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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..4e85396 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #60097 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60097) diff --git a/old/60097-0.txt b/old/60097-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index b4d8462..0000000 --- a/old/60097-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9696 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Horses and Men, by Sherwood Anderson - -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: Horses and Men - Tales, long and short, from our American life - -Author: Sherwood Anderson - -Release Date: August 14, 2019 [EBook #60097] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HORSES AND MEN *** - - - - -Produced by Tim Lindell, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -book was produced from images made available by the -HathiTrust Digital Library.) - - - - - - - - - - HORSES AND MEN - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - ---------------------------- - - OTHER BOOKS BY - - SHERWOOD ANDERSON - - ---------------------------- - - WINDY MCPHERSON’S SON, A novel - MARCHING MEN, A novel - MID-AMERICAN CHANTS, Chants - WINESBURG, OHIO, A book of tales - POOR WHITE, A novel - THE TRIUMPH OF THE EGG, A book of tales - MANY MARRIAGES, A novel - - ---------------------------- - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - HORSES AND MEN - - Tales, long and short, from - our American life - - BY - SHERWOOD ANDERSON - - - - - - -[Illustration] - - - - - NEW YORK - B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. - MCMXXIII - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY - B. W. HUEBSCH, INC. - - --- - - PRINTED IN U.S.A. - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TO THEODORE DREISER - - In whose presence I have sometimes had - the same refreshed feeling as when in - the presence of a thoroughbred horse. - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - Some of the tales in this book have been printed in - The Little Review, The New Republic, The Century, - Harper’s, The Dial, The London Mercury and Vanity - Fair, to which magazines the author makes due - acknowledgment. - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - FOREWORD - - -Did you ever have a notion of this kind—there is an orange, or say an -apple, lying on a table before you. You put out your hand to take it. -Perhaps you eat it, make it a part of your physical life. Have you -touched? Have you eaten? That’s what I wonder about. - -The whole subject is only important to me because I want the apple. What -subtle flavors are concealed in it—how does it taste, smell, feel? -Heavens, man, the way the apple feels in the hand is something—isn’t it? - -For a long time I thought only of eating the apple. Then later its -fragrance became something of importance too. The fragrance stole out -through my room, through a window and into the streets. It made itself a -part of all the smells of the streets. The devil!—in Chicago or -Pittsburgh, Youngstown or Cleveland it would have had a rough time. - -That doesn’t matter. - -The point is that after the form of the apple began to take my eye I -often found myself unable to touch at all. My hands went toward the -object of my desire and then came back. - -There I sat, in the room with the apple before me, and hours passed. I -had pushed myself off into a world where nothing has any existence. Had -I done that, or had I merely stepped, for the moment, out of the world -of darkness into the light? - -It may be that my eyes are blind and that I cannot see. - -It may be I am deaf. - -My hands are nervous and tremble. How much do they tremble? Now, alas, I -am absorbed in looking at my own hands. - -With these nervous and uncertain hands may I really feel for the form of -things concealed in the darkness? - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - DREISER - - _Heavy, heavy, hangs over thy head, - Fine, or superfine?_ - - -Theodore Dreiser is old—he is very, very old. I do not know how many -years he has lived, perhaps forty, perhaps fifty, but he is very old. -Something grey and bleak and hurtful, that has been in the world perhaps -forever, is personified in him. - -When Dreiser is gone men shall write books, many of them, and in the -books they shall write there will be so many of the qualities Dreiser -lacks. The new, the younger men shall have a sense of humor, and -everyone knows Dreiser has no sense of humor. More than that, American -prose writers shall have grace, lightness of touch, a dream of beauty -breaking through the husks of life. - -O, those who follow him shall have many things that Dreiser does not -have. That is a part of the wonder and beauty of Theodore Dreiser, the -things that others shall have, because of him. - -Long ago, when he was editor of the _Delineator_, Dreiser went one day, -with a woman friend, to visit an orphan asylum. The woman once told me -the story of that afternoon in the big, ugly grey building, with -Dreiser, looking heavy and lumpy and old, sitting on a platform, folding -and refolding his pocket-handkerchief and watching the children—all in -their little uniforms, trooping in. - -“The tears ran down his cheeks and he shook his head,” the woman said, -and that is a real picture of Theodore Dreiser. He is old in spirit and -he does not know what to do with life, so he tells about it as he sees -it, simply and honestly. The tears run down his cheeks and he folds and -refolds the pocket-handkerchief and shakes his head. - -Heavy, heavy, the feet of Theodore. How easy to pick some of his books -to pieces, to laugh at him for so much of his heavy prose. - -The feet of Theodore are making a path, the heavy brutal feet. They are -tramping through the wilderness of lies, making a path. Presently the -path will be a street, with great arches overhead and delicately carved -spires piercing the sky. Along the street will run children, shouting, -“Look at me. See what I and my fellows of the new day have -done”—forgetting the heavy feet of Dreiser. - -The fellows of the ink-pots, the prose writers in America who follow -Dreiser, will have much to do that he has never done. Their road is long -but, because of him, those who follow will never have to face the road -through the wilderness of Puritan denial, the road that Dreiser faced -alone. - - _Heavy, heavy, hangs over thy head, - Fine, or superfine?_ - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TALES OF THE BOOK - - - Page - ix FOREWORD - - xi DREISER - - 3 I’M A FOOL - - 21 THE TRIUMPH OF A MODERN - - 31 “UNUSED” - - 139 A CHICAGO HAMLET - - 185 THE MAN WHO BECAME A WOMAN - - 231 MILK BOTTLES - - 245 THE SAD HORN BLOWERS - - 287 THE MAN’S STORY - - 315 AN OHIO PAGAN - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - I’M A FOOL - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - I’M A FOOL - - -IT was a hard jolt for me, one of the most bitterest I ever had to face. -And it all came about through my own foolishness, too. Even yet -sometimes, when I think of it, I want to cry or swear or kick myself. -Perhaps, even now, after all this time, there will be a kind of -satisfaction in making myself look cheap by telling of it. - -It began at three o’clock one October afternoon as I sat in the grand -stand at the fall trotting and pacing meet at Sandusky, Ohio. - -To tell the truth, I felt a little foolish that I should be sitting in -the grand stand at all. During the summer before I had left my home town -with Harry Whitehead and, with a nigger named Burt, had taken a job as -swipe with one of the two horses Harry was campaigning through the fall -race meets that year. Mother cried and my sister Mildred, who wanted to -get a job as a school teacher in our town that fall, stormed and scolded -about the house all during the week before I left. They both thought it -something disgraceful that one of our family should take a place as a -swipe with race horses. I’ve an idea Mildred thought my taking the place -would stand in the way of her getting the job she’d been working so long -for. - -But after all I had to work, and there was no other work to be got. A -big lumbering fellow of nineteen couldn’t just hang around the house and -I had got too big to mow people’s lawns and sell newspapers. Little -chaps who could get next to people’s sympathies by their sizes were -always getting jobs away from me. There was one fellow who kept saying -to everyone who wanted a lawn mowed or a cistern cleaned, that he was -saving money to work his way through college, and I used to lay awake -nights thinking up ways to injure him without being found out. I kept -thinking of wagons running over him and bricks falling on his head as he -walked along the street. But never mind him. - -I got the place with Harry and I liked Burt fine. We got along splendid -together. He was a big nigger with a lazy sprawling body and soft, kind -eyes, and when it came to a fight he could hit like Jack Johnson. He had -Bucephalus, a big black pacing stallion that could do 2.09 or 2.10, if -he had to, and I had a little gelding named Doctor Fritz that never lost -a race all fall when Harry wanted him to win. - -We set out from home late in July in a box car with the two horses and -after that, until late November, we kept moving along to the race meets -and the fairs. It was a peachy time for me, I’ll say that. Sometimes now -I think that boys who are raised regular in houses, and never have a -fine nigger like Burt for best friend, and go to high schools and -college, and never steal anything, or get drunk a little, or learn to -swear from fellows who know how, or come walking up in front of a grand -stand in their shirt sleeves and with dirty horsey pants on when the -races are going on and the grand stand is full of people all dressed -up—What’s the use of talking about it? Such fellows don’t know nothing -at all. They’ve never had no opportunity. - -But I did. Burt taught me how to rub down a horse and put the bandages -on after a race and steam a horse out and a lot of valuable things for -any man to know. He could wrap a bandage on a horse’s leg so smooth that -if it had been the same color you would think it was his skin, and I -guess he’d have been a big driver, too, and got to the top like Murphy -and Walter Cox and the others if he hadn’t been black. - -Gee whizz, it was fun. You got to a county seat town, maybe say on a -Saturday or Sunday, and the fair began the next Tuesday and lasted until -Friday afternoon. Doctor Fritz would be, say in the 2.25 trot on Tuesday -afternoon and on Thursday afternoon Bucephalus would knock ’em cold in -the “free-for-all” pace. It left you a lot of time to hang around and -listen to horse talk, and see Burt knock some yap cold that got too gay, -and you’d find out about horses and men and pick up a lot of stuff you -could use all the rest of your life, if you had some sense and salted -down what you heard and felt and saw. - -And then at the end of the week when the race meet was over, and Harry -had run home to tend up to his livery stable business, you and Burt -hitched the two horses to carts and drove slow and steady across -country, to the place for the next meeting, so as to not over-heat the -horses, etc., etc., you know. - -Gee whizz, Gosh amighty, the nice hickorynut and beechnut and oaks and -other kinds of trees along the roads, all brown and red, and the good -smells, and Burt singing a song that was called Deep River, and the -country girls at the windows of houses and everything. You can stick -your colleges up your nose for all me. I guess I know where I got my -education. - -Why, one of those little burgs of towns you come to on the way, say now -on a Saturday afternoon, and Burt says, “let’s lay up here.” And you -did. - -And you took the horses to a livery stable and fed them, and you got -your good clothes out of a box and put them on. - -And the town was full of farmers gaping, because they could see you were -race horse people, and the kids maybe never see a nigger before and was -afraid and run away when the two of us walked down their main street. - -And that was before prohibition and all that foolishness, and so you -went into a saloon, the two of you, and all the yaps come and stood -around, and there was always someone pretended he was horsey and knew -things and spoke up and began asking questions, and all you did was to -lie and lie all you could about what horses you had, and I said I owned -them, and then some fellow said “will you have a drink of whiskey” and -Burt knocked his eye out the way he could say, off-hand like, “Oh well, -all right, I’m agreeable to a little nip. I’ll split a quart with you.” -Gee whizz. - - * * * * * - -But that isn’t what I want to tell my story about. We got home late in -November and I promised mother I’d quit the race horses for good. -There’s a lot of things you’ve got to promise a mother because she don’t -know any better. - -And so, there not being any work in our town any more than when I left -there to go to the races, I went off to Sandusky and got a pretty good -place taking care of horses for a man who owned a teaming and delivery -and storage and coal and real-estate business there. It was a pretty -good place with good eats, and a day off each week, and sleeping on a -cot in a big barn, and mostly just shovelling in hay and oats to a lot -of big good-enough skates of horses, that couldn’t have trotted a race -with a toad. I wasn’t dissatisfied and I could send money home. - -And then, as I started to tell you, the fall races come to Sandusky and -I got the day off and I went. I left the job at noon and had on my good -clothes and my new brown derby hat, I’d just bought the Saturday before, -and a stand-up collar. - -First of all I went down-town and walked about with the dudes. I’ve -always thought to myself, “put up a good front” and so I did it. I had -forty dollars in my pocket and so I went into the West House, a big -hotel, and walked up to the cigar stand. “Give me three twenty-five cent -cigars,” I said. There was a lot of horsemen and strangers and -dressed-up people from other towns standing around in the lobby and in -the bar, and I mingled amongst them. In the bar there was a fellow with -a cane and a Windsor tie on, that it made me sick to look at him. I like -a man to be a man and dress up, but not to go put on that kind of airs. -So I pushed him aside, kind of rough, and had me a drink of whiskey. And -then he looked at me, as though he thought maybe he’d get gay, but he -changed his mind and didn’t say anything. And then I had another drink -of whiskey, just to show him something, and went out and had a hack out -to the races, all to myself, and when I got there I bought myself the -best seat I could get up in the grand stand, but didn’t go in for any of -these boxes. That’s putting on too many airs. - -And so there I was, sitting up in the grand stand as gay as you please -and looking down on the swipes coming out with their horses, and with -their dirty horsey pants on and the horse blankets swung over their -shoulders, same as I had been doing all the year before. I liked one -thing about the same as the other, sitting up there and feeling grand -and being down there and looking up at the yaps and feeling grander and -more important, too. One thing’s about as good as another, if you take -it just right. I’ve often said that. - -Well, right in front of me, in the grand stand that day, there was a -fellow with a couple of girls and they was about my age. The young -fellow was a nice guy all right. He was the kind maybe that goes to -college and then comes to be a lawyer or maybe a newspaper editor or -something like that, but he wasn’t stuck on himself. There are some of -that kind are all right and he was one of the ones. - -He had his sister with him and another girl and the sister looked around -over his shoulder, accidental at first, not intending to start -anything—she wasn’t that kind—and her eyes and mine happened to meet. - -You know how it is. Gee, she was a peach! She had on a soft dress, kind -of a blue stuff and it looked carelessly made, but was well sewed and -made and everything. I knew that much. I blushed when she looked right -at me and so did she. She was the nicest girl I’ve ever seen in my life. -She wasn’t stuck on herself and she could talk proper grammar without -being like a school teacher or something like that. What I mean is, she -was O. K. I think maybe her father was well-to-do, but not rich to make -her chesty because she was his daughter, as some are. Maybe he owned a -drug store or a drygoods store in their home town, or something like -that. She never told me and I never asked. - -My own people are all O. K. too, when you come to that. My grandfather -was Welsh and over in the old country, in Wales he was—But never mind -that. - - * * * * * - -The first heat of the first race come off and the young fellow setting -there with the two girls left them and went down to make a bet. I knew -what he was up to, but he didn’t talk big and noisy and let everyone -around know he was a sport, as some do. He wasn’t that kind. Well, he -come back and I heard him tell the two girls what horse he’d bet on, and -when the heat was trotted they all half got to their feet and acted in -the excited, sweaty way people do when they’ve got money down on a race, -and the horse they bet on is up there pretty close at the end, and they -think maybe he’ll come on with a rush, but he never does because he -hasn’t got the old juice in him, come right down to it. - -And then, pretty soon, the horses came out for the 2.18 pace and there -was a horse in it I knew. He was a horse Bob French had in his string -but Bob didn’t own him. He was a horse owned by a Mr. Mathers down at -Marietta, Ohio. - -This Mr. Mathers had a lot of money and owned some coal mines or -something, and he had a swell place out in the country, and he was stuck -on race horses, but was a Presbyterian or something, and I think more -than likely his wife was one, too, maybe a stiffer one than himself. So -he never raced his horses hisself, and the story round the Ohio race -tracks was that when one of his horses got ready to go to the races he -turned him over to Bob French and pretended to his wife he was sold. - -So Bob had the horses and he did pretty much as he pleased and you can’t -blame Bob, at least, I never did. Sometimes he was out to win and -sometimes he wasn’t. I never cared much about that when I was swiping a -horse. What I did want to know was that my horse had the speed and could -go out in front, if you wanted him to. - -And, as I’m telling you, there was Bob in this race with one of Mr. -Mathers’ horses, was named “About Ben Ahem” or something like that, and -was fast as a streak. He was a gelding and had a mark of 2.21, but could -step in .08 or .09. - -Because when Burt and I were out, as I’ve told you, the year before, -there was a nigger, Burt knew, worked for Mr. Mathers and we went out -there one day when we didn’t have no race on at the Marietta Fair and -our boss Harry was gone home. - -And so everyone was gone to the fair but just this one nigger and he -took us all through Mr. Mathers’ swell house and he and Burt tapped a -bottle of wine Mr. Mathers had hid in his bedroom, back in a closet, -without his wife knowing, and he showed us this Ahem horse. Burt was -always stuck on being a driver but didn’t have much chance to get to the -top, being a nigger, and he and the other nigger gulped that whole -bottle of wine and Burt got a little lit up. - -So the nigger let Burt take this About Ben Ahem and step him a mile in a -track Mr. Mathers had all to himself, right there on the farm. And Mr. -Mathers had one child, a daughter, kinda sick and not very good looking, -and she came home and we had to hustle and get About Ben Ahem stuck back -in the barn. - - * * * * * - -I’m only telling you to get everything straight. At Sandusky, that -afternoon I was at the fair, this young fellow with the two girls was -fussed, being with the girls and losing his bet. You know how a fellow -is that way. One of them was his girl and the other his sister. I had -figured that out. - -“Gee whizz,” I says to myself, “I’m going to give him the dope.” - -He was mighty nice when I touched him on the shoulder. He and the girls -were nice to me right from the start and clear to the end. I’m not -blaming them. - -And so he leaned back and I give him the dope on About Ben Ahem. “Don’t -bet a cent on this first heat because he’ll go like an oxen hitched to a -plow, but when the first heat is over go right down and lay on your -pile.” That’s what I told him. - -Well, I never saw a fellow treat any one sweller. There was a fat man -sitting beside the little girl, that had looked at me twice by this -time, and I at her, and both blushing, and what did he do but have the -nerve to turn and ask the fat man to get up and change places with me so -I could set with his crowd. - -Gee whizz, craps amighty. There I was. What a chump I was to go and get -gay up there in the West House bar, and just because that dude was -standing there with a cane and that kind of a necktie on, to go and get -all balled-up and drink that whiskey, just to show off. - -Of course she would know, me setting right beside her and letting her -smell of my breath. I could have kicked myself right down out of that -grand stand and all around that race track and made a faster record than -most of the skates of horses they had there that year. - -Because that girl wasn’t any mutt of a girl. What wouldn’t I have give -right then for a stick of chewing gum to chew, or a lozenger, or some -liquorice, or most anything. I was glad I had those twenty-five cent -cigars in my pocket and right away I give that fellow one and lit one -myself. Then that fat man got up and we changed places and there I was, -plunked right down beside her. - -They introduced themselves and the fellow’s best girl, he had with him, -was named Miss Elinor Woodbury, and her father was a manufacturer of -barrels from a place called Tiffin, Ohio. And the fellow himself was -named Wilbur Wessen and his sister was Miss Lucy Wessen. - -I suppose it was their having such swell names got me off my trolley. A -fellow, just because he has been a swipe with a race horse, and works -taking care of horses for a man in the teaming, delivery, and storage -business, isn’t any better or worse than any one else. I’ve often -thought that, and said it too. - -But you know how a fellow is. There’s something in that kind of nice -clothes, and the kind of nice eyes she had, and the way she had looked -at me, awhile before, over her brother’s shoulder, and me looking back -at her, and both of us blushing. - -I couldn’t show her up for a boob, could I? - -I made a fool of myself, that’s what I did. I said my name was Walter -Mathers from Marietta, Ohio, and then I told all three of them the -smashingest lie you ever heard. What I said was that my father owned the -horse About Ben Ahem and that he had let him out to this Bob French for -racing purposes, because our family was proud and had never gone into -racing that way, in our own name, I mean. Then I had got started and -they were all leaning over and listening, and Miss Lucy Wessen’s eyes -were shining, and I went the whole hog. - -I told about our place down at Marietta, and about the big stables and -the grand brick house we had on a hill, up above the Ohio River, but I -knew enough not to do it in no bragging way. What I did was to start -things and then let them drag the rest out of me. I acted just as -reluctant to tell as I could. Our family hasn’t got any barrel factory, -and, since I’ve known us, we’ve always been pretty poor, but not asking -anything of any one at that, and my grandfather, over in Wales—but never -mind that. - -We set there talking like we had known each other for years and years, -and I went and told them that my father had been expecting maybe this -Bob French wasn’t on the square, and had sent me up to Sandusky on the -sly to find out what I could. - -And I bluffed it through I had found out all about the 2.18 pace, in -which About Ben Ahem was to start. - -I said he would lose the first heat by pacing like a lame cow and then -he would come back and skin ’em alive after that. And to back up what I -said I took thirty dollars out of my pocket and handed it to Mr. Wilbur -Wessen and asked him, would he mind, after the first heat, to go down -and place it on About Ben Ahem for whatever odds he could get. What I -said was that I didn’t want Bob French to see me and none of the swipes. - - * * * * * - -Sure enough the first heat come off and About Ben Ahem went off his -stride, up the back stretch, and looked like a wooden horse or a sick -one, and come in to be last. Then this Wilbur Wessen went down to the -betting place under the grand stand and there I was with the two girls, -and when that Miss Woodbury was looking the other way once, Lucy Wessen -kinda, with her shoulder you know, kinda touched me. Not just tucking -down, I don’t mean. You know how a woman can do. They get close, but not -getting gay either. You know what they do. Gee whizz. - -And then they give me a jolt. What they had done, when I didn’t know, -was to get together, and they had decided Wilbur Wessen would bet fifty -dollars, and the two girls had gone and put in ten dollars each, of -their own money, too. I was sick then, but I was sicker later. - -About the gelding, About Ben Ahem, and their winning their money, I -wasn’t worried a lot about that. It come out O.K. Ahem stepped the next -three heats like a bushel of spoiled eggs going to market before they -could be found out, and Wilbur Wessen had got nine to two for the money. -There was something else eating at me. - -Because Wilbur come back, after he had bet the money, and after that he -spent most of his time talking to that Miss Woodbury, and Lucy Wessen -and I was left alone together like on a desert island. Gee, if I’d only -been on the square or if there had been any way of getting myself on the -square. There ain’t any Walter Mathers, like I said to her and them, and -there hasn’t ever been one, but if there was, I bet I’d go to Marietta, -Ohio, and shoot him tomorrow. - -There I was, big boob that I am. Pretty soon the race was over, and -Wilbur had gone down and collected our money, and we had a hack -down-town, and he stood us a swell supper at the West House, and a -bottle of champagne beside. - -And I was with that girl and she wasn’t saying much, and I wasn’t saying -much either. One thing I know. She wasn’t stuck on me because of the lie -about my father being rich and all that. There’s a way you know.... -Craps amighty. There’s a kind of girl, you see just once in your life, -and if you don’t get busy and make hay, then you’re gone for good and -all, and might as well go jump off a bridge. They give you a look from -inside of them somewhere, and it ain’t no vamping, and what it means -is—you want that girl to be your wife, and you want nice things around -her like flowers and swell clothes, and you want her to have the kids -you’re going to have, and you want good music played and no rag time. -Gee whizz. - -There’s a place over near Sandusky, across a kind of bay, and it’s -called Cedar Point. And after we had supper we went over to it in a -launch, all by ourselves. Wilbur and Miss Lucy and that Miss Woodbury -had to catch a ten o’clock train back to Tiffin, Ohio, because, when -you’re out with girls like that you can’t get careless and miss any -trains and stay out all night, like you can with some kinds of Janes. - -And Wilbur blowed himself to the launch and it cost him fifteen cold -plunks, but I wouldn’t never have knew if I hadn’t listened. He wasn’t -no tin horn kind of a sport. - -Over at the Cedar Point place, we didn’t stay around where there was a -gang of common kind of cattle at all. - -There was big dance halls and dining places for yaps, and there was a -beach you could walk along and get where it was dark, and we went there. - -She didn’t talk hardly at all and neither did I, and I was thinking how -glad I was my mother was all right, and always made us kids learn to eat -with a fork at table, and not swill soup, and not be noisy and rough -like a gang you see around a race track that way. - -Then Wilbur and his girl went away up the beach and Lucy and I sat down -in a dark place, where there was some roots of old trees, the water had -washed up, and after that the time, till we had to go back in the launch -and they had to catch their trains, wasn’t nothing at all. It went like -winking your eye. - -Here’s how it was. The place we were setting in was dark, like I said, -and there was the roots from that old stump sticking up like arms, and -there was a watery smell, and the night was like—as if you could put -your hand out and feel it—so warm and soft and dark and sweet like an -orange. - -I most cried and I most swore and I most jumped up and danced, I was so -mad and happy and sad. - -When Wilbur come back from being alone with his girl, and she saw him -coming, Lucy she says, “we got to go to the train now,” and she was most -crying too, but she never knew nothing I knew, and she couldn’t be so -all busted up. And then, before Wilbur and Miss Woodbury got up to where -we was, she put her face up and kissed me quick and put her head up -against me and she was all quivering and—Gee whizz. - - * * * * * - -Sometimes I hope I have cancer and die. I guess you know what I mean. We -went in the launch across the bay to the train like that, and it was -dark, too. She whispered and said it was like she and I could get out of -the boat and walk on the water, and it sounded foolish, but I knew what -she meant. - -And then quick we were right at the depot, and there was a big gang of -yaps, the kind that goes to the fairs, and crowded and milling around -like cattle, and how could I tell her? “It won’t be long because you’ll -write and I’ll write to you.” That’s all she said. - -I got a chance like a hay barn afire. A swell chance I got. - -And maybe she would write me, down at Marietta that way, and the letter -would come back, and stamped on the front of it by the U.S.A. “there -ain’t any such guy,” or something like that, whatever they stamp on a -letter that way. - -And me trying to pass myself off for a bigbug and a swell—to her, as -decent a little body as God ever made. Craps amighty—a swell chance I -got! - -And then the train come in, and she got on it, and Wilbur Wessen he come -and shook hands with me, and that Miss Woodbury was nice too and bowed -to me, and I at her, and the train went and I busted out and cried like -a kid. - -Gee, I could have run after that train and made Dan Patch look like a -freight train after a wreck but, socks amighty, what was the use? Did -you ever see such a fool? - -I’ll bet you what—if I had an arm broke right now or a train had run -over my foot—I wouldn’t go to no doctor at all. I’d go set down and let -her hurt and hurt—that’s what I’d do. - -I’ll bet you what—if I hadn’t a drunk that booze I’d a never been such a -boob as to go tell such a lie—that couldn’t never be made straight to a -lady like her. - -I wish I had that fellow right here that had on a Windsor tie and -carried a cane. I’d smash him for fair. Gosh darn his eyes. He’s a big -fool—that’s what he is. - -And if I’m not another you just go find me one and I’ll quit working and -be a bum and give him my job. I don’t care nothing for working, and -earning money, and saving it for no such boob as myself. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE TRIUMPH OF A MODERN - OR, SEND FOR THE LAWYER - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE TRIUMPH OF A MODERN - OR, SEND FOR THE LAWYER - - -INASMUCH as I have put to myself the task of trying to tell you a -curious story in which I am myself concerned—in a strictly secondary way -you must of course understand—I will begin by giving you some notion of -myself. - -Very well then, I am a man of thirty-two, rather small in size, with -sandy hair. I wear glasses. Until two years ago I lived in Chicago, -where I had a position as clerk in an office that afforded me a good -enough living. I have never married, being somewhat afraid of women—in -the flesh, in a way of speaking. In fancy and in my imagination I have -always been very bold but in the flesh women have always frightened me -horribly. They have a way of smiling quietly as though to say——. But we -will not go into that now. - -Since boyhood I have had an ambition to be a painter, not, I will -confess, because of a desire to produce some great masterpiece of the -arts, but simply and solely because I have always thought the life -painters lead would appeal to me. - -I have always liked the notion (let’s be honest if we can) of going -about, wearing a hat, tipped a little to the side of my head, sporting a -moustache, carrying a cane and speaking in an off-hand way of such -things as form, rhythm, the effects of light and masses, surfaces, etc., -etc. During my life I have read a good many books concerning painters -and their work, their friendships and their loves and when I was in -Chicago and poor and was compelled to live in a small room alone, I -assure you I carried off many a dull weary evening by imagining myself a -painter of wide renown in the world. - -It was afternoon and having finished my day’s work I went strolling off -to the studio of another painter. He was still at work and there were -two models in the room, women in the nude sitting about. One of them -smiled at me, I thought a little wistfully, but pshaw, I am too blasé -for anything of that sort. - -I go across the room to my friend’s canvas and stand looking at it. - -Now he is looking at me, a little anxiously. I am the greater man, you -understand. That is frankly and freely acknowledged. Whatever else may -be said against my friend he never claimed to be my equal. In fact it is -generally understood, wherever I go, that I am the greater man. - -“Well?” says my friend. You see he is fairly hanging on my words, as the -saying goes; in short, he is waiting for me to speak with the air of one -about to be hanged. - -Why? The devil! Why does he put everything up to me? One gets tired -carrying such responsibility upon one’s shoulders. A painter should be -the judge of his own work and not embarrass his fellow painters by -asking questions. That is my method. - -Very well then. If I speak sharply you have only yourself to blame. “The -yellow you have been using is a little muddy. The arm of this woman is -not felt. In painting one should feel the arm of a woman. What I advise -is that you change your palette. You have scattered too much. Pull it -together. A painting should stick together as a wet snow ball thrown by -a boy clings to a wall.” - -When I had reached the age of thirty, that is to say two years ago, I -received from my aunt, the sister of my father to be exact, a small -fortune I had long been dreaming I might possibly inherit. - -My aunt I had never seen, but I had always been saying to myself, “I -must go see my aunt. The old lady will be sore at me and when she dies -will not leave me a cent.” - -And then, lucky fellow that I am, I did go to see her just before she -died. - -Filled with determination to put the thing through I set out from -Chicago, and it is not my fault that I did not spend the day with her. -Even although my aunt is (as I am not fool enough not to know that you -know) a woman I would have spent the day with her but that it was -impossible. - -She lived at Madison, Wisconsin, and I went there on Saturday morning. -The house was locked and the windows boarded up. Fortunately, at just -that moment, a mail carrier came along and, upon my telling him that I -was my aunt’s nephew, gave me her address. He also gave me some news -concerning her. - -For years she had been a sufferer from hay-fever and every summer had to -have a change of climate. - -That was an opportunity for me. I went at once to a hotel and wrote her -a letter telling of my visit and expressing, to the utmost of my -ability, my sorrow in not having found her at home. “I have been a long -time doing this job but now that I am at it I fancy I shall do it rather -well,” I said to myself. - -A sort of feeling came into my hand, as it were. I can’t just say what -it was but as soon as I sat down I knew very well I should be eloquent. -For the moment I was positively a poet. - -In the first place, and as one should in writing a letter to a lady, I -spoke of the sky. “The sky is full of mottled clouds,” I said. Then, and -I frankly admit in a brutally casual way, I spoke of myself as one -practically prostrated with grief. To tell the truth I did not just know -what I was doing. I had got the fever for writing words, you see. They -fairly flowed out of my pen. - -I had come, I said, on a long and weary journey to the home of my only -female relative, and here I threw into the letter some reference to the -fact that I was an orphan. “Imagine,” I wrote, “the sorrow and -desolation in my heart at finding the house unoccupied and the windows -boarded up.” - -It was there, sitting in the hotel at Madison, Wisconsin, with the pen -in my hand, that I made my fortune. Something bold and heroic came into -my mood and, without a moment’s hesitation, I mentioned in my letter -what should never be mentioned to a woman, unless she be an elderly -woman of one’s own family, and then only by a physician perhaps—I spoke -of my aunt’s breasts, using the plural. - -I had hoped, I said, to lay my tired head on her breasts. To tell the -truth I had become drunken with words and now, how glad I am that I did. -Mr. George Moore, Clive Bell, Paul Rosenfeld, and others of the most -skillful writers of our English speech, have written a great deal about -painters and, as I have already explained, there was not a book or -magazine article in English and concerning painters, their lives and -works, procurable in Chicago, I had not read. - -What I am now striving to convey to you is something of my own pride in -my literary effort in the hotel at Madison, Wisconsin, and surely, if I -was, at that moment an artist, no other artist has ever had such quick -and wholehearted recognition. - -Having spoken of putting my tired head on my aunt’s breasts (poor woman, -she died, never having seen me) I went on to give the general -impression—which by the way was quite honest and correct—of a somewhat -boyish figure, rather puzzled, wandering in a confused way through life. -The imaginary but correct enough figure of myself, born at the moment in -my imagination, had made its way through dismal swamps of gloom, over -the rough hills of adversity and through the dry deserts of loneliness, -toward the one spot in all this world where it had hoped to find rest -and peace—that is to say upon the bosom of its aunt. However, as I have -already explained, being a thorough modern and full of the modern -boldness, I did not use the word bosom, as an old-fashioned writer might -have done. I used the word breasts. When I had finished writing tears -were in my eyes. - -The letter I wrote on that day covered some seven sheets of hotel -paper—finely written to the margins—and cost four cents to mail. - -“Shall I mail it or shall I not?” I said to myself as I came out of the -hotel office and stood before a mail box. The letter was balanced -between my finger and thumb. - - “Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, - Catch a nigger by the toe.” - -The forefinger of my left hand—I was holding the letter in my right -hand—touched my nose, mouth, forehead, eyes, chin, neck, shoulder, arm, -hand and then tapped the letter itself. No doubt I fully intended, from -the first, to drop it. I had been doing the work of an artist. Well, -artists are always talking of destroying their own work but few do it, -and those who do are perhaps the real heroes of life. - -And so down into the mail box it went with a thud and my fortune was -made. The letter was received by my aunt, who was lying abed of an -illness that was to destroy her—she had, it seems, other things beside -hay-fever the matter with her—and she altered her will in my favor. She -had intended leaving her money, a tidy sum yielding an income of five -thousand a year, to a fund to be established for the study of methods -for the cure of hay-fever—that is to say, really you see, to her fellow -sufferers—but instead left it to me. My aunt could not find her -spectacles and a nurse—may the gods bring her bright days and a good -husband—read the letter aloud. Both women were deeply touched and my -aunt wept. I am only telling you the facts, you understand, but I would -like to suggest that this whole incident might well be taken as proof of -the power of modern art. From the first I have been a firm believer in -the moderns. I am one who, as an art critic might word it, has been -right down through the movements. At first I was an impressionist and -later a cubist, a post-impressionist, and even a vorticist. Time after -time, in my imaginary life, as a painter, I have been quite swept off my -feet. For example I remember Picasso’s blue period ... but we’ll not go -into that. - -What I am trying to say is that, having this faith in modernity, if one -may use the word thus, I did find within myself a peculiar boldness as I -sat in the hotel writing room at Madison, Wisconsin. I used the word -breasts (in the plural, you understand) and everyone will admit that it -is a bold and modern word to use in a letter to an aunt one has never -seen. It brought my aunt and me into one family. Her modesty never could -have admitted anything else. - -And then, my aunt was really touched. Afterward I talked to the nurse -and made her a rather handsome present for her part in the affair. When -the letter had been read my aunt felt overwhelmingly drawn to me. She -turned her face to the wall and her shoulders shook. Do not think that I -am not also touched as I write this. “Poor lad,” my aunt said to the -nurse, “I will make things easier for him. Send for the lawyer.” - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - “UNUSED” - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - “UNUSED” - - A TALE OF LIFE IN OHIO - - -“UNUSED,” that was one of the words the Doctor used that day in speaking -of her. He, the doctor, was an extraordinarily large and immaculately -clean man, by whom I was at that time employed. I swept out his office, -mowed the lawn before his residence, took care of the two horses in his -stable and did odd jobs about the yard and kitchen—such as bringing in -firewood, putting water in a tub in the sun behind a grape arbor for the -doctor’s bath and even sometimes, during his bath, scrubbing for him -those parts of his broad back he himself could not reach. - -The doctor had a passion in life with which he early infected me. He -loved fishing and as he knew all of the good places in the river, -several miles west of town, and in Sandusky Bay, some nineteen or twenty -miles to the north, we often went off for long delightful days together. - -It was late in the afternoon of such a fishing day in the late June, -when the doctor and I were together in a boat on the bay, that a farmer -came running to the shore, waving his arms and calling to the doctor. -Little May Edgley’s body had been found floating near a river’s mouth -half a mile away, and, as she had been dead for several days, as the -doctor had just had a good bite, and as there was nothing he could do -anyway, it was all nonsense, his being called. I remembered how he -growled and grumbled. He did not then know what had happened but the -fish were just beginning to bite splendidly, I had just landed a fine -bass and the good evening’s fishing was all ahead of us. Well, you know -how it is—a doctor is always at everyone’s beck and call. - -“Dang it all! That’s the way it always goes! Here we are—as good a -fishing evening as we’ll find this summer—wind just right and the sky -clouding over—and will you look at my dang luck? A doctor in the -neighborhood and that farmer knows it and so, just to accommodate me, he -goes and stubs his toe, like as not, or his boy falls out of a barn -loft, or his old woman gets the toothache. Like as not it’s one of his -women folks. I know ’em! His wife’s got an unmarried sister living with -her. Dang sentimental old maid! She’s got a nervous complaint—gets all -worked up and thinks she’s going to die. Die nothing! I know that kind. -Lots of ’em like to have a doctor fooling around. Let a doctor come -near, so they can get him alone in a room, and they’ll spend hours -talking about themselves—if he’ll let ’em.” - -The doctor was reeling in his line, grumbling and complaining as he did -so and then, suddenly, with the characteristic cheerfulness that I had -seen carry him with a smile on his lips through whole days and nights of -work and night driving over rough frozen earth roads in the winter, he -picked up the oars and rowed vigorously ashore. When I offered to take -the oars he shook his head. “No kid, it’s good for the figure,” he said, -looking down at his huge paunch. He smiled. “I got to keep my figure. If -I don’t I’ll be losing some of my practice among the unmarried women.” - -As for the business ashore—there was May Edgley, of our town, drowned in -that out of the way place, and her body had been in the water several -days. It had been found among some willows that grew near the mouth of a -deep creek that emptied into the bay, had lodged in among the roots of -the willows, and when we got ashore the farmer, his son and the hired -man, had got it out and had laid it on some boards near a barn that -faced the bay. - -That was my own first sight of death and I shall not forget the moment -when I followed the doctor in among the little group of silent people -standing about and saw the dead, discolored and bloated body of the -woman lying there. - -The doctor was used to that sort of thing, but to me it was all new and -terrifying. I remember that I looked once and then ran away. Dashing -into the barn I went to lean against the feedbox of a stall, where an -old farm-horse was eating hay. The warm day outside had suddenly seemed -cold and chill but in the barn it was warm again. Oh, what a lovely -thing to a boy is a barn, with the rich warm comforting smell of the -cured hay and the animal life, lying like a soft bed over it all. At the -doctor’s house, while I lived and worked there, the doctor’s wife used -to put on my bed, on winter nights, a kind of soft warm bed cover called -a “comfortable.” That’s what it was like to me that day in the barn when -we had just found May Edgley’s body. - -As for the body—well, May Edgley had been a small woman with small firm -hands and in one of her hands, tightly gripped, when they had found her, -was a woman’s hat—a great broad-brimmed gaudy thing it must have been, -and there had been a huge ostrich feather sticking out of the top, such -an ostrich feather as you see sometimes sticking out of the hat of a -kind of big flashy woman at the horse races or at second-rate summer -resorts near cities. - -It stayed in my mind, that bedraggled ostrich feather, little May -Edgley’s hand had gripped so determinedly when death came, and as I -stood shivering in the barn I could see it again, as I had so often seen -it perched on the head of big bold Lil Edgley, May Edgley’s sister, as -she went, half-defiantly always, through the streets of our town, -Bidwell, Ohio. - -And then as I stood shivering with boyish dread of death in that old -barn, the farm-horse put his head through an opening at the front of the -stall and rubbed his soft warm nose against my cheek. The farmer, on -whose place we were, must have been one who was kind to his animals. The -old horse rubbed his nose up and down my cheek. “You are a long ways -from death, my lad, and when the time comes for you you won’t shiver so -much. I am old and I know. Death is a kind comforting thing to those who -are through with their lives.” - -Something of that sort the old farm-horse seemed to be saying and at any -rate he quieted me, took the fear and the chill all out of me. - -It was when the doctor and I were driving home together that evening in -the dusk, and after all arrangements for sending May Edgley’s body back -to town and to her people had been made, that he spoke of her and used -the word I am now using as the title for her story. The doctor said a -great many things that evening that I cannot now remember and I only -remember how the night came softly on and how the grey road faded out of -sight, and then how the moon came out and the road that had been grey -became silvery white, with patches of inky blackness where the shadows -of trees fell across it. The doctor was one sane enough not to talk down -to a boy. How often he spoke intimately to me of his impressions of men -and events! There were many things in the fat old doctor’s mind of which -his patients knew nothing, but of which his stable boy knew. - -The doctor’s old bay horse went steadily along, doing his work as -cheerfully as the doctor did his and the doctor smoked a cigar. He spoke -of the dead woman, May Edgley, and of what a bright girl she had been. - -As for her story—he did not tell it completely. I was myself much alive -that evening—that is to say the imaginative side of myself was much -alive—and the doctor was as a sower, sowing seed in a fertile soil. He -was as one who goes through a wide long field, newly plowed by the hand -of Death, the plowman, and as he went along he flung wide the seeds of -May Edgley’s story, wide, far over the land, over the rich fertile land -of a boy’s awakening imagination. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER I - - -THERE were three boys and as many girls in the Edgley family of Bidwell, -Ohio, and of the girls Lillian and Kate were known in a dozen towns -along the railroad that ran between Cleveland and Toledo. The fame of -Lillian, the eldest, went far. On the streets of the neighboring towns -of Clyde, Norwalk, Fremont, Tiffin, and even in Toledo and Cleveland, -she was well known. On summer evenings she went up and down our main -street wearing a huge hat with a white ostrich feather that fell down -almost to her shoulder. She, like her sister Kate, who never succeeded -in attaining to a position of prominence in the town’s life, was a -blonde with cold staring blue eyes. On almost any Friday evening she -might have been seen setting forth on some adventure, from which she did -not return until the following Monday or Tuesday. It was evident the -adventures were profitable, as the Edgley family were working folk and -it is certain her brothers did not purchase for her the endless number -of new dresses in which she arrayed herself. - -It was a Friday evening in the summer and Lillian appeared on the upper -main street of Bidwell. Two dozen men and boys loafed by the station -platform, awaiting the arrival of the New York Central train, eastward -bound. They stared at Lillian who stared back at them. In the west, from -which direction the train was presently to come, the sun went down over -young corn fields. A dusky golden splendor lit the skies and the loafers -were awed into silence, hushed, both by the beauty of the evening and by -the challenge in Lillian’s eyes. - -Then the train arrived and the spell of silence was broken. The -conductor and brakeman jumped to the station platform and waved their -hands at Lillian and the engineer put his head out of the cab. - -Aboard the train Lillian found a seat by herself and as soon as the -train had started and the fares were collected the conductor came to sit -with her. When the train arrived at the next town and the conductor was -compelled to attend to his affairs, the brakeman came to lean over her -seat. The men talked in undertones and occasionally the silence in the -car was broken by outbursts of laughter. Other women from Bidwell, going -to visit relatives in distant towns, were embarrassed. They turned their -heads to look out at car windows and their cheeks grew red. - -On the station platform at Bidwell, where darkness was settling down -over the scene, the men and boys still lingered about speaking of -Lillian and her adventures. “She can ride anywhere she pleases and never -has to pay a cent of fare,” declared a tall bearded man who leaned -against the station door. He was a buyer of pigs and cattle and was -compelled to go to the Cleveland market once every week. The thought of -Lillian, the light o’ love traveling free over the railroads filled his -heart with envy and anger. - -The entire Edgley family bore a shaky reputation in Bidwell but with the -exception of May, the youngest of the girls, they were people who knew -how to take care of themselves. For years Jake, the eldest of the boys, -tended bar for Charley Shuter in a saloon in lower Main Street and then, -to everyone’s surprise, he bought out the place. “Either Lillian gave -him the money or he stole it from Charley,” the men said, but -nevertheless, and throwing moral standards aside, they went into the bar -to buy drinks. In Bidwell vice, while openly condemned, was in secret -looked upon as a mark of virility in young manhood. - -Frank and Will Edgley were teamsters and draymen like their father John -and were hard working men. They owned their own teams and asked favors -of no man and when they were not at work did not seek the society of -others. Late on Saturday afternoons, when the week’s work was done and -the horses cleaned, fed and bedded down for the night they dressed -themselves in black suits, put on white collars and black derby hats and -went into our main street to drink themselves drunk. By ten o’clock they -had succeeded and went reeling homeward. When in the darkness under the -maple trees on Vine or Walnut Streets they met a Bidwell citizen, also -homeward bound, a row started. “Damn you, get out of our way. Get off -the sidewalk,” Frank Edgley shouted and the two men rushed forward -intent on a fight. - -One evening in the month of June, when there was a moon and when insects -sang loudly in the long grass between the sidewalks and the road, the -Edgley brothers met Ed Pesch, a young German farmer, out for an -evening’s walk with Caroline Dupee, daughter of a Bidwell drygoods -merchant, and the fight the Edgley boys had long been looking for took -place. Frank Edgley shouted and he and his brother plunged forward but -Ed Pesch did not run into the road and leave them to go triumphantly -homeward. He fought and the brothers were badly beaten, and on Monday -morning appeared driving their team and with faces disfigured and eyes -blackened. For a week they went up and down alleyways and along -residence streets, delivering ice and coal to houses and merchandise to -the stores without lifting their eyes or speaking. The town was -delighted and clerks ran from store to store making comments, they -longed to repeat within hearing of one of the brothers. “Have you seen -the Edgley boys?” they asked one another. “They got what was coming to -them. Ed Pesch gave them what for.” The more excitable and imaginative -of the clerks spoke of the fight in the darkness as though they had been -on hand and had seen every blow struck. “They are bullies and can be -beaten by any man who stands up for his rights,” declared Walter Wills, -a slender, nervous young man who worked for Albert Twist, the grocer. -The clerk hungered to be such another fighter as Ed Pesch had proven -himself. At night he went home from the store in the soft darkness and -imagined himself as meeting the Edgleys. “I’ll show you—you big -bullies,” he muttered and his fists shot out, striking at nothingness. -An eager strained feeling ran along the muscles of his back and arms but -his night time courage did not abide with him through the day. On -Wednesday when Will Edgley came to the back door of the store, his wagon -loaded with salt in barrels, Walter went into the alleyway to enjoy the -sight of the cut lips and blackened eyes. Will stood with hands in -pockets looking at the ground. An uncomfortable silence ensued and in -the end it was broken by the voice of the clerk. “There’s no one here -and those barrels are heavy,” he said heartily. “I might as well make -myself useful and help you unload.” Taking off his coat Walter Wills -voluntarily helped at the task that belonged to Will Edgley, the -drayman. - -If May Edgley, during her girlhood, rose higher than any of the others -of the Edgley family she also fell lower. “She had her chance and threw -it away,” was the word that went round and surely no one else in that -family ever had so completely the town’s sympathy. Lillian Edgley was -outside the pale of the town’s life, and Kate was but a lesser edition -of her sister. She waited on table at the Fownsby House, and on almost -any evening might have been seen walking out with some traveling man. -She also took the evening train to neighboring towns but returned to -Bidwell later on the same night or at daylight the next morning. She did -not prosper as Lillian did and grew tired of the dullness of small town -life. At twenty-two she went to live in Cleveland where she got a job as -cloak model in a large store. Later she went on the road as an actress, -in a burlesque show, and Bidwell heard no more of her. - -As for May Edgley, all through her childhood and until her seventeenth -year she was a model of good behavior. Everyone spoke of it. She was, -unlike the other Edgleys, small and dark, and unlike her sisters dressed -herself in plain neat-fitting clothes. As a young girl in the public -school she began to attract attention because of her proficiency in the -classes. Both Lillian and Kate Edgley had been slovenly students, who -spent their time ogling boys and the men teachers but May looked at no -one and as soon as school was dismissed in the afternoon went home to -her mother, a tall tired-looking woman who seldom went out of her own -house. - -In Bidwell, Tom Means, who later became a soldier and who has recently -won high rank in the army because of his proficiency in training -recruits for the World War, was the prize pupil in the schools. Tom was -working for his appointment to West Point, and did not spend his -evenings loafing on the streets, as did other young men. He stayed in -his own house, intent on his studies. Tom’s father was a lawyer and his -mother was third cousin to a Kentucky woman who had married an English -baronet. The son aspired to be a soldier and a gentleman and to live on -the intellectual plane, and had a good deal of contempt for the mental -capacities of his fellow students, and when one of the Edgley family set -up as his rival he was angry and embarrassed and the schoolroom was -delighted. Day after day and year after year the contest between him and -May Edgley went on and in a sense the whole town of Bidwell got back of -the girl. In all such things as history and English literature Tom swept -all before him but in spelling, arithmetic, and geography May defeated -him without effort. At her desk she sat like a little terrier in the -presence of a trap filled with rats. A question was asked or a problem -in arithmetic put on the blackboard and like a terrier she jumped. Her -hand went up and her sensitive mouth quivered. Fingers were snapped -vigorously. “I know,” she said, and the entire class knew she did. When -she had answered the question or had gone to the blackboard to solve the -problem the half-grown children along the rows of benches laughed and -Tom Means stared out through a window. May returned to her seat, half -triumphant, half ashamed of her victory. - -The country lying west of Bidwell, like all the Ohio country down that -way, is given to small fruit and berry raising, and in June and after -school has been dismissed for the year all the younger men, boys, and -girls, with most of the women of the town go to work in the fruit -harvest. To the fields immediately after breakfast the citizens go -trooping away. Lunches are carried in baskets and until the sun goes -down everyone stays in the fields. - -And in the berry fields as in the schoolroom May was a notable figure. -She did not walk or ride to the work with the other young girls, or join -the parties at lunch at the noon hour, but everyone understood that that -was because of her family. “I know how she feels, if I came from a -family like that I wouldn’t ask or want other people’s attention,” said -one of the women, the wife of a carpenter, who trudged along with the -others in the dust of the road. - -In a berry field, belonging to a farmer named Peter Short, some thirty -women, young men and tall awkward boys crawled over the ground, picking -the red fragrant berries. Ahead of them, in a row by herself, went May, -the exclusive, the woman who walked by herself. Her hands flitted in and -out of the berry vines as the tail of a squirrel disappears among the -leaves of a tree when one walks in a wood. The other pickers went -slowly, stopping occasionally to eat berries and talk and when one had -crawled a little ahead of the others he stopped and waited, sitting on -his haunches. The pickers were paid in proportion to the number of -quarts picked during the day but, as they often said, “pay was not -everything.” The berry picking was in a way a social function, and who -were the pickers, wives, sons and daughters of prosperous artisans, to -kill themselves for a few paltry dollars? - -With May Edgley they understood it was different. Everyone knew that she -and her mother got practically no money from John Edgley, the -father—from the boys, Jake, Frank and Will—or from the girls, Lillian -and Kate, who spent their takings on clothes for themselves. If she were -to be decently dressed, she had to earn the money for the purpose during -the vacation time when she could stay out of school. Later it was -understood she planned to be a school teacher herself, and to attain to -that position it was necessary that she keep herself well dressed and -show herself industrious and alert in affairs. - -Tirelessly, therefore, May worked and the boxes of berries, filled by -her ever alert fingers, grew into mountains. Peter Short with his son -came walking down the rows to gather the filled crates and put them -aboard a wagon to be hauled to town. He looked at May with pride in his -eyes and the other pickers lumbering slowly along became the target for -his scorn. “Ah, you talking women and you big lazy boys, you’re not much -good,” he cried. “Ain’t you ashamed of yourselves? Look at you there, -Sylvester and Al—letting yourself be beat, twice over, by a girl so -little you could almost carry her home in your pocket.” - -It was in the summer of her seventeenth year that May fell down from her -high place in the life of the town of Bidwell. Two vital and dramatic -events had happened to her that year. Her mother died in April and she -graduated from the high school in June, second only in honors to Tom -Means. As Tom’s father had been on the school board for years the town -shook its head over the decision that placed him ahead of May and in -everyone’s eyes May had really walked off with the prize. When she went -into the fields, and when they remembered the fact of her mother’s -recent death, even the women were ready to forget and forgive the fact -of her being a member of the Edgley family. As for May, it seemed to her -at that moment that nothing that could happen to her could very much -matter. - -And then the unexpected. As more than one Bidwell wife said afterwards -to her husband. “It was then that blood showed itself.” - -A man named Jerome Hadley first found out about May. He went that year -to Peter Short’s field, as he himself said, “just for fun,” and he found -it. Jerome was pitcher for the Bidwell baseball nine and worked as mail -clerk on the railroad. After he had returned from a run he had several -days’ rest and went to the berry field because the town was deserted. -When he saw May working off by herself he winked at the other young men -and going to her got down on his knees and began picking at a speed -almost as great as her own. “Come on here, little woman,” he said, “I’m -a mail clerk and have got my hand in, sorting letters. My fingers can go -pretty fast. Come on now, let’s see if you can keep up with me.” - -For an hour Jerome and May went up and down in the rows and then the -thing happened that set the town by the ears. The girl, who had never -talked to others, began talking to Jerome and the other pickers turned -to look and wonder. She no longer picked at lightning speed but loitered -along, stopping to rest and put choice berries into her mouth. “Eat -that,” she said boldly passing a great red berry across the row to the -man. She put a handful of berries into his box. “You won’t make as much -as seventy-five cents all day if you don’t get a move on you,” she said, -smiling shyly. - -At the noon hour the other pickers found out the truth. The tired -workers had gone to the pump by Peter Short’s house and then to a nearby -orchard to sit under the trees and rest after the eating of lunches. - -There was no doubt something had happened to May. Everyone felt it. It -was later understood that she had, during that noon hour in June and -quite calmly and deliberately, decided to become like her two sisters -and go on the town. - -The berry pickers as usual ate their lunches in groups, the women and -girls sitting under one tree and the young men and boys under another. -Peter Short’s wife brought hot coffee and tin cups were filled. Jokes -went back and forth and the girls giggled. - -In spite of the unexpectedness of May’s attitude toward Jerome, a -bachelor and quite legitimate game for the unmarried women, no one -suspected anything serious would happen. Flirtations were always going -on in the berry fields. They came, played themselves out, and passed -like the clouds in the June sky. In the evening, when the young men had -washed the dirt of the fields away and had put on their Sunday clothes, -things were different. Then a girl must look out for herself. When she -went to walk in the evening with a young man under the trees or out into -country lanes—then anything might happen. - -But in the fields, with all the older women about—to have thought -anything at all of a young man and a girl working together and blushing -and laughing, would have been to misunderstand the whole spirit of the -berry picking season. - -And it was evident May had misunderstood. Later no one blamed Jerome, at -least none of the young fellows did. As the pickers ate lunch May sat a -little apart from the others. That was her custom and Jerry lay in the -long grass at the edge of the orchard also a little apart. A sudden -tenseness crept into the groups under the trees. May had not gone to the -pump with the others when she came in from the field but sat with her -back braced against a tree and the hand that held the sandwich was black -with the soil of her morning labors. It trembled and once the sandwich -fell out of her hand. - -Suddenly she got to her feet and put her lunch basket into the fork of a -tree, and then, with a look of defiance in her eyes, she climbed over a -fence and started along a lane past Peter Short’s barn. The lane ran -down to a meadow, crossed a bridge and went on beside a waving -wheatfield to a wood. - -May went a little way along the lane and then stopped to look back and -the other pickers stared at her, wondering what was the matter. Then -Jerome Hadley got to his feet. He was ashamed and climbed awkwardly over -the fence and walked away without looking back. - -Everyone was quite sure it had all been arranged. As the girls and women -got to their feet and stood watching, May and Jerome went out of the -lane and into the wood. The older women shook their heads. “Well, well,” -they exclaimed while the boys and young men began slapping each other on -the back and prancing grotesquely about. - -It was unbelievable. Before they had got out of sight of the others -under the tree Jerome had put his arm about May’s waist and she had put -her head down on his shoulder. It was as though May Edgley who, as all -the older women agreed, had been treated almost as an equal by all of -the others had wanted to throw something ugly right in their faces. - -Jerome and May stayed for two hours in the wood and then came back -together to the field where the others were at work. May’s cheeks were -pale and she looked as though she had been crying. She picked alone as -before and after a few moments of awkward silence Jerome put on his coat -and went off along a road toward town. May made a little mountain of -filled berry boxes during that afternoon but two or three times filled -boxes dropped out of her hands. The spilled fruit lay red and shining -against the brown and black of the soil. - -No one saw May in the berry fields after that, and Jerome Hadley had -something of which to boast. In the evening when he came among the young -fellows he spoke of his adventure at length. - -“You couldn’t blame me for taking the chance when I had it,” he said -laughing. He explained in detail what had occurred in the wood, while -other young men stood about filled with envy. As he talked he grew both -proud and a little ashamed of the public attention his adventure was -attaining. “It was easy,” he said. “That May Edgley’s the easiest thing -that ever lived in this town. A fellow don’t have to ask to get what he -wants. That’s how easy it is.” - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER II - - -IN Bidwell, and after she had fairly flung herself against the wall of -village convention by going into the wood with Jerome, May lived at -home, doing the work her mother had formerly done in the Edgley -household. She washed the clothes, cooked the food and made the beds. -There was, for the time, something sweet to her in the thoughts of doing -lowly tasks and she washed and ironed the dresses in which Lillian and -Kate were to array themselves and the heavy overalls worn by her father -and brothers with a kind of satisfaction in the task. “It makes me tired -and I can sleep and won’t be thinking,” she told herself. As she worked -over the washtubs, among the beds soiled by the heavy slumbers of her -brothers who on the evening before had perhaps come home drunk, or stood -over the hot stove in the kitchen, she kept thinking of her dead mother. -“I wonder what she would think,” she asked herself and then added. “If -she hadn’t died it wouldn’t have happened. If I had someone, I could go -to and talk with, things would be different.” - -During the day when the men of the household were gone with their teams -and when Lillian was away from town May had the house to herself. It was -a two-storied frame building, standing at the edge of a field near the -town’s edge, and had once been painted yellow. Now, water washing from -the roofs had discolored the paint, and the side walls of the old -building were all mottled and streaked. The house stood on a little hill -and the land fell sharply away from the kitchen door. There was a creek -under the hill and beyond the creek a field that at certain times during -the year became a swamp. At the creek’s edge willows and elders grew and -often in the afternoon, when there was no one about, May went softly out -at the kitchen door, looking to be sure there was no one in the road -that ran past the front of the house, and if the coast was clear went -down the hill and crept in among the fragrant elders and willows. “I am -lost here and no one can see me or find me,” she thought, and the -thought gave her intense satisfaction. Her cheeks grew flushed and hot -and she pressed the cool green leaves of the willows against them. When -a wagon passed in the road or someone walked along the board sidewalk at -the road-side she drew herself into a little lump and closed her eyes. -The passing sounds seemed far away and to herself it seemed that she had -in some way escaped from life. How warm and close it was there, buried -amid the dark green shadows of the willows. The gnarled twisted limbs of -the trees were like arms but unlike the arms of the man with whom she -had lain in the wood they did not grasp her with terrifying convulsive -strength. For hours she lay still in the shadows and nothing came to -frighten her and her lacerated spirit began to heal a little. “I have -made myself an outlaw among people but I am not an outlaw here,” she -told herself. - - * * * * * - -Having heard of the incident with Jerome Hadley, in the berry field, -Lillian and Kate Edgley were irritated and angry and one evening when -they were both at the house and May was at work in the kitchen they -spoke about it. Lillian was very angry and had decided to give May what -she spoke of as “a piece of her mind.” “What’d she want to go in the -cheap for?” she asked. “It makes me sick when I think of it—a fellow -like that Jerome Hadley! If she was going to cut loose what made her -want to go on the cheap?” - -In the Edgley family it had always been understood that May was of a -different clay and old John Edgley and the boys had always paid her a -kind of crude respect. They did not swear at her as they sometimes did -at Lillian and Kate, and in secret they thought of her as a link between -themselves and the more respectable life of the town. Ma Edgley was -respectable enough but she was old and tired and never went out of the -house and it was in May the family held up its head. The two brothers -were proud of their sister because of her record in the town school. -They themselves were working men and never expected to be anything else -but, they thought, “that sister of ours has shown the town that an -Edgley can beat them at their own game. She is smarter than any of them. -See how she has forced the town to pay attention to her.” - -As for Lillian—before the incident with Jerome Hadley, she continually -talked of her sister. In Norwalk, Fremont, Clyde and the other towns she -visited she had many friends. Men liked her because, as they often said, -she was a woman to be trusted. One could talk to her, say anything, and -she would keep her mouth shut and in her presence one felt comfortably -free and easy. Among her secret associates were members of churches, -lawyers, owners of prosperous businesses, heads of respectable families. -To be sure they saw Lillian in secret but she seemed to understand and -respect their desire for secrecy. “You don’t need to make no bones about -it with me. I know you got to be careful,” she said. - -On a summer evening, in one of the towns she was in the habit of -visiting, an arrangement was made. The man with whom she was to spend -the evening waited until darkness had come and then, hiring a horse at a -livery stable, drove to an appointed place. Side curtains were put on -the buggy and the pair set forth into the darkness and loneliness of -country roads. As the evening advanced and the more ardent mood of the -occasion passed, a sudden sense of freedom swept over the man. “It is -better not to fool around with a young girl or with some other man’s -wife. With Lillian one does not get found out and get into trouble,” he -thought. - -The horse went slowly, along out of the way roads—bars were let down and -the couple drove into a field. For hours they sat in the buggy and -talked. The men talked to Lillian as they could talk to no other woman -they had ever known. She was shrewd and in her own way capable and often -the men spoke of their affairs, asking her advice. “Now what do you -think, Lil’—if you were me would you buy or sell?” one of them asked. - -Other and more intimate things crept into the conversations. “Well, -Lil’, my wife and I are all right. We get along well enough, but we -ain’t what you might speak of as lovers,” Lillian’s temporary intimate -said. “She jaws me a lot when I smoke too much or when I don’t want to -go to church. And then, you see, we’re worried about the kids. My oldest -girl is running around a lot with young Harry Garvner and I keep asking -myself, ‘Is he any good?’ I can’t make up my mind. You’ve seen him -around, Lil’, what do you think?” - -Having taken part in many such conversations Lillian had come to depend -on her sister May to furnish her with a topic of conversation. “I know -how you feel. I feel that way about May,” she said. More than a hundred -times she had explained that May was different from the rest of the -Edgleys. “She’s smart,” she explained. “I tell you what, she’s the -smartest girl that ever went to the high school in Bidwell.” - -Having so often used May as an example of what an Edgley could be -Lillian was shocked when she heard of the affair in the berry field. For -several weeks she said nothing and then one evening in July when the two -were alone in the house together she spoke. She had intended to be -motherly, direct and kind—if firm, but when the words came her voice -trembled and she grew angry. “I hear, May, you been fooling with a man,” -she began as they sat together on the front porch of the house. It was a -hot evening and dark and a thunder storm threatened and for a long time -after Lillian had spoken there was silence and then May put her head -into her hands and leaning forward began to cry softly. Her body rocked -back and forth and occasionally a dry broken sob broke the silence. -“Well,” Lillian added sharply, being determined to terminate her remarks -before she also broke into tears, “well, May, you’ve made a darn fool of -yourself. I didn’t think it of you. I didn’t think you’d turn out a -fool.” - -In the attempt to control her own unhappiness and to conceal it, Lillian -became more and more angry. Her voice continued to tremble and to regain -control of it she got up and went inside the house. When she came out -again May still sat in the chair at the edge of the porch with her head -held in her hands. Lillian was moved to pity. “Well, don’t break your -heart about it, kid. I’m only an old fool after all. Don’t pay too much -attention to me. I guess Kate and I haven’t set you such a good -example,” she said softly. - -Lillian sat on the edge of the porch and put her hand on May’s knee and -when she felt the trembling of the younger woman’s body a sharp mother -feeling awakened within her. “I say, kid,” she began again, “a girl gets -notions into her head. I’ve had them myself. A girl thinks she’ll find a -man that’s all right. She kinda dreams of a man that doesn’t exist. She -wants to be good and at the same time she wants to be something else. I -guess I know how you felt but, believe me, kid, it’s bunk. Take it from -me, kid, I know what I’m talking about. I been with men enough. I ought -to know something.” - -Intent now on giving advice and having for the first time definitely -accepted her sister as a comrade Lillian did not realize that what she -now had to say would hurt May more than her anger. “I’ve often wondered -about mother,” she said reminiscently. “She was always so glum and -silent. When Kate and I went on the turf she never had nothing to say -and even when I was a kid and began running around with men evenings, -she kept still. I remember the first time I went over to Fremont with a -man and stayed out all night. I was ashamed to come home. ‘I’ll catch -hell,’ I thought but she never said nothing at all and it was the same -way with Kate. She never said nothing to her. I guess Kate and I thought -she was like the rest of the family—she was banking on you.” - -“To Ballyhack with Dad and the boys,” Lillian added sharply. “They’re -men and don’t care about anything but getting filled up with booze and -when they’re tired sleeping like dogs. They’re like all the other men -only not so much stuck on themselves.” - -Lillian became angry again. “I was pretty proud of you, May, and now I -don’t know what to think,” she said. “I’ve bragged about you a thousand -times and I suppose Kate has. It makes me sore to think of it, you an -Edgley and being as smart as you are, to fall for a cheap one like that -Jerome Hadley. I bet he didn’t even give you any money or promise to -marry you either.” - -May arose from her chair, her whole body trembling as with a chill, and -Lillian arose and stood beside her. The older woman got down to the -kernel of what she wanted to say. “You ain’t that way are you, sis—you -ain’t going to have a kid?” she asked. May stood by the door, leaning -against the door jamb and the rain that had been threatening began to -fall. “No, Lillian,” she said. Like a child begging for mercy she held -out her hand. Her face was white and in a flash of lightning Lillian -could see it plainly. It seemed to leap out of the darkness toward her. -“Don’t talk about it any more, Lillian, please don’t. I won’t ever do it -again,” she pleaded. - -Lillian was determined. When May went indoors and up the stairway to her -room above she followed to the foot of the stairs and finished what she -felt she had to say. “I don’t want you to do it, May,” she said, “I -don’t want you to do it. I want to see there be one Edgley that goes -straight but if you intend to go crooked don’t be a fool. Don’t take up -with a cheap one, like Jerome Hadley, who just give you soft talk. If -you are going to do it anyway you just come to me. I’ll get you in with -men who have money and I’ll fix it so you don’t have no trouble. If -you’re going to go on the turf, like Kate and I did, don’t be a fool. -You just come to me.” - - * * * * * - -In all her life May had never achieved a friendship with another woman, -although often she had dreamed of such a possibility. When she was still -a school girl she saw other girls going homeward in the evening. They -loitered along, their arms linked, and how much they had to say to each -other. When they came to a corner, where their ways parted, they could -not bear to leave each other. “You go a piece with me tonight and -tomorrow night I’ll go a piece with you,” one of them said. - -May hurried homeward alone, her heart filled with envy, and after she -had finished her time in the school and, more than ever after the -incident in the berry field—always spoken of by Lillian as the time of -her troubles—the dream of a possible friendship with some other woman -grew more intense. - -During the summer of that last year of her life in Bidwell a young woman -from another town moved into a house on her street. Her father had a job -on the Nickel Plate Railroad and Bidwell was at the end of a section of -that road. The railroad man was seldom at home, his wife had died a few -months before and his daughter, whose name was Maud, was not well and -did not go about town with the other young women. Every afternoon and -evening she sat on the front porch of her father’s house, and May, who -was sometimes compelled to go to one of the stores, often saw her -sitting there. The newcomer in Bidwell was tall and slender and looked -like an invalid. Her cheeks were pale and she looked tired. During the -year before she had been operated upon and some part of her internal -machinery had been taken away and her paleness and the look of weariness -on her face, touched May’s heart. “She looks as though she might be -wanting company,” she thought hopefully. - -After his wife’s death an unmarried sister had become the railroad man’s -housekeeper. She was a short strongly built woman with hard grey eyes -and a determined jaw and sometimes she sat with the new girl. Then May -hurried past without looking, but, when Maud sat alone, she went slowly, -looking slyly at the pale face and drooped figure in the rocking chair. -One day she smiled and the smile was returned. May lingered a moment. -“It’s hot,” she said leaning over the fence, but before a conversation -could be started she grew alarmed and hurried away. - -When the evening’s work was done on that evening and when the Edgley men -had gone up town, May went into the street. Lillian was away from home -and the sidewalk further up the street was deserted. The Edgley house -was the last one on the street, and in the direction of town and on the -same side of the street, there was—first a vacant lot, then a shed that -had once been used as a blacksmith shop but that was now deserted, and -after that the house where the new girl had come to live. - -When the soft darkness of the summer evening came May went a little way -along the street and stopped by the deserted shed. The girl in the -rocking chair on the porch saw her there, and seemed to understand May’s -fear of her aunt. Arising she opened the door and peered into the house -to be sure she was unobserved and then came down a brick walk to the -gate and along the street to May, occasionally looking back to be sure -she had escaped unnoticed. A large stone lay at the edge of the sidewalk -before the shed and May urged the new girl to sit down beside her and -rest herself. - -May was flushed with excitement. “I wonder if she knows? I wonder if she -knows about me?” she thought. - -“I saw you wanted to be friendly and I thought I’d come and talk,” the -new girl said. She was filled with a vague curiosity. “I heard something -about you but I know it ain’t true,” she said. - -May’s heart jumped and her hands trembled. “I’ve let myself in for -something,” she thought. The impulse to jump to her feet and run away -along the sidewalk, to escape at once from the situation her hunger for -companionship had created, almost overcame her and she half arose from -the stone and then sat down again. She became suddenly angry and when -she spoke her voice was firm, filled with indignation. “I know what you -mean,” she said sharply, “you mean the fool story about me and Jerome -Hadley in the woods?” The new girl nodded. “I don’t believe it,” she -said. “My aunt heard it from a woman.” - -Now that Maud had boldly mentioned the affair, that had, May knew, made -her an outlaw in the town’s life May felt suddenly free, bold, capable -of meeting any situation that might arise and was lost in wonder at her -own display of courage. Well, she had wanted to love the new girl, take -her as a friend, but now that impulse was lost in another passion that -swept through her. She wanted to conquer, to come out of a bad situation -with flying colors. With the boldness of another Lillian she began to -speak, to tell lies. “It just shows what happens,” she said quickly. A -re-creation of the incident in the wood with Jerome had come to her -swiftly, like a flash of sunlight on a dark day. “I went into the woods -with Jerome Hadley—why? You won’t believe it when I tell you, maybe,” -she added. - -May began laying the foundation of her lie. “He said he was in trouble -and wanted to speak with me, off somewhere where no one could hear, in -some secret place,” she explained. “I said, ‘If you’re in trouble let’s -go over into the woods at noon.’ It was my idea, our going off together -that way. When he told me he was in trouble his eyes looked so hurt I -never thought of reputation or nothing. I just said I’d go and I been -paid for it. A girl always has to pay if she’s good to a man I suppose.” - -May tried to look and talk like a wise woman, as she imagined Lillian -would have talked under the circumstances. “I’ve got a notion to tell -what that Jerome Hadley talked to me about all the time when we were in -there—in the woods—but I won’t,” she declared. “He lied about me -afterwards because I wouldn’t do what he wanted me to, but I’ll keep my -word. I won’t tell you any names but I’ll tell you this much—I know -enough to have Jerome Hadley sent to jail if I wanted to do it.” - -May watched her companion. To Maud, whose life had always been a dull -affair, the evening was like going to a theatre. It was better than -that. It was like going to the theatre where the star is your friend, -where you sit among strangers and have the sense of superiority that -comes with knowing, as a person much like yourself, the hero in the -velvet gown with the sword clanking at his side. “Oh, do tell me all you -dare. I want to know,” she said. - -“It was about a woman he was in trouble,” May answered. “One of these -days maybe the whole town will find out what I alone know.” She leaned -forward and touched Maud’s arm. The lie she was telling made her feel -glad and free. As on a dark day, when the sun suddenly breaks through -clouds, everything in life now seemed bright and glowing and her -imagination took a great leap forward. She had been inventing a tale to -save herself but went on for the joy of seeing what she could do with -the story that had come suddenly, unexpectedly, to her lips. As when she -was a girl in school her mind worked swiftly, eagerly. “Listen,” she -said impressively, “and don’t you never tell no one. Jerome Hadley -wanted to kill a man here in this town, because he was in love with the -man’s woman. He had got poison and intended to give it to the woman. She -is married and rich too. Her husband is a big man here in Bidwell. -Jerome was to give the poison to the woman and she was to put it in her -husband’s coffee and, when the man died, the woman was to marry Jerome. -I put a stop to it. I prevented the murder. Now do you understand why I -went into the woods with that man?” - -The fever of excitement that had taken possession of May was transmitted -to her companion. It drew them closer together and now Maud put her arm -about May’s waist. “The nerve of him,” May said boldly, “he wanted me to -take the stuff to the woman’s house and he offered me money too. He said -the rich woman would give me a thousand dollars, but I laughed at him. -‘If anything happens to that man I’ll tell and you’ll get hung for -murder,’ that’s what I said to him.” - -May described the scene that had taken place there in the deep dark -forest with the man, intent upon murder. They fought, she said, for more -than two hours and the man tried to kill her. She would have had him -arrested at once, she explained, but to do so involved telling the story -of the poison plot and she had given her word to save him, and if he -reformed, she would not tell. After a long time, when the man saw she -was not to be moved and would neither take part in the plot or allow it -to be carried out, he grew quieter. Then, as they were coming out of the -woods, he sprang upon her again and tried to choke her. Some berry -pickers in a field, among whom she had been working during the morning, -saw the struggle. - -“They went and told lies about me,” May said emphatically. “They saw us -struggling and they went and said he was making love to me. A girl -there, who was in love with Jerome herself and was jealous when she saw -us together, started the story. It spread all over town and now I’m so -ashamed I hardly dare to show my face.” - -With an air of helpless annoyance May arose. “Well,” she said, “I -promised him I wouldn’t tell the name of the man he was going to murder -or nothing about it and I won’t. I’ve told you too much as it is but you -gave me your word you wouldn’t tell. It’s got to be a secret between -us.” She started off along the sidewalk toward the Edgley house and then -turned and ran back to the new girl, who had got almost to her own gate. -“You keep still,” May whispered dramatically. “If you go talking now -remember you may get a man hung.” - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER III - - -A NEW life began to unfold itself to May Edgley. After the affair in the -berry field, and until the time of the conversation with Maud Welliver, -she had felt as one dead. As she went about in the Edgley household, -doing the daily work, she sometimes stopped and stood still, on the -stairs or in the kitchen by the stove. A whirlwind seemed to be going on -around her while she stood thus, becalmed—fear made her body tremble. It -had happened even in the moments when she was hidden under the elders by -the creek. At such times the trunks of the willow trees and the -fragrance of the elders comforted but did not comfort enough. There was -something wanting. They were too impersonal, too sure of themselves. - -To herself, at such moments, May was like one sealed up in a vessel of -glass. The light of days came to her and from all sides came the sound -of life going on but she herself did not live. She but breathed, ate -food, slept and awakened but what she wanted out of life seemed far -away, lost to her. In a way, and ever since she had been conscious of -herself, it had been so. - -She remembered faces she had seen, expressions that had come suddenly to -peoples’ faces as she passed them on the streets. In particular old men -had always been kind to her. They stopped to speak to her. “Hello, -little girl,” they said. For her benefit eyes had been lifted, lips had -smiled, kindly words had been spoken, and at such moments it had seemed -to her that some tiny sluiceway out of the great stream of human life -had been opened to her. The stream flowed on somewhere, in the distance, -on the further side of a wall, behind a mountain of iron—just out of -sight, out of hearing—but a few drops of the living waters of life had -reached her, had bathed her. Understanding of the secret thing that went -on within herself was not impossible. It could exist. - -In the days after the talk with Lillian the puzzled woman in the yellow -house thought much about life. Her mind, naturally a busy active one, -could not remain passive and for the time she dared not think much of -herself and of her own future. She thought abstractly. - -She had done a thing and how natural and yet how strange the doing of it -had been. There she was at work in a berry field—it was morning, the sun -shone, boys, young girls, and mature women laughed and talked in the -rows behind her. Her fingers were very busy but she listened while a -woman’s voice talked of canning fruit. “Cherries take so much sugar,” -the voice said. A young girl’s voice talked endlessly of some boy and -girl affair. There was a tale of a ride into the country on a hay wagon, -and an involved recital of “he saids” and “I saids.” - -And then the man had come along the rows and had got down on his knees -to work beside herself—May Edgley. He was a man out of the town’s life, -and had come thus, suddenly, unexpectedly. No one had ever come to her -in that way. Oh, people had been kind. They had smiled and nodded, and -had gone their own ways. - -May had not seen the sly winks Jerome Hadley had bestowed on the other -berry pickers and had taken his impulse to come to her as a simple and -lovely fact in life. Perhaps he was lonely like herself. For a time the -two had worked together in silence and then a bantering conversation -began. May had found herself able to carry her end of a conversation, to -give and take with the man. She laughed at him because, although his -fingers were skilled, he could not fill the berry boxes as fast as -herself. - -And then, quite suddenly, the tone of the conversation had changed. The -man became bold and his boldness had excited May. What words he had -said. “I’d like to hold you in my arms. I’d like to have you alone where -I could kiss you. I’d like to be alone with you in the woods or -somewhere.” The others working, now far away along the rows, young girls -and women, too, must also have heard just such words from the lips of -men. It was the fact that they had heard such words and responded to -them in kind that differentiated them from herself. It was by responding -to such words that a woman got herself a lover, got married, connected -herself with the stream of life. She heard such words and something -within herself stirred, as it was stirring now in herself. Like a flower -she opened to receive life. Strange beautiful things happened and her -experience became the experience of all life, of trees, of flowers, of -grasses and most of all of other women. Something arose within her and -then broke. The wall of life was broken down. She became a living thing, -receiving life, giving it forth, one with all life. - -In the berry field that morning May had gone on working after the words -were said. Her fingers automatically picked berries and put them in the -boxes slowly, hesitatingly. She turned to the man and laughed. How -wonderful that she could control herself so. - -Her mind had raced. What a thing her mind was. It was always doing -that—racing, running madly, a little out of control. Her fingers moved -more slowly. She picked berries and put them in the man’s box, and now -and then gave him large fine round berries to eat and was conscious that -the others in the field were looking in her direction. They were -listening, wondering, and she grew resentful. “What did they want? What -did all this have to do with them?” - -Her mind took a new turn. “What would it be like to be held in the arms -of a man, to have a man’s lips pressed down upon her lips. It was an -experience all women, who had lived, had known. It had come to her own -mother, to the married women, working with her in the field, to young -girls, too, to many much younger than herself.” She imagined arms soft -and yet firm, strong arms, holding her closely, and sank into a dim, -splendid world of emotion. The stream of life in which she had always -wanted to float had picked her up—it carried her along. All life became -colorful. The red berries in the boxes—how red they were, the green of -the vines, what a living green! The colors merged—they ran together, the -stream of life was flowing over them, over her. - -What a terrible day that had been for May. Later she could not focus her -mind upon it, dared not do so. The actual experience with the man in the -forest had been quite brutal—an assault had been made upon her. She had -consented—yes—but not to what happened. Why had she gone into the woods -with him? Well, she had gone, and by her manner she had invited, urged -him to follow, but she had not expected anything really to happen. - -It had been her own fault, everything had been her own fault. She had -got up from among the berry pickers, angry at them—resentful. They knew -too much and not enough and she had hated their knowledge, their -smartness. She had got up and walked away from them, looking back, -expecting him. - -What had she expected? What she had expected could not get itself put -into words. She knew nothing of poets and their efforts, of the things -they live to try to do, of things men try to paint into canvasses, -translate into song. She was an Ohio woman, an Edgley, the daughter of a -teamster, the sister of Lillian Edgley who had gone on the turf. May -expected to walk into a new world, into life—she expected to bathe -herself in the living waters of life. There was to be something warm, -close, comforting, secure. Hands were to arise out of darkness and grasp -her hands, her hands covered with the stain of red berries and the -yellow dust of fields. She was to be held closely in the warm place and -then like a flower she was to break open, throw herself, her fragrance -into the air. - -What had been the matter with her, with her notion of life? May had -asked herself that question a thousand times, had asked it until she was -weary of asking, could not ask any more. She had known her -mother—thought she had known her—if she had not, no Edgley had. Had none -of the others cared? Her mother had met a man and had been held in his -arms, she had become the mother of sons and daughters, and the sons and -daughters had gone their own way, lived brutally. They had gone after -what they thought they wanted from life, directly, brutally—like -animals. And her mother had stood aside. How long ago she must have -died, really. It was then only flesh and blood that went on living, -working, making beds, cooking, lying with a husband. - -It was plain that was true of her mother—it must have been true. If it -were not true why had she not spoken, why had no words come to her lips. -Day after day May had worked with her mother. Well, then she was a -virgin, young, tender and her mother had not kissed her, had not held -her closely. No word had been said. It was not true, as Lillian had -said, that her mother had counted on her. It was because of death that -she was silent, when Lillian and then Kate went on the turf. The dead -did not care! The dead are dead! - -May wondered if she herself had passed out of life, if she had died. “It -may be,” she thought, “I may never have lived and my thinking I was -alive may only have been a trick of mind.” - -“I’m smart,” May thought. Lillian had said that, her brothers had said -it, the whole town had said it. How she hated her own smartness. - -The others had been proud of it, glad of it. The whole town had been -proud of her, had hailed her. It was because she was smart, because she -thought quicker and faster than others, it was because of that the women -schoolteachers had smiled at her, because of that old men spoke to her -on the streets. - -Once an old man had met her on the sidewalk in front of one of the -stores and taking her by the hand had led her inside and had bought her -a bag of candy. The man was a merchant in Bidwell and had a daughter who -was a teacher in the schools, but May had never seen him before, had -heard nothing of him, knew nothing about him. He came up to her out of -nothingness, out of the stream of life. He had heard about May, of her -quick active mind, that always defeated the other children in the school -room, that in every test came out ahead. Her imagination played about -his figure. - -At that time May went every Sunday morning to the Presbyterian Sunday -School, as there was a tradition in the Edgley family that Ma Edgley had -once been a Presbyterian. None of the other children had ever gone, but -for a time she did and they all seemed to want her to go. She remembered -the men, the Sunday School teachers were always talking about. There was -a gigantic strong old man named Abraham who walked in God’s footsteps. -He must have been huge, strong, and good, too. His children were like -the sands of the seas for numbers, and was that not a sign of strength. -How many children! All the children in the world could not be more than -that! The man who had taken hold of her hand and had led her into the -store to buy the candy for her was, she imagined just such another. He -also must own lands and be the father of innumerable children and no -doubt he could ride all day on a fast horse and never get off his own -possessions. It was possible he thought her one of his innumerable -children. - -There was no doubt he was a mighty man. He looked like one and he had -admired her. “I’m giving you this candy because my daughter says you are -the smartest girl in school,” he said. She remembered that another man -stood in the store and that, as she ran away with the bag of candy -gripped in her small fingers, the old man, the mighty one, turned to -him. He said something to the man. “They are all cattle except her, just -cattle,” he had said. Later she had thought out what he meant. He meant -her family, the Edgleys. - -How many things she had thought out as she went back and forth to -school, always alone. There was always plenty of time for thinking -things out—in the late afternoons as she helped her mother with the -housework and in the long winter evenings when she went to bed early and -for a long time did not go to sleep. The old man in the store had -admired her quick brain—for that he had forgiven her being an Edgley, -one of the cattle. Her thoughts went round and round in circles. Even as -a child she had always felt shut in, walled in from life. She struggled -to escape out of herself, out into life. - -And now she was a woman who had experienced life, tested it, and she -stood, silent and attentive on the stairway of the Edgley house or by -the stove in the kitchen and with an effort forced herself to quit -thinking. On another street, in another house, a door banged. Her sense -of hearing was extraordinarily acute, and it seemed to her she could -hear every sound made by every man, woman, and child in town. The circle -of thoughts began again and again she fought to think, to feel her way -out of herself. On another street, in another house a woman was doing -housework, just as she had been doing—making beds, washing dishes, -cooking food. The woman had just passed from one room of her house to -another and a door had shut with a bang. “Well,” May thought, “she is a -human being, she feels things as I do, she thinks, eats food, sleeps, -dreams, walks about her house.” - -It didn’t matter who the woman was. Being or not being an Edgley made no -difference. Any woman would do for the purposes of May’s thoughts. All -people who lived, lived! Men walked about too, and had thoughts, young -girls laughed. She had heard a girl in school, when no one was speaking -to her—paying any attention to her—burst suddenly into loud laughter. -What was she laughing about? - -How cruelly the town had patronized May, setting her apart from the -others, calling her smart. They had cared about her because of her -smartness. She was smart. Her mind was quick, it reached out. And she -was one of the Edgleys—“cattle,” the bearded man in the store had said. - -And what of that—what was an Edgley—why were they cattle? An Edgley also -slept, ate food, had dreams, walked about. Lillian had said that an -Edgley man was like all other men, only less stuck on himself. - -May’s mind fought to realize herself in the world of people, she wanted -to be a part of all life, to function in life—did not want to be a -special thing—smart—patted on the head—smiled at because she was smart. - -What was smartness? She could work out problems in school quickly, -swiftly, but as each problem was solved she forgot it. It meant nothing -to her. A merchant in Egypt wanted to transport goods across the desert -and had 370 pounds of tea and such another number of pounds of dried -fruits and spices. There was a problem concerning the matter. Camels -were to be loaded. How far away? The result of all her quick thinking -was some number like twelve or eighteen, arrived at before the others. -There was a little trick. It consisted in throwing everything else out -of the mind and concentrating on the one thing—and that was smartness. - -But what did it matter to her about the loading of camels? It might have -meant something could she have seen into the mind, the soul of the man -who owned all that merchandise and who was to carry it so far, if she -could have understood him, if she could have understood anyone, if -anyone could have understood her. - -May stood in the kitchen of the Edgley house, quiet, attentive—for ten -minutes, a half hour. Once a dish she held in her hand fell to the floor -and broke, awakening her suddenly and to awaken was like coming back to -the Edgley house after a long journey, during which she had traveled -far, over mountains, rivers, seas—it was like coming back to a place she -wanted to leave for good. - -“And all the time,” she told herself, “life swept on, other people -lived, laughed, achieved life.” - -And then, through the lie she had told Maud Welliver, May stepped into a -new world, a world of boundless release. Through the lie and the telling -of it she found out that, if she could not live in the life about her, -she could create a life. If she was walled in, shut off from -participation in the life of the Ohio town—hated, feared by the town—she -could come out of the town. The people would not really look at her, try -to understand her and they would not let her look down into themselves. - -The lie she had told was the foundation stone, the first of the -foundation stones. A tower was to be built, a tall tower on which she -could stand, from the ramparts of which she could look down into a world -created by herself, by her own mind. If her mind was really what -Lillian, the teachers in the school, all the others, had said she would -use it, it would become the tool which in her hands, would force stone -after stone into its place in her tower. - - * * * * * - -In the Edgley house May had a room of her own, a tiny room at the back -of the house and there was one window looking down into the field, that -every spring and fall became a swamp. In the winter sometimes it was -covered with ice and boys came there to skate. On the evening she had -told Maud Welliver the great lie—recreated the incident in the wood with -Jerome Hadley—she hurried home and went up to her room and, pulling a -chair to the window, sat down. What a thing she had done! The encounter -with Jerome Hadley in the wood had been terrible—she had been unable to -think about it, did not dare to think about it, and trying not to think -had almost upset her reason. - -And now it was gone. The whole thing had really never happened. What had -happened was this other thing, or something like that, something no one -knew about. There had really been an attempt at murder. May sat by the -window and smiled sadly. “I stretched it a little,” she thought. “Of -course I stretched it, but what was the use trying to tell what -happened. I couldn’t make it understood. I can’t understand it myself.” - -All through the weeks that had passed since that day in the wood May had -been obsessed by the notion that she was unclean, physically unclean. -Doing the housework she wore calico dresses—she had several of them and -two or three times a day she changed her dress and the soiled dress she -could not leave hanging in a closet until washday but washed the dress -at once and hung it on a line in the back yard. The wind blowing through -it gave her a comforting feeling. - -The Edgleys had no bathroom or bathtub. Few people in towns in her day -owned any such luxurious appendages to life. And a washtub was kept in -the woodshed by the kitchen door and what baths were taken were taken in -the tub. It was a ceremony that did not often occur in the family, and -when it did occur the tub was filled from the cistern and set in the sun -to warm. Then it was carried into the shed. The candidate for -cleanliness went into the shed and closed the door. In the winter the -ceremony took place in the kitchen and Ma Edgley came at the last moment -and poured a kettle of boiling water into the cold water in the tub. In -the summer in the shed that was not necessary. The bather undressed and -put his clothes about, on the piles of wood, and there was a great -splashing. - -During that summer May took a bath every afternoon, but did not bother -to put the water out in the sun. How good it felt to have it cold! Often -when there was no one about, she filled the tub and got into it again -before going to bed. Her small body, dark and strong, sank into the cold -water and she took strong soap and scrubbed her legs, her breasts, her -neck where Jerome Hadley’s kisses had alighted. Her neck and breasts she -wished she could scrub quite away. - -Her body was strong and wiry. All the Edgleys, even Ma Edgley, had been -strong. They were all, except May, large people and in her the family -strength seemed to have concentrated. She was never physically weary and -after the time of her intensive thinking began, and when she often slept -little at night her body seemed to grow constantly stronger. Her breasts -grew larger and her figure changed slightly. It grew less boyish. She -was becoming a woman. - - * * * * * - -After the telling of the lie, May’s body became for a time no more than -a tree growing in a forest through which she walked. It was something -through which life made itself manifest; it was a house within which she -lived, a house, in which, and in spite of the enmity of the town, life -went on. “I’m not dead like those who die while their bodies are still -alive,” May thought, and there was intense comfort in the thought. - -She sat by the window of her room in the darkness thinking. Jerome -Hadley had tried to commit a murder and how often such attempts must -have been made in the history of other men and women—and how often they -must have succeeded. The spirit within was killed. Boys and girls grew -up full of notions, brave notions too. In Bidwell, as in other towns, -they went to schools and Sunday schools. Words were said—they heard many -brave words—but within themselves, within their own tiny houses, all -life was uncertain, hesitating. They looked abroad and saw men and -women, bearded men, kind strong women. How many were dead! How many of -the houses were but empty haunted places! Their town was not the town -they had thought it and some day they would have to find that out. It -was not a place of warm friendly closeness. Feeling instinctively the -uncertainty of life, the difficulty of arriving at truth the people did -not draw together. They were not humble in the face of the great -mystery. The mystery was to be solved with lies, with truth put away. A -great noise must be made. Everything was to be covered up. There must be -a great noise and bustle, the firing of cannons, the roll of drums, the -shouting of many words. The spirit within must be killed. “What liars -people are,” May thought breathlessly. It seemed to her that all the -people of her town stood before her, were in a way being judged by her, -and her own lie, told to defeat a universal lie, now seemed a small, a -white innocent thing. - -There was a very tender delicate thing within her, many people had -wanted to kill—that was certain. To kill the delicate thing within was a -passion that obsessed mankind. All men and women tried to do it. First -the man or woman killed the thing within himself, and then tried to kill -it in others. Men and women were afraid to let the thing live. - -May sat in the darkness in her room in the Edgley house having such -thoughts as had never come to her before and the night seemed alive as -no other night of her life had been. For her gods walked abroad in the -land. The Edgley house was but a poor little affair of boards—of thin -walls—and she looked out, in the dim wavering light of the night, into a -field, that at times during the year became a bog where cattle sank in -black mud to their knees. Her town was but a dot on the huge map of her -country—she knew that. It was not necessary to travel to find out. Had -she not been at the top of her class in geography? In her country alone -lived some sixty, eighty, a hundred million people—she could not -remember the number—it changed yearly. When the country was new millions -of buffalo walked up and down on the plains. She was a she-calf among -the buffalo but she had found lodgment in a town, in a house made of -boards and painted yellow, but the field below the house was dry now and -long grass grew there. However, tiny pools remained and frogs lived in -them and croaked loudly while crickets sang in the dry grass. Her life -was sacred—the house in which she lived, the room in which she sat, -became a church, a temple, a tower. The lie she had told had started a -new force within her and the new temple, in which she was to live, was -now being built. - -Thoughts like giant clouds, seen in a dim night sky, floated through her -mind. Tears came to her eyes and her throat seemed to be swelling. She -put her head down on the window sill and convulsive sobs shook her. - -That was, she knew, because she had been brave enough and quick-witted -enough to tell the lie, to re-establish the romance of existence within -herself. The foundation stone for the temple had been laid. - -May did not think anything out clearly, did not try to do that. She -felt—she knew her own truth. Words heard, read in books in school, in -other books loaned her by the schoolteachers, words said casually, -without feeling—by thin-lipped, flat-breasted young women who were -teachers at the Sunday school, words that had seemed as nothing to her -when said, now made a great sound in her mind. They were repeated to her -in stately measure by some force, seemingly outside herself and were -like the steady rhythmical tread of an army marching on earth roads. No, -they were like rain on the roof over her head, on the roof of the house -that was herself. All her life she had lived in a house and the rains -had come unheeded—and the words she had heard and now remembered were -like rain drops falling on roofs. There was a subtle perfume remaining. -“The stone which the builders refused is become the headstone of the -corner.” - -As the thoughts marched through May’s mind her small shoulders shook -with sobs, but she was happy—strangely happy and something within -herself was singing. The singing was a song that was always alive -somewhere in the world, it was the song of life, the song that crickets -sang, the song the frogs croaked hoarsely. It ran away out of her room, -out of the darkness into the night, into days, into far lands—it was the -old song, the sweet song. - -May kept thinking about buildings and builders. “The stone which the -builders refused is become the headstone of the corner.” Someone had -said that and others had felt what she now felt—they had had the feeling -she could not put into words and they had tried putting it into words. -She was not alone in the world. It was not a strange path she walked in -life, but many had walked it, many were walking it now. Even as she sat -in the window, thinking so strangely, many men and women in many places -and many lands sat at other windows having the same thoughts. In a -world, where many men and women had killed the thing within themselves, -the path of the rejected was the true path and how many had walked the -path! The trees along the way were marked. Signs had been hung up by -those who wanted to show others the way. “The stone which the builders -refused is become the headstone of the corner.” - -Lillian had said, “men are no good,” and it was clear Lillian had also -killed the thing within herself, had let it be killed. She had let some -Jerome Hadley kill it, and then she had grown slowly and steadily more -and more angry at life, had come to hate life, had thrown it away. And -the thing had happened to her mother, too. That was the reason for her -life of silence—death walking about. “The dead rise up to strike the -dead.” - -The story May had told to Maud Welliver was not a lie—it was the living -truth. He had tried to kill and had come near succeeding. May had walked -in the valley of the shadow of death. She knew that now. Her own sister, -Lillian, had come to her when she walked with Death and wanted Life. “If -you are going to go on the turf I’ll get you in with men who have -money,” Lillian had said. She had got no closer to understanding than -that. - - * * * * * - -May decided that after all she would not try to be Maud Welliver’s -friend. She would see her and talk to her but, for the present, she -would keep herself to herself. The living thing within her had been -wounded and needed time to recover. Of all the feelings, the strong -emotion, that swept through her on that evening, cleansing her -internally, as she had been trying by splashing in the tub in the -woodshed to cleanse herself externally, one impulse got itself -definitely expressed. “I’ll go it alone, that’s what I’ll do,” she -murmured between sobs as she sat by the window with her head in her -hands, and heard the sweet song of the insects, singing of life in the -darkness of the fields. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER IV - - -“THERE was a man here. For weeks he lay sick to the point of death, in -our house, and all the time I did not dare sleep. Night and day I was on -the watch. How often at night I have crept down across this very field, -in the middle of the night, in the darkness looking for the black, -trying to discover if he was still on the trail.” - -It was early summer and May sat talking with Maud Welliver by a tree in -the field back of the Edgley’s kitchen door—building steadily her tower -of romance. Two or three times each week, since that first talk by the -blacksmith shop, Maud had managed to get to the Edgley house unobserved -by her aunt. In her passionate devotion to the little dark-skinned -woman, who had lived through so many and such romantic adventures in -life, she was ready to risk anything, even to the wrath of her father’s -iron-jawed housekeeper. - -To the Edgley house she came always at night, and the necessity of that -was understood by May and perhaps better understood by Lillian Edgley. -On the next day, after the meeting by the blacksmith shop, Maud’s father -had spoken his mind concerning the Edgleys. The Welliver family sat at -supper in the evening. “Maud,” John Welliver began, looking sternly at -his daughter, “I don’t want you should have anything to do with that -Edgley family that lives on this street.” The railroad man cursed the -ill luck that had led him to take a house on the same street where such -cattle lived. One of his brother employees on the road, he said, had -told him the story of the Edgleys. “They are such an outfit,” he -declared wrathfully. “God only knows why they are allowed to stay here. -They should be tarred and feathered and run out of town. Why, to live on -the same street with them is like living in the midst of cattle.” - -The railroad man looked hard at his daughter. To him she was a young -woman and a virgin, and by these tokens walked a dangerous trail through -life. On dark streets, adventurous men lay in wait for all such women -and they employed other women, of the Edgley stripe, to decoy innocent -virgins into their hands. There was much he would have liked to say to -his daughter but not much he could say. Among themselves men could speak -openly of such women as the Edgley sisters. They were a thing—well. To -tell the truth—during young manhood almost every man went to see such -women, went with other men into a house inhabited by such women. To go -to such a place one needed to have been drinking a little. It happened. -Several young men were together and went from place to place drinking. -“Let’s go down the line,” one of them said. The men went straggling off -along a street, two by two. Little was said and they were all a little -ashamed of their mission. Then they came to a house, always on a dark -foul street, and one of the young men, a bold fellow, knocked at the -door. A fat woman, with a hard face, came to let them in and they went -into a room and stood about, looking foolish. “O, girls,—company,” the -fat woman shouted and several women came and stood about. The women -looked bored and tired. - -John Welliver had himself been to such places. Well, that was when he -was a young workman. Later a man met a good woman and married her, tried -to forget the other women, did forget them. In spite of all the things -said, most men after marriage went straight. They had a living to make -and children growing up and there was no time for any such nonsense. -Among his fellow workmen, the railroad man often spoke of the kind of -women he believed the three Edgley women to be. “It’s my notion,” he -said, “that it’s better to have such places in order that good women may -be let alone, but they ought to be off by themselves somewhere. A good -woman never ought to see or know about such cattle.” - -In the presence of his daughter and of his sister, the housekeeper, now -that the subject of the Edgleys had been broached the railroad man was -embarrassed. He kept his eye on the plate before him and stole a shy -look at his daughter’s face. How white and pure it looked. “I wish I had -kept my mouth shut,” he thought—but a sense of the necessity of the -occasion led him on. “My Maud might be led to take up with the Edgley -women, knowing nothing,” he thought. “Well,” he said, “there are three -women in that family and they are all alike. There is one, who works at -the hotel—where she meets traveling men—and the oldest one doesn’t work -at all. And there is another, too, the youngest that everyone thought -was going to turn out all right because she stood high in school and is -said to be smart. Everyone thought she would be different but she isn’t, -you see. Why, right before everyone, in a berry field, where she was at -work, she went into a wood with a man.” - -“I know about it and I’ve told Maud,” the railroad man’s sister said -sharply. “We don’t need to talk about it no more.” - - * * * * * - -Maud Welliver had listened with flushed cheeks to her father’s words, -and even as he talked had made up her mind she would see May again and -soon. Since coming to Bidwell she had not left the house at night, but -now she felt suddenly quite strong and well. When the supper was -finished and darkness came on she got up from her chair on the porch and -spoke to her aunt, at work inside the house. “I feel better than I have -for months, aunty,” she said, “and I’m going for a little walk. You know -the doctor said I was to walk all I could and I can’t walk during the -day on account of the heat. I’ll just go uptown a little while.” - -Maud went cautiously along the sidewalk toward the business section of -town and then crossed over and returning on the opposite side, stole -along, walking on the grass at the edge of lawns. What an adventure! She -felt like one being admitted into some strange world filled with -romance. For her May Edgley’s tales had become golden apples of -existence, to taste which she would risk anything. “What a person!” she -thought as she crept forward in the darkness, lifting and putting down -her feet on the grass like a kitten compelled to walk in water. She -thought of May Edgley’s adventure in the wood with Jerome Hadley. How -stupid her father had been, how stupid everyone in the town of Bidwell! -“It must be so with men and women everywhere,” she thought vaguely. -“They go on thinking they know what’s happening, and they know nothing.” -She thought of May Edgley, small and a woman, alone in the forest with a -man—a dark determined man, intent upon murder. The man held in his hand -a little package containing a white powder. A few grains of it in a cup -of coffee and a human life would go out. A man who walked and talked and -went about the streets of Bidwell with other men would become a white -lifeless bit of clay. Maud had been at several times in her life close -to the door of death. She imagined a scene. There was a rich man’s home -with soft carpets, woven of priceless stuffs, brought from the Orient. -One walking on the carpets made no sound. The feet sank softly into the -velvety stuff and soft-voiced servants moved about. A man entered and -sat at breakfast. The movies had not at that time come to Bidwell but -Maud had read many popular novels and several times, at Fort Wayne, had -been to the theatre. - -There was a woman in the rich man’s house—his guilty wife. She was -slender and willowy. Ah, there was something serpentine about her. In -Maud’s imagination she lay on a silken couch beside the table, at which -the man now sat down to eat his breakfast. A wood fire burned in the -fireplace. The woman’s hand stole forward and a tiny pinch of the white -powder went into the coffee cup; then she raised a white hand and -stroked the man’s cheek. She closed her eyes and lay back on the silken -couch. The dastardly deed was done and the woman did not care. She was -not even curious as to how death would come. She yawned and waited. - -The man drank his coffee and arising moved about the room and then a -sudden pallor came upon his cheeks. It was quite noticeable as he was a -ruddy-cheeked man with soft grey hair—a strong commanding figure of a -man, a leader among men. Maud pictured him as the president of a great -railroad system. She had never seen a railroad president but her father -had often spoken of the president of the Nickle Plate and had described -him as a big fine looking fellow. - -What a thing is passion, so terrible, so strange. It takes such -unimaginable turns. The woman on the silken couch, the willowy -serpentine woman, had turned from her husband, from the commander of -men, from the strong man, the powerful one who swept all before him, and -had given her illicit but powerfully fascinating love to a railroad mail -clerk. - -Maud had seen Jerome Hadley. When the Wellivers had first come to -Bidwell she, with her aunt and father, had been driven about town with a -real-estate man and his wife. They were looking for a house in which to -live and as they drove about the real-estate man’s wife, who sat on the -back seat of a surrey with Maud and her aunt, had pointed to Jerome -Hadley, walking past in the street, and had told in a whisper the story -of his going into the wood with May Edgley. Maud was half sick on that -day and had not listened. The railroad journey from Fort Wayne to -Bidwell had given her a headache. - -However, she had looked at Jerome. He had sloping shoulders, pale grey -eyes and sandy hair, and when he walked he toed out badly and his -trousers were baggy. And for that man the woman on the silken couch, the -railroad president’s wife, was ready to commit murder. What an -unexplainable, what a strange thing is love! The windings and twistings -of its pathway through life cannot be followed by the human mind. - -The scene being enacted in Maud Welliver’s mind played itself out. The -strong man in the richly furnished room put his hand to his throat and -staggered. He reeled from side to side and clutched at the backs of -chairs. The noiseless servants had all gone out of the room. The woman -half arose from the couch as the man fell to the floor and in falling -struck his head on the corner of a table so that his blood ran out upon -the silken carpets. The woman smiled sardonically. It was terrible. She -cared not the least in the world and a slow cruel smile came and -remained fixed on her face. Then there was the sound of running feet. -The servants were coming, they were running, running desperately. The -woman lay back on the couch and yawned again. “I had better scream and -then faint,” she thought and she did the two things, did them with the -air of a tired actor rehearsing a well known part for a play. It was all -for love, for a strange and mysterious thing called passion. She did it -for Jerome Hadley’s sake, that she might be free to walk with him the -illicit paths of love. - -Maud Welliver tiptoed cautiously forward on the lawns on the further -side of Duane Street in Bidwell, looking across at the dark house where -she had come to live. In Fort Wayne she had known nothing like this. -What a terrible thing might have happened in Bidwell but for May Edgley! -The scene in the rich man’s home faded and was replaced by another. She -saw May standing in the forest with Jerome Hadley. How he had changed! -He stood alert, intent, determined, holding the poison package in his -hand and he was threatening, threatening and pleading. In the other hand -he held money, a great package of bills. He thrust the bills forward and -pleaded with May Edgley and then grew angry and threatened again. - -Before him stood the small, white-faced woman, frightened now, but -terribly determined also. The word “never” was upon her lips. And now -the man threw the money away into the bushes and sprang forward. His -hand was at the woman’s throat, the murderous hand of the infuriated -mail clerk. It pressed hard. May fell to the ground. - -Jerome Hadley did not quite dare let the woman die. Too many people had -seen the two go into the wood together. He stood over her until she had -a little recovered and then the threatening and pleading began again, -but all the time the little woman stood firm, shaking her head and -saying the brave word “never.” “Kill me if you will,” she said, “but -I’ll take no part in this murder. My reputation is gone and I am an -outlaw among men and women but I’ll take no part in this murder, and if -you go on with it I will betray you.” - - * * * * * - -The September evening when May uttered the startling sentences, -regarding a strange man and a mysterious black, set down at the head of -this section of the story of her adventures, was warm and clear. -Brightly the stars shone in the sky and in the field back of the -Edgley’s kitchen door all the little ponds had become dry. Since that -first evening when she had met May a great change had taken place in -Maud. May had led her up to the ramparts of the tower of romance and as -often as possible now the two sat together under a tree in the field or -on the floor by the open window in May’s room. To the field they went -through the kitchen door, along the creek where the elders and willows -grew and over stones in the bed of the creek itself, to a wire fence. -How alone and how far away from the life of the town they were in the -field at night! Buggies and the few automobiles then owned in Bidwell -passed on distant roads, and over the town, soft lights played on the -sky and soft lights seemed to play over the spirits of the two women. On -a distant street, that led down to the town waterworks, a group of young -men went tramping along on a board sidewalk. They were singing a song. -“Listen, May,” Maud said. The voices died away and another sound came. -Jerry Haden, a cripple who walked with a crutch and who delivered -evening papers, went along quickly, his crutch making a sharp clicking -sound on the sidewalks. What a hurry he was in. “Click! click!” went the -crutch. - -It was a time and place for the growth of romance. A desire to reach out -to life, to command life grew within Maud. One evening she, alone and -unaided, mounted the tower of romance and told May of how a young man in -Fort Wayne had wanted to marry her. “He was the son of the president of -a railroad company,” she said. The matter was of no importance and she -only spoke of it to show what men were like. For a long time he came to -the house almost every evening and when he did not come he sent flowers -and candy. Maud had cared nothing for him. There was a certain air he -had that wearied her. He seemed to think himself in some way of better -blood than the Wellivers. The idea was absurd. Maud’s father knew his -father and knew that he had once been no more than a section hand on the -railroad. His pretensions wearied Maud and she finally sent him away. - -Maud told May, on several evenings of the imaginary young man whom, -because of his pride of blood, she had cast adrift, and on the September -evening wanted to speak of something else. For two or three evenings she -had been on the point of saying what was in her mind but could not bring -the matter to her lips. It trembled within her like a wild bird caught -and held in her hand, as, in the dim light, she looked at May. “She -won’t do it. I’ll never get her to do it,” she thought. - -In Fort Wayne, before she came to Bidwell, and when she had just -graduated from the high school Maud had for a time walked upon the -border line of love, had stood for a moment in the very pathway of -Cupid’s darts. Near the house where the Wellivers then lived there was a -grocery run by an alert erect little man of forty-five, whose wife had -died. Maud often went to the store to buy supplies for the Welliver home -and one evening she arrived just as the grocer, a man named Hunt, was -locking the store for the night. He unlocked the door and let her in. -“You won’t mind if I don’t light the lights again,” he said. He -explained that the grocerymen of Fort Wayne had made an agreement among -themselves that they would sell no goods after seven in the evening. “If -I light the lights and people see us in here they will be coming in and -wanting to be waited on,” he explained. - -Maud stood in the uncertain light by a counter while the grocer wrapped -her packages. At the back of the store there was a lamp fastened to a -bracket on the wall and burning dimly and the soft yellow light fell on -her hair and on her white smiling face as the grocer fumbled in the -darkness back of the counter and from time to time looked up at her. How -beautiful her long pale face in that light! He was stirred and delayed -the matter of getting the packages wrapped. “My wife and I were not very -happy together but I was happy when I lived alone with my mother,” he -thought. He let Maud out at the door, locked it and went along beside -her carrying the packages. “I’m going your way,” he said vaguely. He -began to speak of his boyhood in a town in Ohio and told of how he had -married at the age of twenty-three and had come to Fort Wayne where his -wife’s father owned the store that was now his own. He spoke to Maud as -to one who knew most of the details of his life. “Well, my wife and her -father are both dead and I own the place—I’ve come out all right,” he -said. “I wonder why I left my mother. I thought more of her than anyone -else in the world but I got married and went away and left her, went -away and left her, to live alone until she died,” he said. They came to -a corner and he put the packages into Maud’s arms. “You got me started -thinking of mother. You’re like her,” he said suddenly and then hurried -away. - -Maud had got into the habit of going to the store, just at closing time -in the evening and when she did not come the grocer was upset. He closed -the store and, walking to a nearby corner, stood under an awning before -a hardware store, also closed for the night, and looked down along the -street where Maud lived. Then he took a heavy silver watch from his -pocket and looked at it. “Huh!” he exclaimed and went off along another -street to his boarding house, stopping several times in the first block -to look back. - - * * * * * - -It was early June and the Wellivers had lived in Bidwell, for four -months and, during the last year of her life at Fort Wayne Maud had been -so continually ill that she had seldom seen the grocer, but now a letter -had come from him. The letter came from the city of Cleveland. “I am -here at a convention of the K of Ps,” he wrote, “and I have met a man -here who is a widower like myself. We are in the same room at the hotel. -I want to stop to see you on the way home and would like to bring my -friend along. Can’t you get another girl and we’ll all spend an evening -together. If you can do it, you get a surrey and meet us at the -seven-fifty train next Friday evening. I’ll pay for the surrey of course -and we’ll go off somewhere to the country. I’ve got something very -important I want to say to you. You write me here and let me know if -it’s all right.” - -Maud sat in the field beside May and thought of the letter. An answer -must be sent at once. In fancy she saw the little bright-eyed grocer -standing before May, the hero of the passage in the wood with Jerome -Hadley, the woman who lived the romance of which she herself dreamed. At -the post office during the afternoon she had heard two young men talking -of a dance to be given at a place called the Dewdrop. It was to be held -on Friday evening, and a bold impulse had led her to go to a livery -stable and make inquiry about the place. It was twenty miles away and on -the shores of Sandusky Bay. “We will go there,” she had thought, and had -engaged the surrey and horses and now she was face to face with May and -the thought of the little grocer and his companion frightened her. -Freeman Hunt the widower had a bald head and a grey mustache. What would -his friend be like? Fear made Maud’s body tremble and when she tried to -speak, to tell May of her plan, the words would not come. “She’ll never -do it. I’ll never get her to do it,” she thought again. - - * * * * * - -“There was a man here. For weeks he lay sick to the point of death in -our house and all the time I did not dare sleep.” - -May Edgley was building high her tower of romance. Having several times -listened, as Maud told of the imaginary son of the railroad president -who had been determined to marry her, she had set about making a -romantic lover of her own. Books she had read, the remembrance of -childhood tales of love and romantic adventure poured in upon her mind. -“There was a man here. He was just twenty-four but what a life he had -led,” she said absentmindedly. She appeared to be lost in thought and -for a long time was silent. Then she got suddenly to her feet and ran to -where two large maple trees stood on a little hill in the midst of the -field. Maud also got to her feet and her body shook with a new fear. The -grocer was forgotten. May returned and again sat on the grass. “I -thought I saw someone snooping there behind that tree,” she said. “You -see I have to be careful. A man’s life depends on my being careful.” - -Warning Maud that whatever happened she was not to tell the secret, now -for the first time to be told to another, May launched into her tale. On -a dark night, when it was raining and when the trees shook in the wind, -she had got out of bed in the Edgley house and had opened her window to -behold the storm. She could not imagine what had led her to do it. It -was something she had never done before. To tell the truth a voice -outside herself seemed to be calling her, commanding her. Well, she had -thrown up the window and had stood looking out. How the wind screamed -and shrieked! Furies seemed abroad in the night. The house itself -trembled on its foundations and great trees bent almost to the ground. -Now and then there was a flash of lightning and she could see the whole -outdoors as plain as day—“I could even see the leaves on the tree.” May -had thought the world must be coming to an end but for some strange -reason she was not in the least afraid. It was impossible to explain the -feeling she had on that night. Well, she couldn’t sleep. Something, -outside there, in the darkness, seemed to be calling, calling to her. -“All of this happened more than two years ago, when I was just a young -girl in school,” she explained. - -On that night when the storm raged May had seen, during one of the -flashes of lightning, a man running desperately across the very field, -where now she and Maud sat so quietly. Even from where she stood by the -window in the upstairs room she could see that he was white and that his -face was drawn and tired from long running. Behind him, perhaps a dozen -strides behind, was another man, a giant black, with a club in his hand. -In a moment May knew, she knew everything, knowledge came into her mind -and illuminated it as the lightning had illuminated the scene in the -field. The giant black with the club was about to kill the other man, -the white man in the field. In a moment she knew she would see a murder -done. The fleeing man could not escape. At every stride the black -gained. There came a second flash of lightning and then the white man -stumbled and fell. May threw up her hands and screamed. She had always -been ashamed of the fact but why deny it—she fainted. - -What a night that had turned out to be! Even to speak of it made May -shudder, even yet. Her father had heard her scream and came running to -her room. She recovered—she sat up—in a few quick words she told her -father what she had seen. - -Well, you see, her father and she had got out of the house somehow. They -were both in their night dresses and in the woodshed back of the house -her father had fumbled about and had got hold of an axe. It was the only -weapon of any kind he could lay his hands on about the place. - -And there they were, in the darkness. No more flashes of lightning came -and it began to rain. It poured. The rain came in torrents and the wind -blew so that the trees seemed to be shouting to each other, calling to -each other like friends lost in some dark pit. - -There was plenty of shouting after that but neither May nor her father -was afraid. They were perhaps too excited for fear to take hold of them. -May didn’t know exactly how she felt. No words could describe how she -felt. - -Followed by her father she ran, down the little hill back of the -kitchen, got across the creek, stumbled and fell several times, picked -herself up and ran on again. They came to the fence at the edge of the -field. Well, they got over somehow. It was strange how the field, across -which they had both walked so many times in the daytime (as a child May -had always played there) and she thought she knew every blade of grass, -every little pond, and hillock,—it was strange how it had changed. It -was exactly as though she and her father had run out upon a wide -treeless plain. They ran, it seemed for hours and hours, and still they -were in the field. Later when May thought of the experiences of that -night she understood how men came to write fairy tales. Why, the ground -in the field might have been made of rubber that stretched out as they -ran. - -They could see no trees, no buildings—nothing. For a time she and her -father kept close together, running desperately, into nothingness, into -a wall of darkness. - -Then her father got lost from her, was swallowed up in the darkness. - -What a roaring of voices went on. Trees somewhere, away off in the -distance, were shouting to each other. The very blades of grass seemed -to be talking—in excited whispers, you understand. - -It was terrible! Now and then May could hear her father’s voice. He just -swore. “Gol darn you,” he shouted over and over. The words were grunted -forth. - -Then there was another and terrible voice—it must have been the voice of -the black, intent upon murder. May could not understand what he said. -He, of course, just shouted words in some strange foreign language—a -gibberish of words. - -Then May stopped running. She was too exhausted to run any more and sat -down on the ground at the edge of one of the little ponds. Her hair had -all fallen about her face. Well, she wasn’t afraid. The thing that had -happened was too big to be afraid of. It was like being in the presence -of God and one couldn’t be afraid. How could one? A blade of grass isn’t -afraid in the presence of the sun, coming up. That’s the way May -felt—little you see—a tiny thing in the vast night—nothing. - -How wet she was! Her clothes clung to her. All about the voices went on -and on and the storm raged. She sat with her feet in a puddle of water -and things seemed to fly past her, dark figures running, screaming, -swearing, saying strange words. She herself did not doubt—when she -thought of it all after it was over—that the giant black and her father -had both run past her a dozen times, had passed so close to her that she -might have put out her hand and touched them. - -How long did she sit there in the darkness? That was something she never -knew and her father was like her about it too. Later he couldn’t have -said, for the life of him, how long he ran about in the darkness, trying -to strike something with the axe. Once he ran against a tree. Well, he -drew back and sank the axe into the tree. Sometime—in the daytime—May -would show Maud the tree with the great gash in it. Her father sank the -axe so deeply into the body of the tree that he had work getting it out -again and even in the midst of his excitement he had to laugh to think -of what a silly fool he had been. - -And there was May sitting with her feet in the puddle, the hair clinging -to her bare shoulders, her head in her hands, trying to think, trying -perhaps to catch some meaningful word in the strange roar of voices. -Well, what was she thinking about? She didn’t know. - -And then a hand touched her, a white strong firm hand. It just crept up -out of the darkness, seemed to come out of the very ground under her. -There was one thing sure—although she lived to be a thousand years old, -May would never know why she didn’t scream, faint away, get up and run -madly, butting her head against things. - -“Love is a strange thing,” she told Maud Welliver, as the two sat in the -field that warm clear starlit evening. Her voice trembled. “I knew a man -had come to whom I would be faithful unto death,” she explained. - -That was the beginning of the strangest and most exciting time in May’s -whole life. Never had she thought she would tell anyone in the world -about it, at least not until the time came for her marriage, and when -all the dangers that still faced the man she loved had passed like a -cloud. - -On that terrible night, and while the storm still raged, the hand that -had crept so strangely and unexpectedly into hers had at once quieted -and reassured her. It was too dark to see the face and the body of the -man’s back of the hand, but for some reason she knew at once that he was -beautiful and good. She loved the man at once and completely, that was -the truth. Later he had told her that his own experience was the same. -For him also there came a great peace of the spirit, after his hand -found hers in the midst of that roaring darkness. - -They got out of that field and into the Edgley house somehow, crawled -along together and when they got to the house they did not light a lamp -or anything but sat on the floor of May’s room hand in hand, talking in -low quiet tones. After a long time, perhaps an hour, May’s father came -home. He had got out of the field and had wandered on a country road and -as he went along he heard stealthy footsteps behind him. That was the -black following the wrong man and it’s a wonder he didn’t kill John -Edgley. What happened was that the drayman began to run and got into a -grove of trees and there lost his pursuer. Then he took off his shoes -and managed to find his way home barefooted. The black having followed -the wrong man turned out to be a good thing. The man up in May’s room -was free, for the first time in more than two years, he was free. - -It had turned out that the man was quite badly injured, the black -having, in his excitement, aimed a blow at his head that would have done -for him had it struck fair. However, the blow glanced off and only -bruised his head and made it bleed and as he sat in the darkness on the -floor in May’s room with his hand in hers, telling her his story, the -blood kept dropping thump, thump, on the floor. May had thought, at the -time, it was water falling from her hair. It just went to show what a -man he was, afraid of nothing, enduring everything without a murmur. -Later he was sick with a fever for weeks and May never left his room, -but gradually nursed him back to health and strength, and no one in -Bidwell had ever known of his presence in the house. Later he left town -at night, on a dark night when, to save yourself, you couldn’t see your -hand before your face. - -As to the man’s story—it had never been told to anyone and if May told -it to Maud Welliver it was because she had to have at least one friend -who knew all. Even her father, who had risked his life, did not know. - -May put her hands over her face and leaned forward and for a long time -she was silent. In the grass the insects kept singing and on a distant -street Maud could hear the footsteps of people walking. What a world she -had come into when she left Fort Wayne and came to Bidwell! Indiana was -not like Ohio! The very air was different. She breathed deeply and -looked about into the soft darkness. Had she been alone she could not -have stood being in a place where such wonderful things as had just been -described to her could happen. How quiet it was in the field now. She -put out a hand softly and touched May’s dress and tried to think but her -own thoughts were vague, they swam away into a strange world. To go to a -theatre, to read books, to hear of the commonplace adventures of other -people—how dull and uneventful her life had been before she knew May. -Once her father had been in a wreck on the railroad and by a miracle had -escaped uninjured and, when company came to the Welliver house, he -always told of the wreck, how the cars were piled up and how he, walking -over the tops of cars in the darkness of a rainy night was pitched off -and went flying, head over heels, only by a pure miracle to land on his -feet in dense bushes, uninjured, only badly shaken up. May had thought -the tale exciting, she had been stupid enough to think it exciting. What -contempt she now had for such weak commonplace adventures. What a vast -change knowing May Edgley had made in her life! - -“You won’t tell. You promise on your life you won’t tell.” May’s hand -gripped Maud’s and the two women sat in silence, intent, shaken with -some vast emotion that seemed to run over the dry grass in the field, -through the branches of distant trees, and that seemed to effect even -the stars in the sky. To Maud the stars appeared about to speak. They -came down close out of the sky. “Be cautious,” they seemed to be saying. -Had she lived in old times, in Judea, and had she been permitted to go -into the room where Jesus sat at the last supper with his disciples, she -could not have felt more completely humble and thankful that she, of all -the people in the world had been permitted to be where she was at the -moment. - -“He was a prince in his own country,” May said suddenly breaking the -silence that had become so intense that in another moment Maud thought -she would have screamed. “He lived, Oh, far away.” In his own country -the father, a king, had decided to marry the prince to the princess of a -neighboring kingdom, and on the same day his sister was to marry the -brother of his betrothed. Neither he nor his sister had ever seen the -man and woman they were to marry. Princes and princesses don’t, you -know. That is the way such things are arranged when princes and -princesses are concerned. - -“He thought nothing about it, was all ready for the marriage, and then -one night something came into his head and he had an almost overpowering -desire to see the woman, who was to be his wife, and the man who was to -be his sister’s husband. Well, he went at night and crept up the side of -a great wall to the window of a tower, and through the window saw the -man and woman. How ugly they were—horrible! He shuddered. For a time he -thought he would let go his hold on the stone face of the wall and be -dashed to bits on the rocks beneath. He was ready to die with -horror—didn’t care much. - -“And then he thought of his sister, the beautiful princess. Whatever -happened she had to be saved from such a marriage. - -“And so home the prince went and confronted his father and there was a -terrible scene, the father swearing the marriage would have to be -consummated. The neighboring king was powerful and his kingdom was of -vast extent and the marriage would make the son, born of the marriage, -the most powerful king in the whole world. The prince and the king stood -in the castle and looked at each other. Neither of them would give in an -inch. - -“There was one thing of which the prince was sure—if he did not marry -his sister would not have to. If he went away there would be a quarrel -between the two old kings. He was sure of that. - -“First though he gave the king, his father, his chance. ‘I won’t do it,’ -he declared and he stuck to his word. The king was furious. ‘I’ll -disinherit you,’ he cried, and then he ordered his son to go out of his -presence and not to come back until he had made up his mind to go ahead -with the marriage. - -“What the king did not expect was that he would be taken at his word. -For what the young man, the prince, did, you see, was to just walk out -of the castle and right on out into the world. - -“Poor man, his hands were then as soft as a woman’s,” May explained. -“You see in all his former life he had never even lifted his hand to do -a thing. When he dressed he didn’t even button his own clothes. A prince -never did. - -“And so the prince ran away and managed, after unbelievable hardships, -to make his way to a seaport, where he got a place as sailor on a ship -just leaving for foreign parts. The captain of the ship did not know, -and the other sailors did not know that he was a king’s son, nor did -they know that a great outcry was going up and horsemen riding madly -over the whole country, trying to find the lost prince. - -“So he got away and was a sailor and in the castle his father was so -furious he would not speak to anyone. He shut himself up in a room of -the castle and just swore and swore. - -“And then one day he called to him a giant black, one who had been his -slave since he was born, and was the strongest, the fleetest of foot and -the smartest man too, of all the king’s servants. ‘Go over land and -sea,’ shouted the king. ‘Go into all strange far away lands and amongst -all peoples. Do not let me ever see your face again until you have found -my son and have brought him back to marry the woman I have decided shall -be his wife. If you find him and he will not come strike him down if you -must, but do not kill him. Stun him and bring him to me. Do not let me -see your face again until you have done my bidding.’ He threw a handful -of gold at the black’s feet. That was to pay the fares on railroads and -buy his meals at hotels,” May explained. - -“And all the time the king’s son was sailing on and on, over unknown -seas. He passed icebergs, islands and continents, and saw great whales -and at night heard the growling of wild beasts on strange shores. - -“He wasn’t afraid, not he. And all the time he kept getting stronger and -his hands got harder, and he could do more work and do it quicker than -almost any man on the ship. Almost every day the captain called him -aside. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you are my bravest and best sailor. How shall I -reward you?’ - -“But the young prince wanted no reward. He was so glad to escape from -that horrible king’s daughter. How homely she was. Why her teeth stuck -out of her mouth like tusks and she was all covered with wrinkles and -haggard. - -“And the ship sailed and sailed, and it hit a hidden rock, sticking up -in the bottom of the ocean, and was split right in two. All but the -prince were drowned. - -“He swam and swam and came at last to an island that had a mountain on -it, and no one lived there, and the mountain was filled with gold. After -a long time a passing ship took him off but he told no one of the golden -mountain. He sailed and sailed and came to America, and started out to -get money to buy a ship and go get the gold and go back to his own -country, rich enough so he could marry almost anyone he chose. He had -worked and worked and saved money, and then the giant black got on his -trail. He tried to escape, time after time he tried to escape. He had -been trying that time May found him half-dead in the field. - -“The way that came about was that he was on a train passing through -Bidwell at night and it was the nine-fifty, that didn’t stop but only -threw off a mail sack. He was on that train and the black was on it, -too, and, as the train went flying through Bidwell in the terrible -storm, the prince opened a door and jumped and the black jumped after -him. They ran and ran. - -“By a miracle neither of them was hurt by the leap from the train, and -then they had got into the field where May had seen them. - -“I can’t think what kept me awake on that night,” May said again. She -arose and walked toward the Edgley house. “We are betrothed. He has gone -to earn money to buy a ship and get the gold. Then he will come for me,” -she said in a matter of fact tone. - -The two women went to the wire fence, crawled over and got into the -Edgley back yard. It was nearly midnight and Maud Welliver had never -before been out so late. In the Welliver house her aunt and father sat -waiting for her, frightened and nervous. “If she doesn’t come soon I’ll -get the police to look for her. I’m afraid something dreadful has -happened.” - -Maud did not, however, think of her father or of the reception that -awaited her in the Welliver house. Other and more sombre thoughts -occupied her mind. She had come on that evening to the Edgley house, -intending to ask May to go with her on the excursion to the Dewdrop with -the two grocers, and that was now an impossibility. One who was loved by -a prince, who was secretly betrothed to a prince, would never let -herself be seen in the company of a grocer, and, beside May, Maud knew -no other woman in Bidwell she felt she could ask to go on the trip, on -which she did not feel she could go alone. The whole thing would have to -be given up. With a catch in her throat she realized what the trip had -meant to her. In Fort Wayne, in the presence of the grocer Hunt, she had -felt as she had never felt in the presence of another man. He was old, -yes, but there was something in his eyes when he looked at her that made -her feel strange inside. He had written that he had something to say to -her. Now it could never be said. - -In the darkness the two women passed around the Edgley house and came to -the front gate, and then Maud gave way to the grief struggling for -expression within. May was astonished and tried to comfort her. “What’s -the matter? What’s the matter?” she asked anxiously. Stepping through -the gate she put an arm about Maud Welliver’s shoulders and for a long -time the two figures rocked back and forth in the darkness, and then May -managed to get her to come to the Edgley front porch and sit beside her. -Maud told the story of the proposed trip and of what it had meant to -her—spoke of it as a thing of the past, as a hopeless dream that had -faded. “I wouldn’t dare ask you to go,” she said. - -It was ten minutes later when Maud got up to go home and May was silent, -absorbed in her own thoughts. The tale of the prince was forgotten and -she thought only of the town, of what it had done to her, what it would -do again when the chance offered. The two grocers were both, however, -from another place and knew nothing of her. She thought of the long ride -to the shore of Sandusky Bay. Maud had conveyed to her some notion of -what the trip meant to her. May’s mind raced. “I could not be alone with -a man. I wouldn’t dare,” she thought. Maud had said they would go in a -surrey and there was something, that could be used now, in the story she -had told about the prince. She could insist that, because of the prince, -Maud was not to leave her alone with another man, with the strange -grocer, not for a moment. - -May arose and stood irresolutely by the front door of the Edgley house -and watched Maud go through the gate. How her shoulders drooped. “Oh, -well, I’ll go. You fix it up. Don’t you tell anyone in the world, but -I’ll go,” she said and then, before Maud Welliver could recover from her -surprise, and from the glad thrill that ran through her body, May had -opened the door and had disappeared into the Edgley house. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER V - - -THE Dewdrop, where the dance Maud and May were to attend was to be held -was, in May Edgley’s day and no doubt is now, a dreary enough place. An -east and west trunk line here came down almost to the water’s edge, -touching and then swinging off inland again, and on a narrow strip of -land between the tracks and the bay several huge ice houses had been -built. To the west of the ice houses were four other buildings, -buildings less huge but equally stark and unsightly. The shore of the -bay, turned beyond the ice houses, leaving the four latter buildings -standing at some distance from the railroad, and during ten months of -the year they were uninhabited and stared with curtainless windows—that -looked like great dead eyes—out over the water. - -The buildings had been erected by an ice company, with headquarters at -Cleveland, for the housing of its workmen during the ice-cutting season, -and the upper floors, reached by outside stairways, had rickety -balconies running about the four sides. The balconies served as entry -ways to small sleeping rooms each provided with a bunk built against the -inner wall and filled with straw. - -Still further west was the village of Dewdrop itself, a place of some -eight or ten small unpainted frame houses, inhabited by men who combined -fishing with small farming, and on the shore before each house a small -sailing craft was drawn, during the winter months, far up on the sand -out of the reach of storms. - -All summer long the Dewdrop remained a quiet sleepy place and, far away, -over the water, smoke from factory chimneys in the growing industrial -city of Sandusky, at the foot of the bay, could be seen—a cloud of smoke -that drifted slowly across the horizon and was torn and tossed by a -wind. On summer days, on the long beaches a few fishermen launched their -boats and went to visit the nets while their children played in the sand -at the water’s edge. Inland the farming country—black land, partially -covered at certain seasons of the year with stagnant water—was not very -prosperous and the road leading down to the Dewdrop from the towns of -Fremont, Bellevue, Clyde, Tiffin, and Bidwell was often impassable. - -On June days, however, in May Edgley’s time, parties came down along the -road to the beach and there was the screaming of town children, the -laughter of women and the gruff voices of men. They stayed for a day and -an evening and went, leaving upon the beach many empty tin cans, rusty -cooking utensils and bits of paper that lay rotting at the base of trees -and among the bushes back from the shore. - -The hot months of July and August came and brought a little life. The -summer crew came to take the ice out of the ice houses and load it into -cars. They came in the morning and departed in the evening, and, as they -were quiet workmen with families of their own, did nothing to disturb -the quiet of the place. At the noon hour they sat in the shade of one of -the ice houses and ate their luncheons while they discussed such -problems as whether it was better for a workman to pay rent or to own -his own house, going into debt and paying on the installment plan. - -Night came and an adventurous girl, daughter of one of the fishermen, -went to walk on the beach. Thanks to wind and rain the beach kept itself -always quite clean. Great tree stumps and logs had been carried up on to -the sand by winter storms but the wind and water had mellowed these and -touched them with delightful color. On moonlight nights the old roots, -clinging to the tree trunks, were like gaunt arms reached up to the sky, -and on stormy nights these moved back and forth in the wind and sent a -thrill of terror through the breast of the girl. She pressed her body -against the wall of one of the ice houses and listened. Far away, over -the water, were the massed lights of the great town of Sandusky and over -her shoulder the few feeble lights of her own fishing town. A group of -tramps had dropped off a freight train that afternoon and were making a -night of it about the empty workingmen’s lodging houses. They had jerked -doors off their hinges and were throwing them down from the balconies -above and soon a great fire would be lit and all night the fishing -families would be disturbed by oaths and shouts. The adventurous girl -ran swiftly along the beach but was seen by one of the road adventurers. -The fire had been lighted and he took a burning stick in his hand and -hurled it over her head. “Run little rabbit,” he called as the burning -stick, after making a long arch through the air, fell with a hiss into -the water. - -That was a prelude to the coming of winter and the time of terror. In -the hard month of January, when the whole bay was covered with thick -ice, a fat man in a heavy fur overcoat, got off a train, that stopped -beside the ice houses, and from a car at the front of the train a great -multitude of boxes, kegs and crates were pitched into the deep snow at -the track side. The world of the cities was coming to break the winter -silence of the Dewdrop and the fur coated man and his helpers had come -to set the stage for the drama. Hundreds of thousands of tons of ice -were to be cut and stored in sawdust in the great ice houses and for -weeks, the quiet secluded spot would be astir with life. The silence -would be torn by cries, oaths, bits of drunken song—fights would be -started and blood would flow. - -The fat man waded through the snow to the four empty houses and began to -look about. From the little cluster of native houses thin columns of -smoke went up into the winter sky. He spoke to one of his helpers. “Who -lives in those shacks?” he asked. He himself had much money invested at -the Dewdrop but visited the place but once each year and then stayed but -a few days. He walked through the big dining room and along the upper -galleries where the ice cutters slept, swearing softly. During the year -much of his property had been destroyed. Windows had been broken and -doors torn from their hinges and he took pencil and paper from his -pocket and began to figure. “We’ll have to spend all of three hundred -dollars this year,” he meditated. The thoughts of the money, thus thrown -away, brought a flush to his cheeks and he looked again along the shore -towards the tiny houses. Almost every year he decided he would go to the -houses and do what he called “raising the devil.” If doors were torn -from hinges and windows smashed these people must have done it. No one -else lived at the Dewdrop. “Well I suppose they are a rough gang and I’d -better let them alone,” he concluded, “I’ll send a couple of carpenters -down tomorrow and have them do just what has to be done. It’s better to -keep the ice cutters filled up with beer than to waste money giving them -luxurious quarters.” - -The fat man went away and other men came. Fires were lighted in the -kitchens of the great boarding houses, carpenters nailed doors back on -hinges and replaced broken windows and the Dewdrop was ready again for -its season of feverish activity. - -The fisher folk hid themselves completely away. On the day when the -first of the ice cutters arrived one of them spoke to his assembled -family. He looked at his daughter, a somewhat comely girl of fifteen, -who could sail a boat through the roughest storm that ever swept down -the bay. “I want you to keep out of sight,” he said. One winter night a -fire had broken out in the dining room of the smallest of the houses -where the ice cutters boarded and the fishermen with their wives had -gone to help put it out. That was an event they could never forget. As -the men worked, carrying buckets of water from a hole cut in the ice of -the bay, a group of young roughs, from Cleveland, tried to drag their -wives into another of the houses. Screams and cries arose on the winter -air and the men ran to the defense of their women. A battle began, some -of the ice cutters fighting on the side of the fishermen, some on the -side of the young roughs, but the fishermen never knew they had helpers -in the struggle. Out of a mass of swearing, laughing men they had -managed to drag their women and escape to their own houses and the -thoughts of what might have happened, had they been unsuccessful, had -brought the fear of man upon them. “I want you to keep out of sight,” -the fisherman said to his assembled family, but as he said it he looked -at his daughter. He imagined her dragged into the upper galleries of the -boarding houses and handed about among the city men—something like that -had come near happening to her mother. He stared hard at his daughter -and she was frightened by the look in his eyes. “You,” he began again, -“now you—well you keep yourself out of sight. Those men are looking for -just such girls as you.” The fisherman went out of the room and his -daughter stood by a window. Sometimes, on Sundays, during the -ice-cutting time, the men who had not gone to spend the day in the city -walked in the afternoon along the beach past the houses of the fishermen -and, more than once, she had peeked out at them from behind a curtain. -Sometimes they stopped before one of the houses and shouted and a wit -among them exercised his powers. “Hey, the house,” he shouted, “is there -any woman in there wants a louse for a lover.” The wit leaped upon the -shoulders of one of his companions and with his teeth snatched the cap -off his head. Turning towards the house he made an elaborate bow. “I’m -only a little louse but I’m cold. Let me crawl into your nest,” he -shouted. - - * * * * * - -There were six young men from Bidwell who went to the dance given at the -Dewdrop on the June evening when May went there with Maud and the two -widowed grocers, homeward bound from the K. of P. convention at -Cleveland. The dance was held in one of the large rooms, on the first -floor of one of the boarding houses, one of the rooms used as a dining -and drinking place by the ice cutters in the months of January and -February. A group of farmers’ sons gave the dance and Rat Gould, a -one-eyed fiddler from Clyde, came with two other fiddlers, to furnish -the music. The dance was open to all who paid fifty cents at the door, -and women paid nothing. Rat Gould had announced it at other dances given -at Clyde, Bellevue, Castalia and on the floors of newly build barns. -There was an idea. At all dances, where Rat had officiated, for several -weeks previously, the announcement had been made. “There will be a dance -at the Dewdrop two weeks from next Friday night,” he had cried out in a -shrill voice. “A prize will be given. The best dressed lady gets a new -calico dress.” - -Three of the young men from Bidwell who came to the dance, were railroad -employees, brakemen on freight trains. They, like John Welliver, worked -for the Nickel Plate and their names were Sid Gould, Herman Sanford and -Will Smith. With them, to the dance, went Harry Kingsley, Michael -Tompkins and Cal Mosher, all known in Bidwell as young sports. Cal -Mosher tended bar at the Crescent Saloon near the Nickel Plate station -in Bidwell and Michael Tompkins and Harry Kingsley were house painters. - -The going of the six young men to the dance was unpremeditated. They had -met at the Crescent Saloon early on that June evening and there was a -good deal of drinking. There had been a ball game between the baseball -teams of Clyde and Bidwell during the week before, and that was talked -over, and, thinking and speaking of the defeat of the Bidwell team, all -six of the young men grew angry. “Let’s go over to Clyde,” Cal Mosher -said. The young men went to a livery stable and hired a team and surrey -and set out, taking with them a plentiful supply of whiskey in bottles. -It was decided they would make a night of it. As they drove along -Turner’s Pike, between Bidwell and Clyde they stopped before farmhouses. -“Hey, go to bed you rubes. Get the cows milked and go on to bed,” they -shouted. Michael Tompkins, called Mike, was the wit of the party and he -decided upon a stroke to win applause. At one of the farmhouses he went -to the door and told the woman who came to answer his knock that a -friend of hers wanted to speak to her in the road and the woman, a plump -red-cheeked farmer’s wife, came boldly out and stood in the road beside -the surrey. Mike crept up behind her and throwing his arms about her -neck pulled her quickly backward. The woman screamed with fright as Mike -kissed her on the cheek and, jumping into the surrey, Mike joined in the -laughter of his companions. “Tell your husband your lover has been -here,” he shouted at the woman, now fleeing toward the house. Cal Mosher -slapped him on the back. “You got a nerve, Mike,” he said filled with -admiration. He slapped his knees with his hands. “She’ll have something -to talk about for ten years, eh? She won’t get over talking about that -kiss Mike gave her for ten years.” - -At Clyde, the Bidwell young men went into Charley Shuter’s saloon and -there got into trouble. Sid Gould was pitcher for the Bidwell team and -during the game at Clyde, during the week before, had been hurt by a -swiftly pitched ball that struck him on the side of the head as he stood -at bat. He had been unable to continue pitching, and the man who took -his place was unskillful and the game was lost, and now, standing at the -bar in Charley Shuter’s saloon, Sid remembered his injury and began to -talk in a loud voice, challenging another group of young men at another -end of the bar. Charley Shuter’s bartender became alarmed. “Here, now, -don’t you go starting nothing. Don’t you go trying to start nothing in -this place,” he growled. - -Sid turned to his friends. “Well, the cowardly pup, he beaned me,” he -said. “Well, I had the team, this town thinks so much of, eating out of -my hand. For five innings they never got a smell of a hit. Then what did -they do, eh? They fixed it up with their cowardly pitcher to bean -me—that’s what they did.” - -One of the young men of Clyde, loafing the evening away in the saloon, -was an outfielder on the Clyde ball team and as Sid talked he went out -at the front door. From store to store and from saloon to saloon he ran -hurriedly, whispering, sending messengers out in all directions. He was -a tall blue-eyed soft-voiced man but he had now become intensely -excited. A dozen other young men gathered about him and the crowd -started for Shuter’s saloon but when they had got there the young men -from Bidwell had come out to the sidewalk, had unhitched their horses -from the railing before the saloon door and were preparing to depart. -“Yah, you,” bawled the blue-eyed outfielder. “Don’t tell lies and then -sneak out of town. Stand up and take your medicine.” - -The fight at Clyde was short and sharp and when it had lasted three -minutes, and when Sid Gould had lost two teeth and two of his companions -had acquired bleeding heads, they managed to struggle into the surrey -and start the horses. The blue-eyed outfielder, white with wrath and -disappointment, sprang on the steps. “Come back, you cheap skates,” he -cried. The surrey rattled off over the cobblestones and several Clyde -young men ran in the road behind. Sid Gould drew back his arm and caught -the outfielder a swinging blow on the nose and the blow knocked him out -of the surrey to the road so that a wheel ran over his legs. Leaning -out, and mad now with joy, Sid issued a challenge. “Come over to -Bidwell, one at a time, and I’ll clean up your whole town alone. All I -want is to get at you fellows one or two at a time,” he challenged. - -In the road north of Clyde, Cal Mosher, who was driving, stopped the -horses and there was a discussion as to whether the journey should be -continued on to the town of Fremont, in search of new and perhaps more -enticing adventures, or whether it would be better to go back to Bidwell -and mend broken teeth, cut lips and blackened eyes. Sid Gould, the most -badly injured member of the party, settled the matter. “There’s a dance -down at the Dewdrop tonight. Let’s go down there and stir up the -farmers. This night is just started for me,” he said, and the heads of -the horses were turned northward. On the back seat Will Smith and Harry -Kingsley fell into a troubled sleep, Herman Sanford and Michael Tompkins -attempted a song and Cal Mosher talked to Sid. “We’ll get up another -game with that bunch from Clyde,” he said. “Now you listen and I’ll tell -you how to work it. You pitch the game, see. Well, you fan every man -that faces you for eight innings. That will show them up, show what -mutts they are. Then, when it comes to the ninth inning, you start to -bean ’em. You can lay out three or four of that gang before the game -ends in a scrap, and when that time comes we’ll have our own gang on -hand.” - - * * * * * - -At the Dewdrop, when the six young men from Bidwell arrived at about -eleven o’clock, the dance was in full swing. The doors and windows to -the dining room of one of the big frame boarding houses had been thrown -open and the floor carefully swept, and over the windows and doorways -green branches of trees had been hung. The night was fine—with a -moon—and, on a white beach, twenty feet away, the waters of the bay made -a faint murmuring sound. At one end of the dance hall and on a little -raised platform sat Rat Gould with his brother Will, a small grey-haired -man who played a base viol larger than himself. Two other men, fiddlers -like Rat himself filled out the orchestra. Nearly every dance announced -was a square dance and Rat did the “calling off,” his shrill voice -rising above the shuffle of feet and the low continuous hum of -conversations. “Swing your pardners round and round. Bow your heads down -to the ground. Kick your heels and let her fly. The night is fine and -the moon’s on high,” he sang. - -In a corner of the big room with her escort, the grocer, from the town -of Muncie in Indiana, sat May Edgley. He was a rather heavy and fleshy -man of forty-five, whose wife had died during the year before, and for -the first time since that event he was with a woman and the thought had -excited him. There was a round bald spot on the top of his head and -blushes kept running up his cheeks, into his hair and out upon the bald -spot, like waves upon a beach. May had put on a white dress, bought for -the ceremony of graduation from the Bidwell high school and, the owner -being out of town, had borrowed from Lillian,—unknown to her—a huge -white hat, decorated with a long ostrich feather, of the variety known -as a willow plume. - -She had never before been to a dance and her escort had not danced since -boyhood but at Maud Welliver’s suggestion they had tried to take part in -a square dance. “It’s easy,” Maud had said. “All you got to do is to -watch and do what everyone else is doing.” - -The attempt turned out a failure, and all the other dancers giggled and -laughed at the fat man from Muncie as he rolled and capered about. He -ran in the wrong direction, grabbed other men’s partners, whirled them -about and even got into the wrong set. A madness of embarrassment seized -him and he rushed for May, as one hurries into the house at the coming -of a sudden storm, and taking her by the arm started to get off the -floor, out of sight of the laughing people—but Rat Gould shouted at him. -“Come back, fat man,” he shrieked and the grocer, not knowing what else -to do, started to whirl May about. She also laughed and protested but -before she could make him understand that she did not want to dance any -more his feet flew out from under him and he sat down, pulling May down -to sit upon his round paunch. - -For May that evening was terrible and the time spent at the dance hung -fire like a long unused and rusty old gun. It seemed to her that every -passing minute was heavily freighted with possibilities of evil for -herself. In the surrey, coming out from Bidwell, she had remained -silent, filled with vague fears and Maud Welliver was also silent. In a -way she wished May had not come. Alone with Grover Hunt on such a night, -she felt she might have had something to say, but all the time, in her -mind floated vague visions of May—alone in the wood with Jerome Hadley, -May struggling for life there, in the darkness of the field on that -other night—and grasping the hand of a prince. Grover Hunt’s hand took -hold of hers and he also became silent with embarrassment. When they had -got to the Dewdrop, and when they had danced in two square dances, Maud -went to May. “Mr. Hunt and I are going to take a little walk together,” -she said. “We won’t be gone long.” Through a window May saw the two -figures go off along the beach in the moonlight. - -The man who had brought May to the dance was named Wilder, and he also -wanted May to go walk with him, into the moonlight outside, but could -not bring himself to the point of asking so bold a favor. He lit a cigar -and held it outside the window, taking occasional puffs and blowing the -smoke into the outer air and told May of the K. of P. convention at -Cleveland, of a ride the delegates had taken in automobiles and of a -dinner given in their honor by the business men of Cleveland. “It was -one of the largest affairs ever held in the city,” he said. The Mayor -had come and there was present a United States Senator. Well, there was -one man there. He was a fat fellow who could say such funny things that -everyone in the room rocked with laughter. He was the master of -ceremonies and all evening kept telling the funniest stories. As for the -Muncie grocer, he had been unable to eat. Well, he laughed until his -sides ached. Grocer Wilder tried to reproduce one of the tales told by -the Cleveland funny man. “There were two farmers,” he began, “they went -to the city of Philadelphia, to a church convention, and at the same -time and in the same city a convention of brewers was being held. The -two farmers got into the wrong place.” - -May’s escort stopped talking and growing suddenly red, leaned out at the -window and puffed hard at his cigar. “Well, I can’t remember,” he -declared. It had come into his mind that the story he had started to -tell was one a man could not tell to a woman. “Gee, I nearly put me foot -into it! I came near making a break,” he thought. - -May looked from her escort to the men and women dancing on the floor. In -her eyes fear lurked. “I wonder if anyone here knows me, I wonder if -anyone knows about me and Jerome Hadley,” she thought. Fear, like a -little hungry mouse, gnawed at May’s soul. Two red-cheeked country girls -sitting on a nearby bench put their heads together and whispered “Oh, I -don’t believe it,” one of them shouted and they both gave way to a spasm -of giggles. May turned to look at them and something gripped at her -heart. A young farm hand, with a shiny red face and with a white -handkerchief tied about his neck, beckoned to another young man and the -two went outside into the moonlight. They also whispered and laughed. -One of them turned to look back at May’s white face and then they lit -cigars and walked away. May could no longer hear the voice of grocer -Wilder telling of his adventures at the convention at Cleveland. “They -know me, I’m sure they know me. They have heard that story. Something -dreadful will happen to me before the night is over,” she thought. - -May had always wanted to be in some such place as the one to which she -had now come, some place where many strange people had congregated and -where she could move freely about among strange people. Before the -Jerome Hadley incident, and the giving up of the idea of becoming a -schoolteacher she had thought a great deal of what she would do when she -became a teacher. Everything had been carefully planned. She would get a -place as teacher in some town or in the country, far from Bidwell and -from the Edgleys and there she would live her own life and make her own -way. There would be no handicap of birth and she could stand upon her -own feet. Well, that would be a chance. Her natural smartness would at -last count for something real and in the new place she would go about to -dances and to other social gatherings. Being the schoolteacher, and in a -way responsible for the future of their children, people would be glad -to invite her into their houses, and all she wanted was a chance, the -opportunity to step unknown into the presence of people who had never -been to Bidwell and had never heard of the Edgleys. - -Then she would show what she could do! She would go—well, to a dance or -to a house where many people had congregated to have a good time. She -would move about, saying things, laughing, keeping everyone on tiptoes. -What things her quick mind would make up to say! Words would become -little sharp swords with which she played. How many pictures her mind -had made of herself in the midst of such an assemblage. It was not her -fault if she found herself the centre toward which all eyes looked and, -in spite of the fact that she was the outstanding figure in any -assemblage of people among whom she went, she would always remain -modest. After all, she would not say things that would hurt people. -Indeed she would not do that! Such a thing would not be necessary. It -would all be very lovely. Several people would be talking and up she -would come and for a moment she would listen, to catch the drift of what -was being said, and then her own word would be said. Well it would -startle people. She would have a new, a novel, a startling but -attractive point of view on any subject that was brought up. Her mind -was extraordinarily quick. It would attend to things. - -With her fancy thus filled with the thoughts of the possibilities of -herself as a glowing social figure May turned toward her escort who, -puzzled by her apparent indifference, was striving manfully to remember -the funny things the Cleveland man had said at the dinner given for the -K. of Ps. Many of the man’s stories could not be repeated to a lady—it -had been what is called a stag dinner—but others could be. Of the ones -that could be told anywhere—they were called parlor stories—he -remembered one and launched into it. May pitied him. He forgot the -point, could not remember where the story began and ended. “Well,” he -began, “there was a man and woman on a train. It was on a train on the -B. and O. No, I think the man said it was on the Lake Shore and Michigan -Southern. Perhaps they were riding on a train on the Pennsylvania -Railroad. I have forgotten what the woman said to the man. It was about -a dog another woman was trying to conceal in a basket. They do not allow -dogs in passenger cars on railroads, you know. Something very funny -happened. I thought I would die laughing when the man told about it.” - -“If I had that story to tell I could make something out of it,” May -thought. She imagined herself telling the story of the man and the woman -and the dog. How she would decorate it, add little touches. That fat man -in Cleveland might have been funny but had she been entrusted with the -telling of the story, she was sure he would have been outdone. Her mind -began to recast the story and then the fear, that had all evening been -lurking within, came back and she forgot the man, the woman and the dog -on the train. Again her eyes searched the faces in the room and when a -new man or woman came in she trembled. “Suppose Jerome Hadley were to -come here tonight,” she thought and the thought made her ill. It was a -thing that might happen. Jerome was a young man and a bachelor and he no -doubt went about to places, to dances and to shows at the Bidwell Opera -House, and he might now, at any moment, come into the very room in which -she was sitting and walk directly to her. In the berry field he had been -bold and had not cared what he said and, if he came to the dance, he -would walk directly to her and might even take her by the arm. “I want -you,” he would say. “Come outside with me.” - -May tried to think what she would do if such a thing happened. Would she -struggle and refuse to go, thus attracting the attention of everyone in -the room, or would she go quietly and make her struggle with the man -outside alone in the darkness? Her mind ran into a tangle of thoughts. -It was true that Jerome Hadley had done something quite terrible to her, -had tried to kill something within her, but after all she had -surrendered to him. She had lain with the man—filled with fear, -trembling to be sure—but the thing had been done. In a strange sort of -way she belonged to Jerome Hadley and suppose he were to come and demand -again that she submit. Could she refuse? Had she become, and in spite of -herself, the property of the man? - -With her head a whirlpool of thought May stared, half wildly, about. If -in her own room in the Edgley house, and when she had hidden herself -away by the willows by the creek, she had built herself a tower of -romance in which she could live and from the windows of which she could -look down upon life, striving to understand it, to understand people, -the tower was now being destroyed. Hands were tearing at it, strong, -determined hands. She had felt them as she sat in the surrey with Maud -and the two grocers, outbound from Bidwell. Then as now she wondered why -she had consented to come to the dance. Well, she had come because not -to come would bring a disappointment to Maud Welliver, the only woman -who had come in any way close to herself, and now she was at the dance -and Maud had gone away, outdoors into darkness. She had gone away with a -man and it had been understood that would not happen. There was the -matter of the prince, her lover. It had been understood that, because of -the prince, Maud would not leave her alone with another man, and she had -left, had gone outdoors with a grocer and had left another grocer -sitting beside May. - -Hands were tearing at her tower of romance, the tower she had built so -slowly and painfully, the tower in which she had found the prince, the -tower in which she had found a way to live and to be happy in spite of -the ugliness of actuality. Dust arose from the walls. An army of men and -women, male and female Jerome Hadleys, were charging down upon it. There -would be rape and murder and how could she, left alone, withstand them. -The prince had gone away. He was now far, far away, and the invaders -would clamor over the walls. They would throw her down from the walls. -The beautiful hangings in the tower, the rich silken gowns, the stones -from strange lands, all the treasures of the tower would be destroyed. - - * * * * * - -May had worked herself into a state of mind that made her want to -scream. In the room the dance went on, the shrill voice of Rat Gould -called off and the fiddles made dance music to which heavy feet scraped -over rough boards. By her side sat Grocer Wilder, still talking of the -K. of P. convention at Cleveland and May felt that, in coming to the -dance, she had raised a knife that in a moment would be plunged into her -own breast. She arose to go out of the room, out into the night, out of -the sight of people—but for a moment stood uncertain, looking vaguely -about. Then she sat heavily down. Grocer Wilder also arose and his face -grew red. “I’ve made a break,” he thought. He wondered what he had said -that had offended May. “Maybe she didn’t want me to smoke,” he told -himself and threw the end of his cigar out through a window. The moment -reminded him of many moments of his married life. It was like having his -wife back, this feeling of having offended a woman, without knowing in -just what the offense lay. - - * * * * * - -And then, through a door at the front, the six Bidwell young men came -into the room. They had stopped outside for a final drink out of the -bottles carried in their hip pockets and, the appetite for drink being -satisfied, another appetite had come into the ascendency. They wanted -women. - -Sid Gould, accompanied by Cal Mosher, led the way into the dance hall. -His face had become badly swollen during the drive north from Clyde and -he walked uncertainly. - -He walked directly toward May, who turned her face to the wall and tried -to hide herself. She looked like a rabbit, cornered by dogs, and when -she turned on her seat and half knelt, trying to hide her face, the rim -of Lillian Edgley’s white dress hat struck against the wall and the hat -fell to the floor. Trembling with excitement she turned and picked it -up. Her face was chalky white. - -Sid Gould was well known in the Edgley household. One summer evening, in -the year before May’s mother’s death, he had got into a row with the -Edgleys. Being a little under the influence of drink and wanting a woman -he shouted at Kate Edgley, walking through the streets of Bidwell with a -traveling man, and a fight had been started in which the traveling man -blackened Sid’s eyes. Later he was taken into the mayor’s office and -fined and the whole affair had given the Edgley men and women a good -deal of satisfaction and had been discussed endlessly at the table. Old -John Edgley and the sons had sworn they also would beat the ball player. -“Just let me catch him alone somewhere, so I don’t get stuck for no -fine, and I’ll pound the head off’n him,” they declared. - -In the dance hall, and when his eyes alighted upon the figure of May -Edgley, Sid Gould remembered his beating at the hands of the traveling -man and the ten dollar fine he had been compelled to pay for fighting on -the street. “Well, look here,” he cried turning to his companions, now -straggling into the room, “here’s one of the Edgley chickens, a long -ways from the home coop.” - -“There she is—that little chicken over there by the wall.” Sid laughed -and leaning over slapped his knees with his hands. The twisted swollen -face made the laugh a grotesque, something horrible. Sid’s companions -gathered about him. “There she is,” he said, again pointing a wavering -forefinger. “It’s the youngest of that Edgley gang, the one that’s just -gone on the turf, the one that was so blamed smart in school. Jerome -Hadley says she’s all right, and I say she’s mine. I saw her first.” - -In the hall all became quiet and many eyes were turned toward the -laughing man and the shrinking trembling woman by the wall. May tried to -stand erect, to be defiant, but her knees shook so that she sat quickly -down on the bench. Grover Wilder, now utterly confused, touched her on -the arm, intending to ask for an explanation of her strange behavior, -but at the touch of his finger she again sprang to her feet. She was -like some little automatic toy that goes stiffly through certain -movements when you touch some hidden spring. “What’s the matter, what’s -the matter?” Grocer Wilder asked wildly. - -Sid Gould walked to where May stood and took hold of her arm and she -went meekly when he led her toward the door, walking demurely beside -him. He was amazed, having expected a struggle. “Well,” he thought, “I -got into trouble over that Kate Edgley but this one is different. She -knows how to behave. I’ll have a good time with this kid.” He remembered -the trial and the ten dollars he had been compelled to pay for his first -attempt to get into the good graces of one of the Edgley women. “I’ll -get the worth of my money now and I won’t pay this one a cent,” he -thought. He turned to his companions still straggling at his heels. “Get -out,” he cried. “Get your own women. I saw this one first. You go get -one of your own.” - -Sid and May had got outside and nearly to the beach before strength came -back into May’s body and mind. She walked beside Sid on the white sand -and toward the beach. “Don’t be afraid little kid. I won’t hurt you,” he -said. May laughed nervously and he loosened the grip of his hand on her -arm. - -And then, with a cry of joy she sprang away from him and leaning quickly -down grasped one of the pieces of driftwood with which the sand was -strewn. The stick whistled through the air and descended upon Sid’s -head, knocking him to his knees. “You, you!” he stuttered and then cried -out. “Hey, rubes!” he called and two of his companions, who had been -standing at the door of the dance hall, ran toward him. Swinging the -stick about her head May ran past them and in her nervous fright struck -Sid again. In her mind the thing that was happening was in some odd way -connected with the affair in the wood with Jerome. It was the same -affair. Sid Gould and Jerome were one man, they stood for the same -thing, were the same thing. They were something strange and terrible she -had to meet, with which she had to struggle. The thing they represented -had defeated her once, had got the best of her. She had surrendered to -it, had opened the gates that led into the tower of romance, that was -herself, that walled in her own secret and precious life. Something -terribly crude, without understanding had happened then—it must not, -could not happen again! She had been a child and had understood nothing -but now she did understand. There was a thing within herself that must -not be touched by unclean hands. A terrible fear of people swept over -her. There was Maud Welliver, whom she had tried to take as a friend, -and Lillian who had tried to be a sister to her, had wanted to help her -achieve life. As for Maud—she knew nothing, she was a child—and Lillian -was crude, she understood nothing. - -May’s mind put all men in a class with Jerome Hadley. There was -something men wanted from women, that Jerome had wanted and now this -other man, Sid Gould. They were all, like the Edgleys—Lillian and Kate -and the two boys—people who went after the thing they wanted brutally, -directly. That was not May’s way and she decided she wanted nothing more -to do with such people. “I’ll never go back to Bidwell,” she kept saying -over and over as she ran in the uncertain light along the beach. - -Sid Gould’s companions, having run out of the dance hall, could not -understand that he had been knocked over by the slight girl he had led -into the darkness, and when they heard his curses and groans and saw him -reeling about, quite overcome by the second blow May had aimed at his -head—combined with the liquor within—they imagined some man had come to -May’s rescue. When they ran forward and saw May with the stick in her -hand and swinging it wildly about they paid little attention to her but -began at once looking for her companion. Two of them followed May as she -ran along the beach and the others returned to the dance hall. A group -of young farmers came crowding to the door and Cal Mosher hit one of -them a swinging blow with his fist. “Get out of the way,” he cried, -“we’re going to clean up this place.” - -May ran like a frightened rabbit along the beach, stopping occasionally -to listen. From the dance hall came an uproar and oaths and cries broke -the silence of the night. At her heels two men ran, lumbering along -slowly. The drink within had taken effect and one of them fell. As she -ran May came presently into the place of huge stumps and logs, thrown up -by the storms of winter, and saw Maud Welliver standing at the edge of -the water with the grocer Hunt—who had his arm about Maud’s waist. The -frightened woman ran so close to them that she might have touched Maud’s -dress but they were unconscious of her presence and, as for May, she was -in an odd way afraid of them also. She was afraid of everything human. -“It all comes to something ugly and terrible,” she thought frantically. - -May ran for nearly two miles, along the beach, among the tree stumps, -the roots of which stuck up into the air like arms raised in -supplication to the moon. Perhaps the dry withered old tree arms, -sticking up thus, kept her physical fear alive, as it is not likely Sid -Gould’s drunken companions followed her far. She ran clinging to Lillian -Edgley’s hat—she had borrowed without permission—and that, I presume, -seemed a thing of beauty to her. Something conscientious and fine in her -made her cling desperately to the hat and she had held it in her left -hand and safely out of harm’s way, even in the moment when she was -belaboring Sid Gould with the stick of driftwood. - -And now she ran, still clinging to the hat, and was afraid with a fear -that was no longer physical. The new fear that swept in upon her -comprehended something more than the grotesque masses of tree roots, -that now appeared to dance madly in the moonlight, something more than -Sid Gould, Cal Mosher and Jerome Hadley—that had become a fear of life -itself, of all she had ever known of life, all she had ever been -permitted to see of life—that fear was now heavy upon her. - -Little May Edgley did not want to live any more. “Death is a kind and -comforting thing to those who are through with life,” an old farm horse -had seemed to say to a boy, who, a few days later, ran in terror from -the sight of May Edgley’s dead body to lean trembling on the old horse’s -manger. - -What actually happened on that terrible night when May ran so madly was -that she came in her flight to where a creek runs down into the bay. -There are good fishing places off the mouth of the creek. At the creek’s -mouth the water spreads itself out, so that the small stream looks, from -a distance, like a strong river, but one coming along the beach—running -along the beach, in the moonlight, let us say—from the west would run -almost to the eastern bank in the shallow water, that came only to the -shoe tops. - -One would run thus, in the shallow water, and the clear white beach—east -of the creek’s mouth—would seem but a few steps away, and then one would -be plunged suddenly down into the narrow deep current, sweeping under -the eastern bank, the current that carried the main body of the water of -the stream. - -And May Edgley plunged in there, still clinging to Lillian’s white -hat—the white willow plume bobbing up and down in the swift current—and -was swept into the bay. Her body, caught by an eddy was carried in and -lodged among the submerged tree roots, where it stayed, lodged, until -the farmer and his hired man accidentally found it and laid it tenderly -on the boards beside the farmer’s barn. - -The little hard fist clung to the hat, the white grotesque hat that Lil -Edgley was in the habit of putting on when she wanted to look her -best—when she wanted, I presume, to be beautiful. - -May may have thought the hat was beautiful. She may have thought of it -as the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in the actuality of her -life. - -Of that one cannot speak too definitely, and I only know that, if the -hat ever had been beautiful, it had lost its beauty when, a few days -later, it fell under the eyes of a boy who saw the bedraggled remains of -it, clutched in the drowned woman’s hand. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - A CHICAGO HAMLET - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - A CHICAGO HAMLET - - -THERE was one time in Tom’s life when he came near dying, came so close -to it that for several days he held his own life in his hand, as a boy -would hold a ball. He had only to open his fingers to let it drop. - -How vividly I remember the night when he told me the story. We had gone -to dine together at a little combined saloon and restaurant in what is -now Wells Street in Chicago. It was a wet cold night in early October. -In Chicago October and November are usually the most charming months of -the year but that year the first weeks of October were cold and rainy. -Everyone who lives in our industrial lake cities has a disease of the -nasal passages and a week of such weather starts everyone coughing and -sneezing. The warm little den into which Tom and I had got seemed cosy -and comfortable. We had drinks of whiskey to drive the chill out of our -bodies and then, after eating, Tom began to talk. - -Something had come into the air of the place where we sat, a kind of -weariness. At times all Chicagoans grow weary of the almost universal -ugliness of Chicago and everyone sags. One feels it in the streets, in -the stores, in the homes. The bodies of the people sag and a cry seems -to go up out of a million throats,—“we are set down here in this -continual noise, dirt and ugliness. Why did you put us down here? There -is no rest. We are always being hurried about from place to place, to no -end. Millions of us live on the vast Chicago West Side, where all -streets are equally ugly and where the streets go on and on forever, out -of nowhere into nothing. We are tired, tired! What is it all about? Why -did you put us down here, mother of men?” All the moving bodies of the -people in the streets seem to be saying something like the words set -down above and some day, perhaps, that Chicago poet, Carl Sandburg, will -sing a song about it. Oh, he will make you feel then the tired voices -coming out of tired people. Then, it may be, we will all begin singing -it and realizing something long forgotten among us. - -But I grow too eloquent. I will return to Tom and the restaurant in -Wells Street. Carl Sandburg works on a newspaper and sits at a desk -writing about the movies in Wells Street, Chicago. - -In the restaurant two men stood at the bar talking to the bartender. -They were trying to hold a friendly conversation, but there was -something in the air that made friendly conversations impossible. The -bartender looked like pictures one sees of famous generals—he was the -type—a red-faced, well-fed looking man, with a grey moustache. - -The two men facing him and with their feet resting on the bar rail had -got into a meaningless wrangle concerning the relationship of President -McKinley and his friend Mark Hanna. Did Mark Hanna control McKinley or -was McKinley only using Mark Hanna to his own ends. The discussion was -of no special interest to the men engaged in it—they did not care. At -that time the newspapers and political magazines of the country were -always wrangling over the same subject. It filled space that had to be -filled, I should say. - -At any rate the two men had taken it up and were using it as a vehicle -for their weariness and disgust with life. They spoke of McKinley and -Hanna as Bill and Mark. - -“Bill is a smooth one, I tell you what. He has Mark eating out of his -hand.” - -“Eating out of his hand, hell! Mark whistles and Bill comes running, -like that, like a little dog.” - -Meaningless vicious sentences, opinions thrown out by tired brains. One -of the men grew sullenly angry. “Don’t look at me like that, I tell you. -I’ll stand a good deal from a friend but not any such looks. I’m a -fellow who loses his temper. Sometimes I bust someone on the jaw.” - -The bartender was taking the situation in hand. He tried to change the -subject. “Who’s going to lick that Fitzsimmons? How long they going to -let that Australian strut around in this country? Ain’t they no guy can -take him?” he asked, with pumped up enthusiasm. - -I sat with my head in my hands. “Men jangling with men! Men and women in -houses and apartments jangling! Tired people going home to Chicago’s -West Side, going home from the factories! Children crying fretfully!” - -Tom tapped me on the shoulder, and then tapped with his empty glass on -the table. He laughed. - - “Ladybug, ladybug, why do you roam? - Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home,” - -he recited. When the whiskey had come he leaned forward and made one of -the odd and truthful observations on life that were always coming out of -him at unexpected moments. “I want you to notice something,” he began; -“You have seen a lot of bartenders—well, if you’ll notice, there is a -striking similarity in appearance between bartenders, great generals, -diplomats, presidents and all such people. I just happened to think why -it is. It’s because they are all up to the same game. They have to spend -their lives handling weary dissatisfied people and they learn the trick -of giving things just a little twist, out of one dull meaningless -channel into another. That is their game and practising it makes them -all look alike.” - -I smiled sympathetically. Now that I come to write of my friend I find -it somewhat difficult not to misrepresent him on the sentimental side. I -forget times when I was with him and he was unspeakably dull, when he -also talked often for hours of meaningless things. It was all -foolishness, this trying to be anything but a dull business man, he -sometimes said, and declared that both he and I were fools. Better for -us both that we become more alert, more foxy, as he put it. But for the -fact that we were both fools we would both join the Chicago Athletic -Club, play golf, ride about in automobiles, pick up flashy young girls -and take them out to road-houses to dinner, go home later and make up -cock and bull stories to quiet our wives, go to church on Sunday, talk -continuously of money making, woman and golf, and in general enjoy our -lives. At times he half convinced me he thought the fellows he described -led gay and cheerful lives. - -And there were times, too, when he, as a physical being, seemed to -fairly disintegrate before my eyes. His great bulk grew a little loose -and flabby, he talked and talked, saying nothing. - -And then, when I had quite made up my mind he had gone the same road I -and all the men about me were no doubt going, the road of surrender to -ugliness and to dreary meaningless living, something would happen. He -would have talked thus, as I have just described, aimlessly, through a -long evening, and then, when we parted for the night, he would scribble -a few words on a bit of paper and push it awkwardly into my pocket. I -watched his lumbering figure go away along a street and going to a -street lamp read what he had written. - -“I am very weary. I am not the silly ass I seem but I am as tired as a -dog, trying to find out what I am,” were the words he had scrawled. - -But to return to the evening in the place in Wells Street. When the -whiskey came we drank it and sat looking at each other. Then he put his -hand on the table and closing the fingers, so that they made a little -cup, opened the hand slowly and listlessly. “Once I had life, like that, -in my hand, my own life. I could have let go of it as easily as that. -Just why I didn’t I’ve never quite figured out. I can’t think why I kept -my fingers cupped, instead of opening my hand and letting go,” he said. -If, a few minutes before, there had been no integrity in the man there -was enough of it now. - -He began telling the story of an evening and a night of his youth. - -It was when he was still on his father’s farm, a little rented farm down -in Southeastern Ohio, and when he was but eighteen years old. That would -have been in the fall before he left home and started on his adventures -in the world. I knew something of his history. - -It was late October and he and his father had been digging potatoes in a -field. I suppose they both wore torn shoes as, in telling the story, Tom -made a point of the fact that their feet were cold, and that the black -dirt had worked into their shoes and discolored their feet. - -The day was cold and Tom wasn’t very well and was in a bitter mood. He -and his father worked rather desperately and in silence. The father was -tall, had a sallow complexion and wore a beard, and in the mental -picture I have of him, he is always stopping—as he walks about the -farmyard or works in the fields he stops and runs his fingers nervously -through his beard. - -As for Tom, one gets the notion of him as having been at that time -rather nice, one having an inclination toward the nicer things of life -without just knowing he had the feeling, and certainly without an -opportunity to gratify it. - -Tom had something the matter with him, a cold with a bit of fever -perhaps and sometimes as he worked his body shook as with a chill and -then, after a few minutes, he felt hot all over. The two men had been -digging the potatoes all afternoon and as night began to fall over the -field, they started to pick up. One picks up the potatoes in baskets and -carries them to the ends of the rows where they are put into two-bushel -grain bags. - -Tom’s step-mother came to the kitchen door and called. “Supper,” she -cried in her peculiarly colorless voice. Her husband was a little angry -and fretful. Perhaps for a long time he had been feeling very deeply the -enmity of his son. “All right,” he called back, “we’ll come pretty soon. -We got to get done picking up.” There was something very like a whine in -his voice. “You can keep the things hot for a time,” he shouted. - -Tom and his father both worked with feverish haste, as though trying to -outdo each other and every time Tom bent over to pick up a handful of -the potatoes his head whirled and he thought he might fall. A kind of -terrible pride had taken possession of him and with the whole strength -of his being he was determined not to let his father—who, if -ineffectual, was nevertheless sometimes very quick and accurate at -tasks—get the better of him. They were picking up potatoes—that was the -task before them at the moment—and the thing was to get all the potatoes -picked up and in the bags before darkness came. Tom did not believe in -his father and was he to let such an ineffectual man outdo him at any -task, no matter how ill he might be? - -That was somewhat the nature of Tom’s thoughts and feelings at the -moment. - -And then the darkness had come and the task was done. The filled sacks -were set along a fence at the end of the field. It was to be a cold -frosty night and now the moon was coming up and the filled sacks looked -like grotesque human beings, standing there along the fence—standing -with grey sagging bodies, such as Tom’s step-mother had—sagged bodies -and dull eyes—standing and looking at the two men, so amazingly not in -accord with each other. - -As the two walked across the field Tom let his father go ahead. He was -afraid he might stagger and did not want his father to see there was -anything the matter with him. In a way boyish pride was involved too. -“He might think he could wear me out working,” Tom thought. The moon -coming up was a huge yellow ball in the distance. It was larger than the -house towards which they were walking and the figure of Tom’s father -seemed to walk directly across the yellow face of the moon. - -When they got to the house the children Tom’s father had got—thrown in -with the woman, as it were, when he made his second marriage—were -standing about. After he left home Tom could never remember anything -about the children except that they always had dirty faces and were clad -in torn dirty dresses and that the youngest, a baby, wasn’t very well -and was always crying fretfully. - -When the two men came into the house the children, from having been -fussing at their mother because the meal was delayed, grew silent. With -the quick intuition of children they sensed something wrong between -father and son. Tom walked directly across the small dining room and -opening a door entered a stairway that led up to his bedroom. “Ain’t you -going to eat any supper?” his father asked. It was the first word that -had passed between father and son for hours. - -“No,” Tom answered and went up the stairs. At the moment his mind was -concentrated on the problem of not letting anyone in the house know he -was ill and the father let him go without protest. No doubt the whole -family were glad enough to have him out of the way. - -He went upstairs and into his own room and got into bed without taking -off his clothes, just pulled off the torn shoes and crawling in pulled -the covers up over himself. There was an old quilt, not very clean. - -His brain cleared a little and as the house was small he could hear -everything going on down stairs. Now the family were all seated at the -table and his father was doing a thing called “saying grace.” He always -did that and sometimes, while the others waited, he prayed -intermittently. - -Tom was thinking, trying to think. What was it all about, his father’s -praying that way? When he got at it the man seemed to forget everyone -else in the world. There he was, alone with God, facing God alone and -the people about him seemed to have no existence. He prayed a little -about food, and then went on to speak with God, in a strange -confidential way, about other things, his own frustrated desires mostly. - -All his life he had wanted to be a Methodist minister but could not be -ordained because he was uneducated, had never been to the schools or -colleges. There was no chance at all for his becoming just the thing he -wanted to be and still he went on and on praying about it, and in a way -seemed to think there might be a possibility that God, feeling strongly -the need of more Methodist ministers, would suddenly come down out of -the sky, off the judgment seat as it were, and would go to the -administrating board, or whatever one might call it, of the Methodist -Church and say, “Here you, what are you up to? Make this man a Methodist -minister and be quick about it. I don’t want any fooling around.” - -Tom lay on the bed upstairs listening to his father praying down below. -When he was a lad and his own mother was alive he had always been -compelled to go with his father to the church on Sundays and to the -prayer meetings on Wednesday evenings. His father always prayed, -delivered sermons to the other sad-faced men and women sitting about, -under the guise of prayers, and the son sat listening and no doubt it -was then, in childhood, his hatred of his father was born. The man who -was then the minister of the little country church, a tall, raw-boned -young man, who was as yet unmarried, sometimes spoke of Tom’s father as -one powerful in prayer. - -And all the time there was something in Tom’s mind. Well he had seen a -thing. One day when he was walking alone through a strip of wood, coming -back barefooted from town to the farm he had seen—he never told anyone -what he had seen. The minister was in the wood, sitting alone on a log. -There was something. Some rather nice sense of life in Tom was deeply -offended. He had crept away unseen. - -And now he was lying on the bed in the half darkness upstairs in his -father’s house, shaken with a chill, and downstairs his father was -praying and there was one sentence always creeping into his prayers. -“Give me the gift, O God, give me the great gift.” Tom thought he knew -what that meant—“the gift of the gab and the opportunity to exercise it, -eh?” - -There was a door at the foot of Tom’s bed and beyond the door another -room, at the front of the house upstairs. His father slept in there with -the new woman he had married and the three children slept in a small -room beside it. The baby slept with the man and woman. It was odd what -terrible thoughts sometimes came into one’s head. The baby wasn’t very -well and was always whining and crying. Chances were it would grow up to -be a yellow-skinned thing, with dull eyes, like the mother. Suppose ... -well suppose ... some night ... one did not voluntarily have such -thoughts—suppose either the man or woman might, quite accidentally, roll -over on the baby and crush it, smother it, rather. - -Tom’s mind slipped a little out of his grasp. He was trying to hold on -to something—what was it? Was it his own life? That was an odd thought. -Now his father had stopped praying and downstairs the family were eating -the evening meal. There was silence in the house. People, even dirty -half-ill children, grew silent when they ate. That was a good thing. It -was good to be silent sometimes. - -And now Tom was in the wood, going barefooted through the wood and there -was that man, the minister, sitting alone there on the log. Tom’s father -wanted to be a minister, wanted God to arbitrarily make him a minister, -wanted God to break the rules, bust up the regular order of things just -to make him a minister. And he a man who could barely make a living on -the farm, who did everything in a half slipshod way, who, when he felt -he had to have a second wife, had gone off and got one with four sickly -kids, one who couldn’t cook, who did the work of his house in a slovenly -way. - -Tom slipped off into unconsciousness and lay still for a long time. -Perhaps he slept. - -When he awoke—or came back into consciousness—there was his father’s -voice still praying and Tom had thought the grace-saying was over. He -lay still, listening. The voice was loud and insistent and now seemed -near at hand. All of the rest of the house was silent. None of the -children were crying. - -Now there was a sound, the rattling of dishes downstairs in the kitchen -and Tom sat up in bed and leaning far over looked through the open door -into the room occupied by his father and his father’s new wife. His mind -cleared. - -After all, the evening meal was over and the children had been put to -bed and now the woman downstairs had put the three older children into -their bed and was washing the dishes at the kitchen stove. Tom’s father -had come upstairs and had prepared for bed by taking off his clothes and -putting on a long soiled white nightgown. Then he had gone to the open -window at the front of the house and kneeling down had begun praying -again. - -A kind of cold fury took possession of Tom and without a moment’s -hesitation he got silently out of bed. He did not feel ill now but very -strong. At the foot of his bed, leaning against the wall, was a -whippletree, a round piece of hard wood, shaped something like a -baseball bat, but tapering at both ends. At each end there was an iron -ring. The whippletree had been left there by his father who was always -leaving things about, in odd unexpected places. He leaned a whippletree -against the wall in his son’s bedroom and then, on the next day, when he -was hitching a horse to a plow and wanted it, he spent hours going -nervously about rubbing his fingers through his beard and looking. - -Tom took the whippletree in his hand and crept barefooted through the -open door into his father’s room. “He wants to be like that fellow in -the woods—that’s what he’s always praying about.” There was in Tom’s -mind some notion—from the beginning there must have been a great deal of -the autocrat in him—well, you see, he wanted to crush out impotence and -sloth. - -He had quite made up his mind to kill his father with the whippletree -and crept silently across the floor, gripping the hardwood stick firmly -in his right hand. The sickly looking baby had already been put into the -one bed in the room and was asleep. Its little face looked out from -above another dirty quilt and the clear cold moonlight streamed into the -room and fell upon the bed and upon the kneeling figure on the floor by -the window. - -Tom had got almost across the room when he noticed something—his -father’s bare feet sticking out from beneath the white nightgown. The -heels and the little balls of flesh below the toes were black with the -dirt of the fields but in the centre of each foot there was a place. It -was not black but yellowish white in the moonlight. - -Tom crept silently back into his own room and closed softly the door -between himself and his father. After all he did not want to kill -anyone. His father had not thought it necessary to wash his feet before -kneeling to pray to his God, and he had himself come upstairs and had -got into bed without washing his own feet. - -His hands were trembling now and his body shaking with the chill but he -sat on the edge of the bed trying to think. When he was a child and went -to church with his father and mother there was a story he had heard -told. A man came into a feast, after walking a long time on dusty roads, -and sat down at the feast. A woman came and washed his feet. Then she -put precious ointments on them and later dried the feet with her hair. - -The story had, when he heard it, no special meaning to the boy but -now.... He sat on the bed smiling half foolishly. Could one make of -one’s own hands a symbol of what the woman’s hands must have meant on -that occasion, long ago, could not one make one’s own hands the humble -servants to one’s soiled feet, to one’s soiled body? - -It was a strange notion, this business of making oneself the keeper of -the clean integrity of oneself. When one was ill one got things a little -distorted. In Tom’s room there was a tin wash-basin, and a pail of -water, he himself brought each morning from the cistern at the back of -the house. He had always been one who fancied waiting on himself and -perhaps, at that time, he had in him something he afterward lost, or -only got hold of again at long intervals, the sense of the worth of his -own young body, the feeling that his own body was a temple, as one might -put it. - -At any rate he must have had some such feeling on that night of his -childhood and I shall never forget a kind of illusion I had concerning -him that time in the Wells Street place when he told me the tale. At the -moment something seemed to spring out of his great hulking body, -something young hard clean and white. - -But I must walk carefully. Perhaps I had better stick to my tale, try -only to tell it simply, as he did. - -Anyway he got off the bed, there in the upper room of that strangely -disorganized and impotent household, and standing in the centre of the -room took off his clothes. There was a towel hanging on a hook on the -wall but it wasn’t very clean. - -By chance he did have, however, a white nightgown that had not been worn -and he now got it out of the drawer of a small rickety dresser that -stood by the wall and recklessly tore off a part of it to serve as a -washcloth. Then he stood up and with the tin washbasin on the floor at -his feet washed himself carefully in the icy cold water. - -No matter what illusions I may have had regarding him when he told me -the tale, that night in Wells Street, surely on that night of his youth -he must have been, as I have already described him, something young hard -clean and white. Surely and at that moment his body was a temple. - - * * * * * - -As for the matter of his holding his own life in his hands—that came -later, when he had got back into the bed, and that part of his tale I do -not exactly understand. Perhaps he fumbled it in the telling and perhaps -my own understanding fumbled. - -I remember that he kept his hand lying on the table in the Wells Street -place and that he kept opening and closing the fingers as though that -would explain everything. It didn’t for me, not then at any rate. -Perhaps it will for you who read. - -“I got back into bed,” he said, “and taking my own life into my hand -tried to decide whether I wanted to hold on to it or not. All that night -I held it like that, my own life I mean,” he said. - -There was some notion, he was evidently trying to explain, concerning -other lives being things outside his own, things not to be touched, not -to be fooled with. How much of that could have been in his mind that -night of his youth, long ago, and how much came later I do not know and -one takes it for granted he did not know either. - -He seemed however to have had the notion that for some hours that night, -after his father’s wife came upstairs and the two elder people got into -bed and the house was silent, that there came certain hours when his own -life belonged to him to hold or to drop as easily as one spreads out the -fingers of a hand lying on a table in a saloon in Wells Street, Chicago. - -“I had a fancy not to do it,” he said, “not to spread out my fingers, -not to open my hand. You see, I couldn’t feel any very definite purpose -in life, but there was something. There was a feeling I had as I stood -naked in the cold washing my body. Perhaps I just wanted to have that -feeling of washing myself again sometime. You know what I mean—I was -really cleansing myself, there in the moonlight, that night. - -“And so I got back into bed and kept my fingers closed, like this, like -a cup. I held my own life in my hand and when I felt like opening my -fingers and letting my life slip away I remembered myself washing myself -in the moonlight. - -“And so I didn’t open out my fingers. I kept my fingers closed like -this, like a cup,” he said, again slowly drawing his fingers together. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - PART TWO - - -FOR a good many years Tom wrote advertisements in an office in Chicago -where I was also employed. He had grown middle-aged and was unmarried -and in the evenings and on Sundays sat in his apartment reading or -playing rather badly on a piano. Outside business hours he had few -associates and although his youth and young manhood had been a time of -hardship, he continually, in fancy, lived in the past. - -He and I had been intimate, in a loose detached sort of way, for a good -many years. Although I was a much younger man we often got half-drunk -together. - -Little fluttering tag-like ends of his personal history were always -leaking out of him and, of all the men and women I have known, he gave -me the most material for stories. His own talks, things remembered or -imagined, were never quite completely told. They were fragments caught -up, tossed in the air as by a wind and then abruptly dropped. - -All during the late afternoon we had been standing together at a bar and -drinking. We had talked of our work and as Tom grew more drunken he -played with the notion of the importance of advertising writing. At that -time his more mature point of view puzzled me a little. “I’ll tell you -what, that lot of advertisements on which you are now at work is very -important. Do put all your best self into your work. It is very -important that the American house-wife buy Star laundry soap, rather -than Arrow laundry soap. And there is something else—the daughter of the -man who owns the soap factory, that is at present indirectly employing -you, is a very pretty girl. I saw her once. She is nineteen now but soon -she will be out of college and, if her father makes a great deal of -money it will profoundly affect her life. The very man she is to marry -may be decided by the success or failure of the advertisements you are -now writing. In an obscure way you are fighting her battles. Like a -knight of old you have tipped your lance, or shall I say typewriter, in -her service. Today as I walked past your desk and saw you sitting there, -scratching your head, and trying to think whether to say, “buy Star -Laundry Soap—it’s best,” or whether to be a bit slangy and say, “Buy -Star—You win!”—well, I say, my heart went out to you and to this fair -young girl you have never seen, may never see. I tell you what, I was -touched.” He hiccoughed and leaning forward tapped me affectionately on -the shoulder. “I tell you what, young fellow,” he added smiling, “I -thought of the middle ages and of the men, women and children who once -set out toward the Holy Land in the service of the Virgin. They didn’t -get as well paid as you do. I tell you what, we advertising men are too -well paid. There would be more dignity in our profession if we went -barefooted and walked about dressed in old ragged cloaks and carrying -staffs. We might, with a good deal more dignity, carry beggar’s bowls, -in our hands, eh!” - -He was laughing heartily now, but suddenly stopped laughing. There was -always an element of sadness in Tom’s mirth. - -We walked out of the saloon, he going forward a little unsteadily for, -even when he was quite sober, he was not too steady on his legs. Life -did not express itself very definitely in his body and he rolled -awkwardly about, his heavy body at times threatening to knock some -passerby off the sidewalk. - -For a time we stood at a corner, at La Salle and Lake Streets in -Chicago, and about us surged the home-going crowds while over our heads -rattled the elevated trains. Bits of newspaper and clouds of dust were -picked up by a wind and blown in our faces and the dust got into our -eyes. We laughed together, a little nervously. - -At any rate for us the evening had just begun. We would walk and later -dine together. He plunged again into the saloon out of which we had just -come, and in a moment returned with a bottle of whiskey in his pocket. - -“It is horrible stuff, this whiskey, eh, but after all this is a -horrible town. One couldn’t drink wine here. Wine belongs to a sunny, -laughing people and clime,” he said. He had a notion that drunkenness -was necessary to men in such a modern industrial city as the one in -which we lived. “You wait,” he said, “you’ll see what will happen. One -of these days the reformers will manage to take whiskey away from us, -and what then? We’ll sag down, you see. We’ll become like old women, who -have had too many children. We’ll all sag spiritually and then you’ll -see what’ll happen. Without whiskey no people can stand up against all -this ugliness. It can’t be done, I say. We’ll become empty and -bag-like—we will—all of us. We’ll be like old women who were never loved -but who have had too many children.” - -We had walked through many streets and had come to a bridge over a -river. It was growing dark now and we stood for a time in the dusk and -in the uncertain light the structures, built to the very edge of the -stream, great warehouses and factories, began to take on strange shapes. -The river ran through a canyon formed by the buildings, a few boats -passed up and down, and over other bridges, in the distance, street-cars -passed. They were like moving clusters of stars against the dark purple -of the sky. - -From time to time he sucked at the whiskey bottle and occasionally -offered me a drink but often he forgot me and drank alone. When he had -taken the bottle from his lips he held it before him and spoke to it -softly, “Little mother,” he said, “I am always at your breast, eh? You -cannot wean me, can you?” - -He grew a little angry. “Well, then why did you drop me down here? -Mothers should drop their children in places where men have learned a -little to live. Here there is only a desert of buildings.” - -He took another drink from the bottle and then held it for a moment -against his cheek before passing it to me. “There is something feminine -about a whiskey bottle,” he declared. “As long as it contains liquor one -hates to part with it and passing it to a friend is a little like -inviting a friend to go in to your wife. They do that, I’m told, in some -of the Oriental countries—a rather delicate custom. Perhaps they are -more civilized than ourselves, and then, you know, perhaps, it’s just -possible, they have found out that the women sometimes like it too, eh?” - -I tried to laugh but did not succeed very well. Now that I am writing of -my friend, I find I am not making a very good likeness of him after all. -It may be that I overdo the note of sadness I get into my account of -him. There was always that element present but it was tempered in him, -as I seem to be unable to temper it in my account of him. - -For one thing he was not very clever and I seem to be making him out a -rather clever fellow. On many evenings I have spent with him he was -silent and positively dull and for hours walked awkwardly along, talking -of some affair at the office. There was a long rambling story. He had -been at Detroit with the president of the company and the two men had -visited an advertiser. There was a long dull account of what had been -said—of “he saids,” and, “I saids.” - -Or again he told a story of some experience of his own, as a newspaper -man, before he got into advertising. He had been on the copy desk in -some Chicago newspaper, the _Tribune_, perhaps. One grew accustomed to a -little peculiarity of his mind. It traveled sometimes in circles and -there were certain oft-told tales always bobbing up. A man had come into -the newspaper office, a cub reporter with an important piece of news, a -great scoop in fact. No one would believe the reporter’s story. He was -just a kid. There was a murderer, for whom the whole town was on the -watchout, and the cub reporter had picked him up and had brought him -into the office. - -There he sat, the dangerous murderer. The cub reporter had found him in -a saloon and going up to him had said, “You might as well give yourself -up. They will get you anyway and it will go better with you if you come -in voluntarily.” - -And so the dangerous murderer had decided to come and the cub reporter -had escorted him, not to the police station but to the newspaper office. -It was a great scoop. In a moment now the forms would close, the -newspaper would go to press. The dead line was growing close and the cub -reporter ran about the room from one man to another. He kept pointing at -the murderer, a mild-looking little man with blue eyes, sitting on a -bench, waiting. The cub reporter was almost insane. He danced up and -down and shouting “I tell you that’s Murdock, sitting there. Don’t be a -lot of damn fools. I tell you that’s Murdock, sitting there.” - -Now one of the editors has walked listlessly across the room and is -speaking to the little man with blue eyes, and suddenly the whole tone -of the newspaper office has changed. “My God! It’s the truth! Stop -everything! Clear the front page! My God! It is Murdock! What a near -thing! We almost let it go! My God! It’s Murdock!” - -The incident in the newspaper office had stayed in my friend’s mind. It -swam about in his mind as in a pool. At recurring times, perhaps once -every six months, he told the story, using always the same words and the -tenseness of that moment in the newspaper office was reproduced in him -over and over. He grew excited. Now the men in the office were all -gathering about the little blue-eyed Murdock. He had killed his wife, -her lover and three children. Then he had run into the street and quite -wantonly shot two men, innocently passing the house. He sat talking -quietly and all the police of the city, and all the reporters for the -other newspapers, were looking for him. There he sat talking, nervously -telling his story. There wasn’t much to the story. “I did it. I just did -it. I guess I was off my nut,” he kept saying. - -“Well, the story will have to be stretched out.” The cub reporter who -has brought him in walks about the office proudly. “I’ve done it! I’ve -done it! I’ve proven myself the greatest newspaper man in the city.” The -older men are laughing. “The fool! It’s fool’s luck. If he hadn’t been a -fool he would never have done it. Why he walked right up. ‘Are you -Murdock?’ He had gone about all over town, into saloons, asking men, -‘Are you Murdock?’ God is good to fools and drunkards!” - -My friend told the story to me ten, twelve, fifteen times, and did not -know it had grown to be an old story. When he had reproduced the scene -in the newspaper office he made always the same comment. “It’s a good -yarn, eh. Well it’s the truth. I was there. Someone ought to write it up -for one of the magazines.” - -I looked at him, watched him closely as he told the story and as I grew -older and kept hearing the murderer’s story and certain others, he also -told regularly without knowing he had told them before, an idea came to -me. “He is a tale-teller who has had no audience,” I thought. “He is a -stream dammed up. He is full of stories that whirl and circle about -within him. Well, he is not a stream dammed up, he is a stream -overfull.” As I walked beside him and heard again the story of the cub -reporter and the murderer I remembered a creek back of my father’s house -in an Ohio town. In the spring the water overflowed a field near our -house and the brown muddy water ran round and round in crazy circles. -One threw a stick into the water and it was carried far away but, after -a time, it came whirling back to where one stood on a piece of high -ground, watching. - -What interested me was that the untold stories, or rather the -uncompleted stories of my friend’s mind, did not seem to run in circles. -When a story had attained form it had to be told about every so often, -but the unformed fragments were satisfied to peep out at one and then -retire, never to reappear. - - * * * * * - -It was a spring evening and he and I had gone for a walk in Jackson -Park. We went on a street-car and when we were alighting the car started -suddenly and my awkward friend was thrown to the ground and rolled over -and over in the dusty street. The motorman, the conductor and several of -the men passengers alighted and gathered about. No, he was not hurt and -would not give his name and address to the anxious conductor. “I’m not -hurt. I’m not going to sue the company. Damn it, man, I defy you to make -me give my name and address if I do not care to do so.” - -He assumed a look of outraged dignity. “Just suppose now that I happen -to be some great man, traveling about the country—in foreign parts, -incognito, as it were. Let us suppose I am a great prince or a dignitary -of some sort. Look how big I am.” He pointed to his huge round paunch. -“If I told who I was cheers might break forth. I do not care for that. -With me, you see, it is different than with yourselves. I have had too -much of that sort of thing already. I’m sick of it. If it happens that, -in the process of my study of the customs of your charming country, I -chose to fall off a street-car that is my own affair. I did not fall on -anyone.” - -We walked away leaving the conductor, the motorman and passengers -somewhat mystified. “Ah, he’s a nut,” I heard one of the passengers say -to another. - -As for the fall, it had shaken something out of my friend. When later we -were seated on a bench in the park one of the fragments, the little -illuminating bits of his personal history, that sometimes came from him -and that were his chief charm for me, seemed to have been shaken loose -and fell from him as a ripe apple falls from a tree in a wind. - -He began talking, a little hesitatingly, as though feeling his way in -the darkness along the hallway of a strange house at night. It had -happened I had never seen him with a woman and he seldom spoke of women, -except with a witty and half scornful gesture, but now he began speaking -of an experience with a woman. - -The tale concerned an adventure of his young manhood and occurred after -his mother had died and after his father married again, in fact after he -had left home, not to return. - -The enmity, that seemed always to have existed between himself and his -father became while he continued living at home, more and more -pronounced, but on the part of the son, my friend, it was never -expressed in words and his dislike of his father took the form of -contempt that he had made so bad a second marriage. The new woman in the -house seemed such a poor stick. The house was always dirty and the -children, some other man’s children, were always about under foot. When -the two men who had been working in the fields came into the house to -eat, the food was badly cooked. - -The father’s desire to have God make him, in some mysterious way a -Methodist minister continued and, as he grew older, the son had -difficulty keeping back certain sharp comments upon life in the house, -that wanted to be expressed. “What was a Methodist minister after all?” -The son was filled with the intolerance of youth. His father was a -laborer, a man who had never been to school. Did he think that God could -suddenly make him something else and that without effort on his own -part, by this interminable praying? If he had really wanted to be a -minister why had he not prepared himself? He had chased off and got -married and when his first wife died he could hardly wait until she was -buried before making another marriage. And what a poor stick of a woman -he had got. - -The son looked across the table at his step-mother who was afraid of -him. Their eyes met and the woman’s hands began to tremble. “Do you want -anything?” she asked anxiously. “No,” he replied and began eating in -silence. - -One day in the spring, when he was working in the field with his father, -he decided to start out into the world. He and his father were planting -corn. They had no corn-planter and the father had marked out the rows -with a home-made marker and now he was going along in his bare feet, -dropping the grains of corn and the son, with a hoe in his hand, was -following. The son drew earth over the corn and then patted the spot -with the back of the hoe. That was to make the ground solid above so -that the crows would not come down and find the corn before it had time -to take root. - -All morning the two worked in silence, and then at noon and when they -came to the end of a row, they stopped to rest. The father went into a -fence corner. - -The son was nervous. He sat down and then got up and walked about. He -did not want to look into the fence corner, where his father was no -doubt kneeling and praying—he was always doing that at odd moments—but -presently he did. Dread crept over him. His father was kneeling and -praying in silence and the son could see again the bottoms of his two -bare feet, sticking out from among low-growing bushes. Tom shuddered. -Again he saw the heels and the cushions of the feet, the two ball-like -cushions below the toes. They were black but the instep of each foot was -white with an odd whiteness—not unlike the whiteness of the belly of a -fish. - -The reader will understand what was in Tom’s mind—a memory. - -Without a word to his father or to his father’s wife, he walked across -the fields to the house, packed a few belongings and left, saying -good-bye to no one. The woman of the house saw him go but said nothing -and after he had disappeared, about a bend in the road, she ran across -the fields to her husband, who was still at his prayers, oblivious to -what had happened. His wife also saw the bare feet sticking out of the -bushes and ran toward them screaming. When her husband arose she began -to cry hysterically. “I thought something dreadful had happened, Oh, I -thought something dreadful had happened,” she sobbed. - -“Why, what’s the matter,—what’s the matter?” asked her husband but she -did not answer but ran and threw herself into his arms, and as the two -stood thus, like two grotesque bags of grain, embracing in a black -newly-plowed field under a grey sky, the son, who had stopped in a small -clump of trees, saw them. He walked to the edge of a wood and stood for -a moment and then went off along the road. Afterward he never saw or -heard from them again. - - * * * * * - -About Tom’s woman adventure—he told it as I have told you the story of -his departure from home, that is to say in a fragmentary way. The story, -like the one I have just tried to tell, or rather perhaps give you a -sense of, was told in broken sentences, dropped between long silences. -As my friend talked I sat looking at him and I will admit I sometimes -found myself thinking he must be the greatest man I would ever know. “He -has felt more things, has by his capacity for silently feeling things, -penetrated further into human life than any other man I am likely ever -to know, perhaps than any other man who lives in my day,” I -thought—deeply stirred. - -And so he was on the road now and working his way slowly along afoot -through Southern Ohio. He intended to make his way to some city and -begin educating himself. In the winter, during boyhood, he had attended -a country school, but there were certain things he wanted he could not -find in the country, books, for one thing. “I knew then, as I know now, -something of the importance of books, that is to say real books. There -are only a few such books in the world and it takes a long time to find -them out. Hardly anyone knows what they are and one of the reasons I -have never married is because I did not want some woman coming between -me and the search for the books that really have something to say,” he -explained. He was forever breaking the thread of his stories with little -comments of this kind. - -All during that summer he worked on the farms, staying sometimes for two -or three weeks and then moving on and in June he had got to a place, -some twenty miles west of Cincinnati, where he went to work on the farm -of a German, and where the adventure happened that he told me about that -night on the park bench. - -The farm on which he was at work belonged to a tall, solidly-built -German of fifty, who had come to America twenty years before, and who, -by hard work, had prospered and had acquired much land. Three years -before he had made up his mind he had better marry and had written to a -friend in Germany about getting him a wife. “I do not want one of these -American girls, and I would like a young woman, not an old one,” he -wrote. He explained that the American girls all had the idea in their -heads that they could run their husbands and that most of them -succeeded. “It’s getting so all they want is to ride around all dressed -up or trot off to town,” he said. Even the older American women he -employed as housekeepers were the same way; none of them would take -hold, help about the farm, feed the stock and do things the wife of a -European farmer expected to do. When he employed a housekeeper she did -the housework and that was all. - -Then she went to sit on the front porch, to sew or read a book. “What -nonsense! You get me a good German girl, strong and pretty good-looking. -I’ll send the money and she can come over here and be my wife,” he -wrote. - -The letter had been sent to a friend of his young manhood, now a small -merchant in a German town and after talking the matter over with his -wife the merchant decided to send his daughter, a woman of twenty-four. -She had been engaged to marry a man who was taken sick and had died -while he was serving his term in the army and her father decided she had -been mooning about long enough. The merchant called the daughter into a -room where he and his wife sat and told her of his decision and, for a -long time she sat looking at the floor. Was she about to make a fuss? A -prosperous American husband who owned a big farm was not to be sneezed -at. The daughter put up her hand and fumbled with her black hair—there -was a great mass of it. After all she was a big strong woman. Her -husband wouldn’t be cheated. “Yes, I’ll go,” she said quietly, and -getting up walked out of the room. - -In America the woman had turned out all right but her husband thought -her a little too silent. Even though the main purpose in life be to do -the work of a house and farm, feed the stock and keep a man’s clothes in -order, so that he is not always having to buy new ones, still there are -times when something else is in order. As he worked in his fields the -farmer sometimes muttered to himself. “Everything in its place. For -everything there is a time and a place,” he told himself. One worked and -then the time came when one played a little too. Now and then it was -nice to have a few friends about, drink beer, eat a good deal of heavy -food and then have some fun, in a kind of way. One did not go too far -but if there were women in the party someone tickled one of them and she -giggled. One made a remark about legs—nothing out of the way. “Legs is -legs. On horses or women legs count a good deal.” Everyone laughed. One -had a jolly evening, one had some fun. - -Often, after his woman came, the farmer, working in his fields, tried to -think what was the matter with her. She worked all the time and the -house was in order. Well, she fed the stock so that he did not have to -bother about that. What a good cook she was. She even made beer, in the -old-fashioned German way, at home—and that was fine too. - -The whole trouble lay in the fact that she was silent, too silent. When -one spoke to her she answered nicely but she herself made no -conversation and at night she lay in the bed silently. The German -wondered if she would be showing signs of having a child pretty soon. -“That might make a difference,” he thought. He stopped working and -looked across the fields to where there was a meadow. His cattle were -there feeding quietly. “Even cows, and surely cows were quiet and silent -enough things, even cows had times. Sometimes the very devil got into a -cow. You were leading her along a road or a lane and suddenly she went -half insane. If one weren’t careful she would jam her head through -fences, knock a man over, do almost anything. She wanted something -insanely, with a riotous hunger. Even a cow wasn’t always just passive -and quiet.” The German felt cheated. He thought of the friend in Germany -who had sent his daughter. “Ugh, the deuce, he might have sent a -livelier one,” he thought. - -It was June when Tom came to the farm and the harvest was on. The German -had planted several large fields to wheat and the yield was good. -Another man had been employed to work on the farm all summer but Tom -could be used too. He would have to sleep on the hay in the barn but -that he did not mind. He went to work at once. - -And anyone knowing Tom, and seeing his huge and rather ungainly body, -must realize that, in his youth, he might have been unusually strong. -For one thing he had not done so much thinking as he must have done -later, nor had he been for years seated at a desk. He worked in the -fields with the other two men and at the meal time came into the house -with them to eat. He and the German’s wife must have been a good deal -alike. Tom had in his mind certain things—thoughts concerning his -boyhood—and he was thinking a good deal of the future. Well, there he -was working his way westward and making a little money all the time as -he went, and every cent he made he kept. He had not yet been into an -American city, had purposely avoided such places as Springfield, Dayton -and Cincinnati and had kept to the smaller places and the farms. - -After a time he would have an accumulation of money and would go into -cities, study, read books, live. He had then a kind of illusion about -American cities. “A city was a great gathering of people who had grown -tired of loneliness and isolation. They had come to realize that only by -working together could they have the better things of life. Many hands -working together might build wonderfully, many minds working together -might think clearly, many impulses working together might channel all -lives into an expression of something rather fine.” - -I am making a mistake if I give you the impression that Tom, the boy -from the Ohio farm, had any such definite notions. He had a feeling—of a -sort. There was a dumb kind of hope in him. He had even then, I am quite -sure, something else, that he later always retained, a kind of almost -holy inner modesty. It was his chief attraction as a man but perhaps it -stood in the way of his ever achieving the kind of outstanding and -assertive manhood we Americans all seem to think we value so highly. - -At any rate there he was, and there was that woman, the silent one, now -twenty-seven years old. The three men sat at table eating and she waited -on them. They ate in the farm kitchen, a large old-fashioned one, and -she stood by the stove or went silently about putting more food on the -table as it was consumed. - -At night the men did not eat until late and sometimes darkness came as -they sat at table and then she brought lighted lamps for them. Great -winged insects flew violently against the screen door and a few moths, -that had managed to get into the house, flew about the lamps. When the -men had finished eating they sat at the table drinking beer and the -woman washed the dishes. - -The farm hand, employed for the summer, was a man of thirty-five, a -large bony man with a drooping mustache. He and the German talked. Well, -it was good, the German thought, to have the silence of his house -broken. The two men spoke of the coming threshing time and of the hay -harvest just completed. One of the cows would be calving next week. Her -time was almost here. The man with the mustache took a drink of beer and -wiped his mustache with the back of his hand, that was covered with long -black hair. - -Tom had drawn his chair back against the wall and sat in silence and, -when the German was deeply engaged in conversation, he looked at the -woman, who sometimes turned from her dish-washing to look at him. - -There was something, a certain feeling he had sometimes—she, it might -be, also had—but of the two men in the room that could not be said. It -was too bad she spoke no English. Perhaps, however even though she spoke -his language, he could not speak to her of the things he meant. But, -pshaw, there wasn’t anything in his mind, nothing that could be said in -words. Now and then her husband spoke to her in German and she replied -quietly, and then the conversation between the two men was resumed in -English. More beer was brought. The German felt expansive. How good to -have talk in the house. He urged beer upon Tom who took it and drank. -“You’re another close-mouthed one, eh?” he said laughing. - -Tom’s adventure happened during the second week of his stay. All the -people about the place had gone to sleep for the night but, as he could -not sleep, he arose silently and came down out of the hay loft carrying -his blanket. It was a silent hot soft night without a moon and he went -to where there was a small grass plot that came down to the barn and -spreading his blanket sat with his back to the wall of the barn. - -That he could not sleep did not matter. He was young and strong. “If I -do not sleep tonight I will sleep tomorrow night,” he thought. There was -something in the air that he thought concerned only himself, and that -made him want to be thus awake, sitting out of doors and looking at the -dim distant trees in the apple orchard near the barn, at the stars in -the sky, at the farm house, faintly seen some few hundred feet away. Now -that he was out of doors he no longer felt restless. Perhaps it was only -that he was nearer something that was like himself at the moment, just -the night perhaps. - -He became aware of something, of something moving, restlessly in the -darkness. There was a fence between the farm yard and the orchard, with -berry bushes growing beside it, and something was moving in the darkness -along the berry bushes. Was it a cow that had got out of the stable or -were the bushes moved by a wind? He did a trick known to country boys. -Thrusting a finger into his mouth he stood up and put the wet finger out -before him. A wind would dry one side of the warm wet finger quickly and -that side would turn cold. Thus one told oneself something, not only of -the strength of a wind but its direction. Well, there was no wind strong -enough to move berry bushes—there was no wind at all. He had come down -out of the barn loft in his bare feet and in moving about had made no -sound and now he went and stood silently on the blanket with his back -against the wall of the barn. - -The movement among the bushes was growing more distinct but it wasn’t in -the bushes. Something was moving along the fence, between him and the -orchard. There was a place along the fence, an old rail one, where no -bushes grew and now the silent moving thing was passing the open space. - -It was the woman of the house, the German’s wife. What was up? Was she -also trying dumbly to draw nearer something that was like herself, that -she could understand, a little? Thoughts flitted through Tom’s head and -a dumb kind of desire arose within him. He began hoping vaguely that the -woman was in search of himself. - -Later, when he told me of the happenings of that night, he was quite -sure that the feeling that then possessed him was not physical desire -for a woman. His own mother had died several years before and the woman -his father had later married had seemed to him just a thing about the -house, a not very competent thing, bones, a hank of hair, a body that -did not do very well what one’s body was supposed to do. “I was -intolerant as the devil, about all women. Maybe I always have been but -then—I’m sure I was a queer kind of country bumpkin aristocrat. I -thought myself something, a special thing in the world, and that woman, -any women I had ever seen or known, the wives of a few neighbors as poor -as my father, a few country girls—I had thought them all beneath my -contempt, dirt under my feet. - -“About that German’s wife I had not felt that way. I don’t know why. -Perhaps because she had a habit of keeping her mouth shut as I did just -at that time, a habit I have since lost.” - -And so Tom stood there—waiting. The woman came slowly along the fence, -keeping in the shadow of the bushes and then crossed an open space -toward the barn. - -Now she was walking slowly along the barn wall, directly toward the -young man who stood in the heavy shadows holding his breath and waiting -for her coming. - -Afterwards, when he thought of what had happened, he could never quite -make up his mind whether she was walking in sleep or was awake as she -came slowly toward him. They did not speak the same language and they -never saw each other after that night. Perhaps she had only been -restless and had got out of the bed beside her husband and made her way -out of the house, without any conscious knowledge of what she was doing. - -She became conscious when she came to where he was standing however, -conscious and frightened. He stepped out toward her and she stopped. -Their faces were very close together and her eyes were large with alarm. -“The pupils dilated,” he said in speaking of that moment. He insisted -upon the eyes. “There was a fluttering something in them. I am sure I do -not exaggerate when I say that at the moment I saw everything as clearly -as though we had been standing together in the broad daylight. Perhaps -something had happened to my own eyes, eh? That might be possible. I -could not speak to her, reassure her—I could not say, ‘Do not be -frightened, woman.’ I couldn’t say anything. My eyes I suppose had to do -all the saying.” - -Evidently there was something to be said. At any rate there my friend -stood, on that remarkable night of his youth, and his face and the -woman’s face drew nearer each other. Then their lips met and he took her -into his arms and held her for a moment. - -That was all. They stood together, the woman of twenty-seven and the -young man of nineteen and he was a country boy and was afraid. That may -be the explanation of the fact that nothing else happened. - -I do not know as to that but in telling this tale I have an advantage -you who read cannot have. I heard the tale told, brokenly, by the -man—who had the experience I am trying to describe. Story-tellers of old -times, who went from place to place telling their wonder tales, had an -advantage we, who have come in the age of the printed word, do not have. -They were both story tellers and actors. As they talked they modulated -their voices, made gestures with their hands. Often they carried -conviction simply by the power of their own conviction. All of our -modern fussing with style in writing is an attempt to do the same thing. - -And what I am trying to express now is a sense I had that night, as my -friend talked to me in the park, of a union of two people that took -place in the heavy shadows by a barn in Ohio, a union of two people that -was not personal, that concerned their two bodies and at the same time -did not concern their bodies. The thing has to be felt, not understood -with the thinking mind. - -Anyway they stood for a few minutes, five minutes perhaps, with their -bodies pressed against the wall of the barn and their hands together, -clasped together tightly. Now and then one of them stepped away from the -barn and stood for a moment directly facing the other. One might say it -was Europe facing America in the darkness by a barn. One might grow -fancy and learned and say almost anything but all I am saying is that -they stood as I am describing them, and oddly enough with their faces to -the barn wall—instinctively turning from the house I presume—and that -now and then one of them stepped out and stood for a moment facing the -other. Their lips did not meet after the first moment. - -The next step was taken. The German awoke in the house and began -calling, and then he appeared at the kitchen door with a lantern in his -hand. It was the lantern, his carrying of the lantern, that saved the -situation for the wife and my friend. It made a little circle of light -outside of which he could see nothing, but he kept calling his wife, -whose name was Katherine, in a distracted frightened way. “Oh, -Katherine. Where are you? Oh, Katherine,” he called. - -My friend acted at once. Taking hold of the woman’s hand he ran—making -no sound—along the shadows of the barn and across the open space between -the barn and the fence. The two people were two dim shadows flitting -along the dark wall of the barn, nothing more and at the place in the -fence where there were no bushes he lifted her over and climbed over -after her. Then he ran through the orchard and into the road before the -house and putting his two hands on her shoulders shook her. As though -understanding his wish, she answered her husband’s call and as the -lantern came swinging down toward them my friend dodged back into the -orchard. - -The man and wife went toward the house, the German talking vigorously -and the woman answering quietly, as she had always answered him. Tom was -puzzled. Everything that happened to him that night puzzled him then and -long afterward when he told me of it. Later he worked out a kind of -explanation of it—as all men will do in such cases—but that is another -story and the time to tell it is not now. - -The point is that my friend had, at the moment, the feeling of having -completely possessed the woman, and with that knowledge came also the -knowledge that her husband would never possess her, could never by any -chance possess her. A great tenderness swept over him and he had but one -desire, to protect the woman, not to by any chance make the life she had -yet to live any harder. - -And so he ran quickly to the barn, secured the blanket and climbed -silently up into the loft. - -The farm hand with the drooping mustache was sleeping quietly on the hay -and Tom lay down beside him and closed his eyes. As he expected the -German came, almost at once, to the loft and flashed the lantern, not -into the face of the older man but into Tom’s face. Then he went away -and Tom lay awake smiling happily. He was young then and there was -something proud and revengeful in him—in his attitude toward the German, -at the moment. “Her husband knew, but at the same time did not know, -that I had taken his woman from him,” he said to me when he told of the -incident long afterward. “I don’t know why that made me so happy then, -but it did. At the moment I thought I was happy only because we had both -managed to escape, but now I know that wasn’t it.” - -And it is quite sure my friend did have a sense of something. On the -next morning when he went into the house the breakfast was on the table -but the woman was not on hand to serve it. The food was on the table and -the coffee on the stove and the three men ate in silence. And then Tom -and the German stepped out of the house together, stepped, as by a -prearranged plan into the barnyard. The German knew nothing—his wife had -grown restless in the night and had got out of bed and walked out into -the road and both the other men were asleep in the barn. He had never -had any reason for suspecting her of anything at all and she was just -the kind of woman he had wanted, never went trapsing off to town, didn’t -spend a lot of money on clothes, was willing to do any kind of work, -made no trouble. He wondered why he had taken such a sudden and violent -dislike for his young employee. - -Tom spoke first. “I think I’ll quit. I think I’d better be on my way,” -he said. It was obvious his going, at just that time, would upset the -plans the German had made for getting the work done at the rush time but -he made no objection to Tom’s going and at once. Tom had arranged to -work by the week and the German counted back to the Saturday before and -tried to cheat a little. “I owe you for only one week, eh?” he said. One -might as well get two days extra work out of the man without pay—if it -were possible. - -But Tom did not intend being defeated. “A week and four days,” he -replied, purposely adding an extra day. “If you do not want to pay for -the four days I’ll stay out the week.” - -The German went into the house and got the money and Tom set off along -the road. - -When he had walked for two or three miles he stopped and went into a -wood where he stayed all that day thinking of what had happened. - -Perhaps he did not do much thinking. What he said, when he told the -story that night in the Chicago park, was that all day there were -certain figures marching through his mind and that he just sat down on a -log and let them march. Did he have some notion that an impulse toward -life in himself had come, and that it would not come again? - -As he sat on the log there were the figures of his father and his dead -mother and of several other people who had lived about the Ohio -countryside where he had spent his boyhood. They kept doing things, -saying things. It will be quite clear to my readers that I think my -friend a story teller who for some reason has never been able to get his -stories outside himself, as one might say, and that might of course -explain the day in the wood. He himself thought he was in a sort of -comatose state. He had not slept during the night before and, although -he did not say as much, there was something a bit mysterious in the -thing that had happened to him. - -There was one thing he told me concerning that day of dreams that is -curious. There appeared in his fancy, over and over again, the figure of -a woman he had never seen in the flesh and has never seen since. At any -rate it wasn’t the German’s wife, he declared. - -“The figure was that of a woman but I could not tell her age,” he said. -“She was walking away from me and was clad in a blue dress covered with -black dots. Her figure was slender and looked strong but broken. That’s -it. She was walking in a path in a country such as I had then never -seen, have never seen, a country of very low hills and without trees. -There was no grass either but only low bushes that came up to her knees. -One might have thought it an Arctic country, where there is summer but -for a few weeks each year. She had her sleeves rolled to her shoulders -so that her slender arms showed, and had buried her face in the crook of -her right arm. Her left arm hung like a broken thing, her legs were like -broken things, her body was a broken thing. - -“And yet, you see, she kept walking and walking, in the path, among the -low bushes, over the barren little hills. She walked vigorously too. It -seems impossible and a foolish thing to tell about but all day I sat in -the woods on the stump and every time I closed my eyes I saw that woman -walking thus, fairly rushing along, and yet, you see, she was all broken -to pieces.” - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE MAN WHO BECAME A WOMAN - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE MAN WHO BECAME A WOMAN - - -MY father was a retail druggist in our town, out in Nebraska, which was -so much like a thousand other towns I’ve been in since that there’s no -use fooling around and taking up your time and mine trying to describe -it. - -Anyway I became a drug clerk and after father’s death the store was sold -and mother took the money and went west, to her sister in California, -giving me four hundred dollars with which to make my start in the world. -I was only nineteen years old then. - -I came to Chicago, where I worked as a drug clerk for a time, and then, -as my health suddenly went back on me, perhaps because I was so sick of -my lonely life in the city and of the sight and smell of the drug store, -I decided to set out on what seemed to me then the great adventure and -became for a time a tramp, working now and then, when I had no money, -but spending all the time I could loafing around out of doors or riding -up and down the land on freight trains and trying to see the world. I -even did some stealing in lonely towns at night—once a pretty good suit -of clothes that someone had left hanging out on a clothesline, and once -some shoes out of a box in a freight car—but I was in constant terror of -being caught and put into jail so realized that success as a thief was -not for me. - -The most delightful experience of that period of my life was when I once -worked as a groom, or swipe, with race horses and it was during that -time I met a young fellow of about my own age who has since become a -writer of some prominence. - -The young man of whom I now speak had gone into race track work as a -groom, to bring a kind of flourish, a high spot, he used to say, into -his life. - -He was then unmarried and had not been successful as a writer. What I -mean is he was free and I guess, with him as with me, there was -something he liked about the people who hang about a race track, the -touts, swipes, drivers, niggers and gamblers. You know what a gaudy -undependable lot they are—if you’ve ever been around the tracks -much—about the best liars I’ve ever seen, and not saving money or -thinking about morals, like most druggists, drygoods merchants and the -others who used to be my father’s friends in our Nebraska town—and not -bending the knee much either, or kowtowing to people, they thought must -be grander or richer or more powerful than themselves. - -What I mean is, they were an independent, go-to-the-devil, -come-have-a-drink-of-whisky, kind of a crew and when one of them won a -bet, “knocked ’em off,” we called it, his money was just dirt to him -while it lasted. No king or president or soap manufacturer—gone on a -trip with his family to Europe—could throw on more dog than one of them, -with his big diamond rings and the diamond horse-shoe stuck in his -necktie and all. - -I liked the whole blamed lot pretty well and he did too. - -He was groom temporarily for a pacing gelding named Lumpy Joe owned by a -tall black-mustached man named Alfred Kreymborg and trying the best he -could to make the bluff to himself he was a real one. It happened that -we were on the same circuit, doing the West Pennsylvania county fairs -all that fall, and on fine evenings we spent a good deal of time walking -and talking together. - -Let us suppose it to be a Monday or Tuesday evening and our horses had -been put away for the night. The racing didn’t start until later in the -week, maybe Wednesday, usually. There was always a little place called a -dining-hall, run mostly by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Associations -of the towns, and we would go there to eat where we could get a pretty -good meal for twenty-five cents. At least then we thought it pretty -good. - -I would manage it so that I sat beside this fellow, whose name was Tom -Means and when we had got through eating we would go look at our two -horses again and when we got there Lumpy Joe would be eating his hay in -his box-stall and Alfred Kreymborg would be standing there, pulling his -mustache and looking as sad as a sick crane. - -But he wasn’t really sad. “You two boys want to go down-town to see the -girls. I’m an old duffer and way past that myself. You go on along. I’ll -be setting here anyway, and I’ll keep an eye on both the horses for -you,” he would say. - -So we would set off, going, not into the town to try to get in with some -of the town girls, who might have taken up with us because we were -strangers and race track fellows, but out into the country. Sometimes we -got into a hilly country and there was a moon. The leaves were falling -off the trees and lay in the road so that we kicked them up with the -dust as we went along. - -To tell the truth I suppose I got to love Tom Means, who was five years -older than me, although I wouldn’t have dared say so, then. Americans -are shy and timid about saying things like that and a man here don’t -dare own up he loves another man, I’ve found out, and they are afraid to -admit such feelings to themselves even. I guess they’re afraid it may be -taken to mean something it don’t need to at all. - -Anyway we walked along and some of the trees were already bare and -looked like people standing solemnly beside the road and listening to -what we had to say. Only I didn’t say much. Tom Means did most of the -talking. - -Sometimes we came back to the race track and it was late and the moon -had gone down and it was dark. Then we often walked round and round the -track, sometimes a dozen times, before we crawled into the hay to go to -bed. - -Tom talked always on two subjects, writing and race horses, but mostly -about race horses. The quiet sounds about the race tracks and the smells -of horses, and the things that go with horses, seemed to get him all -excited. “Oh, hell, Herman Dudley,” he would burst out suddenly, “don’t -go talking to me. I know what I think. I’ve been around more than you -have and I’ve seen a world of people. There isn’t any man or woman, not -even a fellow’s own mother, as fine as a horse, that is to say a -thoroughbred horse.” - -Sometimes he would go on like that a long time, speaking of people he -had seen and their characteristics. He wanted to be a writer later and -what he said was that when he came to be one he wanted to write the way -a well bred horse runs or trots or paces. Whether he ever did it or not -I can’t say. He has written a lot, but I’m not too good a judge of such -things. Anyway I don’t think he has. - -But when he got on the subject of horses he certainly was a darby. I -would never have felt the way I finally got to feel about horses or -enjoyed my stay among them half so much if it hadn’t been for him. Often -he would go on talking for an hour maybe, speaking of horses’ bodies and -of their minds and wills as though they were human beings. “Lord help -us, Herman,” he would say, grabbing hold of my arm, “don’t it get you up -in the throat? I say now, when a good one, like that Lumpy Joe I’m -swiping, flattens himself at the head of the stretch and he’s coming, -and you know he’s coming, and you know his heart’s sound, and he’s game, -and you know he isn’t going to let himself get licked—don’t it get you -Herman, don’t it get you like the old Harry?” - -That’s the way he would talk, and then later, sometimes, he’d talk about -writing and get himself all het up about that too. He had some notions -about writing I’ve never got myself around to thinking much about but -just the same maybe his talk, working in me, has led me to want to begin -to write this story myself. - - * * * * * - -There was one experience of that time on the tracks that I am forced, by -some feeling inside myself, to tell. - -Well, I don’t know why but I’ve just got to. It will be kind of like -confession is, I suppose, to a good Catholic, or maybe, better yet, like -cleaning up the room you live in, if you are a bachelor, like I was for -so long. The room gets pretty mussy and the bed not made some days and -clothes and things thrown on the closet floor and maybe under the bed. -And then you clean all up and put on new sheets, and then you take off -all your clothes and get down on your hands and knees, and scrub the -floor so clean you could eat bread off it, and then take a walk and come -home after a while and your room smells sweet and you feel sweetened-up -and better inside yourself too. - -What I mean is, this story has been on my chest, and I’ve often dreamed -about the happenings in it, even after I married Jessie and was happy. -Sometimes I even screamed out at night and so I said to myself, “I’ll -write the dang story,” and here goes. - -Fall had come on and in the mornings now when we crept out of our -blankets, spread out on the hay in the tiny lofts above the horse -stalls, and put our heads out to look around, there was a white rime of -frost on the ground. When we woke the horses woke too. You know how it -is at the tracks—the little barn-like stalls with the tiny lofts above -are all set along in a row and there are two doors to each stall, one -coming up to a horse’s breast and then a top one, that is only closed at -night and in bad weather. - -In the mornings the upper door is swung open and fastened back and the -horses put their heads out. There is the white rime on the grass over -inside the grey oval the track makes. Usually there is some outfit that -has six, ten or even twelve horses, and perhaps they have a negro cook -who does his cooking at an open fire in the clear space before the row -of stalls and he is at work now and the horses with their big fine eyes -are looking about and whinnying, and a stallion looks out at the door of -one of the stalls and sees a sweet-eyed mare looking at him and sends up -his trumpet-call, and a man’s voice laughs, and there are no women -anywhere in sight or no sign of one anywhere, and everyone feels like -laughing and usually does. - -It’s pretty fine but I didn’t know how fine it was until I got to know -Tom Means and heard him talk about it all. - -At the time the thing happened of which I am trying to tell now Tom was -no longer with me. A week before his owner, Alfred Kreymborg, had taken -his horse Lumpy Joe over into the Ohio Fair Circuit and I saw no more of -Tom at the tracks. - -There was a story going about the stalls that Lumpy Joe, a big rangy -brown gelding, wasn’t really named Lumpy Joe at all, that he was a -ringer who had made a fast record out in Iowa and up through the -northwest country the year before, and that Kreymborg had picked him up -and had kept him under wraps all winter and had brought him over into -the Pennsylvania country under this new name and made a clean-up in the -books. - -I know nothing about that and never talked to Tom about it but anyway -he, Lumpy Joe and Kreymborg were all gone now. - -I suppose I’ll always remember those days, and Tom’s talk at night, and -before that in the early September evenings how we sat around in front -of the stalls, and Kreymborg sitting on an upturned feed box and pulling -at his long black mustache and some times humming a little ditty one -couldn’t catch the words of. It was something about a deep well and a -little grey squirrel crawling up the sides of it, and he never laughed -or smiled much but there was something in his solemn grey eyes, not -quite a twinkle, something more delicate than that. - -The others talked in low tones and Tom and I sat in silence. He never -did his best talking except when he and I were alone. - -For his sake—if he ever sees my story—I should mention that at the only -big track we ever visited, at Readville, Pennsylvania, we saw old Pop -Geers, the great racing driver, himself. His horses were at a place far -away across the tracks from where we were stabled. I suppose a man like -him was likely to get the choice of all the good places for his horses. - -We went over there one evening and stood about and there was Geers -himself, sitting before one of the stalls on a box tapping the ground -with a riding whip. They called him, around the tracks, “The silent man -from Tennessee” and he was silent—that night anyway. All we did was to -stand and look at him for maybe a half hour and then we went away and -that night Tom talked better than I had ever heard him. He said that the -ambition of his life was to wait until Pop Geers died and then write a -book about him, and to show in the book that there was at least one -American who never went nutty about getting rich or owning a big factory -of being any other kind of a hell of a fellow. “He’s satisfied I think -to sit around like that and wait until the big moments of his life come, -when he heads a fast one into the stretch and then, darn his soul, he -can give all of himself to the thing right in front of him,” Tom said, -and then he was so worked up he began to blubber. We were walking along -the fence on the inside of the tracks and it was dusk and, in some trees -nearby, some birds, just sparrows maybe, were making a chirping sound, -and you could hear insects singing and, where there was a little light, -off to the west between some trees, motes were dancing in the air. Tom -said that about Pop Gears, although I think he was thinking most about -something he wanted to be himself and wasn’t, and then he went and stood -by the fence and sort of blubbered and I began to blubber too, although -I didn’t know what about. - -But perhaps I did know, after all. I suppose Tom wanted to feel, when he -became a writer, like he thought old Pop must feel when his horse swung -around the upper turn, and there lay the stretch before him, and if he -was going to get his horse home in front he had to do it right then. -What Tom said was that any man had something in him that understands -about a thing like that but that no woman ever did except up in her -brain. He often got off things like that about women but I notice he -later married one of them just the same. - -But to get back to my knitting. After Tom had left, the stable I was -with kept drifting along through nice little Pennsylvania county seat -towns. My owner, a strange excitable kind of a man from over in Ohio, -who had lost a lot of money on horses but was always thinking he would -maybe get it all back in some big killing, had been playing in pretty -good luck that year. The horse I had, a tough little gelding, a five -year old, had been getting home in front pretty regular and so he took -some of his winnings and bought a three years old black pacing stallion -named “O, My Man.” My gelding was called “Pick-it-boy” because when he -was in a race and had got into the stretch my owner always got half wild -with excitement and shouted so you could hear him a mile and a half. -“Go, Pick-it-boy, Pick-it-boy, Pick-it-boy,” he kept shouting and so -when he had got hold of this good little gelding he had named him that. - -The gelding was a fast one, all right. As the boys at the tracks used to -say, he “picked ’em up sharp and set ’em down clean,” and he was what we -called a natural race horse, right up to all the speed he had, and -didn’t require much training. “All you got to do is to drop him down on -the track and he’ll go,” was what my owner was always saying to other -men, when he was bragging about his horse. - -And so you see, after Tom left, I hadn’t much to do evenings and then -the new stallion, the three year old, came on with a negro swipe named -Burt. - -I liked him fine and he liked me but not the same as Tom and me. We got -to be friends all right and I suppose Burt would have done things for -me, and maybe me for him, that Tom and me wouldn’t have done for each -other. - -But with a negro you couldn’t be close friends like you can with another -white man. There’s some reason you can’t understand but it’s true. -There’s been too much talk about the difference between whites and -blacks and you’re both shy, and anyway no use trying and I suppose Burt -and I both knew it and so I was pretty lonesome. - -Something happened to me that happened several times, when I was a young -fellow, that I have never exactly understood. Sometimes now I think it -was all because I had got to be almost a man and had never been with a -woman. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I can’t ask a woman. I’ve -tried it a good many times in my life but every time I’ve tried the same -thing happened. - -Of course, with Jessie now, it’s different, but at the time of which I’m -speaking Jessie was a long ways off and a good many things were to -happen to me before I got to her. - -Around a race track, as you may suppose, the fellows who are swipes and -drivers and strangers in the towns do not go without women. They don’t -have to. In any town there are always some fly girls will come around a -place like that. I suppose they think they are fooling with men who lead -romantic lives. Such girls will come along by the front of the stalls -where the race horses are and, if you look all right to them, they will -stop and make a fuss over your horse. They rub their little hands over -the horse’s nose and then is the time for you—if you aren’t a fellow -like me who can’t get up the nerve—then is the time for you to smile and -say, “Hello, kid,” and make a date with one of them for that evening up -town after supper. I couldn’t do that, although the Lord knows I tried -hard enough, often enough. A girl would come along alone, and she would -be a little thing and give me the eye, and I would try and try but -couldn’t say anything. Both Tom, and Burt afterwards, used to laugh at -me about it sometimes but what I think is that, had I been able to speak -up to one of them and had managed to make a date with her, nothing would -have come of it. We would probably have walked around the town and got -off together in the dark somewhere, where the town came to an end, and -then she would have had to knock me over with a club before it got any -further. - -And so there I was, having got used to Tom and our talks together, and -Burt of course had his own friends among the black men. I got lazy and -mopey and had a hard time doing my work. - -It was like this. Sometimes I would be sitting, perhaps under a tree in -the late afternoon when the races were over for the day and the crowds -had gone away. There were always a lot of other men and boys who hadn’t -any horses in the races that day and they would be standing or sitting -about in front of the stalls and talking. - -I would listen for a time to their talk and then their voices would seem -to go far away. The things I was looking at would go far away too. -Perhaps there would be a tree, not more than a hundred yards away, and -it would just come out of the ground and float away like a thistle. It -would get smaller and smaller, away off there in the sky, and then -suddenly—bang, it would be back where it belonged, in the ground, and I -would begin hearing the voices of the men talking again. - -When Tom was with me that summer the nights were splendid. We usually -walked about and talked until pretty late and then I crawled up into my -hole and went to sleep. Always out of Tom’s talk I got something that -stayed in my mind, after I was off by myself, curled up in my blanket. I -suppose he had a way of making pictures as he talked and the pictures -stayed by me as Burt was always saying pork chops did by him. “Give me -the old pork chops, they stick to the ribs,” Burt was always saying and -with the imagination it was always that way about Tom’s talks. He -started something inside you that went on and on, and your mind played -with it like walking about in a strange town and seeing the sights, and -you slipped off to sleep and had splendid dreams and woke up in the -morning feeling fine. - -And then he was gone and it wasn’t that way any more and I got into the -fix I have described. At night I kept seeing women’s bodies and women’s -lips and things in my dreams, and woke up in the morning feeling like -the old Harry. - -Burt was pretty good to me. He always helped me cool Pick-it-boy out -after a race and he did the things himself that take the most skill and -quickness, like getting the bandages on a horse’s leg smooth, and seeing -that every strap is setting just right, and every buckle drawn up to -just the right hole, before your horse goes out on the track for a heat. - -Burt knew there was something wrong with me and put himself out not to -let the boss know. When the boss was around he was always bragging about -me. “The brightest kid I’ve ever worked with around the tracks,” he -would say and grin, and that at a time when I wasn’t worth my salt. - -When you go out with the horses there is one job that always takes a lot -of time. In the late afternoon, after your horse has been in a race and -after you have washed him and rubbed him out, he has to be walked -slowly, sometimes for hours and hours, so he’ll cool out slowly and -won’t get muscle-bound. I got so I did that job for both our horses and -Burt did the more important things. It left him free to go talk or shoot -dice with the other niggers and I didn’t mind. I rather liked it and -after a hard race even the stallion, O My Man, was tame enough, even -when there were mares about. - -You walk and walk and walk, around a little circle, and your horse’s -head is right by your shoulder, and all around you the life of the place -you are in is going on, and in a queer way you get so you aren’t really -a part of it at all. Perhaps no one ever gets as I was then, except boys -that aren’t quite men yet and who like me have never been with girls or -women—to really be with them, up to the hilt, I mean. I used to wonder -if young girls got that way too before they married or did what we used -to call “go on the town.” - -If I remember it right though, I didn’t do much thinking then. Often I -would have forgotten supper if Burt hadn’t shouted at me and reminded -me, and sometimes he forgot and went off to town with one of the other -niggers and I did forget. - -There I was with the horse, going slow slow slow, around a circle that -way. The people were leaving the fair grounds now, some afoot, some -driving away to the farms in wagons and fords. Clouds of dust floated in -the air and over to the west, where the town was, maybe the sun was -going down, a red ball of fire through the dust. Only a few hours before -the crowd had been all filled with excitement and everyone shouting. Let -us suppose my horse had been in a race that afternoon and I had stood in -front of the grandstand with my horse blanket over my shoulder, -alongside of Burt perhaps, and when they came into the stretch my owner -began to call, in that queer high voice of his that seemed to float over -the top of all the shouting up in the grandstand. And his voice was -saying over and over, “Go, Pick-it-boy, Pick-it-boy, Pick-it-boy,” the -way he always did, and my heart was thumping so I could hardly breathe, -and Burt was leaning over and snapping his fingers and muttering, “Come, -little sweet. Come on home. Your Mama wants you. Come get your ’lasses -and bread, little Pick-it-boy.” - -Well, all that was over now and the voices of the people left around -were all low. And Pick-it-boy—I was leading him slowly around the little -ring, to cool him out slowly, as I’ve said,—he was different too. Maybe -he had pretty nearly broken his heart trying to get down to the wire in -front, or getting down there in front, and now everything inside him was -quiet and tired, as it was nearly all the time those days in me, except -in me tired but not quiet. - -You remember I’ve told you we always walked in a circle, round and round -and round. I guess something inside me got to going round and round and -round too. The sun did sometimes and the trees and the clouds of dust. I -had to think sometimes about putting down my feet so they went down in -the right place and I didn’t get to staggering like a drunken man. - -And a funny feeling came that it is going to be hard to describe. It had -something to do with the life in the horse and in me. Sometimes, these -late years, I’ve thought maybe negroes would understand what I’m trying -to talk about now better than any white man ever will. I mean something -about men and animals, something between them, something that can -perhaps only happen to a white man when he has slipped off his base a -little, as I suppose I had then. I think maybe a lot of horsey people -feel it sometimes though. It’s something like this, maybe—do you suppose -it could be that something we whites have got, and think such a lot of, -and are so proud about, isn’t much of any good after all? - -It’s something in us that wants to be big and grand and important maybe -and won’t let us just be, like a horse or a dog or a bird can. Let’s say -Pick-it-boy had won his race that day. He did that pretty often that -summer. Well, he was neither proud, like I would have been in his place, -or mean in one part of the inside of him either. He was just himself, -doing something with a kind of simplicity. That’s what Pick-it-boy was -like and I got to feeling it in him as I walked with him slowly in the -gathering darkness. I got inside him in some way I can’t explain and he -got inside me. Often we would stop walking for no cause and he would put -his nose up against my face. - -I wished he was a girl sometimes or that I was a girl and he was a man. -It’s an odd thing to say but it’s a fact. Being with him that way, so -long, and in such a quiet way, cured something in me a little. Often -after an evening like that I slept all right and did not have the kind -of dreams I’ve spoken about. - -But I wasn’t cured for very long and couldn’t get cured. My body seemed -all right and just as good as ever but there wasn’t no pep in me. - -Then the fall got later and later and we came to the last town we were -going to make before my owner laid his horses up for the winter, in his -home town over across the State line in Ohio, and the track was up on a -hill, or rather in a kind of high plain above the town. - -It wasn’t much of a place and the sheds were rather rickety and the -track bad, especially at the turns. As soon as we got to the place and -got stabled it began to rain and kept it up all week so the fair had to -be put off. - -As the purses weren’t very large a lot of the owners shipped right out -but our owner stayed. The fair owners guaranteed expenses, whether the -races were held the next week or not. - -And all week there wasn’t much of anything for Burt and me to do but -clean manure out of the stalls in the morning, watch for a chance when -the rain let up a little to jog the horses around the track in the mud -and then clean them off, blanket them and stick them back in their -stalls. - -It was the hardest time of all for me. Burt wasn’t so bad off as there -were a dozen or two blacks around and in the evening they went off to -town, got liquored-up a little and came home late, singing and talking, -even in the cold rain. - -And then one night I got mixed up in the thing I’m trying to tell you -about. - - * * * * * - -It was a Saturday evening and when I look back at it now it seems to me -everyone had left the tracks but just me. In the early evening swipe -after swipe came over to my stall and asked me if I was going to stick -around. When I said I was he would ask me to keep an eye out for him, -that nothing happened to his horse. “Just take a stroll down that way -now and then, eh, kid,” one of them would say, “I just want to run up to -town for an hour or two.” - -I would say “yes” to be sure, and so pretty soon it was dark as pitch up -there in that little ruined fairground and nothing living anywhere -around but the horses and me. - -I stood it as long as I could, walking here and there in the mud and -rain, and thinking all the time I wished I was someone else and not -myself. “If I were someone else,” I thought, “I wouldn’t be here but -down there in town with the others.” I saw myself going into saloons and -having drinks and later going off to a house maybe and getting myself a -woman. - -I got to thinking so much that, as I went stumbling around up there in -the darkness, it was as though what was in my mind was actually -happening. - -Only I wasn’t with some cheap woman, such as I would have found had I -had the nerve to do what I wanted but with such a woman as I thought -then I should never find in this world. She was slender and like a -flower and with something in her like a race horse too, something in her -like Pick-it-boy in the stretch, I guess. - -And I thought about her and thought about her until I couldn’t stand -thinking any more. “I’ll do something anyway,” I said to myself. - -So, although I had told all the swipes I would stay and watch their -horses, I went out of the fair grounds and down the hill a ways. I went -down until I came to a little low saloon, not in the main part of the -town itself but half way up the hillside. The saloon had once been a -residence, a farmhouse perhaps, but if it was ever a farmhouse I’m sure -the farmer who lived there and worked the land on that hillside hadn’t -made out very well. The country didn’t look like a farming country, such -as one sees all about the other county-seat towns we had been visiting -all through the late summer and fall. Everywhere you looked there were -stones sticking out of the ground and the trees mostly of the stubby, -stunted kind. It looked wild and untidy and ragged, that’s what I mean. -On the flat plain, up above, where the fairground was, there were a few -fields and pastures, and there were some sheep raised and in the field -right next to the tracks, on the furtherest side from town, on the back -stretch side, there had once been a slaughter-house, the ruins of which -were still standing. It hadn’t been used for quite some time but there -were bones of animals lying all about in the field, and there was a -smell coming out of the old building that would curl your hair. - -The horses hated the place, just as we swipes did, and in the morning -when we were jogging them around the track in the mud, to keep them in -racing condition, Pick-it-boy and O My Man both raised old Ned every -time we headed them up the back stretch and got near to where the old -slaughter-house stood. They would rear and fight at the bit, and go off -their stride and run until they got clear of the rotten smells, and -neither Burt nor I could make them stop it. “It’s a hell of a town down -there and this is a hell of a track for racing,” Burt kept saying. “If -they ever have their danged old fair someone’s going to get spilled and -maybe killed back here.” Whether they did or not I don’t know as I -didn’t stay for the fair, for reasons I’ll tell you pretty soon, but -Burt was speaking sense all right. A race horse isn’t like a human -being. He won’t stand for it to have to do his work in any rotten ugly -kind of a dump the way a man will, and he won’t stand for the smells a -man will either. - -But to get back to my story again. There I was, going down the hillside -in the darkness and the cold soaking rain and breaking my word to all -the others about staying up above and watching the horses. When I got to -the little saloon I decided to stop and have a drink or two. I’d found -out long before that about two drinks upset me so I was two-thirds piped -and couldn’t walk straight, but on that night I didn’t care a tinker’s -dam. - -So I went up a kind of path, out of the road, toward the front door of -the saloon. It was in what must have been the parlor of the place when -it was a farmhouse and there was a little front porch. - -I stopped before I opened the door and looked about a little. From where -I stood I could look right down into the main street of the town, like -being in a big city, like New York or Chicago, and looking down out of -the fifteenth floor of an office building into the street. - -The hillside was mighty steep and the road up had to wind and wind or no -one could ever have come up out of the town to their plagued old fair at -all. - -It wasn’t much of a town I saw—a main street with a lot of saloons and a -few stores, one or two dinky moving-picture places, a few fords, hardly -any women or girls in sight and a raft of men. I tried to think of the -girl I had been dreaming about, as I walked around in the mud and -darkness up at the fair ground, living in the place but I couldn’t make -it. It was like trying to think of Pick-it-boy getting himself worked up -to the state I was in then, and going into the ugly dump I was going -into. It couldn’t be done. - -All the same I knew the town wasn’t all right there in sight. There must -have been a good many of the kinds of houses Pennsylvania miners live in -back in the hills, or around a turn in the valley in which the main -street stood. - -What I suppose is that, it being Saturday night and raining, the women -and kids had all stayed at home and only the men were out, intending to -get themselves liquored-up. I’ve been in some other mining towns since -and if I was a miner and had to live in one of them, or in one of the -houses they live in with their women and kids, I’d get out and liquor -myself up too. - -So there I stood looking, and as sick as a dog inside myself, and as wet -and cold as a rat in a sewer pipe. I could see the mass of dark figures -moving about down below, and beyond the main street there was a river -that made a sound you could hear distinctly, even up where I was, and -over beyond the river were some railroad tracks with switch engines -going up and down. I suppose they had something to do with the mines in -which the men of the town worked. Anyway, as I stood watching and -listening there was, now and then, a sound like thunder rolling down the -sky, and I suppose that was a lot of coal, maybe a whole carload, being -let down plunk into a coal car. - -And then besides there was, on the side of a hill far away, a long row -of coke ovens. They had little doors, through which the light from the -fire within leaked out and as they were set closely, side by side, they -looked like the teeth of some big man-eating giant lying and waiting -over there in the hills. - -The sight of it all, even the sight of the kind of hellholes men are -satisfied to go on living in, gave me the fantods and the shivers right -down in my liver, and on that night I guess I had in me a kind of -contempt for all men, including myself, that I’ve never had so -thoroughly since. Come right down to it, I suppose women aren’t so much -to blame as men. They aren’t running the show. - - * * * * * - -Then I pushed open the door and went into the saloon. There were about a -dozen men, miners I suppose, playing cards at tables in a little long -dirty room, with a bar at one side of it, and with a big red-faced man -with a mustache standing back of the bar. - -The place smelled, as such places do where men hang around who have -worked and sweated in their clothes and perhaps slept in them too, and -have never had them washed but have just kept on wearing them. I guess -you know what I mean if you’ve ever been in a city. You smell that smell -in a city, in street-cars on rainy nights when a lot of factory hands -get on. I got pretty used to that smell when I was a tramp and pretty -sick of it too. - -And so I was in the place now, with a glass of whisky in my hand, and I -thought all the miners were staring at me, which they weren’t at all, -but I thought they were and so I felt just the same as though they had -been. And then I looked up and saw my own face in the old cracked -looking-glass back of the bar. If the miners had been staring, or -laughing at me, I wouldn’t have wondered when I saw what I looked like. - -It—I mean my own face—was white and pasty-looking, and for some reason, -I can’t tell exactly why, it wasn’t my own face at all. It’s a funny -business I’m trying to tell you about and I know what you may be -thinking of me as well as you do, so you needn’t suppose I’m innocent or -ashamed. I’m only wondering. I’ve thought about it a lot since and I -can’t make it out. I know I was never that way before that night and I -know I’ve never been that way since. Maybe it was lonesomeness, just -lonesomeness, gone on in me too long. I’ve often wondered if women -generally are lonesomer than men. - -The point is that the face I saw in the looking-glass back of that bar, -when I looked up from my glass of whisky that evening, wasn’t my own -face at all but the face of a woman. It was a girl’s face, that’s what I -mean. That’s what it was. It was a girl’s face, and a lonesome and -scared girl too. She was just a kid at that. - -When I saw that the glass of whisky came pretty near falling out of my -hand but I gulped it down, put a dollar on the bar, and called for -another. “I’ve got to be careful here—I’m up against something new,” I -said to myself. “If any of these men in here get on to me there’s going -to be trouble.” When I had got the second drink in me I called for a -third and I thought, “When I get this third drink down I’ll get out of -here and back up the hill to the fair ground before I make a fool of -myself and begin to get drunk.” - -And then, while I was thinking and drinking my third glass of whisky, -the men in the room began to laugh and of course I thought they were -laughing at me. But they weren’t. No one in the place had really paid -any attention to me. - -What they were laughing at was a man who had just come in at the door. -I’d never seen such a fellow. He was a huge big man, with red hair, that -stuck straight up like bristles out of his head, and he had a red-haired -kid in his arms. The kid was just like himself, big, I mean, for his -age, and with the same kind of stiff red hair. - -He came and set the kid up on the bar, close beside me, and called for a -glass of whisky for himself and all the men in the room began to shout -and laugh at him and his kid. Only they didn’t shout and laugh when he -was looking, so he could tell which ones did it, but did all their -shouting and laughing when his head was turned the other way. They kept -calling him “cracked.” “The crack is getting wider in the old tin pan,” -someone sang and then they all laughed. - -I’m puzzled you see, just how to make you feel as I felt that night. I -suppose, having undertaken to write this story, that’s what I’m up -against, trying to do that. I’m not claiming to be able to inform you or -to do you any good. I’m just trying to make you understand some things -about me, as I would like to understand some things about you, or -anyone, if I had the chance. Anyway the whole blamed thing, the thing -that went on I mean in that little saloon on that rainy Saturday night, -wasn’t like anything quite real. I’ve already told you how I had looked -into the glass back of the bar and had seen there, not my own face but -the face of a scared young girl. Well, the men, the miners, sitting at -the tables in the half dark room, the red-faced bartender, the unholy -looking big man who had come in and his queer-looking kid, now sitting -on the bar—all of them were like characters in some play, not like real -people at all. - -There was myself, that wasn’t myself—and I’m not any fairy. Anyone who -has ever known me knows better than that. - -And then there was the man who had come in. There was a feeling came out -of him that wasn’t like the feeling you get from a man at all. It was -more like the feeling you get maybe from a horse, only his eyes weren’t -like a horse’s eyes. Horses’ eyes have a kind of calm something in them -and his hadn’t. If you’ve ever carried a lantern through a wood at -night, going along a path, and then suddenly you felt something funny in -the air and stopped, and there ahead of you somewhere were the eyes of -some little animal, gleaming out at you from a dead wall of darkness—The -eyes shine big and quiet but there is a point right in the centre of -each, where there is something dancing and wavering. You aren’t afraid -the little animal will jump at you, you are afraid the little eyes will -jump at you—that’s what’s the matter with you. - -Only of course a horse, when you go into his stall at night, or a little -animal you had disturbed in a wood that way, wouldn’t be talking and the -big man who had come in there with his kid was talking. He kept talking -all the time, saying something under his breath, as they say, and I -could only understand now and then a few words. It was his talking made -him kind of terrible. His eyes said one thing and his lips another. They -didn’t seem to get together, as though they belonged to the same person. - -For one thing the man was too big. There was about him an unnatural -bigness. It was in his hands, his arms, his shoulders, his body, his -head, a bigness like you might see in trees and bushes in a tropical -country perhaps. I’ve never been in a tropical country but I’ve seen -pictures. Only his eyes were small. In his big head they looked like the -eyes of a bird. And I remember that his lips were thick, like negroes’ -lips. - -He paid no attention to me or to the others in the room but kept on -muttering to himself, or to the kid sitting on the bar—I couldn’t tell -to which. - -First he had one drink and then, quick, another. I stood staring at him -and thinking—a jumble of thoughts, I suppose. - -What I must have been thinking was something like this. “Well he’s one -of the kind you are always seeing about towns,” I thought. I meant he -was one of the cracked kind. In almost any small town you go to you will -find one, and sometimes two or three cracked people, walking around. -They go through the street, muttering to themselves and people generally -are cruel to them. Their own folks make a bluff at being kind, but they -aren’t really, and the others in the town, men and boys, like to tease -them. They send such a fellow, the mild silly kind, on some fool errand -after a round square or a dozen post-holes or tie cards on his back -saying “Kick me,” or something like that, and then carry on and laugh as -though they had done something funny. - -And so there was this cracked one in that saloon and I could see the men -in there wanted to have some fun putting up some kind of horseplay on -him, but they didn’t quite dare. He wasn’t one of the mild kind, that -was a cinch. I kept looking at the man and at his kid, and then up at -that strange unreal reflection of myself in the cracked looking-glass -back of the bar. “Rats, rats, digging in the ground—miners are rats, -little jack-rabbit,” I heard him say to his solemn-faced kid. I guess, -after all, maybe he wasn’t so cracked. - -The kid sitting on the bar kept blinking at his father, like an owl -caught out in the daylight, and now the father was having another glass -of whisky. He drank six glasses, one right after the other, and it was -cheap ten-cent stuff. He must have had cast-iron insides all right. - -Of the men in the room there were two or three (maybe they were really -more scared than the others so had to put up a bluff of bravery by -showing off) who kept laughing and making funny cracks about the big man -and his kid and there was one fellow was the worst of the bunch. I’ll -never forget that fellow because of his looks and what happened to him -afterwards. - -He was one of the showing-off kind all right, and he was the one that -had started the song about the crack getting bigger in the old tin pan. -He sang it two or three times, and then he grew bolder and got up and -began walking up and down the room singing it over and over. He was a -showy kind of man with a fancy vest, on which there were brown tobacco -spots, and he wore glasses. Every time he made some crack he thought was -funny, he winked at the others as though to say, “You see me. I’m not -afraid of this big fellow,” and then the others laughed. - -The proprietor of the place must have known what was going on, and the -danger in it, because he kept leaning over the bar and saying, “Shush, -now quit it,” to the showy-off man, but it didn’t do any good. The -fellow kept prancing like a turkey-cock and he put his hat on one side -of his head and stopped right back of the big man and sang that song -about the crack in the old tin pan. He was one of the kind you can’t -shush until they get their blocks knocked off, and it didn’t take him -long to come to it that time anyhow. - -Because the big fellow just kept on muttering to his kid and drinking -his whisky, as though he hadn’t heard anything, and then suddenly he -turned and his big hand flashed out and he grabbed, not the fellow who -had been showing off, but me. With just a sweep of his arm he brought me -up against his big body. Then he shoved me over with my breast jammed -against the bar and looking right into his kid’s face and he said, “Now -you watch him, and if you let him fall I’ll kill you,” in just quiet -ordinary tones as though he was saying “good morning” to some neighbor. - -Then the kid leaned over and threw his arms around my head, and in spite -of that I did manage to screw my head around enough to see what -happened. - -It was a sight I’ll never forget. The big fellow had whirled around, and -he had the showy-off man by the shoulder now, and the fellow’s face was -a sight. The big man must have had some reputation as a bad man in the -town, even though he was cracked for the man with the fancy vest had his -mouth open now, and his hat had fallen off his head, and he was silent -and scared. Once, when I was a tramp, I saw a kid killed by a train. The -kid was walking on the rail and showing off before some other kids, by -letting them see how close he could let an engine come to him before he -got out of the way. And the engine was whistling and a woman, over on -the porch of a house nearby, was jumping up and down and screaming, and -the kid let the engine get nearer and nearer, wanting more and more to -show off, and then he stumbled and fell. God, I’ll never forget the look -on his face, in just the second before he got hit and killed, and now, -there in that saloon, was the same terrible look on another face. - -I closed my eyes for a moment and was sick all through me and then, when -I opened my eyes, the big man’s fist was just coming down in the other -man’s face. The one blow knocked him cold and he fell down like a beast -hit with an axe. - -And then the most terrible thing of all happened. The big man had on -heavy boots, and he raised one of them and brought it down on the other -man’s shoulder, as he lay white and groaning on the floor. I could hear -the bones crunch and it made me so sick I could hardly stand up, but I -had to stand up and hold on to that kid or I knew it would be my turn -next. - -Because the big fellow didn’t seem excited or anything, but kept on -muttering to himself as he had been doing when he was standing -peacefully by the bar drinking his whisky, and now he had raised his -foot again, and maybe this time he would bring it down in the other -man’s face and, “just eliminate his map for keeps,” as sports and -prize-fighters sometimes say. I trembled, like I was having a chill, but -thank God at that moment the kid, who had his arms around me and one -hand clinging to my nose, so that there were the marks of his -finger-nails on it the next morning, at that moment the kid, thank God, -began to howl, and his father didn’t bother any more with the man on the -floor but turned around, knocked me aside, and taking the kid in his -arms tramped out of that place, muttering to himself as he had been -doing ever since he came in. - -I went out too but I didn’t prance out with any dignity, I’ll tell you -that. I slunk out like a thief or a coward, which perhaps I am, partly -anyhow. - -And so there I was, outside there in the darkness, and it was as cold -and wet and black and Godforsaken a night as any man ever saw. I was so -sick at the thought of human beings that night I could have vomited to -think of them at all. For a while I just stumbled along in the mud of -the road, going up the hill, back to the fair ground, and then, almost -before I knew where I was, I found myself in the stall with Pick-it-boy. - -That was one of the best and sweetest feelings I’ve ever had in my whole -life, being in that warm stall alone with that horse that night. I had -told the other swipes that I would go up and down the row of stalls now -and then and have an eye on the other horses, but I had altogether -forgotten my promise now. I went and stood with my back against the side -of the stall, thinking how mean and low and all balled-up and twisted-up -human beings can become, and how the best of them are likely to get that -way any time, just because they are human beings and not simple and -clear in their minds, and inside themselves, as animals are, maybe. - -Perhaps you know how a person feels at such a moment. There are things -you think of, odd little things you had thought you had forgotten. Once, -when you were a kid, you were with your father, and he was all dressed -up, as for a funeral or Fourth of July, and was walking along a street -holding your hand. And you were going past a railroad station, and there -was a woman standing. She was a stranger in your town and was dressed as -you had never seen a woman dressed before, and never thought you would -see one, looking so nice. Long afterwards you knew that was because she -had lovely taste in clothes, such as so few women have really, but then -you thought she must be a queen. You had read about queens in fairy -stories and the thoughts of them thrilled you. What lovely eyes the -strange lady had and what beautiful rings she wore on her fingers. - -Then your father came out, from being in the railroad station, maybe to -set his watch by the station clock, and took you by the hand and he and -the woman smiled at each other, in an embarrassed kind of way, and you -kept looking longingly back at her, and when you were out of her hearing -you asked your father if she really were a queen. And it may be that -your father was one who wasn’t so very hot on democracy and a free -country and talked-up bunk about a free citizenry, and he said he hoped -she was a queen, and maybe, for all he knew, she was. - -Or maybe, when you get jammed up as I was that night, and can’t get -things clear about yourself or other people and why you are alive, or -for that matter why anyone you can think about is alive, you think, not -of people at all but of other things you have seen and felt—like walking -along a road in the snow in the winter, perhaps out in Iowa, and hearing -soft warm sounds in a barn close to the road, or of another time when -you were on a hill and the sun was going down and the sky suddenly -became a great soft-colored bowl, all glowing like a jewel-handled bowl, -a great queen in some far away mighty kingdom might have put on a vast -table out under the tree, once a year, when she invited all her loyal -and loving subjects to come and dine with her. - -I can’t, of course, figure out what you try to think about when you are -as desolate as I was that night. Maybe you are like me and inclined to -think of women, and maybe you are like a man I met once, on the road, -who told me that when he was up against it he never thought of anything -but grub and a big nice clean warm bed to sleep in. “I don’t care about -anything else and I don’t ever let myself think of anything else,” he -said. “If I was like you and went to thinking about women sometime I’d -find myself hooked up to some skirt, and she’d have the old double cross -on me, and the rest of my life maybe I’d be working in some factory for -her and her kids.” - -As I say, there I was anyway, up there alone with that horse in that -warm stall in that dark lonesome fair ground and I had that feeling -about being sick at the thought of human beings and what they could be -like. - -Well, suddenly I got again the queer feeling I’d had about him once or -twice before, I mean the feeling about our understanding each other in -some way I can’t explain. - -So having it again I went over to where he stood and began running my -hands all over his body, just because I loved the feel of him and as -sometimes, to tell the plain truth, I’ve felt about touching with my -hands the body of a woman I’ve seen and who I thought was lovely too. I -ran my hands over his head and neck and then down over his hard firm -round body and then over his flanks and down his legs. His flanks -quivered a little I remember and once he turned his head and stuck his -cold nose down along my neck and nipped my shoulder a little, in a soft -playful way. It hurt a little but I didn’t care. - -So then I crawled up through a hole into the loft above thinking that -night was over anyway and glad of it, but it wasn’t, not by a long -sight. - -As my clothes were all soaking wet and as we race track swipes didn’t -own any such things as night-gowns or pajamas I had to go to bed naked, -of course. - -But we had plenty of horse blankets and so I tucked myself in between a -pile of them and tried not to think any more that night. The being with -Pick-it-boy and having him close right under me that way made me feel a -little better. - -Then I was sound asleep and dreaming and—bang like being hit with a club -by someone who has sneaked up behind you—I got another wallop. - -What I suppose is that, being upset the way I was, I had forgotten to -bolt the door to Pick-it-boy’s stall down below and two negro men had -come in there, thinking they were in their own place, and had climbed up -through the hole where I was. They were half lit up but not what you -might call dead drunk, and I suppose they were up against something a -couple of white swipes, who had some money in their pockets, wouldn’t -have been up against. - -What I mean is that a couple of white swipes, having liquored themselves -up and being down there in the town on a bat, if they wanted a woman or -a couple of women would have been able to find them. There is always a -few women of that kind can be found around any town I’ve ever seen or -heard of, and of course a bar tender would have given them the tip where -to go. - -But a negro, up there in that country, where there aren’t any, or anyway -mighty few negro women, wouldn’t know what to do when he felt that way -and would be up against it. - -It’s so always. Burt and several other negroes I’ve known pretty well -have talked to me about it, lots of times. You take now a young negro -man—not a race track swipe or a tramp or any other low-down kind of a -fellow—but, let us say, one who has been to college, and has behaved -himself and tried to be a good man, the best he could, and be clean, as -they say. He isn’t any better off, is he? If he has made himself some -money and wants to go sit in a swell restaurant, or go to hear some good -music, or see a good play at the theatre, he gets what we used to call -on the tracks, “the messy end of the dung fork,” doesn’t he? - -And even in such a low-down place as what people call a “bad house” it’s -the same way. The white swipes and others can go into a place where they -have negro women fast enough, and they do it too, but you let a negro -swipe try it the other way around and see how he comes out. - -You see, I can think this whole thing out fairly now, sitting here in my -own house and writing, and with my wife Jessie in the kitchen making a -pie or something, and I can show just how the two negro men who came -into that loft, where I was asleep, were justified in what they did, and -I can preach about how the negroes are up against it in this country, -like a daisy, but I tell you what, I didn’t think things out that way -that night. - -For, you understand, what they thought, they being half liquored-up, and -when one of them had jerked the blankets off me, was that I was a woman. -One of them carried a lantern but it was smoky and dirty and didn’t give -out much light. So they must have figured it out—my body being pretty -white and slender then, like a young girl’s body I suppose—that some -white swipe had brought me up there. The kind of girls around a town -that will come with a swipe to a race track on a rainy night aren’t very -fancy females but you’ll find that kind in the towns all right. I’ve -seen many a one in my day. - -And so, I figure, these two big buck niggers, being piped that way, just -made up their minds they would snatch me away from the white swipe who -had brought me out there, and who had left me lying carelessly around. - -“Jes’ you lie still honey. We ain’t gwine hurt you none,” one of them -said, with a little chuckling laugh that had something in it besides a -laugh, too. It was the kind of laugh that gives you the shivers. - -The devil of it was I couldn’t say anything, not even a word. Why I -couldn’t yell out and say “What the hell,” and just kid them a little -and shoo them out of there I don’t know, but I couldn’t. I tried and -tried so that my throat hurt but I didn’t say a word. I just lay there -staring at them. - -It was a mixed-up night. I’ve never gone through another night like it. - -Was I scared? Lord Almighty, I’ll tell you what, I was scared. - -Because the two big black faces were leaning right over me now, and I -could feel their liquored-up breaths on my cheeks, and their eyes were -shining in the dim light from that smoky lantern, and right in the -centre of their eyes was that dancing flickering light I’ve told you -about your seeing in the eyes of wild animals, when you were carrying a -lantern through the woods at night. - -It was a puzzler! All my life, you see—me never having had any sisters, -and at that time never having had a sweetheart either—I had been -dreaming and thinking about women, and I suppose I’d always been -dreaming about a pure innocent one, for myself, made for me by God, -maybe. Men are that way. No matter how big they talk about “let the -women go hang,” they’ve always got that notion tucked away inside -themselves, somewhere. It’s a kind of chesty man’s notion, I suppose, -but they’ve got it and the kind of up-and-coming women we have nowdays -who are always saying, “I’m as good as a man and will do what the men -do,” are on the wrong trail if they really ever want to, what you might -say “hog-tie” a fellow of their own. - -So I had invented a kind of princess, with black hair and a slender -willowy body to dream about. And I thought of her as being shy and -afraid to ever tell anything she really felt to anyone but just me. I -suppose I fancied that if I ever found such a woman in the flesh I would -be the strong sure one and she the timid shrinking one. - -And now I was that woman, or something like her, myself. - -I gave a kind of wriggle, like a fish, you have just taken off the hook. -What I did next wasn’t a thought-out thing. I was caught and I squirmed, -that’s all. - -The two niggers both jumped at me but somehow—the lantern having been -kicked over and having gone out the first move they made—well in some -way, when they both lunged at me they missed. - -As good luck would have it my feet found the hole, where you put hay -down to the horse in the stall below, and through which we crawled up -when it was time to go to bed in our blankets up in the hay, and down I -slid, not bothering to try to find the ladder with my feet but just -letting myself go. - -In less than a second I was out of doors in the dark and the rain and -the two blacks were down the hole and out the door of the stall after -me. - -How long or how far they really followed me I suppose I’ll never know. -It was black dark and raining hard now and a roaring wind had begun to -blow. Of course, my body being white, it must have made some kind of a -faint streak in the darkness as I ran, and anyway I thought they could -see me and I knew I couldn’t see them and that made my terror ten times -worse. Every minute I thought they would grab me. - -You know how it is when a person is all upset and full of terror as I -was. I suppose maybe the two niggers followed me for a while, running -across the muddy race track and into the grove of trees that grew in the -oval inside the track, but likely enough, after just a few minutes, they -gave up the chase and went back, found their own place and went to -sleep. They were liquored-up, as I’ve said, and maybe partly funning -too. - -But I didn’t know that, if they were. As I ran I kept hearing sounds, -sounds made by the rain coming down through the dead old leaves left on -the trees and by the wind blowing, and it may be that the sound that -scared me most of all was my own bare feet stepping on a dead branch and -breaking it or something like that. - -There was something strange and scary, a steady sound, like a heavy man -running and breathing hard, right at my shoulder. It may have been my -own breath, coming quick and fast. And I thought I heard that chuckling -laugh I’d heard up in the loft, the laugh that sent the shivers right -down through me. Of course every tree I came close to looked like a man -standing there, ready to grab me, and I kept dodging and going—bang—into -other trees. My shoulders kept knocking against trees in that way and -the skin was all knocked off, and every time it happened I thought a big -black hand had come down and clutched at me and was tearing my flesh. - -How long it went on I don’t know, maybe an hour, maybe five minutes. But -anyway the darkness didn’t let up, and the terror didn’t let up, and I -couldn’t, to save my life, scream or make any sound. - -Just why I couldn’t I don’t know. Could it be because at the time I was -a woman, while at the same time I wasn’t a woman? It may be that I was -too ashamed of having turned into a girl and being afraid of a man to -make any sound. I don’t know about that. It’s over my head. - -But anyway I couldn’t make a sound. I tried and tried and my throat hurt -from trying and no sound came. - -And then, after a long time, or what seemed like a long time, I got out -from among the trees inside the track and was on the track itself again. -I thought the two black men were still after me, you understand, and I -ran like a madman. - -Of course, running along the track that way, it must have been up the -back stretch, I came after a time to where the old slaughter-house -stood, in that field, beside the track. I knew it by its ungodly smell, -scared as I was. Then, in some way, I managed to get over the high old -fairground fence and was in the field, where the slaughter-house was. - -All the time I was trying to yell or scream, or be sensible and tell -those two black men that I was a man and not a woman, but I couldn’t -make it. And then I heard a sound like a board cracking or breaking in -the fence and thought they were still after me. - -So I kept on running like a crazy man, in the field, and just then I -stumbled and fell over something. I’ve told you how the old -slaughter-house field was filled with bones, that had been lying there a -long time and had all been washed white. There were heads of sheep and -cows and all kinds of things. - -And when I fell and pitched forward I fell right into the midst of -something, still and cold and white. - -It was probably the skeleton of a horse lying there. In small towns like -that, they take an old worn-out horse, that has died, and haul him off -to some field outside of town and skin him for the hide, that they can -sell for a dollar or two. It doesn’t make any difference what the horse -has been, that’s the way he usually ends up. Maybe even Pick-it-boy, or -O My Man, or a lot of other good fast ones I’ve seen and known have -ended that way by this time. - -And so I think it was the bones of a horse lying there and he must have -been lying on his back. The birds and wild animals had picked all his -flesh away and the rain had washed his bones clean. - -Anyway I fell and pitched forward and my side got cut pretty deep and my -hands clutched at something. I had fallen right in between the ribs of -the horse and they seemed to wrap themselves around me close. And my -hands, clutching upwards, had got hold of the cheeks of that dead horse -and the bones of his cheeks were cold as ice with the rain washing over -them. White bones wrapped around me and white bones in my hands. - -There was a new terror now that seemed to go down to the very bottom of -me, to the bottom of the inside of me, I mean. It shook me like I have -seen a rat in a barn shaken by a dog. It was a terror like a big wave -that hits you when you are walking on a seashore, maybe. You see it -coming and you try to run and get away but when you start to run inshore -there is a stone cliff you can’t climb. So the wave comes high as a -mountain, and there it is, right in front of you and nothing in all this -world can stop it. And now it had knocked you down and rolled and -tumbled you over and over and washed you clean, clean, but dead maybe. - -And that’s the way I felt—I seemed to myself dead with blind terror, it -was a feeling like the finger of God running down your back and burning -you clean, I mean. - -It burned all that silly nonsense about being a girl right out of me. - -I screamed at last and the spell that was on me was broken. I’ll bet the -scream I let out of me could have been heard a mile and a half. - -Right away I felt better and crawled out from among the pile of bones, -and then I stood on my own feet again and I wasn’t a woman, or a young -girl any more but a man and my own self, and as far as I know I’ve been -that way ever since. Even the black night seemed warm and alive now, -like a mother might be to a kid in the dark. - -Only I couldn’t go back to the race track because I was blubbering and -crying and was ashamed of myself and of what a fool I had made of -myself. Someone might see me and I couldn’t stand that, not at that -moment. - -So I went across the field, walking now, not running like a crazy man, -and pretty soon I came to a fence and crawled over and got into another -field, in which there was a straw stack, I just happened to find in the -pitch darkness. - -The straw stack had been there a long time and some sheep had nibbled -away at it until they had made a pretty deep hole, like a cave, in the -side of it. I found the hole and crawled in and there were some sheep in -there, about a dozen of them. - -When I came in, creeping on my hands and knees, they didn’t make much -fuss, just stirred around a little and then settled down. - -So I settled down amongst them too. They were warm and gentle and kind, -like Pick-it-boy, and being in there with them made me feel better than -I would have felt being with any human person I knew at that time. - -So I settled down and slept after a while, and when I woke up it was -daylight and not very cold and the rain was over. The clouds were -breaking away from the sky now and maybe there would be a fair the next -week but if there was I knew I wouldn’t be there to see it. - -Because what I expected to happen did happen. I had to go back across -the fields and the fairground to the place where my clothes were, right -in the broad daylight, and me stark naked, and of course I knew someone -would be up and would raise a shout, and every swipe and every driver -would stick his head out and would whoop with laughter. - -And there would be a thousand questions asked, and I would be too mad -and too ashamed to answer, and would perhaps begin to blubber, and that -would make me more ashamed than ever. - -It all turned out just as I expected, except that when the noise and the -shouts of laughter were going it the loudest, Burt came out of the stall -where O My Man was kept, and when he saw me he didn’t know what was the -matter but he knew something was up that wasn’t on the square and for -which I wasn’t to blame. - -So he got so all-fired mad he couldn’t speak for a minute, and then he -grabbed a pitchfork and began prancing up and down before the other -stalls, giving that gang of swipes and drivers such a royal old -dressing-down as you never heard. You should have heard him sling -language. It was grand to hear. - -And while he was doing it I sneaked up into the loft, blubbering because -I was so pleased and happy to hear him swear that way, and I got my wet -clothes on quick and got down, and gave Pick-it-boy a good-bye kiss on -the cheek and lit out. - -The last I saw of all that part of my life was Burt, still going it, and -yelling out for the man who had put up a trick on me to come out and get -what was coming to him. He had the pitchfork in his hand and was -swinging it around, and every now and then he would make a kind of lunge -at a tree or something, he was so mad through, and there was no one else -in sight at all. And Burt didn’t even see me cutting out along the fence -through a gate and down the hill and out of the race horse and the tramp -life for the rest of my days. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - MILK BOTTLES - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - MILK BOTTLES - - -I LIVED, during that summer, in a large room on the top floor of an old -house on the North Side in Chicago. It was August and the night was hot. -Until after midnight I sat—the sweat trickling down my back—under a -lamp, laboring to feel my way into the lives of the fanciful people who -were trying also to live in the tale on which I was at work. - -It was a hopeless affair. - -I became involved in the efforts of the shadowy people and they in turn -became involved in the fact of the hot uncomfortable room, in the fact -that, although it was what the farmers of the Middle West call “good -corn-growing weather” it was plain hell to be alive in Chicago. Hand in -hand the shadowy people of my fanciful world and myself groped our way -through a forest in which the leaves had all been burned off the trees. -The hot ground burned the shoes off our feet. We were striving to make -our way through the forest and into some cool beautiful city. The fact -is, as you will clearly understand, I was a little off my head. - -When I gave up the struggle and got to my feet the chairs in the room -danced about. They also were running aimlessly through a burning land -and striving to reach some mythical city. “I’d better get out of here -and go for a walk or go jump into the lake and cool myself off,” I -thought. - -I went down out of my room and into the street. On a lower floor of the -house lived two burlesque actresses who had just come in from their -evening’s work and who now sat in their room talking. As I reached the -street something heavy whirled past my head and broke on the stone -pavement. A white liquid spurted over my clothes and the voice of one of -the actresses could be heard coming from the one lighted room of the -house. “Oh, hell! We live such damned lives, we do, and we work in such -a town! A dog is better off! And now they are going to take booze away -from us too! I come home from working in that hot theatre on a hot night -like this and what do I see—a half-filled bottle of spoiled milk -standing on a window sill! - -“I won’t stand it! I got to smash everything!” she cried. - -I walked eastward from my house. From the northwestern end of the city -great hordes of men women and children had come to spend the night out -of doors, by the shore of the lake. It was stifling hot there too and -the air was heavy with a sense of struggle. On a few hundred acres of -flat land, that had formerly been a swamp, some two million people were -fighting for the peace and quiet of sleep and not getting it. Out of the -half darkness, beyond the little strip of park land at the water’s edge, -the huge empty houses of Chicago’s fashionable folk made a greyish-blue -blot against the sky. “Thank the gods,” I thought, “there are some -people who can get out of here, who can go to the mountains or the -seashore or to Europe.” I stumbled in the half darkness over the legs of -a woman who was lying and trying to sleep on the grass. A baby lay -beside her and when she sat up it began to cry. I muttered an apology -and stepped aside and as I did so my foot struck a half-filled milk -bottle and I knocked it over, the milk running out on the grass. “Oh, -I’m sorry. Please forgive me,” I cried. “Never mind,” the woman -answered, “the milk is sour.” - - * * * * * - -He is a tall stoop-shouldered man with prematurely greyed hair and works -as a copy writer in an advertising agency in Chicago—an agency where I -also have sometimes been employed—and on that night in August I met him, -walking with quick eager strides along the shore of the lake and past -the tired petulant people. He did not see me at first and I wondered at -the evidence of life in him when everyone else seemed half dead; but a -street lamp hanging over a nearby roadway threw its light down upon my -face and he pounced. “Here you, come up to my place,” he cried sharply. -“I’ve got something to show you. I was on my way down to see you. That’s -where I was going,” he lied as he hurried me along. - -We went to his apartment on a street leading back from the lake and the -park. German, Polish, Italian and Jewish families, equipped with soiled -blankets and the ever-present half-filled bottles of milk, had come -prepared to spend the night out of doors; but the American families in -the crowd were giving up the struggle to find a cool spot and a little -stream of them trickled along the sidewalks, going back to hot beds in -the hot houses. - -It was past one o’clock and my friend’s apartment was disorderly as well -as hot. He explained that his wife, with their two children, had gone -home to visit her mother on a farm near Springfield, Illinois. - -We took off our coats and sat down. My friend’s thin cheeks were flushed -and his eyes shone. “You know—well—you see,” he began and then hesitated -and laughed like an embarrassed schoolboy. “Well now,” he began again, -“I’ve long been wanting to write something real, something besides -advertisements. I suppose I’m silly but that’s the way I am. It’s been -my dream to write something stirring and big. I suppose it’s the dream -of a lot of advertising writers, eh? Now look here—don’t you go -laughing. I think I’ve done it.” - -He explained that he had written something concerning Chicago, the -capital and heart, as he said, of the whole Central West. He grew angry. -“People come here from the East or from farms, or from little holes of -towns like I came from and they think it smart to run Chicago into the -ground,” he declared. “I thought I’d show ’em up,” he added, jumping up -and walking nervously about the room. - -He handed me many sheets of paper covered with hastily scrawled words, -but I protested and asked him to read it aloud. He did, standing with -his face turned away from me. There was a quiver in his voice. The thing -he had written concerned some mythical town I had never seen. He called -it Chicago, but in the same breath spoke of great streets flaming with -color, ghostlike buildings flung up into night skies and a river, -running down a path of gold into the boundless West. It was the city, I -told myself, I and the people of my story had been trying to find -earlier on that same evening, when because of the heat I went a little -off my head and could not work any more. The people of the city, he had -written about, were a cool-headed, brave people, marching forward to -some spiritual triumph, the promise of which was inherent in the -physical aspects of the town. - -Now I am one who, by the careful cultivation of certain traits in my -character, have succeeded in building up the more brutal side of my -nature, but I cannot knock women and children down in order to get -aboard Chicago street-cars, nor can I tell an author to his face that I -think his work is rotten. - -“You’re all right, Ed. You’re great. You’ve knocked out a regular -soc-dolager of a masterpiece here. Why you sound as good as Henry -Mencken writing about Chicago as the literary centre of America, and -you’ve lived in Chicago and he never did. The only thing I can see -you’ve missed is a little something about the stockyards, and you can -put that in later,” I added and prepared to depart. - -“What’s this?” I asked, picking up a half-dozen sheets of paper that lay -on the floor by my chair. I read it eagerly. And when I had finished -reading it he stammered and apologized and then, stepping across the -room, jerked the sheets out of my hand and threw them out at an open -window. “I wish you hadn’t seen that. It’s something else I wrote about -Chicago,” he explained. He was flustered. - -“You see the night was so hot, and, down at the office, I had to write a -condensed-milk advertisement, just as I was sneaking away to come home -and work on this other thing, and the street-car was so crowded and the -people stank so, and when I finally got home here—the wife being -gone—the place was a mess. Well, I couldn’t write and I was sore. It’s -been my chance, you see, the wife and kids being gone and the house -being quiet. I went for a walk. I think I went a little off my head. -Then I came home and wrote that stuff I’ve just thrown out of the -window.” - -He grew cheerful again. “Oh, well—it’s all right. Writing that fool -thing stirred me up and enabled me to write this other stuff, this real -stuff I showed you first, about Chicago.” - -And so I went home and to bed, having in this odd way stumbled upon -another bit of the kind of writing that is—for better or worse—really -presenting the lives of the people of these towns and cities—sometimes -in prose, sometimes in stirring colorful song. It was the kind of thing -Mr. Sandburg or Mr. Masters might have done after an evening’s walk on a -hot night in, say West Congress Street in Chicago. - -The thing I had read of Ed’s, centred about a half-filled bottle of -spoiled milk standing dim in the moonlight on a window sill. There had -been a moon earlier on that August evening, a new moon, a thin crescent -golden streak in the sky. What had happened to my friend, the -advertising writer, was something like this—I figured it all out as I -lay sleepless in bed after our talk. - -I am sure I do not know whether or not it is true that all advertising -writers and newspaper men, want to do other kinds of writing, but Ed did -all right. The August day that had preceded the hot night had been a -hard one for him to get through. All day he had been wanting to be at -home in his quiet apartment producing literature, rather than sitting in -an office and writing advertisements. In the late afternoon, when he had -thought his desk cleared for the day, the boss of the copy writers came -and ordered him to write a page advertisement for the magazines on the -subject of condensed milk. “We got a chance to get a new account if we -can knock out some crackerjack stuff in a hurry,” he said. “I’m sorry to -have to put it up to you on such a rotten hot day, Ed, but we’re up -against it. Let’s see if you’ve got some of the old pep in you. Get down -to hardpan now and knock out something snappy and unusual before you go -home.” - -Ed had tried. He put away the thoughts he had been having about the city -beautiful—the glowing city of the plains—and got right down to business. -He thought about milk, milk for little children, the Chicagoans of the -future, milk that would produce a little cream to put in the coffee of -advertising writers in the morning, sweet fresh milk to keep all his -brother and sister Chicagoans robust and strong. What Ed really wanted -was a long cool drink of something with a kick in it, but he tried to -make himself think he wanted a drink of milk. He gave himself over to -thoughts of milk, milk condensed and yellow, milk warm from the cows his -father owned when he was a boy—his mind launched a little boat and he -set out on a sea of milk. - -Out of it all he got what is called an original advertisement. The sea -of milk on which he sailed became a mountain of cans of condensed milk, -and out of that fancy he got his idea. He made a crude sketch for a -picture showing wide rolling green fields with white farm houses. Cows -grazed on the green hills and at one side of the picture a barefooted -boy was driving a herd of Jersey cows out of the sweet fair land and -down a lane into a kind of funnel at the small end of which was a tin of -the condensed milk. Over the picture he put a heading: “The health and -freshness of a whole countryside is condensed into one can of -Whitney-Wells Condensed Milk.” The head copy writer said it was a -humdinger. - -And then Ed went home. He wanted to begin writing about the city -beautiful at once and so didn’t go out to dinner, but fished about in -the ice chest and found some cold meat out of which he made himself a -sandwich. Also, he poured himself a glass of milk, but it was sour. “Oh, -damn!” he said and poured it into the kitchen sink. - -As Ed explained to me later, he sat down and tried to begin writing his -real stuff at once, but he couldn’t seem to get into it. The last hour -in the office, the trip home in the hot smelly car, and the taste of the -sour milk in his mouth had jangled his nerves. The truth is that Ed has -a rather sensitive, finely balanced nature, and it had got mussed up. - -He took a walk and tried to think, but his mind wouldn’t stay where he -wanted it to. Ed is now a man of nearly forty and on that night his mind -ran back to his young manhood in the city,—and stayed there. Like other -boys who had become grown men in Chicago, he had come to the city from a -farm at the edge of a prairie town, and like all such town and farm -boys, he had come filled with vague dreams. - -What things he had hungered to do and be in Chicago! What he had done -you can fancy. For one thing he had got himself married and now lived in -the apartment on the North Side. To give a real picture of his life -during the twelve or fifteen years that had slipped away since he was a -young man would involve writing a novel, and that is not my purpose. - -Anyway, there he was in his room—come home from his walk—and it was hot -and quiet and he could not manage to get into his masterpiece. How still -it was in the apartment with the wife and children away! His mind stayed -on the subject of his youth in the city. - -He remembered a night of his young manhood when he had gone out to walk, -just as he did on that August evening. Then his life wasn’t complicated -by the fact of the wife and children and he lived alone in his room; but -something had got on his nerves then, too. On that evening long ago he -grew restless in his room and went out to walk. It was summer and first -he went down by the river where ships were being loaded and then to a -crowded park where girls and young fellows walked about. - -He grew bold and spoke to a woman who sat alone on a park bench. She let -him sit beside her and, because it was dark and she was silent, he began -to talk. The night had made him sentimental. “Human beings are such hard -things to get at. I wish I could get close to someone,” he said. “Oh, -you go on! What you doing? You ain’t trying to kid someone?” asked the -woman. - -Ed jumped up and walked away. He went into a long street lined with dark -silent buildings and then stopped and looked about. What he wanted was -to believe that in the apartment buildings were people who lived intense -eager lives, who had great dreams, who were capable of great adventures. -“They are really only separated from me by the brick walls,” was what he -told himself on that night. - -It was then that the milk bottle theme first got hold of him. He went -into an alleyway to look at the backs of the apartment buildings and, on -that evening also, there was a moon. Its light fell upon a long row of -half-filled bottles standing on window sills. - -Something within him went a little sick and he hurried out of the -alleyway and into the street. A man and woman walked past him and -stopped before the entrance to one of the buildings. Hoping they might -be lovers, he concealed himself in the entrance to another building to -listen to their conversation. - -The couple turned out to be a man and wife and they were quarreling. Ed -heard the woman’s voice saying: “You come in here. You can’t put that -over on me. You say you just want to take a walk, but I know you. You -want to go out and blow in some money. What I’d like to know is why you -don’t loosen up a little for me.” - - * * * * * - -That is the story of what happened to Ed, when, as a young man, he went -to walk in the city in the evening, and when he had become a man of -forty and went out of his house wanting to dream and to think of a city -beautiful, much the same sort of thing happened again. Perhaps the -writing of the condensed milk advertisement and the taste of the sour -milk he had got out of the ice box had something to do with his mood; -but, anyway, milk bottles, like a refrain in a song, got into his brain. -They seemed to sit and mock at him from the windows of all the buildings -in all the streets, and when he turned to look at people, he met the -crowds from the West and the Northwest Sides going to the park and the -lake. At the head of each little group of people marched a woman who -carried a milk bottle in her hand. - -And so, on that August night, Ed went home angry and disturbed, and in -anger wrote of his city. Like the burlesque actress in my own house he -wanted to smash something, and, as milk bottles were in his mind, he -wanted to smash milk bottles. “I could grasp the neck of a milk bottle. -It fits the hand so neatly. I could kill a man or woman with such a -thing,” he thought desperately. - -He wrote, you see, the five or six sheets I had read in that mood and -then felt better. And after that he wrote about the ghostlike buildings -flung into the sky by the hands of a brave adventurous people and about -the river that runs down a path of gold, and into the boundless West. - -As you have already concluded, the city he described in his masterpiece -was lifeless, but the city he, in a queer way, expressed in what he -wrote about the milk bottle could not be forgotten. It frightened you a -little but there it was and in spite of his anger or perhaps because of -it, a lovely singing quality had got into the thing. In those few -scrawled pages the miracle had been worked. I was a fool not to have put -the sheets into my pocket. When I went down out of his apartment that -evening I did look for them in a dark alleyway, but they had become lost -in a sea of rubbish that had leaked over the tops of a long row of tin -ash cans that stood at the foot of a stairway leading from the back -doors of the apartments above. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE SAD HORN BLOWERS - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE SAD HORN BLOWERS - - -IT had been a disastrous year in Will’s family. The Appletons lived on -one of the outlying streets of Bidwell and Will’s father was a house -painter. In early February, when there was deep snow on the ground, and -a cold bitter wind blew about the houses, Will’s mother suddenly died. -He was seventeen years old then, and rather a big fellow for his age. - -The mother’s death happened abruptly, without warning, as a sleepy man -kills a fly with the hand in a warm room on a summer day. On one -February day there she was coming in at the kitchen door of the -Appleton’s house, from hanging the wash out on the line in the back -yard, and warming her long hands, covered with blue veins, by holding -them over the kitchen stove—and then looking about at the children with -that half-hidden, shy smile of hers—there she was like that, as the -three children had always known her, and then, but a week later, she was -cold in death and lying in her coffin in the place vaguely spoken of in -the family as “the other room.” - -After that, and when summer came and the family was trying hard to -adjust itself to the new conditions, there came another disaster. Up to -the very moment when it happened it looked as though Tom Appleton, the -house painter, was in for a prosperous season. The two boys, Fred and -Will, were to be his assistants that year. - -To be sure Fred was only fifteen, but he was one to lend a quick alert -hand at almost any undertaking. For example, when there was a job of -paper hanging to be done, he was the fellow to spread on the paste, -helped by an occasional sharp word from his father. - -Down off his step ladder Tom Appleton hopped and ran to the long board -where the paper was spread out. He liked this business of having two -assistants about. Well, you see, one had the feeling of being at the -head of something, of managing affairs. He grabbed the paste brush out -of Fred’s hand. “Don’t spare the paste,” he shouted. “Slap her on like -this. Spread her out—so. Do be sure to catch all the edges.” - -It was all very warm, and comfortable, and nice, working at -paper-hanging jobs in the houses on the March and April days. When it -was cold or rainy outside, stoves were set up in the new houses being -built, and in houses already inhabited the folks moved out of the rooms -to be papered, spread newspapers on the floors over the carpets and put -sheets over the furniture left in the rooms. Outside it rained or -snowed, but inside it was warm and cosy. - -To the Appletons it seemed, at the time, as though the death of the -mother had drawn them closer together. Both Will and Fred felt it, -perhaps Will the more consciously. The family was rather in the hole -financially—the mother’s funeral had cost a good deal of money, and Fred -was being allowed to stay out of school. That pleased him. When they -worked in a house where there were other children, they came home from -school in the late afternoon and looked in through the door to where -Fred was spreading paste over the sheets of wall paper. He made a -slapping sound with the brush, but did not look at them. “Ah, go on, you -kids,” he thought. This was a man’s business he was up to. Will and his -father were on the step ladders, putting the sheets carefully into place -on the ceilings and walls. “Does she match down there?” the father asked -sharply. “Oh-kay, go ahead,” Will replied. When the sheet was in place -Fred ran and rolled out the laps with a little wooden roller. How -jealous the kids of the house were. It would be a long time before any -of them could stay out of school and do a man’s work, as Fred was doing. - -And then in the evening, walking homeward, it was nice, too. Will and -Fred had been provided with suits of white overalls that were now -covered with dried paste and spots of paint and looked really -professional. They kept them on and drew their overcoats on over them. -Their hands were stiff with paste, too. On Main Street the lights were -lighted, and other men passing called to Tom Appleton. He was called -Tony in the town. “Hello, Tony!” some storekeeper shouted. It was rather -too bad, Will thought that his father hadn’t more dignity. He was too -boyish. Young boys growing up and merging into manhood do not fancy -fathers being too boyish. Tom Appleton played a cornet in the Bidwell -Silver Cornet Band and didn’t do the job very well—rather made a mess of -it, when there was a bit of solo work to be done—but was so well liked -by the other members of the band that no one said anything. And then he -talked so grandly about music, and about the lip of a cornet player, -that everyone thought he must be all right. “He has an education. I tell -you what, Tony Appleton knows a lot. He’s a smart one,” the other -members of the band were always saying to each other. - -“Well, the devil! A man should grow up after a time, perhaps. When a -man’s wife had died but such a short time before, it was just as well to -walk through Main Street with more dignity—for the time being, anyway.” - -Tom Appleton had a way of winking at men he passed in the street, as -though to say, “Well, now I’ve got my kids with me, and we won’t say -anything, but didn’t you and I have the very hell of a time last -Wednesday night, eh? Mum’s the word, old pal. Keep everything quiet. -There are gay times ahead for you and me. We’ll cut loose, you bet, when -you and me are out together next time.” - -Will grew a little angry about something he couldn’t exactly understand. -His father stopped in front of Jake Mann’s meat market. “You kids go -along home. Tell Kate I am bringing a steak. I’ll be right on your -heels,” he said. - -He would get the steak and then he would go into Alf Geiger’s saloon and -get a good, stiff drink of whisky. There would be no one now to bother -about smelling it on his breath when he got home later. Not that his -wife had ever said anything when he wanted a drink—but you know how a -man feels when there’s a woman in the house. “Why, hello, Bildad -Smith—how’s the old game leg? Come on, have a little nip with me. Were -you on Main Street last band meeting night and did you hear us do that -new gallop? It’s a humdinger. Turkey White did that trombone solo simply -grand.” - -Will and Fred had got beyond Main Street now, and Will took a small pipe -with a curved stem out of his overcoat pocket and lighted it. “I’ll bet -I could hang a ceiling without father there at all, if only some one -would give me a chance,” he said. Now that his father was no longer -present to embarrass him with his lack of dignity, he felt comfortable -and happy. Also, it was something to be able to smoke a pipe without -discomfiture. When mother was alive she was always kissing a fellow when -he came home at night, and then one had to be mighty careful about -smoking. Now it was different. One had become a man and one accepted -manhood with its responsibilities. “Don’t it make you sick at all?” Fred -asked. “Huh, naw!” Will answered contemptuously. - -The new disaster to the family came late in August, just when the fall -work was all ahead, and the prospects good too. A. P. Wrigley, the -jeweler, had just built a big, new house and barn on a farm he had -bought the year before. It was a mile out of town on the Turner pike. - -That would be a job to set the Appletons up for the winter. The house -was to have three coats outside, with all the work inside, and the barn -was to have two coats—and the two boys were to work with their father -and were to have regular wages. - -And just to think of the work to be done inside that house made Tom -Appleton’s mouth water. He talked of it all the time, and in the -evenings liked to sit in a chair in the Appleton’s front yard, get some -neighbor over, and then go on about it. How he slung house-painter’s -lingo about! The doors and cupboards were to be grained in imitation of -weathered oak, the front door was to be curly maple, and there was to be -black walnut, too. Well, there wasn’t another painter in the town could -imitate all the various kinds of wood as Tom could. Just show him the -wood, or tell him—you didn’t have to show him anything. Name what you -wanted—that was enough. To be sure a man had to have the right tools, -but give him the tools and then just go off and leave everything to him. -What the devil! When A. P. Wrigley gave him this new house to do, he -showed he was a man who knew what he was doing. - -As for the practical side of the matter, everyone in the family knew -that the Wrigley job meant a safe winter. There wasn’t any speculation, -as when taking work on the contract plan. All work was to be paid for by -the day, and the boys were to have their wages, too. It meant new suits -for the boys, a new dress and maybe a hat for Kate, the house rent paid -all winter, potatoes in the cellar. It meant safety—that was the truth. - -In the evenings, sometimes, Tom got out his tools and looked at them. -Brushes and graining tools were spread out on the kitchen table, and -Kate and the boys gathered about. It was Fred’s job to see that all -brushes were kept clean and, one by one, Tom ran his fingers over them, -and then worked them back and forth over the palm of his hand. “This is -a camel’s hair,” he said, picking a soft fine-haired brush up and -handing it to Will. “I paid four dollars and eighty cents for that.” -Will also worked it back and forth over the palm of his hand, just as -his father had done and then Kate picked it up and did the same thing. -“It’s as soft as the cat’s back,” she said. Will thought that rather -silly. He looked forward to the day when he would have brushes ladders -and pots of his own, and could show them off before people and through -his mind went words he had picked up from his father’s talk. One spoke -of the “heel” and “toe” of a brush. The way to put on varnish was to -“flow” it on. Will knew all the words of his trade now and didn’t have -to talk like one of the kind of muts who just does, now and then, a jack -job of house painting. - -On the fatal evening a surprise party was held for Mr. and Mrs. -Bardshare, who lived just across the road from the Appletons on Piety -Hill. That was a chance for Tom Appleton. In any such affair he liked to -have a hand in the arrangements. “Come on now, we’ll make her go with a -bang. They’ll be setting in the house after supper, and Bill Bardshare -will be in his stocking feet, and Ma Bardshare washing the dishes. They -won’t be expecting nothing, and we’ll slip up, all dressed in our Sundey -clothes, and let out a whoop. I’ll bring my cornet and let out a blast -on that too. ‘What in Sam Hill is that?’ Say, I can just see Bill -Bardshare jumping up and beginning to swear, thinking we’re a gang of -kids come to bother him, like Hallowe’en, or something like that. You -just get the grub, and I’ll make the coffee over to my house and bring -it over hot. I’ll get ahold of two big pots and make a whooping lot of -it.” - -In the Appleton house all was in a flurry. Tom, Will and Fred were -painting a barn, three miles out of town, but they knocked off work at -four and Tom got the farmer’s son to drive them to town. He himself had -to wash up, take a bath in a tub in the woodshed, shave and -everything—just like Sunday. He looked more like a boy than a man when -he got all dogged up. - -And then the family had to have supper, over and done with, a little -after six, and Tom didn’t dare go outside the house until dark. It -wouldn’t do to have the Bardshares see him so fixed up. It was their -wedding anniversary, and they might suspect something. He kept trotting -about the house, and occasionally looked out of the front window toward -the Bardshare house. “You kid, you,” Kate said, laughing. Sometimes she -talked up to him like that, and after she said it he went upstairs, and -getting out his cornet blew on it, so softly, you could hardly hear him -downstairs. When he did that you couldn’t tell how badly he played, as -when the band was going it on Main Street and he had to carry a passage -right through alone. He sat in the room upstairs thinking. When Kate -laughed at him it was like having his wife back, alive. There was the -same shy sarcastic gleam in her eyes. - -Well, it was the first time he had been out anywhere since his wife had -died, and there might be some people think it would be better if he -stayed at home now—look better, that is. When he had shaved he had cut -his chin, and the blood had come. After a time he went downstairs and -stood before the looking-glass, hung above the kitchen sink, and dabbed -at the spot with the wet end of a towel. - -Will and Fred stood about. - -Will’s mind was working—perhaps Kate’s, too. “Was there—could it -be?—well, at such a party—only older people invited—there were always -two or three widow women thrown in for good measure, as it were.” - -Kate didn’t want any woman fooling around her kitchen. She was twenty -years old. - -“And it was just as well not to have any monkey-shine talk about -motherless children,” such as Tom might indulge in. Even Fred thought -that. There was a little wave of resent against Tom in the house. It was -a wave that didn’t make much noise, just crept, as it were softly, up a -low sandy beach. - -“Widow women went to such places, and then of course, people were always -going home in couples.” Both Kate and Will had the same picture in mind. -It was late at night and in fancy they were both peeking out at front -upper windows of the Appleton house. There were all the people coming -out at the front door of the Bardshare house, and Bill Bardshare was -standing there and holding the door open. He had managed to sneak away -during the evening, and got his Sunday clothes on all right. - -And the couples were coming out. “There was that woman now, that widow, -Mrs. Childers.” She had been married twice, both husbands dead now, and -she lived away over Maumee Pike way. “What makes a woman of her age want -to act silly like that? It is the very devil how a woman can keep -looking young and handsome after she has buried two men. There are some -who say that, even when her last husband was alive—” - -“But whether that’s true or not, what makes her want to act and talk -silly that way?” Now her face is turned to the light and she is saying -to old Bill Bardshare, “Sleep light, sleep tight, sweet dreams to you -tonight.” - -“It’s only what one may expect when one’s father lacks a sense of -dignity. There is that old fool Tom now, hopping out of the Bardshare -house like a kid, and running right up to Mrs. Childers. ‘May I see you -home?’ he is saying, while all the others are laughing and smiling -knowingly. It makes one’s blood run cold to see such a thing.” - - * * * * * - -“Well, fill up the pots. Let’s get the old coffee pots started, Kate. -The gang’ll be creeping along up the street pretty soon now,” Tom -shouted self-consciously, skipping busily about and breaking the little -circle of thoughts in the house. - -What happened was that—just as darkness came and when all the people -were in the front yard before the Appleton house—Tom went and got it -into his head to try to carry his cornet and two big coffee pots at the -same time. Why didn’t he leave the coffee until later? There the people -were in the dusk outside the house, and there was that kind of low -whispering and tittering that always goes on at such a time—and then Tom -stuck his head out at the door and shouted, “Let her go!” - -And then he must have gone quite crazy, for he ran back into the kitchen -and grabbed both of the big coffee pots, hanging on to his cornet at the -same time. Of course he stumbled in the darkness in the road outside and -fell, and of course all of that boiling hot coffee had to spill right -over him. - -It was terrible. The flood of boiling hot coffee made steam under his -thick clothes, and there he lay screaming with the pain of it. What a -confusion! He just writhed and screamed, and the people ran ’round and -’round in the half darkness like crazy things. Was it some kind of joke -the crazy fellow was up to at the last minute! Tom always was such a -devil to think up things. “You should see him down at Alf Geigers, -sometimes on Saturday nights, imitating the way Joe Douglas got out on a -limb, and then sawed it off between himself and the tree, and the look -on Joe’s face when the limb began to crack. It would make you laugh -until you screamed to see him imitate that.” - -“But what now? My God!” There was Kate Appleton trying to tear her -father’s clothes off, and crying and whimpering, and young Will Appleton -knocking people aside. “Say, the man’s hurt! What’s happened? My God! -Run for the doctor, someone. He’s burnt, something awful!” - - * * * * * - -Early in October Will Appleton sat in the smoking car of a day train -that runs between Cleveland and Buffalo. His destination was Erie, -Pennsylvania, and he had got on the passenger train at Ashtabula, Ohio. -Just why his destination was Erie he couldn’t very easily have -explained. He was going there anyway, going to get a job in a factory or -on the docks there. Perhaps it was just a quirk of the mind that had -made him decide upon Erie. It wasn’t as big as Cleveland or Buffalo or -Toledo or Chicago, or any one of a lot of other cities to which he might -have gone, looking for work. - -At Ashtabula he came into the car and slid into a seat beside a little -old man. His own clothes were wet and wrinkled, and his hair, eyebrows -and ears were black with coal dust. - -At the moment, there was in him a kind of bitter dislike of his native -town, Bidwell. “Sakes alive, a man couldn’t get any work there—not in -the winter.” After the accident to his father, and the spoiling of all -the family plans, he had managed to find employment during September on -the farms. He worked for a time with a threshing crew, and then got work -cutting corn. It was all right. “A man made a dollar a day and board, -and as he wore overalls all the time, he didn’t wear out no clothes. -Still and all, the time when a fellow could make any money in Bidwell -was past now, and the burns on his father’s body had gone pretty deep, -and he might be laid up for months.” - -Will had just made up his mind one day, after he had tramped about all -morning from farm to farm without finding work, and then he had gone -home and told Kate. “Dang it all,” he hadn’t intended lighting out right -away—had thought he would stay about for a week or two, maybe. Well, he -would go up town in the evening, dressed up in his best clothes, and -stand around. “Hello, Harry, what you going to do this winter? I thought -I would run over to Erie, Pennsylvania. I got an offer in a factory over -there. Well, so long—if I don’t see you again.” - -Kate hadn’t seemed to understand, had seemed in an almighty hurry about -getting him off. It was a shame she couldn’t have a little more heart. -Still, Kate was all right—worried a good deal no doubt. After their talk -she had just said, “Yes, I think that’s best, you had better go,” and -had gone to change the bandages on Tom’s legs and back. The father was -sitting among pillows in a rocking chair in the front room. - -Will went up stairs and put his things, overalls and a few shirts, into -a bundle. Then he went down stairs and took a walk—went out along a road -that led into the country, and stopped on a bridge. It was near a place -where he and other kids used to come swimming on summer afternoons. A -thought had come into his head. There was a young fellow worked in -Pawsey’s jewelry store came to see Kate sometimes on Sunday evenings and -they went off to walk together. “Did Kate want to get married?” If she -did his going away now might be for good. He hadn’t thought about that -before. On that afternoon, and quite suddenly, all the world outside of -Bidwell seemed huge and terrible to him and a few secret tears came into -his eyes, but he managed to choke them back. For just a moment his mouth -opened and closed queerly, like the mouth of a fish, when you take it -out of the water and hold it in your hand. - -When he returned to the house at supper time things were better. He had -left his bundle on a chair in the kitchen and Kate had wrapped it more -carefully, and had put in a number of things he had forgotten. His -father called him into the front room. “It’s all right, Will. Every -young fellow ought to take a whirl out in the world. I did it myself, at -about your age,” Tom had said, a little pompously. - -Then supper was served, and there was apple pie. That was a luxury the -Appletons had perhaps better not have indulged in at that time, but Will -knew Kate had baked it during the afternoon,—it might be as a way of -showing him how she felt. Eating two large slices had rather set him up. - -And then, before he realized how the time was slipping away, ten o’clock -had come, and it was time for him to go. He was going to beat his way -out of town on a freight train, and there was a local going toward -Cleveland at ten o’clock. Fred had gone off to bed, and his father was -asleep in the rocking chair in the front room. He had picked up his -bundle, and Kate had put on her hat. “I’m going to see you off,” she had -said. - -Will and Kate had walked in silence along the streets to where he was to -wait, in the shadow of Whaley’s Warehouse, until the freight came along. -Later when he thought back over that evening he was glad, that although -she was three years older, he was taller than Kate. - -How vividly everything that happened later stayed in his mind. After the -train came, and he had crawled into an empty coal car, he sat hunched up -in a corner. Overhead he could see the sky, and when the train stopped -at towns there was always the chance the car in which he was concealed -would be shoved into a siding, and left. The brakemen walked along the -tracks beside the car shouting to each other and their lanterns made -little splashes of light in the darkness. - -“How black the sky!” After a time it began to rain. “His suit would be -in a pretty mess. After all a fellow couldn’t come right out and ask his -sister if she intended to marry. If Kate married, then his father would -also marry again. It was all right for a young woman like Kate, but for -a man of forty to think of marriage—the devil! Why didn’t Tom Appleton -have more dignity? After all, Fred was only a kid and a new woman coming -in, to be his mother—that might be all right for a kid.” - -All during that night on the freight train Will had thought a good deal -about marriage—rather vague thoughts—coming and going like birds flying -in and out of a bush. It was all a matter—this business of man and -woman—that did not touch him very closely—not yet. The matter of having -a home—that was something else. A home was something at a fellow’s back. -When one went off to work all week at some farm, and at night maybe went -into a strange room to sleep, there was always the Appleton -house—floating as it were, like a picture at the back of the mind—the -Appleton house, and Kate moving about. She had been up town, and now had -come home and was going up the stairs. Tom Appleton was fussing about in -the kitchen. He liked a bite before he went off to bed for the night but -presently he would go up stairs and into his own room. He liked to smoke -his pipe before he slept and sometimes he got out his cornet and blew -two or three soft sad notes. - - * * * * * - -At Cleveland Will had crawled off of the freight train and had gone -across the city in a street-car. Workingmen were just going to the -factories and he passed among them unnoticed. If his clothes were -crumpled and soiled, their clothes weren’t so fine. The workingmen were -all silent, looking at the car floor, or out at the car windows. Long -rows of factories stood along the streets through which the car moved. - -He had been lucky, and had caught another freight out of a place called -Collinswood at eight, but at Ashtabula had made up his mind it would be -better to drop off the freight and take a passenger train. If he was to -live in Erie it would be just as well to arrive, looking more like a -gentleman and having paid his fare. - - * * * * * - -As he sat in the smoking car of the train he did not feel much like a -gentleman. The coal dust had got into his hair and the rain had washed -it in long dirty streaks down over his face. His clothes were badly -soiled and wanted cleaning and brushing and the paper package, in which -his overalls and shirts were tied, had become torn and dirty. - -Outside the train window the sky was grey, and no doubt the night was -going to turn cold. Perhaps there would be a cold rain. - -It was an odd thing about the towns through which the train kept -passing—all of the houses in all the towns looked cold and forbidding. -“Dang it all.” In Bidwell, before the night when his father got so badly -burned being such a fool about old Bill Bardshare’s party—all the houses -had always seemed warm cozy places. When one was alone, one walked along -the streets whistling. At night warm lights shone through the windows of -the houses. “John Wyatt, the drayman, lives in that house. His wife has -a wen on her neck. In that barn over there old Doctor Musgrave keeps his -bony old white horse. The horse looks like the devil, but you bet he can -go.” - - * * * * * - -Will squirmed about on the car seat. The old man who sat beside him was -small, almost as small as Fred, and he wore a queer-looking suit. The -pants were brown, and the coat checked, grey and black. There was a -small leather case on the floor at his feet. - -Long before the man spoke Will knew what would happen. It was bound to -turn out that such a fellow played a cornet. He was a man, old in years, -but there was no dignity in him. Will remembered his father’s marchings -through the main street of Bidwell with the band. It was some great day, -Fourth of July, perhaps, and all the people were assembled and there was -Tony Appleton, making a show of blowing his cornet at a great rate. Did -all the people along the street know how badly he played and was there a -kind of conspiracy, that kept grown men from laughing at each other? In -spite of the seriousness of his own situation a smile crept over Will’s -face. - -The little man at his side smiled in return. - -“Well,” he began, not stopping for anything but plunging headlong into a -tale concerning some dissatisfaction he felt with life, “well, you see -before you a man who is up against it, young fellow.” The old man tried -to laugh at his own words, but did not make much of a success of it. His -lip trembled. “I got to go home like a dog, with my tail ’twixt my -legs,” he declared abruptly. - -The old man balanced back and forth between two impulses. He had met a -young man on a train, and hungered for companionship and one got oneself -in with others by being jolly, a little gay perhaps. When one met a -stranger on a train one told a story—“By the way, Mister, I heard a new -one the other day—perhaps you haven’t heard it? It’s about the miner up -in Alaska who hadn’t seen a woman for years.” One began in that way, and -then later perhaps, spoke of oneself, and one’s affairs. - -But the old man wanted to plunge at once into his own story. He talked, -saying sad discouraged words, while his eyes kept smiling with a -peculiar appealing little smile. “If the words uttered by my lips annoy -or bore you, do not pay any attention to them. I am really a jolly -fellow although I am an old man, and not of much use any more,” the eyes -were saying. The eyes were pale blue and watery. How strange to see them -set in the head of an old man. They belonged in the head of a lost dog. -The smile was not really a smile. “Don’t kick me, young fellow. If you -can’t give me anything to eat, scratch my head. At least show you are a -fellow of good intentions. I’ve been kicked about quite enough.” It was -so very evident the eyes were speaking a language of their own. - -Will found himself smiling sympathetically. It was true there was -something dog-like in the little old man and Will was pleased with -himself for having so quickly caught the sense of him. “One who can see -things with his eyes will perhaps get along all right in the world, -after all,” he thought. His thoughts wandered away from the old man. In -Bidwell there was an old woman lived alone and owned a shepherd dog. -Every summer she decided to cut away the dog’s coat, and then—at the -last moment and after she had in fact started the job—she changed her -mind. Well, she grasped a long pair of scissors firmly in her hand and -started on the dog’s flanks. Her hand trembled a little. “Shall I go -ahead, or shall I stop?” After two minutes she gave up the job. “It -makes him look too ugly,” she thought, justifying her timidity. - -Later the hot days came, the dog went about with his tongue hanging out -and again the old woman took the scissors in her hand. The dog stood -patiently waiting but, when she had cut a long wide furrow through the -thick hair of his back, she stopped again. In a sense, and to her way of -looking at the matter, cutting away his splendid coat was like cutting -away a part of himself. She couldn’t go on. “Now there—that made him -look worse than ever,” she declared to herself. With a determined air -she put the scissors away, and all summer the dog went about looking a -little puzzled and ashamed. - -Will kept smiling and thinking of the old woman’s dog and then looked -again at his companion of the train. The variegated suit the old man -wore gave him something of the air of the half-sheared shepherd dog. -Both had the same puzzled, ashamed air. - -Now Will had begun using the old man for his own ends. There was -something inside himself that wanted facing, he didn’t want to face—not -yet. Ever since he had left home, in fact ever since that day when he -had come home from the country and had told Kate of his intention to set -out into the world, he had been dodging something. If one thought of the -little old man, and of the half-sheared dog, one did not have to think -of oneself. - -One thought of Bidwell on a summer afternoon. There was the old woman, -who owned the dog, standing on the porch of her house, and the dog had -run down to the gate. In the winter, when his coat had again fully -grown, the dog would bark and make a great fuss about a boy passing in -the street but now he started to bark and growl, and then stopped. “I -look like the devil, and I’m attracting unnecessary attention to -myself,” the dog seemed to have decided suddenly. He ran furiously down -to the gate, opened his mouth to bark, and then, quite abruptly, changed -his mind and trotted back to the house with his tail between his legs. - -Will kept smiling at his own thoughts. For the first time since he had -left Bidwell he felt quite cheerful. - -And now the old man was telling a story of himself and his life, but -Will wasn’t listening. Within the young man a cross-current of impulses -had been set up and he was like one standing silently in the hallway of -a house, and listening to two voices, talking at a distance. The voices -came from two widely separated rooms of the house and one couldn’t make -up one’s mind to which voice to listen. - -To be sure the old man was another cornet player like his father—he was -a horn blower. That was his horn in the little worn leather case on the -car floor. - -And after he had reached middle age, and after his first wife had died, -he had married again. He had a little property then and, in a foolish -moment, went and made it all over to his second wife, who was fifteen -years younger than himself. She took the money and bought a large house -in the factory district of Erie, and then began taking in boarders. - -There was the old man, feeling lost, of no account in his own house. It -just came about. One had to think of the boarders—their wants had to be -satisfied. His wife had two sons, almost fully grown now, both of whom -worked in a factory. - -Well, it was all right—everything on the square—the sons paid board all -right. Their wants had to be thought of, too. He liked blowing his -cornet a while in the evenings, before he went to bed, but it might -disturb the others in the house. One got rather desperate going about -saying nothing, keeping out of the way and he had tried getting work in -a factory himself, but they wouldn’t have him. His grey hairs stood in -his way, and so one night he had just got out, had gone to Cleveland, -where he had hoped to get a job in a band, in a movie theatre perhaps. -Anyway it hadn’t turned out and now he was going back to Erie and to his -wife. He had written and she had told him to come on home. - -“They didn’t turn me down back there in Cleveland because I’m old. It’s -because my lip is no good any more,” he explained. His shrunken old lip -trembled a little. - -Will kept thinking of the old woman’s dog. In spite of himself, and when -the old man’s lip trembled, his lip also trembled. - -What was the matter with him? - -He stood in the hallway of a house hearing two voices. Was he trying to -close his ears to one of them? Did the second voice, the one he had been -trying all day, and all the night before, not to hear, did that have -something to do with the end of his life in the Appleton house at -Bidwell? Was the voice trying to taunt him, trying to tell him that now -he was a thing swinging in air, that there was no place to put down his -feet? Was he afraid? Of what was he afraid? He had wanted so much to be -a man, to stand on his own feet and now what was the matter with him? -Was he afraid of manhood? - -He was fighting desperately now. There were tears in the old man’s eyes, -and Will also began crying silently and that was the one thing he felt -he must not do. - -The old man talked on and on, telling the tale of his troubles, but Will -could not hear his words. The struggle within was becoming more and more -definite. His mind clung to the life of his boyhood, to the life in the -Appleton house in Bidwell. - -There was Fred, standing in the field of his fancy now, with just the -triumphant look in his eyes that came when other boys saw him doing a -man’s work. A whole series of pictures floated up before Will’s mind. He -and his father and Fred were painting a barn and two farmer boys had -come along a road and stood looking at Fred, who was on a ladder, -putting on paint. They shouted, but Fred wouldn’t answer. There was a -certain air Fred had—he slapped on the paint, and then turning his head, -spat on the ground. Tom Appleton’s eyes looked into Will’s and there was -a smile playing about the corners of the father’s eyes and the son’s -eyes too. The father and his oldest son were like two men, two workmen, -having a delicious little secret between them. They were both looking -lovingly at Fred. “Bless him! He thinks he’s a man already.” - -And now Tom Appleton was standing in the kitchen of his house, and his -brushes were laid out on the kitchen table. Kate was rubbing a brush -back and forth over the palm of her hand. “It’s as soft as the cat’s -back,” she was saying. - -Something gripped at Will’s throat. As in a dream, he saw his sister -Kate walking off along the street on Sunday evening with that young -fellow who clerked in the jewelry store. They were going to church. Her -being with him meant—well, it perhaps meant the beginning of a new -home—it meant the end of the Appleton home. - -Will started to climb out of the seat beside the old man in the smoking -car of the train. It had grown almost dark in the car. The old man was -still talking, telling his tale over and over. “I might as well not have -any home at all,” he was saying. Was Will about to begin crying aloud on -a train, in a strange place, before many strange men. He tried to speak, -to make some commonplace remark, but his mouth only opened and closed -like the mouth of a fish taken out of the water. - -And now the train had run into a train shed, and it was quite dark. -Will’s hand clutched convulsively into the darkness and alighted upon -the old man’s shoulder. - -Then suddenly, the train had stopped, and the two stood half embracing -each other. The tears were quite evident in Will’s eyes, when a brakeman -lighted the overhead lamps in the car, but the luckiest thing in the -world had happened. The old man, who had seen Will’s tears, thought they -were tears of sympathy for his own unfortunate position in life and a -look of gratitude came into his blue watery eyes. Well, this was -something new in life for him, too. In one of the pauses, when he had -first begun telling his tale, Will had said he was going to Erie to try -to get work in some factory and now, as they got off the train, the old -man clung to Will’s arm. “You might as well come live at our house,” he -said. A look of hope flared up in the old man’s eyes. If he could bring -home with him, to his young wife, a new boarder, the gloom of his own -home-coming would be somewhat lightened. “You come on. That’s the best -thing to do. You just come on with me to our house,” he plead, clinging -to Will. - - * * * * * - -Two weeks had passed and Will had, outwardly, and to the eyes of the -people about him, settled into his new life as a factory hand at Erie, -Pennsylvania. - -Then suddenly, on a Saturday evening, the thing happened that he had -unconsciously been expecting and dreading ever since the moment when he -climbed aboard the freight train in the shadow of Whaley’s Warehouse at -Bidwell. A letter, containing great news, had come from Kate. - -At the moment of their parting, and before he settled himself down out -of sight in a corner of the empty coal car, on that night of his -leaving, he had leaned out for a last look at his sister. She had been -standing silently in the shadows of the warehouse, but just as the train -was about to start, stepped toward him and a light from a distant street -lamp fell on her face. - -Well, the face did not jump toward Will, but remained dimly outlined in -the uncertain light. - -Did her lips open and close, as though in an effort to say something to -him, or was that an effect produced by the distant, uncertain and -wavering light? In the families of working people the dramatic and vital -moments of life are passed over in silence. Even in the moments of death -and birth, little is said. A child is born to a laborer’s wife and he -goes into the room. She is in bed with the little red bundle of new life -beside her and her husband stands a moment, fumblingly, beside the bed. -Neither he or his wife can look directly into each other’s eyes. “Take -care of yourself, Ma. Have a good rest,” he says, and hurries out of the -room. - -In the darkness by the warehouse at Bidwell Kate had taken two or three -steps toward Will, and then had stopped. There was a little strip of -grass between the warehouse and the tracks, and she stood upon it. Was -there a more final farewell trembling on her lips at the moment? A kind -of dread had swept over Will, and no doubt Kate had felt the same thing. -At the moment she had become altogether the mother, in the presence of -her child, and the thing within that wanted utterance became submerged. -There was a word to be said that she could not say. Her form seemed to -sway a little in the darkness and, to Will’s eyes, she became a slender -indistinct thing. “Goodbye,” he had whispered into the darkness, and -perhaps her lips had formed the same words. Outwardly there had been -only the silence, and in the silence she had stood as the train rumbled -away. - -And now, on the Saturday evening, Will had come home from the factory -and had found Kate saying in the letter what she had been unable to say -on the night of his departure. The factory closed at five on Saturday -and he came home in his overalls and went to his room. He had found the -letter on a little broken table under a spluttering oil lamp, by the -front door, and had climbed the stairs carrying it in his hand. He read -the letter anxiously, waiting as for a hand to come out of the blank -wall of the room and strike. - -His father was getting better. The deep burns that had taken such a long -time to heal, were really healing now and the doctor had said the danger -of infection had passed. Kate had found a new and soothing remedy. One -took slippery elm and let it lie in milk until it became soft. This -applied to the burns enabled Tom to sleep better at night. - -As for Fred, Kate and her father had decided he might as well go back to -school. It was really too bad for a young boy to miss the chance to get -an education, and anyway there was no work to be had. Perhaps he could -get a job, helping in some store on Saturday afternoons. - -A woman from the Woman’s Relief Corps had had the nerve to come to the -Appleton house and ask Kate if the family needed help. Well, Kate had -managed to hold herself back, and had been polite but, had the woman -known what was in her mind, her ears would have been itching for a -month. The idea! - -It had been fine of Will to send a postcard, as soon as he had got to -Erie and got a job. As for his sending money home—of course the family -would be glad to have anything he could spare—but he wasn’t to go -depriving himself. “We’ve got good credit at the stores. We’ll get along -all right,” Kate had said stoutly. - -And then it was she had added the line, had said the thing she could not -say that night when he was leaving. It concerned herself and her future -plans. “That night when you were going away I wanted to tell you -something, but I thought it was silly, talking too soon.” After all -though, Will might as well know she was planning to be married in the -spring. What she wanted was for Fred to come and live with her and her -husband. He could keep on going to school, and perhaps they could manage -so that he could go to college. Some one in the family ought to have a -decent education. Now that Will had made his start in life, there was no -point in waiting longer before making her own. - - * * * * * - -Will sat, in his tiny room at the top of the huge frame house, owned now -by the wife of the old cornet player of the train, and held the letter -in his hand. The room was on the third floor, under the roof, in a wing -of the house, and beside it was another small room, occupied by the old -man himself. Will had taken the room because it was to be had at a low -price and he could manage the room and his meals, get his washing done, -send three dollars a week to Kate, and still have left a dollar a week -to spend. One could get a little tobacco, and now and then see a movie. - -“Ugh!” Will’s lips made a little grunting noise as he read Kate’s words. -He was sitting in a chair, in his oily overalls, and where his fingers -gripped the white sheets of the letter there was a little oily smudge. -Also his hand trembled a little. He got up, poured water out of a -pitcher into a white bowl, and began washing his face and hands. - -When he had partly dressed a visitor came. There was the shuffling sound -of weary feet along a hallway, and the cornet player put his head -timidly in at the door. The dog-like appealing look Will had noted on -the train was still in his eyes. Now he was planning something, a kind -of gentle revolt against his wife’s power in the house, and he wanted -Will’s moral support. - -For a week he had been coming for talk to Will’s room almost every -evening. There were two things he wanted. In the evening sometimes, as -he sat in his room, he wanted to blow upon his cornet, and he wanted a -little money to jingle in his pockets. - -And there was a sense in which Will, the newcomer in the house, was his -property, did not belong to his wife. Often in the evenings he had -talked to the weary and sleepy young workman, until Will’s eyes had -closed and he snored gently. The old man sat on the one chair in the -room, and Will sat on the edge of the bed, while old lips told the tale -of a lost youth, boasted a little. When Will’s body had slumped down -upon the bed the old man got to his feet and moved with cat-like steps -about the room. One mustn’t raise the voice too loudly after all. Had -Will gone to sleep? The cornet player threw his shoulders back and bold -words came, in a halfwhisper, from his lips. To tell the truth, he had -been a fool about the money he had made over to his wife and, if his -wife had taken advantage of him, it wasn’t her fault. For his present -position in life he had no one to blame but himself. What from the very -beginning he had most lacked was boldness. It was a man’s duty to be a -man and, for a long time, he had been thinking—well, the boarding house -no doubt made a profit and he should have his share. His wife was a good -girl all right, but when one came right down to it, all women seemed to -lack a sense of a man’s position in life. - -“I’ll have to speak to her—yes siree, I’m going to speak right up to -her. I may have to be a little harsh but it’s my money runs this house, -and I want my share of the profits. No foolishness now. Shell out, I -tell you,” the old man whispered, peering out of the corners of his -blue, watery eyes at the sleeping form of the young man on the bed. - - * * * * * - -And now again the old man stood at the door of the room, looking -anxiously in. A bell called insistently, announcing that the evening -meal was ready to be served, and they went below, Will leading the way. -At a long table in the dining room several men had already gathered, and -there was the sound of more footsteps on the stairs. - -Two long rows of young workmen eating silently. Saturday night and two -long rows of young workmen eating in silence. - -After the eating, and on this particular night, there would be a swift -flight of all these young men down into the town, down into the lighted -parts of the town. - -Will sat at his place gripping the sides of his chair. - -There were things men did on Saturday nights. Work was at an end for the -week and money jingled in pockets. Young workmen ate in silence and -hurried away, one by one, down into the town. - -Will’s sister Kate was going to be married in the spring. Her walking -about with the young clerk from the jewelry store, in the streets of -Bidwell, had come to something. - -Young workmen employed in factories in Erie, Pennsylvania, dressed -themselves in their best clothes and walked about in the lighted streets -of Erie on Saturday evenings. They went into parks. Some stood talking -to girls while others walked with girls through the streets. And there -were still others who went into saloons and had drinks. Men stood -talking together at a bar. “Dang that foreman of mine! I’ll bust him in -the jaw if he gives me any of his lip.” - -There was a young man from Bidwell, sitting at a table in a boarding -house at Erie, Pennsylvania, and before him on a plate was a great pile -of meat and potatoes. The room was not very well lighted. It was dark -and gloomy, and there were black streaks on the grey wall paper. Shadows -played on the walls. On all sides of the young man sat other young -men—eating silently, hurriedly. - -Will got abruptly up from the table and started for the door that led -into the street but the others paid no attention to him. If he did not -want to eat his meat and potatoes, it made no difference to them. The -mistress of the house, the wife of the old cornet player, waited on -table when the men ate, but now she had gone away to the kitchen. She -was a silent grim-looking woman, dressed always in a black dress. - -To the others in the room—except only the old cornet player—Will’s going -or staying meant nothing at all. He was a young workman, and at such -places young workmen were always going and coming. - -A man with broad shoulders and a black mustache, a little older than -most of the others, did glance up from his business of eating. He nudged -his neighbor, and then made a jerky movement with his thumb over his -shoulder. “The new guy has hooked up quickly, eh?” he said, smiling. “He -can’t even wait to eat. Lordy, he’s got an early date—some skirt waiting -for him.” - -At his place, opposite where Will had been seated, the cornet player saw -Will go, and his eyes followed, filled with alarm. He had counted on an -evening of talk, of speaking to Will about his youth, boasting a little -in his gentle hesitating way. Now Will had reached the door that led to -the street, and in the old man’s eyes tears began to gather. Again his -lip trembled. Tears were always gathering in the man’s eyes, and his -lips trembled at the slightest provocation. It was no wonder he could no -longer blow a cornet in a band. - - * * * * * - -And now Will was outside the house in the darkness and, for the cornet -player, the evening was spoiled, the house a deserted empty place. He -had intended being very plain in his evening’s talk with Will, and -wanted particularly to speak of a new attitude, he hoped to assume -toward his wife, in the matter of money. Talking the whole matter out -with Will would give him new courage, make him bolder. Well, if his -money had bought the house, that was now a boarding house, he should -have some share in its profits. There must be profits. Why run a -boarding house without profits? The woman he had married was no fool. - -Even though a man were old he needed a little money in his pockets. -Well, an old man, like himself, has a friend, a young fellow, and now -and then he wanted to be able to say to his friend, “Come on friend, -let’s have a glass of beer. I know a good place. Let’s have a glass of -beer and go to the movies. This is on me.” - -The cornet player could not eat his meat and potatoes. For a time he -stared over the heads of the others, and then got up to go to his room. -His wife followed into the little hallway at the foot of the stairs. -“What’s the matter, dearie—are you sick?” she asked. - -“No,” he answered, “I just didn’t want any supper.” He did not look at -her, but tramped slowly and heavily up the stairs. - - * * * * * - -Will was walking hurriedly through streets but did not go down into the -brightly lighted sections of town. The boarding house stood on a factory -street and, turning northward, he crossed several railroad tracks and -went toward the docks, along the shore of Lake Erie. There was something -to be settled with himself, something to be faced. Could he manage the -matter? - -He walked along, hurriedly at first, and then more slowly. It was -getting into late October now and there was a sharpness like frost in -the air. The spaces between street lamps were long, and he plunged in -and out of areas of darkness. Why was it that everything about him -seemed suddenly strange and unreal? He had forgotten to bring his -overcoat from Bidwell and would have to write Kate to send it. - -Now he had almost reached the docks. Not only the night but his own -body, the pavements under his feet, and the stars far away in the -sky—even the solid factory buildings he was now passing—seemed strange -and unreal. It was almost as though one could thrust out an arm and push -a hand through the walls, as one might push his hand into a fog or a -cloud of smoke. All the people Will passed seemed strange, and acted in -a strange way. Dark figures surged toward him out of the darkness. By a -factory wall there was a man standing—perfectly still, motionless. There -was something almost unbelievable about the actions of such men and the -strangeness of such hours as the one through which he was now passing. -He walked within a few inches of the motionless man. Was it a man or a -shadow on the wall? The life Will was now to lead alone, had become a -strange, a vast terrifying thing. Perhaps all life was like that, a -vastness and emptiness. - -He came out into a place where ships were made fast to a dock and stood -for a time, facing the high wall-like side of a vessel. It looked dark -and deserted. When he turned his head he became aware of a man and a -woman passing along a roadway. Their feet made no sound in the thick -dust of the roadway, and he could not see or hear them, but knew they -were there. Some part of a woman’s dress—something white—flashed faintly -into view and the man’s figure was a dark mass against the dark mass of -the night. “Oh, come on, don’t be afraid,” the man whispered, hoarsely. -“There won’t anything happen to you.” - -“Do shut up,” a woman’s voice answered, and there was a quick outburst -of laughter. The figures fluttered away. “You don’t know what you are -talking about,” the woman’s voice said again. - -Now that he had got Kate’s letter, Will was no longer a boy. A boy is, -quite naturally, and without his having anything to do with the matter, -connected with something—and now that connection had been cut. He had -been pushed out of the nest and that fact, the pushing of himself off -the nest’s rim, was something accomplished. The difficulty was that, -while he was no longer a boy, he had not yet become a man. He was a -thing swinging in space. There was no place to put down his feet. - -He stood in the darkness under the shadow of the ship making queer -little wriggling motions with his shoulders, that had become now almost -the shoulders of a man. No need now to think of evenings at the Appleton -house with Kate and Fred standing about, and his father, Tom Appleton, -spreading his paint brushes on the kitchen table, no need of thinking of -the sound of Kate’s feet going up a stairway of the Appleton house, late -at night when she had been out walking with her clerk. What was the good -of trying to amuse oneself by thinking of a shepherd dog in an Ohio -town, a dog made ridiculous by the trembling hand of a timid old woman? - -One stood face to face with manhood now—one stood alone. If only one -could get one’s feet down upon something, could get over this feeling of -falling through space, through a vast emptiness. - -“Manhood”—the word had a queer sound in the head. What did it mean? - -Will tried to think of himself as a man, doing a man’s work in a -factory. There was nothing in the factory, where he was now employed, -upon which he could put down his feet. All day he stood at a machine and -bored holes in pieces of iron. A boy brought to him the little, short, -meaningless pieces of iron in a box-like truck and, one by one, he -picked them up and placed them under the point of a drill. He pulled a -lever and the drill came down and bit into the piece of iron. A little, -smoke-like vapor arose, and then he squirted oil on the spot where the -drill was working. Then the lever was thrown up again. The hole was -drilled and now the meaningless piece of iron was thrown into another -box-like truck. It had nothing to do with him. He had nothing to do with -it. - -At the noon hour, at the factory, one moved about a bit, stepped outside -the factory door to stand for a moment in the sun. Inside, men were -sitting along benches eating lunches out of dinner pails and some had -washed their hands while others had not bothered about such a trivial -matter. They were eating in silence. A tall man spat on the floor and -then drew his foot across the spot. Nights came and one went home from -the factory to eat, sitting with other silent men, and later a boastful -old man came into one’s room to talk. One lay on a bed and tried to -listen, but presently fell asleep. Men were like the pieces of iron in -which holes had been bored—one pitched them aside into a box-like truck. -One had nothing really to do with them. They had nothing to do with -oneself. Life became a procession of days and perhaps all life was just -like that—just a procession of days. - -“Manhood.” - -Did one go out of one place and into another? Were youth and manhood two -houses, in which one lived during different periods in life? It was -evident something of importance must be about to happen to his sister -Kate. First, she had been a young woman, having two brothers and a -father, living with them in a house at Bidwell, Ohio. - -And then a day was to come when she became something else. She married -and went to live in another house and had a husband. Perhaps children -would be born to her. It was evident Kate had got hold of something, -that her hands had reached out and had grasped something definite. Kate -had swung herself off the rim of the home nest and, right away, her feet -had landed on another limb of the tree of life—womanhood. - -As he stood in the darkness something caught at Will’s throat. He was -fighting again but what was he fighting? A fellow like himself did not -move out of one house and into another. There was a house in which one -lived, and then suddenly and unexpectedly, it fell apart. One stood on -the rim of the nest and looked about, and a hand reached out from the -warmth of the nest and pushed one off into space. There was no place for -a fellow to put down his feet. He was one swinging in space. - -What—a great fellow, nearly six feet tall now, and crying in the -darkness, in the shadow of a ship, like a child! He walked, filled with -determination, out of the darkness, along many streets of factories and -came into a street of houses. He passed a store where groceries were -sold and looking in saw, by a clock on the wall, that it was already ten -o’clock. Two drunken men came out at the door of a house and stood on a -little porch. One of them clung to a railing about the porch, and the -other pulled at his arm. “Let me alone. It’s settled. I want you to let -me alone,” grumbled the man clinging to the railing. - - * * * * * - -Will went to his boarding house and climbed the stairs wearily. The -devil—one might face anything if one but knew what was to be faced! - -He turned on a light and sat down in his room on the edge of the bed, -and the old cornet player pounced upon him, pounced like a little -animal, lying under a bush along a path in a forest, and waiting for -food. He came into Will’s room carrying his cornet, and there was an -almost bold look in his eyes. Standing firmly on his old legs in the -centre of the room, he made a declaration. “I’m going to play it. I -don’t care what she says, I’m going to play it,” he said. - -He put the cornet to his lips and blew two or three notes—so softly that -even Will, sitting so closely, could barely hear. Then his eyes wavered. -“My lip’s no good,” he said. He thrust the cornet at Will. “You blow -it,” he said. - -Will sat on the edge of the bed and smiled. There was a notion floating -in his mind now. Was there something, a thought in which one could find -comfort. There was now, before him, standing before him in the room, a -man who was after all not a man. He was a child as Will was too really, -had always been such a child, would always be such a child. One need not -be too afraid. Children were all about, everywhere. If one were a child -and lost in a vast, empty space, one could at least talk to some other -child. One could have conversations, understand perhaps something of the -eternal childishness of oneself and others. - -Will’s thoughts were not very definite. He only felt suddenly warm and -comfortable in the little room at the top of the boarding house. - -And now the man was again explaining himself. He wanted to assert his -manhood. “I stay up here,” he explained, “and don’t go down there, to -sleep in the room with my wife because I don’t want to. That’s the only -reason. I could if I wanted to. She has the bronchitis—but don’t tell -anyone. Women hate to have anyone told. She isn’t so bad. I can do what -I please.” - -He kept urging Will to put the cornet to his lips and blow. There was in -him an intense eagerness. “You can’t really make any music—you don’t -know how—but that don’t make any difference,” he said. “The thing to do -is to make a noise, make a deuce of a racket, blow like the devil.” - -Again Will felt like crying but the sense of vastness and loneliness, -that had been in him since he got aboard the train that night at -Bidwell, had gone. “Well, I can’t go on forever being a baby. Kate has a -right to get married,” he thought, putting the cornet to his lips. He -blew two or three notes, softly. - -“No, I tell you, no! That isn’t the way! Blow on it! Don’t be afraid! I -tell you I want you to do it. Make a deuce of a racket! I tell you what, -I own this house. We don’t need to be afraid. We can do what we please. -Go ahead! Make a deuce of a racket!” the old man kept pleading. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE MAN’S STORY - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - THE MAN’S STORY - - -DURING his trial for murder and later, after he had been cleared through -the confession of that queer little bald chap with the nervous hands, I -watched him, fascinated by his continued effort to make something -understood. - -He was persistently interested in something, having nothing to do with -the charge that he had murdered the woman. The matter of whether or not, -and by due process of law, he was to be convicted of murder and hanged -by the neck until he was dead didn’t seem to interest him. The law was -something outside his life and he declined to have anything to do with -the killing as one might decline a cigarette. “I thank you, I am not -smoking at present. I made a bet with a fellow that I could go along -without smoking cigarettes for a month.” - -That is the sort of thing I mean. It was puzzling. Really, had he been -guilty and trying to save his neck he couldn’t have taken a better line. -You see, at first, everyone thought he had done the killing; we were all -convinced of it, and then, just because of that magnificent air of -indifference, everyone began wanting to save him. When news came of the -confession of the crazy little stage-hand everyone broke out into -cheers. - -He was clear of the law after that but his manner in no way changed. -There was, somewhere, a man or a woman who would understand just what he -understood and it was important to find that person and talk things -over. There was a time, during the trial and immediately afterward, when -I saw a good deal of him, and I had this sharp sense of him, feeling -about in the darkness trying to find something like a needle or a pin -lost on the floor. Well, he was like an old man who cannot find his -glasses. He feels in all his pockets and looks helplessly about. - -There was a question in my own mind too, in everyone’s mind—“Can a man -be wholly casual and brutal, in every outward way, at a moment when the -one nearest and dearest to him is dying, and at the same time, and with -quite another part of himself, be altogether tender and sensitive?” - - * * * * * - -Anyway it’s a story, and once in a while a man likes to tell a story -straight out, without putting in any newspaper jargon about beautiful -heiresses, coldblooded murderers and all that sort of tommyrot. - -As I picked the story up the sense of it was something like this— - -The man’s name was Wilson,—Edgar Wilson—and he had come to Chicago from -some place to the westward, perhaps from the mountains. He might once -have been a sheep herder or something of the sort in the far west, as he -had the peculiar abstract air, acquired only by being a good deal alone. -About himself and his past he told a good many conflicting stories and -so, after being with him for a time, one instinctively discarded the -past. - -“The devil—it doesn’t matter—the man can’t tell the truth in that -direction.—Let it go,” one said to oneself. What was known was that he -had come to Chicago from a town in Kansas and that he had run away from -the Kansas town with another man’s wife. - -As to her story, I knew little enough of it. She had been at one time, I -imagine, a rather handsome thing, in a big strong upstanding sort of -way, but her life, until she met Wilson, had been rather messy. In those -dead flat Kansas towns lives have a way of getting ugly and messy -without anything very definite having happened to make them so. One -can’t imagine the reasons—Let it go. It just is so and one can’t at all -believe the writers of Western tales about the life out there. - -To be a little more definite about this particular woman—in her young -girlhood her father had got into trouble. He had been some sort of a -small official, a travelling agent or something of the sort for an -express company, and got arrested in connection with the disappearance -of some money. And then, when he was in jail and before his trial, he -shot and killed himself. The girl’s mother was already dead. - -Within a year or two she married a man, an honest enough fellow but from -all accounts rather uninteresting. He was a drug clerk and a frugal man -and after a short time managed to buy a drug store of his own. - -The woman, as I have said, had been strong and well-built but now grew -thin and nervous. Still she carried herself well with a sort of air, as -it were, and there was something about her that appealed strongly to -men. Several men of the seedy little town were smitten by her and wrote -her letters, trying to get her to creep out with them at night. You know -how such things are done. The letters were unsigned. “You go to such and -such a place on Friday evening. If you are willing to talk things over -with me carry a book in your hand.” - -Then the woman made a mistake and told her husband about the receipt of -one of the letters and he grew angry and tramped off to the trysting -place at night with a shotgun in his hand. When no one appeared he came -home and fussed about. He said little mean tentative things. “You must -have looked—in a certain way—at the man when he passed you on the -street. A man don’t grow so bold with a married woman unless an opening -has been given him.” - -The man talked and talked after that, and life in the house must have -been gay. She grew habitually silent, and when she was silent the house -was silent. They had no children. - -Then the man Edgar Wilson came along, going eastward, and stopped over -in the town for two or three days. He had at that time a little money -and stayed at a small workingmen’s boarding house, near the railroad -station. One day he saw the woman walking in the street and followed her -to her home and the neighbors saw them standing and talking together for -an hour by the front gate and on the next day he came again. - -That time they talked for two hours and then she went into the house; -got a few belongings and walked to the railroad station with him. They -took a train for Chicago and lived there together, apparently very -happy, until she died—in a way I am about to try to tell you about. They -of course could not be married and during the three years they lived in -Chicago he did nothing toward earning their common living. As he had a -very small amount of money when they came, barely enough to get them -here from the Kansas town, they were miserably poor. - -They lived, when I knew about them, over on the North side, in that -section of old three- and four-story brick residences that were once the -homes of what we call our nice people, but that had afterward gone to -the bad. The section is having a kind of rebirth now but for a good many -years it rather went to seed. There were these old residences, made into -boarding houses, and with unbelievably dirty lace curtains at the -windows, and now and then an utterly disreputable old tumble-down frame -house—in one of which Wilson lived with his woman. - -The place is a sight! Someone owns it, I suppose, who is shrewd enough -to know that in a big city like Chicago no section gets neglected -always. Such a fellow must have said to himself, “Well, I’ll let the -place go. The ground on which the house stands will some day be very -valuable but the house is worth nothing. I’ll let it go at a low rental -and do nothing to fix it up. Perhaps I will get enough out of it to pay -my taxes until prices come up.” - -And so the house had stood there unpainted for years and the windows -were out of line and the shingles nearly all off the roof. The second -floor was reached by an outside stairway with a handrail that had become -just the peculiar grey greasy black that wood can become in a -soft-coal-burning city like Chicago or Pittsburgh. One’s hand became -black when the railing was touched; and the rooms above were altogether -cold and cheerless. - -At the front there was a large room with a fireplace, from which many -bricks had fallen, and back of that were two small sleeping rooms. - -Wilson and his woman lived in the place, at the time when the thing -happened I am to tell you about, and as they had taken it in May I -presume they did not too much mind the cold barrenness of the large -front room in which they lived. There was a sagging wooden bed with a -leg broken off—the woman had tried to repair it with sticks from a -packing box—a kitchen table, that was also used by Wilson as a writing -desk, and two or three cheap kitchen chairs. - -The woman had managed to get a place as wardrobe woman in a theatre in -Randolph Street and they lived on her earnings. It was said she had got -the job because some man connected with the theatre, or a company -playing there, had a passion for her but one can always pick up stories -of that sort about any woman who works about the theatre—from the -scrubwoman to the star. - -Anyway she worked there and had a reputation in the theatre of being -quiet and efficient. - -As for Wilson, he wrote poetry of a sort I’ve never seen before, -although, like most newspaper men, I’ve taken a turn at verse making -myself now and then—both of the rhymed kind and the newfangled vers -libre sort. I rather go in for the classical stuff myself. - -About Wilson’s verse—it was Greek to me. Well now, to get right down to -hardpan in this matter, it was and it wasn’t. - -The stuff made me feel just a little bit woozy when I took a whole sheaf -of it and sat alone in my room reading it at night. It was all about -walls, and deep wells, and great bowls with young trees standing erect -in them—and trying to find their way to the light and air over the rim -of the bowl. - -Queer crazy stuff, every line of it, but fascinating too—in a way. One -got into a new world with new values, which after all is I suppose what -poetry is all about. There was the world of fact—we all know or think we -know—the world of flat buildings and middle-western farms with wire -fences about the fields and fordson tractors running up and down, and -towns with high schools and advertising billboards, and everything that -makes up life—or that we think makes up life. - -There was this world, we all walk about in, and then there was this -other world, that I have come to think of as Wilson’s world—a dim place -to me at least—of far-away near places—things taking new and strange -shapes, the insides of people coming out, the eyes seeing new things, -the fingers feeling new and strange things. - -It was a place of walls mainly. I got hold of the whole lot of Wilson’s -verse by a piece of luck. It happened that I was the first newspaper man -who got into the place on the night when the woman’s body was found, and -there was all his stuff, carefully written out in a sort of child’s copy -book, and two or three stupid policemen standing about. I just shoved -the book under my coat, when they weren’t looking, and later, during -Wilson’s trial, we published some of the more intelligible ones in the -paper. It made pretty good newspaper stuff—the poet who killed his -mistress, - - “He did not wear his purple coat, - For blood and wine are red”— - -and all that. Chicago loved it. - -To get back to the poetry itself for a moment. I just wanted to explain -that all through the book there ran this notion, that men had erected -walls about themselves and that all men were perhaps destined to stand -forever behind the walls—on which they constantly beat with their fists, -or with whatever tools they could get hold of. Wanted to break through -to something, you understand. One couldn’t quite make out whether there -was just one great wall or many little individual walls. Sometimes -Wilson put it one way, sometimes another. Men had themselves built the -walls and now stood behind them, knowing dimly that beyond the walls -there was warmth, light, air, beauty, life in fact—while at the same -time, and because of a kind of madness in themselves, the walls were -constantly being built higher and stronger. - -The notion gives you the fantods a little, doesn’t it? Anyway it does -me. - -And then there was that notion about deep wells, men everywhere -constantly digging and digging themselves down deeper and deeper into -deep wells. They not wanting to do it, you understand, and no one -wanting them to do it, but all the time the thing going on just the -same, that is to say the wells getting constantly deeper and deeper, and -the voices growing dimmer and dimmer in the distance—and again the light -and the warmth of life going away and going away, because of a kind of -blind refusal of people to try to understand each other, I suppose. - -It was all very strange to me—Wilson’s poetry, I mean—when I came to it. -Here is one of his things. It is not directly concerned with the walls, -the bowl or the deep well theme, as you will see, but it is one we ran -in the paper during the trial and a lot of folks rather liked it—as I’ll -admit I do myself. Maybe putting it in here will give a kind of point to -my story, by giving you some sense of the strangeness of the man who is -the story’s hero. In the book it was called merely “Number -Ninety-seven,” and it went as follows: - - The firm grip of my fingers on the thin paper of this cigarette - is a sign that I am very quiet now. Sometimes it is not so. When - I am unquiet I am weak but when I am quiet, as I am now, I am - very strong. - - * * * * * - - Just now I went along one of the streets of my city and in at a - door and came up here, where I am now, lying on a bed and - looking out at a window. Very suddenly and completely the - knowledge has come to me that I could grip the sides of tall - buildings as freely and as easily as I now grip this cigarette. - I could hold the building between my fingers, put it to my lips - and blow smoke through it. I could blow confusion away. I could - blow a thousand people out through the roof of one tall building - into the sky, into the unknown. Building after building I could - consume, as I consume the cigarettes in this box. I could throw - the burning ends of cities over my shoulder and out through a - window. - - * * * * * - - It is not often I get in the state I am now in—so quiet and sure - of myself. When the feeling comes over me there is a directness - and simplicity in me that makes me love myself. To myself at - such times I say strong sweet words. - - * * * * * - - I am on a couch by this window and I could ask a woman to come - here to lie with me, or a man either for that matter. - - * * * * * - - I could take a row of houses standing on a street, tip them - over, empty the people out of them, squeeze and compress all the - people into one person and love that person. - - * * * * * - - Do you see this hand? Suppose it held a knife that could cut - down through all the falseness in you. Suppose it could cut down - through the sides of buildings and houses where thousands of - people now lie asleep. - - * * * * * - - It would be something worth thinking about if the fingers of - this hand gripped a knife that could cut and rip through all the - ugly husks in which millions of lives are enclosed. - -Well, there is the idea you see, a kind of power that could be tender -too. I will quote you just one more of his things, a more gentle one. It -is called in the book, “Number Eighty-three.” - - I am a tree that grows beside the wall. I have been thrusting up - and up. My body is covered with scars. My body is old but still - I thrust upward, creeping toward the top of the wall. - - * * * * * - - It is my desire to drop blossoms and fruit over the wall. - - * * * * * - - I would moisten dry lips. - - * * * * * - - I would drop blossoms on the heads of children, over the top of - the wall. - - * * * * * - - I would caress with falling blossoms the bodies of those who - live on the further side of the wall. - - * * * * * - - My branches are creeping upward and new sap comes into me out of - the dark ground under the wall. - - * * * * * - - My fruit shall not be my fruit until it drops from my arms, into - the arms of the others, over the top of the wall. - -And now as to the life led by the man and woman in the large upper room -in that old frame house. By a stroke of luck I have recently got rather -a line on that by a discovery I have made. - -After they had moved into the house—it was only last spring—the theatre -in which the woman was employed was dark for a long time and they were -more than usually hard up, so the woman tried to pick up a little extra -money—to help pay the rent I suppose—by sub-letting the two little back -rooms of that place of theirs. - -Various people lived in the dark tiny holes, just how I can’t make out -as there was no furniture. Still there are places in Chicago called -“flops” where one may sleep on the floor for five or ten cents and they -are more patronized than respectable people know anything about. - -What I did discover was a little woman—she wasn’t so young but she was -hunchbacked and small and it is hard not to think of her as a girl—who -once lived in one of the rooms for several weeks. She had a job as -ironer in a small hand-laundry in the neighborhood and someone had given -her a cheap folding cot. She was a curiously sentimental creature, with -the kind of hurt eyes deformed people often have, and I have a fancy she -had herself a romantic attachment of a sort for the man Wilson. Anyway I -managed to find out a lot from her. - -After the other woman’s death and after Wilson had been cleared on the -murder charge, by the confession of the stage-hand, I used to go over to -the house where he had lived, sometimes in the late afternoon after our -paper had been put to bed for the day. Ours is an afternoon paper and -after two o’clock most of us are free. - -I found the hunchback girl standing in front of the house one day and -began talking with her. She was a gold mine. - -There was that look in her eyes I’ve told you of, the hurt sensitive -look. I just spoke to her and we began talking of Wilson. She had lived -in one of the rooms at the back. She told me of that at once. - -On some days she found herself unable to work at the laundry because her -strength suddenly gave out and so, on such days, she stayed in the room, -lying on the cot. Blinding headaches came that lasted for hours during -which she was almost entirely unconscious of everything going on about -her. Then afterward she was quite conscious but for a long time very -weak. She wasn’t one who is destined to live very long I suppose and I -presume she didn’t much care. - -Anyway, there she was in the room, in that weak state after the times of -illness, and she grew curious about the two people in the front room, so -she used to get off her couch and go softly in her stockinged feet to -the door between the rooms and peek through the keyhole. She had to -kneel on the dusty floor to do it. - -The life in the room fascinated her from the beginning. Sometimes the -man was in there alone, sitting at the kitchen table and writing the -stuff he afterward put into the book I collared, and from which I have -quoted; sometimes the woman was with him, and again sometimes he was in -there alone but wasn’t writing. Then he was always walking and walking -up and down. - -When both people were in the room, and when the man was writing, the -woman seldom moved but sat in a chair by one of the windows with her -hands crossed. He would write a few lines and then walk up and down -talking to himself or to her. When he spoke she did not answer except -with her eyes, the crippled girl said. What I gathered of all this from -her talk with me, and what is the product of my own imaginings, I -confess I do not quite know. - -Anyway what I got and what I am trying, in my own way, to transmit to -you is a sense of a kind of strangeness in the relationship of the two. -It wasn’t just a domestic household, a little down on its luck, by any -means. He was trying to do something very difficult—with his poetry I -presume—and she in her own way was trying to help him. - -And of course, as I have no doubt you have gathered from what I have -quoted of Wilson’s verse, the matter had something to do with the -relationships between people—not necessarily between the particular man -and woman who happened to be there in that room, but between all -peoples. - -The fellow had some half-mystic conception of all such things, and -before he found his own woman had been going aimlessly about the world -looking for a mate. Then he had found the woman in the Kansas town -and—he at least thought—things had cleared, for him. - -Well, he had the notion that no one in the world could think or feel -anything alone, and that people only got into trouble and walled -themselves in by trying it, or something of the sort. There was a -discord. Things were jangled. Someone, it seems, had to strike a pitch -that all voices could take up before the real song of life could begin. -Mind you I’m not putting forth any notions of my own. What I am trying -to do is to give you a sense of something I got from having read -Wilson’s stuff, from having known him a little, and from having seen -something of the effect of his personality upon others. - -He felt, quite definitely, that no one in the world could feel or even -think alone. And then there was the notion, that if one tried to think -with the mind without taking the body into account, one got all -balled-up. True conscious life built itself up like a pyramid. First the -body and mind of a beloved one must come into one’s thinking and feeling -and then, in some mystic way, the bodies and minds of all the other -people in the world must come in, must come sweeping in like a great -wind—or something of the sort. - -Is all this a little tangled up to you, who read my story of Wilson? It -may not be. It may be that your minds are more clear than my own and -that what I take to be so difficult will be very simple to you. - -However, I have to bring up to you just what I can find, after diving -down into this sea of motives and impulses—I admit I don’t rightly -understand. - -The hunchback girl felt (or is it my own fancy coloring what she -said?)—it doesn’t really matter. The thing to get at is what the man -Edgar Wilson felt. - -He felt, I fancy, that in the field of poetry he had something to -express that could never be expressed until he had found a woman who -could, in a peculiar and absolute way, give herself in the world of the -flesh—and that then there was to be a marriage out of which beauty would -come for all people. He had to find the woman who had that power, and -the power had to be untainted by self-interest, I fancy. A profound -egotist, you see—and he thought he had found what he needed in the wife -of the Kansas druggist. - -He had found her and had done something to her. What it was I can’t -quite make out, except that she was absolutely and wholly happy with -him, in a strangely inexpressive sort of way. - -Trying to speak of him and his influence on others is rather like trying -to walk on a tightrope stretched between two tall buildings above a -crowded street. A cry from below, a laugh, the honk of an automobile -horn, and down one goes into nothingness. One simply becomes ridiculous. - -He wanted, it seems, to condense the flesh and the spirit of himself and -his woman into his poems. You will remember that in one of the things of -his I have quoted he speaks of condensing, of squeezing all the people -of a city into one person and of loving that person. - -One might think of him as a powerful person, almost hideously powerful. -You will see, as you read, how he has got me in his power and is making -me serve his purpose. - -And he had caught and was holding the woman in his grip. He had wanted -her—quite absolutely, and had taken her—as all men, perhaps, want to do -with their women, and don’t quite dare. Perhaps too she was in her own -way greedy and he was making actual love to her always day and night, -when they were together and when they were apart. - -I’ll admit I am confused about the whole matter myself. I am trying to -express something I have felt, not in myself, nor in the words that came -to me from the lips of the hunchback girl whom, you will remember, I -left kneeling on the floor in that back room and peeking through a -keyhole. - -There she was, you see, the hunchback, and in the room before her were -the man and woman and the hunchback girl also had fallen under the power -of the man Wilson. She also was in love with him—there can be no doubt -of that. The room in which she knelt was dark and dusty. There must have -been a thick accumulation of dust on the floor. - -What she said—or if she did not say the words what she made me feel was -that the man Wilson worked in the room, or walked up and down in there -before his woman, and that, while he did that, his woman sat in the -chair, and that there was in her face, in her eyes, a look— - -He was all the time making love to her, and his making love to her in -just that abstract way, was a kind of love-making with all people? and -that was possible because the woman was as purely physical as he was -something else. If all this is meaningless to you, at least it wasn’t to -the hunchback girl—who certainly was uneducated and never would have set -herself up as having any special powers of understanding. She knelt in -the dust, listening, and looking in at the keyhole, and in the end she -came to feel that the man, in whose presence she had never been and -whose person had never in any way touched her person, had made love to -her also. - -She had felt that and it had gratified her entire nature. One might say -it had satisfied her. She was what she was and it had made life worth -living for her. - - * * * * * - -Minor things happened in the room and one may speak of them. - -For example, there was a day in June, a dark warm rainy day. The -hunchback girl was in her room, kneeling on the floor, and Wilson and -his woman were in their room. - -Wilson’s woman had been doing a family washing, and as it could not be -dried outdoors she had stretched ropes across the room and had hung the -clothes inside. - -When the clothes were all hung Wilson came from walking outside in the -rain and going to the desk sat down and began to write. - -He wrote for a few minutes and then got up and went about the room, and -in walking a wet garment brushed against his face. - -He kept right on walking and talking to the woman but as he walked and -talked he gathered all the clothes in his arms and going to the little -landing at the head of the stairs outside, threw them down into the -muddy yard below. He did that and the woman sat without moving or saying -anything until he had gone back to his desk, then she went down the -stairs, got the clothes and washed them again—and it was only after she -had done that and when she was again hanging them in the room above that -he appeared to know what he had done. - -While the clothes were being rewashed he went for another walk and when -she heard his footsteps on the stairs the hunchback girl ran to the -keyhole. As she knelt there, and as he came into the room, she could -look directly into his face. “He was like a puzzled child for a moment -and then, although he said nothing, the tears began to run down his -cheeks,” she said. That happened and then the woman, who was at the -moment re-hanging the clothes, turned and saw him. She had her arm -filled with clothes but dropped them on the floor and ran to him. She -half knelt, the hunchback girl said, and putting her arms about his body -and looking up into his face pleaded with him. “Don’t. Don’t be hurt. -Believe me I know everything. Please don’t be hurt,” was what she said. - - * * * * * - -And now as to the story of the woman’s death. It happened in the fall of -that year. - -In the place where she was sometimes employed—that is to say in the -theatre—there was this other man, the little half-crazed stage-hand who -shot her. - -He had fallen in love with her and, like the men in the Kansas town from -which she came, had written her several silly notes of which she said -nothing to Wilson. The letters weren’t very nice and some of them, the -most unpleasant ones, were by some twist of the fellow’s mind, signed -with Wilson’s name. Two of them were afterwards found on her person and -were brought in as evidence against Wilson during his trial. - -And so the woman worked in the theatre and the summer had passed and on -an evening in the fall there was to be a dress rehearsal at the theatre -and the woman went there, taking Wilson with her. It was a fall day, -such as we sometimes have in Chicago, cold and wet and with a heavy fog -lying over the city. - -The dress rehearsal did not come off. The star was ill, or something of -the sort happened, and Wilson and his woman sat about, in the cold empty -theatre, for an hour or two and then the woman was told she could go for -the night. - -She and Wilson walked across the city, stopping to get something to eat -at a small restaurant. He was in one of the abstract silent moods common -to him. No doubt he was thinking of the things he wanted to express in -the poetry I have tried to tell you about. He went along, not seeing the -woman beside him, not seeing the people drifting up to them and passing -them in the streets. He went along in that way and she— - -She was no doubt then as she always was in his presence—silent and -satisfied with the fact that she was with him. There was nothing he -could think or feel that did not take her into account. The very blood -flowing up through his body was her blood too. He had made her feel -that, and she was silent and satisfied as he went along, his body -walking beside her but his fancy groping its way through the land of -high walls and deep wells. - -They had walked from the restaurant, in the Loop District, over a bridge -to the North Side, and still no words passed between them. - -When they had almost reached their own place the stage-hand, the small -man with the nervous hands who had written the notes, appeared out of -the fog, as though out of nowhere, and shot the woman. - -That was all there was to it. It was as simple as that. - -They were walking, as I have described them, when a head flashed up -before the woman in the midst of the fog, a hand shot out, there was the -quick abrupt sound of a pistol shot and then the absurd little -stage-hand, he with the wrinkled impotent little old woman’s face—then -he turned and ran away. - -All that happened, just as I have written it and it made no impression -at all on the mind of Wilson. He walked along as though nothing had -happened and the woman, after half falling, gathered herself together -and managed to continue walking beside him, still saying nothing. - -They went thus, for perhaps two blocks, and had reached the foot of the -outer stairs that led up to their place when a policeman came running, -and the woman told him a lie. She told him some story about a struggle -between two drunken men, and after a moment of talk the policeman went -away, sent away by the woman in a direction opposite to the one taken by -the fleeing stage-hand. - -They were in the darkness and the fog now and the woman took her man’s -arm while they climbed the stairs. He was as yet—as far as I will ever -be able to explain logically—unaware of the shot, and of the fact that -she was dying, although he had seen and heard everything. What the -doctors said, who were put on the case afterwards, was that a cord or -muscle, or something of the sort that controls the action of the heart, -had been practically severed by the shot. - -She was dead and alive at the same time, I should say. - -Anyway the two people marched up the stairs, and into the room above, -and then a really dramatic and lovely thing happened. One wishes that -the scene, with just all its connotations, could be played out on a -stage instead of having to be put down in words. - -The two came into the room, the one dead but not ready to acknowledge -death without a flash of something individual and lovely, that is to -say, the one dead while still alive and the other alive but at the -moment dead to what was going on. - -The room into which they went was dark but, with the sure instinct of an -animal, the woman walked across the room to the fireplace, while the man -stopped and stood some ten feet from the door—thinking and thinking in -his peculiarly abstract way. The fireplace was filled with an -accumulation of waste matter, cigarette ends—the man was a hard -smoker—bits of paper on which he had scribbled—the rubbishy accumulation -that gathers about all such fellows as Wilson. There was all of this -quickly combustible material, stuffed into the fireplace, on this—the -first cold evening of the fall. - -And so the woman went to it, and found a match somewhere in the -darkness, and touched the pile off. - -There is a picture that will remain with me always—just that—the barren -room and the blind unseeing man standing there, and the woman kneeling -and making a little flare of beauty at the last. Little flames leaped -up. Lights crept and danced over the walls. Below, on the floor of the -room, there was a deep well of darkness in which the man, blind with his -own purpose, was standing. - -The pile of burning papers must have made, for a moment, quite a glare -of light in the room and the woman stood for a moment, beside the -fireplace, just outside the glare of light. - -And then, pale and wavering, she walked across the light, as across a -lighted stage, going softly and silently toward him. Had she also -something to say? No one will ever know. What happened was that she said -nothing. - -She walked across to him and, at the moment she reached him, fell down -on the floor and died at his feet, and at the same moment the little -fire of papers died. If she struggled before she died, there on the -floor, she struggled in silence. There was no sound. She had fallen and -lay between him and the door that led out to the stairway and to the -street. - -It was then Wilson became altogether inhuman—too much so for my -understanding. - -The fire had died and the woman he had loved had died. - -And there he stood looking into nothingness, thinking—God knows—perhaps -of nothingness. - - * * * * * - -He stood a minute, five minutes, perhaps ten. He was a man who, before -he found the woman, had been sunk far down into a deep sea of doubt and -questionings. Before he found the woman no expression had ever come from -him. He had perhaps just wandered from place to place, looking at -people’s faces, wondering about people, wanting to come close to others -and not knowing how. The woman had been able to lift him up to the -surface of the sea of life for a time, and with her he had floated on -the surface of the sea, under the sky, in the sunlight. The woman’s warm -body—given to him in love—had been as a boat in which he had floated on -the surface of the sea, and now the boat had been wrecked and he was -sinking again, back into the sea. - -All of this had happened and he did not know—that is to say he did not -know, and at the same time he did know. - -He was a poet, I presume, and perhaps at the moment a new poem was -forming itself in his mind. - -At any rate he stood for a time, as I have said, and then he must have -had a feeling that he should make some move, that he should if possible -save himself from some disaster about to overtake him. - -He had an impulse to go to the door, and by way of the stairway, to go -down stairs and into the street—but the body of the woman was between -him and the door. - -What he did and what, when he later told of it, sounded so terribly -cruel to others, was to treat the woman’s dead body as one might treat a -fallen tree in the darkness in a forest. First he tried to push the body -aside with his foot and then as that seemed impossible, he stepped -awkwardly over it. - -He stepped directly on the woman’s arm. The discolored mark where his -heel landed was afterward found on the body. - -He almost fell, and then his body righted itself and he went walking, -marched down the rickety stairs and went walking in the streets. - -By chance the night had cleared. It had grown colder and a cold wind had -driven the fog away. He walked along, very nonchalantly, for several -blocks. He walked along as calmly as you, the reader, might walk, after -having had lunch with a friend. - -As a matter of fact he even stopped to make a purchase at a store. I -remember that the place was called “The Whip.” He went in, bought -himself a package of cigarettes, lighted one and stood a moment, -apparently listening to a conversation going on among several idlers in -the place. - -And then he strolled again, going along smoking the cigarette and -thinking of his poem no doubt. Then he came to a moving-picture theatre. - -That perhaps touched him off. He also was an old fireplace, stuffed with -old thoughts, scraps of unwritten poems—God knows what rubbish! Often he -had gone at night to the theatre, where the woman was employed, to walk -home with her, and now the people were coming out of a small -moving-picture house. They had been in there seeing a play called “The -Light of the World.” - -Wilson walked into the midst of the crowd, lost himself in the crowd, -smoking his cigarette, and then he took off his hat, looked anxiously -about for a moment, and suddenly began shouting in a loud voice. - -He stood there, shouting and trying to tell the story of what had -happened in a loud voice, and with the uncertain air of one trying to -remember a dream. He did that for a moment and then, after running a -little way along the pavement, stopped and began his story again. It was -only after he had gone thus, in short rushes, back, along the street to -the house and up the rickety stairway to where the woman was lying—the -crowd following curiously at his heels—that a policeman came up and -arrested him. - -He seemed excited at first but was quiet afterwards and he laughed at -the notion of insanity, when the lawyer who had been retained for him, -tried to set up the plea in court. - -As I have said his action, during his trial, was confusing to us all, as -he seemed wholly uninterested in the murder and in his own fate. After -the confession of the man who had fired the shot he seemed to feel no -resentment toward him either. There was something he wanted, having -nothing to do with what had happened. - -There he had been, you see, before he found the woman, wandering about -in the world, digging himself deeper and deeper into the deep wells he -talked about in his poetry, building the wall between himself and all us -others constantly higher and higher. - -He knew what he was doing but he could not stop. That’s what he kept -talking about, pleading with people about. The man had come up out of -the sea of doubt, had grasped for a time the hand of the woman, and with -her hand in his had floated for a time upon the surface of life—but now -he felt himself again sinking down into the sea. - -His talking and talking, stopping people in the street and talking, -going into people’s houses and talking, was I presume but an effort, he -was always afterward making, not to sink back forever into the sea, it -was the struggle of a drowning man I dare say. - -At any rate I have told you the man’s story—have been compelled to try -to tell you his story. There was a kind of power in him, and the power -has been exerted over me as it was exerted over the woman from Kansas -and the unknown hunchback girl, kneeling on the floor in the dust and -peering through a keyhole. - -Ever since the woman died we have all been trying and trying to drag the -man Wilson back out of the sea of doubt and dumbness into which we feel -him sinking deeper and deeper—and to no avail. - -It may be I have been impelled to tell his story in the hope that by -writing of him I may myself understand. Is there not a possibility that -with understanding would come also the strength to thrust an arm down -into the sea and drag the man Wilson back to the surface again? - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - AN OHIO PAGAN - - - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - AN OHIO PAGAN - - - - - CHAPTER I - - -TOM EDWARDS was a Welshman, born in Northern Ohio, and a descendant of -that Thomas Edwards, the Welsh poet, who was called, in his own time and -country, Twn O’r Nant—which in our own tongue means “Tom of the dingle -or vale.” - -The first Thomas Edwards was a gigantic figure in the history of the -spiritual life of the Welsh. Not only did he write many stirring -interludes concerning life, death, earth, fire and water but as a man he -was a true brother to the elements and to all the passions of his sturdy -and musical race. He sang beautifully but he also played stoutly and -beautifully the part of a man. There is a wonderful tale, told in Wales -and written into a book by the poet himself, of how he, with a team of -horses, once moved a great ship out of the land into the sea, after -three hundred Welshmen had failed at the task. Also he taught Welsh -woodsmen the secret of the crane and pulley for lifting great logs in -the forests, and once he fought to the point of death the bully of the -countryside, a man known over a great part of Wales as The Cruel -Fighter. Tom Edwards, the descendant of this man was born in Ohio near -my own native town of Bidwell. His name was not Edwards, but as his -father was dead when he was born, his mother gave him the old poet’s -name out of pride in having such blood in her veins. Then when the boy -was six his mother died also and the man for whom both his mother and -father had worked, a sporting farmer named Harry Whitehead, took the boy -into his own house to live. - -They were gigantic people, the Whiteheads. Harry himself weighed two -hundred and seventy pounds and his wife twenty pounds more. About the -time he took young Tom to live with him the farmer became interested in -the racing of horses, moved off his farms, of which he had three, and -came to live in our town. - - * * * * * - -In the town of Bidwell there was an old frame building, that had once -been a factory for the making of barrel staves but that had stood for -years vacant, staring with windowless eyes into the streets, and Harry -bought it at a low price and transformed it into a splendid stable with -a board floor and two long rows of box stalls. At a sale of blooded -horses held in the city of Cleveland he bought twenty young colts, all -of the trotting strain, and set up as a trainer of race horses. - -Among the colts thus brought to our town was one great black fellow -named Bucephalus. Harry got the name from John Telfer, our town poetry -lover. “It was the name of the mighty horse of a mighty man,” Telfer -said, and that satisfied Harry. - -Young Tom was told off to be the special guardian and caretaker of -Bucephalus, and the black stallion, who had in him the mighty blood of -the Tennessee Patchens, quickly became the pride of the stables. He was -in his nature a great ugly-tempered beast, as given to whims and notions -as an opera star, and from the very first began to make trouble. Within -a year no one but Harry Whitehead himself and the boy Tom dared go into -his stall. The methods of the two people with the great horse were -entirely different but equally effective. Once big Harry turned the -stallion loose on the floor of the stable, closed all the doors, and -with a cruel long whip in his hand, went in to conquer or to be -conquered. He came out victorious and ever after the horse behaved when -he was about. - -The boy’s method was different. He loved Bucephalus and the wicked -animal loved him. Tom slept on a cot in the barn and day or night, even -when there were mares about, walked into Bucephalus’ box-stall without -fear. When the stallion was in a temper he sometimes turned at the boy’s -entrance and with a snort sent his iron-shod heels banging against the -sides of the stall, but Tom laughed and putting a simple rope halter -over the horse’s head led him forth to be cleaned or hitched to a cart -for his morning’s jog on our town’s half-mile race track. A sight it was -to see the boy with the blood of Twn O’r Nant in his veins leading by -the nose Bucephalus of the royal blood of the Patchens. - -When he was six years old the horse Bucephalus went forth to race and -conquer at the great spring race meeting at Columbus, Ohio. He won two -heats of the trotting free-for-all—the great race of the meeting—with -heavy Harry in the sulky and then faltered. A gelding named “Light o’ -the Orient” beat him in the next heat. Tom, then a lad of sixteen, was -put into the sulky and the two of them, horse and boy, fought out a -royal battle with the gelding and a little bay mare, that hadn’t been -heard from before but that suddenly developed a whirlwind burst of -speed. - -The big stallion and the slender boy won. From amid a mob of cursing, -shouting, whip-slashing men a black horse shot out and a pale boy, -leaning far forward, called and murmured to him. “Go on, boy! Go boy! Go -boy!” the lad’s voice had called over and over all through the race. -Bucephalus got a record of 2.06¼ and Tom Edwards became a newspaper -hero. His picture was in the Cleveland _Leader_ and the Cincinnati -_Enquirer_, and when he came back to Bidwell we other boys fairly wept -in our envy of him. - -Then it was however that Tom Edwards fell down from his high place. -There he was, a tall boy, almost of man’s stature and, except for a few -months during the winters when he lived on the Whitehead farms, and -between his sixth and thirteenth years, when he had attended a country -school and had learned to read and write and do sums, he was without -education. And now, during that very fall of the year of his triumph at -Columbus, the Bidwell truant officer, a thin man with white hair, who -was also superintendent of the Baptist Sunday School, came one afternoon -to the Whitehead stables and told him that if he did not begin going to -school both he and his employer would get into serious trouble. - -Harry Whitehead was furious and so was Tom. There he was, a great tall -slender fellow who had been with race horses to the fairs all over -Northern Ohio and Indiana, during that very fall, and who had just come -home from the journey during which he had driven the winner in the -free-for-all trot at a Grand Circuit meeting and had given Bucephalus a -mark of 2.06¼. - -Was such a fellow to go sit in a schoolroom, with a silly school book in -his hand, reading of the affairs of the men who dealt in butter, eggs, -potatoes and apples, and whose unnecessarily complicated business life -the children were asked to unravel,—was such a fellow to go sit in a -room, under the eyes of a woman teacher, and in the company of boys half -his age and with none of his wide experience of life? - -It was a hard thought and Tom took it hard. The law was all right, Harry -Whitehead said, and was intended to keep noaccount kids off the streets -but what it had to do with himself Tom couldn’t make out. When the -truant officer had gone and Tom was left alone in the stable with his -employer the man and boy stood for a long time glumly staring at each -other. It was all right to be educated but Tom felt he had book -education enough. He could read, write and do sums, and what other -book-training did a horseman need? As for books, they were all right for -rainy evenings when there were no men sitting by the stable door and -talking of horses and races. And also when one went to the races in a -strange town and arrived, perhaps on Sunday, and the races did not begin -until the following Wednesday—it was all right then to have a book in -the chest with the horse blankets. When the weather was fine and the -work was all done on a fine fall afternoon, and the other swipes, both -niggers and whites, had gone off to town, one could take a book out -under a tree and read of life in far away places that was as strange and -almost as fascinating as one’s own life. Tom had read “Robinson Crusoe,” -“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Tales from the Bible,” all of which he had -found in the Whitehead house and Jacob Friedman, the school -superintendent at Bidwell, who had a fancy for horses, had loaned him -other books that he intended reading during the coming winter. They were -in his chest—one called “Gulliver’s Travels” and the other “Moll -Flanders.” - -And now the law said he must give up being a horseman and go every day -to a school and do little foolish sums, he who had already proven -himself a man. What other schoolboy knew what he did about life? Had he -not seen and spoken to several of the greatest men of this world, men -who had driven horses to beat world records, and did they not respect -him? When he became a driver of race horses such men as Pop Geers, -Walter Cox, John Splan, Murphy and the others would not ask him what -books he had read, or how many feet make a rod and how many rods in a -mile. In the race at Columbus, where he had won his spurs as a driver, -he had already proven that life had given him the kind of education he -needed. The driver of the gelding “Light o’ the Orient” had tried to -bluff him in that third heat and had not succeeded. He was a big man -with a black mustache and had lost one eye so that he looked fierce and -ugly, and when the two horses were fighting it out, neck and neck, up -the back stretch, and when Tom was tooling Bucephalus smoothly and -surely to the front, the older man turned in his sulky to glare at him. -“You damned little whipper-snapper,” he yelled, “I’ll knock you out of -your sulky if you don’t take back.” - -He had yelled that at Tom and then had struck at the boy with the butt -of his whip—not intending actually to hit him perhaps but just missing -the boy’s head, and Tom had kept his eyes steadily on his own horse, had -held him smoothly in his stride and at the upper turn, at just the right -moment, had begun to pull out in front. - -Later he hadn’t even told Harry Whitehead of the incident, and that fact -too, he felt vaguely, had something to do with his qualifications as a -man. - -And now they were going to put him into a school with the kids. He was -at work on the stable floor, rubbing the legs of a trim-looking colt, -and Bucephalus was in his stall waiting to be taken to a late fall -meeting at Indianapolis on the following Monday, when the blow fell. -Harry Whitehead walked back and forth swearing at the two men who were -loafing in chairs at the stable door. “Do you call that law, eh, robbing -a kid of the chance Tom’s got?” he asked, shaking a riding whip under -their noses. “I never see such a law. What I say is Dod blast such a -law.” - -Tom took the colt back to its place and went into Bucephalus’ box-stall. -The stallion was in one of his gentle moods and turned to have his nose -rubbed, but Tom went and buried his face against the great black neck -and for a long time stood thus, trembling. He had thought perhaps Harry -would let him drive Bucephalus in all his races another season and now -that was all to come to an end and he was to be pitched back into -childhood, to be made just a kid in school. “I won’t do it,” he decided -suddenly and a dogged light came into his eyes. His future as a driver -of race horses might have to be sacrificed but that didn’t matter so -much as the humiliation of this other, and he decided he would say -nothing to Harry Whitehead or his wife but would make his own move. - -“I’ll get out of here. Before they get me into that school I’ll skip out -of town,” he told himself as his hand crept up and fondled the soft nose -of Bucephalus, the son royal of the Patchens. - -Tom left Bidwell during the night, going east on a freight train, and no -one there ever saw him again. During that winter he lived in the city of -Cleveland, where he got work driving a milk wagon in a district where -factory workers lived. - -Then spring came again and with it the memory of other springs—of -thunder-showers rolling over fields of wheat, just appearing, green and -vivid, out of the black ground—of the sweet smell of new plowed fields, -and most of all the smell and sound of animals about barns at the -Whitehead farms north of Bidwell. How sharply he remembered those days -on the farms and the days later when he lived in Bidwell, slept in the -stables and went each morning to jog race horses and young colts round -and round the half-mile race track at the fair grounds at Bidwell. - -That was a life! Round and round the track they went, young colthood and -young manhood together, not thinking but carrying life very keenly -within themselves and feeling tremendously. The colt’s legs were to be -hardened and their wind made sound and for the boy long hours were to be -spent in a kind of dream world, and life lived in the company of -something fine, courageous, filled with a terrible, waiting surge of -life. At the fair ground, away at the town’s edge, tall grass grew in -the enclosure inside the track and there were trees from which came the -voices of squirrels, chattering and scolding, accompanied by the call of -nesting birds and, down below on the ground, by the song of bees -visiting early blossoms and of insects hidden away in the grass. - -How different the life of the city streets in the springtime! To Tom it -was in a way fetid and foul. For months he had been living in a boarding -house with some six, and often eight or ten, other young fellows, in -narrow rooms above a foul street. The young fellows were unmarried and -made good wages, and on the winter evenings and on Sundays they dressed -in good clothes and went forth, to return later, half drunk, to sit for -long hours boasting and talking loudly in the rooms. Because he was shy, -often lonely and sometimes startled and frightened by what he saw and -heard in the city, the others would have nothing to do with Tom. They -felt a kind of contempt for him, looked upon him as a “rube” and in the -late afternoon when his work was done he often went for long walks alone -in grim streets of workingmen’s houses, breathing the smoke-laden air -and listening to the roar and clatter of machinery in great factories. -At other times and immediately after the evening meal he went off to his -room and to bed, half sick with fear and with some strange nameless -dread of the life about him. - -And so in the early summer of his seventeenth year Tom left the city and -going back into his own Northern Ohio lake country found work with a man -named John Bottsford who owned a threshing outfit and worked among the -farmers of Erie County, Ohio. The slender boy, who had urged Bucephalus -to his greatest victory and had driven him the fastest mile of his -career, had become a tall strong fellow with heavy features, brown eyes, -and big nerveless hands—but in spite of his apparent heaviness there was -something tremendously alive in him. He now drove a team of plodding -grey farm horses and it was his job to keep the threshing engine -supplied with water and fuel and to haul the threshed grain out of the -fields and into farmers’ barns. - -The thresherman Bottsford was a broad-shouldered, powerful old man of -sixty and had, besides Tom, three grown sons in his employ. He had been -a farmer, working on rented land, all his life and had saved some money, -with which he had bought the threshing outfit, and all day the five men -worked like driven slaves and at night slept in the hay in the farmers’ -barns. It was rainy that season in the lake country and at the beginning -of the time of threshing things did not go very well for Bottsford. - -The old thresherman was worried. The threshing venture had taken all of -his money and he had a dread of going into debt and, as he was a deeply -religious man, at night when he thought the others asleep, he crawled -out of the hayloft and went down onto the barn floor to pray. - -Something happened to Tom and for the first time in his life he began to -think about life and its meaning. He was in the country, that he loved, -in the yellow sunwashed fields, far from the dreaded noises and dirt of -city life, and here was a man, of his own type, in some deep way a -brother to himself, who was continuously crying out to some power -outside himself, some power that was in the sun, in the clouds, in the -roaring thunder that accompanied the summer rains—that was in these -things and that at the same time controlled all these things. - -The young threshing apprentice was impressed. Throughout the rainy days, -when no work could be done, he wandered about and waited for night, and -then, when they all had gone into the barn loft and the others prepared -to sleep, he stayed awake to think and listen. He thought of God and of -the possibilities of God’s part in the affairs of men. The thresherman’s -youngest son, a fat jolly fellow, lay beside him and, for a time after -they had crawled into the hay, the two boys whispered and laughed -together. The fat boy’s skin was sensitive and the dry broken ends of -grass stalks crept down under his clothes and tickled him. He giggled -and twisted about, wriggling and kicking and Tom looked at him and -laughed also. The thoughts of God went out of his mind. - -In the barn all became quiet and when it rained a low drumming sound -went on overhead. Tom could hear the horses and cattle, down below, -moving about. The smells were all delicious smells. The smell of the -cows in particular awoke something heady in him. It was as though he had -been drinking strong wine. Every part of his body seemed alive. The two -older boys, who like their father had serious natures, lay with their -feet buried in the hay. They lay very still and a warm musty smell arose -from their clothes, that were full of the sweat of toil. Presently the -bearded old thresherman, who slept off by himself, arose cautiously and -walked across the hay in his stockinged feet. He went down a ladder to -the floor below, and Tom listened eagerly. The fat boy snored but he was -quite sure that the older boys were awake like himself. Every sound from -below was magnified. He heard a horse stamp on the barn floor and a cow -rub her horns against a feed box. The old thresherman prayed fervently, -calling on the name of Jesus to help him out of his difficulty. Tom -could not hear all his words but some of them came to him quite clearly -and one group of words ran like a refrain through the thresherman’s -prayer. “Gentle Jesus,” he cried, “send the good days. Let the good days -come quickly. Look out over the land. Send us the fair warm days.” - -Came the warm fair days and Tom wondered. Late every morning, after the -sun had marched far up into the sky and after the machines were set by a -great pile of wheat bundles he drove his tank wagon off to be filled at -some distant creek or at a pond. Sometimes he was compelled to drive two -or three miles to the lake. Dust gathered in the roads and the horses -plodded along. He passed through a grove of trees and went down a lane -and into a small valley where there was a spring and he thought of the -old man’s words, uttered in the silence and the darkness of the barns. -He made himself a figure of Jesus as a young god walking about over the -land. The young god went through the lanes and through the shaded -covered places. The feet of the horses came down with a thump in the -dust of the road and there was an echoing thump far away in the wood. -Tom leaned forward and listened and his cheeks became a little pale. He -was no longer the growing man but had become again the fine and -sensitive boy who had driven Bucephalus through a mob of angry, -determined men to victory. For the first time the blood of the old poet -Twn O’r Nant awoke in him. - -The water boy for the threshing crew rode the horse Pegasus down through -the lanes back of the farm houses in Erie County, Ohio, to the creeks -where the threshing tanks must be filled. Beside him on the soft earth -in the forest walked the young god Jesus. At the creek Pegasus, born of -the springs of Ocean, stamped on the ground. The plodding farm horses -stopped. With a dazed look in his eyes Tom Edwards arose from the wagon -seat and prepared his hose and pump for filling the tank. The god Jesus -walked away over the land, and with a wave of his hand summoned the -smiling days. - -A light came into Tom Edwards’ eyes and grace seemed to come also into -his heavy maturing body. New impulses came to him. As the threshing crew -went about, over the roads and through the villages from farm to farm, -women and young girls looked at the young man and smiled. Sometimes as -he came from the fields to a farmer’s barn, with a load of wheat in bags -on his wagon, the daughter of the farmer stepped out of the farm house -and stood looking at him. Tom looked at the woman and hunger crept into -his heart and, in the evenings while the thresherman and his sons sat on -the ground by the barns and talked of their affairs, he walked nervously -about. Making a motion to the fat boy, who was not really interested in -the talk of his father and brothers, the two younger men went to walk in -the nearby fields and on the roads. Sometimes they stumbled along a -country road in the dusk of the evening and came into the lighted -streets of a town. Under the store-lights young girls walked about. The -two boys stood in the shadows by a building and watched and later, as -they went homeward in the darkness, the fat boy expressed what they both -felt. They passed through a dark place where the road wound through a -wood. In silence the frogs croaked, and birds roosting in the trees were -disturbed by their presence and fluttered about. The fat boy wore heavy -overalls and his fat legs rubbed against each other. The rough cloth -made a queer creaking sound. He spoke passionately. “I would like to -hold a woman, tight, tight, tight,” he said. - -One Sunday the thresherman took his entire crew with him to a church. -They had been working near a village called Castalia, but did not go -into the town but to a small white frame church that stood amid trees -and by a stream at the side of a road, a mile north of the village. They -went on Tom’s water wagon, from which they had lifted the tank and -placed boards for seats. The boy drove the horses. - -Many teams were tied in the shade under the trees in a little grove near -the church, and strange men—farmers and their sons—stood about in little -groups and talked of the season’s crops. Although it was hot, a breeze -played among the leaves of the trees under which they stood, and back of -the church and the grove the stream ran over stones and made a -persistent soft murmuring noise that arose above the hum of voices. - -In the church Tom sat beside the fat boy who stared at the country girls -as they came in and who, after the sermon began, went to sleep while Tom -listened eagerly to the sermon. The minister, an old man with a beard -and a strong sturdy body, looked, he thought not unlike his employer -Bottsford the thresherman. - -The minister in the country church talked of that time when Mary -Magdalene, the woman who had been taken in adultery, was being stoned by -the crowd of men who had forgotten their own sins and when, in the tale -the minister told, Jesus approached and rescued the woman Tom’s heart -thumped with excitement. Then later the minister talked of how Jesus was -tempted by the devil, as he stood on a high place in the mountain, but -the boy did not listen. He leaned forward and looked out through a -window across fields and the minister’s words came to him but in broken -sentences. Tom took what was said concerning the temptation on the -mountain to mean that Mary had followed Jesus and had offered her body -to him, and that afternoon, when he had returned with the others to the -farm where they were to begin threshing on the next morning, he called -the fat boy aside and asked his opinion. - -The two boys walked across a field of wheat-stubble and sat down on a -log in a grove of trees. It had never occurred to Tom that a man could -be tempted by a woman. It had always seemed to him that it must be the -other way, that women must always be tempted by men. “I thought men -always asked,” he said, “and now it seems that women sometimes do the -asking. That would be a fine thing if it could happen to us. Don’t you -think so?” - -The two boys arose and walked under the trees and dark shadows began to -form on the ground underfoot. Tom burst into words and continually asked -questions and the fat boy, who had been often to church and for whom the -figure of Jesus had lost most of its reality, felt a little embarrassed. -He did not think the subject should be thus freely discussed and when -Tom’s mind kept playing with the notion of Jesus, pursued and tempted by -a woman, he grunted his disapproval. “Do you think he really refused?” -Tom asked over and over. The fat boy tried to explain. “He had twelve -disciples,” he said. “It couldn’t have happened. They were always about. -Well, you see, she wouldn’t ever have had no chance. Wherever he went -they went with him. They were men he was teaching to preach. One of them -later betrayed him to soldiers who killed him.” - -Tom wondered. “How did that come about? How could a man like that be -betrayed?” he asked. “By a kiss,” the fat boy replied. - -On the evening of the day when Tom Edwards—for the first and last time -in his life—went into a church, there was a light shower, the only one -that fell upon John Bottsford’s threshing crew during the last three -months the Welsh boy was with them and the shower in no way interfered -with their work. The shower came up suddenly and a few minutes was gone. -As it was Sunday and as there was no work the men had all gathered in -the barn and were looking out through the open barn doors. Two or three -men from the farm house came and sat with them on boxes and barrels on -the barn floor and, as is customary with country people, very little was -said. The men took knives out of their pockets and finding little sticks -among the rubbish on the barn floor began to whittle, while the old -thresherman went restlessly about with his hands in his trouser pockets. -Tom who sat near the door, where an occasional drop of rain was blown -against his cheek, alternately looked from his employer to the open -country where the rain played over the fields. One of the farmers -remarked that a rainy time had come on and that there would be no good -threshing weather for several days and, while the thresherman did not -answer, Tom saw his lips move and his grey beard bob up and down. He -thought the thresherman was protesting but did not want to protest in -words. - -As they had gone about the country many rains had passed to the north, -south and east of the threshing crew and on some days the clouds hung -over them all day, but no rain fell and when they had got to a new place -they were told it had rained there three days before. Sometimes when -they left a farm Tom stood up on the seat of his water wagon and looked -back. He looked across fields to where they had been at work and then -looked up into the sky. “The rain may come now. The threshing is done -and the wheat is all in the barn. The rain can now do no harm to our -labor,” he thought. - -On the Sunday evening when he sat with the men on the floor of the barn -Tom was sure that the shower that had now come would be but a passing -affair. He thought his employer must be very close to Jesus, who -controlled the affairs of the heavens, and that a long rain would not -come because the thresherman did not want it. He fell into a deep -reverie and John Bottsford came and stood close beside him. The -thresherman put his hand against the door jamb and looked out and Tom -could still see the grey beard moving. The man was praying and was so -close to himself that his trouser leg touched Tom’s hand. Into the boy’s -mind came the remembrance of how John Bottsford had prayed at night on -the barn floor. On that very morning he had prayed. It was just as -daylight came and the boy was awakened because, as he crept across the -hay to descend the ladder, the old man’s foot had touched his hand. - -As always Tom had been excited and wanted to hear every word said in the -older man’s prayers. He lay tense, listening to every sound that came up -from below. A faint glow of light came into the hayloft, through a crack -in the side of the barn, a rooster crowed and some pigs, housed in a pen -near the barn, grunted loudly. They had heard the thresherman moving -about and wanted to be fed and their grunting, and the occasional -restless movement of a horse or a cow in the stable below, prevented -Tom’s hearing very distinctly. He, however, made out that his employer -was thanking Jesus for the fine weather that had attended them and was -protesting that he did not want to be selfish in asking it to continue. -“Jesus,” he said, “send, if you wish, a little shower on this day when, -because of our love for you, we do not work in the fields. Let it be -fine tomorrow but today, after we have come back from the house of -worship, let a shower freshen the land.” - -As Tom sat on a box near the door of the barn and saw how aptly the -words of his employer had been answered by Jesus he knew that the rain -would not last. The man for whom he worked seemed to him so close to the -throne of God that he raised the hand, that had been touched by John -Bottsford’s trouser leg to his lips and secretly kissed it—and when he -looked again out over the fields the clouds were being blown away by a -wind and the evening sun was coming out. It seemed to him that the young -and beautiful god Jesus must be right at hand, within hearing of his -voice. “He is,” Tom told himself, “standing behind a tree in the -orchard.” The rain stopped and he went silently out of the barn, towards -a small apple orchard that lay beside the farm house, but when he came -to a fence and was about to climb over he stopped. “If Jesus is there he -will not want me to find him,” he thought. As he turned again toward the -barn he could see, across a field, a low grass-covered hill. He decided -that Jesus was not after all in the orchard. The long slanting rays of -the evening sun fell on the crest of the hill and touched with light the -grass stalks, heavy with drops of rain and for a moment the hill was -crowned as with a crown of jewels. A million tiny drops of water, -reflecting the light, made the hilltop sparkle as though set with gems. -“Jesus is there,” muttered the boy. “He lies on his belly in the grass. -He is looking at me over the edge of the hill.” - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - CHAPTER II - - -JOHN BOTTSFORD went with his threshing crew to work for a large farmer -named Barton near the town of Sandusky. The threshing season was drawing -near an end and the days remained clear, cool and beautiful. The country -into which he now came made a deep impression on Tom’s mind and he never -forgot the thoughts and experiences that came to him during the last -weeks of that summer on the Barton farms. - -The traction engine, puffing forth smoke and attracting the excited -attention of dogs and children as it rumbled along and pulled the heavy -red grain separator, had trailed slowly over miles of road and had come -down almost to Lake Erie. Tom, with the fat Bottsford boy sitting beside -him on the water wagon, followed the rumbling puffing engine, and when -they came to the new place, where they were to stay for several days, he -could see, from the wagon seat, the smoke of the factories in the town -of Sandusky rising into the clear morning air. - -The man for whom John Bottsford was threshing owned three farms, one on -an island in the bay, where he lived, and two on the mainland, and the -larger of the mainland farms had great stacks of wheat standing in a -field near the barns. The farm was in a wide basin of land, very -fertile, through which a creek flowed northward into Sandusky Bay and, -besides the stacks of wheat in the basin, other stacks had been made in -the upland fields beyond the creek, where a country of low hills began. -From these latter fields the waters of the bay could be seen glistening -in the bright fall sunlight and steamers went from Sandusky to a -pleasure resort called Cedar Point. When the wind blew from the north or -west and when the threshing machinery had been stopped at the noon hour -the men, resting with their backs against a strawstack, could hear a -band playing on one of the steamers. - -Fall came on early that year and the leaves on the trees in the forests -that grew along the roads that ran down through the low creek bottom -lands began to turn yellow and red. In the afternoons when Tom went to -the creek for water he walked beside his horses and the dry leaves -crackled and snapped underfoot. - -As the season had been a prosperous one Bottsford decided that his -youngest son should attend school in town during the fall and winter. He -had bought himself a machine for cutting firewood and with his two older -sons intended to take up that work. “The logs will have to be hauled out -of the wood lots to where we set up the saws,” he said to Tom. “You can -come with us if you wish.” - -The thresherman began to talk to Tom of the value of learning. “You’d -better go to some town yourself this winter. It would be better for you -to get into a school,” he said sharply. He grew excited and walked up -and down beside the water wagon, on the seat of which Tom sat listening -and said that God had given men both minds and bodies and it was wicked -to let either decay because of neglect. “I have watched you,” he said. -“You don’t talk very much but you do plenty of thinking, I guess. Go -into the schools. Find out what the books have to say. You don’t have to -believe when they say things that are lies.” - -The Bottsford family lived in a rented house facing a stone road near -the town of Bellevue, and the fat boy was to go to that town—a distance -of some eighteen miles from where the men were at work—afoot, and on the -evening before he set out he and Tom went out of the barns intending to -have a last walk and talk together on the roads. - -They went along in the dusk of the fall evening, each thinking his own -thoughts, and coming to a bridge that led over the creek in the valley -sat on the bridge rail. Tom had little to say but his companion wanted -to talk about women and, when darkness came on, the embarrassment he -felt regarding the subject went quite away and he talked boldly and -freely. He said that in the town of Bellevue, where he was to live and -attend school during the coming winter, he would be sure to get in with -a woman. “I’m not going to be cheated out of that chance,” he declared. -He explained that as his father would be away from home when he moved -into town he would be free to pick his own place to board. - -The fat boy’s imagination became inflamed and he told Tom his plans. “I -won’t try to get in with any young girl,” he declared shrewdly. “That -only gets a fellow in a fix. He might have to marry her. I’ll go live in -a house with a widow, that’s what I’ll do. And in the evening the two of -us will be there alone. We’ll begin to talk and I’ll keep touching her -with my hands. That will get her excited.” - -The fat boy jumped to his feet and walked back and forth on the bridge. -He was nervous and a little ashamed and wanted to justify what he had -said. The thing for which he hungered had he thought become a -possibility—an act half achieved. Coming to stand before Tom he put a -hand on his shoulder. “I’ll go into her room at night,” he declared. -“I’ll not tell her I’m coming, but will creep in when she is asleep. -Then I’ll get down on my knees by her bed and I’ll kiss her, hard, hard. -I’ll hold her tight, so she can’t get away and I’ll kiss her mouth till -she wants what I want. Then I’ll stay in her house all winter. No one -will know. Even if she won’t have me I’ll only have to move, I’m sure to -be safe. No one will believe what she says, if she tells on me. I’m not -going to be like a boy any more, I’ll tell you what—I’m as big as a man -and I’m going to do like men do, that’s what I am.” - -The two young men went back to the barn where they were to sleep on the -hay. The rich farmer for whom they were now at work had a large house -and provided beds for the thresherman and his two older sons but the two -younger men slept in the barn loft and on the night before had lain -under one blanket. After the talk by the bridge however, Tom did not -feel very comfortable and that stout exponent of manhood, the younger -Bottsford, was also embarrassed. In the road the young man, whose name -was Paul, walked a little ahead of his companion and when they got to -the barn each sought a separate place in the loft. Each wanted to have -thoughts into which he did not want the presence of the other to -intrude. - -For the first time Tom’s body burned with eager desire for a female. He -lay where he could see out through a crack, in the side of the barn, and -at first his thoughts were all about animals. He had brought a horse -blanket up from the stable below and crawling under it lay on his side -with his eyes close to the crack and thought about the love-making of -horses and cattle. Things he had seen in the stables when he worked for -Whitehead, the racing man, came back to his mind and a queer animal -hunger ran through him so that his legs stiffened. He rolled restlessly -about on the hay and for some reason, he did not understand, his lust -took the form of anger and he hated the fat boy. He thought he would -like to crawl over the hay and pound his companion’s face with his -fists. Although he had not seen Paul Bottsford’s face, when he talked of -the widow, he had sensed in him a flavor of triumph. “He thinks he has -got the better of me,” young Edwards thought. - -He rolled again to the crack and stared out into the night. There was a -new moon and the fields were dimly outlined and clumps of trees, along -the road that led into the town of Sandusky, looked like black clouds -that had settled down over the land. For some reason the sight of the -land, lying dim and quiet under the moon, took all of his anger away and -he began to think, not of Paul Bottsford, with hot eager lust in his -eyes, creeping into the room of the widow at Bellevue, but of the god -Jesus, going up into a mountain with his woman, Mary. - -His companion’s notion of going into a room where a woman lay sleeping -and taking her, as it were unawares, now seemed to him entirely mean and -the hot jealous feeling that had turned into anger and hatred went -entirely away. He tried to think what the god, who had brought the -beautiful days for the threshing, would do with a woman. - -Tom’s body still burned with desire and his mind wanted to think -lascivious thoughts. The moon that had been hidden behind clouds emerged -and a wind began to blow. It was still early evening and in the town of -Sandusky pleasure seekers were taking the boat to the resort over the -bay and the wind brought to Tom’s ears the sound of music, blown over -the waters of the bay and down the creek basin. In a grove near the barn -the wind swayed gently the branches of young trees and black shadows ran -here and there on the ground. - -The younger Bottsford had gone to sleep in a distant part of the barn -loft, and now began to snore loudly. The tenseness went out of Tom’s -legs and he prepared to sleep but before sleeping he muttered, half -timidly, certain words, that were half a prayer, half an appeal to some -spirit of the night. “Jesus, bring me a woman,” he whispered. - -Outside the barn, in the fields, the wind, becoming a little stronger, -picked up bits of straw and blew them about among the hard up-standing -stubble and there was a low gentle whispering sound as though the gods -were answering his appeal. - -Tom went to sleep with his arm under his head and with his eye close to -the crack that gave him a view of the moonlit fields, and in his dream -the cry from within repeated itself over and over. The mysterious god -Jesus had heard and answered the needs of his employer John Bottsford -and his own need would, he was quite sure, be understood and attended -to. “Bring me a woman. I need her. Jesus, bring me a woman,” he kept -whispering into the night, as consciousness left him and he slipped away -into dreams. - -After the youngest of the Bottsfords had departed a change took place in -the nature of Tom’s work. The threshing crew had got now into a country -of large farms where the wheat had all been brought in from the fields -and stacked near the barns and where there was always plenty of water -near at hand. Everything was simplified. The separator was pulled in -close by the barn door and the threshed grain was carried directly to -the bins from the separator. As it was not a part of Tom’s work to feed -the bundles of grain into the whirling teeth of the separator—this work -being done by John Bottsford’s two elder sons—there was little for the -crew’s teamster to do. Sometimes John Bottsford, who was the engineer, -departed, going to make arrangements for the next stop, and was gone for -a half day, and at such times Tom, who had picked up some knowledge of -the art, ran the engine. - -On other days however there was nothing at all for him to do and his -mind, unoccupied for long hours, began to play him tricks. In the -morning, after his team had been fed and cleaned until the grey coats of -the old farm horses shone like racers, he went out of the barn and into -an orchard. Filling his pockets with ripe apples he went to a fence and -leaned over. In a field young colts played about. As he held the apples -and called softly they came timidly forward, stopping in alarm and then -running a little forward, until one of them, bolder than the others, ate -one of the apples out of his hand. - -All through those bright warm clear fall days a restless feeling, it -seemed to Tom ran through everything in nature. In the clumps of -woodland still standing on the farms flaming red spread itself out along -the limbs of trees and there was one grove of young maple trees, near a -barn, that was like a troop of girls, young girls who had walked -together down a sloping field, to stop in alarm at seeing the men at -work in the barnyard. Tom stood looking at the trees. A slight breeze -made them sway gently from side to side. Two horses standing among the -trees drew near each other. One nipped the other’s neck. They rubbed -their heads together. - -The crew stopped at another large farm and it was to be their last stop -for the season. “When we have finished this job we’ll go home and get -our own fall work done,” Bottsford said. Saturday evening came and the -thresherman and his sons took the horses and drove away, going to their -own home for the Sunday, and leaving Tom alone. “We’ll be back early, on -Monday morning,” the thresherman said as they drove away. Sunday alone -among the strange farm people brought a sharp experience to Tom and when -it had passed he decided he would not wait for the end of the threshing -season but a few days off now—but would quit his job and go into the -city and surrender to the schools. He remembered his employer’s words, -“Find out what the books have to say. You don’t have to believe, when -they say things that are lies.” - -As he walked in lanes, across meadows and upon the hillsides of the -farm, also on the shores of Sandusky Bay, that Sunday morning Tom -thought almost constantly of his friend the fat fellow, young Paul -Bottsford, who had gone to spend the fall and winter at Bellevue, and -wondered what his life there might be like. He had himself lived in such -a town, in Bidwell, but had rarely left Harry Whitehead’s stable. What -went on in such a town? What happened at night in the houses of the -towns? He remembered Paul’s plan for getting into a house alone with a -widow and how he was to creep into her room at night, holding her -tightly in his arms until she wanted what he wanted. “I wonder if he -will have the nerve. Gee, I wonder if he will have the nerve,” he -muttered. - -For a long time, ever since Paul had gone away and he had no one with -whom he could talk, things had taken on a new aspect in Tom’s mind. The -rustle of dry leaves underfoot, as he walked in a forest—the playing of -shadows over the open face of a field—the murmuring song of insects in -the dry grass beside the fences in the lanes—and at night the hushed -contented sounds made by the animals in the barns, were no longer so -sweet to him. For him no more did the young god Jesus walk beside him, -just out of sight behind low hills, or down the dry beds of streams. -Something within himself, that had been sleeping was now awakening. When -he returned from walking in the fields on the fall evenings and, -thinking of Paul Bottsford alone in the house with the widow at -Bellevue, half wishing he were in the same position, he felt ashamed in -the presence of the gentle old thresherman, and afterward did not lie -awake listening to the older man’s prayers. The men who had come from -nearby farms to help with the threshing laughed and shouted to each -other as they pitched the straw into great stacks or carried the filled -bags of grain to the bins, and they had wives and daughters who had come -with them and who were now at work in the farmhouse kitchen, from which -also laughter came. Girls and women kept coming out at the kitchen door -into the barnyard, tall awkward girls, plump red-cheeked girls, women -with worn thin faces and sagging breasts. All men and women seemed made -for each other. - -They all laughed and talked together, understood one another. Only he -was alone. He only had no one to whom he could feel warm and close, to -whom he could draw close. - -On the Sunday when the Bottsfords had all gone away Tom came in from -walking all morning in the fields and ate his dinner with many other -people in a big farmhouse dining room. In preparation for the threshing -days ahead, and the feeding of many people, several women had come to -spend the day and to help in preparing food. The farmer’s daughter, who -was married and lived in Sandusky, came with her husband, and three -other women, neighbors, came from farms in the neighborhood. Tom did not -look at them but ate his dinner in silence and as soon as he could -manage got out of the house and went to the barns. Going into a long -shed he sat on the tongue of a wagon, that from long disuse was covered -with dust. Swallows flew back and forth among the rafters overhead and, -in an upper corner of the shed where they evidently had a nest, wasps -buzzed in the semi-darkness. - -The daughter of the farmer, who had come from town, came from the house -with a babe in her arms. It was nursing time, and she wanted to escape -from the crowded house and, without having seen Tom, she sat on a box -near the shed door and opened her dress. Embarrassed and at the same -time fascinated by the sight of a woman’s breasts, seen through cracks -of the wagon box, Tom drew his legs up and his head down and remained -concealed until the woman had gone back to the house. Then he went again -to the fields and did not go back to the house for the evening meal. - -As he walked on that Sunday afternoon the grandson of the Welsh poet -experienced many new sensations. In a way he came to understand that the -things Paul had talked of doing and that had, but a short time before, -filled him with disgust were now possible to himself also. In the past -when he had thought about women there had always been something healthy -and animal-like in his lusts but now they took a new form. The passion -that could not find expression through his body went up into his mind -and he began to see visions. Women became to him something different -than anything else in nature, more desirable than anything else in -nature, and at the same time everything in nature became woman. The -trees, in the apple orchard by the barn, were like the arms of women. -The apples on the trees were round like the breasts of women. They were -the breasts of women—and when he had got on to a low hill the contour of -the fences that marked the confines of the fields fell into the forms of -women’s bodies. Even the clouds in the sky did the same thing. - -He walked down along a lane to a stream and crossed the stream by a -wooden bridge. Then he climbed another hill, the highest place in all -that part of the country, and there the fever that possessed him became -more active. An odd lassitude crept over him and he lay down in the -grass on the hilltop and closed his eyes. For a long time he remained in -a hushed, half-sleeping, dreamless state and then opened his eyes again. - -Again the forms of women floated before him. To his left the bay was -ruffled by a gentle breeze and far over towards the city of Sandusky two -sailboats were apparently engaged in a race. The masts of the boats were -fully dressed but on the great stretch of water they seemed to stand -still. The bay itself, in Tom’s eyes, had taken on the form and shape of -a woman’s head and body and the two sailboats were the woman’s eyes -looking at him. - -The bay was a woman with her head lying where lay the city of Sandusky. -Smoke arose from the stacks of steamers docked at the city’s wharves and -the smoke formed itself into masses of black hair. Through the farm, -where he had come to thresh, ran a stream. It swept down past the foot -of the hill on which he lay. The stream was the arm of the woman. Her -hand was thrust into the land and the lower part of her body was -lost—far down to the north, where the bay became a part of Lake Erie—but -her other arm could be seen. It was outlined in the further shore of the -bay. Her other arm was drawn up and her hand was pressing against her -face. Her form was distorted by pain but at the same time the giant -woman smiled at the boy on the hill. There was something in the smile -that was like the smile that had come unconsciously to the lips of the -woman who had nursed her child in the shed. - -Turning his face away from the bay Tom looked at the sky. A great white -cloud that lay along the southern horizon formed itself into the giant -head of a man. Tom watched as the cloud crept slowly across the sky. -There was something noble and quieting about the giant’s face and his -hair, pure white and as thick as wheat in a rich field in June, added to -its nobility. Only the face appeared. Below the shoulders there was just -a white shapeless mass of clouds. - -And then this formless mass began also to change. The face of a giant -woman appeared. It pressed upward toward the face of the man. Two arms -formed themselves on the man’s shoulders and pressed the woman closely. -The two faces merged. Something seemed to snap in Tom’s brain. - -He sat upright and looked neither at the bay nor at the sky. Evening was -coming on and soft shadows began to play over the land. Below him lay -the farm with its barns and houses and in the field, below the hill on -which he was lying, there were two smaller hills that became at once in -his eyes the two full breasts of a woman. Two white sheep appeared and -stood nibbling the grass on the woman’s breasts. They were like babes -being suckled. The trees in the orchards near the barns were the woman’s -hair. An arm of the stream that ran down to the bay, the stream he had -crossed on the wooden bridge when he came to the hill, cut across a -meadow beyond the two low hills. It widened into a pond and the pond -made a mouth for the woman. Her eyes were two black hollows—low spots in -a field where hogs had rooted the grass away, looking for roots. Black -puddles of water lay in the hollows and they seemed eyes shining -invitingly up at him. - -This woman also smiled and her smile was now an invitation. Tom got to -his feet and hurried away down the hill and going stealthily past the -barns and the house got into a road. All night he walked under the stars -thinking new thoughts. “I am obsessed with this idea of having a woman. -I’d better go to the city and go to school and see if I can make myself -fit to have a woman of my own,” he thought. “I won’t sleep tonight but -will wait until tomorrow when Bottsford comes back and then I’ll quit -and go into the city.” He walked, trying to make plans. Even a good man -like John Bottsford, had a woman for himself. Could he do that? - -The thought was exciting. At the moment it seemed to him that he had -only to go into the city, and go to the schools for a time, to become -beautiful and to have beautiful women love him. In his half ecstatic -state he forgot the winter months he had spent in the city of Cleveland, -and forgot also the grim streets, the long rows of dark prison-like -factories and the loneliness of his life in the city. For the moment and -as he walked in the dusty roads under the moon, he thought of American -towns and cities as places for beautifully satisfying adventures, for -all such fellows as himself. - - - THE END - - - PRINTED IN U.S.A. - - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - ● Transcriber’s Notes: - ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. - ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. - ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only - when a predominant form was found in this book. - ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Horses and Men, by Sherwood Anderson - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HORSES AND MEN *** - -***** This file should be named 60097-0.txt or 60097-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/0/9/60097/ - -Produced by Tim Lindell, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -book was produced from images made available by the -HathiTrust Digital Library.) - -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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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: Horses and Men - Tales, long and short, from our American life - -Author: Sherwood Anderson - -Release Date: August 14, 2019 [EBook #60097] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HORSES AND MEN *** - - - - -Produced by Tim Lindell, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -book was produced from images made available by the -HathiTrust Digital Library.) - - - - - - -</pre> - - -<div class='figcenter id001'> -<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' /> -<div class='ic001'> -<p><span class='small'>The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.</span></p> -</div> -</div> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c000' /> -</div> -<div> - <h1 class='c001'>HORSES AND MEN</h1> -</div> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> -<hr class='c003' /> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> - <div class='nf-center'> - <div><i>OTHER BOOKS BY</i></div> - <div class='c000'>SHERWOOD ANDERSON</div> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class='c004' /> - -<div class='lg-container-b'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Windy McPherson’s Son</span>, <i>A novel</i></div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Marching Men</span>, <i>A novel</i></div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Mid-American Chants</span>, <i>Chants</i></div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Winesburg, Ohio</span>, <i>A book of tales</i></div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Poor White</span>, <i>A novel</i></div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>The Triumph of the Egg</span>, <i>A book of tales</i></div> - <div class='line'><span class='sc'>Many Marriages</span>, <i>A novel</i></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class='c004' /> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c005'> - <div><span class='xxlarge'>HORSES AND MEN</span></div> - <div class='c000'><i>Tales, long and short, from</i></div> - <div><i>our American life</i></div> - <div class='c000'>BY</div> - <div><span class='xlarge'>SHERWOOD ANDERSON</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c006'> </p> -<div class='figcenter id002'> -<img src='images/publogo.jpg' alt='' class='ig001' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div>NEW YORK</div> - <div>B. W. HUEBSCH, <span class='sc'>Inc.</span></div> - <div>MCMXXIII</div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div>COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY</div> - <div>B. W. HUEBSCH, INC.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<hr class='c007' /> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> - <div class='nf-center'> - <div>PRINTED IN U.S.A.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div>TO THEODORE DREISER</div> - <div class='c000'>In whose presence I have sometimes had</div> - <div>the same refreshed feeling as when in</div> - <div>the presence of a thoroughbred horse.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div>Some of the tales in this book have been printed in</div> - <div><i>The Little Review</i>, <i>The New Republic</i>, <i>The Century</i>,</div> - <div><i>Harper’s</i>, <i>The Dial</i>, <i>The London Mercury</i> and <i>Vanity</i></div> - <div><i>Fair</i>, to which magazines the author makes due</div> - <div>acknowledgment.</div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_ix'>ix</span> - <h2 class='c008'>FOREWORD</h2> -</div> -<p class='c009'>Did you ever have a notion of this kind—there is an -orange, or say an apple, lying on a table before you. -You put out your hand to take it. Perhaps you eat it, -make it a part of your physical life. Have you -touched? Have you eaten? That’s what I wonder -about.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The whole subject is only important to me because I -want the apple. What subtle flavors are concealed -in it—how does it taste, smell, feel? Heavens, man, -the way the apple feels in the hand is something—isn’t -it?</p> - -<p class='c006'>For a long time I thought only of eating the apple. -Then later its fragrance became something of importance -too. The fragrance stole out through my room, -through a window and into the streets. It made itself -a part of all the smells of the streets. The devil!—in -Chicago or Pittsburgh, Youngstown or Cleveland it -would have had a rough time.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That doesn’t matter.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The point is that after the form of the apple began -to take my eye I often found myself unable to touch -at all. My hands went toward the object of my desire -and then came back.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There I sat, in the room with the apple before me, -and hours passed. I had pushed myself off into a -world where nothing has any existence. Had I done -<span class='pageno' id='Page_x'>x</span>that, or had I merely stepped, for the moment, out -of the world of darkness into the light?</p> - -<p class='c006'>It may be that my eyes are blind and that I cannot -see.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It may be I am deaf.</p> - -<p class='c006'>My hands are nervous and tremble. How much -do they tremble? Now, alas, I am absorbed in looking -at my own hands.</p> - -<p class='c006'>With these nervous and uncertain hands may I -really feel for the form of things concealed in the -darkness?</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_xi'>xi</span> - <h2 class='c008'>DREISER</h2> -</div> - -<div class='lg-container-b c010'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><i>Heavy, heavy, hangs over thy head,</i></div> - <div class='line'><i>Fine, or superfine?</i></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c009'>Theodore Dreiser is old—he is very, very old. I -do not know how many years he has lived, perhaps -forty, perhaps fifty, but he is very old. Something -grey and bleak and hurtful, that has been in the world -perhaps forever, is personified in him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When Dreiser is gone men shall write books, many -of them, and in the books they shall write there will -be so many of the qualities Dreiser lacks. The new, -the younger men shall have a sense of humor, and -everyone knows Dreiser has no sense of humor. -More than that, American prose writers shall have -grace, lightness of touch, a dream of beauty breaking -through the husks of life.</p> - -<p class='c006'>O, those who follow him shall have many things -that Dreiser does not have. That is a part of the -wonder and beauty of Theodore Dreiser, the things -that others shall have, because of him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Long ago, when he was editor of the <i>Delineator</i>, -Dreiser went one day, with a woman friend, to visit -an orphan asylum. The woman once told me the -story of that afternoon in the big, ugly grey building, -with Dreiser, looking heavy and lumpy and old, sitting -on a platform, folding and refolding his pocket-handkerchief -<span class='pageno' id='Page_xii'>xii</span>and watching the children—all in their little -uniforms, trooping in.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The tears ran down his cheeks and he shook his -head,” the woman said, and that is a real picture of -Theodore Dreiser. He is old in spirit and he does -not know what to do with life, so he tells about it as -he sees it, simply and honestly. The tears run down -his cheeks and he folds and refolds the pocket-handkerchief -and shakes his head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Heavy, heavy, the feet of Theodore. How easy to -pick some of his books to pieces, to laugh at him for -so much of his heavy prose.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The feet of Theodore are making a path, the -heavy brutal feet. They are tramping through the -wilderness of lies, making a path. Presently the path -will be a street, with great arches overhead and delicately -carved spires piercing the sky. Along the -street will run children, shouting, “Look at me. See -what I and my fellows of the new day have done”—forgetting -the heavy feet of Dreiser.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The fellows of the ink-pots, the prose writers in -America who follow Dreiser, will have much to do -that he has never done. Their road is long but, because -of him, those who follow will never have to face -the road through the wilderness of Puritan denial, -the road that Dreiser faced alone.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c011'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><i>Heavy, heavy, hangs over thy head,</i></div> - <div class='line'><i>Fine, or superfine?</i></div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_xiii'>xiii</span> - <h2 class='c008'>TALES OF THE BOOK</h2> -</div> -<div class='font120'> - -<table class='table0' summary=''> -<colgroup> -<col width='16%' /> -<col width='83%' /> -</colgroup> - <tr> - <td class='c012'><i>Page</i></td> - <td class='c013'> </td> - </tr> - <tr> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_ix'>ix</a></td> - <td class='c013'><span class='sc'>Foreword</span></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_xi'>xi</a></td> - <td class='c013'><span class='sc'>Dreiser</span></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_3'>3</a></td> - <td class='c013'><span class='sc'>I’m a Fool</span></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_21'>21</a></td> - <td class='c013'><span class='sc'>The Triumph of a Modern</span></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_31'>31</a></td> - <td class='c013'>“<span class='sc'>Unused</span>”</td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_139'>139</a></td> - <td class='c013'><span class='sc'>A Chicago Hamlet</span></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_185'>185</a></td> - <td class='c013'><span class='sc'>The Man Who Became a Woman</span></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_231'>231</a></td> - <td class='c013'><span class='sc'>Milk Bottles</span></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_245'>245</a></td> - <td class='c013'><span class='sc'>The Sad Horn Blowers</span></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_287'>287</a></td> - <td class='c013'><span class='sc'>The Man’s Story</span></td> - </tr> - <tr><td> </td></tr> - <tr> - <td class='c012'><a href='#Page_315'>315</a></td> - <td class='c013'><span class='sc'>An Ohio Pagan</span></td> - </tr> -</table> - -</div> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_xv'>xv</span><span class='large'>I’M A FOOL</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_3'>3</span> - <h2 class='c008'>I’M A FOOL</h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>IT was a hard jolt for me, one of the most bitterest -I ever had to face. And it all came about -through my own foolishness, too. Even yet sometimes, -when I think of it, I want to cry or swear or -kick myself. Perhaps, even now, after all this time, -there will be a kind of satisfaction in making myself -look cheap by telling of it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It began at three o’clock one October afternoon as -I sat in the grand stand at the fall trotting and pacing -meet at Sandusky, Ohio.</p> - -<p class='c006'>To tell the truth, I felt a little foolish that I should -be sitting in the grand stand at all. During the summer -before I had left my home town with Harry -Whitehead and, with a nigger named Burt, had taken -a job as swipe with one of the two horses Harry was -campaigning through the fall race meets that year. -Mother cried and my sister Mildred, who wanted to -get a job as a school teacher in our town that fall, -stormed and scolded about the house all during the -week before I left. They both thought it something -disgraceful that one of our family should take a place -as a swipe with race horses. I’ve an idea Mildred -thought my taking the place would stand in the way -of her getting the job she’d been working so long for.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But after all I had to work, and there was no other -work to be got. A big lumbering fellow of nineteen -couldn’t just hang around the house and I had got too -<span class='pageno' id='Page_4'>4</span>big to mow people’s lawns and sell newspapers. -Little chaps who could get next to people’s sympathies -by their sizes were always getting jobs away -from me. There was one fellow who kept saying to -everyone who wanted a lawn mowed or a cistern -cleaned, that he was saving money to work his way -through college, and I used to lay awake nights thinking -up ways to injure him without being found out. -I kept thinking of wagons running over him and bricks -falling on his head as he walked along the street. But -never mind him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I got the place with Harry and I liked Burt fine. -We got along splendid together. He was a big nigger -with a lazy sprawling body and soft, kind eyes, -and when it came to a fight he could hit like Jack Johnson. -He had Bucephalus, a big black pacing stallion -that could do 2.09 or 2.10, if he had to, and I had a -little gelding named Doctor Fritz that never lost -a race all fall when Harry wanted him to win.</p> - -<p class='c006'>We set out from home late in July in a box car -with the two horses and after that, until late November, -we kept moving along to the race meets and the -fairs. It was a peachy time for me, I’ll say that. -Sometimes now I think that boys who are raised regular -in houses, and never have a fine nigger like Burt -for best friend, and go to high schools and college, -and never steal anything, or get drunk a little, or learn -to swear from fellows who know how, or come walking -up in front of a grand stand in their shirt sleeves -and with dirty horsey pants on when the races are going -on and the grand stand is full of people all dressed -up—What’s the use of talking about it? Such fellows -<span class='pageno' id='Page_5'>5</span>don’t know nothing at all. They’ve never had no opportunity.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But I did. Burt taught me how to rub down a -horse and put the bandages on after a race and steam -a horse out and a lot of valuable things for any man -to know. He could wrap a bandage on a horse’s leg -so smooth that if it had been the same color you -would think it was his skin, and I guess he’d have been -a big driver, too, and got to the top like Murphy and -Walter Cox and the others if he hadn’t been black.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Gee whizz, it was fun. You got to a county seat -town, maybe say on a Saturday or Sunday, and the -fair began the next Tuesday and lasted until Friday -afternoon. Doctor Fritz would be, say in the 2.25 -trot on Tuesday afternoon and on Thursday afternoon -Bucephalus would knock ’em cold in the “free-for-all” -pace. It left you a lot of time to hang around -and listen to horse talk, and see Burt knock some yap -cold that got too gay, and you’d find out about horses -and men and pick up a lot of stuff you could use all -the rest of your life, if you had some sense and salted -down what you heard and felt and saw.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then at the end of the week when the race -meet was over, and Harry had run home to tend up to -his livery stable business, you and Burt hitched the two -horses to carts and drove slow and steady across country, -to the place for the next meeting, so as to not -over-heat the horses, etc., etc., you know.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Gee whizz, Gosh amighty, the nice hickorynut and -beechnut and oaks and other kinds of trees along the -roads, all brown and red, and the good smells, and -Burt singing a song that was called Deep River, and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_6'>6</span>the country girls at the windows of houses and everything. -You can stick your colleges up your nose for -all me. I guess I know where I got my education.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Why, one of those little burgs of towns you come -to on the way, say now on a Saturday afternoon, and -Burt says, “let’s lay up here.” And you did.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And you took the horses to a livery stable and fed -them, and you got your good clothes out of a box and -put them on.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And the town was full of farmers gaping, because -they could see you were race horse people, and the kids -maybe never see a nigger before and was afraid and -run away when the two of us walked down their main -street.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And that was before prohibition and all that foolishness, -and so you went into a saloon, the two of you, -and all the yaps come and stood around, and there was -always someone pretended he was horsey and knew -things and spoke up and began asking questions, and -all you did was to lie and lie all you could about what -horses you had, and I said I owned them, and then -some fellow said “will you have a drink of whiskey” -and Burt knocked his eye out the way he could say, -off-hand like, “Oh well, all right, I’m agreeable to a -little nip. I’ll split a quart with you.” Gee whizz.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>But that isn’t what I want to tell my story about. -We got home late in November and I promised -mother I’d quit the race horses for good. There’s -a lot of things you’ve got to promise a mother because -she don’t know any better.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so, there not being any work in our town any -more than when I left there to go to the races, I went -<span class='pageno' id='Page_7'>7</span>off to Sandusky and got a pretty good place taking -care of horses for a man who owned a teaming -and delivery and storage and coal and real-estate business -there. It was a pretty good place with good eats, -and a day off each week, and sleeping on a cot in a big -barn, and mostly just shovelling in hay and oats to a -lot of big good-enough skates of horses, that couldn’t -have trotted a race with a toad. I wasn’t dissatisfied -and I could send money home.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then, as I started to tell you, the fall races -come to Sandusky and I got the day off and I went. -I left the job at noon and had on my good clothes and -my new brown derby hat, I’d just bought the Saturday -before, and a stand-up collar.</p> - -<p class='c006'>First of all I went down-town and walked about -with the dudes. I’ve always thought to myself, “put -up a good front” and so I did it. I had forty dollars -in my pocket and so I went into the West House, a -big hotel, and walked up to the cigar stand. “Give -me three twenty-five cent cigars,” I said. There was -a lot of horsemen and strangers and dressed-up people -from other towns standing around in the lobby and -in the bar, and I mingled amongst them. In the bar -there was a fellow with a cane and a Windsor tie on, -that it made me sick to look at him. I like a man to -be a man and dress up, but not to go put on that kind -of airs. So I pushed him aside, kind of rough, and -had me a drink of whiskey. And then he looked at -me, as though he thought maybe he’d get gay, but he -changed his mind and didn’t say anything. And then -I had another drink of whiskey, just to show him -something, and went out and had a hack out to the -races, all to myself, and when I got there I bought -<span class='pageno' id='Page_8'>8</span>myself the best seat I could get up in the grand stand, -but didn’t go in for any of these boxes. That’s putting -on too many airs.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so there I was, sitting up in the grand stand -as gay as you please and looking down on the swipes -coming out with their horses, and with their dirty -horsey pants on and the horse blankets swung over -their shoulders, same as I had been doing all the year -before. I liked one thing about the same as the other, -sitting up there and feeling grand and being down -there and looking up at the yaps and feeling grander -and more important, too. One thing’s about as good -as another, if you take it just right. I’ve often said -that.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Well, right in front of me, in the grand stand that -day, there was a fellow with a couple of girls and they -was about my age. The young fellow was a nice guy -all right. He was the kind maybe that goes to college -and then comes to be a lawyer or maybe a newspaper -editor or something like that, but he wasn’t -stuck on himself. There are some of that kind are all -right and he was one of the ones.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had his sister with him and another girl and -the sister looked around over his shoulder, accidental -at first, not intending to start anything—she wasn’t -that kind—and her eyes and mine happened to meet.</p> - -<p class='c006'>You know how it is. Gee, she was a peach! She -had on a soft dress, kind of a blue stuff and it looked -carelessly made, but was well sewed and made and -everything. I knew that much. I blushed when she -looked right at me and so did she. She was the nicest -girl I’ve ever seen in my life. She wasn’t stuck on -herself and she could talk proper grammar without -<span class='pageno' id='Page_9'>9</span>being like a school teacher or something like that. -What I mean is, she was O. K. I think maybe her -father was well-to-do, but not rich to make her chesty -because she was his daughter, as some are. Maybe -he owned a drug store or a drygoods store in their -home town, or something like that. She never told -me and I never asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>My own people are all O. K. too, when you come -to that. My grandfather was Welsh and over in the -old country, in Wales he was—But never mind that.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>The first heat of the first race come off and the -young fellow setting there with the two girls left them -and went down to make a bet. I knew what he was -up to, but he didn’t talk big and noisy and let everyone -around know he was a sport, as some do. He -wasn’t that kind. Well, he come back and I heard -him tell the two girls what horse he’d bet on, and -when the heat was trotted they all half got to their -feet and acted in the excited, sweaty way people do -when they’ve got money down on a race, and the horse -they bet on is up there pretty close at the end, and -they think maybe he’ll come on with a rush, but he -never does because he hasn’t got the old juice in him, -come right down to it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then, pretty soon, the horses came out for the -2.18 pace and there was a horse in it I knew. He -was a horse Bob French had in his string but Bob -didn’t own him. He was a horse owned by a Mr. -Mathers down at Marietta, Ohio.</p> - -<p class='c006'>This Mr. Mathers had a lot of money and owned -some coal mines or something, and he had a swell -place out in the country, and he was stuck on race -<span class='pageno' id='Page_10'>10</span>horses, but was a Presbyterian or something, and I -think more than likely his wife was one, too, maybe a -stiffer one than himself. So he never raced his horses -hisself, and the story round the Ohio race tracks was -that when one of his horses got ready to go to the -races he turned him over to Bob French and pretended -to his wife he was sold.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So Bob had the horses and he did pretty much as -he pleased and you can’t blame Bob, at least, I never -did. Sometimes he was out to win and sometimes he -wasn’t. I never cared much about that when I was -swiping a horse. What I did want to know was that -my horse had the speed and could go out in front, if -you wanted him to.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And, as I’m telling you, there was Bob in this race -with one of Mr. Mathers’ horses, was named “About -Ben Ahem” or something like that, and was fast as a -streak. He was a gelding and had a mark of 2.21, -but could step in .08 or .09.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Because when Burt and I were out, as I’ve told you, -the year before, there was a nigger, Burt knew, -worked for Mr. Mathers and we went out there one -day when we didn’t have no race on at the Marietta -Fair and our boss Harry was gone home.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so everyone was gone to the fair but just this -one nigger and he took us all through Mr. Mathers’ -swell house and he and Burt tapped a bottle of wine -Mr. Mathers had hid in his bedroom, back in a closet, -without his wife knowing, and he showed us this Ahem -horse. Burt was always stuck on being a driver but -didn’t have much chance to get to the top, being a -nigger, and he and the other nigger gulped that whole -bottle of wine and Burt got a little lit up.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_11'>11</span>So the nigger let Burt take this About Ben Ahem -and step him a mile in a track Mr. Mathers had all -to himself, right there on the farm. And Mr. -Mathers had one child, a daughter, kinda sick and not -very good looking, and she came home and we had -to hustle and get About Ben Ahem stuck back in the -barn.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>I’m only telling you to get everything straight. At -Sandusky, that afternoon I was at the fair, this young -fellow with the two girls was fussed, being with the -girls and losing his bet. You know how a fellow is -that way. One of them was his girl and the other his -sister. I had figured that out.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Gee whizz,” I says to myself, “I’m going to give -him the dope.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was mighty nice when I touched him on the -shoulder. He and the girls were nice to me right -from the start and clear to the end. I’m not blaming -them.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so he leaned back and I give him the dope -on About Ben Ahem. “Don’t bet a cent on this first -heat because he’ll go like an oxen hitched to a plow, -but when the first heat is over go right down and lay -on your pile.” That’s what I told him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Well, I never saw a fellow treat any one sweller. -There was a fat man sitting beside the little girl, that -had looked at me twice by this time, and I at her, and -both blushing, and what did he do but have the nerve -to turn and ask the fat man to get up and change -places with me so I could set with his crowd.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Gee whizz, craps amighty. There I was. What a -chump I was to go and get gay up there in the West -<span class='pageno' id='Page_12'>12</span>House bar, and just because that dude was standing -there with a cane and that kind of a necktie on, to -go and get all balled-up and drink that whiskey, just -to show off.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Of course she would know, me setting right beside -her and letting her smell of my breath. I could have -kicked myself right down out of that grand stand and -all around that race track and made a faster record -than most of the skates of horses they had there that -year.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Because that girl wasn’t any mutt of a girl. What -wouldn’t I have give right then for a stick of chewing -gum to chew, or a lozenger, or some liquorice, or -most anything. I was glad I had those twenty-five -cent cigars in my pocket and right away I give that -fellow one and lit one myself. Then that fat man -got up and we changed places and there I was, plunked -right down beside her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They introduced themselves and the fellow’s best -girl, he had with him, was named Miss Elinor Woodbury, -and her father was a manufacturer of barrels -from a place called Tiffin, Ohio. And the fellow himself -was named Wilbur Wessen and his sister was -Miss Lucy Wessen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I suppose it was their having such swell names got -me off my trolley. A fellow, just because he has been -a swipe with a race horse, and works taking care of -horses for a man in the teaming, delivery, and storage -business, isn’t any better or worse than any one else. -I’ve often thought that, and said it too.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But you know how a fellow is. There’s something -in that kind of nice clothes, and the kind of nice eyes -she had, and the way she had looked at me, awhile -<span class='pageno' id='Page_13'>13</span>before, over her brother’s shoulder, and me looking -back at her, and both of us blushing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I couldn’t show her up for a boob, could I?</p> - -<p class='c006'>I made a fool of myself, that’s what I did. I said -my name was Walter Mathers from Marietta, Ohio, -and then I told all three of them the smashingest lie -you ever heard. What I said was that my father -owned the horse About Ben Ahem and that he had let -him out to this Bob French for racing purposes, because -our family was proud and had never gone into -racing that way, in our own name, I mean. Then I -had got started and they were all leaning over and -listening, and Miss Lucy Wessen’s eyes were shining, -and I went the whole hog.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I told about our place down at Marietta, and about -the big stables and the grand brick house we had on -a hill, up above the Ohio River, but I knew enough not -to do it in no bragging way. What I did was to start -things and then let them drag the rest out of me. I -acted just as reluctant to tell as I could. Our family -hasn’t got any barrel factory, and, since I’ve known -us, we’ve always been pretty poor, but not asking anything -of any one at that, and my grandfather, over -in Wales—but never mind that.</p> - -<p class='c006'>We set there talking like we had known each other -for years and years, and I went and told them that my -father had been expecting maybe this Bob French -wasn’t on the square, and had sent me up to Sandusky -on the sly to find out what I could.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And I bluffed it through I had found out all about -the 2.18 pace, in which About Ben Ahem was to start.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I said he would lose the first heat by pacing like -a lame cow and then he would come back and skin -<span class='pageno' id='Page_14'>14</span>’em alive after that. And to back up what I said I -took thirty dollars out of my pocket and handed it to -Mr. Wilbur Wessen and asked him, would he mind, -after the first heat, to go down and place it on About -Ben Ahem for whatever odds he could get. What I -said was that I didn’t want Bob French to see me and -none of the swipes.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Sure enough the first heat come off and About Ben -Ahem went off his stride, up the back stretch, and -looked like a wooden horse or a sick one, and come -in to be last. Then this Wilbur Wessen went down -to the betting place under the grand stand and there -I was with the two girls, and when that Miss Woodbury -was looking the other way once, Lucy Wessen -kinda, with her shoulder you know, kinda touched me. -Not just tucking down, I don’t mean. You know how -a woman can do. They get close, but not getting gay -either. You know what they do. Gee whizz.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then they give me a jolt. What they had -done, when I didn’t know, was to get together, and -they had decided Wilbur Wessen would bet fifty dollars, -and the two girls had gone and put in ten dollars -each, of their own money, too. I was sick then, but -I was sicker later.</p> - -<p class='c006'>About the gelding, About Ben Ahem, and their winning -their money, I wasn’t worried a lot about that. -It come out O.K. Ahem stepped the next three heats -like a bushel of spoiled eggs going to market before -they could be found out, and Wilbur Wessen had got -nine to two for the money. There was something else -eating at me.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Because Wilbur come back, after he had bet the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_15'>15</span>money, and after that he spent most of his time talking -to that Miss Woodbury, and Lucy Wessen and I -was left alone together like on a desert island. Gee, -if I’d only been on the square or if there had been any -way of getting myself on the square. There ain’t any -Walter Mathers, like I said to her and them, and -there hasn’t ever been one, but if there was, I bet I’d -go to Marietta, Ohio, and shoot him tomorrow.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There I was, big boob that I am. Pretty soon the -race was over, and Wilbur had gone down and collected -our money, and we had a hack down-town, and -he stood us a swell supper at the West House, and a -bottle of champagne beside.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And I was with that girl and she wasn’t saying -much, and I wasn’t saying much either. One thing I -know. She wasn’t stuck on me because of the lie -about my father being rich and all that. There’s a -way you know.... Craps amighty. There’s a kind -of girl, you see just once in your life, and if you don’t -get busy and make hay, then you’re gone for good and -all, and might as well go jump off a bridge. They -give you a look from inside of them somewhere, and -it ain’t no vamping, and what it means is—you want -that girl to be your wife, and you want nice things -around her like flowers and swell clothes, and you -want her to have the kids you’re going to have, and -you want good music played and no rag time. Gee -whizz.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There’s a place over near Sandusky, across a kind -of bay, and it’s called Cedar Point. And after we -had supper we went over to it in a launch, all -by ourselves. Wilbur and Miss Lucy and that Miss -Woodbury had to catch a ten o’clock train back to -<span class='pageno' id='Page_16'>16</span>Tiffin, Ohio, because, when you’re out with girls like -that you can’t get careless and miss any trains and stay -out all night, like you can with some kinds of Janes.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And Wilbur blowed himself to the launch and it -cost him fifteen cold plunks, but I wouldn’t never -have knew if I hadn’t listened. He wasn’t no tin -horn kind of a sport.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Over at the Cedar Point place, we didn’t stay -around where there was a gang of common kind -of cattle at all.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was big dance halls and dining places for -yaps, and there was a beach you could walk along -and get where it was dark, and we went there.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She didn’t talk hardly at all and neither did I, and -I was thinking how glad I was my mother was all -right, and always made us kids learn to eat with a -fork at table, and not swill soup, and not be noisy and -rough like a gang you see around a race track that -way.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then Wilbur and his girl went away up the beach -and Lucy and I sat down in a dark place, where there -was some roots of old trees, the water had washed -up, and after that the time, till we had to go back in -the launch and they had to catch their trains, wasn’t -nothing at all. It went like winking your eye.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Here’s how it was. The place we were setting in -was dark, like I said, and there was the roots from -that old stump sticking up like arms, and there was a -watery smell, and the night was like—as if you could -put your hand out and feel it—so warm and soft and -dark and sweet like an orange.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I most cried and I most swore and I most jumped -up and danced, I was so mad and happy and sad.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_17'>17</span>When Wilbur come back from being alone with his -girl, and she saw him coming, Lucy she says, “we -got to go to the train now,” and she was most crying -too, but she never knew nothing I knew, and she -couldn’t be so all busted up. And then, before Wilbur -and Miss Woodbury got up to where we was, she put -her face up and kissed me quick and put her head -up against me and she was all quivering and—Gee -whizz.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Sometimes I hope I have cancer and die. I guess -you know what I mean. We went in the launch -across the bay to the train like that, and it was dark, -too. She whispered and said it was like she and I -could get out of the boat and walk on the water, and -it sounded foolish, but I knew what she meant.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then quick we were right at the depot, and -there was a big gang of yaps, the kind that goes to -the fairs, and crowded and milling around like cattle, -and how could I tell her? “It won’t be long because -you’ll write and I’ll write to you.” That’s all she -said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I got a chance like a hay barn afire. A swell chance -I got.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And maybe she would write me, down at Marietta -that way, and the letter would come back, and stamped -on the front of it by the U.S.A. “there ain’t any -such guy,” or something like that, whatever they -stamp on a letter that way.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And me trying to pass myself off for a bigbug and -a swell—to her, as decent a little body as God ever -made. Craps amighty—a swell chance I got!</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then the train come in, and she got on it, and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_18'>18</span>Wilbur Wessen he come and shook hands with me, -and that Miss Woodbury was nice too and bowed to -me, and I at her, and the train went and I busted out -and cried like a kid.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Gee, I could have run after that train and made -Dan Patch look like a freight train after a wreck but, -socks amighty, what was the use? Did you ever see -such a fool?</p> - -<p class='c006'>I’ll bet you what—if I had an arm broke right now -or a train had run over my foot—I wouldn’t go to -no doctor at all. I’d go set down and let her hurt -and hurt—that’s what I’d do.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I’ll bet you what—if I hadn’t a drunk that booze -I’d a never been such a boob as to go tell such a -lie—that couldn’t never be made straight to a lady -like her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I wish I had that fellow right here that had on a -Windsor tie and carried a cane. I’d smash him for -fair. Gosh darn his eyes. He’s a big fool—that’s -what he is.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And if I’m not another you just go find me one -and I’ll quit working and be a bum and give him my -job. I don’t care nothing for working, and earning -money, and saving it for no such boob as myself.</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_19'>19</span><span class='large'>THE TRIUMPH OF A MODERN</span></div> - <div><span class='small'>OR, SEND FOR THE LAWYER</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_21'>21</span> - <h2 class='c008'>THE TRIUMPH OF A MODERN<br /><span class='small'>OR, SEND FOR THE LAWYER</span></h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>INASMUCH as I have put to myself the task of -trying to tell you a curious story in which I am -myself concerned—in a strictly secondary way you -must of course understand—I will begin by giving you -some notion of myself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Very well then, I am a man of thirty-two, rather -small in size, with sandy hair. I wear glasses. Until -two years ago I lived in Chicago, where I had a -position as clerk in an office that afforded me a good -enough living. I have never married, being somewhat -afraid of women—in the flesh, in a way of speaking. -In fancy and in my imagination I have always -been very bold but in the flesh women have always -frightened me horribly. They have a way of smiling -quietly as though to say——. But we will not go into -that now.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Since boyhood I have had an ambition to be a -painter, not, I will confess, because of a desire to -produce some great masterpiece of the arts, but simply -and solely because I have always thought the life -painters lead would appeal to me.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I have always liked the notion (let’s be honest if -we can) of going about, wearing a hat, tipped a -little to the side of my head, sporting a moustache, -carrying a cane and speaking in an off-hand way of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_22'>22</span>such things as form, rhythm, the effects of light and -masses, surfaces, etc., etc. During my life I have -read a good many books concerning painters and their -work, their friendships and their loves and when I -was in Chicago and poor and was compelled to live -in a small room alone, I assure you I carried off many -a dull weary evening by imagining myself a painter -of wide renown in the world.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was afternoon and having finished my day’s work -I went strolling off to the studio of another painter. -He was still at work and there were two models in the -room, women in the nude sitting about. One of them -smiled at me, I thought a little wistfully, but pshaw, -I am too blasé for anything of that sort.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I go across the room to my friend’s canvas and -stand looking at it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now he is looking at me, a little anxiously. I am -the greater man, you understand. That is frankly -and freely acknowledged. Whatever else may be -said against my friend he never claimed to be my -equal. In fact it is generally understood, wherever -I go, that I am the greater man.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well?” says my friend. You see he is fairly hanging -on my words, as the saying goes; in short, he is -waiting for me to speak with the air of one about to -be hanged.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Why? The devil! Why does he put everything -up to me? One gets tired carrying such responsibility -upon one’s shoulders. A painter should be the judge -of his own work and not embarrass his fellow painters -by asking questions. That is my method.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Very well then. If I speak sharply you have only -yourself to blame. “The yellow you have been using -<span class='pageno' id='Page_23'>23</span>is a little muddy. The arm of this woman is not felt. -In painting one should feel the arm of a woman. -What I advise is that you change your palette. You -have scattered too much. Pull it together. A painting -should stick together as a wet snow ball thrown -by a boy clings to a wall.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>When I had reached the age of thirty, that is to -say two years ago, I received from my aunt, the sister -of my father to be exact, a small fortune I had long -been dreaming I might possibly inherit.</p> - -<p class='c006'>My aunt I had never seen, but I had always been -saying to myself, “I must go see my aunt. The old -lady will be sore at me and when she dies will not -leave me a cent.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then, lucky fellow that I am, I did go to see her -just before she died.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Filled with determination to put the thing through -I set out from Chicago, and it is not my fault that I -did not spend the day with her. Even although my -aunt is (as I am not fool enough not to know that you -know) a woman I would have spent the day with her -but that it was impossible.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She lived at Madison, Wisconsin, and I went there -on Saturday morning. The house was locked and the -windows boarded up. Fortunately, at just that moment, -a mail carrier came along and, upon my telling -him that I was my aunt’s nephew, gave me her address. -He also gave me some news concerning her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For years she had been a sufferer from hay-fever -and every summer had to have a change of climate.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That was an opportunity for me. I went at once -to a hotel and wrote her a letter telling of my visit and -expressing, to the utmost of my ability, my sorrow in -<span class='pageno' id='Page_24'>24</span>not having found her at home. “I have been a long -time doing this job but now that I am at it I fancy I -shall do it rather well,” I said to myself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>A sort of feeling came into my hand, as it were. I -can’t just say what it was but as soon as I sat down -I knew very well I should be eloquent. For the moment -I was positively a poet.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the first place, and as one should in writing a letter -to a lady, I spoke of the sky. “The sky is full of -mottled clouds,” I said. Then, and I frankly admit -in a brutally casual way, I spoke of myself as one practically -prostrated with grief. To tell the truth I did -not just know what I was doing. I had got the fever -for writing words, you see. They fairly flowed out of -my pen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I had come, I said, on a long and weary journey -to the home of my only female relative, and here I -threw into the letter some reference to the fact that -I was an orphan. “Imagine,” I wrote, “the sorrow -and desolation in my heart at finding the house unoccupied -and the windows boarded up.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was there, sitting in the hotel at Madison, Wisconsin, -with the pen in my hand, that I made my fortune. -Something bold and heroic came into my mood -and, without a moment’s hesitation, I mentioned in -my letter what should never be mentioned to a woman, -unless she be an elderly woman of one’s own family, -and then only by a physician perhaps—I spoke of my -aunt’s breasts, using the plural.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I had hoped, I said, to lay my tired head on her -breasts. To tell the truth I had become drunken -with words and now, how glad I am that I did. Mr. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_25'>25</span>George Moore, Clive Bell, Paul Rosenfeld, and others -of the most skillful writers of our English speech, -have written a great deal about painters and, as I have -already explained, there was not a book or magazine -article in English and concerning painters, their lives -and works, procurable in Chicago, I had not read.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What I am now striving to convey to you is something -of my own pride in my literary effort in the hotel -at Madison, Wisconsin, and surely, if I was, at that -moment an artist, no other artist has ever had such -quick and wholehearted recognition.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Having spoken of putting my tired head on my -aunt’s breasts (poor woman, she died, never having -seen me) I went on to give the general impression—which -by the way was quite honest and correct—of a -somewhat boyish figure, rather puzzled, wandering -in a confused way through life. The imaginary but -correct enough figure of myself, born at the moment -in my imagination, had made its way through dismal -swamps of gloom, over the rough hills of adversity -and through the dry deserts of loneliness, toward the -one spot in all this world where it had hoped to find -rest and peace—that is to say upon the bosom of its -aunt. However, as I have already explained, being -a thorough modern and full of the modern boldness, -I did not use the word bosom, as an old-fashioned -writer might have done. I used the word breasts. -When I had finished writing tears were in my eyes.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The letter I wrote on that day covered some seven -sheets of hotel paper—finely written to the margins—and -cost four cents to mail.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Shall I mail it or shall I not?” I said to myself as -<span class='pageno' id='Page_26'>26</span>I came out of the hotel office and stood before a mail -box. The letter was balanced between my finger and -thumb.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c011'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“Eeny, meeny, miny, mo,</div> - <div class='line in1'>Catch a nigger by the toe.”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c016'>The forefinger of my left hand—I was holding the -letter in my right hand—touched my nose, mouth, -forehead, eyes, chin, neck, shoulder, arm, hand and -then tapped the letter itself. No doubt I fully intended, -from the first, to drop it. I had been doing -the work of an artist. Well, artists are always talking -of destroying their own work but few do it, and -those who do are perhaps the real heroes of life.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so down into the mail box it went with a thud -and my fortune was made. The letter was received -by my aunt, who was lying abed of an illness that was -to destroy her—she had, it seems, other things beside -hay-fever the matter with her—and she altered her -will in my favor. She had intended leaving her -money, a tidy sum yielding an income of five thousand -a year, to a fund to be established for the study of -methods for the cure of hay-fever—that is to say, -really you see, to her fellow sufferers—but instead -left it to me. My aunt could not find her spectacles -and a nurse—may the gods bring her bright days and -a good husband—read the letter aloud. Both women -were deeply touched and my aunt wept. I am -only telling you the facts, you understand, but I would -like to suggest that this whole incident might well be -taken as proof of the power of modern art. From -the first I have been a firm believer in the moderns. -I am one who, as an art critic might word it, has been -<span class='pageno' id='Page_27'>27</span>right down through the movements. At first I was -an impressionist and later a cubist, a post-impressionist, -and even a vorticist. Time after time, in my -imaginary life, as a painter, I have been quite swept -off my feet. For example I remember Picasso’s blue -period ... but we’ll not go into that.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What I am trying to say is that, having this faith -in modernity, if one may use the word thus, I did find -within myself a peculiar boldness as I sat in the hotel -writing room at Madison, Wisconsin. I used the -word breasts (in the plural, you understand) and -everyone will admit that it is a bold and modern word -to use in a letter to an aunt one has never seen. It -brought my aunt and me into one family. Her modesty -never could have admitted anything else.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then, my aunt was really touched. Afterward -I talked to the nurse and made her a rather -handsome present for her part in the affair. When -the letter had been read my aunt felt overwhelmingly -drawn to me. She turned her face to the wall and -her shoulders shook. Do not think that I am not -also touched as I write this. “Poor lad,” my aunt -said to the nurse, “I will make things easier for him. -Send for the lawyer.”</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_29'>29</span><span class='large'>“UNUSED”</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_31'>31</span> - <h2 class='c008'>“UNUSED”</h2> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c005'> - <div>A TALE OF LIFE IN OHIO</div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>“UNUSED,” that was one of the words the Doctor -used that day in speaking of her. He, -the doctor, was an extraordinarily large and -immaculately clean man, by whom I was at that time -employed. I swept out his office, mowed the lawn -before his residence, took care of the two horses in -his stable and did odd jobs about the yard and kitchen—such -as bringing in firewood, putting water in a tub -in the sun behind a grape arbor for the doctor’s bath -and even sometimes, during his bath, scrubbing for -him those parts of his broad back he himself could -not reach.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The doctor had a passion in life with which he early -infected me. He loved fishing and as he knew all of -the good places in the river, several miles west of -town, and in Sandusky Bay, some nineteen or twenty -miles to the north, we often went off for long delightful -days together.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was late in the afternoon of such a fishing day in -the late June, when the doctor and I were together in -a boat on the bay, that a farmer came running to the -shore, waving his arms and calling to the doctor. -Little May Edgley’s body had been found floating -near a river’s mouth half a mile away, and, as she had -been dead for several days, as the doctor had just had -<span class='pageno' id='Page_32'>32</span>a good bite, and as there was nothing he could do anyway, -it was all nonsense, his being called. I remembered -how he growled and grumbled. He did not -then know what had happened but the fish were just -beginning to bite splendidly, I had just landed a fine -bass and the good evening’s fishing was all ahead of -us. Well, you know how it is—a doctor is always at -everyone’s beck and call.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Dang it all! That’s the way it always goes! -Here we are—as good a fishing evening as we’ll find -this summer—wind just right and the sky clouding over—and -will you look at my dang luck? A doctor in the -neighborhood and that farmer knows it and so, just -to accommodate me, he goes and stubs his toe, like as -not, or his boy falls out of a barn loft, or his old -woman gets the toothache. Like as not it’s one of his -women folks. I know ’em! His wife’s got an unmarried -sister living with her. Dang sentimental old -maid! She’s got a nervous complaint—gets all -worked up and thinks she’s going to die. Die nothing! -I know that kind. Lots of ’em like to have a -doctor fooling around. Let a doctor come near, so -they can get him alone in a room, and they’ll spend -hours talking about themselves—if he’ll let ’em.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The doctor was reeling in his line, grumbling and -complaining as he did so and then, suddenly, with the -characteristic cheerfulness that I had seen carry him -with a smile on his lips through whole days and nights -of work and night driving over rough frozen earth -roads in the winter, he picked up the oars and rowed -vigorously ashore. When I offered to take the oars -he shook his head. “No kid, it’s good for the figure,” -he said, looking down at his huge paunch. He smiled. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_33'>33</span>“I got to keep my figure. If I don’t I’ll be losing -some of my practice among the unmarried women.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>As for the business ashore—there was May Edgley, -of our town, drowned in that out of the way place, -and her body had been in the water several days. It -had been found among some willows that grew near -the mouth of a deep creek that emptied into the bay, -had lodged in among the roots of the willows, and -when we got ashore the farmer, his son and the hired -man, had got it out and had laid it on some boards -near a barn that faced the bay.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That was my own first sight of death and I shall -not forget the moment when I followed the doctor in -among the little group of silent people standing about -and saw the dead, discolored and bloated body of the -woman lying there.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The doctor was used to that sort of thing, but -to me it was all new and terrifying. I remember -that I looked once and then ran away. Dashing -into the barn I went to lean against the feedbox of -a stall, where an old farm-horse was eating hay. The -warm day outside had suddenly seemed cold and chill -but in the barn it was warm again. Oh, what a lovely -thing to a boy is a barn, with the rich warm comforting -smell of the cured hay and the animal life, lying -like a soft bed over it all. At the doctor’s house, -while I lived and worked there, the doctor’s wife used -to put on my bed, on winter nights, a kind of soft -warm bed cover called a “comfortable.” That’s what -it was like to me that day in the barn when we had just -found May Edgley’s body.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As for the body—well, May Edgley had been a -small woman with small firm hands and in one of her -<span class='pageno' id='Page_34'>34</span>hands, tightly gripped, when they had found her, -was a woman’s hat—a great broad-brimmed gaudy -thing it must have been, and there had been a huge -ostrich feather sticking out of the top, such an ostrich -feather as you see sometimes sticking out of the -hat of a kind of big flashy woman at the horse races or -at second-rate summer resorts near cities.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It stayed in my mind, that bedraggled ostrich -feather, little May Edgley’s hand had gripped so -determinedly when death came, and as I stood shivering -in the barn I could see it again, as I had so often -seen it perched on the head of big bold Lil Edgley, -May Edgley’s sister, as she went, half-defiantly always, -through the streets of our town, Bidwell, Ohio.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then as I stood shivering with boyish dread of -death in that old barn, the farm-horse put his head -through an opening at the front of the stall and -rubbed his soft warm nose against my cheek. The -farmer, on whose place we were, must have been one -who was kind to his animals. The old horse rubbed -his nose up and down my cheek. “You are a long -ways from death, my lad, and when the time comes -for you you won’t shiver so much. I am old and I -know. Death is a kind comforting thing to those -who are through with their lives.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Something of that sort the old farm-horse seemed -to be saying and at any rate he quieted me, took the -fear and the chill all out of me.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was when the doctor and I were driving home together -that evening in the dusk, and after all arrangements -for sending May Edgley’s body back to town -and to her people had been made, that he spoke of her -and used the word I am now using as the title for her -<span class='pageno' id='Page_35'>35</span>story. The doctor said a great many things that evening -that I cannot now remember and I only remember -how the night came softly on and how the grey road -faded out of sight, and then how the moon came out -and the road that had been grey became silvery white, -with patches of inky blackness where the shadows of -trees fell across it. The doctor was one sane enough -not to talk down to a boy. How often he spoke intimately -to me of his impressions of men and events! -There were many things in the fat old doctor’s mind -of which his patients knew nothing, but of which his -stable boy knew.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The doctor’s old bay horse went steadily along, doing -his work as cheerfully as the doctor did his and the -doctor smoked a cigar. He spoke of the dead -woman, May Edgley, and of what a bright girl she -had been.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As for her story—he did not tell it completely. I -was myself much alive that evening—that is to say -the imaginative side of myself was much alive—and -the doctor was as a sower, sowing seed in a fertile -soil. He was as one who goes through a wide long -field, newly plowed by the hand of Death, the plowman, -and as he went along he flung wide the seeds of -May Edgley’s story, wide, far over the land, over -the rich fertile land of a boy’s awakening imagination.</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_36'>36</span> - <h2 class='c008'><span class='sc'>Chapter</span> I</h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>THERE were three boys and as many girls in the -Edgley family of Bidwell, Ohio, and of the -girls Lillian and Kate were known in a dozen -towns along the railroad that ran between Cleveland -and Toledo. The fame of Lillian, the eldest, went -far. On the streets of the neighboring towns of -Clyde, Norwalk, Fremont, Tiffin, and even in Toledo -and Cleveland, she was well known. On summer -evenings she went up and down our main street wearing -a huge hat with a white ostrich feather that fell -down almost to her shoulder. She, like her sister -Kate, who never succeeded in attaining to a position -of prominence in the town’s life, was a blonde with -cold staring blue eyes. On almost any Friday evening -she might have been seen setting forth on some -adventure, from which she did not return until the -following Monday or Tuesday. It was evident the -adventures were profitable, as the Edgley family -were working folk and it is certain her brothers did -not purchase for her the endless number of new -dresses in which she arrayed herself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a Friday evening in the summer and Lillian -appeared on the upper main street of Bidwell. Two -dozen men and boys loafed by the station platform, -awaiting the arrival of the New York Central train, -eastward bound. They stared at Lillian who stared -back at them. In the west, from which direction the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_37'>37</span>train was presently to come, the sun went down over -young corn fields. A dusky golden splendor lit the -skies and the loafers were awed into silence, hushed, -both by the beauty of the evening and by the challenge -in Lillian’s eyes.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then the train arrived and the spell of silence was -broken. The conductor and brakeman jumped to the -station platform and waved their hands at Lillian and -the engineer put his head out of the cab.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Aboard the train Lillian found a seat by herself and -as soon as the train had started and the fares were -collected the conductor came to sit with her. When -the train arrived at the next town and the conductor -was compelled to attend to his affairs, the brakeman -came to lean over her seat. The men talked in undertones -and occasionally the silence in the car was broken -by outbursts of laughter. Other women from Bidwell, -going to visit relatives in distant towns, were -embarrassed. They turned their heads to look out at -car windows and their cheeks grew red.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On the station platform at Bidwell, where darkness -was settling down over the scene, the men and -boys still lingered about speaking of Lillian and her -adventures. “She can ride anywhere she pleases and -never has to pay a cent of fare,” declared a tall -bearded man who leaned against the station door. -He was a buyer of pigs and cattle and was compelled -to go to the Cleveland market once every week. The -thought of Lillian, the light o’ love traveling free -over the railroads filled his heart with envy and anger.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The entire Edgley family bore a shaky reputation -in Bidwell but with the exception of May, the youngest -of the girls, they were people who knew how to -<span class='pageno' id='Page_38'>38</span>take care of themselves. For years Jake, the eldest -of the boys, tended bar for Charley Shuter in a saloon -in lower Main Street and then, to everyone’s surprise, -he bought out the place. “Either Lillian gave him -the money or he stole it from Charley,” the men said, -but nevertheless, and throwing moral standards aside, -they went into the bar to buy drinks. In Bidwell vice, -while openly condemned, was in secret looked upon -as a mark of virility in young manhood.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Frank and Will Edgley were teamsters and draymen -like their father John and were hard working -men. They owned their own teams and asked favors -of no man and when they were not at work did not -seek the society of others. Late on Saturday afternoons, -when the week’s work was done and the horses -cleaned, fed and bedded down for the night they -dressed themselves in black suits, put on white collars -and black derby hats and went into our main street to -drink themselves drunk. By ten o’clock they had succeeded -and went reeling homeward. When in the -darkness under the maple trees on Vine or Walnut -Streets they met a Bidwell citizen, also homeward -bound, a row started. “Damn you, get out of our -way. Get off the sidewalk,” Frank Edgley shouted -and the two men rushed forward intent on a fight.</p> - -<p class='c006'>One evening in the month of June, when there was -a moon and when insects sang loudly in the long grass -between the sidewalks and the road, the Edgley -brothers met Ed Pesch, a young German farmer, out -for an evening’s walk with Caroline Dupee, daughter -of a Bidwell drygoods merchant, and the fight the -Edgley boys had long been looking for took place. -Frank Edgley shouted and he and his brother -<span class='pageno' id='Page_39'>39</span>plunged forward but Ed Pesch did not run into the -road and leave them to go triumphantly homeward. -He fought and the brothers were badly beaten, and -on Monday morning appeared driving their team -and with faces disfigured and eyes blackened. -For a week they went up and down alleyways and -along residence streets, delivering ice and coal to -houses and merchandise to the stores without lifting -their eyes or speaking. The town was delighted and -clerks ran from store to store making comments, they -longed to repeat within hearing of one of the brothers. -“Have you seen the Edgley boys?” they asked one -another. “They got what was coming to them. Ed -Pesch gave them what for.” The more excitable -and imaginative of the clerks spoke of the fight in the -darkness as though they had been on hand and had -seen every blow struck. “They are bullies and can be -beaten by any man who stands up for his rights,” declared -Walter Wills, a slender, nervous young man -who worked for Albert Twist, the grocer. The clerk -hungered to be such another fighter as Ed Pesch had -proven himself. At night he went home from the -store in the soft darkness and imagined himself as -meeting the Edgleys. “I’ll show you—you big bullies,” -he muttered and his fists shot out, striking at -nothingness. An eager strained feeling ran along the -muscles of his back and arms but his night time courage -did not abide with him through the day. On -Wednesday when Will Edgley came to the back door -of the store, his wagon loaded with salt in barrels, -Walter went into the alleyway to enjoy the sight of -the cut lips and blackened eyes. Will stood with -hands in pockets looking at the ground. An uncomfortable -<span class='pageno' id='Page_40'>40</span>silence ensued and in the end it was broken -by the voice of the clerk. “There’s no one here and -those barrels are heavy,” he said heartily. “I might -as well make myself useful and help you unload.” -Taking off his coat Walter Wills voluntarily helped -at the task that belonged to Will Edgley, the drayman.</p> - -<p class='c006'>If May Edgley, during her girlhood, rose higher -than any of the others of the Edgley family she also -fell lower. “She had her chance and threw it away,” -was the word that went round and surely no one else -in that family ever had so completely the town’s sympathy. -Lillian Edgley was outside the pale of the -town’s life, and Kate was but a lesser edition of her -sister. She waited on table at the Fownsby House, -and on almost any evening might have been seen walking -out with some traveling man. She also took the -evening train to neighboring towns but returned to -Bidwell later on the same night or at daylight the -next morning. She did not prosper as Lillian did and -grew tired of the dullness of small town life. At -twenty-two she went to live in Cleveland where she -got a job as cloak model in a large store. Later she -went on the road as an actress, in a burlesque show, -and Bidwell heard no more of her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As for May Edgley, all through her childhood and -until her seventeenth year she was a model of good -behavior. Everyone spoke of it. She was, unlike the -other Edgleys, small and dark, and unlike her sisters -dressed herself in plain neat-fitting clothes. As a -young girl in the public school she began to attract -attention because of her proficiency in the classes. -Both Lillian and Kate Edgley had been slovenly students, -who spent their time ogling boys and the men -<span class='pageno' id='Page_41'>41</span>teachers but May looked at no one and as soon as -school was dismissed in the afternoon went home to -her mother, a tall tired-looking woman who seldom -went out of her own house.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In Bidwell, Tom Means, who later became a soldier -and who has recently won high rank in the army -because of his proficiency in training recruits for the -World War, was the prize pupil in the schools. Tom -was working for his appointment to West Point, and -did not spend his evenings loafing on the streets, -as did other young men. He stayed in his own house, -intent on his studies. Tom’s father was a lawyer -and his mother was third cousin to a Kentucky woman -who had married an English baronet. The son -aspired to be a soldier and a gentleman and to live on -the intellectual plane, and had a good deal of contempt -for the mental capacities of his fellow students, -and when one of the Edgley family set up as his rival -he was angry and embarrassed and the schoolroom -was delighted. Day after day and year after year -the contest between him and May Edgley went on and -in a sense the whole town of Bidwell got back of the -girl. In all such things as history and English literature -Tom swept all before him but in spelling, -arithmetic, and geography May defeated him without -effort. At her desk she sat like a little terrier in the -presence of a trap filled with rats. A question was -asked or a problem in arithmetic put on the blackboard -and like a terrier she jumped. Her hand -went up and her sensitive mouth quivered. Fingers -were snapped vigorously. “I know,” she said, and -the entire class knew she did. When she had answered -the question or had gone to the blackboard -<span class='pageno' id='Page_42'>42</span>to solve the problem the half-grown children along -the rows of benches laughed and Tom Means stared -out through a window. May returned to her seat, -half triumphant, half ashamed of her victory.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The country lying west of Bidwell, like all the Ohio -country down that way, is given to small fruit and -berry raising, and in June and after school has been -dismissed for the year all the younger men, boys, and -girls, with most of the women of the town go to work -in the fruit harvest. To the fields immediately after -breakfast the citizens go trooping away. Lunches are -carried in baskets and until the sun goes down everyone -stays in the fields.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And in the berry fields as in the schoolroom May -was a notable figure. She did not walk or ride to -the work with the other young girls, or join the parties -at lunch at the noon hour, but everyone understood -that that was because of her family. “I know how -she feels, if I came from a family like that I wouldn’t -ask or want other people’s attention,” said one of the -women, the wife of a carpenter, who trudged along -with the others in the dust of the road.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In a berry field, belonging to a farmer named Peter -Short, some thirty women, young men and tall awkward -boys crawled over the ground, picking the red -fragrant berries. Ahead of them, in a row by herself, -went May, the exclusive, the woman who walked by -herself. Her hands flitted in and out of the berry -vines as the tail of a squirrel disappears among the -leaves of a tree when one walks in a wood. The other -pickers went slowly, stopping occasionally to eat berries -and talk and when one had crawled a little ahead -of the others he stopped and waited, sitting on his -<span class='pageno' id='Page_43'>43</span>haunches. The pickers were paid in proportion to the -number of quarts picked during the day but, as they -often said, “pay was not everything.” The berry -picking was in a way a social function, and who were -the pickers, wives, sons and daughters of prosperous -artisans, to kill themselves for a few paltry dollars?</p> - -<p class='c006'>With May Edgley they understood it was different. -Everyone knew that she and her mother got practically -no money from John Edgley, the father—from -the boys, Jake, Frank and Will—or from the girls, -Lillian and Kate, who spent their takings on clothes -for themselves. If she were to be decently dressed, -she had to earn the money for the purpose during the -vacation time when she could stay out of school. -Later it was understood she planned to be a school -teacher herself, and to attain to that position it was -necessary that she keep herself well dressed and show -herself industrious and alert in affairs.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tirelessly, therefore, May worked and the boxes -of berries, filled by her ever alert fingers, grew into -mountains. Peter Short with his son came walking -down the rows to gather the filled crates and put -them aboard a wagon to be hauled to town. He -looked at May with pride in his eyes and the other -pickers lumbering slowly along became the target for -his scorn. “Ah, you talking women and you big -lazy boys, you’re not much good,” he cried. “Ain’t -you ashamed of yourselves? Look at you there, Sylvester -and Al—letting yourself be beat, twice over, -by a girl so little you could almost carry her home -in your pocket.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was in the summer of her seventeenth year that -May fell down from her high place in the life of the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_44'>44</span>town of Bidwell. Two vital and dramatic events -had happened to her that year. Her mother died in -April and she graduated from the high school in -June, second only in honors to Tom Means. As -Tom’s father had been on the school board for years -the town shook its head over the decision that placed -him ahead of May and in everyone’s eyes May had -really walked off with the prize. When she went into -the fields, and when they remembered the fact of her -mother’s recent death, even the women were ready -to forget and forgive the fact of her being a member -of the Edgley family. As for May, it seemed to her -at that moment that nothing that could happen to her -could very much matter.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then the unexpected. As more than one Bidwell -wife said afterwards to her husband. “It was -then that blood showed itself.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>A man named Jerome Hadley first found out -about May. He went that year to Peter Short’s -field, as he himself said, “just for fun,” and he found -it. Jerome was pitcher for the Bidwell baseball nine -and worked as mail clerk on the railroad. After he -had returned from a run he had several days’ rest and -went to the berry field because the town was deserted. -When he saw May working off by herself he winked at -the other young men and going to her got down on -his knees and began picking at a speed almost as -great as her own. “Come on here, little woman,” he -said, “I’m a mail clerk and have got my hand in, -sorting letters. My fingers can go pretty fast. -Come on now, let’s see if you can keep up with me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>For an hour Jerome and May went up and down in -the rows and then the thing happened that set the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_45'>45</span>town by the ears. The girl, who had never talked to -others, began talking to Jerome and the other pickers -turned to look and wonder. She no longer picked at -lightning speed but loitered along, stopping to rest -and put choice berries into her mouth. “Eat that,” -she said boldly passing a great red berry across the -row to the man. She put a handful of berries into -his box. “You won’t make as much as seventy-five -cents all day if you don’t get a move on you,” she -said, smiling shyly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At the noon hour the other pickers found out the -truth. The tired workers had gone to the pump by -Peter Short’s house and then to a nearby orchard -to sit under the trees and rest after the eating of -lunches.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was no doubt something had happened to -May. Everyone felt it. It was later understood -that she had, during that noon hour in June and quite -calmly and deliberately, decided to become like her -two sisters and go on the town.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The berry pickers as usual ate their lunches in -groups, the women and girls sitting under one tree -and the young men and boys under another. Peter -Short’s wife brought hot coffee and tin cups were -filled. Jokes went back and forth and the girls -giggled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In spite of the unexpectedness of May’s attitude -toward Jerome, a bachelor and quite legitimate game -for the unmarried women, no one suspected anything -serious would happen. Flirtations were always going -on in the berry fields. They came, played themselves -out, and passed like the clouds in the June sky. In -the evening, when the young men had washed the dirt -<span class='pageno' id='Page_46'>46</span>of the fields away and had put on their Sunday -clothes, things were different. Then a girl must look -out for herself. When she went to walk in the evening -with a young man under the trees or out into -country lanes—then anything might happen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But in the fields, with all the older women about—to -have thought anything at all of a young man and -a girl working together and blushing and laughing, -would have been to misunderstand the whole spirit -of the berry picking season.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And it was evident May had misunderstood. -Later no one blamed Jerome, at least none of the -young fellows did. As the pickers ate lunch May sat -a little apart from the others. That was her custom -and Jerry lay in the long grass at the edge of the -orchard also a little apart. A sudden tenseness crept -into the groups under the trees. May had not gone -to the pump with the others when she came in from -the field but sat with her back braced against a tree -and the hand that held the sandwich was black with -the soil of her morning labors. It trembled and once -the sandwich fell out of her hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Suddenly she got to her feet and put her lunch -basket into the fork of a tree, and then, with a look -of defiance in her eyes, she climbed over a fence and -started along a lane past Peter Short’s barn. The -lane ran down to a meadow, crossed a bridge and went -on beside a waving wheatfield to a wood.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May went a little way along the lane and then -stopped to look back and the other pickers stared at -her, wondering what was the matter. Then Jerome -Hadley got to his feet. He was ashamed and climbed -<span class='pageno' id='Page_47'>47</span>awkwardly over the fence and walked away without -looking back.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Everyone was quite sure it had all been arranged. -As the girls and women got to their feet -and stood watching, May and Jerome went out of the -lane and into the wood. The older women shook -their heads. “Well, well,” they exclaimed while the -boys and young men began slapping each other on the -back and prancing grotesquely about.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was unbelievable. Before they had got out of -sight of the others under the tree Jerome had put -his arm about May’s waist and she had put her head -down on his shoulder. It was as though May Edgley -who, as all the older women agreed, had been treated -almost as an equal by all of the others had wanted to -throw something ugly right in their faces.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Jerome and May stayed for two hours in the wood -and then came back together to the field where the -others were at work. May’s cheeks were pale and she -looked as though she had been crying. She picked -alone as before and after a few moments of awkward -silence Jerome put on his coat and went off along a -road toward town. May made a little mountain -of filled berry boxes during that afternoon but two or -three times filled boxes dropped out of her hands. -The spilled fruit lay red and shining against the brown -and black of the soil.</p> - -<p class='c006'>No one saw May in the berry fields after that, and -Jerome Hadley had something of which to boast. In -the evening when he came among the young fellows -he spoke of his adventure at length.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You couldn’t blame me for taking the chance when -<span class='pageno' id='Page_48'>48</span>I had it,” he said laughing. He explained in detail -what had occurred in the wood, while other young men -stood about filled with envy. As he talked he grew -both proud and a little ashamed of the public attention -his adventure was attaining. “It was easy,” he -said. “That May Edgley’s the easiest thing that -ever lived in this town. A fellow don’t have to ask -to get what he wants. That’s how easy it is.”</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_49'>49</span> - <h2 class='c008'><span class='sc'>Chapter</span> II</h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>IN Bidwell, and after she had fairly flung herself -against the wall of village convention by going -into the wood with Jerome, May lived at home, -doing the work her mother had formerly done in the -Edgley household. She washed the clothes, cooked -the food and made the beds. There was, for the -time, something sweet to her in the thoughts of doing -lowly tasks and she washed and ironed the dresses in -which Lillian and Kate were to array themselves and -the heavy overalls worn by her father and brothers -with a kind of satisfaction in the task. “It makes -me tired and I can sleep and won’t be thinking,” she -told herself. As she worked over the washtubs, -among the beds soiled by the heavy slumbers of her -brothers who on the evening before had perhaps -come home drunk, or stood over the hot stove in the -kitchen, she kept thinking of her dead mother. “I -wonder what she would think,” she asked herself and -then added. “If she hadn’t died it wouldn’t have -happened. If I had someone, I could go to and talk -with, things would be different.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>During the day when the men of the household -were gone with their teams and when Lillian was away -from town May had the house to herself. It was a -two-storied frame building, standing at the edge of a -field near the town’s edge, and had once been painted -yellow. Now, water washing from the roofs had -<span class='pageno' id='Page_50'>50</span>discolored the paint, and the side walls of the old -building were all mottled and streaked. The house -stood on a little hill and the land fell sharply away -from the kitchen door. There was a creek under -the hill and beyond the creek a field that at certain -times during the year became a swamp. At the -creek’s edge willows and elders grew and often in the -afternoon, when there was no one about, May went -softly out at the kitchen door, looking to be sure -there was no one in the road that ran past the front -of the house, and if the coast was clear went down the -hill and crept in among the fragrant elders and willows. -“I am lost here and no one can see me or find -me,” she thought, and the thought gave her intense -satisfaction. Her cheeks grew flushed and hot and -she pressed the cool green leaves of the willows -against them. When a wagon passed in the road or -someone walked along the board sidewalk at the road-side -she drew herself into a little lump and closed her -eyes. The passing sounds seemed far away and to -herself it seemed that she had in some way escaped -from life. How warm and close it was there, buried -amid the dark green shadows of the willows. The -gnarled twisted limbs of the trees were like arms but -unlike the arms of the man with whom she had lain in -the wood they did not grasp her with terrifying convulsive -strength. For hours she lay still in the shadows -and nothing came to frighten her and her lacerated -spirit began to heal a little. “I have made myself an -outlaw among people but I am not an outlaw here,” -she told herself.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Having heard of the incident with Jerome Hadley, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_51'>51</span>in the berry field, Lillian and Kate Edgley were irritated -and angry and one evening when they were both -at the house and May was at work in the kitchen they -spoke about it. Lillian was very angry and had decided -to give May what she spoke of as “a piece of -her mind.” “What’d she want to go in the cheap -for?” she asked. “It makes me sick when I think of -it—a fellow like that Jerome Hadley! If she was -going to cut loose what made her want to go on the -cheap?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the Edgley family it had always been understood -that May was of a different clay and old John Edgley -and the boys had always paid her a kind of crude -respect. They did not swear at her as they sometimes -did at Lillian and Kate, and in secret they -thought of her as a link between themselves and the -more respectable life of the town. Ma Edgley was -respectable enough but she was old and tired and -never went out of the house and it was in May the -family held up its head. The two brothers were -proud of their sister because of her record in the town -school. They themselves were working men and -never expected to be anything else but, they thought, -“that sister of ours has shown the town that an Edgley -can beat them at their own game. She is smarter -than any of them. See how she has forced the town -to pay attention to her.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>As for Lillian—before the incident with Jerome -Hadley, she continually talked of her sister. In Norwalk, -Fremont, Clyde and the other towns she visited -she had many friends. Men liked her because, as -they often said, she was a woman to be trusted. One -could talk to her, say anything, and she would -<span class='pageno' id='Page_52'>52</span>keep her mouth shut and in her presence one felt -comfortably free and easy. Among her secret associates -were members of churches, lawyers, owners of -prosperous businesses, heads of respectable families. -To be sure they saw Lillian in secret but she seemed -to understand and respect their desire for secrecy. -“You don’t need to make no bones about it with me. -I know you got to be careful,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On a summer evening, in one of the towns she was -in the habit of visiting, an arrangement was made. -The man with whom she was to spend the evening -waited until darkness had come and then, hiring a -horse at a livery stable, drove to an appointed place. -Side curtains were put on the buggy and the pair set -forth into the darkness and loneliness of country -roads. As the evening advanced and the more ardent -mood of the occasion passed, a sudden sense of freedom -swept over the man. “It is better not to fool -around with a young girl or with some other man’s -wife. With Lillian one does not get found out and -get into trouble,” he thought.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The horse went slowly, along out of the way -roads—bars were let down and the couple drove into -a field. For hours they sat in the buggy and talked. -The men talked to Lillian as they could talk to no -other woman they had ever known. She was shrewd -and in her own way capable and often the men spoke -of their affairs, asking her advice. “Now what do -you think, Lil’—if you were me would you buy or -sell?” one of them asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Other and more intimate things crept into the conversations. -“Well, Lil’, my wife and I are all right. -We get along well enough, but we ain’t what you -<span class='pageno' id='Page_53'>53</span>might speak of as lovers,” Lillian’s temporary intimate -said. “She jaws me a lot when I smoke too -much or when I don’t want to go to church. And -then, you see, we’re worried about the kids. My oldest -girl is running around a lot with young Harry -Garvner and I keep asking myself, ‘Is he any good?’ -I can’t make up my mind. You’ve seen him around, -Lil’, what do you think?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Having taken part in many such conversations Lillian -had come to depend on her sister May to furnish -her with a topic of conversation. “I know how you -feel. I feel that way about May,” she said. More -than a hundred times she had explained that May -was different from the rest of the Edgleys. “She’s -smart,” she explained. “I tell you what, she’s the -smartest girl that ever went to the high school in -Bidwell.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Having so often used May as an example of what -an Edgley could be Lillian was shocked when she -heard of the affair in the berry field. For several -weeks she said nothing and then one evening in July -when the two were alone in the house together she -spoke. She had intended to be motherly, direct and -kind—if firm, but when the words came her voice -trembled and she grew angry. “I hear, May, you -been fooling with a man,” she began as they sat together -on the front porch of the house. It was a hot -evening and dark and a thunder storm threatened -and for a long time after Lillian had spoken there -was silence and then May put her head into her hands -and leaning forward began to cry softly. Her body -rocked back and forth and occasionally a dry broken -sob broke the silence. “Well,” Lillian added -<span class='pageno' id='Page_54'>54</span>sharply, being determined to terminate her remarks -before she also broke into tears, “well, May, you’ve -made a darn fool of yourself. I didn’t think it of -you. I didn’t think you’d turn out a fool.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the attempt to control her own unhappiness and -to conceal it, Lillian became more and more angry. -Her voice continued to tremble and to regain control -of it she got up and went inside the house. When -she came out again May still sat in the chair at the -edge of the porch with her head held in her hands. -Lillian was moved to pity. “Well, don’t break your -heart about it, kid. I’m only an old fool after all. -Don’t pay too much attention to me. I guess Kate -and I haven’t set you such a good example,” she said -softly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Lillian sat on the edge of the porch and put her -hand on May’s knee and when she felt the trembling -of the younger woman’s body a sharp mother feeling -awakened within her. “I say, kid,” she began again, -“a girl gets notions into her head. I’ve had them -myself. A girl thinks she’ll find a man that’s all -right. She kinda dreams of a man that doesn’t exist. -She wants to be good and at the same time she wants -to be something else. I guess I know how you felt -but, believe me, kid, it’s bunk. Take it from me, kid, -I know what I’m talking about. I been with men -enough. I ought to know something.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Intent now on giving advice and having for the -first time definitely accepted her sister as a comrade -Lillian did not realize that what she now had to say -would hurt May more than her anger. “I’ve often -wondered about mother,” she said reminiscently. -“She was always so glum and silent. When Kate -<span class='pageno' id='Page_55'>55</span>and I went on the turf she never had nothing to say -and even when I was a kid and began running around -with men evenings, she kept still. I remember the -first time I went over to Fremont with a man and -stayed out all night. I was ashamed to come home. -‘I’ll catch hell,’ I thought but she never said nothing -at all and it was the same way with Kate. She never -said nothing to her. I guess Kate and I thought she -was like the rest of the family—she was banking on -you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“To Ballyhack with Dad and the boys,” Lillian -added sharply. “They’re men and don’t care about -anything but getting filled up with booze and when -they’re tired sleeping like dogs. They’re like all -the other men only not so much stuck on themselves.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Lillian became angry again. “I was pretty proud -of you, May, and now I don’t know what to think,” she -said. “I’ve bragged about you a thousand times and -I suppose Kate has. It makes me sore to think of it, -you an Edgley and being as smart as you are, to fall -for a cheap one like that Jerome Hadley. I bet he -didn’t even give you any money or promise to marry -you either.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>May arose from her chair, her whole body trembling -as with a chill, and Lillian arose and stood beside -her. The older woman got down to the kernel of -what she wanted to say. “You ain’t that way are you, -sis—you ain’t going to have a kid?” she asked. May -stood by the door, leaning against the door jamb and -the rain that had been threatening began to fall. -“No, Lillian,” she said. Like a child begging for -mercy she held out her hand. Her face was white and -in a flash of lightning Lillian could see it plainly. It -<span class='pageno' id='Page_56'>56</span>seemed to leap out of the darkness toward her. -“Don’t talk about it any more, Lillian, please don’t. -I won’t ever do it again,” she pleaded.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Lillian was determined. When May went indoors -and up the stairway to her room above she followed -to the foot of the stairs and finished what she felt she -had to say. “I don’t want you to do it, May,” she -said, “I don’t want you to do it. I want to see there -be one Edgley that goes straight but if you intend to -go crooked don’t be a fool. Don’t take up with a -cheap one, like Jerome Hadley, who just give you soft -talk. If you are going to do it anyway you just come -to me. I’ll get you in with men who have money and -I’ll fix it so you don’t have no trouble. If you’re -going to go on the turf, like Kate and I did, don’t be a -fool. You just come to me.”</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>In all her life May had never achieved a friendship -with another woman, although often she had dreamed -of such a possibility. When she was still a school girl -she saw other girls going homeward in the evening. -They loitered along, their arms linked, and how much -they had to say to each other. When they came to a -corner, where their ways parted, they could not bear -to leave each other. “You go a piece with me tonight -and tomorrow night I’ll go a piece with you,” one of -them said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May hurried homeward alone, her heart filled with -envy, and after she had finished her time in the school -and, more than ever after the incident in the berry -field—always spoken of by Lillian as the time of her -troubles—the dream of a possible friendship with -some other woman grew more intense.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_57'>57</span>During the summer of that last year of her life in -Bidwell a young woman from another town moved -into a house on her street. Her father had a job on -the Nickel Plate Railroad and Bidwell was at the end -of a section of that road. The railroad man was seldom -at home, his wife had died a few months before -and his daughter, whose name was Maud, was not well -and did not go about town with the other young -women. Every afternoon and evening she sat on the -front porch of her father’s house, and May, who was -sometimes compelled to go to one of the stores, -often saw her sitting there. The newcomer in Bidwell -was tall and slender and looked like an invalid. -Her cheeks were pale and she looked tired. During -the year before she had been operated upon and some -part of her internal machinery had been taken away -and her paleness and the look of weariness on her face, -touched May’s heart. “She looks as though she -might be wanting company,” she thought hopefully.</p> - -<p class='c006'>After his wife’s death an unmarried sister had become -the railroad man’s housekeeper. She was a -short strongly built woman with hard grey eyes and a -determined jaw and sometimes she sat with the new -girl. Then May hurried past without looking, but, -when Maud sat alone, she went slowly, looking slyly -at the pale face and drooped figure in the rocking -chair. One day she smiled and the smile was returned. -May lingered a moment. “It’s hot,” she -said leaning over the fence, but before a conversation -could be started she grew alarmed and hurried -away.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When the evening’s work was done on that evening -and when the Edgley men had gone up town, May -<span class='pageno' id='Page_58'>58</span>went into the street. Lillian was away from home -and the sidewalk further up the street was deserted. -The Edgley house was the last one on the street, and -in the direction of town and on the same side of the -street, there was—first a vacant lot, then a shed that -had once been used as a blacksmith shop but that was -now deserted, and after that the house where the new -girl had come to live.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When the soft darkness of the summer evening -came May went a little way along the street and -stopped by the deserted shed. The girl in the -rocking chair on the porch saw her there, and seemed -to understand May’s fear of her aunt. Arising she -opened the door and peered into the house to be sure -she was unobserved and then came down a brick walk -to the gate and along the street to May, occasionally -looking back to be sure she had escaped unnoticed. -A large stone lay at the edge of the sidewalk before -the shed and May urged the new girl to sit down beside -her and rest herself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May was flushed with excitement. “I wonder if -she knows? I wonder if she knows about me?” she -thought.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I saw you wanted to be friendly and I thought I’d -come and talk,” the new girl said. She was filled -with a vague curiosity. “I heard something about -you but I know it ain’t true,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May’s heart jumped and her hands trembled. -“I’ve let myself in for something,” she thought. -The impulse to jump to her feet and run away along -the sidewalk, to escape at once from the situation her -hunger for companionship had created, almost overcame -her and she half arose from the stone and then -<span class='pageno' id='Page_59'>59</span>sat down again. She became suddenly angry and -when she spoke her voice was firm, filled with indignation. -“I know what you mean,” she said sharply, -“you mean the fool story about me and Jerome -Hadley in the woods?” The new girl nodded. “I -don’t believe it,” she said. “My aunt heard it from a -woman.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now that Maud had boldly mentioned the affair, -that had, May knew, made her an outlaw in the -town’s life May felt suddenly free, bold, capable of -meeting any situation that might arise and was lost -in wonder at her own display of courage. Well, she -had wanted to love the new girl, take her as a friend, -but now that impulse was lost in another passion that -swept through her. She wanted to conquer, to come -out of a bad situation with flying colors. With the -boldness of another Lillian she began to speak, to tell -lies. “It just shows what happens,” she said quickly. -A re-creation of the incident in the wood with Jerome -had come to her swiftly, like a flash of sunlight on a -dark day. “I went into the woods with Jerome Hadley—why? -You won’t believe it when I tell you, -maybe,” she added.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May began laying the foundation of her lie. “He -said he was in trouble and wanted to speak with me, -off somewhere where no one could hear, in some secret -place,” she explained. “I said, ‘If you’re in trouble -let’s go over into the woods at noon.’ It was my -idea, our going off together that way. When he told -me he was in trouble his eyes looked so hurt I never -thought of reputation or nothing. I just said I’d go -and I been paid for it. A girl always has to pay if -she’s good to a man I suppose.”</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_60'>60</span>May tried to look and talk like a wise woman, as -she imagined Lillian would have talked under the -circumstances. “I’ve got a notion to tell what that -Jerome Hadley talked to me about all the time when -we were in there—in the woods—but I won’t,” she -declared. “He lied about me afterwards because I -wouldn’t do what he wanted me to, but I’ll keep my -word. I won’t tell you any names but I’ll tell you -this much—I know enough to have Jerome Hadley -sent to jail if I wanted to do it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>May watched her companion. To Maud, whose -life had always been a dull affair, the evening was like -going to a theatre. It was better than that. It was -like going to the theatre where the star is your friend, -where you sit among strangers and have the sense of -superiority that comes with knowing, as a person much -like yourself, the hero in the velvet gown with the -sword clanking at his side. “Oh, do tell me all you -dare. I want to know,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It was about a woman he was in trouble,” May -answered. “One of these days maybe the whole town -will find out what I alone know.” She leaned forward -and touched Maud’s arm. The lie she was -telling made her feel glad and free. As on a dark -day, when the sun suddenly breaks through clouds, -everything in life now seemed bright and glowing and -her imagination took a great leap forward. She had -been inventing a tale to save herself but went on for -the joy of seeing what she could do with the story -that had come suddenly, unexpectedly, to her lips. -As when she was a girl in school her mind worked -swiftly, eagerly. “Listen,” she said impressively, -“and don’t you never tell no one. Jerome Hadley -<span class='pageno' id='Page_61'>61</span>wanted to kill a man here in this town, because he was -in love with the man’s woman. He had got poison -and intended to give it to the woman. She is married -and rich too. Her husband is a big man here in -Bidwell. Jerome was to give the poison to the -woman and she was to put it in her husband’s coffee -and, when the man died, the woman was to marry -Jerome. I put a stop to it. I prevented the murder. -Now do you understand why I went into the woods -with that man?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The fever of excitement that had taken possession -of May was transmitted to her companion. It drew -them closer together and now Maud put her arm -about May’s waist. “The nerve of him,” May said -boldly, “he wanted me to take the stuff to the woman’s -house and he offered me money too. He said the rich -woman would give me a thousand dollars, but I -laughed at him. ‘If anything happens to that man -I’ll tell and you’ll get hung for murder,’ that’s what I -said to him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>May described the scene that had taken place there -in the deep dark forest with the man, intent upon -murder. They fought, she said, for more than two -hours and the man tried to kill her. She would have -had him arrested at once, she explained, but to do -so involved telling the story of the poison plot and -she had given her word to save him, and if he reformed, -she would not tell. After a long time, when -the man saw she was not to be moved and would -neither take part in the plot or allow it to be carried -out, he grew quieter. Then, as they were coming out -of the woods, he sprang upon her again and tried to -choke her. Some berry pickers in a field, among -<span class='pageno' id='Page_62'>62</span>whom she had been working during the morning, saw -the struggle.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They went and told lies about me,” May said -emphatically. “They saw us struggling and they -went and said he was making love to me. A girl -there, who was in love with Jerome herself and was -jealous when she saw us together, started the story. -It spread all over town and now I’m so ashamed I -hardly dare to show my face.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>With an air of helpless annoyance May arose. -“Well,” she said, “I promised him I wouldn’t tell the -name of the man he was going to murder or nothing -about it and I won’t. I’ve told you too much as it is -but you gave me your word you wouldn’t tell. It’s -got to be a secret between us.” She started off along -the sidewalk toward the Edgley house and then -turned and ran back to the new girl, who had got -almost to her own gate. “You keep still,” May -whispered dramatically. “If you go talking now -remember you may get a man hung.”</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_63'>63</span> - <h2 class='c008'><span class='sc'>Chapter III</span></h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>A NEW life began to unfold itself to May Edgley. -After the affair in the berry field, and until the -time of the conversation with Maud Welliver, -she had felt as one dead. As she went about in the -Edgley household, doing the daily work, she sometimes -stopped and stood still, on the stairs or in the -kitchen by the stove. A whirlwind seemed to be going -on around her while she stood thus, becalmed—fear -made her body tremble. It had happened even in the -moments when she was hidden under the elders by the -creek. At such times the trunks of the willow trees -and the fragrance of the elders comforted but did not -comfort enough. There was something wanting. -They were too impersonal, too sure of themselves.</p> - -<p class='c006'>To herself, at such moments, May was like one -sealed up in a vessel of glass. The light of days -came to her and from all sides came the sound of life -going on but she herself did not live. She but -breathed, ate food, slept and awakened but what she -wanted out of life seemed far away, lost to her. In -a way, and ever since she had been conscious of herself, -it had been so.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She remembered faces she had seen, expressions -that had come suddenly to peoples’ faces as she -passed them on the streets. In particular old men -had always been kind to her. They stopped to speak -to her. “Hello, little girl,” they said. For her benefit -<span class='pageno' id='Page_64'>64</span>eyes had been lifted, lips had smiled, kindly words -had been spoken, and at such moments it had seemed to -her that some tiny sluiceway out of the great stream of -human life had been opened to her. The stream -flowed on somewhere, in the distance, on the further -side of a wall, behind a mountain of iron—just out of -sight, out of hearing—but a few drops of the living -waters of life had reached her, had bathed her. -Understanding of the secret thing that went on within -herself was not impossible. It could exist.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the days after the talk with Lillian the -puzzled woman in the yellow house thought much -about life. Her mind, naturally a busy active one, -could not remain passive and for the time she dared -not think much of herself and of her own future. -She thought abstractly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She had done a thing and how natural and yet how -strange the doing of it had been. There she was at -work in a berry field—it was morning, the sun shone, -boys, young girls, and mature women laughed and -talked in the rows behind her. Her fingers were very -busy but she listened while a woman’s voice talked -of canning fruit. “Cherries take so much sugar,” the -voice said. A young girl’s voice talked endlessly of -some boy and girl affair. There was a tale of a ride -into the country on a hay wagon, and an involved -recital of “he saids” and “I saids.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then the man had come along the rows and had -got down on his knees to work beside herself—May -Edgley. He was a man out of the town’s life, and -had come thus, suddenly, unexpectedly. No one had -ever come to her in that way. Oh, people had been -<span class='pageno' id='Page_65'>65</span>kind. They had smiled and nodded, and had gone -their own ways.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May had not seen the sly winks Jerome Hadley had -bestowed on the other berry pickers and had taken -his impulse to come to her as a simple and lovely fact -in life. Perhaps he was lonely like herself. For a -time the two had worked together in silence and then -a bantering conversation began. May had found -herself able to carry her end of a conversation, -to give and take with the man. She laughed at him -because, although his fingers were skilled, he could not -fill the berry boxes as fast as herself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then, quite suddenly, the tone of the conversation -had changed. The man became bold and his -boldness had excited May. What words he had said. -“I’d like to hold you in my arms. I’d like to have -you alone where I could kiss you. I’d like to be alone -with you in the woods or somewhere.” The others -working, now far away along the rows, young girls -and women, too, must also have heard just such words -from the lips of men. It was the fact that they had -heard such words and responded to them in kind that -differentiated them from herself. It was by responding -to such words that a woman got herself a lover, -got married, connected herself with the stream of life. -She heard such words and something within herself -stirred, as it was stirring now in herself. Like a -flower she opened to receive life. Strange beautiful -things happened and her experience became the -experience of all life, of trees, of flowers, of grasses -and most of all of other women. Something arose -within her and then broke. The wall of life was -<span class='pageno' id='Page_66'>66</span>broken down. She became a living thing, receiving -life, giving it forth, one with all life.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the berry field that morning May had gone on -working after the words were said. Her fingers -automatically picked berries and put them in the -boxes slowly, hesitatingly. She turned to the man -and laughed. How wonderful that she could control -herself so.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Her mind had raced. What a thing her mind was. -It was always doing that—racing, running madly, a -little out of control. Her fingers moved more slowly. -She picked berries and put them in the man’s box, and -now and then gave him large fine round berries to eat -and was conscious that the others in the field were -looking in her direction. They were listening, wondering, -and she grew resentful. “What did they -want? What did all this have to do with them?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Her mind took a new turn. “What would it be like -to be held in the arms of a man, to have a man’s lips -pressed down upon her lips. It was an experience -all women, who had lived, had known. It had come -to her own mother, to the married women, working -with her in the field, to young girls, too, to many much -younger than herself.” She imagined arms soft and -yet firm, strong arms, holding her closely, and sank -into a dim, splendid world of emotion. The stream -of life in which she had always wanted to float had -picked her up—it carried her along. All life became -colorful. The red berries in the boxes—how -red they were, the green of the vines, what a living -green! The colors merged—they ran together, the -stream of life was flowing over them, over her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What a terrible day that had been for May. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_67'>67</span>Later she could not focus her mind upon it, dared -not do so. The actual experience with the man in -the forest had been quite brutal—an assault had been -made upon her. She had consented—yes—but not -to what happened. Why had she gone into the woods -with him? Well, she had gone, and by her manner -she had invited, urged him to follow, but she had not -expected anything really to happen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It had been her own fault, everything had been her -own fault. She had got up from among the berry -pickers, angry at them—resentful. They knew too -much and not enough and she had hated their knowledge, -their smartness. She had got up and walked -away from them, looking back, expecting him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What had she expected? What she had expected -could not get itself put into words. She knew nothing -of poets and their efforts, of the things they live -to try to do, of things men try to paint into canvasses, -translate into song. She was an Ohio woman, an -Edgley, the daughter of a teamster, the sister of -Lillian Edgley who had gone on the turf. May expected -to walk into a new world, into life—she -expected to bathe herself in the living waters of life. -There was to be something warm, close, comforting, -secure. Hands were to arise out of darkness and -grasp her hands, her hands covered with the stain -of red berries and the yellow dust of fields. She was -to be held closely in the warm place and then like a -flower she was to break open, throw herself, her -fragrance into the air.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What had been the matter with her, with her notion -of life? May had asked herself that question a -thousand times, had asked it until she was weary of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_68'>68</span>asking, could not ask any more. She had known her -mother—thought she had known her—if she had not, -no Edgley had. Had none of the others cared? -Her mother had met a man and had been held in his -arms, she had become the mother of sons and daughters, -and the sons and daughters had gone their own -way, lived brutally. They had gone after what they -thought they wanted from life, directly, brutally—like -animals. And her mother had stood aside. -How long ago she must have died, really. It -was then only flesh and blood that went on living, -working, making beds, cooking, lying with a husband.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was plain that was true of her mother—it must -have been true. If it were not true why had she not -spoken, why had no words come to her lips. Day -after day May had worked with her mother. Well, -then she was a virgin, young, tender and her mother -had not kissed her, had not held her closely. No -word had been said. It was not true, as Lillian had -said, that her mother had counted on her. It was -because of death that she was silent, when Lillian and -then Kate went on the turf. The dead did not care! -The dead are dead!</p> - -<p class='c006'>May wondered if she herself had passed out of -life, if she had died. “It may be,” she thought, “I -may never have lived and my thinking I was alive may -only have been a trick of mind.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’m smart,” May thought. Lillian had said that, -her brothers had said it, the whole town had said it. -How she hated her own smartness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The others had been proud of it, glad of it. The -whole town had been proud of her, had hailed her. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_69'>69</span>It was because she was smart, because she thought -quicker and faster than others, it was because of that -the women schoolteachers had smiled at her, because -of that old men spoke to her on the streets.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Once an old man had met her on the sidewalk in -front of one of the stores and taking her by the hand -had led her inside and had bought her a bag of candy. -The man was a merchant in Bidwell and had a daughter -who was a teacher in the schools, but May had never -seen him before, had heard nothing of him, knew -nothing about him. He came up to her out of nothingness, -out of the stream of life. He had heard -about May, of her quick active mind, that always defeated -the other children in the school room, that in -every test came out ahead. Her imagination played -about his figure.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At that time May went every Sunday morning to -the Presbyterian Sunday School, as there was a tradition -in the Edgley family that Ma Edgley had once -been a Presbyterian. None of the other children had -ever gone, but for a time she did and they all seemed to -want her to go. She remembered the men, the Sunday -School teachers were always talking about. -There was a gigantic strong old man named Abraham -who walked in God’s footsteps. He must have been -huge, strong, and good, too. His children were like -the sands of the seas for numbers, and was that not a -sign of strength. How many children! All the -children in the world could not be more than that! -The man who had taken hold of her hand and had led -her into the store to buy the candy for her was, she -imagined just such another. He also must own lands -and be the father of innumerable children and no -<span class='pageno' id='Page_70'>70</span>doubt he could ride all day on a fast horse and never -get off his own possessions. It was possible he -thought her one of his innumerable children.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was no doubt he was a mighty man. He -looked like one and he had admired her. “I’m giving -you this candy because my daughter says you are the -smartest girl in school,” he said. She remembered -that another man stood in the store and that, as she -ran away with the bag of candy gripped in her small -fingers, the old man, the mighty one, turned to him. -He said something to the man. “They are all cattle -except her, just cattle,” he had said. Later she had -thought out what he meant. He meant her family, -the Edgleys.</p> - -<p class='c006'>How many things she had thought out as she went -back and forth to school, always alone. There was -always plenty of time for thinking things out—in the -late afternoons as she helped her mother with the -housework and in the long winter evenings when she -went to bed early and for a long time did not go to -sleep. The old man in the store had admired her -quick brain—for that he had forgiven her being an -Edgley, one of the cattle. Her thoughts went round -and round in circles. Even as a child she had always -felt shut in, walled in from life. She struggled to escape -out of herself, out into life.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now she was a woman who had experienced -life, tested it, and she stood, silent and attentive on -the stairway of the Edgley house or by the stove in the -kitchen and with an effort forced herself to quit thinking. -On another street, in another house, a door -banged. Her sense of hearing was extraordinarily -acute, and it seemed to her she could hear every sound -<span class='pageno' id='Page_71'>71</span>made by every man, woman, and child in town. The -circle of thoughts began again and again she fought to -think, to feel her way out of herself. On another -street, in another house a woman was doing housework, -just as she had been doing—making beds, washing -dishes, cooking food. The woman had just -passed from one room of her house to another and a -door had shut with a bang. “Well,” May thought, -“she is a human being, she feels things as I do, she -thinks, eats food, sleeps, dreams, walks about her -house.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It didn’t matter who the woman was. Being or -not being an Edgley made no difference. Any woman -would do for the purposes of May’s thoughts. All -people who lived, lived! Men walked about too, and -had thoughts, young girls laughed. She had heard -a girl in school, when no one was speaking to her—paying -any attention to her—burst suddenly into loud -laughter. What was she laughing about?</p> - -<p class='c006'>How cruelly the town had patronized May, setting -her apart from the others, calling her smart. They -had cared about her because of her smartness. She -was smart. Her mind was quick, it reached out. -And she was one of the Edgleys—“cattle,” the -bearded man in the store had said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And what of that—what was an Edgley—why were -they cattle? An Edgley also slept, ate food, had -dreams, walked about. Lillian had said that an -Edgley man was like all other men, only less stuck on -himself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May’s mind fought to realize herself in the world -of people, she wanted to be a part of all life, to function -in life—did not want to be a special thing—smart—patted -<span class='pageno' id='Page_72'>72</span>on the head—smiled at because she was -smart.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What was smartness? She could work out problems -in school quickly, swiftly, but as each problem -was solved she forgot it. It meant nothing to her. -A merchant in Egypt wanted to transport goods -across the desert and had 370 pounds of tea and such -another number of pounds of dried fruits and spices. -There was a problem concerning the matter. Camels -were to be loaded. How far away? The result of -all her quick thinking was some number like twelve -or eighteen, arrived at before the others. There was -a little trick. It consisted in throwing everything else -out of the mind and concentrating on the one thing—and -that was smartness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But what did it matter to her about the loading of -camels? It might have meant something could she -have seen into the mind, the soul of the man who -owned all that merchandise and who was to carry it -so far, if she could have understood him, if she could -have understood anyone, if anyone could have understood -her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May stood in the kitchen of the Edgley house, -quiet, attentive—for ten minutes, a half hour. Once -a dish she held in her hand fell to the floor and broke, -awakening her suddenly and to awaken was like coming -back to the Edgley house after a long journey, -during which she had traveled far, over mountains, -rivers, seas—it was like coming back to a place she -wanted to leave for good.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And all the time,” she told herself, “life swept on, -other people lived, laughed, achieved life.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then, through the lie she had told Maud Welliver, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_73'>73</span>May stepped into a new world, a world of -boundless release. Through the lie and the telling of -it she found out that, if she could not live in the life -about her, she could create a life. If she was walled -in, shut off from participation in the life of the Ohio -town—hated, feared by the town—she could come -out of the town. The people would not really look -at her, try to understand her and they would not let -her look down into themselves.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The lie she had told was the foundation stone, the -first of the foundation stones. A tower was to be -built, a tall tower on which she could stand, from the -ramparts of which she could look down into a world -created by herself, by her own mind. If her mind was -really what Lillian, the teachers in the school, all the -others, had said she would use it, it would become the -tool which in her hands, would force stone after stone -into its place in her tower.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>In the Edgley house May had a room of her own, a -tiny room at the back of the house and there was one -window looking down into the field, that every spring -and fall became a swamp. In the winter sometimes -it was covered with ice and boys came there to skate. -On the evening she had told Maud Welliver the -great lie—recreated the incident in the wood with -Jerome Hadley—she hurried home and went up to her -room and, pulling a chair to the window, sat down. -What a thing she had done! The encounter with -Jerome Hadley in the wood had been terrible—she -had been unable to think about it, did not dare to -think about it, and trying not to think had almost upset -her reason.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_74'>74</span>And now it was gone. The whole thing had -really never happened. What had happened was this -other thing, or something like that, something no one -knew about. There had really been an attempt at -murder. May sat by the window and smiled sadly. -“I stretched it a little,” she thought. “Of course I -stretched it, but what was the use trying to tell what -happened. I couldn’t make it understood. I can’t -understand it myself.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>All through the weeks that had passed since that -day in the wood May had been obsessed by the notion -that she was unclean, physically unclean. Doing the -housework she wore calico dresses—she had several -of them and two or three times a day she changed -her dress and the soiled dress she could not leave -hanging in a closet until washday but washed the dress -at once and hung it on a line in the back yard. The -wind blowing through it gave her a comforting feeling.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The Edgleys had no bathroom or bathtub. Few -people in towns in her day owned any such luxurious -appendages to life. And a washtub was kept in the -woodshed by the kitchen door and what baths were -taken were taken in the tub. It was a ceremony that -did not often occur in the family, and when it did occur -the tub was filled from the cistern and set in the sun -to warm. Then it was carried into the shed. The -candidate for cleanliness went into the shed and closed -the door. In the winter the ceremony took place in -the kitchen and Ma Edgley came at the last moment -and poured a kettle of boiling water into the cold -water in the tub. In the summer in the shed that was -not necessary. The bather undressed and put his -<span class='pageno' id='Page_75'>75</span>clothes about, on the piles of wood, and there was a -great splashing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>During that summer May took a bath every afternoon, -but did not bother to put the water out in the -sun. How good it felt to have it cold! Often when -there was no one about, she filled the tub and got into -it again before going to bed. Her small body, dark -and strong, sank into the cold water and she took -strong soap and scrubbed her legs, her breasts, her -neck where Jerome Hadley’s kisses had alighted. -Her neck and breasts she wished she could scrub quite -away.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Her body was strong and wiry. All the Edgleys, -even Ma Edgley, had been strong. They were all, -except May, large people and in her the family -strength seemed to have concentrated. She was -never physically weary and after the time of her intensive -thinking began, and when she often slept little -at night her body seemed to grow constantly stronger. -Her breasts grew larger and her figure changed -slightly. It grew less boyish. She was becoming a -woman.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>After the telling of the lie, May’s body became -for a time no more than a tree growing in a forest -through which she walked. It was something through -which life made itself manifest; it was a house within -which she lived, a house, in which, and in spite of the -enmity of the town, life went on. “I’m not dead -like those who die while their bodies are still alive,” -May thought, and there was intense comfort in the -thought.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_76'>76</span>She sat by the window of her room in the darkness -thinking. Jerome Hadley had tried to commit a -murder and how often such attempts must have been -made in the history of other men and women—and -how often they must have succeeded. The spirit -within was killed. Boys and girls grew up full of -notions, brave notions too. In Bidwell, as in other -towns, they went to schools and Sunday schools. -Words were said—they heard many brave words—but -within themselves, within their own tiny houses, all -life was uncertain, hesitating. They looked abroad -and saw men and women, bearded men, kind strong -women. How many were dead! How many of the -houses were but empty haunted places! Their town -was not the town they had thought it and some day -they would have to find that out. It was not a place -of warm friendly closeness. Feeling instinctively the -uncertainty of life, the difficulty of arriving at truth -the people did not draw together. They were not -humble in the face of the great mystery. The mystery -was to be solved with lies, with truth put away. -A great noise must be made. Everything was to be -covered up. There must be a great noise and bustle, -the firing of cannons, the roll of drums, the shouting -of many words. The spirit within must be killed. -“What liars people are,” May thought breathlessly. -It seemed to her that all the people of her town stood -before her, were in a way being judged by her, and -her own lie, told to defeat a universal lie, now seemed -a small, a white innocent thing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a very tender delicate thing within her, -many people had wanted to kill—that was certain. -To kill the delicate thing within was a passion that -<span class='pageno' id='Page_77'>77</span>obsessed mankind. All men and women tried to do -it. First the man or woman killed the thing within -himself, and then tried to kill it in others. Men and -women were afraid to let the thing live.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May sat in the darkness in her room in the Edgley -house having such thoughts as had never come to her -before and the night seemed alive as no other night -of her life had been. For her gods walked abroad -in the land. The Edgley house was but a poor little -affair of boards—of thin walls—and she looked out, -in the dim wavering light of the night, into a field, -that at times during the year became a bog where -cattle sank in black mud to their knees. Her town -was but a dot on the huge map of her country—she -knew that. It was not necessary to travel to find -out. Had she not been at the top of her class in -geography? In her country alone lived some sixty, -eighty, a hundred million people—she could not remember -the number—it changed yearly. When the -country was new millions of buffalo walked up and -down on the plains. She was a she-calf among the -buffalo but she had found lodgment in a town, in a -house made of boards and painted yellow, but the -field below the house was dry now and long grass -grew there. However, tiny pools remained and frogs -lived in them and croaked loudly while crickets sang -in the dry grass. Her life was sacred—the house in -which she lived, the room in which she sat, became -a church, a temple, a tower. The lie she had told -had started a new force within her and the new -temple, in which she was to live, was now being built.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Thoughts like giant clouds, seen in a dim night sky, -floated through her mind. Tears came to her eyes -<span class='pageno' id='Page_78'>78</span>and her throat seemed to be swelling. She put her -head down on the window sill and convulsive sobs -shook her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That was, she knew, because she had been brave -enough and quick-witted enough to tell the lie, to re-establish -the romance of existence within herself. -The foundation stone for the temple had been laid.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May did not think anything out clearly, did not try -to do that. She felt—she knew her own truth. -Words heard, read in books in school, in other books -loaned her by the schoolteachers, words said casually, -without feeling—by thin-lipped, flat-breasted young -women who were teachers at the Sunday school, -words that had seemed as nothing to her when said, -now made a great sound in her mind. They were repeated -to her in stately measure by some force, seemingly -outside herself and were like the steady rhythmical -tread of an army marching on earth roads. No, -they were like rain on the roof over her head, on the -roof of the house that was herself. All her life she -had lived in a house and the rains had come unheeded—and -the words she had heard and now remembered -were like rain drops falling on roofs. There was a -subtle perfume remaining. “The stone which the -builders refused is become the headstone of the corner.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>As the thoughts marched through May’s mind -her small shoulders shook with sobs, but she was -happy—strangely happy and something within herself -was singing. The singing was a song that was -always alive somewhere in the world, it was the song -of life, the song that crickets sang, the song the frogs -croaked hoarsely. It ran away out of her room, out -<span class='pageno' id='Page_79'>79</span>of the darkness into the night, into days, into far -lands—it was the old song, the sweet song.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May kept thinking about buildings and builders. -“The stone which the builders refused is become the -headstone of the corner.” Someone had said that and -others had felt what she now felt—they had had the -feeling she could not put into words and they -had tried putting it into words. She was not alone -in the world. It was not a strange path she walked -in life, but many had walked it, many were walking -it now. Even as she sat in the window, thinking so -strangely, many men and women in many places and -many lands sat at other windows having the same -thoughts. In a world, where many men and women -had killed the thing within themselves, the path of -the rejected was the true path and how many had -walked the path! The trees along the way were -marked. Signs had been hung up by those who -wanted to show others the way. “The stone which the -builders refused is become the headstone of the corner.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Lillian had said, “men are no good,” and it was -clear Lillian had also killed the thing within herself, -had let it be killed. She had let some Jerome Hadley -kill it, and then she had grown slowly and steadily -more and more angry at life, had come to hate life, -had thrown it away. And the thing had happened -to her mother, too. That was the reason for her life -of silence—death walking about. “The dead rise -up to strike the dead.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The story May had told to Maud Welliver was -not a lie—it was the living truth. He had tried to -kill and had come near succeeding. May had walked -<span class='pageno' id='Page_80'>80</span>in the valley of the shadow of death. She knew that -now. Her own sister, Lillian, had come to her when -she walked with Death and wanted Life. “If you are -going to go on the turf I’ll get you in with men who -have money,” Lillian had said. She had got no -closer to understanding than that.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>May decided that after all she would not try to be -Maud Welliver’s friend. She would see her and -talk to her but, for the present, she would keep herself -to herself. The living thing within her had been -wounded and needed time to recover. Of all the -feelings, the strong emotion, that swept through her -on that evening, cleansing her internally, as she had -been trying by splashing in the tub in the woodshed -to cleanse herself externally, one impulse got itself -definitely expressed. “I’ll go it alone, that’s what -I’ll do,” she murmured between sobs as she sat by the -window with her head in her hands, and heard the -sweet song of the insects, singing of life in the darkness -of the fields.</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_81'>81</span> - <h2 class='c008'><span class='sc'>Chapter IV</span></h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>“THERE was a man here. For weeks he lay -sick to the point of death, in our house, -and all the time I did not dare sleep. -Night and day I was on the watch. How often at -night I have crept down across this very field, in the -middle of the night, in the darkness looking for the -black, trying to discover if he was still on the trail.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was early summer and May sat talking with -Maud Welliver by a tree in the field back of the -Edgley’s kitchen door—building steadily her tower -of romance. Two or three times each week, since -that first talk by the blacksmith shop, Maud had -managed to get to the Edgley house unobserved by -her aunt. In her passionate devotion to the little -dark-skinned woman, who had lived through so many -and such romantic adventures in life, she was ready -to risk anything, even to the wrath of her father’s -iron-jawed housekeeper.</p> - -<p class='c006'>To the Edgley house she came always at night, and -the necessity of that was understood by May and perhaps -better understood by Lillian Edgley. On the -next day, after the meeting by the blacksmith shop, -Maud’s father had spoken his mind concerning the -Edgleys. The Welliver family sat at supper in the -evening. “Maud,” John Welliver began, looking -sternly at his daughter, “I don’t want you should have -anything to do with that Edgley family that lives on -<span class='pageno' id='Page_82'>82</span>this street.” The railroad man cursed the ill luck -that had led him to take a house on the same street -where such cattle lived. One of his brother employees -on the road, he said, had told him the story -of the Edgleys. “They are such an outfit,” he declared -wrathfully. “God only knows why they are allowed -to stay here. They should be tarred and -feathered and run out of town. Why, to live on the -same street with them is like living in the midst of -cattle.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The railroad man looked hard at his daughter. -To him she was a young woman and a virgin, and by -these tokens walked a dangerous trail through life. -On dark streets, adventurous men lay in wait for all -such women and they employed other women, of the -Edgley stripe, to decoy innocent virgins into their -hands. There was much he would have liked to say -to his daughter but not much he could say. Among -themselves men could speak openly of such women -as the Edgley sisters. They were a thing—well. -To tell the truth—during young manhood almost -every man went to see such women, went with other -men into a house inhabited by such women. To go to -such a place one needed to have been drinking a little. -It happened. Several young men were together and -went from place to place drinking. “Let’s go down -the line,” one of them said. The men went straggling -off along a street, two by two. Little was said -and they were all a little ashamed of their mission. -Then they came to a house, always on a dark foul -street, and one of the young men, a bold fellow, -knocked at the door. A fat woman, with a hard face, -came to let them in and they went into a room and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_83'>83</span>stood about, looking foolish. “O, girls,—company,” -the fat woman shouted and several women came and -stood about. The women looked bored and tired.</p> - -<p class='c006'>John Welliver had himself been to such places. -Well, that was when he was a young workman. -Later a man met a good woman and married her, -tried to forget the other women, did forget them. -In spite of all the things said, most men after marriage -went straight. They had a living to make and -children growing up and there was no time for any -such nonsense. Among his fellow workmen, the railroad -man often spoke of the kind of women he believed -the three Edgley women to be. “It’s my -notion,” he said, “that it’s better to have such places -in order that good women may be let alone, but they -ought to be off by themselves somewhere. A good -woman never ought to see or know about such cattle.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the presence of his daughter and of his sister, -the housekeeper, now that the subject of the Edgleys -had been broached the railroad man was embarrassed. -He kept his eye on the plate before him and stole -a shy look at his daughter’s face. How white and -pure it looked. “I wish I had kept my mouth shut,” -he thought—but a sense of the necessity of the occasion -led him on. “My Maud might be led to take -up with the Edgley women, knowing nothing,” he -thought. “Well,” he said, “there are three women -in that family and they are all alike. There is one, -who works at the hotel—where she meets traveling -men—and the oldest one doesn’t work at all. And -there is another, too, the youngest that everyone -thought was going to turn out all right because she -stood high in school and is said to be smart. Everyone -<span class='pageno' id='Page_84'>84</span>thought she would be different but she isn’t, you -see. Why, right before everyone, in a berry field, -where she was at work, she went into a wood with -a man.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I know about it and I’ve told Maud,” the railroad -man’s sister said sharply. “We don’t need to talk -about it no more.”</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Maud Welliver had listened with flushed cheeks to -her father’s words, and even as he talked had made -up her mind she would see May again and soon. -Since coming to Bidwell she had not left the house at -night, but now she felt suddenly quite strong and -well. When the supper was finished and darkness -came on she got up from her chair on the porch and -spoke to her aunt, at work inside the house. “I feel -better than I have for months, aunty,” she said, “and -I’m going for a little walk. You know the doctor -said I was to walk all I could and I can’t walk during -the day on account of the heat. I’ll just go uptown -a little while.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maud went cautiously along the sidewalk toward -the business section of town and then crossed over -and returning on the opposite side, stole along, walking -on the grass at the edge of lawns. What an adventure! -She felt like one being admitted into some -strange world filled with romance. For her May -Edgley’s tales had become golden apples of existence, -to taste which she would risk anything. “What -a person!” she thought as she crept forward in -the darkness, lifting and putting down her feet -on the grass like a kitten compelled to walk in -water. She thought of May Edgley’s adventure in the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_85'>85</span>wood with Jerome Hadley. How stupid her father -had been, how stupid everyone in the town of -Bidwell! “It must be so with men and women -everywhere,” she thought vaguely. “They go on -thinking they know what’s happening, and they -know nothing.” She thought of May Edgley, small -and a woman, alone in the forest with a man—a -dark determined man, intent upon murder. The -man held in his hand a little package containing a -white powder. A few grains of it in a cup of coffee -and a human life would go out. A man who walked -and talked and went about the streets of Bidwell with -other men would become a white lifeless bit of -clay. Maud had been at several times in her life -close to the door of death. She imagined a scene. -There was a rich man’s home with soft carpets, woven -of priceless stuffs, brought from the Orient. One -walking on the carpets made no sound. The feet -sank softly into the velvety stuff and soft-voiced -servants moved about. A man entered and sat at -breakfast. The movies had not at that time come to -Bidwell but Maud had read many popular novels and -several times, at Fort Wayne, had been to the theatre.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a woman in the rich man’s house—his -guilty wife. She was slender and willowy. Ah, -there was something serpentine about her. In -Maud’s imagination she lay on a silken couch beside -the table, at which the man now sat down to eat his -breakfast. A wood fire burned in the fireplace. The -woman’s hand stole forward and a tiny pinch of the -white powder went into the coffee cup; then she raised -a white hand and stroked the man’s cheek. She -closed her eyes and lay back on the silken couch. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_86'>86</span>The dastardly deed was done and the woman did not -care. She was not even curious as to how death -would come. She yawned and waited.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The man drank his coffee and arising moved about -the room and then a sudden pallor came upon his -cheeks. It was quite noticeable as he was a ruddy-cheeked -man with soft grey hair—a strong commanding -figure of a man, a leader among men. Maud -pictured him as the president of a great railroad -system. She had never seen a railroad president but -her father had often spoken of the president of the -Nickle Plate and had described him as a big fine looking -fellow.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What a thing is passion, so terrible, so strange. -It takes such unimaginable turns. The woman on -the silken couch, the willowy serpentine woman, had -turned from her husband, from the commander of -men, from the strong man, the powerful one who -swept all before him, and had given her illicit but -powerfully fascinating love to a railroad mail clerk.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maud had seen Jerome Hadley. When the Wellivers -had first come to Bidwell she, with her aunt and -father, had been driven about town with a real-estate -man and his wife. They were looking for a -house in which to live and as they drove about the -real-estate man’s wife, who sat on the back seat of a -surrey with Maud and her aunt, had pointed to Jerome -Hadley, walking past in the street, and had told in a -whisper the story of his going into the wood with -May Edgley. Maud was half sick on that day and -had not listened. The railroad journey from Fort -Wayne to Bidwell had given her a headache.</p> - -<p class='c006'>However, she had looked at Jerome. He had -<span class='pageno' id='Page_87'>87</span>sloping shoulders, pale grey eyes and sandy hair, and -when he walked he toed out badly and his trousers -were baggy. And for that man the woman on the -silken couch, the railroad president’s wife, was ready -to commit murder. What an unexplainable, what a -strange thing is love! The windings and twistings of -its pathway through life cannot be followed by the -human mind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The scene being enacted in Maud Welliver’s mind -played itself out. The strong man in the richly furnished -room put his hand to his throat and staggered. -He reeled from side to side and clutched at the backs -of chairs. The noiseless servants had all gone out of -the room. The woman half arose from the couch -as the man fell to the floor and in falling struck his -head on the corner of a table so that his blood ran -out upon the silken carpets. The woman smiled -sardonically. It was terrible. She cared not the -least in the world and a slow cruel smile came and -remained fixed on her face. Then there was the -sound of running feet. The servants were coming, -they were running, running desperately. The woman -lay back on the couch and yawned again. “I had -better scream and then faint,” she thought and she -did the two things, did them with the air of a tired -actor rehearsing a well known part for a play. It -was all for love, for a strange and mysterious thing -called passion. She did it for Jerome Hadley’s sake, -that she might be free to walk with him the illicit -paths of love.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maud Welliver tiptoed cautiously forward on the -lawns on the further side of Duane Street in Bidwell, -looking across at the dark house where she had -<span class='pageno' id='Page_88'>88</span>come to live. In Fort Wayne she had known nothing -like this. What a terrible thing might have happened -in Bidwell but for May Edgley! The scene -in the rich man’s home faded and was replaced by -another. She saw May standing in the forest with -Jerome Hadley. How he had changed! He stood -alert, intent, determined, holding the poison package -in his hand and he was threatening, threatening and -pleading. In the other hand he held money, a great -package of bills. He thrust the bills forward and -pleaded with May Edgley and then grew angry and -threatened again.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Before him stood the small, white-faced woman, -frightened now, but terribly determined also. The -word “never” was upon her lips. And now the man -threw the money away into the bushes and sprang -forward. His hand was at the woman’s throat, the -murderous hand of the infuriated mail clerk. It -pressed hard. May fell to the ground.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Jerome Hadley did not quite dare let the woman -die. Too many people had seen the two go into the -wood together. He stood over her until she had a -little recovered and then the threatening and pleading -began again, but all the time the little woman stood -firm, shaking her head and saying the brave word -“never.” “Kill me if you will,” she said, “but I’ll -take no part in this murder. My reputation is gone -and I am an outlaw among men and women but I’ll -take no part in this murder, and if you go on with it -I will betray you.”</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>The September evening when May uttered the -startling sentences, regarding a strange man and a -<span class='pageno' id='Page_89'>89</span>mysterious black, set down at the head of this section -of the story of her adventures, was warm and clear. -Brightly the stars shone in the sky and in the field -back of the Edgley’s kitchen door all the little ponds -had become dry. Since that first evening when she -had met May a great change had taken place in Maud. -May had led her up to the ramparts of the tower -of romance and as often as possible now the two -sat together under a tree in the field or on the floor -by the open window in May’s room. To the field -they went through the kitchen door, along the creek -where the elders and willows grew and over stones -in the bed of the creek itself, to a wire fence. How -alone and how far away from the life of the town -they were in the field at night! Buggies and the few -automobiles then owned in Bidwell passed on distant -roads, and over the town, soft lights played on -the sky and soft lights seemed to play over the spirits -of the two women. On a distant street, that led -down to the town waterworks, a group of young men -went tramping along on a board sidewalk. They -were singing a song. “Listen, May,” Maud said. -The voices died away and another sound came. Jerry -Haden, a cripple who walked with a crutch and who -delivered evening papers, went along quickly, his -crutch making a sharp clicking sound on the sidewalks. -What a hurry he was in. “Click! click!” -went the crutch.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a time and place for the growth of romance. -A desire to reach out to life, to command life grew -within Maud. One evening she, alone and unaided, -mounted the tower of romance and told May of how -a young man in Fort Wayne had wanted to marry -<span class='pageno' id='Page_90'>90</span>her. “He was the son of the president of a railroad -company,” she said. The matter was of no importance -and she only spoke of it to show what men were -like. For a long time he came to the house almost -every evening and when he did not come he sent -flowers and candy. Maud had cared nothing for him. -There was a certain air he had that wearied her. He -seemed to think himself in some way of better blood -than the Wellivers. The idea was absurd. Maud’s -father knew his father and knew that he had once -been no more than a section hand on the railroad. -His pretensions wearied Maud and she finally sent -him away.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maud told May, on several evenings of the imaginary -young man whom, because of his pride of blood, -she had cast adrift, and on the September evening -wanted to speak of something else. For two or three -evenings she had been on the point of saying what -was in her mind but could not bring the matter to her -lips. It trembled within her like a wild bird caught -and held in her hand, as, in the dim light, she looked -at May. “She won’t do it. I’ll never get her to do -it,” she thought.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In Fort Wayne, before she came to Bidwell, and -when she had just graduated from the high school -Maud had for a time walked upon the border line -of love, had stood for a moment in the very pathway -of Cupid’s darts. Near the house where the Wellivers -then lived there was a grocery run by an alert erect -little man of forty-five, whose wife had died. Maud -often went to the store to buy supplies for the Welliver -home and one evening she arrived just as the -grocer, a man named Hunt, was locking the store for -<span class='pageno' id='Page_91'>91</span>the night. He unlocked the door and let her in. -“You won’t mind if I don’t light the lights again,” -he said. He explained that the grocerymen of Fort -Wayne had made an agreement among themselves -that they would sell no goods after seven in the evening. -“If I light the lights and people see us in here -they will be coming in and wanting to be waited on,” -he explained.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maud stood in the uncertain light by a counter -while the grocer wrapped her packages. At the back -of the store there was a lamp fastened to a bracket -on the wall and burning dimly and the soft yellow -light fell on her hair and on her white smiling face -as the grocer fumbled in the darkness back of the -counter and from time to time looked up at her. -How beautiful her long pale face in that light! He -was stirred and delayed the matter of getting the -packages wrapped. “My wife and I were not very -happy together but I was happy when I lived alone -with my mother,” he thought. He let Maud out at -the door, locked it and went along beside her carrying -the packages. “I’m going your way,” he said -vaguely. He began to speak of his boyhood in a -town in Ohio and told of how he had married at the -age of twenty-three and had come to Fort Wayne -where his wife’s father owned the store that was now -his own. He spoke to Maud as to one who knew -most of the details of his life. “Well, my wife and -her father are both dead and I own the place—I’ve -come out all right,” he said. “I wonder why I left -my mother. I thought more of her than anyone else -in the world but I got married and went away and -left her, went away and left her, to live alone until -<span class='pageno' id='Page_92'>92</span>she died,” he said. They came to a corner and he -put the packages into Maud’s arms. “You got me -started thinking of mother. You’re like her,” he said -suddenly and then hurried away.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maud had got into the habit of going to the store, -just at closing time in the evening and when she did -not come the grocer was upset. He closed the store -and, walking to a nearby corner, stood under an -awning before a hardware store, also closed for the -night, and looked down along the street where Maud -lived. Then he took a heavy silver watch from his -pocket and looked at it. “Huh!” he exclaimed and -went off along another street to his boarding house, -stopping several times in the first block to look -back.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>It was early June and the Wellivers had lived in -Bidwell, for four months and, during the last year -of her life at Fort Wayne Maud had been so continually -ill that she had seldom seen the grocer, but -now a letter had come from him. The letter came -from the city of Cleveland. “I am here at a convention -of the K of Ps,” he wrote, “and I have met a man -here who is a widower like myself. We are in the -same room at the hotel. I want to stop to see you -on the way home and would like to bring my friend -along. Can’t you get another girl and we’ll all spend -an evening together. If you can do it, you get a -surrey and meet us at the seven-fifty train next Friday -evening. I’ll pay for the surrey of course and -we’ll go off somewhere to the country. I’ve got -something very important I want to say to you. You -write me here and let me know if it’s all right.”</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_93'>93</span>Maud sat in the field beside May and thought of -the letter. An answer must be sent at once. In -fancy she saw the little bright-eyed grocer standing -before May, the hero of the passage in the wood with -Jerome Hadley, the woman who lived the romance -of which she herself dreamed. At the post office -during the afternoon she had heard two young men -talking of a dance to be given at a place called the -Dewdrop. It was to be held on Friday evening, and -a bold impulse had led her to go to a livery stable -and make inquiry about the place. It was twenty -miles away and on the shores of Sandusky Bay. “We -will go there,” she had thought, and had engaged -the surrey and horses and now she was face to face -with May and the thought of the little grocer and his -companion frightened her. Freeman Hunt the widower -had a bald head and a grey mustache. What -would his friend be like? Fear made Maud’s body -tremble and when she tried to speak, to tell May of -her plan, the words would not come. “She’ll never -do it. I’ll never get her to do it,” she thought again.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>“There was a man here. For weeks he lay sick to -the point of death in our house and all the time I -did not dare sleep.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>May Edgley was building high her tower of romance. -Having several times listened, as Maud told -of the imaginary son of the railroad president who -had been determined to marry her, she had set about -making a romantic lover of her own. Books she had -read, the remembrance of childhood tales of love -and romantic adventure poured in upon her mind. -“There was a man here. He was just twenty-four -<span class='pageno' id='Page_94'>94</span>but what a life he had led,” she said absentmindedly. -She appeared to be lost in thought and for a long -time was silent. Then she got suddenly to her feet -and ran to where two large maple trees stood on a -little hill in the midst of the field. Maud also got to -her feet and her body shook with a new fear. The -grocer was forgotten. May returned and again sat -on the grass. “I thought I saw someone snooping -there behind that tree,” she said. “You see I have -to be careful. A man’s life depends on my being -careful.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Warning Maud that whatever happened she was -not to tell the secret, now for the first time to be told -to another, May launched into her tale. On a dark -night, when it was raining and when the trees shook -in the wind, she had got out of bed in the Edgley house -and had opened her window to behold the storm. She -could not imagine what had led her to do it. It was -something she had never done before. To tell the -truth a voice outside herself seemed to be calling her, -commanding her. Well, she had thrown up the window -and had stood looking out. How the wind -screamed and shrieked! Furies seemed abroad in the -night. The house itself trembled on its foundations -and great trees bent almost to the ground. Now and -then there was a flash of lightning and she could see -the whole outdoors as plain as day—“I could even see -the leaves on the tree.” May had thought the world -must be coming to an end but for some strange reason -she was not in the least afraid. It was impossible -to explain the feeling she had on that night. Well, -she couldn’t sleep. Something, outside there, in the -darkness, seemed to be calling, calling to her. “All -<span class='pageno' id='Page_95'>95</span>of this happened more than two years ago, when I -was just a young girl in school,” she explained.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On that night when the storm raged May had seen, -during one of the flashes of lightning, a man running -desperately across the very field, where now she and -Maud sat so quietly. Even from where she stood -by the window in the upstairs room she could see that -he was white and that his face was drawn and tired -from long running. Behind him, perhaps a dozen -strides behind, was another man, a giant black, with -a club in his hand. In a moment May knew, she -knew everything, knowledge came into her mind and -illuminated it as the lightning had illuminated the -scene in the field. The giant black with the club was -about to kill the other man, the white man in the field. -In a moment she knew she would see a murder done. -The fleeing man could not escape. At every stride -the black gained. There came a second flash of -lightning and then the white man stumbled and fell. -May threw up her hands and screamed. She had -always been ashamed of the fact but why deny it—she -fainted.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What a night that had turned out to be! Even to -speak of it made May shudder, even yet. Her father -had heard her scream and came running to her -room. She recovered—she sat up—in a few quick -words she told her father what she had seen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Well, you see, her father and she had got out of -the house somehow. They were both in their night -dresses and in the woodshed back of the house her -father had fumbled about and had got hold of an -axe. It was the only weapon of any kind he could -lay his hands on about the place.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_96'>96</span>And there they were, in the darkness. No more -flashes of lightning came and it began to rain. It -poured. The rain came in torrents and the wind -blew so that the trees seemed to be shouting to each -other, calling to each other like friends lost in some -dark pit.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was plenty of shouting after that but neither -May nor her father was afraid. They were perhaps -too excited for fear to take hold of them. May -didn’t know exactly how she felt. No words could -describe how she felt.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Followed by her father she ran, down the little hill -back of the kitchen, got across the creek, stumbled -and fell several times, picked herself up and ran -on again. They came to the fence at the edge -of the field. Well, they got over somehow. It was -strange how the field, across which they had both -walked so many times in the daytime (as a child May -had always played there) and she thought she knew -every blade of grass, every little pond, and hillock,—it -was strange how it had changed. It was exactly -as though she and her father had run out upon a wide -treeless plain. They ran, it seemed for hours and -hours, and still they were in the field. Later when -May thought of the experiences of that night she -understood how men came to write fairy tales. Why, -the ground in the field might have been made of -rubber that stretched out as they ran.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They could see no trees, no buildings—nothing. -For a time she and her father kept close together, -running desperately, into nothingness, into a wall of -darkness.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_97'>97</span>Then her father got lost from her, was swallowed -up in the darkness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What a roaring of voices went on. Trees somewhere, -away off in the distance, were shouting to each -other. The very blades of grass seemed to be talking—in -excited whispers, you understand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was terrible! Now and then May could hear -her father’s voice. He just swore. “Gol darn you,” -he shouted over and over. The words were grunted -forth.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then there was another and terrible voice—it -must have been the voice of the black, intent upon -murder. May could not understand what he said. -He, of course, just shouted words in some strange -foreign language—a gibberish of words.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then May stopped running. She was too exhausted -to run any more and sat down on the ground -at the edge of one of the little ponds. Her hair had -all fallen about her face. Well, she wasn’t afraid. -The thing that had happened was too big to be afraid -of. It was like being in the presence of God and one -couldn’t be afraid. How could one? A blade of -grass isn’t afraid in the presence of the sun, coming -up. That’s the way May felt—little you see—a tiny -thing in the vast night—nothing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>How wet she was! Her clothes clung to her. -All about the voices went on and on and the storm -raged. She sat with her feet in a puddle of water -and things seemed to fly past her, dark figures running, -screaming, swearing, saying strange words. -She herself did not doubt—when she thought of it all -after it was over—that the giant black and her father -<span class='pageno' id='Page_98'>98</span>had both run past her a dozen times, had passed -so close to her that she might have put out her hand -and touched them.</p> - -<p class='c006'>How long did she sit there in the darkness? That -was something she never knew and her father was -like her about it too. Later he couldn’t have said, -for the life of him, how long he ran about in the darkness, -trying to strike something with the axe. Once -he ran against a tree. Well, he drew back and sank -the axe into the tree. Sometime—in the daytime—May -would show Maud the tree with the great gash -in it. Her father sank the axe so deeply into the body -of the tree that he had work getting it out again and -even in the midst of his excitement he had to laugh -to think of what a silly fool he had been.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And there was May sitting with her feet in the -puddle, the hair clinging to her bare shoulders, her -head in her hands, trying to think, trying perhaps to -catch some meaningful word in the strange roar of -voices. Well, what was she thinking about? She -didn’t know.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then a hand touched her, a white strong firm -hand. It just crept up out of the darkness, seemed -to come out of the very ground under her. There -was one thing sure—although she lived to be a thousand -years old, May would never know why she -didn’t scream, faint away, get up and run madly, -butting her head against things.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Love is a strange thing,” she told Maud Welliver, -as the two sat in the field that warm clear starlit -evening. Her voice trembled. “I knew a man had -come to whom I would be faithful unto death,” she -explained.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_99'>99</span>That was the beginning of the strangest and most -exciting time in May’s whole life. Never had she -thought she would tell anyone in the world about it, -at least not until the time came for her marriage, and -when all the dangers that still faced the man she loved -had passed like a cloud.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On that terrible night, and while the storm still -raged, the hand that had crept so strangely and unexpectedly -into hers had at once quieted and reassured -her. It was too dark to see the face and the body -of the man’s back of the hand, but for some reason -she knew at once that he was beautiful and -good. She loved the man at once and completely, -that was the truth. Later he had told her that -his own experience was the same. For him also -there came a great peace of the spirit, after his -hand found hers in the midst of that roaring darkness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They got out of that field and into the Edgley house -somehow, crawled along together and when they -got to the house they did not light a lamp or anything -but sat on the floor of May’s room hand in hand, -talking in low quiet tones. After a long time, perhaps -an hour, May’s father came home. He had got out -of the field and had wandered on a country road and as -he went along he heard stealthy footsteps behind him. -That was the black following the wrong man and it’s -a wonder he didn’t kill John Edgley. What happened -was that the drayman began to run and got into -a grove of trees and there lost his pursuer. Then he -took off his shoes and managed to find his way home -barefooted. The black having followed the wrong -man turned out to be a good thing. The man up in -<span class='pageno' id='Page_100'>100</span>May’s room was free, for the first time in more than -two years, he was free.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It had turned out that the man was quite badly -injured, the black having, in his excitement, aimed a -blow at his head that would have done for him had it -struck fair. However, the blow glanced off and only -bruised his head and made it bleed and as he sat in -the darkness on the floor in May’s room with his hand -in hers, telling her his story, the blood kept dropping -thump, thump, on the floor. May had thought, -at the time, it was water falling from her hair. It -just went to show what a man he was, afraid of nothing, -enduring everything without a murmur. Later -he was sick with a fever for weeks and May never -left his room, but gradually nursed him back to health -and strength, and no one in Bidwell had ever known of -his presence in the house. Later he left town at -night, on a dark night when, to save yourself, you -couldn’t see your hand before your face.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As to the man’s story—it had never been told to -anyone and if May told it to Maud Welliver it was -because she had to have at least one friend who knew -all. Even her father, who had risked his life, did not -know.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May put her hands over her face and leaned forward -and for a long time she was silent. In the grass -the insects kept singing and on a distant street Maud -could hear the footsteps of people walking. What -a world she had come into when she left Fort -Wayne and came to Bidwell! Indiana was not -like Ohio! The very air was different. She -breathed deeply and looked about into the soft -darkness. Had she been alone she could not have -<span class='pageno' id='Page_101'>101</span>stood being in a place where such wonderful things -as had just been described to her could happen. -How quiet it was in the field now. She put -out a hand softly and touched May’s dress and -tried to think but her own thoughts were vague, -they swam away into a strange world. To go to a -theatre, to read books, to hear of the commonplace -adventures of other people—how dull and uneventful -her life had been before she knew May. Once her -father had been in a wreck on the railroad and by a -miracle had escaped uninjured and, when company -came to the Welliver house, he always told of the -wreck, how the cars were piled up and how he, walking -over the tops of cars in the darkness of a rainy -night was pitched off and went flying, head over heels, -only by a pure miracle to land on his feet in dense -bushes, uninjured, only badly shaken up. May had -thought the tale exciting, she had been stupid enough -to think it exciting. What contempt she now had -for such weak commonplace adventures. What a -vast change knowing May Edgley had made in her -life!</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You won’t tell. You promise on your life you -won’t tell.” May’s hand gripped Maud’s and the -two women sat in silence, intent, shaken with some -vast emotion that seemed to run over the dry grass -in the field, through the branches of distant trees, and -that seemed to effect even the stars in the sky. To -Maud the stars appeared about to speak. They came -down close out of the sky. “Be cautious,” they -seemed to be saying. Had she lived in old times, in -Judea, and had she been permitted to go into the room -where Jesus sat at the last supper with his disciples, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_102'>102</span>she could not have felt more completely humble and -thankful that she, of all the people in the world had -been permitted to be where she was at the moment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“He was a prince in his own country,” May said -suddenly breaking the silence that had become so intense -that in another moment Maud thought she -would have screamed. “He lived, Oh, far away.” -In his own country the father, a king, had decided to -marry the prince to the princess of a neighboring kingdom, -and on the same day his sister was to marry the -brother of his betrothed. Neither he nor his sister -had ever seen the man and woman they were to marry. -Princes and princesses don’t, you know. That is -the way such things are arranged when princes and -princesses are concerned.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“He thought nothing about it, was all ready for the -marriage, and then one night something came into his -head and he had an almost overpowering desire to see -the woman, who was to be his wife, and the man who -was to be his sister’s husband. Well, he went at night -and crept up the side of a great wall to the window of -a tower, and through the window saw the man and -woman. How ugly they were—horrible! He shuddered. -For a time he thought he would let go his -hold on the stone face of the wall and be dashed to -bits on the rocks beneath. He was ready to die with -horror—didn’t care much.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And then he thought of his sister, the beautiful -princess. Whatever happened she had to be saved -from such a marriage.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And so home the prince went and confronted his -father and there was a terrible scene, the father -swearing the marriage would have to be consummated. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_103'>103</span>The neighboring king was powerful and his -kingdom was of vast extent and the marriage would -make the son, born of the marriage, the most powerful -king in the whole world. The prince and the king -stood in the castle and looked at each other. Neither -of them would give in an inch.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There was one thing of which the prince was -sure—if he did not marry his sister would not have to. -If he went away there would be a quarrel between the -two old kings. He was sure of that.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“First though he gave the king, his father, his -chance. ‘I won’t do it,’ he declared and he stuck to -his word. The king was furious. ‘I’ll disinherit -you,’ he cried, and then he ordered his son to go out of -his presence and not to come back until he had made -up his mind to go ahead with the marriage.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What the king did not expect was that he would be -taken at his word. For what the young man, the -prince, did, you see, was to just walk out of the castle -and right on out into the world.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Poor man, his hands were then as soft as a -woman’s,” May explained. “You see in all his former -life he had never even lifted his hand to do a thing. -When he dressed he didn’t even button his own -clothes. A prince never did.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And so the prince ran away and managed, after -unbelievable hardships, to make his way to a seaport, -where he got a place as sailor on a ship just leaving -for foreign parts. The captain of the ship did not -know, and the other sailors did not know that he was -a king’s son, nor did they know that a great outcry -was going up and horsemen riding madly over the -whole country, trying to find the lost prince.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_104'>104</span>“So he got away and was a sailor and in the castle -his father was so furious he would not speak to anyone. -He shut himself up in a room of the castle and -just swore and swore.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And then one day he called to him a giant black, -one who had been his slave since he was born, and -was the strongest, the fleetest of foot and the smartest -man too, of all the king’s servants. ‘Go over land -and sea,’ shouted the king. ‘Go into all strange -far away lands and amongst all peoples. Do not let -me ever see your face again until you have found my -son and have brought him back to marry the woman -I have decided shall be his wife. If you find him and -he will not come strike him down if you must, but do -not kill him. Stun him and bring him to me. Do not -let me see your face again until you have done my -bidding.’ He threw a handful of gold at the black’s -feet. That was to pay the fares on railroads and buy -his meals at hotels,” May explained.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And all the time the king’s son was sailing on and -on, over unknown seas. He passed icebergs, islands -and continents, and saw great whales and at night -heard the growling of wild beasts on strange shores.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“He wasn’t afraid, not he. And all the time he -kept getting stronger and his hands got harder, and he -could do more work and do it quicker than almost any -man on the ship. Almost every day the captain -called him aside. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you are my -bravest and best sailor. How shall I reward you?’</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But the young prince wanted no reward. He was -so glad to escape from that horrible king’s daughter. -How homely she was. Why her teeth stuck out of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_105'>105</span>her mouth like tusks and she was all covered with -wrinkles and haggard.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And the ship sailed and sailed, and it hit a hidden -rock, sticking up in the bottom of the ocean, and was -split right in two. All but the prince were drowned.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“He swam and swam and came at last to an island -that had a mountain on it, and no one lived there, and -the mountain was filled with gold. After a long time -a passing ship took him off but he told no one of the -golden mountain. He sailed and sailed and came to -America, and started out to get money to buy a ship -and go get the gold and go back to his own country, -rich enough so he could marry almost anyone he chose. -He had worked and worked and saved money, and -then the giant black got on his trail. He tried to -escape, time after time he tried to escape. He had -been trying that time May found him half-dead in the -field.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The way that came about was that he was on a -train passing through Bidwell at night and it was the -nine-fifty, that didn’t stop but only threw off a mail -sack. He was on that train and the black was on it, -too, and, as the train went flying through Bidwell in -the terrible storm, the prince opened a door and -jumped and the black jumped after him. They ran -and ran.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“By a miracle neither of them was hurt by the leap -from the train, and then they had got into the field -where May had seen them.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I can’t think what kept me awake on that night,” -May said again. She arose and walked toward the -Edgley house. “We are betrothed. He has gone -<span class='pageno' id='Page_106'>106</span>to earn money to buy a ship and get the gold. Then -he will come for me,” she said in a matter of fact tone.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The two women went to the wire fence, crawled -over and got into the Edgley back yard. It was -nearly midnight and Maud Welliver had never before -been out so late. In the Welliver house her aunt -and father sat waiting for her, frightened and -nervous. “If she doesn’t come soon I’ll get the police -to look for her. I’m afraid something dreadful has -happened.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Maud did not, however, think of her father or of -the reception that awaited her in the Welliver house. -Other and more sombre thoughts occupied her mind. -She had come on that evening to the Edgley house, -intending to ask May to go with her on the -excursion to the Dewdrop with the two grocers, and -that was now an impossibility. One who was loved -by a prince, who was secretly betrothed to a prince, -would never let herself be seen in the company of a -grocer, and, beside May, Maud knew no other -woman in Bidwell she felt she could ask to go on the -trip, on which she did not feel she could go alone. -The whole thing would have to be given up. With a -catch in her throat she realized what the trip had -meant to her. In Fort Wayne, in the presence of -the grocer Hunt, she had felt as she had never felt -in the presence of another man. He was old, yes, -but there was something in his eyes when he looked -at her that made her feel strange inside. He had -written that he had something to say to her. Now it -could never be said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the darkness the two women passed around the -Edgley house and came to the front gate, and then -<span class='pageno' id='Page_107'>107</span>Maud gave way to the grief struggling for expression -within. May was astonished and tried to comfort -her. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” -she asked anxiously. Stepping through the gate she -put an arm about Maud Welliver’s shoulders and for -a long time the two figures rocked back and forth in -the darkness, and then May managed to get her to -come to the Edgley front porch and sit beside her. -Maud told the story of the proposed trip and of what -it had meant to her—spoke of it as a thing of the past, -as a hopeless dream that had faded. “I wouldn’t -dare ask you to go,” she said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was ten minutes later when Maud got up to go -home and May was silent, absorbed in her own -thoughts. The tale of the prince was forgotten and -she thought only of the town, of what it had done -to her, what it would do again when the chance -offered. The two grocers were both, however, from -another place and knew nothing of her. She thought -of the long ride to the shore of Sandusky Bay. Maud -had conveyed to her some notion of what the trip -meant to her. May’s mind raced. “I could not be -alone with a man. I wouldn’t dare,” she thought. -Maud had said they would go in a surrey and there was -something, that could be used now, in the story she -had told about the prince. She could insist that, -because of the prince, Maud was not to leave her -alone with another man, with the strange grocer, not -for a moment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May arose and stood irresolutely by the front door -of the Edgley house and watched Maud go through -the gate. How her shoulders drooped. “Oh, well, -I’ll go. You fix it up. Don’t you tell anyone in the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_108'>108</span>world, but I’ll go,” she said and then, before Maud -Welliver could recover from her surprise, and from -the glad thrill that ran through her body, May had -opened the door and had disappeared into the Edgley -house.</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_109'>109</span> - <h2 class='c008'><span class='sc'>Chapter V</span></h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>THE Dewdrop, where the dance Maud and May -were to attend was to be held was, in May -Edgley’s day and no doubt is now, a dreary -enough place. An east and west trunk line here came -down almost to the water’s edge, touching and then -swinging off inland again, and on a narrow strip of -land between the tracks and the bay several huge ice -houses had been built. To the west of the ice -houses were four other buildings, buildings less huge -but equally stark and unsightly. The shore of the -bay, turned beyond the ice houses, leaving the four -latter buildings standing at some distance from the -railroad, and during ten months of the year they were -uninhabited and stared with curtainless windows—that -looked like great dead eyes—out over the -water.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The buildings had been erected by an ice company, -with headquarters at Cleveland, for the housing of its -workmen during the ice-cutting season, and the upper -floors, reached by outside stairways, had rickety -balconies running about the four sides. The balconies -served as entry ways to small sleeping rooms -each provided with a bunk built against the inner wall -and filled with straw.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Still further west was the village of Dewdrop itself, -a place of some eight or ten small unpainted frame -houses, inhabited by men who combined fishing with -<span class='pageno' id='Page_110'>110</span>small farming, and on the shore before each house a -small sailing craft was drawn, during the winter -months, far up on the sand out of the reach of -storms.</p> - -<p class='c006'>All summer long the Dewdrop remained a quiet -sleepy place and, far away, over the water, smoke -from factory chimneys in the growing industrial city -of Sandusky, at the foot of the bay, could be seen—a -cloud of smoke that drifted slowly across the -horizon and was torn and tossed by a wind. On summer -days, on the long beaches a few fishermen launched -their boats and went to visit the nets while their children -played in the sand at the water’s edge. Inland -the farming country—black land, partially covered at -certain seasons of the year with stagnant water—was -not very prosperous and the road leading down to the -Dewdrop from the towns of Fremont, Bellevue, -Clyde, Tiffin, and Bidwell was often impassable.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On June days, however, in May Edgley’s time, -parties came down along the road to the beach and -there was the screaming of town children, the laughter -of women and the gruff voices of men. They stayed -for a day and an evening and went, leaving upon the -beach many empty tin cans, rusty cooking utensils -and bits of paper that lay rotting at the base of -trees and among the bushes back from the shore.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The hot months of July and August came and -brought a little life. The summer crew came to take -the ice out of the ice houses and load it into cars. -They came in the morning and departed in the -evening, and, as they were quiet workmen with -families of their own, did nothing to disturb the quiet -<span class='pageno' id='Page_111'>111</span>of the place. At the noon hour they sat in the -shade of one of the ice houses and ate their luncheons -while they discussed such problems as whether it was -better for a workman to pay rent or to own his own -house, going into debt and paying on the installment -plan.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Night came and an adventurous girl, daughter of -one of the fishermen, went to walk on the beach. -Thanks to wind and rain the beach kept itself always -quite clean. Great tree stumps and logs had been -carried up on to the sand by winter storms but the -wind and water had mellowed these and touched -them with delightful color. On moonlight nights -the old roots, clinging to the tree trunks, were like -gaunt arms reached up to the sky, and on stormy -nights these moved back and forth in the wind and -sent a thrill of terror through the breast of the -girl. She pressed her body against the wall of one of -the ice houses and listened. Far away, over the -water, were the massed lights of the great town of -Sandusky and over her shoulder the few feeble lights -of her own fishing town. A group of tramps had -dropped off a freight train that afternoon and were -making a night of it about the empty workingmen’s -lodging houses. They had jerked doors off their -hinges and were throwing them down from the -balconies above and soon a great fire would be lit and -all night the fishing families would be disturbed by -oaths and shouts. The adventurous girl ran swiftly -along the beach but was seen by one of the road -adventurers. The fire had been lighted and he took -a burning stick in his hand and hurled it over her head. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_112'>112</span>“Run little rabbit,” he called as the burning stick, -after making a long arch through the air, fell with a -hiss into the water.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That was a prelude to the coming of winter and -the time of terror. In the hard month of January, -when the whole bay was covered with thick ice, a -fat man in a heavy fur overcoat, got off a train, that -stopped beside the ice houses, and from a car at the -front of the train a great multitude of boxes, kegs -and crates were pitched into the deep snow at the -track side. The world of the cities was coming to -break the winter silence of the Dewdrop and the fur -coated man and his helpers had come to set the -stage for the drama. Hundreds of thousands of tons -of ice were to be cut and stored in sawdust in the -great ice houses and for weeks, the quiet secluded -spot would be astir with life. The silence would be -torn by cries, oaths, bits of drunken song—fights -would be started and blood would flow.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The fat man waded through the snow to the four -empty houses and began to look about. From the -little cluster of native houses thin columns of smoke -went up into the winter sky. He spoke to one of -his helpers. “Who lives in those shacks?” he asked. -He himself had much money invested at the Dewdrop -but visited the place but once each year and then -stayed but a few days. He walked through the big -dining room and along the upper galleries where the -ice cutters slept, swearing softly. During the year -much of his property had been destroyed. Windows -had been broken and doors torn from their hinges -and he took pencil and paper from his pocket and -began to figure. “We’ll have to spend all of three -<span class='pageno' id='Page_113'>113</span>hundred dollars this year,” he meditated. The -thoughts of the money, thus thrown away, brought a -flush to his cheeks and he looked again along the -shore towards the tiny houses. Almost every year -he decided he would go to the houses and do what he -called “raising the devil.” If doors were torn from -hinges and windows smashed these people must have -done it. No one else lived at the Dewdrop. “Well -I suppose they are a rough gang and I’d better let -them alone,” he concluded, “I’ll send a couple of -carpenters down tomorrow and have them do just -what has to be done. It’s better to keep the ice -cutters filled up with beer than to waste money giving -them luxurious quarters.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The fat man went away and other men came. -Fires were lighted in the kitchens of the great -boarding houses, carpenters nailed doors back on -hinges and replaced broken windows and the -Dewdrop was ready again for its season of feverish -activity.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The fisher folk hid themselves completely away. -On the day when the first of the ice cutters arrived one -of them spoke to his assembled family. He looked -at his daughter, a somewhat comely girl of fifteen, -who could sail a boat through the roughest storm -that ever swept down the bay. “I want you to keep -out of sight,” he said. One winter night a fire had -broken out in the dining room of the smallest of the -houses where the ice cutters boarded and the fishermen -with their wives had gone to help put it out. -That was an event they could never forget. As the -men worked, carrying buckets of water from a hole -cut in the ice of the bay, a group of young roughs, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_114'>114</span>from Cleveland, tried to drag their wives into another -of the houses. Screams and cries arose on the -winter air and the men ran to the defense of their -women. A battle began, some of the ice cutters -fighting on the side of the fishermen, some on the -side of the young roughs, but the fishermen never -knew they had helpers in the struggle. Out of a -mass of swearing, laughing men they had managed to -drag their women and escape to their own houses -and the thoughts of what might have happened, had -they been unsuccessful, had brought the fear of man -upon them. “I want you to keep out of sight,” the -fisherman said to his assembled family, but as he -said it he looked at his daughter. He imagined her -dragged into the upper galleries of the boarding houses -and handed about among the city men—something -like that had come near happening to her -mother. He stared hard at his daughter and she -was frightened by the look in his eyes. “You,” he -began again, “now you—well you keep yourself -out of sight. Those men are looking for just such -girls as you.” The fisherman went out of the room -and his daughter stood by a window. Sometimes, -on Sundays, during the ice-cutting time, the men who -had not gone to spend the day in the city walked in -the afternoon along the beach past the houses of the -fishermen and, more than once, she had peeked out -at them from behind a curtain. Sometimes they -stopped before one of the houses and shouted and a -wit among them exercised his powers. “Hey, the -house,” he shouted, “is there any woman in there -wants a louse for a lover.” The wit leaped upon the -shoulders of one of his companions and with his teeth -<span class='pageno' id='Page_115'>115</span>snatched the cap off his head. Turning towards the -house he made an elaborate bow. “I’m only a little -louse but I’m cold. Let me crawl into your nest,” he -shouted.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>There were six young men from Bidwell who went -to the dance given at the Dewdrop on the June -evening when May went there with Maud and the two -widowed grocers, homeward bound from the K. of P. -convention at Cleveland. The dance was held in one -of the large rooms, on the first floor of one of the -boarding houses, one of the rooms used as a dining -and drinking place by the ice cutters in the months of -January and February. A group of farmers’ sons -gave the dance and Rat Gould, a one-eyed fiddler -from Clyde, came with two other fiddlers, to furnish -the music. The dance was open to all who paid fifty -cents at the door, and women paid nothing. Rat -Gould had announced it at other dances given at -Clyde, Bellevue, Castalia and on the floors of newly -build barns. There was an idea. At all dances, -where Rat had officiated, for several weeks -previously, the announcement had been made. -“There will be a dance at the Dewdrop two weeks -from next Friday night,” he had cried out in a shrill -voice. “A prize will be given. The best dressed -lady gets a new calico dress.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Three of the young men from Bidwell who came to -the dance, were railroad employees, brakemen on -freight trains. They, like John Welliver, worked for -the Nickel Plate and their names were Sid Gould, -Herman Sanford and Will Smith. With them, to -the dance, went Harry Kingsley, Michael Tompkins -<span class='pageno' id='Page_116'>116</span>and Cal Mosher, all known in Bidwell as young sports. -Cal Mosher tended bar at the Crescent Saloon near -the Nickel Plate station in Bidwell and Michael -Tompkins and Harry Kingsley were house painters.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The going of the six young men to the dance was -unpremeditated. They had met at the Crescent -Saloon early on that June evening and there was a -good deal of drinking. There had been a ball game -between the baseball teams of Clyde and Bidwell -during the week before, and that was talked over, -and, thinking and speaking of the defeat of the -Bidwell team, all six of the young men grew angry. -“Let’s go over to Clyde,” Cal Mosher said. The -young men went to a livery stable and hired a team -and surrey and set out, taking with them a plentiful -supply of whiskey in bottles. It was decided they -would make a night of it. As they drove along -Turner’s Pike, between Bidwell and Clyde they -stopped before farmhouses. “Hey, go to bed you -rubes. Get the cows milked and go on to bed,” they -shouted. Michael Tompkins, called Mike, was the -wit of the party and he decided upon a stroke to -win applause. At one of the farmhouses he went to -the door and told the woman who came to answer -his knock that a friend of hers wanted to speak to her -in the road and the woman, a plump red-cheeked -farmer’s wife, came boldly out and stood in the road -beside the surrey. Mike crept up behind her and -throwing his arms about her neck pulled her quickly -backward. The woman screamed with fright as -Mike kissed her on the cheek and, jumping into the -surrey, Mike joined in the laughter of his companions. -“Tell your husband your lover has been -<span class='pageno' id='Page_117'>117</span>here,” he shouted at the woman, now fleeing toward -the house. Cal Mosher slapped him on the back. -“You got a nerve, Mike,” he said filled with -admiration. He slapped his knees with his hands. -“She’ll have something to talk about for ten years, -eh? She won’t get over talking about that kiss Mike -gave her for ten years.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>At Clyde, the Bidwell young men went into -Charley Shuter’s saloon and there got into trouble. -Sid Gould was pitcher for the Bidwell team and -during the game at Clyde, during the week before, -had been hurt by a swiftly pitched ball that struck -him on the side of the head as he stood at bat. He -had been unable to continue pitching, and the man who -took his place was unskillful and the game was lost, -and now, standing at the bar in Charley Shuter’s -saloon, Sid remembered his injury and began to talk -in a loud voice, challenging another group of young -men at another end of the bar. Charley Shuter’s -bartender became alarmed. “Here, now, don’t you -go starting nothing. Don’t you go trying to start -nothing in this place,” he growled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Sid turned to his friends. “Well, the cowardly -pup, he beaned me,” he said. “Well, I had the team, -this town thinks so much of, eating out of my hand. -For five innings they never got a smell of a hit. -Then what did they do, eh? They fixed it up with -their cowardly pitcher to bean me—that’s what they -did.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>One of the young men of Clyde, loafing the -evening away in the saloon, was an outfielder on the -Clyde ball team and as Sid talked he went out at the -front door. From store to store and from saloon to -<span class='pageno' id='Page_118'>118</span>saloon he ran hurriedly, whispering, sending messengers -out in all directions. He was a tall blue-eyed -soft-voiced man but he had now become intensely -excited. A dozen other young men gathered about -him and the crowd started for Shuter’s saloon -but when they had got there the young men from -Bidwell had come out to the sidewalk, had unhitched -their horses from the railing before the saloon door -and were preparing to depart. “Yah, you,” bawled -the blue-eyed outfielder. “Don’t tell lies and then -sneak out of town. Stand up and take your -medicine.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The fight at Clyde was short and sharp and when -it had lasted three minutes, and when Sid Gould had -lost two teeth and two of his companions had acquired -bleeding heads, they managed to struggle into -the surrey and start the horses. The blue-eyed outfielder, -white with wrath and disappointment, sprang -on the steps. “Come back, you cheap skates,” he -cried. The surrey rattled off over the cobblestones -and several Clyde young men ran in the road behind. -Sid Gould drew back his arm and caught the outfielder -a swinging blow on the nose and the blow -knocked him out of the surrey to the road so that -a wheel ran over his legs. Leaning out, and mad -now with joy, Sid issued a challenge. “Come over to -Bidwell, one at a time, and I’ll clean up your whole -town alone. All I want is to get at you fellows one -or two at a time,” he challenged.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the road north of Clyde, Cal Mosher, who was -driving, stopped the horses and there was a discussion -as to whether the journey should be continued on to -the town of Fremont, in search of new and perhaps -<span class='pageno' id='Page_119'>119</span>more enticing adventures, or whether it would be -better to go back to Bidwell and mend broken teeth, -cut lips and blackened eyes. Sid Gould, the most -badly injured member of the party, settled the matter. -“There’s a dance down at the Dewdrop tonight. -Let’s go down there and stir up the farmers. This -night is just started for me,” he said, and the heads of -the horses were turned northward. On the back seat -Will Smith and Harry Kingsley fell into a troubled -sleep, Herman Sanford and Michael Tompkins attempted -a song and Cal Mosher talked to Sid. -“We’ll get up another game with that bunch from -Clyde,” he said. “Now you listen and I’ll tell you -how to work it. You pitch the game, see. Well, -you fan every man that faces you for eight innings. -That will show them up, show what mutts they are. -Then, when it comes to the ninth inning, you start to -bean ’em. You can lay out three or four of that gang -before the game ends in a scrap, and when that time -comes we’ll have our own gang on hand.”</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>At the Dewdrop, when the six young men from -Bidwell arrived at about eleven o’clock, the dance was -in full swing. The doors and windows to the dining -room of one of the big frame boarding houses had -been thrown open and the floor carefully swept, and -over the windows and doorways green branches of -trees had been hung. The night was fine—with a -moon—and, on a white beach, twenty feet away, the -waters of the bay made a faint murmuring sound. At -one end of the dance hall and on a little raised platform -sat Rat Gould with his brother Will, a small -grey-haired man who played a base viol larger -<span class='pageno' id='Page_120'>120</span>than himself. Two other men, fiddlers like Rat himself -filled out the orchestra. Nearly every dance announced -was a square dance and Rat did the “calling -off,” his shrill voice rising above the shuffle of feet and -the low continuous hum of conversations. “Swing -your pardners round and round. Bow your heads -down to the ground. Kick your heels and let her fly. -The night is fine and the moon’s on high,” he sang.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In a corner of the big room with her escort, the -grocer, from the town of Muncie in Indiana, sat May -Edgley. He was a rather heavy and fleshy man of -forty-five, whose wife had died during the year before, -and for the first time since that event he was with a -woman and the thought had excited him. There was -a round bald spot on the top of his head and blushes -kept running up his cheeks, into his hair and out upon -the bald spot, like waves upon a beach. May had -put on a white dress, bought for the ceremony of -graduation from the Bidwell high school and, the -owner being out of town, had borrowed from Lillian,—unknown -to her—a huge white hat, decorated with -a long ostrich feather, of the variety known as a willow -plume.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She had never before been to a dance and her escort -had not danced since boyhood but at Maud Welliver’s -suggestion they had tried to take part in a square -dance. “It’s easy,” Maud had said. “All you got to -do is to watch and do what everyone else is doing.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The attempt turned out a failure, and all the other -dancers giggled and laughed at the fat man from -Muncie as he rolled and capered about. He ran in -the wrong direction, grabbed other men’s partners, -whirled them about and even got into the wrong set. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_121'>121</span>A madness of embarrassment seized him and he -rushed for May, as one hurries into the house at the -coming of a sudden storm, and taking her by the arm -started to get off the floor, out of sight of the laughing -people—but Rat Gould shouted at him. “Come -back, fat man,” he shrieked and the grocer, not knowing -what else to do, started to whirl May about. She -also laughed and protested but before she could make -him understand that she did not want to dance any -more his feet flew out from under him and he sat -down, pulling May down to sit upon his round -paunch.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For May that evening was terrible and the time -spent at the dance hung fire like a long unused and -rusty old gun. It seemed to her that every passing -minute was heavily freighted with possibilities of evil -for herself. In the surrey, coming out from Bidwell, -she had remained silent, filled with vague fears and -Maud Welliver was also silent. In a way she wished -May had not come. Alone with Grover Hunt on -such a night, she felt she might have had something -to say, but all the time, in her mind floated vague visions -of May—alone in the wood with Jerome Hadley, -May struggling for life there, in the darkness of the -field on that other night—and grasping the hand of a -prince. Grover Hunt’s hand took hold of hers and -he also became silent with embarrassment. When -they had got to the Dewdrop, and when they had -danced in two square dances, Maud went to May. -“Mr. Hunt and I are going to take a little walk -together,” she said. “We won’t be gone long.” -Through a window May saw the two figures go off -along the beach in the moonlight.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_122'>122</span>The man who had brought May to the dance was -named Wilder, and he also wanted May to go walk -with him, into the moonlight outside, but could not -bring himself to the point of asking so bold a favor. -He lit a cigar and held it outside the window, taking -occasional puffs and blowing the smoke into the outer -air and told May of the K. of P. convention at Cleveland, -of a ride the delegates had taken in automobiles -and of a dinner given in their honor by the business -men of Cleveland. “It was one of the largest affairs -ever held in the city,” he said. The Mayor had come -and there was present a United States Senator. -Well, there was one man there. He was a fat -fellow who could say such funny things that everyone -in the room rocked with laughter. He was the -master of ceremonies and all evening kept telling the -funniest stories. As for the Muncie grocer, he had -been unable to eat. Well, he laughed until his sides -ached. Grocer Wilder tried to reproduce one of the -tales told by the Cleveland funny man. “There were -two farmers,” he began, “they went to the city of -Philadelphia, to a church convention, and at the same -time and in the same city a convention of brewers was -being held. The two farmers got into the wrong -place.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>May’s escort stopped talking and growing suddenly -red, leaned out at the window and puffed hard at his -cigar. “Well, I can’t remember,” he declared. It -had come into his mind that the story he had started -to tell was one a man could not tell to a woman. -“Gee, I nearly put me foot into it! I came near -making a break,” he thought.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May looked from her escort to the men and women -<span class='pageno' id='Page_123'>123</span>dancing on the floor. In her eyes fear lurked. “I -wonder if anyone here knows me, I wonder if anyone -knows about me and Jerome Hadley,” she thought. -Fear, like a little hungry mouse, gnawed at May’s -soul. Two red-cheeked country girls sitting on a -nearby bench put their heads together and whispered -“Oh, I don’t believe it,” one of them shouted and they -both gave way to a spasm of giggles. May turned -to look at them and something gripped at her heart. -A young farm hand, with a shiny red face and with a -white handkerchief tied about his neck, beckoned to -another young man and the two went outside into the -moonlight. They also whispered and laughed. One -of them turned to look back at May’s white face and -then they lit cigars and walked away. May could no -longer hear the voice of grocer Wilder telling of his -adventures at the convention at Cleveland. “They -know me, I’m sure they know me. They have heard -that story. Something dreadful will happen to me -before the night is over,” she thought.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May had always wanted to be in some such place -as the one to which she had now come, some place -where many strange people had congregated and where -she could move freely about among strange people. -Before the Jerome Hadley incident, and the giving -up of the idea of becoming a schoolteacher she -had thought a great deal of what she would do when -she became a teacher. Everything had been carefully -planned. She would get a place as teacher in some -town or in the country, far from Bidwell and from -the Edgleys and there she would live her own life and -make her own way. There would be no handicap -of birth and she could stand upon her own feet. Well, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_124'>124</span>that would be a chance. Her natural smartness -would at last count for something real and in the new -place she would go about to dances and to other social -gatherings. Being the schoolteacher, and in a way -responsible for the future of their children, people -would be glad to invite her into their houses, and all -she wanted was a chance, the opportunity to step unknown -into the presence of people who had never -been to Bidwell and had never heard of the Edgleys.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then she would show what she could do! She -would go—well, to a dance or to a house where many -people had congregated to have a good time. She -would move about, saying things, laughing, keeping -everyone on tiptoes. What things her quick mind -would make up to say! Words would become little -sharp swords with which she played. How many -pictures her mind had made of herself in the midst -of such an assemblage. It was not her fault if she -found herself the centre toward which all eyes looked -and, in spite of the fact that she was the outstanding -figure in any assemblage of people among whom she -went, she would always remain modest. After all, -she would not say things that would hurt people. -Indeed she would not do that! Such a thing would -not be necessary. It would all be very lovely. -Several people would be talking and up she would -come and for a moment she would listen, to catch the -drift of what was being said, and then her own word -would be said. Well it would startle people. She -would have a new, a novel, a startling but attractive -point of view on any subject that was brought up. -Her mind was extraordinarily quick. It would attend -to things.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_125'>125</span>With her fancy thus filled with the thoughts of the -possibilities of herself as a glowing social figure May -turned toward her escort who, puzzled by her -apparent indifference, was striving manfully to remember -the funny things the Cleveland man had said -at the dinner given for the K. of Ps. Many of the -man’s stories could not be repeated to a lady—it had -been what is called a stag dinner—but others could -be. Of the ones that could be told anywhere—they -were called parlor stories—he remembered one and -launched into it. May pitied him. He forgot the -point, could not remember where the story began and -ended. “Well,” he began, “there was a man and -woman on a train. It was on a train on the B. and O. -No, I think the man said it was on the Lake Shore and -Michigan Southern. Perhaps they were riding on -a train on the Pennsylvania Railroad. I have -forgotten what the woman said to the man. It was -about a dog another woman was trying to conceal in -a basket. They do not allow dogs in passenger cars -on railroads, you know. Something very funny -happened. I thought I would die laughing when the -man told about it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“If I had that story to tell I could make something -out of it,” May thought. She imagined herself -telling the story of the man and the woman and the -dog. How she would decorate it, add little touches. -That fat man in Cleveland might have been funny but -had she been entrusted with the telling of the story, -she was sure he would have been outdone. Her -mind began to recast the story and then the fear, that -had all evening been lurking within, came back and -she forgot the man, the woman and the dog on the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_126'>126</span>train. Again her eyes searched the faces in the room -and when a new man or woman came in she trembled. -“Suppose Jerome Hadley were to come here tonight,” -she thought and the thought made her ill. It was a -thing that might happen. Jerome was a young man -and a bachelor and he no doubt went about to places, -to dances and to shows at the Bidwell Opera House, -and he might now, at any moment, come into the very -room in which she was sitting and walk directly to -her. In the berry field he had been bold and had not -cared what he said and, if he came to the dance, he -would walk directly to her and might even take her -by the arm. “I want you,” he would say. “Come -outside with me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>May tried to think what she would do if such a -thing happened. Would she struggle and refuse to -go, thus attracting the attention of everyone in the -room, or would she go quietly and make her struggle -with the man outside alone in the darkness? Her -mind ran into a tangle of thoughts. It was true that -Jerome Hadley had done something quite terrible to -her, had tried to kill something within her, but after -all she had surrendered to him. She had lain with -the man—filled with fear, trembling to be sure—but -the thing had been done. In a strange sort of way -she belonged to Jerome Hadley and suppose he were -to come and demand again that she submit. Could -she refuse? Had she become, and in spite of herself, -the property of the man?</p> - -<p class='c006'>With her head a whirlpool of thought May stared, -half wildly, about. If in her own room in the -Edgley house, and when she had hidden herself away -by the willows by the creek, she had built herself -<span class='pageno' id='Page_127'>127</span>a tower of romance in which she could live and -from the windows of which she could look down -upon life, striving to understand it, to understand -people, the tower was now being destroyed. Hands -were tearing at it, strong, determined hands. She -had felt them as she sat in the surrey with -Maud and the two grocers, outbound from Bidwell. -Then as now she wondered why she had consented -to come to the dance. Well, she had come -because not to come would bring a disappointment -to Maud Welliver, the only woman who had -come in any way close to herself, and now she -was at the dance and Maud had gone away, outdoors -into darkness. She had gone away with a man and it -had been understood that would not happen. There -was the matter of the prince, her lover. It had -been understood that, because of the prince, Maud -would not leave her alone with another man, and she -had left, had gone outdoors with a grocer and had -left another grocer sitting beside May.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Hands were tearing at her tower of romance, the -tower she had built so slowly and painfully, the tower -in which she had found the prince, the tower in which -she had found a way to live and to be happy in spite -of the ugliness of actuality. Dust arose from the -walls. An army of men and women, male and -female Jerome Hadleys, were charging down upon -it. There would be rape and murder and how -could she, left alone, withstand them. The prince -had gone away. He was now far, far away, and the -invaders would clamor over the walls. They would -throw her down from the walls. The beautiful -hangings in the tower, the rich silken gowns, the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_128'>128</span>stones from strange lands, all the treasures of the -tower would be destroyed.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>May had worked herself into a state of mind that -made her want to scream. In the room the dance -went on, the shrill voice of Rat Gould called off and -the fiddles made dance music to which heavy feet -scraped over rough boards. By her side sat Grocer -Wilder, still talking of the K. of P. convention at -Cleveland and May felt that, in coming to the dance, -she had raised a knife that in a moment would be -plunged into her own breast. She arose to go out -of the room, out into the night, out of the sight of -people—but for a moment stood uncertain, looking -vaguely about. Then she sat heavily down. Grocer -Wilder also arose and his face grew red. “I’ve -made a break,” he thought. He wondered what he -had said that had offended May. “Maybe she -didn’t want me to smoke,” he told himself and threw -the end of his cigar out through a window. The -moment reminded him of many moments of his -married life. It was like having his wife back, this -feeling of having offended a woman, without knowing -in just what the offense lay.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>And then, through a door at the front, the six -Bidwell young men came into the room. They had -stopped outside for a final drink out of the bottles -carried in their hip pockets and, the appetite for -drink being satisfied, another appetite had come into -the ascendency. They wanted women.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Sid Gould, accompanied by Cal Mosher, led the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_129'>129</span>way into the dance hall. His face had become badly -swollen during the drive north from Clyde and he -walked uncertainly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He walked directly toward May, who turned her -face to the wall and tried to hide herself. She -looked like a rabbit, cornered by dogs, and when she -turned on her seat and half knelt, trying to hide her -face, the rim of Lillian Edgley’s white dress hat -struck against the wall and the hat fell to the floor. -Trembling with excitement she turned and picked it -up. Her face was chalky white.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Sid Gould was well known in the Edgley household. -One summer evening, in the year before May’s -mother’s death, he had got into a row with the -Edgleys. Being a little under the influence of drink -and wanting a woman he shouted at Kate Edgley, -walking through the streets of Bidwell with a traveling -man, and a fight had been started in which -the traveling man blackened Sid’s eyes. Later he -was taken into the mayor’s office and fined and the -whole affair had given the Edgley men and women -a good deal of satisfaction and had been discussed -endlessly at the table. Old John Edgley and the sons -had sworn they also would beat the ball player. -“Just let me catch him alone somewhere, so I don’t -get stuck for no fine, and I’ll pound the head off’n -him,” they declared.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the dance hall, and when his eyes alighted upon -the figure of May Edgley, Sid Gould remembered his -beating at the hands of the traveling man and the -ten dollar fine he had been compelled to pay for -fighting on the street. “Well, look here,” he cried -<span class='pageno' id='Page_130'>130</span>turning to his companions, now straggling into the -room, “here’s one of the Edgley chickens, a long ways -from the home coop.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“There she is—that little chicken over there by the -wall.” Sid laughed and leaning over slapped his -knees with his hands. The twisted swollen face made -the laugh a grotesque, something horrible. Sid’s -companions gathered about him. “There she is,” he -said, again pointing a wavering forefinger. “It’s the -youngest of that Edgley gang, the one that’s just -gone on the turf, the one that was so blamed smart in -school. Jerome Hadley says she’s all right, and I -say she’s mine. I saw her first.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the hall all became quiet and many eyes were -turned toward the laughing man and the shrinking -trembling woman by the wall. May tried to stand -erect, to be defiant, but her knees shook so that -she sat quickly down on the bench. Grover Wilder, -now utterly confused, touched her on the arm, intending -to ask for an explanation of her strange behavior, -but at the touch of his finger she again sprang to her -feet. She was like some little automatic toy that -goes stiffly through certain movements when you touch -some hidden spring. “What’s the matter, what’s the -matter?” Grocer Wilder asked wildly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Sid Gould walked to where May stood and took -hold of her arm and she went meekly when he led her -toward the door, walking demurely beside him. He -was amazed, having expected a struggle. “Well,” -he thought, “I got into trouble over that Kate Edgley -but this one is different. She knows how to behave. -I’ll have a good time with this kid.” He remembered -the trial and the ten dollars he had been compelled -<span class='pageno' id='Page_131'>131</span>to pay for his first attempt to get into the good -graces of one of the Edgley women. “I’ll get the -worth of my money now and I won’t pay this one a -cent,” he thought. He turned to his companions -still straggling at his heels. “Get out,” he cried. -“Get your own women. I saw this one first. You -go get one of your own.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Sid and May had got outside and nearly to the -beach before strength came back into May’s body and -mind. She walked beside Sid on the white sand and -toward the beach. “Don’t be afraid little kid. I -won’t hurt you,” he said. May laughed nervously -and he loosened the grip of his hand on her arm.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then, with a cry of joy she sprang away from -him and leaning quickly down grasped one of the -pieces of driftwood with which the sand was strewn. -The stick whistled through the air and descended -upon Sid’s head, knocking him to his knees. “You, -you!” he stuttered and then cried out. “Hey, -rubes!” he called and two of his companions, who -had been standing at the door of the dance hall, ran -toward him. Swinging the stick about her head May -ran past them and in her nervous fright struck Sid -again. In her mind the thing that was happening -was in some odd way connected with the affair in the -wood with Jerome. It was the same affair. Sid -Gould and Jerome were one man, they stood for -the same thing, were the same thing. They were -something strange and terrible she had to meet, with -which she had to struggle. The thing they represented -had defeated her once, had got the best of -her. She had surrendered to it, had opened the gates -that led into the tower of romance, that was herself, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_132'>132</span>that walled in her own secret and precious life. -Something terribly crude, without understanding had -happened then—it must not, could not happen -again! She had been a child and had understood -nothing but now she did understand. There was a -thing within herself that must not be touched by -unclean hands. A terrible fear of people swept over -her. There was Maud Welliver, whom she had -tried to take as a friend, and Lillian who had tried -to be a sister to her, had wanted to help her achieve -life. As for Maud—she knew nothing, she was -a child—and Lillian was crude, she understood -nothing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May’s mind put all men in a class with Jerome -Hadley. There was something men wanted from -women, that Jerome had wanted and now this -other man, Sid Gould. They were all, like the -Edgleys—Lillian and Kate and the two boys—people -who went after the thing they wanted brutally, -directly. That was not May’s way and she decided -she wanted nothing more to do with such people. -“I’ll never go back to Bidwell,” she kept saying over -and over as she ran in the uncertain light along the -beach.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Sid Gould’s companions, having run out of the -dance hall, could not understand that he had been -knocked over by the slight girl he had led into the -darkness, and when they heard his curses and groans -and saw him reeling about, quite overcome by the -second blow May had aimed at his head—combined -with the liquor within—they imagined some man had -come to May’s rescue. When they ran forward and -saw May with the stick in her hand and swinging it -<span class='pageno' id='Page_133'>133</span>wildly about they paid little attention to her but -began at once looking for her companion. Two of -them followed May as she ran along the beach and -the others returned to the dance hall. A group of -young farmers came crowding to the door and Cal -Mosher hit one of them a swinging blow with his -fist. “Get out of the way,” he cried, “we’re going -to clean up this place.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>May ran like a frightened rabbit along the beach, -stopping occasionally to listen. From the dance hall -came an uproar and oaths and cries broke the silence -of the night. At her heels two men ran, lumbering -along slowly. The drink within had taken effect and -one of them fell. As she ran May came presently -into the place of huge stumps and logs, thrown up by -the storms of winter, and saw Maud Welliver standing -at the edge of the water with the grocer Hunt—who -had his arm about Maud’s waist. The -frightened woman ran so close to them that she might -have touched Maud’s dress but they were unconscious -of her presence and, as for May, she was in an odd -way afraid of them also. She was afraid of -everything human. “It all comes to something ugly -and terrible,” she thought frantically.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May ran for nearly two miles, along the beach, -among the tree stumps, the roots of which stuck up -into the air like arms raised in supplication to the -moon. Perhaps the dry withered old tree arms, -sticking up thus, kept her physical fear alive, as it is -not likely Sid Gould’s drunken companions followed -her far. She ran clinging to Lillian Edgley’s hat—she -had borrowed without permission—and that, I -presume, seemed a thing of beauty to her. Something -<span class='pageno' id='Page_134'>134</span>conscientious and fine in her made her cling -desperately to the hat and she had held it in her left -hand and safely out of harm’s way, even in the -moment when she was belaboring Sid Gould with the -stick of driftwood.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now she ran, still clinging to the hat, and was -afraid with a fear that was no longer physical. The -new fear that swept in upon her comprehended something -more than the grotesque masses of tree roots, -that now appeared to dance madly in the moonlight, -something more than Sid Gould, Cal Mosher and -Jerome Hadley—that had become a fear of life -itself, of all she had ever known of life, all she had -ever been permitted to see of life—that fear was now -heavy upon her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Little May Edgley did not want to live any more. -“Death is a kind and comforting thing to those who -are through with life,” an old farm horse had seemed -to say to a boy, who, a few days later, ran in terror -from the sight of May Edgley’s dead body to lean -trembling on the old horse’s manger.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What actually happened on that terrible night when -May ran so madly was that she came in her flight to -where a creek runs down into the bay. There are -good fishing places off the mouth of the creek. At -the creek’s mouth the water spreads itself out, so that -the small stream looks, from a distance, like a strong -river, but one coming along the beach—running along -the beach, in the moonlight, let us say—from the west -would run almost to the eastern bank in the shallow -water, that came only to the shoe tops.</p> - -<p class='c006'>One would run thus, in the shallow water, and the -clear white beach—east of the creek’s mouth—would -<span class='pageno' id='Page_135'>135</span>seem but a few steps away, and then one would be -plunged suddenly down into the narrow deep current, -sweeping under the eastern bank, the current that -carried the main body of the water of the stream.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And May Edgley plunged in there, still clinging to -Lillian’s white hat—the white willow plume bobbing -up and down in the swift current—and was swept into -the bay. Her body, caught by an eddy was carried -in and lodged among the submerged tree roots, where -it stayed, lodged, until the farmer and his hired man -accidentally found it and laid it tenderly on the boards -beside the farmer’s barn.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The little hard fist clung to the hat, the white -grotesque hat that Lil Edgley was in the habit of -putting on when she wanted to look her best—when -she wanted, I presume, to be beautiful.</p> - -<p class='c006'>May may have thought the hat was beautiful. -She may have thought of it as the most beautiful thing -she had ever seen in the actuality of her life.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Of that one cannot speak too definitely, and I only -know that, if the hat ever had been beautiful, it had -lost its beauty when, a few days later, it fell -under the eyes of a boy who saw the bedraggled -remains of it, clutched in the drowned woman’s -hand.</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_137'>137</span><span class='large'>A CHICAGO HAMLET</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_139'>139</span> - <h2 class='c008'>A CHICAGO HAMLET</h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>THERE was one time in Tom’s life when he -came near dying, came so close to it that for -several days he held his own life in his hand, as -a boy would hold a ball. He had only to open his -fingers to let it drop.</p> - -<p class='c006'>How vividly I remember the night when he told -me the story. We had gone to dine together at a -little combined saloon and restaurant in what is now -Wells Street in Chicago. It was a wet cold night -in early October. In Chicago October and November -are usually the most charming months of the year -but that year the first weeks of October were cold -and rainy. Everyone who lives in our industrial lake -cities has a disease of the nasal passages and a week -of such weather starts everyone coughing and sneezing. -The warm little den into which Tom and I had -got seemed cosy and comfortable. We had drinks of -whiskey to drive the chill out of our bodies and then, -after eating, Tom began to talk.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Something had come into the air of the place where -we sat, a kind of weariness. At times all Chicagoans -grow weary of the almost universal ugliness of -Chicago and everyone sags. One feels it in the -streets, in the stores, in the homes. The bodies of -the people sag and a cry seems to go up out of a -million throats,—“we are set down here in this -<span class='pageno' id='Page_140'>140</span>continual noise, dirt and ugliness. Why did you put -us down here? There is no rest. We are always -being hurried about from place to place, to no end. -Millions of us live on the vast Chicago West Side, -where all streets are equally ugly and where the -streets go on and on forever, out of nowhere into -nothing. We are tired, tired! What is it all about? -Why did you put us down here, mother of men?” All -the moving bodies of the people in the streets seem -to be saying something like the words set down above -and some day, perhaps, that Chicago poet, Carl -Sandburg, will sing a song about it. Oh, he will -make you feel then the tired voices coming out of -tired people. Then, it may be, we will all begin -singing it and realizing something long forgotten -among us.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But I grow too eloquent. I will return to Tom -and the restaurant in Wells Street. Carl Sandburg -works on a newspaper and sits at a desk writing about -the movies in Wells Street, Chicago.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the restaurant two men stood at the bar talking -to the bartender. They were trying to hold a -friendly conversation, but there was something in the -air that made friendly conversations impossible. The -bartender looked like pictures one sees of famous -generals—he was the type—a red-faced, well-fed -looking man, with a grey moustache.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The two men facing him and with their feet resting -on the bar rail had got into a meaningless wrangle -concerning the relationship of President McKinley -and his friend Mark Hanna. Did Mark Hanna -control McKinley or was McKinley only using Mark -Hanna to his own ends. The discussion was of no -<span class='pageno' id='Page_141'>141</span>special interest to the men engaged in it—they did -not care. At that time the newspapers and political -magazines of the country were always wrangling -over the same subject. It filled space that had to be -filled, I should say.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At any rate the two men had taken it up and were -using it as a vehicle for their weariness and disgust -with life. They spoke of McKinley and Hanna as -Bill and Mark.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Bill is a smooth one, I tell you what. He has -Mark eating out of his hand.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Eating out of his hand, hell! Mark whistles -and Bill comes running, like that, like a little -dog.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Meaningless vicious sentences, opinions thrown out -by tired brains. One of the men grew sullenly -angry. “Don’t look at me like that, I tell you. I’ll -stand a good deal from a friend but not any such -looks. I’m a fellow who loses his temper. Sometimes -I bust someone on the jaw.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The bartender was taking the situation in hand. -He tried to change the subject. “Who’s going to -lick that Fitzsimmons? How long they going to let -that Australian strut around in this country? Ain’t -they no guy can take him?” he asked, with pumped -up enthusiasm.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I sat with my head in my hands. “Men jangling -with men! Men and women in houses and apartments -jangling! Tired people going home to -Chicago’s West Side, going home from the factories! -Children crying fretfully!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom tapped me on the shoulder, and then tapped -with his empty glass on the table. He laughed.</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c011'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'><span class='pageno' id='Page_142'>142</span>“Ladybug, ladybug, why do you roam?</div> - <div class='line in1'>Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home,”</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c017'>he recited. When the whiskey had come he leaned -forward and made one of the odd and truthful -observations on life that were always coming out of -him at unexpected moments. “I want you to notice -something,” he began; “You have seen a lot of -bartenders—well, if you’ll notice, there is a striking -similarity in appearance between bartenders, great -generals, diplomats, presidents and all such people. -I just happened to think why it is. It’s because they -are all up to the same game. They have to spend -their lives handling weary dissatisfied people and they -learn the trick of giving things just a little twist, out -of one dull meaningless channel into another. That -is their game and practising it makes them all look -alike.”</p> -<p class='c006'>I smiled sympathetically. Now that I come to -write of my friend I find it somewhat difficult not to -misrepresent him on the sentimental side. I forget -times when I was with him and he was unspeakably -dull, when he also talked often for hours of meaningless -things. It was all foolishness, this trying to be -anything but a dull business man, he sometimes said, -and declared that both he and I were fools. Better -for us both that we become more alert, more foxy, as -he put it. But for the fact that we were both fools -we would both join the Chicago Athletic Club, play -golf, ride about in automobiles, pick up flashy young -girls and take them out to road-houses to dinner, go -home later and make up cock and bull stories to quiet -<span class='pageno' id='Page_143'>143</span>our wives, go to church on Sunday, talk continuously -of money making, woman and golf, and in general -enjoy our lives. At times he half convinced me he -thought the fellows he described led gay and cheerful -lives.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And there were times, too, when he, as a physical -being, seemed to fairly disintegrate before my eyes. -His great bulk grew a little loose and flabby, he -talked and talked, saying nothing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then, when I had quite made up my mind he -had gone the same road I and all the men about me -were no doubt going, the road of surrender to -ugliness and to dreary meaningless living, something -would happen. He would have talked thus, as I have -just described, aimlessly, through a long evening, and -then, when we parted for the night, he would scribble -a few words on a bit of paper and push it awkwardly -into my pocket. I watched his lumbering figure go -away along a street and going to a street lamp read -what he had written.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I am very weary. I am not the silly ass I seem but -I am as tired as a dog, trying to find out what I am,” -were the words he had scrawled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But to return to the evening in the place in Wells -Street. When the whiskey came we drank it and sat -looking at each other. Then he put his hand on the -table and closing the fingers, so that they made a -little cup, opened the hand slowly and listlessly. -“Once I had life, like that, in my hand, my own life. -I could have let go of it as easily as that. Just why -I didn’t I’ve never quite figured out. I can’t think -why I kept my fingers cupped, instead of opening my -<span class='pageno' id='Page_144'>144</span>hand and letting go,” he said. If, a few minutes -before, there had been no integrity in the man there -was enough of it now.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He began telling the story of an evening and a night -of his youth.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was when he was still on his father’s farm, a -little rented farm down in Southeastern Ohio, and -when he was but eighteen years old. That would -have been in the fall before he left home and started -on his adventures in the world. I knew something of -his history.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was late October and he and his father had -been digging potatoes in a field. I suppose they both -wore torn shoes as, in telling the story, Tom made a -point of the fact that their feet were cold, and that the -black dirt had worked into their shoes and discolored -their feet.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The day was cold and Tom wasn’t very well and -was in a bitter mood. He and his father worked -rather desperately and in silence. The father was -tall, had a sallow complexion and wore a beard, and -in the mental picture I have of him, he is always -stopping—as he walks about the farmyard or works in -the fields he stops and runs his fingers nervously -through his beard.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As for Tom, one gets the notion of him as having -been at that time rather nice, one having an inclination -toward the nicer things of life without just knowing -he had the feeling, and certainly without an -opportunity to gratify it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom had something the matter with him, a cold -with a bit of fever perhaps and sometimes as he -worked his body shook as with a chill and then, after -<span class='pageno' id='Page_145'>145</span>a few minutes, he felt hot all over. The two men -had been digging the potatoes all afternoon and as -night began to fall over the field, they started to pick -up. One picks up the potatoes in baskets and carries -them to the ends of the rows where they are put into -two-bushel grain bags.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom’s step-mother came to the kitchen door and -called. “Supper,” she cried in her peculiarly colorless -voice. Her husband was a little angry and fretful. -Perhaps for a long time he had been feeling -very deeply the enmity of his son. “All right,” he -called back, “we’ll come pretty soon. We got to get -done picking up.” There was something very like a -whine in his voice. “You can keep the things hot for -a time,” he shouted.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom and his father both worked with feverish -haste, as though trying to outdo each other and every -time Tom bent over to pick up a handful of the -potatoes his head whirled and he thought he might -fall. A kind of terrible pride had taken possession -of him and with the whole strength of his being he -was determined not to let his father—who, if -ineffectual, was nevertheless sometimes very quick and -accurate at tasks—get the better of him. They were -picking up potatoes—that was the task before them -at the moment—and the thing was to get all the -potatoes picked up and in the bags before darkness -came. Tom did not believe in his father and was he -to let such an ineffectual man outdo him at any task, -no matter how ill he might be?</p> - -<p class='c006'>That was somewhat the nature of Tom’s thoughts -and feelings at the moment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then the darkness had come and the task was -<span class='pageno' id='Page_146'>146</span>done. The filled sacks were set along a fence at -the end of the field. It was to be a cold frosty night -and now the moon was coming up and the filled sacks -looked like grotesque human beings, standing there -along the fence—standing with grey sagging bodies, -such as Tom’s step-mother had—sagged bodies and -dull eyes—standing and looking at the two men, so -amazingly not in accord with each other.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As the two walked across the field Tom let his -father go ahead. He was afraid he might stagger -and did not want his father to see there was anything -the matter with him. In a way boyish pride -was involved too. “He might think he could wear me -out working,” Tom thought. The moon coming up -was a huge yellow ball in the distance. It was larger -than the house towards which they were walking and -the figure of Tom’s father seemed to walk directly -across the yellow face of the moon.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When they got to the house the children Tom’s -father had got—thrown in with the woman, as it -were, when he made his second marriage—were standing -about. After he left home Tom could never -remember anything about the children except that they -always had dirty faces and were clad in torn dirty -dresses and that the youngest, a baby, wasn’t very -well and was always crying fretfully.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When the two men came into the house the children, -from having been fussing at their mother because the -meal was delayed, grew silent. With the quick intuition -of children they sensed something wrong -between father and son. Tom walked directly across -the small dining room and opening a door entered a -stairway that led up to his bedroom. “Ain’t you -<span class='pageno' id='Page_147'>147</span>going to eat any supper?” his father asked. It was -the first word that had passed between father and son -for hours.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No,” Tom answered and went up the stairs. At -the moment his mind was concentrated on the problem -of not letting anyone in the house know he was ill -and the father let him go without protest. No doubt -the whole family were glad enough to have him out of -the way.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He went upstairs and into his own room and got -into bed without taking off his clothes, just pulled off -the torn shoes and crawling in pulled the covers up -over himself. There was an old quilt, not very -clean.</p> - -<p class='c006'>His brain cleared a little and as the house was small -he could hear everything going on down stairs. Now -the family were all seated at the table and his father -was doing a thing called “saying grace.” He always -did that and sometimes, while the others waited, he -prayed intermittently.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom was thinking, trying to think. What was it -all about, his father’s praying that way? When he -got at it the man seemed to forget everyone else in -the world. There he was, alone with God, facing -God alone and the people about him seemed to have -no existence. He prayed a little about food, and -then went on to speak with God, in a strange confidential -way, about other things, his own frustrated -desires mostly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>All his life he had wanted to be a Methodist minister -but could not be ordained because he was uneducated, -had never been to the schools or colleges. -There was no chance at all for his becoming just the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_148'>148</span>thing he wanted to be and still he went on and on praying -about it, and in a way seemed to think there might -be a possibility that God, feeling strongly the need of -more Methodist ministers, would suddenly come down -out of the sky, off the judgment seat as it were, and -would go to the administrating board, or whatever one -might call it, of the Methodist Church and say, “Here -you, what are you up to? Make this man a -Methodist minister and be quick about it. I don’t -want any fooling around.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom lay on the bed upstairs listening to his father -praying down below. When he was a lad and his -own mother was alive he had always been compelled -to go with his father to the church on Sundays and -to the prayer meetings on Wednesday evenings. His -father always prayed, delivered sermons to the other -sad-faced men and women sitting about, under the -guise of prayers, and the son sat listening and no -doubt it was then, in childhood, his hatred of his -father was born. The man who was then the -minister of the little country church, a tall, raw-boned -young man, who was as yet unmarried, sometimes -spoke of Tom’s father as one powerful in prayer.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And all the time there was something in Tom’s -mind. Well he had seen a thing. One day when he -was walking alone through a strip of wood, coming -back barefooted from town to the farm he had seen—he -never told anyone what he had seen. The -minister was in the wood, sitting alone on a log. -There was something. Some rather nice sense of life -in Tom was deeply offended. He had crept away -unseen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now he was lying on the bed in the half darkness -<span class='pageno' id='Page_149'>149</span>upstairs in his father’s house, shaken with a chill, -and downstairs his father was praying and there was -one sentence always creeping into his prayers. “Give -me the gift, O God, give me the great gift.” Tom -thought he knew what that meant—“the gift of the -gab and the opportunity to exercise it, eh?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a door at the foot of Tom’s bed and -beyond the door another room, at the front of the -house upstairs. His father slept in there with the -new woman he had married and the three children -slept in a small room beside it. The baby slept with -the man and woman. It was odd what terrible -thoughts sometimes came into one’s head. The -baby wasn’t very well and was always whining and -crying. Chances were it would grow up to be a -yellow-skinned thing, with dull eyes, like the mother. -Suppose ... well suppose ... some night ... -one did not voluntarily have such thoughts—suppose -either the man or woman might, quite accidentally, -roll over on the baby and crush it, smother it, -rather.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom’s mind slipped a little out of his grasp. He -was trying to hold on to something—what was it? -Was it his own life? That was an odd thought. -Now his father had stopped praying and downstairs -the family were eating the evening meal. There was -silence in the house. People, even dirty half-ill -children, grew silent when they ate. That was a -good thing. It was good to be silent sometimes.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now Tom was in the wood, going barefooted -through the wood and there was that man, the -minister, sitting alone there on the log. Tom’s -father wanted to be a minister, wanted God to -<span class='pageno' id='Page_150'>150</span>arbitrarily make him a minister, wanted God to break -the rules, bust up the regular order of things just to -make him a minister. And he a man who could -barely make a living on the farm, who did everything -in a half slipshod way, who, when he felt he had to -have a second wife, had gone off and got one with -four sickly kids, one who couldn’t cook, who did the -work of his house in a slovenly way.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom slipped off into unconsciousness and lay still for -a long time. Perhaps he slept.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When he awoke—or came back into consciousness—there -was his father’s voice still praying and Tom -had thought the grace-saying was over. He lay still, -listening. The voice was loud and insistent and now -seemed near at hand. All of the rest of the house -was silent. None of the children were crying.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now there was a sound, the rattling of dishes downstairs -in the kitchen and Tom sat up in bed and leaning -far over looked through the open door into the -room occupied by his father and his father’s new wife. -His mind cleared.</p> - -<p class='c006'>After all, the evening meal was over and the -children had been put to bed and now the woman -downstairs had put the three older children into their -bed and was washing the dishes at the kitchen stove. -Tom’s father had come upstairs and had prepared for -bed by taking off his clothes and putting on a long -soiled white nightgown. Then he had gone to the -open window at the front of the house and kneeling -down had begun praying again.</p> - -<p class='c006'>A kind of cold fury took possession of Tom and -without a moment’s hesitation he got silently out of -bed. He did not feel ill now but very strong. At -<span class='pageno' id='Page_151'>151</span>the foot of his bed, leaning against the wall, was a -whippletree, a round piece of hard wood, shaped -something like a baseball bat, but tapering at both -ends. At each end there was an iron ring. The -whippletree had been left there by his father who -was always leaving things about, in odd unexpected -places. He leaned a whippletree against the wall in -his son’s bedroom and then, on the next day, when he -was hitching a horse to a plow and wanted it, he -spent hours going nervously about rubbing his fingers -through his beard and looking.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom took the whippletree in his hand and crept -barefooted through the open door into his father’s -room. “He wants to be like that fellow in the -woods—that’s what he’s always praying about.” -There was in Tom’s mind some notion—from the -beginning there must have been a great deal of the -autocrat in him—well, you see, he wanted to crush out -impotence and sloth.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had quite made up his mind to kill his father -with the whippletree and crept silently across the floor, -gripping the hardwood stick firmly in his right hand. -The sickly looking baby had already been put into the -one bed in the room and was asleep. Its little face -looked out from above another dirty quilt and the -clear cold moonlight streamed into the room and fell -upon the bed and upon the kneeling figure on the floor -by the window.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom had got almost across the room when he -noticed something—his father’s bare feet sticking out -from beneath the white nightgown. The heels and -the little balls of flesh below the toes were black -with the dirt of the fields but in the centre of each -<span class='pageno' id='Page_152'>152</span>foot there was a place. It was not black but yellowish -white in the moonlight.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom crept silently back into his own room and -closed softly the door between himself and his father. -After all he did not want to kill anyone. His father -had not thought it necessary to wash his feet before -kneeling to pray to his God, and he had himself come -upstairs and had got into bed without washing his -own feet.</p> - -<p class='c006'>His hands were trembling now and his body shaking -with the chill but he sat on the edge of the bed trying -to think. When he was a child and went to church -with his father and mother there was a story he had -heard told. A man came into a feast, after walking a -long time on dusty roads, and sat down at the feast. -A woman came and washed his feet. Then she put -precious ointments on them and later dried the feet -with her hair.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The story had, when he heard it, no special meaning -to the boy but now.... He sat on the bed smiling -half foolishly. Could one make of one’s own hands -a symbol of what the woman’s hands must have -meant on that occasion, long ago, could not one make -one’s own hands the humble servants to one’s soiled -feet, to one’s soiled body?</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a strange notion, this business of making oneself -the keeper of the clean integrity of oneself. -When one was ill one got things a little distorted. -In Tom’s room there was a tin wash-basin, and a pail -of water, he himself brought each morning from the -cistern at the back of the house. He had always been -one who fancied waiting on himself and perhaps, at -that time, he had in him something he afterward lost, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_153'>153</span>or only got hold of again at long intervals, the sense -of the worth of his own young body, the feeling that -his own body was a temple, as one might put it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At any rate he must have had some such feeling on -that night of his childhood and I shall never forget -a kind of illusion I had concerning him that time in -the Wells Street place when he told me the tale. At -the moment something seemed to spring out of his -great hulking body, something young hard clean and -white.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But I must walk carefully. Perhaps I had better -stick to my tale, try only to tell it simply, as he -did.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Anyway he got off the bed, there in the upper room -of that strangely disorganized and impotent household, -and standing in the centre of the room took off -his clothes. There was a towel hanging on a hook on -the wall but it wasn’t very clean.</p> - -<p class='c006'>By chance he did have, however, a white nightgown -that had not been worn and he now got it out of the -drawer of a small rickety dresser that stood by the -wall and recklessly tore off a part of it to serve as a -washcloth. Then he stood up and with the tin washbasin -on the floor at his feet washed himself carefully -in the icy cold water.</p> - -<p class='c006'>No matter what illusions I may have had regarding -him when he told me the tale, that night in Wells -Street, surely on that night of his youth he must have -been, as I have already described him, something -young hard clean and white. Surely and at that -moment his body was a temple.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>As for the matter of his holding his own life in his -<span class='pageno' id='Page_154'>154</span>hands—that came later, when he had got back into the -bed, and that part of his tale I do not exactly understand. -Perhaps he fumbled it in the telling and -perhaps my own understanding fumbled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I remember that he kept his hand lying on the table -in the Wells Street place and that he kept opening -and closing the fingers as though that would explain -everything. It didn’t for me, not then at any rate. -Perhaps it will for you who read.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I got back into bed,” he said, “and taking my own -life into my hand tried to decide whether I wanted to -hold on to it or not. All that night I held it like that, -my own life I mean,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was some notion, he was evidently trying -to explain, concerning other lives being things outside -his own, things not to be touched, not to be fooled -with. How much of that could have been in his mind -that night of his youth, long ago, and how much came -later I do not know and one takes it for granted he did -not know either.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He seemed however to have had the notion that -for some hours that night, after his father’s wife came -upstairs and the two elder people got into bed and the -house was silent, that there came certain hours when -his own life belonged to him to hold or to drop as -easily as one spreads out the fingers of a hand lying -on a table in a saloon in Wells Street, Chicago.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I had a fancy not to do it,” he said, “not to spread -out my fingers, not to open my hand. You see, I -couldn’t feel any very definite purpose in life, but there -was something. There was a feeling I had as I stood -naked in the cold washing my body. Perhaps I just -wanted to have that feeling of washing myself again -<span class='pageno' id='Page_155'>155</span>sometime. You know what I mean—I was really -cleansing myself, there in the moonlight, that night.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And so I got back into bed and kept my fingers -closed, like this, like a cup. I held my own life in my -hand and when I felt like opening my fingers and -letting my life slip away I remembered myself washing -myself in the moonlight.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And so I didn’t open out my fingers. I kept my -fingers closed like this, like a cup,” he said, again -slowly drawing his fingers together.</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_156'>156</span> - <h2 class='c008'>PART TWO</h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>FOR a good many years Tom wrote advertisements -in an office in Chicago where I was also -employed. He had grown middle-aged and -was unmarried and in the evenings and on Sundays sat -in his apartment reading or playing rather badly on a -piano. Outside business hours he had few associates -and although his youth and young manhood had been -a time of hardship, he continually, in fancy, lived -in the past.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He and I had been intimate, in a loose detached -sort of way, for a good many years. Although I was -a much younger man we often got half-drunk together.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Little fluttering tag-like ends of his personal -history were always leaking out of him and, of all the -men and women I have known, he gave me the most -material for stories. His own talks, things remembered -or imagined, were never quite completely told. -They were fragments caught up, tossed in the air as -by a wind and then abruptly dropped.</p> - -<p class='c006'>All during the late afternoon we had been standing -together at a bar and drinking. We had talked -of our work and as Tom grew more drunken he -played with the notion of the importance of advertising -writing. At that time his more mature point of -view puzzled me a little. “I’ll tell you what, that -lot of advertisements on which you are now at work -is very important. Do put all your best self into -<span class='pageno' id='Page_157'>157</span>your work. It is very important that the American -house-wife buy Star laundry soap, rather than Arrow -laundry soap. And there is something else—the -daughter of the man who owns the soap factory, that -is at present indirectly employing you, is a very pretty -girl. I saw her once. She is nineteen now but soon -she will be out of college and, if her father makes a -great deal of money it will profoundly affect her life. -The very man she is to marry may be decided by the -success or failure of the advertisements you are now -writing. In an obscure way you are fighting her -battles. Like a knight of old you have tipped your -lance, or shall I say typewriter, in her service. -Today as I walked past your desk and saw you -sitting there, scratching your head, and trying to -think whether to say, “buy Star Laundry Soap—it’s -best,” or whether to be a bit slangy and say, “Buy Star—You -win!”—well, I say, my heart went out to you -and to this fair young girl you have never seen, may -never see. I tell you what, I was touched.” He -hiccoughed and leaning forward tapped me affectionately -on the shoulder. “I tell you what, young -fellow,” he added smiling, “I thought of the middle -ages and of the men, women and children who once set -out toward the Holy Land in the service of the Virgin. -They didn’t get as well paid as you do. I tell you -what, we advertising men are too well paid. There -would be more dignity in our profession if we went -barefooted and walked about dressed in old ragged -cloaks and carrying staffs. We might, with a good -deal more dignity, carry beggar’s bowls, in our hands, -eh!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was laughing heartily now, but suddenly -<span class='pageno' id='Page_158'>158</span>stopped laughing. There was always an element of -sadness in Tom’s mirth.</p> - -<p class='c006'>We walked out of the saloon, he going forward a -little unsteadily for, even when he was quite sober, he -was not too steady on his legs. Life did not express -itself very definitely in his body and he rolled -awkwardly about, his heavy body at times threatening -to knock some passerby off the sidewalk.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For a time we stood at a corner, at La Salle and -Lake Streets in Chicago, and about us surged the -home-going crowds while over our heads rattled the -elevated trains. Bits of newspaper and clouds of -dust were picked up by a wind and blown in our faces -and the dust got into our eyes. We laughed together, -a little nervously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At any rate for us the evening had just begun. We -would walk and later dine together. He plunged -again into the saloon out of which we had just come, -and in a moment returned with a bottle of whiskey in -his pocket.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It is horrible stuff, this whiskey, eh, but after all -this is a horrible town. One couldn’t drink wine here. -Wine belongs to a sunny, laughing people and clime,” -he said. He had a notion that drunkenness was necessary -to men in such a modern industrial city as the -one in which we lived. “You wait,” he said, “you’ll -see what will happen. One of these days the reformers -will manage to take whiskey away from us, -and what then? We’ll sag down, you see. We’ll become -like old women, who have had too many -children. We’ll all sag spiritually and then you’ll see -what’ll happen. Without whiskey no people can stand -<span class='pageno' id='Page_159'>159</span>up against all this ugliness. It can’t be done, I say. -We’ll become empty and bag-like—we will—all of us. -We’ll be like old women who were never loved but -who have had too many children.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>We had walked through many streets and had come -to a bridge over a river. It was growing dark now -and we stood for a time in the dusk and in the uncertain -light the structures, built to the very edge of -the stream, great warehouses and factories, began to -take on strange shapes. The river ran through a -canyon formed by the buildings, a few boats passed up -and down, and over other bridges, in the distance, -street-cars passed. They were like moving clusters of -stars against the dark purple of the sky.</p> - -<p class='c006'>From time to time he sucked at the whiskey bottle -and occasionally offered me a drink but often he forgot -me and drank alone. When he had taken the -bottle from his lips he held it before him and spoke to -it softly, “Little mother,” he said, “I am always at -your breast, eh? You cannot wean me, can you?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He grew a little angry. “Well, then why did you -drop me down here? Mothers should drop their -children in places where men have learned a little to -live. Here there is only a desert of buildings.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He took another drink from the bottle and then -held it for a moment against his cheek before passing -it to me. “There is something feminine about a -whiskey bottle,” he declared. “As long as it contains -liquor one hates to part with it and passing it to a -friend is a little like inviting a friend to go in to your -wife. They do that, I’m told, in some of the Oriental -countries—a rather delicate custom. Perhaps -<span class='pageno' id='Page_160'>160</span>they are more civilized than ourselves, and then, you -know, perhaps, it’s just possible, they have found out -that the women sometimes like it too, eh?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>I tried to laugh but did not succeed very well. -Now that I am writing of my friend, I find I am not -making a very good likeness of him after all. It may -be that I overdo the note of sadness I get into my account -of him. There was always that element present -but it was tempered in him, as I seem to be unable -to temper it in my account of him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For one thing he was not very clever and I seem to -be making him out a rather clever fellow. On many -evenings I have spent with him he was silent and positively -dull and for hours walked awkwardly along, -talking of some affair at the office. There was a long -rambling story. He had been at Detroit with the -president of the company and the two men had visited -an advertiser. There was a long dull account of -what had been said—of “he saids,” and, “I saids.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Or again he told a story of some experience of his -own, as a newspaper man, before he got into advertising. -He had been on the copy desk in some Chicago -newspaper, the <i>Tribune</i>, perhaps. One grew -accustomed to a little peculiarity of his mind. It -traveled sometimes in circles and there were certain -oft-told tales always bobbing up. A man had come -into the newspaper office, a cub reporter with an important -piece of news, a great scoop in fact. No one -would believe the reporter’s story. He was just a -kid. There was a murderer, for whom the whole -town was on the watchout, and the cub reporter had -picked him up and had brought him into the office.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There he sat, the dangerous murderer. The cub -<span class='pageno' id='Page_161'>161</span>reporter had found him in a saloon and going up to -him had said, “You might as well give yourself up. -They will get you anyway and it will go better with -you if you come in voluntarily.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so the dangerous murderer had decided to -come and the cub reporter had escorted him, not to -the police station but to the newspaper office. It was -a great scoop. In a moment now the forms would -close, the newspaper would go to press. The dead -line was growing close and the cub reporter ran about -the room from one man to another. He kept pointing -at the murderer, a mild-looking little man with -blue eyes, sitting on a bench, waiting. The cub reporter -was almost insane. He danced up and down -and shouting “I tell you that’s Murdock, sitting there. -Don’t be a lot of damn fools. I tell you that’s Murdock, -sitting there.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now one of the editors has walked listlessly across -the room and is speaking to the little man with blue -eyes, and suddenly the whole tone of the newspaper -office has changed. “My God! It’s the truth! Stop -everything! Clear the front page! My God! It -is Murdock! What a near thing! We almost let it -go! My God! It’s Murdock!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The incident in the newspaper office had stayed in -my friend’s mind. It swam about in his mind as in a -pool. At recurring times, perhaps once every six -months, he told the story, using always the same -words and the tenseness of that moment in the newspaper -office was reproduced in him over and over. -He grew excited. Now the men in the office were all -gathering about the little blue-eyed Murdock. He -had killed his wife, her lover and three children. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_162'>162</span>Then he had run into the street and quite wantonly -shot two men, innocently passing the house. He sat -talking quietly and all the police of the city, and all -the reporters for the other newspapers, were looking -for him. There he sat talking, nervously telling his -story. There wasn’t much to the story. “I did it. -I just did it. I guess I was off my nut,” he kept saying.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well, the story will have to be stretched out.” -The cub reporter who has brought him in walks about -the office proudly. “I’ve done it! I’ve done it! -I’ve proven myself the greatest newspaper man in the -city.” The older men are laughing. “The fool! -It’s fool’s luck. If he hadn’t been a fool he would -never have done it. Why he walked right up. ‘Are -you Murdock?’ He had gone about all over town, -into saloons, asking men, ‘Are you Murdock?’ God -is good to fools and drunkards!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>My friend told the story to me ten, twelve, fifteen -times, and did not know it had grown to be an old -story. When he had reproduced the scene in the -newspaper office he made always the same comment. -“It’s a good yarn, eh. Well it’s the truth. I was -there. Someone ought to write it up for one of the -magazines.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>I looked at him, watched him closely as he told the -story and as I grew older and kept hearing the murderer’s -story and certain others, he also told regularly -without knowing he had told them before, an -idea came to me. “He is a tale-teller who has had no -audience,” I thought. “He is a stream dammed up. -He is full of stories that whirl and circle about within -him. Well, he is not a stream dammed up, he is a -<span class='pageno' id='Page_163'>163</span>stream overfull.” As I walked beside him and heard -again the story of the cub reporter and the murderer I -remembered a creek back of my father’s house in an -Ohio town. In the spring the water overflowed a -field near our house and the brown muddy water ran -round and round in crazy circles. One threw a stick -into the water and it was carried far away but, after -a time, it came whirling back to where one stood on a -piece of high ground, watching.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What interested me was that the untold stories, or -rather the uncompleted stories of my friend’s mind, -did not seem to run in circles. When a story had -attained form it had to be told about every so often, -but the unformed fragments were satisfied to peep out -at one and then retire, never to reappear.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>It was a spring evening and he and I had gone for a -walk in Jackson Park. We went on a street-car and -when we were alighting the car started suddenly and -my awkward friend was thrown to the ground and -rolled over and over in the dusty street. The motorman, -the conductor and several of the men passengers -alighted and gathered about. No, he was not hurt -and would not give his name and address to the anxious -conductor. “I’m not hurt. I’m not going to -sue the company. Damn it, man, I defy you to make -me give my name and address if I do not care to do -so.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He assumed a look of outraged dignity. “Just -suppose now that I happen to be some great man, -traveling about the country—in foreign parts, incognito, -as it were. Let us suppose I am a great prince -or a dignitary of some sort. Look how big I am.” -<span class='pageno' id='Page_164'>164</span>He pointed to his huge round paunch. “If I told -who I was cheers might break forth. I do not care -for that. With me, you see, it is different than with -yourselves. I have had too much of that sort of -thing already. I’m sick of it. If it happens that, in -the process of my study of the customs of your charming -country, I chose to fall off a street-car that is my -own affair. I did not fall on anyone.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>We walked away leaving the conductor, the motorman -and passengers somewhat mystified. “Ah, he’s a -nut,” I heard one of the passengers say to another.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As for the fall, it had shaken something out of my -friend. When later we were seated on a bench in -the park one of the fragments, the little illuminating -bits of his personal history, that sometimes came from -him and that were his chief charm for me, seemed to -have been shaken loose and fell from him as a ripe -apple falls from a tree in a wind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He began talking, a little hesitatingly, as though -feeling his way in the darkness along the hallway of a -strange house at night. It had happened I had never -seen him with a woman and he seldom spoke of -women, except with a witty and half scornful gesture, -but now he began speaking of an experience with a -woman.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The tale concerned an adventure of his young manhood -and occurred after his mother had died and after -his father married again, in fact after he had left -home, not to return.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The enmity, that seemed always to have existed -between himself and his father became while he continued -living at home, more and more pronounced, -but on the part of the son, my friend, it was never -<span class='pageno' id='Page_165'>165</span>expressed in words and his dislike of his father -took the form of contempt that he had made so bad a -second marriage. The new woman in the house -seemed such a poor stick. The house was always -dirty and the children, some other man’s children, were -always about under foot. When the two men who -had been working in the fields came into the house to -eat, the food was badly cooked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The father’s desire to have God make him, in some -mysterious way a Methodist minister continued and, -as he grew older, the son had difficulty keeping back -certain sharp comments upon life in the house, that -wanted to be expressed. “What was a Methodist -minister after all?” The son was filled with the intolerance -of youth. His father was a laborer, a man -who had never been to school. Did he think that -God could suddenly make him something else and -that without effort on his own part, by this interminable -praying? If he had really wanted to be a minister -why had he not prepared himself? He had -chased off and got married and when his first wife -died he could hardly wait until she was buried before -making another marriage. And what a poor stick of -a woman he had got.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The son looked across the table at his step-mother -who was afraid of him. Their eyes met and the -woman’s hands began to tremble. “Do you want anything?” -she asked anxiously. “No,” he replied and -began eating in silence.</p> - -<p class='c006'>One day in the spring, when he was working in the -field with his father, he decided to start out into the -world. He and his father were planting corn. They -had no corn-planter and the father had marked out -<span class='pageno' id='Page_166'>166</span>the rows with a home-made marker and now he was -going along in his bare feet, dropping the grains of -corn and the son, with a hoe in his hand, was following. -The son drew earth over the corn and then patted the -spot with the back of the hoe. That was to make the -ground solid above so that the crows would not come -down and find the corn before it had time to take root.</p> - -<p class='c006'>All morning the two worked in silence, and then -at noon and when they came to the end of a row, -they stopped to rest. The father went into a fence -corner.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The son was nervous. He sat down and then got -up and walked about. He did not want to look into -the fence corner, where his father was no doubt kneeling -and praying—he was always doing that at odd -moments—but presently he did. Dread crept over -him. His father was kneeling and praying in silence -and the son could see again the bottoms of his -two bare feet, sticking out from among low-growing -bushes. Tom shuddered. Again he saw the heels -and the cushions of the feet, the two ball-like cushions -below the toes. They were black but the instep of -each foot was white with an odd whiteness—not unlike -the whiteness of the belly of a fish.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The reader will understand what was in Tom’s -mind—a memory.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Without a word to his father or to his father’s -wife, he walked across the fields to the house, packed -a few belongings and left, saying good-bye to no -one. The woman of the house saw him go but said -nothing and after he had disappeared, about a bend -in the road, she ran across the fields to her husband, -who was still at his prayers, oblivious to what had -<span class='pageno' id='Page_167'>167</span>happened. His wife also saw the bare feet sticking -out of the bushes and ran toward them screaming. -When her husband arose she began to cry hysterically. -“I thought something dreadful had happened, Oh, -I thought something dreadful had happened,” she -sobbed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Why, what’s the matter,—what’s the matter?” -asked her husband but she did not answer but ran and -threw herself into his arms, and as the two stood thus, -like two grotesque bags of grain, embracing in a black -newly-plowed field under a grey sky, the son, who had -stopped in a small clump of trees, saw them. He -walked to the edge of a wood and stood for a moment -and then went off along the road. Afterward he -never saw or heard from them again.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>About Tom’s woman adventure—he told it as I -have told you the story of his departure from home, -that is to say in a fragmentary way. The story, like -the one I have just tried to tell, or rather perhaps give -you a sense of, was told in broken sentences, dropped -between long silences. As my friend talked I sat -looking at him and I will admit I sometimes found -myself thinking he must be the greatest man I would -ever know. “He has felt more things, has by his capacity -for silently feeling things, penetrated further -into human life than any other man I am likely ever to -know, perhaps than any other man who lives in my -day,” I thought—deeply stirred.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so he was on the road now and working his -way slowly along afoot through Southern Ohio. He -intended to make his way to some city and begin -educating himself. In the winter, during boyhood, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_168'>168</span>he had attended a country school, but there were certain -things he wanted he could not find in the country, -books, for one thing. “I knew then, as I -know now, something of the importance of books, -that is to say real books. There are only a few such -books in the world and it takes a long time to find -them out. Hardly anyone knows what they are and -one of the reasons I have never married is because I -did not want some woman coming between me and the -search for the books that really have something to -say,” he explained. He was forever breaking the -thread of his stories with little comments of this -kind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>All during that summer he worked on the farms, -staying sometimes for two or three weeks and then -moving on and in June he had got to a place, some -twenty miles west of Cincinnati, where he went -to work on the farm of a German, and where the adventure -happened that he told me about that night on -the park bench.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The farm on which he was at work belonged to a -tall, solidly-built German of fifty, who had come to -America twenty years before, and who, by hard work, -had prospered and had acquired much land. Three -years before he had made up his mind he had -better marry and had written to a friend in Germany -about getting him a wife. “I do not want one of -these American girls, and I would like a young woman, -not an old one,” he wrote. He explained that the -American girls all had the idea in their heads that they -could run their husbands and that most of them succeeded. -“It’s getting so all they want is to ride -around all dressed up or trot off to town,” he said. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_169'>169</span>Even the older American women he employed as -housekeepers were the same way; none of them would -take hold, help about the farm, feed the stock and do -things the wife of a European farmer expected to do. -When he employed a housekeeper she did the housework -and that was all.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then she went to sit on the front porch, to sew or -read a book. “What nonsense! You get me a good -German girl, strong and pretty good-looking. I’ll -send the money and she can come over here and be my -wife,” he wrote.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The letter had been sent to a friend of his young -manhood, now a small merchant in a German town -and after talking the matter over with his wife the -merchant decided to send his daughter, a woman of -twenty-four. She had been engaged to marry a man -who was taken sick and had died while he was serving -his term in the army and her father decided she had -been mooning about long enough. The merchant -called the daughter into a room where he and his wife -sat and told her of his decision and, for a long time -she sat looking at the floor. Was she about to make -a fuss? A prosperous American husband who owned -a big farm was not to be sneezed at. The daughter -put up her hand and fumbled with her black hair—there -was a great mass of it. After all she was a big -strong woman. Her husband wouldn’t be cheated. -“Yes, I’ll go,” she said quietly, and getting up walked -out of the room.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In America the woman had turned out all right but -her husband thought her a little too silent. Even -though the main purpose in life be to do the work of -a house and farm, feed the stock and keep a man’s -<span class='pageno' id='Page_170'>170</span>clothes in order, so that he is not always having to -buy new ones, still there are times when something else -is in order. As he worked in his fields the farmer -sometimes muttered to himself. “Everything in its -place. For everything there is a time and a place,” -he told himself. One worked and then the time came -when one played a little too. Now and then it was -nice to have a few friends about, drink beer, eat a -good deal of heavy food and then have some fun, in a -kind of way. One did not go too far but if there were -women in the party someone tickled one of them and -she giggled. One made a remark about legs—nothing -out of the way. “Legs is legs. On horses or -women legs count a good deal.” Everyone laughed. -One had a jolly evening, one had some fun.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Often, after his woman came, the farmer, working -in his fields, tried to think what was the matter with -her. She worked all the time and the house was in -order. Well, she fed the stock so that he did not -have to bother about that. What a good cook she -was. She even made beer, in the old-fashioned German -way, at home—and that was fine too.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The whole trouble lay in the fact that she was -silent, too silent. When one spoke to her she answered -nicely but she herself made no conversation -and at night she lay in the bed silently. The German -wondered if she would be showing signs of -having a child pretty soon. “That might make a -difference,” he thought. He stopped working and -looked across the fields to where there was a meadow. -His cattle were there feeding quietly. “Even cows, -and surely cows were quiet and silent enough things, -even cows had times. Sometimes the very devil got -<span class='pageno' id='Page_171'>171</span>into a cow. You were leading her along a road or -a lane and suddenly she went half insane. If one -weren’t careful she would jam her head through -fences, knock a man over, do almost anything. She -wanted something insanely, with a riotous hunger. -Even a cow wasn’t always just passive and quiet.” The -German felt cheated. He thought of the friend in -Germany who had sent his daughter. “Ugh, the -deuce, he might have sent a livelier one,” he thought.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was June when Tom came to the farm and the -harvest was on. The German had planted several -large fields to wheat and the yield was good. -Another man had been employed to work on the farm -all summer but Tom could be used too. He would -have to sleep on the hay in the barn but that he did -not mind. He went to work at once.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And anyone knowing Tom, and seeing his huge and -rather ungainly body, must realize that, in his youth, -he might have been unusually strong. For one thing -he had not done so much thinking as he must have -done later, nor had he been for years seated at a desk. -He worked in the fields with the other two men and at -the meal time came into the house with them to eat. -He and the German’s wife must have been a good deal -alike. Tom had in his mind certain things—thoughts -concerning his boyhood—and he was thinking a good -deal of the future. Well, there he was working his -way westward and making a little money all the time -as he went, and every cent he made he kept. He had -not yet been into an American city, had purposely -avoided such places as Springfield, Dayton and Cincinnati -and had kept to the smaller places and the -farms.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_172'>172</span>After a time he would have an accumulation of -money and would go into cities, study, read books, -live. He had then a kind of illusion about American -cities. “A city was a great gathering of people who -had grown tired of loneliness and isolation. They -had come to realize that only by working together -could they have the better things of life. Many -hands working together might build wonderfully, -many minds working together might think clearly, -many impulses working together might channel all -lives into an expression of something rather fine.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>I am making a mistake if I give you the impression -that Tom, the boy from the Ohio farm, had any such -definite notions. He had a feeling—of a sort. There -was a dumb kind of hope in him. He had even then, -I am quite sure, something else, that he later always -retained, a kind of almost holy inner modesty. It -was his chief attraction as a man but perhaps it -stood in the way of his ever achieving the kind of -outstanding and assertive manhood we Americans all -seem to think we value so highly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At any rate there he was, and there was that -woman, the silent one, now twenty-seven years old. -The three men sat at table eating and she waited on -them. They ate in the farm kitchen, a large old-fashioned -one, and she stood by the stove or went -silently about putting more food on the table as it was -consumed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At night the men did not eat until late and sometimes -darkness came as they sat at table and then -she brought lighted lamps for them. Great winged -insects flew violently against the screen door and a few -<span class='pageno' id='Page_173'>173</span>moths, that had managed to get into the house, flew -about the lamps. When the men had finished eating -they sat at the table drinking beer and the woman -washed the dishes.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The farm hand, employed for the summer, was a -man of thirty-five, a large bony man with a drooping -mustache. He and the German talked. Well, it -was good, the German thought, to have the silence of -his house broken. The two men spoke of the coming -threshing time and of the hay harvest just completed. -One of the cows would be calving next -week. Her time was almost here. The man with -the mustache took a drink of beer and wiped his -mustache with the back of his hand, that was covered -with long black hair.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom had drawn his chair back against the wall and -sat in silence and, when the German was deeply engaged -in conversation, he looked at the woman, who -sometimes turned from her dish-washing to look at -him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was something, a certain feeling he had -sometimes—she, it might be, also had—but of the two -men in the room that could not be said. It was too -bad she spoke no English. Perhaps, however even -though she spoke his language, he could not speak to -her of the things he meant. But, pshaw, there wasn’t -anything in his mind, nothing that could be said in -words. Now and then her husband spoke to her in -German and she replied quietly, and then the conversation -between the two men was resumed in -English. More beer was brought. The German -felt expansive. How good to have talk in the house. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_174'>174</span>He urged beer upon Tom who took it and drank. -“You’re another close-mouthed one, eh?” he said -laughing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom’s adventure happened during the second -week of his stay. All the people about the place had -gone to sleep for the night but, as he could not sleep, -he arose silently and came down out of the hay loft -carrying his blanket. It was a silent hot soft night -without a moon and he went to where there was a -small grass plot that came down to the barn and -spreading his blanket sat with his back to the wall of -the barn.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That he could not sleep did not matter. He was -young and strong. “If I do not sleep tonight I will -sleep tomorrow night,” he thought. There was -something in the air that he thought concerned only -himself, and that made him want to be thus awake, -sitting out of doors and looking at the dim distant -trees in the apple orchard near the barn, at the stars in -the sky, at the farm house, faintly seen some few hundred -feet away. Now that he was out of doors he no -longer felt restless. Perhaps it was only that he was -nearer something that was like himself at the moment, -just the night perhaps.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He became aware of something, of something moving, -restlessly in the darkness. There was a fence -between the farm yard and the orchard, with berry -bushes growing beside it, and something was moving -in the darkness along the berry bushes. Was -it a cow that had got out of the stable or were the -bushes moved by a wind? He did a trick known to -country boys. Thrusting a finger into his mouth he -stood up and put the wet finger out before him. A -<span class='pageno' id='Page_175'>175</span>wind would dry one side of the warm wet finger -quickly and that side would turn cold. Thus one -told oneself something, not only of the strength of a -wind but its direction. Well, there was no wind -strong enough to move berry bushes—there was no -wind at all. He had come down out of the barn -loft in his bare feet and in moving about had made -no sound and now he went and stood silently on the -blanket with his back against the wall of the barn.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The movement among the bushes was growing -more distinct but it wasn’t in the bushes. Something -was moving along the fence, between him and the -orchard. There was a place along the fence, an old -rail one, where no bushes grew and now the silent -moving thing was passing the open space.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was the woman of the house, the German’s wife. -What was up? Was she also trying dumbly to draw -nearer something that was like herself, that she could -understand, a little? Thoughts flitted through Tom’s -head and a dumb kind of desire arose within him. -He began hoping vaguely that the woman was in -search of himself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Later, when he told me of the happenings of that -night, he was quite sure that the feeling that then -possessed him was not physical desire for a woman. -His own mother had died several years before and -the woman his father had later married had seemed -to him just a thing about the house, a not very competent -thing, bones, a hank of hair, a body that did -not do very well what one’s body was supposed to do. -“I was intolerant as the devil, about all women. -Maybe I always have been but then—I’m sure I was -a queer kind of country bumpkin aristocrat. I -<span class='pageno' id='Page_176'>176</span>thought myself something, a special thing in the -world, and that woman, any women I had ever seen -or known, the wives of a few neighbors as poor as -my father, a few country girls—I had thought -them all beneath my contempt, dirt under my feet.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“About that German’s wife I had not felt that -way. I don’t know why. Perhaps because she had a -habit of keeping her mouth shut as I did just at that -time, a habit I have since lost.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so Tom stood there—waiting. The woman -came slowly along the fence, keeping in the shadow of -the bushes and then crossed an open space toward the -barn.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now she was walking slowly along the barn wall, -directly toward the young man who stood in the heavy -shadows holding his breath and waiting for her -coming.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Afterwards, when he thought of what had happened, -he could never quite make up his mind whether -she was walking in sleep or was awake as she came -slowly toward him. They did not speak the same -language and they never saw each other after that -night. Perhaps she had only been restless and had -got out of the bed beside her husband and made her -way out of the house, without any conscious knowledge -of what she was doing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She became conscious when she came to where he -was standing however, conscious and frightened. He -stepped out toward her and she stopped. Their faces -were very close together and her eyes were large with -alarm. “The pupils dilated,” he said in speaking -of that moment. He insisted upon the eyes. -“There was a fluttering something in them. I am -<span class='pageno' id='Page_177'>177</span>sure I do not exaggerate when I say that at the -moment I saw everything as clearly as though we had -been standing together in the broad daylight. Perhaps -something had happened to my own eyes, eh? -That might be possible. I could not speak to her, -reassure her—I could not say, ‘Do not be frightened, -woman.’ I couldn’t say anything. My eyes I suppose -had to do all the saying.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Evidently there was something to be said. At any -rate there my friend stood, on that remarkable night -of his youth, and his face and the woman’s face drew -nearer each other. Then their lips met and he took -her into his arms and held her for a moment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That was all. They stood together, the woman of -twenty-seven and the young man of nineteen and he -was a country boy and was afraid. That may be the -explanation of the fact that nothing else happened.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I do not know as to that but in telling this tale I -have an advantage you who read cannot have. I -heard the tale told, brokenly, by the man—who had -the experience I am trying to describe. Story-tellers -of old times, who went from place to place telling -their wonder tales, had an advantage we, who have -come in the age of the printed word, do not have. -They were both story tellers and actors. As they -talked they modulated their voices, made gestures -with their hands. Often they carried conviction -simply by the power of their own conviction. All -of our modern fussing with style in writing is an -attempt to do the same thing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And what I am trying to express now is a sense I -had that night, as my friend talked to me in the park, -of a union of two people that took place in the heavy -<span class='pageno' id='Page_178'>178</span>shadows by a barn in Ohio, a union of two people that -was not personal, that concerned their two bodies and -at the same time did not concern their bodies. The -thing has to be felt, not understood with the thinking -mind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Anyway they stood for a few minutes, five minutes -perhaps, with their bodies pressed against the wall -of the barn and their hands together, clasped together -tightly. Now and then one of them stepped away -from the barn and stood for a moment directly -facing the other. One might say it was Europe facing -America in the darkness by a barn. One might -grow fancy and learned and say almost anything but -all I am saying is that they stood as I am describing -them, and oddly enough with their faces to the barn -wall—instinctively turning from the house I presume—and -that now and then one of them stepped out and -stood for a moment facing the other. Their lips did -not meet after the first moment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The next step was taken. The German awoke in -the house and began calling, and then he appeared at -the kitchen door with a lantern in his hand. It was -the lantern, his carrying of the lantern, that saved the -situation for the wife and my friend. It made a -little circle of light outside of which he could see nothing, -but he kept calling his wife, whose name was -Katherine, in a distracted frightened way. “Oh, -Katherine. Where are you? Oh, Katherine,” he -called.</p> - -<p class='c006'>My friend acted at once. Taking hold of the -woman’s hand he ran—making no sound—along the -shadows of the barn and across the open space between -the barn and the fence. The two people were two -<span class='pageno' id='Page_179'>179</span>dim shadows flitting along the dark wall of the barn, -nothing more and at the place in the fence where there -were no bushes he lifted her over and climbed over -after her. Then he ran through the orchard and into -the road before the house and putting his two hands -on her shoulders shook her. As though understanding -his wish, she answered her husband’s call and as -the lantern came swinging down toward them my -friend dodged back into the orchard.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The man and wife went toward the house, the -German talking vigorously and the woman answering -quietly, as she had always answered him. Tom -was puzzled. Everything that happened to him that -night puzzled him then and long afterward when he -told me of it. Later he worked out a kind of explanation -of it—as all men will do in such cases—but -that is another story and the time to tell it is not -now.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The point is that my friend had, at the moment, the -feeling of having completely possessed the woman, -and with that knowledge came also the knowledge -that her husband would never possess her, could never -by any chance possess her. A great tenderness swept -over him and he had but one desire, to protect the -woman, not to by any chance make the life she had yet -to live any harder.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so he ran quickly to the barn, secured the -blanket and climbed silently up into the loft.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The farm hand with the drooping mustache was -sleeping quietly on the hay and Tom lay down -beside him and closed his eyes. As he expected the -German came, almost at once, to the loft and flashed -the lantern, not into the face of the older man but into -<span class='pageno' id='Page_180'>180</span>Tom’s face. Then he went away and Tom lay awake -smiling happily. He was young then and there was -something proud and revengeful in him—in his attitude -toward the German, at the moment. “Her -husband knew, but at the same time did not know, -that I had taken his woman from him,” he said to me -when he told of the incident long afterward. “I -don’t know why that made me so happy then, but it -did. At the moment I thought I was happy only -because we had both managed to escape, but now I -know that wasn’t it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And it is quite sure my friend did have a sense of -something. On the next morning when he went into -the house the breakfast was on the table but the -woman was not on hand to serve it. The food was -on the table and the coffee on the stove and the three -men ate in silence. And then Tom and the German -stepped out of the house together, stepped, as by a -prearranged plan into the barnyard. The German -knew nothing—his wife had grown restless in the -night and had got out of bed and walked out into the -road and both the other men were asleep in the barn. -He had never had any reason for suspecting her -of anything at all and she was just the kind of -woman he had wanted, never went trapsing off to -town, didn’t spend a lot of money on clothes, was -willing to do any kind of work, made no trouble. He -wondered why he had taken such a sudden and -violent dislike for his young employee.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom spoke first. “I think I’ll quit. I think I’d -better be on my way,” he said. It was obvious his -going, at just that time, would upset the plans the -German had made for getting the work done at the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_181'>181</span>rush time but he made no objection to Tom’s going -and at once. Tom had arranged to work by the -week and the German counted back to the Saturday -before and tried to cheat a little. “I owe you for -only one week, eh?” he said. One might as well get -two days extra work out of the man without pay—if -it were possible.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But Tom did not intend being defeated. “A week -and four days,” he replied, purposely adding an -extra day. “If you do not want to pay for the four -days I’ll stay out the week.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The German went into the house and got the money -and Tom set off along the road.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When he had walked for two or three miles he -stopped and went into a wood where he stayed all -that day thinking of what had happened.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Perhaps he did not do much thinking. What he -said, when he told the story that night in the Chicago -park, was that all day there were certain figures -marching through his mind and that he just sat down -on a log and let them march. Did he have some -notion that an impulse toward life in himself had -come, and that it would not come again?</p> - -<p class='c006'>As he sat on the log there were the figures of his -father and his dead mother and of several other -people who had lived about the Ohio countryside -where he had spent his boyhood. They kept doing -things, saying things. It will be quite clear to my -readers that I think my friend a story teller who for -some reason has never been able to get his stories -outside himself, as one might say, and that might of -course explain the day in the wood. He himself -thought he was in a sort of comatose state. He had -<span class='pageno' id='Page_182'>182</span>not slept during the night before and, although he did -not say as much, there was something a bit mysterious -in the thing that had happened to him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was one thing he told me concerning that -day of dreams that is curious. There appeared in his -fancy, over and over again, the figure of a woman -he had never seen in the flesh and has never seen since. -At any rate it wasn’t the German’s wife, he -declared.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The figure was that of a woman but I could not -tell her age,” he said. “She was walking away from -me and was clad in a blue dress covered with black -dots. Her figure was slender and looked strong but -broken. That’s it. She was walking in a path in a -country such as I had then never seen, have never -seen, a country of very low hills and without trees. -There was no grass either but only low bushes that -came up to her knees. One might have thought it an -Arctic country, where there is summer but for a few -weeks each year. She had her sleeves rolled to her -shoulders so that her slender arms showed, and had -buried her face in the crook of her right arm. Her -left arm hung like a broken thing, her legs were like -broken things, her body was a broken thing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And yet, you see, she kept walking and walking, -in the path, among the low bushes, over the barren -little hills. She walked vigorously too. It seems -impossible and a foolish thing to tell about but all day -I sat in the woods on the stump and every time I closed -my eyes I saw that woman walking thus, fairly rushing -along, and yet, you see, she was all broken to pieces.”</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_183'>183</span><span class='large'>THE MAN WHO BECAME A WOMAN</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_185'>185</span> - <h2 class='c008'>THE MAN WHO BECAME A WOMAN</h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>MY father was a retail druggist in our town, -out in Nebraska, which was so much like a -thousand other towns I’ve been in since that -there’s no use fooling around and taking up your -time and mine trying to describe it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Anyway I became a drug clerk and after father’s -death the store was sold and mother took the money -and went west, to her sister in California, giving me -four hundred dollars with which to make my start -in the world. I was only nineteen years old then.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I came to Chicago, where I worked as a drug clerk -for a time, and then, as my health suddenly went back -on me, perhaps because I was so sick of my lonely -life in the city and of the sight and smell of the drug -store, I decided to set out on what seemed to me then -the great adventure and became for a time a tramp, -working now and then, when I had no money, but -spending all the time I could loafing around out of -doors or riding up and down the land on freight trains -and trying to see the world. I even did some -stealing in lonely towns at night—once a pretty good -suit of clothes that someone had left hanging out on -a clothesline, and once some shoes out of a box in a -freight car—but I was in constant terror of being -caught and put into jail so realized that success as a -thief was not for me.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The most delightful experience of that period of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_186'>186</span>my life was when I once worked as a groom, or swipe, -with race horses and it was during that time I met a -young fellow of about my own age who has since become -a writer of some prominence.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The young man of whom I now speak had gone -into race track work as a groom, to bring a kind of -flourish, a high spot, he used to say, into his life.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was then unmarried and had not been successful -as a writer. What I mean is he was free and I guess, -with him as with me, there was something he liked -about the people who hang about a race track, the -touts, swipes, drivers, niggers and gamblers. You -know what a gaudy undependable lot they are—if -you’ve ever been around the tracks much—about the -best liars I’ve ever seen, and not saving money or -thinking about morals, like most druggists, drygoods -merchants and the others who used to be my father’s -friends in our Nebraska town—and not bending the -knee much either, or kowtowing to people, they -thought must be grander or richer or more powerful -than themselves.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What I mean is, they were an independent, go-to-the-devil, -come-have-a-drink-of-whisky, kind of a -crew and when one of them won a bet, “knocked ’em -off,” we called it, his money was just dirt to him while -it lasted. No king or president or soap manufacturer—gone -on a trip with his family to Europe—could -throw on more dog than one of them, with his big -diamond rings and the diamond horse-shoe stuck in his -necktie and all.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I liked the whole blamed lot pretty well and he did -too.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was groom temporarily for a pacing gelding -<span class='pageno' id='Page_187'>187</span>named Lumpy Joe owned by a tall black-mustached -man named Alfred Kreymborg and trying the best -he could to make the bluff to himself he was a real -one. It happened that we were on the same circuit, -doing the West Pennsylvania county fairs all that -fall, and on fine evenings we spent a good deal of -time walking and talking together.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Let us suppose it to be a Monday or Tuesday -evening and our horses had been put away for the -night. The racing didn’t start until later in the week, -maybe Wednesday, usually. There was always a -little place called a dining-hall, run mostly by the -Woman’s Christian Temperance Associations of the -towns, and we would go there to eat where we could -get a pretty good meal for twenty-five cents. At -least then we thought it pretty good.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I would manage it so that I sat beside this fellow, -whose name was Tom Means and when we had got -through eating we would go look at our two horses -again and when we got there Lumpy Joe would be -eating his hay in his box-stall and Alfred Kreymborg -would be standing there, pulling his mustache and -looking as sad as a sick crane.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But he wasn’t really sad. “You two boys want to -go down-town to see the girls. I’m an old duffer and -way past that myself. You go on along. I’ll be -setting here anyway, and I’ll keep an eye on both -the horses for you,” he would say.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So we would set off, going, not into the town to -try to get in with some of the town girls, who might -have taken up with us because we were strangers and -race track fellows, but out into the country. Sometimes -we got into a hilly country and there was a -<span class='pageno' id='Page_188'>188</span>moon. The leaves were falling off the trees and lay -in the road so that we kicked them up with the dust as -we went along.</p> - -<p class='c006'>To tell the truth I suppose I got to love Tom -Means, who was five years older than me, although -I wouldn’t have dared say so, then. Americans are -shy and timid about saying things like that and a man -here don’t dare own up he loves another man, I’ve -found out, and they are afraid to admit such feelings -to themselves even. I guess they’re afraid it may -be taken to mean something it don’t need to at all.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Anyway we walked along and some of the trees -were already bare and looked like people standing -solemnly beside the road and listening to what we had -to say. Only I didn’t say much. Tom Means did -most of the talking.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Sometimes we came back to the race track and it -was late and the moon had gone down and it was dark. -Then we often walked round and round the track, -sometimes a dozen times, before we crawled into the -hay to go to bed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom talked always on two subjects, writing and race -horses, but mostly about race horses. The quiet -sounds about the race tracks and the smells of horses, -and the things that go with horses, seemed to get him -all excited. “Oh, hell, Herman Dudley,” he would -burst out suddenly, “don’t go talking to me. I know -what I think. I’ve been around more than you have -and I’ve seen a world of people. There isn’t any -man or woman, not even a fellow’s own mother, as -fine as a horse, that is to say a thoroughbred -horse.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Sometimes he would go on like that a long time, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_189'>189</span>speaking of people he had seen and their characteristics. -He wanted to be a writer later and what he -said was that when he came to be one he wanted to -write the way a well bred horse runs or trots or paces. -Whether he ever did it or not I can’t say. He has -written a lot, but I’m not too good a judge of such -things. Anyway I don’t think he has.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But when he got on the subject of horses he certainly -was a darby. I would never have felt the way -I finally got to feel about horses or enjoyed my stay -among them half so much if it hadn’t been for him. -Often he would go on talking for an hour maybe, -speaking of horses’ bodies and of their minds and wills -as though they were human beings. “Lord help us, -Herman,” he would say, grabbing hold of my arm, -“don’t it get you up in the throat? I say now, when -a good one, like that Lumpy Joe I’m swiping, flattens -himself at the head of the stretch and he’s coming, -and you know he’s coming, and you know his heart’s -sound, and he’s game, and you know he isn’t going to -let himself get licked—don’t it get you Herman, don’t -it get you like the old Harry?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>That’s the way he would talk, and then later, sometimes, -he’d talk about writing and get himself all -het up about that too. He had some notions -about writing I’ve never got myself around to thinking -much about but just the same maybe his talk, -working in me, has led me to want to begin to write -this story myself.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>There was one experience of that time on the tracks -that I am forced, by some feeling inside myself, to tell.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Well, I don’t know why but I’ve just got to. It -<span class='pageno' id='Page_190'>190</span>will be kind of like confession is, I suppose, to a good -Catholic, or maybe, better yet, like cleaning up the -room you live in, if you are a bachelor, like I was -for so long. The room gets pretty mussy and the -bed not made some days and clothes and things -thrown on the closet floor and maybe under the bed. -And then you clean all up and put on new sheets, and -then you take off all your clothes and get down on -your hands and knees, and scrub the floor so clean -you could eat bread off it, and then take a walk and -come home after a while and your room smells sweet -and you feel sweetened-up and better inside yourself -too.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What I mean is, this story has been on my chest, -and I’ve often dreamed about the happenings in it, -even after I married Jessie and was happy. Sometimes -I even screamed out at night and so I said -to myself, “I’ll write the dang story,” and here goes.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Fall had come on and in the mornings now when -we crept out of our blankets, spread out on the hay -in the tiny lofts above the horse stalls, and put our -heads out to look around, there was a white rime of -frost on the ground. When we woke the horses -woke too. You know how it is at the tracks—the -little barn-like stalls with the tiny lofts above are all -set along in a row and there are two doors to each -stall, one coming up to a horse’s breast and then a -top one, that is only closed at night and in bad -weather.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the mornings the upper door is swung open and -fastened back and the horses put their heads out. -There is the white rime on the grass over inside the -grey oval the track makes. Usually there is some -<span class='pageno' id='Page_191'>191</span>outfit that has six, ten or even twelve horses, and -perhaps they have a negro cook who does his cooking -at an open fire in the clear space before the row of -stalls and he is at work now and the horses with their -big fine eyes are looking about and whinnying, and a -stallion looks out at the door of one of the stalls and -sees a sweet-eyed mare looking at him and sends up -his trumpet-call, and a man’s voice laughs, and there -are no women anywhere in sight or no sign of one -anywhere, and everyone feels like laughing and usually -does.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It’s pretty fine but I didn’t know how fine it was -until I got to know Tom Means and heard him talk -about it all.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At the time the thing happened of which I am trying -to tell now Tom was no longer with me. A week -before his owner, Alfred Kreymborg, had taken his -horse Lumpy Joe over into the Ohio Fair Circuit and -I saw no more of Tom at the tracks.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a story going about the stalls that -Lumpy Joe, a big rangy brown gelding, wasn’t really -named Lumpy Joe at all, that he was a ringer who had -made a fast record out in Iowa and up through the -northwest country the year before, and that Kreymborg -had picked him up and had kept him under wraps -all winter and had brought him over into the -Pennsylvania country under this new name and made -a clean-up in the books.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I know nothing about that and never talked to Tom -about it but anyway he, Lumpy Joe and Kreymborg -were all gone now.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I suppose I’ll always remember those days, and -Tom’s talk at night, and before that in the early -<span class='pageno' id='Page_192'>192</span>September evenings how we sat around in front of the -stalls, and Kreymborg sitting on an upturned feed -box and pulling at his long black mustache and some -times humming a little ditty one couldn’t catch the -words of. It was something about a deep well and a -little grey squirrel crawling up the sides of it, and he -never laughed or smiled much but there was something -in his solemn grey eyes, not quite a twinkle, -something more delicate than that.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The others talked in low tones and Tom and I -sat in silence. He never did his best talking except -when he and I were alone.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For his sake—if he ever sees my story—I should -mention that at the only big track we ever visited, at -Readville, Pennsylvania, we saw old Pop Geers, the -great racing driver, himself. His horses were at a -place far away across the tracks from where we were -stabled. I suppose a man like him was likely to get -the choice of all the good places for his horses.</p> - -<p class='c006'>We went over there one evening and stood about -and there was Geers himself, sitting before one of -the stalls on a box tapping the ground with a riding -whip. They called him, around the tracks, “The -silent man from Tennessee” and he was silent—that -night anyway. All we did was to stand and look at -him for maybe a half hour and then we went away -and that night Tom talked better than I had ever -heard him. He said that the ambition of his life -was to wait until Pop Geers died and then write a -book about him, and to show in the book that there -was at least one American who never went nutty about -getting rich or owning a big factory of being any -other kind of a hell of a fellow. “He’s satisfied I -<span class='pageno' id='Page_193'>193</span>think to sit around like that and wait until the big -moments of his life come, when he heads a fast one -into the stretch and then, darn his soul, he can give -all of himself to the thing right in front of him,” -Tom said, and then he was so worked up he began -to blubber. We were walking along the fence on the -inside of the tracks and it was dusk and, in some trees -nearby, some birds, just sparrows maybe, were making -a chirping sound, and you could hear insects singing -and, where there was a little light, off to the west -between some trees, motes were dancing in the air. -Tom said that about Pop Gears, although I think -he was thinking most about something he wanted to -be himself and wasn’t, and then he went and stood by -the fence and sort of blubbered and I began to blubber -too, although I didn’t know what about.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But perhaps I did know, after all. I suppose Tom -wanted to feel, when he became a writer, like he -thought old Pop must feel when his horse swung -around the upper turn, and there lay the stretch -before him, and if he was going to get his horse -home in front he had to do it right then. What Tom -said was that any man had something in him that -understands about a thing like that but that no woman -ever did except up in her brain. He often got off -things like that about women but I notice he later -married one of them just the same.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But to get back to my knitting. After Tom had -left, the stable I was with kept drifting along through -nice little Pennsylvania county seat towns. My -owner, a strange excitable kind of a man from over -in Ohio, who had lost a lot of money on horses but -was always thinking he would maybe get it all back -<span class='pageno' id='Page_194'>194</span>in some big killing, had been playing in pretty good -luck that year. The horse I had, a tough little gelding, -a five year old, had been getting home in front -pretty regular and so he took some of his winnings and -bought a three years old black pacing stallion named -“O, My Man.” My gelding was called “Pick-it-boy” -because when he was in a race and had got -into the stretch my owner always got half wild with -excitement and shouted so you could hear him a mile -and a half. “Go, Pick-it-boy, Pick-it-boy, Pick-it-boy,” -he kept shouting and so when he had got hold -of this good little gelding he had named him -that.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The gelding was a fast one, all right. As the -boys at the tracks used to say, he “picked ’em up sharp -and set ’em down clean,” and he was what we called a -natural race horse, right up to all the speed he had, -and didn’t require much training. “All you got to do -is to drop him down on the track and he’ll go,” was -what my owner was always saying to other men, when -he was bragging about his horse.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so you see, after Tom left, I hadn’t much to -do evenings and then the new stallion, the three year -old, came on with a negro swipe named Burt.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I liked him fine and he liked me but not the same -as Tom and me. We got to be friends all right and -I suppose Burt would have done things for me, and -maybe me for him, that Tom and me wouldn’t have -done for each other.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But with a negro you couldn’t be close friends like -you can with another white man. There’s some -reason you can’t understand but it’s true. There’s -been too much talk about the difference between -<span class='pageno' id='Page_195'>195</span>whites and blacks and you’re both shy, and anyway no -use trying and I suppose Burt and I both knew it and -so I was pretty lonesome.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Something happened to me that happened several -times, when I was a young fellow, that I have never -exactly understood. Sometimes now I think it was -all because I had got to be almost a man and had -never been with a woman. I don’t know what’s the -matter with me. I can’t ask a woman. I’ve tried -it a good many times in my life but every time I’ve -tried the same thing happened.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Of course, with Jessie now, it’s different, but at the -time of which I’m speaking Jessie was a long ways -off and a good many things were to happen to me -before I got to her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Around a race track, as you may suppose, the -fellows who are swipes and drivers and strangers in -the towns do not go without women. They don’t -have to. In any town there are always some fly girls -will come around a place like that. I suppose they -think they are fooling with men who lead romantic -lives. Such girls will come along by the front of the -stalls where the race horses are and, if you look -all right to them, they will stop and make a -fuss over your horse. They rub their little hands -over the horse’s nose and then is the time -for you—if you aren’t a fellow like me who -can’t get up the nerve—then is the time for you -to smile and say, “Hello, kid,” and make a date -with one of them for that evening up town after -supper. I couldn’t do that, although the Lord -knows I tried hard enough, often enough. A girl -would come along alone, and she would be a little -<span class='pageno' id='Page_196'>196</span>thing and give me the eye, and I would try and try -but couldn’t say anything. Both Tom, and Burt -afterwards, used to laugh at me about it sometimes -but what I think is that, had I been able to speak up -to one of them and had managed to make a date with -her, nothing would have come of it. We would -probably have walked around the town and got off -together in the dark somewhere, where the town came -to an end, and then she would have had to knock me -over with a club before it got any further.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so there I was, having got used to Tom and -our talks together, and Burt of course had his own -friends among the black men. I got lazy and mopey -and had a hard time doing my work.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was like this. Sometimes I would be sitting, -perhaps under a tree in the late afternoon when the -races were over for the day and the crowds had gone -away. There were always a lot of other men and -boys who hadn’t any horses in the races that day and -they would be standing or sitting about in front of -the stalls and talking.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I would listen for a time to their talk and then -their voices would seem to go far away. The things I -was looking at would go far away too. Perhaps there -would be a tree, not more than a hundred yards away, -and it would just come out of the ground and float -away like a thistle. It would get smaller and smaller, -away off there in the sky, and then suddenly—bang, it -would be back where it belonged, in the ground, and -I would begin hearing the voices of the men talking -again.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When Tom was with me that summer the nights -were splendid. We usually walked about and talked -<span class='pageno' id='Page_197'>197</span>until pretty late and then I crawled up into my hole -and went to sleep. Always out of Tom’s talk I got -something that stayed in my mind, after I was off by -myself, curled up in my blanket. I suppose he had a -way of making pictures as he talked and the pictures -stayed by me as Burt was always saying pork chops -did by him. “Give me the old pork chops, they stick -to the ribs,” Burt was always saying and with the -imagination it was always that way about Tom’s talks. -He started something inside you that went on and -on, and your mind played with it like walking about -in a strange town and seeing the sights, and you -slipped off to sleep and had splendid dreams and woke -up in the morning feeling fine.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then he was gone and it wasn’t that way any -more and I got into the fix I have described. At -night I kept seeing women’s bodies and women’s lips -and things in my dreams, and woke up in the morning -feeling like the old Harry.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Burt was pretty good to me. He always helped -me cool Pick-it-boy out after a race and he did the -things himself that take the most skill and quickness, -like getting the bandages on a horse’s leg smooth, and -seeing that every strap is setting just right, and every -buckle drawn up to just the right hole, before your -horse goes out on the track for a heat.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Burt knew there was something wrong with me -and put himself out not to let the boss know. When -the boss was around he was always bragging about -me. “The brightest kid I’ve ever worked with -around the tracks,” he would say and grin, and that -at a time when I wasn’t worth my salt.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When you go out with the horses there is one job -<span class='pageno' id='Page_198'>198</span>that always takes a lot of time. In the late afternoon, -after your horse has been in a race and after -you have washed him and rubbed him out, he has to -be walked slowly, sometimes for hours and hours, so -he’ll cool out slowly and won’t get muscle-bound. I -got so I did that job for both our horses and Burt did -the more important things. It left him free to go -talk or shoot dice with the other niggers and I didn’t -mind. I rather liked it and after a hard race even -the stallion, O My Man, was tame enough, even when -there were mares about.</p> - -<p class='c006'>You walk and walk and walk, around a little circle, -and your horse’s head is right by your shoulder, and -all around you the life of the place you are in is going -on, and in a queer way you get so you aren’t really -a part of it at all. Perhaps no one ever gets as I was -then, except boys that aren’t quite men yet and who -like me have never been with girls or women—to -really be with them, up to the hilt, I mean. I used to -wonder if young girls got that way too before they -married or did what we used to call “go on the town.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>If I remember it right though, I didn’t do much -thinking then. Often I would have forgotten supper -if Burt hadn’t shouted at me and reminded me, and -sometimes he forgot and went off to town with one of -the other niggers and I did forget.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There I was with the horse, going slow slow slow, -around a circle that way. The people were leaving -the fair grounds now, some afoot, some driving away -to the farms in wagons and fords. Clouds of dust -floated in the air and over to the west, where the town -was, maybe the sun was going down, a red ball of fire -through the dust. Only a few hours before the crowd -<span class='pageno' id='Page_199'>199</span>had been all filled with excitement and everyone shouting. -Let us suppose my horse had been in a race that -afternoon and I had stood in front of the grandstand -with my horse blanket over my shoulder, alongside of -Burt perhaps, and when they came into the stretch my -owner began to call, in that queer high voice of his -that seemed to float over the top of all the shouting -up in the grandstand. And his voice was saying over -and over, “Go, Pick-it-boy, Pick-it-boy, Pick-it-boy,” the -way he always did, and my heart was thumping so I -could hardly breathe, and Burt was leaning over and -snapping his fingers and muttering, “Come, little -sweet. Come on home. Your Mama wants you. -Come get your ’lasses and bread, little Pick-it-boy.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Well, all that was over now and the voices of the -people left around were all low. And Pick-it-boy—I -was leading him slowly around the little ring, to cool -him out slowly, as I’ve said,—he was different too. -Maybe he had pretty nearly broken his heart trying -to get down to the wire in front, or getting down there -in front, and now everything inside him was quiet and -tired, as it was nearly all the time those days in me, except -in me tired but not quiet.</p> - -<p class='c006'>You remember I’ve told you we always walked in -a circle, round and round and round. I guess something -inside me got to going round and round and -round too. The sun did sometimes and the trees and -the clouds of dust. I had to think sometimes about -putting down my feet so they went down in the right -place and I didn’t get to staggering like a drunken -man.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And a funny feeling came that it is going to be hard -to describe. It had something to do with the life in -<span class='pageno' id='Page_200'>200</span>the horse and in me. Sometimes, these late years, -I’ve thought maybe negroes would understand what -I’m trying to talk about now better than any white -man ever will. I mean something about men and -animals, something between them, something that can -perhaps only happen to a white man when he has -slipped off his base a little, as I suppose I had then. -I think maybe a lot of horsey people feel it sometimes -though. It’s something like this, maybe—do you suppose -it could be that something we whites have got, -and think such a lot of, and are so proud about, isn’t -much of any good after all?</p> - -<p class='c006'>It’s something in us that wants to be big and grand -and important maybe and won’t let us just be, like a -horse or a dog or a bird can. Let’s say Pick-it-boy -had won his race that day. He did that pretty often -that summer. Well, he was neither proud, like I -would have been in his place, or mean in one part of -the inside of him either. He was just himself, doing -something with a kind of simplicity. That’s what -Pick-it-boy was like and I got to feeling it in him as I -walked with him slowly in the gathering darkness. I -got inside him in some way I can’t explain and he got -inside me. Often we would stop walking for no cause -and he would put his nose up against my face.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I wished he was a girl sometimes or that I was a girl -and he was a man. It’s an odd thing to say but it’s -a fact. Being with him that way, so long, and in such -a quiet way, cured something in me a little. Often -after an evening like that I slept all right and did not -have the kind of dreams I’ve spoken about.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But I wasn’t cured for very long and couldn’t get -<span class='pageno' id='Page_201'>201</span>cured. My body seemed all right and just as good as -ever but there wasn’t no pep in me.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then the fall got later and later and we came to the -last town we were going to make before my owner -laid his horses up for the winter, in his home town -over across the State line in Ohio, and the track was -up on a hill, or rather in a kind of high plain above -the town.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It wasn’t much of a place and the sheds were rather -rickety and the track bad, especially at the turns. As -soon as we got to the place and got stabled it began to -rain and kept it up all week so the fair had to be put -off.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As the purses weren’t very large a lot of the owners -shipped right out but our owner stayed. The fair -owners guaranteed expenses, whether the races were -held the next week or not.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And all week there wasn’t much of anything for -Burt and me to do but clean manure out of the stalls -in the morning, watch for a chance when the rain let -up a little to jog the horses around the track in the -mud and then clean them off, blanket them and stick -them back in their stalls.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was the hardest time of all for me. Burt wasn’t -so bad off as there were a dozen or two blacks around -and in the evening they went off to town, got liquored-up -a little and came home late, singing and talking, -even in the cold rain.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then one night I got mixed up in the thing I’m -trying to tell you about.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>It was a Saturday evening and when I look back at -<span class='pageno' id='Page_202'>202</span>it now it seems to me everyone had left the tracks but -just me. In the early evening swipe after swipe came -over to my stall and asked me if I was going to stick -around. When I said I was he would ask me to keep -an eye out for him, that nothing happened to his horse. -“Just take a stroll down that way now and then, eh, -kid,” one of them would say, “I just want to run up to -town for an hour or two.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>I would say “yes” to be sure, and so pretty soon it -was dark as pitch up there in that little ruined fairground -and nothing living anywhere around but the -horses and me.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I stood it as long as I could, walking here and there -in the mud and rain, and thinking all the time I wished -I was someone else and not myself. “If I were someone -else,” I thought, “I wouldn’t be here but down -there in town with the others.” I saw myself going -into saloons and having drinks and later going off to -a house maybe and getting myself a woman.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I got to thinking so much that, as I went stumbling -around up there in the darkness, it was as though -what was in my mind was actually happening.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Only I wasn’t with some cheap woman, such as I -would have found had I had the nerve to do what I -wanted but with such a woman as I thought then I -should never find in this world. She was slender -and like a flower and with something in her like a race -horse too, something in her like Pick-it-boy in the -stretch, I guess.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And I thought about her and thought about her -until I couldn’t stand thinking any more. “I’ll do -something anyway,” I said to myself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So, although I had told all the swipes I would stay -<span class='pageno' id='Page_203'>203</span>and watch their horses, I went out of the fair grounds -and down the hill a ways. I went down until I came -to a little low saloon, not in the main part of the town -itself but half way up the hillside. The saloon had -once been a residence, a farmhouse perhaps, but if it -was ever a farmhouse I’m sure the farmer who lived -there and worked the land on that hillside hadn’t -made out very well. The country didn’t look like a -farming country, such as one sees all about the other -county-seat towns we had been visiting all through the -late summer and fall. Everywhere you looked there -were stones sticking out of the ground and the trees -mostly of the stubby, stunted kind. It looked wild -and untidy and ragged, that’s what I mean. On the -flat plain, up above, where the fairground was, there -were a few fields and pastures, and there were some -sheep raised and in the field right next to the tracks, -on the furtherest side from town, on the back stretch -side, there had once been a slaughter-house, the ruins -of which were still standing. It hadn’t been used for -quite some time but there were bones of animals lying -all about in the field, and there was a smell coming out -of the old building that would curl your hair.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The horses hated the place, just as we swipes did, -and in the morning when we were jogging them -around the track in the mud, to keep them in racing -condition, Pick-it-boy and O My Man both raised -old Ned every time we headed them up the back -stretch and got near to where the old slaughter-house -stood. They would rear and fight at the bit, and go -off their stride and run until they got clear of the -rotten smells, and neither Burt nor I could make them -stop it. “It’s a hell of a town down there and this is -<span class='pageno' id='Page_204'>204</span>a hell of a track for racing,” Burt kept saying. “If -they ever have their danged old fair someone’s going -to get spilled and maybe killed back here.” Whether -they did or not I don’t know as I didn’t stay for the -fair, for reasons I’ll tell you pretty soon, but Burt was -speaking sense all right. A race horse isn’t like a -human being. He won’t stand for it to have to do -his work in any rotten ugly kind of a dump the way a -man will, and he won’t stand for the smells a man will -either.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But to get back to my story again. There I was, -going down the hillside in the darkness and the cold -soaking rain and breaking my word to all the others -about staying up above and watching the horses. -When I got to the little saloon I decided to stop and -have a drink or two. I’d found out long before that -about two drinks upset me so I was two-thirds piped -and couldn’t walk straight, but on that night I didn’t -care a tinker’s dam.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So I went up a kind of path, out of the road, toward -the front door of the saloon. It was in what must -have been the parlor of the place when it was a farmhouse -and there was a little front porch.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I stopped before I opened the door and looked -about a little. From where I stood I could look right -down into the main street of the town, like being in a -big city, like New York or Chicago, and looking down -out of the fifteenth floor of an office building into the -street.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The hillside was mighty steep and the road up had -to wind and wind or no one could ever have come up -out of the town to their plagued old fair at all.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It wasn’t much of a town I saw—a main street with -<span class='pageno' id='Page_205'>205</span>a lot of saloons and a few stores, one or two dinky -moving-picture places, a few fords, hardly any -women or girls in sight and a raft of men. I tried to -think of the girl I had been dreaming about, as I -walked around in the mud and darkness up at the fair -ground, living in the place but I couldn’t make it. It -was like trying to think of Pick-it-boy getting himself -worked up to the state I was in then, and going -into the ugly dump I was going into. It couldn’t be -done.</p> - -<p class='c006'>All the same I knew the town wasn’t all right there -in sight. There must have been a good many of the -kinds of houses Pennsylvania miners live in back in the -hills, or around a turn in the valley in which the main -street stood.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What I suppose is that, it being Saturday night and -raining, the women and kids had all stayed at home -and only the men were out, intending to get themselves -liquored-up. I’ve been in some other mining towns -since and if I was a miner and had to live in one of -them, or in one of the houses they live in with their -women and kids, I’d get out and liquor myself up too.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So there I stood looking, and as sick as a dog inside -myself, and as wet and cold as a rat in a sewer pipe. -I could see the mass of dark figures moving about -down below, and beyond the main street there was a -river that made a sound you could hear distinctly, -even up where I was, and over beyond the river were -some railroad tracks with switch engines going up and -down. I suppose they had something to do with the -mines in which the men of the town worked. Anyway, -as I stood watching and listening there was, now -and then, a sound like thunder rolling down the sky, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_206'>206</span>and I suppose that was a lot of coal, maybe a whole -carload, being let down plunk into a coal car.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then besides there was, on the side of a hill -far away, a long row of coke ovens. They had little -doors, through which the light from the fire within -leaked out and as they were set closely, side by side, -they looked like the teeth of some big man-eating -giant lying and waiting over there in the hills.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The sight of it all, even the sight of the kind of hellholes -men are satisfied to go on living in, gave me the -fantods and the shivers right down in my liver, and -on that night I guess I had in me a kind of contempt -for all men, including myself, that I’ve never had so -thoroughly since. Come right down to it, I suppose -women aren’t so much to blame as men. They aren’t -running the show.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Then I pushed open the door and went into the -saloon. There were about a dozen men, miners I suppose, -playing cards at tables in a little long dirty room, -with a bar at one side of it, and with a big red-faced -man with a mustache standing back of the bar.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The place smelled, as such places do where men -hang around who have worked and sweated in their -clothes and perhaps slept in them too, and have never -had them washed but have just kept on wearing them. -I guess you know what I mean if you’ve ever been in -a city. You smell that smell in a city, in street-cars -on rainy nights when a lot of factory hands get on. -I got pretty used to that smell when I was a tramp -and pretty sick of it too.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so I was in the place now, with a glass of -whisky in my hand, and I thought all the miners -<span class='pageno' id='Page_207'>207</span>were staring at me, which they weren’t at all, but I -thought they were and so I felt just the same as though -they had been. And then I looked up and saw my -own face in the old cracked looking-glass back of the -bar. If the miners had been staring, or laughing at -me, I wouldn’t have wondered when I saw what I -looked like.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It—I mean my own face—was white and pasty-looking, -and for some reason, I can’t tell exactly why, -it wasn’t my own face at all. It’s a funny business -I’m trying to tell you about and I know what you may -be thinking of me as well as you do, so you needn’t -suppose I’m innocent or ashamed. I’m only wondering. -I’ve thought about it a lot since and I can’t make -it out. I know I was never that way before that night -and I know I’ve never been that way since. Maybe -it was lonesomeness, just lonesomeness, gone on in me -too long. I’ve often wondered if women generally are -lonesomer than men.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The point is that the face I saw in the looking-glass -back of that bar, when I looked up from my glass of -whisky that evening, wasn’t my own face at all but -the face of a woman. It was a girl’s face, that’s what -I mean. That’s what it was. It was a girl’s face, -and a lonesome and scared girl too. She was just a -kid at that.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When I saw that the glass of whisky came pretty -near falling out of my hand but I gulped it down, put a -dollar on the bar, and called for another. “I’ve -got to be careful here—I’m up against something -new,” I said to myself. “If any of these men in here -get on to me there’s going to be trouble.” When I -had got the second drink in me I called for a third -<span class='pageno' id='Page_208'>208</span>and I thought, “When I get this third drink down I’ll -get out of here and back up the hill to the fair ground -before I make a fool of myself and begin to get -drunk.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then, while I was thinking and drinking my -third glass of whisky, the men in the room began to -laugh and of course I thought they were laughing at -me. But they weren’t. No one in the place had -really paid any attention to me.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What they were laughing at was a man who had -just come in at the door. I’d never seen such a fellow. -He was a huge big man, with red hair, that stuck -straight up like bristles out of his head, and he had a -red-haired kid in his arms. The kid was just like himself, -big, I mean, for his age, and with the same kind -of stiff red hair.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He came and set the kid up on the bar, close beside -me, and called for a glass of whisky for himself and -all the men in the room began to shout and laugh at -him and his kid. Only they didn’t shout and laugh -when he was looking, so he could tell which ones did -it, but did all their shouting and laughing when his -head was turned the other way. They kept calling -him “cracked.” “The crack is getting wider in the -old tin pan,” someone sang and then they all laughed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I’m puzzled you see, just how to make you feel as -I felt that night. I suppose, having undertaken to -write this story, that’s what I’m up against, trying to -do that. I’m not claiming to be able to inform you or -to do you any good. I’m just trying to make you -understand some things about me, as I would like to -understand some things about you, or anyone, if I had -the chance. Anyway the whole blamed thing, the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_209'>209</span>thing that went on I mean in that little saloon on that -rainy Saturday night, wasn’t like anything quite real. -I’ve already told you how I had looked into the glass -back of the bar and had seen there, not my own face -but the face of a scared young girl. Well, the men, -the miners, sitting at the tables in the half dark room, -the red-faced bartender, the unholy looking big man -who had come in and his queer-looking kid, now sitting -on the bar—all of them were like characters in some -play, not like real people at all.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was myself, that wasn’t myself—and I’m -not any fairy. Anyone who has ever known me -knows better than that.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then there was the man who had come in. -There was a feeling came out of him that wasn’t like -the feeling you get from a man at all. It was more -like the feeling you get maybe from a horse, only his -eyes weren’t like a horse’s eyes. Horses’ eyes have a -kind of calm something in them and his hadn’t. If -you’ve ever carried a lantern through a wood at night, -going along a path, and then suddenly you felt something -funny in the air and stopped, and there ahead -of you somewhere were the eyes of some little animal, -gleaming out at you from a dead wall of darkness—The -eyes shine big and quiet but there is a point right -in the centre of each, where there is something dancing -and wavering. You aren’t afraid the little animal -will jump at you, you are afraid the little eyes will -jump at you—that’s what’s the matter with you.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Only of course a horse, when you go into his stall -at night, or a little animal you had disturbed in a wood -that way, wouldn’t be talking and the big man who -had come in there with his kid was talking. He kept -<span class='pageno' id='Page_210'>210</span>talking all the time, saying something under his -breath, as they say, and I could only understand now -and then a few words. It was his talking made him -kind of terrible. His eyes said one thing and his lips -another. They didn’t seem to get together, as though -they belonged to the same person.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For one thing the man was too big. There was -about him an unnatural bigness. It was in his hands, -his arms, his shoulders, his body, his head, a bigness -like you might see in trees and bushes in a tropical -country perhaps. I’ve never been in a tropical -country but I’ve seen pictures. Only his eyes were -small. In his big head they looked like the eyes of a -bird. And I remember that his lips were thick, like -negroes’ lips.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He paid no attention to me or to the others in the -room but kept on muttering to himself, or to the kid -sitting on the bar—I couldn’t tell to which.</p> - -<p class='c006'>First he had one drink and then, quick, another. -I stood staring at him and thinking—a jumble of -thoughts, I suppose.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What I must have been thinking was something like -this. “Well he’s one of the kind you are always -seeing about towns,” I thought. I meant he was one -of the cracked kind. In almost any small town you -go to you will find one, and sometimes two or three -cracked people, walking around. They go through -the street, muttering to themselves and people -generally are cruel to them. Their own folks make -a bluff at being kind, but they aren’t really, and the -others in the town, men and boys, like to tease -them. They send such a fellow, the mild silly kind, -on some fool errand after a round square or a dozen -<span class='pageno' id='Page_211'>211</span>post-holes or tie cards on his back saying “Kick me,” -or something like that, and then carry on and laugh as -though they had done something funny.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so there was this cracked one in that saloon -and I could see the men in there wanted to have some -fun putting up some kind of horseplay on him, but they -didn’t quite dare. He wasn’t one of the mild -kind, that was a cinch. I kept looking at the man -and at his kid, and then up at that strange unreal -reflection of myself in the cracked looking-glass back -of the bar. “Rats, rats, digging in the ground—miners -are rats, little jack-rabbit,” I heard him say to -his solemn-faced kid. I guess, after all, maybe he -wasn’t so cracked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The kid sitting on the bar kept blinking at his -father, like an owl caught out in the daylight, and -now the father was having another glass of whisky. -He drank six glasses, one right after the other, and -it was cheap ten-cent stuff. He must have had cast-iron -insides all right.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Of the men in the room there were two or three -(maybe they were really more scared than the others -so had to put up a bluff of bravery by showing off) -who kept laughing and making funny cracks about the -big man and his kid and there was one fellow was -the worst of the bunch. I’ll never forget that fellow -because of his looks and what happened to him afterwards.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was one of the showing-off kind all right, and he -was the one that had started the song about the crack -getting bigger in the old tin pan. He sang it two or -three times, and then he grew bolder and got up and -began walking up and down the room singing it over -<span class='pageno' id='Page_212'>212</span>and over. He was a showy kind of man with a -fancy vest, on which there were brown tobacco spots, -and he wore glasses. Every time he made some -crack he thought was funny, he winked at the others -as though to say, “You see me. I’m not afraid of -this big fellow,” and then the others laughed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The proprietor of the place must have known what -was going on, and the danger in it, because he kept -leaning over the bar and saying, “Shush, now quit it,” -to the showy-off man, but it didn’t do any good. -The fellow kept prancing like a turkey-cock and he put -his hat on one side of his head and stopped right back -of the big man and sang that song about the crack -in the old tin pan. He was one of the kind you -can’t shush until they get their blocks knocked off, and -it didn’t take him long to come to it that time -anyhow.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Because the big fellow just kept on muttering to his -kid and drinking his whisky, as though he hadn’t -heard anything, and then suddenly he turned and his -big hand flashed out and he grabbed, not the fellow -who had been showing off, but me. With just a -sweep of his arm he brought me up against his big -body. Then he shoved me over with my breast -jammed against the bar and looking right into his -kid’s face and he said, “Now you watch him, and -if you let him fall I’ll kill you,” in just quiet ordinary -tones as though he was saying “good morning” to -some neighbor.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then the kid leaned over and threw his arms -around my head, and in spite of that I did manage -to screw my head around enough to see what -happened.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_213'>213</span>It was a sight I’ll never forget. The big fellow -had whirled around, and he had the showy-off man -by the shoulder now, and the fellow’s face was a -sight. The big man must have had some reputation -as a bad man in the town, even though he was cracked -for the man with the fancy vest had his mouth open -now, and his hat had fallen off his head, and he was -silent and scared. Once, when I was a tramp, I saw -a kid killed by a train. The kid was walking on the -rail and showing off before some other kids, by -letting them see how close he could let an engine come -to him before he got out of the way. And the engine -was whistling and a woman, over on the porch of a -house nearby, was jumping up and down and screaming, -and the kid let the engine get nearer and nearer, -wanting more and more to show off, and then he -stumbled and fell. God, I’ll never forget the look -on his face, in just the second before he got hit and -killed, and now, there in that saloon, was the same -terrible look on another face.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I closed my eyes for a moment and was sick all -through me and then, when I opened my eyes, the big -man’s fist was just coming down in the other man’s -face. The one blow knocked him cold and he fell -down like a beast hit with an axe.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then the most terrible thing of all happened. -The big man had on heavy boots, and he raised one -of them and brought it down on the other man’s -shoulder, as he lay white and groaning on the floor. -I could hear the bones crunch and it made me so sick -I could hardly stand up, but I had to stand up and -hold on to that kid or I knew it would be my turn -next.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_214'>214</span>Because the big fellow didn’t seem excited or anything, -but kept on muttering to himself as he had been -doing when he was standing peacefully by the bar -drinking his whisky, and now he had raised his foot -again, and maybe this time he would bring it down in -the other man’s face and, “just eliminate his map for -keeps,” as sports and prize-fighters sometimes say. -I trembled, like I was having a chill, but thank God -at that moment the kid, who had his arms around me -and one hand clinging to my nose, so that there were -the marks of his finger-nails on it the next morning, at -that moment the kid, thank God, began to howl, and -his father didn’t bother any more with the man on the -floor but turned around, knocked me aside, and taking -the kid in his arms tramped out of that place, muttering -to himself as he had been doing ever since he came -in.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I went out too but I didn’t prance out with any -dignity, I’ll tell you that. I slunk out like a thief or -a coward, which perhaps I am, partly anyhow.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so there I was, outside there in the darkness, -and it was as cold and wet and black and Godforsaken -a night as any man ever saw. I was so -sick at the thought of human beings that night I could -have vomited to think of them at all. For a while I -just stumbled along in the mud of the road, going up -the hill, back to the fair ground, and then, almost -before I knew where I was, I found myself in the stall -with Pick-it-boy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That was one of the best and sweetest feelings -I’ve ever had in my whole life, being in that warm -stall alone with that horse that night. I had told the -other swipes that I would go up and down the row -<span class='pageno' id='Page_215'>215</span>of stalls now and then and have an eye on the other -horses, but I had altogether forgotten my promise -now. I went and stood with my back against the -side of the stall, thinking how mean and low and all -balled-up and twisted-up human beings can become, -and how the best of them are likely to get that way -any time, just because they are human beings and not -simple and clear in their minds, and inside themselves, -as animals are, maybe.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Perhaps you know how a person feels at such a -moment. There are things you think of, odd little -things you had thought you had forgotten. Once, -when you were a kid, you were with your father, and -he was all dressed up, as for a funeral or Fourth of -July, and was walking along a street holding your -hand. And you were going past a railroad station, -and there was a woman standing. She was a stranger -in your town and was dressed as you had never seen -a woman dressed before, and never thought you would -see one, looking so nice. Long afterwards you knew -that was because she had lovely taste in clothes, such -as so few women have really, but then you thought -she must be a queen. You had read about queens -in fairy stories and the thoughts of them thrilled you. -What lovely eyes the strange lady had and what -beautiful rings she wore on her fingers.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then your father came out, from being in the railroad -station, maybe to set his watch by the station -clock, and took you by the hand and he and -the woman smiled at each other, in an embarrassed -kind of way, and you kept looking longingly -back at her, and when you were out of her -hearing you asked your father if she really were a -<span class='pageno' id='Page_216'>216</span>queen. And it may be that your father was one who -wasn’t so very hot on democracy and a free country -and talked-up bunk about a free citizenry, and he said -he hoped she was a queen, and maybe, for all he knew, -she was.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Or maybe, when you get jammed up as I was that -night, and can’t get things clear about yourself or -other people and why you are alive, or for that -matter why anyone you can think about is alive, you -think, not of people at all but of other things you -have seen and felt—like walking along a road in the -snow in the winter, perhaps out in Iowa, and hearing -soft warm sounds in a barn close to the road, or of -another time when you were on a hill and the sun -was going down and the sky suddenly became a great -soft-colored bowl, all glowing like a jewel-handled -bowl, a great queen in some far away mighty kingdom -might have put on a vast table out under the tree, once -a year, when she invited all her loyal and loving subjects -to come and dine with her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I can’t, of course, figure out what you try to think -about when you are as desolate as I was that night. -Maybe you are like me and inclined to think of -women, and maybe you are like a man I met once, on -the road, who told me that when he was up against -it he never thought of anything but grub and a big -nice clean warm bed to sleep in. “I don’t care about -anything else and I don’t ever let myself think of -anything else,” he said. “If I was like you and went -to thinking about women sometime I’d find myself -hooked up to some skirt, and she’d have the old -double cross on me, and the rest of my life maybe I’d -be working in some factory for her and her kids.”</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_217'>217</span>As I say, there I was anyway, up there alone with -that horse in that warm stall in that dark lonesome -fair ground and I had that feeling about being sick -at the thought of human beings and what they could -be like.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Well, suddenly I got again the queer feeling I’d -had about him once or twice before, I mean the feeling -about our understanding each other in some way I -can’t explain.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So having it again I went over to where he stood -and began running my hands all over his body, just -because I loved the feel of him and as sometimes, to -tell the plain truth, I’ve felt about touching with my -hands the body of a woman I’ve seen and who I -thought was lovely too. I ran my hands over his -head and neck and then down over his hard firm -round body and then over his flanks and down his -legs. His flanks quivered a little I remember and -once he turned his head and stuck his cold nose down -along my neck and nipped my shoulder a little, in a -soft playful way. It hurt a little but I didn’t care.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So then I crawled up through a hole into the loft -above thinking that night was over anyway and glad -of it, but it wasn’t, not by a long sight.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As my clothes were all soaking wet and as we race -track swipes didn’t own any such things as night-gowns -or pajamas I had to go to bed naked, of course.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But we had plenty of horse blankets and so I -tucked myself in between a pile of them and tried not -to think any more that night. The being with Pick-it-boy -and having him close right under me that way -made me feel a little better.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then I was sound asleep and dreaming and—bang -<span class='pageno' id='Page_218'>218</span>like being hit with a club by someone who has sneaked -up behind you—I got another wallop.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What I suppose is that, being upset the way I was, -I had forgotten to bolt the door to Pick-it-boy’s stall -down below and two negro men had come in there, -thinking they were in their own place, and had -climbed up through the hole where I was. They were -half lit up but not what you might call dead drunk, -and I suppose they were up against something a couple -of white swipes, who had some money in their -pockets, wouldn’t have been up against.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What I mean is that a couple of white swipes, -having liquored themselves up and being down there -in the town on a bat, if they wanted a woman or a -couple of women would have been able to find them. -There is always a few women of that kind can be -found around any town I’ve ever seen or heard of, -and of course a bar tender would have given them the -tip where to go.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But a negro, up there in that country, where there -aren’t any, or anyway mighty few negro women, -wouldn’t know what to do when he felt that way and -would be up against it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It’s so always. Burt and several other negroes -I’ve known pretty well have talked to me about it, -lots of times. You take now a young negro man—not -a race track swipe or a tramp or any other low-down -kind of a fellow—but, let us say, one who has been -to college, and has behaved himself and tried to be a -good man, the best he could, and be clean, as they -say. He isn’t any better off, is he? If he has made -himself some money and wants to go sit in a swell -restaurant, or go to hear some good music, or see a -<span class='pageno' id='Page_219'>219</span>good play at the theatre, he gets what we used to -call on the tracks, “the messy end of the dung fork,” -doesn’t he?</p> - -<p class='c006'>And even in such a low-down place as what people -call a “bad house” it’s the same way. The white -swipes and others can go into a place where they have -negro women fast enough, and they do it too, but you -let a negro swipe try it the other way around and see -how he comes out.</p> - -<p class='c006'>You see, I can think this whole thing out fairly -now, sitting here in my own house and writing, and -with my wife Jessie in the kitchen making a pie or -something, and I can show just how the two negro -men who came into that loft, where I was asleep, were -justified in what they did, and I can preach about how -the negroes are up against it in this country, like a -daisy, but I tell you what, I didn’t think things out -that way that night.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For, you understand, what they thought, they being -half liquored-up, and when one of them had jerked -the blankets off me, was that I was a woman. One -of them carried a lantern but it was smoky and dirty -and didn’t give out much light. So they must have -figured it out—my body being pretty white and -slender then, like a young girl’s body I suppose—that -some white swipe had brought me up there. The -kind of girls around a town that will come with a -swipe to a race track on a rainy night aren’t very fancy -females but you’ll find that kind in the towns all -right. I’ve seen many a one in my day.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so, I figure, these two big buck niggers, being -piped that way, just made up their minds they would -snatch me away from the white swipe who had -<span class='pageno' id='Page_220'>220</span>brought me out there, and who had left me lying -carelessly around.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Jes’ you lie still honey. We ain’t gwine hurt you -none,” one of them said, with a little chuckling laugh -that had something in it besides a laugh, too. It -was the kind of laugh that gives you the shivers.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The devil of it was I couldn’t say anything, not -even a word. Why I couldn’t yell out and say -“What the hell,” and just kid them a little and shoo -them out of there I don’t know, but I couldn’t. I -tried and tried so that my throat hurt but I didn’t say -a word. I just lay there staring at them.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a mixed-up night. I’ve never gone through -another night like it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Was I scared? Lord Almighty, I’ll tell you what, -I was scared.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Because the two big black faces were leaning right -over me now, and I could feel their liquored-up breaths -on my cheeks, and their eyes were shining in the dim -light from that smoky lantern, and right in the centre -of their eyes was that dancing flickering light I’ve -told you about your seeing in the eyes of wild animals, -when you were carrying a lantern through the woods -at night.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a puzzler! All my life, you see—me never -having had any sisters, and at that time never having -had a sweetheart either—I had been dreaming and -thinking about women, and I suppose I’d always been -dreaming about a pure innocent one, for myself, made -for me by God, maybe. Men are that way. No -matter how big they talk about “let the women go -hang,” they’ve always got that notion tucked away -inside themselves, somewhere. It’s a kind of chesty -<span class='pageno' id='Page_221'>221</span>man’s notion, I suppose, but they’ve got it and the kind -of up-and-coming women we have nowdays who are -always saying, “I’m as good as a man and will do -what the men do,” are on the wrong trail if they -really ever want to, what you might say “hog-tie” a -fellow of their own.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So I had invented a kind of princess, with black -hair and a slender willowy body to dream about. -And I thought of her as being shy and afraid to ever -tell anything she really felt to anyone but just me. -I suppose I fancied that if I ever found such a woman -in the flesh I would be the strong sure one and she -the timid shrinking one.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now I was that woman, or something like her, -myself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I gave a kind of wriggle, like a fish, you have just -taken off the hook. What I did next wasn’t a -thought-out thing. I was caught and I squirmed, -that’s all.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The two niggers both jumped at me but somehow—the -lantern having been kicked over and having gone -out the first move they made—well in some way, -when they both lunged at me they missed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As good luck would have it my feet found the hole, -where you put hay down to the horse in the stall -below, and through which we crawled up when it was -time to go to bed in our blankets up in the hay, and -down I slid, not bothering to try to find the ladder -with my feet but just letting myself go.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In less than a second I was out of doors in the dark -and the rain and the two blacks were down the hole -and out the door of the stall after me.</p> - -<p class='c006'>How long or how far they really followed me I -<span class='pageno' id='Page_222'>222</span>suppose I’ll never know. It was black dark and -raining hard now and a roaring wind had begun to -blow. Of course, my body being white, it must have -made some kind of a faint streak in the darkness as I -ran, and anyway I thought they could see me and I -knew I couldn’t see them and that made my terror ten -times worse. Every minute I thought they would grab -me.</p> - -<p class='c006'>You know how it is when a person is all upset and -full of terror as I was. I suppose maybe the two -niggers followed me for a while, running across the -muddy race track and into the grove of trees that -grew in the oval inside the track, but likely enough, -after just a few minutes, they gave up the chase and -went back, found their own place and went to sleep. -They were liquored-up, as I’ve said, and maybe -partly funning too.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But I didn’t know that, if they were. As I ran I -kept hearing sounds, sounds made by the rain coming -down through the dead old leaves left on the trees -and by the wind blowing, and it may be that the sound -that scared me most of all was my own bare feet -stepping on a dead branch and breaking it or something -like that.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was something strange and scary, a steady -sound, like a heavy man running and breathing hard, -right at my shoulder. It may have been my own -breath, coming quick and fast. And I thought I -heard that chuckling laugh I’d heard up in the -loft, the laugh that sent the shivers right down -through me. Of course every tree I came close to -looked like a man standing there, ready to grab me, -and I kept dodging and going—bang—into other -<span class='pageno' id='Page_223'>223</span>trees. My shoulders kept knocking against trees in -that way and the skin was all knocked off, and every -time it happened I thought a big black hand had come -down and clutched at me and was tearing my flesh.</p> - -<p class='c006'>How long it went on I don’t know, maybe an hour, -maybe five minutes. But anyway the darkness didn’t -let up, and the terror didn’t let up, and I couldn’t, to -save my life, scream or make any sound.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Just why I couldn’t I don’t know. Could it be -because at the time I was a woman, while at the same -time I wasn’t a woman? It may be that I was too -ashamed of having turned into a girl and being afraid -of a man to make any sound. I don’t know about -that. It’s over my head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But anyway I couldn’t make a sound. I tried and -tried and my throat hurt from trying and no sound -came.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then, after a long time, or what seemed like a -long time, I got out from among the trees inside the -track and was on the track itself again. I thought -the two black men were still after me, you understand, -and I ran like a madman.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Of course, running along the track that way, it must -have been up the back stretch, I came after a time to -where the old slaughter-house stood, in that field, -beside the track. I knew it by its ungodly smell, -scared as I was. Then, in some way, I managed to -get over the high old fairground fence and was in -the field, where the slaughter-house was.</p> - -<p class='c006'>All the time I was trying to yell or scream, or be -sensible and tell those two black men that I was a -man and not a woman, but I couldn’t make it. And -then I heard a sound like a board cracking or breaking -<span class='pageno' id='Page_224'>224</span>in the fence and thought they were still after -me.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So I kept on running like a crazy man, in the field, -and just then I stumbled and fell over something. -I’ve told you how the old slaughter-house field -was filled with bones, that had been lying there -a long time and had all been washed white. There -were heads of sheep and cows and all kinds of -things.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And when I fell and pitched forward I fell right -into the midst of something, still and cold and -white.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was probably the skeleton of a horse lying there. -In small towns like that, they take an old worn-out -horse, that has died, and haul him off to some field -outside of town and skin him for the hide, that they -can sell for a dollar or two. It doesn’t make any -difference what the horse has been, that’s the way he -usually ends up. Maybe even Pick-it-boy, or O My -Man, or a lot of other good fast ones I’ve seen and -known have ended that way by this time.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so I think it was the bones of a horse lying -there and he must have been lying on his back. The -birds and wild animals had picked all his flesh away -and the rain had washed his bones clean.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Anyway I fell and pitched forward and my side -got cut pretty deep and my hands clutched at something. -I had fallen right in between the ribs of the -horse and they seemed to wrap themselves around me -close. And my hands, clutching upwards, had got -hold of the cheeks of that dead horse and the bones of -his cheeks were cold as ice with the rain washing over -<span class='pageno' id='Page_225'>225</span>them. White bones wrapped around me and white -bones in my hands.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a new terror now that seemed to go -down to the very bottom of me, to the bottom of the -inside of me, I mean. It shook me like I have seen -a rat in a barn shaken by a dog. It was a terror like a -big wave that hits you when you are walking on a seashore, -maybe. You see it coming and you try to run -and get away but when you start to run inshore there -is a stone cliff you can’t climb. So the wave comes -high as a mountain, and there it is, right in front of -you and nothing in all this world can stop it. And -now it had knocked you down and rolled and tumbled -you over and over and washed you clean, clean, but -dead maybe.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And that’s the way I felt—I seemed to myself dead -with blind terror, it was a feeling like the finger of -God running down your back and burning you clean, -I mean.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It burned all that silly nonsense about being a girl -right out of me.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I screamed at last and the spell that was on me was -broken. I’ll bet the scream I let out of me could have -been heard a mile and a half.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Right away I felt better and crawled out from -among the pile of bones, and then I stood on my own -feet again and I wasn’t a woman, or a young girl any -more but a man and my own self, and as far as I know -I’ve been that way ever since. Even the black night -seemed warm and alive now, like a mother might be to -a kid in the dark.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Only I couldn’t go back to the race track because I -<span class='pageno' id='Page_226'>226</span>was blubbering and crying and was ashamed of myself -and of what a fool I had made of myself. Someone -might see me and I couldn’t stand that, not at that -moment.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So I went across the field, walking now, not running -like a crazy man, and pretty soon I came to a fence -and crawled over and got into another field, in which -there was a straw stack, I just happened to find in the -pitch darkness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The straw stack had been there a long time and -some sheep had nibbled away at it until they had made -a pretty deep hole, like a cave, in the side of it. I -found the hole and crawled in and there were some -sheep in there, about a dozen of them.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When I came in, creeping on my hands and knees, -they didn’t make much fuss, just stirred around a -little and then settled down.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So I settled down amongst them too. They were -warm and gentle and kind, like Pick-it-boy, and being -in there with them made me feel better than I would -have felt being with any human person I knew at that -time.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So I settled down and slept after a while, and when -I woke up it was daylight and not very cold and the -rain was over. The clouds were breaking away from -the sky now and maybe there would be a fair the next -week but if there was I knew I wouldn’t be there to -see it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Because what I expected to happen did happen. -I had to go back across the fields and the fairground -to the place where my clothes were, right in the -broad daylight, and me stark naked, and of course I -<span class='pageno' id='Page_227'>227</span>knew someone would be up and would raise a shout, -and every swipe and every driver would stick his head -out and would whoop with laughter.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And there would be a thousand questions asked, and -I would be too mad and too ashamed to answer, and -would perhaps begin to blubber, and that would make -me more ashamed than ever.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It all turned out just as I expected, except that -when the noise and the shouts of laughter were going -it the loudest, Burt came out of the stall where O My -Man was kept, and when he saw me he didn’t know -what was the matter but he knew something was up -that wasn’t on the square and for which I wasn’t to -blame.</p> - -<p class='c006'>So he got so all-fired mad he couldn’t speak for a -minute, and then he grabbed a pitchfork and began -prancing up and down before the other stalls, giving -that gang of swipes and drivers such a royal old -dressing-down as you never heard. You should have -heard him sling language. It was grand to hear.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And while he was doing it I sneaked up into the -loft, blubbering because I was so pleased and happy -to hear him swear that way, and I got my wet clothes -on quick and got down, and gave Pick-it-boy a good-bye -kiss on the cheek and lit out.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The last I saw of all that part of my life was Burt, -still going it, and yelling out for the man who had -put up a trick on me to come out and get what was -coming to him. He had the pitchfork in his hand and -was swinging it around, and every now and then he -would make a kind of lunge at a tree or something, he -was so mad through, and there was no one else in -<span class='pageno' id='Page_228'>228</span>sight at all. And Burt didn’t even see me cutting out -along the fence through a gate and down the hill and -out of the race horse and the tramp life for the rest -of my days.</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_229'>229</span><span class='large'>MILK BOTTLES</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_231'>231</span> - <h2 class='c008'>MILK BOTTLES</h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>I LIVED, during that summer, in a large room on the -top floor of an old house on the North Side in -Chicago. It was August and the night was hot. -Until after midnight I sat—the sweat trickling down -my back—under a lamp, laboring to feel my way into -the lives of the fanciful people who were trying also -to live in the tale on which I was at work.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a hopeless affair.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I became involved in the efforts of the shadowy -people and they in turn became involved in the fact -of the hot uncomfortable room, in the fact that, -although it was what the farmers of the Middle West -call “good corn-growing weather” it was plain hell to -be alive in Chicago. Hand in hand the shadowy -people of my fanciful world and myself groped our -way through a forest in which the leaves had all been -burned off the trees. The hot ground burned the -shoes off our feet. We were striving to make our -way through the forest and into some cool beautiful -city. The fact is, as you will clearly understand, I was -a little off my head.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When I gave up the struggle and got to my feet the -chairs in the room danced about. They also were -running aimlessly through a burning land and striving -to reach some mythical city. “I’d better get out of -here and go for a walk or go jump into the lake and -cool myself off,” I thought.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_232'>232</span>I went down out of my room and into the street. -On a lower floor of the house lived two burlesque -actresses who had just come in from their evening’s -work and who now sat in their room talking. As -I reached the street something heavy whirled past my -head and broke on the stone pavement. A white -liquid spurted over my clothes and the voice of one -of the actresses could be heard coming from the one -lighted room of the house. “Oh, hell! We live such -damned lives, we do, and we work in such a town! A -dog is better off! And now they are going to take -booze away from us too! I come home from working -in that hot theatre on a hot night like this and -what do I see—a half-filled bottle of spoiled milk -standing on a window sill!</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I won’t stand it! I got to smash everything!” -she cried.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I walked eastward from my house. From the -northwestern end of the city great hordes of men -women and children had come to spend the night out -of doors, by the shore of the lake. It was stifling hot -there too and the air was heavy with a sense of -struggle. On a few hundred acres of flat land, that -had formerly been a swamp, some two million people -were fighting for the peace and quiet of sleep and not -getting it. Out of the half darkness, beyond the little -strip of park land at the water’s edge, the huge empty -houses of Chicago’s fashionable folk made a greyish-blue -blot against the sky. “Thank the gods,” I -thought, “there are some people who can get out of -here, who can go to the mountains or the seashore or -to Europe.” I stumbled in the half darkness over -the legs of a woman who was lying and trying to sleep -<span class='pageno' id='Page_233'>233</span>on the grass. A baby lay beside her and when she -sat up it began to cry. I muttered an apology and -stepped aside and as I did so my foot struck a half-filled -milk bottle and I knocked it over, the milk -running out on the grass. “Oh, I’m sorry. Please -forgive me,” I cried. “Never mind,” the woman -answered, “the milk is sour.”</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>He is a tall stoop-shouldered man with prematurely -greyed hair and works as a copy writer in an advertising -agency in Chicago—an agency where I also -have sometimes been employed—and on that night in -August I met him, walking with quick eager strides -along the shore of the lake and past the tired petulant -people. He did not see me at first and I wondered at -the evidence of life in him when everyone else seemed -half dead; but a street lamp hanging over a nearby -roadway threw its light down upon my face and he -pounced. “Here you, come up to my place,” he cried -sharply. “I’ve got something to show you. I was -on my way down to see you. That’s where I was -going,” he lied as he hurried me along.</p> - -<p class='c006'>We went to his apartment on a street leading back -from the lake and the park. German, Polish, Italian -and Jewish families, equipped with soiled blankets -and the ever-present half-filled bottles of milk, had -come prepared to spend the night out of doors; but -the American families in the crowd were giving up the -struggle to find a cool spot and a little stream of them -trickled along the sidewalks, going back to hot beds -in the hot houses.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was past one o’clock and my friend’s apartment -was disorderly as well as hot. He explained that his -<span class='pageno' id='Page_234'>234</span>wife, with their two children, had gone home to visit -her mother on a farm near Springfield, Illinois.</p> - -<p class='c006'>We took off our coats and sat down. My friend’s -thin cheeks were flushed and his eyes shone. “You -know—well—you see,” he began and then hesitated -and laughed like an embarrassed schoolboy. “Well -now,” he began again, “I’ve long been wanting to -write something real, something besides advertisements. -I suppose I’m silly but that’s the way I am. -It’s been my dream to write something stirring and -big. I suppose it’s the dream of a lot of advertising -writers, eh? Now look here—don’t you go laughing. -I think I’ve done it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He explained that he had written something concerning -Chicago, the capital and heart, as he said, of -the whole Central West. He grew angry. “People -come here from the East or from farms, or from little -holes of towns like I came from and they think it -smart to run Chicago into the ground,” he declared. -“I thought I’d show ’em up,” he added, jumping up -and walking nervously about the room.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He handed me many sheets of paper covered with -hastily scrawled words, but I protested and asked him -to read it aloud. He did, standing with his face -turned away from me. There was a quiver in his -voice. The thing he had written concerned some -mythical town I had never seen. He called it -Chicago, but in the same breath spoke of great streets -flaming with color, ghostlike buildings flung up into -night skies and a river, running down a path of gold -into the boundless West. It was the city, I told -myself, I and the people of my story had been trying -to find earlier on that same evening, when because of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_235'>235</span>the heat I went a little off my head and could not work -any more. The people of the city, he had written -about, were a cool-headed, brave people, marching -forward to some spiritual triumph, the promise of -which was inherent in the physical aspects of the -town.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now I am one who, by the careful cultivation of -certain traits in my character, have succeeded in building -up the more brutal side of my nature, but I cannot -knock women and children down in order to get -aboard Chicago street-cars, nor can I tell an author to -his face that I think his work is rotten.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You’re all right, Ed. You’re great. You’ve -knocked out a regular soc-dolager of a masterpiece -here. Why you sound as good as Henry Mencken -writing about Chicago as the literary centre of -America, and you’ve lived in Chicago and he never -did. The only thing I can see you’ve missed is -a little something about the stockyards, and you -can put that in later,” I added and prepared to depart.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“What’s this?” I asked, picking up a half-dozen -sheets of paper that lay on the floor by my chair. -I read it eagerly. And when I had finished reading -it he stammered and apologized and then, stepping -across the room, jerked the sheets out of my hand and -threw them out at an open window. “I wish you -hadn’t seen that. It’s something else I wrote about -Chicago,” he explained. He was flustered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“You see the night was so hot, and, down at the -office, I had to write a condensed-milk advertisement, -just as I was sneaking away to come home and work on -this other thing, and the street-car was so crowded -<span class='pageno' id='Page_236'>236</span>and the people stank so, and when I finally got home -here—the wife being gone—the place was a mess. -Well, I couldn’t write and I was sore. It’s been my -chance, you see, the wife and kids being gone and the -house being quiet. I went for a walk. I think I went -a little off my head. Then I came home and wrote -that stuff I’ve just thrown out of the window.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He grew cheerful again. “Oh, well—it’s all right. -Writing that fool thing stirred me up and enabled me -to write this other stuff, this real stuff I showed you -first, about Chicago.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so I went home and to bed, having in this odd -way stumbled upon another bit of the kind of writing -that is—for better or worse—really presenting the -lives of the people of these towns and cities—sometimes -in prose, sometimes in stirring colorful song. -It was the kind of thing Mr. Sandburg or Mr. -Masters might have done after an evening’s walk on a -hot night in, say West Congress Street in Chicago.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The thing I had read of Ed’s, centred about a half-filled -bottle of spoiled milk standing dim in the moonlight -on a window sill. There had been a moon -earlier on that August evening, a new moon, a thin -crescent golden streak in the sky. What had happened -to my friend, the advertising writer, was -something like this—I figured it all out as I lay sleepless -in bed after our talk.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I am sure I do not know whether or not it is true -that all advertising writers and newspaper men, want -to do other kinds of writing, but Ed did all right. The -August day that had preceded the hot night had been -a hard one for him to get through. All day he had -been wanting to be at home in his quiet apartment -<span class='pageno' id='Page_237'>237</span>producing literature, rather than sitting in an office -and writing advertisements. In the late afternoon, -when he had thought his desk cleared for the day, the -boss of the copy writers came and ordered him to -write a page advertisement for the magazines on the -subject of condensed milk. “We got a chance to get -a new account if we can knock out some crackerjack -stuff in a hurry,” he said. “I’m sorry to have to put -it up to you on such a rotten hot day, Ed, but we’re -up against it. Let’s see if you’ve got some of the -old pep in you. Get down to hardpan now and knock -out something snappy and unusual before you go -home.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ed had tried. He put away the thoughts he had -been having about the city beautiful—the glowing -city of the plains—and got right down to business. -He thought about milk, milk for little children, the -Chicagoans of the future, milk that would produce a -little cream to put in the coffee of advertising writers -in the morning, sweet fresh milk to keep all his -brother and sister Chicagoans robust and strong. -What Ed really wanted was a long cool drink of -something with a kick in it, but he tried to make -himself think he wanted a drink of milk. He gave -himself over to thoughts of milk, milk condensed and -yellow, milk warm from the cows his father owned -when he was a boy—his mind launched a little boat -and he set out on a sea of milk.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Out of it all he got what is called an original advertisement. -The sea of milk on which he sailed -became a mountain of cans of condensed milk, and -out of that fancy he got his idea. He made a crude -sketch for a picture showing wide rolling green fields -<span class='pageno' id='Page_238'>238</span>with white farm houses. Cows grazed on the green -hills and at one side of the picture a barefooted boy -was driving a herd of Jersey cows out of the sweet -fair land and down a lane into a kind of funnel at the -small end of which was a tin of the condensed milk. -Over the picture he put a heading: “The health and -freshness of a whole countryside is condensed into one -can of Whitney-Wells Condensed Milk.” The head -copy writer said it was a humdinger.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then Ed went home. He wanted to begin -writing about the city beautiful at once and so didn’t -go out to dinner, but fished about in the ice chest and -found some cold meat out of which he made himself -a sandwich. Also, he poured himself a glass of milk, -but it was sour. “Oh, damn!” he said and poured it -into the kitchen sink.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As Ed explained to me later, he sat down and tried -to begin writing his real stuff at once, but he -couldn’t seem to get into it. The last hour in the -office, the trip home in the hot smelly car, and the -taste of the sour milk in his mouth had jangled his -nerves. The truth is that Ed has a rather sensitive, -finely balanced nature, and it had got mussed up.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He took a walk and tried to think, but his mind -wouldn’t stay where he wanted it to. Ed is now a -man of nearly forty and on that night his mind ran -back to his young manhood in the city,—and stayed -there. Like other boys who had become grown men -in Chicago, he had come to the city from a farm at -the edge of a prairie town, and like all such town and -farm boys, he had come filled with vague dreams.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What things he had hungered to do and be in -<span class='pageno' id='Page_239'>239</span>Chicago! What he had done you can fancy. For -one thing he had got himself married and now lived -in the apartment on the North Side. To give a real -picture of his life during the twelve or fifteen years -that had slipped away since he was a young man would -involve writing a novel, and that is not my purpose.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Anyway, there he was in his room—come home -from his walk—and it was hot and quiet and he could -not manage to get into his masterpiece. How still it -was in the apartment with the wife and children away! -His mind stayed on the subject of his youth in the -city.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He remembered a night of his young manhood -when he had gone out to walk, just as he did on that -August evening. Then his life wasn’t complicated by -the fact of the wife and children and he lived alone -in his room; but something had got on his nerves -then, too. On that evening long ago he grew restless -in his room and went out to walk. It was -summer and first he went down by the river where -ships were being loaded and then to a crowded park -where girls and young fellows walked about.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He grew bold and spoke to a woman who sat alone -on a park bench. She let him sit beside her and, -because it was dark and she was silent, he began to -talk. The night had made him sentimental. -“Human beings are such hard things to get at. I -wish I could get close to someone,” he said. “Oh, -you go on! What you doing? You ain’t trying -to kid someone?” asked the woman.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ed jumped up and walked away. He went into a -long street lined with dark silent buildings and then -<span class='pageno' id='Page_240'>240</span>stopped and looked about. What he wanted was to -believe that in the apartment buildings were people -who lived intense eager lives, who had great dreams, -who were capable of great adventures. “They are -really only separated from me by the brick walls,” was -what he told himself on that night.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was then that the milk bottle theme first got hold -of him. He went into an alleyway to look at the -backs of the apartment buildings and, on that evening -also, there was a moon. Its light fell upon a long -row of half-filled bottles standing on window sills.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Something within him went a little sick and he -hurried out of the alleyway and into the street. A -man and woman walked past him and stopped before -the entrance to one of the buildings. Hoping they -might be lovers, he concealed himself in the entrance -to another building to listen to their conversation.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The couple turned out to be a man and wife and -they were quarreling. Ed heard the woman’s voice -saying: “You come in here. You can’t put that -over on me. You say you just want to take a walk, -but I know you. You want to go out and blow in -some money. What I’d like to know is why you don’t -loosen up a little for me.”</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>That is the story of what happened to Ed, when, as -a young man, he went to walk in the city in the -evening, and when he had become a man of forty and -went out of his house wanting to dream and to -think of a city beautiful, much the same sort of -thing happened again. Perhaps the writing of the -condensed milk advertisement and the taste of the sour -<span class='pageno' id='Page_241'>241</span>milk he had got out of the ice box had something to do -with his mood; but, anyway, milk bottles, like a refrain -in a song, got into his brain. They seemed to sit and -mock at him from the windows of all the buildings in -all the streets, and when he turned to look at people, -he met the crowds from the West and the Northwest -Sides going to the park and the lake. At the head -of each little group of people marched a woman who -carried a milk bottle in her hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so, on that August night, Ed went home angry -and disturbed, and in anger wrote of his city. Like -the burlesque actress in my own house he wanted to -smash something, and, as milk bottles were in his -mind, he wanted to smash milk bottles. “I could -grasp the neck of a milk bottle. It fits the hand -so neatly. I could kill a man or woman with such a -thing,” he thought desperately.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He wrote, you see, the five or six sheets I had read -in that mood and then felt better. And after that he -wrote about the ghostlike buildings flung into the sky -by the hands of a brave adventurous people and -about the river that runs down a path of gold, and -into the boundless West.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As you have already concluded, the city he described -in his masterpiece was lifeless, but the city he, in a -queer way, expressed in what he wrote about the milk -bottle could not be forgotten. It frightened you a -little but there it was and in spite of his anger or perhaps -because of it, a lovely singing quality had got into -the thing. In those few scrawled pages the miracle -had been worked. I was a fool not to have put the -sheets into my pocket. When I went down out of his -<span class='pageno' id='Page_242'>242</span>apartment that evening I did look for them in a dark -alleyway, but they had become lost in a sea of rubbish -that had leaked over the tops of a long row of tin -ash cans that stood at the foot of a stairway leading -from the back doors of the apartments above.</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_243'>243</span><span class='large'>THE SAD HORN BLOWERS</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_245'>245</span> - <h2 class='c008'>THE SAD HORN BLOWERS</h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>IT had been a disastrous year in Will’s family. -The Appletons lived on one of the outlying -streets of Bidwell and Will’s father was a house -painter. In early February, when there was deep -snow on the ground, and a cold bitter wind blew about -the houses, Will’s mother suddenly died. He was -seventeen years old then, and rather a big fellow for -his age.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The mother’s death happened abruptly, without -warning, as a sleepy man kills a fly with the hand in a -warm room on a summer day. On one February day -there she was coming in at the kitchen door of the -Appleton’s house, from hanging the wash out on the -line in the back yard, and warming her long hands, -covered with blue veins, by holding them over the -kitchen stove—and then looking about at the children -with that half-hidden, shy smile of hers—there she -was like that, as the three children had always known -her, and then, but a week later, she was cold in death -and lying in her coffin in the place vaguely spoken of -in the family as “the other room.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>After that, and when summer came and the family -was trying hard to adjust itself to the new conditions, -there came another disaster. Up to the very moment -when it happened it looked as though Tom Appleton, -the house painter, was in for a prosperous season. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_246'>246</span>The two boys, Fred and Will, were to be his assistants -that year.</p> - -<p class='c006'>To be sure Fred was only fifteen, but he was one -to lend a quick alert hand at almost any undertaking. -For example, when there was a job of paper hanging -to be done, he was the fellow to spread on the paste, -helped by an occasional sharp word from his father.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Down off his step ladder Tom Appleton hopped -and ran to the long board where the paper was -spread out. He liked this business of having two -assistants about. Well, you see, one had the feeling -of being at the head of something, of managing -affairs. He grabbed the paste brush out of Fred’s -hand. “Don’t spare the paste,” he shouted. “Slap -her on like this. Spread her out—so. Do be sure -to catch all the edges.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was all very warm, and comfortable, and nice, -working at paper-hanging jobs in the houses on the -March and April days. When it was cold or rainy -outside, stoves were set up in the new houses being -built, and in houses already inhabited the folks moved -out of the rooms to be papered, spread newspapers on -the floors over the carpets and put sheets over the -furniture left in the rooms. Outside it rained or -snowed, but inside it was warm and cosy.</p> - -<p class='c006'>To the Appletons it seemed, at the time, as though -the death of the mother had drawn them closer -together. Both Will and Fred felt it, perhaps Will -the more consciously. The family was rather in the -hole financially—the mother’s funeral had cost a good -deal of money, and Fred was being allowed to stay -out of school. That pleased him. When they -worked in a house where there were other children, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_247'>247</span>they came home from school in the late afternoon and -looked in through the door to where Fred was spreading -paste over the sheets of wall paper. He made a -slapping sound with the brush, but did not look at -them. “Ah, go on, you kids,” he thought. This -was a man’s business he was up to. Will and his -father were on the step ladders, putting the sheets -carefully into place on the ceilings and walls. “Does -she match down there?” the father asked sharply. -“Oh-kay, go ahead,” Will replied. When the sheet -was in place Fred ran and rolled out the laps with a -little wooden roller. How jealous the kids of the -house were. It would be a long time before any of -them could stay out of school and do a man’s work, as -Fred was doing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then in the evening, walking homeward, it was -nice, too. Will and Fred had been provided with -suits of white overalls that were now covered with -dried paste and spots of paint and looked really -professional. They kept them on and drew their -overcoats on over them. Their hands were stiff with -paste, too. On Main Street the lights were lighted, -and other men passing called to Tom Appleton. He -was called Tony in the town. “Hello, Tony!” some -storekeeper shouted. It was rather too bad, Will -thought that his father hadn’t more dignity. He was -too boyish. Young boys growing up and merging -into manhood do not fancy fathers being too boyish. -Tom Appleton played a cornet in the Bidwell Silver -Cornet Band and didn’t do the job very well—rather -made a mess of it, when there was a bit of solo work -to be done—but was so well liked by the other -members of the band that no one said anything. And -<span class='pageno' id='Page_248'>248</span>then he talked so grandly about music, and about the -lip of a cornet player, that everyone thought he must -be all right. “He has an education. I tell you -what, Tony Appleton knows a lot. He’s a smart -one,” the other members of the band were always -saying to each other.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well, the devil! A man should grow up after -a time, perhaps. When a man’s wife had died but -such a short time before, it was just as well to walk -through Main Street with more dignity—for the time -being, anyway.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom Appleton had a way of winking at men he -passed in the street, as though to say, “Well, now -I’ve got my kids with me, and we won’t say anything, -but didn’t you and I have the very hell of a time last -Wednesday night, eh? Mum’s the word, old pal. -Keep everything quiet. There are gay times ahead -for you and me. We’ll cut loose, you bet, when you -and me are out together next time.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will grew a little angry about something he -couldn’t exactly understand. His father stopped in -front of Jake Mann’s meat market. “You kids go -along home. Tell Kate I am bringing a steak. I’ll -be right on your heels,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He would get the steak and then he would go into -Alf Geiger’s saloon and get a good, stiff drink of -whisky. There would be no one now to bother -about smelling it on his breath when he got home -later. Not that his wife had ever said anything -when he wanted a drink—but you know how a man -feels when there’s a woman in the house. “Why, -hello, Bildad Smith—how’s the old game leg? Come -on, have a little nip with me. Were you on Main -<span class='pageno' id='Page_249'>249</span>Street last band meeting night and did you hear us -do that new gallop? It’s a humdinger. Turkey -White did that trombone solo simply grand.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will and Fred had got beyond Main Street now, -and Will took a small pipe with a curved stem out of -his overcoat pocket and lighted it. “I’ll bet I could -hang a ceiling without father there at all, if only -some one would give me a chance,” he said. Now -that his father was no longer present to embarrass him -with his lack of dignity, he felt comfortable and -happy. Also, it was something to be able to smoke -a pipe without discomfiture. When mother was alive -she was always kissing a fellow when he came home -at night, and then one had to be mighty careful about -smoking. Now it was different. One had become a -man and one accepted manhood with its responsibilities. -“Don’t it make you sick at all?” Fred asked. -“Huh, naw!” Will answered contemptuously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The new disaster to the family came late in August, -just when the fall work was all ahead, and the -prospects good too. A. P. Wrigley, the jeweler, had -just built a big, new house and barn on a farm he had -bought the year before. It was a mile out of town -on the Turner pike.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That would be a job to set the Appletons up for -the winter. The house was to have three coats outside, -with all the work inside, and the barn was to -have two coats—and the two boys were to work with -their father and were to have regular wages.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And just to think of the work to be done inside that -house made Tom Appleton’s mouth water. He -talked of it all the time, and in the evenings liked to -sit in a chair in the Appleton’s front yard, get some -<span class='pageno' id='Page_250'>250</span>neighbor over, and then go on about it. How he -slung house-painter’s lingo about! The doors and -cupboards were to be grained in imitation of -weathered oak, the front door was to be curly maple, -and there was to be black walnut, too. Well, there -wasn’t another painter in the town could imitate all -the various kinds of wood as Tom could. Just show -him the wood, or tell him—you didn’t have to show -him anything. Name what you wanted—that was -enough. To be sure a man had to have the right -tools, but give him the tools and then just go off and -leave everything to him. What the devil! When -A. P. Wrigley gave him this new house to do, he -showed he was a man who knew what he was -doing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As for the practical side of the matter, everyone -in the family knew that the Wrigley job meant a safe -winter. There wasn’t any speculation, as when taking -work on the contract plan. All work was to be -paid for by the day, and the boys were to have their -wages, too. It meant new suits for the boys, a new -dress and maybe a hat for Kate, the house rent paid -all winter, potatoes in the cellar. It meant safety—that -was the truth.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the evenings, sometimes, Tom got out his tools -and looked at them. Brushes and graining tools were -spread out on the kitchen table, and Kate and the -boys gathered about. It was Fred’s job to see that -all brushes were kept clean and, one by one, Tom ran -his fingers over them, and then worked them back and -forth over the palm of his hand. “This is a camel’s -hair,” he said, picking a soft fine-haired brush up and -handing it to Will. “I paid four dollars and eighty -<span class='pageno' id='Page_251'>251</span>cents for that.” Will also worked it back and forth -over the palm of his hand, just as his father had done -and then Kate picked it up and did the same thing. -“It’s as soft as the cat’s back,” she said. Will -thought that rather silly. He looked forward to the -day when he would have brushes ladders and pots of -his own, and could show them off before people and -through his mind went words he had picked up from -his father’s talk. One spoke of the “heel” and “toe” -of a brush. The way to put on varnish was to “flow” -it on. Will knew all the words of his trade now and -didn’t have to talk like one of the kind of muts who -just does, now and then, a jack job of house -painting.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On the fatal evening a surprise party was held for -Mr. and Mrs. Bardshare, who lived just across the -road from the Appletons on Piety Hill. That was -a chance for Tom Appleton. In any such affair he -liked to have a hand in the arrangements. “Come -on now, we’ll make her go with a bang. They’ll be -setting in the house after supper, and Bill Bardshare -will be in his stocking feet, and Ma Bardshare washing -the dishes. They won’t be expecting nothing, and -we’ll slip up, all dressed in our Sundey clothes, and let -out a whoop. I’ll bring my cornet and let out a blast -on that too. ‘What in Sam Hill is that?’ Say, I can -just see Bill Bardshare jumping up and beginning to -swear, thinking we’re a gang of kids come to bother -him, like Hallowe’en, or something like that. You -just get the grub, and I’ll make the coffee over to my -house and bring it over hot. I’ll get ahold of two big -pots and make a whooping lot of it.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the Appleton house all was in a flurry. Tom, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_252'>252</span>Will and Fred were painting a barn, three miles out -of town, but they knocked off work at four and Tom -got the farmer’s son to drive them to town. He himself -had to wash up, take a bath in a tub in the woodshed, -shave and everything—just like Sunday. He -looked more like a boy than a man when he got all -dogged up.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then the family had to have supper, over and -done with, a little after six, and Tom didn’t dare go -outside the house until dark. It wouldn’t do to have -the Bardshares see him so fixed up. It was their wedding -anniversary, and they might suspect something. -He kept trotting about the house, and occasionally -looked out of the front window toward the Bardshare -house. “You kid, you,” Kate said, laughing. Sometimes -she talked up to him like that, and after she said -it he went upstairs, and getting out his cornet blew on -it, so softly, you could hardly hear him downstairs. -When he did that you couldn’t tell how badly he -played, as when the band was going it on Main Street -and he had to carry a passage right through alone. -He sat in the room upstairs thinking. When Kate -laughed at him it was like having his wife back, alive. -There was the same shy sarcastic gleam in her eyes.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Well, it was the first time he had been out anywhere -since his wife had died, and there might be some -people think it would be better if he stayed at home -now—look better, that is. When he had shaved -he had cut his chin, and the blood had come. After -a time he went downstairs and stood before the -looking-glass, hung above the kitchen sink, and dabbed -at the spot with the wet end of a towel.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will and Fred stood about.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_253'>253</span>Will’s mind was working—perhaps Kate’s, too. -“Was there—could it be?—well, at such a party—only -older people invited—there were always two or -three widow women thrown in for good measure, as it -were.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kate didn’t want any woman fooling around her -kitchen. She was twenty years old.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“And it was just as well not to have any monkey-shine -talk about motherless children,” such as Tom -might indulge in. Even Fred thought that. There -was a little wave of resent against Tom in the house. -It was a wave that didn’t make much noise, just crept, -as it were softly, up a low sandy beach.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Widow women went to such places, and then of -course, people were always going home in couples.” -Both Kate and Will had the same picture in mind. -It was late at night and in fancy they were both -peeking out at front upper windows of the Appleton -house. There were all the people coming out at the -front door of the Bardshare house, and Bill Bardshare -was standing there and holding the door open. -He had managed to sneak away during the evening, -and got his Sunday clothes on all right.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And the couples were coming out. “There was -that woman now, that widow, Mrs. Childers.” She -had been married twice, both husbands dead now, and -she lived away over Maumee Pike way. “What -makes a woman of her age want to act silly like that? -It is the very devil how a woman can keep looking -young and handsome after she has buried two men. -There are some who say that, even when her last -husband was alive—”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But whether that’s true or not, what makes her -<span class='pageno' id='Page_254'>254</span>want to act and talk silly that way?” Now her face -is turned to the light and she is saying to old Bill -Bardshare, “Sleep light, sleep tight, sweet dreams to -you tonight.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“It’s only what one may expect when one’s father -lacks a sense of dignity. There is that old fool -Tom now, hopping out of the Bardshare house like a -kid, and running right up to Mrs. Childers. ‘May -I see you home?’ he is saying, while all the others -are laughing and smiling knowingly. It makes one’s -blood run cold to see such a thing.”</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>“Well, fill up the pots. Let’s get the old coffee -pots started, Kate. The gang’ll be creeping along up -the street pretty soon now,” Tom shouted self-consciously, -skipping busily about and breaking the -little circle of thoughts in the house.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What happened was that—just as darkness came -and when all the people were in the front yard -before the Appleton house—Tom went and got it into -his head to try to carry his cornet and two big coffee -pots at the same time. Why didn’t he leave the -coffee until later? There the people were in the dusk -outside the house, and there was that kind of low -whispering and tittering that always goes on at such -a time—and then Tom stuck his head out at the door -and shouted, “Let her go!”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then he must have gone quite crazy, for he ran -back into the kitchen and grabbed both of the big coffee -pots, hanging on to his cornet at the same time. Of -course he stumbled in the darkness in the road outside -and fell, and of course all of that boiling hot coffee -had to spill right over him.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_255'>255</span>It was terrible. The flood of boiling hot coffee -made steam under his thick clothes, and there he lay -screaming with the pain of it. What a confusion! -He just writhed and screamed, and the people ran -’round and ’round in the half darkness like crazy -things. Was it some kind of joke the crazy fellow -was up to at the last minute! Tom always was such -a devil to think up things. “You should see him -down at Alf Geigers, sometimes on Saturday nights, -imitating the way Joe Douglas got out on a limb, and -then sawed it off between himself and the tree, and the -look on Joe’s face when the limb began to crack. It -would make you laugh until you screamed to see him -imitate that.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“But what now? My God!” There was Kate -Appleton trying to tear her father’s clothes off, and -crying and whimpering, and young Will Appleton -knocking people aside. “Say, the man’s hurt! -What’s happened? My God! Run for the doctor, -someone. He’s burnt, something awful!”</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Early in October Will Appleton sat in the smoking -car of a day train that runs between Cleveland and -Buffalo. His destination was Erie, Pennsylvania, -and he had got on the passenger train at Ashtabula, -Ohio. Just why his destination was Erie he couldn’t -very easily have explained. He was going there anyway, -going to get a job in a factory or on the docks -there. Perhaps it was just a quirk of the mind that -had made him decide upon Erie. It wasn’t as big as -Cleveland or Buffalo or Toledo or Chicago, or any -one of a lot of other cities to which he might have -gone, looking for work.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_256'>256</span>At Ashtabula he came into the car and slid into a -seat beside a little old man. His own clothes were -wet and wrinkled, and his hair, eyebrows and ears -were black with coal dust.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At the moment, there was in him a kind of bitter -dislike of his native town, Bidwell. “Sakes alive, a -man couldn’t get any work there—not in the winter.” -After the accident to his father, and the spoiling of -all the family plans, he had managed to find employment -during September on the farms. He worked -for a time with a threshing crew, and then got work -cutting corn. It was all right. “A man made a -dollar a day and board, and as he wore overalls all -the time, he didn’t wear out no clothes. Still and all, -the time when a fellow could make any money in Bidwell -was past now, and the burns on his father’s -body had gone pretty deep, and he might be laid up for -months.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will had just made up his mind one day, after he -had tramped about all morning from farm to farm -without finding work, and then he had gone home and -told Kate. “Dang it all,” he hadn’t intended lighting -out right away—had thought he would stay about for -a week or two, maybe. Well, he would go up town -in the evening, dressed up in his best clothes, and -stand around. “Hello, Harry, what you going to do -this winter? I thought I would run over to Erie, -Pennsylvania. I got an offer in a factory over there. -Well, so long—if I don’t see you again.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Kate hadn’t seemed to understand, had seemed -in an almighty hurry about getting him off. It was a -shame she couldn’t have a little more heart. Still, -Kate was all right—worried a good deal no doubt. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_257'>257</span>After their talk she had just said, “Yes, I think that’s -best, you had better go,” and had gone to change the -bandages on Tom’s legs and back. The father was -sitting among pillows in a rocking chair in the front -room.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will went up stairs and put his things, overalls and -a few shirts, into a bundle. Then he went down -stairs and took a walk—went out along a road that -led into the country, and stopped on a bridge. It -was near a place where he and other kids used to come -swimming on summer afternoons. A thought had -come into his head. There was a young fellow -worked in Pawsey’s jewelry store came to see Kate -sometimes on Sunday evenings and they went off to -walk together. “Did Kate want to get married?” If -she did his going away now might be for good. He -hadn’t thought about that before. On that afternoon, -and quite suddenly, all the world outside of -Bidwell seemed huge and terrible to him and a few -secret tears came into his eyes, but he managed to -choke them back. For just a moment his mouth -opened and closed queerly, like the mouth of a fish, -when you take it out of the water and hold it in your -hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When he returned to the house at supper time -things were better. He had left his bundle on a chair -in the kitchen and Kate had wrapped it more carefully, -and had put in a number of things he had forgotten. -His father called him into the front room. -“It’s all right, Will. Every young fellow ought to -take a whirl out in the world. I did it myself, at -about your age,” Tom had said, a little pompously.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then supper was served, and there was apple pie. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_258'>258</span>That was a luxury the Appletons had perhaps better -not have indulged in at that time, but Will knew Kate -had baked it during the afternoon,—it might be as a -way of showing him how she felt. Eating two large -slices had rather set him up.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then, before he realized how the time was slipping -away, ten o’clock had come, and it was time for -him to go. He was going to beat his way out of town -on a freight train, and there was a local going toward -Cleveland at ten o’clock. Fred had gone off to bed, -and his father was asleep in the rocking chair in the -front room. He had picked up his bundle, and Kate -had put on her hat. “I’m going to see you off,” she -had said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will and Kate had walked in silence along the -streets to where he was to wait, in the shadow of -Whaley’s Warehouse, until the freight came along. -Later when he thought back over that evening he was -glad, that although she was three years older, he was -taller than Kate.</p> - -<p class='c006'>How vividly everything that happened later stayed -in his mind. After the train came, and he had -crawled into an empty coal car, he sat hunched up in a -corner. Overhead he could see the sky, and when the -train stopped at towns there was always the chance -the car in which he was concealed would be shoved -into a siding, and left. The brakemen walked along -the tracks beside the car shouting to each other and -their lanterns made little splashes of light in the darkness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“How black the sky!” After a time it began to -rain. “His suit would be in a pretty mess. After all -a fellow couldn’t come right out and ask his sister if -<span class='pageno' id='Page_259'>259</span>she intended to marry. If Kate married, then his -father would also marry again. It was all right for -a young woman like Kate, but for a man of forty to -think of marriage—the devil! Why didn’t Tom -Appleton have more dignity? After all, Fred was -only a kid and a new woman coming in, to be his -mother—that might be all right for a kid.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>All during that night on the freight train Will had -thought a good deal about marriage—rather vague -thoughts—coming and going like birds flying in and -out of a bush. It was all a matter—this business of -man and woman—that did not touch him very closely—not -yet. The matter of having a home—that was -something else. A home was something at a fellow’s -back. When one went off to work all week at some -farm, and at night maybe went into a strange room to -sleep, there was always the Appleton house—floating -as it were, like a picture at the back of the mind—the -Appleton house, and Kate moving about. She had -been up town, and now had come home and was going -up the stairs. Tom Appleton was fussing about in -the kitchen. He liked a bite before he went off to -bed for the night but presently he would go up stairs -and into his own room. He liked to smoke his pipe -before he slept and sometimes he got out his cornet -and blew two or three soft sad notes.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>At Cleveland Will had crawled off of the freight -train and had gone across the city in a street-car. -Workingmen were just going to the factories and he -passed among them unnoticed. If his clothes were -crumpled and soiled, their clothes weren’t so fine. -The workingmen were all silent, looking at the car -<span class='pageno' id='Page_260'>260</span>floor, or out at the car windows. Long rows of factories -stood along the streets through which the car -moved.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had been lucky, and had caught another freight -out of a place called Collinswood at eight, but at -Ashtabula had made up his mind it would be better to -drop off the freight and take a passenger train. If -he was to live in Erie it would be just as well to arrive, -looking more like a gentleman and having paid his -fare.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>As he sat in the smoking car of the train he did not -feel much like a gentleman. The coal dust had got -into his hair and the rain had washed it in long dirty -streaks down over his face. His clothes were badly -soiled and wanted cleaning and brushing and the -paper package, in which his overalls and shirts were -tied, had become torn and dirty.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Outside the train window the sky was grey, and no -doubt the night was going to turn cold. Perhaps -there would be a cold rain.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was an odd thing about the towns through which -the train kept passing—all of the houses in all the -towns looked cold and forbidding. “Dang it all.” -In Bidwell, before the night when his father got so -badly burned being such a fool about old Bill Bardshare’s -party—all the houses had always seemed -warm cozy places. When one was alone, one walked -along the streets whistling. At night warm lights -shone through the windows of the houses. “John -Wyatt, the drayman, lives in that house. His wife -has a wen on her neck. In that barn over there old -Doctor Musgrave keeps his bony old white horse. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_261'>261</span>The horse looks like the devil, but you bet he can go.”</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Will squirmed about on the car seat. The old man -who sat beside him was small, almost as small as Fred, -and he wore a queer-looking suit. The pants were -brown, and the coat checked, grey and black. There -was a small leather case on the floor at his feet.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Long before the man spoke Will knew what would -happen. It was bound to turn out that such a fellow -played a cornet. He was a man, old in years, but -there was no dignity in him. Will remembered his -father’s marchings through the main street of Bidwell -with the band. It was some great day, Fourth of -July, perhaps, and all the people were assembled and -there was Tony Appleton, making a show of blowing -his cornet at a great rate. Did all the people along -the street know how badly he played and was there a -kind of conspiracy, that kept grown men from laughing -at each other? In spite of the seriousness of his -own situation a smile crept over Will’s face.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The little man at his side smiled in return.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Well,” he began, not stopping for anything but -plunging headlong into a tale concerning some dissatisfaction -he felt with life, “well, you see before -you a man who is up against it, young fellow.” The -old man tried to laugh at his own words, but did not -make much of a success of it. His lip trembled. -“I got to go home like a dog, with my tail ’twixt my -legs,” he declared abruptly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The old man balanced back and forth between two -impulses. He had met a young man on a train, and -hungered for companionship and one got oneself in -with others by being jolly, a little gay perhaps. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_262'>262</span>When one met a stranger on a train one told a -story—“By the way, Mister, I heard a new one the -other day—perhaps you haven’t heard it? It’s about -the miner up in Alaska who hadn’t seen a woman for -years.” One began in that way, and then later perhaps, -spoke of oneself, and one’s affairs.</p> - -<p class='c006'>But the old man wanted to plunge at once into his -own story. He talked, saying sad discouraged words, -while his eyes kept smiling with a peculiar appealing -little smile. “If the words uttered by my lips annoy -or bore you, do not pay any attention to them. I am -really a jolly fellow although I am an old man, and -not of much use any more,” the eyes were saying. -The eyes were pale blue and watery. How strange -to see them set in the head of an old man. They belonged -in the head of a lost dog. The smile was not -really a smile. “Don’t kick me, young fellow. If -you can’t give me anything to eat, scratch my head. -At least show you are a fellow of good intentions. -I’ve been kicked about quite enough.” It was so -very evident the eyes were speaking a language of -their own.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will found himself smiling sympathetically. It -was true there was something dog-like in the little old -man and Will was pleased with himself for having so -quickly caught the sense of him. “One who can see -things with his eyes will perhaps get along all right -in the world, after all,” he thought. His thoughts -wandered away from the old man. In Bidwell there -was an old woman lived alone and owned a shepherd -dog. Every summer she decided to cut away the -dog’s coat, and then—at the last moment and after -she had in fact started the job—she changed her -<span class='pageno' id='Page_263'>263</span>mind. Well, she grasped a long pair of scissors -firmly in her hand and started on the dog’s flanks. -Her hand trembled a little. “Shall I go ahead, or -shall I stop?” After two minutes she gave up the -job. “It makes him look too ugly,” she thought, -justifying her timidity.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Later the hot days came, the dog went about with -his tongue hanging out and again the old woman took -the scissors in her hand. The dog stood patiently -waiting but, when she had cut a long wide furrow -through the thick hair of his back, she stopped again. -In a sense, and to her way of looking at the matter, -cutting away his splendid coat was like cutting away a -part of himself. She couldn’t go on. “Now there—that -made him look worse than ever,” she declared -to herself. With a determined air she put the scissors -away, and all summer the dog went about looking -a little puzzled and ashamed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will kept smiling and thinking of the old woman’s -dog and then looked again at his companion of the -train. The variegated suit the old man wore gave -him something of the air of the half-sheared shepherd -dog. Both had the same puzzled, ashamed air.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now Will had begun using the old man for his own -ends. There was something inside himself that -wanted facing, he didn’t want to face—not yet. -Ever since he had left home, in fact ever since that -day when he had come home from the country and -had told Kate of his intention to set out into the -world, he had been dodging something. If one -thought of the little old man, and of the half-sheared -dog, one did not have to think of oneself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>One thought of Bidwell on a summer afternoon. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_264'>264</span>There was the old woman, who owned the dog, -standing on the porch of her house, and the dog had -run down to the gate. In the winter, when his coat -had again fully grown, the dog would bark and make -a great fuss about a boy passing in the street but now -he started to bark and growl, and then stopped. “I -look like the devil, and I’m attracting unnecessary attention -to myself,” the dog seemed to have decided -suddenly. He ran furiously down to the gate, -opened his mouth to bark, and then, quite abruptly, -changed his mind and trotted back to the house with -his tail between his legs.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will kept smiling at his own thoughts. For the -first time since he had left Bidwell he felt quite -cheerful.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now the old man was telling a story of himself -and his life, but Will wasn’t listening. Within -the young man a cross-current of impulses had been -set up and he was like one standing silently in the -hallway of a house, and listening to two voices, talking -at a distance. The voices came from two widely -separated rooms of the house and one couldn’t make -up one’s mind to which voice to listen.</p> - -<p class='c006'>To be sure the old man was another cornet player -like his father—he was a horn blower. That was his -horn in the little worn leather case on the car -floor.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And after he had reached middle age, and after his -first wife had died, he had married again. He had a -little property then and, in a foolish moment, went -and made it all over to his second wife, who was -fifteen years younger than himself. She took the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_265'>265</span>money and bought a large house in the factory district -of Erie, and then began taking in boarders.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was the old man, feeling lost, of no account -in his own house. It just came about. One had to -think of the boarders—their wants had to be satisfied. -His wife had two sons, almost fully grown now, both -of whom worked in a factory.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Well, it was all right—everything on the square—the -sons paid board all right. Their wants had to -be thought of, too. He liked blowing his cornet a -while in the evenings, before he went to bed, but it -might disturb the others in the house. One got -rather desperate going about saying nothing, keeping -out of the way and he had tried getting work in a -factory himself, but they wouldn’t have him. His -grey hairs stood in his way, and so one night he had -just got out, had gone to Cleveland, where he had -hoped to get a job in a band, in a movie theatre -perhaps. Anyway it hadn’t turned out and now he -was going back to Erie and to his wife. He had -written and she had told him to come on home.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“They didn’t turn me down back there in Cleveland -because I’m old. It’s because my lip is no good any -more,” he explained. His shrunken old lip trembled -a little.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will kept thinking of the old woman’s dog. In -spite of himself, and when the old man’s lip trembled, -his lip also trembled.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What was the matter with him?</p> - -<p class='c006'>He stood in the hallway of a house hearing two -voices. Was he trying to close his ears to one of -them? Did the second voice, the one he had been -trying all day, and all the night before, not to hear, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_266'>266</span>did that have something to do with the end of his life -in the Appleton house at Bidwell? Was the voice -trying to taunt him, trying to tell him that now he -was a thing swinging in air, that there was no place to -put down his feet? Was he afraid? Of what was -he afraid? He had wanted so much to be a man, to -stand on his own feet and now what was the matter -with him? Was he afraid of manhood?</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was fighting desperately now. There were tears -in the old man’s eyes, and Will also began crying -silently and that was the one thing he felt he must not -do.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The old man talked on and on, telling the tale of -his troubles, but Will could not hear his words. The -struggle within was becoming more and more definite. -His mind clung to the life of his boyhood, to the life -in the Appleton house in Bidwell.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was Fred, standing in the field of his fancy -now, with just the triumphant look in his eyes that -came when other boys saw him doing a man’s work. A -whole series of pictures floated up before Will’s mind. -He and his father and Fred were painting a barn and -two farmer boys had come along a road and stood -looking at Fred, who was on a ladder, putting on -paint. They shouted, but Fred wouldn’t answer. -There was a certain air Fred had—he slapped on the -paint, and then turning his head, spat on the ground. -Tom Appleton’s eyes looked into Will’s and there was -a smile playing about the corners of the father’s eyes -and the son’s eyes too. The father and his oldest son -were like two men, two workmen, having a delicious -little secret between them. They were both looking -<span class='pageno' id='Page_267'>267</span>lovingly at Fred. “Bless him! He thinks he’s a -man already.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now Tom Appleton was standing in the kitchen -of his house, and his brushes were laid out on the -kitchen table. Kate was rubbing a brush back and -forth over the palm of her hand. “It’s as soft as the -cat’s back,” she was saying.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Something gripped at Will’s throat. As in a dream, -he saw his sister Kate walking off along the street on -Sunday evening with that young fellow who -clerked in the jewelry store. They were going to -church. Her being with him meant—well, it perhaps -meant the beginning of a new home—it meant the end -of the Appleton home.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will started to climb out of the seat beside the old -man in the smoking car of the train. It had grown -almost dark in the car. The old man was still -talking, telling his tale over and over. “I might as -well not have any home at all,” he was saying. Was -Will about to begin crying aloud on a train, in a -strange place, before many strange men. He tried -to speak, to make some commonplace remark, but -his mouth only opened and closed like the mouth of a -fish taken out of the water.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now the train had run into a train shed, and it -was quite dark. Will’s hand clutched convulsively -into the darkness and alighted upon the old man’s -shoulder.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then suddenly, the train had stopped, and the two -stood half embracing each other. The tears were -quite evident in Will’s eyes, when a brakeman lighted -the overhead lamps in the car, but the luckiest thing -<span class='pageno' id='Page_268'>268</span>in the world had happened. The old man, who had -seen Will’s tears, thought they were tears of sympathy -for his own unfortunate position in life and a look of -gratitude came into his blue watery eyes. Well, this -was something new in life for him, too. In one of the -pauses, when he had first begun telling his tale, Will -had said he was going to Erie to try to get work in -some factory and now, as they got off the train, the -old man clung to Will’s arm. “You might as well -come live at our house,” he said. A look of hope -flared up in the old man’s eyes. If he could -bring home with him, to his young wife, a new -boarder, the gloom of his own home-coming would -be somewhat lightened. “You come on. That’s the -best thing to do. You just come on with me to our -house,” he plead, clinging to Will.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Two weeks had passed and Will had, outwardly, -and to the eyes of the people about him, settled into -his new life as a factory hand at Erie, Pennsylvania.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then suddenly, on a Saturday evening, the thing -happened that he had unconsciously been expecting -and dreading ever since the moment when he climbed -aboard the freight train in the shadow of Whaley’s -Warehouse at Bidwell. A letter, containing great -news, had come from Kate.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At the moment of their parting, and before he -settled himself down out of sight in a corner of the -empty coal car, on that night of his leaving, he had -leaned out for a last look at his sister. She had been -standing silently in the shadows of the warehouse, but -just as the train was about to start, stepped toward -<span class='pageno' id='Page_269'>269</span>him and a light from a distant street lamp fell on her -face.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Well, the face did not jump toward Will, but -remained dimly outlined in the uncertain light.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Did her lips open and close, as though in an effort -to say something to him, or was that an effect produced -by the distant, uncertain and wavering light? -In the families of working people the dramatic and -vital moments of life are passed over in silence. Even -in the moments of death and birth, little is said. A -child is born to a laborer’s wife and he goes into the -room. She is in bed with the little red bundle of -new life beside her and her husband stands a moment, -fumblingly, beside the bed. Neither he or his wife -can look directly into each other’s eyes. “Take care -of yourself, Ma. Have a good rest,” he says, and -hurries out of the room.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the darkness by the warehouse at Bidwell Kate -had taken two or three steps toward Will, and then -had stopped. There was a little strip of grass -between the warehouse and the tracks, and she stood -upon it. Was there a more final farewell trembling on -her lips at the moment? A kind of dread had swept -over Will, and no doubt Kate had felt the same thing. -At the moment she had become altogether the mother, -in the presence of her child, and the thing within that -wanted utterance became submerged. There was a -word to be said that she could not say. Her form -seemed to sway a little in the darkness and, to Will’s -eyes, she became a slender indistinct thing. “Goodbye,” -he had whispered into the darkness, and perhaps -her lips had formed the same words. Outwardly -<span class='pageno' id='Page_270'>270</span>there had been only the silence, and in the silence she -had stood as the train rumbled away.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now, on the Saturday evening, Will had come -home from the factory and had found Kate saying in -the letter what she had been unable to say on the night -of his departure. The factory closed at five on -Saturday and he came home in his overalls and went -to his room. He had found the letter on a little -broken table under a spluttering oil lamp, by the front -door, and had climbed the stairs carrying it in his -hand. He read the letter anxiously, waiting as for -a hand to come out of the blank wall of the room and -strike.</p> - -<p class='c006'>His father was getting better. The deep burns -that had taken such a long time to heal, were really -healing now and the doctor had said the danger of -infection had passed. Kate had found a new and -soothing remedy. One took slippery elm and let it lie -in milk until it became soft. This applied to the -burns enabled Tom to sleep better at night.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As for Fred, Kate and her father had decided he -might as well go back to school. It was really too -bad for a young boy to miss the chance to get an -education, and anyway there was no work to be had. -Perhaps he could get a job, helping in some store on -Saturday afternoons.</p> - -<p class='c006'>A woman from the Woman’s Relief Corps had had -the nerve to come to the Appleton house and ask -Kate if the family needed help. Well, Kate had -managed to hold herself back, and had been polite -but, had the woman known what was in her mind, her -ears would have been itching for a month. The -idea!</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_271'>271</span>It had been fine of Will to send a postcard, as soon -as he had got to Erie and got a job. As for his -sending money home—of course the family would be -glad to have anything he could spare—but he wasn’t -to go depriving himself. “We’ve got good credit -at the stores. We’ll get along all right,” Kate had -said stoutly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then it was she had added the line, had said -the thing she could not say that night when he was -leaving. It concerned herself and her future plans. -“That night when you were going away I wanted to -tell you something, but I thought it was silly, talking -too soon.” After all though, Will might as well -know she was planning to be married in the spring. -What she wanted was for Fred to come and live with -her and her husband. He could keep on going to -school, and perhaps they could manage so that he -could go to college. Some one in the family ought to -have a decent education. Now that Will had made -his start in life, there was no point in waiting longer -before making her own.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Will sat, in his tiny room at the top of the huge -frame house, owned now by the wife of the old cornet -player of the train, and held the letter in his hand. -The room was on the third floor, under the roof, in -a wing of the house, and beside it was another small -room, occupied by the old man himself. Will had -taken the room because it was to be had at a low price -and he could manage the room and his meals, get his -washing done, send three dollars a week to Kate, and -still have left a dollar a week to spend. One could get -a little tobacco, and now and then see a movie.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_272'>272</span>“Ugh!” Will’s lips made a little grunting noise as -he read Kate’s words. He was sitting in a chair, in -his oily overalls, and where his fingers gripped the -white sheets of the letter there was a little oily -smudge. Also his hand trembled a little. He got -up, poured water out of a pitcher into a white bowl, -and began washing his face and hands.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When he had partly dressed a visitor came. There -was the shuffling sound of weary feet along a hallway, -and the cornet player put his head timidly in at the -door. The dog-like appealing look Will had noted -on the train was still in his eyes. Now he was -planning something, a kind of gentle revolt against -his wife’s power in the house, and he wanted Will’s -moral support.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For a week he had been coming for talk to Will’s -room almost every evening. There were two things -he wanted. In the evening sometimes, as he sat in his -room, he wanted to blow upon his cornet, and he -wanted a little money to jingle in his pockets.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And there was a sense in which Will, the newcomer -in the house, was his property, did not belong to his -wife. Often in the evenings he had talked to the -weary and sleepy young workman, until Will’s eyes -had closed and he snored gently. The old man sat on -the one chair in the room, and Will sat on the edge of -the bed, while old lips told the tale of a lost youth, -boasted a little. When Will’s body had slumped -down upon the bed the old man got to his feet and -moved with cat-like steps about the room. One -mustn’t raise the voice too loudly after all. Had -Will gone to sleep? The cornet player threw his -shoulders back and bold words came, in a halfwhisper, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_273'>273</span>from his lips. To tell the truth, he had been -a fool about the money he had made over to his wife -and, if his wife had taken advantage of him, it wasn’t -her fault. For his present position in life he had no -one to blame but himself. What from the very beginning -he had most lacked was boldness. It was a -man’s duty to be a man and, for a long time, he had -been thinking—well, the boarding house no doubt -made a profit and he should have his share. His wife -was a good girl all right, but when one came right -down to it, all women seemed to lack a sense of a -man’s position in life.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll have to speak to her—yes siree, I’m going to -speak right up to her. I may have to be a little -harsh but it’s my money runs this house, and I want -my share of the profits. No foolishness now. Shell -out, I tell you,” the old man whispered, peering out -of the corners of his blue, watery eyes at the sleeping -form of the young man on the bed.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>And now again the old man stood at the door of the -room, looking anxiously in. A bell called insistently, -announcing that the evening meal was ready to be -served, and they went below, Will leading the way. -At a long table in the dining room several men had -already gathered, and there was the sound of more -footsteps on the stairs.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Two long rows of young workmen eating silently. -Saturday night and two long rows of young workmen -eating in silence.</p> - -<p class='c006'>After the eating, and on this particular night, there -would be a swift flight of all these young men down -into the town, down into the lighted parts of the town.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_274'>274</span>Will sat at his place gripping the sides of his chair.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There were things men did on Saturday nights. -Work was at an end for the week and money jingled -in pockets. Young workmen ate in silence and -hurried away, one by one, down into the town.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will’s sister Kate was going to be married in the -spring. Her walking about with the young clerk -from the jewelry store, in the streets of Bidwell, had -come to something.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Young workmen employed in factories in Erie, -Pennsylvania, dressed themselves in their best clothes -and walked about in the lighted streets of Erie on -Saturday evenings. They went into parks. Some -stood talking to girls while others walked with girls -through the streets. And there were still others who -went into saloons and had drinks. Men stood talking -together at a bar. “Dang that foreman of mine! -I’ll bust him in the jaw if he gives me any of his lip.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a young man from Bidwell, sitting at a -table in a boarding house at Erie, Pennsylvania, and -before him on a plate was a great pile of meat and -potatoes. The room was not very well lighted. It -was dark and gloomy, and there were black streaks -on the grey wall paper. Shadows played on the -walls. On all sides of the young man sat other young -men—eating silently, hurriedly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will got abruptly up from the table and started for -the door that led into the street but the others paid -no attention to him. If he did not want to eat his -meat and potatoes, it made no difference to them. -The mistress of the house, the wife of the old cornet -player, waited on table when the men ate, but now -she had gone away to the kitchen. She was a silent -<span class='pageno' id='Page_275'>275</span>grim-looking woman, dressed always in a black -dress.</p> - -<p class='c006'>To the others in the room—except only the old -cornet player—Will’s going or staying meant nothing -at all. He was a young workman, and at such places -young workmen were always going and coming.</p> - -<p class='c006'>A man with broad shoulders and a black mustache, -a little older than most of the others, did glance up -from his business of eating. He nudged his neighbor, -and then made a jerky movement with his thumb over -his shoulder. “The new guy has hooked up quickly, -eh?” he said, smiling. “He can’t even wait to eat. -Lordy, he’s got an early date—some skirt waiting for -him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>At his place, opposite where Will had been seated, -the cornet player saw Will go, and his eyes followed, -filled with alarm. He had counted on an evening of -talk, of speaking to Will about his youth, boasting a -little in his gentle hesitating way. Now Will had -reached the door that led to the street, and in the old -man’s eyes tears began to gather. Again his lip -trembled. Tears were always gathering in the man’s -eyes, and his lips trembled at the slightest provocation. -It was no wonder he could no longer blow a -cornet in a band.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>And now Will was outside the house in the darkness -and, for the cornet player, the evening was spoiled, -the house a deserted empty place. He had intended -being very plain in his evening’s talk with Will, and -wanted particularly to speak of a new attitude, he -hoped to assume toward his wife, in the matter of -money. Talking the whole matter out with Will -<span class='pageno' id='Page_276'>276</span>would give him new courage, make him bolder. -Well, if his money had bought the house, that was -now a boarding house, he should have some share in -its profits. There must be profits. Why run a -boarding house without profits? The woman he had -married was no fool.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Even though a man were old he needed a little -money in his pockets. Well, an old man, like himself, -has a friend, a young fellow, and now and then he -wanted to be able to say to his friend, “Come on -friend, let’s have a glass of beer. I know a good place. -Let’s have a glass of beer and go to the movies. -This is on me.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The cornet player could not eat his meat and -potatoes. For a time he stared over the heads of the -others, and then got up to go to his room. His -wife followed into the little hallway at the foot of the -stairs. “What’s the matter, dearie—are you sick?” -she asked.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No,” he answered, “I just didn’t want any -supper.” He did not look at her, but tramped slowly -and heavily up the stairs.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Will was walking hurriedly through streets but did -not go down into the brightly lighted sections of town. -The boarding house stood on a factory street and, -turning northward, he crossed several railroad tracks -and went toward the docks, along the shore of Lake -Erie. There was something to be settled with himself, -something to be faced. Could he manage the -matter?</p> - -<p class='c006'>He walked along, hurriedly at first, and then more -slowly. It was getting into late October now and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_277'>277</span>there was a sharpness like frost in the air. The -spaces between street lamps were long, and he plunged -in and out of areas of darkness. Why was it that -everything about him seemed suddenly strange and -unreal? He had forgotten to bring his overcoat from -Bidwell and would have to write Kate to send it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now he had almost reached the docks. Not only -the night but his own body, the pavements under his -feet, and the stars far away in the sky—even the -solid factory buildings he was now passing—seemed -strange and unreal. It was almost as though one -could thrust out an arm and push a hand through the -walls, as one might push his hand into a fog or a cloud -of smoke. All the people Will passed seemed -strange, and acted in a strange way. Dark figures -surged toward him out of the darkness. By a factory -wall there was a man standing—perfectly still, -motionless. There was something almost unbelievable -about the actions of such men and the strangeness -of such hours as the one through which he was now -passing. He walked within a few inches of the -motionless man. Was it a man or a shadow on the -wall? The life Will was now to lead alone, had -become a strange, a vast terrifying thing. Perhaps -all life was like that, a vastness and emptiness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He came out into a place where ships were made -fast to a dock and stood for a time, facing the high -wall-like side of a vessel. It looked dark and -deserted. When he turned his head he became aware -of a man and a woman passing along a roadway. -Their feet made no sound in the thick dust of the -roadway, and he could not see or hear them, but knew -they were there. Some part of a woman’s dress—something -<span class='pageno' id='Page_278'>278</span>white—flashed faintly into view and the -man’s figure was a dark mass against the dark mass -of the night. “Oh, come on, don’t be afraid,” the -man whispered, hoarsely. “There won’t anything -happen to you.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Do shut up,” a woman’s voice answered, and there -was a quick outburst of laughter. The figures -fluttered away. “You don’t know what you are -talking about,” the woman’s voice said again.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Now that he had got Kate’s letter, Will was no -longer a boy. A boy is, quite naturally, and without -his having anything to do with the matter, connected -with something—and now that connection had been -cut. He had been pushed out of the nest and that -fact, the pushing of himself off the nest’s rim, was -something accomplished. The difficulty was that, -while he was no longer a boy, he had not yet become -a man. He was a thing swinging in space. There -was no place to put down his feet.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He stood in the darkness under the shadow of the -ship making queer little wriggling motions with his -shoulders, that had become now almost the shoulders -of a man. No need now to think of evenings at the -Appleton house with Kate and Fred standing about, -and his father, Tom Appleton, spreading his paint -brushes on the kitchen table, no need of thinking of -the sound of Kate’s feet going up a stairway of the -Appleton house, late at night when she had been out -walking with her clerk. What was the good of trying -to amuse oneself by thinking of a shepherd dog -in an Ohio town, a dog made ridiculous by the trembling -hand of a timid old woman?</p> - -<p class='c006'>One stood face to face with manhood now—one -<span class='pageno' id='Page_279'>279</span>stood alone. If only one could get one’s feet down -upon something, could get over this feeling of falling -through space, through a vast emptiness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Manhood”—the word had a queer sound in the -head. What did it mean?</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will tried to think of himself as a man, doing a -man’s work in a factory. There was nothing in the -factory, where he was now employed, upon which he -could put down his feet. All day he stood at a machine -and bored holes in pieces of iron. A boy -brought to him the little, short, meaningless pieces of -iron in a box-like truck and, one by one, he picked -them up and placed them under the point of a drill. -He pulled a lever and the drill came down and bit into -the piece of iron. A little, smoke-like vapor arose, -and then he squirted oil on the spot where the drill -was working. Then the lever was thrown up again. -The hole was drilled and now the meaningless piece -of iron was thrown into another box-like truck. It -had nothing to do with him. He had nothing to do -with it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At the noon hour, at the factory, one moved about -a bit, stepped outside the factory door to stand for a -moment in the sun. Inside, men were sitting along -benches eating lunches out of dinner pails and some -had washed their hands while others had not bothered -about such a trivial matter. They were eating in silence. -A tall man spat on the floor and then drew -his foot across the spot. Nights came and one went -home from the factory to eat, sitting with other silent -men, and later a boastful old man came into one’s -room to talk. One lay on a bed and tried to listen, -but presently fell asleep. Men were like the pieces -<span class='pageno' id='Page_280'>280</span>of iron in which holes had been bored—one pitched -them aside into a box-like truck. One had nothing -really to do with them. They had nothing to do with -oneself. Life became a procession of days and perhaps -all life was just like that—just a procession of -days.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“Manhood.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Did one go out of one place and into another? -Were youth and manhood two houses, in which one -lived during different periods in life? It was evident -something of importance must be about to happen to -his sister Kate. First, she had been a young woman, -having two brothers and a father, living with them in -a house at Bidwell, Ohio.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then a day was to come when she became something -else. She married and went to live in another -house and had a husband. Perhaps children would -be born to her. It was evident Kate had got hold of -something, that her hands had reached out and had -grasped something definite. Kate had swung herself -off the rim of the home nest and, right away, her feet -had landed on another limb of the tree of life—womanhood.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As he stood in the darkness something caught at -Will’s throat. He was fighting again but what was -he fighting? A fellow like himself did not move -out of one house and into another. There was a -house in which one lived, and then suddenly and unexpectedly, -it fell apart. One stood on the rim of the -nest and looked about, and a hand reached out from -the warmth of the nest and pushed one off into space. -There was no place for a fellow to put down his feet. -He was one swinging in space.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_281'>281</span>What—a great fellow, nearly six feet tall now, and -crying in the darkness, in the shadow of a ship, like -a child! He walked, filled with determination, out -of the darkness, along many streets of factories and -came into a street of houses. He passed a store -where groceries were sold and looking in saw, by a -clock on the wall, that it was already ten o’clock. -Two drunken men came out at the door of a house -and stood on a little porch. One of them clung to a -railing about the porch, and the other pulled at his -arm. “Let me alone. It’s settled. I want you to -let me alone,” grumbled the man clinging to the railing.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Will went to his boarding house and climbed the -stairs wearily. The devil—one might face anything -if one but knew what was to be faced!</p> - -<p class='c006'>He turned on a light and sat down in his room on -the edge of the bed, and the old cornet player pounced -upon him, pounced like a little animal, lying under a -bush along a path in a forest, and waiting for food. -He came into Will’s room carrying his cornet, and -there was an almost bold look in his eyes. Standing -firmly on his old legs in the centre of the room, he -made a declaration. “I’m going to play it. I don’t -care what she says, I’m going to play it,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He put the cornet to his lips and blew two or three -notes—so softly that even Will, sitting so closely, -could barely hear. Then his eyes wavered. “My -lip’s no good,” he said. He thrust the cornet at Will. -“You blow it,” he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will sat on the edge of the bed and smiled. There -was a notion floating in his mind now. Was there -<span class='pageno' id='Page_282'>282</span>something, a thought in which one could find comfort. -There was now, before him, standing before him in -the room, a man who was after all not a man. He -was a child as Will was too really, had always been -such a child, would always be such a child. One need -not be too afraid. Children were all about, everywhere. -If one were a child and lost in a vast, empty -space, one could at least talk to some other child. -One could have conversations, understand perhaps -something of the eternal childishness of oneself and -others.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Will’s thoughts were not very definite. He only -felt suddenly warm and comfortable in the little room -at the top of the boarding house.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now the man was again explaining himself. -He wanted to assert his manhood. “I stay up here,” -he explained, “and don’t go down there, to sleep in -the room with my wife because I don’t want to. -That’s the only reason. I could if I wanted to. -She has the bronchitis—but don’t tell anyone. Women -hate to have anyone told. She isn’t so bad. I can -do what I please.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>He kept urging Will to put the cornet to his lips -and blow. There was in him an intense eagerness. -“You can’t really make any music—you don’t know -how—but that don’t make any difference,” he said. -“The thing to do is to make a noise, make a deuce of -a racket, blow like the devil.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Again Will felt like crying but the sense of vastness -and loneliness, that had been in him since he got -aboard the train that night at Bidwell, had gone. -“Well, I can’t go on forever being a baby. Kate has -a right to get married,” he thought, putting the cornet -<span class='pageno' id='Page_283'>283</span>to his lips. He blew two or three notes, softly.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“No, I tell you, no! That isn’t the way! Blow -on it! Don’t be afraid! I tell you I want you to do -it. Make a deuce of a racket! I tell you what, I -own this house. We don’t need to be afraid. We -can do what we please. Go ahead! Make a deuce -of a racket!” the old man kept pleading.</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_285'>285</span><span class='large'>THE MAN’S STORY</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_287'>287</span> - <h2 class='c008'>THE MAN’S STORY</h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>DURING his trial for murder and later, after he -had been cleared through the confession of -that queer little bald chap with the nervous -hands, I watched him, fascinated by his continued -effort to make something understood.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was persistently interested in something, having -nothing to do with the charge that he had murdered -the woman. The matter of whether or not, and by -due process of law, he was to be convicted of murder -and hanged by the neck until he was dead didn’t seem -to interest him. The law was something outside his -life and he declined to have anything to do with the -killing as one might decline a cigarette. “I thank -you, I am not smoking at present. I made a bet with -a fellow that I could go along without smoking -cigarettes for a month.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>That is the sort of thing I mean. It was puzzling. -Really, had he been guilty and trying to save his neck -he couldn’t have taken a better line. You see, at -first, everyone thought he had done the killing; we -were all convinced of it, and then, just because of that -magnificent air of indifference, everyone began wanting -to save him. When news came of the confession -of the crazy little stage-hand everyone broke out into -cheers.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was clear of the law after that but his manner -in no way changed. There was, somewhere, a man -<span class='pageno' id='Page_288'>288</span>or a woman who would understand just what he -understood and it was important to find that person -and talk things over. There was a time, during the -trial and immediately afterward, when I saw a good -deal of him, and I had this sharp sense of him, feeling -about in the darkness trying to find something like a -needle or a pin lost on the floor. Well, he was like -an old man who cannot find his glasses. He feels in -all his pockets and looks helplessly about.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was a question in my own mind too, in everyone’s -mind—“Can a man be wholly casual and -brutal, in every outward way, at a moment when the -one nearest and dearest to him is dying, and at the -same time, and with quite another part of himself, -be altogether tender and sensitive?”</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Anyway it’s a story, and once in a while a man likes -to tell a story straight out, without putting in any -newspaper jargon about beautiful heiresses, coldblooded -murderers and all that sort of tommyrot.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As I picked the story up the sense of it was something -like this—</p> - -<p class='c006'>The man’s name was Wilson,—Edgar Wilson—and -he had come to Chicago from some place to the westward, -perhaps from the mountains. He might once -have been a sheep herder or something of the sort in -the far west, as he had the peculiar abstract air, acquired -only by being a good deal alone. About himself -and his past he told a good many conflicting stories -and so, after being with him for a time, one instinctively -discarded the past.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“The devil—it doesn’t matter—the man can’t tell -the truth in that direction.—Let it go,” one said to -<span class='pageno' id='Page_289'>289</span>oneself. What was known was that he had come to -Chicago from a town in Kansas and that he had run -away from the Kansas town with another man’s wife.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As to her story, I knew little enough of it. She -had been at one time, I imagine, a rather handsome -thing, in a big strong upstanding sort of way, but her -life, until she met Wilson, had been rather messy. In -those dead flat Kansas towns lives have a way of -getting ugly and messy without anything very definite -having happened to make them so. One can’t imagine -the reasons—Let it go. It just is so and one -can’t at all believe the writers of Western tales about -the life out there.</p> - -<p class='c006'>To be a little more definite about this particular -woman—in her young girlhood her father had got -into trouble. He had been some sort of a small -official, a travelling agent or something of the sort -for an express company, and got arrested in connection -with the disappearance of some money. And -then, when he was in jail and before his trial, he -shot and killed himself. The girl’s mother was already -dead.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Within a year or two she married a man, an honest -enough fellow but from all accounts rather uninteresting. -He was a drug clerk and a frugal man and -after a short time managed to buy a drug store of his -own.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The woman, as I have said, had been strong and -well-built but now grew thin and nervous. Still she -carried herself well with a sort of air, as it were, and -there was something about her that appealed strongly -to men. Several men of the seedy little town were -smitten by her and wrote her letters, trying to get -<span class='pageno' id='Page_290'>290</span>her to creep out with them at night. You know how -such things are done. The letters were unsigned. -“You go to such and such a place on Friday evening. -If you are willing to talk things over with me carry -a book in your hand.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then the woman made a mistake and told her husband -about the receipt of one of the letters and he -grew angry and tramped off to the trysting place at -night with a shotgun in his hand. When no one appeared -he came home and fussed about. He said -little mean tentative things. “You must have looked—in -a certain way—at the man when he passed you -on the street. A man don’t grow so bold with a married -woman unless an opening has been given him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The man talked and talked after that, and life in -the house must have been gay. She grew habitually -silent, and when she was silent the house was silent. -They had no children.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then the man Edgar Wilson came along, going -eastward, and stopped over in the town for two or -three days. He had at that time a little money and -stayed at a small workingmen’s boarding house, near -the railroad station. One day he saw the woman -walking in the street and followed her to her home -and the neighbors saw them standing and talking together -for an hour by the front gate and on the next -day he came again.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That time they talked for two hours and then she -went into the house; got a few belongings and walked -to the railroad station with him. They took a train -for Chicago and lived there together, apparently very -happy, until she died—in a way I am about to try -<span class='pageno' id='Page_291'>291</span>to tell you about. They of course could not be married -and during the three years they lived in Chicago -he did nothing toward earning their common living. -As he had a very small amount of money when they -came, barely enough to get them here from the Kansas -town, they were miserably poor.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They lived, when I knew about them, over on the -North side, in that section of old three- and four-story -brick residences that were once the homes of what we -call our nice people, but that had afterward gone to -the bad. The section is having a kind of rebirth now -but for a good many years it rather went to seed. -There were these old residences, made into boarding houses, -and with unbelievably dirty lace curtains at -the windows, and now and then an utterly disreputable -old tumble-down frame house—in one of which Wilson -lived with his woman.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The place is a sight! Someone owns it, I suppose, -who is shrewd enough to know that in a big city like -Chicago no section gets neglected always. Such a -fellow must have said to himself, “Well, I’ll let the -place go. The ground on which the house stands will -some day be very valuable but the house is worth -nothing. I’ll let it go at a low rental and do nothing -to fix it up. Perhaps I will get enough out of it to -pay my taxes until prices come up.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so the house had stood there unpainted for -years and the windows were out of line and the shingles -nearly all off the roof. The second floor was -reached by an outside stairway with a handrail that -had become just the peculiar grey greasy black that -wood can become in a soft-coal-burning city like -<span class='pageno' id='Page_292'>292</span>Chicago or Pittsburgh. One’s hand became black -when the railing was touched; and the rooms above -were altogether cold and cheerless.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At the front there was a large room with a fireplace, -from which many bricks had fallen, and back of -that were two small sleeping rooms.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Wilson and his woman lived in the place, at the -time when the thing happened I am to tell you about, -and as they had taken it in May I presume they did -not too much mind the cold barrenness of the large -front room in which they lived. There was a sagging -wooden bed with a leg broken off—the woman -had tried to repair it with sticks from a packing box—a -kitchen table, that was also used by Wilson as a -writing desk, and two or three cheap kitchen chairs.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The woman had managed to get a place as wardrobe -woman in a theatre in Randolph Street and they -lived on her earnings. It was said she had got the -job because some man connected with the theatre, -or a company playing there, had a passion for her -but one can always pick up stories of that sort about -any woman who works about the theatre—from the -scrubwoman to the star.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Anyway she worked there and had a reputation in -the theatre of being quiet and efficient.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As for Wilson, he wrote poetry of a sort I’ve never -seen before, although, like most newspaper men, I’ve -taken a turn at verse making myself now and then—both -of the rhymed kind and the newfangled vers -libre sort. I rather go in for the classical stuff myself.</p> - -<p class='c006'>About Wilson’s verse—it was Greek to me. Well -now, to get right down to hardpan in this matter, it -was and it wasn’t.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_293'>293</span>The stuff made me feel just a little bit woozy when -I took a whole sheaf of it and sat alone in my room -reading it at night. It was all about walls, and deep -wells, and great bowls with young trees standing erect -in them—and trying to find their way to the light and -air over the rim of the bowl.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Queer crazy stuff, every line of it, but fascinating -too—in a way. One got into a new world with new -values, which after all is I suppose what poetry is all -about. There was the world of fact—we all know -or think we know—the world of flat buildings and -middle-western farms with wire fences about the fields -and fordson tractors running up and down, and towns -with high schools and advertising billboards, and -everything that makes up life—or that we think -makes up life.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was this world, we all walk about in, and then -there was this other world, that I have come to think -of as Wilson’s world—a dim place to me at least—of -far-away near places—things taking new and -strange shapes, the insides of people coming out, the -eyes seeing new things, the fingers feeling new and -strange things.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a place of walls mainly. I got hold of -the whole lot of Wilson’s verse by a piece of luck. -It happened that I was the first newspaper man who -got into the place on the night when the woman’s -body was found, and there was all his stuff, carefully -written out in a sort of child’s copy book, and two -or three stupid policemen standing about. I just -shoved the book under my coat, when they weren’t -looking, and later, during Wilson’s trial, we published -some of the more intelligible ones in the paper. It -<span class='pageno' id='Page_294'>294</span>made pretty good newspaper stuff—the poet who -killed his mistress,</p> - -<div class='lg-container-b c011'> - <div class='linegroup'> - <div class='group'> - <div class='line'>“He did not wear his purple coat,</div> - <div class='line in1'>For blood and wine are red”—</div> - </div> - </div> -</div> - -<p class='c017'>and all that. Chicago loved it.</p> -<p class='c006'>To get back to the poetry itself for a moment. I -just wanted to explain that all through the book there -ran this notion, that men had erected walls about themselves -and that all men were perhaps destined to stand -forever behind the walls—on which they constantly -beat with their fists, or with whatever tools they could -get hold of. Wanted to break through to something, -you understand. One couldn’t quite make out -whether there was just one great wall or many little -individual walls. Sometimes Wilson put it one way, -sometimes another. Men had themselves built the -walls and now stood behind them, knowing dimly that -beyond the walls there was warmth, light, air, beauty, -life in fact—while at the same time, and because of a -kind of madness in themselves, the walls were constantly -being built higher and stronger.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The notion gives you the fantods a little, doesn’t -it? Anyway it does me.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then there was that notion about deep wells, -men everywhere constantly digging and digging themselves -down deeper and deeper into deep wells. They -not wanting to do it, you understand, and no one wanting -them to do it, but all the time the thing going on -just the same, that is to say the wells getting constantly -deeper and deeper, and the voices growing dimmer -and dimmer in the distance—and again the light and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_295'>295</span>the warmth of life going away and going away, because -of a kind of blind refusal of people to try to understand -each other, I suppose.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was all very strange to me—Wilson’s poetry, I -mean—when I came to it. Here is one of his things. -It is not directly concerned with the walls, the bowl -or the deep well theme, as you will see, but it is one we -ran in the paper during the trial and a lot of folks -rather liked it—as I’ll admit I do myself. Maybe -putting it in here will give a kind of point to my story, -by giving you some sense of the strangeness of the -man who is the story’s hero. In the book it was called -merely “Number Ninety-seven,” and it went as follows:</p> - -<p class='c018'>The firm grip of my fingers on the thin paper of this -cigarette is a sign that I am very quiet now. Sometimes it -is not so. When I am unquiet I am weak but when I am -quiet, as I am now, I am very strong.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c019'>Just now I went along one of the streets of my city and -in at a door and came up here, where I am now, lying on -a bed and looking out at a window. Very suddenly and -completely the knowledge has come to me that I could grip -the sides of tall buildings as freely and as easily as I now grip -this cigarette. I could hold the building between my fingers, -put it to my lips and blow smoke through it. I could blow -confusion away. I could blow a thousand people out through -the roof of one tall building into the sky, into the unknown. -Building after building I could consume, as I consume the -cigarettes in this box. I could throw the burning ends of -cities over my shoulder and out through a window.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c019'>It is not often I get in the state I am now in—so quiet -and sure of myself. When the feeling comes over me there -<span class='pageno' id='Page_296'>296</span>is a directness and simplicity in me that makes me love myself. -To myself at such times I say strong sweet words.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c019'>I am on a couch by this window and I could ask a woman -to come here to lie with me, or a man either for that matter.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c019'>I could take a row of houses standing on a street, tip them -over, empty the people out of them, squeeze and compress all -the people into one person and love that person.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c019'>Do you see this hand? Suppose it held a knife that could -cut down through all the falseness in you. Suppose it could -cut down through the sides of buildings and houses where -thousands of people now lie asleep.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c019'>It would be something worth thinking about if the fingers -of this hand gripped a knife that could cut and rip through -all the ugly husks in which millions of lives are enclosed.</p> - -<p class='c016'>Well, there is the idea you see, a kind of power -that could be tender too. I will quote you just one -more of his things, a more gentle one. It is called in -the book, “Number Eighty-three.”</p> - -<p class='c018'>I am a tree that grows beside the wall. I have been -thrusting up and up. My body is covered with scars. My -body is old but still I thrust upward, creeping toward the -top of the wall.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c019'>It is my desire to drop blossoms and fruit over the wall.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c019'>I would moisten dry lips.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c019'>I would drop blossoms on the heads of children, over the -top of the wall.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c019'><span class='pageno' id='Page_297'>297</span>I would caress with falling blossoms the bodies of those -who live on the further side of the wall.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c019'>My branches are creeping upward and new sap comes into -me out of the dark ground under the wall.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c019'>My fruit shall not be my fruit until it drops from my -arms, into the arms of the others, over the top of the wall.</p> - -<p class='c016'>And now as to the life led by the man and woman -in the large upper room in that old frame house. By -a stroke of luck I have recently got rather a line on -that by a discovery I have made.</p> - -<p class='c006'>After they had moved into the house—it was only -last spring—the theatre in which the woman was employed -was dark for a long time and they were more -than usually hard up, so the woman tried to pick up -a little extra money—to help pay the rent I suppose—by -sub-letting the two little back rooms of that -place of theirs.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Various people lived in the dark tiny holes, just how -I can’t make out as there was no furniture. Still -there are places in Chicago called “flops” where one -may sleep on the floor for five or ten cents and they -are more patronized than respectable people know -anything about.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What I did discover was a little woman—she wasn’t -so young but she was hunchbacked and small and it -is hard not to think of her as a girl—who once lived -in one of the rooms for several weeks. She had a job -as ironer in a small hand-laundry in the neighborhood -and someone had given her a cheap folding cot. -She was a curiously sentimental creature, with the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_298'>298</span>kind of hurt eyes deformed people often have, and I -have a fancy she had herself a romantic attachment -of a sort for the man Wilson. Anyway I managed to -find out a lot from her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>After the other woman’s death and after Wilson had -been cleared on the murder charge, by the confession -of the stage-hand, I used to go over to the house where -he had lived, sometimes in the late afternoon after our -paper had been put to bed for the day. Ours is an -afternoon paper and after two o’clock most of us are -free.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I found the hunchback girl standing in front of -the house one day and began talking with her. She -was a gold mine.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There was that look in her eyes I’ve told you of, -the hurt sensitive look. I just spoke to her and we -began talking of Wilson. She had lived in one of -the rooms at the back. She told me of that at once.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On some days she found herself unable to work at -the laundry because her strength suddenly gave out -and so, on such days, she stayed in the room, lying on -the cot. Blinding headaches came that lasted for -hours during which she was almost entirely unconscious -of everything going on about her. Then -afterward she was quite conscious but for a long time -very weak. She wasn’t one who is destined to live -very long I suppose and I presume she didn’t much -care.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Anyway, there she was in the room, in that weak -state after the times of illness, and she grew curious -about the two people in the front room, so she used -to get off her couch and go softly in her stockinged feet -to the door between the rooms and peek through the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_299'>299</span>keyhole. She had to kneel on the dusty floor to do -it.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The life in the room fascinated her from the beginning. -Sometimes the man was in there alone, sitting -at the kitchen table and writing the stuff he afterward -put into the book I collared, and from which I have -quoted; sometimes the woman was with him, and -again sometimes he was in there alone but wasn’t writing. -Then he was always walking and walking up -and down.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When both people were in the room, and when the -man was writing, the woman seldom moved but sat -in a chair by one of the windows with her hands -crossed. He would write a few lines and then walk -up and down talking to himself or to her. When he -spoke she did not answer except with her eyes, the -crippled girl said. What I gathered of all this from -her talk with me, and what is the product of my own -imaginings, I confess I do not quite know.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Anyway what I got and what I am trying, in my -own way, to transmit to you is a sense of a kind of -strangeness in the relationship of the two. It wasn’t -just a domestic household, a little down on its luck, by -any means. He was trying to do something very difficult—with -his poetry I presume—and she in her own -way was trying to help him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And of course, as I have no doubt you have gathered -from what I have quoted of Wilson’s verse, the -matter had something to do with the relationships between -people—not necessarily between the particular -man and woman who happened to be there in that -room, but between all peoples.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The fellow had some half-mystic conception of all -<span class='pageno' id='Page_300'>300</span>such things, and before he found his own woman had -been going aimlessly about the world looking for a -mate. Then he had found the woman in the Kansas -town and—he at least thought—things had cleared, -for him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Well, he had the notion that no one in the world -could think or feel anything alone, and that people -only got into trouble and walled themselves in by trying -it, or something of the sort. There was a discord. -Things were jangled. Someone, it seems, had to strike -a pitch that all voices could take up before the real -song of life could begin. Mind you I’m not putting -forth any notions of my own. What I am trying to -do is to give you a sense of something I got from having -read Wilson’s stuff, from having known him a little, -and from having seen something of the effect of his -personality upon others.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He felt, quite definitely, that no one in the world -could feel or even think alone. And then there was -the notion, that if one tried to think with the mind -without taking the body into account, one got all balled-up. -True conscious life built itself up like a pyramid. -First the body and mind of a beloved one must come -into one’s thinking and feeling and then, in some -mystic way, the bodies and minds of all the other -people in the world must come in, must come sweeping -in like a great wind—or something of the sort.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Is all this a little tangled up to you, who read my -story of Wilson? It may not be. It may be that -your minds are more clear than my own and that what -I take to be so difficult will be very simple to you.</p> - -<p class='c006'>However, I have to bring up to you just what I -can find, after diving down into this sea of motives -<span class='pageno' id='Page_301'>301</span>and impulses—I admit I don’t rightly understand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The hunchback girl felt (or is it my own fancy -coloring what she said?)—it doesn’t really matter. -The thing to get at is what the man Edgar Wilson -felt.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He felt, I fancy, that in the field of poetry he had -something to express that could never be expressed -until he had found a woman who could, in a peculiar -and absolute way, give herself in the world of the -flesh—and that then there was to be a marriage out -of which beauty would come for all people. He had -to find the woman who had that power, and the power -had to be untainted by self-interest, I fancy. A profound -egotist, you see—and he thought he had found -what he needed in the wife of the Kansas druggist.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had found her and had done something to her. -What it was I can’t quite make out, except that she -was absolutely and wholly happy with him, in a -strangely inexpressive sort of way.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Trying to speak of him and his influence on others -is rather like trying to walk on a tightrope stretched -between two tall buildings above a crowded street. -A cry from below, a laugh, the honk of an automobile -horn, and down one goes into nothingness. One -simply becomes ridiculous.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He wanted, it seems, to condense the flesh and the -spirit of himself and his woman into his poems. You -will remember that in one of the things of his I have -quoted he speaks of condensing, of squeezing all -the people of a city into one person and of loving that -person.</p> - -<p class='c006'>One might think of him as a powerful person, almost -hideously powerful. You will see, as you read, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_302'>302</span>how he has got me in his power and is making me -serve his purpose.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And he had caught and was holding the woman in -his grip. He had wanted her—quite absolutely, and -had taken her—as all men, perhaps, want to do with -their women, and don’t quite dare. Perhaps too she -was in her own way greedy and he was making -actual love to her always day and night, when they -were together and when they were apart.</p> - -<p class='c006'>I’ll admit I am confused about the whole matter -myself. I am trying to express something I have felt, -not in myself, nor in the words that came to me from -the lips of the hunchback girl whom, you will remember, -I left kneeling on the floor in that back room and -peeking through a keyhole.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There she was, you see, the hunchback, and in the -room before her were the man and woman and the -hunchback girl also had fallen under the power of the -man Wilson. She also was in love with him—there -can be no doubt of that. The room in which she knelt -was dark and dusty. There must have been a thick -accumulation of dust on the floor.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What she said—or if she did not say the words -what she made me feel was that the man Wilson -worked in the room, or walked up and down in there -before his woman, and that, while he did that, his -woman sat in the chair, and that there was in her face, -in her eyes, a look—</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was all the time making love to her, and his -making love to her in just that abstract way, was a -kind of love-making with all people? and that was -possible because the woman was as purely physical as -he was something else. If all this is meaningless to -<span class='pageno' id='Page_303'>303</span>you, at least it wasn’t to the hunchback girl—who -certainly was uneducated and never would have set -herself up as having any special powers of understanding. -She knelt in the dust, listening, and looking in -at the keyhole, and in the end she came to feel that -the man, in whose presence she had never been and -whose person had never in any way touched her person, -had made love to her also.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She had felt that and it had gratified her entire nature. -One might say it had satisfied her. She was -what she was and it had made life worth living for -her.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>Minor things happened in the room and one may -speak of them.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For example, there was a day in June, a dark warm -rainy day. The hunchback girl was in her room, -kneeling on the floor, and Wilson and his woman were -in their room.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Wilson’s woman had been doing a family washing, -and as it could not be dried outdoors she had stretched -ropes across the room and had hung the clothes inside.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When the clothes were all hung Wilson came from -walking outside in the rain and going to the desk sat -down and began to write.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He wrote for a few minutes and then got up and -went about the room, and in walking a wet garment -brushed against his face.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He kept right on walking and talking to the woman -but as he walked and talked he gathered all the clothes -in his arms and going to the little landing at the head -of the stairs outside, threw them down into the muddy -<span class='pageno' id='Page_304'>304</span>yard below. He did that and the woman sat without -moving or saying anything until he had gone back -to his desk, then she went down the stairs, got the -clothes and washed them again—and it was only after -she had done that and when she was again hanging -them in the room above that he appeared to know -what he had done.</p> - -<p class='c006'>While the clothes were being rewashed he went for -another walk and when she heard his footsteps on the -stairs the hunchback girl ran to the keyhole. As she -knelt there, and as he came into the room, she could -look directly into his face. “He was like a puzzled -child for a moment and then, although he said nothing, -the tears began to run down his cheeks,” she said. -That happened and then the woman, who was at the -moment re-hanging the clothes, turned and saw him. -She had her arm filled with clothes but dropped them -on the floor and ran to him. She half knelt, the hunchback -girl said, and putting her arms about his body -and looking up into his face pleaded with him. -“Don’t. Don’t be hurt. Believe me I know everything. -Please don’t be hurt,” was what she said.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>And now as to the story of the woman’s death. It -happened in the fall of that year.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the place where she was sometimes employed—that -is to say in the theatre—there was this other man, -the little half-crazed stage-hand who shot her.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had fallen in love with her and, like the men in -the Kansas town from which she came, had written -her several silly notes of which she said nothing to -Wilson. The letters weren’t very nice and some of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_305'>305</span>them, the most unpleasant ones, were by some twist -of the fellow’s mind, signed with Wilson’s name. Two -of them were afterwards found on her person and -were brought in as evidence against Wilson during his -trial.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so the woman worked in the theatre and the -summer had passed and on an evening in the fall -there was to be a dress rehearsal at the theatre and -the woman went there, taking Wilson with her. It -was a fall day, such as we sometimes have in Chicago, -cold and wet and with a heavy fog lying over the -city.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The dress rehearsal did not come off. The star -was ill, or something of the sort happened, and Wilson -and his woman sat about, in the cold empty theatre, -for an hour or two and then the woman was told she -could go for the night.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She and Wilson walked across the city, stopping to -get something to eat at a small restaurant. He was -in one of the abstract silent moods common to him. -No doubt he was thinking of the things he wanted -to express in the poetry I have tried to tell you about. -He went along, not seeing the woman beside him, not -seeing the people drifting up to them and passing -them in the streets. He went along in that way and -she—</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was no doubt then as she always was in his -presence—silent and satisfied with the fact that she -was with him. There was nothing he could think or -feel that did not take her into account. The very -blood flowing up through his body was her blood too. -He had made her feel that, and she was silent and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_306'>306</span>satisfied as he went along, his body walking beside -her but his fancy groping its way through the land -of high walls and deep wells.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They had walked from the restaurant, in the Loop -District, over a bridge to the North Side, and still -no words passed between them.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When they had almost reached their own place the -stage-hand, the small man with the nervous hands who -had written the notes, appeared out of the fog, as -though out of nowhere, and shot the woman.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That was all there was to it. It was as simple -as that.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They were walking, as I have described them, when -a head flashed up before the woman in the midst of -the fog, a hand shot out, there was the quick abrupt -sound of a pistol shot and then the absurd little stage-hand, -he with the wrinkled impotent little old woman’s -face—then he turned and ran away.</p> - -<p class='c006'>All that happened, just as I have written it and it -made no impression at all on the mind of Wilson. -He walked along as though nothing had happened and -the woman, after half falling, gathered herself together -and managed to continue walking beside him, -still saying nothing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They went thus, for perhaps two blocks, and had -reached the foot of the outer stairs that led up to their -place when a policeman came running, and the woman -told him a lie. She told him some story about a -struggle between two drunken men, and after a moment -of talk the policeman went away, sent away by -the woman in a direction opposite to the one taken by -the fleeing stage-hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They were in the darkness and the fog now and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_307'>307</span>the woman took her man’s arm while they climbed the -stairs. He was as yet—as far as I will ever be able -to explain logically—unaware of the shot, and of the -fact that she was dying, although he had seen and -heard everything. What the doctors said, who were -put on the case afterwards, was that a cord or muscle, -or something of the sort that controls the action of -the heart, had been practically severed by the shot.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She was dead and alive at the same time, I should -say.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Anyway the two people marched up the stairs, and -into the room above, and then a really dramatic and -lovely thing happened. One wishes that the scene, -with just all its connotations, could be played out on -a stage instead of having to be put down in words.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The two came into the room, the one dead but not -ready to acknowledge death without a flash of something -individual and lovely, that is to say, the one -dead while still alive and the other alive but at the -moment dead to what was going on.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The room into which they went was dark but, with -the sure instinct of an animal, the woman walked -across the room to the fireplace, while the man stopped -and stood some ten feet from the door—thinking and -thinking in his peculiarly abstract way. The fireplace -was filled with an accumulation of waste matter, cigarette -ends—the man was a hard smoker—bits of paper -on which he had scribbled—the rubbishy accumulation -that gathers about all such fellows as Wilson. There -was all of this quickly combustible material, stuffed -into the fireplace, on this—the first cold evening of the -fall.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so the woman went to it, and found a match -<span class='pageno' id='Page_308'>308</span>somewhere in the darkness, and touched the pile off.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There is a picture that will remain with me always—just -that—the barren room and the blind unseeing -man standing there, and the woman kneeling and making -a little flare of beauty at the last. Little flames -leaped up. Lights crept and danced over the walls. -Below, on the floor of the room, there was a deep well -of darkness in which the man, blind with his own purpose, -was standing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The pile of burning papers must have made, for a -moment, quite a glare of light in the room and the -woman stood for a moment, beside the fireplace, just -outside the glare of light.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then, pale and wavering, she walked across the -light, as across a lighted stage, going softly and -silently toward him. Had she also something to say? -No one will ever know. What happened was that -she said nothing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>She walked across to him and, at the moment she -reached him, fell down on the floor and died at his feet, -and at the same moment the little fire of papers died. -If she struggled before she died, there on the floor, -she struggled in silence. There was no sound. She -had fallen and lay between him and the door that led -out to the stairway and to the street.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was then Wilson became altogether inhuman—too -much so for my understanding.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The fire had died and the woman he had loved had -died.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And there he stood looking into nothingness, thinking—God -knows—perhaps of nothingness.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>He stood a minute, five minutes, perhaps ten. He -<span class='pageno' id='Page_309'>309</span>was a man who, before he found the woman, had been -sunk far down into a deep sea of doubt and questionings. -Before he found the woman no expression had -ever come from him. He had perhaps just wandered -from place to place, looking at people’s faces, wondering -about people, wanting to come close to others -and not knowing how. The woman had been able to -lift him up to the surface of the sea of life for a time, -and with her he had floated on the surface of the sea, -under the sky, in the sunlight. The woman’s warm -body—given to him in love—had been as a boat in -which he had floated on the surface of the sea, and -now the boat had been wrecked and he was sinking -again, back into the sea.</p> - -<p class='c006'>All of this had happened and he did not know—that -is to say he did not know, and at the same time he did -know.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He was a poet, I presume, and perhaps at the moment -a new poem was forming itself in his mind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At any rate he stood for a time, as I have said, -and then he must have had a feeling that he should -make some move, that he should if possible save himself -from some disaster about to overtake him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He had an impulse to go to the door, and by way -of the stairway, to go down stairs and into the street—but -the body of the woman was between him and -the door.</p> - -<p class='c006'>What he did and what, when he later told of it, -sounded so terribly cruel to others, was to treat the -woman’s dead body as one might treat a fallen tree in -the darkness in a forest. First he tried to push the -body aside with his foot and then as that seemed impossible, -he stepped awkwardly over it.</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_310'>310</span>He stepped directly on the woman’s arm. The discolored -mark where his heel landed was afterward -found on the body.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He almost fell, and then his body righted itself -and he went walking, marched down the rickety stairs -and went walking in the streets.</p> - -<p class='c006'>By chance the night had cleared. It had grown -colder and a cold wind had driven the fog away. He -walked along, very nonchalantly, for several blocks. -He walked along as calmly as you, the reader, might -walk, after having had lunch with a friend.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As a matter of fact he even stopped to make a purchase -at a store. I remember that the place was -called “The Whip.” He went in, bought himself a -package of cigarettes, lighted one and stood a moment, -apparently listening to a conversation going on -among several idlers in the place.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then he strolled again, going along smoking -the cigarette and thinking of his poem no doubt. -Then he came to a moving-picture theatre.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That perhaps touched him off. He also was an old -fireplace, stuffed with old thoughts, scraps of unwritten -poems—God knows what rubbish! Often he -had gone at night to the theatre, where the woman was -employed, to walk home with her, and now the people -were coming out of a small moving-picture house. -They had been in there seeing a play called “The Light -of the World.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Wilson walked into the midst of the crowd, lost -himself in the crowd, smoking his cigarette, and then -he took off his hat, looked anxiously about for a moment, -and suddenly began shouting in a loud voice.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He stood there, shouting and trying to tell the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_311'>311</span>story of what had happened in a loud voice, and with -the uncertain air of one trying to remember a dream. -He did that for a moment and then, after running a -little way along the pavement, stopped and began his -story again. It was only after he had gone thus, in -short rushes, back, along the street to the house and -up the rickety stairway to where the woman was lying—the -crowd following curiously at his heels—that a -policeman came up and arrested him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He seemed excited at first but was quiet afterwards -and he laughed at the notion of insanity, when the -lawyer who had been retained for him, tried to set up -the plea in court.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As I have said his action, during his trial, was confusing -to us all, as he seemed wholly uninterested in -the murder and in his own fate. After the confession -of the man who had fired the shot he seemed to feel -no resentment toward him either. There was something -he wanted, having nothing to do with what had -happened.</p> - -<p class='c006'>There he had been, you see, before he found the -woman, wandering about in the world, digging himself -deeper and deeper into the deep wells he talked -about in his poetry, building the wall between himself -and all us others constantly higher and higher.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He knew what he was doing but he could not stop. -That’s what he kept talking about, pleading with people -about. The man had come up out of the sea of -doubt, had grasped for a time the hand of the woman, -and with her hand in his had floated for a time upon -the surface of life—but now he felt himself again -sinking down into the sea.</p> - -<p class='c006'>His talking and talking, stopping people in the -<span class='pageno' id='Page_312'>312</span>street and talking, going into people’s houses and talking, -was I presume but an effort, he was always afterward -making, not to sink back forever into the sea, -it was the struggle of a drowning man I dare say.</p> - -<p class='c006'>At any rate I have told you the man’s story—have -been compelled to try to tell you his story. There was -a kind of power in him, and the power has been exerted -over me as it was exerted over the woman from -Kansas and the unknown hunchback girl, kneeling on -the floor in the dust and peering through a keyhole.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Ever since the woman died we have all been trying -and trying to drag the man Wilson back out of the -sea of doubt and dumbness into which we feel him sinking -deeper and deeper—and to no avail.</p> - -<p class='c006'>It may be I have been impelled to tell his story in -the hope that by writing of him I may myself understand. -Is there not a possibility that with understanding -would come also the strength to thrust an arm -down into the sea and drag the man Wilson back to the -surface again?</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c002'> - <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_313'>313</span><span class='large'>AN OHIO PAGAN</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c002' /> -</div> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c005'> - <div><span class='pageno' id='Page_315'>315</span><span class='large'>AN OHIO PAGAN</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='chapter'> - <h2 class='c008'><span class='sc'>Chapter I</span></h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>TOM EDWARDS was a Welshman, born in -Northern Ohio, and a descendant of that -Thomas Edwards, the Welsh poet, who was -called, in his own time and country, Twn O’r Nant—which -in our own tongue means “Tom of the dingle or -vale.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The first Thomas Edwards was a gigantic figure in -the history of the spiritual life of the Welsh. Not -only did he write many stirring interludes concerning -life, death, earth, fire and water but as a man he was -a true brother to the elements and to all the passions -of his sturdy and musical race. He sang beautifully -but he also played stoutly and beautifully the part of -a man. There is a wonderful tale, told in Wales and -written into a book by the poet himself, of how -he, with a team of horses, once moved a great ship -out of the land into the sea, after three hundred -Welshmen had failed at the task. Also he taught -Welsh woodsmen the secret of the crane and pulley for -lifting great logs in the forests, and once he fought to -the point of death the bully of the countryside, a -man known over a great part of Wales as The Cruel -Fighter. Tom Edwards, the descendant of this man -was born in Ohio near my own native town of Bidwell. -His name was not Edwards, but as his father -<span class='pageno' id='Page_316'>316</span>was dead when he was born, his mother gave him the -old poet’s name out of pride in having such blood in -her veins. Then when the boy was six his mother -died also and the man for whom both his mother and -father had worked, a sporting farmer named Harry -Whitehead, took the boy into his own house to live.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They were gigantic people, the Whiteheads. Harry -himself weighed two hundred and seventy pounds and -his wife twenty pounds more. About the time he took -young Tom to live with him the farmer became interested -in the racing of horses, moved off his farms, of -which he had three, and came to live in our town.</p> - -<hr class='c015' /> - -<p class='c006'>In the town of Bidwell there was an old frame building, -that had once been a factory for the making of -barrel staves but that had stood for years vacant, staring -with windowless eyes into the streets, and Harry -bought it at a low price and transformed it into a -splendid stable with a board floor and two long rows -of box stalls. At a sale of blooded horses held in -the city of Cleveland he bought twenty young colts, all -of the trotting strain, and set up as a trainer of race -horses.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Among the colts thus brought to our town was one -great black fellow named Bucephalus. Harry got the -name from John Telfer, our town poetry lover. “It -was the name of the mighty horse of a mighty man,” -Telfer said, and that satisfied Harry.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Young Tom was told off to be the special guardian -and caretaker of Bucephalus, and the black stallion, -who had in him the mighty blood of the Tennessee -Patchens, quickly became the pride of the stables. He -was in his nature a great ugly-tempered beast, as given -<span class='pageno' id='Page_317'>317</span>to whims and notions as an opera star, and from the -very first began to make trouble. Within a year no -one but Harry Whitehead himself and the boy Tom -dared go into his stall. The methods of the two -people with the great horse were entirely different -but equally effective. Once big Harry turned the stallion -loose on the floor of the stable, closed all the -doors, and with a cruel long whip in his hand, went in -to conquer or to be conquered. He came out victorious -and ever after the horse behaved when he was -about.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The boy’s method was different. He loved -Bucephalus and the wicked animal loved him. Tom -slept on a cot in the barn and day or night, even -when there were mares about, walked into Bucephalus’ -box-stall without fear. When the stallion was in a -temper he sometimes turned at the boy’s entrance and -with a snort sent his iron-shod heels banging against -the sides of the stall, but Tom laughed and putting a -simple rope halter over the horse’s head led him -forth to be cleaned or hitched to a cart for his morning’s -jog on our town’s half-mile race track. A sight -it was to see the boy with the blood of Twn O’r Nant -in his veins leading by the nose Bucephalus of the -royal blood of the Patchens.</p> - -<p class='c006'>When he was six years old the horse Bucephalus -went forth to race and conquer at the great spring -race meeting at Columbus, Ohio. He won two heats -of the trotting free-for-all—the great race of the -meeting—with heavy Harry in the sulky and then -faltered. A gelding named “Light o’ the Orient” beat -him in the next heat. Tom, then a lad of sixteen, was -put into the sulky and the two of them, horse and boy, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_318'>318</span>fought out a royal battle with the gelding and a little -bay mare, that hadn’t been heard from before but that -suddenly developed a whirlwind burst of speed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The big stallion and the slender boy won. From -amid a mob of cursing, shouting, whip-slashing men -a black horse shot out and a pale boy, leaning far -forward, called and murmured to him. “Go on, boy! -Go boy! Go boy!” the lad’s voice had called over -and over all through the race. Bucephalus got a -record of 2.06¼ and Tom Edwards became a newspaper -hero. His picture was in the Cleveland -<i>Leader</i> and the Cincinnati <i>Enquirer</i>, and when he -came back to Bidwell we other boys fairly wept in our -envy of him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then it was however that Tom Edwards fell down -from his high place. There he was, a tall boy, almost -of man’s stature and, except for a few months during -the winters when he lived on the Whitehead farms, -and between his sixth and thirteenth years, when he -had attended a country school and had learned to read -and write and do sums, he was without education. -And now, during that very fall of the year of his -triumph at Columbus, the Bidwell truant officer, a -thin man with white hair, who was also superintendent -of the Baptist Sunday School, came one afternoon to -the Whitehead stables and told him that if he did not -begin going to school both he and his employer would -get into serious trouble.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Harry Whitehead was furious and so was Tom. -There he was, a great tall slender fellow who had -been with race horses to the fairs all over Northern -Ohio and Indiana, during that very fall, and who had -just come home from the journey during which -<span class='pageno' id='Page_319'>319</span>he had driven the winner in the free-for-all trot at -a Grand Circuit meeting and had given Bucephalus a -mark of 2.06¼.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Was such a fellow to go sit in a schoolroom, with a -silly school book in his hand, reading of the affairs of -the men who dealt in butter, eggs, potatoes and -apples, and whose unnecessarily complicated business -life the children were asked to unravel,—was such a -fellow to go sit in a room, under the eyes of a woman -teacher, and in the company of boys half his age and -with none of his wide experience of life?</p> - -<p class='c006'>It was a hard thought and Tom took it hard. The -law was all right, Harry Whitehead said, and was -intended to keep noaccount kids off the streets but -what it had to do with himself Tom couldn’t make out. -When the truant officer had gone and Tom was left -alone in the stable with his employer the man and boy -stood for a long time glumly staring at each other. -It was all right to be educated but Tom felt he had -book education enough. He could read, write and do -sums, and what other book-training did a horseman -need? As for books, they were all right for rainy -evenings when there were no men sitting by the -stable door and talking of horses and races. And -also when one went to the races in a strange town -and arrived, perhaps on Sunday, and the races did -not begin until the following Wednesday—it was all -right then to have a book in the chest with the horse -blankets. When the weather was fine and the work -was all done on a fine fall afternoon, and the other -swipes, both niggers and whites, had gone off to town, -one could take a book out under a tree and read of -life in far away places that was as strange and almost -<span class='pageno' id='Page_320'>320</span>as fascinating as one’s own life. Tom had read -“Robinson Crusoe,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Tales -from the Bible,” all of which he had found in the -Whitehead house and Jacob Friedman, the school -superintendent at Bidwell, who had a fancy for horses, -had loaned him other books that he intended reading -during the coming winter. They were in his chest—one -called “Gulliver’s Travels” and the other “Moll -Flanders.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now the law said he must give up being a horseman -and go every day to a school and do little foolish -sums, he who had already proven himself a man. -What other schoolboy knew what he did about life? -Had he not seen and spoken to several of the greatest -men of this world, men who had driven horses to beat -world records, and did they not respect him? When -he became a driver of race horses such men as Pop -Geers, Walter Cox, John Splan, Murphy and the -others would not ask him what books he had read, or -how many feet make a rod and how many rods in a -mile. In the race at Columbus, where he had won -his spurs as a driver, he had already proven that life -had given him the kind of education he needed. The -driver of the gelding “Light o’ the Orient” had tried -to bluff him in that third heat and had not succeeded. -He was a big man with a black mustache and had lost -one eye so that he looked fierce and ugly, and when -the two horses were fighting it out, neck and neck, -up the back stretch, and when Tom was tooling -Bucephalus smoothly and surely to the front, the older -man turned in his sulky to glare at him. “You -damned little whipper-snapper,” he yelled, “I’ll knock -you out of your sulky if you don’t take back.”</p> - -<p class='c006'><span class='pageno' id='Page_321'>321</span>He had yelled that at Tom and then had struck at -the boy with the butt of his whip—not intending actually -to hit him perhaps but just missing the boy’s -head, and Tom had kept his eyes steadily on his own -horse, had held him smoothly in his stride and at the -upper turn, at just the right moment, had begun to -pull out in front.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Later he hadn’t even told Harry Whitehead of the -incident, and that fact too, he felt vaguely, had something -to do with his qualifications as a man.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And now they were going to put him into a school -with the kids. He was at work on the stable floor, -rubbing the legs of a trim-looking colt, and Bucephalus -was in his stall waiting to be taken to a late fall -meeting at Indianapolis on the following Monday, -when the blow fell. Harry Whitehead walked back -and forth swearing at the two men who were loafing -in chairs at the stable door. “Do you call that law, -eh, robbing a kid of the chance Tom’s got?” he asked, -shaking a riding whip under their noses. “I never -see such a law. What I say is Dod blast such a law.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom took the colt back to its place and went into -Bucephalus’ box-stall. The stallion was in one of his -gentle moods and turned to have his nose rubbed, but -Tom went and buried his face against the great black -neck and for a long time stood thus, trembling. He -had thought perhaps Harry would let him drive Bucephalus -in all his races another season and now that -was all to come to an end and he was to be pitched -back into childhood, to be made just a kid in school. -“I won’t do it,” he decided suddenly and a dogged -light came into his eyes. His future as a driver of -race horses might have to be sacrificed but that didn’t -<span class='pageno' id='Page_322'>322</span>matter so much as the humiliation of this other, and -he decided he would say nothing to Harry Whitehead -or his wife but would make his own move.</p> - -<p class='c006'>“I’ll get out of here. Before they get me into that -school I’ll skip out of town,” he told himself as his -hand crept up and fondled the soft nose of Bucephalus, -the son royal of the Patchens.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom left Bidwell during the night, going east on a -freight train, and no one there ever saw him again. -During that winter he lived in the city of Cleveland, -where he got work driving a milk wagon in a district -where factory workers lived.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Then spring came again and with it the memory of -other springs—of thunder-showers rolling over fields -of wheat, just appearing, green and vivid, out of the -black ground—of the sweet smell of new plowed -fields, and most of all the smell and sound of animals -about barns at the Whitehead farms north of Bidwell. -How sharply he remembered those days on the -farms and the days later when he lived in Bidwell, -slept in the stables and went each morning to jog race -horses and young colts round and round the half-mile -race track at the fair grounds at Bidwell.</p> - -<p class='c006'>That was a life! Round and round the track they -went, young colthood and young manhood together, -not thinking but carrying life very keenly within themselves -and feeling tremendously. The colt’s legs were -to be hardened and their wind made sound and for -the boy long hours were to be spent in a kind of dream -world, and life lived in the company of something fine, -courageous, filled with a terrible, waiting surge of -life. At the fair ground, away at the town’s edge, -tall grass grew in the enclosure inside the track and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_323'>323</span>there were trees from which came the voices of squirrels, -chattering and scolding, accompanied by the call -of nesting birds and, down below on the ground, by -the song of bees visiting early blossoms and of insects -hidden away in the grass.</p> - -<p class='c006'>How different the life of the city streets in the -springtime! To Tom it was in a way fetid and foul. -For months he had been living in a boarding house -with some six, and often eight or ten, other young fellows, -in narrow rooms above a foul street. The -young fellows were unmarried and made good wages, -and on the winter evenings and on Sundays they -dressed in good clothes and went forth, to return -later, half drunk, to sit for long hours boasting and -talking loudly in the rooms. Because he was shy, often -lonely and sometimes startled and frightened by -what he saw and heard in the city, the others would -have nothing to do with Tom. They felt a kind of -contempt for him, looked upon him as a “rube” and in -the late afternoon when his work was done he often -went for long walks alone in grim streets of workingmen’s -houses, breathing the smoke-laden air and -listening to the roar and clatter of machinery in great -factories. At other times and immediately after the -evening meal he went off to his room and to bed, half -sick with fear and with some strange nameless dread -of the life about him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And so in the early summer of his seventeenth year -Tom left the city and going back into his own Northern -Ohio lake country found work with a man named -John Bottsford who owned a threshing outfit and -worked among the farmers of Erie County, Ohio. -The slender boy, who had urged Bucephalus to his -<span class='pageno' id='Page_324'>324</span>greatest victory and had driven him the fastest mile of -his career, had become a tall strong fellow with heavy -features, brown eyes, and big nerveless hands—but in -spite of his apparent heaviness there was something -tremendously alive in him. He now drove a team of -plodding grey farm horses and it was his job to keep -the threshing engine supplied with water and fuel and -to haul the threshed grain out of the fields and into -farmers’ barns.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The thresherman Bottsford was a broad-shouldered, -powerful old man of sixty and had, besides -Tom, three grown sons in his employ. He had -been a farmer, working on rented land, all his life -and had saved some money, with which he had bought -the threshing outfit, and all day the five men worked -like driven slaves and at night slept in the hay in -the farmers’ barns. It was rainy that season in -the lake country and at the beginning of the time of -threshing things did not go very well for Bottsford.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The old thresherman was worried. The threshing -venture had taken all of his money and he had a dread -of going into debt and, as he was a deeply religious -man, at night when he thought the others asleep, he -crawled out of the hayloft and went down onto the -barn floor to pray.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Something happened to Tom and for the first time -in his life he began to think about life and its meaning. -He was in the country, that he loved, in the -yellow sunwashed fields, far from the dreaded noises -and dirt of city life, and here was a man, of his own -type, in some deep way a brother to himself, who -was continuously crying out to some power outside -himself, some power that was in the sun, in the clouds, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_325'>325</span>in the roaring thunder that accompanied the summer -rains—that was in these things and that at the -same time controlled all these things.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The young threshing apprentice was impressed. -Throughout the rainy days, when no work could be -done, he wandered about and waited for night, and -then, when they all had gone into the barn loft and -the others prepared to sleep, he stayed awake to -think and listen. He thought of God and of the -possibilities of God’s part in the affairs of men. The -thresherman’s youngest son, a fat jolly fellow, lay -beside him and, for a time after they had crawled -into the hay, the two boys whispered and laughed together. -The fat boy’s skin was sensitive and the -dry broken ends of grass stalks crept down under -his clothes and tickled him. He giggled and twisted -about, wriggling and kicking and Tom looked at him -and laughed also. The thoughts of God went out of -his mind.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the barn all became quiet and when it rained -a low drumming sound went on overhead. Tom -could hear the horses and cattle, down below, moving -about. The smells were all delicious smells. The -smell of the cows in particular awoke something -heady in him. It was as though he had been drinking -strong wine. Every part of his body seemed -alive. The two older boys, who like their father had -serious natures, lay with their feet buried in the hay. -They lay very still and a warm musty smell arose -from their clothes, that were full of the sweat of -toil. Presently the bearded old thresherman, who -slept off by himself, arose cautiously and walked -across the hay in his stockinged feet. He went down -<span class='pageno' id='Page_326'>326</span>a ladder to the floor below, and Tom listened eagerly. -The fat boy snored but he was quite sure that the -older boys were awake like himself. Every sound -from below was magnified. He heard a horse stamp -on the barn floor and a cow rub her horns against a -feed box. The old thresherman prayed fervently, -calling on the name of Jesus to help him out of his -difficulty. Tom could not hear all his words but some -of them came to him quite clearly and one group of -words ran like a refrain through the thresherman’s -prayer. “Gentle Jesus,” he cried, “send the good -days. Let the good days come quickly. Look out -over the land. Send us the fair warm days.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Came the warm fair days and Tom wondered. -Late every morning, after the sun had marched far -up into the sky and after the machines were set by -a great pile of wheat bundles he drove his tank wagon -off to be filled at some distant creek or at a pond. -Sometimes he was compelled to drive two or three -miles to the lake. Dust gathered in the roads and -the horses plodded along. He passed through a -grove of trees and went down a lane and into a small -valley where there was a spring and he thought of -the old man’s words, uttered in the silence and the -darkness of the barns. He made himself a figure -of Jesus as a young god walking about over the land. -The young god went through the lanes and through -the shaded covered places. The feet of the horses -came down with a thump in the dust of the road and -there was an echoing thump far away in the wood. -Tom leaned forward and listened and his cheeks -became a little pale. He was no longer the growing -man but had become again the fine and sensitive boy -<span class='pageno' id='Page_327'>327</span>who had driven Bucephalus through a mob of angry, -determined men to victory. For the first time the -blood of the old poet Twn O’r Nant awoke in him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The water boy for the threshing crew rode the -horse Pegasus down through the lanes back of the -farm houses in Erie County, Ohio, to the creeks -where the threshing tanks must be filled. Beside him -on the soft earth in the forest walked the young god -Jesus. At the creek Pegasus, born of the springs of -Ocean, stamped on the ground. The plodding farm -horses stopped. With a dazed look in his eyes Tom -Edwards arose from the wagon seat and prepared -his hose and pump for filling the tank. The god -Jesus walked away over the land, and with a wave -of his hand summoned the smiling days.</p> - -<p class='c006'>A light came into Tom Edwards’ eyes and grace -seemed to come also into his heavy maturing body. -New impulses came to him. As the threshing crew -went about, over the roads and through the villages -from farm to farm, women and young girls looked at -the young man and smiled. Sometimes as he came -from the fields to a farmer’s barn, with a load of -wheat in bags on his wagon, the daughter of the -farmer stepped out of the farm house and stood looking -at him. Tom looked at the woman and hunger -crept into his heart and, in the evenings while the -thresherman and his sons sat on the ground by the -barns and talked of their affairs, he walked nervously -about. Making a motion to the fat boy, who was not -really interested in the talk of his father and brothers, -the two younger men went to walk in the nearby fields -and on the roads. Sometimes they stumbled along a -country road in the dusk of the evening and came into -<span class='pageno' id='Page_328'>328</span>the lighted streets of a town. Under the store-lights -young girls walked about. The two boys stood in the -shadows by a building and watched and later, as they -went homeward in the darkness, the fat boy expressed -what they both felt. They passed through a dark -place where the road wound through a wood. In -silence the frogs croaked, and birds roosting in the -trees were disturbed by their presence and fluttered -about. The fat boy wore heavy overalls and his fat -legs rubbed against each other. The rough cloth -made a queer creaking sound. He spoke passionately. -“I would like to hold a woman, tight, tight, tight,” -he said.</p> - -<p class='c006'>One Sunday the thresherman took his entire crew -with him to a church. They had been working near a -village called Castalia, but did not go into the town -but to a small white frame church that stood amid -trees and by a stream at the side of a road, a mile -north of the village. They went on Tom’s water -wagon, from which they had lifted the tank and placed -boards for seats. The boy drove the horses.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Many teams were tied in the shade under the trees -in a little grove near the church, and strange men—farmers -and their sons—stood about in little groups -and talked of the season’s crops. Although it was -hot, a breeze played among the leaves of the trees -under which they stood, and back of the church and -the grove the stream ran over stones and made a persistent -soft murmuring noise that arose above the hum -of voices.</p> - -<p class='c006'>In the church Tom sat beside the fat boy who -stared at the country girls as they came in and who, -after the sermon began, went to sleep while Tom listened -<span class='pageno' id='Page_329'>329</span>eagerly to the sermon. The minister, an old -man with a beard and a strong sturdy body, looked, -he thought not unlike his employer Bottsford the -thresherman.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The minister in the country church talked of that -time when Mary Magdalene, the woman who had -been taken in adultery, was being stoned by the crowd -of men who had forgotten their own sins and when, -in the tale the minister told, Jesus approached and -rescued the woman Tom’s heart thumped with excitement. -Then later the minister talked of how Jesus -was tempted by the devil, as he stood on a high place -in the mountain, but the boy did not listen. He -leaned forward and looked out through a window -across fields and the minister’s words came to him -but in broken sentences. Tom took what was said concerning -the temptation on the mountain to mean that -Mary had followed Jesus and had offered her body to -him, and that afternoon, when he had returned with -the others to the farm where they were to begin -threshing on the next morning, he called the fat boy -aside and asked his opinion.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The two boys walked across a field of wheat-stubble -and sat down on a log in a grove of trees. It -had never occurred to Tom that a man could be -tempted by a woman. It had always seemed to him -that it must be the other way, that women must always -be tempted by men. “I thought men always -asked,” he said, “and now it seems that women sometimes -do the asking. That would be a fine thing if it -could happen to us. Don’t you think so?”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The two boys arose and walked under the trees and -dark shadows began to form on the ground underfoot. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_330'>330</span>Tom burst into words and continually asked questions -and the fat boy, who had been often to church and -for whom the figure of Jesus had lost most of its -reality, felt a little embarrassed. He did not think -the subject should be thus freely discussed and when -Tom’s mind kept playing with the notion of Jesus, -pursued and tempted by a woman, he grunted his disapproval. -“Do you think he really refused?” Tom -asked over and over. The fat boy tried to explain. -“He had twelve disciples,” he said. “It couldn’t -have happened. They were always about. Well, -you see, she wouldn’t ever have had no chance. -Wherever he went they went with him. They were -men he was teaching to preach. One of them later -betrayed him to soldiers who killed him.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom wondered. “How did that come about? -How could a man like that be betrayed?” he asked. -“By a kiss,” the fat boy replied.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On the evening of the day when Tom Edwards—for -the first and last time in his life—went into a -church, there was a light shower, the only one that -fell upon John Bottsford’s threshing crew during the -last three months the Welsh boy was with them and -the shower in no way interfered with their work. -The shower came up suddenly and a few minutes -was gone. As it was Sunday and as there was no -work the men had all gathered in the barn and were -looking out through the open barn doors. Two or -three men from the farm house came and sat -with them on boxes and barrels on the barn floor -and, as is customary with country people, very -little was said. The men took knives out of their -pockets and finding little sticks among the rubbish -<span class='pageno' id='Page_331'>331</span>on the barn floor began to whittle, while the old -thresherman went restlessly about with his hands -in his trouser pockets. Tom who sat near the -door, where an occasional drop of rain was blown -against his cheek, alternately looked from his -employer to the open country where the rain played -over the fields. One of the farmers remarked -that a rainy time had come on and that there would be -no good threshing weather for several days and, while -the thresherman did not answer, Tom saw his lips -move and his grey beard bob up and down. He -thought the thresherman was protesting but did not -want to protest in words.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As they had gone about the country many rains had -passed to the north, south and east of the threshing -crew and on some days the clouds hung over them all -day, but no rain fell and when they had got to a new -place they were told it had rained there three days -before. Sometimes when they left a farm Tom stood -up on the seat of his water wagon and looked back. -He looked across fields to where they had been at -work and then looked up into the sky. “The rain -may come now. The threshing is done and the wheat -is all in the barn. The rain can now do no harm to -our labor,” he thought.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On the Sunday evening when he sat with the men -on the floor of the barn Tom was sure that the -shower that had now come would be but a passing affair. -He thought his employer must be very close to -Jesus, who controlled the affairs of the heavens, and -that a long rain would not come because the thresherman -did not want it. He fell into a deep reverie and -John Bottsford came and stood close beside him. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_332'>332</span>The thresherman put his hand against the door jamb -and looked out and Tom could still see the grey beard -moving. The man was praying and was so close to -himself that his trouser leg touched Tom’s hand. -Into the boy’s mind came the remembrance of how -John Bottsford had prayed at night on the barn floor. -On that very morning he had prayed. It was just as -daylight came and the boy was awakened because, as -he crept across the hay to descend the ladder, the old -man’s foot had touched his hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As always Tom had been excited and wanted to -hear every word said in the older man’s prayers. He -lay tense, listening to every sound that came up from -below. A faint glow of light came into the hayloft, -through a crack in the side of the barn, a rooster -crowed and some pigs, housed in a pen near the barn, -grunted loudly. They had heard the thresherman -moving about and wanted to be fed and their grunting, -and the occasional restless movement of a horse -or a cow in the stable below, prevented Tom’s hearing -very distinctly. He, however, made out that his -employer was thanking Jesus for the fine weather that -had attended them and was protesting that he did not -want to be selfish in asking it to continue. “Jesus,” -he said, “send, if you wish, a little shower on this day -when, because of our love for you, we do not work in -the fields. Let it be fine tomorrow but today, after -we have come back from the house of worship, let a -shower freshen the land.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>As Tom sat on a box near the door of the barn and -saw how aptly the words of his employer had been -answered by Jesus he knew that the rain would not -last. The man for whom he worked seemed to him -<span class='pageno' id='Page_333'>333</span>so close to the throne of God that he raised the hand, -that had been touched by John Bottsford’s trouser leg -to his lips and secretly kissed it—and when he looked -again out over the fields the clouds were being blown -away by a wind and the evening sun was coming out. -It seemed to him that the young and beautiful god -Jesus must be right at hand, within hearing of his -voice. “He is,” Tom told himself, “standing behind -a tree in the orchard.” The rain stopped and he -went silently out of the barn, towards a small apple -orchard that lay beside the farm house, but when he -came to a fence and was about to climb over he -stopped. “If Jesus is there he will not want me to -find him,” he thought. As he turned again toward -the barn he could see, across a field, a low grass-covered -hill. He decided that Jesus was not after all -in the orchard. The long slanting rays of the evening -sun fell on the crest of the hill and touched with light -the grass stalks, heavy with drops of rain and for a -moment the hill was crowned as with a crown of -jewels. A million tiny drops of water, reflecting the -light, made the hilltop sparkle as though set with -gems. “Jesus is there,” muttered the boy. “He lies -on his belly in the grass. He is looking at me over -the edge of the hill.”</p> -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> -<div class='chapter'> - <span class='pageno' id='Page_334'>334</span> - <h2 class='c008'><span class='sc'>Chapter II</span></h2> -</div> -<p class='drop-capa0_3_0_65 c014'>JOHN BOTTSFORD went with his threshing -crew to work for a large farmer named Barton -near the town of Sandusky. The threshing -season was drawing near an end and the days remained -clear, cool and beautiful. The country into -which he now came made a deep impression on Tom’s -mind and he never forgot the thoughts and experiences -that came to him during the last weeks of that summer -on the Barton farms.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The traction engine, puffing forth smoke and attracting -the excited attention of dogs and children as -it rumbled along and pulled the heavy red grain separator, -had trailed slowly over miles of road and had -come down almost to Lake Erie. Tom, with the fat -Bottsford boy sitting beside him on the water wagon, -followed the rumbling puffing engine, and when they -came to the new place, where they were to stay for -several days, he could see, from the wagon seat, the -smoke of the factories in the town of Sandusky rising -into the clear morning air.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The man for whom John Bottsford was threshing -owned three farms, one on an island in the bay, where -he lived, and two on the mainland, and the larger of -the mainland farms had great stacks of wheat standing -in a field near the barns. The farm was in a wide -basin of land, very fertile, through which a creek -<span class='pageno' id='Page_335'>335</span>flowed northward into Sandusky Bay and, besides the -stacks of wheat in the basin, other stacks had been -made in the upland fields beyond the creek, where a -country of low hills began. From these latter fields -the waters of the bay could be seen glistening in the -bright fall sunlight and steamers went from Sandusky -to a pleasure resort called Cedar Point. When the -wind blew from the north or west and when the -threshing machinery had been stopped at the noon -hour the men, resting with their backs against a strawstack, -could hear a band playing on one of the steamers.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Fall came on early that year and the leaves on the -trees in the forests that grew along the roads that ran -down through the low creek bottom lands began to -turn yellow and red. In the afternoons when Tom -went to the creek for water he walked beside his -horses and the dry leaves crackled and snapped underfoot.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As the season had been a prosperous one Bottsford -decided that his youngest son should attend school in -town during the fall and winter. He had bought himself -a machine for cutting firewood and with his two -older sons intended to take up that work. “The logs -will have to be hauled out of the wood lots to where -we set up the saws,” he said to Tom. “You can come -with us if you wish.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The thresherman began to talk to Tom of the value -of learning. “You’d better go to some town yourself -this winter. It would be better for you to get into -a school,” he said sharply. He grew excited and -walked up and down beside the water wagon, on the -seat of which Tom sat listening and said that God had -<span class='pageno' id='Page_336'>336</span>given men both minds and bodies and it was wicked to -let either decay because of neglect. “I have watched -you,” he said. “You don’t talk very much but you -do plenty of thinking, I guess. Go into the schools. -Find out what the books have to say. You don’t have -to believe when they say things that are lies.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The Bottsford family lived in a rented house facing -a stone road near the town of Bellevue, and the -fat boy was to go to that town—a distance of some -eighteen miles from where the men were at work—afoot, -and on the evening before he set out he and -Tom went out of the barns intending to have a last -walk and talk together on the roads.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They went along in the dusk of the fall evening, -each thinking his own thoughts, and coming to a -bridge that led over the creek in the valley sat on the -bridge rail. Tom had little to say but his companion -wanted to talk about women and, when darkness came -on, the embarrassment he felt regarding the subject -went quite away and he talked boldly and freely. -He said that in the town of Bellevue, where he was to -live and attend school during the coming winter, he -would be sure to get in with a woman. “I’m not going -to be cheated out of that chance,” he declared. -He explained that as his father would be away from -home when he moved into town he would be free to -pick his own place to board.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The fat boy’s imagination became inflamed and he -told Tom his plans. “I won’t try to get in with any -young girl,” he declared shrewdly. “That only gets a -fellow in a fix. He might have to marry her. I’ll -go live in a house with a widow, that’s what I’ll do. -And in the evening the two of us will be there alone. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_337'>337</span>We’ll begin to talk and I’ll keep touching her with -my hands. That will get her excited.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The fat boy jumped to his feet and walked back and -forth on the bridge. He was nervous and a little -ashamed and wanted to justify what he had said. The -thing for which he hungered had he thought become a -possibility—an act half achieved. Coming to stand -before Tom he put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll go -into her room at night,” he declared. “I’ll not tell -her I’m coming, but will creep in when she is asleep. -Then I’ll get down on my knees by her bed and I’ll -kiss her, hard, hard. I’ll hold her tight, so she can’t -get away and I’ll kiss her mouth till she wants what -I want. Then I’ll stay in her house all winter. No -one will know. Even if she won’t have me I’ll only -have to move, I’m sure to be safe. No one will believe -what she says, if she tells on me. I’m not going -to be like a boy any more, I’ll tell you what—I’m -as big as a man and I’m going to do like men do, -that’s what I am.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>The two young men went back to the barn where -they were to sleep on the hay. The rich farmer for -whom they were now at work had a large house and -provided beds for the thresherman and his two older -sons but the two younger men slept in the barn loft -and on the night before had lain under one blanket. -After the talk by the bridge however, Tom did not -feel very comfortable and that stout exponent of manhood, -the younger Bottsford, was also embarrassed. -In the road the young man, whose name was Paul, -walked a little ahead of his companion and when they -got to the barn each sought a separate place in the -loft. Each wanted to have thoughts into which he -<span class='pageno' id='Page_338'>338</span>did not want the presence of the other to intrude.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For the first time Tom’s body burned with eager -desire for a female. He lay where he could see out -through a crack, in the side of the barn, and at first -his thoughts were all about animals. He had brought -a horse blanket up from the stable below and crawling -under it lay on his side with his eyes close to the -crack and thought about the love-making of horses and -cattle. Things he had seen in the stables when he -worked for Whitehead, the racing man, came back to -his mind and a queer animal hunger ran through him -so that his legs stiffened. He rolled restlessly about -on the hay and for some reason, he did not understand, -his lust took the form of anger and he hated the -fat boy. He thought he would like to crawl over the -hay and pound his companion’s face with his fists. -Although he had not seen Paul Bottsford’s face, when -he talked of the widow, he had sensed in him a flavor -of triumph. “He thinks he has got the better of -me,” young Edwards thought.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He rolled again to the crack and stared out into the -night. There was a new moon and the fields were -dimly outlined and clumps of trees, along the road -that led into the town of Sandusky, looked like black -clouds that had settled down over the land. For -some reason the sight of the land, lying dim and quiet -under the moon, took all of his anger away and he began -to think, not of Paul Bottsford, with hot eager -lust in his eyes, creeping into the room of the widow -at Bellevue, but of the god Jesus, going up into a mountain -with his woman, Mary.</p> - -<p class='c006'>His companion’s notion of going into a room where -a woman lay sleeping and taking her, as it were unawares, -<span class='pageno' id='Page_339'>339</span>now seemed to him entirely mean and the hot -jealous feeling that had turned into anger and hatred -went entirely away. He tried to think what the god, -who had brought the beautiful days for the threshing, -would do with a woman.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom’s body still burned with desire and his mind -wanted to think lascivious thoughts. The moon that -had been hidden behind clouds emerged and a wind -began to blow. It was still early evening and in the -town of Sandusky pleasure seekers were taking the -boat to the resort over the bay and the wind brought -to Tom’s ears the sound of music, blown over the -waters of the bay and down the creek basin. In a -grove near the barn the wind swayed gently the -branches of young trees and black shadows ran here -and there on the ground.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The younger Bottsford had gone to sleep in a distant -part of the barn loft, and now began to snore -loudly. The tenseness went out of Tom’s legs and -he prepared to sleep but before sleeping he muttered, -half timidly, certain words, that were half a prayer, -half an appeal to some spirit of the night. “Jesus, -bring me a woman,” he whispered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Outside the barn, in the fields, the wind, becoming -a little stronger, picked up bits of straw and blew them -about among the hard up-standing stubble and there -was a low gentle whispering sound as though the gods -were answering his appeal.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Tom went to sleep with his arm under his head and -with his eye close to the crack that gave him a view of -the moonlit fields, and in his dream the cry from within -repeated itself over and over. The mysterious god -Jesus had heard and answered the needs of his employer -<span class='pageno' id='Page_340'>340</span>John Bottsford and his own need would, he -was quite sure, be understood and attended to. -“Bring me a woman. I need her. Jesus, bring me a -woman,” he kept whispering into the night, as consciousness -left him and he slipped away into dreams.</p> - -<p class='c006'>After the youngest of the Bottsfords had departed -a change took place in the nature of Tom’s work. The -threshing crew had got now into a country of large -farms where the wheat had all been brought in from -the fields and stacked near the barns and where there -was always plenty of water near at hand. Everything -was simplified. The separator was pulled in -close by the barn door and the threshed grain was -carried directly to the bins from the separator. As -it was not a part of Tom’s work to feed the bundles -of grain into the whirling teeth of the separator—this -work being done by John Bottsford’s two elder -sons—there was little for the crew’s teamster to do. -Sometimes John Bottsford, who was the engineer, departed, -going to make arrangements for the next stop, -and was gone for a half day, and at such times Tom, -who had picked up some knowledge of the art, ran -the engine.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On other days however there was nothing at all for -him to do and his mind, unoccupied for long hours, -began to play him tricks. In the morning, after his -team had been fed and cleaned until the grey coats of -the old farm horses shone like racers, he went out of -the barn and into an orchard. Filling his pockets with -ripe apples he went to a fence and leaned over. In a -field young colts played about. As he held the apples -and called softly they came timidly forward, stopping -in alarm and then running a little forward, until one of -<span class='pageno' id='Page_341'>341</span>them, bolder than the others, ate one of the apples out -of his hand.</p> - -<p class='c006'>All through those bright warm clear fall days a -restless feeling, it seemed to Tom ran through everything -in nature. In the clumps of woodland still -standing on the farms flaming red spread itself out -along the limbs of trees and there was one grove of -young maple trees, near a barn, that was like a troop -of girls, young girls who had walked together down a -sloping field, to stop in alarm at seeing the men at -work in the barnyard. Tom stood looking at the -trees. A slight breeze made them sway gently from -side to side. Two horses standing among the trees -drew near each other. One nipped the other’s neck. -They rubbed their heads together.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The crew stopped at another large farm and it was -to be their last stop for the season. “When we have -finished this job we’ll go home and get our own fall -work done,” Bottsford said. Saturday evening came -and the thresherman and his sons took the horses and -drove away, going to their own home for the Sunday, -and leaving Tom alone. “We’ll be back early, on -Monday morning,” the thresherman said as they drove -away. Sunday alone among the strange farm people -brought a sharp experience to Tom and when it had -passed he decided he would not wait for the end of the -threshing season but a few days off now—but would -quit his job and go into the city and surrender to the -schools. He remembered his employer’s words, “Find -out what the books have to say. You don’t have to -believe, when they say things that are lies.”</p> - -<p class='c006'>As he walked in lanes, across meadows and upon the -hillsides of the farm, also on the shores of Sandusky -<span class='pageno' id='Page_342'>342</span>Bay, that Sunday morning Tom thought almost constantly -of his friend the fat fellow, young Paul Bottsford, -who had gone to spend the fall and winter at -Bellevue, and wondered what his life there might be -like. He had himself lived in such a town, in Bidwell, -but had rarely left Harry Whitehead’s stable. What -went on in such a town? What happened at night in -the houses of the towns? He remembered Paul’s plan -for getting into a house alone with a widow and how -he was to creep into her room at night, holding her -tightly in his arms until she wanted what he wanted. -“I wonder if he will have the nerve. Gee, I wonder -if he will have the nerve,” he muttered.</p> - -<p class='c006'>For a long time, ever since Paul had gone away and -he had no one with whom he could talk, things had -taken on a new aspect in Tom’s mind. The rustle of -dry leaves underfoot, as he walked in a forest—the -playing of shadows over the open face of a field—the -murmuring song of insects in the dry grass beside -the fences in the lanes—and at night the hushed contented -sounds made by the animals in the barns, were -no longer so sweet to him. For him no more did the -young god Jesus walk beside him, just out of sight -behind low hills, or down the dry beds of streams. -Something within himself, that had been sleeping was -now awakening. When he returned from walking in -the fields on the fall evenings and, thinking of Paul -Bottsford alone in the house with the widow at Bellevue, -half wishing he were in the same position, he felt -ashamed in the presence of the gentle old thresherman, -and afterward did not lie awake listening to the -older man’s prayers. The men who had come from -nearby farms to help with the threshing laughed and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_343'>343</span>shouted to each other as they pitched the straw into -great stacks or carried the filled bags of grain to the -bins, and they had wives and daughters who had come -with them and who were now at work in the farmhouse -kitchen, from which also laughter came. Girls -and women kept coming out at the kitchen door into -the barnyard, tall awkward girls, plump red-cheeked -girls, women with worn thin faces and sagging breasts. -All men and women seemed made for each other.</p> - -<p class='c006'>They all laughed and talked together, understood -one another. Only he was alone. He only had no -one to whom he could feel warm and close, to whom -he could draw close.</p> - -<p class='c006'>On the Sunday when the Bottsfords had all gone -away Tom came in from walking all morning in the -fields and ate his dinner with many other people in a -big farmhouse dining room. In preparation for the -threshing days ahead, and the feeding of many people, -several women had come to spend the day and to -help in preparing food. The farmer’s daughter, who -was married and lived in Sandusky, came with her -husband, and three other women, neighbors, came from -farms in the neighborhood. Tom did not look at them -but ate his dinner in silence and as soon as he could -manage got out of the house and went to the barns. -Going into a long shed he sat on the tongue of a -wagon, that from long disuse was covered with dust. -Swallows flew back and forth among the rafters overhead -and, in an upper corner of the shed where they -evidently had a nest, wasps buzzed in the semi-darkness.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The daughter of the farmer, who had come from -town, came from the house with a babe in her arms. -<span class='pageno' id='Page_344'>344</span>It was nursing time, and she wanted to escape from -the crowded house and, without having seen Tom, she -sat on a box near the shed door and opened her dress. -Embarrassed and at the same time fascinated by the -sight of a woman’s breasts, seen through cracks of -the wagon box, Tom drew his legs up and his head -down and remained concealed until the woman had -gone back to the house. Then he went again to the -fields and did not go back to the house for the evening -meal.</p> - -<p class='c006'>As he walked on that Sunday afternoon the grandson -of the Welsh poet experienced many new sensations. -In a way he came to understand that the things -Paul had talked of doing and that had, but a short -time before, filled him with disgust were now possible -to himself also. In the past when he had thought -about women there had always been something healthy -and animal-like in his lusts but now they took a new -form. The passion that could not find expression -through his body went up into his mind and he began -to see visions. Women became to him something different -than anything else in nature, more desirable -than anything else in nature, and at the same time -everything in nature became woman. The trees, in -the apple orchard by the barn, were like the arms of -women. The apples on the trees were round like the -breasts of women. They were the breasts of women—and -when he had got on to a low hill the contour of -the fences that marked the confines of the fields fell -into the forms of women’s bodies. Even the clouds -in the sky did the same thing.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He walked down along a lane to a stream and -<span class='pageno' id='Page_345'>345</span>crossed the stream by a wooden bridge. Then he -climbed another hill, the highest place in all that part -of the country, and there the fever that possessed him -became more active. An odd lassitude crept over him -and he lay down in the grass on the hilltop and closed -his eyes. For a long time he remained in a hushed, -half-sleeping, dreamless state and then opened his eyes -again.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Again the forms of women floated before him. To -his left the bay was ruffled by a gentle breeze and far -over towards the city of Sandusky two sailboats were -apparently engaged in a race. The masts of the boats -were fully dressed but on the great stretch of water -they seemed to stand still. The bay itself, in Tom’s -eyes, had taken on the form and shape of a woman’s -head and body and the two sailboats were the woman’s -eyes looking at him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>The bay was a woman with her head lying where -lay the city of Sandusky. Smoke arose from the -stacks of steamers docked at the city’s wharves and -the smoke formed itself into masses of black hair. -Through the farm, where he had come to thresh, ran -a stream. It swept down past the foot of the hill on -which he lay. The stream was the arm of the woman. -Her hand was thrust into the land and the lower part -of her body was lost—far down to the north, where -the bay became a part of Lake Erie—but her other -arm could be seen. It was outlined in the further -shore of the bay. Her other arm was drawn up and -her hand was pressing against her face. Her form -was distorted by pain but at the same time the giant -woman smiled at the boy on the hill. There was something -<span class='pageno' id='Page_346'>346</span>in the smile that was like the smile that had -come unconsciously to the lips of the woman who -had nursed her child in the shed.</p> - -<p class='c006'>Turning his face away from the bay Tom looked at -the sky. A great white cloud that lay along the -southern horizon formed itself into the giant head of -a man. Tom watched as the cloud crept slowly across -the sky. There was something noble and quieting -about the giant’s face and his hair, pure white and as -thick as wheat in a rich field in June, added to its -nobility. Only the face appeared. Below the shoulders -there was just a white shapeless mass of clouds.</p> - -<p class='c006'>And then this formless mass began also to change. -The face of a giant woman appeared. It pressed upward -toward the face of the man. Two arms formed -themselves on the man’s shoulders and pressed the -woman closely. The two faces merged. Something -seemed to snap in Tom’s brain.</p> - -<p class='c006'>He sat upright and looked neither at the bay nor at -the sky. Evening was coming on and soft shadows -began to play over the land. Below him lay the farm -with its barns and houses and in the field, below the -hill on which he was lying, there were two smaller -hills that became at once in his eyes the two full -breasts of a woman. Two white sheep appeared and -stood nibbling the grass on the woman’s breasts. -They were like babes being suckled. The trees in -the orchards near the barns were the woman’s hair. -An arm of the stream that ran down to the bay, the -stream he had crossed on the wooden bridge when he -came to the hill, cut across a meadow beyond the two -low hills. It widened into a pond and the pond made -a mouth for the woman. Her eyes were two black -<span class='pageno' id='Page_347'>347</span>hollows—low spots in a field where hogs had rooted -the grass away, looking for roots. Black puddles of -water lay in the hollows and they seemed eyes shining -invitingly up at him.</p> - -<p class='c006'>This woman also smiled and her smile was now an -invitation. Tom got to his feet and hurried away -down the hill and going stealthily past the barns and -the house got into a road. All night he walked under -the stars thinking new thoughts. “I am obsessed with -this idea of having a woman. I’d better go to the -city and go to school and see if I can make myself -fit to have a woman of my own,” he thought. “I -won’t sleep tonight but will wait until tomorrow when -Bottsford comes back and then I’ll quit and go into -the city.” He walked, trying to make plans. Even a -good man like John Bottsford, had a woman for himself. -Could he do that?</p> - -<p class='c006'>The thought was exciting. At the moment it -seemed to him that he had only to go into the city, and -go to the schools for a time, to become beautiful and to -have beautiful women love him. In his half ecstatic -state he forgot the winter months he had spent in the -city of Cleveland, and forgot also the grim streets, the -long rows of dark prison-like factories and the loneliness -of his life in the city. For the moment and as he -walked in the dusty roads under the moon, he thought -of American towns and cities as places for beautifully -satisfying adventures, for all such fellows as himself.</p> - -<div class='nf-center-c0'> -<div class='nf-center c005'> - <div>THE END</div> - <div class='c005'><span class='small'>PRINTED IN U.S.A.</span></div> - </div> -</div> - -<div class='pbb'> - <hr class='pb c005' /> -</div> -<p class='c006'> </p> -<div class='tnbox'> - - <ul class='ul_1 c005'> - <li>Transcriber’s Notes: - <ul class='ul_2'> - <li>Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. - </li> - <li>Typographical errors were silently corrected. - </li> - <li>Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant - form was found in this book. - </li> - </ul> - </li> - </ul> - -</div> -<p class='c006'> </p> - - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Horses and Men, by Sherwood Anderson - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HORSES AND MEN *** - -***** This file should be named 60097-h.htm or 60097-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/0/0/9/60097/ - -Produced by Tim Lindell, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online -Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This -book was produced from images made available by the -HathiTrust Digital Library.) - -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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