in her manner a quality of softness—almost - of sentimentality, Clarke felt. She was getting ready to try and melt him - into a kind of sympathy for her frailty, was she! Well, that would not - work with him! And with the receipted bill waving in his hand, he made it - the text of a lecture on extravagance, into which he plunged with - vehemence. - </p> - <p> - Why did he not let her speak? He would not admit the real reason to - himself, just then. But in his heart he was afraid to have her go on. - Afraid, either way it turned. If she were innocent of any wrong, he would - have made an ass of himself—and much worse than an ass. If she were - guilty, she might melt him into a weak forgiveness in spite of her guilt! - No, she must not speak... not now! If she were innocent, how could he - confess his suspicions to her and acknowledge his baseness? And besides... - women were so damned clever... whatever was in that box, she might fool - him about it, somehow! - </p> - <p> - And then, “Good God!” he thought, “I have got to the place where I hug my - suspicion to me as a dearer thing than my love, have I? Have I got so low - as that?” - </p> - <p> - While these thoughts raced and rioted through his mind, his lips were - feverishly pouring out torrents in denunciation of feminine extravagance. - Even as he spoke he felt the black injustice of his speech, for he had - always encouraged his wife, rather than otherwise, in the expenditure of - money; his income was a good one; and the very furs which formed the text - of his harangue he had helped her select and even urged upon her. - </p> - <p> - It was their first quarrel, if that can be called a quarrel which has only - one side to it. For she listened in silence, with white lips and hurt - eyes, and a face that was soon set into a semblance of hard indifference. - He stormed out of the room, ashamed of himself, and feeling that he had - disgraced the name of civilization. - </p> - <h3> - IV - </h3> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>shamed of himself, - indeed; but before the angel of contrition could take full possession of - his nature, the devil of suspicion, the imp of the box, regained its - place. - </p> - <p> - For why had she not answered him? She knew he cared nothing about the - trivial bill, the matter of the furs, he told himself. Why had she not - insisted on a hearing, and told him about the box? She knew as well as he - that that was what he had broken into her desk to get! - </p> - <p> - Justice whispered that she had been about to speak, and that he had denied - her the chance. But the imp of the box said that an honest woman would - have <i>demanded</i> the chance—would have persisted until she got - it! And thus, his very shame, and anger at himself, were cunningly turned - and twisted by the genius of the brass-bound box into a confirmation of - his suspicions. - </p> - <h3> - V - </h3> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>uspicions? Nay, - convictions! Beliefs. Certainties! - </p> - <p> - They were certainties, now! Certainties to Clarke's mind, at least. For in - a month after this episode he had become a silent monomaniac on the - subject of the brass-bound box. He felt shame no longer. She was guilty. - Of just what, he did not know. But guilty. Guilty as Hell itself, he told - himself, rhetorically, in one of the dumb rages which now became so - frequent with him. - </p> - <p> - <i>Guilty—guilty—guilty</i>—the clock on the mantelpiece - ticked off many dragging hours of intolerable minutes to that tune, while - Clarke lay awake and listened. <i>Guilty—guilty—guilty</i>—repeat - any word often enough, and it will hypnotize you. <i>Guilty—guilty—guilty</i>—so - he and the clock would talk to each other, back and forth, the whole night - through. If any suggestions of his former, more normal habits of thought - came to him now it was they that were laughed out of court; it was they - that were flung away and scorned as traitors. - </p> - <p> - She was guilty. But he would be crafty! He would be cunning. He would make - no mistake. He would allow her no subterfuge. He would give her no chance - to snare him back into a condition of half belief. There should be no - juggling explanations. They were clever as the devil, women were! But this - one should have no chance to fool him again. She had fooled him too long - already. - </p> - <p> - And she kept trying to fool him. Shortly after his outburst over the furs, - she began again a series of timid advances which would have struck him as - pathetic had he not known that her whole nature was corroded and corrupted - with deceit, with abominable deceit. She was trying to make him believe - that she did not know why he was angry and estranged, was she? He would - show her! He hated her now, with that restless, burning intensity of - hatred known only to him who has injured another. A hatred that consumed - his own vitality, and made him sick in soul and body. The little sleep he - got was passed in uneasy dreams of his revenge; and his waking hours were - devoted to plots and plans of the form which it should take. Oh, but she - had been cunning to fool him for so long; but she should see! She should - see! When the time for action came, she should see! - </p> - <h3> - VI - </h3> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>omething, one - tense and feverish midnight, when he lay in his bed snarling and brooding - and chuckling—a kind of snapping sense in some remote interior - chamber of his brain, followed by a nervous shock that made him sit - upright—warned him that the time for action was at hand. What is it - that makes sinners, at provincial revival meetings, suddenly aware that - the hours of dalliance are past and the great instant that shall send them - to “the mourners' bench” is at hand? Somehow, they seem to know! And, - somehow, Clarke felt an occult touch and knew that his time for action had - arrived. - </p> - <p> - He did not care what came afterwards. Any jury in the world, so he told - himself, ought to acquit him of his deed, when they once knew his story; - when they once looked at the damning evidence of her guilt which she had - hidden away for so long in the brass-bound box. But if they did not acquit - him, that was all right, too. His work in the world would have been done; - he would have punished a guilty woman. He would have shown that all men - are not fools. - </p> - <p> - But he did not spend a great deal of thought on how other people would - regard what he was about to do. As he crept down the hall with the knife - in his hand, his chief sensation was a premonitory itch, a salty tang of - pleasure in the doing of the deed itself. When hatred comes in where love - has gone out, there may be a kind of voluptuary delight in the act of - murder. - </p> - <p> - Very carefully he opened the door of her room. And then he smiled to - himself, and entered noisily; for what was the need of being careful about - waking up a woman who was already dead? He did not care whether he killed - her in her sleep or not;—indeed, if she wakened and begged for her - life, he thought it might add a certain zest to the business. He should - enjoy hearing her plead. He would not mind prolonging things. - </p> - <p> - But things were not prolonged. His hand and the muscles of his forearm had - tensed so often with the thought, with the idea, that the first blow went - home. She never waked. - </p> - <h3> - VII - </h3> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>e got the box, and - opened it. - </p> - <p> - Inside was a long envelope, and written on that were the words: - </p> - <p> - “To be opened by my husband only after my death.” - </p> - <p> - That time had come! - </p> - <p> - Within the envelope was a letter. It was dated on the day of his return - from his western trip, a few months before. He read: - </p> - <p> - “Dick, I love you! - </p> - <p> - “Does it seem strange to you that I should write it down? - </p> - <p> - “Listen, Dickie dear—I <i>had</i> to write it! I couldn't tell you - when I was alive—but I just had to tell you, too. And now that I am - dead, what I say will come to you with all of its sweetness increased; and - all of its bitterness left out! It will, now that I am dead—or if - you die first, you will never see this. This is from beyond the grave to - you, Dickie dear, to make all your life good to you afterwards! - </p> - <p> - “Now, listen, dear, and don't be hard on me. - </p> - <p> - “When I married you, Dickie, I <i>didn't</i> love you! You were wild about - me. But I only <i>liked</i> you very much. It wasn't really love. It - wasn't what you <i>deserved</i>. But I was only a girl, and you were the - first man, and I didn't know things; I didn't know what I <i>should have</i> - felt. - </p> - <p> - “Later, when I realized how very much you cared, I was ashamed of myself. - I grew to see that I had done wrong in marrying you. Wrong to both of us. - For no woman should marry a man she doesn't love. And I was ashamed, and - worried about it. You were so good to me! So sweet—and you never - suspected that I didn't care like I should. And because you were so good - and sweet to me, I felt <i>worse</i>. And I made up my mind you should <i>never</i> - know! That I would be everything to you any woman could be. I tried to be - a good wife. Wasn't I, Dickie, even then? - </p> - <p> - “But I prayed and prayed and prayed. 'O God,' I used to say, 'let me love - him like he loves me!' It was five years, Dickie, and I <i>liked</i> you - more, and <i>admired</i> you more, and saw more in you that was worth - while, every week; but still, no miracle happened. - </p> - <p> - “And then one morning <i>a miracle did happen!</i> - </p> - <p> - “It was when you were on that trip West. I had gone to bed thinking how - kind and dear you were. I missed you, Dickie dear, and <i>needed</i> you. - And when I woke up, there was a change over the world. I felt so - different, somehow. It had come! Wasn't it wonderful, Dickie?—it had - come! And I sang all that day for joy. I could hardly wait for you to come - home so that I could tell you. I loved you, loved you, loved you, Dickie, - <i>as you deserved!</i> My prayers had been answered, somehow—or - maybe it was what any woman would do just living near you and being with - you. - </p> - <p> - “And then I saw <i>I couldn't tell you, after all!</i> - </p> - <p> - “For if I told you I loved you now, that would be to tell you that for - five years <i>I hadn't loved you</i>, Dickie! - </p> - <p> - “And how would <i>that</i> make you feel? Wouldn't that have been like a - knife, Dickie? - </p> - <p> - “Oh, I wanted you to know! <i>How</i> I wanted you to know! But, you see, - I couldn't tell you, could I, dear, without telling the other, too? I just - <i>had</i> to save you from that! And I just had to make you feel it, - somehow or other. And I <i>will</i> make you feel it, Dickie! - </p> - <p> - “But I can't tell you. Who knows what ideas you might get into your head - about those five years, if I told you now? Men are so queer, and they can - be so stupid sometimes! And I can't bear to think of losing one smallest - bit of your love... not now! It would <i>kill</i> me! - </p> - <p> - “But I want you to know, sometime. And so I'm writing you—it's my - first love letter—the first real one, Dickie. If <i>you</i> die - first, I'll tell you in Heaven. And if <i>I</i> die first, you'll - understand! - </p> - <p> - “Agnes.” - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XII.—Behind the Curtain - </h2> - <p class="pfirst"> - <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was as dark as - the belly of the fish that swallowed Jonah. A drizzling rain blanketed the - earth in chill discomfort. As I splashed and struggled along the country - road, now in the beaten path, and now among the wet weeds by its side, I - had never more heartily yearned for the dullness and comforts of - respectability. Here was I with more talents in my quiver, it pleased me - to think, than nine out of ten of the burghers I had left sleeping snug - and smug in the town a few miles behind; with as much real love of - humanity as the next man, too; and yet shivering and cursing my way into - another situation that might well mean my death. And all for what? For - fame or riches? No, for little more than a mere existence, albeit free - from responsibility. Indeed, I was all but ready to become an honest man - then and there, to turn back and give up the night's adventure, had but my - imagination furnished me with the picture of some occupation whereby I - might gain the same leisure and independence as by what your precisians - call thieving. - </p> - <p> - With the thought I stumbled off the road again, and into a narrow gully - that splashed me to the knees with muddy water. Out of that, I walked - plump into a hedge, and when I sought to turn from it at right angles, I - found myself still following its line. This circumstance showed me that I - was come unaware upon the sharp turn of the road which marked the - whereabouts of the house that was my object. Following the hedge, I found - the entrance to the graveled driveway within a hundred yards of my last - misstep, and entered the grounds. I groped about me for a space, not - daring to show a light, until presently a blacker bulk, lifting itself out - of the night's comprehensive blackness, indicated the house itself, to my - left and a bit in front of me. I left the moist gravel—for there is - nothing to be gained on an expedition of this sort by advertising the size - and shape of your boots to a morbidly inquisitive public—and reached - the shelter of the veranda by walking across the lawn. - </p> - <p> - There, being out of eyeshot from the upper windows, I risked a gleam from - my pocket lantern, one of those little electric affairs that are - occasionally useful to others than night watchmen. Two long French windows - gave on the veranda; and, as I knew, both of them opened from the - reception hall. A bit of a way with the women is not amiss in my - profession; and the little grayeyed Irish maid, who had told me three - weeks before of old man Rolfe's stinginess and brutality towards the young - wife whom he had cooped up here for the past four years, had also given - me, bit by bit, other information more valuable than she could guess. So, - thanks to the maid, I was aware that the safe where the Rolfe jewels were - kept—and often a substantial bit of money as well—was situated - in the library; which was just beyond the hall and connected with it by a - flight of four or five steps. This safe was my objective point. - </p> - <p> - The wooden window shutters were but the work of a moment; and the window - fastenings themselves of only a few minutes more. (I flatter myself that I - have a very coaxing way with window fasteners.) The safe itself would give - me the devil's own trouble, I knew. It was really a job for two men, and I - ached all over to be at it, to be safely through with it, and away, a good - hour before sunrise. - </p> - <p> - The window opened noiselessly enough, and I stepped within and set my - little satchel full of necessary tools upon the floor. But the damp - weather had swelled the woodwork, and as I closed the window again, though - I pushed it ever so gently, it gave forth a noise something between a - grunt and a squeak. - </p> - <p> - And as pat as the report of a pistol to the pressure of the trigger came - the answer—a sound of a quickly-caught breath from the warm dimness - of the room. I made no motion; though the blood drummed desperately - through my brain and my scalp tingled with apprehension and excitement. - </p> - <p> - For ten, for twenty, for thirty seconds I stood so; and then the silence - was broken by the unmistakable rustle of a woman's skirts. The sound came - softly towards me through the darkness. It was my turn to let loose my - held breath with a gasp, and in another moment I should have been through - the window and running for it; when a woman's whisper halted me. - </p> - <p> - “Is that you, Charles? And why did you not rap upon the shutter?” - </p> - <p> - So some one called Charles was expected? Then, ticked off my thoughts - almost automatically, the lady somewhere near me in the dark might have - her own reasons for not caring to alarm the house just then! The thought - steadied me to action. - </p> - <p> - “Shh,” I whispered, feeling behind me for the window, and gradually - opening it again. “S-h-h! No, it is not Charles”—and I put one foot - backward across the sill. “It is not Charles, but Charles has sent me to - say——” - </p> - <p> - Click!—went something by the window, and the room was flooded with - sudden brilliance from a dozen electric globes. And again, click!—and - I looked with blinking eyes at the muzzle of a cocked pistol held by the - most beautiful, the most be-jeweled, the most determined-looking young - woman it has ever been my lot to meet. - </p> - <p> - “Who are you?” she asked in a voice that was at once hoarse and sweet. - “Who are you? And what do you want? And where is Charles?” - </p> - <p> - As I stood there dripping moisture upon the oiled floor, with my hands in - the air—they had gone up quite involuntarily—I must have been - the very picture of idiocy and discomfiture. I wondered if Charles, - whoever the devil Charles might be, was always welcomed with a cocked - pistol. Probably not; but, I wondered, how did she happen to have a pistol - with her? I wondered why neck, breast, hair, arms, and hands should be - ablaze with the diamonds that accentuated her lithe and vivid loveliness. - I wondered why, now that she saw I was not Charles, she did not alarm the - house. I wondered everything; but nothing to the point. And as I stood - wondering she repeated: - </p> - <p> - “Who are you? And what do you want?” - </p> - <p> - “Madame,” I stammered, my jarred brain fastening upon the sentence she had - interrupted, “Charles sent me to—to say to you——” - </p> - <p> - “Charles who?” she asked. And as tense as was her face, a gleam of - merriment shot through her eyes. “Charles who?” she repeated. - </p> - <p> - Charles was not one of the points upon which the Irish maid had given me - information. - </p> - <p> - The lady with the pistol considered for a moment. “You are not very - clever, are you?” she said. - </p> - <p> - “If you will pardon me,” I said, “I think I had better be going. I seem to - have mistaken the house.” - </p> - <p> - “You at least seem to have mistaken the proper manner in which to enter - it,” she returned. - </p> - <p> - “Why, as to the mode of entrance,” I said, “I might plead that the mistake - appears to have been less in that than in the person who employed it.” - </p> - <p> - I could not resist the retort. A dull red crept slowly up her neck and - face; a pallid, olive-tinted face, beautiful in itself, beautiful for its - oval contour and broad brow, and frame of black hair; beautiful in itself, - and yet dominated and outdone by the lustrous, restless beauty of the dark - eyes wherewith she held me more surely captive than by virtue of the - pistol. - </p> - <p> - “You will come in,” she said, “and sit there.” She indicated a seat beside - a central table. “But first you will kindly let me have whatever weapons - you may possess.” She took my revolver, examined it, and put her own in - the breast of her gown. “Now you may put your hands down,” she said, “your - arms must ache by now. Sit down.” - </p> - <p> - I sat. She stood and looked at me for a moment. - </p> - <p> - “I am wondering what you are going to do with me,” I ventured. - </p> - <p> - In all of her quick actions, and in the tones of her voice, there was - evident a most unnatural sort of strain. She may well have been excited; - that was only to be expected in the circumstances. But the repressed - excitement in this woman's manner was not that of a woman who is forcing - herself to keep her courage up; not that of a woman who would like to - scream; but a steadier nervous energy which seemed to burn in her like a - fire, to escape from her finger tips, and almost to crackle in her hair; - an intensity that was vibrant. I marveled. Most women would have screamed - at the advent of a man in the dead of night; screamed and fainted. Or the - ones who would not, and who were armed as she, would ordinarily have been - inclined to shoot, and at once; or immediately to have given the alarm. - She had done none of these things. She had merely taken me captive. She - had set me down in a chair at the center of the room. She had not roused - the house. And now she stood looking at me with a trace of abstraction in - her manner; looking at me, for the moment, less as if I were a human being - than as if I were a factor in some mathematical problem which it was the - immediate task of that active, high-keyed brain of hers to solve. And - there was a measure of irony in her glance, as if she alone tasted and - enjoyed some ulterior jest. - </p> - <p> - “I am wondering,” I repeated, “what you are going to do with me.” - </p> - <p> - She sat down at the opposite side of the table before she replied. - </p> - <p> - “I believe,” she said slowly, “that I have nearly made up my mind what to - do with you.” - </p> - <p> - “Well?” I asked. - </p> - <p> - But she said nothing, and continued to say nothing. I looked at her and - her diamonds—the diamonds I had come after!—and wondered again - why she was wearing them; wondered why she had tricked herself out as for - some grand entertainment. And as the ignominious result of my night's - expedition pressed more sharply against my pride I could have strangled - her through sheer disappointment and mortification. The pistol she held - was the answer to that impulse. But what was the answer to her hesitancy - in alarming the house? Why did she not give me up and be done with me? - </p> - <p> - At the farther end of the room was a long red curtain, which covered the - entrance to a sitting-room or parlor, as I guessed; and by the side of the - curtain hung an old-fashioned bell cord, also of red, which I supposed to - communicate with the servants' quarters. It were easy enough, now that she - had taken the whip hand of me so cleverly, to pull that rope, to set the - bell jangling, to rouse the house. Why did she not do so? - </p> - <p> - Was she a mad woman? There was that in her inexplicable conduct, and in - her highly-wrought, yet governed, mood, as she sat in brooding silence - across the table from me, to make the theory plausible. Brooding she was, - and studying me, I thought; yet watchful, too. For at any least motion of - mine her hand tightened slightly upon the pistol. We sat thus while the - slow seconds lengthened into intolerable minutes; and I steamed with - sweat, and fidgeted. Nor was I set more at my ease by her long searching - glances. In fact, my overthrow had been so instant and so complete that my - scattered wits had never drawn themselves together again; I continued as - one in a haze; as a person half under the power of the hypnotist; as a - mouse must feel after the first blow of the cat's paw. And yet one idea - began to loom clearly out of that haze and possess me—the idea that - she desired the alarm to be given as little as I did myself. - </p> - <p> - But there was no light in that. It was easy to understand why she did not - wish the house aroused while she still believed me to be Charles—whoever - Charles might be. But now?—it was too much for me. I could not find - a justification in reason for my belief; and yet the conviction grew. - </p> - <p> - She broke the silence with a question that might have been put with full - knowledge of my thought. - </p> - <p> - “You are still wondering why I do not give you up?” she said. - </p> - <p> - I nodded. She leaned towards me across the table, and if ever the demons - of mockery danced through a woman's eyes it was then; and her lips parted - in a kind of silent laughter. - </p> - <p> - She touched the diamonds about her throat. - </p> - <p> - “It was these you came after?” - </p> - <p> - I nodded again. Evidently speech was of no avail with this lady. She asked - questions at her will, and reserved the right of answering none. - </p> - <p> - “Tell me,” she said, “Why are you a thief? Why do you steal?” - </p> - <p> - “'Convey, the wise it call,'” I quoted. “Accident, or fate, or destiny, I - suppose,” I went on, wondering more than ever at the question, but with a - fluttering hope. Perhaps the lady (in spite of Charles—such things - have been!) was an amateur sociologist, a crank reformer, or something of - that sort. There had been no mockery in her tone when she asked the - question; instead, I thought, a kind of pity. “Fate, or destiny,” I went - on, “or what you please, 'There is a destiny that shapes our ends, - rough-hew them how we will,'” I quoted again, in my best actor manner. - </p> - <p> - “Why,” she said, “you are a man with some air of better things about you. - You quote Shakespeare as if he were an old friend. And yet, you are a - thief! Tell me,” she continued, “tell me—I dare say there were many - struggles against that destiny?” There was a note almost of eagerness in - her voice, as if she were a leniently-inclined judge who would fain search - out and put in the mouth of a condemned man some plausible plea for the - exercise of clemency. “Come—were there not?—I dare say there - were—circumstances of uncommon bitterness that forced you to become - what I see you? And even now you hate the thing you are?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, as to that,” I said, possessed of the sudden whim to be honest with - myself for once, “I am afraid that I can complain of no bitterer usage at - the hands of the world than can the majority of those who reap where they - have not sowed. When I think of it all, I am used to putting it to myself - that my life is devoted to a kind of private warfare against the unjust - conditions of a hypocritical social order.” - </p> - <p> - “Warfare!” she flouted, hard and brilliant as one of her own diamonds - again. “And you could justify it, too, could you not?” - </p> - <p> - And then she asked me: “Have you ever killed a man?” - </p> - <p> - “Why, no,” said I, “but I have tried to.” - </p> - <p> - “He lived?—and you were sorry that he lived?” - </p> - <p> - “No,” I said, quite out of my depths in all this moral quibbling, “I was - glad he lived.” - </p> - <p> - “And yet you hated him?” - </p> - <p> - “I would have taken his life in a rage,” I said. “He had wronged me as - greatly as one man can wrong another.” - </p> - <p> - “And yet you were glad he lived? My dear thief——” - </p> - <p> - “Higgins is the name,” said I. “You may call me Higgins.” - </p> - <p> - “My dear Higgins,” she went on, “you are inconsistent. You attempt to slay - a man in what I should judge to have been a not ignoble passion. It may - have been an anger that did you credit. And yet you are not bold enough to - face the thought of killing him. You are glib with justifications of your - thievery; and perhaps that is also because you are too much of a coward to - look steadily at it. You creep along a mean and despicable path in life, - contentedly, it seems to me, with a dead soul. You are what you are - because there is nothing positive in you for either good or evil. You are - negative; you were better dead. Yes, better dead!” - </p> - <p> - Why should I have felt as if she were seeking self-justification in - advance for some death she planned for me? Certainly, my life, or death, - was not hers to give or take; she might give me up, and probably would. - But just as certainly she had made me feel, as she passed her judgment - upon me, that she was likely to turn executioner as well as judge. My - doubts as to her sanity returned. - </p> - <p> - “Still,” I said, for the sake of saying something, “if I killed a man, I - should not like to think about it, even if he deserved death.” - </p> - <p> - “Even if he deserved death?” she repeated, and sprang up, as if the phrase - had touched her. “You make yourself the judge, you do, of when a man - 'deserves' to lose his wealth. Come, what is your idea of when he deserves - to die?” - </p> - <p> - Up and down the room she swept; yet still watchful. And the emotion which - she had so long suppressed burst out into a poisonous lovely bloom that - suffused her being with an awful beauty. - </p> - <p> - “When does he deserve to die?” she repeated. “Listen to me. I knew a woman - once—no matter where—no matter when—who was sold—sold! - I say—by the sordid devil she called her father, to the veriest - beast that ever trod this earth. Her beauty—for she had beauty—her - wit—for wit she had—became this husband's chattels before she - turned her twentieth year. She would never have loved him, but she would - have been faithful to him—she was faithful to him, in fact, in spite - of all his drunkenness and bestiality—and abuse! It was not neglect - alone that she had to complain of—she had never looked for - understanding or sympathy. But she had not looked for abuse. Abuse, I say, - and worse than abuse. Before she had been married a year she knew what it - was, not only to feel the weight of a heavy hand and to hide the bruises - from her maid, but to see other women brought into her very house. Pah!—hate? - She hated him? Hate is not the word. She became a live coal. But she never - cried out; she found strength to smile at him even when he beat her; she - was proud enough for that. It pleased him, in his hellish humor, and - because she was made to shine, to cage her in a country house, and there - to taunt her that although she was sold to him she got little of what - money may buy. And still she smiled at him, and still her hatred grew - through all the weeks and months until it filled her whole being. And then—love - came. For God has ordained that love may enter even Hell. Love, I say; and - she loved this lover of hers with a passion that was measured only by the - degree in which she hated her husband. And she would have left with him; - but on the very night they would have flown together her lord and master——-” - </p> - <p> - She said the words with an indescribable spluttering sneer, sidewise from - her mouth. It is so a lioness may snarl and spit before she leaps. - </p> - <p> - “Her—lord and master—found it out, and waited up to catch - them; and coming upon her alone, taunted her. Taunted her, and struck her——” - </p> - <p> - “Look!” she cried, and tore the diamonds from her breast, and rent the - laces, and wrenched the fastenings apart. A new red weal that seemed to - throb and pulse with her respiration stood out from the whiteness of her - bosom. - </p> - <p> - “Tell me,” she whispered hoarsely, “would it have been murder if she had - killed that man? Which were the more courageous thing—to kill him, - or to step back into her living hell? If she had killed him, would she - have regretted it?” - </p> - <p> - I know not what I might have answered; but at that instant three raps - sounded distinctly upon the window-shutter. I leaped to my feet. Then - Charles had come! - </p> - <p> - An instant she stood as if stricken to a statue in mid-rage. - </p> - <p> - And then she cried out, and there was a furious triumph in her voice—a - kind of joy that matched itself to, and blended with, the fierce and - reckless beauty of her shaken jewels, possessed her. - </p> - <p> - “Charles,” she cried, “come in! Come in!” - </p> - <p> - Slowly the window opened and a man entered. He drew back in amaze at the - sight of me, and turned to her with an air that was all one question. - </p> - <p> - “I thought you would never come,” she said. - </p> - <p> - He was a big blond man, and as he turned from the one to the other of us, - with his helpless, inquiring face, and eyes that blinked from the outer - darkness, he looked oddly like a sleepy schoolboy who has been awakened - from an afternoon nap by the teacher's ruler. - </p> - <p> - “Katherine,” he finally stammered, “what is this? Who is this man?” He - passed his hand across his forehead as one may do who doubts whether or - not he dreams; and walked towards the table. - </p> - <p> - “Charles,” she said, “I have shot the old man.” I have seen a beef - stricken on the head with a mallet look at its executioner with big eyes - for an instant before the quivering in its limbs set in and it sank to the - ground. So this Charles looked with wide, stupid eyes, and shivered, and - dropped the great bulk of him into a chair. His head sank upon his hand. - But finally he looked up, and spoke in a confused voice, as if through a - mist. “Good God, Katherine, what do you mean?” - </p> - <p> - “I mean,” she said, framing the words slowly, as one speaks a lesson to a - child, “I mean that I have killed the old man.” - </p> - <p> - And moving swiftly across the room she flung back the heavy red curtain at - the end of it; and I saw the answer to my many questionings. - </p> - <p> - The body lay upon its back, with one arm bent, the hand across the chest, - and the fingers spread wide. The face was that of a man of sixty or - thereabouts, but, indeed, so deeply lined and wrinkled and pouched with - evil living that the age even in life must have been hard to determine. - Blood was coagulating about a bullet wound in the temple, and there were - powder burns on the forehead. The shot had been fired at close range, - evidently from the weapon with which I had been confronted on my entrance; - and the sound had been so muffled in the curtain that it was little wonder - that the servants in the rooms above, and across the house, had not heard - it. He had a monstrous nose, that man upon the floor, and it must have - been a red nose in life; but now it was of a bluish-white color, like the - skin of an old and scrawny fowl. That, and the thin, drawn-up legs, and - the big flabby paunch of the thing, robbed the sight, for me, of all the - solemnity which (we are taught) exudes from the presence of death. It made - me sick; and yet I cackled with sheer hysteria, too; or rather my strained - nerves jarred and laughed, if not myself. It was too damned grotesque. - </p> - <p> - Herself, she did not look at it. She looked at the man called Charles; and - he, with a shudder, lifted his slow gaze from the thing behind the curtain - to her face. - </p> - <p> - She was the first to speak, and the terrible joy with which she had bade - Charles to enter still dominated her accents. - </p> - <p> - “Don't you understand, Charles? This man,” and she indicated me with the - pistol, “this man takes the blame of this. He is a thief. He came just - after—just afterwards. And I held him for your coming. Don't you - see? Don't you see? His presence clears us of this deed!” - </p> - <p> - “<i>Us?</i>” queried Charles. - </p> - <p> - “Not <i>us?</i>” she asked. - </p> - <p> - “My God, Katherine,” he burst forth, “why did you do this thing? And you - would heap murder on murder! Why, why, why did you do it? Why splash this - blood upon our love? A useless thing to do! We might have—we might - have———” - </p> - <p> - He broke down and sobbed. And then: “God knows the old man never did me - any harm,” he said. “And she'd accuse the thief, too!” he cried a moment - later, with a kind of wondering horror. - </p> - <p> - “Listen, Charles,” she said, and moved towards him; and yet with a - sidelong glance she still took heed of me. “Listen, and understand me. We - must act quickly—but after it happened it was necessary that I - should see you before we could act. This man came to rob; here is his - pistol, and in that satchel by the window are his tools, no doubt. He may - tell what wild tale he will; but who will believe him? You go as you came; - I give him up—and we—we wait awhile, and then the rest of life - is ours.” - </p> - <p> - I suppose that it is given to few men to hear their death plotted in their - presence. But I had come to the pass by this time where it struck me as an - impersonal thing. I listened; but somehow the full sense of what she said, - as affecting me, did not then impinge upon my brain with waking force. I - stood as if in a trance; I stood and looked on at those two contending - personalities, that were concerned just now with the question of my life - or death, as if I were a spectator in a theater—as if it were - someone else of whom they spoke. - </p> - <p> - “Go,” she cried to Charles again, “and I will give him up.” - </p> - <p> - “Katherine,” he said, “and you would do this thing?” - </p> - <p> - “Why?” she retorted, “what is this man's life beside mine? His soul is - dead! I tell you, Charles, that I have come through Hell alive to gain one - ray of happiness! But go!—and leave the rest to me.” - </p> - <p> - And she grasped the bell cord and pulled it. Pulled it again and again. - The sound wandered crazily through what remote corridors I know not. - </p> - <p> - She made a step towards him. He leaped to his feet with an oath, with - loathing in his eyes, shrank back from her, and held out a hand as if to - ward off some unclean thing. - </p> - <p> - Bewilderment lined her face. She groped to understand. And then, as the - full significance of his gesture came home to her, she winced and swayed - as if from a blow; and the pistol dropped from her loosened grasp to the - floor. - </p> - <p> - “You—you abandon me?” she said slowly. “You desert me, then? Love, - Love, think how I have loved you that I did this thing! And is what I have - suffered—what I have done—still to purchase—nothing?” - </p> - <p> - She pleaded for my death; but I hope that I shall never again see on any - human face the look of despair that was on hers. I pitied her! - </p> - <p> - Heavy feet on the stairway woke me from my trance. Unregarded of them both - I grasped my pistol from the floor and sprang for the window. A door - opened somewhere above, and a voice asked: - </p> - <p> - “You rang, Ma'am?” - </p> - <p> - From without the window I looked back into the room. She stood with - outstretched hands—hands that reached upward from the pit of - torment, my fancy told me—and pleaded for a little love. “In all - this world is there no little ray of love for me?”—it was so my - imagination rather than my hearing translated the slight movement of her - lips. And while she and the man called Charles stood thus at gaze with one - another, the servant spoke again from the stairway. - </p> - <p> - “You rang?” he asked. - </p> - <p> - She slowly straightened. She steadied herself. And with her eyes still - fixed upon those of Charles she cried: - </p> - <p> - “Yes, yes, I rang, Jones! Your master is—dead. Your master's - murdered! And there, there,” and she stabbed an accusing finger at her - erstwhile lover, “there is the man who murdered him!” - </p> - <p> - And then I turned from the window and ran from that house; and as I ran I - saw the Dawn, like a wild, fair woman, walk up the eastern sky with - blood-stained feet. - </p> - <p> - <br /><br /> - </p> - <hr /> - <p> - <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a> - </p> - <div style="height: 4em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - <h2> - XIII.—Words and Thoughts - </h2> - <h3> - [A Play in One Act] - </h3> - <p> - Characters: - </p> - <p> - Cousin Fanny Hemlock - </p> - <p> - John Speaker - </p> - <p> - Mary Speaker - </p> - <p> - John Thinker - </p> - <p> - Mary Thinker - </p> - <p> - Maid - </p> - <p> - Period, the present. Place, any American city. - </p> - <p> - The Scene <i>represents two drawing rooms, exact duplicates, furnished - alike to the smallest detail. Either room might be the reflection of the - other in a mirror. Each occupies half of the stage. The division line - between them is indicated, towards the hack of the stage, by two pianos, - which sit hack to back at the center of the hack drop. This division is - carried by the pianos a quarter or a third of the way towards the - footlights. The division is further suggested, towards the front of the - stage, hy a couple of settees or couches, which also sit back to back.</i> - </p> - <p> - John Speaker and Mary Speaker <i>remain all the time in the room at the - right of the stage. They are not aware of</i> John Thinker <i>and</i> Mary - Thinker, <i>who are, throughout the play, in the room at the left. The</i> - Thinkers, <i>however, are aware of the</i> Speakers. - </p> - <p> - <i>In make-up, looks, dress, etc., the two</i>Johns <i>are precisely - alike. The same is true of</i> Mary Speaker and Mary Thinker. <i>The</i> - Johns <i>are conventional-looking, prosperous Americans of from 38 to 40 - years of age. The two</i> Marys <i>are a few years younger.</i> - </p> - <p> - Cousin Fanny Hemlock <i>is a dried-up, querulous old woman of seventy.</i> - </p> - <p> - <i>The Curtain, on rising, discovers the two</i> Johns <i>and the two</i> - Marys. <i>It is between 7 and 8 in the evening; they are all in evening - dress, and are preparing to go out, putting on their gloves, etc., etc.</i> - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>Picking up over coat.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Are you ready, Mary dear? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>Holding out a gloved hand.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Quite, John dear. Button this for me, won't you, love? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>Busy with glove.</i>] - </p> - <p> - It's been nearly a year, hasn't it, since we've been out together of an - evening? I'm afraid Cousin Fanny is terribly trying on you at times, Mary. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - You know, John, I don't consider her a trial. I <i>love</i> Cousin Fanny. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Busy with Mary Thinker's glove.</i>] - </p> - <p> - The old cat's letting us off to-night, for a wonder, Mary. She's a - horrible affliction! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> [<i>Passionately.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Affliction is no word. She makes my life a living hell! I hate her! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Helping <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> on with coat, which action is - simultaneously imitated hy John and <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Well, we must bear with her gently, Mary. I am afraid poor Cousin Fanny - will not be with us many more years. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>.</i>] - </p> - <p> - One comfort is she'll die before long! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>John Speaker</b>.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Oh, John, you don't think Cousin Fanny's going to die, do you? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>John Thinker</b>.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Don't fool yourself about her dying soon, John. There's no such luck! - </p> - <p> - [<i>Enter Maid through door in right back to John and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>, - who look up. John and <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> also notice entrance of - Maid and listen.</i>] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Maid</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>To <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Miss Hemlock sent me to inquire whether you were going out to-night. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>John Thinker</b>, quickly.</i>] - </p> - <p> - The old cat's up to something! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>To Maid</i>.] - </p> - <p> - Yes. We were just starting. Does Miss Hemlock want anything? I will go to - her if she wishes to speak with me. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Maid</b> - </p> - <p> - She said, in case you were going out, that I was to tell you <i>not</i> to - do so. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - <i>Not</i> to do so? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Maid</b> - </p> - <p> - Yes, ma'am; that's what she said. She said in case you were getting ready - to go out, you were to change your plans and stop at home. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>To Maid.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Not to do so? But, surely, there must be some mistake! - </p> - <p> - [<i>Maid shakes her head slowly, deliberately, looking fixedly at John - Speaker; and while she is doing so <br /><b>John Thinker</b> says to <br /><b>Mary - Thinker</b></i>:] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Some malicious idea is working in her head tonight! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Maid</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>To <br /><b>John Speaker</b>.</i>] - </p> - <p> - No, sir, no mistake. She said very plainly and distinctly that you were - not to go out tonight. - </p> - <p> - [<i>Maid bows and exits.</i>] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Cousin Fanny is not so well to-night, I'm afraid, dear, or she would - certainly have put her request in some other way. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - If I didn't love Cousin Fanny, John, I would be tempted to believe that - she deliberately tries at times to annoy us. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Cousin Fanny is old, and we must remember that she is very fond of us. We - will have to bear with her. - </p> - <p> - [<i><br /><b>John Speaker</b> takes his top coat and his wife's coat> and - lays them on a chair, while <br /><b>John Thinker</b>, who has been - frowning and brooding, flings himself into chair and says to <br /><b>Mary - Thinker</b></i>:] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - For cold-blooded, devilish nerve in a man's own house, Cousin Fanny - certainly takes the cake, Mary! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - She gets more spiteful every day. She knows her power, and the more - childish she gets the more delight she takes in playing tyrant. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Cheer up, it isn't forever! If she doesn't change her will before she - dies, it means fifteen thousand dollars a year. That's worth a little - trouble! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - You're away at your office all day. I'm here at home with her. It is I who - catch all the trouble! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Well, after all, she's more nearly related to you, Mary, than she is to - me. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - She's my mother's third cousin, if you call <i>that</i> near! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Well, then, she's my father's fifth cousin, if you call <i>that</i> near! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - What were you thinking of, John, dear? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Nothing... nothing, Mary... except that - </p> - <p> - Cousin Fanny is a poor, lonely old soul, after all. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Poor, lonely old woman, indeed—it's odd, isn't it, that she is - related to both you and me, John? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - She's closer to you than to me, Mary. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - You couldn't call a fourth or fifth cousin very near, John. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - It almost seems as if you were trying to deny the blood tie, Mary! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - No, John, dear, blood is thicker than water. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> Thicker than water! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Relations are the most unpleasant persons on earth. I hate cousins. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Especially cousins who are also cousins-in-law! <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - But even if she were only <i>my</i> relation, Mary, and not related to <i>you</i> - at all, I know enough of your sweet nature to know that she would always - be welcome in our home in spite of her little idiosyncrasies. - </p> - <p> - [<i>Enter Cousin Fanny, to John and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>, through door - right hack. She coughs as she steps forward, leaning on a cane, and puts - her hand to her chest, stop-ping. Then as she comes forward, she stumbles. - John and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> leap forward, put their arms behind her, - and, supporting and leading her, conduct her tenderly down stage to chair - at center of room they are in. John and <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>, near - together at table in their room, lean forward eagerly and watch this - entrance, and when the old woman stumbles, <br /><b>John Thinker</b> says - to <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>, nudging her:</i>] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - You see? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - See what? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - She totters! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - She stumbled. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - She's getting weaker. - </p> - <p> - [<i><br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> tenderly kisses Cousin Fanny, as <br /><b>Mary - Thinker</b> says</i>:] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Weaker! She'll live to be a hundred and ten! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Not she! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - The mean kind always do! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Tenderly, to Cousin Fanny, arranging cushion behind her.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Can't I get you a wrap, Cousin Fanny? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Don't you feel a draught, Cousin Fanny? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Bitterly, frowning at other group</i>.] - </p> - <p> - No draught will ever harm her! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>To <br /><b>John Speaker</b>, sneeringly; petulantly.</i>] You're - mighty anxious about a <i>wrap</i>, John! But you were thinking of going - out and leaving me practically alone in the house. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>Deprecatingly.</i> ] - </p> - <p> - But, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>—— - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Interrupting</i>.] - </p> - <p> - Don't deny it! Don't take the trouble to deny it! Don't lie about it! You - can't lie to me! Don't I see your evening clothes? And Mary, too! Both of - you were going out—<i>both</i> of you! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, we gave it up when we learned that you wanted us - to stop at home with you. Didn't we, John? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Querulously, childishly, shrilly.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Don't deny it, Mary, don't deny it! Don't excuse yourself! I can see you - were going out! I can see your evening clothes! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - We'll go and change to something else, won't we, John? - </p> - <p> - [<i>She is going, as she speaks, but <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> cries out</i>:] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - Stop! - </p> - <p> - [<i><br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> stops, and <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> continues</i>:] - </p> - <p> - Don't take them off. I don't want you to take them off. What do you want - to take them off for? Are they too good for <i>me</i> to see? Are they too - grand for me to look at? Ain't I as good as any one you'd find if you went - out? Heh? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, I didn't mean that. I meant—— - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Interrupting.</i>] - </p> - <p> - I know what you meant! Don't tell me what you meant, Mary. You meant to - slip out and leave me here alone, both of you. It's lucky I caught you in - time. It's lucky I have money! It's lucky I don't have to put up with the - treatment most old folks get. I'd starve, if I were poor! I'd die of - hunger and neglect! - </p> - <p> - [<i>She begins to cry, and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> says</i>:] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> No, no, no, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>! - </p> - <p> - [<i><br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> soothes her, in pantomime, and pets her, - trying to take her hands away from her face, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - resisting, like a spoiled and spiteful child. <br /><b>John Speaker</b>, - behind <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> and his wife, walks up and down, with his - eyes on them, running his hand nervously and excitedly through his hair. - While this pantomime goes on, John and Mary Thinker are watching and - saying </i>:] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - This is to be one of <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>'s pleasant evenings! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - This happens a dozen times a day. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> She's not really crying. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Pretence! She works it up to be unpleasant. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> The old she-devil! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Taking <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>'s hand.</i>] - </p> - <p> - You know, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, that we try to do our duty by you. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Flinging his hand off.</i>] - </p> - <p> - You try to do your duty by my money! I know! - </p> - <p> - I see! You talk of love and duty, but it's my money you want! But I may - fool you—I may fool you yet. It's not too late to change my will. - It's not too late to leave it all to charity! - </p> - <p> - [<i>She speaks these lines with a cunning leer, and <br /><b>John Thinker</b>, - nudging <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> and pointing to her, says:</i>] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> The old cat is capable of it, too! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b></i>.] - </p> - <p> - If you should leave your money to charity, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, you - would find it made no difference with us. You know blood is thicker than - water, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Shrewdly, maliciously</i>.] - </p> - <p> - So is sticky flypaper! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Come, come, you don't doubt the genuineness of our affection, do you, - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>? You've known me from my boyhood, <br /><b>Cousin - Fanny</b>, and you've lived with us for ten years. You ought to know us by - this time! You ought to know us in ten years! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> Ten years of torture! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> It can't last much longer! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Who has taken her hand again, and has been patting it as a - continuation of his last speech, and looking at her fondly</i>.] - </p> - <p> - You trust us, don't you, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>? You really are sure of - our affection, aren't you? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>To <br /><b>John Speaker</b>. She shows that she really is willing to - be convinced; she searches their faces wistfully; she is pathetically - eager.</i> ] - </p> - <p> - John, John, you really <i>do</i> care for me, don't you? [<i>She takes a - hand of each.</i>] - </p> - <p> - It isn't <i>all</i> on account of my money, is it? If you knew I hadn't a - cent, you'd still be good to me, wouldn't you? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>Together.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Yes, yes, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - If I lost it all; if I told you I'd lost it all, you'd be just the same, - wouldn't you? - </p> - <p> - [<i><br /><b>John Speaker</b> and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> exchange glances - over her head, and John Speaker drops her hand, while <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - grabs <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> excitedly by the arm and says quickly</i>:] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - My God, you don't suppose she's really <i>lost</i> it, do you? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - No! This is just one of her cunning spells now. She can be as crafty as a - witch. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - If I hadn't a cent you'd still care for me, wouldn't you, Mary? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Why, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, you know I would! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - But I'm hard on you at times. I'm unjust. I don't mean to be spiteful, but - I <i>am</i> spiteful. When we get old we get suspicious of people. We get - suspicious of everybody. And suspicion makes us spiteful and unjust. I - know I'm not easy to live with, Mary. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>Kissing <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>.</i>] - </p> - <p> - You get such strange notions, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - And such true ones, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - Tell me the truth, Mary. You find me a trial, Mary. You and John find me a - trial! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> and <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>Together.</i> ] - </p> - <p> - Never, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> and <br /><b>John Thinker</b> [<i>Together.</i> ] - </p> - <p> - Always, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> And that is the truth? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b>, <br /><b>John Thinker</b>, <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - and <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> [<i>All together.</i> ] - </p> - <p> - And that is the truth, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - You don't know how suspicious one gets! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>Petting her</i>.] - </p> - <p> - But suspicion never stays long in your good heart, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>. - There's no room for it there, I know. But don't you think you'd better go - to bed now? Let me call the maid. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Rousing up in chair; suspicion and meanness all awake again</i>.] - </p> - <p> - To bed? Why to bed? Why do you want to pack me off to bed? I know! I know - why! You want me to go to bed so you two can talk about me. So you can - talk me over! So you can speculate on how long I will live. I know you! I - know what you talk about when I'm not around! I know what you've been - waiting and hoping for the last ten years! - </p> - <p> - [<i>Begins to cry.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Well, you won't have long to wait now. The time's almost come! I feel it's - almost here. You'll get the money soon enough! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>Soothing her</i>.] - </p> - <p> - There, there, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, don't go on like this! - </p> - <p> - You know it isn't true—you know you'll live ten years yet! - </p> - <p> - [<i><br /><b>John Speaker</b> runs his hands through his hair and looks - silently at <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>, and <br /><b>John Thinker</b>, with - the same gesture, says to Mary Thinker</i>:] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - If I thought she'd live ten years yet——! - </p> - <p> - [<i>Pauses.</i>] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Well, if you thought she'd live ten years yet——? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> [<i>With a gesture of de pair.</i> ] - </p> - <p> - My God—ten years like the last ten years! Ten years! Talk about - earning money! If it hasn't been earned ten times over! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Fiercely.</i>] - </p> - <p> - You see it mornings and evenings. I have it all day long, and every day. - I've had it for ten years. I go nowhere, I see no one. I have no - pleasures. I have no friends; I've lost my friends. I'm losing my youth. - I'm losing my looks. I'm losing my very soul. I'm shedding my life's blood - drop by drop to keep that querulous fool alive—just merely alive! - I'm tired of it! I'm sick of it! I'm desperate! I'm dying from her, I tell - you! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Still soothing <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, but speaking with one hand - nervously clutching her own head as she does so</i>.] - </p> - <p> - Come, come, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>—you'd better go to bed now! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - I won't go to bed yet! I want my medicine. It's time for my medicine now. - I won't go to bed till I've had my sleeping tablets. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Where are they, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - On top of the bookcase there. The small phial. [<i><br /><b>John Speaker</b> - goes to the bookcase and begins to rummage for phial, while <br /><b>John - Thinker</b> says, meditatively</i>:] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - I suppose if one ever gave her the wrong medicine by mistake it would be - called by some ugly name! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - People like her never get the wrong medicine given to them, and never take - it by mistake themselves. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>Finding bottle; examining it</i>.] - </p> - <p> - See here, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, didn't you have one of these about an - hour ago? Didn't I see you take one of them right after dinner? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Peevishly.</i>] - </p> - <p> - I don't know. I don't remember. I want one now, anyhow. My nerves are on - the jump. You have got all my nerves on the jump. I'll take one, and nap - here in the chair. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b></i>.] - </p> - <p> - She took one about an hour ago. I don't think it's quite right to let her - have another so soon. They have a powerful depressing effect on the heart. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> Let me see which ones they are. - </p> - <p> - [<i><br /><b>John Speaker</b> holds the bottle out towards <br /><b>Mary - Speaker</b>, in front of <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>. <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - snatches it with a sudden motion, and laughs childishly. <br /><b>John - Speaker</b> and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> look at each other inquiringly - over her head.</i>] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - She really shouldn't have another one now, I'm afraid, dear. It might be - pretty serious. [<i>To <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b></i>.] - </p> - <p> - You <i>did</i> take one right after dinner, didn't you, <br /><b>Cousin - Fanny</b>? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Hugging bottle to her very excitedly</i>.] - </p> - <p> - No! No! I tell you I didn't! I <i>will</i> take one! You don't want me to - get to sleep! You don't want me to get any rest! You want me to die! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> I <i>know</i> that she <i>did</i> have one. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>John Speaker</b></i>.] - </p> - <p> - What can you do, dear? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Taking hold of <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>'s hands, and trying to take - phial gently</i>.] - </p> - <p> - See here, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, you must be reasonable... you mustn't - be stubborn about this. You can't have another tablet now. It's dangerous. - It might even kill you! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - It <i>would</i> kill her as certainly as she sits there. <br /><b>John - Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Come, come, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>... it might be dangerous. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - John, don't struggle with her! Don't you know if you struggle with her it - is likely to prove fatal? The doctor says the <i>least</i> strain will - prove fatal. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Whimpering and struggling.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Let me have it! Let me alone! Let go of my hands! You want to kill me! You - want me to die so you can get my money! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>Releasing her.</i>] - </p> - <p> - No! No! No! <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>... Come, be reasonable! - </p> - <p> - [<i>He reaches for her hands again, and she grabs his hand and bites it. - He draws back and says</i>:] - </p> - <p> - Damn! - </p> - <p> - [<i>Nurses his hand.</i>] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Did she bite you? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Yes. - </p> - <p> - [<i>Nurses his hand, and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> examines it, while <br /><b>Cousin - Fanny</b> pulls cork from phial with teeth, and <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - says</i>:] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - The old viper has teeth yet! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - She is a cat... she is a she-devil... she is a witch... she has a bad - heart.... - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>To <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>, pointing to <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, who - is shaking tablet out of bottle; she drops one and gropes for it, and - shakes another more carefully, with air of childish triumph.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Mary, what <i>can</i> I do? She <i>will</i> have it! And if I struggle - with her it will kill her! She is too weak to struggle! It will kill her - to struggle! And if I let her take the tablet it may do her harm! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Perhaps the tablet won't do her any harm, John. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - It will kill her as surely as she sits there. I know it will and <i>you</i> - know it will. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Maybe it won't hurt her, Mary... but we can never tell.... I'm afraid... - I'm afraid it really <i>might</i> harm her.... - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Putting tablet into her mouth</i>.] - </p> - <p> - There! I'm going to sleep, now.... I'm going to sleep in spite of you. You - hate me—both of you hate me—but you can't prevent me going to - sleep! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - She's taken it, John. Do you suppose she really <i>did</i> have one - before? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [To <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>.] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, you <i>didn't</i> have one before, did you? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>She has closed her eyes; she opens them and rocks back and forth, - laughing foolishly</i>.] - </p> - <p> - Yes! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Taking out handkerchief; mopping fore-head</i>.] - </p> - <p> - I don't believe she did. She says she did, but she doesn't know. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Rocking and laughing sillily.</i>] - </p> - <p> - Yes, I did! You know I did! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - She doesn't know.... She doesn't know whether she did or not.... She - hasn't really been right in her mind for a long time. I don't think she - had one before. - </p> - <p> - [<i>As he speaks <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> ceases rocking and leans hack in - her chair, closing her eyes. From this time on the two Johns and the two - Marys stare at her intently, never taking their eyes off of her while they - speak.</i>] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - She <i>did</i> have one before. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - I <i>know</i> she did. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Will she die? Will I see her die? I should hate to see her die! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - She <i>would</i> have that tablet... she WOULD have it. If I had taken it - away from her by force it would have killed her; the struggle would have - killed her. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Will I see her die? Will she die? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - I let her have it to save her life... it was to save her life that I quit - struggling with her. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - If she dies... but <i>will</i> she die? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - She will die! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Rousing from her lethargy slightly; open-ing her eyes.</i>] - </p> - <p> - John... Mary.... You really love me, don't you? Don't you? You really... - really... - </p> - <p> - [<i>Sinks back, with head slightly on one side and eyes closed again; does - not move after this.</i>] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>They all speak with lowered voices now.</i>] She is asleep. She really - needed the tablet. It was a mercy she got it. She was nervous and - overwrought, and it has put her to sleep. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Yes, it was a mercy she got it. She was nervous and overwrought, and it - has put her to sleep. - </p> - <p> - ... And you know, Mary, she <i>would</i> have t... if I had <i>struggled</i> - with her, she would have <i>died!</i> A struggle would have killed her. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - And now she will die because there was no struggle. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - She will die. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Is she breathing quite naturally, Mary? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> Quite. Quite naturally. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> <i>Death</i> is quite natural. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> And she is dying. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Well, if she had struggled and died... if she had died through any fault - of mine... I would always have reproached myself.... - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - You have nothing to reproach yourself for. You need never reproach - yourself with regard to her.... - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - She was old. She was very old. She will be better dead. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> She is not quite dead. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - I don't like the way she is breathing.... She is scarcely breathing.... - She doesn't seem to be breathing at all! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> Old people breathe very quietly. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> Old people die very quietly. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> And she is dying. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - She is dead! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Mary... Mary... is she breathing at all? <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Call the maid.... Send for the doctor.... Call the maid! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> It is too late for any doctor. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Too late! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Mary, Mary.... My God... she can't be <i>dead!</i> - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>Bending above her.</i>] - </p> - <p> - John, dear... try to bear it bravely... but... but I'm afraid she is.... - Poor <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> has left us! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Rapidly</i>.] - </p> - <p> - Poor <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>.... Poor <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>.... Poor - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>.... - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Fifteen thousand a year... fifteen thousand a year.... Why do I think of - that?... But I can't help it.... I can't help thinking of it.... - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> I'll go get the maid. - </p> - <p> - [<i>Going</i>.] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Stop.... Wait, Mary.... Don't call her yet... get her presently.... I - don't want to be alone just now.... I'm in a kind of fog.... - </p> - <p> - [<i>Lights go out as he says this; he continues in the darkness.</i>] - </p> - <p> - I'm all in the dark. - </p> - <p> - [<i>Lights on again</i>.] - </p> - <p> - [<i>In the interim, which is very short, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> has gone - over to the room on the left in which are John and <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>, - and sits in chair corresponding to one which she has just left.</i>] - </p> - <p> - [<i>She is silent and motionless, but her head is lifted; her eyes are - open; she is alive again. When lights go on again, John and <br /><b>Mary - Speaker</b> still stand before chair she has left as if she were in it; it - is apparent that they believe themselves to be still looking at the old - woman.</i>] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Nonsense... all in the dark?... What do you mean by all in the dark? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - Nothing... nothing now. It has passed.... - </p> - <p> - [Pointing to chair where <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> was.] She died with a - smile on her face! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - But she isn't there.... <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> isn't there. - </p> - <p> - ... She's here.... She's over here with us... over here with <i>us</i>! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Here with us... over here, forever, now. - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Holding <br /><b>John Speaker</b>'s hand and gazing at vacant chair</i>.] - </p> - <p> - How beautiful she looks! She is at rest, now! She is better off so. Better - dead. She is better at peace! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Violently; starting towards other room</i>.] - </p> - <p> - My God. I'm going to stop it... stop it... stop that lying... stop it at - any cost.... I'm going to stop that pretending... that damned - pretending.... - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>Quickly getting in front of him; holding him back.</i>] - </p> - <p> - What are you going to do? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Stop it, I tell you.... Tell the truth... stop that pretense.... - </p> - <p> - [<i>Moves towards the other room. As he does so, <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> - and John Speaker, for the first time become aware of John and <br /><b>Mary - Thinker</b>, and shrink back in terror and alarm, clinging together, - confused, convicted, abject, retreating, powerless; <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - leaps in front of John Thinker at same instant, and bars him back, saying:</i>] - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - Stop! - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>John Thinker</b> - </p> - <p> - Why? I <i>will</i> stop this pretense... Why not? - </p> - <p> - <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> - </p> - <p> - [<i>All four of the others lean forward and hang eagerly upon her words</i>.] - </p> - <p> - You must not. It can't be done. It is the foundation upon which your - society rests. It is necessary...<i> over there!</i> - </p> - <h3> - CURTAIN - </h3> - <div style="height: 6em;"> - <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> - </div> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Carter, and Other People, by Don Marquis - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE *** - -***** This file should be named 51913-h.htm or 51913-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/9/1/51913/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: Carter, and Other People - -Author: Don Marquis - -Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51913] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - - - -CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE - -By Don Marquis - -D. Appleton and Co. - -1921 - - - - -FOREWORD - -|I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to the editors of several -magazines for permission to reprint the following stories in book form. -"Carter" was originally published in _Harpers Monthly Magazine_ under -the title "The Mulatto." - -"Death and Old Man Murtrie" was printed in The New _Republic_; others -were first brought out in _Everybody's Magazine, Short Stories, Putnam's -Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post_. "The Penitent" was originally -printed in _The Pictorial Review_, with the title "The Healer and -the Penitent." The plot of this story is taken from two poems, one by -Browning and one by Owen Meredith. Happening to read these two poems, -one after the other, I was struck by the fact that Owen Meredith had -unwittingly written what was in effect a continuation of a situation -invented by Browning; the plot of the one poem, telescoped into the plot -of the other, made in effect a complete short story. I pasted the two -situations together, so to speak, inventing an ending of my own, and had -a short story which neither Browning nor Owen Meredith could claim as -his-and which I scarcely have the nerve to claim as mine. And yet this -story, taken piecemeal from the two poets, gave me more trouble than -anything else I ever tried to write; it was all there, apparently; but -to transpose the story into a modern American setting was a difficult -job. It is my only essay in conscious plagiarism-I hate to call it -plagiarism, but what else could one call it?--and I give you my word -that it is easier to invent than to plagiarize. - -The one-act play, "Words and Thoughts," was written ten years ago-in -1911-and has been offered to every theatrical manager in America, and -refused by them all. I still believe in it as a thing that could be -acted with effect, and I am determined to get it read, even if I -cannot get it produced. The fact that it has been going the rounds of -theatrical managers for ten years is no indication that it has ever been -read. - -Don Marquis - -New York - - - - -I.-Carter - -|Carter was not exactly a negro, but he was a "nigger." Seven drops of -his blood out of every eight were Caucasian. The eighth, being African, -classified him. The white part of him despised and pitied the black -part. The black part hated the white part. Consequently, wherever Carter -went he carried his own hell along inside of him. - -Carter began to learn that he was a nigger very early in life. Nigger -children are not left long in doubt anywhere, and especially in the -South. Carter first saw the light--and the shadows--of day in Atlanta. -The color line itself, about which one hears so much talk, seemed to run -along one end of the alley in which he was born. It was an alley with a -gutter and a great deal of mud in it. At the corner, where it gave into -a little narrow street not much better than an alley itself, the mud was -the thickest, deepest, and best adapted to sculptural purposes. But in -the little street lived a number of white families. They were most -of them mill hands, and a numerous spawn of skinny children, little -"crackers," with faces white and sad even from babyhood, disputed the -mud with the nigger children. Nigger babies of five, four, three, and -even two, understood quite well that this most desirable mud, even -though it was in the nigger alley, was claimed by the white babies as -_their_ mud. It was in every way a more attractive sort of mud than -any in the little street proper; and juvenile race riots were of almost -hourly occurrence--skirmishes in which the very dogs took part. For the -dogs grasped the situation as clearly as did the children; a "nigger" -dog, even though he may have started in life as a white man's dog, soon -gets a certain look about him. - -So there was no chance for Carter to escape the knowledge that he was -a nigger. But it was with a thrill that he perceived in his youthful -excursions from the home alley, that he was sometimes mistaken for a -white child. He was so white in color that one could not tell he was a -nigger at a casual glance. - -As he grew up, he made another discovery that elated and embittered him -still more. He found out who his father was--or rather, who his father -had been, since he never saw that gentleman. The white blood in Carter's -veins was no common ichor. Because white people seldom speak of these -things it does not follow that they are not known pretty generally among -the negroes. They are, in fact, discussed. - -Carter went to school; he made the further discovery that he had -brains--"white man's brains" is the way he put it to himself. Given the -opportunity, he told himself, he could go as far as the average white -man--perhaps further than the average. The white man's standard, nigger -though he was, was still the standard by which he must measure himself. -But the opportunity! Even as the youth prepared himself for it he -perceived, hopelessly, that it would be denied him. - -As he matured he began to feel a strange, secret pride in that -white family whose blood he shared. He familiarized himself with its -genealogy. There is many a courtier who cannot trace his ancestry as -far back as Carter could. One of his forebears had signed Magna Charta; -several had fought in the Revolutionary War. There had been a United -States Senator in the family, and a Confederate General. At times, -feeling the vigorous impulse of hereditary instinct and ambitions, -Carter looked upon himself as all white man, but never for long, nor to -any purpose. The consciousness of his negro blood pulled him down again. - -But, as he grew up, he ceased to herd with black negroes; he scorned -them. He crept about the world cursing it and himself--an unfortunate -and bitter creature that had no place; unfortunate and bitter, cursed -with an intellect, denied that mitigation that might have come with a -full share of the negro jovialty of disposition, forever unreconciled. - -There was one member of that white family from which he drew so much of -his blood whom Carter particularly admired. Willoughby Howard was about -Carter's own age, and he was Carter's half-brother. Howard did not -distinguish Carter from any other mulatto; probably did not know of his -existence. But as Howard reached manhood, and, through virtue of his -wealth and standing and parts, began to attain an excellent place in -the world, his rise was watched by Carter with a strange intensity of -emotion. Carter in some occult way identified himself with the career of -Willoughby Howard--sometimes he almost worshiped Willoughby Howard, -and then he hated him; he envied him and raged over him with the same -breath. - -But mostly, as the isolation of his own condition, ate into his soul, -he raged over himself; he pitied himself; he hated himself. Out of the -turmoil of his spirit arose the one despairing cry, Oh, to be white, -white, _white!_ - -Many a night he lay awake until daybreak, measuring the slow minutes -with the ceaseless iteration of that useless prayer: Only to be white! O -God, for _one little year of being white!_ - -Fruitless hours of prayers and curses! - -Carter went North. He went to New York. But the North, which affects to -promise so much to the negro, in a large, loose, general way, does not -perform in the same degree. There was only one thing which Carter would -have thanked any one for performing; it was the one thing that could -never be performed--he wanted to be made white. Sometimes, indeed, from -the depths of his despair, he cried out that he wanted to be altogether -black; but in his soul he did not really want that. - -Nevertheless, at several different periods he yielded to temptation -and "went over to the whites." In the South he could not have done -this without discovery, in spite of the color of his skin. But in the -Northern cities, with their enormous numbers of aliens, all more or less -strange to the American eye, Carter found no great difficulty in passing -as white. He "looked a little foreign" to the casual glance; that was -all. - -But if there was no great difficulty in it, there was no great -satisfaction in it, either. In fact, it only made him the more bitter. -Others might think him a white man, but he knew that he was a nigger. - -The incident which sent him back South, resolved to be a nigger, and to -live and die among the niggers, might not have affected another in his -condition just as it did Carter. But to him it showed conclusively that -his destiny was not a matter of environment so much as a question of -himself. - -He fell in love. The girl was a waitress in a cheap restaurant near the -barber shop where Carter worked. She was herself a product of the -East Side, struggling upward from the slums; partly Italian, with some -Oriental strain in her that had given the least perceptible obliqueness -to her eyes--one of those rare hybrid products which give the thinker -pause and make him wonder what the word "American" will signify a -century from now; a creature with very red lips and very black eyebrows; -she seemed to know more than she really did; she had a kind of naive -charm, a sort of allurement, without actual beauty; and her name had -been Anglicized into Mary. - -And she loved Carter. This being, doomed from the cradle to despair, had -his moment of romance. But even in his intoxication there was no hope; -his elation was embittered and perplexed. He was tempted not to tell the -girl that he was a nigger. But if he married her, and did not tell her, -perhaps the first child would tell her. It might look more of a nigger -than he did. - -But if he told her, would she marry a nigger? He decided he would tell -her. Perhaps his conscience had less to do with this decision than the -fatalism of his temperament. - -So he made his revelation one Sunday evening, as they walked along the -boardwalk from Coney Island to Brighton. To him, it was a tremendous -moment. For days he had been revolving in his mind the phrases he -would use; he had been rehearsing his plea; in his imagination he saw -something spectacular, something histrionic, in his confession. - -"Mary," he said, as they sat down on a bench on the beach, "there is -something I think I ought to tell you before we get married." - -The girl turned toward him her big, sleepy, dark eyes, which always -seemed to see and understand so much more than they really did, and -looked away again. - -"I ought to tell you," he said--and as he said it, staring out to sea, -he was so imposed upon by the importance of the moment to himself that -he almost felt as if the sea listened and the waves paused--"I ought to -tell you that I have negro blood in my veins." - -She was silent. There was a moment before he dared look at her; he could -not bear to read his doom in her eyes. But finally he did muster up -courage enough to turn his head. - -The girl was placidly chewing gum and gazing at an excursion vessel that -was making a landing at one of the piers. - -He thought she had not heard. "Mary," he repeated, "I have negro blood -in my veins." - -"Uh-huh," said she. "I gotcha the first time, Steve! Say, I wonder if we -couldn't take the boat back to town? Huh? Whatcha say?" - -He looked at her almost incredulous. She had understood, and yet she -had not shrunk away from him! He examined her with a new interest; his -personal drama, in which she, perforce, must share, seemed to have made -no impression upon her whatsoever. - -"Do you mean," he said, hesitatingly, "that it will--that it won't make -any difference to you? That you can marry me, that you _will_ marry me, -in spite of--of--in spite of what I am?" - -"Gee! but ain't you the solemn one!" said the girl, taking hold of her -gum and "stringing" it out from her lips. "Whatcha s'pose I care for a -little thing like that?" - -He had looked for a sort of dramatic "situation"; and, behold, there was -none! There was none simply because the girl had no vantage point from -which to look at his life and hers. He had negro blood in his veins--and -she simply did not care one way or the other! - -He felt no elation, no exultation; he believed that she _should_ have -cared; whether her love was great enough to pardon that in him or not, -she should have felt it as a thing that _needed_ pardon. - -As he stared at the girl, and she continued to chew her gum, he swiftly -and subtly revised his estimate of her; and in his new appraisement -there was more than a tinge of disgust. And for a moment he became -altogether a white man in his judgment of the thing that was happening; -he looked at the situation as a patrician of the South might have looked -at it; the seven eighths of his blood which was white spoke: - -"By God!" he said, suddenly leaping to his feet and flinging aside the -startled hand which the girl put out toward him, "I can't have anything -to do with a woman who'd marry a nigger!" - -So Carter went back to Atlanta. And, curiously enough, he stepped from -the train almost into the midst of a strange and terrible conflict of -which the struggle in his individual breast was, in a sense, the type -and the symbol. - -It was a Saturday night in September, an evening on which there began -a memorable and sanguinary massacre of negroes; an event which has been -variously explained and analyzed, but of which, perhaps, the underlying -causes will never be completely understood. - -There was riot in the streets, a whirlwind of passion which lashed the -town and lifted up the trivial souls of men and spun them round and -round, and passed and left the stains of blood behind. White men were -making innocent negroes suffer for the brutal crimes of guilty negroes. -It had been a hot summer; scarcely a day had passed during July and -August without bringing to the newspapers from somewhere in Georgia -a report of a negro assault upon some white woman. A blind, -undiscriminating anger against the whole negro race had been growing and -growing. And when, on that Saturday afternoon, the newspapers reported -four more crimes, in rapid succession, all in or near Atlanta, the -cumulative rage burst into a storm. - -There was no danger for Carter in the streets; more than a hasty glance -was necessary to spy out his negro taint. He stood in a doorway, in the -heart of the business district of the town, and watched the wild work -that went on in a large, irregular plaza, where five streets come -together and all the car lines in the place converge. From this roughly -triangular plaza leads Decatur Street, at one time notorious throughout -the South for its negro dives and gambling-dens. - -Now and then Carter could hear the crack of a pistol, close at hand -or far away; and again some fleeing negro would start from a place of -temporary concealment, at the approach of a mob that beat its way along -a street, and make a wild dash for safety, as a rabbit startled from the -sedge-grass scurries to the brush. There was not one mob, but several; -the different bands united, split up, and reunited, as the shifting -winds of madness blew. The plaza, with arc lights all about it, was -the brilliantly illuminated stage on which more than one scene of that -disgusting melodrama was played out; from some dim hell of gloom and -clamor to the north or east would rush a shouting group that whirled -and swayed beneath the lights, dancing like flecks of soot in their -brightness, to disappear in the gloom again, shouting, cursing, and -gesticulating, down one of the thoroughfares to the west or south. And -to Carter, in whose heart there waxed a fearful turmoil of emotions, -even as the two races clashed along the echoing streets, there was a -strange element of unreality about it all; or, rather, the night was -dreadful with that superior reality which makes so much more vivid than -waking life the intense experience of dreams. Carter thrilled; he shook; -he was torn with terror and pity and horror and hatred. - -No white man felt all that Carter felt that night; nor yet any negro. -For he was both, and he was neither; and he beheld that conflict which -was forever active in his own nature dramatized by fate and staged with -a thousand actors in the lighted proscenium at his feet. - -This thought struck Carter himself, and he turned toward another man who -had paused in the doorway, with no clear intention, but perhaps with the -vague impulse of addressing him, as a point of solid contact and relief -from the sense of hurrying nightmare that possessed both the streets and -his own spirit. - -Startled, he saw that the other man was Willoughby Howard. Carter -hesitated, and then advanced a step. But whatever he had to say was -interrupted by a crowd that swept past them from Decatur Street in -pursuit of a panting negro. The fleeing colored man was struck a dozen -times; he fell at the street corner near them, and the mob surged -on again into the darkness beyond, already in full chase of another -quarry--all but one man, who left the mob and ran back as if to assure -himself that the prostrate negro was really dead. - -This was a short man, a very short man, a dwarf with a big head too -heavy for him, and little bandy legs--legs so inadequate that he wabbled -like an overfed poodle when he ran. Carter had seen him twice before -that night, dodging in and out among the feet of the rioters like an -excited cur, stumbling, falling, trodden upon; a being with bloodshot -eyes and matted hair, hoarse voice and menacing fist, drunken and -staggering with blood lust; the very Gnome of Riot himself come up from -some foul cave and howling in the streets. "Kill them! Kill them!" -he would cry, and then shake with cackling laughter. But he was only -valiant when there was; no danger. As he approached the negro who lay -upon the ground, and bent over him, Willoughby Howard stepped down -from the doorway and aimed a blow at the creature with a cane. The blow -missed, but the dwarf ran shrieking down Decatur Street. - -Howard bent over the negro. The negro stirred; he was not dead. Howard -turned toward Carter and said: - -"He's alive! Help me get him out of the street." - -Together they lifted the wounded man, moving him toward the curbstone. -He groaned and twisted, and they laid him down. Howard poured whisky -into him from a pocket flask, and a little later he managed to struggle -to a sitting posture on the curb, looking up at them with dazed eyes and -a bloody face. - -Howard took his slow gaze from the negro and covered his face with his -hands. - -Carter watched him. - -Of all men in the world this was the one whom Carter most honored and -most loved--honored and loved, while he envied; he was the only man, -perhaps, that could have touched Carter through his crust of bitterness. -Carter listened with strained attention for what Howard would say, as if -with some premonition that the words would be the cue for the most vital -action of his life. - -"My God! My God!" said Willoughby Howard, "will this thing never stop?" -And then he straightened himself and turned toward the shadow into which -Carter had retired, and there was the glow and glory of a large idea on -his face; the thought of a line of men never lacking, when once aroused, -in the courage to do and die for a principle or a human need. "There is -one way," he cried, stretching out his hands impulsively to Carter, and -not knowing to whom or to what manner of man he spoke--"there is one way -to make them pause and think! If two of us white men of the better class -offer our lives for these poor devils--die in their defense!--the mob -will halt; the crowd will think; we can end it! Will you do it, with me? -Will you do it?" - -Two of us white men of the better class! Willoughby Howard had taken him -for a white man! - -It was like an accolade. A light blazed through the haunted caverns of -his soul; he swelled with a vast exultation. - -Willoughby Howard had taken him for a white man! Then, by God, he would -be one! Since he was nothing in this life, he could at least die--and in -his death he would be a white man! Nay, more:--he would die shoulder to -shoulder with one of that family whose blood he shared. He would show -that he, too, could shed that blood for an idea or a principle! For -humanity! At the thought he could feel it singing in his veins. Oh, to -be white, white, white! The dreams and the despairs of all his miserable -and hampered life passed before him in a whirl, and now the cry was -answered! - -"Yes," he said, lifting his head, and rising at that instant into a -larger thing than he had ever been, "I will stand by you. I will die -with you." And under his breath he added--"my brother." - -They had not long to wait. In the confused horror of that night things -happened quickly. Even as Carter spoke the wounded negro struggled to -his feet with a scarce articulate cry of alarm, for around the corner -swept a mob, and the dwarf with matted hair was in the lead. He had come -back with help to make sure of his job. - -With the negro cowering behind them, the white man and the mulatto -stepped forth to face the mob. Their attitude made their intention -obvious. - -"Don't be a damned fool, Willoughby Howard," said a voice from the -crowd, "or you may get hurt yourself." And with the words there was a -rush, and the three were in the midst of the clamoring madness, the mob -dragging the negro from his two defenders. - -"Be careful--don't hurt Willoughby Howard!" said the same voice again. -Willoughby turned, and, recognizing the speaker as an acquaintance, with -a sudden access of scorn and fury and disgust, struck him across the -mouth. The next moment his arms were pinioned, and he was lifted and -flung away from the negro he had been fighting to protect by half a -dozen men. - -"You fools! You fools!" he raged, struggling toward the center of -the crowd again, "you're killing a white man there. An innocent white -man------ Do you stop at nothing? You're killing a _white man_, I say!" - -"White man?" said the person whom he had struck, and who appeared to -bear him little resentment for the blow. "Who's a white man? Not Jerry -Carter here! He wasn't any white man. I've known him since he was a -kid--he was just one of those yaller niggers." - -And Carter heard it as he died. - - - - -II--Old Man Murtrie - -|Old Man Murtrie never got any fresh air at all, except on Sundays on -his way to and from church. He lived, slept, cooked and ate back of the -prescription case in his little dismal drug store in one of the most -depressing quarters of Brooklyn. The store was dimly lighted by gas and -it was always damp and suggested a tomb. Drifting feebly about in the -pale and cold and faintly greenish radiance reflected from bottles and -show cases, Old Man Murtrie with his bloodless face and dead white hair -and wisps of whisker was like a ghost that has not managed to get free -from the neighborhood of a sepulcher where its body lies disintegrating. - -People said that Old Man Murtrie was nearly a hundred years old, -but this was not true; he was only getting along towards ninety. The -neighborhood, however, seemed a little impatient with him for not dying. -Some persons suggested that perhaps he really had been dead for a long -time, and did not know it. If so, they thought, it might be kind to tell -him about it. - -But Old Man Murtrie was not dead, any more than he was alive. And Death -himself, who has his moments of impatience, began to get worried about -Old Man Murtrie. It was time, Death thought, that he was dead, since he -looked so dead; and Death had said so, both to God and to the Devil. - -"But I don't want to garner him, naturally," Death would say, "till -I know which one of you is to have him. He's got to go somewhere, you -know." - -God and Death and the Devil used to sit on the prescription counter in -a row, now and then, and watch Old Man Murtrie as he slept in his humble -little cot back there, and discuss him. - -God would look at Old Man Murtrie's pale little Adam's Apple sticking up -in the faint gaslight, and moving as he snored--moving feebly, for even -his snores were feeble--and say, with a certain distaste: - -"I don't want him. He can't get into Heaven." - -And the Devil would look at his large, weak, characterless nose;--a -nose so big that it might have suggested force on any one but Old Man -Murtrie--and think what a sham it was, and how effectually all its -contemptible effort to be a real nose was exposed in Old Man Murtrie's -sleep. And the Devil would say: - -"I don't want him. He can't get into Hell." - -And then Death would say, querulously: "But he can't go on living -forever. My reputation is suffering." - -"You should take him," the Devil would say to God. "He goes to church -on Sunday, and he is the most meek and pious and humble and prayerful -person in all Brooklyn, and perhaps in all the world." - -"But he takes drugs," God would say. "You should take him, because he is -a drug fiend." - -"He takes drugs," the Devil would admit, "but that doesn't make him a -_fiend_. You have to do something besides take drugs to be a fiend. You -will permit me to have my own notions, I am sure, on what constitutes a -fiend." - -"You ought to forgive him the drugs for the sake of his piety," the -Devil would say. "And taking drugs is his only vice. He doesn't drink, -or smoke tobacco, or use profane language, or gamble. And he doesn't run -after women." - -"You ought to forgive him the piety for the sake of the drugs," God -would tell the Devil. - -"I never saw such a pair as you two," Death would say querulously. -"Quibble, quibble, quibble!--while Old Man Murtrie goes on and on -living! He's lived so long that he is affecting death rates and -insurance tables, all by himself, and you know what that does to my -reputation." - -And Death would stoop over and run his finger caressingly across Old Man -Murtrie's throat, as the Old Man slept. Whereupon Old Man Murtrie would -roll over on his back and moan in his sleep and gurgle. - -"He has wanted to be a cheat all his life," God would say to the Devil. -"He has always had the impulse to give short weight and substitute -inferior drugs in his prescriptions and overcharge children who were -sent on errands to his store. If that isn't sin I don't know what sin -is. You should take him." - -"I admit he has had those impulses," the Devil would say to God. "But -he has never yielded to them. In my opinion having those impulses and -conquering them makes him a great deal more virtuous than if he'd never -had 'em. No one who is as virtuous as all that can get into Hell." - -"I never saw such a pair," Death would grumble. "Can't you agree with -each other about anything?" - -"He didn't abstain from his vices because of any courage," God would -say. "He abstained simply because he was afraid. It wasn't virtue in -him; it was cowardice." - -"The fear of the Lord," murmured the Devil, dreamily, "is the beginning -of all wisdom." - -"But not necessarily the end of it," God would remark. - -"Argue, argue, argue," Death would say, "and here's Old Man Murtrie -still alive! I'm criticized about the way I do my work, but no one has -any idea of the vacillation and inefficiency I have to contend with! I -never saw such a pair as you two to vacillate!" - -Sometimes Old Man Murtrie would wake up and turn over on his couch and -see God and Death and the Devil sitting in a row on the prescription -counter, looking at him. But he always persuaded himself that it was -a sort of dream, induced by the "medicine" he took; and he would take -another dose of his "medicine" and go back to sleep again. He never -spoke to them when he waked, but just lay on his cot and stared at them; -and if they spoke to him he would pretend to himself that they had not -spoken. For it was absurd to think that God and Death and the Devil -could really be sitting there, in the dim greenish gaslight, among all -the faintly radiant bottles, talking to each other and looking at him; -and so Old Man Murtrie would not believe it. - -When he first began taking his "medicine" Old Man Murtrie took it in the -form of a certain patent preparation which was full of opium. He wanted -the opium more and more after he started, but he pretended to himself -that he did not know there was much opium in that medicine. Then, when a -federal law banished that kind of medicine from the markets, he took to -making it for his own use. He would not take opium outright, for that -would be to acknowledge to himself that he was an opium eater; he -thought eating opium was a sin, and he thought of himself as sinless. -But to make the medicine with the exact formula that its manufacturers -had used, before they had been compelled to shut up shop, and use it, -did not seem to him to be the same thing at all as being an opium eater. -And yet, after the law was passed, abolishing the medicine, he would not -sell to any one else what he made for himself; his conscience would not -allow him to do so. Therefore, he must have known that he was eating -opium at the same time he tried to fool himself about it. - -God and the Devil used to discuss the ethics of this attitude towards -the "medicine," and Old Man Murtrie would sometimes pretend to be asleep -and would listen to them. - -"He knows it is opium all right," God would say. "He is just lying to -himself about it. He ought to go to Hell. No one that lies to himself -that way can get into Heaven." - -"He's pretending for the sake of society in general and for the sake of -religion," the Devil would say. "If he admitted to himself that it was -opium and if he let the world know that he took opium, it might bring -discredit on the church that he loves so well. He might become a -stumbling block to others who are seeking salvation, and who seek it -through the church. He is willing to sacrifice himself so as not to -hamper others in their religious life. For my part, I think it is highly -honorable of him, and highly virtuous. No person as moral as that in his -instincts can get into Hell." - -"Talk, talk, talk!" Death would say. "The trouble with you two is that -neither one of you wants Old Man Murtrie around where you will have to -look at him through all eternity, and each of you is trying to put it on -moral grounds." - -And Old Man Murtrie kept on living and praying and being pious and -wanting to be bad and not daring to and taking his medicine and being -generally as ineffectual in the world either for good or evil as a -butterfly in a hurricane. - -But things took a turn. There was a faded-looking blonde woman with -stringy hair by the name of Mable who assisted Old Man Murtrie in the -store, keeping his books and waiting on customers, and so forth. She was -unmarried, and one day she announced to him that she was going to have a -child. - -Old Man Murtrie had often looked at her with a recollection, a dim and -faint remembrance, of the lusts of his youth and of his middle age. -In his youth and middle age he had lusted after many women, but he had -never let any of them know it, because he was afraid, and he had called -his fears virtue, and had really believed that he was virtuous. - -"Whom do you suspect?" asked Old Man Murtrie, leering at Mable like a -wraith blown down the ages from the dead adulteries of ruined Babylon. - -"Who?" cried Mable, an unlessoned person, but with a cruel, instinctive -humor. "Who but you!" - -She had expected Old Man Murtrie to be outraged at her ridiculous joke, -and, because she was unhappy herself, had anticipated enjoying his -astounded protests. But it was she who was astounded. Old Man Murtrie's -face was blank and his eyes were big for a moment, and then he chuckled; -a queer little cackling chuckle. And when she went out he opened the -door for her and cocked his head and cackled again. - -It gave Mable an idea. She reflected that he took so much opium that he -might possibly be led to believe the incredible, and she might get some -money out of him. So the next evening she brought her mother and her -brother to the store and accused him. - -Old Man Murtrie chuckled and... _and admitted it!_ Whether he believed -that it could be true or not, Mable and her people were unable to -determine. But they made the tactical error of giving him his choice -between marriage and money, and he chose matrimony. - -And then Old Man Murtrie was suddenly seized with a mania for -confession. God and Death and the Devil used to listen to him nights, -and they wondered over him, and began to change their minds about him, a -little. He confessed to the officials of his church. He confessed to all -the people whom he knew. He insisted on making a confession, a public -confession, in the church itself and asking for the prayers of the -preacher and congregation for his sin, and telling them that he was -going to atone by matrimony, and asking for a blessing on the wedding. - -And one night, full of opium, while he-was babbling about it in his -sleep, God and Death and the Devil sat on the prescription counter again -and looked at him and listened to his ravings and speculated. - -"I'm going to have him," said the Devil. "Any one who displays such -conspicuous bad taste that he goes around confessing that he has ruined -a woman ought to go to Hell." - -"You don't want him for that reason," said God. "And you know you don't. -You want him because you admire the idea of adultery, and think that now -he is worthy of a place in Hell. You are rather entertained by Old Man -Murtrie, and want him around now." - -"Well," said the Devil, "suppose I admit that is true! Have you any -counter claim?" - -"Yes," said God. "I am going to take Old Man Murtrie into Heaven. He -knows he is not the father of the child that is going to be born, but he -has deliberately assumed the responsibility lest it be born fatherless, -and I think that is a noble act." - -"Rubbish!" said the Devil. "That isn't the reason you want him. You want -him because of the paternal instinct he displays. It flatters you!" - -"Well," said God, "why not? The paternal instinct is another name for -the great creative force of the universe. I have been known by many -names in many countries... they called me Osiris, the All-Father, in -Egypt, and they called me Jehovah in Palestine, and they called me -Zeus and Brahm... but always they recognized me as the Father. And this -instinct for fatherliness appeals to me. Old Man Murtrie shall come to -Heaven." - -"Such a pair as you two," said Death, gloomily, "I never did see! -Discuss and discuss, but never get anywhere! And all the time Old Man -Murtrie goes on living." - -And then Death added: - -"Why not settle this matter once and for all, right now? Why not wake -Old Man Murtrie up and let him decide?" - -"Decide?" asked the Devil. - -"Yes,--whether he wants to go to Hell or to Heaven." - -"I imagine," said God, "that if we do that there can be no question as -to which place he would rather go to." - -"Oh, I don't know," said the Devil. "Some people come to Hell quite -willingly. I've been to Heaven myself, you know, and I can quite -understand why. Are you afraid to have Old Man Murtrie make the choice?" - -"Wake him up, Death, wake him up," said God. "It's unusual to allow -people to know that they are making their own decision--though all of -them, in a sense, do make it--but wake him up, Death, and we'll see." - -So Death prodded Old Man Murtrie in the ribs, and they asked him. For a -long time he thought it was only opium, but when he finally understood -that it was really God and Death and the Devil who were there, and that -it was really they who had often been there before, he was very much -frightened. He was so frightened he couldn't choose. - -"I'll leave it to you, I'll leave it to you," said Old Man Murtrie. "Who -am I that I should set myself up to decide?" - -"Well," said God, getting a little angry, perhaps, "if you don't want to -go to Heaven, Murtrie, you don't have to. But you've been, praying to go -to Heaven, and all that sort of thing, for seventy or eighty years, and -I naturally thought you were in earnest. But I'm through with you... you -can go to Hell." - -"Oh! Oh! Oh!" moaned Old Man Murtrie. - -"No," said the Devil, "I've changed my mind, too. My distaste for -Murtrie has returned to me. I don't want him around. I won't have him in -Hell." - -"See here, now!" cried Death. "You two are starting it all over again. -I won't have it, so I won't! You aren't fair to Murtrie, and you aren't -fair to me! This matter has got to be settled, and settled to-night!" - -"Well, then," said God, "settle it. I've ceased to care one way or -another." - -"I will not," said Death, "I know my job, and I stick to my job. One of -you two has got to settle it." - -"Toss a coin," suggested the Devil, indifferently. - -Death looked around for one. - -"There's a qu-qu-quarter in m-m-my t-t-trousers' p-p-pocket," stammered -Old Man Murtrie, and then stuck his head under the bedclothes and -shivered as if he had the ague. - -Death picked up Murtrie's poor little weazened trousers from the floor -at the foot of the cot, where they lay sprawled untidily, and shook them -till the quarter dropped out. - -He picked it up. - -"Heads, he goes to Heaven. Tails, he goes to Hell," said Death, and -tossed the coin to the ceiling. Murtrie heard it hit the ceiling, and -started. He heard it hit the floor, and bounce, and jingle and spin and -roll and come to rest. And he thrust his head deeper under the covers -and lay there quaking. He did not dare look. - -"Look at it, Murtrie," said Death. - -"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned Murtrie, shaking the cot. - -But Death reached over and caught him by the neck and turned his face so -that he could not help seeing. And Old Man Murtrie looked and saw that -the coin had fallen with the side up that sent him to---- - -But, really, why should I tell you? Go and worry about your own soul, -and let Old Man Murtrie's alone. - - - - -III.--Never Say Die - -|There seemed nothing left but suicide. - -But how? In what manner? By what method? Mr. Gooley lay on his bed and -thought--or tried to think. The pain in his head, which had been there -ever since the day after he had last eaten, prevented easy and coherent -thought. - -It had been three days ago that the pain left his stomach and went into -his head. Hunger had become a cerebral thing, he told himself. His body -had felt hunger so long that it refused to feel it any longer; it had -shifted the burden to his brain. - -"It has passed the buck to my mind, my stomach has," murmured Mr. Gooley -feebly. And the mind, less by the process of coherent and connected -thought than by a sudden impulsive pounce, had grasped the idea of -suicide. - -"Not with a knife," considered Mr. Gooley. He had no knife. He had no -money to buy a knife. He had no strength to go down the three flights -of stairs in the cheap Brooklyn lodging house where he lay, and borrow a -knife from the landlady who came and went vaguely in the nether regions, -dim and damp and dismal. - -"Not with a knife," repeated Mr. Gooley. And a large cockroach, which -had been crawling along the footpiece of the old-fashioned wooden bed, -stopped crawling at the words as if it understood, and turned about and -looked at him. - -Mr. Gooley wondered painfully, for it was a pain even to wonder about -anything, why this cockroach should remind him of somebody who was -somehow connected with a knife, and not unpleasantly connected with a -knife. The cockroach stood up on the hindmost pair of his six legs, and -seemed to put his head on one side and motion with his front legs at Mr. -Gooley. - -"I get you," said Mr. Gooley, conscious that his mind was wandering from -the point, and willing to let it wander. "I know who you are! You were -Old Man Archibald Hammil, the hardware merchant back in Mapletown, where -I was a kid, before you dried up and turned into a cockroach." And Mr. -Gooley wept a few weak tears. For old Archibald Hammil, the village -hardware merchant, had sold him the first knife he had ever owned. -His father had taken him into Hammil's store to buy it on his seventh -birthday, for a present, and it had had a buckhorn handle and two -blades. Again he saw Old Man Hammil in his dingy brown clothes, looking -at him, with his head on one side, as this cockroach was doing. Again -he felt his father pat him on the head, and heard him say always to -remember to whittle _away_ from himself, never _toward_ himself. And he -saw himself, shy and flushed and eager, a freckle-faced boy as good and -as bad as most boys, looking up at his father and wriggling and wanting -to thank him, and not knowing how. That was nearly forty years ago--and -here he was, a failure and starving and------ - -_Why_ had he wanted a knife? Yes, he remembered now! To kill himself -with. - -"It's none of your damned business, Old Man Hammil," he said to the -cockroach, which was crawling back and forth on the footboard, and -pausing every now and then to look at him with disapproval. - -Old Man Hammil had had ropes in his store, too, and guns and pistols, -he remembered. He hadn't thought of Old Man Hammi's store in many years; -but now he saw it, and the village street outside it, and the place -where the stores left off on the street and the residences began, and -berry bushes, and orchards, and clover in the grass--the random bloom, -the little creek that bounded the town, and beyond the creek the open -country with its waving fields of oats and rye and com. His head hurt -him worse. He would go right back into Old Man Hammil's store and get a -rope or a gun and end that pain. - -But _that_ was foolish, too. There wasn't any store. There was only Old -Man Hammil here, shrunk to the size of a cockroach, in his rusty brown -suit, looking at him from the footboard of the bed and telling him in -pantomime not to kill himself. - -"I will too!" cried Mr. Gooley to Old Man Hammil. And he repeated, "It's -none of _your_ damned business!" - -But how? Not with a knife. He had none. Not with a gun. He had none. Not -with a rope. He had none. He thought of his suspenders. But they would -never hold him. - -"Too weak, even for me," muttered Mr. Gooley. "I have shrunk so I -don't weigh much more than Old Man Hammil there, but even at that those -suspenders would never do the business." - -How did people kill themselves? He must squeeze his head till the pain -let up a little, so he could think. Poison! That was it--yes, poison! -And then he cackled out a small, dry, throaty laugh, his Adam's apple -fluttering in his weazened throat under his sandy beard. Poison! He -_hadn't_ any poison. He hadn't any money with which to buy poison. - -And then began a long, broken and miserable debate within himself. If he -had money enough with which to buy poison, would he go and buy poison? -Or go and buy a bowl of soup? It was some moments before Mr. Gooley -decided. - -"I'd be game," he said. "I'd buy the soup. I'd give myself that one more -chance. I must remember while I'm killing myself, that I'm not killing -myself because I _want_ to. I'm just doing it because I've _got_ to. I'm -not romantic. I'm just all in. It's the end; that's all." - -Old Man Hammil, on the footboard of the bed, permitted himself a series -of gestures which Mr. Gooley construed as applause of this resolution. -They angered Mr. Gooley, those gestures. - -"You shut up!" he told the cockroach, although that insect had not -spoken, but only made signs. "This is none of your damned business, Old -Man Hammil!" - -Old Man Hammil, he remembered, had always been a meddlesome old -party--one of the village gossips, in fact. And that set him to thinking -of Mapletown again. - -The mill pond near the schoolhouse would soon be freezing over, and -the boys would be skating on it--it was getting into December. And they -would be going into Old Man Hammil's store for skates and straps and -heel plates and files. And he remembered his first pair of skates, and -how his father had taught him the proper way to keep them sharp with a -file. He and the old dad had always been pretty good pals, and---- - -Good God! Why _should_ he be coming back to that? And to Old Man -Hammil's store? It was that confounded cockroach there, reminding him of -Old Man Hammil, that had done it. He wanted to die decently and quietly, -and as quickly as might be, without thinking of all these things. -He didn't want to lie there and die of starvation, he wanted to kill -himself and be done with it without further misery--and it was a part -of the ridiculous futility of his life, his baffled and broken and -insignificant life, that he couldn't even kill himself competently--that -he lay there suffering and ineffectual and full of self-pity, a prey to -memories and harassing visions of the past, all mingled with youth and -innocence and love, without the means of a quick escape. It was that -damned cockroach, looking like Old Man Hammil, the village hardware -merchant, that had brought back the village and his youth to him, and -all those intolerable recollections. - -He took his dirty pillow and feebly menaced the cockroach. Feeble as the -gesture was, the insect took alarm. It disappeared from the footboard -of the bed. A minute later, however, he saw it climbing the wall. It -reached the ceiling, and crawled to the center of the room. Mr. Goo-ley -watched it. He felt as if he, too, could crawl along the ceiling. He had -the crazy notion of trying. After all, he told himself light-headedly, -Old Cockroach Hammil up there on the ceiling had been friendly--the only -friendly thing, human or otherwise, that had made overtures to him in -many, many months. And he had scared Cockroach Hammil away! He shed some -more maudlin tears. - -What was the thing doing now? He watched as the insect climbed on to -the gas pipe that came down from the ceiling. It descended the rod and -perched itself on the gas jet. From this point of vantage it began once -more to regard Mr. Gooley with a singular intentness. - -Ah! Gas! That was it! What a fool he had been not to think of it sooner! -That was the way people killed themselves! Gas! - -Mr. Gooley got himself weakly out of bed. He would get the thing over as -quickly as possible now. It would be damnably unpleasant before he lost -consciousness, no doubt, and painful. But likely not more unpleasant and -painful than his present state. And he simply could not bear any more of -those recollections, any more visions. - -He turned his back on the cockroach, which was watching him from the -gas jet, and went methodically to work. The window rattled; between the -upper and lower sashes there was a crevice a quarter of an inch wide. He -plugged it with paper. There was a break in the wall of his closet; the -plaster had fallen away, and a chink allowed the cockroaches from his -room easy access to the closet of the adjoining room. He plugged that -also, and was about to turn his attention to the keyhole, when there -came a knock on his door. - -Mr. Gooley's first thought was: "What can any one want with a dead man?" -For he looked upon himself as already dead. There came a second knock, -more peremptory than the first, and he said mechanically, "Come in!" It -would have to be postponed a few minutes, that was all. - -The door opened, and in walked his landlady. She was a tall and bulky -and worried-looking woman, who wore a faded blond wig that was always -askew, and Mr. Gooley was afraid of her. Her wig was more askew than -usual when she entered, and he gathered from this that she was angry -about something--why the devil must she intrude her trivial mundane -anger upon himself, a doomed man? It was not seemly. - -"Mr. Gooley," she began severely, without preamble, "I have always -looked on you as a gentleman." - -"Yes?" he murmured dully. - -"But you ain't," she continued. "You ain't no better than a cheat." - -He shrugged his shoulders patiently. He supposed that she was right -about it. He owed her three weeks' room rent, and he was going to die -and beat her out of it. But he couldn't help it. - -"It ain't the room rent," she went on, as if vaguely cognizant of the -general trend of his thoughts. "It ain't the room rent alone. You either -pay me that or you don't pay me that, and if you don't, out you go. But -while you are here, you must conduct yourself as a gentleman should!" - -"Well," murmured Mr. Gooley, "haven't I?" - -And the cockroach, perched on the gas jet above the landlady's head, and -apparently listening to this conversation, moved several of his legs, as -if in surprise. - -"You have not!" said the landlady, straightening her wig. - -"What have I done, Mrs. Hinkley?" asked Mr. Gooley humbly. And Old -Cockroach Hammil from his perch also made signs of inquiry. - -"What have you done! What have you done!" cried Mrs. Hinkley. "As if the -man didn't know what he had done I You've been stealin' my gas, that's -what you have been doin'--stealin', I say, and there's no other word for -it!" - -Mr. Gooley started guiltily. He had not been stealing her gas, but it -came over him with a shock for the first time that that was what he -had, in effect, been planning to do. The cockroach, as if it also felt -convicted of sin, gave the gas jet a glance of horror and moved up the -rod to the ceiling, where it continued to listen. - -"Stealin'!" repeated Mrs. Hinkley. "That's what it is, nothin' else -but stealin'. You don't ever stop to think when you use one of them gas -plates to cook in your room, Mr. Gooley--which it is expressly forbid -and agreed on that no cooking shall be done in these rooms when they're -rented to you--that it's my gas you're using, and that I have to pay for -it, and that it's just as much stealin' as if you was to put your hand -into my pocket-book and take my money!" - -"Cooking? Gas plate?" muttered Mr. Gooley. "Don't say you ain't got -one!" cried Mrs. Hinkley. "You all got 'em! Every last one of you! Don't -you try to come none of your sweet innocence dodges over me. I know -you, and the whole tribe of you! I ain't kept lodgers for thirty years -without knowing the kind of people they be! 'Gas plate! Gas plate!' says -you, as innocent as if you didn't know what a gas plate was! You got it -hid here somewheres, and I ain't going to stir from this room until I -get my hands on it and squash it under my feet! Come across with it, Mr. -Gooley, come across with it!" - -"But I _haven't_ one," said Mr. Gooley, very ill and very weary. "You -can look, if you want to." - -And he lay back upon the bed. The cockroach slyly withdrew himself from -the ceiling, came down the wall, and crawled to the foot of the bed -again. If Mrs. Hinkley noticed him, she said nothing; perhaps it was not -a part of her professional policy to draw attention to cockroaches on -the premises. She stood and regarded Mr. Gooley for some moments, while -he turned his head away from her in apathy. Her first anger seemed to -have spent itself. But finally, with a new resolution, she said: "And -look I will! You got one, or else that blondined party in the next room -has lied." - -She went into the closet and he heard her opening his trunk. She pulled -it into the bedroom and examined the interior. It didn't take long. She -dived under the bed and drew out his battered suitcase, so dilapidated -that he had not been able to get a quarter for it at the pawnshop, but -no more dilapidated than his trunk. - -She seemed struck, for the first time since her entrance, with the utter -bareness of the room. Outside of the bed, one chair, the bureau, and -Mr. Cooley's broken shoes at the foot of the bed, there was absolutely -nothing in it. - -She sat down in the chair beside the bed. "Mr. Gooley," she said, "you -_ain't_ got any gas plate." - -"No," he said. - -"Mr. Gooley," she said, "you got _nothing at all._ - -"No," he said, "nothing." - -"You had a passel of books and an overcoat five or six weeks ago," she -said, "when you come here. It was seein' them books, and knowing what -you was four or five years ago, when you lived here once before, that -made me sure you was a gentleman." - -Mr. Gooley made no reply. The cockroach on the foot of the bed also -seemed to be listening to see if Mrs. Hinkley had anything more to say, -and suspending judgment. - -"Mr. Gooley," said the landlady, "I beg your pardon. You was lied on by -one that has a gas plate herself, and when I taxed her with it, and took -it away from her, and got rid of her, she had the impudence to say she -thought it was _allowed_, and that everybody done it, and named you as -one that did." - -Mrs. Hinkley paused, but neither Mr. Gooley nor the cockroach had -anything to contribute to the conversation. - -"Gas," continued Mrs. Hinkley, "is gas. And gas costs money. I hadn't -orter jumped on you the way I did, Mr. Gooley, but gas plates has got -to be what you might call corns on my brain, Mr. Gooley. They're my -sensitive spot, Mr. Gooley. If I was to tell you the half of what I have -had to suffer from gas plates during the last thirty years, Mr. Gooley, -you wouldn't believe it! There's them that will cheat you one way and -there's them that will cheat you another, but the best of them will -cheat you with gas plates, Mr. Gooley. With the exception of yourself, -Mr. Gooley, I ain't had a lodger in thirty years that wouldn't rob me -on the gas. Some don't think it's stealin', Mr. Gooley, when they steal -gas. And some of 'em don't care if it is. But there ain't none of 'em -ever thinks what a _landlady_ goes through with, year in and year out." - -She paused for a moment, and then, overcome with self-pity, she began to -sniffle. - -"And my rent's been raised on me again, Mr. Gooley! And I'm a month -behind! And if I ain't come across with the two months, the old month -and the new, by day after to-morrow, out I goes; and it means the -poorhouse as fur as I can see, because I don't know anything else but -keeping lodgers, and I got no place to go!" - -She gathered her apron up and wiped her eyes and nose with it. The -cockroach on the footboard wiped his front set of feet across his face -sympathetically. - -"I got it all ready but fifteen dollars," continued Mrs. Hinkley, "and -then in comes the gas bill this morning with _arrears_ onto it. It is -them _arrears_, Mr. Gooley, that always knocks me out! If it wasn't for -them arrears, I could get along. And now I got to pay out part of the -rent money onto the gas bill, with them arrears on it, or the gas will -be shut off this afternoon." - -The pain in Mr. Gooley's head was getting worse. He wished she would go. -He hated hearing her troubles. But she continued: - -"It's the way them arrears come onto the bill, Mr. Gooley, that has got -me sore. About a week before you come here again to live, Mr. Gooley, -there was a fellow stole fifteen dollars worth of my gas all at once. He -went and killed himself, Mr. Gooley, and he used my gas to do it with. -It leaked out of two jets for forty-eight hours up on the top floor, -before the door was busted in and the body was found, and it came -to fifteen dollars, and all on account of that man's cussedness, Mr. -Gooley, I will likely get turned out into the street, and me sixty years -old and no place to turn." - -Mr. Gooley sat up in bed feebly and looked at her. She _was_ in real -trouble--in about as much trouble as he was. The cockroach walked -meditatively up and down the footboard, as if thinking it over very -seriously. - -Mrs. Hinkley finally rose. - -"Mr. Gooley," she said, regarding him sharply, "you look kind o' done -up!" - -"Uh-huh," said Mr. Gooley. - -She lingered in the room for a few seconds more, irresolutely, and then -departed. - -Mr. Gooley thought. Gas was barred to him now. He couldn't bring himself -to do it with gas. There was still a chance that the old woman might -get hold of the gas money and the rent money, too, and go on for a few -years, but if he selfishly stole twelve or fifteen dollars' worth of gas -from her this afternoon it might be just the thing that would plunge her -into immediate destitution. At any rate, it was, as she had said, like -stealing money from her pocketbook. He thought of what her life as a -rooming-house keeper must have been, and pitied her. He had known many -rooming houses. The down-and-outers know how to gauge the reality and -poignancy of the troubles of the down-and-out. No, he simply could not -do it with gas. - -He must think of some other method. He was on the fourth floor. He might -throw himself out of the window onto the brick walk at the back of the -building, and die. He shuddered as he thought of it. To jump from a -twentieth story, or from the top of the Woolworth Tower, to a certain -death is one thing. To contemplate a fall of three or four stories that -may maim you without killing you, is another. - -Nevertheless, he would do it. He pulled the paper out of the crevice -between the window sashes, opened the window and looked down. He saw the -back stoop and there was a dirty mop beside it; there was an ash can, -and there were two garbage cans there. And there was a starved cat that -sat and looked up at him. He had a tremor and drew back and covered his -face with his hands as he thought of that cat--that knowing cat, that -loathsome, that obscene cat. - -He sat down on the edge of the bed to collect his strength and summon -his resolution. The cockroach had crawled to the head of the bed and -seemed to wish to partake of his thoughts. - -"Damn you, Old Archibald Hammil!" he cried. And he scooped the cockroach -into his hand with a sudden sweep and flung it out of the window. The -insect fell without perceptible discomfort, and at once began to climb -up the outside wall again, making for the window. - -The door opened and Mrs. Hinkley entered, her face cleft with a grin, -and a tray in her hands. - -"Mr. Gooley," she said, setting it on the wash-stand, "I'll bet you -ain't had nothing to eat today!" - -On the tray was a bowl of soup, a half loaf of bread with a long keen -bread knife, a pat of butter, a boiled egg and a cup of coffee. - -"No, nor yesterday, either," said Mr. Gooley, and he looked at the soup -and at the long keen bread knife. - -"Here's something else I want to show you, Mr. Gooley," said the -landlady, dodging out of the door and back in again instantly. She bore -in her hands this time a surprising length of flexible gas tubing, and a -small nickel-plated pearl-handled revolver. - -"You see that there gas tubing?" she said. - -"That is what that blondined party in the next room had on to her gas -plate--the nerve of her! Strung from the gas jet clear across the room -to the window sill. And when I throwed her out, Mr. Gooley, she wouldn't -pay her rent, and I took this here revolver to part pay it. What kind of -a woman is it, Mr. Gooley, that has a revolver in her room, and a loaded -one, too?" - -Just then the doorbell rang in the dim lower regions, and she left the -room to answer it. - -And Mr. Gooley sat and looked at the knife, with which he might so -easily stab himself, and at the gas cord, with which he might so easily -hang himself, and at the loaded revolver, with which he might so easily -shoot himself. - -He looked also at the bowl of soup. - -He had the strength to reflect--a meal is a meal. But _after_ that meal, -what? Penniless, broken in health, friendless, a failure--why prolong it -for another twenty-four hours? A meal would prolong it, but that was -all a meal _would_ do--and after that would come the suffering and the -despair and the end to be faced all over again. - -Was he man enough to take the pistol and do it now? - -Or did true manhood lie the other way? Was he man enough to drink the -soup, and dare to live and hope? - -Just then the cockroach, which had climbed into the window and upon the -washstand, made for the bowl of soup. - -"Here!" cried Mr. Gooley, grabbing the bowl in both hands, "Old Man -Hammil! Get away from that soup!" - -And the bowl being in his hands, he drank. - -"What do you mean by Old Man Hammil?" - -It was Mrs. Hinkley who spoke. She stood again in the doorway, with a -letter in her hands and a look of wonder on her face. - -Mr. Gooley set down the soup bowl. By an effort of the will he had -only drunk half the liquid. He had heard somewhere that those who are -suffering from starvation had better go slow at first when they get hold -of food again. And he already felt better, warmed and resurrected, from -the first gulp. - -"What," demanded the landlady, "do you mean by yelling out about Old Man -Hammil?" - -"Why," said Mr. Gooley, feeling foolish, and looking it, "I was talking -to that cockroach there. He looks sort of like some one I knew when I -was a kid, by the name of Hammil--Archibald Hammil." - -"_Where_ was you a kid?" asked Mrs. Hinkley. - -"In a place called Mapletown--Mapletown, Illinois," said Mr. Gooley. -"There's where I knew Old Man Hammil." - -"Well," said the landlady, "when you go back there you won't see him. -He's dead. He died a week ago. This letter tells it. I was his niece. -And the old man went and left me his hardware store. I never expected -it. But all his kids is dead--it seems he outlived 'em all, and he was -nearly ninety when he passed away." - -"Well," said Mr. Gooley, "I don't remember you." - -"You wouldn't," said the landlady. "You must have been in short pants -when I ran away from home and married the hardware drummer. But I'll bet -you the old-timers in that burg still remembers it against me!" - -"The kids will be coming into that store about now to get their skates -sharpened," said Mr. Gooley, looking at the boiled egg. - -"Uh-huh!" said Mrs. Hinkley. "Don't you want to go back home and help -sharpen 'em? I'm goin' back and run that there store, and I'll need a -clerk, I suppose." - -"Uh-huh," said Mr. Gooley, breaking the eggshell. - -The cockroach, busy with a crumb on the floor, waved his three starboard -legs genially at Mr. Gooley and Mrs. Hinkley--as if, in fact, he were -winking with his feet. - - - - -IV.--McDermott - -|McDermott had gone over with a cargo of mules. The animals were -disembarked at a Channel port, received by officers of that grand -organization which guesses right so frequently, the Quartermaster Corps, -and started in a southerly direction, in carload lots, toward the Toul -sector of the Western Front. McDermott went with one of the carloads -in an unofficial capacity. He had no business in the war zone. But the -Quartermaster Corps, or that part of it in charge of his particular car, -was in no mood to be harsh toward any one who seemed to understand the -wants and humors of mules and who was willing to associate with them. -And so, with his blue overalls and his red beard, McDermott went along. - -"I'll have a look at the war," said McDermott, "and if I like it, I'll -jine it." - -"And if you don't like it," said the teamster to whom he confided his -intention, "I reckon you'll stop it?" - -"I dunno," replied McDermott, "as I would be justified in stoppin' a -good war. The McDermotts has niver been great hands f'r stoppin' wars. -The McDermotts is always more like to be startin' wars." - -McDermott got a look at the war sooner than any one, including the high -command of the Entente Allies, would have thought likely--or, rather, -the war got a look at McDermott. The carload of mules, separated from -its right and proper train, got too far eastward at just the time -the Germans got too far westward. It was in April, 1918, that, having -entered Hazebrouck from the north, McDermott and his mules left it -again, bound eastward. They passed through a turmoil of guns and -lorries, Scotchmen and ambulances, Englishmen, tanks and ammunition -wagons, Irishmen, colonials and field kitchens, all moving slowly -eastward, and came to a halt at a little village where they should not -have been at all, halfway between the northern rim of the forest of -Nieppe and Bailleul. - -The mules did not stay there long. - -"I'll stretch me legs a bit," said McDermott, climbing off the car -and strolling toward a Grande Place surrounded by sixteenth-century -architecture. And just then something passed over the Renaissance roofs -with the scream of one of Dante's devils, struck McDermott's car of -mules with a great noise and a burst of flame, and straightway created a -situation in which there was neither car nor mules. - -For a minute it seemed to McDermott that possibly there was no -McDermott, either. When McDermott regained consciousness of McDermott, -he was sitting on the ground, and he sat there and felt of himself for -many seconds before he spoke or rose. Great guns he had been hearing for -hours, and a rattle and roll of small-arms fire had been getting nearer -all that day; but it seemed to McDermott that there was something quite -vicious and personal about the big shell that had separated him forever -from his mules. Not that he had loved the mules, but he loved McDermott. - -"Mules," said he, still sitting on the ground, but trying to get his -philosophy of life on to its legs again, "is here wan minute an' gawn -the nixt. Mules is fickle an' untrustworthy animals. Here was thim -mules, wigglin' their long ears and arsk-in' f'r Gawd's sake c'u'd they -have a dhrink of wather, an' promisin' a lifelong friendship--but where -is thim mules now?" - -He scratched his red head as he spoke, feeling-of an old scar under the -thick thatch of hair. The wound had been made some years previously -with a bung starter, and whenever McDermott was agitated he caressed it -tenderly. - -He got up, turned about and regarded the extraordinary Grande Place. -There had once been several pretty little shops about it, he could see, -with pleasant courtyards, where the April sun was trying to bring green -things into life again, but now some of these were in newly made and -smoking ruins. The shell that had stricken McDermott's mules from the -roster of existence had not been the only one to fall into the village -recently. - -But it was neither old ruins nor new ruins that interested McDermott -chiefly. It was the humanity that flowed through the Grande Place in a -feeble trickle westward, and the humanity that stayed there. - -Women and old men went by with household treasures slung in bundles or -pushed before them in carts and perambulators, and they were wearing -their best clothes, as if they were going to some village fete, instead -of into desolation and homelessness; the children whom they carried, or -who straggled after them, were also in their holiday best. Here was an -ancient peasant with a coop of skinny chickens on a barrow; there was a -girl in a silk gown carrying something in a bed quilt; yonder was a boy -of twelve on a bicycle, and two things were tied to the handlebars--a -loaf of bread and a soldier's bayonet. Perhaps it had been his father's -bayonet. Quietly they went westward; their lips were dumb and their -faces showed their souls were dumb, too. A long time they had heard the -battle growling to the eastward; and now the war was upon them. It was -upon them, indeed; for as McDermott gazed, another shell struck full -upon a bell-shaped tower that stood at the north side of the Grande -Place and it leaped up in flames and fell in dust and ruin, all gone but -one irregular point of masonry that still stuck out like a snaggle tooth -from a trampled skull. - -These were the ones that were going, and almost the last of the -dreary pageant disappeared as McDermott watched. But those who stayed -astonished him even more by their strange actions and uncouth postures. - -"Don't tell me," mumbled McDermott, rubbing his scar, "that all thim -sojers is aslape!" - -But asleep they were. To the east and to the north the world was one rip -and rat-a-tat of rifle and machine-gun fire--how near, McDermott could -not guess--and over the village whined and droned the shells, of -great or lesser caliber; here was one gate to a hell of noise, and the -buildings stirred and the budding vines in the courtyards moved and -the dust itself was agitated with the breath and blast of far and near -concussions; but yet the big open Place itself was held in the grip of a -grotesque and incredible slumber. - -Sprawled in the gutters, collapsed across the doorsills, leaning against -the walls, slept that portion of the British army; slept strangely, -without snoring. In the middle of the Grande Place there was a young -lieutenant bending forward across the wreck of a motor car; he had tried -to pluck forth a basket from the tonneau and sleep had touched him with -his fingers on the handle. And from the eastern fringes of the village -there entered the square, as actors enter upon a stage, a group of -a dozen men, with their arms linked together, swaying and dazed and -stumbling. At first McDermott thought that wounded were being helped -from the field. But these men were not wounded; they were walking in -their sleep, and the group fell apart, as McDermott looked at them, and -sank severally to the cobblestones. Scotchmen, Canadians, English, torn -and battered remnants of many different commands, they had striven with -their guns and bodies for more than a week to dam the vast, rising wave -of the German attack--day melting into night and night burning into day -again, till there was no such thing as time to them any longer; there -were but two things in the world, battle and weariness, weariness and -battle. - -McDermott moved across the square unchallenged. He had eaten and slept -but little for two days himself, and he made instinctively for the open -door of an empty inn, to search for food. In the doorway he stumbled -across a lad who roused and spoke to him. - -"Jack," said the boy, looking at him with red eyes out of an old, worn -face, "have you got the makin's?" - -He was in a ragged and muddied Canadian uniform, but McDermott guessed -that he was an American. - -"I have that," said McDermott, producing papers and tobacco. But the boy -had lapsed into slumber again. McDermott rolled the cigarette for him, -placed it between his lips, waked him and lighted it for him. - -The boy took a puff or two, and then said dreamily: "And what the hell -are you doin' here with them blue overalls on?" - -"I come to look at the war," said McDermott. - -The soldier glanced around the Grande Place, and a gleam of deviltry -flashed through his utter exhaustion. "So you come to see the war, huh? -Well, don't you wake it now. It's restin'. But if you'll take a chair -and set down, I'll have it--called--for--you--in--in--in 'n 'our--or -so------" - -His voice tailed off into sleep once more; he mangled the cigarette, the -tobacco mingling with the scraggly beard about his drawn mouth; his head -fell forward upon his chest. McDermott stepped past him into the Hotel -Faucon, as the inn had called itself. He found no food, but he found -liquor there. - -"Frinch booze," said McDermott, getting the cork out of a bottle of -brandy and sniffing it; "but booze is booze!" - -And more booze is more booze, especially upon an empty stomach. It was -after the fourth drink that McDermott pulled his chair up to one of the -open windows of the inn and sat down, with the brandy beside him. - -"I'm neglictin' that war I come all this way to see," said McDermott. - -The Grande Place, still shaken by the tremendous and unceasing -pulsations of battle, far and near, was beginning to wake up. A fresh, -or, at least, a fresher, battalion was arriving over the spur line of -railroad along which McDermott's mules had been so mistakenly shunted, -and was moving eastward through the town to the firing line. The men -whom McDermott had seen asleep were rising at the word of command; -taking their weapons, falling in, and staggering back to the -interminable battle once more. - -"I dunno," mused McDermott, as the tired men straggled past, "whether I -want to be afther j'inin' that war or not. It makes all thim lads that -slapey! I dunno phwat the devil it is, the Frinch booze bein' so close -to me, inside, or that war so close to me, outside, but I'm gittin' -slapey m'silf." - -It was, likely, the brandy. There had not been a great deal of French -brandy in McDermott's previous experience, and he did not stint himself. -It was somewhere between the ninth and the fifteenth swallows of it that -McDermott remarked to himself, rubbing the scar on his head: - -"I w'u'd jine that war now, if I c'u'd be sure which way it had wint!" - -And then he slid gently out of his chair and went to sleep on the floor -just inside the open window of the Hotel Faucon. - -The war crept closer and took another look at McDermott. As the warm -golden afternoon waned, the British troops, fighting like fiends for -every inch of ground, exacting a ghastly toll of lives from the Germans, -were forced back into the eastern outskirts of the town. There, with -rifle and machine gun, from walls, trees, courtyards, roofs and ruins, -they held the advancing Germans for an hour. But they were pushed back -again, doggedly establishing themselves in the houses of the Grande -Place. Neither British nor Germans were dropping shells into that -village now, each side fearful of damaging its own men. - -A British subaltern with a machine gun and two private soldiers entered -the inn and were setting the gun up at McDermott's window when a -German bullet struck the officer and he fell dead across the slumbering -McDermott. Nevertheless, the gun was manned and fought for half an hour -above McDermott, who stirred now and then, but did not waken. Just at -dusk an Irish battalion struck the Germans on the right flank of their -assaulting force, a half mile to the north of the village, rolled them -back temporarily, and cleared the village of them. This counter attack -took the firing line a good thousand yards eastward once more. - -McDermott roused, crawled from beneath the body of the British officer, -and viewed it with surprise. "That war has been here ag'in an' me -aslape," said McDermott. "I might jine that war if I c'u'd ketch up wid -it--but 'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gawn ag'in! An' how c'u'd I jine it -wid no weapons, not even a good thick club to m' hands?" - -He foraged and found a piece of sausage that he had overlooked in his -former search, ate it greedily and then stood in the doorway, listening -to the sound of the firing. It was getting dark and northward toward -Messines and Wytschaete and southward for more miles than he could guess -the lightning of big guns flickered along the sky. - -"Anny way I w'u'd go," mused McDermott, "I w'u'd run into that war if I -was thryin' to dodge ut. And anny wray I w'u'd go, I w'u'd miss that war -if I was thryin' to come up wid ut. An' till I make up me mind which wan -I want to do, here will I sthay." - -He opened another bottle of brandy, and drank and cogitated. Whether it -was the cogitation or the drinks or the effect of the racket of war, his -head began to ache dully. When McDermott's scar ached, it was his custom -to take another drink. After a while there came a stage at which, if it -still ached, he at least ceased to feel it aching any more. - -"The hotel here," he remarked, "is filled wid hospitality and midical -tratement, and where bet-ther c'u'd I be?" - -And presently, once more, a deep sleep overtook him. A deeper, more -profound sleep, indeed, than his former one. And this time the war came -still nearer to McDermott. - -The British were driven back again and again occupied the town, the -Germans in close pursuit. From house to house and from wall to wall -the struggle went on, with grenade, rifle and bayonet. A German, with -a Scotchman's steel in his chest, fell screaming, back through the open -window, and his blood as he died soaked McDermott's feet. But McDermott -slept. Full night came, thick and cloudy, and both sides sent up -floating flares. The square was strewn with the bodies of the dead and -the bodies of the maimed in increasing numbers; the wounded groaned and -whimpered in the shadows of the trampled Place, crawling, if they still -could crawl, to whatever bit of broken wall seemed to offer momentary -shelter and praying for the stretcher bearers to be speedy. But still -McDermott slept. - -At ten o'clock that night two Englishmen once more brought a machine gun -into the Hotel Faucon; they worked the weapon for twenty minutes from -the window within ten feet of which McDermott now lay with his brandy -bottle beside him. Once McDermott stirred; he sat up sleepily on the -floor and murmured: "An' where is that war now? Begad, an' I don't -belave there is anny war!" - -And he rolled over and went to sleep again. The men with the machine gun -did not notice him; they were too busy. A moment later one of them sank -with a bullet through his heart. His comrade lasted a little longer, and -then he, too, went down, a wound in his lungs. It took him some weary -minutes to choke and bleed to death, there in that dark place, upon the -floor, among the dead men and McDermott's brandy bottles and the heap -of ammunition he had brought with him. Hist struggle did not wake -McDermott. - -By midnight the British had been driven back until they held the houses -at the west end of the town and the end of the spur railroad that came -eastward from Hazebrouck. The Germans were in the eastern part of the -village, and between was a "no man's land," of which the Grande Place -was a part. What was left of the Hotel Faucon, with the sleeping -McDermott in it, was toward the middle of the south side of the square. -In the streets to the north and south of the Place patrols still clashed -with grenade and bayonet and rifle, but the Germans attempted no further -advance in any force after midnight. No doubt they were bringing up more -men; no doubt, with the first morning light, they would move forward a -regiment or two, possibly even a division, against the British who -still clung stubbornly to the western side of the town. All the way from -Wytschaete south to Givenchy the battle-line was broken up into many -little bitter struggles of this sort, the British at every point facing -great odds. - -When dawn came, there came with it a mist. And three men of a German -patrol, creeping from house to house and ruin to ruin along the south -side of that part of "no man's land" which was the Grande Place, entered -the open door of the Hotel Faucon. - -One of them stepped upon McDermott's stomach, where he lay sleeping and -dreaming of the war he had come to look at. - -McDermott, when he had been drinking, was often cross. And especially -was he cross if, when sleeping off his liquor, some one purposely or -inadvertently interfered with his rightful and legitimate rest. When -this coarse and heavy-footed intruder set his boot, albeit unwittingly, -upon McDermott's stomach, McDermott sat up with a bellow of rage, -instinctively and instantaneously grabbed the leg attached to the boot, -rose as burning rocks rise from a volcano, with the leg in his hands, -upset the man attached to the leg, and jumped with two large feet -accurately upon the back of that person's neck. Whereupon the Boche went -to Valhalla. McDermott, though nearer fifty than forty years old, was a -barroom fighter of wonderful speed and technique, and this instinctive -and spontaneous maneuver was all one motion, just as it is all one -motion when a cat in a cellar leaps over a sack of potatoes, lands upon -a rat, and sinks her teeth into a vital spot. The second German and -the third German hung back an instant toward the door, and then came -on toward the moving shadow in the midst of shadows. For their own good -they should have come on without hanging back that second; but perhaps -their training, otherwise so efficient, did not include barroom tactics. -Their hesitation gave McDermott just the time he needed, for when he -faced them he had the first German's gun in his hands. - -"No war," said McDermott, "can come into me slapin' chamber and stand on -me stomach like that, and expict me to take it peaceful!" - -With the words he fired the first German's rifle into the second -German. The third German, to the rear of the second one, fired his gun -simultaneously, but perhaps he was a hit flurried, for he also fired -directly into the second German, and there was nothing the second German -could do but die; which he did at once. McDermott leaped at the third -German with his rifle clubbed just as the man pressed the trigger again. -The bullet struck McDermott's rifle, splintered the butt of it and -knocked it from his hands; but a second later McDermott's hands were on -the barrel of the German's gun and the two of them were struggling for -it. - -There is one defect in the German military system, observers say: the -drill masters do not teach their men independent thinking; perhaps the -drill-masters do not have the most promising material to work upon. -At any rate, it occurred to McDermott to kick the third German in the -stomach while the third German was still thinking of nothing else than -trying to depress the gun to shoot or bayonet McDermott. Thought and -kick were as well coordinated as if they had proceeded from one of -McDermott's late mules. - -The Boche went to the floor of the Hotel Faucon with a groan. "Gott!" he -said. - -"A stomach f'r a stomach," said Mc-Dermott, standing over him with the -rifle. "Git up!" - -The German painfully arose. - -"Ye are me prisoner," said McDermott, "an' the furst wan I iver took. -Hould up y'r hands! Hould thim up, I say! Not over y'r stomach, man, but -over y'r head!" - -The Boche complied hurriedly. - -"I see ye understhand United States," said McDermott. "I was afraid ye -might not, an' I w'u'd have to shoot ye." - -"_Kamerad!_" exclaimed the man. - -"Ye are no comrade av mine," said McDermott, peering at the man's face -through the eery halflight of early morning, "an' comrade av mine ye -niver was! I know ye well! Ye are Goostave Schmidt b' name, an' wanst ye -tinded bar in a dive down b' the Brooklyn wather front!" - -The man stared at McDermott in silence for a long minute, and then -recollection slowly came to him. - -"MagDermodd!" he said. "Batrick MagDermodd!" - -"The same," said McDermott. - -"_Gott sei dank!_" said the German. "I haf fallen into der hands of -a friend." And with the beginning of a smile he started to lower his -hands. - -"Put thim up!" cried McDermott. "Don't desave y'silf! Ye are no fri'nd -av mine!" - -The smile faded, and something like a look of panic took its place on -the German's face. - -"Th' last time I saw ye, ye was in bad company, f'r ye was alone," said -McDermott. "An' I come over here lookin' f'r ye, an' I find ye in bad -company ag'in!" - -"Looking?" said the German with quite sincere perplexity. "You gome here -_looking_ for me?" - -The wonder on the man's face at this unpremeditated jest of his having -crossed the Atlantic especially to look for Gustave Schmidt titillated -McDermott's whole being. But he did not laugh, and he let the German -wonder. "And phwy sh'u'd I not?" he said. - -The German thought intensely for a while. "Why _should_ you gome all der -vay agross der Adlandic looking for _me?_" he said finally. - -"Ye have a short mimory," said McDermott. "Ye do not recollict the time -ye hit me on the head wid a bung starter whin I was too soused to defind -m'silf? The scar is there yet, bad luck to ye!" - -"But dot was nudding," said the German. "Dot bung-starder business was -all a bart of der day's vork." - -"But ye cript up behint me," said McDermott; "an' me soused!" - -"But dot was der bractical vay to do it," said the German. "Dot was -nuddings at all, dot bung-starder business. I haf forgodden it long -ago!" - -"The McDermotts remimber thim compliments longer," said McDermott. "An' -b' rights I sh'u'd give ye wan good clout wid this gun and be done wid -ye. But I'm thinkin' I may be usin' ye otherwise." - -"You gome all der vay agross der Adlandic yoost because I hit you on der -head mit a bung starder?" persisted the German, still wondering. "Dot, -MagDermodd, I cannot belief--_Nein!_" - -"And ye tore up y'r citizenship papers and come all the way across -the Atlantic just to jine this gang av murtherin' child-killers," said -McDermott. "That I c'n belave! Yis!" - -"But I haf not dorn up my American cidizen papers--_Nein!_" exclaimed -the German, earnestly. "Dose I haf kept. I gome across to fight for mein -Faderland--dot vas orders. _Ja!_ But mein American cidizenship papers I -haf kept, and ven der war is ofer I shall go back to Brooklyn and once -more an American citizen be, undill der next war. _Ja!_ You haf not -understood, but dot is der vay of it. _Ja!_" - -"Goostave," said McDermott, "ye have too many countries workin' f'r ye. -But y'r takin' ordhers from m'silf now--do ye get that? C'n ye play that -musical insthrumint there by the window?" - -"_Ja!_" said Gustave. "Dot gun I can vork. Dot is der Lewis machine gun. -Id is not so good a gun as our machine gun, for our machine gun haf been -a colossal sugcess, but id is a goot gun." - -"Ye been fightin' f'r the Kaiser f'r three or four years, Goostave," -said McDermott, menacing him with his rifle, "but this mornin' I'll be -afther seein' that ye do a bit av work f'r thim citizenship papers, an', -later, ye can go to hell, if ye like, an' naturalize y'rsilf in still a -third country. Ye will shoot Germans wid that gun till I get the hang -av the mechanism m'silf. And thin I will shoot Germans wid that gun. But -furst, ye will give me that fancy tin soup-bowl ye're wearin'." - -Gustave handed over his helmet. McDermott put it on his red head. - -"I've been thinkin'," said McDermott, "will I jine this war, or will I -not jine it. An' the only way ye c'n tell do ye like a thing or do ye -not is to thry it wance. Wid y'r assistance, Goostave, I'll thry it this -mornin', if anny more av it comes my way." - -More of it was coming his way. The Germans, tired of trifling with the -small British force which held the village, had brought up the better -part of a division during the night and were marshaling the troops for -their favorite feat of arms, an overwhelming frontal attack _en masse_. -The British had likewise received reinforcements, drawing from the north -and from the south every man the hard-pressed lines could spare. But -they were not many, perhaps some three thousand men in all, to resist -the massed assault, with the railroad for its objective, which would -surely come with dawn. If troops were needed in the village they were -no less needed on the lines that flanked it. The little town, which -had been the scene of so much desperate skirmishing the day before and -during the first half of the night, was now about to become the ground -of something like a battle. - -"There's a French division on the way," said the British colonel in -command in the village to one of his captains. "If we can only hold them -for an hour----" - -He did not finish the sentence. As he spoke the German bombardment, -precedent to the infantry attack, began to comb the western fringes -of the town and the railroad line behind, searching for the -hurriedly-digged and shallow trenches, the improvised dugouts, the -shell holes, the cellars and the embankments where the British lay. The -British guns to the rear of the village made answer, and the uproar tore -the mists of dawn to tatters. A shell fell short, into the middle of the -Grande Place, and McDermott saw the broken motor car against which the -sleeping lieutenant had leaned the day before vanish into nothingness; -and then a house directly opposite the Hotel Faucon jumped into flame -and was no more. Looking out across the back of the stooping Gustave at -the window, McDermott muttered, "I dunno as I w'u'd want to jine that -war." And then he bellowed in Gustave Schmidt's ear: "Cut loose! Cut -loose wid y'rgun! Cut loose!" - -"I vill not!" shrieked Gustave. "Mein Gott! Dat is mein own regiment!" - -"Ye lie!" shouted McDermott. "Ye will!" He thrust a bit of bayonet into -the fleshiest part of the German's back. - -"I vill! I vill!" cried Gustave. - -"Ye will that," said McDermott, "an' the less damned nonsinse I hear -from ye about y'r own rigimint the betther f'r ye! Ye're undher me -own ordhers till I c'n make up me mind about this war." The mists were -rising. In the clearing daylight at the eastern end of the square, as if -other clouds were moving forward with a solid front, appeared the first -gray wave of the German infantry. Close packed, shoulder to shoulder, -three deep, they came, almost filling the space from side to side of the -Grande Place, moving across that open stretch against the British fire -with a certain heavy-footed and heavy-brained contempt of everything -before them. Ten steps, and the British machine guns and rifles caught -them. The first wave, or half of it, went down in a long writhing -windrow, across the east end of the square, and in the instant that he -saw it squirm and toss before the trampling second wave swept over it -and through it, the twisting gray-clad figures on the stones reminded -McDermott of the heaps of heaving worms he used to see at the bottom of -his bait-can when he went fishing as a boy. - -"Hold that nozzle lower, Goostave!" he yelled to his captive. "Spray -thim! Spray thim! Ye're shootin' over their heads, ye lumberin' -Dutchman, ye!" - -"_Gott!_" cried Gustave, as another jab of the bayonet urged him to his -uncongenial task. - -And then McDermott made one of the few errors of his military career. -Whether it was the French brandy he had drunk to excess the night -before, or whether it was the old bung-starter wound on his head, which -always throbbed and jumped when he became excited, his judgment deserted -him for an instant. For one instant he forgot that there must be no -instants free from the immediate occupation of guiding and directing -Gustave. - -"Let me see if I can't work that gun m'self," he cried. - -As he relaxed his vigilance, pushing the German to one side, the Boche -suddenly struck him upon the jaw. McDermott reeled and dropped his -rifle; before he could recover himself, the German had it. The weapon -swung upward in the air and--just then a shell burst outside the open -window of the Hotel Faucon. - -Both men were flung from their feet by the concussion. For a moment -everything was blank to McDermott. And then, stretching out his hand to -rise, his fingers encountered something smooth and hard upon the floor. -Automatically his grasp closed over it and he rose. At the same instant -the German struggled to his feet, one hand behind his back, and the -other extended, as if in entreaty. - -"_Kamerad_," he whined, and even as he whined he lurched nearer and -flung at McDermott a jagged, broken bottle. McDermott ducked, and -the dagger-like glass splintered on his helmet. And then McDermott -struck--once. Once was enough. The Boche sank to the floor without a -groan, lifeless. McDermott looked at him, and then, for the first time, -looked at what he held in his own hand, the weighty thing which he had -wielded so instinctively and with such ferocity. It was the bung starter -of the Hotel Faucon. - -"Goostave niver knowed what hit him," said McDermott. And if there had -been any one to hear, in all that din, a note of regret that Gustave -never knew might have been remarked in his voice. - -McDermott turned his attention to the machine gun, which, with its -tripod, had been knocked to the floor. He squatted, with his head below -the level of the window sill, and looked it over. - -"'Tis not broken," he decided, after some moments of examination. "Did -Goostave do it so? Or did he do it so?" He removed his helmet and rubbed -the scar under his red hair reflectively. "If I was to make up me mind -to jine that war," mused McDermott, "this same w'u'd be a handy thing to -take wid me. It w'u'd that! Now, did that Goostave that used to be here -pull this pretty little thingumajig so? Or did he pull it so? Ihaveut! -He pulled it so! And thim ca'tridges, now--do they feed in so? Or do -they feed in so? 'T w'u'd be a handy thing, now, f'r a man that had anny -intintions av jinin' the war to know about all thim things!" - -And, patiently, McDermott studied the mechanism, while the red sunlight -turned to yellow in the Grande Place outside, and the budding green -vines withered along the broken walls, and the stones ran blood, and the -Hotel Faucon began to fall to pieces about his ears. McDermott did not -hurry; he felt that there was no need to hurry; he had not yet made up -his mind whether he intended to participate in this war. By the time he -had learned how to work that machine gun, and had used it on the Germans -for a while, he thought, he might be vouchsafed some light on that -particular subject. It was one of McDermott's fixed beliefs that he -was an extremely cautious sort of man, though many of his acquaintances -thought of him differently, and he told himself that he must not get too -far into this war until he was sure that it was going to be congenial. -So far, it promised well. - -And also, McDermott, as he puzzled over the machine gun, was not quite -the normal McDermott. He was, rather, a supernormal McDermott. He had -been awakened rudely from an alcoholic slumber and he had been rather -busy ever since; so many things had taken place in his immediate -neighborhood, and were still taking place, that he was not quite sure -of their reality. As he sat on the floor and studied the weapon, he was -actually, from moment to moment, more than half convinced that he was -dreaming--he might awaken and find that that war had eluded him again. -Perhaps he is scarcely to be chided for being in what is sometimes known -as a state of mind. - -And while McDermott was looking at the machine gun, the British -commander prayed, as a greater British commander before him had prayed -one time, for assistance, only this one did not pray for night or -Blucher as Wellington had done. Night was many hours beyond all -hope and would probably bring its own hell when it came, and as for -Prussians, there were too many Prussians now. His men would hold on; -they had been holding on for epic days and unbelievable nights, and they -would still hold while there was breath in their bodies, and when their -bodies were breathless they would hold one minute more. But--God! For -Foch's _poilus!_ There is a moment which is the ultimate moment; the -spirit can drag the body until--until spirit and body are wrenched into -two things. No longer. His men could die in their tracks; they were -dying where they stood and crouched and lay, by dozens and by scores and -by heroic hundreds--but when they were dead, who would bar the way to -Hazebrouck, and beyond Hazebrouck, to the channel ports? - -That way was all but open now, if the enemy but realized it. Any moment -they might discover it. A half-mile to the south of the village the line -was so thinly held that one strong, quick thrust must make a gap. Let -the enemy but fling a third of the troops he was pounding to pieces in -the bloody streets of the town, in the torn fields that flanked it, and -in the shambles of the Grande Place that was the center of this action, -at that weak spot, and all was over. But with a fury mechanical, -insensate, the Germans still came on in direct frontal attacks. - -The British had slain and slain and slain, firing into the gray masses -until the water boiled in the jackets of the machine guns. Five attacks -had broken down in the Grande Place itself--and now a sixth was forming. -Should he still hold fast, the colonel asked himself, or should he -retire, saving what machine guns he might, and flinging a desperate -detachment southward in the attempt to make a stronger right flank? But -to do that might be the very move that would awaken the Germans to their -opportunity there. So long as they pounded, pounded at his center, he -would take a toll of them, at least--but the moment was coming-- - -"I have ut!" cried McDermott, and mounted his gun at the window. - -"It is time to retire," said the British colonel, and was about to give -the order. - -"Right in their bloody backs," said McDermott to himself. - -And so it was. For the sixth advance of the German masses had carried -them well into the Grande Place. McDermott, crouched at his window, cut -loose with his gun at pointblank range as the first wave, five men deep, -passed by him, splashing along the thick ranks from behind as one might -sweep a garden hose down a row of vegetables. Taken thus in the rear, -ambushed, with no knowledge of the strength of the attacking force -behind them, the German shock troops swayed and staggered, faced about -and fell and broke. For right into the milling herd of them, and -into the second advancing wave, the British poured their bullets. The -colonel, who had been about to order a retreat, ordered a charge, -and before the stampeded remnant of the first two waves could recover -themselves the British were on them with grenades and bayonets, flinging -them back into the third wave, just advancing to their support, in a -bleeding huddle of defeat. - -McDermott saw the beginning of that charge, and with his bung starter in -his hand he rushed from the door to join it. But he did not see the -end of it, nor did he see the _poilus_, as they came slouching into the -village five minutes later to give the repulse weight and confirmation, -redolent of onions and strange stews, but with their bayonets--those -bayonets that are part of the men who wield them, living things, -instinct with the beautiful, straight, keen soul of France herself. - -McDermott did not see them, for some more of the Hotel Faucon had fallen -on him, crushing one of his ankles and giving him a clout on the head. - -"Whoever it was turned loose that machine gun from the inn window, did -the trick," said the colonel, later. "It's hardly too much to say that -he blocked the way to Hazebrouck--for the time, at least, if one man can -be said to have done such a thing--what's that?" - -"That" was McDermott, who was being carried forth, unconscious, to an -ambulance. It was his blue overalls that had occasioned the colonel's -surprise. He was neither French nor British nor German; palpably he was -a civilian, and a civilian who had no business there. And in his hand he -clasped a bung starter. His fingers were closed over it so tightly that -in the base hospital later they found difficulty in taking it away from -him. - -Owing, no doubt, to the blow on his head, McDermott was unable to recall -clearly anything that had taken place from the moment he had first -fallen asleep under the influence of French brandy until he awakened in -the hospital nearly four weeks later. During this period there had been -several intervals of more open-eyed dreaming, succeeded by lapses into -profound stupor; but even in these open-eyed intervals, McDermott -had not been himself. It was during one of these intervals that a -representative of the French Government bestowed the Croix de Guerre -upon McDermott, for it had been learned that he was the man behind the -machine gun that had turned the tide of combat. - -McDermott, his eyes open, but his mind in too much of a daze even to -wonder what the ceremony was about, sat in a wheel chair, and in company -with half a dozen other men selected for decoration, listened to a brief -oration in very good French, which he could not have understood had he -been normal. In answer he muttered in a low tone, rubbing his broken and -bandaged head: "I think maybe I will jine that war, afther all!" - -The French officer assumed that McDermott had spoken some sort of -compliment to France and kissed McDermott on both cheeks, in front -of the hospital staff, several American reporters, and as much of the -French army as qould be spared to do honor to the occasion. The _Croix -de Guerre_ made no impression upon McDermott, but the kiss briefly -arrested his wandering consciousness, and he cried out, starting up in -his chair and menacing the officer: "Where is me bung starter?" Then he -fainted. - -A good many thousands of people in France and England and America -learned from the newspapers the story of the nondescript in the blue -overalls, who had behaved so gallantly at the crucial moment of a -crucial fight. But McDermott never did. He seldom read newspapers. No -one had been able to learn his name, so the reporters had given him a -name. They called him "Dennis." And it was "Dennis" who got the fame and -glory. McDermott would not have identified himself with Dennis had he -seen the newspapers. When he awakened from his long, broken stupor, with -its intervals of dazed halfconsciousness, the first thing he did was to -steal away from that hospital; he left without having heard of Dennis or -of the decoration of Dennis. - -There was one thing that he had experienced that did live hazily and -confusedly in his memory, however, although he could not fix it in its -relationship to any other thing. And that was the fact that he had met -Gustave Schmidt. Three or four months after he slipped away from the -hospital--a period of unchronicled wanderings, during which he had tried -unsuccessfully to enlist several times--he limped into a saloon on the -Brooklyn water front and asked Tim O'Toole, the proprietor, for his -usual. He had just got back to Brooklyn, and he carried his earthly -possessions in a bundle wrapped in brown paper. - -"I hear Yordy Crowley isn't givin' his racket this year," said -McDermott, laying his bundle on the bar and pouring out his drink. - -"He is not," said Tim. "He is in France helpin' out thim English." - -"Yordy will make a good sojer," said McDermott. "He is a good man of his -fists." - -"The Irish is all good sojers," said Mr. O'Toole, sententiously. "There -was that man Dinnis, now, that was in all av the papers." - -"I did not hear av him," said McDermott. "An' phwat did he do?" - -"He licked th' entire German army wan morn-in'," said O'Toole, "an' -saved England, an' the Quane of France kissed him for it. 'Twas in all -the papers. Or, maybe," said Mr. O'Toole, "it was the King av Belg'um -kissed him for ut. Anny-way wan of thim foreign powers kissed him wid -the whole world lookin' on." - -"An' phwat did this Dinnis do thin?" asked McDermott. - -"He attimpted to assault the person that kissed him," said O'Toole. -"Maybe 'twas the King av Italy. 'Twas in all the papers at th' time. -Some wan told me ye were in France y'rsilf, Paddy." - -"I was that," said McDermott. "I wint wid mules." - -"Did ye see annything av the war?" - -"I did not," said McDermott. "Divil a bit of ut, barrin' a lot o' -racket an' a big roarin' divil av a stame-boiler thing that come bustin' -through th' air an' took away the mules that was me passport. But I come -near seein' some av ut, wan time." - -"An' how was it that ye come near it, an' missed it?" inquired Tim. - -"I wint to slape," said McDermott. "The war was slapin', an' I laid -m'silf down b' the side av ut an' took a nap, too. Later, I woke up in -the hospital, some wan havin' stipped on me whilst I was slapin', or -somethin'. They was afther keep-in' me in th' hospital indefinite, an' -I slipped away wan mornin', dodgin' the orderlies an' nurses, or I might -have been there yet eatin' jelly an' gettin' me face washed f'r me. An' -afther I got back here I thried to jine that war, but th' Amurrican Army -w'u'd not have me." - -"And phwy not?" - -"Because av me fut." - -"And how did ye hurt y'r fut?" - -"Divil a bit do I know how," said McDermott. "I'm tellin' ye 'twas done -whilst I was aslape. I remimber gettin' soused in wan av thim Frinch -barrooms, an' I w'u'd think it was a mule stipped on me fut whin I was -slapin' off me souse, excipt that thim mules was gone before I got me -souse." - -"An' ye saw naught av the war?" Tim was distinctly disappointed. - -"But little of ut, but little of ut," said McDermott. "But, Timmy,--wan -thing I did whilst I was in France." - -"An' phwat was that?" - -"I avened up an ould grudge," said McDermott. He put away a second -drink, rolling it over his tongue with satisfaction. "Do ye mind that -Goostave Schmidt that used to kape bar acrost the strate? Ye do! Do ye -mind th' time he hit me wid th' bung starter? Ye do!" - -"Phwat thin?" - -"Well, thin," said McDermott, "I met up wid him ag'in in wan av thim -Frinch barrooms. I do not remimber phwat he said to me nor phwat I said -to him, for I was soused, Timmy. But wan word led to another, an' I give -him as good as he sint, an' 'twas wid a bung starter, too. I brung it -back wid me as a sooveneer av me travels in France." - -And, undoing his brown paper bundle, McDermott fished forth from among -his change of socks and shirts and underwear the bung starter of the -Hotel Faucon and laid it upon the bar for his friend's inspection. -Something else in the bundle caught O'Toole's eye. - -"An' phwat is that thing ye have there?" asked Tim. - -"Divil a bit do I know phwat," said McDermott, picking the article up -and tossing it carelessly upon the bar. "'Twas layin' by me cot in -the hospital, along wid m' bung starter an' me clothes whin I come to -m'silf, an' whin I made me sneak from that place I brung it along." - -It was the _Croix de Guerre_. - - - - -V.--Looney the Mutt - -|Looney had but one object in life, one thought, one conscious motive -of existence--to find Slim again. After he found Slim, things would be -different, things would be better, somehow. Just how, Looney did not -know. - -Looney did not know much, anyhow. Likely he would never have known much, -in the most favorable circumstances. And the circumstances under which -he had passed his life were scarcely conducive to mental growth. He -could remember, vaguely, that he had not always been called Looney -Hogan. There had been a time when he was called Kid Hogan. Something had -happened inside his head one day, and then there had come a period of -which he remembered nothing at all; after that, when he could remember -again, he was not Kid any more, but Looney. Perhaps some one had hit him -on the head. People were always hitting him, before he knew Slim. And -now that Slim was gone, people were always hitting him again. When he -was with Slim, Slim had not let people hit him--often. So he must find -Slim again; Slim, who was the only God he had ever known. - -In the course of time he became known, in his own queer world, from -Baltimore to Seattle, from Los Angeles to Boston, as Slim's Lost -Mutt, or as Looney the Mutt. Looney did not resent being called a -dog, particularly, but he never called himself "The Mutt"; he stuck to -"Looney"; Slim had called him Looney, and Looney must, therefore, be -right. - -The humors of Looney's world are not, uniformly, kindly humors. Giving -Looney the Mutt a "bum steer" as to Slim's whereabouts was considered a -legitimate jest. - -"Youse ain't seen Slim Matchett anywheres?" he would ask of hobo or -wobbly, working stiff or yeggman, his faded pale-blue eyes peering from -his weather-worn face with the same anxious intensity, the same eager -hope, as if he had not asked the question ten thousand times before. - -And the other wanderer, if he were one that knew of Looney the Mutt and -Looney's quest would answer, like as not: - -"Slimmy de Match? Uh-huh! I seen Slim last mont' in Chi. He's lookin' -fer youse, Looney." One day the Burlington Crip, who lacked a hand, and -who looked so mean that it was of common report that he had got sore at -himself and bitten it off, varied the reply a bit by saying: - -"I seen Slim las' week, an' he says: 'Where t' hell's dat kid o' mine? -Youse ain't seen nuttin' o' dat kid o' mine, has you, Crip? Dat kid o' -mine give me de slip, Crip. He lammistered, and I ain't seen him since. -If youse gets yer lamps on dat kid o' mine, Crip, give him a wallop on -his mush fer me, an' tell him to come an' find me an' I'm gonna give him -another one.'" - -Looney stared and wondered and grieved. It hurt him especially that Slim -should think that he, Looney, had run away from Slim; he agonized anew -that he could not tell Slim at once that such was not the truth. And he -wondered and grieved at the change that must have taken place in Slim, -who now promised him "a wallop on the mush." For Slim had never struck -him. It was Slim who had always kept other people from striking him. -It was Slim who had, upon occasion, struck other people to protect -him--once, in a hangout among the lakeside sand dunes south of Chicago, -Slim had knifed a man who had, by way of jovial byplay to enliven a dull -afternoon, flung Looney into the fire. - -It never occurred to Looney to doubt, entirely, these bearers of -misinformation. He was hunting Slim, and of course, he thought, Slim -was hunting Looney. His nature was all credulity. Such mind as the boy -possessed--he was somewhere in his twenties, but had the physique of -a boy--was saturated with belief in Slim, with faith in Slim, and he -thought that all the world must admire Slim. He did not see why any one -should tell lies that might increase Slim's difficulties, or his own. - -There was a big red star he used to look at nights, when he slept in the -open, and because it seemed to him bigger and better and more splendid -than any of the other stars he took to calling it Slim's star. It was a -cocky, confident-looking star; it looked as if it would know how to take -care of itself, and Slim had been like that. It looked good-natured, -too, and Slim had been that way. When Looney had rustled the scoffin's -for Slim, Slim had always let him have some of the best chow--or almost -always. And he used to talk to that star about Slim when he was alone. -It seemed sympathetic. And although he believed the hoboes were telling -him the truth when they said that they had seen Slim, it was apparent -even to his intelligence that they had no real sympathy with his quest. - -Once he did find a certain sympathy, if no great understanding. He -worked a week, one Spring, for a farmer in Indiana. The farmer wished -to keep him, for that Summer at least, for Looney was docile, willing -enough, and had a natural, unconscious tact with the work-horses. Looney -was never afraid of animals, and they were never afraid of him. Dogs -took to him, and the instant liking of dogs had often stood him in good -stead in his profession. - -"Why won't you stay?" asked the farmer. - -"Slim's lookin' fer me, somewheres," said Looney. And he told the farmer -about Slim. The farmer, having perceived Looney's mental twilight, and -feeling kindly toward the creature, advanced an argument that he thought -might hold him. - -"Slim is just as likely to find you if you stay in one place, as if you -go travelin' all over the country," he said. - -"Huh-uh," said Looney. "He ain't, Mister. It's this way, Mister: every -time I stop long any-, wheres, Slim, he passes me by." - -And then he continued, after a pause: "Slim, he was always good to me, -Mister. I kinda want to be the one that finds Slim, instead of just -stayin' still an' waitin' to be found." - -They were standing in the dusk by the barn, and the early stars were -out. Looney told him about Slim's star. - -"I want to be the guy that does the findin'," went on Looney presently, -"because I was the guy that done the losin'. One night they was five or -six of us layin' under a lot of railroad ties we had propped up against -a fence to keep the weather off, an' we figgered on hoppin' a train fer -Chi that night. Well, the train comes along, but I'm asleep. See? The -rest of t' gang gits into an empty in de dark, an' I don't wake up. I -s'pose Slim he t'inks I'm wit' t' gang, but I don't wake up under them -ties till mornin'. I went to Chi soon's I could, but I ain't never -glommed him since, Mister. I didn't find him dere. An' dat's t' way I -lost Slim, Mister." - -"Maybe," suggested the farmer, "he is dead." - -"Nit," said Looney. "He ain't dead. If Slim was croaked or anything, I'd -be wised up to it. Look at that there star. Dat is Slim's star, like I -told youse. If Slim had been bumped off, or anything, Mister, that star -wouldn't be shinin' that way, Mister." - -And he went back to his own world--his world--which was a succession of -freight and cattle cars, ruinous sheds and shelters in dubious suburbs -near to railroad sidings, police stations, workhouses, jails, city -missions, transient hangouts in bedraggled clumps of wood, improvised -shacks, shared with others of his kind in vacant lots in sooty -industrial towns, chance bivouacs amidst lumber piles and under dripping -water tanks, lucky infrequent lodgings in slum hotels that used to -charge fifteen cents for a bed and now charge a quarter, golden moments -in vile barrooms and blind tigers, occasional orgies in quarries or -gravel pits or abandoned tin-roofed tool houses, uneasy, loiterings -and interrupted slumbers in urban parks and the squares or outskirts of -villages. Sometimes he worked, as he had with the Indiana farmer, with -the wheat harvesters of the Northwest, or the snow shovelers of the -metropoli, or the fruit gatherers of California; but more often he -loafed, and rustled grub and small coin from the charitably disposed. - -It all seemed the natural way of life to Looney. He could not remember -anything else. He viewed the people of the world who did not live so, -and whom he saw to be the majority, as strange, unaccountable beings -whom he could never hope to understand; he vaguely perceived that they -were stronger than he and his ever-hiking clan, and he knew that they -might do unpleasant things to him with their laws and their courts -and their strength, but he bore them no rancor, unlike many of his -associates. - -He had no theories about work or idleness; he accepted either as it -came; he had little conscious thought about anything, except finding -Slim again. And one thing worried him: Slim, who was supposed to be -looking for Looney, even as Looney was looking for Slim, left no mark. -He was forever looking for it, searching for the traces of Slim's -knife--a name, a date, a destination, a message bidding Looney to follow -or to wait--on freight sheds and water tanks, and known and charted -telegraph poles and the tool houses of construction gangs. But Slim, -always just ahead of him, as he thought, continually returning and -passing him, ever receding in the distance, left no mark, no wanderer's -pateran, behind. Looney left his own marks everywhere, but, strangely -enough, it seemed that Slim never saw them. Looney remembered that one -time when he and Slim were together Slim had wished to meet and confer -with the Burlington Crip, and had left word to that effect, penciled and -carved and sown by the speech of the mouth, from the Barbary Coast to -the Erie Basin. And the Burlington Crip, with his snaggle teeth and his -stump where a hand had been, had joined them on the Brooklyn waterfront -within two months. It had been simple, and Looney wondered why Slim -omitted this easy method of communication. Perhaps Slim was using it and -Looney was not finding the marks. He knew himself for stupid, and set -his failure down to that, never to neglect on Slim's part. For Slim was -Slim, and Slim could do no wrong. - -His habit of searching for some scratched or written word of Slim's -became known to his whole section of the underworld, and furnished -material for an elaboration of the standing jest at his expense. When -ennui descended upon some chance gathering in one of the transient -hangouts--caravanserai as familiar to the loose-foot, casual guests, -from coast to coast, as was ever the Blackstone in Chicago or the -Biltmore in New York to those who read this simple history--it was -customary for some wag to say: - -"Looney, I seen a mark that looked like Slim's mark on a shed down in -Alexandria, Virginny, right by where the Long Bridge starts over to -Washington." - -And it might be that Looney would start at once, without a word, for -Alexandria. Therein lay the cream of this subtle witticism, for its -perpetrators--in Looney's swift departures. - -Or it might be that Looney would sit and ponder, his washed-out eyes -interrogating the speaker in a puzzled fashion, but never doubting. And -then the jester would say, perhaps: "Why don't you get a move onto you, -Looney? You're gonna miss Slim again." - -And Looney would answer, perchance: "Slim, he ain't there now. The' was -one of them wobblies' bump-off men sayin' he seen Slim in Tacoma two -weeks ago, an' Slim was headin' this way. I'm gonna wait fer him a while -longer." - -But he never waited long. He could never make himself. As he had told -the Indiana farmer, he was afraid to wait long. It was the Burlington -Crip who had made him afraid to do that. The Crip had told him one time: -"Looney, Slim went through here last night, while youse was asleep over -on that lumber pile. I forgets youse is lookin' fer him or I'd a tipped -him off youse was here." - -Slim had been within a hundred yards of him, and he had been asleep and -had never known! What would Slim think, if he knew that? So thereafter -he was continually tortured by the fancy that Slim might be passing -him in the night; or that Slim, while he himself was riding the rods -underneath a railway car, might be on the blind baggage of that very -train, and would hop off first and be missed again. From day to day he -became more muddled and perplexed trying to decide whether it would be -better to choose this route or that, whether it would be better to stop -here a week, or go yonder with all possible speed. And from month to -month he developed more and more the questing, peering, wavering manner -of the lost dog that seeks its master. - -Looney was always welcome In the hang-outs of the wandering underworld. -Not only was he a source of diversion, a convenient butt, but few could -rustle grub so successfully. His meager frame and his wistfulness, his -evident feebleness of intellect, drew alms from the solvent population, -and Looney faithfully brought his takings to the hangouts and was -dispatched again for more. Servant and butt he was to such lords as the -Burlington Crip and the English Basher. But he did not mind so long as -he was not physically maltreated--as he often was. The occasional -crimes of his associates, the occasional connection of some of them with -industrial warfare here and there, Looney sometimes participated in; but -he never understood. If he were told to do so and so, for the most part -he did it. If he were asked to do too much, or was beaten up for his -stupidity, and he was always stupid, he quietly slunk away at his first -opportunity. - -The English Basher was a red-faced savage with fists as hard and rough -as tarred rope; and he conceived the idea that Looney should be his kid, -and wait upon him, even as he had been Slim's kid. Looney, afraid of the -man, for a time seemed to acquiesce. But the Basher had reckoned without -Looney's faculty for blundering. - -He dispatched Looney one day, ostensibly to bum a handout, but in -reality to get the lay of a certain house in a suburb near Cincinnati, -which the Basher meditated cracking the next convenient night. Looney -returned with the food but without the information. He had been willing -enough, for he admired yeggmen and all their ways and works, and was -withheld by no moral considerations from anything he was asked to do; -but he had bungled. He had been in the kitchen, he had eaten his own -scoffin's there, he had talked with the cook for twenty minutes, he had -even brought up from the cellar a scuttle of coal for the kitchen range -to save the cook's back, but he actually knew less about that house, its -plan, its fastenings, its doors and basement windows than the Basher had -been able to gather with a single stroke of the eye as he loitered down -the street. - -"Cripes! Whadje chin about with the kitchen mechanic all dat time, you?" -demanded the Basher. - -"She was stringin' me along," said Looney humbly, "an' I spilled to her -about me an' Slim." - -"Slim! ------ -------- yer, I've a mind t' croak yer!" cried the Basher. - -And he nearly did it, knocking the boy down repeatedly, till finally -Looney lay still upon the ground. - -"'S'elp me," said the Basher, "I've a mind to give yer m' boots! You -get up an' beat it! An' if I ever gets my lamps onto you again I _will_ -croak you, by Gawd, an' no mistake!" - -Looney staggered to his feet and hobbled to a safe distance. And then, -spitting out a broken tooth, he dared to mutter: "If Slimmy was here, -he'd see de color o' youse insides, Slimmy would. Slimmy, he knifed a -yegg oncet wot done less'n dat t'me!" - -It was only a week or two after he left the Basher that Looney's faith -in Slim's star was tested again. Half a dozen of the brotherhood were -gathered about a fire in a gravel pit in northern Illinois, swapping -yarns and experiences and making merry. It was a tremendous fire, and -lighted up the hollow as if it were the entrance to Gehenna, flinging -the grotesque shadows of the men against the overhanging embankments, -and causing the inhabitants of a village a mile or so away to wonder -what farmer's haystack was aflame. The tramps were wasting five times -the wood they needed, after their fashion. They had eaten to repletion, -and they were wasting the left-over food from their evening gorge; they -had booze; they were smoking; they felt, for the hour, at peace with the -world. - -"Wot ever _did_ become of dat Slim?" asked the Burlington Crip, who -happened to be of the party, looking speculatively at Looney. Even the -sinister Crip, for the nonce, was not toting with him his usual mordant -grouch. - -Looney was tending the fire, while he listened to tales of the spacious -days of the great Johnny Yegg himself, and other Titans of the road who -have now assumed the state of legendary heroes; and he was, as usual, -saying nothing. - -"Slim? Slimmy t' Match wot Looney here's been tailin' after fer so -long?" said the San Diego Kid. "Slim, he was bumped off in Paterson -t'ree or four years ago." - -"He wasn't neither," spoke up Looney. "Tex, here, seen him in Chi last -mont'." - -And, indeed, Tex had told Looney so. But now, thus directly appealed -to, Tex answered nothing. And for the first time Looney began to get -the vague suspicion that these, his friends, might have trifled with him -before. Certainly they were serious now. He looked around the sprawled -circle and sensed that their manner was somehow different from the -attitude with which they had usually discussed his quest for Slim. - -"Bumped off?" said Tex. "How?" - -"A wobbly done it," said the San Diego Kid. "Slim, he was scabbin'. -Strike-breakin'. And they was some wobblies there helpin' on the strike. -See? An' this wobbly bumps Slim off." - -"He didn't neither," said Looney again. - -"T' hell he didn't? He said he did," said the San Diego Kid pacifically. -"Is a guy gonna say he's bumped off a guy unless he's bumped him off?" - -Looney, somewhat shaken, withdrew from the group to seek comfort from -the constellations; and particularly from that big, red star, the -apparent king of stars, which he had come to think of as Slim's star, -and vaguely, as Slim's mascot. It was brighter and redder than ever -that night, Looney thought, and sitting on a discarded railroad tie and -staring at the planet, Looney gradually recovered his faith. - -"He ain't neither been bumped off, Slim ain't," he muttered, "an' I'm -gonna find him yet." - -And Slim had not been bumped off, however sincere the San Diego Kid may -have been in his belief. - -It was some months later that Looney did find him in a little city in -Pennsylvania--or found some one that looked like him. - -Looney had dropped from a freight train early in the morning, had -rustled himself some grub, had eaten two good meals and had part of a -day's sleep, and now, just as dark was coming on, and the street lamps -were being lighted, was loafing aimlessly on the platform of the railway -depot. He purposed to take a train south that night, when it became so -dark that he could crawl into an empty in the yards without too much -danger of being seen and he was merely putting in the time until full -night came on. - -While he was standing idly so, an automobile drew up beside the station -platform and an elegantly dressed and slender man of about thirty got -out. He assisted from the car a woman and a small child, and they made -toward the door of the waiting room. - -"Slim!" cried Looney, rushing forward. - -For this was Slim--it must be Slim--it was Slimmy the Match in every -feature--and yet, the car!--the clothes--the woman--the baby--the -prosperity----- _Was_ it Slim? - -"Slim!" cried Looney again, his heart leaping in his meager body. "It's -me, Slim! It's Looney! I've got youse again, Slim! Gawd! I've found -yuh!" - -The woman hastily snatched the child up into her arms, with a suppressed -scream, and recoiled. - -The man made no sound, but he, too, drew back a step, not seeming to see -Looney's outstretched hand. - -But he did see it--he saw more than that. He saw, as if they were -flashed before him at lightning speed upon a cinema screen, a dozen -scenes of a wild and reckless and indigent youth that he had thought was -dead forever; he saw these roughneck years suddenly leap alive and -stalk toward him again, toward him and his; he saw his later years of -industry, his hard-won success, his position so strenuously battled for, -his respectability that was become so dear to him, all his house of -life so laboriously builded, crumbling before the touch of this torn and -grotesque outcast that confronted and claimed him, this wavering, -dusty lunatic whom he dimly remembered. If his wife knew--if her people -knew--if the business men of this town were to know---- - -He shuddered and turned sick, and then with a sudden recovery he took -his child from its mother and guided her before him into the waiting -room. - -Looney watched them enter, in silence. He stood dazed for a moment, -and then he slowly turned and walked down the railroad track beyond the -limits of the town. There, upon a spot of turf beside the right of -way, he threw himself upon his face and sobbed and moaned, as a -broken-hearted child sobs, as a dog moans upon its master's grave. - -But after a while he looked up. Slim's star was looking down at him, red -and confident and heartening as ever. He gazed at it a long time, and -then an idea took form in his ruined brain and he said aloud: - -"Now, dat wasn't _really_ Slim! I been lookin' fer Slim so long I t'ink -I see Slim where he ain't! Dat was jus' some guy wot looks like Slimmy. -Slimmy, he wouldn't never of gone back on an old pal like dat!" - -The rumble of an approaching train caught his ears. He got to his feet -and prepared to board it. - -"Slim, he's waitin' fer me somewheres," he told the star. "I may be -kinda looney about some t'ings, but I knows Slim, an' dey ain't no -yellow streak nowheres in Slim!" - -And with unshaken loyalty Looney the Mutt boarded the train and set off -upon his endless quest anew. - - - - -VI--Kale - -|See that old fellow there?" asked Ed the waiter. "Well, his fad is -money." - -The old fellow indicated--he must have been nearly eighty--sat eating -corned beef and cabbage in a little booth in a certain delightful, -greasy old chophouse in downtown New York. It was nearly time to close -the chophouse for that day for it was almost eleven o'clock at night; it -was nearly time to close the chophouse forever, for it was the middle of -June, 1919. In a couple of weeks the wartime prohibition act would be in -force, and Ed and I had been discussing what effect it would have upon -our respective lives. - -There was no one else in the place at the time except the cashier and -the old man whose fad was money, and so Ed had condescended toward me, -as a faithful customer, and was sitting down to have a drink with me. - -"His fad is money?" I questioned, glancing at the old gentleman, who -seemed to be nothing extraordinary as regards face or manner or attire. -He had a long, bony New Englandish head and a short, white, well-trimmed -beard; he was finishing his nowise delicate food with gusto. "I should -say," I added, "that his fad was corned beef and cabbage." - -"That's one of his fads," admitted Ed the waiter, "and I don't know but -that it's as strong in him as his money fad. At any rate, I've never -seen him without one or the other was near him, and both in large -quantities." - -We had been conversing in a mumble, so that our voices should not carry -to the old gentleman. And now Ed dropped his voice still lower and -whispered: - -"That's Old Man Singleton." - -I looked at him with a renewed interest. Every one knew who Old Man -Singleton was, and many persons liked to guess how much he was worth. -Ostensibly he had retired, leaving to his two sons the management of the -Singleton banking business, with its many ramifications; but actually -he kept his interest in the concern and was reputed to be coaching his -grandsons in the ways of the world, and especially that part of the -world known as "The Street." - -Starting out as a New England villager who hated poverty because his -family had always known it, he had come to New York as a lad of twenty, -with red knitted mittens on his osseous hands, and he had at once -removed the mittens and put the hands to work gathering money; it was -rumored that the hands had never turned loose any of the garnered coin; -it was even said by some persons that he still had the same pair of -mittens. - -The details of his rise I cannot give; he had achieved his ambition -to be one of the very rich men of America because the ambition was so -strong within him. - -"Of course his fad is money," I muttered to Ed the waiter. "Everybody -knows that Old Man Singleton's fad is money." - -Ed was about to reply, when Mr. Singleton looked up and motioned for his -check. Ed brought it, and gave the old gentleman his hat and his stick -and his change. - -"I hope everything was all right," Mr. Singleton said Ed, palpably -bidding for recognition and a tip. - -"Eh? said Singleton, looking blankly at Ed You know me, hey? I don't -recall you. Yes, everything was all right, thank you." He gave the -waiter a dime and passed out, after another blank, fumbling look at Ed, -and a shake of his head. There was something feeble and wandering in the -old fellow's manner; his memory was going; it was obvious that before -long the rest of him would follow his memory. He shouldn't be allowed to -go around this way alone at night," murmured Ed, watching the door -through which he had made his exit. "But I suppose he's as bull-headed -as ever about doing what he pleases, even if his legs are shaky." - -"He didn't know you," I hinted, for I wished to learn all that Ed knew -about Old Man Singleton. - -Ed is a person who has been in the world nearly fifty years; he has had -some very unusual acquaintances and experiences. It is never safe to -predict just what Ed will know and what he will not know. One afternoon, -after I had known Ed for about a year, I was attempting to argue some -scientific point with a friend who was lunching with me, and Ed, who was -waiting on us and listening, remarked: "I beg your pardon, sir, but it -wasn't in _The Descent of Man_ that Darwin said that; it was in _The -Origin of Species_." - -And yet, if you deduce from that remark that Ed knows a great deal about -modern science, you will be mistaken; as likely as not he could quote -pages of Marcus Aurelius to you, and at the same time he might pronounce -"Euripides" as if the last two syllables were one, riming with "hides"; -his reading, like his life, has been elective. - -"He doesn't recall you," I repeated. - -"And that's ingratitude," said Ed, "if he only knew it. I saved the old -man's life once." - -And Ed limped over to the table and resumed his seat opposite me. He -has a bullet under one kneecap, and at times it makes him very lame. He -would never tell me how it came there; to this day I do not know. - -"From what did you save his life?" I asked. "From a man," said Ed -moodily. "From a man who had a notion to bean him one night. And to this -day I ask myself: 'Did I do right, or did I do wrong?'" - -"Tell me about it," I insisted, - -"Drink up," said Ed, manipulating the Scotch bottle and the siphon of -seltzer. "This is one of the last highballs you'll ever have, unless -you sneak around and take it on the sly. I don't know that I should have -another one myself; it settles in this damned knee of mine if I get a -little too much." - -"Tell me when, where and how you knew Old Man Singleton," I demanded -again. - -"This knee of mine," went on Ed, disregarding me, "is a hell of a -handicap. We were talking about prohibition--what's prohibition going to -do to me? Hey? It puts me out of a job in a barroom like this the first -thing. And what else can I do? With this game leg, you can see me going -on the stage as a Russian dancer, can't you? Or digging trenches to lay -gas pipes in, or carrying a Hod? Huh? And I can't even get a job in a -swell restaurant uptown; they don't want any gamelegged waiters sticking -around, falling over the chairs. This was about the only kind of a joint -and the only kind of a job I was fit for, this chop-house thing down -here, and it's going to close in two weeks. What then? Be somebody's -housemaid? I can't see it. I don't wish anybody any bad luck, but I -hope the guy that put over this prohibition thing gets stiff in all his -joints and lives forever." - -I sympathized and waited, and finally he began. "Old Man Singleton's -fad," said Ed, "as I re marked before, is money. And as you remarked, -another of his fads is corned beef and cabbage--especially cabbage. He -will eat corned beef with his cabbage, and like it; or he will eat pork -with his cabbage, and like it; or he will eat cabbage without either; it -is the cabbage he likes--or kale. In fact, you could reduce his two fads -to one, and say what he likes is kale--kale in the slang sense of money, -and kale that is cabbage. And all his life he has been stuffing himself -with kale. - -"His fad is kale that he can see and feel and handle and show and carry -about with him. Not merely money in the bank and stocks and bonds and -property and real estate, but actual cash. He likes to carry it with -him, and he does carry it with him. I guess he likes the feel of it in -his billfolder, and the thought that he has got it on him--on him, the -poor boy that came out of New England with the red knitted mittens on -that everybody has heard so much about. I can understand the way -he feels about it; with a folder full of thousand-dollar and -ten-thousand-dollar bills he feels safe, somehow; feels like he'll never -have to go back to that little New England town and saw cordwood and -shovel snow again. - -"He's got it on him now, that folder, and I'll bet you on it. That's -what I meant when I said it wasn't safe for him to be trotting about -this way after night. For if I know it, it stands to reason others know -it, too. - -"What you want to know is, how I know it. Well, I was not always what I -am now. Once I was quite a bird and wore dress suits and went to the -Metropolitan Opera and listened to Caruso as he jumped his voice from -peak to peak. Yes, sir, I know every darned acoustic in that place! They -weren't my dress suits that I wore, but they fit me. Once I moved in the -circles of the idle rich, though they didn't know it, and helped 'em -spend the unearned increment they wrung from the toil of the downtrodden -laboring man. - -"Once, to come down to brass tacks, I was a butler's companion. It is -an office you won't find listed in the social directory, but it existed, -for me at least. The butler in the case was a good friend of mine by the -name of Larry Hodgkins, and being part Irish, he was an ideal English -butler. Larry and his mother were in the employ of the Hergsheimers, a -wealthy Jewish family--you know who they are if you read the financial -pages or the Sunday supplements. Mrs. Hodgkins was the housekeeper and -Larry was the butler, and when the Hergsheimers were traveling Larry and -his mother stayed in the New York house as caretakers and kept things -shipshape. And let me give you a tip, by the way: if you ever take a -notion to quit the writing game and go into domestic service, plant -yourself with a rich Hebrew family. They want things done right, -but they are the most liberal people on earth, especially to Gentile -servants. - -"This Hergsheimer was Jacob Hergsheimer, and he was in right socially in -New York, as well as financially; he had put himself across into the -big time socially because, if you ask me, he belonged there; all the -Hergsheimers didn't get across, but this one did. His New York house is -uptown, between the sixties and the eighties, east of the Park, and -he wants it kept so he can drop into it with his family and a flock of -servants at any hour of the day or night, from any part of the earth, -without a minute's notice, and give a dinner party at once, if he feels -like it, and he frequently feels like it. - -"It was Mrs. Hodgkins's and Larry's job to keep the fire from going -out in the boilers, so to speak, and a head of steam on, so that the -domestic ship could sail in any direction on receipt of orders by wire, -wireless or telephone. They were permanent there, but Jake Hergsheimer -and his family, as far as I could make out, never got more than an -average of about three months' use a year out of that mansion. - -"This time I am speaking of was nearly ten years ago. I was a waiter in -an uptown restaurant, and both my legs were good then; Larry and I -were old pals. The Jake Hergsheimers were sailing around the world in a -yacht, and would be at it for about a year, as far as Larry knew, and -he asked me up to live with him. I accepted; and believe me, the eight -months I put in as Jake Hergsheimer's guest were _some_ eight months. -Not that Jake knew about it; but if he had known it, he wouldn't have -cared. This Jake was a real human being. - -"And his clothes fit me; just as if I had been measured for them. He had -what you might call an automatic tailor, Jake did. Every six weeks, rain -or shine, that tailor delivered a new suit of clothes to the Hergsheimer -house, and he sent in his bill once a year, so Larry the butler told me. -Some people go away and forget to stop the milk; and when Jake sailed -for the other side of the world he forgot to tell anybody to stop the -tailor. Larry didn't feel as if it were any part of his duty to stop -him; for Larry liked that tailor. He made Larry's clothes, too. - -"And I didn't see where it was up to me to protest. As I said, Jake's -garments might have been made for me. In fact, a great many of them -_were_ made for me. There were at least fifteen suits of clothes that -had never been worn in that house, made to my measure and Jake's, when -I became butler's companion in the establishment, and they kept right -on coming. Also, there was a standing order for orchestra seats at the -Metropolitan. Jake had a box every second Thursday, or something like -that, but when he really wanted to hear the music and see the show he -usually sat in the orchestra. Not only did his business suits fit me, -but his dress clothes fit me, too. - -"I used to go often, with a lady's maid that had the same access to -clothing as I did. She was part of a caretaking staff also. Being a -writing person, you have, of course, only viewed New York's society and -near-society from the outside, and no doubt you have been intimidated by -the haughty manners of the servants. Well, when you get close to swells -and really know them personally, you will find they are human, too. - -"A butler on duty is a swelled-up proposition, because he has to be that -way. But take him as you find him among his peers, and he quits acting -like the Duke of Westminster Abbey, and is real sociable. This Larry -person, for instance, could distend himself like a poisoned pup and -make a timid millionaire feel like the sleeves of his undershirt must be -showing below his cuffs; but in our little select circle Larry was the -life of the party. - -"Being, as I said before, an outsider, you likely don't realize how -many of those big swell millionaires' cribs uptown are in the hands of -caretakers like Larry and his mother and me the best part of the year. -Well, they are; and there's a social life goes on in them that don't -ever get into the papers. The parties we had that year in Jake's house -would have done Jake himself good, if Jake could have got an invitation -to them. But Jake was absent, though his cellar and his grocers were -at our service; and he never questioned a bill, Larry said. There were -twelve or fifteen hand-picked servants in our little social circle that -year, and before I left there I could begin to understand how these -debutantes feel at the end of the season--sort of tired and bored and -willing to relax and go in for work and rest and athletics for a change. - -"I had only been butler's companion for a few weeks when Old Man -Singleton dropped in one evening--yes, sir, Old Lemuel Singleton -himself. He came to see the butler's mother, Mrs. Hodgkins. He had known -her a good many years before, when he was wearing those red mittens and -sawing wood up in that New England town and she was somebody's Irish -cook. And he had run across her again, after he became a millionaire, -down here in New York City. He was tickled to see her, and he didn't -care a darn if she was Jake Hergsheimer's housekeeper. She could cook -cabbage and kale better than any one else in the world, and he used to -come and sit with her, and talk about that little old town up there, and -indulge in his favorite dissipation. - -"Old Man Singleton has had what you call the social entree in New York -for a good many years; for so long that some of his children, and -all his grandchildren, were born with it. But he never took it very -seriously himself. He has been an in-and-outer, you might say. If he saw -Mrs. Hodgkins around Jake's house, he would call her Mary and ask her -how folks were up home in front of Jake and his wife and a whole bunch -of guests, just as soon as not. - -"And his sons and his daughters and his grandchildren never could get -him out of those ways; he always was bull-headed about doing what he -pleased, so Mrs. Hodgkins told me, and he always will be. And the old -lady liked to see him and chin with him and cook for him; and believe -me, she was some cook when she set herself to it. Not merely kale, but -everything. She didn't cook for the Hergsheimers--they had a chef for -that--but they missed it by not having her. Victuals was old Mary's -middle name, and she could rustle up some of the best grub you ever -threw your lip over. - -"At first, Old Man Singleton and Mrs. Hodgkins didn't mix much with -us younger folks when we pulled a party. It wasn't that we were too -aristocratic for them, for off duty, as I said before, butlers and other -swells can be as easy and jolly as common people. But they seemed too -antiquated, if you get me; they were living too much in the past. - -"And then, one night, I discovered what Old Man Singleton's fad -was--kale. Money. Big money. Big money on his person. It was this way: -Larry and I wanted to go downtown and have a little fun, but neither -of us had any cash in hand. Larry had a check for one hundred and fifty -dollars which Jake Hergsheimer had sent him, but all the tradesmen we -knew were closed at that hour, and there wasn't any way to cash it, -unless Old Man Singleton could. - -"'Mr. Singleton,' says Larry to the old man, who was sitting down to a -mess of pork and kale with Mrs. Hodgkins, 'maybe you can cash this for -me.' And he handed him the check. - -"The old man stopped eating and put his glasses on and pulled a -billfolder out of his pocket, with a kind of pleased smile on his face. - -"'Let me see,' he says, taking out the bills, and running them over with -his fingers; 'let me see.' - -"I nearly dropped dead. There wasn't a bill in there of lower -denomination than one thousand dollars; and most of them were -ten-thousand-dol-lar bills. - -"'No, Larry,' says the old man, 'I'm afraid I can't, afraid I -can't--haven't got the change.' - -"And while we stood there and looked, he smoothed and patted those -bills, and folded and refolded them, and then put them back into his -pocket, and patted the pocket. - -"'Mary,' he says to the old woman with a grin, 'that's quite a lot of -money for little Lem Singleton to be carrying around in his pocket, -isn't it?' "'It is that, Lemuel,' said the old lady, 'and I should think -you'd be afraid of leaving it out of the bank.' - -"'Well, Mary,' says the old man, 'I kind o' like to have it around me -all the time--uh--huh! a little bit where I can put my hands on it, all -the time. I used to carry gold; but I gave that up; it's too heavy, for -what it's worth. But I like it, Mary; I used to look at that gold and -say to myself, "Well, there's one thing you got, Lem Singleton, they -never thought you'd get when you left home! And they aren't going to -take it away from you, either!" It was a long time before I could make -paper seem as real to me as gold. But it does now.' - -"And what does the old bird do but take it out of his pocket again and -crinkle it through his fingers and smooth it out again and pet it and do -everything but kiss it. Larry and I stood looking at him with our eyes -sticking out, and he looked at us and laughed. It came to me all of a -sudden that he liked to come where we servants were because he could -pull that kind of thing in front of us, but that he was sort of lost -among the swell-society bunch because he didn't dare pull it there and -didn't feel so rich among them. - -"'My God, Larry,' I said, when we were outside the house, 'did you -notice how much kale the old man had there?' - -"'Uh-huh,' said Larry. 'Mother always cooks a lot for him.' - -"'Wake up, Stupid,' I said. 'I don't mean cabbage. I mean money. There -must have been nearly two hundred thousand dollars in that roll!' - -"'He always has around one hundred thousand dollars on him, at least,' -says Larry. 'And I've seen him flash as high as a quarter of a million.' - -"'Well,' I says, 'something ought to be done about it.' - -"'What do you mean, Ed?' says he. - -"'Oh, nothing,' I said. - -"We walked over to get the L train downtown, saying nothing, and then -finally Larry remarked: "'Electricity is a great thing, Ed.' - -"'I never said it wasn't,' says I. - -"'It's a great thing,' says Larry, 'but when you sit on it, sit on -it right. For instance, I'd a darned sight rather sit in one of these -electric trains than in that electric chair up at Sing Sing.' - -"'Who said anything about an electric chair?' I asked him. - -"'Nobody said anything,' says Larry, 'but you're thinking so darned loud -I can get you.' - -"'Piffle, peanuts and petrification,' I said. 'Take care of your own -thoughts, and I'll skim the fat off of mine myself.' - -"Well, as I said, after that we got better acquainted, the old man and -I. I paid more attention to him. He interested me more. I've always -been interested in science of all kinds, and the year I spent in Jake -Hergsheimer's house I cut the leaves of a lot of books in his library -and gave them the once over. I was always interested in psychology, even -before the word got to be a headliner in the Sunday supplements, and I -took a good deal of pleasure that winter trying to get inside of Old -Man Singleton's mind. I must say, I never got very far in, at that. My -general conclusion at the end is what it was at the beginning--his fad -is kale. - -"And he loved to show it, you could see that. Not that he pulled it -every time he happened to be at one of our parties. Often he would drop -in that winter from some swell social event at one of the big houses -uptown, where he had been a guest, and eat some of old Mary's chow, and -never intimate by word or look that he had all that kale on him. And -then again he'd come among us, diked out in the soup and fish, and flash -the roll, for no other reason that I know except he enjoyed seeing us -get the blind staggers, which we always did. And then he'd fuss with it -and pet it and go into a dream over it, and wake up again and grin and -talk about life with old Mary. And they agreed about life; you never -heard two more moral persons exchange views. It was sometimes as good as -a Sunday-school to listen to them for half an hour. - -"One night, when they had been gassing for a while, they sort of got my -goat, and I said to him: - -"'Mr. Singleton, does it ever strike you as a little peculiar that you -should have so much money and so many other people, such as myself, none -at all?' - -"'No, Ed,' he says. 'No, it doesn't. That's the Lord's way, Ed! Money is -given as a sacred trust by the Lord to them that are best fitted to have -and to hold.' - -"'Meaning,' I asked him, 'that if you were ever to let loose of any of -it, it might work harm in the world?' - -"He chewed over that for quite a while, as if he saw something personal -in it, and he gave me a ten-dollar bill for a Christmas present. He -isn't as stingy as some people say he is; he just looks so stingy that -if he was the most liberal man on earth he would get the reputation of -being stingy. - -"The lady's maid that I used to go to the opera with quit me a little -while after Christmas. She and I were walking around the promenade -between the acts one night at the Metropolitan and Larry was with -us, when a fellow stopped Larry and spoke to him. I could see the guy -looking at the girl and me as he and Larry talked. Later, Larry told me -that it was one of Jake Hergsheimer's friends, and he had been a little -bit surprised to see Larry at the opera all diked out, and he had wanted -to know who the girl was. - -"Well, anyhow, she never went to the opera with me after that; but a few -weeks later I saw her at a cabaret with Jake's friend. It was a grief to -me; but I got into some real trouble, or let it get into me, about -the same time, and that helped take the sting off. I had once been -married--but there's no use going into all that. Anyhow, when the -marriage kind o' wore off, my own folks took my wife's side of the case -and she went to live with them. My old dad was sick, and they needed -money, and my wife wrote to me that she was willing to let bygones be -bygones and accept some money from me, and that my parents felt the same -way, and there was a kid, too, that my folks were bringing up. - -"Well, I was desperate for some way to get hold of some cash and send -to them. In the end, I took one of Jake Hergsheimer's silver vases and -hocked it and sent the money, and got it out of hock two or three months -later; but in the meantime there was a spell when I was so hard pressed -it looked to me like I would actually have to do something dishonest to -get that money. - -"One night, before Jake Hergsheimer came to my rescue and lent me that -silver vase, if you want to call it that, I was sitting alone in the -house thinking what a failure in life I was, and how rotten it was to -have a wife and kid and parents all set against me, and drinking some of -Jake's good booze, and getting more and more low in my mind, when there -came a ring at the front doorbell. The butler was out, and old Mary was -asleep way up in the top of the house, at the back, and wouldn't hear. - -"'I'll bet,' I said to myself, 'that's Old Man Singleton nosing around -for his cabbage.' And I made up my mind I wouldn't let him in--he could -ring till he froze to death on the front steps, and I wouldn't. It was -a blustery, snowy January night, with new snow over the old ice -underneath, and I says to myself, 'It's a wonder the old coot don't slip -down and bust some of those big New England bones of his. And I wouldn't -care much if he did.' - -"But he kept on ringing, and finally I thought I'd better go and let him -in. I didn't have any ulterior notions when I went up the stairs from -the servants' dining room and made for the front door. But the minute I -clapped eyes on him I thought of all that kale in his pocket. - -"I opened the front door, but outside of that was an iron grille. It had -a number of fastenings, but the final one was a short, heavy iron bar -that lay in two sockets, one on each side of the opening. - -"I lifted the bar and swung the grille open. - -"'Ha! Hum!' said he, and sneezed. 'It's you, Ed, is it?' - -"And, snuffing and sneezing, he passed in front of me. - -"And as he passed by me that bar said something to my hand. And the hand -raised up. It wasn't any of my doings, it was all the hand and the bar. -It raised up, that bar did, right behind the old man's head. He stopped -just outside the front door and flapped his big bony feet on a rug -that was there, to get the snow off his shoes, and while he flapped and -sneezed that bar was right over the old man's brain-box. - -"'Well,' I said to myself, 'here is your chance to be an honest man and -a prosperous man, reunited with your wife and your kid and your folks -at home, and not have to borrow anything from Jake Hergsheimer's -collection--just one little tap on the old man's head, and down he goes, -and he's got anywhere from one hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty -thousand dollars in his clothes.' - -"'Yes,' said myself to me, 'one little tap, and maybe you kill him. What -then? The electric chair, huh?' - -"'Hell!' I said to myself. 'Take a chance! The old man has so much money -that what he has in his pocket means nothing to him one way or another. -Larry's gone till morning, and the old woman won't wake for a long time. -It means a little bit of a headache for Old Lemuel here, and it means -your chance to lead an honest life hereafter and be a useful citizen and -take care of those you have been neglecting.' - -"'Yes,' said myself to me, 'it's more moral to do it, and make your life -over, but you never have been one for morality in the past. Besides, -you'd kill him.' - -"And I might have killed him, boss. I wasn't sure of it then, but I've -been sure of it since then. I was that strung up that I would have hit -too hard. - -"And yet, I might _not_ have done so! I might have hit him just enough -to put him out and make my get-away, and I might have led an honest life -since then. - -"But at the moment I couldn't do it. I saw, all of a sudden, something -funny. I saw the old man stamping his feet and getting the snow off, and -I thought of him as a dead man, and I says to myself: 'How damned funny -for a dead man to stamp the snow off his feet!' And I laughed. - -"'Heh? Heh? What did you say, Ed?' says the old man, and turns around. - -"I dropped the iron bar to my side, and that dead man came up out of the -grave. - -"'Nothing, Mr. Singleton,' I said. 'I was just going to say, go on in, -and I'll get a brush and clean the snow off of you.' - -"I said I saved his life from a man one time. Well, I was the man I -saved his life from. - -"He went on in, and I barred the grille and locked the door, and we went -on down to the dining room. I was shaking, and still I wasn't easy in my -mind. I told him there wasn't anybody home but me, and he said he'd take -a drop of Jake's brandy. And while I was opening a bottle of it for him, -what does he do but pull out that billfolder. - -"'For God's sake, Mr. Singleton,' I said, turning weak and sitting down -in a chair all of a sudden, 'put that money up.' - -"He sat there and sipped his brandy and talked, but I didn't hear what -he was saying. I just looked at him, and kept saying to myself, should I -have done it? Or should I have let him go by? - -"Boss, that was nearly ten years ago, and I've been asking myself that -question from time to time ever since. Should I have done it? Was it -moral to refuse that chance to make my life over again? You know me, -kid. You know some of me, at least. You know I don't hold much by -morals. If I was to tell you how I got that bullet under my kneecap, -you'd know me better than _you_ do. If I had hit him just right and made -my get-away, I would have led a different life. - -"And I wouldn't now be 'waiting for my death sentence. For that's -practically what this prohibition thing means to me. I can't work at -anything but this. And this is through with. And I'm through with. I'm a -bum from now on. There's no use kidding myself; I'm a bum. - -"And yet, often, I'm glad I didn't do it." - -Ed brooded in silence for a while. - -And then I said, "It's strange he didn't know you." - -"It's been ten years," said Ed, "and you saw that the old man's got -to the doddering stage. He likely wouldn't know his own children if he -didn't see them every day or two." - -"I suppose," I said, "that the old man feels he is ending his days in a -very satisfactory manner--the national prohibition thing triumphant, and -all that." - -"How do you mean?" asked Ed. - -"Don't you know?" I said. "Why, Old Man Singleton, it is said, helped -to finance the fight, and used his money and his influence on other big -money all over the country in getting next to doubtful politicians and -putting the thing through the state legislatures. I don't mean there -was anything crooked about it anywhere, but he was one of the bunch that -represented organized power, and put the stunt across while the liquor -interests were still saying national prohibition could never come." - -"The hell he did!" said Ed. "I didn't know he was mixed up with it. I -never saw him take a drink, now that I remember, except the brandy on -the night I saved his life." - -"Old Man Singleton," I said, "is credited with having had more to do -with it than any other one person, by those who are on the inside." - -"The old coot!" said Ed. And then added wryly: "I hope he gets as stiff -in his knee joint as I am and lives forever! He's made a bum of me!" - -It was three or four weeks after my talk with Ed that I read in the -papers of a peculiar accident of which Old Man Singleton had been the -victim. A head of cabbage, he said, had fallen out of a tree and hit him -on his own head one evening as he was walking alone in Central Park. He -had been dazed by the blow for a moment; and when he regained his feet -a considerable sum of money which he had been carrying was gone. He was -sure that he had been struck by a head of cabbage, for a head of cabbage -lay on the pathway near him when he was helped to his feet. He did not -pretend to be able to say how a head of cabbage could have gotten into -one of the park trees. - -The police discredited his story, pointing out that likely the old -man, who was near-sighted, had blundered against a tree in the dusk and -struck his head. The head of cabbage, they told the reporters, could -have had nothing to do with it; it could not have come into contact with -his head at all, unless, indeed, some one had put it into a sack and -swung it on him like a bludgeon; and this, the police said, was too -absurd to be considered. For why should a crook use a head of cabbage, -when the same results might have been attained with the more usual -blackjack, stick or fist? - -Old Man Singleton was not badly hurt; and as regarded the loss of the -money, he never said, nor did his family ever say, just how large the -sum was. Mr. Singleton had the vague impression that after the cabbage -fell out of the tree and hit him he had been helped to his feet by a man -who limped and who said to him: "Kale is given to them that can best use -it, to have and to hold." - -He did not accuse this person, who disappeared before he was thoroughly -himself again, of having found the money which had evidently dropped -from his pocket when the cabbage fell from the tree and hit him, but -he was suspicious, and he thought the police were taking the matter too -lightly; he criticized the police in an interview given to the papers. -The police pointed out the irrelevance of the alleged words of the -alleged person who limped, and intimated that Mr. Singleton was -irrational and should be kept at home evenings; as far as they were -concerned, the incident was closed. - -But I got another slant at it, as Ed might have said. Last winter I was -talking at my club with a friend just back from Cuba, where the rum is -red and joy is unconfined. - -"I met a friend of yours," he said, "by the name of Ed down there, who -is running a barroom and seems to be quite a sport in his way. Sent his -regards to you. Must have made it pay--seems to have all kinds of money. -Named his barroom 'The Second Thought.' Asked him why. He said nobody -knew but himself, and he was keeping it a secret--though you might -guess. Wants you to come down. Sent you a message. Let's see: what was -it? Oh, yes! Cryptic! Very cryptic! Wrote it down--here it is: '_Kale! -Kale! The gang's all here_.' Make anything out of it? I can't." - -I could, though I didn't tell him what. But I shall not visit Ed in -Cuba; I consider him an immoral person. - - - - -VII--Bubbles - - -I - -|Tommy Hawkins was not so sober that you could tell it on him. Certainly -his friend Jack Dobson, calling on him one dreary winter evening--an -evening of that winter before John Barleycorn cried maudlin tears into -his glass and kissed America good-by--would never have guessed it from -Tommy's occupation. Presenting himself at Tommy's door and finding it -unlocked, Jack had gone on in. A languid splashing guided him to the -bathroom. In the tub sat Tommy with the water up to his shoulders, -blowing soap bubbles. - -"You darned old fool!" said Jack. "Aren't you ever going to grow up, -Tommy?" - -"Nope," said Tommy placidly. "What for?" Sitting on a chair close by -the bathtub was a shallow silver dish with a cake of soap and some -reddish-colored suds in it. Tommy had bought the dish to give some one -for a wedding present, and then had forgotten to send it. - -"What makes the suds red?" asked Jack. - -"I poured a lot of that nose-and-throat spray stuff into it," explained -Tommy. "It makes them prettier. Look!" - -As a pipe he was using a piece of hollow brass curtain rod six or eight -inches long and of about the diameter of a fat lead pencil. He soused -this thing in the reddish suds and manufactured a bubble with elaborate -care. With a graceful gesture of his wet arm he gently waved the rod -until the bubble detached itself. It floated in the air for a moment, -and the thin, reddish integument caught the light from the electric -globe and gave forth a brief answering flash as of fire. Then the bubble -suddenly and whimsically dashed itself against the wall and was no more, -leaving a faint, damp, reddish trace upon the white plaster. - -"Air current caught it," elucidated Tommy with the air of a circus -proprietor showing off pet elephants. In his most facetious moments -Tommy was wont to hide his childish soul beneath an exterior of serious -dignity. "This old dump is full of air currents. They come in round -the windows, come in round the doors, come right in through the -walls. Damned annoying, too, for a scientist making experiments with -bubbles--starts a bubble and never knows which way it's going to jump. -I'm gonna complain to the management of this hotel." - -"You're going to come out of that bathtub and get into your duds," said -Jack. "That water's getting cool now, and between cold water and air -currents you'll have pneumonia the first thing you know--you poor silly -fish, you." - -"Speaking of fish," said Tommy elliptically, "there's a bottle of -cocktails on the mantel in the room there. Forgot it for a moment. Don't -want to be inhospitable, but don't drink all of it." - -"It's all gone," said Dobson a moment later. - -"So?" said Tommy in surprise. "That's the way with cocktails. Here -one minute and gone the next--like bubbles. Bubbles! Life's like that, -Jack!" He made another bubble with great solemnity, watched it float and -dart and burst. "Pouf!" he said. "Bubbles! Bubbles! Life's like that!" - -"You're an original philosopher, you are," said Jack, seizing him by the -shoulders. "You're about as original as a valentine. Douse yourself -with cold water and rub yourself down and dress. Come out of it, kid, or -you'll be sick." - -"If I get sick," said Tommy, obeying, nevertheless, "I won't have to go -to work to-morrow." - -"Why aren't you working to-day?" asked his friend, working on him with a -coarse towel. - -"Day off," said Tommy. - -"Day off!" rejoined Dobson. "Since when has the _Morning Despatch_ -been giving two days off a week to its reporters? You had your day off -Tuesday, and this is Thursday." - -"Is it?" said Tommy. "I always get Tuesday and Thursday mixed. Both -begin with a T. Hey, Jack, how's that? Both begin with a T! End with a -tea party! Good line, hey, Jack? Tuesday and Thursday both begin with -a T and end with a tea party. I'm gonna write a play round that, Jack. -Broadway success! Letters a foot high! Royalties for both of us! I won't -forget you, Jack! You suggested the idea for the plot, Jack. Drag you -out in front of the curtain with me when I make my speech. 'Author! -Author!' yells the crowd. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' says I, 'here is the -obscure and humble person who set in motion the train of thought that -led to my writing this masterpiece. Such as he is, I introduce him to -you.'" - -"Shut up!" said Jack, and continued to lacerate Tommy's hide with the -rough towel. "Hold still! Now go and get into your clothes." And as -Tommy began to dress he regarded that person darkly. "You're a brilliant -wag, you are! It's a shame the way the copy readers down on the -_Despatch_ keep your best things out of print, you splattering -supermudhen of journalism, you! You'll wake up some morning without any -more job than a kaiser." And as Tommy threaded himself into the mystic -maze of his garments Mr. Dobson continued to look at him and mutter -disgustedly, "Bubbles!" - -Not that he was afraid that Tommy would actually lose his job. If it had -been possible for Tommy to lose his job that must have happened years -before. But Tommy wrote a certain joyous type of story better than any -other person in New York, and his facetiousness got him out of as many -scrapes as it got him into. He was thirty years old. At ninety he would -still be experimenting with the visible world in a spirit of random -eagerness, joshing everything in it, including himself. He looked -exactly like the young gentleman pictured in a widely disseminated -collar advertisement. He enjoyed looking that way, and occasionally he -enjoyed talking as if he were exactly that kind of person. He loved to -turn his ironic levity against the character he seemed to be, much as -the mad wags who grace the column of F. P. A. delight in getting their -sayings across accompanied by a gentle satirical fillip at all mad -waggery. - -"Speaking of bubbles," he suddenly chuckled as he carefully adjusted his -tie in the collar that looked exactly like the one in the advertisement, -"there's an old party in the next room that takes 'em more seriously -than you do, Jack." - -The old downtown hotel in which Tommy lived had once been a known and -noted hostelry, and persons from Plumville, Pennsylvania, Griffin, -Georgia, and Galva, Illinois, still stopped there when in New York, -because their fathers and mothers had stopped there on their wedding -journeys perhaps. It was not such a very long way from the Eden Musee, -when there was an Eden Musee. Tommy's room had once formed part of a -suite. The bathroom which adjoined it had belonged jointly to another -room in the suite. But now these two rooms were always let separately. -Still, however, the bathroom was a joint affair. When Tommy wished to -bathe he must first insure privacy by hooking on the inside the door -that led into the bathroom from the chamber beyond. - -"Old party in the next room?" questioned Jack. - -"Uh-huh," said Tommy, who had benefited by his cold sluicing and his -rubdown. "I gave him a few bubbles for his very own--through the keyhole -into his room, you know. Poked that brass rod through and blew the -bubble in his room. Detached it with a little jerk and let it float. -Seemed more sociable, you know, to let him in on the fun. Never be -stingy with your pleasures, Jack. Shows a mean spirit--a mean soul. Why -not cheer the old party up with soap bubbles? Cost little, bubbles -do. More than likely he's a stranger in New York. Unfriendly city, he -thinks. Big city. Nobody thinks of him. Nobody cares for him. Away from -home. Winter day. Melancholy. Well, I say, give him a bubble now and -then. Shows some one is thinking of him. Shows the world isn't so -thoughtless and gloomy after all. Neighborly sort of thing to do, Jack. -Makes him think of his youth--home--mother's knee--all that kind of -thing, Jack. Cheers him up. Sat in the tub there and got to thinking -of him. Almost cried, Jack, when I thought how lonely the old man must -be--got one of these old man's voices. Whiskers. Whiskers deduced from -the voice. So I climbed out of the tub every ten or fifteen minutes all -afternoon and gave the old man a bubble. Rain outside--fog, sleet. Dark -indoors. Old man sits and thinks nobody loves him. Along comes a bubble. -Old man gets happy. Laughs. Remembers his infancy. Skies clear. You -think I'm a selfish person, Jack? I'm not. I'm a Samaritan. Where will -we eat?" - -"You are a darned fool," said Jack. "You say he took them seriously? -What do you mean? Did he like 'em?" - -"Couldn't quite make out," said Tommy. "But they moved him. Gasped every -now and then. Think he prayed. Emotion, Jack. Probably made him think -of boyhood's happy days down on the farm. Heard him talking to himself. -Think he cried. Went to bed anyhow with his clothes on and pulled the -covers over his head. Looked through the keyhole and saw that. Gray -whiskers sticking up, and that's all. Deduced the whiskers from the -voice, Jack. Let's give the old party a couple more bubbles and then go -eat. It's been an hour since he's had one. Thinks I'm forgetting him, no -doubt." - -So they gave the old man a couple of bubbles, poking the brass rod -through the keyhole of the door. - -The result was startling and unexpected. First there came a gasp from -the other room, a sort of whistling release of the breath, and an -instant later a high, whining, nasal voice. - -"Oh, God! God! Again! You meant it, then, God! You meant it!" - -The two young men started back and looked at each other in wonderment. -There was such a quivering agony, such an utter groveling terror in this -voice from the room beyond that they were daunted. - -"What's eating him?" asked Dobson, instinctively dropping his tones to a -whisper. - -"I don't know," said Tommy, temporarily subdued. "Sounds like that last -one shell-shocked him when it exploded, doesn't it?" - -But Tommy was subdued only for a moment. - -As they went out into the corridor he giggled and remarked, "Told you he -took 'em seriously, Jack." - - - -II - -"Seriously" was a word scarcely strong enough for the way in which the -old party in the room beyond had taken it, though he had not, in fact, -seen the bubble. He had only seen a puff of smoke coming apparently from -nowhere, originating in the air itself, as it seemed to him, manifesting -itself, materializing itself out of nothing, and floating in front of -the one eye which was peeping fearfully out of the huddled bedclothing -which he had drawn over himself. He had lain quaking on the bed, waiting -for this puff of smoke for an hour or more, hoping against hope that it -would not come, praying and muttering, knotting his bony hands in the -whiskers that Tommy had seen sticking up from the coverings, twisting -convulsively. - -Tommy had whimsically filled the bubble, as he blew it, with smoke -from his cigarette. He had in like manner, throughout the afternoon and -early-evening, filled all the bubbles that he had given the old man -with cigarette or pipe smoke. The old party had not been bowled over -by anything in Tommy's tobacco. He had not noticed that the smoke was -tobacco smoke, for he had been smoking a pipe himself the greater part -of the day, and had not aired out the room. It was neither bubbles nor -tobacco that had flicked a raw spot on his soul. It was smoke. - - - -III - -Bubbles! They seemed to be in Tommy's brain. Perhaps it was the -association of ideas that made him think of champagne. At any rate he -declared that he must have some, and vetoed his friend's suggestion that -they dine--as they frequently did--at one of the little Italian table -d'hote places in Greenwich Village. - -"You're a bubble and I'm a bubble and the world is a bubble," Tommy -was saying a little later as he watched the gas stirring in his golden -drink. - -They had gone to the genial old Brevoort, which was--but why tell -persons who missed the Brevoort in its mellower days what they missed, -and why cause anguished yearnings in the bosoms of those who knew it -well? - -"Tommy," said his friend, "don't, if you love me, hand out any more of -your jejune poeticism or musical-comedy philosophy. I'll agree with you -that the world is a bubble for the sake of argument, if you'll change -the record. I want to eat, and nothing interferes with my pleasure in -a meal so much as this line of pseudocerebration that you seem to have -adopted lately." - -"Bubbles seem trivial things, Jack," went on Tommy, altogether -unperturbed. "But I have a theory that there aren't any trivial things. -I like to think of the world balancing itself on a trivial thing. Look -at the Kaiser, for instance. A madman. Well, let's say there's been a -blood clot in his brain for years--a little trivial thing the size of a -pin point, Jack. It hooks up with the wrong brain cell; it gets into -the wrong channel, and--pouf! The world goes to war. A thousand million -people are affected by it--by that one little clot of blood no bigger -than a pin point that gets into the wrong channel. An atom! A planet -balanced on an atom! A star pivoting on a molecule!" - -"Have some soup," said his friend. - -"Bubbles! Bubbles and butterflies!" continued Tommy. "Some day, Jack, -I'm going to write a play in which a butterfly's wing brushes over an -empire." - -"No, you're not," said Jack. "You're just going to talk about it and -think you're writing it and peddle the idea round to everybody you know, -and then finally some wise guy is going to grab it off and really write -it. You've been going to write a play ever since I knew you." - -"Yes, I am; I'm really going to write that play." - -"Well, Tommy," said Jack, looking round the chattering dining room, -"this is a hell of a place to do it in!" - -"Meaning, of course," said Tommy serenely, "that it takes more than a -butterfly to write a play about a butterfly." - -"You get me," said his friend. And then after a pause he went on with -sincerity in his manner: "You know I think you could write the play, -Tommy. But unless you get to work on some of your ideas pretty soon, and -buckle down to them in earnest, other people will continue to write your -plays--and you will continue to josh them and yourself, and your friends -will continue to think that you could write better plays if you would -only do it. People aren't going to take you seriously, Tommy, till you -begin to take yourself a little seriously. Why, you poor, futile, silly, -misguided, dear old mutt, you! You don't even have sense enough--you -don't have the moral continuity, if you follow me--to stay sore at a man -that does you dirt! Now, do you?" - -"Oh, I don't know about that," said Tommy a little more seriously. - -"Well now, do you?" persisted his friend. "I don't say it's good -Christian doctrine not to forgive people. It isn't. But I've seen people -put things across on you, Tommy, and seen you laugh it off and let 'em -be friends with you again inside of six weeks. I couldn't do it, and -nine-tenths of the fellows we know couldn't do it; and in the way you -do it it shouldn't be done. You should at least remember, even if you do -forgive; remember well enough not to get bit by the same dog again. With -you, old kid, it's all a part of your being a butterfly and a bubble. -It's no particular virtue in you. I wouldn't talk to you like a Dutch -uncle if I didn't think you had it in you to make good. But you've got -to be prodded." - -"There's one fellow that did me dirt," said Tommy musingly, "that I've -never taken to my bosom again." - -"What did you do to him?" asked his friend. "Beat him to death with -a butterfly's wing, Tommy, or blow him out of existence with a soap -bubble?" - -"I've never done anything to him," said Tommy soberly. "And I don't -think I ever would do anything to him. I just remember, that's all. If -he ever gets his come-uppance, as they say in the rural districts, it -won't be through any act of mine. Let life take revenge for me. I never -will." - -"I suppose you're right," said Dobson. "But who was this guy? And what -did he do to you?" - - - -IV - -"He was--and is--my uncle," said Tommy, "and he did about everything -to me. Listen! You think I do nothing but flitter, flutter, frivol and -flivver! And you may be right, and maybe I never will do anything else. -Maybe I never will be anything but a kid. - -"I was young when I was born. No, that's not one of my silly lines, -Jack. I mean it seriously. I was young when I was born. I was born with -a jolly disposition. But this uncle of mine took it out of me. I'll say -he did! The reason I'm such a kid now, Jack, is because I had to grow up -when I was about five years old, and I stayed grown up until I was -seventeen or eighteen. I never had a chance to be a boy. If I showed any -desire to be it was knocked out of me on the spot. And if I live two -hundred years, and stay nineteen years old all that time, Jack, I won't -any more than make up for the childhood I missed--that was stolen from -me. Frivol? I could frivol a thousand years and not dull my appetite. I -want froth, Jack: froth and bubbles! - -"This old uncle of mine--he wasn't so old in years when I first knew -him, but in his soul he was as old as the overseers who whipped the -slaves that built Cheops' pyramid, and as sandy and as flinty--hated me -as soon as he saw me. He hated me before he saw me. He would have hated -me if he had never seen me, because I was young and happy and careless. - -"I was that, when I went to live with him--young and happy and careless. -I was five years old. He was my father's brother, Uncle Ezra was, and he -beat my father out of money in his dirty, underhanded way. Oh, nothing -illegal! At least, I suppose not. Uncle Ezra was too cautious to do -anything that might be found out on him. There was nothing that my -mother could prove, at any rate, and my father had been careless and had -trusted him. When my father died my mother was ill. He gave us a home, -Uncle Ezra did. She had to live somewhere; she had to have a roof over -her head and attention of some sort. She had no near relations, and I -had to be looked after. - -"So she and I went into his house to live. It was to be temporary. We -were to move as soon as she got better. But she did not live long. I -don't remember her definitely as she was before we went to live with -Uncle Ezra. I can only see her as she lay on a bed in a dark room before -she died. It was a large wooden bed, with wooden slats and a straw -mattress. I can see myself sitting on a chair by the head of the bed and -talking to her. My feet did not reach to the floor by any means; they -only reached to the chair rungs. I can't remember what she said or what -I said. All I remember of her is that she had very bright eyes and that -her arms were thin. I remember her arms, but not her face, except the -eyes. I suppose she used to reach her arms out to me. I think she -must have been jolly at one time, too. There is a vague feeling, a -remembrance, that before we went to Uncle Ezra's she was jolly, and -that she and I laughed and played together in some place where there was -red-clover bloom. - -"One day when I was siting on the chair, the door opened and Uncle Ezra -came in. There was some man with him that was, I suppose, a doctor. -I can recall Uncle Ezra's false grin and the way he put his hand on my -head--to impress the doctor, I suppose--and the way I pulled away from -him. For I felt that he disliked me, and I feared and hated him. - -"Yes, Uncle Ezra gave us a home. I don't know how much you know about -the rural districts, Jack. But when an Uncle Ezra in a country town -gives some one a home he acquires merit. This was a little town in -Pennsylvania that Pm talking about, and Uncle Ezra was a prominent -citizen--deacon in the church and all that sort of thing. Truly rural -drama stuff, Jack, but I can't help that--it's true. Uncle Ezra had a -reputation for being stingy and mean. Giving us a home was a good card -for him to play. My mother had a little money, and he stole that, too, -when she died. - -"I suppose he stole it legally. I don't know. It wasn't much. No one had -any particular interest in looking out for me, and nobody would want to -start anything in opposition to Uncle Ezra in that town if it could be -helped anyhow. He didn't have the whole village and the whole of the -farming country round about sewed up, all by himself, but he was one -of the little group that did. There's a gang like that in every country -town, I imagine. He was one of four or five big ducks in that little -puddle--lent money, took mortgages and all that kind of thing you read -about. I don't know how much he is worth now, counting what he has -been stealing all his life. But it can't be a staggering sum. He's too -cowardly to plunge or take a long chance. He steals and saves and grinds -in a little way. He is too mean and small and blind and limited in his -intelligence to be a big, really successful crook, such as you will find -in New York City. - -"When my mother died, of course, I stayed with Uncle Ezra. I suppose -everybody said how good it was of him to keep me, and that it showed a -soft and kindly spot in his nature after all, and that he couldn't be so -hard as he had the name of being. But I don't see what else could have -been done with me, unless he had taken me out and dropped me in the mill -pond like a blind cat. Sometimes I used to wish he had done that. - -"It isn't hard to put a five-year-old kid in the wrong, so as to make it -appear--even to the child himself--that he is bad and disobedient. Uncle -Ezra began that way with me. I'm not going into details. This isn't a -howl; it's merely an explanation. But he persecuted me in every way. He -put me to work before I should have known what work was--work too hard -for me. He deviled me and he beat me, he clothed me like a beggar and he -fed me like a dog, he robbed me of childhood and of boyhood. I won't go -over the whole thing. - -"I never had decent shoes, or a hat that wasn't a rag, and I never went -to kid parties or anything, or even owned so much as an air rifle of my -own. The only pair of skates I ever had, Jack, I made for myself out of -two old files, with the help of the village blacksmith--and I got licked -for that. Uncle Ezra said I had stolen the files and the straps. They -belonged to him. - -"But there's one thing I remember with more of anger than any other. He -used to make me kneel down and pray every night before I went to bed, -in his presence; and sometimes he would pray with me. He was a deacon in -the church. There are plenty of them on the square--likely most of them -are. But this one was the kind you used to see in the old-fashioned -melodramas. Truly rural stuff, Jack. He used to be quite a shark at -prayer himself, Uncle Ezra did. I can remember how he looked when he -prayed, with his eyes shut and his Adam's apple bobbing up and down and -the sound whining through his nose. - -"The only person that was ever human to me was a woman I called Aunt -Lizzie. I don't know really what relation she wras to me; a distant -cousin of Uncle Ezra's, I think. She was half blind and she was deaf, -and he bullied her and made her do all the housework. She was bent -nearly double with drudgery. He had given her a home, too. She didn't -dare be very good to me. He might find it out, and then we both would -catch it. She baked me some apple dumplings once on one of my birthdays. -I was nine years old. And he said she had stolen the apples and flour -from him; that he had not ordered her to make any apple dumplings, -and it was theft; and he made me pray for her, and made her pray for -herself, and he prayed for both of us in family prayers every day for a -week. - -"I was nearly eighteen when I ran away. I might have done it sooner, but -I was small for my age, and I was cowed. I didn't dare to call my soul -my own, and I had a reputation for being queer, too. For I used to grin -and laugh at things no one else thought were funny--when Uncle Ezra -wasn't round. I suppose people in that town thought it was odd that I -could laugh at all. No one could understand how I had a laugh left in -me. But when I was alone I used to laugh. I used to laugh at myself -sometimes because I was so little and so queer. When I was seventeen I -wasn't much bigger than a thirteen-year-old kid should be. I packed a -lot of growing into the years between seventeen and twenty-one. - -"When I ran away Aunt Lizzie gave me eighty-seven cents, all in nickels -and pennies, and there were two or three of those old-fashioned two-cent -pieces in it, too, that she had had for God knows how long. It was -all she had. I don't suppose he ever paid her anything at all, and the -wonder was she had that much. I told her that when I got out into the -world and made good I would come and get her, but she shivered all over -with fright at the idea of daring to leave. I have sent her things from -time to time in the last ten years--money, and dresses I have bought -for her, and little things I thought she would like. But I don't know -whether he let her have them or not I never got any letter from her at -all. I don't even know whether she can write, to tell the truth, and she -wouldn't dare get one of the neighbors to write for her. But if I ever -make any real money, Jack, I am going to go and get her, whether she -dares to come away or not. - -"Well, when I left, the thing I wanted to do was go to school. Uncle -Ezra hadn't given me time to go to school much. But I tramped to a -town where there was a little fresh-water college that had its own prep -school attached, and I did the whole seven years of prep school and -college in five years. You see, I had a lot of bounce in me. The minute -I got away from Uncle Ezra the whole world brightened up for me. The -clouds rolled by and life looked like one grand long joke, and I turned -into a kid. I romped through that prep school and that college, and made -my own living while I was doing it, and laughed all the time and loved -the world and everything in it, and it came as easy to me as water comes -to a duck. I came on down here to New York and was lucky enough to get a -chance as a reporter, and I've been romping ever since. - -"I don't want to do anything but romp. Of course, I want to write some -good stuff some day, but I want to keep romping while I write it, and I -want it to be stuff that has a romp in it, too. You say I romp so much -I'm never serious. Well, I do have some serious moments, too. I have -a dream that keeps coming to me. I dream that I'm back in that little -town, and that I'm Uncle Ezra's slave again, and that I can't get away. - -"Sometimes the dream takes the form of Uncle Ezra coming here to New -York to get me, and I know that I've got to go back with him to that -place, and I wake up sweating and crying like an eight-year-old kid. If -he ever really came it would put a crimp into me, Jack. - -"You say I'm a butterfly. And I say, yes, Jack, thank God I am! I used -to be a grubworm, and now I'm a butterfly, praise heaven! - -"Well, that's the guy I hold the grudge against, and that's why I'm fool -enough to rush into every pleasure I can find. I don't know that I'll -ever change. And as for the man, I don't ever want to see him. I don't -know that I'd ever do anything to him if I did--beat him to death with -a butterfly's wing, or blow him up with a soap bubble, as you suggested. -Let him alone. He'll punish himself. He is punished by being what he is. -I wouldn't put a breath into the scale one way or the other--not even a -puff of cigarette smoke." - -He blew a breath of cigarette smoke luxuriously out of his nose as he -finished, and then he remarked, "Let's go somewhere and dance." - -"Nazimova is doing Ibsen uptown," suggested Jack, "and I have a couple -of tickets. Let's go and see Ibsen lb a little." - -"Nope," said Tommy. "Ibsen's got too much sense. I want something silly. -Me for a cabaret, or some kind of a hop garden." - - - -V - -But sometimes in this ironical world it happens that we have already -beaten a man to death with a butterfly's wing, slain him with a bubble, -sent him whirling into the hereafter on a puff of smoke, even as we are -saying that such a thing is foreign to our thoughts. - -The old party in the room next to Tommy's at the hotel had arrived the -day before, with an umbrella, a straw suitcase and a worried eye on -either side his long, white, chalkish, pitted nose. He seemed chilly -in spite of his large plum-colored overcoat, of a cut that has survived -only in the rural districts. He wore a salient, assertive beard, that -had once been sandy and was now almost white, but it was the only -assertive thing about him. His manner was far from aggressive. - -An hour after he had been shown to his room he appeared at the desk -again and inquired timidly of the clerk, "There's a fire near here?" - -"Little blaze in the next block. Doesn't amount to anything," said the -clerk. - -"I heard the--the engines," said the guest apologetically. - -"Doesn't amount to anything," said the clerk again. And then, "Nervous -about fire?" - -The old party seemed startled. - -"Who? Me? Why should I be nervous about fire? No! No! No!" He beat a -sudden retreat. "I was just asking--just asking," he threw back over his -shoulder. - -"Old duck's scared of fire and ashamed to own it," mused the clerk, -watching him out of the lobby. - -The old party went back to his room, and there one of the first -things he saw was a copy of the Bible lying on the bureau. There is an -organization which professes for its object the placing of a Bible in -every hotel room in the land. The old party had his own Bible with him. -As if reminded of it by the one on the bureau, he took it out of -his suitcase and sat down and began to turn the leaves like a person -familiar with the book--and like a person in need of comfort, as indeed -he was. - -There was a text in Matthew that he sought--where was it? Somewhere in -the first part of Matthew's gospel--ah, here it is: The twelfth chapter -and the thirty-first verse: - -"All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men...." - -There is a terrible reservation in the same verse. He kept his eyes from -it, and read the first part over and over, forming the syllables with -his lips, but not speaking aloud. - -"All manner of sin--all manner of sin-------" - -And then, as if no longer able to avoid it, he yielded his consciousness -to the latter clause of the verse: - -"But the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto -men." - -What was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost? Could what he had done be -construed as that? Probably if one lied to God in his prayers, that was -blasphemy against the Holy Ghost--one form of it. And had he been lying -to God these last two weeks when he had said over and over again in his -prayers that it was all a mistake? It hadn't been all a mistake, but the -worst part of it had been a mistake. - -He went out for his dinner that evening, but he was in again before ten -o'clock. He could not have slept well. At two o'clock in the morning he -appeared in front of the desk. - -He had heard fire engines again. - -"See here," said the night clerk, appraising him, as the day clerk had -done, as a rube who had been seldom to the city and was nervous about -fire, "you don't need to be worried. If anything should happen near here -we'd get all the guests out in a jiffy." - -The old party returned to his room. He was up early the next morning and -down to breakfast before the dining room was open. - -He did not look as if he had had much rest. The morning hours he devoted -to reading his Bible in his room. Perhaps he found comfort in it. At -noon he seemed a bit more cheerful. He asked the clerk the way to the -Eden Musee, and was surprised to learn that that place of amusement had -been closed for a year or two. The clerk recommended a moving-picture -house round the corner. But it had begun to rain and snow and sleet -all together; the sky was dark and the wind was rising; the old party -elected not to go out after all. - -He went back to his room once more, and his black fear and melancholy -descended upon him again, and the old debate began to weave through his -brain anew. For two weeks he had been fleeing from the debate and from -himself. He had come to New York to get away from it, but it was no -good. Just when he had made up his mind that God had forgiven him, and -was experiencing a momentary respite, some new doubt would assail him -and the agony would begin again. - -The old debate--he had burned the store, with the living quarters over -it, to get the insurance money, after having removed a part of the -insured goods, but he did not regard that as an overwhelming sin. It -wasn't right, of course, in one way. And yet in another way it was -merely sharp business practice, so he told himself. For a year before -that, when one of his buildings had burned through accident, he had been -forced to accept from the same insurance company less than was actually -due him as a matter of equity. Therefore, to make money out of that -company by a shrewd trick was in a way merely to get back his own again. -It wasn't the sort of thing that a deacon in the church would care to -have found out on him, of course. It was wrong in a sense. But it was -the wrong that it had led to that worried him. - -It was the old woman's death that worried him. He hadn't meant to burn -her to death, God knows! He hadn't known she was in the building. - -He had sent her on a week's visit to another town, to see a surprised -cousin of his own, and it had been distinctly understood that she was -not to return until Saturday. But some time on Friday evening she must -have crept back home and gone to bed in her room. He had not known she -was there. - -"I didn't know! I didn't know!" - -There were times when he gibbered the words to himself by the hour. - -It was at midnight that he had set fire to the place. The old woman was -deaf. Even when the flames began to crackle she could not have heard -them. She had had no more chance than a rat in a trap. The old fool! It -was her own fault! Why had she not obeyed him? Why had she come creeping -back, like a deaf old half-blind tabby cat, to die in the flames? It -was her own fault! When he thought of the way she had returned to kill -herself there were moments when he cursed and hated her. - -But had she killed herself? Back and forth swung the inner argument. At -times he saw clearly enough that this incident joined on without a break -to the texture of his whole miserable life; when he recognized that, -though it might be an accident in a strictly literal sense that the old -woman was dead, yet it was the sort of accident for which his previous -existence had been a preparation. Even while he fiercely denied -his guilt, or talked of it in a seizure of whining prayer that was -essentially a lying denial, he knew that guilt there was. - -Would he be forgiven? There were comforting passages in the Bible. He -switched on the rather insufficient electric light, which was all the -old hotel provided, for the day was too dark to read without that help, -and turned the pages of the New Testament through and through again. - -At three o'clock in the afternoon he was sitting on the edge of his bed, -with the book open in front of him and his head bowed, almost dozing. -His pipe, with which he had filled the room with the fumes of tobacco, -had fallen to the floor. Perhaps it was weariness, but for a brief -period his sharper sense of fear had been somewhat stilled again. Maybe -it was going to be like this--a gradual easing off of the strain in -answer to his prayers. He had asked God for an answer as to whether -he should be forgiven, and God was answering in this way, so he told -himself. God was going to let him get some sleep, and maybe when he woke -everything would be all right again--bearable at least. - -So he mused, half asleep. - -And then all at once he sprang wide awake again, and his terror wakened -with him. For suddenly in front of his half-shut eyes, coming from -nowhere in particular, there passed a puff of smoke! - -What could it mean? He had asked God for an answer. He had been lulled -for a moment almost into something like peace, and--now--this puff of -smoke! Was it a sign? Was it God's answer? - -He sat up on the edge of the bed, rigid, in a cold, still agony of -superstitious fright. He dared not move or turn his head. He was afraid -that he would see--something--if he looked behind him. He was afraid -that he would in another moment hear something--a voice! - -He closed his eyes. He prayed. He prayed aloud. His eyes once closed, -he scarcely dared open them again. After seme minutes he began to tell -himself that perhaps he had been mistaken; perhaps he had not seen smoke -at all. Perhaps even if he had seen smoke it was due to some explicable -cause, and not meant for him. - -He greatly dared. He opened his eyes. And drifting lazily above the -white pillow at the head of the bed was another puff of smoke. - -He rocked back and forth upon the bed, with his arms up as if to shield -his head from a physical blow, and then he passed in a moment from the -quakings of fear to a kind of still certainty of doom. God was angry at -him. God was telling him so. God would send the devil for him. There -was no further doubt. He would go to hell--to hell! To burn forever! -Forever--even as the old woman had burned for a quarter of an hour. He -began to search through the pages of the Bible again, not for words of -comfort this time, but in a morbid ecstasy of despair, for phrases about -hell, for verses that mentioned fire and flames. - -He did not need the concordance. He knew his Bible well, and his fear -helped him. Consciousness and subconsciousness joined to guide his -fingers and eyes in the quest. - -"Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming," he -read in Isaiah, and he took it to himself. - -"Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and -ye shall be melted in the midst thereof," he read in Ezekiel. - -He had a literal imagination, and he had a literal belief, and at every -repetition of the word "fire" the flesh cringed and crawled on his -bones. God! To burn! How it must hurt! - -"And the God that answereth by fire, let Him be God," met his eyes in -the first book of Kings. - -And it all meant him. Now and then over his shoulder would float another -little puff of smoke; and once, lifting his head suddenly from poring -over the book, he thought he saw something that moved and glinted like a -traveling spark, and was gone. - -He began to feel himself in hell already. This was the foretaste, that -was all. Would he begin to burn even before he died? Did this smoke -presage something of that kind? Would flames physically seize upon him, -and would he burn, even as the old woman had burned? - -Suddenly in his hysteria there came a revulsion--a revolt. Having -reached the nethermost depths of despair, he began to move upward a -little. His soul stirred and took a step and tried to climb. He began to -pray once more. After all, the Good Book did promise mercy! He began to -dare to pray again. And he prayed in a whisper that now and then broke -into a whine--a strange prayer, characteristic of the man. - -"Oh, God," he cried, "you promise forgiveness in that book there, and -I'm gonna hold you to it! I'm gonna hold you to it! It's down there in -black and white, your own words, God, and I'm gonna hold you to it! It's -a contract, God, and you ain't the kind of a man, God, to go back on a -contract that's down in black and white!" - -Thus he prayed, with a naive, unconscious blasphemy. And after long -minutes of this sort of thing his soul dared take another step. A -faint, far glimmering of hope came to him where he groveled. For he was -groveling on the bed now, with the covers pulled up to his head and his -hand upon the open Bible. He found the courage to peer from beneath the -covers at intervals as he prayed and muttered, and minutes passed with -no more smoke. Had the smoke ceased? The sound of his own murmuring -voice began to reassure him. The smoke had certainly ceased! It had been -twenty minutes since he had seen it--half an hour! - -What could it mean? That God was hearkening to his prayer? - -An hour went by, and still there was no more sign of smoke. He prayed -feverishly, he gabbled, as if by the rapidity of his utterance and the -repeated strokes of his words he were beating back and holding at bay -the smoke that was God's warning and the symbol of his displeasure. And -the smoke had ceased to come! He was to be forgiven! He was winning! His -prayers were winning for him! At least God was listening! - -Yes, that must be it. God was listening now. The smoke had come as a -warning; and he had, upon receiving this warning, repented. God had not -meant, after all, that he was doomed irrevocably. God had meant that, -to be forgiven, his repentance must be genuine, must be thorough--and -it was thorough now. Now it was genuine! And the smoke had ceased! The -smoke had been a sign, and he had heeded the sign, and now if he kept up -his prayers and lived a good life in the future he was to be forgiven. -He would not have to burn in hell after all. - -The minutes passed, and he prayed steadily, and every minute that went -by and brought no further sign of the smoke built up in him a little -more hope, another grain of confidence. - -An hour and a quarter, and he almost dared be sure that he was -forgiven--but he was not quite sure. If he could only be quite sure! He -wallowed on the bed, and his hand turned idly the pages of the Bible, -lying outside on the coverlet. - -More than an hour had gone by. Could he accept it as an indication that -God had indeed heard him? He shifted himself upon the bed, and stared -up at the ceiling through a chink in the covers as if through and beyond -the ceiling he were interrogating heaven. - -And lying so, there came a damp touch upon his hand, soft and chill and -silent, as if it were delicately and ironically brushed by the kiss of -Death. A sudden agony numbed his hand and arm. With the compulsion of -hysteria, not to be resisted, his head lifted and he sat up and looked. -Over the Bible and his hand that lay upon the open page there floated -again a puff of smoke, and faintly staining his Angers and the paper -itself was something moist and red. It stained his Angers and it marked -with red for his straining sight this passage of Isaiah: - -"The earth also shall disclose her blood." - -It was then he cried out, "Oh, God! God! Again! You meant it, then, God! -You meant it." - -It was nearly midnight when Tommy and his friend Dobson returned to the -hotel. "Your paper's been trying to get you for an hour, Mr. Hawkins," -said the night clerk when they came in. "Story right in the next room to -yours. Old party in there hanged himself." - -"So?" said Tommy. "Ungrateful old guy, he is! I put in the afternoon -trying to cheer him up a little." - -"Did you know him?" asked the clerk. - -"Nope," said Tommy, moving toward the elevator. - -But a few moments later, confronted with the grotesque spectacle in the -room upstairs, he said, "Yes--I--I know him. Jack! Jack! Get me out of -here, Jack! It's Uncle Ezra, Jack! He's--he's come for me!" - -As has been remarked before, sometimes even a bubble may be a mordant -weapon. - - - - -VIII.--The Chances of the Street - - -|Merriwether Buck had lost all his money. Also his sisters', and his -cousins', and his aunts'. - -"At two o'clock sharp I will shoot myself," said Merriwether Buck. - -He caressed a ten-shot automatic pistol in the right-hand pocket of his -coat as he loitered up Broadway. He was light-headed. He had had nothing -to eat for forty-eight hours. - -"How I hate you!" said Merriwether Buck, comprehensively to the city in -general. "If nine pistol shots would blot you out, I'd do it!" - -Very melodramatic language, this, for a well-brought-up young man; and -thus indicating that he was light-headed, indeed. And as for the city, -it continued to roar and rattle and honk and rumble and squeak and bawl -and shuffle and thunder and grate in the same old way--supreme in its -confidence that nine pistol shots could not, by any possibility, blot -it out. That is one of the most disconcerting things about a city; you -become enraged at it, and the city doesn't even know it. Unless you -happen to be Nero it is very difficult to blot them out satisfactorily. - -It was one o'clock. Merriwether Buck crossed the street at Herald Square -and went over and stood in front of the big newspaper office. A portly -young fellow with leaden eyes came out of the building and stood -meditatively on the curb with his hands in the pockets of clothing that -clamored shrilly of expense. - -"Excuse me," said Merriwether Buck, approaching him, "but are you, by -any chance, a reporter?" - -"Uh," grunted the young man, frigidly affirmative. - -"I can put you in the way of a good story," said Merriwether Buck, -obeying an impulse: We may live anonymously but most of us like to feel -that it will make a little stir when we die. - -"Huh," remarked the reporter. - -"At two o'clock," persisted Merriwether Buck, "I am going to shoot -myself." - -The reporter looked bored; his specialty was politics. - -"Are you anybody in particular?" he asked, discouragingly. - -"No," confessed Merriwether Buck. It didn't seem to be worth while to -mention that he was one of the Bucks of Bucktown, Merriwether County, -Georgia. - -"I thought," said the reporter, with an air of rebuke, "that you said it -was a _good_ story." - -"I am, at least, a human being," said Merriwether Buck, on the -defensive. - -"They're cheap, hereabout," returned the other, in the manner of a -person who has estimated a good many assorted lots. - -"You are callous," said Merriwether Buck. "Callous to the soul! What are -you, but--but--Why, you are New York incarnate! That is what you are! -And I think I will shoot you first!" - -"I don't want to be a spoil sport," said the reporter, "but I'm afraid I -can't allow it. I have a rather important assignment." - -Merriwether played with the little automatic pistol in his pocket. It -was not any regard for the consequences that deterred him from shooting -the portly young man. But in his somewhat dizzy brain a fancy was taking -shape; a whim worked in him. He drew his hand empty from the pocket, and -that reporter came up out of the grave. - -"I am hungry," said Merriwether Buck, in obedience to the whim. - -"Now that you remind me of it," said the other, his lack-luster -eyes lighting up a little, "so am I!" And he crossed the street and -disappeared through the swinging doors of a cafe. - -Callous, leaden-eyed young man! epitome of this hard town! So cried the -spirit of Merriwether Buck; and then he spoke aloud, formulating his -idea: - -"New York, you are on trial. You are in the balances. I give you an -hour. If I'm asked to lunch by two o'clock, all right. If not, I will -kill myself, first carefully shooting down the most prosperous citizens, -and as many of 'em as I can reach. New York, it's up to you!" - -The idea of playing it out that way tickled him to the heart; he had -always loved games of chance. One man or woman out of all the prosperous -thousands in the streets might save another prosperous half-dozen; -might save as many as he could otherwise reach with nine shots from his -pistol, for he would reserve the tenth for himself. Otherwise, there -should be a sacrifice; he would offer up a blood atonement for the pagan -city's selfishness. Giddy and feverish, and drunk with the sense of his -power to slay, he beheld himself as a kind of grotesque priest--and he -threw back his head and laughed at the maniac conceit. - -A woman who was passing turned at the sound, and their eyes met. She -smiled. Merriwether Buck was good to look at. So was she. She was of -that type of which men are certain at once, without quite knowing why; -while women are often puzzled, saying to themselves: "After all, it may -be only her rings." - -"Pardon me," said Merriwether Buck, overtaking her, "but you and I are -to lunch together, aren't we?" - -"I like your nerve!" said she. And she laughed. It was evident that she -did like it. "Where?" she asked briefly, falling into step beside him. - -"Wherever you like," said Merriwether. "I leave that to you, as I'm -depending on you to pay the check." - -She began a doubtful laugh, and then, seeing that it wasn't a joke, -repeated: - -"I like your nerve!" And it was now evident that she didn't like it. - -"See here," he said, speaking rapidly, "my clothes look all right yet, -but I'm broke. I'm hungry. I haven't had anything to eat since day -before yesterday. I'm not kidding you; it's true. You looked like a good -fellow to me, and I took a chance. Hunger" (as he spoke it he seemed to -remember having heard the remark before), "hunger makes one a judge of -faces; I gambled on yours." - -She wasn't complimented; she regarded him with a manner in which scorn -and incredulity were blended; Merriwether Buck perceived that, for some -reason or other, she was insulted. - -"Don't," she said, "don't pull any of that sentimental stuff on me. I -thought you was a gentleman!" - -And she turned away from him. He took a step in pursuit and started to -renew his plea; for he was determined to play his game square and give -the directing deities of the city a fair chance to soften whatsoever -random heart they would. - -"Beat it!" she shrilled, "beat it, you cheap grafter, or I'll call a -cop!" - -And Merriwether beat it; nor' by nor'west he beat it, as the street -beats it; as the tides beat. The clock on the Times building marked 1.20 -as he paused by the subway station there. In forty minutes--just the -time it takes to hook your wife's dress or put a girdle round the -world--Merri-wether Buck would be beating it toward eternity, shooing -before him a flock of astonished ghosts of his own making. Twenty -minutes had gone by and whatever gods they be that rule New York had -made no sign; perhaps said gods were out at lunch or gone to Coney -Island. Twice twenty minutes more, and---- - -But no. It is all over now. It must be. There emerges from the subway -station one who is unmistakably a preacher. The creases of his face -attest a smiling habit; no doubt long years of doing good have given it -that stamp; the puffs of white hair above the temples add distinction to -benignity. - -"I beg your pardon," said Merriwether Buck, "but are you a minister?" - -"Eh?" said the reverend gentleman, adjusting a pair of gold-rimmed -eyeglasses. "Yes," he said pleasantly, "I am," and he removed the -glasses and put them back on once again, as he spoke. Somehow, the way -he did it was a benediction. - -"I am hungry," said Merriwether. - -"Dear me!" said the reverend gentleman. "I shouldn't have thought it." - -"Will you ask me to lunch?" - -"Eh?" It was an embarrassing question; but the gentleman was all -good nature. His air indicated that he did not intend to let his -own embarrassment embarrass Merriwether too much. "My dear man, you -know--really----" He placed a shapely hand upon Merriwether's shoulder, -rallyingly, almost affectionately, and completed the sentence with a -laugh. - -"It's charity I'm asking for," said Merriwether. - -"Oh!" For some reason he seemed vastly relieved. "Have you been--but, -dear me, are you sure you aren't joking?" - -"Yes; sure." - -"And have you--ahem!--have you sought aid from any institution; any -charitable organization, you know?" - -"But no," said Merriwether, who had instinctively eliminated charitable -organizations, free lunches and police stations from the terms of his -wager, "I thought----" - -"My, my, my," hummed the reverend gentleman, interrupting him. He -produced his card case and took a card therefrom. "I am going," he said, -writing on the card with a pencil, "to give you my card to the secretary -of the Combined Charities. Excellent system they have there. You'll be -investigated, you know," he said brightly, as if that were an especial -boon he was conferring, "your record looked into--character and -antecedents and all that sort of thing!" - -"And fed?" asked Merriwether. - -"Oh, indeed!" And he handed over the card as if he were giving -Merriwether the keys to the city--but not too gross and material a city -either; Merriwether felt almost as if he were being baptized. - -"But," said Merriwether Buck, "I wanted _you_ to feed me!" - -"Oh, my dear man!" smiled the minister, "I _am_ doing it, you know. I'm -a subscriber--do _all_ my charitable work this way. Saves time. Well, -good-by." And he nodded cheerily. - -"But," said Merriwether Buck, "aren't you interested in me personally? -Don't you want to hear my story?" - -"Story? Story?" hummed the other. "Indeed, but they'll learn your story -there! They have the most excellent system there; card system; cases -and case numbers, you know--Stories, bless you! Hundreds and hundreds of -stories! Big file cases! You'll be number so-and-so. Really," he said, -with a beaming enthusiasm, "they have a _wonderful_ system. Well, -good-by!" There was a touch of finality in his pleasant tone, but -Merriwether caught him by the sleeve. - -"See here," he said, "haven't you even got any _curiosity_ about -me? Don't you even want to know why I'm hungry? Can't you find time -_yourself_ to listen to the tale?" - -"Time," said the reverend gentleman, "_time_ is just what I feel the -lack of--feel it sadly, at moments like these, sadly." He sighed, but it -was an optimistic, good-humored sort of sigh. "But I tell you what you -do." He drew forth another card and scribbled on it. "If you want to -tell me your story so very badly--(dear me, what remarkable situations -the clerical life lets one in for!)--so _very_ badly, take this card -to my study about 3.30. You'll find my stenographer there and you can -dictate it to her; she'll type it out. Yes, indeed, she'll type it out! -Well, _good_-by!" - -And with a bright backward nod he was off. - -It was 1.25. There were thirty-five minutes more of life. Merriwether -Buck gave the reverend gentleman's cards to a seedy individual who -begged from him, with the injunction to go and get himself charitably -Bertilloned like a gentleman and stop whining, and turned eastward on -Forty-second Street. If you have but thirty-five minutes of life, why -not spend them on Fifth Avenue, where sightly things abound?--indeed -if you happen to be a homicidal maniac of some hours standing, like -Merriwether Buck, Fifth Avenue should be good hunting ground; the very -place to mark the fat and greasy citizens of your sacrifice. - -Time, the only patrician, will not step lively for the pert subway -guards of human need, nor yet slacken pace for any bawling traffic cop -of man's desire; he comes of an old family too proud to rush, too proud -to wait; a fine old fellow with a sense of his own value. Time walked -with Merriwether Buck as he loitered up Fifth Avenue, for the old -gentleman loves to assist personally at these little comedies, -sometimes; with Death a hang-dog third. Not even a fly-cop took note of -the trio, although several, if they robbed a jewelry store or anything -like that, would tell the reporters later that they had noticed -something suspicious at the time. And the patron deities of New York -City might have been over in Hoboken playing pinochle for all the heed -_they_ took. - -Which brings us to Sixty-fifth Street and 1.58 o'clock and the presence -of the great man, all at once. - -When Merriwether Buck first saw him, Meriwether Buck gasped. He couldn't -believe it. And, indeed, it was a thing that might not happen again this -year or next year or in five years--J. Dupont Evans, minus bulwark or -attendant, even minus his habitual grouch, walking leisurely toward him -like any approachable and common mortal. Merriwether Buck might well be -incredulous. But it was he; the presentment of that remarkable face has -been printed a hundred thousand times; it is as well known to the world -at large as Uncle Pete Watson's cork leg is on the streets of Prairie -Centre, Ill.; it is unmistakable. - -To have J. Dupont Evans at the point of a pistol might almost intoxicate -some sane and well-fed men, and Merriwether Buck was neither. J. Dupont -Evans--the wealth of Croesus would be just one cracked white chip in the -game he plays. But at this moment his power and his importance had been -extraordinarily multiplied by circumstances. The chances of the street -had tumbled down a half dozen banks--(well did Merriwether Buck know -that, since it had ruined him)--and financial panic was in the air; -an epochal and staggering disaster threatened; and at this juncture a -president in no wise humble had publicly confessed his own impotence and -put it up to J. Dupont Evans to avert, to save, to reassure. - -Merriwether Buck had not dreamed of this; in the crook of his trigger -finger lay, not merely the life of a man, but the immediate destiny of a -nation. - -He grasped the pistol in his pocket, and aimed it through the cloth. - -"Do you know what time it is?" he asked J. Dupont Evans, politely -enough. - -It was only a second before the man answered. But in that second -Merriwether Buck, crazily exalted, and avid of the sensation he was -about to create, had a swift vision. He saw bank after bank come -crashing down; great railroad systems ruined; factories closed and -markets stagnant; mines shut and crops ungathered in the fields; ships -idle at the wharves; pandemonium and ruin everywhere. - -"Huh?" said J. Dupont Evans, gruffly, removing an unlighted cigar from -his mouth. He looked at Merriwether Buck suspiciously, and made as if to -move on. But he thought better of it the next instant, evidently, for -he pulled out a plain silver watch and said grudgingly: "Two minutes -of two." And then, in a tone less unpleasant, he asked: "Have you got a -match, young man?" - -Merriwether fumbled in his vest pocket. In a minute and a half he would -perfunctorily ask this man for lunch, and then he would kill him. But he -would give him a match first--for Merriwether Buck was a well-brought-up -young man. As he fumbled he picked out the exact spot on the other's -waistcoat where he would plant the bullet. But the idea of a man on the -edge of the grave lighting a cigar tickled him so that he laughed aloud -as he held out the matches. - -"What can I do with these?" snorted J. Dupont Evans. "They are the sort -that light only on their own box." From his glance one might have gained -the impression that he thought Merriwether Buck a fool. - -"Great principle that," said Merriwether Buck, cackling with hysteria. -It was so funny that a dead man should want to smoke a cigar! He would -let him play he was alive for fifty seconds longer. - -"Principle?" said Evans. "Principle? What Principle?" - -"Well," said Merriwether, with the random argumentativeness of insanity, -"it _is_ a great principle. Apply that principle to some high explosive, -for instance, and you have no more battleship flare-backs--no premature -mine blasts----" - -"Say," the other suddenly interrupted, "are you an inventor?" - -"Yes," lied Merriwether Buck, glibly, although he had never given five -seconds' thought to the subject of high explosives in his life. "That's -how I know. I've invented an explosive more powerful than dynamite. But -it won't explode by contact with fire, like powder. Won't explode with a -jar, like dynamite. Won't freeze, like dynamite. Only one way to explode -it--you've got to bring it into contact with a certain other chemical -the same as scratching one of these matches on its own box." - -"The deuce, young man!" said the other. "There's a fortune in it! Is it -on the market at all?" - -"No," said Merriwether Buck, raising his pistol hand slightly and -thrusting it a bit forward, under the mask of his coat pocket, "no money -to start it going." - -"Hum," mused the other. "I tell you what you do, young man. You come -along to lunch with me and we'll talk the thing over--money and all." - -And the directing deities of New York struck twice on all the city -clocks, and striking, winked. - - - - -IX.--The Professor's Awakening - -|How I ever come to hit such a swell-looking house for a handout I never -knew. Not that there was anything so gaudy about it, neither, as far as -putting up a bluff at being a millionaire's mansion went, which I found -out afterwards it was, or pretty near that at any rate. But it was just -about the biggest house in that Illinois town, and it's mostly that kind -o' place with them naked iron heathens in the front yard and a brick -stable behind that it ain't no use to go up against unless you're -looking for a lemon. If you need real food and need it sudden and ain't -prospecting around town for no other kind of an opening you better make -for the nearest public works like a canal being dug, or a railroad gang. -Hit the little tin dinner buckets, men that does the unskilled labor -on jobs like that, except Swedes and Dagos, knowing what it is to be -up against it themselves now and then and not inclined to ask no fool -questions. - -Well, I went around to the back door, and Biddy Malone she lets me in. I -found out that was her name afterwards, but as soon as I seen her face -I guessed if her name wasn't Bridget it was Nora. It's all in the -first look they give you after they open the door. If that look's right -they're coming across and you'll get some kind of a surprise for your -digestive ornaments and you don't need to make no fool breaks about -sawing wood neither. I makes my little talk and Biddy she says come in; -and into the kitchen I went. - -"It's Minnesota you're working towards," says Biddy, pouring me out a -cup of coffee. - -She was thinking of the wheat harvest where there's thousands makes for -every fall. But not for me, I never did like to work for none of them -Scandiluvian Swedes and Norwegians that gets into the field before -daylight and stays at it so long the hired men got to milk the cows by -moonlight. They got no sense of proportion, them Gusses and Oles ain't. - -"I been across the river into I'way," I says, "working at my trade, and -I'm going back to Chicago to work at it some more." - -"And what may your trade be?" says Biddy, sizing me up careful. I seen I -made a hit somehow or she wouldn't of asked me in the first place was -I going to the wheat harvest, but would of just supposed I was a hobo, -which I ain't. I got a lot of trades when I want to use one, and as a -regular thing I rather work at one of them for a while, too, but can't -stand it very long on account of not feeling right to stay in one place -too long, especially in the summer. When I seen I made a hit with Biddy -I thinks I'll hand her a good one she never heard tell of before. - -"I'm an agnostic by trade," I says. I spotted that one in a Carnegie -library one time and that was the first chance I ever had to spring it. - -"I see," says Biddy. And she opened her eyes and mouth to once. I seen -she didn't see, but I didn't help her none. She would of rather killed -herself than let on she didn't see. Most of the Irish is like that -whether they is kitchen mechanics or what. After a while she says, -pouring me out some more coffee and handing me a little glass jar full -of watermelon rinds boiled in with molasses and things, she says: - -"And ain't that the dangerous thing to work at, though!" - -"It is," I says, and says nothing further. - -She sets down and folds her arms like she was thinking about it, -watching my hands all the time as if she was looking for scars where -something slipped when I done that agnostic work. Finally she says with -a sigh: - -"Sure, and it's dangerous! Me brother Patrick was kilt at it in the old -country. He was the most vinturesome lad of thim all!" - -She was putting up a stiff front, and for a minute I don't know whether -she's stringing me or I'm stringing her. The Irish is like that. So -being through eating I says: - -"Did it fly up and hit him?" - -She looks at me scornful and tosses her chin up and says: - -"No. He fell off of it. And I'm thinking you don't know what one of them -is, after!" - -"What is it, then?" says I. - -"Then you _don't_ know," says she; and the next thing I knew I'd been -eased out the back door and she was grinning at me through the crack of -it with superiousness all over her face. - -So I was walking slow around towards the front thinking to myself how -the Irish was a great people; and shall I go to Chicago and maybe get a -job sailing on the lakes till navigation closes, or shall I go back to -Omaha and work in the railroad yards again, which I don't like much, or -shall I go on down to Saint Looey just to see what's doing. And then I -thinks: "Billy, you was a fool to let that circus walk off and leave -you asleep with nothing over you but a barb wire fence this morning, and -what are you going to do now? First thing you know you'll be a regular -hobo, which some folks can't distinguish you ain't now." And then I -thinks I'll go down to the river and take a swim and lazy around in the -grass a while and think things over and maybe something will happen. -Anyways, you can always join the army. And just when I was thinking that -I got by one of them naked stone heathens that was squirting water out -of a sea shell and a guy comes down the front steps on the jump and nabs -me by the coat collar. I seen he was a doctor or else a piano tuner by -the satchel he dropped when he grabbed me. - -"Did you come out of this house?" he says. - -"I did," I says, wondering what next. - -"Back in you goes," he says, marching me towards the front steps. -"They've got smallpox in there." - -I liked to a-jumped loose when he said that, but he twisted my coat -collar and dug his thumbs into my neck and I seen they wasn't no use -pulling back. If a guy that's knocking around mixes up with one of the -solid citizens the magistrate's going to give him the worst of it on -principle. I ain't no hobo and never was, and never traveled much with -none of them professional bums, but there has been times I had hard work -making some people believe it. I seen I couldn't jerk away and I seen I -couldn't fight and so I went along. He rung the door bell, and I says: - -"Smallpox ain't no inducement to me, doc." - -"No?" says he. And the door opened, and in we went. The girl that opened -it, she drew back when she seen me. - -"Tell Professor Booth that Dr. Wilkins wants to see him," says the doc, -not letting loose of me. - -And we stood there saying nothing till the per-fessor come in, which he -did slow and absent-minded. When he seen me he stopped and took off a -pair of thick glasses that was split in two like a mended show case, so -he could see me better, and he says: - -"What is that you have there, Dr. Wilkins?" - -"A guest for you," says Dr. Wilkins, grinning all over himself. "I -caught him leaving the house, and you being under quarantine and me -being secretary to the board of health, I'll have to ask you to keep him -here until we can get Miss Margery on her feet again," he says. Or they -was words to that effect, as the lawyers asks you. - -"Dear me," says Perfessor Booth, kind o' helplesslike. - -And he put his glasses on and took them off again, and come up close and -looked at me like I was one of them amphimissourian specimens in a free -museum. "Dear me," he says, looking worrieder and worrieder all the -time. And then he went to the foot of the stairs and pipes out in a -voice that was so flat-chested and bleached-out it would a-looked just -like him if you could a-saw it--"Estelle," he says, "O Estelle!" - -I thinks the perfessor is one of them folks that can maybe do a lot -of high-class thinking, but has got to have some one tell 'em what the -answer is. But I doped him out wrong as I seen later on. - -Estelle, she come down stairs looking like she was the perfessor's big -brother. I found out later she was his old maid sister. She wasn't no -spring chicken, Estelle wasn't, and they was a continuous grin on her -face. I figgered it must of froze there years and years ago. They was -a kid about ten or eleven years old come along down with her, that had -hair down to its shoulders and didn't look like it knowed whether it was -a girl or a boy. Miss Estelle, she looks me over in a way that makes me -shiver, while the doctor and the per-fessor jaws about whose fault it is -the smallpox sign ain't been hung out. And when she was done listening -she says to the perfessor: "You had better go back to your laboratory." -And the perfessor he went along out, and the doctor with him. - -"What are you going to do with him, Aunt Estelle?" the kid asks her. - -"What would _you_ suggest, William Dear?" asks his aunt. I ain't feeling -very comfortable, and I was getting all ready just to natcherally bolt -out the front door now the doctor was gone. Then I thinks it mightn't be -no bad place to stay in fur a couple o' days, even risking the smallpox. -Fur I had ricolected I couldn't ketch it nohow, having been vaccinated -a few months before in Terry Hutt by compulsory medical advice, me being -temporary engaged in repair work on the city pavements through a mistake -in the police court. - -William Dear looks at me when his aunt put it up to him just as solemn -as if it was the day of judgment and his job was separating the fatted -calves from the goats and the prodigals, and he says: - -"Don't you think, Aunt Estelle, we better cut his hair and bathe him and -get him some clothes the first thing?" - -"William is my friend," thinks I, and I seen right off he was one of -them serious kids that you can't tell what is going on inside their -heads. - -So she calls James, which was the butler, and James he buttled me into a -bathroom the like of which I never see before; and he buttled me into a -suit of somebody's clothes and into a room at the top of the house next -to his'n, and then he come back and buttled a razor and a comb and brush -at me; him being the most mournful-looking fat man I ever seen, and he -informs me that me not being respectable I will eat alone in the kitchen -after the servants is done. People has made them errors about me before. -And I looks around the room and I thinks to myself that this is all -right so far as it has went. But is these four walls, disregarding -the rest of the house, to be my home, and them only? Not, thinks I, if -little Billy knows it. It was not me that invited myself to become the -guest of this family; and if I got to be a guest I be damned if I don't -be one according to Hoyle's rules of etiquette or I'll quit the job. -Will I stay in this one room? Not me. Suppose the perfessor takes it -next? And then William Dear? And suppose when William Dear gets through -with it he gives it to Aunt Estelle? Am I to waste the golden hours -when, maybe, my country needs me, just for accommodation? But I thinks -it's all right for a day or two and then I'll leave my regrets and go on -down to Saint Looey or somewheres. And then James he buttles back into -the room like a funeral procession and says the perfessor says he wants -to see me in the laboratory. - -That was a big room and the darndest looking room I ever see, and it -smelt strong enough to chase a Hungarian pig sticker out of a Chicago -slaughter house. It smelt like a drug store had died of old age and got -buried in a glue factory. I never seen so much scientific effusions and -the things to hold 'em in mixed up in one place before. They must of -been several brands of science being mixed up there all to once. They -was dinky little stoves, they was glass jars of all shapes and sizes -labeled with Dago names standing around on shelves like in one of them -Dutch delicatessen stores; they was straight glass tubes and they was -glass tubes that had the spinal contortions; they was bones and they -was whole skeletons, and they was things that looked like whisky stills; -they was a bookcase full of bugs and butterflies against one wall; they -was chunks of things that might have been human for all I know floating -around in vats like pickled pork in a barrel; they was beer schooners -with twisted spouts to them; they was microscopes and telescopes and -twenty-seven shapes and sizes of knives; they was crates of stuff that -was unpacked and crates that wasn't; and they was tables with things -just piled and spilled over 'em, every which way, and the looks of -everything was dirty on account of the perfessor not allowing any one in -there but himself and Miss Estelle and William. And whether you knowed -anything about them different brands of science or not you could see the -perfessor was one of them nuts that's always starting to do things and -then leaving them go and starting something else. It looked as if the -operating room of an emergency hospital and a blacksmith shop and a -people's free museum and a side show full of freaks, snakes and oneeyed -calves had all gone out and got drunk together, all four of them, and -wandered into a cremation plant to sleep off that souse; and when they -woke up they couldn't tell which was which nor nothing else except -they had a bad taste in their mouth and was sentenced to stay there -unseparated and unhappy and unsociable in each other's company for -evermore. And every time you turned around you stepped on something new, -and if you saw a rat or a lizard or a spider you better let him alone -for how was you going to tell he was dead or alive till he crawled up -you? - -The perfessor, he was setting over by a window, and he pushed out -another chair for me and he says sit down. - -"You are a gentleman of leisure?" he says, with a grin; or words to that -effect. - -"I work at that sometimes," I told him, "although it ain't rightly my -trade." - -"Biddy Malone says you're an agnostic," he says, looking at me close. -It won't do, I thinks, to spring none of them agnostic gags on him, so I -says nothing. - -"I'm one myself," he says. - -"Regular," I asks him, "or just occasional?" He kind o' grins again, and -I thinks: "Billy, you're making a hit somehow." - -Then he says, like he was apologizing to someone about something: "Being -interested in sociology and the lower classes in general, I sent for you -to get some first-hand observations on your train of mind," he says. Or -it was words like them. "I'm a sociologist," he says. - -I seen I made a hit before and I thinks I'll push my luck, so I swells -up and says: - -"I'm a kind of sociologist myself." - -"Hum," he says, thoughtful-like. "Indeed? And your itinerant mode of -subsistence is persecuted in pursuit of your desire to study knowledge -of the human specimen and to observe wisdom as to the ways they live -in the underworld," he says. Or it was words to that effect. I wish I'd -a-had him wrote them words down. Then I'd a-had 'em just right now. I -seen a bunch of good words help a man out of a hole before this. Words -has always been more or less my admiration; you can never tell what one -of them long gazaboos is going to do till you spring it on somebody. So -I says: - -"That's me, perfessor. I likes to float around and see what's doing." - -Then he tells me that sociology was how the criminal classes and the -lower classes in general was regarded by the scientific classes, only -it's a difficult brand of science to get next to, he says, on account -of the lower classes like me being mostly broke out with environment he -says, unbeknownst even to theirselves. He's not what you would call a -practicing sociologist all the time, being afraid, I suppose, he would -catch it if he got too close to it; he's just one of the boys that -writes about it, so as both the lower classes and the scientific classes -won't make no bad breaks, he says. - -But what he wants of me just now ain't got nothing to do with that, he -says. He's been making experiments with all kinds of canned victuals, -that is put up with acid that eats holes in your stomach, he says, and -so long as I'm going to be a guest he's going to mix some of them acids -in my chuck and weigh me after each meal. He says I'll start slow and -easy and there won't be nothing dangerous about it. He's been practicing -on William Dear and Miss Estelle, which I suppose it was the acids got -into her smile, but he's going to give them a rest, them being naturally -delicate. I ain't got no kick, I thinks, and I'm going to leave this -place in a day or two anyhow. Besides, I always was intrusted in -scientific things and games of chance of all kinds. - -But I didn't leave in a few days, and the first thing I knew I'd been -there a week. I had pretty much the run of the house, and I eat my meals -with Biddy Malone, the only uncomfortable feature of being a guest being -that Miss Estelle, soon as she found out I was an agnostic (whatever -brand of science that is, which I never found out to this day, just -having come across the word accidental), she begun to take charge of my -religion and intellectuals and things like that. She used to try to cure -the perfessor, too, but she had to give it up for a bad job, Biddy says. - -Biddy, she says Mrs. Booth's been over to her mother's while this -smallpox has been going on; which I hadn't knowed they was a Mrs. Booth -before. And Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay there, too. -They's been a lot of talk, anyhow, Biddy says, about Mrs. Booth and some -musician fellow around town. But Biddy she likes Mrs. Booth, and even if -it was so who could blame her? - -Things ain't right around that house since Miss Estelle's been there, -which the perfessor's science, though worrying to the nerves, ain't cut -much ice till about four years ago when Miss Estelle come. - -But Mrs. Booth she's getting where she can't stand it much longer, Biddy -says. I didn't blame her none for feeling sore about things. - -You can't expect a woman that's pretty and knows it, and ain't more'n -thirty-two or three years old, and don't look it, to be interested in -mummies and pickled snakes and the preservation of the criminal classes -and chemical profusions, not _all_ the time. And maybe when she'd ask -the perfessor if he wasn't going to take her to the opera he'd ask her -did she know them Germans had invented a newfangled disease or that it -was a mistake about them Austrians hiding their heads in the sand when -they are scared, which any fool that's ever seen 'em working around a -coal mine ought to of knowed. It wouldn't a-been so bad if the perfessor -had just picked out one brand of science and stuck to it. She could -a-got used to any one kind and knowed what to expect. But maybe this -week the perfessor's bug would be ornithography, and he'd be chasing -sparrows all over the front lawn; and next week it would be geneology -and he'd be trying to grow bananas on a potato vine. Then, he'd get -worried about the nigger problem in the south, and settle it all -up scientific and explain how ethnology done the whole damn thing, -lynchings and all, and it never could be straightened out till it was -done scientific. Every new gag that come out the perfessor took up with -it, Biddy says; one time he'd be fussing around with gastronomy through -a telescope and the next he'd be putting astrology into William's -breakfast food. - -They was a row on all the time about the kids, which they hadn't been -till Miss Estelle come. Mrs. Booth she said they could kill their own -selves if they wanted to, but she had more right than anybody to say -what went into William's digestive ornaments, and she didn't want him -brought up scientific nohow, but just human. He was always making notes -on William, which was how William come to take so little interest in -life after a while. But Miss Estelle, she egged him on. She seen he -didn't have no sense about his money, which had been left to him when -he was a sure enough perfessor in a college before he quit and went nuts -and everything begun to go wrong between him and Mrs. Booth, so Miss -Estelle she took to running his money herself; but she seen likewise -that when it come to writing articles about William's insides and -intellectuals the perfessor he was a genius. Well, maybe he was; but -Biddy wouldn't let him try none of them laboratory gags on her though -she just as soon be hypnotized and telepathed as not just to humor him. -Miss Estelle, she eat what the perfessor give her, and after a while -she says she'll take charge of the children's education herself, their -mother being a frivolous young thing, and it was too bad, she says, a -genius like him couldn't a-mar-ried a noble woman who would a-understood -his great work for humanity and sympathized with it. So while the -perfessor filled William and Miss Margery up on new discovered food and -weighed 'em and probed 'em and sterilized 'em and did everything else -but put 'em in glass bottles, Miss Estelle she laid out courses of -reading matter for them and tended to their religion and intellectuals -and things like that. I reckon they never was two kids more completely -educated, inside and out. It hadn't worked much on Miss Margery yet, her -being younger than William. But William took it hard and serious, being -more like his father's family, and it made bumps all over his head. I -reckon by the time William was ten years old he knew more than a whole -high school, and every time that boy cut his finger he just naturally -bled science. But somehow he wasn't very chipper, and whenever the -perfessor would notice that he and Miss Estelle would change treatment. -But Biddy liked William just the same, they hadn't spoiled his -disposition none; and she said he seen a lot of things his aunt never -would a-seen, William did. One day when I first was a guest I says to -his aunt, I says: - -"Miss Booth, William looks kind o' pale to me like he was getting too -much bringin' up to the square inch." - -She acted like she didn't care for no outsiders butting in, but I -seen she'd noticed it, too, and she liked William, too, in a kind of -scientific sort of a way, and she says in a minute: - -"What do you suggest?" - -"Why," says I, "what a kid like that needs is to roll around and play in -the dirt now and then, and yell and holler." - -She went away like she was kind o' mad about it; but about an hour later -the perfessor sent word for me to come down to the labaratory, and Miss -Estelle was there. - -"We have decided that there is something in what you say," says the -perfessor. "Even the crudest and most untrained intellectuals has now -and then a bright hunch from which us men of special knowledge may take -a suggestion," he says, or words to that effect. And they was a whole -lot more, and they was more scientific than that. I didn't know I'd done -nothing important like that, but when he told me all about it in science -talk I seen I made a ten strike, though I should of thought anyone could -of saw all William needed was just to be allowed to be a little more -human. - -But what do you think--I never was so jarred in my life as I was the -next day. I seen Miss Estelle spreading an oilcloth on the floor, and -then the butler come in and poured a lot of nice, clean, sterilized dirt -on to it. And then she sent for William. - -"William Dear," she says, "we have decided that what you need is more -recreation mixed in along with your intellectuals. You ought to romp and -play in the dirt, close to the soil and nature, as is right for a youth -of your age. For an hour each day right after you study your biology and -before you take up your Euclid you will romp and play in this dirt like -a child of nature, and frolic. You may now begin to frolic, William, and -James will gather up the dirt again for to-morrow's frolic." Or it was -words to that effect. - -But William didn't frolic none. He seen things they didn't. He just -looked at that dirt, and he come the nearest to smiling I ever seen -William come; and then he come the nearest to getting mad I ever seen -William come. And then he says very serious: - -"Aunt Estelle," he says, "I shall _not_ frolic. I have come to that -place in my discretions where my intellectuals got to work some for -theirselves. It is them intellectuals which you have trained that -refuses to be made ridiculous one hour each day between the biology -lesson and the Euclid lesson with sand." Those was not William's exact -words, which he always had down as slick as his pa, but they was what he -meant. William was a serious kid, but he seen things his aunt never had -no idea of. And he never did frolic, neither, and all that nice clean -dirt had to be throwed out by the stable amongst the unscientific dirt -again. - -That was before Biddy Malone told me about why it was that the perfessor -and his wife didn't get along well, and as I was saying I didn't -blame her none, Miss Estelle having finally beat her out about her own -children, too; and she feeling she didn't scarcely own 'em no more, and -they hardly daring to kiss their own mamma with Miss Estelle in the room -because of germs, so Biddy says. Biddy, she says the perfessor is all -right, he's just a fool and don't mean no harm by his scientific gags, -but Miss Estelle she's a she-devil and takes that way to make herself -the boss of that house. If she wasn't there Mrs. Booth would have been -boss and never let the perfessor know it and things wouldn't a-been so -bad. Which shows that so long as every house got to have a boss it ain't -so much difference if it's a him or her so long as it ain't a relation. - -The perfessor always eats his dinner in one of them coats with the -open-face vest to it, and one night I thinks I will, too. When you is in -Rome you does like the Dagos does, I thinks. - -So I sends for James along before dinner time and I says: "Where is my -dinky clothes to eat dinner in?" I says. - -James he says I'm to continue to eat dinner by myself. Which is all -right, I tells him, but I'll do it in style or I'll quit the job. So he -goes and asks Miss Estelle, and she comes in with that lemon grin on, -but looking, too, like I done something to please her. - -"Is it true," she says, "that already the effects of a refined -environment has overcome defections in early training and a misfortune -in ancestral hereditary?" she says. Or they was words to that effect. - -"It is true," I says. And the perfessor's being too small she made James -give me his'n. But when I seen all that shirt front it made me feel -kind of uncomfortable, too. So I takes them off again and puts on my old -striped sweater and puts on the vest and coat over that, and the effect -of them red stripes running crossways is something gorgeous with one of -them open-face vests over it. - -So after I eat I don't want to go to bed and I gets a box of the -perfessor's cigars and goes into the library and thinks I'll see if he's -got anything fit to read. I dig around for a while among them shelves, -and most everything is one brand of science or other, but finally I got -hold of a little book that was real interesting. That was the damndest -book! It was all in rhyme, with the explanations of the rhyme printed in -real talk down the sides so as you could tell where you was at and what -it was about. It's about an Ancient Mariner. The nut that wrote it he's -never been sailing none, I bet; but he can make you feel like you been -going against the hop in one of them Chink joints. Of course, there -ain't nothing real literary about it like one of them Marie Corelli -stories I read once and it ain't got the excitement of a good Bill Hart -movie or a Nick Carter story, but I got real interested in it. The I-man -of that story he was a Jonah to the whole ship. He seen an albatross -circling around, and he up with his air gun and give him his'n. It -wasn't for nothing to eat, but just to be a-shooting. And from that on -everybody gets as sick of living as a bunch of Chicago factory hands -when another savings bank busts, and they all falls down and curses him. -And the snakes wiggles all over the top of the water like I seen 'em one -time when they cleaned out a reservoir where one of them prairie towns -gets its drinking water from. And the Ancient Mariner he tries to die -and can't make it; and their ghosts is whizzing all around that ship and -they go by him in the moonlight like a puff of steam goes by you on a -frosty morning out of an engine-room manhole. And there's a moral to -that story, too. I bet the fellow that doped that out had been on an -awful bat. I like to of talked with that nut. They was a fellow named -Looney Hogan use to have them phoney hunches, and he use to tell me what -he saw after he had 'em. Looney was awful good company and I use to like -to hear him tell what he seen and what he thinks he seen, but he walked -off of a grain barge up to Duluth when he was asleep one night and he -never did wake up. - -Sitting there thinking of the awful remarkable things that is, and the -ones that isn't, and the ones that maybe is and maybe isn't, and the -nuts that is phoney about some things and not about others, and how two -guys can look at the same thing and when you ask them about it both has -seen different things, I must a-went to sleep. And I must a-slept a long -time there, and pretty soon in my sleep I heard two voices and then I -wakes up sudden and still hears them, low and quicklike, in the room -that opens right off from the library with a pair of them sliding doors -like is on to a boxcar. One was a woman's voice, and not Miss Estelle's, -and she says like she was choked up: - -"But I _must_ see them before we go, Henry." - -And the other was a man's voice, and it wasn't no one around our house. - -"But, my God!" he says, "suppose you catch it yourself, Jane!" - -I set up straight then, and I would of give a good deal to see through -that door, because Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name. - -"You mean suppose _you_ get it," she says. I like to of seen the look -she must of give him to fit in with the way she says that _you_. He -didn't say nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down -some, and she says, low and slow: "Henry, wouldn't you love me if I -_did_ get it? Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?" - -"Oh, of course," he says, "of course I would. Nothing can change the way -I feel. _You_ know that." He said it quick enough, all right, just the -way they do in a show, but it sounded _too much_ like it does on the -stage to of suited me if _I'd_ been her. I seen folks overdo them little -talks before this. - -I listens some more, and then I see how it is. This is that musician -feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with -him all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that. -They may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em -don't like the kids. I thinks to myself: "It must be late. I bet they -was already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here -first so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She just simply couldn't -get by. But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see -Margery with that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night? -And even if she tries just to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot -he'll wake up and she'll be ketched at it." - -And then I thinks, suppose she _is_ ketched at it? What of it? Ain't a -woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, -even if they is a quarantine on to it, and see her kids? And if she is -ketched seeing them, how would anyone know she was going to run off? And -ain't she got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring -her over from her mother's house, even if it is a little late? - -Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby -I better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated -me purty white. And then I thinks: "I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle. -So fur as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's -coming to him, nohow. And as fur _her_, you got to let some people find -out what they want fur theirselves. Anyhow, where do _I_ come in at?" - -But I want to get a look at her and Henry, anyhow. So I eases off my -shoes, careful-like, and I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors, -and I puts my eye down to the little crack. The talk is going backward -and forward between them two, him wanting her to come away quick, and -her undecided whether to risk seeing the kids. And all the time she's -kind o' hoping mebby she will be ketched if she tries to see the kids, -and she's begging off fur more time ginerally. - -Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none when I seen her. She -was a peach. - -And I couldn't blame her so much, either, when I thought of Miss Estelle -and all them scientifics of the perfessor's strung out fur years and -years world without end. - -Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she wouldn't. I seen right -off that Henry wouldn't do. It takes a man with a lot of gumption to -keep a woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it when he's married -to her. But it takes a man with twicet as much to make her feel right -when they ain't married. This feller wears one of them little, brown, -pointed beards fur to hide where his chin ain't. And his eyes is too -much like a woman's. Which is the kind that gets the biggest piece of -pie at the lunch counter and fergits to thank the girl as cuts it big. -She was setting in front of a table, twisting her fingers together, and -he was walking up and down. I seen he was mad and trying not to show it, -and I seen he was scared of the smallpox and trying not to show that, -too. And just about that time something happened that kind o' jolted me. - -They was one of them big chairs in the room where they was that has got -a high back and spins around on itself. It was right acrost from me, on -the other side of the room, and it was facing the front window, which -was a bow window. And that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy. -First I thought she wasn't turning. Then I seen she was. But Jane and -Henry didn't. They was all took up with each other in the middle of the -room, with their back to it. - -Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little more, that chair -does. Will she squeak, I wonders? - -"Don't you be a fool, Jane," says the Henry feller. - -Around she comes three hull inches, that there chair, and nary a squeak. - -"A fool?" asks Jane, and laughs. "And I'm not a fool to think of going -with you at all, then?" - -That chair, she moved six inches more and I seen the calf of a leg and -part of a crumpled-up coat tail. - -"But I _am_ going with you, Henry," says Jane. And she gets up just like -she is going to put her arms around him. - -But Jane don't. Fur that chair swings clear around and there sets the -perfessor. He's all hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his eyes -like he's just woke up recent, and he's got a grin on to his face that -makes him look like his sister Estelle looks all the time. - -"Excuse me," says the perfessor. - -They both swings around and faces him. I can hear my heart bumping. Jane -never says a word. The man with the brown beard never says a word. But -if they felt like me they both felt like laying right down there and -having a fit. They looks at him and he just sets there and grins at -them. - -But after a while Jane, she says: - -"Well, now you _know!_ What are you going to do about it?" - -Henry, he starts to say something, too. But---- - -"Don't start anything," says the perfessor to him. "_You_ aren't going -to do anything." Or they was words to that effect. - -"Professor Booth," he says, seeing he has got to say something or else -Jane will think the worse of him, "I am----" - -"Shut up," says the perfessor, real quiet. "I'll tend to you in a minute -or two. _You_ don't count for much. This thing is mostly between me and -my wife." - -When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something -into him beside science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised -herself. But she says nothing, except: - -"What are you going to do, Frederick?" And she laughs one of them mean -kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a -little more, and says: "What _can_ you do, Frederick?" - -Frederick, he says, not excited a bit: - -"There's quite a number of things I _could_ do that would look bad when -they got into the newspapers. But it's none of them, unless one of you -forces it on to me." Then he says: - -"You _did_ want to see the children, Jane?" - -She nodded. - -"Jane," he says, "can't you see I'm the better man?" - -The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and -he didn't want to see her go. "Look at him," he says, pointing to the -feller with the brown beard, "he's scared stiff right now." - -Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way -like Henry was, and the perfessor's voice sounding like you was chopping -ice every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no -blood on the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making -up his mind about something, too. Jane, she says: - -"_You_ a better man? _You?_ You think you've been a model husband just -because you've never beaten me, don't you?" - -"No," says the perfessor, "I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been -a worse fool, maybe, than if I _had_ beaten you." Then he turns to Henry -and he says: - -"Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in -the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me." With which he gets -up and trots out, and I heard him running down stairs to his labertory. - -Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane -a-looking at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some -kind of a strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't -do it. And Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects -it. And me, I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, "What is -that there perfessor up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one -else. He is looney, that perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too. I -wonder if they is anyone that ain't looney sometimes? I been around the -country a good 'eal, too, and seen and hearn of some awful remarkable -things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or less looney when -the _search us the femm_ comes into the case. Which is a Dago word I got -out'n a newspaper and it means: Who was the dead gent's lady friend?' -And we all set and sweat and got the fidgets waiting fur that perfessor -to come back. - -"Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin on to his face and a pill -box in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and -chilly: "Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science. -All the same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she -isn't worth fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I -made 'em myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it -gets to working well--which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken. -The other one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one, -I keep her. If I get it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait -long enough after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town." - -Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of -it. When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek -on the inside like a piece of sandpaper. He was scared, Henry was. - -"But _you_ know which is which," Jane sings out. "The thing's not fair!" - -"That is the reason my dear Jane is going to shuffle these pills around -each other herself," says the perfessor, "and then pick out one for him -and one for me. _You_ don't know which is which, Jane. And as he is the -favorite, he is going to get the first chance. If he gets the one I want -him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live after taking it. -In that fifteen minutes he will please to walk so far from my house that -he won't die near it and make a scandal. I won't have a scandal without -I have to. Everything is going to be nice and quiet and respectable. The -effect of the poison is similar to heart failure. No one can tell the -difference on the corpse. There's going to be no blood anywhere. I will -be found dead in my house in the morning with heart failure, or else he -will be picked up dead in the street, far enough away so as to make no -talk." Or they was words to that effect. - -He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that perfessor is. I wonder -if I better jump in and stop the hull thing. Then I thinks: "No, it's -between them three." Beside, I want to see which one is going to get -that there loaded pill. I always been intrusted in games of chance of -all kinds, and when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm sorry I -been misjudging him all this time. - -Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard and quick. - -"I won't touch 'em," she says. "I refuse to be a party to any murder of -that kind." - -"Huh? You do?" says the perfessor. "But the time when you might have -refused has gone by. You have made yourself a party to it already. -You're really the _main_ party to it. - -"But do as you like," he goes on. "I'm giving him more chance than I -ought to with those pills. I might shoot him, and I would, and then face -the music, if it wasn't for mixing the children up in the scandal, Jane. -If you want to see him get a fair chance, Jane, you've got to hand out -these pills, one to him and then one to me. _You_ must kill one or the -other of us, or else _I'll_ kill _him_ the other way. And _you_ had -better pick one out for him, because _I_ know which is which. Or else -let him pick one out for himself," he says. - -Henry, he wasn't saying nothing. I thought he had fainted. But he -hadn't. I seen him licking his lips. I bet Henry's mouth was all dry -inside. - -Jane, she took the box and she went round in front of Henry and she -looked at him hard. She looked at him like she was thinking: "Fur God's -sake, spunk up some, and take one if it _does_ kill you!" Then she says -out loud: "Henry, if you die I will die, too!" - -And Henry, he took one. His hand shook, but he took it out'n the box. If -she had of looked like that at me mebby I would of took one myself. Fur -Jane, she was a peach, she was. But I don't know whether I would of or -not. When she makes that brag about dying, I looked at the perfessor. -What she said never fazed him. And I thinks agin: "Mebby I better jump -in now and stop this thing." And then I thinks agin: "No, it is between -them three and Providence." Beside, I'm anxious to see who is going -to get that pill with the science in it. I gets to feeling just like -Providence hisself was in that there room picking out them pills with -his own hands. And I was anxious to see what Providence's ideas of right -and wrong was like. So fur as I could see they was all three in the -wrong, but if I had of been in there running them pills in Providence's -place I would of let them all off kind o' easy. - -Henry, he ain't eat his pill yet. He is just looking at it and shaking. - -The perfessor reaches for his watch, and don't find none. Then he -reaches over and takes Henry's watch, and opens it, and lays it on the -table. "A quarter past one," he says. "Mr. Murray, are you going to make -me shoot you after all? I didn't want any blood nor any scandal," he -says. "It's up to you," he says, "whether you want to take that pill and -get your even chance, or whether you want to get shot. The shooting way -is sure, but looks bad in the papers. The pill way don't implicate any -one," he says. "Which?" And he pulls a gun. - -Henry he looks at the gun. - -Then he looks at the pill. - -Then he swallows the pill. - -The perfessor puts his'n into his mouth. But he don't swallow it. He -looks at the watch, and he looks at Henry. "Sixteen minutes past one," -he says. "_Mr. Murray will be dead at exactly fourteen minutes to two_. -I got the harmless one. I can tell by the taste of the chemicals." - -And he put the pieces out into his hand to show that he chewed his'n -up, not being willing to wait fifteen minutes for a verdict from his -digestive ornaments. Then he put 'em back into his mouth and chewed 'em -and swallowed 'em down like it was coughdrops. - -Henry has got sweat breaking out all over his face, and he tries to make -fur the door, but he falls down on to a sofa. - -"This is murder," he says, weaklike. And he tries to get up agin, but -this time he falls to the floor in a dead faint. - -"It's a dern short fifteen minutes," I thinks to myself. "That perfessor -must of put more science into Henry's pill than he thought he did fur it -to of knocked him out this quick. It ain't skeercly three minutes." - -When Henry falls the woman staggers and tries to throw herself on top -of him. The corners of her mouth was all drawed down, and her eyes was -turned up. But she don't yell none. She can't. She tries, but she just -gurgles in her throat. The perfessor won't let her fall acrost Henry. He -ketches her. "Sit up, Jane," he says, with that Estelle look on to his -face, "and let us have a talk." - -She looks at him with no more sense in her face than a piece of putty -has got. But she can't look away from him. - -And I'm kind o' paralyzed, too. If that feller laying on the floor -had only jest kicked oncet, or grunted, or done something, I could of -loosened up and yelled, and I would of. I just _needed_ to fetch a yell. -But Henry ain't more'n dropped down there till I'm feeling just like -he'd _always_ been there, and I'd _always_ been staring into that room, -and the last word anyone spoke was said hundreds and hundreds of years -ago. - -"You're a murderer," says Jane in a whisper, looking at the perfessor in -that stare-eyed way. "You're a _murderer,_" she says, saying it like she -was trying to make herself feel sure he really was one. - -"Murder!" says the perfessor. "Did you think I was going to run any -chances for a pup like him? He's scared, that's all. He's just fainted -through fright. He's a coward. Those pills were both just bread and -sugar. He'll be all right in a minute or two. I've just been showing -you that the fellow hasn't got nerve enough nor brains enough for a fine -woman like you, Jane," he says. - -Then Jane begins to sob and laugh, both to oncet, kind o' wildlike, her -voice clucking like a hen does, and she says: - -"It's worse then, it's worse! It's worse for me than if it were a -murder! Some farces can be more tragic than any tragedy ever was," she -says. Or they was words to that effect. - -And if Henry had of been really dead she couldn't of took it no harder -than she begun to take it now when she saw he was alive, but just wasn't -no good. But I seen she was taking on fur herself now more'n fur Henry. -Women is made unlike most other animals in many ways. When they is -foolish about a man they can stand to have that man killed a good 'eal -better than to have him showed up ridiculous right in front of them. -They will still be crazy about the man that's killed, but they don't -never forgive the lobster. I seen that work out before this. You can be -most any thing else and get away with it, but if you're a lobster it's -all off even if you can't help being a lobster. And when the perfessor -kicks Henry in the ribs and he comes to and sneaks out, Jane she never -even looks at him. - -"Jane," says the perfessor, when she quiets down some, "you got a lot to -forgive me. But do you s'pose I learned enough sense so we can make a go -of it if we start over again?" - -But Jane never said nothing. - -"Jane," he says, "Estelle is going back to New England to stay there for -good." - -She begins to take a little interest then. "Did Estelle tell you so?" -she says. - -"No," says the perfessor, "Estelle don't know it yet. But she is. I'm -going to tell her in the mornin'." - -But she still hates him. She's making herself. She wouldn't of been a -female woman if she'd of been coaxed that easy. Pretty soon she says, -"I'm going upstairs and go to bed. I'm tired." And she went out looking -like the perfessor was a perfect stranger. - -After she left the perfessor set there quite a while and he was looking -tired out, too; and there wasn't no mistake about me. I was asleep all -through my legs, and I kept a wondering to myself, suppose them pills -had one of them been loaded sure enough, which one would of got it? And -when the perfessor leaves I says to myself, I reckon I better light a -rag. So I goes to the front window and opens it easy; but I thinks -about Henry's watch on the table, every one else having forgot it, and I -thinks I better hunt him up and give it to him. - -And then I thinks why should I give him pain, for that watch will always -remind him of an unpleasant time he once had. - -And if it hadn't been for me sitting in that window looking at that -watch I wouldn't a-been writing this, for I wouldn't of been in jail -now. - -I tried to explain my intentions was all right, but the police says -it ain't natural to be seen coming out of a front window at two in the -morning in a striped sweater and a dinky dinner suit with a gold watch -in your hand; if you are hunting the owner you are doing it peculiar. - -One of them reporters he says to me to write the truth about how I got -into jail; nobody else never done it and stuck to facts. But this is -the truth so help me; it was all on account of that watch, which my -intentions with regard to was perfectly honorable, and all that goes -before leads up to that watch. There wasn't no larceny about it; it was -just another mistake on the part of the police. If I'd of been stealing -wouldn't I stole the silverware a week before that? - -The more I travel around the more dumb people I see that can't -understand how an honest and upright citizen can get into circumstantial -evidence and still be a honest and upright citizen. - - - - -X.--The Penitent - - -|You, who are not married," said the penitent, "cannot know--can never -realize----" - -He hesitated, his glance wandering over the evidences of luxury, the -hints of Oriental artistry, the esthetic effectiveness of Dr. Eustace -Beaulieu's studio. - -"Proceed," said Dr. Beaulieu, suavely. "What I may know is not the -important thing. You do not address yourself to me, but through me -to that principle of Harmony in the Cosmos which is Spirit--Ultimate -Spirit--which we call God. All that I can do is assist you to get into -Accord with the Infinite again, help you to vibrate in unison with the -Cosmic All." - -"You are right; I do not look to you," said the penitent, "for ease of -mind or spirit." And a fleeting half-smile showed in his eyes, as if -some ulterior thought gave a certain gusto to the manner in which he -stressed the pronoun _you_. But the rest of his scarred and twisted -face was expressionless, beneath the thick mask of a heavy gray-streaked -beard that grew almost to his eyes. - - * Author's Note: "The Penitent" was suggested by two poems, - "A Forgiveness," by Browning, and "The Portrait," by Owen - Meredith. - -Dr. Eustace Beaulieu was the leader--nay, the founder--of one of the -many, many cults that have sprung up in New York City and elsewhere in -America during the past three or four decades. An extraordinary number -of idle, well-to-do women gathered at his studio two or three times a -week, and listened to his expositions of ethics _de luxe_, served with -just the proper dash of Oriental mysticism and European pseudoscience. -He was forty, he was handsome, with magnetic brown eyes and the long -sensitive fingers of a musician; he was eloquent, he was persuasive, he -was prosperous. - -When he talked of the Zend-Avesta, when he spoke of the Vedantic -writings, when he touched upon the Shinto worship of the Nipponese, when -he descanted upon the likeness of the Christian teachings to the tenets -of Buddhism, when he revealed the secrets of the Yogi philosophy, when -he hinted his knowledge of the priestly craft of older Egypt and of -later Eleusis, his feminine followers thrilled in their seats as a -garden of flowers that is breathed upon by a Summer wind--they vibrated -to his words and his manner and his restrained fervor with a faint -rustling of silken garments and a delicate fragrance of perfume. - -Men were not, as a rule, so enthusiastic concerning Dr. Eustace Beaulieu -and his cult; there were few of them at his lectures, there were few of -them enrolled in the classes where he inducted his followers into the -more subtle phases of ethics, where he led them to the higher planes -of occultism, for a monetary consideration; few of them submitted -themselves to him for the psychic healing that was one of his major -claims to fame. And this scarred and bearded stranger, who limped, was -one of the very few men who had ever intimated a desire to bare his soul -to Dr. Beaulieu, to tell his story and receive spiritual ministration, -in the manner of the confessional. These confessionals, after the public -lectures, had been recently introduced by Dr. Beaulieu, and they were -giving him, he felt, a firmer grip upon his flock--his disciples, he did -not hesitate to call them. - -"I repeat," said the penitent--if he was a repentant man, indeed--"no -bachelor can know what love really is. He cannot conceive of what the -daily habit of association with a woman who seems made for him, and for -him alone, may mean to a man. My love for my wife was almost worship. -She was my wife indeed, I told myself, and she it was for whom I worked. - -"For I did work, worked well and unselfishly. Every man must have -some work. Some do it from necessity, but I did it because I loved -the work--and the woman--and thus I gained a double reward. I was a -politician, and something more. I think I may say that I was a patriot, -too. The inheritor of wealth and position, I undertook to clear the city -in which I lived, and which my forefathers had helped to build, of -the ring of grafters who were making the name of the town a byword -throughout the nation. The details of that long and hard strife are not -pertinent. I fought with something more than boldness and determination; -I fought with a joy in every struggle, because I fought for something -more than the world knew. The world could not see that my inspiration -was in my home; that in the hours of battle my blood sang joyously with -the thought of--her! Was it any wonder that I worked well? - -"One day, as I sat in my office downtown, the thought of her drew me so -strongly that I determined to surprise her by coming home unexpectedly -early. It was summer, and we were living in our country home, an -old-fashioned stone residence a couple of miles from the outskirts of -the city. The house was situated at the edge of a park that was, indeed, -almost virgin forest, for the whole estate had been in my family for -nearly a hundred years. - -"I determined to surprise my wife, and at the same time to take the rare -relaxation of a suburban walk. I was soon outside the city limits, and -through the zone where vacant lots broaden into fields; and then I left -the road, cutting across the fields and finally plunging into the woods -on my own place. Thus it was that I approached the house from the rear -and came suddenly out of the timber into my own orchard. I seldom walked -from town, and it was a good long hour before my usual time of arrival, -although in that sheltered and woody place the dusk was already -gathering in. - -"As I entered the orchard a man made a hurried exit from a vine-wreathed -pergola where my wife often sat to read, cast one look at me, cleared -the orchard fence, and made off through the woods, disappearing at once -among the boles of the trees. - -"He had not turned his full face toward me at any time, but had shielded -it with an upflung arm; from the moment he broke cover until his -disappearance there had passed less time than it takes to tell it, and I -was scarcely to be blamed if I was left guessing as to his identity, for -the moment. For the moment, I say. - -"There had been so much fright in his manner that I stood and looked -after him. The thought came to me that perhaps here was a man who had -had an affair with one of my servants. I turned toward the pergola and -met--my wife! - -"She was a beautiful woman, always more beautiful in her moments of -excitement. She confronted me now with a manner which I could not help -but admire. I trusted her so that she might readily have passed off a -much more anomalous situation with an easy explanation. But in her face -I read a deliberate wish to make me feel the truth. - -"I looked at her long, and she returned the gaze unflinchingly. And -I recognized her look for what it was. She had cast off the chains of -deceit. Her glance was a sword of hatred, and the first open thrust of -the blade was an intense pleasure to her. We both knew all without a -word. - -"I might have killed her then. But I did not. I turned and walked toward -the house; she followed me, and I opened the door; she preceded me -inside. She paused again, as if gathering all her forces for a struggle; -but I passed her in silence, and went upstairs to my own room. - -"And then began a strange period in my life. Shortly after this episode -came a partial triumph of the reform element in my city; the grafters -were ousted, and I found myself with more than a local reputation, and -thrust into an office. My life was now even more of a public matter than -before. We entertained largely. We were always in the public eye. Before -our guests and in public we were always all that should be. But when -the occasion was past, we would drop the mask, turn from each other with -dumb faces, and go each our severed ways. - -"For a year this sort of life kept up. I still worked; but now I worked -to forget. When I allowed myself to think of her at all, it was always -as of some one who was dead. Or so I told myself, over and over again, -until I believed it. - -"One day there was a close election. I was the successful candidate. I -was to go to Congress. All evening and far into the night my wife and -I played our parts well. But when the last congratulation had been -received, and the last speech made, and the last friend had gone, and -we were alone with each other once more, she turned to me with a look -something like the one she had met me with on that summer evening a year -before. - -"'I want to speak with you,' she said. - -"'Yes?' - -"They were the first words we had exchanged in that year, when not -compelled by the necessities. - -"'What do you wish to speak about?' I asked her. - -"'You know,' she said, briefly. And I did know. There was little use -trying to deny it. - -"'Why have you asked me no questions?' she said. - -"I would have made another attempt to pass the situation over without -going into it, but I saw that that would be impossible. She had reached -the place where she must speak. I read all this in her face. And looking -at her closely with the first candid glance I had given her in that -year, I saw that she had changed greatly, but she was still beautiful. - -"'I did not choose to open the subject with you,' I said; 'I thought -that you would explain when you could stand it no longer. Evidently that -time has come. You were to me like a dead person. If the dead have any -messages for me, they must bring them to me unsolicited. It was not my -place to hunt among the tombs.' - -"'No,' she said, 'let us be honest, since it is the last talk we may -ever have together. Let us be frank with each other, and with ourselves. -I was not like a dead person to you. The dead are dead, and I am not. -You asked me no questions because you disdained me so. You despised -me so--and it was sweet to you to make me feel the full weight of your -scorn through this silence. It was better than killing me. Is that not -the real reason?' - -"'Yes,' I admitted, 'that is it. That is the truth.' "'Listen,' she -said, 'it would surprise you--would it not--to learn that I still love -you--that I have loved you all along--that you are the only man I have -ever really loved--that I love you now? All that is incredible to you, -is it not?' - -"'Yes,' I said, 'it is. You must pardon me, but--it is incredible to -me.' - -"'Well, it is true,' she said, and paused a moment. 'And I can tell you -why it is true, and why--why--the--the other was true, too. You--you -do not understand women,' she said. 'Sometimes I think if you were a -smaller man, in some ways, you would understand them better. Sometimes -I think that you are too--too big, somehow--ever to make a woman happy. -Not too self-centered; you are not consciously selfish; you never mean -to be. But you give, give, give the riches of your nature to people--to -the world at large--instead of to those who should share them. - -"'Oh, I know--the fault is all mine! Another kind of woman--the right -kind for you--the kind you thought I was--would not have asked for all -that was a necessity for me; would have been big enough to have done -without it; would have lost herself in your love for all humanity. That -is the kind of woman you thought I was. And I tried to be. But I wasn't. -I wasn't that big. - -"'I did sympathize with your work; I could understand it; I loved to -hear you tell about it. But I loved it because it was you that told -me about it. You didn't see that! You thought I was a goddess. It was -enough for your nature to worship me; to set me upon a pedestal and to -call me your inspiration; oh, you treated me well--you were faithful -to me--you were generous! But you neglected me in a way that men do not -understand; that some men will never understand. While you were giving -your days and your nights, and every fiber of your brain and body, to -what you called the cause of the people, you more and more forgot you -had a wife. Again and again and again I tried to win you back to -what you were when I married you--to the time when your cause was not -all--but you wouldn't see; I couldn't make you feel. - -"'Then I thought I would show you that other men were not such fools as -to overlook what was wasted on you. But you never noticed; you trusted -me too much; you were too much engrossed. And then I began to hate you. -I loved you more than I ever did before, and at the same time I hated -you. Can you understand that? Do you see how women can hate and love at -the same time? Well, they can. - -"'At last--for I was a fool--I took a lover!" - -"'What was his name?' I broke in. - -"'His name?' she cried; 'that does not matter! What matter if there was -one of them, or two of them. That is nothing!--the name is nothing--they -were nothing--nothing but tools; the symbols of my rage, of my hatred -for you; whether I loved or hated you, you were all--always.' - -"'They were merely convenient clubs with which to murder my honor in the -dark--is that it?' I said. - -"'Yes,' she said, 'that is it, if you choose to put it so.' And she -spoke with a humility foreign to her nature. - -"'And what now?' I asked. - -"'Now,' she said, 'now that I have spoken; now that I have told you -everything; now that I have told you that I have gone on loving you more -and more and more--now--I am going to die.' - -"'You have not asked me to forgive you,' I said. - -"'No,' she replied. 'For what is forgiveness? I do not know exactly what -that word means. It is supposed to wipe out something that has happened, -is it not?--to make things the same as they were before! But it does not -do that. That which has happened, has happened; and you and I know it.' - -"'You had better live,' I said; 'I no longer consider you worthless. I -feel that you are worthy of my anger now.' - -"Her face cleared almost into something like joy. - -"'I have told the truth, and I raise myself from the depths of your -scorn to the place where you can feel a hot rage against me?' she asked. - -"'Yes,' I said. And the light on her face was like that of which some -women are capable when they are told that they are beloved. - -"'And if I die?' she asked. - -"'Who knows but that you might climb by it?' I said. 'Who knows but what -your death might turn my anger to love again?' And with that I turned -and left her there. - -"That night I sat all night in my study, and in the morning they brought -me the news that she was dead. She must have used some poison. What, I -do not know; and the physicians called it heart-failure. But what is the -matter, Doctor?" - -"Nothing, nothing!" said Dr. Beaulieu. And he motioned for the narrator -to proceed. But there were beads of perspiration upon the healer's -forehead, and a pallor overspread his face. - -"I had condemned her to death," the penitent went on, "and she had been -her own executioner. She had loved me; she had sinned against me; -but she had always loved me; she had hated the flesh that sinned, and -scorned it as much as I; her life was intolerable and she had been her -own executioner. - -"The revulsion of feeling came. I loved her again; now that I had lost -her. All that day I shut myself up, seeing no one; refusing to look -at the dozens of telegrams that came pouring in from friends and -acquaintances, thinking--thinking--thinking---- - -"Night came again; and with it the word that the best friend I had was -in the house; a friend of my college days, who had stood shoulder to -shoulder with me in many a fight, then and since. He had come to be -under the same roof with me in the hour of my bitterest bereavement, -was the word he sent--how bitter now, he did not know. But -he did not intrude upon the privacy of my grief. And I sat -thinking--thinking--thinking-- - -"Suddenly the idea came to me that I would go upstairs to the chamber -where she was, and look at her once more. Quietly I stole up the stairs, -and through the hushed, dim house, on into the gloomy room, lighted only -by the candles at the head and foot of the curtained couch on which she -lay. - -"In the room beyond, the watchers sat. I stole softly across the floor -so as not to attract their attention; there was no one in the room -with the body. I approached the couch, and with my hand put by the -curtain---- - -"Then I dropped it suddenly. I remembered a locket which she had -formerly worn that had always had my picture in it, in the early days -of our married life; a locket that had never left her neck, waking or -sleeping. And I wondered---- - -"I wondered something about women which no one has ever been able to -tell me; not even a woman. I wondered if any light o' love had ever been -able to make her feel anything like _real_ love, after all! I wondered -if she had ever hugged the thought of her sin to her bosom, even as -she had at first hugged the thought of our real love--hers and mine. I -wondered if she had ever carried about with her a sentimental reminder -of her lover, of any lover, as she had once done of her husband--and how -long ago! I wondered how important a thing it had seemed to her, after -all! She had reconciled herself to herself, with her death, and made -me love her again. And I wondered to how great an extent she had -ever fooled a lover into thinking she loved him! There are depths and -contradictions and cross-currents in the souls of women that even women -do not know, far less men--I wondered whose picture was in that locket! - -"I thrust my hand through the curtains of the bed again, and then jumped -back. - -"I had felt something warm there. - -"Did she live, after all? - -"At the same instant I heard a movement on the other side of the bed. I -went around. - -"My best friend was removing his hand from the curtains on the other -side, and in his hand was the locket. It was his hand that I had felt. - -"We stared at each other. I spoke first, and in a whisper, so that the -others in the next room, who had come to watch, should not hear. - -"'I came for that,' I said. - -"'The locket? So did I," he said. And then added quite simply, 'My -picture is in it.' - -"'You lie!' I whispered, shaken by a wind of fury. And yet I knew that -perhaps he did not lie, that what he said might well be true. Perhaps -that was the cause of my fury. - -"His face was lined with a grief and weariness terrible to behold. To -look at him you would have thought that there was nothing else in the -world for him except grief. It was a great grief that made him careless -of everything else. - -"'It is my picture,' he said. 'She loved me.' - -"'I say that you lie,' I repeated. 'She may have played with you--but -she never loved any one but me--in her heart she never did!' - -"'You!' And because he whispered, hissing out the words, they seemed to -gain in intensity of scorn. 'You! She hated you! You who neglected her, -you with your damned eternal politics, you who could never understand -her--love? You who could never give her the things a woman needs and -must have--the warmth--the color--the romance--the poetry of life! -You!--with your cold-blooded humanitarianism! I tell you, she loved -_me!_ Why should I hesitate to avow it to you? It is the sweetest -thing on earth to me, that she loved me! She turned from you to me -because----' - -"'Don't go into all that,' I said. 'I heard all about that last -night--from her! Open the locket, and let us see whose face is there!' - -"He opened it, and dropped the locket. He reeled against the wall, with -his hands over his face, as if he had been struck a physical blow. - -"I picked the toy up and looked at it. - -"The face in the locket was neither his face nor mine. It was the face -of--of the man who ran from the pergola and vaulted over the orchard -wall into the woods that summer night a year earlier; the man whom I had -not, for the moment, recognized. - -"We stood there, this man who had been my best friend and I, with the -locket between us, and I debated whether to strike him down----" - -The narrator paused. And then he said, fixing Dr. Beaulieu with an -intent gaze: - -"Should I have struck him down? You, who are a teacher of ethics, -who set yourself up to be, after a fashion, a preacher, a priest, a -spiritual director, tell me, would I have been justified if I had killed -him?" - -Dr. Beaulieu seemed to shrink, seemed to contract and grow smaller, -physically, under the other man's look. He opened his mouth as if to -articulate, but for a second or two no word came. And then, regaining -something of his usual poise, he said, although his voice was a bit -husky: - -"No! It is for the Creator of life to take life, and no other. Hatred -and strife are disharmony, and bring their own punishment by throwing -the soul out of unity with the spirit of love which rules the universe." - -It sounded stereotyped and emotionless, even in Dr. Beaulieu's own ears, -as he said it; there was a mocking gleam in the eyes of the other man -that spoke of a far more vital and genuine emotion. Dr. Beaulieu licked -his lips and there came a knot in his forehead; beads of perspiration -stood out upon his brow. - -"You were right," said Dr. Beaulieu, "in not striking him down. You were -right in sparing him." - -The bearded man laughed. "I did not say that I spared him," he said. - -Dr. Beaulieu looked a question; a question that, perhaps, he dared -not utter; or at least that he did not care to utter. He had dropped -completely his role of spiritual counselor; he regarded his visitor with -an emotion that might have been horror and might have been terror, -or might have been a mixture of the two. The visitor replied to the -unspoken interrogation in the healer's manner. - -"I did not strike him down. Neither did I spare him. I waited and I--I -used him. I know how to wait; I am of the nature that can wait. It was -years before fate drew all things together for my purpose, and gave him -into my hands--fate, assisted by myself. - -"I waited, and I used him. The details are not pertinent for it is not -his story that I am telling. I piloted him to the brink of destruction, -and then--then, I saved him." - -"You saved him?" Dr. Beaulieu was puzzled; but his fear, if fear it was, -had not abated. There was a frank menace, now, in his visitor's air. And -the healer seemed to be struggling, as he listened to the tale, to force -some reluctant brain-cell to unlock and give its stored memories to his -conscious mind. - -"I saved him. I saved him to be my creature. I broke him, and I saved -him. I made him my slave, my dog, my--my anything I choose to have him. -I have work for him to do." - -Again the man paused, looking about the rich profusion of Dr. Beaulieu's -studio. There was a table in the room which contained a number of curios -from Eastern lands. The visitor suddenly rose from his chair and picked -from among them a thin, keen-bladed dagger. It was a beautiful weapon, -of some Oriental make; beautiful in its lines; beautiful with the sullen -fire of many jewels blazing in its hilt--an evil levin that got into the -mind and led the thoughts astray even as the dainty deadliness of -the whole tool seduced the hand to grasp and strike. As his visitor, -strangely breaking the flow of his narrative, examined and handled the -thing, Dr. Beaulieu shuddered. - -"The man is as much my tool," said the visitor slowly, "as this dagger -would be your tool, Dr. Beaulieu, if you chose to thrust it into my -breast--or into your own." - -He laid the dagger down on the table, and resumed his seat. Dr. Beaulieu -said nothing, but he found it difficult to withdraw his eyes from his -visitor's steady stare. Slumped and sagged within his chair, he said -nothing. Presently the visitor went on. - -"I had a fancy, Dr. Beaulieu; I had a fancy! It suited me to make my -revenge a less obvious thing than striking down the old friend who had -betrayed my love and confidence, a less obvious thing than striking down -the other man--the man whose face was in the locket." - -As he spoke he took from his pocket a locket. He opened it, and gazed -upon the face. The healer half rose from his chair, and then sank back, -with a hoarse, inarticulate murmur. His face had turned livid, and he -trembled in every limb. It was evident that the missing scene which he -had sought before had suddenly been flashed upon the cinema screen of -his recollection. He remembered, now---- - -"It was my fancy, Dr. Beaulieu, to make one of them take revenge upon -the other, that I might thus be revenged upon them both." - -He suddenly rose, and forced the locket into the healer's nerveless -grasp. - -"That face--look at it!" he cried, towering over the collapsed figure -before him. - -Compelled by a will stronger than his own, Dr. Beaulieu looked. It -was the counterfeit presentment of himself within. It fell from his -trembling fingers and rolled upon the floor. The cultist buried his face -in his hands. - -The other man stepped back and regarded him sardonically for a moment or -two. - -"I should not wonder," he said, "if the man who used to be my best -friend would pay you a visit before long--perhaps in an hour, perhaps in -a week, perhaps in a month." - -He picked up the dagger again, and toyed with it. - -"This thing," he said, impersonally, trying the point upon his finger, -"is sharp. It would give a quick death, a sure death, an almost painless -death, if one used it against another man--or against one's self." - -And without another word he turned and left the room. - -Dr. Beaulieu sat and listened to his retreating footsteps. And, long -after they had ceased to sound, Dr. Beaulieu still sat and listened. -Perhaps he was listening for some one to come, now that the bearded -man had left. He sat and listened, and presently he reached over to the -table and picked up the dagger that the visitor had laid down with its -handle toward him. He pressed its point against his finger, as the other -man had done. It was sharp. It would give, as the fellow had said, "a -quick death, a sure death, an almost painless death." - -And as he whispered these words he was still -listening--listening--waiting for some one to come---- - - - - -XI.--The Locked Box - - - -I - -|It was a small, oblong affair, not more than three inches wide or deep, -by twice that much in length, made of some dark, hard wood; brass bound -and with brass lock and brass hinges; altogether such a box as a woman -might choose to keep about her room for any one of a half dozen possible -uses. - -Clarke did not remember that he had ever seen it prior to his -unexpectedly early return from a western trip of a month's duration. -He thought he would give his wife a pleasant surprise, so he did not -telephone the news of his arrival to the house, but went home and -entered her room unannounced. As he came in his wife hastily slipped -something into the box, locked it, and put it into one of the drawers -of her desk. Then she came to meet him, and he would not have thought -of the matter at all had it not been for just the slightest trace of -confusion in her manner. - -She was glad to see him. She always was after his absences, but it -seemed to him that she was exceptionally so this time. She had never -been a demonstrative woman; but it seemed to Clarke that she came nearer -that description on the occasion of this home-coming than ever before. -They had a deal to say to each other, and it was not until after dinner -that the picture of his wife hurriedly disposing of the box crossed -Clarke's consciousness again. Even then he mentioned it casually because -they were talked out of more important topics rather than because of any -very sharp curiosity. He asked her what it was; what was in it. - -"Oh, nothing!--nothing of any importance--nothing at all," she said; -and moved over to the piano and began one of his favorite airs. And he -forgot the box again in an instant. She had always been able to make -Clarke forget things, when she wanted to. But the next day it suddenly -came to him, out of that nowhere-in-particular from which thoughts come -to mortals, that she had been almost as much confused at his sudden -question as she had at his previous sudden entrance. - -Clarke was not a suspicious person; not even a very curious one, as a -rule. But it was so evident to him that there was something in that -box which his wife did not wish him to see that he could not help but -wonder. Always frank with her, and always accustomed to an equal -candor on her part, it occurred to him that he would ask her again, in -something more than a casual way, and that she would certainly tell him, -at the same time clearing up her former hesitation. But no!--why should -he ask her? That would be to make something out of nothing; this was a -trifle, and not worth thinking about. But he continued thinking about -it, nevertheless.... - -Ah, he had it! What a chump he had been, not to guess it sooner! His -birthday was only ten days off, and his wife had been planning to -surprise him with a remembrance of some sort. Of course! That accounted -for the whole thing. - -With this idea in his head, he said nothing more about the box, but -waited. And when dinner was over and they sat before the fire together, -on the evening of the anniversary, he still forbore to mention it, -expecting every moment that the next she would present him with the -token. But as the evening wore away, with no sign on her part, he -finally broke an interval of silence with the remark: - -"Well, dear, don't keep me guessing any longer! Bring it to me!" - -"Guessing? Bring you--what?" And he could see that she was genuinely -puzzled. - -"Why, my birthday present." - -"Why, my dear boy! And did you expect one? And I had forgotten! -Positively forgotten--it _is_ your birthday, isn't it, Dickie! If I had -only known you _wanted_ one--------" And she came up and kissed him, -with something like contrition, although his birthday had never been one -of the sentimental anniversaries which she felt bound to observe with -gifts. - -"Don't feel bad about it--I don't care, you know--really," he said. -"Only, I thought you had something of the sort in that brass-bound -box--that was the only reason I mentioned it." - -"Brass-bound box--why, no, I--I forgot it. I'm ashamed of myself, but I -forgot the date entirely!" - -But she volunteered no explanation of what the box contained, although -the opportunity was so good a one. - -And Clarke wondered more than ever. - -What could it be? The letters of some former sweetheart? Well, all girls -had sweethearts before they married, he supposed; at least all men did. -He had had several himself. There was nothing in that. And he would not -make an ass of himself by saying any more about it. - -Only... he could not remember any old sweethearts that he wouldn't have -told Agnes all about, if she had asked him. He had no secrets from her. -But she had a secret from him... innocent enough, of course. But still, -a secret. There was none of those old sweethearts of his whose letters -he cared to keep after five years of marriage. And there was no... But, -steady! Where were his reflections leading him? Into something very like -suspicion? Positively, yes; to the verge of it. Until Agnes got ready to -tell him all about it, he would forget that damned box! - -And if she never got ready, why, that was all right, too. She was his -wife, and he loved her... and that settled it. - -Perhaps that should have settled it, but it did not. Certain -healthy-looking, fleshy specimens of humanity are said to succumb the -quickest to pneumonia, and it may be that the most ingenuous natures -suffer the most intensely with suspicion, when once thoroughly -inoculated. - - - -II - -|Clarke fought against it, cursing his own baseness. But the very effort -necessary to the fight showed him the persistence of the thing itself. -He loved his wife, and trusted her, he told himself over and over again, -and in all their relations hitherto there had never been the slightest -deviation from mutual confidence and understanding. What did he suspect? -He could not have told himself. He went over their life together in his -mind. In the five years of their married life, he could not have helped -but notice that men were attracted to her. Of course they were. That was -natural. She was a charming woman. He quite approved of it; it reflected -credit upon him, in a way. He was not a Bluebeard of a husband, to lock -a wife up and deny her the society proper to her years. And her -very catholicity of taste, the perfect frankness of her enjoyment of -masculine attention, had but served to make his confidence all the more -complete. True, he had never thought she loved him as much as he loved -her... but now that he came to think of it, was there not a warmer -quality to her affection since his return from this last trip west? Was -there not a kind of thoughtfulness, was there not a watchful increase in -attentiveness, that he had always missed before? Was she not making love -to him every day now; just as he had always made love to her before? -Were not the parts which they had played for the five years of their -married life suddenly reversed? They were! Indeed they were! And what -did that mean? What did that portend? Did the brass-bound box have aught -to do with that? What was the explanation of this change? - -The subtle imp of suspicion turned this matter of the exchanged roles -into capital. Clarke, still ashamed of himself for doing it, began -covertly to watch his wife; to set traps of various kinds for her. He -said nothing more about the box, but within six months after the first -day upon which he had seen it, it became the constant companion of his -thoughts. - -_What_ did he suspect? Not even now could he have said. He suspected -nothing definite; vaguely, he suspected anything and everything. If -his wife noticed his changed manner towards her, she made no sign. -If anything, her efforts to please him, her attentiveness, her -thoughtfulness in small things, increased. - - - -III - -|There came a day when he could stand this self-torture no longer, -he thought. He came home from his office--Clarke was a partner in a -prosperous real-estate concern--at an hour when he thought his wife not -yet returned from an afternoon of call making, determined to end the -matter once for all. - -He went to her room, found the key to her desk, and opened the drawer. -He found the box, but It was locked, and he began rummaging through the -drawers, and among the papers and letters therein, for the key. - -Perhaps she carried it with her. Very well, then, he would break it -open! With the thing in his hand he began to look around for something -with which to force the fastenings, and was about deciding that he would -take it down to the basement, and use the hatchet, when he heard a step. -He turned, just as his wife entered the room. - -Her glance traveled from the box in his hand to the ransacked desk, and -rested there inquiringly for a moment. Strangely enough, in view of the -fact that he felt himself an injured husband and well within his rights, -it was Clarke who became confused, apologetic, and evasive under her -gaze. He essayed a clumsy lie: - -"Agnes," he began, indicating the desk, "I--I got a bill to-day from -Meigs and Horner, for those furs, you know--I was sure that the -account had been settled--that you had paid them, and had shown me the -receipt--that you had paid them from your allowance, you know--and I -thought I would come home and look up the receipt." - -It was very lame; and very lamely done, at that, as he felt even while -he was doing it. But it gave him an opportunity of setting the box down -on the desk almost in a casual manner, as if he had picked it up quite -casually, while he began to tumble the papers again with his hands. - -"The receipt is here," she said; and got it for him. - -The box lay between them, but they did not look at it, nor at each -other, and they both trembled with agitation. - -Each knew that the thoughts of the other were on nothing except that -little locked receptacle of wood and brass, yet neither one referred -to it; and for a full half minute they stood with averted faces, and -fumbling hands, and played out the deception. - -Finally she looked full at him, and drew a long breath, as if the -story were coming now; and there was in her manner a quality of -softness--almost of sentimentality, Clarke felt. She was getting ready -to try and melt him into a kind of sympathy for her frailty, was she! -Well, that would not work with him! And with the receipted bill waving -in his hand, he made it the text of a lecture on extravagance, into -which he plunged with vehemence. - -Why did he not let her speak? He would not admit the real reason to -himself, just then. But in his heart he was afraid to have her go on. -Afraid, either way it turned. If she were innocent of any wrong, he -would have made an ass of himself--and much worse than an ass. If she -were guilty, she might melt him into a weak forgiveness in spite of -her guilt! No, she must not speak... not now! If she were innocent, how -could he confess his suspicions to her and acknowledge his baseness? And -besides... women were so damned clever... whatever was in that box, she -might fool him about it, somehow! - -And then, "Good God!" he thought, "I have got to the place where I hug -my suspicion to me as a dearer thing than my love, have I? Have I got so -low as that?" - -While these thoughts raced and rioted through his mind, his lips -were feverishly pouring out torrents in denunciation of feminine -extravagance. Even as he spoke he felt the black injustice of his -speech, for he had always encouraged his wife, rather than otherwise, in -the expenditure of money; his income was a good one; and the very furs -which formed the text of his harangue he had helped her select and even -urged upon her. - -It was their first quarrel, if that can be called a quarrel which has -only one side to it. For she listened in silence, with white lips -and hurt eyes, and a face that was soon set into a semblance of hard -indifference. He stormed out of the room, ashamed of himself, and -feeling that he had disgraced the name of civilization. - - - -IV - -|Ashamed of himself, indeed; but before the angel of contrition could -take full possession of his nature, the devil of suspicion, the imp of -the box, regained its place. - -For why had she not answered him? She knew he cared nothing about the -trivial bill, the matter of the furs, he told himself. Why had she not -insisted on a hearing, and told him about the box? She knew as well as -he that that was what he had broken into her desk to get! - -Justice whispered that she had been about to speak, and that he had -denied her the chance. But the imp of the box said that an honest woman -would have _demanded_ the chance--would have persisted until she got it! -And thus, his very shame, and anger at himself, were cunningly turned -and twisted by the genius of the brass-bound box into a confirmation of -his suspicions. - -V - -|Suspicions? Nay, convictions! Beliefs. Certainties! - -They were certainties, now! Certainties to Clarke's mind, at least. For -in a month after this episode he had become a silent monomaniac on the -subject of the brass-bound box. He felt shame no longer. She was guilty. -Of just what, he did not know. But guilty. Guilty as Hell itself, he -told himself, rhetorically, in one of the dumb rages which now became so -frequent with him. - -_Guilty--guilty--guilty_--the clock on the mantelpiece ticked off many -dragging hours of intolerable minutes to that tune, while Clarke lay -awake and listened. _Guilty--guilty--guilty_--repeat any word often -enough, and it will hypnotize you. _Guilty--guilty--guilty_--so he and -the clock would talk to each other, back and forth, the whole night -through. If any suggestions of his former, more normal habits of thought -came to him now it was they that were laughed out of court; it was they -that were flung away and scorned as traitors. - -She was guilty. But he would be crafty! He would be cunning. He would -make no mistake. He would allow her no subterfuge. He would give her no -chance to snare him back into a condition of half belief. There should -be no juggling explanations. They were clever as the devil, women were! -But this one should have no chance to fool him again. She had fooled him -too long already. - -And she kept trying to fool him. Shortly after his outburst over the -furs, she began again a series of timid advances which would have struck -him as pathetic had he not known that her whole nature was corroded and -corrupted with deceit, with abominable deceit. She was trying to make -him believe that she did not know why he was angry and estranged, was -she? He would show her! He hated her now, with that restless, burning -intensity of hatred known only to him who has injured another. A hatred -that consumed his own vitality, and made him sick in soul and body. The -little sleep he got was passed in uneasy dreams of his revenge; and his -waking hours were devoted to plots and plans of the form which it should -take. Oh, but she had been cunning to fool him for so long; but she -should see! She should see! When the time for action came, she should -see! - - - -VI - -|Something, one tense and feverish midnight, when he lay in his bed -snarling and brooding and chuckling--a kind of snapping sense in some -remote interior chamber of his brain, followed by a nervous shock that -made him sit upright--warned him that the time for action was at hand. -What is it that makes sinners, at provincial revival meetings, suddenly -aware that the hours of dalliance are past and the great instant that -shall send them to "the mourners' bench" is at hand? Somehow, they seem -to know! And, somehow, Clarke felt an occult touch and knew that his -time for action had arrived. - -He did not care what came afterwards. Any jury in the world, so he told -himself, ought to acquit him of his deed, when they once knew his story; -when they once looked at the damning evidence of her guilt which she -had hidden away for so long in the brass-bound box. But if they did not -acquit him, that was all right, too. His work in the world would have -been done; he would have punished a guilty woman. He would have shown -that all men are not fools. - -But he did not spend a great deal of thought on how other people would -regard what he was about to do. As he crept down the hall with the knife -in his hand, his chief sensation was a premonitory itch, a salty tang -of pleasure in the doing of the deed itself. When hatred comes in where -love has gone out, there may be a kind of voluptuary delight in the act -of murder. - -Very carefully he opened the door of her room. And then he smiled to -himself, and entered noisily; for what was the need of being careful -about waking up a woman who was already dead? He did not care whether he -killed her in her sleep or not;--indeed, if she wakened and begged for -her life, he thought it might add a certain zest to the business. He -should enjoy hearing her plead. He would not mind prolonging things. - -But things were not prolonged. His hand and the muscles of his forearm -had tensed so often with the thought, with the idea, that the first blow -went home. She never waked. - - - -VII - -|He got the box, and opened it. - -Inside was a long envelope, and written on that were the words: - -"To be opened by my husband only after my death." - -That time had come! - -Within the envelope was a letter. It was dated on the day of his return -from his western trip, a few months before. He read: - -"Dick, I love you! - -"Does it seem strange to you that I should write it down? - -"Listen, Dickie dear--I _had_ to write it! I couldn't tell you when I -was alive--but I just had to tell you, too. And now that I am dead, what -I say will come to you with all of its sweetness increased; and all -of its bitterness left out! It will, now that I am dead--or if you die -first, you will never see this. This is from beyond the grave to you, -Dickie dear, to make all your life good to you afterwards! - -"Now, listen, dear, and don't be hard on me. - -"When I married you, Dickie, I _didn't_ love you! You were wild about -me. But I only _liked_ you very much. It wasn't really love. It wasn't -what you _deserved_. But I was only a girl, and you were the first man, -and I didn't know things; I didn't know what I _should have_ felt. - -"Later, when I realized how very much you cared, I was ashamed of -myself. I grew to see that I had done wrong in marrying you. Wrong to -both of us. For no woman should marry a man she doesn't love. And I was -ashamed, and worried about it. You were so good to me! So sweet--and you -never suspected that I didn't care like I should. And because you were -so good and sweet to me, I felt _worse_. And I made up my mind you -should _never_ know! That I would be everything to you any woman could -be. I tried to be a good wife. Wasn't I, Dickie, even then? - -"But I prayed and prayed and prayed. 'O God,' I used to say, 'let me -love him like he loves me!' It was five years, Dickie, and I _liked_ you -more, and _admired_ you more, and saw more in you that was worth while, -every week; but still, no miracle happened. - -"And then one morning _a miracle did happen!_ - -"It was when you were on that trip West. I had gone to bed thinking how -kind and dear you were. I missed you, Dickie dear, and _needed_ you. And -when I woke up, there was a change over the world. I felt so different, -somehow. It had come! Wasn't it wonderful, Dickie?--it had come! And I -sang all that day for joy. I could hardly wait for you to come home so -that I could tell you. I loved you, loved you, loved you, Dickie, _as -you deserved!_ My prayers had been answered, somehow--or maybe it was -what any woman would do just living near you and being with you. - -"And then I saw _I couldn't tell you, after all!_ - -"For if I told you I loved you now, that would be to tell you that for -five years _I hadn't loved you_, Dickie! - -"And how would _that_ make you feel? Wouldn't that have been like a -knife, Dickie? - -"Oh, I wanted you to know! _How_ I wanted you to know! But, you see, I -couldn't tell you, could I, dear, without telling the other, too? I just -_had_ to save you from that! And I just had to make you feel it, somehow -or other. And I _will_ make you feel it, Dickie! - -"But I can't tell you. Who knows what ideas you might get into your head -about those five years, if I told you now? Men are so queer, and they -can be so stupid sometimes! And I can't bear to think of losing one -smallest bit of your love... not now! It would _kill_ me! - -"But I want you to know, sometime. And so I'm writing you--it's my first -love letter--the first real one, Dickie. If _you_ die first, I'll tell -you in Heaven. And if _I_ die first, you'll understand! - -"Agnes." - - - - -XII.--Behind the Curtain - -|It was as dark as the belly of the fish that swallowed Jonah. A -drizzling rain blanketed the earth in chill discomfort. As I splashed -and struggled along the country road, now in the beaten path, and now -among the wet weeds by its side, I had never more heartily yearned -for the dullness and comforts of respectability. Here was I with more -talents in my quiver, it pleased me to think, than nine out of ten of -the burghers I had left sleeping snug and smug in the town a few miles -behind; with as much real love of humanity as the next man, too; and yet -shivering and cursing my way into another situation that might well mean -my death. And all for what? For fame or riches? No, for little more than -a mere existence, albeit free from responsibility. Indeed, I was all but -ready to become an honest man then and there, to turn back and give -up the night's adventure, had but my imagination furnished me with the -picture of some occupation whereby I might gain the same leisure and -independence as by what your precisians call thieving. - -With the thought I stumbled off the road again, and into a narrow gully -that splashed me to the knees with muddy water. Out of that, I walked -plump into a hedge, and when I sought to turn from it at right angles, I -found myself still following its line. This circumstance showed me that -I was come unaware upon the sharp turn of the road which marked the -whereabouts of the house that was my object. Following the hedge, I -found the entrance to the graveled driveway within a hundred yards of -my last misstep, and entered the grounds. I groped about me for a space, -not daring to show a light, until presently a blacker bulk, lifting -itself out of the night's comprehensive blackness, indicated the -house itself, to my left and a bit in front of me. I left the moist -gravel--for there is nothing to be gained on an expedition of this -sort by advertising the size and shape of your boots to a morbidly -inquisitive public--and reached the shelter of the veranda by walking -across the lawn. - -There, being out of eyeshot from the upper windows, I risked a gleam -from my pocket lantern, one of those little electric affairs that are -occasionally useful to others than night watchmen. Two long French -windows gave on the veranda; and, as I knew, both of them opened from -the reception hall. A bit of a way with the women is not amiss in my -profession; and the little grayeyed Irish maid, who had told me three -weeks before of old man Rolfe's stinginess and brutality towards the -young wife whom he had cooped up here for the past four years, had also -given me, bit by bit, other information more valuable than she could -guess. So, thanks to the maid, I was aware that the safe where the Rolfe -jewels were kept--and often a substantial bit of money as well--was -situated in the library; which was just beyond the hall and connected -with it by a flight of four or five steps. This safe was my objective -point. - -The wooden window shutters were but the work of a moment; and the window -fastenings themselves of only a few minutes more. (I flatter myself that -I have a very coaxing way with window fasteners.) The safe itself would -give me the devil's own trouble, I knew. It was really a job for two -men, and I ached all over to be at it, to be safely through with it, and -away, a good hour before sunrise. - -The window opened noiselessly enough, and I stepped within and set my -little satchel full of necessary tools upon the floor. But the damp -weather had swelled the woodwork, and as I closed the window again, -though I pushed it ever so gently, it gave forth a noise something -between a grunt and a squeak. - -And as pat as the report of a pistol to the pressure of the trigger came -the answer--a sound of a quickly-caught breath from the warm dimness of -the room. I made no motion; though the blood drummed desperately through -my brain and my scalp tingled with apprehension and excitement. - -For ten, for twenty, for thirty seconds I stood so; and then the silence -was broken by the unmistakable rustle of a woman's skirts. The sound -came softly towards me through the darkness. It was my turn to let loose -my held breath with a gasp, and in another moment I should have been -through the window and running for it; when a woman's whisper halted me. - -"Is that you, Charles? And why did you not rap upon the shutter?" - -So some one called Charles was expected? Then, ticked off my thoughts -almost automatically, the lady somewhere near me in the dark might have -her own reasons for not caring to alarm the house just then! The thought -steadied me to action. - -"Shh," I whispered, feeling behind me for the window, and gradually -opening it again. "S-h-h! No, it is not Charles"--and I put one foot -backward across the sill. "It is not Charles, but Charles has sent me to -say----" - -Click!--went something by the window, and the room was flooded with -sudden brilliance from a dozen electric globes. And again, click!--and -I looked with blinking eyes at the muzzle of a cocked pistol held by the -most beautiful, the most be-jeweled, the most determined-looking young -woman it has ever been my lot to meet. - -"Who are you?" she asked in a voice that was at once hoarse and sweet. -"Who are you? And what do you want? And where is Charles?" - -As I stood there dripping moisture upon the oiled floor, with my hands -in the air--they had gone up quite involuntarily--I must have been the -very picture of idiocy and discomfiture. I wondered if Charles, whoever -the devil Charles might be, was always welcomed with a cocked pistol. -Probably not; but, I wondered, how did she happen to have a pistol with -her? I wondered why neck, breast, hair, arms, and hands should be ablaze -with the diamonds that accentuated her lithe and vivid loveliness. I -wondered why, now that she saw I was not Charles, she did not alarm the -house. I wondered everything; but nothing to the point. And as I stood -wondering she repeated: - -"Who are you? And what do you want?" - -"Madame," I stammered, my jarred brain fastening upon the sentence she -had interrupted, "Charles sent me to--to say to you----" - -"Charles who?" she asked. And as tense as was her face, a gleam of -merriment shot through her eyes. "Charles who?" she repeated. - -Charles was not one of the points upon which the Irish maid had given me -information. - -The lady with the pistol considered for a moment. "You are not very -clever, are you?" she said. - -"If you will pardon me," I said, "I think I had better be going. I seem -to have mistaken the house." - -"You at least seem to have mistaken the proper manner in which to enter -it," she returned. - -"Why, as to the mode of entrance," I said, "I might plead that the -mistake appears to have been less in that than in the person who -employed it." - -I could not resist the retort. A dull red crept slowly up her neck and -face; a pallid, olive-tinted face, beautiful in itself, beautiful for -its oval contour and broad brow, and frame of black hair; beautiful in -itself, and yet dominated and outdone by the lustrous, restless beauty -of the dark eyes wherewith she held me more surely captive than by -virtue of the pistol. - -"You will come in," she said, "and sit there." She indicated a seat -beside a central table. "But first you will kindly let me have whatever -weapons you may possess." She took my revolver, examined it, and put her -own in the breast of her gown. "Now you may put your hands down," she -said, "your arms must ache by now. Sit down." - -I sat. She stood and looked at me for a moment. - -"I am wondering what you are going to do with me," I ventured. - -In all of her quick actions, and in the tones of her voice, there was -evident a most unnatural sort of strain. She may well have been excited; -that was only to be expected in the circumstances. But the repressed -excitement in this woman's manner was not that of a woman who is forcing -herself to keep her courage up; not that of a woman who would like to -scream; but a steadier nervous energy which seemed to burn in her like a -fire, to escape from her finger tips, and almost to crackle in her -hair; an intensity that was vibrant. I marveled. Most women would have -screamed at the advent of a man in the dead of night; screamed and -fainted. Or the ones who would not, and who were armed as she, would -ordinarily have been inclined to shoot, and at once; or immediately to -have given the alarm. She had done none of these things. She had merely -taken me captive. She had set me down in a chair at the center of the -room. She had not roused the house. And now she stood looking at me with -a trace of abstraction in her manner; looking at me, for the moment, -less as if I were a human being than as if I were a factor in some -mathematical problem which it was the immediate task of that active, -high-keyed brain of hers to solve. And there was a measure of irony in -her glance, as if she alone tasted and enjoyed some ulterior jest. - -"I am wondering," I repeated, "what you are going to do with me." - -She sat down at the opposite side of the table before she replied. - -"I believe," she said slowly, "that I have nearly made up my mind what -to do with you." - -"Well?" I asked. - -But she said nothing, and continued to say nothing. I looked at her and -her diamonds--the diamonds I had come after!--and wondered again why she -was wearing them; wondered why she had tricked herself out as for -some grand entertainment. And as the ignominious result of my night's -expedition pressed more sharply against my pride I could have strangled -her through sheer disappointment and mortification. The pistol she held -was the answer to that impulse. But what was the answer to her hesitancy -in alarming the house? Why did she not give me up and be done with me? - -At the farther end of the room was a long red curtain, which covered the -entrance to a sitting-room or parlor, as I guessed; and by the side -of the curtain hung an old-fashioned bell cord, also of red, which -I supposed to communicate with the servants' quarters. It were easy -enough, now that she had taken the whip hand of me so cleverly, to pull -that rope, to set the bell jangling, to rouse the house. Why did she not -do so? - -Was she a mad woman? There was that in her inexplicable conduct, and in -her highly-wrought, yet governed, mood, as she sat in brooding silence -across the table from me, to make the theory plausible. Brooding she -was, and studying me, I thought; yet watchful, too. For at any least -motion of mine her hand tightened slightly upon the pistol. We sat -thus while the slow seconds lengthened into intolerable minutes; and I -steamed with sweat, and fidgeted. Nor was I set more at my ease by her -long searching glances. In fact, my overthrow had been so instant and -so complete that my scattered wits had never drawn themselves together -again; I continued as one in a haze; as a person half under the power -of the hypnotist; as a mouse must feel after the first blow of the cat's -paw. And yet one idea began to loom clearly out of that haze and possess -me--the idea that she desired the alarm to be given as little as I did -myself. - -But there was no light in that. It was easy to understand why she -did not wish the house aroused while she still believed me to be -Charles--whoever Charles might be. But now?--it was too much for me. -I could not find a justification in reason for my belief; and yet the -conviction grew. - -She broke the silence with a question that might have been put with full -knowledge of my thought. - -"You are still wondering why I do not give you up?" she said. - -I nodded. She leaned towards me across the table, and if ever the demons -of mockery danced through a woman's eyes it was then; and her lips -parted in a kind of silent laughter. - -She touched the diamonds about her throat. - -"It was these you came after?" - -I nodded again. Evidently speech was of no avail with this lady. She -asked questions at her will, and reserved the right of answering none. - -"Tell me," she said, "Why are you a thief? Why do you steal?" - -"'Convey, the wise it call,'" I quoted. "Accident, or fate, or destiny, -I suppose," I went on, wondering more than ever at the question, but -with a fluttering hope. Perhaps the lady (in spite of Charles--such -things have been!) was an amateur sociologist, a crank reformer, or -something of that sort. There had been no mockery in her tone when -she asked the question; instead, I thought, a kind of pity. "Fate, -or destiny," I went on, "or what you please, 'There is a destiny that -shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will,'" I quoted again, in my -best actor manner. - -"Why," she said, "you are a man with some air of better things about -you. You quote Shakespeare as if he were an old friend. And yet, you are -a thief! Tell me," she continued, "tell me--I dare say there were many -struggles against that destiny?" There was a note almost of eagerness -in her voice, as if she were a leniently-inclined judge who would fain -search out and put in the mouth of a condemned man some plausible plea -for the exercise of clemency. "Come--were there not?--I dare say there -were--circumstances of uncommon bitterness that forced you to become -what I see you? And even now you hate the thing you are?" - -"Why, as to that," I said, possessed of the sudden whim to be honest -with myself for once, "I am afraid that I can complain of no bitterer -usage at the hands of the world than can the majority of those who reap -where they have not sowed. When I think of it all, I am used to putting -it to myself that my life is devoted to a kind of private warfare -against the unjust conditions of a hypocritical social order." - -"Warfare!" she flouted, hard and brilliant as one of her own diamonds -again. "And you could justify it, too, could you not?" - -And then she asked me: "Have you ever killed a man?" - -"Why, no," said I, "but I have tried to." - -"He lived?--and you were sorry that he lived?" - -"No," I said, quite out of my depths in all this moral quibbling, "I was -glad he lived." - -"And yet you hated him?" - -"I would have taken his life in a rage," I said. "He had wronged me as -greatly as one man can wrong another." - -"And yet you were glad he lived? My dear thief----" - -"Higgins is the name," said I. "You may call me Higgins." - -"My dear Higgins," she went on, "you are inconsistent. You attempt to -slay a man in what I should judge to have been a not ignoble passion. -It may have been an anger that did you credit. And yet you are not -bold enough to face the thought of killing him. You are glib with -justifications of your thievery; and perhaps that is also because you -are too much of a coward to look steadily at it. You creep along a mean -and despicable path in life, contentedly, it seems to me, with a dead -soul. You are what you are because there is nothing positive in you for -either good or evil. You are negative; you were better dead. Yes, better -dead!" - -Why should I have felt as if she were seeking self-justification in -advance for some death she planned for me? Certainly, my life, or death, -was not hers to give or take; she might give me up, and probably would. -But just as certainly she had made me feel, as she passed her judgment -upon me, that she was likely to turn executioner as well as judge. My -doubts as to her sanity returned. - -"Still," I said, for the sake of saying something, "if I killed a man, I -should not like to think about it, even if he deserved death." - -"Even if he deserved death?" she repeated, and sprang up, as if the -phrase had touched her. "You make yourself the judge, you do, of when -a man 'deserves' to lose his wealth. Come, what is your idea of when he -deserves to die?" - -Up and down the room she swept; yet still watchful. And the emotion -which she had so long suppressed burst out into a poisonous lovely bloom -that suffused her being with an awful beauty. - -"When does he deserve to die?" she repeated. "Listen to me. I knew -a woman once--no matter where--no matter when--who was sold--sold! I -say--by the sordid devil she called her father, to the veriest beast -that ever trod this earth. Her beauty--for she had beauty--her wit--for -wit she had--became this husband's chattels before she turned her -twentieth year. She would never have loved him, but she would have been -faithful to him--she was faithful to him, in fact, in spite of all his -drunkenness and bestiality--and abuse! It was not neglect alone that she -had to complain of--she had never looked for understanding or sympathy. -But she had not looked for abuse. Abuse, I say, and worse than abuse. -Before she had been married a year she knew what it was, not only to -feel the weight of a heavy hand and to hide the bruises from her maid, -but to see other women brought into her very house. Pah!--hate? She -hated him? Hate is not the word. She became a live coal. But she never -cried out; she found strength to smile at him even when he beat her; she -was proud enough for that. It pleased him, in his hellish humor, and -because she was made to shine, to cage her in a country house, and there -to taunt her that although she was sold to him she got little of what -money may buy. And still she smiled at him, and still her hatred grew -through all the weeks and months until it filled her whole being. And -then--love came. For God has ordained that love may enter even Hell. -Love, I say; and she loved this lover of hers with a passion that was -measured only by the degree in which she hated her husband. And she -would have left with him; but on the very night they would have flown -together her lord and master-----" - -She said the words with an indescribable spluttering sneer, sidewise -from her mouth. It is so a lioness may snarl and spit before she leaps. - -"Her--lord and master--found it out, and waited up to catch them; and -coming upon her alone, taunted her. Taunted her, and struck her----" - -"Look!" she cried, and tore the diamonds from her breast, and rent the -laces, and wrenched the fastenings apart. A new red weal that seemed to -throb and pulse with her respiration stood out from the whiteness of her -bosom. - -"Tell me," she whispered hoarsely, "would it have been murder if she had -killed that man? Which were the more courageous thing--to kill him, or -to step back into her living hell? If she had killed him, would she have -regretted it?" - -I know not what I might have answered; but at that instant three raps -sounded distinctly upon the window-shutter. I leaped to my feet. Then -Charles had come! - -An instant she stood as if stricken to a statue in mid-rage. - -And then she cried out, and there was a furious triumph in her voice--a -kind of joy that matched itself to, and blended with, the fierce and -reckless beauty of her shaken jewels, possessed her. - -"Charles," she cried, "come in! Come in!" - -Slowly the window opened and a man entered. He drew back in amaze at the -sight of me, and turned to her with an air that was all one question. - -"I thought you would never come," she said. - -He was a big blond man, and as he turned from the one to the other of -us, with his helpless, inquiring face, and eyes that blinked from the -outer darkness, he looked oddly like a sleepy schoolboy who has been -awakened from an afternoon nap by the teacher's ruler. - -"Katherine," he finally stammered, "what is this? Who is this man?" He -passed his hand across his forehead as one may do who doubts whether or -not he dreams; and walked towards the table. - -"Charles," she said, "I have shot the old man." I have seen a beef -stricken on the head with a mallet look at its executioner with big eyes -for an instant before the quivering in its limbs set in and it sank to -the ground. So this Charles looked with wide, stupid eyes, and shivered, -and dropped the great bulk of him into a chair. His head sank upon his -hand. But finally he looked up, and spoke in a confused voice, as if -through a mist. "Good God, Katherine, what do you mean?" - -"I mean," she said, framing the words slowly, as one speaks a lesson to -a child, "I mean that I have killed the old man." - -And moving swiftly across the room she flung back the heavy red curtain -at the end of it; and I saw the answer to my many questionings. - -The body lay upon its back, with one arm bent, the hand across the -chest, and the fingers spread wide. The face was that of a man of sixty -or thereabouts, but, indeed, so deeply lined and wrinkled and pouched -with evil living that the age even in life must have been hard to -determine. Blood was coagulating about a bullet wound in the temple, -and there were powder burns on the forehead. The shot had been fired at -close range, evidently from the weapon with which I had been confronted -on my entrance; and the sound had been so muffled in the curtain that it -was little wonder that the servants in the rooms above, and across the -house, had not heard it. He had a monstrous nose, that man upon the -floor, and it must have been a red nose in life; but now it was of a -bluish-white color, like the skin of an old and scrawny fowl. That, and -the thin, drawn-up legs, and the big flabby paunch of the thing, robbed -the sight, for me, of all the solemnity which (we are taught) exudes -from the presence of death. It made me sick; and yet I cackled with -sheer hysteria, too; or rather my strained nerves jarred and laughed, if -not myself. It was too damned grotesque. - -Herself, she did not look at it. She looked at the man called Charles; -and he, with a shudder, lifted his slow gaze from the thing behind the -curtain to her face. - -She was the first to speak, and the terrible joy with which she had bade -Charles to enter still dominated her accents. - -"Don't you understand, Charles? This man," and she indicated me with the -pistol, "this man takes the blame of this. He is a thief. He came just -after--just afterwards. And I held him for your coming. Don't you see? -Don't you see? His presence clears us of this deed!" - -"_Us?_" queried Charles. - -"Not _us?_" she asked. - -"My God, Katherine," he burst forth, "why did you do this thing? And -you would heap murder on murder! Why, why, why did you do it? Why splash -this blood upon our love? A useless thing to do! We might have--we might -have------" - -He broke down and sobbed. And then: "God knows the old man never did me -any harm," he said. "And she'd accuse the thief, too!" he cried a moment -later, with a kind of wondering horror. - -"Listen, Charles," she said, and moved towards him; and yet with a -sidelong glance she still took heed of me. "Listen, and understand -me. We must act quickly--but after it happened it was necessary that I -should see you before we could act. This man came to rob; here is his -pistol, and in that satchel by the window are his tools, no doubt. He -may tell what wild tale he will; but who will believe him? You go as you -came; I give him up--and we--we wait awhile, and then the rest of life -is ours." - -I suppose that it is given to few men to hear their death plotted in -their presence. But I had come to the pass by this time where it struck -me as an impersonal thing. I listened; but somehow the full sense of -what she said, as affecting me, did not then impinge upon my brain with -waking force. I stood as if in a trance; I stood and looked on at those -two contending personalities, that were concerned just now with the -question of my life or death, as if I were a spectator in a theater--as -if it were someone else of whom they spoke. - -"Go," she cried to Charles again, "and I will give him up." - -"Katherine," he said, "and you would do this thing?" - -"Why?" she retorted, "what is this man's life beside mine? His soul is -dead! I tell you, Charles, that I have come through Hell alive to gain -one ray of happiness! But go!--and leave the rest to me." - -And she grasped the bell cord and pulled it. Pulled it again and again. -The sound wandered crazily through what remote corridors I know not. - -She made a step towards him. He leaped to his feet with an oath, with -loathing in his eyes, shrank back from her, and held out a hand as if to -ward off some unclean thing. - -Bewilderment lined her face. She groped to understand. And then, as the -full significance of his gesture came home to her, she winced and swayed -as if from a blow; and the pistol dropped from her loosened grasp to the -floor. - -"You--you abandon me?" she said slowly. "You desert me, then? Love, -Love, think how I have loved you that I did this thing! And is what I -have suffered--what I have done--still to purchase--nothing?" - -She pleaded for my death; but I hope that I shall never again see on any -human face the look of despair that was on hers. I pitied her! - -Heavy feet on the stairway woke me from my trance. Unregarded of them -both I grasped my pistol from the floor and sprang for the window. A -door opened somewhere above, and a voice asked: - -"You rang, Ma'am?" - -From without the window I looked back into the room. She stood with -outstretched hands--hands that reached upward from the pit of torment, -my fancy told me--and pleaded for a little love. "In all this world is -there no little ray of love for me?"--it was so my imagination rather -than my hearing translated the slight movement of her lips. And while -she and the man called Charles stood thus at gaze with one another, the -servant spoke again from the stairway. - -"You rang?" he asked. - -She slowly straightened. She steadied herself. And with her eyes still -fixed upon those of Charles she cried: - -"Yes, yes, I rang, Jones! Your master is--dead. Your master's murdered! -And there, there," and she stabbed an accusing finger at her erstwhile -lover, "there is the man who murdered him!" - -And then I turned from the window and ran from that house; and as I ran -I saw the Dawn, like a wild, fair woman, walk up the eastern sky with -blood-stained feet. - - - - -XIII.--Words and Thoughts - -[A Play in One Act] - -Characters: - -Cousin Fanny Hemlock - -John Speaker - -Mary Speaker - -John Thinker - -Mary Thinker - -Maid - -Period, the present. Place, any American city. - -The Scene _represents two drawing rooms, exact duplicates, furnished -alike to the smallest detail. Either room might be the reflection of the -other in a mirror. Each occupies half of the stage. The division line -between them is indicated, towards the hack of the stage, by two pianos, -which sit hack to back at the center of the hack drop. This division -is carried by the pianos a quarter or a third of the way towards the -footlights. The division is further suggested, towards the front of the -stage, hy a couple of settees or couches, which also sit back to back._ - -John Speaker and Mary Speaker _remain all the time in the room at the -right of the stage. They are not aware of_ John Thinker _and_ Mary -Thinker, _who are, throughout the play, in the room at the left. The_ -Thinkers, _however, are aware of the_ Speakers. - -_In make-up, looks, dress, etc., the two_Johns _are precisely alike. -The same is true of_ Mary Speaker and Mary Thinker. _The_ Johns _are -conventional-looking, prosperous Americans of from 38 to 40 years of -age. The two_ Marys _are a few years younger._ - -Cousin Fanny Hemlock _is a dried-up, querulous old woman of seventy._ - -_The Curtain, on rising, discovers the two_ Johns _and the two_ Marys. -_It is between 7 and 8 in the evening; they are all in evening dress, -and are preparing to go out, putting on their gloves, etc., etc._ - -John Speaker [_Picking up over coat._] - -Are you ready, Mary dear? - -Mary Speaker [_Holding out a gloved hand._] - -Quite, John dear. Button this for me, won't you, love? - -John Speaker [_Busy with glove._] - -It's been nearly a year, hasn't it, since we've been out together of -an evening? I'm afraid Cousin Fanny is terribly trying on you at times, -Mary. - -Mary Speaker - -You know, John, I don't consider her a trial. I _love_ Cousin Fanny. - -John Thinker - -[_Busy with Mary Thinker's glove._] - -The old cat's letting us off to-night, for a wonder, Mary. She's a -horrible affliction! - -Mary Thinker [_Passionately._] - -Affliction is no word. She makes my life a living hell! I hate her! - -John Speaker - -[_Helping Mary Speaker on with coat, which action is simultaneously -imitated hy John and Mary Thinker._] - -Well, we must bear with her gently, Mary. I am afraid poor Cousin Fanny -will not be with us many more years. - -John Thinker [_To Mary Thinker._] - -One comfort is she'll die before long! - -Mary Speaker [_To John Speaker._] - -Oh, John, you don't think Cousin Fanny's going to die, do you? - -Mary Thinker [_To John Thinker._] - -Don't fool yourself about her dying soon, John. There's no such luck! - -[_Enter Maid through door in right back to John and Mary Speaker, -who look up. John and Mary Thinker also notice entrance of Maid and -listen._] - -Maid - -[_To Mary Speaker._] - -Miss Hemlock sent me to inquire whether you were going out to-night. - -Mary Thinker [_To John Thinker, quickly._] - -The old cat's up to something! - -Mary Speaker [_To Maid_.] - -Yes. We were just starting. Does Miss Hemlock want anything? I will go -to her if she wishes to speak with me. - -Maid - -She said, in case you were going out, that I was to tell you _not_ to do -so. - -Mary Speaker - -_Not_ to do so? - -Maid - -Yes, ma'am; that's what she said. She said in case you were getting -ready to go out, you were to change your plans and stop at home. - -John Speaker [_To Maid._] - -Not to do so? But, surely, there must be some mistake! - -[_Maid shakes her head slowly, deliberately, looking fixedly at John -Speaker; and while she is doing so John Thinker says to Mary Thinker_:] - -John Thinker - -Some malicious idea is working in her head tonight! - -Maid - -[_To John Speaker._] - -No, sir, no mistake. She said very plainly and distinctly that you were -not to go out tonight. - -[_Maid bows and exits._] - -John Speaker - -Cousin Fanny is not so well to-night, I'm afraid, dear, or she would -certainly have put her request in some other way. - -Mary Speaker - -If I didn't love Cousin Fanny, John, I would be tempted to believe that -she deliberately tries at times to annoy us. - -John Speaker - -Cousin Fanny is old, and we must remember that she is very fond of us. -We will have to bear with her. - -[_John Speaker takes his top coat and his wife's coat> and lays them on -a chair, while John Thinker, who has been frowning and brooding, flings -himself into chair and says to Mary Thinker_:] - -John Thinker - -For cold-blooded, devilish nerve in a man's own house, Cousin Fanny -certainly takes the cake, Mary! - -Mary Thinker - -She gets more spiteful every day. She knows her power, and the more -childish she gets the more delight she takes in playing tyrant. - -John Thinker - -Cheer up, it isn't forever! If she doesn't change her will before she -dies, it means fifteen thousand dollars a year. That's worth a little -trouble! - -Mary Thinker - -You're away at your office all day. I'm here at home with her. It is I -who catch all the trouble! - -John Thinker - -Well, after all, she's more nearly related to you, Mary, than she is to -me. - -Mary Thinker - -She's my mother's third cousin, if you call _that_ near! - -John Thinker - -Well, then, she's my father's fifth cousin, if you call _that_ near! - -Mary Speaker - -What were you thinking of, John, dear? - -John Speaker - -Nothing... nothing, Mary... except that - -Cousin Fanny is a poor, lonely old soul, after all. - -Mary Speaker - -Poor, lonely old woman, indeed--it's odd, isn't it, that she is related -to both you and me, John? - -John Speaker - -She's closer to you than to me, Mary. - -Mary Speaker - -You couldn't call a fourth or fifth cousin very near, John. - -John Speaker - -It almost seems as if you were trying to deny the blood tie, Mary! - -Mary Speaker - -No, John, dear, blood is thicker than water. - -John Speaker Thicker than water! - -John Thinker - -Relations are the most unpleasant persons on earth. I hate cousins. - -Mary Thinker - -Especially cousins who are also cousins-in-law! John Speaker - -But even if she were only _my_ relation, Mary, and not related to _you_ -at all, I know enough of your sweet nature to know that she would always -be welcome in our home in spite of her little idiosyncrasies. - -[_Enter Cousin Fanny, to John and Mary Speaker, through door right hack. -She coughs as she steps forward, leaning on a cane, and puts her hand to -her chest, stop-ping. Then as she comes forward, she stumbles. John and -Mary Speaker leap forward, put their arms behind her, and, supporting -and leading her, conduct her tenderly down stage to chair at center of -room they are in. John and Mary Thinker, near together at table in their -room, lean forward eagerly and watch this entrance, and when the old -woman stumbles, John Thinker says to Mary Thinker, nudging her:_] - -John Thinker - -You see? - -Mary Thinker - -See what? - -John Thinker - -She totters! - -Mary Thinker - -She stumbled. - -John Thinker - -She's getting weaker. - -[_Mary Speaker tenderly kisses Cousin Fanny, as Mary Thinker says_:] - -Mary Thinker - -Weaker! She'll live to be a hundred and ten! - -John Thinker - -Not she! - -Mary Thinker - -The mean kind always do! - -John Speaker - -[_Tenderly, to Cousin Fanny, arranging cushion behind her._] - -Can't I get you a wrap, Cousin Fanny? - -Mary Speaker - -Don't you feel a draught, Cousin Fanny? - -Mary Thinker - -[_Bitterly, frowning at other group_.] - -No draught will ever harm her! - -Cousin Fanny - -[_To John Speaker, sneeringly; petulantly._] You're mighty anxious -about a _wrap_, John! But you were thinking of going out and leaving me -practically alone in the house. - -John Speaker [_Deprecatingly._ ] - -But, Cousin Fanny---- - -Cousin Fanny [_Interrupting_.] - -Don't deny it! Don't take the trouble to deny it! Don't lie about it! -You can't lie to me! Don't I see your evening clothes? And Mary, too! -Both of you were going out--_both_ of you! - -Mary Speaker - -Cousin Fanny, we gave it up when we learned that you wanted us to stop -at home with you. Didn't we, John? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_Querulously, childishly, shrilly._] - -Don't deny it, Mary, don't deny it! Don't excuse yourself! I can see you -were going out! I can see your evening clothes! - -Mary Speaker - -We'll go and change to something else, won't we, John? - -[_She is going, as she speaks, but Cousin Fanny cries out_:] - -Cousin Fanny - -Stop! - -[_Mary Speaker stops, and Cousin Fanny continues_:] - -Don't take them off. I don't want you to take them off. What do you want -to take them off for? Are they too good for _me_ to see? Are they too -grand for me to look at? Ain't I as good as any one you'd find if you -went out? Heh? - -Mary Speaker - -Cousin Fanny, I didn't mean that. I meant---- - -Cousin Fanny [_Interrupting._] - -I know what you meant! Don't tell me what you meant, Mary. You meant to -slip out and leave me here alone, both of you. It's lucky I caught you -in time. It's lucky I have money! It's lucky I don't have to put up with -the treatment most old folks get. I'd starve, if I were poor! I'd die of -hunger and neglect! - -[_She begins to cry, and Mary Speaker says_:] - -Mary Speaker No, no, no, Cousin Fanny! - -[_Mary Speaker soothes her, in pantomime, and pets her, trying to take -her hands away from her face, Cousin Fanny resisting, like a spoiled and -spiteful child. John Speaker, behind Cousin Fanny and his wife, walks -up and down, with his eyes on them, running his hand nervously and -excitedly through his hair. While this pantomime goes on, John and Mary -Thinker are watching and saying _:] - -John Thinker - -This is to be one of Cousin Fanny's pleasant evenings! - -Mary Thinker - -This happens a dozen times a day. - -John Thinker She's not really crying. - -Mary Thinker - -Pretence! She works it up to be unpleasant. - -John Thinker The old she-devil! - -John Speaker - -[_Taking Cousin Fanny's hand._] - -You know, Cousin Fanny, that we try to do our duty by you. - -Cousin Fanny [_Flinging his hand off._] - -You try to do your duty by my money! I know! - -I see! You talk of love and duty, but it's my money you want! But I may -fool you--I may fool you yet. It's not too late to change my will. It's -not too late to leave it all to charity! - -[_She speaks these lines with a cunning leer, and John Thinker, nudging -Mary Thinker and pointing to her, says:_] - -John Thinker The old cat is capable of it, too! - -John Speaker [_To Cousin Fanny_.] - -If you should leave your money to charity, Cousin Fanny, you would find -it made no difference with us. You know blood is thicker than water, -Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny [_Shrewdly, maliciously_.] - -So is sticky flypaper! - -John Speaker - -Come, come, you don't doubt the genuineness of our affection, do you, -Cousin Fanny? You've known me from my boyhood, Cousin Fanny, and you've -lived with us for ten years. You ought to know us by this time! You -ought to know us in ten years! - -Mary Thinker Ten years of torture! - -John Thinker It can't last much longer! - -John Speaker - -[_Who has taken her hand again, and has been patting it as a -continuation of his last speech, and looking at her fondly_.] - -You trust us, don't you, Cousin Fanny? You really are sure of our -affection, aren't you? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_To John Speaker. She shows that she really is willing to be convinced; -she searches their faces wistfully; she is pathetically eager._ ] - -John, John, you really _do_ care for me, don't you? [_She takes a hand -of each._] - -It isn't _all_ on account of my money, is it? If you knew I hadn't a -cent, you'd still be good to me, wouldn't you? - -John Speaker and Mary Speaker [_Together._] - -Yes, yes, Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny - -If I lost it all; if I told you I'd lost it all, you'd be just the same, -wouldn't you? - -[_John Speaker and Mary Speaker exchange glances over her head, and John -Speaker drops her hand, while John Thinker grabs Mary Thinker excitedly -by the arm and says quickly_:] - -John Thinker - -My God, you don't suppose she's really _lost_ it, do you? - -Mary Thinker - -No! This is just one of her cunning spells now. She can be as crafty as -a witch. - -Cousin Fanny - -If I hadn't a cent you'd still care for me, wouldn't you, Mary? - -Mary Speaker - -Why, Cousin Fanny, you know I would! - -Cousin Fanny - -But I'm hard on you at times. I'm unjust. I don't mean to be spiteful, -but I _am_ spiteful. When we get old we get suspicious of people. We get -suspicious of everybody. And suspicion makes us spiteful and unjust. I -know I'm not easy to live with, Mary. - -Mary Speaker [_Kissing Cousin Fanny._] - -You get such strange notions, Cousin Fanny! - -John Thinker - -And such true ones, Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny - -Tell me the truth, Mary. You find me a trial, Mary. You and John find me -a trial! - -Mary Speaker and John Speaker [_Together._ ] - -Never, Cousin Fanny! - -Mary Thinker and John Thinker [_Together._ ] - -Always, Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny And that is the truth? - -John Speaker, John Thinker, Mary Speaker and Mary Thinker [_All -together._ ] - -And that is the truth, Cousin Fanny! - -Cousin Fanny - -You don't know how suspicious one gets! - -Mary Speaker [_Petting her_.] - -But suspicion never stays long in your good heart, Cousin Fanny. There's -no room for it there, I know. But don't you think you'd better go to bed -now? Let me call the maid. - -Cousin Fanny - -[_Rousing up in chair; suspicion and meanness all awake again_.] - -To bed? Why to bed? Why do you want to pack me off to bed? I know! I -know why! You want me to go to bed so you two can talk about me. So you -can talk me over! So you can speculate on how long I will live. I know -you! I know what you talk about when I'm not around! I know what you've -been waiting and hoping for the last ten years! - -[_Begins to cry._] - -Well, you won't have long to wait now. The time's almost come! I feel -it's almost here. You'll get the money soon enough! - -Mary Speaker [_Soothing her_.] - -There, there, Cousin Fanny, don't go on like this! - -You know it isn't true--you know you'll live ten years yet! - -[_John Speaker runs his hands through his hair and looks silently at -Mary Speaker, and John Thinker, with the same gesture, says to Mary -Thinker_:] - -John Thinker - -If I thought she'd live ten years yet----! - -[_Pauses._] - -Mary Thinker - -Well, if you thought she'd live ten years yet----? - -John Thinker [_With a gesture of de pair._ ] - -My God--ten years like the last ten years! Ten years! Talk about earning -money! If it hasn't been earned ten times over! - -Mary Thinker - -[_Fiercely._] - -You see it mornings and evenings. I have it all day long, and every -day. I've had it for ten years. I go nowhere, I see no one. I have no -pleasures. I have no friends; I've lost my friends. I'm losing my youth. -I'm losing my looks. I'm losing my very soul. I'm shedding my life's -blood drop by drop to keep that querulous fool alive--just merely alive! -I'm tired of it! I'm sick of it! I'm desperate! I'm dying from her, I -tell you! - -Mary Speaker - -[_Still soothing Cousin Fanny, but speaking with one hand nervously -clutching her own head as she does so_.] - -Come, come, Cousin Fanny--you'd better go to bed now! - -Cousin Fanny - -I won't go to bed yet! I want my medicine. It's time for my medicine -now. I won't go to bed till I've had my sleeping tablets. - -John Speaker - -Where are they, Cousin Fanny? - -Cousin Fanny - -On top of the bookcase there. The small phial. [_John Speaker goes to -the bookcase and begins to rummage for phial, while John Thinker says, -meditatively_:] - -John Thinker - -I suppose if one ever gave her the wrong medicine by mistake it would be -called by some ugly name! - -Mary Thinker - -People like her never get the wrong medicine given to them, and never -take it by mistake themselves. - -John Speaker [_Finding bottle; examining it_.] - -See here, Cousin Fanny, didn't you have one of these about an hour ago? -Didn't I see you take one of them right after dinner? - -Cousin Fanny [_Peevishly._] - -I don't know. I don't remember. I want one now, anyhow. My nerves are on -the jump. You have got all my nerves on the jump. I'll take one, and nap -here in the chair. - -John Speaker [_To Mary Speaker_.] - -She took one about an hour ago. I don't think it's quite right to let -her have another so soon. They have a powerful depressing effect on the -heart. - -Mary Speaker Let me see which ones they are. - -[_John Speaker holds the bottle out towards Mary Speaker, in front of -Cousin Fanny. Cousin Fanny snatches it with a sudden motion, and laughs -childishly. John Speaker and Mary Speaker look at each other inquiringly -over her head._] - -John Speaker - -She really shouldn't have another one now, I'm afraid, dear. It might be -pretty serious. [_To Cousin Fanny_.] - -You _did_ take one right after dinner, didn't you, Cousin Fanny? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_Hugging bottle to her very excitedly_.] - -No! No! I tell you I didn't! I _will_ take one! You don't want me to get -to sleep! You don't want me to get any rest! You want me to die! - -John Thinker I _know_ that she _did_ have one. - -Mary Speaker [_To John Speaker_.] - -What can you do, dear? - -John Speaker - -[_Taking hold of Cousin Fanny's hands, and trying to take phial -gently_.] - -See here, Cousin Fanny, you must be reasonable... you mustn't be -stubborn about this. You can't have another tablet now. It's dangerous. -It might even kill you! - -John Thinker - -It _would_ kill her as certainly as she sits there. John Speaker - -Come, come, Cousin Fanny... it might be dangerous. - -Mary Speaker - -John, don't struggle with her! Don't you know if you struggle with her -it is likely to prove fatal? The doctor says the _least_ strain will -prove fatal. - -Cousin Fanny [_Whimpering and struggling._] - -Let me have it! Let me alone! Let go of my hands! You want to kill me! -You want me to die so you can get my money! - -John Speaker [_Releasing her._] - -No! No! No! Cousin Fanny... Come, be reasonable! - -[_He reaches for her hands again, and she grabs his hand and bites it. -He draws back and says_:] - -Damn! - -[_Nurses his hand._] - -Mary Speaker - -Did she bite you? - -John Speaker - -Yes. - -[_Nurses his hand, and Mary Speaker examines it, while Cousin Fanny -pulls cork from phial with teeth, and John Thinker says_:] - -John Thinker - -The old viper has teeth yet! - -Mary Thinker - -She is a cat... she is a she-devil... she is a witch... she has a bad -heart.... - -John Speaker - -[_To Mary Speaker, pointing to Cousin Fanny, who is shaking tablet out -of bottle; she drops one and gropes for it, and shakes another more -carefully, with air of childish triumph._] - -Mary, what _can_ I do? She _will_ have it! And if I struggle with her -it will kill her! She is too weak to struggle! It will kill her to -struggle! And if I let her take the tablet it may do her harm! - -Mary Speaker - -Perhaps the tablet won't do her any harm, John. - -John Thinker - -It will kill her as surely as she sits there. I know it will and _you_ -know it will. - -John Speaker - -Maybe it won't hurt her, Mary... but we can never tell.... I'm afraid... -I'm afraid it really _might_ harm her.... - -Cousin Fanny [_Putting tablet into her mouth_.] - -There! I'm going to sleep, now.... I'm going to sleep in spite of you. -You hate me--both of you hate me--but you can't prevent me going to -sleep! - -Mary Speaker - -She's taken it, John. Do you suppose she really _did_ have one before? - -John Speaker [To Cousin Fanny.] - -Cousin Fanny, you _didn't_ have one before, did you? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_She has closed her eyes; she opens them and rocks back and forth, -laughing foolishly_.] - -Yes! - -John Speaker - -[_Taking out handkerchief; mopping fore-head_.] - -I don't believe she did. She says she did, but she doesn't know. - -Cousin Fanny [_Rocking and laughing sillily._] - -Yes, I did! You know I did! - -John Speaker - -She doesn't know.... She doesn't know whether she did or not.... She -hasn't really been right in her mind for a long time. I don't think she -had one before. - -[_As he speaks Cousin Fanny ceases rocking and leans hack in her chair, -closing her eyes. From this time on the two Johns and the two Marys -stare at her intently, never taking their eyes off of her while they -speak._] - -John Thinker - -She _did_ have one before. - -Mary Thinker - -I _know_ she did. - -John Thinker - -Will she die? Will I see her die? I should hate to see her die! - -John Speaker - -She _would_ have that tablet... she WOULD have it. If I had taken it -away from her by force it would have killed her; the struggle would have -killed her. - -John Thinker - -Will I see her die? Will she die? - -John Speaker - -I let her have it to save her life... it was to save her life that I -quit struggling with her. - -John Thinker - -If she dies... but _will_ she die? - -Mary Thinker - -She will die! - -Cousin Fanny - -[_Rousing from her lethargy slightly; open-ing her eyes._] - -John... Mary.... You really love me, don't you? Don't you? You really... -really... - -[_Sinks back, with head slightly on one side and eyes closed again; does -not move after this._] - -Mary Speaker - -[_They all speak with lowered voices now._] She is asleep. She really -needed the tablet. It was a mercy she got it. She was nervous and -overwrought, and it has put her to sleep. - -John Speaker - -Yes, it was a mercy she got it. She was nervous and overwrought, and it -has put her to sleep. - -... And you know, Mary, she _would_ have t... if I had _struggled_ with -her, she would have _died!_ A struggle would have killed her. - -John Thinker - -And now she will die because there was no struggle. - -Mary Thinker - -She will die. - -John Speaker - -Is she breathing quite naturally, Mary? - -Mary Speaker Quite. Quite naturally. - -Mary Thinker _Death_ is quite natural. - -John Thinker And she is dying. - -John Speaker - -Well, if she had struggled and died... if she had died through any fault -of mine... I would always have reproached myself.... - -Mary Speaker - -You have nothing to reproach yourself for. You need never reproach -yourself with regard to her.... - -John Thinker - -She was old. She was very old. She will be better dead. - -Mary Thinker She is not quite dead. - -John Speaker - -I don't like the way she is breathing.... She is scarcely breathing.... -She doesn't seem to be breathing at all! - -Mary Speaker Old people breathe very quietly. - -Mary Thinker Old people die very quietly. - -John Thinker And she is dying. - -Mary Thinker - -She is dead! - -John Thinker - -Mary... Mary... is she breathing at all? Mary Speaker - -Call the maid.... Send for the doctor.... Call the maid! - -John Thinker It is too late for any doctor. - -Mary Thinker - -Too late! - -John Speaker - -Mary, Mary.... My God... she can't be _dead!_ - -Mary Speaker [_Bending above her._] - -John, dear... try to bear it bravely... but... but I'm afraid she is.... -Poor Cousin Fanny has left us! - -John Speaker - -[_Rapidly_.] - -Poor Cousin Fanny.... Poor Cousin Fanny.... Poor Cousin Fanny.... - -John Thinker - -Fifteen thousand a year... fifteen thousand a year.... Why do I think of -that?... But I can't help it.... I can't help thinking of it.... - -Mary Speaker I'll go get the maid. - -[_Going_.] - -John Speaker - -Stop.... Wait, Mary.... Don't call her yet... get her presently.... I -don't want to be alone just now.... I'm in a kind of fog.... - -[_Lights go out as he says this; he continues in the darkness._] - -I'm all in the dark. - -[_Lights on again_.] - -[_In the interim, which is very short, Cousin Fanny has gone over to the -room on the left in which are John and Mary Thinker, and sits in chair -corresponding to one which she has just left._] - -[_She is silent and motionless, but her head is lifted; her eyes are -open; she is alive again. When lights go on again, John and Mary Speaker -still stand before chair she has left as if she were in it; it is -apparent that they believe themselves to be still looking at the old -woman._] - -Mary Speaker - -Nonsense... all in the dark?... What do you mean by all in the dark? - -John Speaker - -Nothing... nothing now. It has passed.... - -[Pointing to chair where Cousin Fanny was.] She died with a smile on her -face! - -John Thinker - -But she isn't there.... Cousin Fanny isn't there. - -... She's here.... She's over here with us... over here with _us_! - -Mary Thinker - -Here with us... over here, forever, now. - -Mary Speaker - -[_Holding John Speaker's hand and gazing at vacant chair_.] - -How beautiful she looks! She is at rest, now! She is better off so. -Better dead. She is better at peace! - -John Thinker - -[_Violently; starting towards other room_.] - -My God. I'm going to stop it... stop it... stop that lying... stop it -at any cost.... I'm going to stop that pretending... that damned -pretending.... - -Mary Thinker - -[_Quickly getting in front of him; holding him back._] - -What are you going to do? - -John Thinker - -Stop it, I tell you.... Tell the truth... stop that pretense.... - -[_Moves towards the other room. As he does so, Mary Speaker and John -Speaker, for the first time become aware of John and Mary Thinker, and -shrink back in terror and alarm, clinging together, confused, convicted, -abject, retreating, powerless; Cousin Fanny leaps in front of John -Thinker at same instant, and bars him back, saying:_] - -Cousin Fanny - -Stop! - -John Thinker - -Why? I _will_ stop this pretense... Why not? - -Cousin Fanny - -[_All four of the others lean forward and hang eagerly upon her words_.] - -You must not. It can't be done. It is the foundation upon which your -society rests. It is necessary..._ over there!_ - -CURTAIN - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Carter, and Other People, by Don Marquis - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE *** - -***** This file should be named 51913.txt or 51913.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/1/9/1/51913/ - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Carter, and Other People, by Don Marquis
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-
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-Title: Carter, and Other People
-
-Author: Don Marquis
-
-Release Date: May 1, 2016 [EBook #51913]
-Last Updated: March 13, 2018
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE ***
-
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-
-
-Produced by David Widger from page images generously
-provided by the Internet Archive
-
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-</pre>
-
- <div style="height: 8em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h1>
- CARTER, AND OTHER PEOPLE
- </h1>
- <h2>
- By Don Marquis
- </h2>
- <h4>
- D. Appleton and Co.
- </h4>
- <h5>
- 1921
- </h5>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <p>
- <b>CONTENTS</b>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_FORE"> FOREWORD </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> I.-Carter </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> II—Old Man Murtrie </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0004"> III.—Never Say Die </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0005"> IV.—McDermott </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0006"> V.—Looney the Mutt </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0007"> VI—Kale </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0008"> VII—Bubbles </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0009"> VIII.—The Chances of the Street </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0010"> IX.—The Professor's Awakening </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0011"> X.—The Penitent </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0012"> XI.—The Locked Box </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0013"> XII.—Behind the Curtain </a>
- </p>
- <p class="toc">
- <a href="#link2H_4_0014"> XIII.—Words and Thoughts </a>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_FORE" id="link2H_FORE"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- FOREWORD
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span> wish to
- acknowledge my indebtedness to the editors of several magazines for
- permission to reprint the following stories in book form. “Carter” was
- originally published in <i>Harpers Monthly Magazine</i> under the title
- “The Mulatto.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Death and Old Man Murtrie” was printed in The New <i>Republic</i>; others
- were first brought out in <i>Everybody's Magazine, Short Stories, Putnam's
- Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post</i>. “The Penitent” was originally
- printed in <i>The Pictorial Review</i>, with the title “The Healer and the
- Penitent.” The plot of this story is taken from two poems, one by Browning
- and one by Owen Meredith. Happening to read these two poems, one after the
- other, I was struck by the fact that Owen Meredith had unwittingly written
- what was in effect a continuation of a situation invented by Browning; the
- plot of the one poem, telescoped into the plot of the other, made in
- effect a complete short story. I pasted the two situations together, so to
- speak, inventing an ending of my own, and had a short story which neither
- Browning nor Owen Meredith could claim as his-and which I scarcely have
- the nerve to claim as mine. And yet this story, taken piecemeal from the
- two poets, gave me more trouble than anything else I ever tried to write;
- it was all there, apparently; but to transpose the story into a modern
- American setting was a difficult job. It is my only essay in conscious
- plagiarism-I hate to call it plagiarism, but what else could one call it?—and
- I give you my word that it is easier to invent than to plagiarize.
- </p>
- <p>
- The one-act play, “Words and Thoughts,” was written ten years ago-in
- 1911-and has been offered to every theatrical manager in America, and
- refused by them all. I still believe in it as a thing that could be acted
- with effect, and I am determined to get it read, even if I cannot get it
- produced. The fact that it has been going the rounds of theatrical
- managers for ten years is no indication that it has ever been read.
- </p>
- <p>
- Don Marquis
- </p>
- <p>
- New York
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- I.-Carter
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>arter was not
- exactly a negro, but he was a “nigger.” Seven drops of his blood out of
- every eight were Caucasian. The eighth, being African, classified him. The
- white part of him despised and pitied the black part. The black part hated
- the white part. Consequently, wherever Carter went he carried his own hell
- along inside of him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Carter began to learn that he was a nigger very early in life. Nigger
- children are not left long in doubt anywhere, and especially in the South.
- Carter first saw the light—and the shadows—of day in Atlanta.
- The color line itself, about which one hears so much talk, seemed to run
- along one end of the alley in which he was born. It was an alley with a
- gutter and a great deal of mud in it. At the corner, where it gave into a
- little narrow street not much better than an alley itself, the mud was the
- thickest, deepest, and best adapted to sculptural purposes. But in the
- little street lived a number of white families. They were most of them
- mill hands, and a numerous spawn of skinny children, little “crackers,”
- with faces white and sad even from babyhood, disputed the mud with the
- nigger children. Nigger babies of five, four, three, and even two,
- understood quite well that this most desirable mud, even though it was in
- the nigger alley, was claimed by the white babies as <i>their</i> mud. It
- was in every way a more attractive sort of mud than any in the little
- street proper; and juvenile race riots were of almost hourly occurrence—skirmishes
- in which the very dogs took part. For the dogs grasped the situation as
- clearly as did the children; a “nigger” dog, even though he may have
- started in life as a white man's dog, soon gets a certain look about him.
- </p>
- <p>
- So there was no chance for Carter to escape the knowledge that he was a
- nigger. But it was with a thrill that he perceived in his youthful
- excursions from the home alley, that he was sometimes mistaken for a white
- child. He was so white in color that one could not tell he was a nigger at
- a casual glance.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he grew up, he made another discovery that elated and embittered him
- still more. He found out who his father was—or rather, who his
- father had been, since he never saw that gentleman. The white blood in
- Carter's veins was no common ichor. Because white people seldom speak of
- these things it does not follow that they are not known pretty generally
- among the negroes. They are, in fact, discussed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Carter went to school; he made the further discovery that he had brains—“white
- man's brains” is the way he put it to himself. Given the opportunity, he
- told himself, he could go as far as the average white man—perhaps
- further than the average. The white man's standard, nigger though he was,
- was still the standard by which he must measure himself. But the
- opportunity! Even as the youth prepared himself for it he perceived,
- hopelessly, that it would be denied him.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he matured he began to feel a strange, secret pride in that white
- family whose blood he shared. He familiarized himself with its genealogy.
- There is many a courtier who cannot trace his ancestry as far back as
- Carter could. One of his forebears had signed Magna Charta; several had
- fought in the Revolutionary War. There had been a United States Senator in
- the family, and a Confederate General. At times, feeling the vigorous
- impulse of hereditary instinct and ambitions, Carter looked upon himself
- as all white man, but never for long, nor to any purpose. The
- consciousness of his negro blood pulled him down again.
- </p>
- <p>
- But, as he grew up, he ceased to herd with black negroes; he scorned them.
- He crept about the world cursing it and himself—an unfortunate and
- bitter creature that had no place; unfortunate and bitter, cursed with an
- intellect, denied that mitigation that might have come with a full share
- of the negro jovialty of disposition, forever unreconciled.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was one member of that white family from which he drew so much of
- his blood whom Carter particularly admired. Willoughby Howard was about
- Carter's own age, and he was Carter's half-brother. Howard did not
- distinguish Carter from any other mulatto; probably did not know of his
- existence. But as Howard reached manhood, and, through virtue of his
- wealth and standing and parts, began to attain an excellent place in the
- world, his rise was watched by Carter with a strange intensity of emotion.
- Carter in some occult way identified himself with the career of Willoughby
- Howard—sometimes he almost worshiped Willoughby Howard, and then he
- hated him; he envied him and raged over him with the same breath.
- </p>
- <p>
- But mostly, as the isolation of his own condition, ate into his soul, he
- raged over himself; he pitied himself; he hated himself. Out of the
- turmoil of his spirit arose the one despairing cry, Oh, to be white,
- white, <i>white!</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- Many a night he lay awake until daybreak, measuring the slow minutes with
- the ceaseless iteration of that useless prayer: Only to be white! O God,
- for <i>one little year of being white!</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- Fruitless hours of prayers and curses!
- </p>
- <p>
- Carter went North. He went to New York. But the North, which affects to
- promise so much to the negro, in a large, loose, general way, does not
- perform in the same degree. There was only one thing which Carter would
- have thanked any one for performing; it was the one thing that could never
- be performed—he wanted to be made white. Sometimes, indeed, from the
- depths of his despair, he cried out that he wanted to be altogether black;
- but in his soul he did not really want that.
- </p>
- <p>
- Nevertheless, at several different periods he yielded to temptation and
- “went over to the whites.” In the South he could not have done this
- without discovery, in spite of the color of his skin. But in the Northern
- cities, with their enormous numbers of aliens, all more or less strange to
- the American eye, Carter found no great difficulty in passing as white. He
- “looked a little foreign” to the casual glance; that was all.
- </p>
- <p>
- But if there was no great difficulty in it, there was no great
- satisfaction in it, either. In fact, it only made him the more bitter.
- Others might think him a white man, but he knew that he was a nigger.
- </p>
- <p>
- The incident which sent him back South, resolved to be a nigger, and to
- live and die among the niggers, might not have affected another in his
- condition just as it did Carter. But to him it showed conclusively that
- his destiny was not a matter of environment so much as a question of
- himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- He fell in love. The girl was a waitress in a cheap restaurant near the
- barber shop where Carter worked. She was herself a product of the East
- Side, struggling upward from the slums; partly Italian, with some Oriental
- strain in her that had given the least perceptible obliqueness to her eyes—one
- of those rare hybrid products which give the thinker pause and make him
- wonder what the word “American” will signify a century from now; a
- creature with very red lips and very black eyebrows; she seemed to know
- more than she really did; she had a kind of naïve charm, a sort of
- allurement, without actual beauty; and her name had been Anglicized into
- Mary.
- </p>
- <p>
- And she loved Carter. This being, doomed from the cradle to despair, had
- his moment of romance. But even in his intoxication there was no hope; his
- elation was embittered and perplexed. He was tempted not to tell the girl
- that he was a nigger. But if he married her, and did not tell her, perhaps
- the first child would tell her. It might look more of a nigger than he
- did.
- </p>
- <p>
- But if he told her, would she marry a nigger? He decided he would tell
- her. Perhaps his conscience had less to do with this decision than the
- fatalism of his temperament.
- </p>
- <p>
- So he made his revelation one Sunday evening, as they walked along the
- boardwalk from Coney Island to Brighton. To him, it was a tremendous
- moment. For days he had been revolving in his mind the phrases he would
- use; he had been rehearsing his plea; in his imagination he saw something
- spectacular, something histrionic, in his confession.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mary,” he said, as they sat down on a bench on the beach, “there is
- something I think I ought to tell you before we get married.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl turned toward him her big, sleepy, dark eyes, which always seemed
- to see and understand so much more than they really did, and looked away
- again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I ought to tell you,” he said—and as he said it, staring out to
- sea, he was so imposed upon by the importance of the moment to himself
- that he almost felt as if the sea listened and the waves paused—“I
- ought to tell you that I have negro blood in my veins.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She was silent. There was a moment before he dared look at her; he could
- not bear to read his doom in her eyes. But finally he did muster up
- courage enough to turn his head.
- </p>
- <p>
- The girl was placidly chewing gum and gazing at an excursion vessel that
- was making a landing at one of the piers.
- </p>
- <p>
- He thought she had not heard. “Mary,” he repeated, “I have negro blood in
- my veins.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Uh-huh,” said she. “I gotcha the first time, Steve! Say, I wonder if we
- couldn't take the boat back to town? Huh? Whatcha say?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked at her almost incredulous. She had understood, and yet she had
- not shrunk away from him! He examined her with a new interest; his
- personal drama, in which she, perforce, must share, seemed to have made no
- impression upon her whatsoever.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you mean,” he said, hesitatingly, “that it will—that it won't
- make any difference to you? That you can marry me, that you <i>will</i>
- marry me, in spite of—of—in spite of what I am?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gee! but ain't you the solemn one!” said the girl, taking hold of her gum
- and “stringing” it out from her lips. “Whatcha s'pose I care for a little
- thing like that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He had looked for a sort of dramatic “situation”; and, behold, there was
- none! There was none simply because the girl had no vantage point from
- which to look at his life and hers. He had negro blood in his veins—and
- she simply did not care one way or the other!
- </p>
- <p>
- He felt no elation, no exultation; he believed that she <i>should</i> have
- cared; whether her love was great enough to pardon that in him or not, she
- should have felt it as a thing that <i>needed</i> pardon.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he stared at the girl, and she continued to chew her gum, he swiftly
- and subtly revised his estimate of her; and in his new appraisement there
- was more than a tinge of disgust. And for a moment he became altogether a
- white man in his judgment of the thing that was happening; he looked at
- the situation as a patrician of the South might have looked at it; the
- seven eighths of his blood which was white spoke:
- </p>
- <p>
- “By God!” he said, suddenly leaping to his feet and flinging aside the
- startled hand which the girl put out toward him, “I can't have anything to
- do with a woman who'd marry a nigger!”
- </p>
- <p>
- So Carter went back to Atlanta. And, curiously enough, he stepped from the
- train almost into the midst of a strange and terrible conflict of which
- the struggle in his individual breast was, in a sense, the type and the
- symbol.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was a Saturday night in September, an evening on which there began a
- memorable and sanguinary massacre of negroes; an event which has been
- variously explained and analyzed, but of which, perhaps, the underlying
- causes will never be completely understood.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was riot in the streets, a whirlwind of passion which lashed the
- town and lifted up the trivial souls of men and spun them round and round,
- and passed and left the stains of blood behind. White men were making
- innocent negroes suffer for the brutal crimes of guilty negroes. It had
- been a hot summer; scarcely a day had passed during July and August
- without bringing to the newspapers from somewhere in Georgia a report of a
- negro assault upon some white woman. A blind, undiscriminating anger
- against the whole negro race had been growing and growing. And when, on
- that Saturday afternoon, the newspapers reported four more crimes, in
- rapid succession, all in or near Atlanta, the cumulative rage burst into a
- storm.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no danger for Carter in the streets; more than a hasty glance
- was necessary to spy out his negro taint. He stood in a doorway, in the
- heart of the business district of the town, and watched the wild work that
- went on in a large, irregular plaza, where five streets come together and
- all the car lines in the place converge. From this roughly triangular
- plaza leads Decatur Street, at one time notorious throughout the South for
- its negro dives and gambling-dens.
- </p>
- <p>
- Now and then Carter could hear the crack of a pistol, close at hand or far
- away; and again some fleeing negro would start from a place of temporary
- concealment, at the approach of a mob that beat its way along a street,
- and make a wild dash for safety, as a rabbit startled from the sedge-grass
- scurries to the brush. There was not one mob, but several; the different
- bands united, split up, and reunited, as the shifting winds of madness
- blew. The plaza, with arc lights all about it, was the brilliantly
- illuminated stage on which more than one scene of that disgusting
- melodrama was played out; from some dim hell of gloom and clamor to the
- north or east would rush a shouting group that whirled and swayed beneath
- the lights, dancing like flecks of soot in their brightness, to disappear
- in the gloom again, shouting, cursing, and gesticulating, down one of the
- thoroughfares to the west or south. And to Carter, in whose heart there
- waxed a fearful turmoil of emotions, even as the two races clashed along
- the echoing streets, there was a strange element of unreality about it
- all; or, rather, the night was dreadful with that superior reality which
- makes so much more vivid than waking life the intense experience of
- dreams. Carter thrilled; he shook; he was torn with terror and pity and
- horror and hatred.
- </p>
- <p>
- No white man felt all that Carter felt that night; nor yet any negro. For
- he was both, and he was neither; and he beheld that conflict which was
- forever active in his own nature dramatized by fate and staged with a
- thousand actors in the lighted proscenium at his feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- This thought struck Carter himself, and he turned toward another man who
- had paused in the doorway, with no clear intention, but perhaps with the
- vague impulse of addressing him, as a point of solid contact and relief
- from the sense of hurrying nightmare that possessed both the streets and
- his own spirit.
- </p>
- <p>
- Startled, he saw that the other man was Willoughby Howard. Carter
- hesitated, and then advanced a step. But whatever he had to say was
- interrupted by a crowd that swept past them from Decatur Street in pursuit
- of a panting negro. The fleeing colored man was struck a dozen times; he
- fell at the street corner near them, and the mob surged on again into the
- darkness beyond, already in full chase of another quarry—all but one
- man, who left the mob and ran back as if to assure himself that the
- prostrate negro was really dead.
- </p>
- <p>
- This was a short man, a very short man, a dwarf with a big head too heavy
- for him, and little bandy legs—legs so inadequate that he wabbled
- like an overfed poodle when he ran. Carter had seen him twice before that
- night, dodging in and out among the feet of the rioters like an excited
- cur, stumbling, falling, trodden upon; a being with bloodshot eyes and
- matted hair, hoarse voice and menacing fist, drunken and staggering with
- blood lust; the very Gnome of Riot himself come up from some foul cave and
- howling in the streets. “Kill them! Kill them!” he would cry, and then
- shake with cackling laughter. But he was only valiant when there was; no
- danger. As he approached the negro who lay upon the ground, and bent over
- him, Willoughby Howard stepped down from the doorway and aimed a blow at
- the creature with a cane. The blow missed, but the dwarf ran shrieking
- down Decatur Street.
- </p>
- <p>
- Howard bent over the negro. The negro stirred; he was not dead. Howard
- turned toward Carter and said:
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's alive! Help me get him out of the street.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Together they lifted the wounded man, moving him toward the curbstone. He
- groaned and twisted, and they laid him down. Howard poured whisky into him
- from a pocket flask, and a little later he managed to struggle to a
- sitting posture on the curb, looking up at them with dazed eyes and a
- bloody face.
- </p>
- <p>
- Howard took his slow gaze from the negro and covered his face with his
- hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- Carter watched him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Of all men in the world this was the one whom Carter most honored and most
- loved—honored and loved, while he envied; he was the only man,
- perhaps, that could have touched Carter through his crust of bitterness.
- Carter listened with strained attention for what Howard would say, as if
- with some premonition that the words would be the cue for the most vital
- action of his life.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My God! My God!” said Willoughby Howard, “will this thing never stop?”
- And then he straightened himself and turned toward the shadow into which
- Carter had retired, and there was the glow and glory of a large idea on
- his face; the thought of a line of men never lacking, when once aroused,
- in the courage to do and die for a principle or a human need. “There is
- one way,” he cried, stretching out his hands impulsively to Carter, and
- not knowing to whom or to what manner of man he spoke—“there is one
- way to make them pause and think! If two of us white men of the better
- class offer our lives for these poor devils—die in their defense!—the
- mob will halt; the crowd will think; we can end it! Will you do it, with
- me? Will you do it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Two of us white men of the better class! Willoughby Howard had taken him
- for a white man!
- </p>
- <p>
- It was like an accolade. A light blazed through the haunted caverns of his
- soul; he swelled with a vast exultation.
- </p>
- <p>
- Willoughby Howard had taken him for a white man! Then, by God, he would be
- one! Since he was nothing in this life, he could at least die—and in
- his death he would be a white man! Nay, more:—he would die shoulder
- to shoulder with one of that family whose blood he shared. He would show
- that he, too, could shed that blood for an idea or a principle! For
- humanity! At the thought he could feel it singing in his veins. Oh, to be
- white, white, white! The dreams and the despairs of all his miserable and
- hampered life passed before him in a whirl, and now the cry was answered!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” he said, lifting his head, and rising at that instant into a larger
- thing than he had ever been, “I will stand by you. I will die with you.”
- And under his breath he added—“my brother.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They had not long to wait. In the confused horror of that night things
- happened quickly. Even as Carter spoke the wounded negro struggled to his
- feet with a scarce articulate cry of alarm, for around the corner swept a
- mob, and the dwarf with matted hair was in the lead. He had come back with
- help to make sure of his job.
- </p>
- <p>
- With the negro cowering behind them, the white man and the mulatto stepped
- forth to face the mob. Their attitude made their intention obvious.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't be a damned fool, Willoughby Howard,” said a voice from the crowd,
- “or you may get hurt yourself.” And with the words there was a rush, and
- the three were in the midst of the clamoring madness, the mob dragging the
- negro from his two defenders.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Be careful—don't hurt Willoughby Howard!” said the same voice
- again. Willoughby turned, and, recognizing the speaker as an acquaintance,
- with a sudden access of scorn and fury and disgust, struck him across the
- mouth. The next moment his arms were pinioned, and he was lifted and flung
- away from the negro he had been fighting to protect by half a dozen men.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You fools! You fools!” he raged, struggling toward the center of the
- crowd again, “you're killing a white man there. An innocent white man———
- Do you stop at nothing? You're killing a <i>white man</i>, I say!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “White man?” said the person whom he had struck, and who appeared to bear
- him little resentment for the blow. “Who's a white man? Not Jerry Carter
- here! He wasn't any white man. I've known him since he was a kid—he
- was just one of those yaller niggers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And Carter heard it as he died.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- II—Old Man Murtrie
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>ld Man Murtrie
- never got any fresh air at all, except on Sundays on his way to and from
- church. He lived, slept, cooked and ate back of the prescription case in
- his little dismal drug store in one of the most depressing quarters of
- Brooklyn. The store was dimly lighted by gas and it was always damp and
- suggested a tomb. Drifting feebly about in the pale and cold and faintly
- greenish radiance reflected from bottles and show cases, Old Man Murtrie
- with his bloodless face and dead white hair and wisps of whisker was like
- a ghost that has not managed to get free from the neighborhood of a
- sepulcher where its body lies disintegrating.
- </p>
- <p>
- People said that Old Man Murtrie was nearly a hundred years old, but this
- was not true; he was only getting along towards ninety. The neighborhood,
- however, seemed a little impatient with him for not dying. Some persons
- suggested that perhaps he really had been dead for a long time, and did
- not know it. If so, they thought, it might be kind to tell him about it.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Old Man Murtrie was not dead, any more than he was alive. And Death
- himself, who has his moments of impatience, began to get worried about Old
- Man Murtrie. It was time, Death thought, that he was dead, since he looked
- so dead; and Death had said so, both to God and to the Devil.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I don't want to garner him, naturally,” Death would say, “till I know
- which one of you is to have him. He's got to go somewhere, you know.”
- </p>
- <p>
- God and Death and the Devil used to sit on the prescription counter in a
- row, now and then, and watch Old Man Murtrie as he slept in his humble
- little cot back there, and discuss him.
- </p>
- <p>
- God would look at Old Man Murtrie's pale little Adam's Apple sticking up
- in the faint gaslight, and moving as he snored—moving feebly, for
- even his snores were feeble—and say, with a certain distaste:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't want him. He can't get into Heaven.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And the Devil would look at his large, weak, characterless nose;—a
- nose so big that it might have suggested force on any one but Old Man
- Murtrie—and think what a sham it was, and how effectually all its
- contemptible effort to be a real nose was exposed in Old Man Murtrie's
- sleep. And the Devil would say:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't want him. He can't get into Hell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And then Death would say, querulously: “But he can't go on living forever.
- My reputation is suffering.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You should take him,” the Devil would say to God. “He goes to church on
- Sunday, and he is the most meek and pious and humble and prayerful person
- in all Brooklyn, and perhaps in all the world.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But he takes drugs,” God would say. “You should take him, because he is a
- drug fiend.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He takes drugs,” the Devil would admit, “but that doesn't make him a <i>fiend</i>.
- You have to do something besides take drugs to be a fiend. You will permit
- me to have my own notions, I am sure, on what constitutes a fiend.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You ought to forgive him the drugs for the sake of his piety,” the Devil
- would say. “And taking drugs is his only vice. He doesn't drink, or smoke
- tobacco, or use profane language, or gamble. And he doesn't run after
- women.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You ought to forgive him the piety for the sake of the drugs,” God would
- tell the Devil.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I never saw such a pair as you two,” Death would say querulously.
- “Quibble, quibble, quibble!—while Old Man Murtrie goes on and on
- living! He's lived so long that he is affecting death rates and insurance
- tables, all by himself, and you know what that does to my reputation.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And Death would stoop over and run his finger caressingly across Old Man
- Murtrie's throat, as the Old Man slept. Whereupon Old Man Murtrie would
- roll over on his back and moan in his sleep and gurgle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He has wanted to be a cheat all his life,” God would say to the Devil.
- “He has always had the impulse to give short weight and substitute
- inferior drugs in his prescriptions and overcharge children who were sent
- on errands to his store. If that isn't sin I don't know what sin is. You
- should take him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I admit he has had those impulses,” the Devil would say to God. “But he
- has never yielded to them. In my opinion having those impulses and
- conquering them makes him a great deal more virtuous than if he'd never
- had 'em. No one who is as virtuous as all that can get into Hell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I never saw such a pair,” Death would grumble. “Can't you agree with each
- other about anything?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He didn't abstain from his vices because of any courage,” God would say.
- “He abstained simply because he was afraid. It wasn't virtue in him; it
- was cowardice.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The fear of the Lord,” murmured the Devil, dreamily, “is the beginning of
- all wisdom.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But not necessarily the end of it,” God would remark.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Argue, argue, argue,” Death would say, “and here's Old Man Murtrie still
- alive! I'm criticized about the way I do my work, but no one has any idea
- of the vacillation and inefficiency I have to contend with! I never saw
- such a pair as you two to vacillate!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Sometimes Old Man Murtrie would wake up and turn over on his couch and see
- God and Death and the Devil sitting in a row on the prescription counter,
- looking at him. But he always persuaded himself that it was a sort of
- dream, induced by the “medicine” he took; and he would take another dose
- of his “medicine” and go back to sleep again. He never spoke to them when
- he waked, but just lay on his cot and stared at them; and if they spoke to
- him he would pretend to himself that they had not spoken. For it was
- absurd to think that God and Death and the Devil could really be sitting
- there, in the dim greenish gaslight, among all the faintly radiant
- bottles, talking to each other and looking at him; and so Old Man Murtrie
- would not believe it.
- </p>
- <p>
- When he first began taking his “medicine” Old Man Murtrie took it in the
- form of a certain patent preparation which was full of opium. He wanted
- the opium more and more after he started, but he pretended to himself that
- he did not know there was much opium in that medicine. Then, when a
- federal law banished that kind of medicine from the markets, he took to
- making it for his own use. He would not take opium outright, for that
- would be to acknowledge to himself that he was an opium eater; he thought
- eating opium was a sin, and he thought of himself as sinless. But to make
- the medicine with the exact formula that its manufacturers had used,
- before they had been compelled to shut up shop, and use it, did not seem
- to him to be the same thing at all as being an opium eater. And yet, after
- the law was passed, abolishing the medicine, he would not sell to any one
- else what he made for himself; his conscience would not allow him to do
- so. Therefore, he must have known that he was eating opium at the same
- time he tried to fool himself about it.
- </p>
- <p>
- God and the Devil used to discuss the ethics of this attitude towards the
- “medicine,” and Old Man Murtrie would sometimes pretend to be asleep and
- would listen to them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He knows it is opium all right,” God would say. “He is just lying to
- himself about it. He ought to go to Hell. No one that lies to himself that
- way can get into Heaven.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's pretending for the sake of society in general and for the sake of
- religion,” the Devil would say. “If he admitted to himself that it was
- opium and if he let the world know that he took opium, it might bring
- discredit on the church that he loves so well. He might become a stumbling
- block to others who are seeking salvation, and who seek it through the
- church. He is willing to sacrifice himself so as not to hamper others in
- their religious life. For my part, I think it is highly honorable of him,
- and highly virtuous. No person as moral as that in his instincts can get
- into Hell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Talk, talk, talk!” Death would say. “The trouble with you two is that
- neither one of you wants Old Man Murtrie around where you will have to
- look at him through all eternity, and each of you is trying to put it on
- moral grounds.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And Old Man Murtrie kept on living and praying and being pious and wanting
- to be bad and not daring to and taking his medicine and being generally as
- ineffectual in the world either for good or evil as a butterfly in a
- hurricane.
- </p>
- <p>
- But things took a turn. There was a faded-looking blonde woman with
- stringy hair by the name of Mable who assisted Old Man Murtrie in the
- store, keeping his books and waiting on customers, and so forth. She was
- unmarried, and one day she announced to him that she was going to have a
- child.
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Man Murtrie had often looked at her with a recollection, a dim and
- faint remembrance, of the lusts of his youth and of his middle age. In his
- youth and middle age he had lusted after many women, but he had never let
- any of them know it, because he was afraid, and he had called his fears
- virtue, and had really believed that he was virtuous.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whom do you suspect?” asked Old Man Murtrie, leering at Mable like a
- wraith blown down the ages from the dead adulteries of ruined Babylon.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who?” cried Mable, an unlessoned person, but with a cruel, instinctive
- humor. “Who but you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She had expected Old Man Murtrie to be outraged at her ridiculous joke,
- and, because she was unhappy herself, had anticipated enjoying his
- astounded protests. But it was she who was astounded. Old Man Murtrie's
- face was blank and his eyes were big for a moment, and then he chuckled; a
- queer little cackling chuckle. And when she went out he opened the door
- for her and cocked his head and cackled again.
- </p>
- <p>
- It gave Mable an idea. She reflected that he took so much opium that he
- might possibly be led to believe the incredible, and she might get some
- money out of him. So the next evening she brought her mother and her
- brother to the store and accused him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Man Murtrie chuckled and... <i>and admitted it!</i> Whether he
- believed that it could be true or not, Mable and her people were unable to
- determine. But they made the tactical error of giving him his choice
- between marriage and money, and he chose matrimony.
- </p>
- <p>
- And then Old Man Murtrie was suddenly seized with a mania for confession.
- God and Death and the Devil used to listen to him nights, and they
- wondered over him, and began to change their minds about him, a little. He
- confessed to the officials of his church. He confessed to all the people
- whom he knew. He insisted on making a confession, a public confession, in
- the church itself and asking for the prayers of the preacher and
- congregation for his sin, and telling them that he was going to atone by
- matrimony, and asking for a blessing on the wedding.
- </p>
- <p>
- And one night, full of opium, while he-was babbling about it in his sleep,
- God and Death and the Devil sat on the prescription counter again and
- looked at him and listened to his ravings and speculated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm going to have him,” said the Devil. “Any one who displays such
- conspicuous bad taste that he goes around confessing that he has ruined a
- woman ought to go to Hell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You don't want him for that reason,” said God. “And you know you don't.
- You want him because you admire the idea of adultery, and think that now
- he is worthy of a place in Hell. You are rather entertained by Old Man
- Murtrie, and want him around now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” said the Devil, “suppose I admit that is true! Have you any
- counter claim?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” said God. “I am going to take Old Man Murtrie into Heaven. He knows
- he is not the father of the child that is going to be born, but he has
- deliberately assumed the responsibility lest it be born fatherless, and I
- think that is a noble act.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Rubbish!” said the Devil. “That isn't the reason you want him. You want
- him because of the paternal instinct he displays. It flatters you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” said God, “why not? The paternal instinct is another name for the
- great creative force of the universe. I have been known by many names in
- many countries... they called me Osiris, the All-Father, in Egypt, and
- they called me Jehovah in Palestine, and they called me Zeus and Brahm...
- but always they recognized me as the Father. And this instinct for
- fatherliness appeals to me. Old Man Murtrie shall come to Heaven.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Such a pair as you two,” said Death, gloomily, “I never did see! Discuss
- and discuss, but never get anywhere! And all the time Old Man Murtrie goes
- on living.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And then Death added:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why not settle this matter once and for all, right now? Why not wake Old
- Man Murtrie up and let him decide?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Decide?” asked the Devil.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,—whether he wants to go to Hell or to Heaven.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I imagine,” said God, “that if we do that there can be no question as to
- which place he would rather go to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I don't know,” said the Devil. “Some people come to Hell quite
- willingly. I've been to Heaven myself, you know, and I can quite
- understand why. Are you afraid to have Old Man Murtrie make the choice?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wake him up, Death, wake him up,” said God. “It's unusual to allow people
- to know that they are making their own decision—though all of them,
- in a sense, do make it—but wake him up, Death, and we'll see.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So Death prodded Old Man Murtrie in the ribs, and they asked him. For a
- long time he thought it was only opium, but when he finally understood
- that it was really God and Death and the Devil who were there, and that it
- was really they who had often been there before, he was very much
- frightened. He was so frightened he couldn't choose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll leave it to you, I'll leave it to you,” said Old Man Murtrie. “Who
- am I that I should set myself up to decide?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” said God, getting a little angry, perhaps, “if you don't want to
- go to Heaven, Murtrie, you don't have to. But you've been, praying to go
- to Heaven, and all that sort of thing, for seventy or eighty years, and I
- naturally thought you were in earnest. But I'm through with you... you can
- go to Hell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh! Oh! Oh!” moaned Old Man Murtrie.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” said the Devil, “I've changed my mind, too. My distaste for Murtrie
- has returned to me. I don't want him around. I won't have him in Hell.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “See here, now!” cried Death. “You two are starting it all over again. I
- won't have it, so I won't! You aren't fair to Murtrie, and you aren't fair
- to me! This matter has got to be settled, and settled to-night!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, then,” said God, “settle it. I've ceased to care one way or
- another.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will not,” said Death, “I know my job, and I stick to my job. One of
- you two has got to settle it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Toss a coin,” suggested the Devil, indifferently.
- </p>
- <p>
- Death looked around for one.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's a qu-qu-quarter in m-m-my t-t-trousers' p-p-pocket,” stammered
- Old Man Murtrie, and then stuck his head under the bedclothes and shivered
- as if he had the ague.
- </p>
- <p>
- Death picked up Murtrie's poor little weazened trousers from the floor at
- the foot of the cot, where they lay sprawled untidily, and shook them till
- the quarter dropped out.
- </p>
- <p>
- He picked it up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Heads, he goes to Heaven. Tails, he goes to Hell,” said Death, and tossed
- the coin to the ceiling. Murtrie heard it hit the ceiling, and started. He
- heard it hit the floor, and bounce, and jingle and spin and roll and come
- to rest. And he thrust his head deeper under the covers and lay there
- quaking. He did not dare look.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look at it, Murtrie,” said Death.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh! Oh! Oh!” groaned Murtrie, shaking the cot.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Death reached over and caught him by the neck and turned his face so
- that he could not help seeing. And Old Man Murtrie looked and saw that the
- coin had fallen with the side up that sent him to——
- </p>
- <p>
- But, really, why should I tell you? Go and worry about your own soul, and
- let Old Man Murtrie's alone.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0004" id="link2H_4_0004"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- III.—Never Say Die
- </h2>
- <h3>
- |There seemed nothing left but suicide.
- </h3>
- <p>
- But how? In what manner? By what method? Mr. Gooley lay on his bed and
- thought—or tried to think. The pain in his head, which had been
- there ever since the day after he had last eaten, prevented easy and
- coherent thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- It had been three days ago that the pain left his stomach and went into
- his head. Hunger had become a cerebral thing, he told himself. His body
- had felt hunger so long that it refused to feel it any longer; it had
- shifted the burden to his brain.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It has passed the buck to my mind, my stomach has,” murmured Mr. Gooley
- feebly. And the mind, less by the process of coherent and connected
- thought than by a sudden impulsive pounce, had grasped the idea of
- suicide.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not with a knife,” considered Mr. Gooley. He had no knife. He had no
- money to buy a knife. He had no strength to go down the three flights of
- stairs in the cheap Brooklyn lodging house where he lay, and borrow a
- knife from the landlady who came and went vaguely in the nether regions,
- dim and damp and dismal.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not with a knife,” repeated Mr. Gooley. And a large cockroach, which had
- been crawling along the footpiece of the old-fashioned wooden bed, stopped
- crawling at the words as if it understood, and turned about and looked at
- him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Gooley wondered painfully, for it was a pain even to wonder about
- anything, why this cockroach should remind him of somebody who was somehow
- connected with a knife, and not unpleasantly connected with a knife. The
- cockroach stood up on the hindmost pair of his six legs, and seemed to put
- his head on one side and motion with his front legs at Mr. Gooley.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I get you,” said Mr. Gooley, conscious that his mind was wandering from
- the point, and willing to let it wander. “I know who you are! You were Old
- Man Archibald Hammil, the hardware merchant back in Mapletown, where I was
- a kid, before you dried up and turned into a cockroach.” And Mr. Gooley
- wept a few weak tears. For old Archibald Hammil, the village hardware
- merchant, had sold him the first knife he had ever owned. His father had
- taken him into Hammil's store to buy it on his seventh birthday, for a
- present, and it had had a buckhorn handle and two blades. Again he saw Old
- Man Hammil in his dingy brown clothes, looking at him, with his head on
- one side, as this cockroach was doing. Again he felt his father pat him on
- the head, and heard him say always to remember to whittle <i>away</i> from
- himself, never <i>toward</i> himself. And he saw himself, shy and flushed
- and eager, a freckle-faced boy as good and as bad as most boys, looking up
- at his father and wriggling and wanting to thank him, and not knowing how.
- That was nearly forty years ago—and here he was, a failure and
- starving and———
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>Why</i> had he wanted a knife? Yes, he remembered now! To kill himself
- with.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's none of your damned business, Old Man Hammil,” he said to the
- cockroach, which was crawling back and forth on the footboard, and pausing
- every now and then to look at him with disapproval.
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Man Hammil had had ropes in his store, too, and guns and pistols, he
- remembered. He hadn't thought of Old Man Hammi's store in many years; but
- now he saw it, and the village street outside it, and the place where the
- stores left off on the street and the residences began, and berry bushes,
- and orchards, and clover in the grass—the random bloom, the little
- creek that bounded the town, and beyond the creek the open country with
- its waving fields of oats and rye and com. His head hurt him worse. He
- would go right back into Old Man Hammil's store and get a rope or a gun
- and end that pain.
- </p>
- <p>
- But <i>that</i> was foolish, too. There wasn't any store. There was only
- Old Man Hammil here, shrunk to the size of a cockroach, in his rusty brown
- suit, looking at him from the footboard of the bed and telling him in
- pantomime not to kill himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I will too!” cried Mr. Gooley to Old Man Hammil. And he repeated, “It's
- none of <i>your</i> damned business!”
- </p>
- <p>
- But how? Not with a knife. He had none. Not with a gun. He had none. Not
- with a rope. He had none. He thought of his suspenders. But they would
- never hold him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Too weak, even for me,” muttered Mr. Gooley. “I have shrunk so I don't
- weigh much more than Old Man Hammil there, but even at that those
- suspenders would never do the business.”
- </p>
- <p>
- How did people kill themselves? He must squeeze his head till the pain let
- up a little, so he could think. Poison! That was it—yes, poison! And
- then he cackled out a small, dry, throaty laugh, his Adam's apple
- fluttering in his weazened throat under his sandy beard. Poison! He <i>hadn't</i>
- any poison. He hadn't any money with which to buy poison.
- </p>
- <p>
- And then began a long, broken and miserable debate within himself. If he
- had money enough with which to buy poison, would he go and buy poison? Or
- go and buy a bowl of soup? It was some moments before Mr. Gooley decided.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'd be game,” he said. “I'd buy the soup. I'd give myself that one more
- chance. I must remember while I'm killing myself, that I'm not killing
- myself because I <i>want</i> to. I'm just doing it because I've <i>got</i>
- to. I'm not romantic. I'm just all in. It's the end; that's all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Man Hammil, on the footboard of the bed, permitted himself a series of
- gestures which Mr. Gooley construed as applause of this resolution. They
- angered Mr. Gooley, those gestures.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You shut up!” he told the cockroach, although that insect had not spoken,
- but only made signs. “This is none of your damned business, Old Man
- Hammil!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Man Hammil, he remembered, had always been a meddlesome old party—one
- of the village gossips, in fact. And that set him to thinking of Mapletown
- again.
- </p>
- <p>
- The mill pond near the schoolhouse would soon be freezing over, and the
- boys would be skating on it—it was getting into December. And they
- would be going into Old Man Hammil's store for skates and straps and heel
- plates and files. And he remembered his first pair of skates, and how his
- father had taught him the proper way to keep them sharp with a file. He
- and the old dad had always been pretty good pals, and——
- </p>
- <p>
- Good God! Why <i>should</i> he be coming back to that? And to Old Man
- Hammil's store? It was that confounded cockroach there, reminding him of
- Old Man Hammil, that had done it. He wanted to die decently and quietly,
- and as quickly as might be, without thinking of all these things. He
- didn't want to lie there and die of starvation, he wanted to kill himself
- and be done with it without further misery—and it was a part of the
- ridiculous futility of his life, his baffled and broken and insignificant
- life, that he couldn't even kill himself competently—that he lay
- there suffering and ineffectual and full of self-pity, a prey to memories
- and harassing visions of the past, all mingled with youth and innocence
- and love, without the means of a quick escape. It was that damned
- cockroach, looking like Old Man Hammil, the village hardware merchant,
- that had brought back the village and his youth to him, and all those
- intolerable recollections.
- </p>
- <p>
- He took his dirty pillow and feebly menaced the cockroach. Feeble as the
- gesture was, the insect took alarm. It disappeared from the footboard of
- the bed. A minute later, however, he saw it climbing the wall. It reached
- the ceiling, and crawled to the center of the room. Mr. Goo-ley watched
- it. He felt as if he, too, could crawl along the ceiling. He had the crazy
- notion of trying. After all, he told himself light-headedly, Old Cockroach
- Hammil up there on the ceiling had been friendly—the only friendly
- thing, human or otherwise, that had made overtures to him in many, many
- months. And he had scared Cockroach Hammil away! He shed some more maudlin
- tears.
- </p>
- <p>
- What was the thing doing now? He watched as the insect climbed on to the
- gas pipe that came down from the ceiling. It descended the rod and perched
- itself on the gas jet. From this point of vantage it began once more to
- regard Mr. Gooley with a singular intentness.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ah! Gas! That was it! What a fool he had been not to think of it sooner!
- That was the way people killed themselves! Gas!
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Gooley got himself weakly out of bed. He would get the thing over as
- quickly as possible now. It would be damnably unpleasant before he lost
- consciousness, no doubt, and painful. But likely not more unpleasant and
- painful than his present state. And he simply could not bear any more of
- those recollections, any more visions.
- </p>
- <p>
- He turned his back on the cockroach, which was watching him from the gas
- jet, and went methodically to work. The window rattled; between the upper
- and lower sashes there was a crevice a quarter of an inch wide. He plugged
- it with paper. There was a break in the wall of his closet; the plaster
- had fallen away, and a chink allowed the cockroaches from his room easy
- access to the closet of the adjoining room. He plugged that also, and was
- about to turn his attention to the keyhole, when there came a knock on his
- door.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Gooley's first thought was: “What can any one want with a dead man?”
- For he looked upon himself as already dead. There came a second knock,
- more peremptory than the first, and he said mechanically, “Come in!” It
- would have to be postponed a few minutes, that was all.
- </p>
- <p>
- The door opened, and in walked his landlady. She was a tall and bulky and
- worried-looking woman, who wore a faded blond wig that was always askew,
- and Mr. Gooley was afraid of her. Her wig was more askew than usual when
- she entered, and he gathered from this that she was angry about something—why
- the devil must she intrude her trivial mundane anger upon himself, a
- doomed man? It was not seemly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Gooley,” she began severely, without preamble, “I have always looked
- on you as a gentleman.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes?” he murmured dully.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But you ain't,” she continued. “You ain't no better than a cheat.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He shrugged his shoulders patiently. He supposed that she was right about
- it. He owed her three weeks' room rent, and he was going to die and beat
- her out of it. But he couldn't help it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It ain't the room rent,” she went on, as if vaguely cognizant of the
- general trend of his thoughts. “It ain't the room rent alone. You either
- pay me that or you don't pay me that, and if you don't, out you go. But
- while you are here, you must conduct yourself as a gentleman should!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” murmured Mr. Gooley, “haven't I?”
- </p>
- <p>
- And the cockroach, perched on the gas jet above the landlady's head, and
- apparently listening to this conversation, moved several of his legs, as
- if in surprise.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You have not!” said the landlady, straightening her wig.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What have I done, Mrs. Hinkley?” asked Mr. Gooley humbly. And Old
- Cockroach Hammil from his perch also made signs of inquiry.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What have you done! What have you done!” cried Mrs. Hinkley. “As if the
- man didn't know what he had done I You've been stealin' my gas, that's
- what you have been doin'—stealin', I say, and there's no other word
- for it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Gooley started guiltily. He had not been stealing her gas, but it came
- over him with a shock for the first time that that was what he had, in
- effect, been planning to do. The cockroach, as if it also felt convicted
- of sin, gave the gas jet a glance of horror and moved up the rod to the
- ceiling, where it continued to listen.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Stealin'!” repeated Mrs. Hinkley. “That's what it is, nothin' else but
- stealin'. You don't ever stop to think when you use one of them gas plates
- to cook in your room, Mr. Gooley—which it is expressly forbid and
- agreed on that no cooking shall be done in these rooms when they're rented
- to you—that it's my gas you're using, and that I have to pay for it,
- and that it's just as much stealin' as if you was to put your hand into my
- pocket-book and take my money!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cooking? Gas plate?” muttered Mr. Gooley. “Don't say you ain't got one!”
- cried Mrs. Hinkley. “You all got 'em! Every last one of you! Don't you try
- to come none of your sweet innocence dodges over me. I know you, and the
- whole tribe of you! I ain't kept lodgers for thirty years without knowing
- the kind of people they be! 'Gas plate! Gas plate!' says you, as innocent
- as if you didn't know what a gas plate was! You got it hid here
- somewheres, and I ain't going to stir from this room until I get my hands
- on it and squash it under my feet! Come across with it, Mr. Gooley, come
- across with it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I <i>haven't</i> one,” said Mr. Gooley, very ill and very weary. “You
- can look, if you want to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And he lay back upon the bed. The cockroach slyly withdrew himself from
- the ceiling, came down the wall, and crawled to the foot of the bed again.
- If Mrs. Hinkley noticed him, she said nothing; perhaps it was not a part
- of her professional policy to draw attention to cockroaches on the
- premises. She stood and regarded Mr. Gooley for some moments, while he
- turned his head away from her in apathy. Her first anger seemed to have
- spent itself. But finally, with a new resolution, she said: “And look I
- will! You got one, or else that blondined party in the next room has
- lied.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She went into the closet and he heard her opening his trunk. She pulled it
- into the bedroom and examined the interior. It didn't take long. She dived
- under the bed and drew out his battered suitcase, so dilapidated that he
- had not been able to get a quarter for it at the pawnshop, but no more
- dilapidated than his trunk.
- </p>
- <p>
- She seemed struck, for the first time since her entrance, with the utter
- bareness of the room. Outside of the bed, one chair, the bureau, and Mr.
- Cooley's broken shoes at the foot of the bed, there was absolutely nothing
- in it.
- </p>
- <p>
- She sat down in the chair beside the bed. “Mr. Gooley,” she said, “you <i>ain't</i>
- got any gas plate.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Gooley,” she said, “you got <i>nothing at all.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” he said, “nothing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You had a passel of books and an overcoat five or six weeks ago,” she
- said, “when you come here. It was seein' them books, and knowing what you
- was four or five years ago, when you lived here once before, that made me
- sure you was a gentleman.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Gooley made no reply. The cockroach on the foot of the bed also seemed
- to be listening to see if Mrs. Hinkley had anything more to say, and
- suspending judgment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Gooley,” said the landlady, “I beg your pardon. You was lied on by
- one that has a gas plate herself, and when I taxed her with it, and took
- it away from her, and got rid of her, she had the impudence to say she
- thought it was <i>allowed</i>, and that everybody done it, and named you
- as one that did.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hinkley paused, but neither Mr. Gooley nor the cockroach had anything
- to contribute to the conversation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Gas,” continued Mrs. Hinkley, “is gas. And gas costs money. I hadn't
- orter jumped on you the way I did, Mr. Gooley, but gas plates has got to
- be what you might call corns on my brain, Mr. Gooley. They're my sensitive
- spot, Mr. Gooley. If I was to tell you the half of what I have had to
- suffer from gas plates during the last thirty years, Mr. Gooley, you
- wouldn't believe it! There's them that will cheat you one way and there's
- them that will cheat you another, but the best of them will cheat you with
- gas plates, Mr. Gooley. With the exception of yourself, Mr. Gooley, I
- ain't had a lodger in thirty years that wouldn't rob me on the gas. Some
- don't think it's stealin', Mr. Gooley, when they steal gas. And some of
- 'em don't care if it is. But there ain't none of 'em ever thinks what a <i>landlady</i>
- goes through with, year in and year out.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She paused for a moment, and then, overcome with self-pity, she began to
- sniffle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And my rent's been raised on me again, Mr. Gooley! And I'm a month
- behind! And if I ain't come across with the two months, the old month and
- the new, by day after to-morrow, out I goes; and it means the poorhouse as
- fur as I can see, because I don't know anything else but keeping lodgers,
- and I got no place to go!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She gathered her apron up and wiped her eyes and nose with it. The
- cockroach on the footboard wiped his front set of feet across his face
- sympathetically.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I got it all ready but fifteen dollars,” continued Mrs. Hinkley, “and
- then in comes the gas bill this morning with <i>arrears</i> onto it. It is
- them <i>arrears</i>, Mr. Gooley, that always knocks me out! If it wasn't
- for them arrears, I could get along. And now I got to pay out part of the
- rent money onto the gas bill, with them arrears on it, or the gas will be
- shut off this afternoon.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The pain in Mr. Gooley's head was getting worse. He wished she would go.
- He hated hearing her troubles. But she continued:
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's the way them arrears come onto the bill, Mr. Gooley, that has got me
- sore. About a week before you come here again to live, Mr. Gooley, there
- was a fellow stole fifteen dollars worth of my gas all at once. He went
- and killed himself, Mr. Gooley, and he used my gas to do it with. It
- leaked out of two jets for forty-eight hours up on the top floor, before
- the door was busted in and the body was found, and it came to fifteen
- dollars, and all on account of that man's cussedness, Mr. Gooley, I will
- likely get turned out into the street, and me sixty years old and no place
- to turn.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Gooley sat up in bed feebly and looked at her. She <i>was</i> in real
- trouble—in about as much trouble as he was. The cockroach walked
- meditatively up and down the footboard, as if thinking it over very
- seriously.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mrs. Hinkley finally rose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Gooley,” she said, regarding him sharply, “you look kind o' done up!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Uh-huh,” said Mr. Gooley.
- </p>
- <p>
- She lingered in the room for a few seconds more, irresolutely, and then
- departed.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Gooley thought. Gas was barred to him now. He couldn't bring himself
- to do it with gas. There was still a chance that the old woman might get
- hold of the gas money and the rent money, too, and go on for a few years,
- but if he selfishly stole twelve or fifteen dollars' worth of gas from her
- this afternoon it might be just the thing that would plunge her into
- immediate destitution. At any rate, it was, as she had said, like stealing
- money from her pocketbook. He thought of what her life as a rooming-house
- keeper must have been, and pitied her. He had known many rooming houses.
- The down-and-outers know how to gauge the reality and poignancy of the
- troubles of the down-and-out. No, he simply could not do it with gas.
- </p>
- <p>
- He must think of some other method. He was on the fourth floor. He might
- throw himself out of the window onto the brick walk at the back of the
- building, and die. He shuddered as he thought of it. To jump from a
- twentieth story, or from the top of the Woolworth Tower, to a certain
- death is one thing. To contemplate a fall of three or four stories that
- may maim you without killing you, is another.
- </p>
- <p>
- Nevertheless, he would do it. He pulled the paper out of the crevice
- between the window sashes, opened the window and looked down. He saw the
- back stoop and there was a dirty mop beside it; there was an ash can, and
- there were two garbage cans there. And there was a starved cat that sat
- and looked up at him. He had a tremor and drew back and covered his face
- with his hands as he thought of that cat—that knowing cat, that
- loathsome, that obscene cat.
- </p>
- <p>
- He sat down on the edge of the bed to collect his strength and summon his
- resolution. The cockroach had crawled to the head of the bed and seemed to
- wish to partake of his thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Damn you, Old Archibald Hammil!” he cried. And he scooped the cockroach
- into his hand with a sudden sweep and flung it out of the window. The
- insect fell without perceptible discomfort, and at once began to climb up
- the outside wall again, making for the window.
- </p>
- <p>
- The door opened and Mrs. Hinkley entered, her face cleft with a grin, and
- a tray in her hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mr. Gooley,” she said, setting it on the wash-stand, “I'll bet you ain't
- had nothing to eat today!”
- </p>
- <p>
- On the tray was a bowl of soup, a half loaf of bread with a long keen
- bread knife, a pat of butter, a boiled egg and a cup of coffee.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, nor yesterday, either,” said Mr. Gooley, and he looked at the soup
- and at the long keen bread knife.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here's something else I want to show you, Mr. Gooley,” said the landlady,
- dodging out of the door and back in again instantly. She bore in her hands
- this time a surprising length of flexible gas tubing, and a small
- nickel-plated pearl-handled revolver.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You see that there gas tubing?” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is what that blondined party in the next room had on to her gas
- plate—the nerve of her! Strung from the gas jet clear across the
- room to the window sill. And when I throwed her out, Mr. Gooley, she
- wouldn't pay her rent, and I took this here revolver to part pay it. What
- kind of a woman is it, Mr. Gooley, that has a revolver in her room, and a
- loaded one, too?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Just then the doorbell rang in the dim lower regions, and she left the
- room to answer it.
- </p>
- <p>
- And Mr. Gooley sat and looked at the knife, with which he might so easily
- stab himself, and at the gas cord, with which he might so easily hang
- himself, and at the loaded revolver, with which he might so easily shoot
- himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- He looked also at the bowl of soup.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had the strength to reflect—a meal is a meal. But <i>after</i>
- that meal, what? Penniless, broken in health, friendless, a failure—why
- prolong it for another twenty-four hours? A meal would prolong it, but
- that was all a meal <i>would</i> do—and after that would come the
- suffering and the despair and the end to be faced all over again.
- </p>
- <p>
- Was he man enough to take the pistol and do it now?
- </p>
- <p>
- Or did true manhood lie the other way? Was he man enough to drink the
- soup, and dare to live and hope?
- </p>
- <p>
- Just then the cockroach, which had climbed into the window and upon the
- washstand, made for the bowl of soup.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Here!” cried Mr. Gooley, grabbing the bowl in both hands, “Old Man
- Hammil! Get away from that soup!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And the bowl being in his hands, he drank.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you mean by Old Man Hammil?”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was Mrs. Hinkley who spoke. She stood again in the doorway, with a
- letter in her hands and a look of wonder on her face.
- </p>
- <p>
- Mr. Gooley set down the soup bowl. By an effort of the will he had only
- drunk half the liquid. He had heard somewhere that those who are suffering
- from starvation had better go slow at first when they get hold of food
- again. And he already felt better, warmed and resurrected, from the first
- gulp.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What,” demanded the landlady, “do you mean by yelling out about Old Man
- Hammil?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why,” said Mr. Gooley, feeling foolish, and looking it, “I was talking to
- that cockroach there. He looks sort of like some one I knew when I was a
- kid, by the name of Hammil—Archibald Hammil.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Where</i> was you a kid?” asked Mrs. Hinkley.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In a place called Mapletown—Mapletown, Illinois,” said Mr. Gooley.
- “There's where I knew Old Man Hammil.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” said the landlady, “when you go back there you won't see him. He's
- dead. He died a week ago. This letter tells it. I was his niece. And the
- old man went and left me his hardware store. I never expected it. But all
- his kids is dead—it seems he outlived 'em all, and he was nearly
- ninety when he passed away.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” said Mr. Gooley, “I don't remember you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You wouldn't,” said the landlady. “You must have been in short pants when
- I ran away from home and married the hardware drummer. But I'll bet you
- the old-timers in that burg still remembers it against me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The kids will be coming into that store about now to get their skates
- sharpened,” said Mr. Gooley, looking at the boiled egg.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Uh-huh!” said Mrs. Hinkley. “Don't you want to go back home and help
- sharpen 'em? I'm goin' back and run that there store, and I'll need a
- clerk, I suppose.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Uh-huh,” said Mr. Gooley, breaking the eggshell.
- </p>
- <p>
- The cockroach, busy with a crumb on the floor, waved his three starboard
- legs genially at Mr. Gooley and Mrs. Hinkley—as if, in fact, he were
- winking with his feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- IV.—McDermott
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>cDermott had gone
- over with a cargo of mules. The animals were disembarked at a Channel
- port, received by officers of that grand organization which guesses right
- so frequently, the Quartermaster Corps, and started in a southerly
- direction, in carload lots, toward the Toul sector of the Western Front.
- McDermott went with one of the carloads in an unofficial capacity. He had
- no business in the war zone. But the Quartermaster Corps, or that part of
- it in charge of his particular car, was in no mood to be harsh toward any
- one who seemed to understand the wants and humors of mules and who was
- willing to associate with them. And so, with his blue overalls and his red
- beard, McDermott went along.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll have a look at the war,” said McDermott, “and if I like it, I'll
- jine it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And if you don't like it,” said the teamster to whom he confided his
- intention, “I reckon you'll stop it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I dunno,” replied McDermott, “as I would be justified in stoppin' a good
- war. The McDermotts has niver been great hands f'r stoppin' wars. The
- McDermotts is always more like to be startin' wars.”
- </p>
- <p>
- McDermott got a look at the war sooner than any one, including the high
- command of the Entente Allies, would have thought likely—or, rather,
- the war got a look at McDermott. The carload of mules, separated from its
- right and proper train, got too far eastward at just the time the Germans
- got too far westward. It was in April, 1918, that, having entered
- Hazebrouck from the north, McDermott and his mules left it again, bound
- eastward. They passed through a turmoil of guns and lorries, Scotchmen and
- ambulances, Englishmen, tanks and ammunition wagons, Irishmen, colonials
- and field kitchens, all moving slowly eastward, and came to a halt at a
- little village where they should not have been at all, halfway between the
- northern rim of the forest of Nieppe and Bailleul.
- </p>
- <p>
- The mules did not stay there long.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'll stretch me legs a bit,” said McDermott, climbing off the car and
- strolling toward a Grande Place surrounded by sixteenth-century
- architecture. And just then something passed over the Renaissance roofs
- with the scream of one of Dante's devils, struck McDermott's car of mules
- with a great noise and a burst of flame, and straightway created a
- situation in which there was neither car nor mules.
- </p>
- <p>
- For a minute it seemed to McDermott that possibly there was no McDermott,
- either. When McDermott regained consciousness of McDermott, he was sitting
- on the ground, and he sat there and felt of himself for many seconds
- before he spoke or rose. Great guns he had been hearing for hours, and a
- rattle and roll of small-arms fire had been getting nearer all that day;
- but it seemed to McDermott that there was something quite vicious and
- personal about the big shell that had separated him forever from his
- mules. Not that he had loved the mules, but he loved McDermott.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Mules,” said he, still sitting on the ground, but trying to get his
- philosophy of life on to its legs again, “is here wan minute an' gawn the
- nixt. Mules is fickle an' untrustworthy animals. Here was thim mules,
- wigglin' their long ears and arsk-in' f'r Gawd's sake c'u'd they have a
- dhrink of wather, an' promisin' a lifelong friendship—but where is
- thim mules now?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He scratched his red head as he spoke, feeling-of an old scar under the
- thick thatch of hair. The wound had been made some years previously with a
- bung starter, and whenever McDermott was agitated he caressed it tenderly.
- </p>
- <p>
- He got up, turned about and regarded the extraordinary Grande Place. There
- had once been several pretty little shops about it, he could see, with
- pleasant courtyards, where the April sun was trying to bring green things
- into life again, but now some of these were in newly made and smoking
- ruins. The shell that had stricken McDermott's mules from the roster of
- existence had not been the only one to fall into the village recently.
- </p>
- <p>
- But it was neither old ruins nor new ruins that interested McDermott
- chiefly. It was the humanity that flowed through the Grande Place in a
- feeble trickle westward, and the humanity that stayed there.
- </p>
- <p>
- Women and old men went by with household treasures slung in bundles or
- pushed before them in carts and perambulators, and they were wearing their
- best clothes, as if they were going to some village fête, instead of into
- desolation and homelessness; the children whom they carried, or who
- straggled after them, were also in their holiday best. Here was an ancient
- peasant with a coop of skinny chickens on a barrow; there was a girl in a
- silk gown carrying something in a bed quilt; yonder was a boy of twelve on
- a bicycle, and two things were tied to the handlebars—a loaf of
- bread and a soldier's bayonet. Perhaps it had been his father's bayonet.
- Quietly they went westward; their lips were dumb and their faces showed
- their souls were dumb, too. A long time they had heard the battle growling
- to the eastward; and now the war was upon them. It was upon them, indeed;
- for as McDermott gazed, another shell struck full upon a bell-shaped tower
- that stood at the north side of the Grande Place and it leaped up in
- flames and fell in dust and ruin, all gone but one irregular point of
- masonry that still stuck out like a snaggle tooth from a trampled skull.
- </p>
- <p>
- These were the ones that were going, and almost the last of the dreary
- pageant disappeared as McDermott watched. But those who stayed astonished
- him even more by their strange actions and uncouth postures.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't tell me,” mumbled McDermott, rubbing his scar, “that all thim
- sojers is aslape!”
- </p>
- <p>
- But asleep they were. To the east and to the north the world was one rip
- and rat-a-tat of rifle and machine-gun fire—how near, McDermott
- could not guess—and over the village whined and droned the shells,
- of great or lesser caliber; here was one gate to a hell of noise, and the
- buildings stirred and the budding vines in the courtyards moved and the
- dust itself was agitated with the breath and blast of far and near
- concussions; but yet the big open Place itself was held in the grip of a
- grotesque and incredible slumber.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sprawled in the gutters, collapsed across the doorsills, leaning against
- the walls, slept that portion of the British army; slept strangely,
- without snoring. In the middle of the Grande Place there was a young
- lieutenant bending forward across the wreck of a motor car; he had tried
- to pluck forth a basket from the tonneau and sleep had touched him with
- his fingers on the handle. And from the eastern fringes of the village
- there entered the square, as actors enter upon a stage, a group of a dozen
- men, with their arms linked together, swaying and dazed and stumbling. At
- first McDermott thought that wounded were being helped from the field. But
- these men were not wounded; they were walking in their sleep, and the
- group fell apart, as McDermott looked at them, and sank severally to the
- cobblestones. Scotchmen, Canadians, English, torn and battered remnants of
- many different commands, they had striven with their guns and bodies for
- more than a week to dam the vast, rising wave of the German attack—day
- melting into night and night burning into day again, till there was no
- such thing as time to them any longer; there were but two things in the
- world, battle and weariness, weariness and battle.
- </p>
- <p>
- McDermott moved across the square unchallenged. He had eaten and slept but
- little for two days himself, and he made instinctively for the open door
- of an empty inn, to search for food. In the doorway he stumbled across a
- lad who roused and spoke to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jack,” said the boy, looking at him with red eyes out of an old, worn
- face, “have you got the makin's?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He was in a ragged and muddied Canadian uniform, but McDermott guessed
- that he was an American.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have that,” said McDermott, producing papers and tobacco. But the boy
- had lapsed into slumber again. McDermott rolled the cigarette for him,
- placed it between his lips, waked him and lighted it for him.
- </p>
- <p>
- The boy took a puff or two, and then said dreamily: “And what the hell are
- you doin' here with them blue overalls on?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I come to look at the war,” said McDermott.
- </p>
- <p>
- The soldier glanced around the Grande Place, and a gleam of deviltry
- flashed through his utter exhaustion. “So you come to see the war, huh?
- Well, don't you wake it now. It's restin'. But if you'll take a chair and
- set down, I'll have it—called—for—you—in—in—in
- 'n 'our—or so———”
- </p>
- <p>
- His voice tailed off into sleep once more; he mangled the cigarette, the
- tobacco mingling with the scraggly beard about his drawn mouth; his head
- fell forward upon his chest. McDermott stepped past him into the Hôtel
- Faucon, as the inn had called itself. He found no food, but he found
- liquor there.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Frinch booze,” said McDermott, getting the cork out of a bottle of brandy
- and sniffing it; “but booze is booze!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And more booze is more booze, especially upon an empty stomach. It was
- after the fourth drink that McDermott pulled his chair up to one of the
- open windows of the inn and sat down, with the brandy beside him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm neglictin' that war I come all this way to see,” said McDermott.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Grande Place, still shaken by the tremendous and unceasing pulsations
- of battle, far and near, was beginning to wake up. A fresh, or, at least,
- a fresher, battalion was arriving over the spur line of railroad along
- which McDermott's mules had been so mistakenly shunted, and was moving
- eastward through the town to the firing line. The men whom McDermott had
- seen asleep were rising at the word of command; taking their weapons,
- falling in, and staggering back to the interminable battle once more.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I dunno,” mused McDermott, as the tired men straggled past, “whether I
- want to be afther j'inin' that war or not. It makes all thim lads that
- slapey! I dunno phwat the devil it is, the Frinch booze bein' so close to
- me, inside, or that war so close to me, outside, but I'm gittin' slapey
- m'silf.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was, likely, the brandy. There had not been a great deal of French
- brandy in McDermott's previous experience, and he did not stint himself.
- It was somewhere between the ninth and the fifteenth swallows of it that
- McDermott remarked to himself, rubbing the scar on his head:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I w'u'd jine that war now, if I c'u'd be sure which way it had wint!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And then he slid gently out of his chair and went to sleep on the floor
- just inside the open window of the Hôtel Fauçon.
- </p>
- <p>
- The war crept closer and took another look at McDermott. As the warm
- golden afternoon waned, the British troops, fighting like fiends for every
- inch of ground, exacting a ghastly toll of lives from the Germans, were
- forced back into the eastern outskirts of the town. There, with rifle and
- machine gun, from walls, trees, courtyards, roofs and ruins, they held the
- advancing Germans for an hour. But they were pushed back again, doggedly
- establishing themselves in the houses of the Grande Place. Neither British
- nor Germans were dropping shells into that village now, each side fearful
- of damaging its own men.
- </p>
- <p>
- A British subaltern with a machine gun and two private soldiers entered
- the inn and were setting the gun up at McDermott's window when a German
- bullet struck the officer and he fell dead across the slumbering
- McDermott. Nevertheless, the gun was manned and fought for half an hour
- above McDermott, who stirred now and then, but did not waken. Just at dusk
- an Irish battalion struck the Germans on the right flank of their
- assaulting force, a half mile to the north of the village, rolled them
- back temporarily, and cleared the village of them. This counter attack
- took the firing line a good thousand yards eastward once more.
- </p>
- <p>
- McDermott roused, crawled from beneath the body of the British officer,
- and viewed it with surprise. “That war has been here ag'in an' me aslape,”
- said McDermott. “I might jine that war if I c'u'd ketch up wid it—but
- 'tis here, 'tis there, 'tis gawn ag'in! An' how c'u'd I jine it wid no
- weapons, not even a good thick club to m' hands?”
- </p>
- <p>
- He foraged and found a piece of sausage that he had overlooked in his
- former search, ate it greedily and then stood in the doorway, listening to
- the sound of the firing. It was getting dark and northward toward Messines
- and Wytschaete and southward for more miles than he could guess the
- lightning of big guns flickered along the sky.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Anny way I w'u'd go,” mused McDermott, “I w'u'd run into that war if I
- was thryin' to dodge ut. And anny wray I w'u'd go, I w'u'd miss that war
- if I was thryin' to come up wid ut. An' till I make up me mind which wan I
- want to do, here will I sthay.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He opened another bottle of brandy, and drank and cogitated. Whether it
- was the cogitation or the drinks or the effect of the racket of war, his
- head began to ache dully. When McDermott's scar ached, it was his custom
- to take another drink. After a while there came a stage at which, if it
- still ached, he at least ceased to feel it aching any more.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The hotel here,” he remarked, “is filled wid hospitality and midical
- tratement, and where bet-ther c'u'd I be?”
- </p>
- <p>
- And presently, once more, a deep sleep overtook him. A deeper, more
- profound sleep, indeed, than his former one. And this time the war came
- still nearer to McDermott.
- </p>
- <p>
- The British were driven back again and again occupied the town, the
- Germans in close pursuit. From house to house and from wall to wall the
- struggle went on, with grenade, rifle and bayonet. A German, with a
- Scotchman's steel in his chest, fell screaming, back through the open
- window, and his blood as he died soaked McDermott's feet. But McDermott
- slept. Full night came, thick and cloudy, and both sides sent up floating
- flares. The square was strewn with the bodies of the dead and the bodies
- of the maimed in increasing numbers; the wounded groaned and whimpered in
- the shadows of the trampled Place, crawling, if they still could crawl, to
- whatever bit of broken wall seemed to offer momentary shelter and praying
- for the stretcher bearers to be speedy. But still McDermott slept.
- </p>
- <p>
- At ten o'clock that night two Englishmen once more brought a machine gun
- into the Hôtel Fauçon; they worked the weapon for twenty minutes from the
- window within ten feet of which McDermott now lay with his brandy bottle
- beside him. Once McDermott stirred; he sat up sleepily on the floor and
- murmured: “An' where is that war now? Begad, an' I don't belave there is
- anny war!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And he rolled over and went to sleep again. The men with the machine gun
- did not notice him; they were too busy. A moment later one of them sank
- with a bullet through his heart. His comrade lasted a little longer, and
- then he, too, went down, a wound in his lungs. It took him some weary
- minutes to choke and bleed to death, there in that dark place, upon the
- floor, among the dead men and McDermott's brandy bottles and the heap of
- ammunition he had brought with him. Hist struggle did not wake McDermott.
- </p>
- <p>
- By midnight the British had been driven back until they held the houses at
- the west end of the town and the end of the spur railroad that came
- eastward from Hazebrouck. The Germans were in the eastern part of the
- village, and between was a “no man's land,” of which the Grande Place was
- a part. What was left of the Hôtel Faucon, with the sleeping McDermott in
- it, was toward the middle of the south side of the square. In the streets
- to the north and south of the Place patrols still clashed with grenade and
- bayonet and rifle, but the Germans attempted no further advance in any
- force after midnight. No doubt they were bringing up more men; no doubt,
- with the first morning light, they would move forward a regiment or two,
- possibly even a division, against the British who still clung stubbornly
- to the western side of the town. All the way from Wytschaete south to
- Givenchy the battle-line was broken up into many little bitter struggles
- of this sort, the British at every point facing great odds.
- </p>
- <p>
- When dawn came, there came with it a mist. And three men of a German
- patrol, creeping from house to house and ruin to ruin along the south side
- of that part of “no man's land” which was the Grande Place, entered the
- open door of the Hôtel Fauçon.
- </p>
- <p>
- One of them stepped upon McDermott's stomach, where he lay sleeping and
- dreaming of the war he had come to look at.
- </p>
- <p>
- McDermott, when he had been drinking, was often cross. And especially was
- he cross if, when sleeping off his liquor, some one purposely or
- inadvertently interfered with his rightful and legitimate rest. When this
- coarse and heavy-footed intruder set his boot, albeit unwittingly, upon
- McDermott's stomach, McDermott sat up with a bellow of rage, instinctively
- and instantaneously grabbed the leg attached to the boot, rose as burning
- rocks rise from a volcano, with the leg in his hands, upset the man
- attached to the leg, and jumped with two large feet accurately upon the
- back of that person's neck. Whereupon the Boche went to Valhalla.
- McDermott, though nearer fifty than forty years old, was a barroom fighter
- of wonderful speed and technique, and this instinctive and spontaneous
- maneuver was all one motion, just as it is all one motion when a cat in a
- cellar leaps over a sack of potatoes, lands upon a rat, and sinks her
- teeth into a vital spot. The second German and the third German hung back
- an instant toward the door, and then came on toward the moving shadow in
- the midst of shadows. For their own good they should have come on without
- hanging back that second; but perhaps their training, otherwise so
- efficient, did not include barroom tactics. Their hesitation gave
- McDermott just the time he needed, for when he faced them he had the first
- German's gun in his hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No war,” said McDermott, “can come into me slapin' chamber and stand on
- me stomach like that, and expict me to take it peaceful!”
- </p>
- <p>
- With the words he fired the first German's rifle into the second German.
- The third German, to the rear of the second one, fired his gun
- simultaneously, but perhaps he was a hit flurried, for he also fired
- directly into the second German, and there was nothing the second German
- could do but die; which he did at once. McDermott leaped at the third
- German with his rifle clubbed just as the man pressed the trigger again.
- The bullet struck McDermott's rifle, splintered the butt of it and knocked
- it from his hands; but a second later McDermott's hands were on the barrel
- of the German's gun and the two of them were struggling for it.
- </p>
- <p>
- There is one defect in the German military system, observers say: the
- drill masters do not teach their men independent thinking; perhaps the
- drill-masters do not have the most promising material to work upon. At any
- rate, it occurred to McDermott to kick the third German in the stomach
- while the third German was still thinking of nothing else than trying to
- depress the gun to shoot or bayonet McDermott. Thought and kick were as
- well coordinated as if they had proceeded from one of McDermott's late
- mules.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Boche went to the floor of the Hôtel Faucon with a groan. “Gott!” he
- said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A stomach f'r a stomach,” said Mc-Dermott, standing over him with the
- rifle. “Git up!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The German painfully arose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ye are me prisoner,” said McDermott, “an' the furst wan I iver took.
- Hould up y'r hands! Hould thim up, I say! Not over y'r stomach, man, but
- over y'r head!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The Boche complied hurriedly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I see ye understhand United States,” said McDermott. “I was afraid ye
- might not, an' I w'u'd have to shoot ye.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Kamerad!</i>” exclaimed the man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ye are no comrade av mine,” said McDermott, peering at the man's face
- through the eery halflight of early morning, “an' comrade av mine ye niver
- was! I know ye well! Ye are Goostave Schmidt b' name, an' wanst ye tinded
- bar in a dive down b' the Brooklyn wather front!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The man stared at McDermott in silence for a long minute, and then
- recollection slowly came to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “MagDermodd!” he said. “Batrick MagDermodd!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The same,” said McDermott.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Gott sei dank!</i>” said the German. “I haf fallen into der hands of a
- friend.” And with the beginning of a smile he started to lower his hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Put thim up!” cried McDermott. “Don't desave y'silf! Ye are no fri'nd av
- mine!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The smile faded, and something like a look of panic took its place on the
- German's face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Th' last time I saw ye, ye was in bad company, f'r ye was alone,” said
- McDermott. “An' I come over here lookin' f'r ye, an' I find ye in bad
- company ag'in!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Looking?” said the German with quite sincere perplexity. “You gome here
- <i>looking</i> for me?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The wonder on the man's face at this unpremeditated jest of his having
- crossed the Atlantic especially to look for Gustave Schmidt titillated
- McDermott's whole being. But he did not laugh, and he let the German
- wonder. “And phwy sh'u'd I not?” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- The German thought intensely for a while. “Why <i>should</i> you gome all
- der vay agross der Adlandic looking for <i>me?</i>” he said finally.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ye have a short mimory,” said McDermott. “Ye do not recollict the time ye
- hit me on the head wid a bung starter whin I was too soused to defind
- m'silf? The scar is there yet, bad luck to ye!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But dot was nudding,” said the German. “Dot bung-starder business was all
- a bart of der day's vork.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But ye cript up behint me,” said McDermott; “an' me soused!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But dot was der bractical vay to do it,” said the German. “Dot was
- nuddings at all, dot bung-starder business. I haf forgodden it long ago!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The McDermotts remimber thim compliments longer,” said McDermott. “An' b'
- rights I sh'u'd give ye wan good clout wid this gun and be done wid ye.
- But I'm thinkin' I may be usin' ye otherwise.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You gome all der vay agross der Adlandic yoost because I hit you on der
- head mit a bung starder?” persisted the German, still wondering. “Dot,
- MagDermodd, I cannot belief—<i>Nein!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And ye tore up y'r citizenship papers and come all the way across the
- Atlantic just to jine this gang av murtherin' child-killers,” said
- McDermott. “That I c'n belave! Yis!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I haf not dorn up my American cidizen papers—<i>Nein!</i>”
- exclaimed the German, earnestly. “Dose I haf kept. I gome across to fight
- for mein Faderland—dot vas orders. <i>Ja!</i> But mein American
- cidizenship papers I haf kept, and ven der war is ofer I shall go back to
- Brooklyn and once more an American citizen be, undill der next war. <i>Ja!</i>
- You haf not understood, but dot is der vay of it. <i>Ja!</i>”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Goostave,” said McDermott, “ye have too many countries workin' f'r ye.
- But y'r takin' ordhers from m'silf now—do ye get that? C'n ye play
- that musical insthrumint there by the window?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Ja!</i>” said Gustave. “Dot gun I can vork. Dot is der Lewis machine
- gun. Id is not so good a gun as our machine gun, for our machine gun haf
- been a colossal sugcess, but id is a goot gun.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ye been fightin' f'r the Kaiser f'r three or four years, Goostave,” said
- McDermott, menacing him with his rifle, “but this mornin' I'll be afther
- seein' that ye do a bit av work f'r thim citizenship papers, an', later,
- ye can go to hell, if ye like, an' naturalize y'rsilf in still a third
- country. Ye will shoot Germans wid that gun till I get the hang av the
- mechanism m'silf. And thin I will shoot Germans wid that gun. But furst,
- ye will give me that fancy tin soup-bowl ye're wearin'.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Gustave handed over his helmet. McDermott put it on his red head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've been thinkin',” said McDermott, “will I jine this war, or will I not
- jine it. An' the only way ye c'n tell do ye like a thing or do ye not is
- to thry it wance. Wid y'r assistance, Goostave, I'll thry it this mornin',
- if anny more av it comes my way.”
- </p>
- <p>
- More of it was coming his way. The Germans, tired of trifling with the
- small British force which held the village, had brought up the better part
- of a division during the night and were marshaling the troops for their
- favorite feat of arms, an overwhelming frontal attack <i>en masse</i>. The
- British had likewise received reinforcements, drawing from the north and
- from the south every man the hard-pressed lines could spare. But they were
- not many, perhaps some three thousand men in all, to resist the massed
- assault, with the railroad for its objective, which would surely come with
- dawn. If troops were needed in the village they were no less needed on the
- lines that flanked it. The little town, which had been the scene of so
- much desperate skirmishing the day before and during the first half of the
- night, was now about to become the ground of something like a battle.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's a French division on the way,” said the British colonel in
- command in the village to one of his captains. “If we can only hold them
- for an hour——”
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not finish the sentence. As he spoke the German bombardment,
- precedent to the infantry attack, began to comb the western fringes of the
- town and the railroad line behind, searching for the hurriedly-digged and
- shallow trenches, the improvised dugouts, the shell holes, the cellars and
- the embankments where the British lay. The British guns to the rear of the
- village made answer, and the uproar tore the mists of dawn to tatters. A
- shell fell short, into the middle of the Grande Place, and McDermott saw
- the broken motor car against which the sleeping lieutenant had leaned the
- day before vanish into nothingness; and then a house directly opposite the
- Hôtel Fauçon jumped into flame and was no more. Looking out across the
- back of the stooping Gustave at the window, McDermott muttered, “I dunno
- as I w'u'd want to jine that war.” And then he bellowed in Gustave
- Schmidt's ear: “Cut loose! Cut loose wid y'rgun! Cut loose!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I vill not!” shrieked Gustave. “Mein Gott! Dat is mein own regiment!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ye lie!” shouted McDermott. “Ye will!” He thrust a bit of bayonet into
- the fleshiest part of the German's back.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I vill! I vill!” cried Gustave.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Ye will that,” said McDermott, “an' the less damned nonsinse I hear from
- ye about y'r own rigimint the betther f'r ye! Ye're undher me own ordhers
- till I c'n make up me mind about this war.” The mists were rising. In the
- clearing daylight at the eastern end of the square, as if other clouds
- were moving forward with a solid front, appeared the first gray wave of
- the German infantry. Close packed, shoulder to shoulder, three deep, they
- came, almost filling the space from side to side of the Grande Place,
- moving across that open stretch against the British fire with a certain
- heavy-footed and heavy-brained contempt of everything before them. Ten
- steps, and the British machine guns and rifles caught them. The first
- wave, or half of it, went down in a long writhing windrow, across the east
- end of the square, and in the instant that he saw it squirm and toss
- before the trampling second wave swept over it and through it, the
- twisting gray-clad figures on the stones reminded McDermott of the heaps
- of heaving worms he used to see at the bottom of his bait-can when he went
- fishing as a boy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hold that nozzle lower, Goostave!” he yelled to his captive. “Spray thim!
- Spray thim! Ye're shootin' over their heads, ye lumberin' Dutchman, ye!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Gott!</i>” cried Gustave, as another jab of the bayonet urged him to
- his uncongenial task.
- </p>
- <p>
- And then McDermott made one of the few errors of his military career.
- Whether it was the French brandy he had drunk to excess the night before,
- or whether it was the old bung-starter wound on his head, which always
- throbbed and jumped when he became excited, his judgment deserted him for
- an instant. For one instant he forgot that there must be no instants free
- from the immediate occupation of guiding and directing Gustave.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Let me see if I can't work that gun m'self,” he cried.
- </p>
- <p>
- As he relaxed his vigilance, pushing the German to one side, the Boche
- suddenly struck him upon the jaw. McDermott reeled and dropped his rifle;
- before he could recover himself, the German had it. The weapon swung
- upward in the air and—just then a shell burst outside the open
- window of the Hôtel Fauçon.
- </p>
- <p>
- Both men were flung from their feet by the concussion. For a moment
- everything was blank to McDermott. And then, stretching out his hand to
- rise, his fingers encountered something smooth and hard upon the floor.
- Automatically his grasp closed over it and he rose. At the same instant
- the German struggled to his feet, one hand behind his back, and the other
- extended, as if in entreaty.
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Kamerad</i>,” he whined, and even as he whined he lurched nearer and
- flung at McDermott a jagged, broken bottle. McDermott ducked, and the
- dagger-like glass splintered on his helmet. And then McDermott struck—once.
- Once was enough. The Boche sank to the floor without a groan, lifeless.
- McDermott looked at him, and then, for the first time, looked at what he
- held in his own hand, the weighty thing which he had wielded so
- instinctively and with such ferocity. It was the bung starter of the Hôtel
- Fauçon.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Goostave niver knowed what hit him,” said McDermott. And if there had
- been any one to hear, in all that din, a note of regret that Gustave never
- knew might have been remarked in his voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- McDermott turned his attention to the machine gun, which, with its tripod,
- had been knocked to the floor. He squatted, with his head below the level
- of the window sill, and looked it over.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Tis not broken,” he decided, after some moments of examination. “Did
- Goostave do it so? Or did he do it so?” He removed his helmet and rubbed
- the scar under his red hair reflectively. “If I was to make up me mind to
- jine that war,” mused McDermott, “this same w'u'd be a handy thing to take
- wid me. It w'u'd that! Now, did that Goostave that used to be here pull
- this pretty little thingumajig so? Or did he pull it so? Ihaveut! He
- pulled it so! And thim ca'tridges, now—do they feed in so? Or do
- they feed in so? 'T w'u'd be a handy thing, now, f'r a man that had anny
- intintions av jinin' the war to know about all thim things!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And, patiently, McDermott studied the mechanism, while the red sunlight
- turned to yellow in the Grande Place outside, and the budding green vines
- withered along the broken walls, and the stones ran blood, and the Hôtel
- Fauçon began to fall to pieces about his ears. McDermott did not hurry; he
- felt that there was no need to hurry; he had not yet made up his mind
- whether he intended to participate in this war. By the time he had learned
- how to work that machine gun, and had used it on the Germans for a while,
- he thought, he might be vouchsafed some light on that particular subject.
- It was one of McDermott's fixed beliefs that he was an extremely cautious
- sort of man, though many of his acquaintances thought of him differently,
- and he told himself that he must not get too far into this war until he
- was sure that it was going to be congenial. So far, it promised well.
- </p>
- <p>
- And also, McDermott, as he puzzled over the machine gun, was not quite the
- normal McDermott. He was, rather, a supernormal McDermott. He had been
- awakened rudely from an alcoholic slumber and he had been rather busy ever
- since; so many things had taken place in his immediate neighborhood, and
- were still taking place, that he was not quite sure of their reality. As
- he sat on the floor and studied the weapon, he was actually, from moment
- to moment, more than half convinced that he was dreaming—he might
- awaken and find that that war had eluded him again. Perhaps he is scarcely
- to be chided for being in what is sometimes known as a state of mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- And while McDermott was looking at the machine gun, the British commander
- prayed, as a greater British commander before him had prayed one time, for
- assistance, only this one did not pray for night or Blucher as Wellington
- had done. Night was many hours beyond all hope and would probably bring
- its own hell when it came, and as for Prussians, there were too many
- Prussians now. His men would hold on; they had been holding on for epic
- days and unbelievable nights, and they would still hold while there was
- breath in their bodies, and when their bodies were breathless they would
- hold one minute more. But—God! For Foch's <i>poilus!</i> There is a
- moment which is the ultimate moment; the spirit can drag the body until—until
- spirit and body are wrenched into two things. No longer. His men could die
- in their tracks; they were dying where they stood and crouched and lay, by
- dozens and by scores and by heroic hundreds—but when they were dead,
- who would bar the way to Hazebrouck, and beyond Hazebrouck, to the channel
- ports?
- </p>
- <p>
- That way was all but open now, if the enemy but realized it. Any moment
- they might discover it. A half-mile to the south of the village the line
- was so thinly held that one strong, quick thrust must make a gap. Let the
- enemy but fling a third of the troops he was pounding to pieces in the
- bloody streets of the town, in the torn fields that flanked it, and in the
- shambles of the Grande Place that was the center of this action, at that
- weak spot, and all was over. But with a fury mechanical, insensate, the
- Germans still came on in direct frontal attacks.
- </p>
- <p>
- The British had slain and slain and slain, firing into the gray masses
- until the water boiled in the jackets of the machine guns. Five attacks
- had broken down in the Grande Place itself—and now a sixth was
- forming. Should he still hold fast, the colonel asked himself, or should
- he retire, saving what machine guns he might, and flinging a desperate
- detachment southward in the attempt to make a stronger right flank? But to
- do that might be the very move that would awaken the Germans to their
- opportunity there. So long as they pounded, pounded at his center, he
- would take a toll of them, at least—but the moment was coming—
- </p>
- <p>
- “I have ut!” cried McDermott, and mounted his gun at the window.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is time to retire,” said the British colonel, and was about to give
- the order.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Right in their bloody backs,” said McDermott to himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- And so it was. For the sixth advance of the German masses had carried them
- well into the Grande Place. McDermott, crouched at his window, cut loose
- with his gun at pointblank range as the first wave, five men deep, passed
- by him, splashing along the thick ranks from behind as one might sweep a
- garden hose down a row of vegetables. Taken thus in the rear, ambushed,
- with no knowledge of the strength of the attacking force behind them, the
- German shock troops swayed and staggered, faced about and fell and broke.
- For right into the milling herd of them, and into the second advancing
- wave, the British poured their bullets. The colonel, who had been about to
- order a retreat, ordered a charge, and before the stampeded remnant of the
- first two waves could recover themselves the British were on them with
- grenades and bayonets, flinging them back into the third wave, just
- advancing to their support, in a bleeding huddle of defeat.
- </p>
- <p>
- McDermott saw the beginning of that charge, and with his bung starter in
- his hand he rushed from the door to join it. But he did not see the end of
- it, nor did he see the <i>poilus</i>, as they came slouching into the
- village five minutes later to give the repulse weight and confirmation,
- redolent of onions and strange stews, but with their bayonets—those
- bayonets that are part of the men who wield them, living things, instinct
- with the beautiful, straight, keen soul of France herself.
- </p>
- <p>
- McDermott did not see them, for some more of the Hôtel Fauçon had fallen
- on him, crushing one of his ankles and giving him a clout on the head.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Whoever it was turned loose that machine gun from the inn window, did the
- trick,” said the colonel, later. “It's hardly too much to say that he
- blocked the way to Hazebrouck—for the time, at least, if one man can
- be said to have done such a thing—what's that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That” was McDermott, who was being carried forth, unconscious, to an
- ambulance. It was his blue overalls that had occasioned the colonel's
- surprise. He was neither French nor British nor German; palpably he was a
- civilian, and a civilian who had no business there. And in his hand he
- clasped a bung starter. His fingers were closed over it so tightly that in
- the base hospital later they found difficulty in taking it away from him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Owing, no doubt, to the blow on his head, McDermott was unable to recall
- clearly anything that had taken place from the moment he had first fallen
- asleep under the influence of French brandy until he awakened in the
- hospital nearly four weeks later. During this period there had been
- several intervals of more open-eyed dreaming, succeeded by lapses into
- profound stupor; but even in these open-eyed intervals, McDermott had not
- been himself. It was during one of these intervals that a representative
- of the French Government bestowed the Croix de Guerre upon McDermott, for
- it had been learned that he was the man behind the machine gun that had
- turned the tide of combat.
- </p>
- <p>
- McDermott, his eyes open, but his mind in too much of a daze even to
- wonder what the ceremony was about, sat in a wheel chair, and in company
- with half a dozen other men selected for decoration, listened to a brief
- oration in very good French, which he could not have understood had he
- been normal. In answer he muttered in a low tone, rubbing his broken and
- bandaged head: “I think maybe I will jine that war, afther all!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The French officer assumed that McDermott had spoken some sort of
- compliment to France and kissed McDermott on both cheeks, in front of the
- hospital staff, several American reporters, and as much of the French army
- as qould be spared to do honor to the occasion. The <i>Croix de Guerre</i>
- made no impression upon McDermott, but the kiss briefly arrested his
- wandering consciousness, and he cried out, starting up in his chair and
- menacing the officer: “Where is me bung starter?” Then he fainted.
- </p>
- <p>
- A good many thousands of people in France and England and America learned
- from the newspapers the story of the nondescript in the blue overalls, who
- had behaved so gallantly at the crucial moment of a crucial fight. But
- McDermott never did. He seldom read newspapers. No one had been able to
- learn his name, so the reporters had given him a name. They called him
- “Dennis.” And it was “Dennis” who got the fame and glory. McDermott would
- not have identified himself with Dennis had he seen the newspapers. When
- he awakened from his long, broken stupor, with its intervals of dazed
- halfconsciousness, the first thing he did was to steal away from that
- hospital; he left without having heard of Dennis or of the decoration of
- Dennis.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was one thing that he had experienced that did live hazily and
- confusedly in his memory, however, although he could not fix it in its
- relationship to any other thing. And that was the fact that he had met
- Gustave Schmidt. Three or four months after he slipped away from the
- hospital—a period of unchronicled wanderings, during which he had
- tried unsuccessfully to enlist several times—he limped into a saloon
- on the Brooklyn water front and asked Tim O'Toole, the proprietor, for his
- usual. He had just got back to Brooklyn, and he carried his earthly
- possessions in a bundle wrapped in brown paper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hear Yordy Crowley isn't givin' his racket this year,” said McDermott,
- laying his bundle on the bar and pouring out his drink.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He is not,” said Tim. “He is in France helpin' out thim English.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yordy will make a good sojer,” said McDermott. “He is a good man of his
- fists.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The Irish is all good sojers,” said Mr. O'Toole, sententiously. “There
- was that man Dinnis, now, that was in all av the papers.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did not hear av him,” said McDermott. “An' phwat did he do?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He licked th' entire German army wan morn-in',” said O'Toole, “an' saved
- England, an' the Quane of France kissed him for it. 'Twas in all the
- papers. Or, maybe,” said Mr. O'Toole, “it was the King av Belg'um kissed
- him for ut. Anny-way wan of thim foreign powers kissed him wid the whole
- world lookin' on.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' phwat did this Dinnis do thin?” asked McDermott.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He attimpted to assault the person that kissed him,” said O'Toole. “Maybe
- 'twas the King av Italy. 'Twas in all the papers at th' time. Some wan
- told me ye were in France y'rsilf, Paddy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was that,” said McDermott. “I wint wid mules.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did ye see annything av the war?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did not,” said McDermott. “Divil a bit of ut, barrin' a lot o' racket
- an' a big roarin' divil av a stame-boiler thing that come bustin' through
- th' air an' took away the mules that was me passport. But I come near
- seein' some av ut, wan time.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' how was it that ye come near it, an' missed it?” inquired Tim.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wint to slape,” said McDermott. “The war was slapin', an' I laid m'silf
- down b' the side av ut an' took a nap, too. Later, I woke up in the
- hospital, some wan havin' stipped on me whilst I was slapin', or
- somethin'. They was afther keep-in' me in th' hospital indefinite, an' I
- slipped away wan mornin', dodgin' the orderlies an' nurses, or I might
- have been there yet eatin' jelly an' gettin' me face washed f'r me. An'
- afther I got back here I thried to jine that war, but th' Amurrican Army
- w'u'd not have me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And phwy not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Because av me fut.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And how did ye hurt y'r fut?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Divil a bit do I know how,” said McDermott. “I'm tellin' ye 'twas done
- whilst I was aslape. I remimber gettin' soused in wan av thim Frinch
- barrooms, an' I w'u'd think it was a mule stipped on me fut whin I was
- slapin' off me souse, excipt that thim mules was gone before I got me
- souse.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' ye saw naught av the war?” Tim was distinctly disappointed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But little of ut, but little of ut,” said McDermott. “But, Timmy,—wan
- thing I did whilst I was in France.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' phwat was that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I avened up an ould grudge,” said McDermott. He put away a second drink,
- rolling it over his tongue with satisfaction. “Do ye mind that Goostave
- Schmidt that used to kape bar acrost the strate? Ye do! Do ye mind th'
- time he hit me wid th' bung starter? Ye do!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Phwat thin?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, thin,” said McDermott, “I met up wid him ag'in in wan av thim
- Frinch barrooms. I do not remimber phwat he said to me nor phwat I said to
- him, for I was soused, Timmy. But wan word led to another, an' I give him
- as good as he sint, an' 'twas wid a bung starter, too. I brung it back wid
- me as a sooveneer av me travels in France.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And, undoing his brown paper bundle, McDermott fished forth from among his
- change of socks and shirts and underwear the bung starter of the Hôtel
- Fauçon and laid it upon the bar for his friend's inspection. Something
- else in the bundle caught O'Toole's eye.
- </p>
- <p>
- “An' phwat is that thing ye have there?” asked Tim.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Divil a bit do I know phwat,” said McDermott, picking the article up and
- tossing it carelessly upon the bar. “'Twas layin' by me cot in the
- hospital, along wid m' bung starter an' me clothes whin I come to m'silf,
- an' whin I made me sneak from that place I brung it along.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the <i>Croix de Guerre</i>.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0006" id="link2H_4_0006"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- V.—Looney the Mutt
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">L</span>ooney had but one
- object in life, one thought, one conscious motive of existence—to
- find Slim again. After he found Slim, things would be different, things
- would be better, somehow. Just how, Looney did not know.
- </p>
- <p>
- Looney did not know much, anyhow. Likely he would never have known much,
- in the most favorable circumstances. And the circumstances under which he
- had passed his life were scarcely conducive to mental growth. He could
- remember, vaguely, that he had not always been called Looney Hogan. There
- had been a time when he was called Kid Hogan. Something had happened
- inside his head one day, and then there had come a period of which he
- remembered nothing at all; after that, when he could remember again, he
- was not Kid any more, but Looney. Perhaps some one had hit him on the
- head. People were always hitting him, before he knew Slim. And now that
- Slim was gone, people were always hitting him again. When he was with
- Slim, Slim had not let people hit him—often. So he must find Slim
- again; Slim, who was the only God he had ever known.
- </p>
- <p>
- In the course of time he became known, in his own queer world, from
- Baltimore to Seattle, from Los Angeles to Boston, as Slim's Lost Mutt, or
- as Looney the Mutt. Looney did not resent being called a dog,
- particularly, but he never called himself “The Mutt”; he stuck to
- “Looney”; Slim had called him Looney, and Looney must, therefore, be
- right.
- </p>
- <p>
- The humors of Looney's world are not, uniformly, kindly humors. Giving
- Looney the Mutt a “bum steer” as to Slim's whereabouts was considered a
- legitimate jest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Youse ain't seen Slim Matchett anywheres?” he would ask of hobo or
- wobbly, working stiff or yeggman, his faded pale-blue eyes peering from
- his weather-worn face with the same anxious intensity, the same eager
- hope, as if he had not asked the question ten thousand times before.
- </p>
- <p>
- And the other wanderer, if he were one that knew of Looney the Mutt and
- Looney's quest would answer, like as not:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Slimmy de Match? Uh-huh! I seen Slim last mont' in Chi. He's lookin' fer
- youse, Looney.” One day the Burlington Crip, who lacked a hand, and who
- looked so mean that it was of common report that he had got sore at
- himself and bitten it off, varied the reply a bit by saying:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I seen Slim las' week, an' he says: 'Where t' hell's dat kid o' mine?
- Youse ain't seen nuttin' o' dat kid o' mine, has you, Crip? Dat kid o'
- mine give me de slip, Crip. He lammistered, and I ain't seen him since. If
- youse gets yer lamps on dat kid o' mine, Crip, give him a wallop on his
- mush fer me, an' tell him to come an' find me an' I'm gonna give him
- another one.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- Looney stared and wondered and grieved. It hurt him especially that Slim
- should think that he, Looney, had run away from Slim; he agonized anew
- that he could not tell Slim at once that such was not the truth. And he
- wondered and grieved at the change that must have taken place in Slim, who
- now promised him “a wallop on the mush.” For Slim had never struck him. It
- was Slim who had always kept other people from striking him. It was Slim
- who had, upon occasion, struck other people to protect him—once, in
- a hangout among the lakeside sand dunes south of Chicago, Slim had knifed
- a man who had, by way of jovial byplay to enliven a dull afternoon, flung
- Looney into the fire.
- </p>
- <p>
- It never occurred to Looney to doubt, entirely, these bearers of
- misinformation. He was hunting Slim, and of course, he thought, Slim was
- hunting Looney. His nature was all credulity. Such mind as the boy
- possessed—he was somewhere in his twenties, but had the physique of
- a boy—was saturated with belief in Slim, with faith in Slim, and he
- thought that all the world must admire Slim. He did not see why any one
- should tell lies that might increase Slim's difficulties, or his own.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a big red star he used to look at nights, when he slept in the
- open, and because it seemed to him bigger and better and more splendid
- than any of the other stars he took to calling it Slim's star. It was a
- cocky, confident-looking star; it looked as if it would know how to take
- care of itself, and Slim had been like that. It looked good-natured, too,
- and Slim had been that way. When Looney had rustled the scoffin's for
- Slim, Slim had always let him have some of the best chow—or almost
- always. And he used to talk to that star about Slim when he was alone. It
- seemed sympathetic. And although he believed the hoboes were telling him
- the truth when they said that they had seen Slim, it was apparent even to
- his intelligence that they had no real sympathy with his quest.
- </p>
- <p>
- Once he did find a certain sympathy, if no great understanding. He worked
- a week, one Spring, for a farmer in Indiana. The farmer wished to keep
- him, for that Summer at least, for Looney was docile, willing enough, and
- had a natural, unconscious tact with the work-horses. Looney was never
- afraid of animals, and they were never afraid of him. Dogs took to him,
- and the instant liking of dogs had often stood him in good stead in his
- profession.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why won't you stay?” asked the farmer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Slim's lookin' fer me, somewheres,” said Looney. And he told the farmer
- about Slim. The farmer, having perceived Looney's mental twilight, and
- feeling kindly toward the creature, advanced an argument that he thought
- might hold him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Slim is just as likely to find you if you stay in one place, as if you go
- travelin' all over the country,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Huh-uh,” said Looney. “He ain't, Mister. It's this way, Mister: every
- time I stop long any-, wheres, Slim, he passes me by.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And then he continued, after a pause: “Slim, he was always good to me,
- Mister. I kinda want to be the one that finds Slim, instead of just
- stayin' still an' waitin' to be found.”
- </p>
- <p>
- They were standing in the dusk by the barn, and the early stars were out.
- Looney told him about Slim's star.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I want to be the guy that does the findin',” went on Looney presently,
- “because I was the guy that done the losin'. One night they was five or
- six of us layin' under a lot of railroad ties we had propped up against a
- fence to keep the weather off, an' we figgered on hoppin' a train fer Chi
- that night. Well, the train comes along, but I'm asleep. See? The rest of
- t' gang gits into an empty in de dark, an' I don't wake up. I s'pose Slim
- he t'inks I'm wit' t' gang, but I don't wake up under them ties till
- mornin'. I went to Chi soon's I could, but I ain't never glommed him
- since, Mister. I didn't find him dere. An' dat's t' way I lost Slim,
- Mister.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Maybe,” suggested the farmer, “he is dead.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nit,” said Looney. “He ain't dead. If Slim was croaked or anything, I'd
- be wised up to it. Look at that there star. Dat is Slim's star, like I
- told youse. If Slim had been bumped off, or anything, Mister, that star
- wouldn't be shinin' that way, Mister.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And he went back to his own world—his world—which was a
- succession of freight and cattle cars, ruinous sheds and shelters in
- dubious suburbs near to railroad sidings, police stations, workhouses,
- jails, city missions, transient hangouts in bedraggled clumps of wood,
- improvised shacks, shared with others of his kind in vacant lots in sooty
- industrial towns, chance bivouacs amidst lumber piles and under dripping
- water tanks, lucky infrequent lodgings in slum hotels that used to charge
- fifteen cents for a bed and now charge a quarter, golden moments in vile
- barrooms and blind tigers, occasional orgies in quarries or gravel pits or
- abandoned tin-roofed tool houses, uneasy, loiterings and interrupted
- slumbers in urban parks and the squares or outskirts of villages.
- Sometimes he worked, as he had with the Indiana farmer, with the wheat
- harvesters of the Northwest, or the snow shovelers of the metropoli, or
- the fruit gatherers of California; but more often he loafed, and rustled
- grub and small coin from the charitably disposed.
- </p>
- <p>
- It all seemed the natural way of life to Looney. He could not remember
- anything else. He viewed the people of the world who did not live so, and
- whom he saw to be the majority, as strange, unaccountable beings whom he
- could never hope to understand; he vaguely perceived that they were
- stronger than he and his ever-hiking clan, and he knew that they might do
- unpleasant things to him with their laws and their courts and their
- strength, but he bore them no rancor, unlike many of his associates.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had no theories about work or idleness; he accepted either as it came;
- he had little conscious thought about anything, except finding Slim again.
- And one thing worried him: Slim, who was supposed to be looking for
- Looney, even as Looney was looking for Slim, left no mark. He was forever
- looking for it, searching for the traces of Slim's knife—a name, a
- date, a destination, a message bidding Looney to follow or to wait—on
- freight sheds and water tanks, and known and charted telegraph poles and
- the tool houses of construction gangs. But Slim, always just ahead of him,
- as he thought, continually returning and passing him, ever receding in the
- distance, left no mark, no wanderer's pateran, behind. Looney left his own
- marks everywhere, but, strangely enough, it seemed that Slim never saw
- them. Looney remembered that one time when he and Slim were together Slim
- had wished to meet and confer with the Burlington Crip, and had left word
- to that effect, penciled and carved and sown by the speech of the mouth,
- from the Barbary Coast to the Erie Basin. And the Burlington Crip, with
- his snaggle teeth and his stump where a hand had been, had joined them on
- the Brooklyn waterfront within two months. It had been simple, and Looney
- wondered why Slim omitted this easy method of communication. Perhaps Slim
- was using it and Looney was not finding the marks. He knew himself for
- stupid, and set his failure down to that, never to neglect on Slim's part.
- For Slim was Slim, and Slim could do no wrong.
- </p>
- <p>
- His habit of searching for some scratched or written word of Slim's became
- known to his whole section of the underworld, and furnished material for
- an elaboration of the standing jest at his expense. When ennui descended
- upon some chance gathering in one of the transient hangouts—caravanserai
- as familiar to the loose-foot, casual guests, from coast to coast, as was
- ever the Blackstone in Chicago or the Biltmore in New York to those who
- read this simple history—it was customary for some wag to say:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Looney, I seen a mark that looked like Slim's mark on a shed down in
- Alexandria, Virginny, right by where the Long Bridge starts over to
- Washington.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And it might be that Looney would start at once, without a word, for
- Alexandria. Therein lay the cream of this subtle witticism, for its
- perpetrators—in Looney's swift departures.
- </p>
- <p>
- Or it might be that Looney would sit and ponder, his washed-out eyes
- interrogating the speaker in a puzzled fashion, but never doubting. And
- then the jester would say, perhaps: “Why don't you get a move onto you,
- Looney? You're gonna miss Slim again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And Looney would answer, perchance: “Slim, he ain't there now. The' was
- one of them wobblies' bump-off men sayin' he seen Slim in Tacoma two weeks
- ago, an' Slim was headin' this way. I'm gonna wait fer him a while
- longer.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But he never waited long. He could never make himself. As he had told the
- Indiana farmer, he was afraid to wait long. It was the Burlington Crip who
- had made him afraid to do that. The Crip had told him one time: “Looney,
- Slim went through here last night, while youse was asleep over on that
- lumber pile. I forgets youse is lookin' fer him or I'd a tipped him off
- youse was here.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Slim had been within a hundred yards of him, and he had been asleep and
- had never known! What would Slim think, if he knew that? So thereafter he
- was continually tortured by the fancy that Slim might be passing him in
- the night; or that Slim, while he himself was riding the rods underneath a
- railway car, might be on the blind baggage of that very train, and would
- hop off first and be missed again. From day to day he became more muddled
- and perplexed trying to decide whether it would be better to choose this
- route or that, whether it would be better to stop here a week, or go
- yonder with all possible speed. And from month to month he developed more
- and more the questing, peering, wavering manner of the lost dog that seeks
- its master.
- </p>
- <p>
- Looney was always welcome In the hang-outs of the wandering underworld.
- Not only was he a source of diversion, a convenient butt, but few could
- rustle grub so successfully. His meager frame and his wistfulness, his
- evident feebleness of intellect, drew alms from the solvent population,
- and Looney faithfully brought his takings to the hangouts and was
- dispatched again for more. Servant and butt he was to such lords as the
- Burlington Crip and the English Basher. But he did not mind so long as he
- was not physically maltreated—as he often was. The occasional crimes
- of his associates, the occasional connection of some of them with
- industrial warfare here and there, Looney sometimes participated in; but
- he never understood. If he were told to do so and so, for the most part he
- did it. If he were asked to do too much, or was beaten up for his
- stupidity, and he was always stupid, he quietly slunk away at his first
- opportunity.
- </p>
- <p>
- The English Basher was a red-faced savage with fists as hard and rough as
- tarred rope; and he conceived the idea that Looney should be his kid, and
- wait upon him, even as he had been Slim's kid. Looney, afraid of the man,
- for a time seemed to acquiesce. But the Basher had reckoned without
- Looney's faculty for blundering.
- </p>
- <p>
- He dispatched Looney one day, ostensibly to bum a handout, but in reality
- to get the lay of a certain house in a suburb near Cincinnati, which the
- Basher meditated cracking the next convenient night. Looney returned with
- the food but without the information. He had been willing enough, for he
- admired yeggmen and all their ways and works, and was withheld by no moral
- considerations from anything he was asked to do; but he had bungled. He
- had been in the kitchen, he had eaten his own scoffin's there, he had
- talked with the cook for twenty minutes, he had even brought up from the
- cellar a scuttle of coal for the kitchen range to save the cook's back,
- but he actually knew less about that house, its plan, its fastenings, its
- doors and basement windows than the Basher had been able to gather with a
- single stroke of the eye as he loitered down the street.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Cripes! Whadje chin about with the kitchen mechanic all dat time, you?”
- demanded the Basher.
- </p>
- <p>
- “She was stringin' me along,” said Looney humbly, “an' I spilled to her
- about me an' Slim.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Slim! ——— ———— yer, I've a mind
- t' croak yer!” cried the Basher.
- </p>
- <p>
- And he nearly did it, knocking the boy down repeatedly, till finally
- Looney lay still upon the ground.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'S'elp me,” said the Basher, “I've a mind to give yer m' boots! You get
- up an' beat it! An' if I ever gets my lamps onto you again I <i>will</i>
- croak you, by Gawd, an' no mistake!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Looney staggered to his feet and hobbled to a safe distance. And then,
- spitting out a broken tooth, he dared to mutter: “If Slimmy was here, he'd
- see de color o' youse insides, Slimmy would. Slimmy, he knifed a yegg
- oncet wot done less'n dat t'me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was only a week or two after he left the Basher that Looney's faith in
- Slim's star was tested again. Half a dozen of the brotherhood were
- gathered about a fire in a gravel pit in northern Illinois, swapping yarns
- and experiences and making merry. It was a tremendous fire, and lighted up
- the hollow as if it were the entrance to Gehenna, flinging the grotesque
- shadows of the men against the overhanging embankments, and causing the
- inhabitants of a village a mile or so away to wonder what farmer's
- haystack was aflame. The tramps were wasting five times the wood they
- needed, after their fashion. They had eaten to repletion, and they were
- wasting the left-over food from their evening gorge; they had booze; they
- were smoking; they felt, for the hour, at peace with the world.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wot ever <i>did</i> become of dat Slim?” asked the Burlington Crip, who
- happened to be of the party, looking speculatively at Looney. Even the
- sinister Crip, for the nonce, was not toting with him his usual mordant
- grouch.
- </p>
- <p>
- Looney was tending the fire, while he listened to tales of the spacious
- days of the great Johnny Yegg himself, and other Titans of the road who
- have now assumed the state of legendary heroes; and he was, as usual,
- saying nothing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Slim? Slimmy t' Match wot Looney here's been tailin' after fer so long?”
- said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was bumped off in Paterson t'ree or four
- years ago.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He wasn't neither,” spoke up Looney. “Tex, here, seen him in Chi last
- mont'.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And, indeed, Tex had told Looney so. But now, thus directly appealed to,
- Tex answered nothing. And for the first time Looney began to get the vague
- suspicion that these, his friends, might have trifled with him before.
- Certainly they were serious now. He looked around the sprawled circle and
- sensed that their manner was somehow different from the attitude with
- which they had usually discussed his quest for Slim.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bumped off?” said Tex. “How?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A wobbly done it,” said the San Diego Kid. “Slim, he was scabbin'.
- Strike-breakin'. And they was some wobblies there helpin' on the strike.
- See? An' this wobbly bumps Slim off.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He didn't neither,” said Looney again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “T' hell he didn't? He said he did,” said the San Diego Kid pacifically.
- “Is a guy gonna say he's bumped off a guy unless he's bumped him off?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Looney, somewhat shaken, withdrew from the group to seek comfort from the
- constellations; and particularly from that big, red star, the apparent
- king of stars, which he had come to think of as Slim's star, and vaguely,
- as Slim's mascot. It was brighter and redder than ever that night, Looney
- thought, and sitting on a discarded railroad tie and staring at the
- planet, Looney gradually recovered his faith.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He ain't neither been bumped off, Slim ain't,” he muttered, “an' I'm
- gonna find him yet.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And Slim had not been bumped off, however sincere the San Diego Kid may
- have been in his belief.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was some months later that Looney did find him in a little city in
- Pennsylvania—or found some one that looked like him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Looney had dropped from a freight train early in the morning, had rustled
- himself some grub, had eaten two good meals and had part of a day's sleep,
- and now, just as dark was coming on, and the street lamps were being
- lighted, was loafing aimlessly on the platform of the railway depot. He
- purposed to take a train south that night, when it became so dark that he
- could crawl into an empty in the yards without too much danger of being
- seen and he was merely putting in the time until full night came on.
- </p>
- <p>
- While he was standing idly so, an automobile drew up beside the station
- platform and an elegantly dressed and slender man of about thirty got out.
- He assisted from the car a woman and a small child, and they made toward
- the door of the waiting room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Slim!” cried Looney, rushing forward.
- </p>
- <p>
- For this was Slim—it must be Slim—it was Slimmy the Match in
- every feature—and yet, the car!—the clothes—the woman—the
- baby—the prosperity——- <i>Was</i> it Slim?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Slim!” cried Looney again, his heart leaping in his meager body. “It's
- me, Slim! It's Looney! I've got youse again, Slim! Gawd! I've found yuh!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The woman hastily snatched the child up into her arms, with a suppressed
- scream, and recoiled.
- </p>
- <p>
- The man made no sound, but he, too, drew back a step, not seeming to see
- Looney's outstretched hand.
- </p>
- <p>
- But he did see it—he saw more than that. He saw, as if they were
- flashed before him at lightning speed upon a cinema screen, a dozen scenes
- of a wild and reckless and indigent youth that he had thought was dead
- forever; he saw these roughneck years suddenly leap alive and stalk toward
- him again, toward him and his; he saw his later years of industry, his
- hard-won success, his position so strenuously battled for, his
- respectability that was become so dear to him, all his house of life so
- laboriously builded, crumbling before the touch of this torn and grotesque
- outcast that confronted and claimed him, this wavering, dusty lunatic whom
- he dimly remembered. If his wife knew—if her people knew—if
- the business men of this town were to know——
- </p>
- <p>
- He shuddered and turned sick, and then with a sudden recovery he took his
- child from its mother and guided her before him into the waiting room.
- </p>
- <p>
- Looney watched them enter, in silence. He stood dazed for a moment, and
- then he slowly turned and walked down the railroad track beyond the limits
- of the town. There, upon a spot of turf beside the right of way, he threw
- himself upon his face and sobbed and moaned, as a broken-hearted child
- sobs, as a dog moans upon its master's grave.
- </p>
- <p>
- But after a while he looked up. Slim's star was looking down at him, red
- and confident and heartening as ever. He gazed at it a long time, and then
- an idea took form in his ruined brain and he said aloud:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now, dat wasn't <i>really</i> Slim! I been lookin' fer Slim so long I
- t'ink I see Slim where he ain't! Dat was jus' some guy wot looks like
- Slimmy. Slimmy, he wouldn't never of gone back on an old pal like dat!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The rumble of an approaching train caught his ears. He got to his feet and
- prepared to board it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Slim, he's waitin' fer me somewheres,” he told the star. “I may be kinda
- looney about some t'ings, but I knows Slim, an' dey ain't no yellow streak
- nowheres in Slim!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And with unshaken loyalty Looney the Mutt boarded the train and set off
- upon his endless quest anew.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0007" id="link2H_4_0007"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VI—Kale
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>ee that old fellow
- there?” asked Ed the waiter. “Well, his fad is money.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The old fellow indicated—he must have been nearly eighty—sat
- eating corned beef and cabbage in a little booth in a certain delightful,
- greasy old chophouse in downtown New York. It was nearly time to close the
- chophouse for that day for it was almost eleven o'clock at night; it was
- nearly time to close the chophouse forever, for it was the middle of June,
- 1919. In a couple of weeks the wartime prohibition act would be in force,
- and Ed and I had been discussing what effect it would have upon our
- respective lives.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was no one else in the place at the time except the cashier and the
- old man whose fad was money, and so Ed had condescended toward me, as a
- faithful customer, and was sitting down to have a drink with me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “His fad is money?” I questioned, glancing at the old gentleman, who
- seemed to be nothing extraordinary as regards face or manner or attire. He
- had a long, bony New Englandish head and a short, white, well-trimmed
- beard; he was finishing his nowise delicate food with gusto. “I should
- say,” I added, “that his fad was corned beef and cabbage.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's one of his fads,” admitted Ed the waiter, “and I don't know but
- that it's as strong in him as his money fad. At any rate, I've never seen
- him without one or the other was near him, and both in large quantities.”
- </p>
- <p>
- We had been conversing in a mumble, so that our voices should not carry to
- the old gentleman. And now Ed dropped his voice still lower and whispered:
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's Old Man Singleton.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I looked at him with a renewed interest. Every one knew who Old Man
- Singleton was, and many persons liked to guess how much he was worth.
- Ostensibly he had retired, leaving to his two sons the management of the
- Singleton banking business, with its many ramifications; but actually he
- kept his interest in the concern and was reputed to be coaching his
- grandsons in the ways of the world, and especially that part of the world
- known as “The Street.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Starting out as a New England villager who hated poverty because his
- family had always known it, he had come to New York as a lad of twenty,
- with red knitted mittens on his osseous hands, and he had at once removed
- the mittens and put the hands to work gathering money; it was rumored that
- the hands had never turned loose any of the garnered coin; it was even
- said by some persons that he still had the same pair of mittens.
- </p>
- <p>
- The details of his rise I cannot give; he had achieved his ambition to be
- one of the very rich men of America because the ambition was so strong
- within him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Of course his fad is money,” I muttered to Ed the waiter. “Everybody
- knows that Old Man Singleton's fad is money.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Ed was about to reply, when Mr. Singleton looked up and motioned for his
- check. Ed brought it, and gave the old gentleman his hat and his stick and
- his change.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I hope everything was all right,” Mr. Singleton said Ed, palpably bidding
- for recognition and a tip.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Eh? said Singleton, looking blankly at Ed You know me, hey? I don't
- recall you. Yes, everything was all right, thank you.” He gave the waiter
- a dime and passed out, after another blank, fumbling look at Ed, and a
- shake of his head. There was something feeble and wandering in the old
- fellow's manner; his memory was going; it was obvious that before long the
- rest of him would follow his memory. He shouldn't be allowed to go around
- this way alone at night,” murmured Ed, watching the door through which he
- had made his exit. “But I suppose he's as bull-headed as ever about doing
- what he pleases, even if his legs are shaky.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He didn't know you,” I hinted, for I wished to learn all that Ed knew
- about Old Man Singleton.
- </p>
- <p>
- Ed is a person who has been in the world nearly fifty years; he has had
- some very unusual acquaintances and experiences. It is never safe to
- predict just what Ed will know and what he will not know. One afternoon,
- after I had known Ed for about a year, I was attempting to argue some
- scientific point with a friend who was lunching with me, and Ed, who was
- waiting on us and listening, remarked: “I beg your pardon, sir, but it
- wasn't in <i>The Descent of Man</i> that Darwin said that; it was in <i>The
- Origin of Species</i>.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And yet, if you deduce from that remark that Ed knows a great deal about
- modern science, you will be mistaken; as likely as not he could quote
- pages of Marcus Aurelius to you, and at the same time he might pronounce
- “Euripides” as if the last two syllables were one, riming with “hides”;
- his reading, like his life, has been elective.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He doesn't recall you,” I repeated.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And that's ingratitude,” said Ed, “if he only knew it. I saved the old
- man's life once.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And Ed limped over to the table and resumed his seat opposite me. He has a
- bullet under one kneecap, and at times it makes him very lame. He would
- never tell me how it came there; to this day I do not know.
- </p>
- <p>
- “From what did you save his life?” I asked. “From a man,” said Ed moodily.
- “From a man who had a notion to bean him one night. And to this day I ask
- myself: 'Did I do right, or did I do wrong?'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me about it,” I insisted,
- </p>
- <p>
- “Drink up,” said Ed, manipulating the Scotch bottle and the siphon of
- seltzer. “This is one of the last highballs you'll ever have, unless you
- sneak around and take it on the sly. I don't know that I should have
- another one myself; it settles in this damned knee of mine if I get a
- little too much.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me when, where and how you knew Old Man Singleton,” I demanded
- again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This knee of mine,” went on Ed, disregarding me, “is a hell of a
- handicap. We were talking about prohibition—what's prohibition going
- to do to me? Hey? It puts me out of a job in a barroom like this the first
- thing. And what else can I do? With this game leg, you can see me going on
- the stage as a Russian dancer, can't you? Or digging trenches to lay gas
- pipes in, or carrying a Hod? Huh? And I can't even get a job in a swell
- restaurant uptown; they don't want any gamelegged waiters sticking around,
- falling over the chairs. This was about the only kind of a joint and the
- only kind of a job I was fit for, this chop-house thing down here, and
- it's going to close in two weeks. What then? Be somebody's housemaid? I
- can't see it. I don't wish anybody any bad luck, but I hope the guy that
- put over this prohibition thing gets stiff in all his joints and lives
- forever.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I sympathized and waited, and finally he began. “Old Man Singleton's fad,”
- said Ed, “as I re marked before, is money. And as you remarked, another of
- his fads is corned beef and cabbage—especially cabbage. He will eat
- corned beef with his cabbage, and like it; or he will eat pork with his
- cabbage, and like it; or he will eat cabbage without either; it is the
- cabbage he likes—or kale. In fact, you could reduce his two fads to
- one, and say what he likes is kale—kale in the slang sense of money,
- and kale that is cabbage. And all his life he has been stuffing himself
- with kale.
- </p>
- <p>
- “His fad is kale that he can see and feel and handle and show and carry
- about with him. Not merely money in the bank and stocks and bonds and
- property and real estate, but actual cash. He likes to carry it with him,
- and he does carry it with him. I guess he likes the feel of it in his
- billfolder, and the thought that he has got it on him—on him, the
- poor boy that came out of New England with the red knitted mittens on that
- everybody has heard so much about. I can understand the way he feels about
- it; with a folder full of thousand-dollar and ten-thousand-dollar bills he
- feels safe, somehow; feels like he'll never have to go back to that little
- New England town and saw cordwood and shovel snow again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He's got it on him now, that folder, and I'll bet you on it. That's what
- I meant when I said it wasn't safe for him to be trotting about this way
- after night. For if I know it, it stands to reason others know it, too.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What you want to know is, how I know it. Well, I was not always what I am
- now. Once I was quite a bird and wore dress suits and went to the
- Metropolitan Opera and listened to Caruso as he jumped his voice from peak
- to peak. Yes, sir, I know every darned acoustic in that place! They
- weren't my dress suits that I wore, but they fit me. Once I moved in the
- circles of the idle rich, though they didn't know it, and helped 'em spend
- the unearned increment they wrung from the toil of the downtrodden
- laboring man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Once, to come down to brass tacks, I was a butler's companion. It is an
- office you won't find listed in the social directory, but it existed, for
- me at least. The butler in the case was a good friend of mine by the name
- of Larry Hodgkins, and being part Irish, he was an ideal English butler.
- Larry and his mother were in the employ of the Hergsheimers, a wealthy
- Jewish family—you know who they are if you read the financial pages
- or the Sunday supplements. Mrs. Hodgkins was the housekeeper and Larry was
- the butler, and when the Hergsheimers were traveling Larry and his mother
- stayed in the New York house as caretakers and kept things shipshape. And
- let me give you a tip, by the way: if you ever take a notion to quit the
- writing game and go into domestic service, plant yourself with a rich
- Hebrew family. They want things done right, but they are the most liberal
- people on earth, especially to Gentile servants.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This Hergsheimer was Jacob Hergsheimer, and he was in right socially in
- New York, as well as financially; he had put himself across into the big
- time socially because, if you ask me, he belonged there; all the
- Hergsheimers didn't get across, but this one did. His New York house is
- uptown, between the sixties and the eighties, east of the Park, and he
- wants it kept so he can drop into it with his family and a flock of
- servants at any hour of the day or night, from any part of the earth,
- without a minute's notice, and give a dinner party at once, if he feels
- like it, and he frequently feels like it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was Mrs. Hodgkins's and Larry's job to keep the fire from going out in
- the boilers, so to speak, and a head of steam on, so that the domestic
- ship could sail in any direction on receipt of orders by wire, wireless or
- telephone. They were permanent there, but Jake Hergsheimer and his family,
- as far as I could make out, never got more than an average of about three
- months' use a year out of that mansion.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This time I am speaking of was nearly ten years ago. I was a waiter in an
- uptown restaurant, and both my legs were good then; Larry and I were old
- pals. The Jake Hergsheimers were sailing around the world in a yacht, and
- would be at it for about a year, as far as Larry knew, and he asked me up
- to live with him. I accepted; and believe me, the eight months I put in as
- Jake Hergsheimer's guest were <i>some</i> eight months. Not that Jake knew
- about it; but if he had known it, he wouldn't have cared. This Jake was a
- real human being.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And his clothes fit me; just as if I had been measured for them. He had
- what you might call an automatic tailor, Jake did. Every six weeks, rain
- or shine, that tailor delivered a new suit of clothes to the Hergsheimer
- house, and he sent in his bill once a year, so Larry the butler told me.
- Some people go away and forget to stop the milk; and when Jake sailed for
- the other side of the world he forgot to tell anybody to stop the tailor.
- Larry didn't feel as if it were any part of his duty to stop him; for
- Larry liked that tailor. He made Larry's clothes, too.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I didn't see where it was up to me to protest. As I said, Jake's
- garments might have been made for me. In fact, a great many of them <i>were</i>
- made for me. There were at least fifteen suits of clothes that had never
- been worn in that house, made to my measure and Jake's, when I became
- butler's companion in the establishment, and they kept right on coming.
- Also, there was a standing order for orchestra seats at the Metropolitan.
- Jake had a box every second Thursday, or something like that, but when he
- really wanted to hear the music and see the show he usually sat in the
- orchestra. Not only did his business suits fit me, but his dress clothes
- fit me, too.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I used to go often, with a lady's maid that had the same access to
- clothing as I did. She was part of a caretaking staff also. Being a
- writing person, you have, of course, only viewed New York's society and
- near-society from the outside, and no doubt you have been intimidated by
- the haughty manners of the servants. Well, when you get close to swells
- and really know them personally, you will find they are human, too.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A butler on duty is a swelled-up proposition, because he has to be that
- way. But take him as you find him among his peers, and he quits acting
- like the Duke of Westminster Abbey, and is real sociable. This Larry
- person, for instance, could distend himself like a poisoned pup and make a
- timid millionaire feel like the sleeves of his undershirt must be showing
- below his cuffs; but in our little select circle Larry was the life of the
- party.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Being, as I said before, an outsider, you likely don't realize how many
- of those big swell millionaires' cribs uptown are in the hands of
- caretakers like Larry and his mother and me the best part of the year.
- Well, they are; and there's a social life goes on in them that don't ever
- get into the papers. The parties we had that year in Jake's house would
- have done Jake himself good, if Jake could have got an invitation to them.
- But Jake was absent, though his cellar and his grocers were at our
- service; and he never questioned a bill, Larry said. There were twelve or
- fifteen hand-picked servants in our little social circle that year, and
- before I left there I could begin to understand how these débutantes feel
- at the end of the season—sort of tired and bored and willing to
- relax and go in for work and rest and athletics for a change.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had only been butler's companion for a few weeks when Old Man Singleton
- dropped in one evening—yes, sir, Old Lemuel Singleton himself. He
- came to see the butler's mother, Mrs. Hodgkins. He had known her a good
- many years before, when he was wearing those red mittens and sawing wood
- up in that New England town and she was somebody's Irish cook. And he had
- run across her again, after he became a millionaire, down here in New York
- City. He was tickled to see her, and he didn't care a darn if she was Jake
- Hergsheimer's housekeeper. She could cook cabbage and kale better than any
- one else in the world, and he used to come and sit with her, and talk
- about that little old town up there, and indulge in his favorite
- dissipation.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Old Man Singleton has had what you call the social entrée in New York for
- a good many years; for so long that some of his children, and all his
- grandchildren, were born with it. But he never took it very seriously
- himself. He has been an in-and-outer, you might say. If he saw Mrs.
- Hodgkins around Jake's house, he would call her Mary and ask her how folks
- were up home in front of Jake and his wife and a whole bunch of guests,
- just as soon as not.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And his sons and his daughters and his grandchildren never could get him
- out of those ways; he always was bull-headed about doing what he pleased,
- so Mrs. Hodgkins told me, and he always will be. And the old lady liked to
- see him and chin with him and cook for him; and believe me, she was some
- cook when she set herself to it. Not merely kale, but everything. She
- didn't cook for the Hergsheimers—they had a chef for that—but
- they missed it by not having her. Victuals was old Mary's middle name, and
- she could rustle up some of the best grub you ever threw your lip over.
- </p>
- <p>
- “At first, Old Man Singleton and Mrs. Hodgkins didn't mix much with us
- younger folks when we pulled a party. It wasn't that we were too
- aristocratic for them, for off duty, as I said before, butlers and other
- swells can be as easy and jolly as common people. But they seemed too
- antiquated, if you get me; they were living too much in the past.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And then, one night, I discovered what Old Man Singleton's fad was—kale.
- Money. Big money. Big money on his person. It was this way: Larry and I
- wanted to go downtown and have a little fun, but neither of us had any
- cash in hand. Larry had a check for one hundred and fifty dollars which
- Jake Hergsheimer had sent him, but all the tradesmen we knew were closed
- at that hour, and there wasn't any way to cash it, unless Old Man
- Singleton could.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Mr. Singleton,' says Larry to the old man, who was sitting down to a
- mess of pork and kale with Mrs. Hodgkins, 'maybe you can cash this for
- me.' And he handed him the check.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The old man stopped eating and put his glasses on and pulled a billfolder
- out of his pocket, with a kind of pleased smile on his face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Let me see,' he says, taking out the bills, and running them over with
- his fingers; 'let me see.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “I nearly dropped dead. There wasn't a bill in there of lower denomination
- than one thousand dollars; and most of them were ten-thousand-dol-lar
- bills.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'No, Larry,' says the old man, 'I'm afraid I can't, afraid I can't—haven't
- got the change.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “And while we stood there and looked, he smoothed and patted those bills,
- and folded and refolded them, and then put them back into his pocket, and
- patted the pocket.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Mary,' he says to the old woman with a grin, 'that's quite a lot of
- money for little Lem Singleton to be carrying around in his pocket, isn't
- it?' “'It is that, Lemuel,' said the old lady, 'and I should think you'd
- be afraid of leaving it out of the bank.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Well, Mary,' says the old man, 'I kind o' like to have it around me all
- the time—uh—huh! a little bit where I can put my hands on it,
- all the time. I used to carry gold; but I gave that up; it's too heavy,
- for what it's worth. But I like it, Mary; I used to look at that gold and
- say to myself, “Well, there's one thing you got, Lem Singleton, they never
- thought you'd get when you left home! And they aren't going to take it
- away from you, either!” It was a long time before I could make paper seem
- as real to me as gold. But it does now.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “And what does the old bird do but take it out of his pocket again and
- crinkle it through his fingers and smooth it out again and pet it and do
- everything but kiss it. Larry and I stood looking at him with our eyes
- sticking out, and he looked at us and laughed. It came to me all of a
- sudden that he liked to come where we servants were because he could pull
- that kind of thing in front of us, but that he was sort of lost among the
- swell-society bunch because he didn't dare pull it there and didn't feel
- so rich among them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'My God, Larry,' I said, when we were outside the house, 'did you notice
- how much kale the old man had there?'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Uh-huh,' said Larry. 'Mother always cooks a lot for him.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Wake up, Stupid,' I said. 'I don't mean cabbage. I mean money. There
- must have been nearly two hundred thousand dollars in that roll!'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'He always has around one hundred thousand dollars on him, at least,'
- says Larry. 'And I've seen him flash as high as a quarter of a million.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Well,' I says, 'something ought to be done about it.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'What do you mean, Ed?' says he.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Oh, nothing,' I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We walked over to get the L train downtown, saying nothing, and then
- finally Larry remarked: “'Electricity is a great thing, Ed.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'I never said it wasn't,' says I.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'It's a great thing,' says Larry, 'but when you sit on it, sit on it
- right. For instance, I'd a darned sight rather sit in one of these
- electric trains than in that electric chair up at Sing Sing.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Who said anything about an electric chair?' I asked him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Nobody said anything,' says Larry, 'but you're thinking so darned loud I
- can get you.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Piffle, peanuts and petrification,' I said. 'Take care of your own
- thoughts, and I'll skim the fat off of mine myself.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, as I said, after that we got better acquainted, the old man and I.
- I paid more attention to him. He interested me more. I've always been
- interested in science of all kinds, and the year I spent in Jake
- Hergsheimer's house I cut the leaves of a lot of books in his library and
- gave them the once over. I was always interested in psychology, even
- before the word got to be a headliner in the Sunday supplements, and I
- took a good deal of pleasure that winter trying to get inside of Old Man
- Singleton's mind. I must say, I never got very far in, at that. My general
- conclusion at the end is what it was at the beginning—his fad is
- kale.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And he loved to show it, you could see that. Not that he pulled it every
- time he happened to be at one of our parties. Often he would drop in that
- winter from some swell social event at one of the big houses uptown, where
- he had been a guest, and eat some of old Mary's chow, and never intimate
- by word or look that he had all that kale on him. And then again he'd come
- among us, diked out in the soup and fish, and flash the roll, for no other
- reason that I know except he enjoyed seeing us get the blind staggers,
- which we always did. And then he'd fuss with it and pet it and go into a
- dream over it, and wake up again and grin and talk about life with old
- Mary. And they agreed about life; you never heard two more moral persons
- exchange views. It was sometimes as good as a Sunday-school to listen to
- them for half an hour.
- </p>
- <p>
- “One night, when they had been gassing for a while, they sort of got my
- goat, and I said to him:
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Mr. Singleton, does it ever strike you as a little peculiar that you
- should have so much money and so many other people, such as myself, none
- at all?'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'No, Ed,' he says. 'No, it doesn't. That's the Lord's way, Ed! Money is
- given as a sacred trust by the Lord to them that are best fitted to have
- and to hold.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Meaning,' I asked him, 'that if you were ever to let loose of any of it,
- it might work harm in the world?'
- </p>
- <p>
- “He chewed over that for quite a while, as if he saw something personal in
- it, and he gave me a ten-dollar bill for a Christmas present. He isn't as
- stingy as some people say he is; he just looks so stingy that if he was
- the most liberal man on earth he would get the reputation of being stingy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The lady's maid that I used to go to the opera with quit me a little
- while after Christmas. She and I were walking around the promenade between
- the acts one night at the Metropolitan and Larry was with us, when a
- fellow stopped Larry and spoke to him. I could see the guy looking at the
- girl and me as he and Larry talked. Later, Larry told me that it was one
- of Jake Hergsheimer's friends, and he had been a little bit surprised to
- see Larry at the opera all diked out, and he had wanted to know who the
- girl was.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, anyhow, she never went to the opera with me after that; but a few
- weeks later I saw her at a cabaret with Jake's friend. It was a grief to
- me; but I got into some real trouble, or let it get into me, about the
- same time, and that helped take the sting off. I had once been married—but
- there's no use going into all that. Anyhow, when the marriage kind o' wore
- off, my own folks took my wife's side of the case and she went to live
- with them. My old dad was sick, and they needed money, and my wife wrote
- to me that she was willing to let bygones be bygones and accept some money
- from me, and that my parents felt the same way, and there was a kid, too,
- that my folks were bringing up.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, I was desperate for some way to get hold of some cash and send to
- them. In the end, I took one of Jake Hergsheimer's silver vases and hocked
- it and sent the money, and got it out of hock two or three months later;
- but in the meantime there was a spell when I was so hard pressed it looked
- to me like I would actually have to do something dishonest to get that
- money.
- </p>
- <p>
- “One night, before Jake Hergsheimer came to my rescue and lent me that
- silver vase, if you want to call it that, I was sitting alone in the house
- thinking what a failure in life I was, and how rotten it was to have a
- wife and kid and parents all set against me, and drinking some of Jake's
- good booze, and getting more and more low in my mind, when there came a
- ring at the front doorbell. The butler was out, and old Mary was asleep
- way up in the top of the house, at the back, and wouldn't hear.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'I'll bet,' I said to myself, 'that's Old Man Singleton nosing around for
- his cabbage.' And I made up my mind I wouldn't let him in—he could
- ring till he froze to death on the front steps, and I wouldn't. It was a
- blustery, snowy January night, with new snow over the old ice underneath,
- and I says to myself, 'It's a wonder the old coot don't slip down and bust
- some of those big New England bones of his. And I wouldn't care much if he
- did.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “But he kept on ringing, and finally I thought I'd better go and let him
- in. I didn't have any ulterior notions when I went up the stairs from the
- servants' dining room and made for the front door. But the minute I
- clapped eyes on him I thought of all that kale in his pocket.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I opened the front door, but outside of that was an iron grille. It had a
- number of fastenings, but the final one was a short, heavy iron bar that
- lay in two sockets, one on each side of the opening.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I lifted the bar and swung the grille open.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Ha! Hum!' said he, and sneezed. 'It's you, Ed, is it?'
- </p>
- <p>
- “And, snuffing and sneezing, he passed in front of me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And as he passed by me that bar said something to my hand. And the hand
- raised up. It wasn't any of my doings, it was all the hand and the bar. It
- raised up, that bar did, right behind the old man's head. He stopped just
- outside the front door and flapped his big bony feet on a rug that was
- there, to get the snow off his shoes, and while he flapped and sneezed
- that bar was right over the old man's brain-box.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Well,' I said to myself, 'here is your chance to be an honest man and a
- prosperous man, reunited with your wife and your kid and your folks at
- home, and not have to borrow anything from Jake Hergsheimer's collection—just
- one little tap on the old man's head, and down he goes, and he's got
- anywhere from one hundred thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand
- dollars in his clothes.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Yes,' said myself to me, 'one little tap, and maybe you kill him. What
- then? The electric chair, huh?'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Hell!' I said to myself. 'Take a chance! The old man has so much money
- that what he has in his pocket means nothing to him one way or another.
- Larry's gone till morning, and the old woman won't wake for a long time.
- It means a little bit of a headache for Old Lemuel here, and it means your
- chance to lead an honest life hereafter and be a useful citizen and take
- care of those you have been neglecting.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Yes,' said myself to me, 'it's more moral to do it, and make your life
- over, but you never have been one for morality in the past. Besides, you'd
- kill him.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I might have killed him, boss. I wasn't sure of it then, but I've
- been sure of it since then. I was that strung up that I would have hit too
- hard.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And yet, I might <i>not</i> have done so! I might have hit him just
- enough to put him out and make my get-away, and I might have led an honest
- life since then.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But at the moment I couldn't do it. I saw, all of a sudden, something
- funny. I saw the old man stamping his feet and getting the snow off, and I
- thought of him as a dead man, and I says to myself: 'How damned funny for
- a dead man to stamp the snow off his feet!' And I laughed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Heh? Heh? What did you say, Ed?' says the old man, and turns around.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I dropped the iron bar to my side, and that dead man came up out of the
- grave.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Nothing, Mr. Singleton,' I said. 'I was just going to say, go on in, and
- I'll get a brush and clean the snow off of you.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “I said I saved his life from a man one time. Well, I was the man I saved
- his life from.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He went on in, and I barred the grille and locked the door, and we went
- on down to the dining room. I was shaking, and still I wasn't easy in my
- mind. I told him there wasn't anybody home but me, and he said he'd take a
- drop of Jake's brandy. And while I was opening a bottle of it for him,
- what does he do but pull out that billfolder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'For God's sake, Mr. Singleton,' I said, turning weak and sitting down in
- a chair all of a sudden, 'put that money up.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “He sat there and sipped his brandy and talked, but I didn't hear what he
- was saying. I just looked at him, and kept saying to myself, should I have
- done it? Or should I have let him go by?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Boss, that was nearly ten years ago, and I've been asking myself that
- question from time to time ever since. Should I have done it? Was it moral
- to refuse that chance to make my life over again? You know me, kid. You
- know some of me, at least. You know I don't hold much by morals. If I was
- to tell you how I got that bullet under my kneecap, you'd know me better
- than <i>you</i> do. If I had hit him just right and made my get-away, I
- would have led a different life.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And I wouldn't now be 'waiting for my death sentence. For that's
- practically what this prohibition thing means to me. I can't work at
- anything but this. And this is through with. And I'm through with. I'm a
- bum from now on. There's no use kidding myself; I'm a bum.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And yet, often, I'm glad I didn't do it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Ed brooded in silence for a while.
- </p>
- <p>
- And then I said, “It's strange he didn't know you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's been ten years,” said Ed, “and you saw that the old man's got to the
- doddering stage. He likely wouldn't know his own children if he didn't see
- them every day or two.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose,” I said, “that the old man feels he is ending his days in a
- very satisfactory manner—the national prohibition thing triumphant,
- and all that.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “How do you mean?” asked Ed.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't you know?” I said. “Why, Old Man Singleton, it is said, helped to
- finance the fight, and used his money and his influence on other big money
- all over the country in getting next to doubtful politicians and putting
- the thing through the state legislatures. I don't mean there was anything
- crooked about it anywhere, but he was one of the bunch that represented
- organized power, and put the stunt across while the liquor interests were
- still saying national prohibition could never come.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The hell he did!” said Ed. “I didn't know he was mixed up with it. I
- never saw him take a drink, now that I remember, except the brandy on the
- night I saved his life.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Old Man Singleton,” I said, “is credited with having had more to do with
- it than any other one person, by those who are on the inside.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The old coot!” said Ed. And then added wryly: “I hope he gets as stiff in
- his knee joint as I am and lives forever! He's made a bum of me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was three or four weeks after my talk with Ed that I read in the papers
- of a peculiar accident of which Old Man Singleton had been the victim. A
- head of cabbage, he said, had fallen out of a tree and hit him on his own
- head one evening as he was walking alone in Central Park. He had been
- dazed by the blow for a moment; and when he regained his feet a
- considerable sum of money which he had been carrying was gone. He was sure
- that he had been struck by a head of cabbage, for a head of cabbage lay on
- the pathway near him when he was helped to his feet. He did not pretend to
- be able to say how a head of cabbage could have gotten into one of the
- park trees.
- </p>
- <p>
- The police discredited his story, pointing out that likely the old man,
- who was near-sighted, had blundered against a tree in the dusk and struck
- his head. The head of cabbage, they told the reporters, could have had
- nothing to do with it; it could not have come into contact with his head
- at all, unless, indeed, some one had put it into a sack and swung it on
- him like a bludgeon; and this, the police said, was too absurd to be
- considered. For why should a crook use a head of cabbage, when the same
- results might have been attained with the more usual blackjack, stick or
- fist?
- </p>
- <p>
- Old Man Singleton was not badly hurt; and as regarded the loss of the
- money, he never said, nor did his family ever say, just how large the sum
- was. Mr. Singleton had the vague impression that after the cabbage fell
- out of the tree and hit him he had been helped to his feet by a man who
- limped and who said to him: “Kale is given to them that can best use it,
- to have and to hold.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not accuse this person, who disappeared before he was thoroughly
- himself again, of having found the money which had evidently dropped from
- his pocket when the cabbage fell from the tree and hit him, but he was
- suspicious, and he thought the police were taking the matter too lightly;
- he criticized the police in an interview given to the papers. The police
- pointed out the irrelevance of the alleged words of the alleged person who
- limped, and intimated that Mr. Singleton was irrational and should be kept
- at home evenings; as far as they were concerned, the incident was closed.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I got another slant at it, as Ed might have said. Last winter I was
- talking at my club with a friend just back from Cuba, where the rum is red
- and joy is unconfined.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I met a friend of yours,” he said, “by the name of Ed down there, who is
- running a barroom and seems to be quite a sport in his way. Sent his
- regards to you. Must have made it pay—seems to have all kinds of
- money. Named his barroom 'The Second Thought.' Asked him why. He said
- nobody knew but himself, and he was keeping it a secret—though you
- might guess. Wants you to come down. Sent you a message. Let's see: what
- was it? Oh, yes! Cryptic! Very cryptic! Wrote it down—here it is: '<i>Kale!
- Kale! The gang's all here</i>.' Make anything out of it? I can't.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I could, though I didn't tell him what. But I shall not visit Ed in Cuba;
- I consider him an immoral person.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0008" id="link2H_4_0008"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VII—Bubbles
- </h2>
- <h3>
- I
- </h3>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>ommy Hawkins was
- not so sober that you could tell it on him. Certainly his friend Jack
- Dobson, calling on him one dreary winter evening—an evening of that
- winter before John Barleycorn cried maudlin tears into his glass and
- kissed America good-by—would never have guessed it from Tommy's
- occupation. Presenting himself at Tommy's door and finding it unlocked,
- Jack had gone on in. A languid splashing guided him to the bathroom. In
- the tub sat Tommy with the water up to his shoulders, blowing soap
- bubbles.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You darned old fool!” said Jack. “Aren't you ever going to grow up,
- Tommy?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nope,” said Tommy placidly. “What for?” Sitting on a chair close by the
- bathtub was a shallow silver dish with a cake of soap and some
- reddish-colored suds in it. Tommy had bought the dish to give some one for
- a wedding present, and then had forgotten to send it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What makes the suds red?” asked Jack.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I poured a lot of that nose-and-throat spray stuff into it,” explained
- Tommy. “It makes them prettier. Look!”
- </p>
- <p>
- As a pipe he was using a piece of hollow brass curtain rod six or eight
- inches long and of about the diameter of a fat lead pencil. He soused this
- thing in the reddish suds and manufactured a bubble with elaborate care.
- With a graceful gesture of his wet arm he gently waved the rod until the
- bubble detached itself. It floated in the air for a moment, and the thin,
- reddish integument caught the light from the electric globe and gave forth
- a brief answering flash as of fire. Then the bubble suddenly and
- whimsically dashed itself against the wall and was no more, leaving a
- faint, damp, reddish trace upon the white plaster.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Air current caught it,” elucidated Tommy with the air of a circus
- proprietor showing off pet elephants. In his most facetious moments Tommy
- was wont to hide his childish soul beneath an exterior of serious dignity.
- “This old dump is full of air currents. They come in round the windows,
- come in round the doors, come right in through the walls. Damned annoying,
- too, for a scientist making experiments with bubbles—starts a bubble
- and never knows which way it's going to jump. I'm gonna complain to the
- management of this hotel.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You're going to come out of that bathtub and get into your duds,” said
- Jack. “That water's getting cool now, and between cold water and air
- currents you'll have pneumonia the first thing you know—you poor
- silly fish, you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Speaking of fish,” said Tommy elliptically, “there's a bottle of
- cocktails on the mantel in the room there. Forgot it for a moment. Don't
- want to be inhospitable, but don't drink all of it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's all gone,” said Dobson a moment later.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So?” said Tommy in surprise. “That's the way with cocktails. Here one
- minute and gone the next—like bubbles. Bubbles! Life's like that,
- Jack!” He made another bubble with great solemnity, watched it float and
- dart and burst. “Pouf!” he said. “Bubbles! Bubbles! Life's like that!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You're an original philosopher, you are,” said Jack, seizing him by the
- shoulders. “You're about as original as a valentine. Douse yourself with
- cold water and rub yourself down and dress. Come out of it, kid, or you'll
- be sick.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “If I get sick,” said Tommy, obeying, nevertheless, “I won't have to go to
- work to-morrow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why aren't you working to-day?” asked his friend, working on him with a
- coarse towel.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Day off,” said Tommy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Day off!” rejoined Dobson. “Since when has the <i>Morning Despatch</i>
- been giving two days off a week to its reporters? You had your day off
- Tuesday, and this is Thursday.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is it?” said Tommy. “I always get Tuesday and Thursday mixed. Both begin
- with a T. Hey, Jack, how's that? Both begin with a T! End with a tea
- party! Good line, hey, Jack? Tuesday and Thursday both begin with a T and
- end with a tea party. I'm gonna write a play round that, Jack. Broadway
- success! Letters a foot high! Royalties for both of us! I won't forget
- you, Jack! You suggested the idea for the plot, Jack. Drag you out in
- front of the curtain with me when I make my speech. 'Author! Author!'
- yells the crowd. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' says I, 'here is the obscure and
- humble person who set in motion the train of thought that led to my
- writing this masterpiece. Such as he is, I introduce him to you.'”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shut up!” said Jack, and continued to lacerate Tommy's hide with the
- rough towel. “Hold still! Now go and get into your clothes.” And as Tommy
- began to dress he regarded that person darkly. “You're a brilliant wag,
- you are! It's a shame the way the copy readers down on the <i>Despatch</i>
- keep your best things out of print, you splattering supermudhen of
- journalism, you! You'll wake up some morning without any more job than a
- kaiser.” And as Tommy threaded himself into the mystic maze of his
- garments Mr. Dobson continued to look at him and mutter disgustedly,
- “Bubbles!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Not that he was afraid that Tommy would actually lose his job. If it had
- been possible for Tommy to lose his job that must have happened years
- before. But Tommy wrote a certain joyous type of story better than any
- other person in New York, and his facetiousness got him out of as many
- scrapes as it got him into. He was thirty years old. At ninety he would
- still be experimenting with the visible world in a spirit of random
- eagerness, joshing everything in it, including himself. He looked exactly
- like the young gentleman pictured in a widely disseminated collar
- advertisement. He enjoyed looking that way, and occasionally he enjoyed
- talking as if he were exactly that kind of person. He loved to turn his
- ironic levity against the character he seemed to be, much as the mad wags
- who grace the column of F. P. A. delight in getting their sayings across
- accompanied by a gentle satirical fillip at all mad waggery.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Speaking of bubbles,” he suddenly chuckled as he carefully adjusted his
- tie in the collar that looked exactly like the one in the advertisement,
- “there's an old party in the next room that takes 'em more seriously than
- you do, Jack.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The old downtown hotel in which Tommy lived had once been a known and
- noted hostelry, and persons from Plumville, Pennsylvania, Griffin,
- Georgia, and Galva, Illinois, still stopped there when in New York,
- because their fathers and mothers had stopped there on their wedding
- journeys perhaps. It was not such a very long way from the Eden Musee,
- when there was an Eden Musee. Tommy's room had once formed part of a
- suite. The bathroom which adjoined it had belonged jointly to another room
- in the suite. But now these two rooms were always let separately. Still,
- however, the bathroom was a joint affair. When Tommy wished to bathe he
- must first insure privacy by hooking on the inside the door that led into
- the bathroom from the chamber beyond.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Old party in the next room?” questioned Jack.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Uh-huh,” said Tommy, who had benefited by his cold sluicing and his
- rubdown. “I gave him a few bubbles for his very own—through the
- keyhole into his room, you know. Poked that brass rod through and blew the
- bubble in his room. Detached it with a little jerk and let it float.
- Seemed more sociable, you know, to let him in on the fun. Never be stingy
- with your pleasures, Jack. Shows a mean spirit—a mean soul. Why not
- cheer the old party up with soap bubbles? Cost little, bubbles do. More
- than likely he's a stranger in New York. Unfriendly city, he thinks. Big
- city. Nobody thinks of him. Nobody cares for him. Away from home. Winter
- day. Melancholy. Well, I say, give him a bubble now and then. Shows some
- one is thinking of him. Shows the world isn't so thoughtless and gloomy
- after all. Neighborly sort of thing to do, Jack. Makes him think of his
- youth—home—mother's knee—all that kind of thing, Jack.
- Cheers him up. Sat in the tub there and got to thinking of him. Almost
- cried, Jack, when I thought how lonely the old man must be—got one
- of these old man's voices. Whiskers. Whiskers deduced from the voice. So I
- climbed out of the tub every ten or fifteen minutes all afternoon and gave
- the old man a bubble. Rain outside—fog, sleet. Dark indoors. Old man
- sits and thinks nobody loves him. Along comes a bubble. Old man gets
- happy. Laughs. Remembers his infancy. Skies clear. You think I'm a selfish
- person, Jack? I'm not. I'm a Samaritan. Where will we eat?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are a darned fool,” said Jack. “You say he took them seriously? What
- do you mean? Did he like 'em?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Couldn't quite make out,” said Tommy. “But they moved him. Gasped every
- now and then. Think he prayed. Emotion, Jack. Probably made him think of
- boyhood's happy days down on the farm. Heard him talking to himself. Think
- he cried. Went to bed anyhow with his clothes on and pulled the covers
- over his head. Looked through the keyhole and saw that. Gray whiskers
- sticking up, and that's all. Deduced the whiskers from the voice, Jack.
- Let's give the old party a couple more bubbles and then go eat. It's been
- an hour since he's had one. Thinks I'm forgetting him, no doubt.”
- </p>
- <p>
- So they gave the old man a couple of bubbles, poking the brass rod through
- the keyhole of the door.
- </p>
- <p>
- The result was startling and unexpected. First there came a gasp from the
- other room, a sort of whistling release of the breath, and an instant
- later a high, whining, nasal voice.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, God! God! Again! You meant it, then, God! You meant it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The two young men started back and looked at each other in wonderment.
- There was such a quivering agony, such an utter groveling terror in this
- voice from the room beyond that they were daunted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What's eating him?” asked Dobson, instinctively dropping his tones to a
- whisper.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't know,” said Tommy, temporarily subdued. “Sounds like that last
- one shell-shocked him when it exploded, doesn't it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- But Tommy was subdued only for a moment.
- </p>
- <p>
- As they went out into the corridor he giggled and remarked, “Told you he
- took 'em seriously, Jack.”
- </p>
- <h3>
- II
- </h3>
- <p>
- “Seriously” was a word scarcely strong enough for the way in which the old
- party in the room beyond had taken it, though he had not, in fact, seen
- the bubble. He had only seen a puff of smoke coming apparently from
- nowhere, originating in the air itself, as it seemed to him, manifesting
- itself, materializing itself out of nothing, and floating in front of the
- one eye which was peeping fearfully out of the huddled bedclothing which
- he had drawn over himself. He had lain quaking on the bed, waiting for
- this puff of smoke for an hour or more, hoping against hope that it would
- not come, praying and muttering, knotting his bony hands in the whiskers
- that Tommy had seen sticking up from the coverings, twisting convulsively.
- </p>
- <p>
- Tommy had whimsically filled the bubble, as he blew it, with smoke from
- his cigarette. He had in like manner, throughout the afternoon and
- early-evening, filled all the bubbles that he had given the old man with
- cigarette or pipe smoke. The old party had not been bowled over by
- anything in Tommy's tobacco. He had not noticed that the smoke was tobacco
- smoke, for he had been smoking a pipe himself the greater part of the day,
- and had not aired out the room. It was neither bubbles nor tobacco that
- had flicked a raw spot on his soul. It was smoke.
- </p>
- <h3>
- III
- </h3>
- <p>
- Bubbles! They seemed to be in Tommy's brain. Perhaps it was the
- association of ideas that made him think of champagne. At any rate he
- declared that he must have some, and vetoed his friend's suggestion that
- they dine—as they frequently did—at one of the little Italian
- table d'hote places in Greenwich Village.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You're a bubble and I'm a bubble and the world is a bubble,” Tommy was
- saying a little later as he watched the gas stirring in his golden drink.
- </p>
- <p>
- They had gone to the genial old Brevoort, which was—but why tell
- persons who missed the Brevoort in its mellower days what they missed, and
- why cause anguished yearnings in the bosoms of those who knew it well?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tommy,” said his friend, “don't, if you love me, hand out any more of
- your jejune poeticism or musical-comedy philosophy. I'll agree with you
- that the world is a bubble for the sake of argument, if you'll change the
- record. I want to eat, and nothing interferes with my pleasure in a meal
- so much as this line of pseudocerebration that you seem to have adopted
- lately.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bubbles seem trivial things, Jack,” went on Tommy, altogether
- unperturbed. “But I have a theory that there aren't any trivial things. I
- like to think of the world balancing itself on a trivial thing. Look at
- the Kaiser, for instance. A madman. Well, let's say there's been a blood
- clot in his brain for years—a little trivial thing the size of a pin
- point, Jack. It hooks up with the wrong brain cell; it gets into the wrong
- channel, and—pouf! The world goes to war. A thousand million people
- are affected by it—by that one little clot of blood no bigger than a
- pin point that gets into the wrong channel. An atom! A planet balanced on
- an atom! A star pivoting on a molecule!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Have some soup,” said his friend.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Bubbles! Bubbles and butterflies!” continued Tommy. “Some day, Jack, I'm
- going to write a play in which a butterfly's wing brushes over an empire.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No, you're not,” said Jack. “You're just going to talk about it and think
- you're writing it and peddle the idea round to everybody you know, and
- then finally some wise guy is going to grab it off and really write it.
- You've been going to write a play ever since I knew you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, I am; I'm really going to write that play.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, Tommy,” said Jack, looking round the chattering dining room, “this
- is a hell of a place to do it in!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Meaning, of course,” said Tommy serenely, “that it takes more than a
- butterfly to write a play about a butterfly.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You get me,” said his friend. And then after a pause he went on with
- sincerity in his manner: “You know I think you could write the play,
- Tommy. But unless you get to work on some of your ideas pretty soon, and
- buckle down to them in earnest, other people will continue to write your
- plays—and you will continue to josh them and yourself, and your
- friends will continue to think that you could write better plays if you
- would only do it. People aren't going to take you seriously, Tommy, till
- you begin to take yourself a little seriously. Why, you poor, futile,
- silly, misguided, dear old mutt, you! You don't even have sense enough—you
- don't have the moral continuity, if you follow me—to stay sore at a
- man that does you dirt! Now, do you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I don't know about that,” said Tommy a little more seriously.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well now, do you?” persisted his friend. “I don't say it's good Christian
- doctrine not to forgive people. It isn't. But I've seen people put things
- across on you, Tommy, and seen you laugh it off and let 'em be friends
- with you again inside of six weeks. I couldn't do it, and nine-tenths of
- the fellows we know couldn't do it; and in the way you do it it shouldn't
- be done. You should at least remember, even if you do forgive; remember
- well enough not to get bit by the same dog again. With you, old kid, it's
- all a part of your being a butterfly and a bubble. It's no particular
- virtue in you. I wouldn't talk to you like a Dutch uncle if I didn't think
- you had it in you to make good. But you've got to be prodded.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's one fellow that did me dirt,” said Tommy musingly, “that I've
- never taken to my bosom again.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What did you do to him?” asked his friend. “Beat him to death with a
- butterfly's wing, Tommy, or blow him out of existence with a soap bubble?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I've never done anything to him,” said Tommy soberly. “And I don't think
- I ever would do anything to him. I just remember, that's all. If he ever
- gets his come-uppance, as they say in the rural districts, it won't be
- through any act of mine. Let life take revenge for me. I never will.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose you're right,” said Dobson. “But who was this guy? And what did
- he do to you?”
- </p>
- <h3>
- IV
- </h3>
- <p>
- “He was—and is—my uncle,” said Tommy, “and he did about
- everything to me. Listen! You think I do nothing but flitter, flutter,
- frivol and flivver! And you may be right, and maybe I never will do
- anything else. Maybe I never will be anything but a kid.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was young when I was born. No, that's not one of my silly lines, Jack.
- I mean it seriously. I was young when I was born. I was born with a jolly
- disposition. But this uncle of mine took it out of me. I'll say he did!
- The reason I'm such a kid now, Jack, is because I had to grow up when I
- was about five years old, and I stayed grown up until I was seventeen or
- eighteen. I never had a chance to be a boy. If I showed any desire to be
- it was knocked out of me on the spot. And if I live two hundred years, and
- stay nineteen years old all that time, Jack, I won't any more than make up
- for the childhood I missed—that was stolen from me. Frivol? I could
- frivol a thousand years and not dull my appetite. I want froth, Jack:
- froth and bubbles!
- </p>
- <p>
- “This old uncle of mine—he wasn't so old in years when I first knew
- him, but in his soul he was as old as the overseers who whipped the slaves
- that built Cheops' pyramid, and as sandy and as flinty—hated me as
- soon as he saw me. He hated me before he saw me. He would have hated me if
- he had never seen me, because I was young and happy and careless.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was that, when I went to live with him—young and happy and
- careless. I was five years old. He was my father's brother, Uncle Ezra
- was, and he beat my father out of money in his dirty, underhanded way. Oh,
- nothing illegal! At least, I suppose not. Uncle Ezra was too cautious to
- do anything that might be found out on him. There was nothing that my
- mother could prove, at any rate, and my father had been careless and had
- trusted him. When my father died my mother was ill. He gave us a home,
- Uncle Ezra did. She had to live somewhere; she had to have a roof over her
- head and attention of some sort. She had no near relations, and I had to
- be looked after.
- </p>
- <p>
- “So she and I went into his house to live. It was to be temporary. We were
- to move as soon as she got better. But she did not live long. I don't
- remember her definitely as she was before we went to live with Uncle Ezra.
- I can only see her as she lay on a bed in a dark room before she died. It
- was a large wooden bed, with wooden slats and a straw mattress. I can see
- myself sitting on a chair by the head of the bed and talking to her. My
- feet did not reach to the floor by any means; they only reached to the
- chair rungs. I can't remember what she said or what I said. All I remember
- of her is that she had very bright eyes and that her arms were thin. I
- remember her arms, but not her face, except the eyes. I suppose she used
- to reach her arms out to me. I think she must have been jolly at one time,
- too. There is a vague feeling, a remembrance, that before we went to Uncle
- Ezra's she was jolly, and that she and I laughed and played together in
- some place where there was red-clover bloom.
- </p>
- <p>
- “One day when I was siting on the chair, the door opened and Uncle Ezra
- came in. There was some man with him that was, I suppose, a doctor. I can
- recall Uncle Ezra's false grin and the way he put his hand on my head—to
- impress the doctor, I suppose—and the way I pulled away from him.
- For I felt that he disliked me, and I feared and hated him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, Uncle Ezra gave us a home. I don't know how much you know about the
- rural districts, Jack. But when an Uncle Ezra in a country town gives some
- one a home he acquires merit. This was a little town in Pennsylvania that
- Pm talking about, and Uncle Ezra was a prominent citizen—deacon in
- the church and all that sort of thing. Truly rural drama stuff, Jack, but
- I can't help that—it's true. Uncle Ezra had a reputation for being
- stingy and mean. Giving us a home was a good card for him to play. My
- mother had a little money, and he stole that, too, when she died.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I suppose he stole it legally. I don't know. It wasn't much. No one had
- any particular interest in looking out for me, and nobody would want to
- start anything in opposition to Uncle Ezra in that town if it could be
- helped anyhow. He didn't have the whole village and the whole of the
- farming country round about sewed up, all by himself, but he was one of
- the little group that did. There's a gang like that in every country town,
- I imagine. He was one of four or five big ducks in that little puddle—lent
- money, took mortgages and all that kind of thing you read about. I don't
- know how much he is worth now, counting what he has been stealing all his
- life. But it can't be a staggering sum. He's too cowardly to plunge or
- take a long chance. He steals and saves and grinds in a little way. He is
- too mean and small and blind and limited in his intelligence to be a big,
- really successful crook, such as you will find in New York City.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When my mother died, of course, I stayed with Uncle Ezra. I suppose
- everybody said how good it was of him to keep me, and that it showed a
- soft and kindly spot in his nature after all, and that he couldn't be so
- hard as he had the name of being. But I don't see what else could have
- been done with me, unless he had taken me out and dropped me in the mill
- pond like a blind cat. Sometimes I used to wish he had done that.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It isn't hard to put a five-year-old kid in the wrong, so as to make it
- appear—even to the child himself—that he is bad and
- disobedient. Uncle Ezra began that way with me. I'm not going into
- details. This isn't a howl; it's merely an explanation. But he persecuted
- me in every way. He put me to work before I should have known what work
- was—work too hard for me. He deviled me and he beat me, he clothed
- me like a beggar and he fed me like a dog, he robbed me of childhood and
- of boyhood. I won't go over the whole thing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I never had decent shoes, or a hat that wasn't a rag, and I never went to
- kid parties or anything, or even owned so much as an air rifle of my own.
- The only pair of skates I ever had, Jack, I made for myself out of two old
- files, with the help of the village blacksmith—and I got licked for
- that. Uncle Ezra said I had stolen the files and the straps. They belonged
- to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But there's one thing I remember with more of anger than any other. He
- used to make me kneel down and pray every night before I went to bed, in
- his presence; and sometimes he would pray with me. He was a deacon in the
- church. There are plenty of them on the square—likely most of them
- are. But this one was the kind you used to see in the old-fashioned
- melodramas. Truly rural stuff, Jack. He used to be quite a shark at prayer
- himself, Uncle Ezra did. I can remember how he looked when he prayed, with
- his eyes shut and his Adam's apple bobbing up and down and the sound
- whining through his nose.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The only person that was ever human to me was a woman I called Aunt
- Lizzie. I don't know really what relation she wras to me; a distant cousin
- of Uncle Ezra's, I think. She was half blind and she was deaf, and he
- bullied her and made her do all the housework. She was bent nearly double
- with drudgery. He had given her a home, too. She didn't dare be very good
- to me. He might find it out, and then we both would catch it. She baked me
- some apple dumplings once on one of my birthdays. I was nine years old.
- And he said she had stolen the apples and flour from him; that he had not
- ordered her to make any apple dumplings, and it was theft; and he made me
- pray for her, and made her pray for herself, and he prayed for both of us
- in family prayers every day for a week.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I was nearly eighteen when I ran away. I might have done it sooner, but I
- was small for my age, and I was cowed. I didn't dare to call my soul my
- own, and I had a reputation for being queer, too. For I used to grin and
- laugh at things no one else thought were funny—when Uncle Ezra
- wasn't round. I suppose people in that town thought it was odd that I
- could laugh at all. No one could understand how I had a laugh left in me.
- But when I was alone I used to laugh. I used to laugh at myself sometimes
- because I was so little and so queer. When I was seventeen I wasn't much
- bigger than a thirteen-year-old kid should be. I packed a lot of growing
- into the years between seventeen and twenty-one.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When I ran away Aunt Lizzie gave me eighty-seven cents, all in nickels
- and pennies, and there were two or three of those old-fashioned two-cent
- pieces in it, too, that she had had for God knows how long. It was all she
- had. I don't suppose he ever paid her anything at all, and the wonder was
- she had that much. I told her that when I got out into the world and made
- good I would come and get her, but she shivered all over with fright at
- the idea of daring to leave. I have sent her things from time to time in
- the last ten years—money, and dresses I have bought for her, and
- little things I thought she would like. But I don't know whether he let
- her have them or not I never got any letter from her at all. I don't even
- know whether she can write, to tell the truth, and she wouldn't dare get
- one of the neighbors to write for her. But if I ever make any real money,
- Jack, I am going to go and get her, whether she dares to come away or not.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, when I left, the thing I wanted to do was go to school. Uncle Ezra
- hadn't given me time to go to school much. But I tramped to a town where
- there was a little fresh-water college that had its own prep school
- attached, and I did the whole seven years of prep school and college in
- five years. You see, I had a lot of bounce in me. The minute I got away
- from Uncle Ezra the whole world brightened up for me. The clouds rolled by
- and life looked like one grand long joke, and I turned into a kid. I
- romped through that prep school and that college, and made my own living
- while I was doing it, and laughed all the time and loved the world and
- everything in it, and it came as easy to me as water comes to a duck. I
- came on down here to New York and was lucky enough to get a chance as a
- reporter, and I've been romping ever since.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't want to do anything but romp. Of course, I want to write some
- good stuff some day, but I want to keep romping while I write it, and I
- want it to be stuff that has a romp in it, too. You say I romp so much I'm
- never serious. Well, I do have some serious moments, too. I have a dream
- that keeps coming to me. I dream that I'm back in that little town, and
- that I'm Uncle Ezra's slave again, and that I can't get away.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sometimes the dream takes the form of Uncle Ezra coming here to New York
- to get me, and I know that I've got to go back with him to that place, and
- I wake up sweating and crying like an eight-year-old kid. If he ever
- really came it would put a crimp into me, Jack.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You say I'm a butterfly. And I say, yes, Jack, thank God I am! I used to
- be a grubworm, and now I'm a butterfly, praise heaven!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, that's the guy I hold the grudge against, and that's why I'm fool
- enough to rush into every pleasure I can find. I don't know that I'll ever
- change. And as for the man, I don't ever want to see him. I don't know
- that I'd ever do anything to him if I did—beat him to death with a
- butterfly's wing, or blow him up with a soap bubble, as you suggested. Let
- him alone. He'll punish himself. He is punished by being what he is. I
- wouldn't put a breath into the scale one way or the other—not even a
- puff of cigarette smoke.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He blew a breath of cigarette smoke luxuriously out of his nose as he
- finished, and then he remarked, “Let's go somewhere and dance.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nazimova is doing Ibsen uptown,” suggested Jack, “and I have a couple of
- tickets. Let's go and see Ibsen lb a little.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nope,” said Tommy. “Ibsen's got too much sense. I want something silly.
- Me for a cabaret, or some kind of a hop garden.”
- </p>
- <h3>
- V
- </h3>
- <p>
- But sometimes in this ironical world it happens that we have already
- beaten a man to death with a butterfly's wing, slain him with a bubble,
- sent him whirling into the hereafter on a puff of smoke, even as we are
- saying that such a thing is foreign to our thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- The old party in the room next to Tommy's at the hotel had arrived the day
- before, with an umbrella, a straw suitcase and a worried eye on either
- side his long, white, chalkish, pitted nose. He seemed chilly in spite of
- his large plum-colored overcoat, of a cut that has survived only in the
- rural districts. He wore a salient, assertive beard, that had once been
- sandy and was now almost white, but it was the only assertive thing about
- him. His manner was far from aggressive.
- </p>
- <p>
- An hour after he had been shown to his room he appeared at the desk again
- and inquired timidly of the clerk, “There's a fire near here?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Little blaze in the next block. Doesn't amount to anything,” said the
- clerk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I heard the—the engines,” said the guest apologetically.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Doesn't amount to anything,” said the clerk again. And then, “Nervous
- about fire?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The old party seemed startled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who? Me? Why should I be nervous about fire? No! No! No!” He beat a
- sudden retreat. “I was just asking—just asking,” he threw back over
- his shoulder.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Old duck's scared of fire and ashamed to own it,” mused the clerk,
- watching him out of the lobby.
- </p>
- <p>
- The old party went back to his room, and there one of the first things he
- saw was a copy of the Bible lying on the bureau. There is an organization
- which professes for its object the placing of a Bible in every hotel room
- in the land. The old party had his own Bible with him. As if reminded of
- it by the one on the bureau, he took it out of his suitcase and sat down
- and began to turn the leaves like a person familiar with the book—and
- like a person in need of comfort, as indeed he was.
- </p>
- <p>
- There was a text in Matthew that he sought—where was it? Somewhere
- in the first part of Matthew's gospel—ah, here it is: The twelfth
- chapter and the thirty-first verse:
- </p>
- <p>
- “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men....”
- </p>
- <p>
- There is a terrible reservation in the same verse. He kept his eyes from
- it, and read the first part over and over, forming the syllables with his
- lips, but not speaking aloud.
- </p>
- <p>
- “All manner of sin—all manner of sin———-”
- </p>
- <p>
- And then, as if no longer able to avoid it, he yielded his consciousness
- to the latter clause of the verse:
- </p>
- <p>
- “But the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men.”
- </p>
- <p>
- What was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost? Could what he had done be
- construed as that? Probably if one lied to God in his prayers, that was
- blasphemy against the Holy Ghost—one form of it. And had he been
- lying to God these last two weeks when he had said over and over again in
- his prayers that it was all a mistake? It hadn't been all a mistake, but
- the worst part of it had been a mistake.
- </p>
- <p>
- He went out for his dinner that evening, but he was in again before ten
- o'clock. He could not have slept well. At two o'clock in the morning he
- appeared in front of the desk.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had heard fire engines again.
- </p>
- <p>
- “See here,” said the night clerk, appraising him, as the day clerk had
- done, as a rube who had been seldom to the city and was nervous about
- fire, “you don't need to be worried. If anything should happen near here
- we'd get all the guests out in a jiffy.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The old party returned to his room. He was up early the next morning and
- down to breakfast before the dining room was open.
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not look as if he had had much rest. The morning hours he devoted
- to reading his Bible in his room. Perhaps he found comfort in it. At noon
- he seemed a bit more cheerful. He asked the clerk the way to the Eden
- Musee, and was surprised to learn that that place of amusement had been
- closed for a year or two. The clerk recommended a moving-picture house
- round the corner. But it had begun to rain and snow and sleet all
- together; the sky was dark and the wind was rising; the old party elected
- not to go out after all.
- </p>
- <p>
- He went back to his room once more, and his black fear and melancholy
- descended upon him again, and the old debate began to weave through his
- brain anew. For two weeks he had been fleeing from the debate and from
- himself. He had come to New York to get away from it, but it was no good.
- Just when he had made up his mind that God had forgiven him, and was
- experiencing a momentary respite, some new doubt would assail him and the
- agony would begin again.
- </p>
- <p>
- The old debate—he had burned the store, with the living quarters
- over it, to get the insurance money, after having removed a part of the
- insured goods, but he did not regard that as an overwhelming sin. It
- wasn't right, of course, in one way. And yet in another way it was merely
- sharp business practice, so he told himself. For a year before that, when
- one of his buildings had burned through accident, he had been forced to
- accept from the same insurance company less than was actually due him as a
- matter of equity. Therefore, to make money out of that company by a shrewd
- trick was in a way merely to get back his own again. It wasn't the sort of
- thing that a deacon in the church would care to have found out on him, of
- course. It was wrong in a sense. But it was the wrong that it had led to
- that worried him.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was the old woman's death that worried him. He hadn't meant to burn her
- to death, God knows! He hadn't known she was in the building.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had sent her on a week's visit to another town, to see a surprised
- cousin of his own, and it had been distinctly understood that she was not
- to return until Saturday. But some time on Friday evening she must have
- crept back home and gone to bed in her room. He had not known she was
- there.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I didn't know! I didn't know!”
- </p>
- <p>
- There were times when he gibbered the words to himself by the hour.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was at midnight that he had set fire to the place. The old woman was
- deaf. Even when the flames began to crackle she could not have heard them.
- She had had no more chance than a rat in a trap. The old fool! It was her
- own fault! Why had she not obeyed him? Why had she come creeping back,
- like a deaf old half-blind tabby cat, to die in the flames? It was her own
- fault! When he thought of the way she had returned to kill herself there
- were moments when he cursed and hated her.
- </p>
- <p>
- But had she killed herself? Back and forth swung the inner argument. At
- times he saw clearly enough that this incident joined on without a break
- to the texture of his whole miserable life; when he recognized that,
- though it might be an accident in a strictly literal sense that the old
- woman was dead, yet it was the sort of accident for which his previous
- existence had been a preparation. Even while he fiercely denied his guilt,
- or talked of it in a seizure of whining prayer that was essentially a
- lying denial, he knew that guilt there was.
- </p>
- <p>
- Would he be forgiven? There were comforting passages in the Bible. He
- switched on the rather insufficient electric light, which was all the old
- hotel provided, for the day was too dark to read without that help, and
- turned the pages of the New Testament through and through again.
- </p>
- <p>
- At three o'clock in the afternoon he was sitting on the edge of his bed,
- with the book open in front of him and his head bowed, almost dozing. His
- pipe, with which he had filled the room with the fumes of tobacco, had
- fallen to the floor. Perhaps it was weariness, but for a brief period his
- sharper sense of fear had been somewhat stilled again. Maybe it was going
- to be like this—a gradual easing off of the strain in answer to his
- prayers. He had asked God for an answer as to whether he should be
- forgiven, and God was answering in this way, so he told himself. God was
- going to let him get some sleep, and maybe when he woke everything would
- be all right again—bearable at least.
- </p>
- <p>
- So he mused, half asleep.
- </p>
- <p>
- And then all at once he sprang wide awake again, and his terror wakened
- with him. For suddenly in front of his half-shut eyes, coming from nowhere
- in particular, there passed a puff of smoke!
- </p>
- <p>
- What could it mean? He had asked God for an answer. He had been lulled for
- a moment almost into something like peace, and—now—this puff
- of smoke! Was it a sign? Was it God's answer?
- </p>
- <p>
- He sat up on the edge of the bed, rigid, in a cold, still agony of
- superstitious fright. He dared not move or turn his head. He was afraid
- that he would see—something—if he looked behind him. He was
- afraid that he would in another moment hear something—a voice!
- </p>
- <p>
- He closed his eyes. He prayed. He prayed aloud. His eyes once closed, he
- scarcely dared open them again. After seme minutes he began to tell
- himself that perhaps he had been mistaken; perhaps he had not seen smoke
- at all. Perhaps even if he had seen smoke it was due to some explicable
- cause, and not meant for him.
- </p>
- <p>
- He greatly dared. He opened his eyes. And drifting lazily above the white
- pillow at the head of the bed was another puff of smoke.
- </p>
- <p>
- He rocked back and forth upon the bed, with his arms up as if to shield
- his head from a physical blow, and then he passed in a moment from the
- quakings of fear to a kind of still certainty of doom. God was angry at
- him. God was telling him so. God would send the devil for him. There was
- no further doubt. He would go to hell—to hell! To burn forever!
- Forever—even as the old woman had burned for a quarter of an hour.
- He began to search through the pages of the Bible again, not for words of
- comfort this time, but in a morbid ecstasy of despair, for phrases about
- hell, for verses that mentioned fire and flames.
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not need the concordance. He knew his Bible well, and his fear
- helped him. Consciousness and subconsciousness joined to guide his fingers
- and eyes in the quest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming,” he read
- in Isaiah, and he took it to himself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yea, I will gather you, and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath, and ye
- shall be melted in the midst thereof,” he read in Ezekiel.
- </p>
- <p>
- He had a literal imagination, and he had a literal belief, and at every
- repetition of the word “fire” the flesh cringed and crawled on his bones.
- God! To burn! How it must hurt!
- </p>
- <p>
- “And the God that answereth by fire, let Him be God,” met his eyes in the
- first book of Kings.
- </p>
- <p>
- And it all meant him. Now and then over his shoulder would float another
- little puff of smoke; and once, lifting his head suddenly from poring over
- the book, he thought he saw something that moved and glinted like a
- traveling spark, and was gone.
- </p>
- <p>
- He began to feel himself in hell already. This was the foretaste, that was
- all. Would he begin to burn even before he died? Did this smoke presage
- something of that kind? Would flames physically seize upon him, and would
- he burn, even as the old woman had burned?
- </p>
- <p>
- Suddenly in his hysteria there came a revulsion—a revolt. Having
- reached the nethermost depths of despair, he began to move upward a
- little. His soul stirred and took a step and tried to climb. He began to
- pray once more. After all, the Good Book did promise mercy! He began to
- dare to pray again. And he prayed in a whisper that now and then broke
- into a whine—a strange prayer, characteristic of the man.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, God,” he cried, “you promise forgiveness in that book there, and I'm
- gonna hold you to it! I'm gonna hold you to it! It's down there in black
- and white, your own words, God, and I'm gonna hold you to it! It's a
- contract, God, and you ain't the kind of a man, God, to go back on a
- contract that's down in black and white!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Thus he prayed, with a naïve, unconscious blasphemy. And after long
- minutes of this sort of thing his soul dared take another step. A faint,
- far glimmering of hope came to him where he groveled. For he was groveling
- on the bed now, with the covers pulled up to his head and his hand upon
- the open Bible. He found the courage to peer from beneath the covers at
- intervals as he prayed and muttered, and minutes passed with no more
- smoke. Had the smoke ceased? The sound of his own murmuring voice began to
- reassure him. The smoke had certainly ceased! It had been twenty minutes
- since he had seen it—half an hour!
- </p>
- <p>
- What could it mean? That God was hearkening to his prayer?
- </p>
- <p>
- An hour went by, and still there was no more sign of smoke. He prayed
- feverishly, he gabbled, as if by the rapidity of his utterance and the
- repeated strokes of his words he were beating back and holding at bay the
- smoke that was God's warning and the symbol of his displeasure. And the
- smoke had ceased to come! He was to be forgiven! He was winning! His
- prayers were winning for him! At least God was listening!
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, that must be it. God was listening now. The smoke had come as a
- warning; and he had, upon receiving this warning, repented. God had not
- meant, after all, that he was doomed irrevocably. God had meant that, to
- be forgiven, his repentance must be genuine, must be thorough—and it
- was thorough now. Now it was genuine! And the smoke had ceased! The smoke
- had been a sign, and he had heeded the sign, and now if he kept up his
- prayers and lived a good life in the future he was to be forgiven. He
- would not have to burn in hell after all.
- </p>
- <p>
- The minutes passed, and he prayed steadily, and every minute that went by
- and brought no further sign of the smoke built up in him a little more
- hope, another grain of confidence.
- </p>
- <p>
- An hour and a quarter, and he almost dared be sure that he was forgiven—but
- he was not quite sure. If he could only be quite sure! He wallowed on the
- bed, and his hand turned idly the pages of the Bible, lying outside on the
- coverlet.
- </p>
- <p>
- More than an hour had gone by. Could he accept it as an indication that
- God had indeed heard him? He shifted himself upon the bed, and stared up
- at the ceiling through a chink in the covers as if through and beyond the
- ceiling he were interrogating heaven.
- </p>
- <p>
- And lying so, there came a damp touch upon his hand, soft and chill and
- silent, as if it were delicately and ironically brushed by the kiss of
- Death. A sudden agony numbed his hand and arm. With the compulsion of
- hysteria, not to be resisted, his head lifted and he sat up and looked.
- Over the Bible and his hand that lay upon the open page there floated
- again a puff of smoke, and faintly staining his Angers and the paper
- itself was something moist and red. It stained his Angers and it marked
- with red for his straining sight this passage of Isaiah:
- </p>
- <p>
- “The earth also shall disclose her blood.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was then he cried out, “Oh, God! God! Again! You meant it, then, God!
- You meant it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was nearly midnight when Tommy and his friend Dobson returned to the
- hotel. “Your paper's been trying to get you for an hour, Mr. Hawkins,”
- said the night clerk when they came in. “Story right in the next room to
- yours. Old party in there hanged himself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “So?” said Tommy. “Ungrateful old guy, he is! I put in the afternoon
- trying to cheer him up a little.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you know him?” asked the clerk.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nope,” said Tommy, moving toward the elevator.
- </p>
- <p>
- But a few moments later, confronted with the grotesque spectacle in the
- room upstairs, he said, “Yes—I—I know him. Jack! Jack! Get me
- out of here, Jack! It's Uncle Ezra, Jack! He's—he's come for me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- As has been remarked before, sometimes even a bubble may be a mordant
- weapon.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0009" id="link2H_4_0009"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- VIII.—The Chances of the Street
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>erriwether Buck
- had lost all his money. Also his sisters', and his cousins', and his
- aunts'.
- </p>
- <p>
- “At two o'clock sharp I will shoot myself,” said Merriwether Buck.
- </p>
- <p>
- He caressed a ten-shot automatic pistol in the right-hand pocket of his
- coat as he loitered up Broadway. He was light-headed. He had had nothing
- to eat for forty-eight hours.
- </p>
- <p>
- “How I hate you!” said Merriwether Buck, comprehensively to the city in
- general. “If nine pistol shots would blot you out, I'd do it!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Very melodramatic language, this, for a well-brought-up young man; and
- thus indicating that he was light-headed, indeed. And as for the city, it
- continued to roar and rattle and honk and rumble and squeak and bawl and
- shuffle and thunder and grate in the same old way—supreme in its
- confidence that nine pistol shots could not, by any possibility, blot it
- out. That is one of the most disconcerting things about a city; you become
- enraged at it, and the city doesn't even know it. Unless you happen to be
- Nero it is very difficult to blot them out satisfactorily.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was one o'clock. Merriwether Buck crossed the street at Herald Square
- and went over and stood in front of the big newspaper office. A portly
- young fellow with leaden eyes came out of the building and stood
- meditatively on the curb with his hands in the pockets of clothing that
- clamored shrilly of expense.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Excuse me,” said Merriwether Buck, approaching him, “but are you, by any
- chance, a reporter?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Uh,” grunted the young man, frigidly affirmative.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I can put you in the way of a good story,” said Merriwether Buck, obeying
- an impulse: We may live anonymously but most of us like to feel that it
- will make a little stir when we die.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Huh,” remarked the reporter.
- </p>
- <p>
- “At two o'clock,” persisted Merriwether Buck, “I am going to shoot
- myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The reporter looked bored; his specialty was politics.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Are you anybody in particular?” he asked, discouragingly.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” confessed Merriwether Buck. It didn't seem to be worth while to
- mention that he was one of the Bucks of Bucktown, Merriwether County,
- Georgia.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought,” said the reporter, with an air of rebuke, “that you said it
- was a <i>good</i> story.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am, at least, a human being,” said Merriwether Buck, on the defensive.
- </p>
- <p>
- “They're cheap, hereabout,” returned the other, in the manner of a person
- who has estimated a good many assorted lots.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are callous,” said Merriwether Buck. “Callous to the soul! What are
- you, but—but—Why, you are New York incarnate! That is what you
- are! And I think I will shoot you first!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I don't want to be a spoil sport,” said the reporter, “but I'm afraid I
- can't allow it. I have a rather important assignment.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Merriwether played with the little automatic pistol in his pocket. It was
- not any regard for the consequences that deterred him from shooting the
- portly young man. But in his somewhat dizzy brain a fancy was taking
- shape; a whim worked in him. He drew his hand empty from the pocket, and
- that reporter came up out of the grave.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am hungry,” said Merriwether Buck, in obedience to the whim.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now that you remind me of it,” said the other, his lack-luster eyes
- lighting up a little, “so am I!” And he crossed the street and disappeared
- through the swinging doors of a café.
- </p>
- <p>
- Callous, leaden-eyed young man! epitome of this hard town! So cried the
- spirit of Merriwether Buck; and then he spoke aloud, formulating his idea:
- </p>
- <p>
- “New York, you are on trial. You are in the balances. I give you an hour.
- If I'm asked to lunch by two o'clock, all right. If not, I will kill
- myself, first carefully shooting down the most prosperous citizens, and as
- many of 'em as I can reach. New York, it's up to you!”
- </p>
- <p>
- The idea of playing it out that way tickled him to the heart; he had
- always loved games of chance. One man or woman out of all the prosperous
- thousands in the streets might save another prosperous half-dozen; might
- save as many as he could otherwise reach with nine shots from his pistol,
- for he would reserve the tenth for himself. Otherwise, there should be a
- sacrifice; he would offer up a blood atonement for the pagan city's
- selfishness. Giddy and feverish, and drunk with the sense of his power to
- slay, he beheld himself as a kind of grotesque priest—and he threw
- back his head and laughed at the maniac conceit.
- </p>
- <p>
- A woman who was passing turned at the sound, and their eyes met. She
- smiled. Merriwether Buck was good to look at. So was she. She was of that
- type of which men are certain at once, without quite knowing why; while
- women are often puzzled, saying to themselves: “After all, it may be only
- her rings.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Pardon me,” said Merriwether Buck, overtaking her, “but you and I are to
- lunch together, aren't we?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I like your nerve!” said she. And she laughed. It was evident that she
- did like it. “Where?” she asked briefly, falling into step beside him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Wherever you like,” said Merriwether. “I leave that to you, as I'm
- depending on you to pay the check.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She began a doubtful laugh, and then, seeing that it wasn't a joke,
- repeated:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I like your nerve!” And it was now evident that she didn't like it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “See here,” he said, speaking rapidly, “my clothes look all right yet, but
- I'm broke. I'm hungry. I haven't had anything to eat since day before
- yesterday. I'm not kidding you; it's true. You looked like a good fellow
- to me, and I took a chance. Hunger” (as he spoke it he seemed to remember
- having heard the remark before), “hunger makes one a judge of faces; I
- gambled on yours.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She wasn't complimented; she regarded him with a manner in which scorn and
- incredulity were blended; Merriwether Buck perceived that, for some reason
- or other, she was insulted.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't,” she said, “don't pull any of that sentimental stuff on me. I
- thought you was a gentleman!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And she turned away from him. He took a step in pursuit and started to
- renew his plea; for he was determined to play his game square and give the
- directing deities of the city a fair chance to soften whatsoever random
- heart they would.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Beat it!” she shrilled, “beat it, you cheap grafter, or I'll call a cop!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And Merriwether beat it; nor' by nor'west he beat it, as the street beats
- it; as the tides beat. The clock on the Times building marked 1.20 as he
- paused by the subway station there. In forty minutes—just the time
- it takes to hook your wife's dress or put a girdle round the world—Merri-wether
- Buck would be beating it toward eternity, shooing before him a flock of
- astonished ghosts of his own making. Twenty minutes had gone by and
- whatever gods they be that rule New York had made no sign; perhaps said
- gods were out at lunch or gone to Coney Island. Twice twenty minutes more,
- and——
- </p>
- <p>
- But no. It is all over now. It must be. There emerges from the subway
- station one who is unmistakably a preacher. The creases of his face attest
- a smiling habit; no doubt long years of doing good have given it that
- stamp; the puffs of white hair above the temples add distinction to
- benignity.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I beg your pardon,” said Merriwether Buck, “but are you a minister?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Eh?” said the reverend gentleman, adjusting a pair of gold-rimmed
- eyeglasses. “Yes,” he said pleasantly, “I am,” and he removed the glasses
- and put them back on once again, as he spoke. Somehow, the way he did it
- was a benediction.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am hungry,” said Merriwether.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dear me!” said the reverend gentleman. “I shouldn't have thought it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Will you ask me to lunch?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Eh?” It was an embarrassing question; but the gentleman was all good
- nature. His air indicated that he did not intend to let his own
- embarrassment embarrass Merriwether too much. “My dear man, you know—really——”
- He placed a shapely hand upon Merriwether's shoulder, rallyingly, almost
- affectionately, and completed the sentence with a laugh.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's charity I'm asking for,” said Merriwether.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh!” For some reason he seemed vastly relieved. “Have you been—but,
- dear me, are you sure you aren't joking?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes; sure.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And have you—ahem!—have you sought aid from any institution;
- any charitable organization, you know?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “But no,” said Merriwether, who had instinctively eliminated charitable
- organizations, free lunches and police stations from the terms of his
- wager, “I thought——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My, my, my,” hummed the reverend gentleman, interrupting him. He produced
- his card case and took a card therefrom. “I am going,” he said, writing on
- the card with a pencil, “to give you my card to the secretary of the
- Combined Charities. Excellent system they have there. You'll be
- investigated, you know,” he said brightly, as if that were an especial
- boon he was conferring, “your record looked into—character and
- antecedents and all that sort of thing!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And fed?” asked Merriwether.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, indeed!” And he handed over the card as if he were giving Merriwether
- the keys to the city—but not too gross and material a city either;
- Merriwether felt almost as if he were being baptized.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But,” said Merriwether Buck, “I wanted <i>you</i> to feed me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, my dear man!” smiled the minister, “I <i>am</i> doing it, you know.
- I'm a subscriber—do <i>all</i> my charitable work this way. Saves
- time. Well, good-by.” And he nodded cheerily.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But,” said Merriwether Buck, “aren't you interested in me personally?
- Don't you want to hear my story?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Story? Story?” hummed the other. “Indeed, but they'll learn your story
- there! They have the most excellent system there; card system; cases and
- case numbers, you know—Stories, bless you! Hundreds and hundreds of
- stories! Big file cases! You'll be number so-and-so. Really,” he said,
- with a beaming enthusiasm, “they have a <i>wonderful</i> system. Well,
- good-by!” There was a touch of finality in his pleasant tone, but
- Merriwether caught him by the sleeve.
- </p>
- <p>
- “See here,” he said, “haven't you even got any <i>curiosity</i> about me?
- Don't you even want to know why I'm hungry? Can't you find time <i>yourself</i>
- to listen to the tale?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Time,” said the reverend gentleman, “<i>time</i> is just what I feel the
- lack of—feel it sadly, at moments like these, sadly.” He sighed, but
- it was an optimistic, good-humored sort of sigh. “But I tell you what you
- do.” He drew forth another card and scribbled on it. “If you want to tell
- me your story so very badly—(dear me, what remarkable situations the
- clerical life lets one in for!)—so <i>very</i> badly, take this card
- to my study about 3.30. You'll find my stenographer there and you can
- dictate it to her; she'll type it out. Yes, indeed, she'll type it out!
- Well, <i>good</i>-by!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And with a bright backward nod he was off.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was 1.25. There were thirty-five minutes more of life. Merriwether Buck
- gave the reverend gentleman's cards to a seedy individual who begged from
- him, with the injunction to go and get himself charitably Bertilloned like
- a gentleman and stop whining, and turned eastward on Forty-second Street.
- If you have but thirty-five minutes of life, why not spend them on Fifth
- Avenue, where sightly things abound?—indeed if you happen to be a
- homicidal maniac of some hours standing, like Merriwether Buck, Fifth
- Avenue should be good hunting ground; the very place to mark the fat and
- greasy citizens of your sacrifice.
- </p>
- <p>
- Time, the only patrician, will not step lively for the pert subway guards
- of human need, nor yet slacken pace for any bawling traffic cop of man's
- desire; he comes of an old family too proud to rush, too proud to wait; a
- fine old fellow with a sense of his own value. Time walked with
- Merriwether Buck as he loitered up Fifth Avenue, for the old gentleman
- loves to assist personally at these little comedies, sometimes; with Death
- a hang-dog third. Not even a fly-cop took note of the trio, although
- several, if they robbed a jewelry store or anything like that, would tell
- the reporters later that they had noticed something suspicious at the
- time. And the patron deities of New York City might have been over in
- Hoboken playing pinochle for all the heed <i>they</i> took.
- </p>
- <p>
- Which brings us to Sixty-fifth Street and 1.58 o'clock and the presence of
- the great man, all at once.
- </p>
- <p>
- When Merriwether Buck first saw him, Meriwether Buck gasped. He couldn't
- believe it. And, indeed, it was a thing that might not happen again this
- year or next year or in five years—J. Dupont Evans, minus bulwark or
- attendant, even minus his habitual grouch, walking leisurely toward him
- like any approachable and common mortal. Merriwether Buck might well be
- incredulous. But it was he; the presentment of that remarkable face has
- been printed a hundred thousand times; it is as well known to the world at
- large as Uncle Pete Watson's cork leg is on the streets of Prairie Centre,
- Ill.; it is unmistakable.
- </p>
- <p>
- To have J. Dupont Evans at the point of a pistol might almost intoxicate
- some sane and well-fed men, and Merriwether Buck was neither. J. Dupont
- Evans—the wealth of Croesus would be just one cracked white chip in
- the game he plays. But at this moment his power and his importance had
- been extraordinarily multiplied by circumstances. The chances of the
- street had tumbled down a half dozen banks—(well did Merriwether
- Buck know that, since it had ruined him)—and financial panic was in
- the air; an epochal and staggering disaster threatened; and at this
- juncture a president in no wise humble had publicly confessed his own
- impotence and put it up to J. Dupont Evans to avert, to save, to reassure.
- </p>
- <p>
- Merriwether Buck had not dreamed of this; in the crook of his trigger
- finger lay, not merely the life of a man, but the immediate destiny of a
- nation.
- </p>
- <p>
- He grasped the pistol in his pocket, and aimed it through the cloth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Do you know what time it is?” he asked J. Dupont Evans, politely enough.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was only a second before the man answered. But in that second
- Merriwether Buck, crazily exalted, and avid of the sensation he was about
- to create, had a swift vision. He saw bank after bank come crashing down;
- great railroad systems ruined; factories closed and markets stagnant;
- mines shut and crops ungathered in the fields; ships idle at the wharves;
- pandemonium and ruin everywhere.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Huh?” said J. Dupont Evans, gruffly, removing an unlighted cigar from his
- mouth. He looked at Merriwether Buck suspiciously, and made as if to move
- on. But he thought better of it the next instant, evidently, for he pulled
- out a plain silver watch and said grudgingly: “Two minutes of two.” And
- then, in a tone less unpleasant, he asked: “Have you got a match, young
- man?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Merriwether fumbled in his vest pocket. In a minute and a half he would
- perfunctorily ask this man for lunch, and then he would kill him. But he
- would give him a match first—for Merriwether Buck was a
- well-brought-up young man. As he fumbled he picked out the exact spot on
- the other's waistcoat where he would plant the bullet. But the idea of a
- man on the edge of the grave lighting a cigar tickled him so that he
- laughed aloud as he held out the matches.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What can I do with these?” snorted J. Dupont Evans. “They are the sort
- that light only on their own box.” From his glance one might have gained
- the impression that he thought Merriwether Buck a fool.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Great principle that,” said Merriwether Buck, cackling with hysteria. It
- was so funny that a dead man should want to smoke a cigar! He would let
- him play he was alive for fifty seconds longer.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Principle?” said Evans. “Principle? What Principle?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well,” said Merriwether, with the random argumentativeness of insanity,
- “it <i>is</i> a great principle. Apply that principle to some high
- explosive, for instance, and you have no more battleship flare-backs—no
- premature mine blasts——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Say,” the other suddenly interrupted, “are you an inventor?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes,” lied Merriwether Buck, glibly, although he had never given five
- seconds' thought to the subject of high explosives in his life. “That's
- how I know. I've invented an explosive more powerful than dynamite. But it
- won't explode by contact with fire, like powder. Won't explode with a jar,
- like dynamite. Won't freeze, like dynamite. Only one way to explode it—you've
- got to bring it into contact with a certain other chemical the same as
- scratching one of these matches on its own box.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “The deuce, young man!” said the other. “There's a fortune in it! Is it on
- the market at all?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” said Merriwether Buck, raising his pistol hand slightly and
- thrusting it a bit forward, under the mask of his coat pocket, “no money
- to start it going.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hum,” mused the other. “I tell you what you do, young man. You come along
- to lunch with me and we'll talk the thing over—money and all.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And the directing deities of New York struck twice on all the city clocks,
- and striking, winked.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0010" id="link2H_4_0010"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- IX.—The Professor's Awakening
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>ow I ever come to
- hit such a swell-looking house for a handout I never knew. Not that there
- was anything so gaudy about it, neither, as far as putting up a bluff at
- being a millionaire's mansion went, which I found out afterwards it was,
- or pretty near that at any rate. But it was just about the biggest house
- in that Illinois town, and it's mostly that kind o' place with them naked
- iron heathens in the front yard and a brick stable behind that it ain't no
- use to go up against unless you're looking for a lemon. If you need real
- food and need it sudden and ain't prospecting around town for no other
- kind of an opening you better make for the nearest public works like a
- canal being dug, or a railroad gang. Hit the little tin dinner buckets,
- men that does the unskilled labor on jobs like that, except Swedes and
- Dagos, knowing what it is to be up against it themselves now and then and
- not inclined to ask no fool questions.
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, I went around to the back door, and Biddy Malone she lets me in. I
- found out that was her name afterwards, but as soon as I seen her face I
- guessed if her name wasn't Bridget it was Nora. It's all in the first look
- they give you after they open the door. If that look's right they're
- coming across and you'll get some kind of a surprise for your digestive
- ornaments and you don't need to make no fool breaks about sawing wood
- neither. I makes my little talk and Biddy she says come in; and into the
- kitchen I went.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's Minnesota you're working towards,” says Biddy, pouring me out a cup
- of coffee.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was thinking of the wheat harvest where there's thousands makes for
- every fall. But not for me, I never did like to work for none of them
- Scandiluvian Swedes and Norwegians that gets into the field before
- daylight and stays at it so long the hired men got to milk the cows by
- moonlight. They got no sense of proportion, them Gusses and Oles ain't.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I been across the river into I'way,” I says, “working at my trade, and
- I'm going back to Chicago to work at it some more.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And what may your trade be?” says Biddy, sizing me up careful. I seen I
- made a hit somehow or she wouldn't of asked me in the first place was I
- going to the wheat harvest, but would of just supposed I was a hobo, which
- I ain't. I got a lot of trades when I want to use one, and as a regular
- thing I rather work at one of them for a while, too, but can't stand it
- very long on account of not feeling right to stay in one place too long,
- especially in the summer. When I seen I made a hit with Biddy I thinks
- I'll hand her a good one she never heard tell of before.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm an agnostic by trade,” I says. I spotted that one in a Carnegie
- library one time and that was the first chance I ever had to spring it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I see,” says Biddy. And she opened her eyes and mouth to once. I seen she
- didn't see, but I didn't help her none. She would of rather killed herself
- than let on she didn't see. Most of the Irish is like that whether they is
- kitchen mechanics or what. After a while she says, pouring me out some
- more coffee and handing me a little glass jar full of watermelon rinds
- boiled in with molasses and things, she says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “And ain't that the dangerous thing to work at, though!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is,” I says, and says nothing further.
- </p>
- <p>
- She sets down and folds her arms like she was thinking about it, watching
- my hands all the time as if she was looking for scars where something
- slipped when I done that agnostic work. Finally she says with a sigh:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Sure, and it's dangerous! Me brother Patrick was kilt at it in the old
- country. He was the most vinturesome lad of thim all!”
- </p>
- <p>
- She was putting up a stiff front, and for a minute I don't know whether
- she's stringing me or I'm stringing her. The Irish is like that. So being
- through eating I says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did it fly up and hit him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looks at me scornful and tosses her chin up and says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “No. He fell off of it. And I'm thinking you don't know what one of them
- is, after!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is it, then?” says I.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then you <i>don't</i> know,” says she; and the next thing I knew I'd been
- eased out the back door and she was grinning at me through the crack of it
- with superiousness all over her face.
- </p>
- <p>
- So I was walking slow around towards the front thinking to myself how the
- Irish was a great people; and shall I go to Chicago and maybe get a job
- sailing on the lakes till navigation closes, or shall I go back to Omaha
- and work in the railroad yards again, which I don't like much, or shall I
- go on down to Saint Looey just to see what's doing. And then I thinks:
- “Billy, you was a fool to let that circus walk off and leave you asleep
- with nothing over you but a barb wire fence this morning, and what are you
- going to do now? First thing you know you'll be a regular hobo, which some
- folks can't distinguish you ain't now.” And then I thinks I'll go down to
- the river and take a swim and lazy around in the grass a while and think
- things over and maybe something will happen. Anyways, you can always join
- the army. And just when I was thinking that I got by one of them naked
- stone heathens that was squirting water out of a sea shell and a guy comes
- down the front steps on the jump and nabs me by the coat collar. I seen he
- was a doctor or else a piano tuner by the satchel he dropped when he
- grabbed me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did you come out of this house?” he says.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did,” I says, wondering what next.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Back in you goes,” he says, marching me towards the front steps. “They've
- got smallpox in there.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I liked to a-jumped loose when he said that, but he twisted my coat collar
- and dug his thumbs into my neck and I seen they wasn't no use pulling
- back. If a guy that's knocking around mixes up with one of the solid
- citizens the magistrate's going to give him the worst of it on principle.
- I ain't no hobo and never was, and never traveled much with none of them
- professional bums, but there has been times I had hard work making some
- people believe it. I seen I couldn't jerk away and I seen I couldn't fight
- and so I went along. He rung the door bell, and I says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Smallpox ain't no inducement to me, doc.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No?” says he. And the door opened, and in we went. The girl that opened
- it, she drew back when she seen me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell Professor Booth that Dr. Wilkins wants to see him,” says the doc,
- not letting loose of me.
- </p>
- <p>
- And we stood there saying nothing till the per-fessor come in, which he
- did slow and absent-minded. When he seen me he stopped and took off a pair
- of thick glasses that was split in two like a mended show case, so he
- could see me better, and he says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “What is that you have there, Dr. Wilkins?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “A guest for you,” says Dr. Wilkins, grinning all over himself. “I caught
- him leaving the house, and you being under quarantine and me being
- secretary to the board of health, I'll have to ask you to keep him here
- until we can get Miss Margery on her feet again,” he says. Or they was
- words to that effect, as the lawyers asks you.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dear me,” says Perfessor Booth, kind o' helplesslike.
- </p>
- <p>
- And he put his glasses on and took them off again, and come up close and
- looked at me like I was one of them amphimissourian specimens in a free
- museum. “Dear me,” he says, looking worrieder and worrieder all the time.
- And then he went to the foot of the stairs and pipes out in a voice that
- was so flat-chested and bleached-out it would a-looked just like him if
- you could a-saw it—“Estelle,” he says, “O Estelle!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I thinks the perfessor is one of them folks that can maybe do a lot of
- high-class thinking, but has got to have some one tell 'em what the answer
- is. But I doped him out wrong as I seen later on.
- </p>
- <p>
- Estelle, she come down stairs looking like she was the perfessor's big
- brother. I found out later she was his old maid sister. She wasn't no
- spring chicken, Estelle wasn't, and they was a continuous grin on her
- face. I figgered it must of froze there years and years ago. They was a
- kid about ten or eleven years old come along down with her, that had hair
- down to its shoulders and didn't look like it knowed whether it was a girl
- or a boy. Miss Estelle, she looks me over in a way that makes me shiver,
- while the doctor and the per-fessor jaws about whose fault it is the
- smallpox sign ain't been hung out. And when she was done listening she
- says to the perfessor: “You had better go back to your laboratory.” And
- the perfessor he went along out, and the doctor with him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What are you going to do with him, Aunt Estelle?” the kid asks her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “What would <i>you</i> suggest, William Dear?” asks his aunt. I ain't
- feeling very comfortable, and I was getting all ready just to natcherally
- bolt out the front door now the doctor was gone. Then I thinks it mightn't
- be no bad place to stay in fur a couple o' days, even risking the
- smallpox. Fur I had ricolected I couldn't ketch it nohow, having been
- vaccinated a few months before in Terry Hutt by compulsory medical advice,
- me being temporary engaged in repair work on the city pavements through a
- mistake in the police court.
- </p>
- <p>
- William Dear looks at me when his aunt put it up to him just as solemn as
- if it was the day of judgment and his job was separating the fatted calves
- from the goats and the prodigals, and he says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't you think, Aunt Estelle, we better cut his hair and bathe him and
- get him some clothes the first thing?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “William is my friend,” thinks I, and I seen right off he was one of them
- serious kids that you can't tell what is going on inside their heads.
- </p>
- <p>
- So she calls James, which was the butler, and James he buttled me into a
- bathroom the like of which I never see before; and he buttled me into a
- suit of somebody's clothes and into a room at the top of the house next to
- his'n, and then he come back and buttled a razor and a comb and brush at
- me; him being the most mournful-looking fat man I ever seen, and he
- informs me that me not being respectable I will eat alone in the kitchen
- after the servants is done. People has made them errors about me before.
- And I looks around the room and I thinks to myself that this is all right
- so far as it has went. But is these four walls, disregarding the rest of
- the house, to be my home, and them only? Not, thinks I, if little Billy
- knows it. It was not me that invited myself to become the guest of this
- family; and if I got to be a guest I be damned if I don't be one according
- to Hoyle's rules of etiquette or I'll quit the job. Will I stay in this
- one room? Not me. Suppose the perfessor takes it next? And then William
- Dear? And suppose when William Dear gets through with it he gives it to
- Aunt Estelle? Am I to waste the golden hours when, maybe, my country needs
- me, just for accommodation? But I thinks it's all right for a day or two
- and then I'll leave my regrets and go on down to Saint Looey or
- somewheres. And then James he buttles back into the room like a funeral
- procession and says the perfessor says he wants to see me in the
- laboratory.
- </p>
- <p>
- That was a big room and the darndest looking room I ever see, and it smelt
- strong enough to chase a Hungarian pig sticker out of a Chicago slaughter
- house. It smelt like a drug store had died of old age and got buried in a
- glue factory. I never seen so much scientific effusions and the things to
- hold 'em in mixed up in one place before. They must of been several brands
- of science being mixed up there all to once. They was dinky little stoves,
- they was glass jars of all shapes and sizes labeled with Dago names
- standing around on shelves like in one of them Dutch delicatessen stores;
- they was straight glass tubes and they was glass tubes that had the spinal
- contortions; they was bones and they was whole skeletons, and they was
- things that looked like whisky stills; they was a bookcase full of bugs
- and butterflies against one wall; they was chunks of things that might
- have been human for all I know floating around in vats like pickled pork
- in a barrel; they was beer schooners with twisted spouts to them; they was
- microscopes and telescopes and twenty-seven shapes and sizes of knives;
- they was crates of stuff that was unpacked and crates that wasn't; and
- they was tables with things just piled and spilled over 'em, every which
- way, and the looks of everything was dirty on account of the perfessor not
- allowing any one in there but himself and Miss Estelle and William. And
- whether you knowed anything about them different brands of science or not
- you could see the perfessor was one of them nuts that's always starting to
- do things and then leaving them go and starting something else. It looked
- as if the operating room of an emergency hospital and a blacksmith shop
- and a people's free museum and a side show full of freaks, snakes and
- oneeyed calves had all gone out and got drunk together, all four of them,
- and wandered into a cremation plant to sleep off that souse; and when they
- woke up they couldn't tell which was which nor nothing else except they
- had a bad taste in their mouth and was sentenced to stay there unseparated
- and unhappy and unsociable in each other's company for evermore. And every
- time you turned around you stepped on something new, and if you saw a rat
- or a lizard or a spider you better let him alone for how was you going to
- tell he was dead or alive till he crawled up you?
- </p>
- <p>
- The perfessor, he was setting over by a window, and he pushed out another
- chair for me and he says sit down.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are a gentleman of leisure?” he says, with a grin; or words to that
- effect.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I work at that sometimes,” I told him, “although it ain't rightly my
- trade.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Biddy Malone says you're an agnostic,” he says, looking at me close. It
- won't do, I thinks, to spring none of them agnostic gags on him, so I says
- nothing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm one myself,” he says.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Regular,” I asks him, “or just occasional?” He kind o' grins again, and I
- thinks: “Billy, you're making a hit somehow.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he says, like he was apologizing to someone about something: “Being
- interested in sociology and the lower classes in general, I sent for you
- to get some first-hand observations on your train of mind,” he says. Or it
- was words like them. “I'm a sociologist,” he says.
- </p>
- <p>
- I seen I made a hit before and I thinks I'll push my luck, so I swells up
- and says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “I'm a kind of sociologist myself.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Hum,” he says, thoughtful-like. “Indeed? And your itinerant mode of
- subsistence is persecuted in pursuit of your desire to study knowledge of
- the human specimen and to observe wisdom as to the ways they live in the
- underworld,” he says. Or it was words to that effect. I wish I'd a-had him
- wrote them words down. Then I'd a-had 'em just right now. I seen a bunch
- of good words help a man out of a hole before this. Words has always been
- more or less my admiration; you can never tell what one of them long
- gazaboos is going to do till you spring it on somebody. So I says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “That's me, perfessor. I likes to float around and see what's doing.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he tells me that sociology was how the criminal classes and the lower
- classes in general was regarded by the scientific classes, only it's a
- difficult brand of science to get next to, he says, on account of the
- lower classes like me being mostly broke out with environment he says,
- unbeknownst even to theirselves. He's not what you would call a practicing
- sociologist all the time, being afraid, I suppose, he would catch it if he
- got too close to it; he's just one of the boys that writes about it, so as
- both the lower classes and the scientific classes won't make no bad
- breaks, he says.
- </p>
- <p>
- But what he wants of me just now ain't got nothing to do with that, he
- says. He's been making experiments with all kinds of canned victuals, that
- is put up with acid that eats holes in your stomach, he says, and so long
- as I'm going to be a guest he's going to mix some of them acids in my
- chuck and weigh me after each meal. He says I'll start slow and easy and
- there won't be nothing dangerous about it. He's been practicing on William
- Dear and Miss Estelle, which I suppose it was the acids got into her
- smile, but he's going to give them a rest, them being naturally delicate.
- I ain't got no kick, I thinks, and I'm going to leave this place in a day
- or two anyhow. Besides, I always was intrusted in scientific things and
- games of chance of all kinds.
- </p>
- <p>
- But I didn't leave in a few days, and the first thing I knew I'd been
- there a week. I had pretty much the run of the house, and I eat my meals
- with Biddy Malone, the only uncomfortable feature of being a guest being
- that Miss Estelle, soon as she found out I was an agnostic (whatever brand
- of science that is, which I never found out to this day, just having come
- across the word accidental), she begun to take charge of my religion and
- intellectuals and things like that. She used to try to cure the perfessor,
- too, but she had to give it up for a bad job, Biddy says.
- </p>
- <p>
- Biddy, she says Mrs. Booth's been over to her mother's while this smallpox
- has been going on; which I hadn't knowed they was a Mrs. Booth before. And
- Biddy, she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay there, too. They's been a
- lot of talk, anyhow, Biddy says, about Mrs. Booth and some musician fellow
- around town. But Biddy she likes Mrs. Booth, and even if it was so who
- could blame her?
- </p>
- <p>
- Things ain't right around that house since Miss Estelle's been there,
- which the perfessor's science, though worrying to the nerves, ain't cut
- much ice till about four years ago when Miss Estelle come.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Mrs. Booth she's getting where she can't stand it much longer, Biddy
- says. I didn't blame her none for feeling sore about things.
- </p>
- <p>
- You can't expect a woman that's pretty and knows it, and ain't more'n
- thirty-two or three years old, and don't look it, to be interested in
- mummies and pickled snakes and the preservation of the criminal classes
- and chemical profusions, not <i>all</i> the time. And maybe when she'd ask
- the perfessor if he wasn't going to take her to the opera he'd ask her did
- she know them Germans had invented a newfangled disease or that it was a
- mistake about them Austrians hiding their heads in the sand when they are
- scared, which any fool that's ever seen 'em working around a coal mine
- ought to of knowed. It wouldn't a-been so bad if the perfessor had just
- picked out one brand of science and stuck to it. She could a-got used to
- any one kind and knowed what to expect. But maybe this week the
- perfessor's bug would be ornithography, and he'd be chasing sparrows all
- over the front lawn; and next week it would be geneology and he'd be
- trying to grow bananas on a potato vine. Then, he'd get worried about the
- nigger problem in the south, and settle it all up scientific and explain
- how ethnology done the whole damn thing, lynchings and all, and it never
- could be straightened out till it was done scientific. Every new gag that
- come out the perfessor took up with it, Biddy says; one time he'd be
- fussing around with gastronomy through a telescope and the next he'd be
- putting astrology into William's breakfast food.
- </p>
- <p>
- They was a row on all the time about the kids, which they hadn't been till
- Miss Estelle come. Mrs. Booth she said they could kill their own selves if
- they wanted to, but she had more right than anybody to say what went into
- William's digestive ornaments, and she didn't want him brought up
- scientific nohow, but just human. He was always making notes on William,
- which was how William come to take so little interest in life after a
- while. But Miss Estelle, she egged him on. She seen he didn't have no
- sense about his money, which had been left to him when he was a sure
- enough perfessor in a college before he quit and went nuts and everything
- begun to go wrong between him and Mrs. Booth, so Miss Estelle she took to
- running his money herself; but she seen likewise that when it come to
- writing articles about William's insides and intellectuals the perfessor
- he was a genius. Well, maybe he was; but Biddy wouldn't let him try none
- of them laboratory gags on her though she just as soon be hypnotized and
- telepathed as not just to humor him. Miss Estelle, she eat what the
- perfessor give her, and after a while she says she'll take charge of the
- children's education herself, their mother being a frivolous young thing,
- and it was too bad, she says, a genius like him couldn't a-mar-ried a
- noble woman who would a-understood his great work for humanity and
- sympathized with it. So while the perfessor filled William and Miss
- Margery up on new discovered food and weighed 'em and probed 'em and
- sterilized 'em and did everything else but put 'em in glass bottles, Miss
- Estelle she laid out courses of reading matter for them and tended to
- their religion and intellectuals and things like that. I reckon they never
- was two kids more completely educated, inside and out. It hadn't worked
- much on Miss Margery yet, her being younger than William. But William took
- it hard and serious, being more like his father's family, and it made
- bumps all over his head. I reckon by the time William was ten years old he
- knew more than a whole high school, and every time that boy cut his finger
- he just naturally bled science. But somehow he wasn't very chipper, and
- whenever the perfessor would notice that he and Miss Estelle would change
- treatment. But Biddy liked William just the same, they hadn't spoiled his
- disposition none; and she said he seen a lot of things his aunt never
- would a-seen, William did. One day when I first was a guest I says to his
- aunt, I says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Miss Booth, William looks kind o' pale to me like he was getting too much
- bringin' up to the square inch.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She acted like she didn't care for no outsiders butting in, but I seen
- she'd noticed it, too, and she liked William, too, in a kind of scientific
- sort of a way, and she says in a minute:
- </p>
- <p>
- “What do you suggest?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why,” says I, “what a kid like that needs is to roll around and play in
- the dirt now and then, and yell and holler.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She went away like she was kind o' mad about it; but about an hour later
- the perfessor sent word for me to come down to the labaratory, and Miss
- Estelle was there.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We have decided that there is something in what you say,” says the
- perfessor. “Even the crudest and most untrained intellectuals has now and
- then a bright hunch from which us men of special knowledge may take a
- suggestion,” he says, or words to that effect. And they was a whole lot
- more, and they was more scientific than that. I didn't know I'd done
- nothing important like that, but when he told me all about it in science
- talk I seen I made a ten strike, though I should of thought anyone could
- of saw all William needed was just to be allowed to be a little more
- human.
- </p>
- <p>
- But what do you think—I never was so jarred in my life as I was the
- next day. I seen Miss Estelle spreading an oilcloth on the floor, and then
- the butler come in and poured a lot of nice, clean, sterilized dirt on to
- it. And then she sent for William.
- </p>
- <p>
- “William Dear,” she says, “we have decided that what you need is more
- recreation mixed in along with your intellectuals. You ought to romp and
- play in the dirt, close to the soil and nature, as is right for a youth of
- your age. For an hour each day right after you study your biology and
- before you take up your Euclid you will romp and play in this dirt like a
- child of nature, and frolic. You may now begin to frolic, William, and
- James will gather up the dirt again for to-morrow's frolic.” Or it was
- words to that effect.
- </p>
- <p>
- But William didn't frolic none. He seen things they didn't. He just looked
- at that dirt, and he come the nearest to smiling I ever seen William come;
- and then he come the nearest to getting mad I ever seen William come. And
- then he says very serious:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Aunt Estelle,” he says, “I shall <i>not</i> frolic. I have come to that
- place in my discretions where my intellectuals got to work some for
- theirselves. It is them intellectuals which you have trained that refuses
- to be made ridiculous one hour each day between the biology lesson and the
- Euclid lesson with sand.” Those was not William's exact words, which he
- always had down as slick as his pa, but they was what he meant. William
- was a serious kid, but he seen things his aunt never had no idea of. And
- he never did frolic, neither, and all that nice clean dirt had to be
- throwed out by the stable amongst the unscientific dirt again.
- </p>
- <p>
- That was before Biddy Malone told me about why it was that the perfessor
- and his wife didn't get along well, and as I was saying I didn't blame her
- none, Miss Estelle having finally beat her out about her own children,
- too; and she feeling she didn't scarcely own 'em no more, and they hardly
- daring to kiss their own mamma with Miss Estelle in the room because of
- germs, so Biddy says. Biddy, she says the perfessor is all right, he's
- just a fool and don't mean no harm by his scientific gags, but Miss
- Estelle she's a she-devil and takes that way to make herself the boss of
- that house. If she wasn't there Mrs. Booth would have been boss and never
- let the perfessor know it and things wouldn't a-been so bad. Which shows
- that so long as every house got to have a boss it ain't so much difference
- if it's a him or her so long as it ain't a relation.
- </p>
- <p>
- The perfessor always eats his dinner in one of them coats with the
- open-face vest to it, and one night I thinks I will, too. When you is in
- Rome you does like the Dagos does, I thinks.
- </p>
- <p>
- So I sends for James along before dinner time and I says: “Where is my
- dinky clothes to eat dinner in?” I says.
- </p>
- <p>
- James he says I'm to continue to eat dinner by myself. Which is all right,
- I tells him, but I'll do it in style or I'll quit the job. So he goes and
- asks Miss Estelle, and she comes in with that lemon grin on, but looking,
- too, like I done something to please her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is it true,” she says, “that already the effects of a refined environment
- has overcome defections in early training and a misfortune in ancestral
- hereditary?” she says. Or they was words to that effect.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It is true,” I says. And the perfessor's being too small she made James
- give me his'n. But when I seen all that shirt front it made me feel kind
- of uncomfortable, too. So I takes them off again and puts on my old
- striped sweater and puts on the vest and coat over that, and the effect of
- them red stripes running crossways is something gorgeous with one of them
- open-face vests over it.
- </p>
- <p>
- So after I eat I don't want to go to bed and I gets a box of the
- perfessor's cigars and goes into the library and thinks I'll see if he's
- got anything fit to read. I dig around for a while among them shelves, and
- most everything is one brand of science or other, but finally I got hold
- of a little book that was real interesting. That was the damndest book! It
- was all in rhyme, with the explanations of the rhyme printed in real talk
- down the sides so as you could tell where you was at and what it was
- about. It's about an Ancient Mariner. The nut that wrote it he's never
- been sailing none, I bet; but he can make you feel like you been going
- against the hop in one of them Chink joints. Of course, there ain't
- nothing real literary about it like one of them Marie Corelli stories I
- read once and it ain't got the excitement of a good Bill Hart movie or a
- Nick Carter story, but I got real interested in it. The I-man of that
- story he was a Jonah to the whole ship. He seen an albatross circling
- around, and he up with his air gun and give him his'n. It wasn't for
- nothing to eat, but just to be a-shooting. And from that on everybody gets
- as sick of living as a bunch of Chicago factory hands when another savings
- bank busts, and they all falls down and curses him. And the snakes wiggles
- all over the top of the water like I seen 'em one time when they cleaned
- out a reservoir where one of them prairie towns gets its drinking water
- from. And the Ancient Mariner he tries to die and can't make it; and their
- ghosts is whizzing all around that ship and they go by him in the
- moonlight like a puff of steam goes by you on a frosty morning out of an
- engine-room manhole. And there's a moral to that story, too. I bet the
- fellow that doped that out had been on an awful bat. I like to of talked
- with that nut. They was a fellow named Looney Hogan use to have them
- phoney hunches, and he use to tell me what he saw after he had 'em. Looney
- was awful good company and I use to like to hear him tell what he seen and
- what he thinks he seen, but he walked off of a grain barge up to Duluth
- when he was asleep one night and he never did wake up.
- </p>
- <p>
- Sitting there thinking of the awful remarkable things that is, and the
- ones that isn't, and the ones that maybe is and maybe isn't, and the nuts
- that is phoney about some things and not about others, and how two guys
- can look at the same thing and when you ask them about it both has seen
- different things, I must a-went to sleep. And I must a-slept a long time
- there, and pretty soon in my sleep I heard two voices and then I wakes up
- sudden and still hears them, low and quicklike, in the room that opens
- right off from the library with a pair of them sliding doors like is on to
- a boxcar. One was a woman's voice, and not Miss Estelle's, and she says
- like she was choked up:
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I <i>must</i> see them before we go, Henry.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And the other was a man's voice, and it wasn't no one around our house.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But, my God!” he says, “suppose you catch it yourself, Jane!”
- </p>
- <p>
- I set up straight then, and I would of give a good deal to see through
- that door, because Jane was the perfessor's wife's first name.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You mean suppose <i>you</i> get it,” she says. I like to of seen the look
- she must of give him to fit in with the way she says that <i>you</i>. He
- didn't say nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice softens down some,
- and she says, low and slow: “Henry, wouldn't you love me if I <i>did</i>
- get it? Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, of course,” he says, “of course I would. Nothing can change the way I
- feel. <i>You</i> know that.” He said it quick enough, all right, just the
- way they do in a show, but it sounded <i>too much</i> like it does on the
- stage to of suited me if <i>I'd</i> been her. I seen folks overdo them
- little talks before this.
- </p>
- <p>
- I listens some more, and then I see how it is. This is that musician
- feller Biddy Malone's been talking about. Jane's going to run off with him
- all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first. Women is like that. They
- may hate the kids' pa all right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em don't
- like the kids. I thinks to myself: “It must be late. I bet they was
- already started, or ready to start, and she made him bring her here first
- so's she could sneak in and see the kids. She just simply couldn't get by.
- But she's taking a fool risk, too. Fur how's she going to see Margery with
- that nurse coming and going and hanging around all night? And even if she
- tries just to see William Dear it's a ten to one shot he'll wake up and
- she'll be ketched at it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And then I thinks, suppose she <i>is</i> ketched at it? What of it? Ain't
- a woman got a right to come into her own house with her own door key, even
- if they is a quarantine on to it, and see her kids? And if she is ketched
- seeing them, how would anyone know she was going to run off? And ain't she
- got a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's bring her over from
- her mother's house, even if it is a little late?
- </p>
- <p>
- Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks neither, and I thinks mebby I
- better go and tell that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated me
- purty white. And then I thinks: “I'll be gosh-derned if I meddle. So fur
- as I can see that there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's coming to
- him, nohow. And as fur <i>her</i>, you got to let some people find out
- what they want fur theirselves. Anyhow, where do <i>I</i> come in at?”
- </p>
- <p>
- But I want to get a look at her and Henry, anyhow. So I eases off my
- shoes, careful-like, and I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors,
- and I puts my eye down to the little crack. The talk is going backward and
- forward between them two, him wanting her to come away quick, and her
- undecided whether to risk seeing the kids. And all the time she's kind o'
- hoping mebby she will be ketched if she tries to see the kids, and she's
- begging off fur more time ginerally.
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none when I seen her. She
- was a peach.
- </p>
- <p>
- And I couldn't blame her so much, either, when I thought of Miss Estelle
- and all them scientifics of the perfessor's strung out fur years and years
- world without end.
- </p>
- <p>
- Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she wouldn't. I seen right off
- that Henry wouldn't do. It takes a man with a lot of gumption to keep a
- woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it when he's married to her.
- But it takes a man with twicet as much to make her feel right when they
- ain't married. This feller wears one of them little, brown, pointed beards
- fur to hide where his chin ain't. And his eyes is too much like a woman's.
- Which is the kind that gets the biggest piece of pie at the lunch counter
- and fergits to thank the girl as cuts it big. She was setting in front of
- a table, twisting her fingers together, and he was walking up and down. I
- seen he was mad and trying not to show it, and I seen he was scared of the
- smallpox and trying not to show that, too. And just about that time
- something happened that kind o' jolted me.
- </p>
- <p>
- They was one of them big chairs in the room where they was that has got a
- high back and spins around on itself. It was right acrost from me, on the
- other side of the room, and it was facing the front window, which was a
- bow window. And that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy. First I
- thought she wasn't turning. Then I seen she was. But Jane and Henry
- didn't. They was all took up with each other in the middle of the room,
- with their back to it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little more, that chair does.
- Will she squeak, I wonders?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't you be a fool, Jane,” says the Henry feller.
- </p>
- <p>
- Around she comes three hull inches, that there chair, and nary a squeak.
- </p>
- <p>
- “A fool?” asks Jane, and laughs. “And I'm not a fool to think of going
- with you at all, then?”
- </p>
- <p>
- That chair, she moved six inches more and I seen the calf of a leg and
- part of a crumpled-up coat tail.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I <i>am</i> going with you, Henry,” says Jane. And she gets up just
- like she is going to put her arms around him.
- </p>
- <p>
- But Jane don't. Fur that chair swings clear around and there sets the
- perfessor. He's all hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his eyes like
- he's just woke up recent, and he's got a grin on to his face that makes
- him look like his sister Estelle looks all the time.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Excuse me,” says the perfessor.
- </p>
- <p>
- They both swings around and faces him. I can hear my heart bumping. Jane
- never says a word. The man with the brown beard never says a word. But if
- they felt like me they both felt like laying right down there and having a
- fit. They looks at him and he just sets there and grins at them.
- </p>
- <p>
- But after a while Jane, she says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, now you <i>know!</i> What are you going to do about it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Henry, he starts to say something, too. But——
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't start anything,” says the perfessor to him. “<i>You</i> aren't
- going to do anything.” Or they was words to that effect.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Professor Booth,” he says, seeing he has got to say something or else
- Jane will think the worse of him, “I am——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shut up,” says the perfessor, real quiet. “I'll tend to you in a minute
- or two. <i>You</i> don't count for much. This thing is mostly between me
- and my wife.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something
- into him beside science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised
- herself. But she says nothing, except:
- </p>
- <p>
- “What are you going to do, Frederick?” And she laughs one of them mean
- kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a
- little more, and says: “What <i>can</i> you do, Frederick?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Frederick, he says, not excited a bit:
- </p>
- <p>
- “There's quite a number of things I <i>could</i> do that would look bad
- when they got into the newspapers. But it's none of them, unless one of
- you forces it on to me.” Then he says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You <i>did</i> want to see the children, Jane?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She nodded.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jane,” he says, “can't you see I'm the better man?”
- </p>
- <p>
- The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and he
- didn't want to see her go. “Look at him,” he says, pointing to the feller
- with the brown beard, “he's scared stiff right now.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way like
- Henry was, and the perfessor's voice sounding like you was chopping ice
- every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no blood on
- the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making up his mind
- about something, too. Jane, she says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>You</i> a better man? <i>You?</i> You think you've been a model
- husband just because you've never beaten me, don't you?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” says the perfessor, “I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been a
- worse fool, maybe, than if I <i>had</i> beaten you.” Then he turns to
- Henry and he says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in
- the papers, doesn't it? Well, you just wait for me.” With which he gets up
- and trots out, and I heard him running down stairs to his labertory.
- </p>
- <p>
- Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane a-looking
- at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some kind of a
- strong action now to show Jane he is a great man. But he don't do it. And
- Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects it. And me, I'm
- getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, “What is that there perfessor
- up to now? Whatever it is, it ain't like no one else. He is looney, that
- perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too. I wonder if they is anyone
- that ain't looney sometimes? I been around the country a good 'eal, too,
- and seen and hearn of some awful remarkable things, and I never seen no
- one that wasn't more or less looney when the <i>search us the femm</i>
- comes into the case. Which is a Dago word I got out'n a newspaper and it
- means: Who was the dead gent's lady friend?' And we all set and sweat and
- got the fidgets waiting fur that perfessor to come back.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin on to his face and a pill box
- in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and chilly:
- “Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science. All the
- same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she isn't worth
- fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I made 'em
- myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it gets to
- working well—which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken. The
- other one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one, I keep
- her. If I get it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait long enough
- after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of it.
- When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek on
- the inside like a piece of sandpaper. He was scared, Henry was.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But <i>you</i> know which is which,” Jane sings out. “The thing's not
- fair!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “That is the reason my dear Jane is going to shuffle these pills around
- each other herself,” says the perfessor, “and then pick out one for him
- and one for me. <i>You</i> don't know which is which, Jane. And as he is
- the favorite, he is going to get the first chance. If he gets the one I
- want him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live after taking
- it. In that fifteen minutes he will please to walk so far from my house
- that he won't die near it and make a scandal. I won't have a scandal
- without I have to. Everything is going to be nice and quiet and
- respectable. The effect of the poison is similar to heart failure. No one
- can tell the difference on the corpse. There's going to be no blood
- anywhere. I will be found dead in my house in the morning with heart
- failure, or else he will be picked up dead in the street, far enough away
- so as to make no talk.” Or they was words to that effect.
- </p>
- <p>
- He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that perfessor is. I wonder if
- I better jump in and stop the hull thing. Then I thinks: “No, it's between
- them three.” Beside, I want to see which one is going to get that there
- loaded pill. I always been intrusted in games of chance of all kinds, and
- when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm sorry I been misjudging
- him all this time.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard and quick.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I won't touch 'em,” she says. “I refuse to be a party to any murder of
- that kind.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Huh? You do?” says the perfessor. “But the time when you might have
- refused has gone by. You have made yourself a party to it already. You're
- really the <i>main</i> party to it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “But do as you like,” he goes on. “I'm giving him more chance than I ought
- to with those pills. I might shoot him, and I would, and then face the
- music, if it wasn't for mixing the children up in the scandal, Jane. If
- you want to see him get a fair chance, Jane, you've got to hand out these
- pills, one to him and then one to me. <i>You</i> must kill one or the
- other of us, or else <i>I'll</i> kill <i>him</i> the other way. And <i>you</i>
- had better pick one out for him, because <i>I</i> know which is which. Or
- else let him pick one out for himself,” he says.
- </p>
- <p>
- Henry, he wasn't saying nothing. I thought he had fainted. But he hadn't.
- I seen him licking his lips. I bet Henry's mouth was all dry inside.
- </p>
- <p>
- Jane, she took the box and she went round in front of Henry and she looked
- at him hard. She looked at him like she was thinking: “Fur God's sake,
- spunk up some, and take one if it <i>does</i> kill you!” Then she says out
- loud: “Henry, if you die I will die, too!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And Henry, he took one. His hand shook, but he took it out'n the box. If
- she had of looked like that at me mebby I would of took one myself. Fur
- Jane, she was a peach, she was. But I don't know whether I would of or
- not. When she makes that brag about dying, I looked at the perfessor. What
- she said never fazed him. And I thinks agin: “Mebby I better jump in now
- and stop this thing.” And then I thinks agin: “No, it is between them
- three and Providence.” Beside, I'm anxious to see who is going to get that
- pill with the science in it. I gets to feeling just like Providence
- hisself was in that there room picking out them pills with his own hands.
- And I was anxious to see what Providence's ideas of right and wrong was
- like. So fur as I could see they was all three in the wrong, but if I had
- of been in there running them pills in Providence's place I would of let
- them all off kind o' easy.
- </p>
- <p>
- Henry, he ain't eat his pill yet. He is just looking at it and shaking.
- </p>
- <p>
- The perfessor reaches for his watch, and don't find none. Then he reaches
- over and takes Henry's watch, and opens it, and lays it on the table. “A
- quarter past one,” he says. “Mr. Murray, are you going to make me shoot
- you after all? I didn't want any blood nor any scandal,” he says. “It's up
- to you,” he says, “whether you want to take that pill and get your even
- chance, or whether you want to get shot. The shooting way is sure, but
- looks bad in the papers. The pill way don't implicate any one,” he says.
- “Which?” And he pulls a gun.
- </p>
- <p>
- Henry he looks at the gun.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he looks at the pill.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then he swallows the pill.
- </p>
- <p>
- The perfessor puts his'n into his mouth. But he don't swallow it. He looks
- at the watch, and he looks at Henry. “Sixteen minutes past one,” he says.
- “<i>Mr. Murray will be dead at exactly fourteen minutes to two</i>. I got
- the harmless one. I can tell by the taste of the chemicals.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And he put the pieces out into his hand to show that he chewed his'n up,
- not being willing to wait fifteen minutes for a verdict from his digestive
- ornaments. Then he put 'em back into his mouth and chewed 'em and
- swallowed 'em down like it was coughdrops.
- </p>
- <p>
- Henry has got sweat breaking out all over his face, and he tries to make
- fur the door, but he falls down on to a sofa.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This is murder,” he says, weaklike. And he tries to get up agin, but this
- time he falls to the floor in a dead faint.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's a dern short fifteen minutes,” I thinks to myself. “That perfessor
- must of put more science into Henry's pill than he thought he did fur it
- to of knocked him out this quick. It ain't skeercly three minutes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- When Henry falls the woman staggers and tries to throw herself on top of
- him. The corners of her mouth was all drawed down, and her eyes was turned
- up. But she don't yell none. She can't. She tries, but she just gurgles in
- her throat. The perfessor won't let her fall acrost Henry. He ketches her.
- “Sit up, Jane,” he says, with that Estelle look on to his face, “and let
- us have a talk.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She looks at him with no more sense in her face than a piece of putty has
- got. But she can't look away from him.
- </p>
- <p>
- And I'm kind o' paralyzed, too. If that feller laying on the floor had
- only jest kicked oncet, or grunted, or done something, I could of loosened
- up and yelled, and I would of. I just <i>needed</i> to fetch a yell. But
- Henry ain't more'n dropped down there till I'm feeling just like he'd <i>always</i>
- been there, and I'd <i>always</i> been staring into that room, and the
- last word anyone spoke was said hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You're a murderer,” says Jane in a whisper, looking at the perfessor in
- that stare-eyed way. “You're a <i>murderer,</i>” she says, saying it like
- she was trying to make herself feel sure he really was one.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Murder!” says the perfessor. “Did you think I was going to run any
- chances for a pup like him? He's scared, that's all. He's just fainted
- through fright. He's a coward. Those pills were both just bread and sugar.
- He'll be all right in a minute or two. I've just been showing you that the
- fellow hasn't got nerve enough nor brains enough for a fine woman like
- you, Jane,” he says.
- </p>
- <p>
- Then Jane begins to sob and laugh, both to oncet, kind o' wildlike, her
- voice clucking like a hen does, and she says:
- </p>
- <p>
- “It's worse then, it's worse! It's worse for me than if it were a murder!
- Some farces can be more tragic than any tragedy ever was,” she says. Or
- they was words to that effect.
- </p>
- <p>
- And if Henry had of been really dead she couldn't of took it no harder
- than she begun to take it now when she saw he was alive, but just wasn't
- no good. But I seen she was taking on fur herself now more'n fur Henry.
- Women is made unlike most other animals in many ways. When they is foolish
- about a man they can stand to have that man killed a good 'eal better than
- to have him showed up ridiculous right in front of them. They will still
- be crazy about the man that's killed, but they don't never forgive the
- lobster. I seen that work out before this. You can be most any thing else
- and get away with it, but if you're a lobster it's all off even if you
- can't help being a lobster. And when the perfessor kicks Henry in the ribs
- and he comes to and sneaks out, Jane she never even looks at him.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jane,” says the perfessor, when she quiets down some, “you got a lot to
- forgive me. But do you s'pose I learned enough sense so we can make a go
- of it if we start over again?”
- </p>
- <p>
- But Jane never said nothing.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Jane,” he says, “Estelle is going back to New England to stay there for
- good.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She begins to take a little interest then. “Did Estelle tell you so?” she
- says.
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” says the perfessor, “Estelle don't know it yet. But she is. I'm
- going to tell her in the mornin'.”
- </p>
- <p>
- But she still hates him. She's making herself. She wouldn't of been a
- female woman if she'd of been coaxed that easy. Pretty soon she says, “I'm
- going upstairs and go to bed. I'm tired.” And she went out looking like
- the perfessor was a perfect stranger.
- </p>
- <p>
- After she left the perfessor set there quite a while and he was looking
- tired out, too; and there wasn't no mistake about me. I was asleep all
- through my legs, and I kept a wondering to myself, suppose them pills had
- one of them been loaded sure enough, which one would of got it? And when
- the perfessor leaves I says to myself, I reckon I better light a rag. So I
- goes to the front window and opens it easy; but I thinks about Henry's
- watch on the table, every one else having forgot it, and I thinks I better
- hunt him up and give it to him.
- </p>
- <p>
- And then I thinks why should I give him pain, for that watch will always
- remind him of an unpleasant time he once had.
- </p>
- <p>
- And if it hadn't been for me sitting in that window looking at that watch
- I wouldn't a-been writing this, for I wouldn't of been in jail now.
- </p>
- <p>
- I tried to explain my intentions was all right, but the police says it
- ain't natural to be seen coming out of a front window at two in the
- morning in a striped sweater and a dinky dinner suit with a gold watch in
- your hand; if you are hunting the owner you are doing it peculiar.
- </p>
- <p>
- One of them reporters he says to me to write the truth about how I got
- into jail; nobody else never done it and stuck to facts. But this is the
- truth so help me; it was all on account of that watch, which my intentions
- with regard to was perfectly honorable, and all that goes before leads up
- to that watch. There wasn't no larceny about it; it was just another
- mistake on the part of the police. If I'd of been stealing wouldn't I
- stole the silverware a week before that?
- </p>
- <p>
- The more I travel around the more dumb people I see that can't understand
- how an honest and upright citizen can get into circumstantial evidence and
- still be a honest and upright citizen.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0011" id="link2H_4_0011"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- X.—The Penitent
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">Y</span>ou, who are not
- married,” said the penitent, “cannot know—can never realize——”
- </p>
- <p>
- He hesitated, his glance wandering over the evidences of luxury, the hints
- of Oriental artistry, the esthetic effectiveness of Dr. Eustace Beaulieu's
- studio.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Proceed,” said Dr. Beaulieu, suavely. “What I may know is not the
- important thing. You do not address yourself to me, but through me to that
- principle of Harmony in the Cosmos which is Spirit—Ultimate Spirit—which
- we call God. All that I can do is assist you to get into Accord with the
- Infinite again, help you to vibrate in unison with the Cosmic All.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are right; I do not look to you,” said the penitent, “for ease of
- mind or spirit.” And a fleeting half-smile showed in his eyes, as if some
- ulterior thought gave a certain gusto to the manner in which he stressed
- the pronoun <i>you</i>. But the rest of his scarred and twisted face was
- expressionless, beneath the thick mask of a heavy gray-streaked beard that
- grew almost to his eyes.
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
- * Author's Note: “The Penitent” was suggested by two poems,
- “A Forgiveness,” by Browning, and “The Portrait,” by Owen
- Meredith.
-</pre>
- <p>
- Dr. Eustace Beaulieu was the leader—nay, the founder—of one of
- the many, many cults that have sprung up in New York City and elsewhere in
- America during the past three or four decades. An extraordinary number of
- idle, well-to-do women gathered at his studio two or three times a week,
- and listened to his expositions of ethics <i>de luxe</i>, served with just
- the proper dash of Oriental mysticism and European pseudoscience. He was
- forty, he was handsome, with magnetic brown eyes and the long sensitive
- fingers of a musician; he was eloquent, he was persuasive, he was
- prosperous.
- </p>
- <p>
- When he talked of the Zend-Avesta, when he spoke of the Vedantic writings,
- when he touched upon the Shinto worship of the Nipponese, when he
- descanted upon the likeness of the Christian teachings to the tenets of
- Buddhism, when he revealed the secrets of the Yogi philosophy, when he
- hinted his knowledge of the priestly craft of older Egypt and of later
- Eleusis, his feminine followers thrilled in their seats as a garden of
- flowers that is breathed upon by a Summer wind—they vibrated to his
- words and his manner and his restrained fervor with a faint rustling of
- silken garments and a delicate fragrance of perfume.
- </p>
- <p>
- Men were not, as a rule, so enthusiastic concerning Dr. Eustace Beaulieu
- and his cult; there were few of them at his lectures, there were few of
- them enrolled in the classes where he inducted his followers into the more
- subtle phases of ethics, where he led them to the higher planes of
- occultism, for a monetary consideration; few of them submitted themselves
- to him for the psychic healing that was one of his major claims to fame.
- And this scarred and bearded stranger, who limped, was one of the very few
- men who had ever intimated a desire to bare his soul to Dr. Beaulieu, to
- tell his story and receive spiritual ministration, in the manner of the
- confessional. These confessionals, after the public lectures, had been
- recently introduced by Dr. Beaulieu, and they were giving him, he felt, a
- firmer grip upon his flock—his disciples, he did not hesitate to
- call them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I repeat,” said the penitent—if he was a repentant man, indeed—“no
- bachelor can know what love really is. He cannot conceive of what the
- daily habit of association with a woman who seems made for him, and for
- him alone, may mean to a man. My love for my wife was almost worship. She
- was my wife indeed, I told myself, and she it was for whom I worked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “For I did work, worked well and unselfishly. Every man must have some
- work. Some do it from necessity, but I did it because I loved the work—and
- the woman—and thus I gained a double reward. I was a politician, and
- something more. I think I may say that I was a patriot, too. The inheritor
- of wealth and position, I undertook to clear the city in which I lived,
- and which my forefathers had helped to build, of the ring of grafters who
- were making the name of the town a byword throughout the nation. The
- details of that long and hard strife are not pertinent. I fought with
- something more than boldness and determination; I fought with a joy in
- every struggle, because I fought for something more than the world knew.
- The world could not see that my inspiration was in my home; that in the
- hours of battle my blood sang joyously with the thought of—her! Was
- it any wonder that I worked well?
- </p>
- <p>
- “One day, as I sat in my office downtown, the thought of her drew me so
- strongly that I determined to surprise her by coming home unexpectedly
- early. It was summer, and we were living in our country home, an
- old-fashioned stone residence a couple of miles from the outskirts of the
- city. The house was situated at the edge of a park that was, indeed,
- almost virgin forest, for the whole estate had been in my family for
- nearly a hundred years.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I determined to surprise my wife, and at the same time to take the rare
- relaxation of a suburban walk. I was soon outside the city limits, and
- through the zone where vacant lots broaden into fields; and then I left
- the road, cutting across the fields and finally plunging into the woods on
- my own place. Thus it was that I approached the house from the rear and
- came suddenly out of the timber into my own orchard. I seldom walked from
- town, and it was a good long hour before my usual time of arrival,
- although in that sheltered and woody place the dusk was already gathering
- in.
- </p>
- <p>
- “As I entered the orchard a man made a hurried exit from a vine-wreathed
- pergola where my wife often sat to read, cast one look at me, cleared the
- orchard fence, and made off through the woods, disappearing at once among
- the boles of the trees.
- </p>
- <p>
- “He had not turned his full face toward me at any time, but had shielded
- it with an upflung arm; from the moment he broke cover until his
- disappearance there had passed less time than it takes to tell it, and I
- was scarcely to be blamed if I was left guessing as to his identity, for
- the moment. For the moment, I say.
- </p>
- <p>
- “There had been so much fright in his manner that I stood and looked after
- him. The thought came to me that perhaps here was a man who had had an
- affair with one of my servants. I turned toward the pergola and met—my
- wife!
- </p>
- <p>
- “She was a beautiful woman, always more beautiful in her moments of
- excitement. She confronted me now with a manner which I could not help but
- admire. I trusted her so that she might readily have passed off a much
- more anomalous situation with an easy explanation. But in her face I read
- a deliberate wish to make me feel the truth.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I looked at her long, and she returned the gaze unflinchingly. And I
- recognized her look for what it was. She had cast off the chains of
- deceit. Her glance was a sword of hatred, and the first open thrust of the
- blade was an intense pleasure to her. We both knew all without a word.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I might have killed her then. But I did not. I turned and walked toward
- the house; she followed me, and I opened the door; she preceded me inside.
- She paused again, as if gathering all her forces for a struggle; but I
- passed her in silence, and went upstairs to my own room.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And then began a strange period in my life. Shortly after this episode
- came a partial triumph of the reform element in my city; the grafters were
- ousted, and I found myself with more than a local reputation, and thrust
- into an office. My life was now even more of a public matter than before.
- We entertained largely. We were always in the public eye. Before our
- guests and in public we were always all that should be. But when the
- occasion was past, we would drop the mask, turn from each other with dumb
- faces, and go each our severed ways.
- </p>
- <p>
- “For a year this sort of life kept up. I still worked; but now I worked to
- forget. When I allowed myself to think of her at all, it was always as of
- some one who was dead. Or so I told myself, over and over again, until I
- believed it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “One day there was a close election. I was the successful candidate. I was
- to go to Congress. All evening and far into the night my wife and I played
- our parts well. But when the last congratulation had been received, and
- the last speech made, and the last friend had gone, and we were alone with
- each other once more, she turned to me with a look something like the one
- she had met me with on that summer evening a year before.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'I want to speak with you,' she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Yes?'
- </p>
- <p>
- “They were the first words we had exchanged in that year, when not
- compelled by the necessities.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'What do you wish to speak about?' I asked her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'You know,' she said, briefly. And I did know. There was little use
- trying to deny it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Why have you asked me no questions?' she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I would have made another attempt to pass the situation over without
- going into it, but I saw that that would be impossible. She had reached
- the place where she must speak. I read all this in her face. And looking
- at her closely with the first candid glance I had given her in that year,
- I saw that she had changed greatly, but she was still beautiful.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'I did not choose to open the subject with you,' I said; 'I thought that
- you would explain when you could stand it no longer. Evidently that time
- has come. You were to me like a dead person. If the dead have any messages
- for me, they must bring them to me unsolicited. It was not my place to
- hunt among the tombs.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'No,' she said, 'let us be honest, since it is the last talk we may ever
- have together. Let us be frank with each other, and with ourselves. I was
- not like a dead person to you. The dead are dead, and I am not. You asked
- me no questions because you disdained me so. You despised me so—and
- it was sweet to you to make me feel the full weight of your scorn through
- this silence. It was better than killing me. Is that not the real reason?'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Yes,' I admitted, 'that is it. That is the truth.' “'Listen,' she said,
- 'it would surprise you—would it not—to learn that I still love
- you—that I have loved you all along—that you are the only man
- I have ever really loved—that I love you now? All that is incredible
- to you, is it not?'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Yes,' I said, 'it is. You must pardon me, but—it is incredible to
- me.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Well, it is true,' she said, and paused a moment. 'And I can tell you
- why it is true, and why—why—the—the other was true, too.
- You—you do not understand women,' she said. 'Sometimes I think if
- you were a smaller man, in some ways, you would understand them better.
- Sometimes I think that you are too—too big, somehow—ever to
- make a woman happy. Not too self-centered; you are not consciously
- selfish; you never mean to be. But you give, give, give the riches of your
- nature to people—to the world at large—instead of to those who
- should share them.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Oh, I know—the fault is all mine! Another kind of woman—the
- right kind for you—the kind you thought I was—would not have
- asked for all that was a necessity for me; would have been big enough to
- have done without it; would have lost herself in your love for all
- humanity. That is the kind of woman you thought I was. And I tried to be.
- But I wasn't. I wasn't that big.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'I did sympathize with your work; I could understand it; I loved to hear
- you tell about it. But I loved it because it was you that told me about
- it. You didn't see that! You thought I was a goddess. It was enough for
- your nature to worship me; to set me upon a pedestal and to call me your
- inspiration; oh, you treated me well—you were faithful to me—you
- were generous! But you neglected me in a way that men do not understand;
- that some men will never understand. While you were giving your days and
- your nights, and every fiber of your brain and body, to what you called
- the cause of the people, you more and more forgot you had a wife. Again
- and again and again I tried to win you back to what you were when I
- married you—to the time when your cause was not all—but you
- wouldn't see; I couldn't make you feel.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Then I thought I would show you that other men were not such fools as to
- overlook what was wasted on you. But you never noticed; you trusted me too
- much; you were too much engrossed. And then I began to hate you. I loved
- you more than I ever did before, and at the same time I hated you. Can you
- understand that? Do you see how women can hate and love at the same time?
- Well, they can.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'At last—for I was a fool—I took a lover!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “'What was his name?' I broke in.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'His name?' she cried; 'that does not matter! What matter if there was
- one of them, or two of them. That is nothing!—the name is nothing—they
- were nothing—nothing but tools; the symbols of my rage, of my hatred
- for you; whether I loved or hated you, you were all—always.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'They were merely convenient clubs with which to murder my honor in the
- dark—is that it?' I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Yes,' she said, 'that is it, if you choose to put it so.' And she spoke
- with a humility foreign to her nature.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'And what now?' I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Now,' she said, 'now that I have spoken; now that I have told you
- everything; now that I have told you that I have gone on loving you more
- and more and more—now—I am going to die.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'You have not asked me to forgive you,' I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'No,' she replied. 'For what is forgiveness? I do not know exactly what
- that word means. It is supposed to wipe out something that has happened,
- is it not?—to make things the same as they were before! But it does
- not do that. That which has happened, has happened; and you and I know
- it.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'You had better live,' I said; 'I no longer consider you worthless. I
- feel that you are worthy of my anger now.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “Her face cleared almost into something like joy.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'I have told the truth, and I raise myself from the depths of your scorn
- to the place where you can feel a hot rage against me?' she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Yes,' I said. And the light on her face was like that of which some
- women are capable when they are told that they are beloved.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'And if I die?' she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Who knows but that you might climb by it?' I said. 'Who knows but what
- your death might turn my anger to love again?' And with that I turned and
- left her there.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That night I sat all night in my study, and in the morning they brought
- me the news that she was dead. She must have used some poison. What, I do
- not know; and the physicians called it heart-failure. But what is the
- matter, Doctor?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Nothing, nothing!” said Dr. Beaulieu. And he motioned for the narrator to
- proceed. But there were beads of perspiration upon the healer's forehead,
- and a pallor overspread his face.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had condemned her to death,” the penitent went on, “and she had been
- her own executioner. She had loved me; she had sinned against me; but she
- had always loved me; she had hated the flesh that sinned, and scorned it
- as much as I; her life was intolerable and she had been her own
- executioner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The revulsion of feeling came. I loved her again; now that I had lost
- her. All that day I shut myself up, seeing no one; refusing to look at the
- dozens of telegrams that came pouring in from friends and acquaintances,
- thinking—thinking—thinking——
- </p>
- <p>
- “Night came again; and with it the word that the best friend I had was in
- the house; a friend of my college days, who had stood shoulder to shoulder
- with me in many a fight, then and since. He had come to be under the same
- roof with me in the hour of my bitterest bereavement, was the word he sent—how
- bitter now, he did not know. But he did not intrude upon the privacy of my
- grief. And I sat thinking—thinking—thinking—
- </p>
- <p>
- “Suddenly the idea came to me that I would go upstairs to the chamber
- where she was, and look at her once more. Quietly I stole up the stairs,
- and through the hushed, dim house, on into the gloomy room, lighted only
- by the candles at the head and foot of the curtained couch on which she
- lay.
- </p>
- <p>
- “In the room beyond, the watchers sat. I stole softly across the floor so
- as not to attract their attention; there was no one in the room with the
- body. I approached the couch, and with my hand put by the curtain——
- </p>
- <p>
- “Then I dropped it suddenly. I remembered a locket which she had formerly
- worn that had always had my picture in it, in the early days of our
- married life; a locket that had never left her neck, waking or sleeping.
- And I wondered——
- </p>
- <p>
- “I wondered something about women which no one has ever been able to tell
- me; not even a woman. I wondered if any light o' love had ever been able
- to make her feel anything like <i>real</i> love, after all! I wondered if
- she had ever hugged the thought of her sin to her bosom, even as she had
- at first hugged the thought of our real love—hers and mine. I
- wondered if she had ever carried about with her a sentimental reminder of
- her lover, of any lover, as she had once done of her husband—and how
- long ago! I wondered how important a thing it had seemed to her, after
- all! She had reconciled herself to herself, with her death, and made me
- love her again. And I wondered to how great an extent she had ever fooled
- a lover into thinking she loved him! There are depths and contradictions
- and cross-currents in the souls of women that even women do not know, far
- less men—I wondered whose picture was in that locket!
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thrust my hand through the curtains of the bed again, and then jumped
- back.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had felt something warm there.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Did she live, after all?
- </p>
- <p>
- “At the same instant I heard a movement on the other side of the bed. I
- went around.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My best friend was removing his hand from the curtains on the other side,
- and in his hand was the locket. It was his hand that I had felt.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We stared at each other. I spoke first, and in a whisper, so that the
- others in the next room, who had come to watch, should not hear.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'I came for that,' I said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'The locket? So did I,” he said. And then added quite simply, 'My picture
- is in it.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'You lie!' I whispered, shaken by a wind of fury. And yet I knew that
- perhaps he did not lie, that what he said might well be true. Perhaps that
- was the cause of my fury.
- </p>
- <p>
- “His face was lined with a grief and weariness terrible to behold. To look
- at him you would have thought that there was nothing else in the world for
- him except grief. It was a great grief that made him careless of
- everything else.
- </p>
- <p>
- “'It is my picture,' he said. 'She loved me.'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'I say that you lie,' I repeated. 'She may have played with you—but
- she never loved any one but me—in her heart she never did!'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'You!' And because he whispered, hissing out the words, they seemed to
- gain in intensity of scorn. 'You! She hated you! You who neglected her,
- you with your damned eternal politics, you who could never understand her—love?
- You who could never give her the things a woman needs and must have—the
- warmth—the color—the romance—the poetry of life! You!—with
- your cold-blooded humanitarianism! I tell you, she loved <i>me!</i> Why
- should I hesitate to avow it to you? It is the sweetest thing on earth to
- me, that she loved me! She turned from you to me because——'
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Don't go into all that,' I said. 'I heard all about that last night—from
- her! Open the locket, and let us see whose face is there!'
- </p>
- <p>
- “He opened it, and dropped the locket. He reeled against the wall, with
- his hands over his face, as if he had been struck a physical blow.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I picked the toy up and looked at it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The face in the locket was neither his face nor mine. It was the face of—of
- the man who ran from the pergola and vaulted over the orchard wall into
- the woods that summer night a year earlier; the man whom I had not, for
- the moment, recognized.
- </p>
- <p>
- “We stood there, this man who had been my best friend and I, with the
- locket between us, and I debated whether to strike him down——”
- </p>
- <p>
- The narrator paused. And then he said, fixing Dr. Beaulieu with an intent
- gaze:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Should I have struck him down? You, who are a teacher of ethics, who set
- yourself up to be, after a fashion, a preacher, a priest, a spiritual
- director, tell me, would I have been justified if I had killed him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Beaulieu seemed to shrink, seemed to contract and grow smaller,
- physically, under the other man's look. He opened his mouth as if to
- articulate, but for a second or two no word came. And then, regaining
- something of his usual poise, he said, although his voice was a bit husky:
- </p>
- <p>
- “No! It is for the Creator of life to take life, and no other. Hatred and
- strife are disharmony, and bring their own punishment by throwing the soul
- out of unity with the spirit of love which rules the universe.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It sounded stereotyped and emotionless, even in Dr. Beaulieu's own ears,
- as he said it; there was a mocking gleam in the eyes of the other man that
- spoke of a far more vital and genuine emotion. Dr. Beaulieu licked his
- lips and there came a knot in his forehead; beads of perspiration stood
- out upon his brow.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You were right,” said Dr. Beaulieu, “in not striking him down. You were
- right in sparing him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- The bearded man laughed. “I did not say that I spared him,” he said.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Beaulieu looked a question; a question that, perhaps, he dared not
- utter; or at least that he did not care to utter. He had dropped
- completely his rôle of spiritual counselor; he regarded his visitor with
- an emotion that might have been horror and might have been terror, or
- might have been a mixture of the two. The visitor replied to the unspoken
- interrogation in the healer's manner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I did not strike him down. Neither did I spare him. I waited and I—I
- used him. I know how to wait; I am of the nature that can wait. It was
- years before fate drew all things together for my purpose, and gave him
- into my hands—fate, assisted by myself.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I waited, and I used him. The details are not pertinent for it is not his
- story that I am telling. I piloted him to the brink of destruction, and
- then—then, I saved him.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You saved him?” Dr. Beaulieu was puzzled; but his fear, if fear it was,
- had not abated. There was a frank menace, now, in his visitor's air. And
- the healer seemed to be struggling, as he listened to the tale, to force
- some reluctant brain-cell to unlock and give its stored memories to his
- conscious mind.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I saved him. I saved him to be my creature. I broke him, and I saved him.
- I made him my slave, my dog, my—my anything I choose to have him. I
- have work for him to do.”
- </p>
- <p>
- Again the man paused, looking about the rich profusion of Dr. Beaulieu's
- studio. There was a table in the room which contained a number of curios
- from Eastern lands. The visitor suddenly rose from his chair and picked
- from among them a thin, keen-bladed dagger. It was a beautiful weapon, of
- some Oriental make; beautiful in its lines; beautiful with the sullen fire
- of many jewels blazing in its hilt—an evil levin that got into the
- mind and led the thoughts astray even as the dainty deadliness of the
- whole tool seduced the hand to grasp and strike. As his visitor, strangely
- breaking the flow of his narrative, examined and handled the thing, Dr.
- Beaulieu shuddered.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The man is as much my tool,” said the visitor slowly, “as this dagger
- would be your tool, Dr. Beaulieu, if you chose to thrust it into my breast—or
- into your own.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He laid the dagger down on the table, and resumed his seat. Dr. Beaulieu
- said nothing, but he found it difficult to withdraw his eyes from his
- visitor's steady stare. Slumped and sagged within his chair, he said
- nothing. Presently the visitor went on.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I had a fancy, Dr. Beaulieu; I had a fancy! It suited me to make my
- revenge a less obvious thing than striking down the old friend who had
- betrayed my love and confidence, a less obvious thing than striking down
- the other man—the man whose face was in the locket.”
- </p>
- <p>
- As he spoke he took from his pocket a locket. He opened it, and gazed upon
- the face. The healer half rose from his chair, and then sank back, with a
- hoarse, inarticulate murmur. His face had turned livid, and he trembled in
- every limb. It was evident that the missing scene which he had sought
- before had suddenly been flashed upon the cinema screen of his
- recollection. He remembered, now——
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was my fancy, Dr. Beaulieu, to make one of them take revenge upon the
- other, that I might thus be revenged upon them both.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He suddenly rose, and forced the locket into the healer's nerveless grasp.
- </p>
- <p>
- “That face—look at it!” he cried, towering over the collapsed figure
- before him.
- </p>
- <p>
- Compelled by a will stronger than his own, Dr. Beaulieu looked. It was the
- counterfeit presentment of himself within. It fell from his trembling
- fingers and rolled upon the floor. The cultist buried his face in his
- hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- The other man stepped back and regarded him sardonically for a moment or
- two.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I should not wonder,” he said, “if the man who used to be my best friend
- would pay you a visit before long—perhaps in an hour, perhaps in a
- week, perhaps in a month.”
- </p>
- <p>
- He picked up the dagger again, and toyed with it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “This thing,” he said, impersonally, trying the point upon his finger, “is
- sharp. It would give a quick death, a sure death, an almost painless
- death, if one used it against another man—or against one's self.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And without another word he turned and left the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- Dr. Beaulieu sat and listened to his retreating footsteps. And, long after
- they had ceased to sound, Dr. Beaulieu still sat and listened. Perhaps he
- was listening for some one to come, now that the bearded man had left. He
- sat and listened, and presently he reached over to the table and picked up
- the dagger that the visitor had laid down with its handle toward him. He
- pressed its point against his finger, as the other man had done. It was
- sharp. It would give, as the fellow had said, “a quick death, a sure
- death, an almost painless death.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And as he whispered these words he was still listening—listening—waiting
- for some one to come——
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XI.—The Locked Box
- </h2>
- <h3>
- I
- </h3>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was a small,
- oblong affair, not more than three inches wide or deep, by twice that much
- in length, made of some dark, hard wood; brass bound and with brass lock
- and brass hinges; altogether such a box as a woman might choose to keep
- about her room for any one of a half dozen possible uses.
- </p>
- <p>
- Clarke did not remember that he had ever seen it prior to his unexpectedly
- early return from a western trip of a month's duration. He thought he
- would give his wife a pleasant surprise, so he did not telephone the news
- of his arrival to the house, but went home and entered her room
- unannounced. As he came in his wife hastily slipped something into the
- box, locked it, and put it into one of the drawers of her desk. Then she
- came to meet him, and he would not have thought of the matter at all had
- it not been for just the slightest trace of confusion in her manner.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was glad to see him. She always was after his absences, but it seemed
- to him that she was exceptionally so this time. She had never been a
- demonstrative woman; but it seemed to Clarke that she came nearer that
- description on the occasion of this home-coming than ever before. They had
- a deal to say to each other, and it was not until after dinner that the
- picture of his wife hurriedly disposing of the box crossed Clarke's
- consciousness again. Even then he mentioned it casually because they were
- talked out of more important topics rather than because of any very sharp
- curiosity. He asked her what it was; what was in it.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, nothing!—nothing of any importance—nothing at all,” she
- said; and moved over to the piano and began one of his favorite airs. And
- he forgot the box again in an instant. She had always been able to make
- Clarke forget things, when she wanted to. But the next day it suddenly
- came to him, out of that nowhere-in-particular from which thoughts come to
- mortals, that she had been almost as much confused at his sudden question
- as she had at his previous sudden entrance.
- </p>
- <p>
- Clarke was not a suspicious person; not even a very curious one, as a
- rule. But it was so evident to him that there was something in that box
- which his wife did not wish him to see that he could not help but wonder.
- Always frank with her, and always accustomed to an equal candor on her
- part, it occurred to him that he would ask her again, in something more
- than a casual way, and that she would certainly tell him, at the same time
- clearing up her former hesitation. But no!—why should he ask her?
- That would be to make something out of nothing; this was a trifle, and not
- worth thinking about. But he continued thinking about it, nevertheless....
- </p>
- <p>
- Ah, he had it! What a chump he had been, not to guess it sooner! His
- birthday was only ten days off, and his wife had been planning to surprise
- him with a remembrance of some sort. Of course! That accounted for the
- whole thing.
- </p>
- <p>
- With this idea in his head, he said nothing more about the box, but
- waited. And when dinner was over and they sat before the fire together, on
- the evening of the anniversary, he still forbore to mention it, expecting
- every moment that the next she would present him with the token. But as
- the evening wore away, with no sign on her part, he finally broke an
- interval of silence with the remark:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well, dear, don't keep me guessing any longer! Bring it to me!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Guessing? Bring you—what?” And he could see that she was genuinely
- puzzled.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, my birthday present.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, my dear boy! And did you expect one? And I had forgotten! Positively
- forgotten—it <i>is</i> your birthday, isn't it, Dickie! If I had
- only known you <i>wanted</i> one————” And she came
- up and kissed him, with something like contrition, although his birthday
- had never been one of the sentimental anniversaries which she felt bound
- to observe with gifts.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't feel bad about it—I don't care, you know—really,” he
- said. “Only, I thought you had something of the sort in that brass-bound
- box—that was the only reason I mentioned it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Brass-bound box—why, no, I—I forgot it. I'm ashamed of
- myself, but I forgot the date entirely!”
- </p>
- <p>
- But she volunteered no explanation of what the box contained, although the
- opportunity was so good a one.
- </p>
- <p>
- And Clarke wondered more than ever.
- </p>
- <p>
- What could it be? The letters of some former sweetheart? Well, all girls
- had sweethearts before they married, he supposed; at least all men did. He
- had had several himself. There was nothing in that. And he would not make
- an ass of himself by saying any more about it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Only... he could not remember any old sweethearts that he wouldn't have
- told Agnes all about, if she had asked him. He had no secrets from her.
- But she had a secret from him... innocent enough, of course. But still, a
- secret. There was none of those old sweethearts of his whose letters he
- cared to keep after five years of marriage. And there was no... But,
- steady! Where were his reflections leading him? Into something very like
- suspicion? Positively, yes; to the verge of it. Until Agnes got ready to
- tell him all about it, he would forget that damned box!
- </p>
- <p>
- And if she never got ready, why, that was all right, too. She was his
- wife, and he loved her... and that settled it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Perhaps that should have settled it, but it did not. Certain
- healthy-looking, fleshy specimens of humanity are said to succumb the
- quickest to pneumonia, and it may be that the most ingenuous natures
- suffer the most intensely with suspicion, when once thoroughly inoculated.
- </p>
- <h3>
- II
- </h3>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">C</span>larke fought
- against it, cursing his own baseness. But the very effort necessary to the
- fight showed him the persistence of the thing itself. He loved his wife,
- and trusted her, he told himself over and over again, and in all their
- relations hitherto there had never been the slightest deviation from
- mutual confidence and understanding. What did he suspect? He could not
- have told himself. He went over their life together in his mind. In the
- five years of their married life, he could not have helped but notice that
- men were attracted to her. Of course they were. That was natural. She was
- a charming woman. He quite approved of it; it reflected credit upon him,
- in a way. He was not a Bluebeard of a husband, to lock a wife up and deny
- her the society proper to her years. And her very catholicity of taste,
- the perfect frankness of her enjoyment of masculine attention, had but
- served to make his confidence all the more complete. True, he had never
- thought she loved him as much as he loved her... but now that he came to
- think of it, was there not a warmer quality to her affection since his
- return from this last trip west? Was there not a kind of thoughtfulness,
- was there not a watchful increase in attentiveness, that he had always
- missed before? Was she not making love to him every day now; just as he
- had always made love to her before? Were not the parts which they had
- played for the five years of their married life suddenly reversed? They
- were! Indeed they were! And what did that mean? What did that portend? Did
- the brass-bound box have aught to do with that? What was the explanation
- of this change?
- </p>
- <p>
- The subtle imp of suspicion turned this matter of the exchanged rôles into
- capital. Clarke, still ashamed of himself for doing it, began covertly to
- watch his wife; to set traps of various kinds for her. He said nothing
- more about the box, but within six months after the first day upon which
- he had seen it, it became the constant companion of his thoughts.
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>What</i> did he suspect? Not even now could he have said. He suspected
- nothing definite; vaguely, he suspected anything and everything. If his
- wife noticed his changed manner towards her, she made no sign. If
- anything, her efforts to please him, her attentiveness, her thoughtfulness
- in small things, increased.
- </p>
- <h3>
- III
- </h3>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>here came a day
- when he could stand this self-torture no longer, he thought. He came home
- from his office—Clarke was a partner in a prosperous real-estate
- concern—at an hour when he thought his wife not yet returned from an
- afternoon of call making, determined to end the matter once for all.
- </p>
- <p>
- He went to her room, found the key to her desk, and opened the drawer. He
- found the box, but It was locked, and he began rummaging through the
- drawers, and among the papers and letters therein, for the key.
- </p>
- <p>
- Perhaps she carried it with her. Very well, then, he would break it open!
- With the thing in his hand he began to look around for something with
- which to force the fastenings, and was about deciding that he would take
- it down to the basement, and use the hatchet, when he heard a step. He
- turned, just as his wife entered the room.
- </p>
- <p>
- Her glance traveled from the box in his hand to the ransacked desk, and
- rested there inquiringly for a moment. Strangely enough, in view of the
- fact that he felt himself an injured husband and well within his rights,
- it was Clarke who became confused, apologetic, and evasive under her gaze.
- He essayed a clumsy lie:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Agnes,” he began, indicating the desk, “I—I got a bill to-day from
- Meigs and Horner, for those furs, you know—I was sure that the
- account had been settled—that you had paid them, and had shown me
- the receipt—that you had paid them from your allowance, you know—and
- I thought I would come home and look up the receipt.”
- </p>
- <p>
- It was very lame; and very lamely done, at that, as he felt even while he
- was doing it. But it gave him an opportunity of setting the box down on
- the desk almost in a casual manner, as if he had picked it up quite
- casually, while he began to tumble the papers again with his hands.
- </p>
- <p>
- “The receipt is here,” she said; and got it for him.
- </p>
- <p>
- The box lay between them, but they did not look at it, nor at each other,
- and they both trembled with agitation.
- </p>
- <p>
- Each knew that the thoughts of the other were on nothing except that
- little locked receptacle of wood and brass, yet neither one referred to
- it; and for a full half minute they stood with averted faces, and fumbling
- hands, and played out the deception.
- </p>
- <p>
- Finally she looked full at him, and drew a long breath, as if the story
- were coming now; and there was in her manner a quality of softness—almost
- of sentimentality, Clarke felt. She was getting ready to try and melt him
- into a kind of sympathy for her frailty, was she! Well, that would not
- work with him! And with the receipted bill waving in his hand, he made it
- the text of a lecture on extravagance, into which he plunged with
- vehemence.
- </p>
- <p>
- Why did he not let her speak? He would not admit the real reason to
- himself, just then. But in his heart he was afraid to have her go on.
- Afraid, either way it turned. If she were innocent of any wrong, he would
- have made an ass of himself—and much worse than an ass. If she were
- guilty, she might melt him into a weak forgiveness in spite of her guilt!
- No, she must not speak... not now! If she were innocent, how could he
- confess his suspicions to her and acknowledge his baseness? And besides...
- women were so damned clever... whatever was in that box, she might fool
- him about it, somehow!
- </p>
- <p>
- And then, “Good God!” he thought, “I have got to the place where I hug my
- suspicion to me as a dearer thing than my love, have I? Have I got so low
- as that?”
- </p>
- <p>
- While these thoughts raced and rioted through his mind, his lips were
- feverishly pouring out torrents in denunciation of feminine extravagance.
- Even as he spoke he felt the black injustice of his speech, for he had
- always encouraged his wife, rather than otherwise, in the expenditure of
- money; his income was a good one; and the very furs which formed the text
- of his harangue he had helped her select and even urged upon her.
- </p>
- <p>
- It was their first quarrel, if that can be called a quarrel which has only
- one side to it. For she listened in silence, with white lips and hurt
- eyes, and a face that was soon set into a semblance of hard indifference.
- He stormed out of the room, ashamed of himself, and feeling that he had
- disgraced the name of civilization.
- </p>
- <h3>
- IV
- </h3>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>shamed of himself,
- indeed; but before the angel of contrition could take full possession of
- his nature, the devil of suspicion, the imp of the box, regained its
- place.
- </p>
- <p>
- For why had she not answered him? She knew he cared nothing about the
- trivial bill, the matter of the furs, he told himself. Why had she not
- insisted on a hearing, and told him about the box? She knew as well as he
- that that was what he had broken into her desk to get!
- </p>
- <p>
- Justice whispered that she had been about to speak, and that he had denied
- her the chance. But the imp of the box said that an honest woman would
- have <i>demanded</i> the chance—would have persisted until she got
- it! And thus, his very shame, and anger at himself, were cunningly turned
- and twisted by the genius of the brass-bound box into a confirmation of
- his suspicions.
- </p>
- <h3>
- V
- </h3>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>uspicions? Nay,
- convictions! Beliefs. Certainties!
- </p>
- <p>
- They were certainties, now! Certainties to Clarke's mind, at least. For in
- a month after this episode he had become a silent monomaniac on the
- subject of the brass-bound box. He felt shame no longer. She was guilty.
- Of just what, he did not know. But guilty. Guilty as Hell itself, he told
- himself, rhetorically, in one of the dumb rages which now became so
- frequent with him.
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>Guilty—guilty—guilty</i>—the clock on the mantelpiece
- ticked off many dragging hours of intolerable minutes to that tune, while
- Clarke lay awake and listened. <i>Guilty—guilty—guilty</i>—repeat
- any word often enough, and it will hypnotize you. <i>Guilty—guilty—guilty</i>—so
- he and the clock would talk to each other, back and forth, the whole night
- through. If any suggestions of his former, more normal habits of thought
- came to him now it was they that were laughed out of court; it was they
- that were flung away and scorned as traitors.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was guilty. But he would be crafty! He would be cunning. He would make
- no mistake. He would allow her no subterfuge. He would give her no chance
- to snare him back into a condition of half belief. There should be no
- juggling explanations. They were clever as the devil, women were! But this
- one should have no chance to fool him again. She had fooled him too long
- already.
- </p>
- <p>
- And she kept trying to fool him. Shortly after his outburst over the furs,
- she began again a series of timid advances which would have struck him as
- pathetic had he not known that her whole nature was corroded and corrupted
- with deceit, with abominable deceit. She was trying to make him believe
- that she did not know why he was angry and estranged, was she? He would
- show her! He hated her now, with that restless, burning intensity of
- hatred known only to him who has injured another. A hatred that consumed
- his own vitality, and made him sick in soul and body. The little sleep he
- got was passed in uneasy dreams of his revenge; and his waking hours were
- devoted to plots and plans of the form which it should take. Oh, but she
- had been cunning to fool him for so long; but she should see! She should
- see! When the time for action came, she should see!
- </p>
- <h3>
- VI
- </h3>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>omething, one
- tense and feverish midnight, when he lay in his bed snarling and brooding
- and chuckling—a kind of snapping sense in some remote interior
- chamber of his brain, followed by a nervous shock that made him sit
- upright—warned him that the time for action was at hand. What is it
- that makes sinners, at provincial revival meetings, suddenly aware that
- the hours of dalliance are past and the great instant that shall send them
- to “the mourners' bench” is at hand? Somehow, they seem to know! And,
- somehow, Clarke felt an occult touch and knew that his time for action had
- arrived.
- </p>
- <p>
- He did not care what came afterwards. Any jury in the world, so he told
- himself, ought to acquit him of his deed, when they once knew his story;
- when they once looked at the damning evidence of her guilt which she had
- hidden away for so long in the brass-bound box. But if they did not acquit
- him, that was all right, too. His work in the world would have been done;
- he would have punished a guilty woman. He would have shown that all men
- are not fools.
- </p>
- <p>
- But he did not spend a great deal of thought on how other people would
- regard what he was about to do. As he crept down the hall with the knife
- in his hand, his chief sensation was a premonitory itch, a salty tang of
- pleasure in the doing of the deed itself. When hatred comes in where love
- has gone out, there may be a kind of voluptuary delight in the act of
- murder.
- </p>
- <p>
- Very carefully he opened the door of her room. And then he smiled to
- himself, and entered noisily; for what was the need of being careful about
- waking up a woman who was already dead? He did not care whether he killed
- her in her sleep or not;—indeed, if she wakened and begged for her
- life, he thought it might add a certain zest to the business. He should
- enjoy hearing her plead. He would not mind prolonging things.
- </p>
- <p>
- But things were not prolonged. His hand and the muscles of his forearm had
- tensed so often with the thought, with the idea, that the first blow went
- home. She never waked.
- </p>
- <h3>
- VII
- </h3>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>e got the box, and
- opened it.
- </p>
- <p>
- Inside was a long envelope, and written on that were the words:
- </p>
- <p>
- “To be opened by my husband only after my death.”
- </p>
- <p>
- That time had come!
- </p>
- <p>
- Within the envelope was a letter. It was dated on the day of his return
- from his western trip, a few months before. He read:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Dick, I love you!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Does it seem strange to you that I should write it down?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Listen, Dickie dear—I <i>had</i> to write it! I couldn't tell you
- when I was alive—but I just had to tell you, too. And now that I am
- dead, what I say will come to you with all of its sweetness increased; and
- all of its bitterness left out! It will, now that I am dead—or if
- you die first, you will never see this. This is from beyond the grave to
- you, Dickie dear, to make all your life good to you afterwards!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Now, listen, dear, and don't be hard on me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When I married you, Dickie, I <i>didn't</i> love you! You were wild about
- me. But I only <i>liked</i> you very much. It wasn't really love. It
- wasn't what you <i>deserved</i>. But I was only a girl, and you were the
- first man, and I didn't know things; I didn't know what I <i>should have</i>
- felt.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Later, when I realized how very much you cared, I was ashamed of myself.
- I grew to see that I had done wrong in marrying you. Wrong to both of us.
- For no woman should marry a man she doesn't love. And I was ashamed, and
- worried about it. You were so good to me! So sweet—and you never
- suspected that I didn't care like I should. And because you were so good
- and sweet to me, I felt <i>worse</i>. And I made up my mind you should <i>never</i>
- know! That I would be everything to you any woman could be. I tried to be
- a good wife. Wasn't I, Dickie, even then?
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I prayed and prayed and prayed. 'O God,' I used to say, 'let me love
- him like he loves me!' It was five years, Dickie, and I <i>liked</i> you
- more, and <i>admired</i> you more, and saw more in you that was worth
- while, every week; but still, no miracle happened.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And then one morning <i>a miracle did happen!</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was when you were on that trip West. I had gone to bed thinking how
- kind and dear you were. I missed you, Dickie dear, and <i>needed</i> you.
- And when I woke up, there was a change over the world. I felt so
- different, somehow. It had come! Wasn't it wonderful, Dickie?—it had
- come! And I sang all that day for joy. I could hardly wait for you to come
- home so that I could tell you. I loved you, loved you, loved you, Dickie,
- <i>as you deserved!</i> My prayers had been answered, somehow—or
- maybe it was what any woman would do just living near you and being with
- you.
- </p>
- <p>
- “And then I saw <i>I couldn't tell you, after all!</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- “For if I told you I loved you now, that would be to tell you that for
- five years <i>I hadn't loved you</i>, Dickie!
- </p>
- <p>
- “And how would <i>that</i> make you feel? Wouldn't that have been like a
- knife, Dickie?
- </p>
- <p>
- “Oh, I wanted you to know! <i>How</i> I wanted you to know! But, you see,
- I couldn't tell you, could I, dear, without telling the other, too? I just
- <i>had</i> to save you from that! And I just had to make you feel it,
- somehow or other. And I <i>will</i> make you feel it, Dickie!
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I can't tell you. Who knows what ideas you might get into your head
- about those five years, if I told you now? Men are so queer, and they can
- be so stupid sometimes! And I can't bear to think of losing one smallest
- bit of your love... not now! It would <i>kill</i> me!
- </p>
- <p>
- “But I want you to know, sometime. And so I'm writing you—it's my
- first love letter—the first real one, Dickie. If <i>you</i> die
- first, I'll tell you in Heaven. And if <i>I</i> die first, you'll
- understand!
- </p>
- <p>
- “Agnes.”
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0013" id="link2H_4_0013"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XII.—Behind the Curtain
- </h2>
- <p class="pfirst">
- <span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">I</span>t was as dark as
- the belly of the fish that swallowed Jonah. A drizzling rain blanketed the
- earth in chill discomfort. As I splashed and struggled along the country
- road, now in the beaten path, and now among the wet weeds by its side, I
- had never more heartily yearned for the dullness and comforts of
- respectability. Here was I with more talents in my quiver, it pleased me
- to think, than nine out of ten of the burghers I had left sleeping snug
- and smug in the town a few miles behind; with as much real love of
- humanity as the next man, too; and yet shivering and cursing my way into
- another situation that might well mean my death. And all for what? For
- fame or riches? No, for little more than a mere existence, albeit free
- from responsibility. Indeed, I was all but ready to become an honest man
- then and there, to turn back and give up the night's adventure, had but my
- imagination furnished me with the picture of some occupation whereby I
- might gain the same leisure and independence as by what your precisians
- call thieving.
- </p>
- <p>
- With the thought I stumbled off the road again, and into a narrow gully
- that splashed me to the knees with muddy water. Out of that, I walked
- plump into a hedge, and when I sought to turn from it at right angles, I
- found myself still following its line. This circumstance showed me that I
- was come unaware upon the sharp turn of the road which marked the
- whereabouts of the house that was my object. Following the hedge, I found
- the entrance to the graveled driveway within a hundred yards of my last
- misstep, and entered the grounds. I groped about me for a space, not
- daring to show a light, until presently a blacker bulk, lifting itself out
- of the night's comprehensive blackness, indicated the house itself, to my
- left and a bit in front of me. I left the moist gravel—for there is
- nothing to be gained on an expedition of this sort by advertising the size
- and shape of your boots to a morbidly inquisitive public—and reached
- the shelter of the veranda by walking across the lawn.
- </p>
- <p>
- There, being out of eyeshot from the upper windows, I risked a gleam from
- my pocket lantern, one of those little electric affairs that are
- occasionally useful to others than night watchmen. Two long French windows
- gave on the veranda; and, as I knew, both of them opened from the
- reception hall. A bit of a way with the women is not amiss in my
- profession; and the little grayeyed Irish maid, who had told me three
- weeks before of old man Rolfe's stinginess and brutality towards the young
- wife whom he had cooped up here for the past four years, had also given
- me, bit by bit, other information more valuable than she could guess. So,
- thanks to the maid, I was aware that the safe where the Rolfe jewels were
- kept—and often a substantial bit of money as well—was situated
- in the library; which was just beyond the hall and connected with it by a
- flight of four or five steps. This safe was my objective point.
- </p>
- <p>
- The wooden window shutters were but the work of a moment; and the window
- fastenings themselves of only a few minutes more. (I flatter myself that I
- have a very coaxing way with window fasteners.) The safe itself would give
- me the devil's own trouble, I knew. It was really a job for two men, and I
- ached all over to be at it, to be safely through with it, and away, a good
- hour before sunrise.
- </p>
- <p>
- The window opened noiselessly enough, and I stepped within and set my
- little satchel full of necessary tools upon the floor. But the damp
- weather had swelled the woodwork, and as I closed the window again, though
- I pushed it ever so gently, it gave forth a noise something between a
- grunt and a squeak.
- </p>
- <p>
- And as pat as the report of a pistol to the pressure of the trigger came
- the answer—a sound of a quickly-caught breath from the warm dimness
- of the room. I made no motion; though the blood drummed desperately
- through my brain and my scalp tingled with apprehension and excitement.
- </p>
- <p>
- For ten, for twenty, for thirty seconds I stood so; and then the silence
- was broken by the unmistakable rustle of a woman's skirts. The sound came
- softly towards me through the darkness. It was my turn to let loose my
- held breath with a gasp, and in another moment I should have been through
- the window and running for it; when a woman's whisper halted me.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Is that you, Charles? And why did you not rap upon the shutter?”
- </p>
- <p>
- So some one called Charles was expected? Then, ticked off my thoughts
- almost automatically, the lady somewhere near me in the dark might have
- her own reasons for not caring to alarm the house just then! The thought
- steadied me to action.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Shh,” I whispered, feeling behind me for the window, and gradually
- opening it again. “S-h-h! No, it is not Charles”—and I put one foot
- backward across the sill. “It is not Charles, but Charles has sent me to
- say——”
- </p>
- <p>
- Click!—went something by the window, and the room was flooded with
- sudden brilliance from a dozen electric globes. And again, click!—and
- I looked with blinking eyes at the muzzle of a cocked pistol held by the
- most beautiful, the most be-jeweled, the most determined-looking young
- woman it has ever been my lot to meet.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who are you?” she asked in a voice that was at once hoarse and sweet.
- “Who are you? And what do you want? And where is Charles?”
- </p>
- <p>
- As I stood there dripping moisture upon the oiled floor, with my hands in
- the air—they had gone up quite involuntarily—I must have been
- the very picture of idiocy and discomfiture. I wondered if Charles,
- whoever the devil Charles might be, was always welcomed with a cocked
- pistol. Probably not; but, I wondered, how did she happen to have a pistol
- with her? I wondered why neck, breast, hair, arms, and hands should be
- ablaze with the diamonds that accentuated her lithe and vivid loveliness.
- I wondered why, now that she saw I was not Charles, she did not alarm the
- house. I wondered everything; but nothing to the point. And as I stood
- wondering she repeated:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Who are you? And what do you want?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Madame,” I stammered, my jarred brain fastening upon the sentence she had
- interrupted, “Charles sent me to—to say to you——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Charles who?” she asked. And as tense as was her face, a gleam of
- merriment shot through her eyes. “Charles who?” she repeated.
- </p>
- <p>
- Charles was not one of the points upon which the Irish maid had given me
- information.
- </p>
- <p>
- The lady with the pistol considered for a moment. “You are not very
- clever, are you?” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- “If you will pardon me,” I said, “I think I had better be going. I seem to
- have mistaken the house.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “You at least seem to have mistaken the proper manner in which to enter
- it,” she returned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, as to the mode of entrance,” I said, “I might plead that the mistake
- appears to have been less in that than in the person who employed it.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I could not resist the retort. A dull red crept slowly up her neck and
- face; a pallid, olive-tinted face, beautiful in itself, beautiful for its
- oval contour and broad brow, and frame of black hair; beautiful in itself,
- and yet dominated and outdone by the lustrous, restless beauty of the dark
- eyes wherewith she held me more surely captive than by virtue of the
- pistol.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You will come in,” she said, “and sit there.” She indicated a seat beside
- a central table. “But first you will kindly let me have whatever weapons
- you may possess.” She took my revolver, examined it, and put her own in
- the breast of her gown. “Now you may put your hands down,” she said, “your
- arms must ache by now. Sit down.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I sat. She stood and looked at me for a moment.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am wondering what you are going to do with me,” I ventured.
- </p>
- <p>
- In all of her quick actions, and in the tones of her voice, there was
- evident a most unnatural sort of strain. She may well have been excited;
- that was only to be expected in the circumstances. But the repressed
- excitement in this woman's manner was not that of a woman who is forcing
- herself to keep her courage up; not that of a woman who would like to
- scream; but a steadier nervous energy which seemed to burn in her like a
- fire, to escape from her finger tips, and almost to crackle in her hair;
- an intensity that was vibrant. I marveled. Most women would have screamed
- at the advent of a man in the dead of night; screamed and fainted. Or the
- ones who would not, and who were armed as she, would ordinarily have been
- inclined to shoot, and at once; or immediately to have given the alarm.
- She had done none of these things. She had merely taken me captive. She
- had set me down in a chair at the center of the room. She had not roused
- the house. And now she stood looking at me with a trace of abstraction in
- her manner; looking at me, for the moment, less as if I were a human being
- than as if I were a factor in some mathematical problem which it was the
- immediate task of that active, high-keyed brain of hers to solve. And
- there was a measure of irony in her glance, as if she alone tasted and
- enjoyed some ulterior jest.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I am wondering,” I repeated, “what you are going to do with me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- She sat down at the opposite side of the table before she replied.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I believe,” she said slowly, “that I have nearly made up my mind what to
- do with you.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Well?” I asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- But she said nothing, and continued to say nothing. I looked at her and
- her diamonds—the diamonds I had come after!—and wondered again
- why she was wearing them; wondered why she had tricked herself out as for
- some grand entertainment. And as the ignominious result of my night's
- expedition pressed more sharply against my pride I could have strangled
- her through sheer disappointment and mortification. The pistol she held
- was the answer to that impulse. But what was the answer to her hesitancy
- in alarming the house? Why did she not give me up and be done with me?
- </p>
- <p>
- At the farther end of the room was a long red curtain, which covered the
- entrance to a sitting-room or parlor, as I guessed; and by the side of the
- curtain hung an old-fashioned bell cord, also of red, which I supposed to
- communicate with the servants' quarters. It were easy enough, now that she
- had taken the whip hand of me so cleverly, to pull that rope, to set the
- bell jangling, to rouse the house. Why did she not do so?
- </p>
- <p>
- Was she a mad woman? There was that in her inexplicable conduct, and in
- her highly-wrought, yet governed, mood, as she sat in brooding silence
- across the table from me, to make the theory plausible. Brooding she was,
- and studying me, I thought; yet watchful, too. For at any least motion of
- mine her hand tightened slightly upon the pistol. We sat thus while the
- slow seconds lengthened into intolerable minutes; and I steamed with
- sweat, and fidgeted. Nor was I set more at my ease by her long searching
- glances. In fact, my overthrow had been so instant and so complete that my
- scattered wits had never drawn themselves together again; I continued as
- one in a haze; as a person half under the power of the hypnotist; as a
- mouse must feel after the first blow of the cat's paw. And yet one idea
- began to loom clearly out of that haze and possess me—the idea that
- she desired the alarm to be given as little as I did myself.
- </p>
- <p>
- But there was no light in that. It was easy to understand why she did not
- wish the house aroused while she still believed me to be Charles—whoever
- Charles might be. But now?—it was too much for me. I could not find
- a justification in reason for my belief; and yet the conviction grew.
- </p>
- <p>
- She broke the silence with a question that might have been put with full
- knowledge of my thought.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You are still wondering why I do not give you up?” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- I nodded. She leaned towards me across the table, and if ever the demons
- of mockery danced through a woman's eyes it was then; and her lips parted
- in a kind of silent laughter.
- </p>
- <p>
- She touched the diamonds about her throat.
- </p>
- <p>
- “It was these you came after?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I nodded again. Evidently speech was of no avail with this lady. She asked
- questions at her will, and reserved the right of answering none.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me,” she said, “Why are you a thief? Why do you steal?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “'Convey, the wise it call,'” I quoted. “Accident, or fate, or destiny, I
- suppose,” I went on, wondering more than ever at the question, but with a
- fluttering hope. Perhaps the lady (in spite of Charles—such things
- have been!) was an amateur sociologist, a crank reformer, or something of
- that sort. There had been no mockery in her tone when she asked the
- question; instead, I thought, a kind of pity. “Fate, or destiny,” I went
- on, “or what you please, 'There is a destiny that shapes our ends,
- rough-hew them how we will,'” I quoted again, in my best actor manner.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why,” she said, “you are a man with some air of better things about you.
- You quote Shakespeare as if he were an old friend. And yet, you are a
- thief! Tell me,” she continued, “tell me—I dare say there were many
- struggles against that destiny?” There was a note almost of eagerness in
- her voice, as if she were a leniently-inclined judge who would fain search
- out and put in the mouth of a condemned man some plausible plea for the
- exercise of clemency. “Come—were there not?—I dare say there
- were—circumstances of uncommon bitterness that forced you to become
- what I see you? And even now you hate the thing you are?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, as to that,” I said, possessed of the sudden whim to be honest with
- myself for once, “I am afraid that I can complain of no bitterer usage at
- the hands of the world than can the majority of those who reap where they
- have not sowed. When I think of it all, I am used to putting it to myself
- that my life is devoted to a kind of private warfare against the unjust
- conditions of a hypocritical social order.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Warfare!” she flouted, hard and brilliant as one of her own diamonds
- again. “And you could justify it, too, could you not?”
- </p>
- <p>
- And then she asked me: “Have you ever killed a man?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why, no,” said I, “but I have tried to.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “He lived?—and you were sorry that he lived?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “No,” I said, quite out of my depths in all this moral quibbling, “I was
- glad he lived.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And yet you hated him?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I would have taken his life in a rage,” I said. “He had wronged me as
- greatly as one man can wrong another.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “And yet you were glad he lived? My dear thief——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Higgins is the name,” said I. “You may call me Higgins.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “My dear Higgins,” she went on, “you are inconsistent. You attempt to slay
- a man in what I should judge to have been a not ignoble passion. It may
- have been an anger that did you credit. And yet you are not bold enough to
- face the thought of killing him. You are glib with justifications of your
- thievery; and perhaps that is also because you are too much of a coward to
- look steadily at it. You creep along a mean and despicable path in life,
- contentedly, it seems to me, with a dead soul. You are what you are
- because there is nothing positive in you for either good or evil. You are
- negative; you were better dead. Yes, better dead!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Why should I have felt as if she were seeking self-justification in
- advance for some death she planned for me? Certainly, my life, or death,
- was not hers to give or take; she might give me up, and probably would.
- But just as certainly she had made me feel, as she passed her judgment
- upon me, that she was likely to turn executioner as well as judge. My
- doubts as to her sanity returned.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Still,” I said, for the sake of saying something, “if I killed a man, I
- should not like to think about it, even if he deserved death.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Even if he deserved death?” she repeated, and sprang up, as if the phrase
- had touched her. “You make yourself the judge, you do, of when a man
- 'deserves' to lose his wealth. Come, what is your idea of when he deserves
- to die?”
- </p>
- <p>
- Up and down the room she swept; yet still watchful. And the emotion which
- she had so long suppressed burst out into a poisonous lovely bloom that
- suffused her being with an awful beauty.
- </p>
- <p>
- “When does he deserve to die?” she repeated. “Listen to me. I knew a woman
- once—no matter where—no matter when—who was sold—sold!
- I say—by the sordid devil she called her father, to the veriest
- beast that ever trod this earth. Her beauty—for she had beauty—her
- wit—for wit she had—became this husband's chattels before she
- turned her twentieth year. She would never have loved him, but she would
- have been faithful to him—she was faithful to him, in fact, in spite
- of all his drunkenness and bestiality—and abuse! It was not neglect
- alone that she had to complain of—she had never looked for
- understanding or sympathy. But she had not looked for abuse. Abuse, I say,
- and worse than abuse. Before she had been married a year she knew what it
- was, not only to feel the weight of a heavy hand and to hide the bruises
- from her maid, but to see other women brought into her very house. Pah!—hate?
- She hated him? Hate is not the word. She became a live coal. But she never
- cried out; she found strength to smile at him even when he beat her; she
- was proud enough for that. It pleased him, in his hellish humor, and
- because she was made to shine, to cage her in a country house, and there
- to taunt her that although she was sold to him she got little of what
- money may buy. And still she smiled at him, and still her hatred grew
- through all the weeks and months until it filled her whole being. And then—love
- came. For God has ordained that love may enter even Hell. Love, I say; and
- she loved this lover of hers with a passion that was measured only by the
- degree in which she hated her husband. And she would have left with him;
- but on the very night they would have flown together her lord and master——-”
- </p>
- <p>
- She said the words with an indescribable spluttering sneer, sidewise from
- her mouth. It is so a lioness may snarl and spit before she leaps.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Her—lord and master—found it out, and waited up to catch
- them; and coming upon her alone, taunted her. Taunted her, and struck her——”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Look!” she cried, and tore the diamonds from her breast, and rent the
- laces, and wrenched the fastenings apart. A new red weal that seemed to
- throb and pulse with her respiration stood out from the whiteness of her
- bosom.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Tell me,” she whispered hoarsely, “would it have been murder if she had
- killed that man? Which were the more courageous thing—to kill him,
- or to step back into her living hell? If she had killed him, would she
- have regretted it?”
- </p>
- <p>
- I know not what I might have answered; but at that instant three raps
- sounded distinctly upon the window-shutter. I leaped to my feet. Then
- Charles had come!
- </p>
- <p>
- An instant she stood as if stricken to a statue in mid-rage.
- </p>
- <p>
- And then she cried out, and there was a furious triumph in her voice—a
- kind of joy that matched itself to, and blended with, the fierce and
- reckless beauty of her shaken jewels, possessed her.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Charles,” she cried, “come in! Come in!”
- </p>
- <p>
- Slowly the window opened and a man entered. He drew back in amaze at the
- sight of me, and turned to her with an air that was all one question.
- </p>
- <p>
- “I thought you would never come,” she said.
- </p>
- <p>
- He was a big blond man, and as he turned from the one to the other of us,
- with his helpless, inquiring face, and eyes that blinked from the outer
- darkness, he looked oddly like a sleepy schoolboy who has been awakened
- from an afternoon nap by the teacher's ruler.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Katherine,” he finally stammered, “what is this? Who is this man?” He
- passed his hand across his forehead as one may do who doubts whether or
- not he dreams; and walked towards the table.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Charles,” she said, “I have shot the old man.” I have seen a beef
- stricken on the head with a mallet look at its executioner with big eyes
- for an instant before the quivering in its limbs set in and it sank to the
- ground. So this Charles looked with wide, stupid eyes, and shivered, and
- dropped the great bulk of him into a chair. His head sank upon his hand.
- But finally he looked up, and spoke in a confused voice, as if through a
- mist. “Good God, Katherine, what do you mean?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “I mean,” she said, framing the words slowly, as one speaks a lesson to a
- child, “I mean that I have killed the old man.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And moving swiftly across the room she flung back the heavy red curtain at
- the end of it; and I saw the answer to my many questionings.
- </p>
- <p>
- The body lay upon its back, with one arm bent, the hand across the chest,
- and the fingers spread wide. The face was that of a man of sixty or
- thereabouts, but, indeed, so deeply lined and wrinkled and pouched with
- evil living that the age even in life must have been hard to determine.
- Blood was coagulating about a bullet wound in the temple, and there were
- powder burns on the forehead. The shot had been fired at close range,
- evidently from the weapon with which I had been confronted on my entrance;
- and the sound had been so muffled in the curtain that it was little wonder
- that the servants in the rooms above, and across the house, had not heard
- it. He had a monstrous nose, that man upon the floor, and it must have
- been a red nose in life; but now it was of a bluish-white color, like the
- skin of an old and scrawny fowl. That, and the thin, drawn-up legs, and
- the big flabby paunch of the thing, robbed the sight, for me, of all the
- solemnity which (we are taught) exudes from the presence of death. It made
- me sick; and yet I cackled with sheer hysteria, too; or rather my strained
- nerves jarred and laughed, if not myself. It was too damned grotesque.
- </p>
- <p>
- Herself, she did not look at it. She looked at the man called Charles; and
- he, with a shudder, lifted his slow gaze from the thing behind the curtain
- to her face.
- </p>
- <p>
- She was the first to speak, and the terrible joy with which she had bade
- Charles to enter still dominated her accents.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Don't you understand, Charles? This man,” and she indicated me with the
- pistol, “this man takes the blame of this. He is a thief. He came just
- after—just afterwards. And I held him for your coming. Don't you
- see? Don't you see? His presence clears us of this deed!”
- </p>
- <p>
- “<i>Us?</i>” queried Charles.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Not <i>us?</i>” she asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- “My God, Katherine,” he burst forth, “why did you do this thing? And you
- would heap murder on murder! Why, why, why did you do it? Why splash this
- blood upon our love? A useless thing to do! We might have—we might
- have———”
- </p>
- <p>
- He broke down and sobbed. And then: “God knows the old man never did me
- any harm,” he said. “And she'd accuse the thief, too!” he cried a moment
- later, with a kind of wondering horror.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Listen, Charles,” she said, and moved towards him; and yet with a
- sidelong glance she still took heed of me. “Listen, and understand me. We
- must act quickly—but after it happened it was necessary that I
- should see you before we could act. This man came to rob; here is his
- pistol, and in that satchel by the window are his tools, no doubt. He may
- tell what wild tale he will; but who will believe him? You go as you came;
- I give him up—and we—we wait awhile, and then the rest of life
- is ours.”
- </p>
- <p>
- I suppose that it is given to few men to hear their death plotted in their
- presence. But I had come to the pass by this time where it struck me as an
- impersonal thing. I listened; but somehow the full sense of what she said,
- as affecting me, did not then impinge upon my brain with waking force. I
- stood as if in a trance; I stood and looked on at those two contending
- personalities, that were concerned just now with the question of my life
- or death, as if I were a spectator in a theater—as if it were
- someone else of whom they spoke.
- </p>
- <p>
- “Go,” she cried to Charles again, “and I will give him up.”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Katherine,” he said, “and you would do this thing?”
- </p>
- <p>
- “Why?” she retorted, “what is this man's life beside mine? His soul is
- dead! I tell you, Charles, that I have come through Hell alive to gain one
- ray of happiness! But go!—and leave the rest to me.”
- </p>
- <p>
- And she grasped the bell cord and pulled it. Pulled it again and again.
- The sound wandered crazily through what remote corridors I know not.
- </p>
- <p>
- She made a step towards him. He leaped to his feet with an oath, with
- loathing in his eyes, shrank back from her, and held out a hand as if to
- ward off some unclean thing.
- </p>
- <p>
- Bewilderment lined her face. She groped to understand. And then, as the
- full significance of his gesture came home to her, she winced and swayed
- as if from a blow; and the pistol dropped from her loosened grasp to the
- floor.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You—you abandon me?” she said slowly. “You desert me, then? Love,
- Love, think how I have loved you that I did this thing! And is what I have
- suffered—what I have done—still to purchase—nothing?”
- </p>
- <p>
- She pleaded for my death; but I hope that I shall never again see on any
- human face the look of despair that was on hers. I pitied her!
- </p>
- <p>
- Heavy feet on the stairway woke me from my trance. Unregarded of them both
- I grasped my pistol from the floor and sprang for the window. A door
- opened somewhere above, and a voice asked:
- </p>
- <p>
- “You rang, Ma'am?”
- </p>
- <p>
- From without the window I looked back into the room. She stood with
- outstretched hands—hands that reached upward from the pit of
- torment, my fancy told me—and pleaded for a little love. “In all
- this world is there no little ray of love for me?”—it was so my
- imagination rather than my hearing translated the slight movement of her
- lips. And while she and the man called Charles stood thus at gaze with one
- another, the servant spoke again from the stairway.
- </p>
- <p>
- “You rang?” he asked.
- </p>
- <p>
- She slowly straightened. She steadied herself. And with her eyes still
- fixed upon those of Charles she cried:
- </p>
- <p>
- “Yes, yes, I rang, Jones! Your master is—dead. Your master's
- murdered! And there, there,” and she stabbed an accusing finger at her
- erstwhile lover, “there is the man who murdered him!”
- </p>
- <p>
- And then I turned from the window and ran from that house; and as I ran I
- saw the Dawn, like a wild, fair woman, walk up the eastern sky with
- blood-stained feet.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><br />
- </p>
- <hr />
- <p>
- <a name="link2H_4_0014" id="link2H_4_0014"> </a>
- </p>
- <div style="height: 4em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
- <h2>
- XIII.—Words and Thoughts
- </h2>
- <h3>
- [A Play in One Act]
- </h3>
- <p>
- Characters:
- </p>
- <p>
- Cousin Fanny Hemlock
- </p>
- <p>
- John Speaker
- </p>
- <p>
- Mary Speaker
- </p>
- <p>
- John Thinker
- </p>
- <p>
- Mary Thinker
- </p>
- <p>
- Maid
- </p>
- <p>
- Period, the present. Place, any American city.
- </p>
- <p>
- The Scene <i>represents two drawing rooms, exact duplicates, furnished
- alike to the smallest detail. Either room might be the reflection of the
- other in a mirror. Each occupies half of the stage. The division line
- between them is indicated, towards the hack of the stage, by two pianos,
- which sit hack to back at the center of the hack drop. This division is
- carried by the pianos a quarter or a third of the way towards the
- footlights. The division is further suggested, towards the front of the
- stage, hy a couple of settees or couches, which also sit back to back.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- John Speaker and Mary Speaker <i>remain all the time in the room at the
- right of the stage. They are not aware of</i> John Thinker <i>and</i> Mary
- Thinker, <i>who are, throughout the play, in the room at the left. The</i>
- Thinkers, <i>however, are aware of the</i> Speakers.
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>In make-up, looks, dress, etc., the two</i>Johns <i>are precisely
- alike. The same is true of</i> Mary Speaker and Mary Thinker. <i>The</i>
- Johns <i>are conventional-looking, prosperous Americans of from 38 to 40
- years of age. The two</i> Marys <i>are a few years younger.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- Cousin Fanny Hemlock <i>is a dried-up, querulous old woman of seventy.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>The Curtain, on rising, discovers the two</i> Johns <i>and the two</i>
- Marys. <i>It is between 7 and 8 in the evening; they are all in evening
- dress, and are preparing to go out, putting on their gloves, etc., etc.</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>Picking up over coat.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Are you ready, Mary dear?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>Holding out a gloved hand.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Quite, John dear. Button this for me, won't you, love?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>Busy with glove.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- It's been nearly a year, hasn't it, since we've been out together of an
- evening? I'm afraid Cousin Fanny is terribly trying on you at times, Mary.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- You know, John, I don't consider her a trial. I <i>love</i> Cousin Fanny.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Busy with Mary Thinker's glove.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- The old cat's letting us off to-night, for a wonder, Mary. She's a
- horrible affliction!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> [<i>Passionately.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Affliction is no word. She makes my life a living hell! I hate her!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Helping <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> on with coat, which action is
- simultaneously imitated hy John and <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, we must bear with her gently, Mary. I am afraid poor Cousin Fanny
- will not be with us many more years.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- One comfort is she'll die before long!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>John Speaker</b>.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Oh, John, you don't think Cousin Fanny's going to die, do you?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>John Thinker</b>.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Don't fool yourself about her dying soon, John. There's no such luck!
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Enter Maid through door in right back to John and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>,
- who look up. John and <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> also notice entrance of
- Maid and listen.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Maid</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>To <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Miss Hemlock sent me to inquire whether you were going out to-night.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>John Thinker</b>, quickly.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- The old cat's up to something!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>To Maid</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes. We were just starting. Does Miss Hemlock want anything? I will go to
- her if she wishes to speak with me.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Maid</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She said, in case you were going out, that I was to tell you <i>not</i> to
- do so.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- <i>Not</i> to do so?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Maid</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, ma'am; that's what she said. She said in case you were getting ready
- to go out, you were to change your plans and stop at home.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>To Maid.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Not to do so? But, surely, there must be some mistake!
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Maid shakes her head slowly, deliberately, looking fixedly at John
- Speaker; and while she is doing so <br /><b>John Thinker</b> says to <br /><b>Mary
- Thinker</b></i>:]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Some malicious idea is working in her head tonight!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Maid</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>To <br /><b>John Speaker</b>.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- No, sir, no mistake. She said very plainly and distinctly that you were
- not to go out tonight.
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Maid bows and exits.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Cousin Fanny is not so well to-night, I'm afraid, dear, or she would
- certainly have put her request in some other way.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- If I didn't love Cousin Fanny, John, I would be tempted to believe that
- she deliberately tries at times to annoy us.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Cousin Fanny is old, and we must remember that she is very fond of us. We
- will have to bear with her.
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i><br /><b>John Speaker</b> takes his top coat and his wife's coat> and
- lays them on a chair, while <br /><b>John Thinker</b>, who has been
- frowning and brooding, flings himself into chair and says to <br /><b>Mary
- Thinker</b></i>:]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- For cold-blooded, devilish nerve in a man's own house, Cousin Fanny
- certainly takes the cake, Mary!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She gets more spiteful every day. She knows her power, and the more
- childish she gets the more delight she takes in playing tyrant.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Cheer up, it isn't forever! If she doesn't change her will before she
- dies, it means fifteen thousand dollars a year. That's worth a little
- trouble!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- You're away at your office all day. I'm here at home with her. It is I who
- catch all the trouble!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, after all, she's more nearly related to you, Mary, than she is to
- me.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She's my mother's third cousin, if you call <i>that</i> near!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, then, she's my father's fifth cousin, if you call <i>that</i> near!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- What were you thinking of, John, dear?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Nothing... nothing, Mary... except that
- </p>
- <p>
- Cousin Fanny is a poor, lonely old soul, after all.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Poor, lonely old woman, indeed—it's odd, isn't it, that she is
- related to both you and me, John?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She's closer to you than to me, Mary.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- You couldn't call a fourth or fifth cousin very near, John.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- It almost seems as if you were trying to deny the blood tie, Mary!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- No, John, dear, blood is thicker than water.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b> Thicker than water!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Relations are the most unpleasant persons on earth. I hate cousins.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Especially cousins who are also cousins-in-law! <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- But even if she were only <i>my</i> relation, Mary, and not related to <i>you</i>
- at all, I know enough of your sweet nature to know that she would always
- be welcome in our home in spite of her little idiosyncrasies.
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Enter Cousin Fanny, to John and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>, through door
- right hack. She coughs as she steps forward, leaning on a cane, and puts
- her hand to her chest, stop-ping. Then as she comes forward, she stumbles.
- John and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> leap forward, put their arms behind her,
- and, supporting and leading her, conduct her tenderly down stage to chair
- at center of room they are in. John and <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>, near
- together at table in their room, lean forward eagerly and watch this
- entrance, and when the old woman stumbles, <br /><b>John Thinker</b> says
- to <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>, nudging her:</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- You see?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- See what?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She totters!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She stumbled.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She's getting weaker.
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i><br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> tenderly kisses Cousin Fanny, as <br /><b>Mary
- Thinker</b> says</i>:]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Weaker! She'll live to be a hundred and ten!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Not she!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- The mean kind always do!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Tenderly, to Cousin Fanny, arranging cushion behind her.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Can't I get you a wrap, Cousin Fanny?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Don't you feel a draught, Cousin Fanny?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Bitterly, frowning at other group</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- No draught will ever harm her!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>To <br /><b>John Speaker</b>, sneeringly; petulantly.</i>] You're
- mighty anxious about a <i>wrap</i>, John! But you were thinking of going
- out and leaving me practically alone in the house.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>Deprecatingly.</i> ]
- </p>
- <p>
- But, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>——
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Interrupting</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- Don't deny it! Don't take the trouble to deny it! Don't lie about it! You
- can't lie to me! Don't I see your evening clothes? And Mary, too! Both of
- you were going out—<i>both</i> of you!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, we gave it up when we learned that you wanted us
- to stop at home with you. Didn't we, John?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Querulously, childishly, shrilly.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Don't deny it, Mary, don't deny it! Don't excuse yourself! I can see you
- were going out! I can see your evening clothes!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- We'll go and change to something else, won't we, John?
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>She is going, as she speaks, but <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> cries out</i>:]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Stop!
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i><br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> stops, and <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> continues</i>:]
- </p>
- <p>
- Don't take them off. I don't want you to take them off. What do you want
- to take them off for? Are they too good for <i>me</i> to see? Are they too
- grand for me to look at? Ain't I as good as any one you'd find if you went
- out? Heh?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, I didn't mean that. I meant——
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Interrupting.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- I know what you meant! Don't tell me what you meant, Mary. You meant to
- slip out and leave me here alone, both of you. It's lucky I caught you in
- time. It's lucky I have money! It's lucky I don't have to put up with the
- treatment most old folks get. I'd starve, if I were poor! I'd die of
- hunger and neglect!
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>She begins to cry, and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> says</i>:]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> No, no, no, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>!
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i><br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> soothes her, in pantomime, and pets her,
- trying to take her hands away from her face, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- resisting, like a spoiled and spiteful child. <br /><b>John Speaker</b>,
- behind <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> and his wife, walks up and down, with his
- eyes on them, running his hand nervously and excitedly through his hair.
- While this pantomime goes on, John and Mary Thinker are watching and
- saying </i>:]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- This is to be one of <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>'s pleasant evenings!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- This happens a dozen times a day.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b> She's not really crying.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Pretence! She works it up to be unpleasant.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b> The old she-devil!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Taking <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>'s hand.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- You know, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, that we try to do our duty by you.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Flinging his hand off.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- You try to do your duty by my money! I know!
- </p>
- <p>
- I see! You talk of love and duty, but it's my money you want! But I may
- fool you—I may fool you yet. It's not too late to change my will.
- It's not too late to leave it all to charity!
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>She speaks these lines with a cunning leer, and <br /><b>John Thinker</b>,
- nudging <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> and pointing to her, says:</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b> The old cat is capable of it, too!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b></i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- If you should leave your money to charity, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, you
- would find it made no difference with us. You know blood is thicker than
- water, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Shrewdly, maliciously</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- So is sticky flypaper!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Come, come, you don't doubt the genuineness of our affection, do you,
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>? You've known me from my boyhood, <br /><b>Cousin
- Fanny</b>, and you've lived with us for ten years. You ought to know us by
- this time! You ought to know us in ten years!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> Ten years of torture!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b> It can't last much longer!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Who has taken her hand again, and has been patting it as a
- continuation of his last speech, and looking at her fondly</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- You trust us, don't you, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>? You really are sure of
- our affection, aren't you?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>To <br /><b>John Speaker</b>. She shows that she really is willing to
- be convinced; she searches their faces wistfully; she is pathetically
- eager.</i> ]
- </p>
- <p>
- John, John, you really <i>do</i> care for me, don't you? [<i>She takes a
- hand of each.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- It isn't <i>all</i> on account of my money, is it? If you knew I hadn't a
- cent, you'd still be good to me, wouldn't you?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b> and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>Together.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, yes, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- If I lost it all; if I told you I'd lost it all, you'd be just the same,
- wouldn't you?
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i><br /><b>John Speaker</b> and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> exchange glances
- over her head, and John Speaker drops her hand, while <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- grabs <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> excitedly by the arm and says quickly</i>:]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- My God, you don't suppose she's really <i>lost</i> it, do you?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- No! This is just one of her cunning spells now. She can be as crafty as a
- witch.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- If I hadn't a cent you'd still care for me, wouldn't you, Mary?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Why, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, you know I would!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- But I'm hard on you at times. I'm unjust. I don't mean to be spiteful, but
- I <i>am</i> spiteful. When we get old we get suspicious of people. We get
- suspicious of everybody. And suspicion makes us spiteful and unjust. I
- know I'm not easy to live with, Mary.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>Kissing <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- You get such strange notions, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- And such true ones, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Tell me the truth, Mary. You find me a trial, Mary. You and John find me a
- trial!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> and <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>Together.</i> ]
- </p>
- <p>
- Never, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> and <br /><b>John Thinker</b> [<i>Together.</i> ]
- </p>
- <p>
- Always, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> And that is the truth?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>, <br /><b>John Thinker</b>, <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- and <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> [<i>All together.</i> ]
- </p>
- <p>
- And that is the truth, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- You don't know how suspicious one gets!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>Petting her</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- But suspicion never stays long in your good heart, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>.
- There's no room for it there, I know. But don't you think you'd better go
- to bed now? Let me call the maid.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Rousing up in chair; suspicion and meanness all awake again</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- To bed? Why to bed? Why do you want to pack me off to bed? I know! I know
- why! You want me to go to bed so you two can talk about me. So you can
- talk me over! So you can speculate on how long I will live. I know you! I
- know what you talk about when I'm not around! I know what you've been
- waiting and hoping for the last ten years!
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Begins to cry.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, you won't have long to wait now. The time's almost come! I feel it's
- almost here. You'll get the money soon enough!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>Soothing her</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- There, there, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, don't go on like this!
- </p>
- <p>
- You know it isn't true—you know you'll live ten years yet!
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i><br /><b>John Speaker</b> runs his hands through his hair and looks
- silently at <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>, and <br /><b>John Thinker</b>, with
- the same gesture, says to Mary Thinker</i>:]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- If I thought she'd live ten years yet——!
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Pauses.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, if you thought she'd live ten years yet——?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b> [<i>With a gesture of de pair.</i> ]
- </p>
- <p>
- My God—ten years like the last ten years! Ten years! Talk about
- earning money! If it hasn't been earned ten times over!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Fiercely.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- You see it mornings and evenings. I have it all day long, and every day.
- I've had it for ten years. I go nowhere, I see no one. I have no
- pleasures. I have no friends; I've lost my friends. I'm losing my youth.
- I'm losing my looks. I'm losing my very soul. I'm shedding my life's blood
- drop by drop to keep that querulous fool alive—just merely alive!
- I'm tired of it! I'm sick of it! I'm desperate! I'm dying from her, I tell
- you!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Still soothing <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, but speaking with one hand
- nervously clutching her own head as she does so</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- Come, come, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>—you'd better go to bed now!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- I won't go to bed yet! I want my medicine. It's time for my medicine now.
- I won't go to bed till I've had my sleeping tablets.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Where are they, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- On top of the bookcase there. The small phial. [<i><br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- goes to the bookcase and begins to rummage for phial, while <br /><b>John
- Thinker</b> says, meditatively</i>:]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- I suppose if one ever gave her the wrong medicine by mistake it would be
- called by some ugly name!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- People like her never get the wrong medicine given to them, and never take
- it by mistake themselves.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>Finding bottle; examining it</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- See here, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, didn't you have one of these about an
- hour ago? Didn't I see you take one of them right after dinner?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Peevishly.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- I don't know. I don't remember. I want one now, anyhow. My nerves are on
- the jump. You have got all my nerves on the jump. I'll take one, and nap
- here in the chair.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b></i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- She took one about an hour ago. I don't think it's quite right to let her
- have another so soon. They have a powerful depressing effect on the heart.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> Let me see which ones they are.
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i><br /><b>John Speaker</b> holds the bottle out towards <br /><b>Mary
- Speaker</b>, in front of <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>. <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- snatches it with a sudden motion, and laughs childishly. <br /><b>John
- Speaker</b> and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> look at each other inquiringly
- over her head.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She really shouldn't have another one now, I'm afraid, dear. It might be
- pretty serious. [<i>To <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b></i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- You <i>did</i> take one right after dinner, didn't you, <br /><b>Cousin
- Fanny</b>?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Hugging bottle to her very excitedly</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- No! No! I tell you I didn't! I <i>will</i> take one! You don't want me to
- get to sleep! You don't want me to get any rest! You want me to die!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b> I <i>know</i> that she <i>did</i> have one.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>To <br /><b>John Speaker</b></i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- What can you do, dear?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Taking hold of <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>'s hands, and trying to take
- phial gently</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- See here, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, you must be reasonable... you mustn't
- be stubborn about this. You can't have another tablet now. It's dangerous.
- It might even kill you!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- It <i>would</i> kill her as certainly as she sits there. <br /><b>John
- Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Come, come, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>... it might be dangerous.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- John, don't struggle with her! Don't you know if you struggle with her it
- is likely to prove fatal? The doctor says the <i>least</i> strain will
- prove fatal.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Whimpering and struggling.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Let me have it! Let me alone! Let go of my hands! You want to kill me! You
- want me to die so you can get my money!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [<i>Releasing her.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- No! No! No! <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>... Come, be reasonable!
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>He reaches for her hands again, and she grabs his hand and bites it.
- He draws back and says</i>:]
- </p>
- <p>
- Damn!
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Nurses his hand.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Did she bite you?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes.
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Nurses his hand, and <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> examines it, while <br /><b>Cousin
- Fanny</b> pulls cork from phial with teeth, and <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- says</i>:]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- The old viper has teeth yet!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She is a cat... she is a she-devil... she is a witch... she has a bad
- heart....
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>To <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>, pointing to <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, who
- is shaking tablet out of bottle; she drops one and gropes for it, and
- shakes another more carefully, with air of childish triumph.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Mary, what <i>can</i> I do? She <i>will</i> have it! And if I struggle
- with her it will kill her! She is too weak to struggle! It will kill her
- to struggle! And if I let her take the tablet it may do her harm!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Perhaps the tablet won't do her any harm, John.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- It will kill her as surely as she sits there. I know it will and <i>you</i>
- know it will.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Maybe it won't hurt her, Mary... but we can never tell.... I'm afraid...
- I'm afraid it really <i>might</i> harm her....
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Putting tablet into her mouth</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- There! I'm going to sleep, now.... I'm going to sleep in spite of you. You
- hate me—both of you hate me—but you can't prevent me going to
- sleep!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She's taken it, John. Do you suppose she really <i>did</i> have one
- before?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b> [To <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>, you <i>didn't</i> have one before, did you?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>She has closed her eyes; she opens them and rocks back and forth,
- laughing foolishly</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Taking out handkerchief; mopping fore-head</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- I don't believe she did. She says she did, but she doesn't know.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> [<i>Rocking and laughing sillily.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, I did! You know I did!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She doesn't know.... She doesn't know whether she did or not.... She
- hasn't really been right in her mind for a long time. I don't think she
- had one before.
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>As he speaks <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> ceases rocking and leans hack in
- her chair, closing her eyes. From this time on the two Johns and the two
- Marys stare at her intently, never taking their eyes off of her while they
- speak.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She <i>did</i> have one before.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- I <i>know</i> she did.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Will she die? Will I see her die? I should hate to see her die!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She <i>would</i> have that tablet... she WOULD have it. If I had taken it
- away from her by force it would have killed her; the struggle would have
- killed her.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Will I see her die? Will she die?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- I let her have it to save her life... it was to save her life that I quit
- struggling with her.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- If she dies... but <i>will</i> she die?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She will die!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Rousing from her lethargy slightly; open-ing her eyes.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- John... Mary.... You really love me, don't you? Don't you? You really...
- really...
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Sinks back, with head slightly on one side and eyes closed again; does
- not move after this.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>They all speak with lowered voices now.</i>] She is asleep. She really
- needed the tablet. It was a mercy she got it. She was nervous and
- overwrought, and it has put her to sleep.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Yes, it was a mercy she got it. She was nervous and overwrought, and it
- has put her to sleep.
- </p>
- <p>
- ... And you know, Mary, she <i>would</i> have t... if I had <i>struggled</i>
- with her, she would have <i>died!</i> A struggle would have killed her.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- And now she will die because there was no struggle.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She will die.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Is she breathing quite naturally, Mary?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> Quite. Quite naturally.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> <i>Death</i> is quite natural.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b> And she is dying.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Well, if she had struggled and died... if she had died through any fault
- of mine... I would always have reproached myself....
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- You have nothing to reproach yourself for. You need never reproach
- yourself with regard to her....
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She was old. She was very old. She will be better dead.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> She is not quite dead.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- I don't like the way she is breathing.... She is scarcely breathing....
- She doesn't seem to be breathing at all!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> Old people breathe very quietly.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b> Old people die very quietly.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b> And she is dying.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- She is dead!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Mary... Mary... is she breathing at all? <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Call the maid.... Send for the doctor.... Call the maid!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b> It is too late for any doctor.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Too late!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Mary, Mary.... My God... she can't be <i>dead!</i>
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> [<i>Bending above her.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- John, dear... try to bear it bravely... but... but I'm afraid she is....
- Poor <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> has left us!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Rapidly</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- Poor <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>.... Poor <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>.... Poor
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>....
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Fifteen thousand a year... fifteen thousand a year.... Why do I think of
- that?... But I can't help it.... I can't help thinking of it....
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b> I'll go get the maid.
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Going</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Stop.... Wait, Mary.... Don't call her yet... get her presently.... I
- don't want to be alone just now.... I'm in a kind of fog....
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Lights go out as he says this; he continues in the darkness.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- I'm all in the dark.
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Lights on again</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>In the interim, which is very short, <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> has gone
- over to the room on the left in which are John and <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>,
- and sits in chair corresponding to one which she has just left.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>She is silent and motionless, but her head is lifted; her eyes are
- open; she is alive again. When lights go on again, John and <br /><b>Mary
- Speaker</b> still stand before chair she has left as if she were in it; it
- is apparent that they believe themselves to be still looking at the old
- woman.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Nonsense... all in the dark?... What do you mean by all in the dark?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Nothing... nothing now. It has passed....
- </p>
- <p>
- [Pointing to chair where <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> was.] She died with a
- smile on her face!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- But she isn't there.... <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b> isn't there.
- </p>
- <p>
- ... She's here.... She's over here with us... over here with <i>us</i>!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Here with us... over here, forever, now.
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Holding <br /><b>John Speaker</b>'s hand and gazing at vacant chair</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- How beautiful she looks! She is at rest, now! She is better off so. Better
- dead. She is better at peace!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Violently; starting towards other room</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- My God. I'm going to stop it... stop it... stop that lying... stop it at
- any cost.... I'm going to stop that pretending... that damned
- pretending....
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Mary Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Quickly getting in front of him; holding him back.</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- What are you going to do?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Stop it, I tell you.... Tell the truth... stop that pretense....
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>Moves towards the other room. As he does so, <br /><b>Mary Speaker</b>
- and John Speaker, for the first time become aware of John and <br /><b>Mary
- Thinker</b>, and shrink back in terror and alarm, clinging together,
- confused, convicted, abject, retreating, powerless; <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- leaps in front of John Thinker at same instant, and bars him back, saying:</i>]
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Stop!
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>John Thinker</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- Why? I <i>will</i> stop this pretense... Why not?
- </p>
- <p>
- <br /><b>Cousin Fanny</b>
- </p>
- <p>
- [<i>All four of the others lean forward and hang eagerly upon her words</i>.]
- </p>
- <p>
- You must not. It can't be done. It is the foundation upon which your
- society rests. It is necessary...<i> over there!</i>
- </p>
- <h3>
- CURTAIN
- </h3>
- <div style="height: 6em;">
- <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
- </div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
-
-
-
-
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