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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Bring the Jubilee, by Ward Moore
+
+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
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Bring the Jubilee
+
+Author: Ward Moore
+
+Release Date: March 18, 2022 [eBook #67652]
+
+Language: English
+
+Produced by: Tim Lindell, Les Galloway and the Online Distributed
+             Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+             produced from images made available by the HathiTrust
+             Digital Library.)
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRING THE JUBILEE ***
+
+                          Transcriber’s Notes
+
+Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
+in hyphenation been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation
+remains unchanged. Note in particular that the apostrophe is very
+rarely used to indicate abbreviation.
+
+Italics are represented thus _italic_.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                Bring
+                                the
+                                Jubilee
+
+
+
+
+                             By Ward Moore
+
+
+                        _Breathe the Air Again_
+                       _Greener Than You Think_
+                          _Bring the Jubilee_
+
+ This is an original novel—not a reprint—published by FARRAR, STRAUS &
+YOUNG, INC. The low price of $2.00 is made possible by large printings
+                         of combined editions.
+
+
+
+
+                                      Bring
+                                      the
+                                      Jubilee
+
+                              WARD
+                              MOORE
+
+
+  FARRAR, STRAUS and YOUNG, Inc.
+  NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                  Copyright 1952 Fantasy House, Inc.
+                       Copyright 1953 Ward Moore
+          All rights reserved. Manufactured in the  U. S. A.
+           Library of Congress catalog card number: 53-10417
+
+                   BACK COVER MAP: BETTMANN ARCHIVE
+
+
+
+
+                                 _For
+                     TONY BOUCHER and MICK McCOMAS
+                         who liked this story_
+
+
+
+
+    What he will he does, and does so much
+    That proof is call’d impossibility
+                    —_Troilus and Cressida_
+
+ It is always the puzzle of the nature of time that brings our thoughts
+ to a standstill. And if time is so fundamental that an understanding
+ of its true nature is for ever beyond our reach, then so also in
+ all probability is a decision in the age-long controversy between
+ determination and free will.
+                          —_The Mysterious Universe_ by James Jeans
+
+
+
+
+                               Contents
+
+
+  I _Life in the Twenty-Six States_                                    1
+
+  II _Of Decisions, Minibiles, and Tinugraphs_                        12
+
+  III _A Member of the Grand Army_                                    22
+
+  IV _Tyss_                                                           32
+
+  V _Of Whigs and Populists_                                          42
+
+  VI _Enfandin_                                                       50
+
+  VII _Of Confederate Agents in 1942_                                 61
+
+  VIII _In Violent Times_                                             71
+
+  IX _Barbara_                                                        76
+
+  X _The Holdup_                                                      86
+
+  XI _Of Haggershaven_                                                95
+
+  XII _More of Haggershaven_                                         106
+
+  XIII _Time_                                                        116
+
+  XIV _Midbin’s Experiment_                                          124
+
+  XV _Good Years_                                                    132
+
+  XVI _Of Varied Subjects_                                           142
+
+  XVII _HX-1_                                                        156
+
+  XVIII _The Woman Tempted Me_                                       166
+
+  XIX _Gettysburg_                                                   175
+
+  XX _Bring the Jubilee_                                             181
+
+  XXI _For the Time Being_                                           191
+
+
+
+
+_1. LIFE IN THE TWENTY-SIX STATES_
+
+
+Although I am writing this in the year 1877, I was not born until 1921.
+Neither the dates nor the tenses are error—let me explain:
+
+I was born, as I say, in 1921, but it was not until the early 1930’s,
+when I was about ten, that I began to understand what a peculiarly
+frustrate and disinherited world was about me. Perhaps my approach to
+realization was through the crayon portrait of Granpa Hodgins which
+hung, very solemnly, over the mantel.
+
+Granpa Hodgins after whom I was named, perhaps a little
+grandiloquently, Hodgins McCormick Backmaker, had been a veteran of
+the War of Southron Independence. Like so many young men he had put on
+a shapeless blue uniform in response to the call of the ill-advised
+and headstrong—or martyred—Mr Lincoln. Depending on which of my lives’
+viewpoints you take.
+
+Granpa lost an arm on the Great Retreat to Philadelphia after the fall
+of Washington to General Lee’s victorious Army of Northern Virginia, so
+his war ended some six months before the capitulation at Reading and
+the acknowledgment of the independence of the Confederate States on
+July 4, 1864. One-armed and embittered, Granpa came home to Wappinger
+Falls and, like his fellow veterans, tried to remake his life in a
+different and increasingly hopeless world.
+
+On its face the Peace of Richmond was a just and even generous
+disposition of a defeated foe by the victor. (Both sides—for different
+reasons—remembered the mutiny of the Unreconstructed Federals in
+the Armies of the Cumberland and the Tennessee who, despite defeat
+at Chattanooga, could not forget Vicksburg or Port Hudson and fought
+bloodily against the order to surrender.) The South could easily have
+carved the country up to suit its most fiery patriots, even to the
+point of detaching the West and making a protectorate of it. Instead
+the chivalrous Southrons contented themselves with drawing the new
+boundary along traditional lines. The Mason-Dixon gave them Delaware
+and Maryland, but they generously returned the panhandle of western
+Virginia jutting above it. Missouri was naturally included in the
+Confederacy, but of the disputed territory Colorado and Deseret were
+conceded to the old Union; only Kansas and California as well as—for
+obvious defensive reasons—Nevada’s tip went to the South.
+
+But the Peace of Richmond had also laid the cost of the war on the
+beaten North and this was what crippled Granpa Hodgins more than the
+loss of his arm. The postwar inflation entered the galloping stage
+during the Vallandigham Administration, became dizzying in the time
+of President Seymour and precipitated the food riots of 1873 and ’74.
+It was only after the election of President Butler by the Whigs in
+1876 and the reorganization and drastic deflation following that money
+and property became stable, but by this time all normal values were
+destroyed. Meanwhile the indemnities had to be paid regularly in gold.
+Granpa and hundreds of thousands like him just never seemed to get back
+on their feet.
+
+How well I remember, as a small boy in the 1920’s and ’30s, my mother
+and father talking bitterly of how the War had ruined everything. They
+were not speaking of the then fairly recent Emperors’ War of 1914-16,
+but of the War of Southron Independence which still, nearly seventy
+years later, blighted what was left of the United States.
+
+Nor were they unique or peculiar in this. Men who slouched in the
+smithy while Father shod their horses, or gathered every month around
+the postoffice waiting for the notice of the winning lottery numbers
+to be put up, as often cursed the Confederates or discussed what might
+have been if Meade had been a better general or Lee a worse one, as
+they did the new-type bicycles with clockwork auxiliaries to make
+pedaling uphill easier, or the latest scandal about the French Emperor,
+Napoleon VI.
+
+I tried to imagine what it must have been like in Granpa Hodgins’ day,
+to visualize the lost past—that strange bright era when, if it could
+be believed, folk like ourselves and our neighbors had owned their
+farms outright and didnt pay rent to the bank or give half the crop to
+a landlord. I searched the wiggling crayon lines that composed Granpa
+Hodgins’ face for some sign that set him apart from his descendants.
+
+“But what did he _do_ to lose the farm?” I used to ask my mother.
+
+“Do? Didnt do anything. Couldnt help himself. Go along now and do your
+chores; Ive a terrible batch of work to get out.”
+
+How could Granpa’s not doing anything result so disastrously? I could
+not understand this any more than I could the bygone time when a man
+could nearly always get a job for wages which would support himself
+and a family, before the system of indenture became so common that
+practically the only alternative to pauperism was to sell oneself to a
+company.
+
+Indenting I understood all right, for there was a mill in Wappinger
+Falls which wove a shoddy cloth very different from the goods my mother
+produced on her handloom. Mother, even in her late forties, could have
+indented there for a good price, and she admitted that the work would
+be easier than weaving homespun to compete with their product. But, as
+she used to say with an obstinate shake of her head, “Free I was born
+and free I’ll die.”
+
+In Granpa Hodgins’ day, if one could believe the folktales or family
+legends, men and women married young and had large families; there
+might have been five generations between him and me instead of two. And
+many uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers and sisters. Now late marriages
+and only children were the rule.
+
+If it hadnt been for the War—This was the basic theme stated with
+variations suited to the particular circumstance. If it hadnt been
+for the War the most energetic young men and women would not turn
+to emigration; visiting foreigners would not come as to a slum; and
+the great powers would think twice before sending troops to restore
+order every time one of their citizens was molested. If it hadnt been
+for the War the detestable buyer from Boston—detestable to my mother,
+but rather fascinating to me with his brightly colored vest and smell
+of soap and hair tonic—would not have come regularly to offer her a
+miserable price for her weaving.
+
+“Foreigner!” she would always exclaim after he left; “sending good
+cloth out of the country.”
+
+Once my father ventured, “He’s only doing what he’s paid for.”
+
+“Trust a Backmaker to stand up for foreigners. Like father, like son;
+suppose you’d let the whole thieving crew in if you had your way.”
+
+So was first hinted the scandal of Grandfather Backmaker. No enlarged
+portrait of him hung anywhere, much less over the mantel. I got the
+impression my father’s father had been not only a foreigner by birth,
+but a shady character in his own right, a man who kept on believing
+in the things for which Granpa Hodgins fought after they were proved
+wrong. I don’t know how I learned that Grandfather Backmaker had made
+speeches advocating equal rights for Negroes or protesting the mass
+lynchings so popular in the North, in contrast to the humane treatment
+accorded these non-citizens in the Confederacy. Nor do I remember where
+I heard he had been run out of several places before finally settling
+in Wappinger Falls or that all his life people had muttered darkly
+at his back, “Dirty Abolitionist!”—a very deep imprecation indeed.
+I only know that as a consequence of this taint my father, a meek,
+hardworking, worried little man, was completely dominated by my mother
+who never let him forget that a Hodgins or a McCormick was worth dozens
+of Backmakers.
+
+I must have been a sore trial to her for I showed no sign of proper
+Hodgins gumption, such as she displayed herself and which surely kept
+us all—though precariously—free. For one thing I was remarkably unhandy
+and awkward, of little use in the hundred necessary chores around our
+dilapidated house. I could not pick up a hammer at her command to do
+something about fixing the loose weatherboards on the east side without
+mashing my thumb or splitting the aged, unpainted wood. I could not hoe
+the kitchen garden without damaging precious vegetables and leaving
+weeds intact. I could shovel snow in the winter at a tremendous rate
+for I was strong and had endurance, but work requiring manual dexterity
+baffled me. I fumbled in harnessing Bessie, our mare, or hitching her
+to the cart for my father’s trips to Poughkeepsie, and as for helping
+him on the farm or in his smithy I’m afraid my efforts drove that mild
+man nearest to a temper he ever came. He would lay the reins on the
+plowhorse’s back or his hammer down on the anvil and say mournfully:
+
+“Better see if you can help your mother, Hodge. Youre only in my way
+here.”
+
+On only one score did I come near pleasing Mother: I learned to read
+and write early, and exhibited some proficiency. But even here there
+was a flaw; she looked upon literacy as something which distinguished
+Hodginses and McCormicks from the ruck who had to make their mark, as
+an accomplishment which might somehow and unspecifiedly lead away from
+poverty. I found reading an end in itself, which probably reminded her
+of my father’s laxity or Grandfather Backmaker’s subversion.
+
+“Make something of yourself, Hodge,” she admonished me often.
+“You can’t change the world”—an obvious allusion to Grandfather
+Backmaker—“but you can do something with it as it is if you try hard
+enough. There’s always some way out.”
+
+Yet she did not approve of the postoffice lottery, on which so many
+pinned their hopes of escape from poverty or indenture. In this she and
+my father were agreed; both believed in hard work rather than chance.
+
+Still, chance could help even the steadiest toiler. I remember the
+time a minibile—one of the small, trackless locomotives—broke down
+not a quarter of a mile from Father’s smithy. This was a golden,
+unparalleled, unbelievable opportunity. Minibiles, like any other
+luxury, were rare in the United States though they were common enough
+in prosperous countries like the German Union or the Confederacy. We
+had to rely for our transportation on the never-failing horse or on the
+railroads, wornout and broken down as they were. For decades the great
+issue in Congress was the never completed Pacific transcontinental
+line, though British America had one and the Confederate States seven.
+(Sailing balloons, economical and fairly common, were still looked
+upon with some suspicion.) Only a rare millionaire with connections in
+Frankfurt, Washington-Baltimore or Leesburg could afford to indulge
+in a costly and complicated minibile requiring a trained driver to
+bounce it over the rutted and chuckholed roads. Only an extraordinarily
+adventurous spirit would leave the tar-surfaced streets of New York or
+its sister city of Brooklyn, where the minibiles’ solid rubber tires
+could at worst find traction on the horse or cable-car rails, for the
+morasses or washboard roads which were the only highways north of the
+Harlem River.
+
+When one did, the jolting, jouncing and shaking inevitably broke or
+disconnected one of the delicate parts in its complex mechanism. Then
+the only recourse—apart from telegraphing back to the city if the
+traveler broke down near an instrument—was to the closest blacksmith.
+Smiths rarely knew much of the principles of the minibiles, but with
+the broken part before them they could fabricate a passable duplicate
+and, unless the machine had suffered severe damage, put it back in
+place. It was customary for such a craftsman to compensate himself
+for the time taken away from horseshoeing or spring-fitting—or just
+absently chewing on an oatstraw—by demanding exorbitant remuneration,
+amounting to perhaps twenty-five or thirty cents an hour, thus avenging
+his rural poverty and self-sufficiency upon the effete wealth and
+helplessness of the urban excursionist.
+
+Such a golden opportunity befell my father, as I said, during the fall
+of 1933, when I was twelve. The driver had made his way to the smithy,
+leaving the owner of the minibile marooned and fuming in the enclosed
+passenger seat. A hasty visit convinced Father, who could repair a
+clock or broken rake with equal dexterity, that his only course was
+to bring the machine to the forge where he could heat and straighten
+a part not easy to disassemble. (The driver, the owner, and Father
+all repeated the name of the part often enough, but so inept have I
+been with “practical” things all my life that I couldnt recall it ten
+minutes, much less thirty years later.)
+
+“Hodge, run and get the mare and ride over to Jones’s. Don’t try to
+saddle her—go bareback. Ask Mr Jones to kindly lend me his team.”
+
+“I’ll give the boy a quarter dollar for himself if he’s back with the
+team in twenty minutes,” added the owner of the minibile, sticking his
+head out of the window.
+
+I won’t say I was off like the wind, for my life’s work has given me a
+distaste for exaggeration or hyperbole, but I moved faster than I ever
+had before. A quarter, a whole shining silver quarter, a day’s full
+wage for the boy who could find odd jobs, half the day’s pay of a grown
+man who wasnt indented or worked extra hours—all for myself, to spend
+as I wished!
+
+I ran all the way back to the barn, led Bessie out by her halter and
+jumped on her broad back, my enthralling daydream growing and deepening
+each moment. With my quarter safely got I could perhaps persuade my
+father to take me along on his next trip to Poughkeepsie; in the shops
+there I could find some yards of figured cotton for Mother, or a box of
+cigars to which Father was partial but rarely bought for himself, or an
+unimagined something for Mary McCutcheon, some three years older than
+I, with whom it had so recently become disturbing as well as imperative
+to wrestle—in secret of course so as not to show oneself unmanly in
+sporting with a weak girl instead of another boy.
+
+It never even occurred to me, as it would have to most, to invest in an
+eighth of a lottery ticket. Not only were my parents sternly against
+this popular gamble, but I myself felt a strangely puritanical aversion
+to meddling with my fortune.
+
+Or I could take the entire quarter into Newman’s Book and Clock Store.
+Here I could not afford one of the latest English or Confederate
+books—even the novels I disdained cost fifty cents in their original
+and thirty in the pirated United States’ edition—but what treasures
+there were in the twelve-and-a-half cent reprints and the dime classics!
+
+With Bessie’s legs moving steadily beneath me I pored over in my
+imagination Mr Newman’s entire stock, which I knew by heart from
+examinations lulled by the steady ticking of his other, and no doubt
+more salable, merchandise. My quarter would buy two reprints, but I
+would read them in as many evenings and be no better off than before
+until their memory faded and I could read them again. Better to invest
+in paperbacked adventure stories giving sharp, breathless pictures
+of life in the West or rekindling the glories of the War. True, they
+were written almost entirely by Confederate authors and I was, perhaps
+thanks to Granpa Hodgins and my mother, a devout partisan of the lost
+cause of Sheridan and Sherman and Thomas. But patriotism couldnt steel
+me against the excitement of the Confederate paperbacks; literature
+simply ignored the boundary stretching to the Pacific.
+
+I had finally determined to invest all my twenty-five cents, not
+in five paperbound volumes but in ten of the same in secondhand or
+shopworn condition, when I suddenly realized that I had been riding
+Bessie for some considerable time. I looked around, rather dazed by
+the abrupt translation from the dark and slightly musty interior of
+Newman’s store to the bright countryside, to find with dismay that
+Bessie hadnt taken me to the Jones farm after all but on some private
+tour of her own in the opposite direction.
+
+I’m afraid this little anecdote is pointless—it was momentarily pointed
+enough for me that evening, for in addition to the loss of the promised
+quarter I received a thorough whacking with a willow switch from my
+mother after my father had, as usual, dolefully refused his parental
+duty—except perhaps that it shows how in pursuing the dream I could
+lose the reality.
+
+My feeling that books were a part of life, and the most important part,
+was no passing phase. Other boys in their early teens dreamed of going
+to the wilds of Dakotah, Montana or Wyoming, indenting to a company
+run by a young and beautiful woman—this was also a favorite paperback
+theme—discovering the loot hidden by a gang, or emigrating to Australia
+or the South African Republic. Or else they faced the reality of
+indenture, carrying on the family farm, or petty trade. I only wanted
+to be allowed to read.
+
+I knew this ambition, if that is the proper word, to be outrageous and
+unheard of. It was also practically impossible. The school at Wappinger
+Falls, a survival from the days of compulsory attendance and an object
+of doubt in the eyes of the taxpayers, taught as little as possible
+as quickly as possible. Parents needed the help of their children to
+survive or to build up a small reserve in the illusory hope of buying
+free of indenture. Both my mother and my teachers looked askance at
+my longing to persist past an age when my contemporaries were making
+themselves economically useful.
+
+Nor, even supposing I had the fees, could the shabby, fusty Academy
+at Poughkeepsie—originally designed for the education of the
+well-to-do—provide what I wanted. Not that I was clear at all as to
+just what this was; I only knew that commercial arithmetic, surveying,
+or any of the other subjects taught there, were not the answer to my
+desires.
+
+There was certainly no money for any college. Our position had grown
+slowly worse; my father talked of selling the smithy and indenting.
+My dreams of Harvard or Yale were as idle as Father’s of making a
+good crop and getting out of debt. Nor did I know then, as I was to
+find out later, that the colleges were increasingly provincialized
+and decayed, contrasting painfully with the flourishing universities
+of the Confederacy and Europe. The average man asked what the United
+States needed colleges for anyway; those who attended them only
+learned discontent and to question time-honored institutions. Constant
+scrutiny of the faculties, summary firing of all instructors suspected
+of abnormal ideas, did not seem to improve the situation or raise the
+standards of teaching.
+
+My mother, now that I was getting beyond the switching age, lectured
+me firmly and at length on idleness and self-indulgence. “It’s a hard
+world, Hodge, and no one’s going to give you anything you don’t earn.
+Your father’s an easy-going man; too easy-going for his own good, but
+he always knows where his duty lies.”
+
+“Yes, maam,” I responded politely, not quite seeing what she was
+driving at.
+
+“Hard, honest work—that’s the only thing. Not hoping or wishing or
+thinking miracles will happen to you. Work hard and keep yourself free.
+Don’t depend on circumstances or other people, and don’t blame them for
+your own shortcomings. Be your own man. That’s the only way you’ll ever
+be where you want to.”
+
+She spoke of responsibility and duty as though they were measurable
+quantities, but the gentler parts of such equations, the factors of
+affection and pity, were never mentioned. I don’t want to give the
+impression that ours was a particularly puritanical family; I know
+our neighbors had of necessity much the same grim outlook. But I felt
+guiltily vulnerable, not merely on the score of wanting more schooling,
+but because of something else which would have shocked my mother beyond
+forgiveness.
+
+My early tussles with Mary McCutcheon had the natural consequences, but
+she had found me a too-youthful partner and had taken her interests
+elsewhere. For my part I now turned to Agnes Jones, a suddenly alluring
+young woman grown from the skinny kid I’d always brushed away. Agnes
+sympathized with my aspirations and encouraged me most pleasantly.
+However her specific plans for my future were limited to marrying her
+and helping her father on his farm, which seemed no great advance over
+what I could look forward to at home.
+
+And there I was certainly no asset; I ate three hearty meals a day and
+occupied a bed. I was conscious of the looks and smiles which followed
+me. A great lout of seventeen, too lazy to do a stroke of work, always
+wandering around with his head in the clouds or lying with his nose
+stuck in a book. Too bad; and the Backmakers such industrious folks
+too. I could feel what the shock of my behavior with Agnes added to my
+idleness would be to my mother.
+
+Yet I was neither depraved nor very different from the other youths of
+Wappinger Falls, who not only took their pleasures where they found
+them, but often more forcibly than persuasively. I did not analyze
+it fully or clearly, but I was at least to some extent aware of the
+essentially loveless atmosphere around me. The rigid convention
+of late marriages bred an exaggerated respect for chastity which
+had two sides: sisters’ and daughters’ honor was sternly avenged
+with no protest from society, and undiscovered seduction produced
+that much more gratification. But both retribution and venery
+were somewhat mechanical; they were the expected rather than the
+inescapable passions. Revivalists—and we country people had a vast
+fondness for those itinerants who came periodically to castigate us
+for our sins—denounced our laxity and pointed to the virtues of our
+grandparents and greatgrandparents. We accepted their advice with such
+modifications as suited us, which was not at all what they intended.
+
+And this was how I took my mother’s admonition to be my own man. What
+debts I owed her and my father seemed best discharged by relieving them
+of the burden of my keep, since I was clearly not fitting myself to
+reverse the balance. The notion that there was an emotional obligation
+on either side hardly occurred to me; I doubt if it did to them. Toward
+Agnes Jones I felt no debt at all.
+
+A few months after my seventeenth birthday I packed my three most
+cherished books in my good white cotton shirt, and having bade a most
+romantic goodbye to Agnes, one which would certainly have consummated
+her hopes had her father come upon us, I left Wappinger Falls and set
+out for New York.
+
+
+
+
+_2._ _OF DECISIONS, MINIBILES, AND TINUGRAPHS_
+
+
+I thought I could do the walk of some eighty miles in four days,
+allowing time to swap work for food, supposing I found farmers or
+housewives agreeable to the exchange. June made it no hardship to sleep
+outdoors, and the old post road ran close enough to the Hudson for any
+bathing I might want to do.
+
+The dangers of the trip were part erf the pattern of life in the United
+States in 1938. I didnt particularly fear being robbed by a roving
+gang for I was sure organized predators would disdain so obviously
+unprofitable a prey, and individual thieves I felt I could take care
+of, but I was not anxious to be picked up as a vagrant by any of the
+three police forces, national, state, or local. As a freeman I was
+more exposed to this chance than an indent would be, with a work-card
+on his person and a company behind him. A freeman was fair game for
+the constables, state troopers, or revenuers to recruit, after a
+perfunctory trial, into one of the chain gangs upon whom the roads,
+canals and other public works were dependent.
+
+Some wondered why the roads were so bad in spite of all this apparent
+surplus of labor and were dubious of the explanation that surfacing
+was expensive and it was impossible to maintain unsurfaced highways
+in good condition. Only the hint that prisoners had been seen working
+around the estates of the great Whig families or had been lent to some
+enterprise operated by foreign capital brought knowing nods.
+
+At seventeen possible disasters are not brooded over. I resolved
+to be wary, and then dismissed thoughts of police, gangs and all
+unpleasantness. The future was mine to make as my mother had insisted,
+and I was taking the first steps in shaping it.
+
+I started off briskly, passing at first through villages long familiar;
+then, getting beyond the territory I had known all my life, I slowed
+down often enough to gaze at something new and strange, or to wander
+into wood or pasture for wild strawberries or early blueberries.
+I covered less ground than I had intended by the time I found a
+farmhouse, after inquiring at several others, where the woman was
+willing to give me supper and even let me sleep in the barn in return
+for splitting a sizable stack of logs into kindling and milking two
+cows.
+
+Exercise and hot food must have counteracted the excitement of the
+day, for I fell asleep immediately and didnt waken till quite a while
+after sunup. It was another warm, fine morning; soon the post road led,
+not between shabby villages and towns or struggling farms, but past
+the stone or brick walls of opulent estates. Now and then I caught a
+glimpse between old, well-tended trees of magnificent houses either
+a century old or built to resemble those dating from that prosperous
+time. I could not but share the general dislike for the wealthy Whigs
+who owned these places, their riches contrasting with the common
+poverty and deriving from exploitation of the United States as a
+colony, but I could not help enjoying the beauty of their surroundings.
+
+The highway was better traveled here also; I passed other walkers,
+quite a few wagons, a carriage or two, several peddlers and a number
+of ladies and gentlemen on horseback. This was the first time I’d seen
+women riding astride, a practice shocking to the sensitivities of
+Wappinger Falls which also condemned the fashion, imported from the
+Chinese Empire by way of England, of feminine trousers. Having learned
+that women were bipedal, both customs seemed sensible to me.
+
+I had the post road to myself for some miles between turns when I heard
+a commotion beyond the stone wall to my left. This was followed by an
+angry shout and shrill words impossible to distinguish. My progress
+halted, I instinctively shifted my bundle to my left hand as though to
+leave my right free for defence, but against what I had no idea.
+
+The shouts came closer; a boy of about my own age scrambled frantically
+over the wall, dislodging some of the smaller lichen-covered rocks on
+top and sending them rolling into the ditch. He looked at me, startled,
+then paused for a long instant at the road’s edge, undecided which way
+to run.
+
+He was barefoot and wore a jute sack as a shirt, with holes cut for his
+arms, and ragged cotton pants. His face was little browner than my own
+had often been at the end of a summer’s work under a burning sun.
+
+He came to the end of indecision and started across the highway, legs
+pumping high, head turned watchfully. A splendid tawny stallion cleared
+the wall in a soaring jump, his rider bellowing, “There you are, you
+damned black coon!”
+
+He rode straight for the fugitive, quirt upraised, lips thickened and
+eyes rolling in rage. The victim dodged and turned; in no more doubt
+than I that the horseman meant to ride him down. He darted by me, so
+close I heard the labored rasp of breathing.
+
+The rider swerved, and he too twisted around me as though I were the
+post at the far turn of a racecourse. Reflexively I put out my hand to
+grab at the reins and stop the assault. Indeed, my fingers actually
+touched the leather and grasped it for a fraction of a second before
+they fell away.
+
+Then I was alone in the road again as both pursued and pursuer vaulted
+back over the fence. The whole scene of anger and terror could not have
+lasted two minutes; I strained my ears to hear the shouts coming from
+farther and farther away. Quiet fell again; a squirrel flirted his tail
+and sped down one tree trunk and up another. The episode might never
+have happened.
+
+I shifted my bundle back and began walking again—less briskly now. My
+legs felt heavy and there was an involuntary twitch in the muscles of
+my arm.
+
+Why hadnt I held on to the rein and delayed the hunter, at least long
+enough to give his quarry a fair start? What had made me draw back?
+It had not been fear, at least in the usual sense, for I knew I wasnt
+timorous of the horseman. I was sure I could have dragged him down if
+he had taken his quirt to me.
+
+Yet I had been afraid. Afraid of interfering, of meddling in affairs
+which were no concern of mine, of risking action on quick judgment.
+I had been immobilized by the fear of asserting my sympathies, my
+presumptions, against events.
+
+Walking slowly down the road I experienced deep shame. I might, I could
+have saved someone from hurt; I had perhaps had the power for a brief
+instant to change the course of a whole life. I had been guilty of a
+cowardice far worse than mere fear for my skin. I could have wept with
+mortification—done anything, in fact, but turn back and try to rectify
+my failure.
+
+The rest of the day was gloomy as I alternately taunted and feebly
+excused myself. The fugitive might have been a trespasser or a servant;
+his fault might have been slowness, rudeness, theft or attempted
+murder. Whatever it was, any retaliation the white man chose could be
+inflicted with impunity. He would not be punished or even tried for it.
+Popular opinion was unanimous for Negro emigration to Africa, voluntary
+or forced; those who went westward to join the unconquered Sioux or
+Nez Perce were looked upon as depraved. Any Negro who didnt embark for
+Liberia or Sierra Leone, regardless of whether he had the fare or not,
+deserved anything that happened to him in the United States.
+
+It was because I held, somewhat vaguely, a stubborn refusal to accept
+this conventional view, a refusal never precisely reasoned and little
+more, perhaps, than romantic rebellion against my mother in favor of
+my disreputable Grandfather Backmaker, that I suffered. I couldnt
+excuse my failure on the grounds that action would have been considered
+outrageous. It would not have been considered outrageous by me.
+
+I pushed self-contempt at my passivity aside as best I could and strove
+to recapture the mood of yesterday, succeeding to some extent as the
+memory of the scene came back less insistently. I even tried pretending
+the episode had perhaps not been quite as serious as it seemed, or that
+the pursued had somehow in the end evaded the pursuer. I could not
+make what had happened not happen; the best I could do was minimize my
+culpability.
+
+That night I slept a little way from the road and in the morning
+started off at dawn. Although I was now little more than twenty miles
+from the metropolis the character of the country had hardly changed.
+Perhaps the farms were smaller and closer together, their juxtaposition
+to the estates more incongruous. But traffic was continual now, with no
+empty stretches on the roads, and the small towns had horse-drawn cars
+running on iron tracks embedded in the cobbles.
+
+It was late afternoon when I crossed Spuyten Duyvil Creek to Manhattan.
+Between me and the city now lay a wilderness of squatters’ shacks
+made of old boards, barrel-staves and other discarded rubbish. Lean
+goats and mangy cats nosed through rubble heaps of broken glass and
+earthenware demijohns. Mounds of garbage lay beside aimless creeks
+struggling blindly for the rivers. As clearly as though it had been
+proclaimed on signposts this was an area of outcasts and fugitives, of
+men and women ignored and tolerated by the law so long as they kept
+within the confines of their horrible slum.
+
+Strange and repugnant as the place was, I hesitated to keep on going
+and arrive in the city at nightfall, but it seemed unlikely there was a
+place to sleep among the shacks. Once away from the order and sobriety
+of the post road one could be lost in the squalid maze; undefined
+threats of vaguely dreadful fates seemed to rise from it like vapors.
+
+Then the fading light revealed the anomaly of a venerable mansion
+set far back from the highway, with grounds as yet unusurped by the
+encroaching stews. The house was in ruins; the surrounding gardens
+lost in brush and weeds. Evidently a watchman or caretaker guarded its
+forlorn dignity or had very recently abandoned it; I could not imagine
+its remaining long without being entirely overrun otherwise.
+
+It was almost fully dark as I made my way cautiously toward the
+remains of an old summerhouse. Its roof was fallen in and it was
+densely enclosed by ancient rosebushes whose thorns, I thought, when
+they pricked my fingers as I struggled through them, ought to give
+warning of any intruder. For weatherworthiness this shelter had little
+advantage over the hovels, yet somehow the fact that it had survived
+seemed to make it a more secure retreat.
+
+I stretched out on the dank boards and slept fitfully, disturbed by
+dreams that the old mansion was filled with people from a past time
+who begged me to save them from the slumdwellers and their house from
+being further ravaged. Brokenly I protested I was helpless—in true
+dream manner I then became helpless, unable to move—that I could not
+interfere with what had to happen; they moaned and wrung their hands
+and faded away. Still, I slept, and in the morning the cramps in my
+muscles and the aches in my bones disappeared in the excitement of the
+remaining miles to the city.
+
+And how suddenly it grew up around me, not as though it was a fixed
+collection of buildings which I approached, but as if I stood still
+while the wood and stone, iron and brick, sprang into being all about.
+
+New York, in 1938, had a population of nearly a million, having grown
+very slowly since the close of the War of Southron Independence.
+Together with the half million in the city of Brooklyn this represented
+by far the largest concentration of people in the United States, though
+of course it could not compare with the great Confederate centers
+of Washington, now including Baltimore and Alexandria, St Louis, or
+Leesburg (once Mexico City).
+
+The change from the country and the dreadful slums through which I
+had passed was startling. Cable-cars whizzed northward as far as
+Fifty-ninth Street on the west side and all the way to Eighty-seventh
+on the east, while horse-cars furnished convenient crosstown
+transportation every few blocks. Express steam trains ran through
+bridged cuts on Madison Avenue, an engineering achievement of which
+New Yorkers were vastly proud.
+
+Bicycles, rare around Wappinger Falls, were thick as flies, darting
+ahead and alongside drayhorses pulling wallowing vans, carts or
+wagons. Prancing trotters drew private carriages, buggies, broughams,
+victorias, hansoms, dogcarts or sulkies; neither the cyclists, coachmen
+nor horses seemed overawed or discommoded by occasional minibiles
+chuffing their way swiftly and implacably over cobblestones or asphalt.
+
+Incredibly intricate traceries of telegraph wires swarmed overhead,
+crossing and recrossing at all angles, slanting upward into offices
+and flats or downward to stores, a reminder that no urban family with
+pretensions to gentility would be without the clacking instrument in
+the parlor, that every child learned the Morse code before he could
+read. Thousands of sparrows considered the wires properly their own;
+they perched and swung, quarreled and scolded on them, leaving only to
+satisfy their voracity upon the steaming mounds of horsedung below.
+
+The country boy who had never seen anything more metropolitan than
+Poughkeepsie was tremendously impressed. Buildings of eight or ten
+storeys were common, and there were many of fourteen or fifteen,
+serviced by pneumatic English lifts, that same marvelous invention
+which permitted the erection of veritable skyscrapers in Washington and
+Leesburg.
+
+Above them balloons moved gracefully through the air, guided and
+controlled as skillfully as old-time sailing vessels. These were not
+entirely novel to me; I had seen more of them than I had minibiles,
+but never so many as here. In a single hour, gawking upward, I counted
+seven, admiring how nicely calculated their courses were, for they
+seldom came so low as to endanger lives beneath by having to throw out
+sandbags in order to rise. That they could so maneuver over buildings
+of greatly uneven height showed this to be the air age indeed.
+
+Most exciting of all was the great number of people who walked, rode,
+or merely stood around on the streets. It seemed hardly believable
+so many humans could crowd themselves so closely. Beggars pleaded,
+touts wheedled, peddlers hawked, newsboys shouted, bootblacks chanted.
+Messengers pushed their way, loafers yawned, ladies shopped, drunks
+staggered. For long moments I paused, standing stock still, not
+thinking of going on, merely watching the spectacle.
+
+How far I walked, how many different parts of the city I explored that
+day, I have no idea. I felt I had hardly begun to fondle the sharp edge
+of wonder when it was twilight and the gas lamps, lit simultaneously by
+telegraph sparks, gleamed and shone on nearly every corner. Whatever
+had been drab and dingy in daylight—and even my eyes had not been
+blind to the dirt and decay—became in an instant magically enchanting,
+softened and shadowed into mysterious beauty. I breathed the dusty air
+with a relish I had never known in the country and felt I was inhaling
+some elixir for the spirit.
+
+But spiritual sustenance is not quite enough for a seventeen-year-old,
+especially one who is beginning to be hungry and tired. I was
+desperately anxious to hoard the three precious dollars in my pocket,
+for I had little idea how to go about replacing them, once they were
+spent. I could not do without eating, however, so I stopped in at the
+first gaslit bakery, buying, after some consideration, a penny loaf,
+and walked on through the entrancing streets, munching at it and
+feeling like an historical character.
+
+Now the fronts of the tinugraph lyceums were lit up by porters with
+long tapers, so that they glowed yellow and inviting, each heralded
+with a boldly lettered broadside or dashingly drawn cartoon advertising
+the amusement to be found within. I was tempted to see for myself this
+magical entertainment of pictures taken so close together they gave
+the illusion of motion, but the lowest admission price was five cents.
+Some of the more garish theaters, which specialized in the incredible
+phonotos—tinugraphs ingeniously combined with a sound-producing machine
+operated by compressed air, so that the pictures seemed not only to
+move but to talk—actually charged ten or even fifteen cents for an
+hour’s spectacle.
+
+By this time I ached with tiredness; the insignificant bundle of shirt
+and books had become a burden. I was pressed by the question of where
+to sleep and began thinking more kindly than I would have believed
+possible of last night’s slum. I didnt connect my need with the glass
+transparencies behind which gaslight shone through the unpainted
+letters of BEDS, ROOMS, or HOTEL, for my mind was hazily fixed on
+some urban version of the inn at Wappinger Falls or the Poughkeepsie
+Commercial House.
+
+I became more and more confused as fatigue blurred impressions of still
+newer marvels, so that I am not entirely sure whether it was one or a
+succession of girls who offered delights for a quarter. I know I was
+solicited by crimps for the Confederate Legion who operated openly in
+defiance of United States law, and an incredible number of beggars
+accosted me.
+
+At last I thought of asking directions. But without realizing it I had
+wandered from the thronged wooden or granite sidewalks of the brightly
+lit avenues into an unpeopled, darkened area where the buildings were
+low and frowning, where the flicker of a candle or the yellow of a
+kerosene lamp in windows far apart were uncontested by any streetlights.
+
+All day my ears had been pressed by the clop of hooves, the rattling
+of iron tires or the puffing of minibiles; now the empty street was
+unnaturally still. The suddenly looming figure of another walker seemed
+the luckiest of chances.
+
+“Excuse me, friend,” I said. “Can you tell me where’s the nearest inn,
+or anywhere I can get a bed for the night cheap?”
+
+I felt him peering at me. “Rube, huh? Much money you got?”
+
+“Th—Not very much. That’s why I want to find cheap lodging.”
+
+“OK, Reuben. Come along.”
+
+“Oh, don’t trouble to show me. Just give me an idea how to get there.”
+
+He grunted. “No trouble, Reuben. No trouble at all.”
+
+Taking my arm just above the elbow in a firm grip be steered me along.
+For the first time I began to feel alarm. However, before I could
+attempt to shrug free he had shoved me into the mouth of an alley,
+discernible only because its absolute blackness contrasted with the
+relative darkness of the street.
+
+“Wait—” I began.
+
+“In here, Reuben. Soundest night’s sleep youve had in a long time. And
+cheap—it’s free.”
+
+I started to break loose and was surprised to find he no longer held
+me. Before I could even begin to think, a terrific blow fell on the
+right side of my head and I traded the blackness of the alley for the
+blackness of insensibility.
+
+
+
+
+_3._ _A MEMBER OF THE GRAND ARMY_
+
+
+I was recalled to consciousness by a smell. More accurately a cacophony
+of smells. I opened my eyes and shut them against the unbearable pain
+of light; I groaned at the equally unbearable pain in my skullbones.
+Feverishly and against my will I tried to identify the walloping odors
+around me.
+
+The stink of death and rottenness was thick. I knew there was an
+outhouse—many outhouses—nearby. The ground I lay on, where it was not
+stony, was damp with the water of endless dishwashings and launderings.
+The noisomeness of offal suggested that the garbage of many families
+had never been buried, but left to rot in the alley or near it. In
+addition there was the smell of death, not the sweetish effluvium of
+blood, such as any country boy who has helped butcher a bull-calf or
+hog knows, but the unmistakable stench of corrupt, maggotty flesh.
+Besides all this there was the spoor of humanity.
+
+A new discomfort at last forced my eyes open for the second time. A
+hard surface was pressing painful knobs into my exposed skin. I looked
+and felt around me.
+
+The knobs were the scattered cobbles of a fetid alley; not a foot away
+was the cadaver of a dog, thoroughly putrescent; beyond him a drunk
+retched and groaned. A trickle of liquid swill wound its way delicately
+over the moldy earth between the stones. My coat, shirt, and shoes were
+gone, so was the bundle with my books. There was no use searching my
+pocket for the three dollars. I knew I was lucky the robber had left me
+my pants and my life.
+
+A middleaged man, at least he looked middleaged to my youthful
+eye, regarded me speculatively over the head of the drunk. A pale,
+elliptical scar interrupted the wrinkles on his forehead, its upper
+point making a permanent part in his thin hair. Tiny red veins marked
+his nose; his eyes were bloodshot.
+
+“Pretty well cleaned yuh out, huh boy?”
+
+I nodded—and then was sorry for the motion.
+
+“Reward of virtue. Assuming you was virtuous, which I assume. Come to
+the same end as me, stinking drunk. Only I still got my shirt. Couldnt
+hock it no matter how thirsty I got.”
+
+I groaned.
+
+“Where yuh from boy? What rural—see, sober now—precincts miss you?”
+“Wappinger Falls, near Poughkeepsie. My name’s Hodge Backmaker.”
+
+“Well now, that’s friendly of you, Hodge. I’m George Pondible.
+Periodic. Just tapering off.”
+
+I hadnt an idea what Pondible was talking about. Trying to understand
+made my head worse.
+
+“Took everything, I suppose? Havent a nickel left to help a hangover?”
+
+“My head,” I mumbled, quite superfluously.
+
+He staggered to his feet. I slowly sat up, tenderly touching the lump
+over my ear with my fingertips.
+
+“Best thing—souse it in the river. Take more to fix mine.”
+“But ... can I go through the streets like this?”
+
+“Right,” he said. “Quite right.”
+
+He stooped down and put one hand beneath the drunk, who murmured
+unintelligibly. With the other he removed the jacket, a maneuver
+betraying practice, for it elicited no protest from the victim. He
+then performed the still more delicate operation of depriving him of
+his shirt and shoes, tossing them all to me. They were a loathsome
+collection of rags not fit to clean a manurespreader. The jacket was
+torn and greasy, the pockets hanging like the ears of a dog; the shirt
+was a filthy tatter, the shoes shapeless fragments of leather with
+great gapes in the soles.
+
+“It’s stealing,” I protested.
+
+“Right. Put them on and let’s get out of here.”
+
+The short walk to the river was through streets lacking the glamour of
+those of the day before. The tenements were smokestreaked, with steps
+between the parting bricks where mortar had fallen out; great hunks
+of wall were kept in place only by the support of equally crazy ones
+abutting. The wretched things I wore were better suited than Pondible’s
+to this neighborhood, though his would have marked him tramp and
+vagrant in Wappinger Falls.
+
+The Hudson too was soiled, with an oily scum and debris, so that I
+hesitated to dip even the purloined shirt, much less my aching head.
+But urged on by Pondible I climbed down the slimy stones between two
+docks and pushing the flotsam aside, ducked myself in the unappetizing
+water.
+
+“Fixes your head,” said Pondible with more assurance than accuracy.
+“Now for mine.”
+
+The sun was hot and the shirt dried on my back as we walked away from
+the river, the jacket over my arm. Now that my mind was clearing my
+despair grew rapidly; for a moment I wished I had waded farther into
+the Hudson and drowned.
+
+Admitting any plans I’d had were nebulous and impractical, they had
+yet been plans of a kind, something in which I could put, or force,
+my hopes. My appearance had been presentable, I had the means to keep
+myself fed and sheltered for a few weeks at least. Now everything was
+changed, any future was gone, literally knocked out of existence and I
+had nothing to look forward to, nothing on which to exert my energies
+and dreams. To go back to Wappinger Falls was out of the question, not
+simply to dodge the bitterness of admitting defeat so quickly, but
+because I knew how relieved my mother and father must have been to be
+freed of my uselessness. Yet I had nothing to expect in the city except
+starvation or a life of petty crime.
+
+Pondible guided me into a saloon, a dark, secretive place, gaslit even
+this early, with a steam piano tinkling the popular, mournful tune,
+_Mormon Girl_:
+
+    There’s a girl in the state of Deseret
+    I love and I’m trying to for-get.
+    Forget her for my tired feet’s sake
+    Don’t wanna walk to the Great Salt Lake.
+    They ever build that railroad toooo the ocean
+    I’d return my Mormon girl’s devotion.
+    But the tracks stop short in Ioway....
+
+I couldnt remember the next line. Something about Injuns say.
+
+“Shot,” Pondible ordered the bartender, “and buttermilk for my chum
+here.”
+
+The bartender kept on polishing the wood in front of him with a wet,
+dirty rag. “Got any jack?”
+
+“Pay you tomorrow, friend.”
+
+The bartender’s uninterrupted industry said clearly, then drink
+tomorrow.
+
+“Listen,” argued Pondible; “I’m tapering off. You know me. Ive spent
+plenty of money here.”
+
+The bartender shrugged. “I don’t own the place; anything goes over the
+bar has to be rung up on the cash register.”
+
+“Youre lucky to have a job that pays wages.”
+
+“Times I’m not so sure. Why don’t you indent?”
+
+Pondible looked shocked. “At my age? What would a company pay for a
+wornout old carcass? A hundred dollars at the top. Then a release in a
+couple of years with a med holdback so I’d have to report every week
+somewhere. No, friend, Ive come through this long a free man—in a
+manner of speaking—and I’ll stick it out. Let’s have that shot; you can
+see for yourself I’m tapering off. Youll get your jack tomorrow.”
+I could see the bartender was weakening; each refusal was less surly
+and at last, to my astonishment, he set out a glass and bottle
+for Pondible and an earthenware mug of buttermilk for me. To my
+astonishment, I say, for credit was rarely extended on any scale, large
+or small. The inflation, though sixty years in the past, had left
+indelible impressions; people paid cash or did without. Debt was not
+only disgraceful, it was dangerous; the notion things could be paid
+for while, or even after, they were being used was as unthinkable as
+was the idea of circulating paper money instead of silver or gold.
+
+I drank my buttermilk slowly, gratefully aware Pondible had ordered
+the most filling and sustaining liquid in the saloon. For all his
+unprepossessing appearance and peculiar moral notions, my new
+acquaintance seemed to have a rude wisdom as well as a rude kindliness.
+
+He swallowed his whiskey and called for a quart pot of light beer which
+he sipped slowly. “That’s the trick of it, Hodge. Avoid the second
+shot. If you can.” He sipped again. “Now what?”
+
+“What?” I repeated.
+
+“Now what are you going to do? What’s your aim in life anyway?”
+
+“None—now. I ... wanted to learn. To study.”
+He frowned. “Out of books?”
+
+“How else?”
+
+“Books is mostly written and printed in foreign countries.”
+
+“There might be more written here if more people had time to learn.”
+
+Pondible wiped specks of froth from his beard with the back of his
+hand. “Might and mightnt. Oh, some of my best friends are book-readers,
+don’t get me wrong, boy.”
+
+“I’d thought,” I burst out, “I’d thought to try Columbia College. To
+offer—to beg to be allowed to do any kind of work for tuition.”
+
+“Hmm. I doubt it would have worked.”
+
+“Anyway I can’t go now, looking like this.”
+
+“Might be as well. We need fighters, not readers.”
+
+“‘We?’ ”
+
+He did not explain. “Well, you could always take the advice our friend
+here gave me and indent. A young healthy lad like you could get
+yourself a thousand or twelve hundred dollars—”
+
+“Sure. And be a slave for the rest of my life.”
+
+“Oh, indenting aint slavery. It’s better. And worse. For one thing the
+company buys you won’t hold you after you arent worth your keep. Not
+that long, on account of bookkeeping; they lose when they break even.
+So they cancel your indenture without a cent payment. Course theyll
+take a med holdback so as to get a dollar or two for your corpse, but
+that’s a long time away for you.”
+
+An inconceivably long time. The medical holdback was the least of my
+distaste, though it had played a large part in the discussions at
+home. My mother had heard that cadavers for dissection were shipped
+to foreign medical schools like so much cargo. She was shocked not so
+much at the thought of the scientific use of her dead body as at its
+disposal outside the United States.
+
+“Yes,” I said. “A long time away. So I wouldnt be a slave for life;
+just thirty or forty years. Till I wasnt any good to anyone, including
+myself.”
+
+He seemed to be enjoying himself as he drank his beer. “Youre a gloomy
+gus, Hodge. Taint’s bad’s that. Indenting’s pretty strictly regulated.
+That’s the idea anyway. I aint saying the big companies don’t get
+away with a lot. You can’t be made to work over sixty hours a week.
+Ten hours a day. With twelve hundred dollars you could get all the
+education you want in your spare time and then turn your learning to
+account by making enough to buy yourself free.”
+
+I tried to think about it dispassionately, though goodness knows I’d
+been over the ground often enough. It was true the amount, a not
+improbable one, would see me through college. But Pondible’s notion of
+turning my “learning to account” I knew to be a fantasy. Perhaps in
+the Confederate States or the German Union knowledge was rewarded with
+wealth, or at least a comfortable living, but any study I pursued—I
+knew my own “impracticality” well enough by now—was bound to yield few
+material benefits in the backward United States, which existed as a
+nation at all only on the sufferance and unresolved rivalries of the
+great powers. I’d be lucky to struggle through school and eke out some
+kind of living as a freeman; I could hardly hope to earn enough to buy
+back an indenture on what was left of my time after subtracting sixty
+hours a week.
+
+“It wouldnt work,” I said despondently.
+
+Pondible nodded, as though this were the conclusion he had expected me
+to come to. “Well then,” he said, “there’s the gangs.”
+
+I looked my horror.
+
+He laughed. “Forget your country rearing. What’s right? What the
+strongest country or the strongest man says it is. The government says
+gangs are wrong, but the government aint strong enough to stop them.
+And maybe they don’t do as much killing as people think. Only when
+somebody works against them—just like the government. Sure they have
+to be paid off, but it’s just like taxes. If you leave the parsons’
+sermons out of it there’s no difference joining the gangs than the
+army—if we had one—or the Confederate Legion—”
+
+“They tried to recruit me yesterday. Are they always so....”
+
+“Bold?” For the first time Pondible looked angry and I thought the scar
+on his forehead turned whiter. “Yes, damn them. The Legion must be half
+United States citizens. When they have to put down a disturbance or run
+some little cockroach country they send off the Confederate Legion—made
+up of men who ought to be the backbone of an army of our own.”
+
+“But the police—don’t they ever try to stop them?”
+
+“What’d I tell you about right being what the strongest country says
+it is? Sure we got laws against recruiting into a foreign army. So we
+squawk. And what have we got to back it up with? So the Confederate
+Legion goes right on recruiting the men who have to beg for a square
+meal in their own country. Well, the government is pretty near as bad
+off when it comes to the gangs. Best it can do is pick off some of the
+little ones and forget about the big ones. Most of the gangsters never
+even get shot at. They all live high, high as anybody in the twenty-six
+states, and every so often there’s a dividend—more than a workman makes
+in a lifetime.”
+
+I began to be sure my benefactor was a gangster. And yet ... if this
+were so why had he wheedled credit from the barkeep? Was it simply an
+elaborate blind? It seemed hardly worth it.
+
+“A dividend,” I said, “or a rope.”
+
+“Most gangsters die of old age. Or competition. Aint one been hung I
+can think of the last five-six years. But I see youve no stomach for
+it. Tell me, Hodge—you Whig or Populist?”
+
+The sudden change of subject bewildered me. “Why ... Populist, I guess.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Oh ... I don’t know....” I thought of some of the discussions that
+used to go on among the men around the smithy. “The Whigs’ ‘Property,
+Protection, Permanent Population’ —what does it mean to me?”
+“Tell you, boy, means this: Property for the Confederates who own
+factories here and don’t want to pay taxes. Protection for foreign
+capital to come in and buy or hire. Permanent Population—cheap native
+labor. Build up a prosperous employing class.”
+
+“Yes, I know. I can’t see how it helps. Ive heard Whigs at home say the
+money’s bound to seep down from above, but it seems awfully roundabout.
+And not very efficient.”
+
+He reached over and clapped me lightly on the shoulder. “That’s my
+boy,” he said. “They can’t fool you.”
+
+I wasnt entirely pleased by his commendation. “And protection means
+paying more for things than theyre worth.”
+
+“Taint only that, Hodge, it’s a damn lie as well. Whigs never even
+tried protection when they was in. Didnt dast. Knew the other countries
+wouldnt let them.”
+
+“As for ‘permanent population’ ... well, those who can’t make a living
+are going to go on emigrating to prosperous countries. Permanent
+population means dwindling population if it means anything.”
+
+“Ah,” he said. “You got a head on your shoulders, Hodge. Youre all
+right; books won’t hurt you. But what about emigrating? Yourself, I
+mean?”
+
+I shook my head.
+
+He nodded, chewing on a soggy corner of his mustache. “Don’t want to
+leave the old ship, huh?”
+
+I don’t suppose I would have put it exactly that way, or even fully
+formulated the thought. I was willing to exchange the familiar for the
+unknown—up to a certain point. The thought of giving up the country
+in which I’d been born was repugnant. Call it loyalty, or a sense of
+having ties with the past, or just stubbornness. “Something like that,”
+I said.
+
+“Well now, let’s see what weve got.” He stuck up a dirty and slightly
+tremulous hand, turning down a finger as he stated each point. “One,
+patriot; two, Populist; three, don’t like indenting; four, prosperity’s
+got to come from the poor upward, not the rich down.” He hesitated,
+holding his thumb. “You heard of the Grand Army?”
+
+“Who hasnt? Not much difference between them and the regular gangs.”
+
+“Now what makes you say that?”
+
+“Why ... everybody knows it”
+
+“Do, huh? Maybe they know it all wrong. Look here now—and remember
+about the Confederate Legion riding over the laws of the United
+States—what would you think ought to be done about foreigners from the
+strong countries who come here and walk all over us? Or the Whigs who
+do their dirty work for them?”
+
+“I don’t know,” I said. “Not murder, certainly.”
+
+“Murder,” he repeated. “That’s a word, Hodge. Means what you want it
+to mean. Wasnt murder back during the War when Union soldiers was
+trying to keep the country from being split up. Taint murder today when
+somebody’s hung for rape or counterfeiting. Anyhow the Grand Army don’t
+go in for murder.”
+
+I said nothing.
+
+“Oh, accidents happen; wouldnt deny it. Maybe they get a little rougher
+than they intend with Whig traitors or Confederate agents, but you
+can’t make bacon out of a live hog. Point is the Grand Army’s the only
+thing in the country that even tries to restore it to what it once was.
+What was fought for in the War.”
+
+I don’t know whether it was the thought of Grandfather Backmaker or the
+unassuaged guilt for the miserable figure I had cut only three days
+back that made me ask, “And do they want to give the Negroes equality?”
+
+He drew back sharply, shock showing clearly on his face. “Touch of the
+tarbrush in you, boy? By—” He bent forward, looking at me searchingly.
+“No, I can see you aint. Just some notions youll outgrow. You just
+don’t understand. We might have won that war if it hadnt been for the
+Abolitionists.”
+
+Would we? I’d heard it said often enough; it would have been
+presumptuous to doubt it.
+
+“The darkies are better off among their own,” he said; “they never
+should have been here in the first place; black and white can’t mix.
+Leave ideas like that alone, Hodge; there’s plenty and enough to be
+done. Chase the foreigners out, teach their flunkies a lesson, build
+the country up again.”
+
+“Are you trying to get me to join the Grand Army?”
+
+Pondible finished his beer. “Won’t answer that one, boy. Let’s say I
+just want to get you somewheres to sleep, three meals a day, and some
+of that education youre so fired up about. Come along.”
+
+
+
+
+_4._ _TYSS_
+
+
+He took me to a bookseller’s and stationery store on Astor Place with
+a printshop in the basement and the man to whom he introduced me was
+the owner, Roger Tyss. I spent almost six years there, and when I left
+neither the store nor its contents nor Tyss himself seemed to have
+changed or aged.
+
+I know books were sold and others bought to take their places on the
+shelves or to be piled towerwise on the floor. I helped cart in many
+rolls of sulphide paper and bottles of printers’ ink, and delivered
+many bundles of damp pamphlets, broadsides, letterheads and envelopes.
+Inked ribbons for typewriting machines, penpoints, ledgers and
+daybooks, rulers, paperclips, legal forms and cubes of indiarubber
+came and went. Yet the identical, invincible disorder, the synonymous
+dogeared volumes, the indistinguishable stock, the unaltered cases of
+type seemed fixed for six years, all covered by the same film of dust
+which responded to vigorous sweeping only by rising into the air and
+immediately settling back on precisely the same spots.
+
+Roger Tyss grew six years older and I can only charge it to the
+heedless eye of youth that I saw no signs of that aging. Like Pondible
+and, as I learned, so many members of the Grand Army, he wore a beard.
+His was closely trimmed, wiry and grizzled. Above the beard and across
+his forehead were many fine lines which always held some of the grime
+of the store or printing press. You did not dwell long on either beard
+or wrinkles however; what held you were his eyes: large, dark, fierce
+and compassionate. You might have dismissed him at first glance as
+simply an undersized, stoopshouldered, slovenly printer, had it not
+been for those eyes which seemed in perpetual conflict with his other
+features.
+
+“Robbed and bludgeoned, ay?” he said with a curious disrespect for
+sequence after Pondible had explained me to him. “Dog eats dog, and the
+survivors survive. Backmaker, ay? Is that an American name?”
+
+So far as I knew, I said, it was.
+
+“Well, well; let’s not pry too deeply. So you want to learn. Why?”
+
+“Why?” The question was too big for an answer, yet an answer of some
+kind was expected. “I guess because there’s nothing else so important.”
+
+“Wrong,” he said triumphantly, “wrong and illusory. Since nothing is
+ultimately important there can be no degrees involved. Books are the
+waste-product of the human mind.”
+
+“Yet you deal in them,” I ventured.
+
+“I’m alive and I shall die too; this doesnt mean I approve of either
+life or death. Well, if you are going to learn you are going to learn;
+there’s nothing I can do about it As well here as another place.”
+
+“Thank you, sir.”
+
+“Gratitude, Hodgins”—he never then nor later condescended to the
+familiar “Hodge” nor did I ever address or even think of him except as
+Mr Tyss—“Gratitude, Hodgins, is an emotion disagreeable both to the
+giver and to the receiver. We do what we must; gratitude, pity, love,
+hate, all that cant, is superfluous.”
+
+I considered this statement reflectively.
+
+“Look you,” he went on, “I’ll feed you and lodge you, teach you to set
+type and give you the run of the books. I’ll pay you no money; you can
+steal from me if you must You can learn as much here in four months as
+in a college in four years—if you persist in thinking it’s learning you
+want—or you can learn nothing. I’ll expect you to do the work I think
+needs doing; any time you don’t like it youre free to go.”
+
+And so our agreement, if so simple and unilateral a statement can be
+called an agreement, was made within ten minutes after he met me for
+the first time. For six years the store was home and school, and Roger
+Tyss was employer, teacher and father to me. He was never my friend.
+Rather he was my adversary. I respected him and the longer I knew him
+the deeper became my respect, but it was an ambivalent feeling and
+attached only to those qualities which he himself would have scorned.
+I detested his ideas, his philosophy and many of his actions, and this
+detestation grew until I was no longer able to live near him. But I am
+getting ahead of my story.
+
+Tyss knew books, not merely as a bookman knows them—binding, size,
+edition, value—but as a scholar. He seemed to have read enormously and
+on every conceivable subject, many of them quite useless in practical
+application. (I remember a long discourse on heraldry, filled with
+terms like “paley-bendy” or, “fusils conjoined in fess, gules” and
+“sable demi-lions.” He regarded such erudition, indeed any erudition,
+contemptuously. When I asked why he had bothered to pick it up, his
+retort was, “Why have you bothered to pick up calluses, Hodgins?”)
+
+As a printer he followed the same pattern; he was not concerned solely
+with setting up a neat page; he sometimes spent hours laying out some
+trivia, which could have interested only its author, until he struck a
+proof which satisfied him. He wrote much on his own account: poetry,
+essays, manifestoes, composing directly from the font, running off a
+single proof which he read—always expressionlessly—and immediately
+destroyed before pieing the type.
+
+I slept on a mattress kept under one of the counters during the day;
+Tyss had a couch hardly more luxurious, downstairs by the flatbed
+press. Each morning before it was time to open he sent me across
+town on the horse-cars to the Washington Market to buy six pounds of
+beef—twelve on Saturdays, for the market, unlike the bookstore, was
+closed Sundays. It was always the same cut, heart of ox or cow, dressed
+by the butcher in thin strips. After I had been with him long enough to
+tire of the fare, but not long enough to realize the obstinacy of his
+nature, I begged him to let me substitute pork or mutton, or at least
+some other part of the beef, like brains or tripe which were even
+cheaper. He always answered, “The heart, Hodgins. Purchase the heart;
+it is the vital food.”
+
+While I was on my errand he would buy three loaves of yesterday’s
+bread, still tolerably fresh; when I returned he took a long
+two-pronged fork, our only utensil, for the establishment was innocent
+of either cutlery or dishes, and spearing a strip of heart held it
+over the gas flame of a light standard until it was sooted and toasted
+rather than broiled. We tore the loaves with our fingers and with a
+hunk of bread in one hand and a strip of heart in the other we each ate
+a pound of meat and half a loaf of bread for breakfast, dinner, and
+supper.
+
+“Man is uniquely a savage eater of carrion,” he informed me, chewing
+vigorously. “What lion or tiger would relish another’s ancient,
+putrefying kill? What vulture or hyena displays human ferocity? Too, we
+are cannibals at heart. We eat our gods; we have always eaten our gods.”
+
+“Isnt that figurative, or poetic, Mr Tyss? I mean, doesnt it refer to
+the grain of wheat which is ‘killed’ by the harvester and buried by the
+sower?”
+
+“You think the gods were modelled on John Barleycorn and not John
+Barleycorn on them—to conceal their fate? I fear you have a higher
+opinion of mankind than is warranted, Hodgins.”
+
+“I’m not sure I know what you mean by gods.”
+
+“Embodiments or personifications of human aspirations. The good, the
+true, the beautiful—with winged feet or bull’s body.”
+
+“How about ... oh, Chronos? Or Satan?”
+
+He licked his fingers of the meat juices, obviously pleased. “Satan. An
+excellent example. Epitome of man’s futile longing to upset and defy
+the divine plan—I use the word ‘divine’ derisively, Hodgins—; who does
+not admire and reverence Lucifer in his heart? Well, having made a god
+out of the devil we eat him daily in a two-fold sense: by swallowing
+the myth of his enmity (a truer friend there never was), and by
+digesting his great precepts of pride and curiosity and strength. And
+you see for yourself how he finds interesting thoughts for idle minds
+to speculate on. Let’s get to work.”
+
+He expected me to work, but he was far from a hard or inconsiderate
+master. In 1938-44, when the country was being ground deeper into
+colonialism, there were few employers so lenient. I read much,
+generally when I pleased, and despite his jeers at learning in the
+abstract he encouraged me, even going to the length, if a particular
+book was not to be found in his considerable stock, of letting me get
+it from one of his competitors, to be written up against his account.
+
+Nor was he scrupulous about the time I took on his errands. I continued
+to ramble and sight-see the city much as though I had nothing else to
+do. And if, from time to time, I discovered there were girls in New
+York who didnt look too unkindly on a tall youth even though he still
+carried some of the rustic air of Wappinger Falls, he never questioned
+why the walk of half a mile took me a couple of hours.
+
+True, he kept to his original promise never to pay me wages, but he
+often handed me coins for pocketmoney, evidently satisfied I wasnt
+stealing, and he replaced my makeshift wardrobe with worn but decent
+clothing.
+
+He had not exaggerated the possibilities of the books surrounding
+me. His brief warning, “—you can learn nothing,” was lost on me. I
+suppose a different temperament might have become surfeited with
+paper and print; I can only say I wasnt. I nibbled, tasted, gobbled
+books. After the store was shut I hooked a student lamp to the nearest
+gasjet by means of a long tube, and lying on my pallet with a dozen
+volumes handy, I read till I was no longer able to keep my eyes open
+or understand the words. Often I woke in the morning to find the light
+still burning and my fingers holding the pages open.
+
+I think one of the first books to influence me strongly was the
+monumental _Causes of American Decline and Decay_ by the always popular
+expatriate historian, Henry Adams. I was particularly impressed by
+the famous passage in which he reproves the “stay-at-home” Bostonian
+essayists, William and Henry James, for their quixotic sacrifice
+and espousal of a long-lost cause. History, said Sir Henry, who
+had renounced his United States citizenship and been knighted by
+William V, history is never directed or diverted by well-intentioned
+individuals; it is the product of forces with geographical, not moral
+roots.
+
+Possibly the learned expatriate was right, but my instinctive
+sympathies lay with the Jameses, in spite of the fact that I had not
+found their books enjoyable. This was due at least partly to the fact
+that the small editions were badly printed and marred, at least so
+foreign critics claimed, by an excessive use of Yankee colloquialisms,
+consciously employed to demonstrate patriotism and disdain of imported
+elegance. For some reason, obscure to me then, I did not mention
+Adams to Tyss, though I usually turned to him with each of my fresh
+discoveries. When he came upon me with an open book he would glance at
+the running title over my shoulder and begin talking, either of the
+particular work or of its topic. What he had to say gave me an insight
+I might otherwise have missed, and turned me to other writers, other
+aspects. He respected no authority simply because it was acclaimed or
+established; he prodded me to examine every statement, every hypothesis
+no matter how commonly accepted.
+
+Early in my employment I was attracted to a large framed parchment
+he kept hanging, slightly askew and highly attractive to dust, over
+his typecase. It was simply but beautifully printed in 16 point
+Baskerville; I knew without being told that he had set it himself:
+
+                             _The Body of
+                           Benjamin Franklin
+                                Printer
+                     Like the Cover of an Old Book
+                 Stripped of Its Lettering and Gilding
+                               Lies Here
+                            Food for Worms.
+                    But the Work Shall Not Be Lost
+                     For it will, As he Believed,
+                           Come Forth Again
+                      In a new and Better Edition
+                          Revised & Corrected
+                                  By
+                             The Author._
+
+When he caught me admiring it Tyss laughed. “Felicitous, isnt it,
+Hodgins? But a lie, a perverse and probably hypocritical lie. There is
+no Author; the book of life is simply a mess of pied type, a tale told
+by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. There is no
+plan, no synopsis to be filled in with pious hopes or sanctimonious
+actions. There is nothing but a vast emptiness in the universe.”
+
+“The other day you told me we admired the devil for rebelling against a
+plan.”
+
+He grinned. “So you expect consistency instead of truth from me,
+Hodgins. There is no plan, authored by a Mind; it is this no-plan
+against which Lucifer fought. But there is a plan too, a mindless plan,
+which accounts for all our acts.”
+
+I had been reading an obscure Irish theologian, a Protestant curate of
+some forsaken parish, so ill-esteemed he had been forced to publish his
+sermons himself, named George B Shaw, and I had been impressed by his
+forceful style. I quoted him to Tyss, perhaps as much to preen myself
+as to counter his argument.
+
+“Nonsense. Ive seen the good parson’s book with its eighteenth-century
+logic and its quaint rationalism, and know it for a waste of ink and
+paper. Man does not think; he only thinks he thinks. An automaton, he
+responds to external stimuli; he cannot order his thought.”
+
+“You mean that there’s no free will? Not even a marginal minimum of
+choice?”
+
+“Exactly. The whole thing is an illusion. We do what we do because
+someone else has done what he did; he did it because still another
+someone did what he did. Every action is the rigid result of another
+action.”
+
+“But there must have been a beginning,” I objected. “And if there was a
+beginning, choice existed if only for that split second. And if choice
+exists once it can exist again.”
+
+“You have the makings of a metaphysician, Hodgins,” he said
+witheringly, for metaphysics was one of the most despised words in his
+vocabulary. “The reasoning is infantile. Answering you and the Reverend
+Shaw on your own level, I could say that time is a convention and that
+all events occur simultaneously. Or if I grant its dimension I can ask,
+What makes you think time is a simple straight line running flatly
+through eternity? Why do you assume that time isnt curved? Can you
+conceive of its end? Can you really imagine its beginning? Of course
+not; then why arent both the same? The serpent with its tail in its
+mouth?”
+
+“You mean we not only play a prepared script but repeat the identical
+lines over and over and over for infinity? There’s no heaven in your
+cosmos, only an unimaginable, never-ending hell.”
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. “That you should spout emotional apologetics
+at me is part of what you call the script, Hodgins. You didnt select
+the words nor speak them voluntarily. They were called into existence
+by what I said, which in turn was mere response to what went before.”
+
+Weakly I was forced back to a more elementary attack. “You don’t act in
+accordance with your own conviction.”
+
+He snorted. “A thoughtless remark, excusable only because automatic.
+How could I act differently? Like you, I am a prisoner of stimuli.”
+
+“How pointless to risk ruin and imprisonment as a member of the Grand
+Army when no one can change what’s predestined.”
+
+“Pointless or not, emotions and reflections are responses just as much
+as actions. I can no more help engaging myself in the underground than
+I can help breathing, or my heart beating, or dying when the time
+comes. Nothing, they say, is certain but death and taxes; actually
+everything is certain. Everything,” he repeated firmly.
+
+I went back to sorting some pamphlets which were to be sold for
+wastepaper, shaking my head. His theory was unassailable; every
+attack was discounted by the very nature of the thesis. That it was
+false I didnt doubt; its impregnability made its falseness still more
+terrifying.
+
+There were fully as many imaginary discussions with Tyss as real ones.
+Yet even in these disembodied arguments I could gain no advantage. Why
+do you look back on the War of Southron Independence with regret for
+what might have been, if no might-have-been is possible? I asked him
+mentally, knowing his answer, I cannot help myself, was no answer at
+all.
+
+The logical illogic of it was only one of the multitude of
+contradictions in him. The Grand Army to which he was devoted was
+a violent organization of violent men. He himself was an advocate
+and implement of violence—one illegal paper, the _True American_,
+came from his press and I often saw crumpled proofs of large type
+warnings to “Get Out of Town you Conf. TRAITOR or the GA will HANG
+YOU!” Yet cruelty, other than intellectually, was repugnant to him;
+his vindictiveness toward the Whigs and Confederates rose from
+commiseration for the condition into which they had plunged the country.
+
+Pondible and the others who bore an indefinable resemblance to each
+other, bearded or not, came to the store on Grand Army business, and I
+was sure many of the errands I was sent on advanced or were supposed
+to advance the Grand Army’s cause. Those who signed receipts with an
+X—and in the beginning at least Tyss was strict about assurance of
+delivery—seemed unlikely customers for the sort of merchandise we
+handled.
+
+I was relieved, but puzzled and perhaps a little piqued, that aside
+from the very first conversation with Pondible, no attempt was made to
+persuade me into the organization. Tyss must have perceived this, for
+he explained obliquely.
+
+“There’s the formative type, Hodgins, and the spectator type. One acts,
+and the other is acted upon. One changes events, the other observes
+them. Of course,” he went on hastily, “I’m not talking metaphysical
+rubbish. When I say the formative type changes events I merely mean he
+reacts to a given stimulus in a positive way while the spectator reacts
+to the same circumstances negatively, both reactions being inevitable
+and inescapable. Naturally, events are never changed.”
+
+“Why can’t one be one type sometimes and the other at other times?
+Ive certainly heard of men of action who have sat down to write their
+memoirs.”
+
+“You are confusing the after-effect of action with nonaction, the
+dying ripples on a pond into which a stone has been tossed with the
+still surface of one which has never been disturbed. No, Hodgins, the
+two types are completely distinct and unchangeable. The Swiss police
+chief, Carl Jung, has refined and improved the classifications of
+Lombroso, showing how the formative type can always be detected.”
+
+I felt he was talking pure nonsense, even though I had never read
+Lombroso or heard of Chief Jung.
+
+“To the formative type the spectator seems useless, to the spectator
+the man of action is faintly absurd. A born observer would find the
+earnest efforts of the Grand Army—the formation of skeleton companies,
+the appointment of officers, the secret drills, the serious attempt to
+become a real army—lacking in humor and repellent.”
+
+“You think I’m the spectator type, Mr Tyss?”
+
+“No doubt about it, Hodgins. Certain features might be deceptive at
+first sight: the wide-spaced eyes, the restrained fleshiness of the
+mouth, the elevation of the nostril; but they subordinate to more
+subtle indicators. No question but that Chief Jung would put you down
+as an observer.”
+
+If his fantastic reasoning and curious manner of classifying
+personalities as though they were zoological specimens could relieve me
+of having to refuse pointblank to join the Grand Army I was content.
+While this hardly alleviated my disturbance at being, no matter how
+remotely, accessory to mayhem, kidnaping and murder I compromised with
+my conscience by trying to believe I might after all be mistaken in
+thinking I was being used. There were times when I felt I ought boldly
+to declare myself and leave the store but when I faced the prospect
+of having to find a way to eat and sleep, even if I put aside the
+imperative necessity of books, I lacked the courage.
+
+Spectator? Why not? Spectators had no difficult decisions to make.
+
+
+
+
+_5._ _OF WHIGS AND POPULISTS_
+
+
+A country defeated in a bitter war and divested of half its territory
+loses its drive and spirit and suffers a shock which is communicated
+to all its people. For generations its citizens brood over what has
+happened, preoccupied with the past and dreaming of a miraculous
+change, until time brings apathy or a reversal of history. The Grand
+Army, with its crude and brutal philosophy and methods, was pride’s
+answer to defeat.
+
+It was not the only answer; the two major political parties had others.
+The realistic Whigs wanted to fit the country and its economy into
+actual world conditions, to subordinate it wholly and openly to the
+great manufacturing nations and accept with gratitude foreign capital
+and foreign protection. The immediate result would be more prosperity
+for the propertied classes; they contended this would mean a gradual
+raising of the standard of living since employers could hire more
+hands, and indenture, faced by competition with wages, would dwindle
+away.
+
+This the Populists denied. The government, they insisted when they were
+out of office, should create industries, forbid indenting, buy up the
+indentures of skilled workers and offer high enough pay to create new
+markets, and defy the world by building a new army and navy. That they
+never put their program into effect they laid to the wily tricks of the
+Whigs.
+
+The presidential election of 1940 was as violent as if the office were
+really a prize to be sought rather than a practically empty title,
+with all real power now held by the Majority Leader of the House and
+his cabinet of Committee Chairmen. As early as May one of the leading
+contenders for the Populist nomination was shot and badly crippled; the
+Cleveland hall where the Whig convention was being held was fired by an
+arsonist.
+
+I would not be old enough to vote for two years, yet I too had campaign
+fever. Jennings Lewis, the Populist, was perhaps the ugliest candidate
+ever offered, with a hairless, skeletonlike face; Dewey, the Whig
+nominee, had a certain handsomeness, which might have been an asset if
+the persistent advocates of woman suffrage had ever gotten their way.
+
+Traditionally, candidates never ventured west of Chicago, concentrating
+their appearances in New York and New England and leaving the campaign
+in the sparsely settled trans-Mississippi to local politicians. This
+year both office-seekers used every device to reach the greatest
+number of voters. Dewey made a grand tour in his balloon-train; Lewis
+was featured in a series of short phonotos which were shown free.
+Dewey spoke several times daily to small groups; Lewis specialized in
+enormous weekly rallies followed by torchlight parades.
+
+One of these Populist rallies was held in Union Square early in
+September; outgoing President George Norris spoke, and ex-President
+Norman Thomas, the only Populist to serve two terms since the beloved
+Bryan. Tyss indulgently gave me permission to leave the store a couple
+of hours before the meeting was to commence so I might get a place from
+which to see and hear all that was going on. Though he characterized
+all elections as meaningless exercises devised to befuddle, he had been
+active in this one in some mysterious and secretive way.
+
+The square was already well filled when I arrived, with the more
+acrobatic members of the audience perched on the statues of LaFayette
+and Washington. Calliopes played patriotic airs, and a compressed
+air machine shot up puffs of smoke which momentarily spelled out the
+candidate’s name. Resigned to pantomime glimpses of what was going on,
+I moved around the outside edge of the crowd, thinking I might just as
+well leave altogether.
+
+“Please don’t step on my foot so firmly. Or is that part of the
+Populist tradition?”
+
+“Excuse me, Miss; I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
+
+We were close enough to a light standard for me to see she was young
+and well-dressed, hardly the sort of girl to be found at a political
+meeting, few of which ever counted much of a feminine audience.
+
+She rubbed her instep briefly. “It’s all right,” she conceded
+grudgingly. “Serves me right for being curious about the mob.”
+
+She was plump and pretty, with a small, discontented mouth and pale
+hair worn long over her shoulders. “There’s not much to see from here,”
+I said; “unless youre enthusiastic enough to be satisfied with a bare
+look at the important people, perhaps you’d let me help you to the
+streetcar. For my clumsiness.”
+
+She looked at me thoughtfully. “I can manage by myself. But if you feel
+you owe me something for trampling me, maybe you’ll explain why anyone
+comes to these ridiculous gatherings.”
+
+“Why ... to hear the speakers.”
+
+“Hardly any of them can. Only those close up.”
+
+“Well then, to show their support of the party, I guess.”
+
+“That’s what I thought. It’s a custom or rite or something like that. A
+stupid amusement.”
+
+“But cheap,” I said. “And those who vote for Populists usually havent
+much money.”
+
+“Maybe that’s why,” she answered. “If they found more useful things to
+do they’d earn money; then they wouldnt vote for Populists.”
+
+“A virtuous circle. If everyone voted Whig we’d all be rich as Whigs.”
+
+She shrugged her shoulders, a gesture I found pleasing. “It’s easy
+enough to be envious of those who are better off; it’s a lot harder to
+become better off yourself.”
+
+“I can’t argue with you on that, Miss ... um ...?”
+
+“Why Mister Populist, do ladies always tell you their names when you
+step on their feet?”
+
+“I’m not usually lucky enough to find feet to step on that have lovely
+ladies attached,” I answered boldly. “I won’t deny Populist leanings,
+but my name is really Hodge Backmaker.”
+
+Hers was Tirzah Vame, and she was indentured to a family of wealthy
+Whigs who owned a handsome modern castiron and concrete house near the
+Reservoir at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. She had used the
+apt word “curious” in characterizing herself but it was, as I soon
+found out, a cold and inflexible curiosity which explored only what
+she thought might be useful or which impressed her as foolish. She
+was interested in the nature of anything fashionable or popular or
+much talked of, the idea of being concerned with anything even vaguely
+abstract struck her as preposterous.
+
+She had indented, not out of stark economic necessity, but
+calculatedly, believing she could achieve economic security through
+indenture. This seemed paradoxical to me, even when I contrasted my
+“free” condition with her bound one. Certainly she seemed to have
+minimum restriction on her time; soon after our introduction at the
+rally she was meeting me almost every evening in Reservoir Square where
+we sat for hours talking on a bench or walking briskly when the autumn
+weather chilled our blood.
+
+I did not long flatter myself that her interest—perhaps tolerance would
+be a better word—was due to any strong attraction exerted by me. If
+anything she was, I think, slightly repelled by my physical presence,
+which carried to her some connotation of ordinary surroundings and
+contrasted with the well-fed smooth surfaces of her employers and their
+friends. The first time I kissed her she shuddered slightly; then,
+closing her eyes, she allowed me to kiss her again.
+
+She did not resist me when I pressed my lovemaking; she led me quietly
+to her room in the big house on my transparent plea that the outdoors
+was now too cold even for conversation. I was no accomplished seducer,
+but even in my awkward eagerness I could see she had made up her mind I
+was to succeed.
+
+That her complaisance was not the result of passion was soon obvious;
+there was not so much a failure on my part to arouse her as a refusal
+on hers to be aroused beyond an inescapable degree. Even as she
+permitted our intimacy she remained as virginal, aloof and critical as
+before.
+
+“It seems hardly worth the trouble. Imagine people talking and writing
+and thinking about nothing else.”
+
+“Tirzah dear—”
+
+“And the liberties that seem to go with it. I don’t think of you as any
+more dear than I did an hour ago. If people must indulge in this sort
+of thing, and I suppose they must since it’s been going on for a long
+time, I think it could be conducted with more dignity.”
+
+As my infatuation increased her coolness did not lessen; curiosity
+alone seemed to move her. She was amused at my pathetic search for
+knowledge. “What good is your learning ever going to do you? It’ll
+never get you a penny.”
+
+I smoothed the long, pale hair and kissed her ear. “Suppose it doesnt?”
+I argued lazily; “There are other things besides money.”
+
+She drew away. “That’s what those who can’t get it always say.”
+
+“And what do people who can get it say?”
+
+“That it’s the most important thing of all,” she answered earnestly.
+“That it will buy all the other things.”
+
+“It will buy you free of your indenture,” I admitted, “but you have to
+get it first.”
+
+“Get it first? I never let it go. I still have the contract payment.”
+
+“Then what was the point of indenting at all?”
+
+She looked at me wonderingly. “Havent you ever thought about serious
+things? Only books and politics and all that? How could I get
+opportunities without indenting? I doubt if the Vames are much of a cut
+above the Backmakers; well, youre a general drudge and I’m a governess
+and tutor and even in a way a sort of distant friend to Mrs Smythe.”
+
+“That sounds suspiciously like snobbery to me.”
+
+“Does it? Well, I’m a snob; Ive never denied it. I want to live like a
+lady, to have a good house with servants and carriages and minibiles,
+to travel to civilized countries, with a place in Paris or Rome or
+Vienna. You can love the poor and cheer for the Populists; I love the
+rich and the Whigs.”
+
+“That’s all very well,” I objected, “but even though you have your
+indenting money and can buy back your freedom any moment you want it,
+how does this help you get rich?”
+
+“Do you think I keep my money in my pocket? It’s invested, every cent.
+People who come to this house give me tips; not just money, though
+there’s enough of that to add a bit to my original capital, but tips on
+what to buy and sell. By the time I’m thirty I should be well off. Of
+course I may marry a rich man sooner.”
+
+“That’s an awfully cold-blooded way of looking at marriage,” I
+remonstrated.
+
+“Is it?” she asked indifferently. “Well, youve been telling me I’m
+cold-blooded anyway. I may as well be cold-blooded profitably.”
+
+“If that’s the way you feel I don’t understand what we’re doing here
+at this moment. I’d have thought you’d have picked a more profitable
+lover.”
+
+She was unruffled. “You didnt think about it at all. If you had, you
+would have seen I could hardly encourage any of the men from the class
+into which I intend to marry. Great ladies can laugh at gossip, but the
+faintest whisper about someone like me would be damaging. Scandal would
+be unavoidable if I appeared to be anything in this house but a chilly
+prude.”
+
+An appearance not too deceitful, I considered, sickly jealous at
+the thought of men who might have been in my place if they had been
+as anonymous, as inconsequential as I. But this writhing jealousy
+was little more painful than my frustration at having been made a
+convenience, a trial experiment. Almost anyone of equal unimportance,
+anyone who was not a fellow-servant or a familiar in the house would
+have done as well as I, anyone unlikely ever to come face to face with
+Mrs Smythe, much less talk to her.
+
+Looking back, trying to recapture for a moment that vanished past,
+I have a sad, quizzical welling of pity for the girl Tirzah and the
+boy Hodge. How gravely we took our moral and political differences;
+how lightly the flying moments of union. We said and did all the
+wrong things, all the things which fostered the antagonism between
+us and none of the things which might have softened our youthful
+self-assurance. We wrangled and argued: Dewey and Lewis, Whig versus
+Populist, materialist against idealist, reality opposing principle. It
+all seems so futile now; it all appeared so vital then.
+
+Added to the almost unanimous distrust and hatred of all foreigners
+in the United States, we regarded the Confederates in particular as
+the cause of all our misfortunes. We not only blamed and feared them,
+but looked upon them as sinister, so Populist orators had a ready-made
+response every time they referred to the Whigs as Southron tools.
+
+Contrary to the accepted view in the United States, I was sure the
+victors in the War of Southron Independence had been men of the highest
+probity, and the noblest among them was their second president. Yet I
+also knew that immediately after the Peace of Richmond less dedicated
+individuals became increasingly powerful in the new nation. As Sir John
+Dahlberg remarked, “Power tends to corrupt.”
+
+From his first election in 1865 until his death ten years later,
+President Lee had been the prisoner of an increasingly strong and
+imperialistic congress. He had opposed the invasion and conquest of
+Mexico by the Confederacy, undertaken on the pretext of restoring order
+during the conflict between the republicans and the emperor. However he
+had too profound a respect for the constitutional processes to continue
+this opposition in the face of joint resolutions by the Confederate
+House and Senate.
+
+Lee remained a symbol, but as the generation which had fought for
+independence died, the ideals he symbolized faded. Negro emancipation,
+enacted largely because of pressure from men like Lee, soon revealed
+itself as a device for obtaining the benefits of slavery without its
+obligations. The freedmen on both sides of the new border were without
+franchise, and for all practical purposes without civil rights. Yet
+while the old Union first restricted and then abolished immigration,
+the Confederacy encouraged it, making the newcomers subjects like
+the Latin-Americans who made up so much of the Southron population
+after the Confederacy expanded southward, limiting full citizenship to
+posterity of enfranchised residents in the Confederate States on July
+Fourth 1864.
+
+The Populists claimed the Whigs were Confederate agents; the Whigs
+retorted that the Populists were visionaries and demagogues who
+tolerated if they did not actually encourage the activities of the
+Grand Army. The Populists replied by pointing to their platform which
+denounced illegal organizations and lawless methods. I was not too
+impressed by this, knowing how busy Tyss, Pondible and their associates
+had been ever since the campaign started.
+
+On election night Tyss closed the store and we walked the few blocks
+to Wanamaker & Stewarts drygoods store where a big screen showed the
+returns between tinugraphs puffing the firm’s merchandise. From the
+first it was apparent the unpredictable electorate preferred Dewey to
+Lewis. State after state, hitherto staunchly Populist, turned to the
+Whigs for the first time since William Hale Thompson defeated President
+Thomas R Marshall back in 1920 and again Alfred E Smith in 1924, before
+Smith gained the great popularity which gave him the presidency four
+years later. Only Massachusetts, Connecticut, Dakotah and Oregon went
+for Lewis; his own Minnesota along with twenty-one other states plumped
+for Dewey.
+
+Disappointed as I was, I could not but note Tyss’s cheerful air. When I
+asked him what satisfaction he could find in so overwhelming a defeat
+he smiled and said, “What defeat, Hodgins? Did you think we wanted the
+Populists to win? To elect Jennings Lewis with his program of world
+peace conferences? Really Hodgins, I’m afraid you learn nothing day by
+day.”
+
+“You mean the Grand Army wanted Dewey all along?”
+
+“Dewey or another; we prefer a Whig administration which presents a
+fixed target to a Populist one wavering all over the place.”
+
+Of course it should have occurred to me that Tyss and Tirzah would wind
+up on the same side. It was a measure of my innocence that it never
+had.
+
+
+
+
+_6._ _ENFANDIN_
+
+
+Tirzah’s question, “What good is your learning ever going to do you?”
+bothered me from time to time. Not that I was burdened by any vast
+amount of knowledge, but presumably I would get more—and then what?
+It was true I expected no rewards from reading except the pleasure
+it gave me, but the future, to use a topheavy word, could not be
+entirely disregarded. I could not see myself spending a lifetime in the
+bookstore. I was grateful to Tyss, despite his disdain of this emotion,
+for the opportunities he had given me, but not grateful enough to
+reconcile myself to becoming another Tyss, especially one without his
+vitalizing involvement with the Grand Army.
+
+Other courses were neither numerous nor inviting. To follow Tirzah’s
+own example might have seemed feasible if one ignored the vast
+differences of situation and character, to say nothing of those between
+a hulking youth and a pretty girl. I could hardly hope to find a
+wealthy family who would buy my services, put me to congenial tasks,
+and look with tolerance on my efforts to advance myself right out
+of their employment. Even if such a chance existed I could not have
+utilized it as she did; I should undoubtedly confuse one stock with
+another or neglect to buy what I was told until too late, winding up
+with lottery tickets and losing the stubs.
+
+My helpless uncertainty only added to my disadvantage with her. I
+had no hope her coolness would change to either ardor or affection.
+At any moment she might decide her curiosity was satisfied and find
+the awkwardness, inconveniences, and what must have been to her the
+sordidness of the affair too great.
+
+We were a strange pair of young lovers. When we talked we argued
+opposing views or spoke sedately of things not near our hearts.
+When we walked together in the streets or fled the gaslit pavements
+for the moon over Reservoir Square we neither held hands nor kissed
+impulsively. Because prudence forbade the slightest physical contact
+save in utmost privacy there were no innocent touchings or accidental
+brushing of hands against hips or arms against arms, and our secret
+embraces were guilty simply because they were secret.
+
+Often I dreamed of a miraculous change, either in circumstances or
+in her attitude, to dissolve the walls between us; beneath the hope
+was only expectation of an abrupt and final break. Yet when it came
+at last, after more than a year, it was not the result, as I had
+agonizedly anticipated, of some successful speculation or an offer of
+marriage, but of natural and normal actions of my own.
+
+Among the customers to whom I frequently delivered parcels of books was
+a Monsieur René Enfandin who lived on Eighth Street, not far from Fifth
+Avenue. M Enfandin was Consul for the Republic of Haiti; the house he
+occupied was distinguished from otherwise equally drab neighbors by
+a large red and blue escutcheon over the doorway. He did not use the
+entire dwelling himself, reserving only the parlor floor for the office
+of the consulate and living quarters; the rest was let to other tenants.
+
+Tyss’s anti-foreign bias caused him to jeer at Enfandin behind his back
+and embark on discourses which proved by anthropometry and frequent
+references to Lombroso and Chief Jung that Negroes were incapable
+of self-government. I noticed however that he treated the consul no
+differently, either in politeness or honesty, from his other patrons,
+and by this time I knew Tyss well enough to attribute this courtesy not
+to the self-interest of a tradesman but to that compassion which he
+suppressed so sternly under the contradictions of his nature.
+
+For a long time I paid little attention to Enfandin, beyond noting the
+wide range of interests revealed by the books he bought. I sensed
+that, like myself, he was inclined to shyness. He had an arrangement
+whereby he turned back most of his purchases for credit on others. I
+saw that if he hadnt, his library would have soon dispossessed him;
+as it was, books covered all the space not taken by the paraphernalia
+of his office and bedroom with the exception of a bit of bare wall on
+which hung a large crucifix. He seemed always to have a volume in his
+large, dark brown hand, politely closed over his thumb or open for
+eager sampling.
+
+Enfandin was tall and strong-featured, notable in any company. In
+the United States where a black man was, more than anything else,
+a reminder of the disastrous war and Mr Lincoln’s proclamation, he
+was the permanent target of rowdy boys and adult hoodlums. Even the
+diplomatic immunity of his post was poor protection, for it was
+believed, not without justification, that Haiti, the only American
+republic south of the Mason-Dixon line to preserve its independence,
+was disrupting the official if sporadically executed policy of
+deporting Negroes to Africa by encouraging their emigration to its own
+shores or, what was even more annoying, assisting them to flee to the
+unconquered Indians of Idaho or Montana.
+
+Beyond a “Good morning” or “Thank you” I doubt if we exchanged a
+hundred words until the time I saw a copy of Randolph Bourne’s
+_Fragment_ among his selections. “That’s not what you think it is,” I
+exclaimed brashly; “it’s a novel.”
+
+He looked at me gravely. “You also admire Bourne?”
+
+“Oh yes.” I felt a trifle foolish, not only for having thrust my advice
+upon him, but for the inadequacy of my comment on a writer who had so
+many pertinent things to say and had been persecuted for saying them.
+I was conscious too of Tyss’s opinion: How could a cripple like Bourne
+speak to whole and healthy men?
+
+“But you do not approve of fiction, is that so?” Enfandin had no
+discernible accent but often his English was uncolloquial and sometimes
+it was overly careful and stiff.
+
+I thought of the adventure tales I had once swallowed so breathlessly.
+“Well ... it does seem to be a sort of a waste of time.”
+
+He nodded. “Time, yes.... We waste it or save it or use it—one would
+almost think we mastered it instead of the other way around. Yet are
+all novels really a waste of the precious dimension? Perhaps you
+underestimate the value of invention.”
+
+“No,” I said; “but what value has the invention of happenings that
+never happened, or characters who never existed?”
+
+“Who is to say what never happened? It is a matter of definition.”
+
+“All right,” I said; “suppose the characters exist in the author’s
+mind, like the events; where does the value of the invention come in?”
+
+“Where the value of any invention comes in,” he answered. “In its
+purpose or use. A wheel spinning aimlessly is worth nothing; the same
+wheel on a cart or a pulley changes destiny.”
+
+“You can’t learn anything from fairy tales,” I persisted stubbornly.
+
+He smiled. “Maybe you havent read the right fairy tales.”
+
+I soon discovered in him a quick and penetrating sympathy which was at
+times almost telepathic. He listened to my callow opinions patiently,
+offering observations of his own without diffidence and without
+didacticism. The understanding and encouragement I did not expect or
+want from Tyss he gave me generously. To him, as I never could to
+Tirzah, I talked of my hopes and dreams; he listened patiently and did
+not seem to think them foolish or impossible of accomplishment. I do
+not minimize what Tyss did for me by saying that without Enfandin I
+would have taken much less profit from the books my employer gave me
+access to.
+
+I was drawn to him more and more; I’m not sure why he interested
+himself in me, unless there was a reason in the remark he made once:
+“Ay, we are alike, you and I. The books, always the books. And for
+themselves, not to become rich or famous like sensible people. Are
+we not foolish? But it is a pleasant folly and a sometimes blameless
+vice.”
+
+I wanted anxiously to speak of Tirzah, not only because it is an urgent
+necessity for lovers to mention the name at least of their beloved a
+hundred times a day or more, but in the nebulous hope he could somehow
+give me an answer to her as well as to her question. I approached the
+topic in a number of different ways; each time our conversation moved
+on without my having told him about her.
+
+Often, after I had delivered an armful of books to the consulate and
+we had talked of a wide range of things—for, unlike me, he had no
+self-consciousness about what interested him, whether others might
+consider it trivial or not—he would walk back to the bookstore with
+me, leaving a note on his door. The promise that he would be “Back in
+10 minutes” was, I’m afraid, seldom fulfilled, for he became so deeply
+engrossed that he was unaware of time.
+
+The occasion which was to be so important to me sprang from a
+discussion of non-resistance to evil, a subject on which he had much
+to say. We were just passing Wanamaker & Stewarts and he had just
+triumphantly reviewed the amazing decision of the Japanese Shogun to
+abolish all police forces, when I became conscious that someone was
+staring fixedly at me.
+
+A minibile, highslung and obviously custom-built, moved slowly down the
+street. Its brass brightwork, bumpers like two enormous tackheads, hub
+rims like delicate eyelets in the center of the great spokes, rococo
+lamps, rain gutters and door handles, was dazzling. In the jump-seat,
+facing a lady of majestic demeanor, was Tirzah. Her head was turned
+ostentatiously away from us.
+
+Enfandin halted as I did. “Ah,” he murmured; “you know the ladies?”
+
+“The girl. The lady is her employer.”
+
+“I caught only a glimpse of the face, but it is a pretty one.”
+
+“Yes. Oh yes....” I wanted desperately to say more, to thank him as
+though Tirzah’s looks were somehow to my credit, to praise her and at
+the same time call her cruel and hardhearted. “Oh yes....”
+
+“She is perhaps a particular friend?”
+
+I nodded. “Very particular.” We walked on in silence.
+
+“That is nice. But she is perhaps a little unhappy over your prospects?”
+
+“How did you know?”
+
+“It was not too hard to infer. You have been concealed from the
+mistress; the young lady is impressed by wealth; you are the idealistic
+one who is not.”
+
+At last I was able to talk. I explained her indenture, her ambitious
+plans, and how I expected her to end everything between us at any
+moment. “And there’s nothing I can do about it,” I finished bitterly.
+
+“That is right, Hodge. There is nothing you can do about it because—You
+will forgive me if I speak plainly, brutally even?”
+
+“Go ahead. Tirzah—” what a joy it was just to say the name “—Tirzah has
+told me often enough how unrealistic I am.”
+
+“That was not what I meant. I would say there is nothing you can do
+about it because there is nothing you wish to do about it.”
+
+“What do you mean? I’d do anything I could....”
+
+“Would you? Give up books, for instance?”
+
+“Why should I? What good would that do?”
+
+“I do not say you should or that it would do good. I only try to show
+that the young lady, charming and important as she is, is not the most
+magnetic or important thing in your life. Romantic love is a curious
+byproduct of west European feudalism that Africans and Asiatics can
+only criticize gingerly. You shake your head with obstinacy; you do not
+believe me. Good, then I have not hurt you.”
+
+“I can’t see that youve helped me much, either.”
+
+“Ay! What did you expect from the black man of Haiti? Miracles?”
+
+“Nothing less will do any good I’m afraid. Now I suppose youll tell
+me I’ll get over it in time; that it’s just an adolescent languishing
+anyway.”
+
+He looked at me reproachfully. “No, Hodge. I hope I should never be
+the one to think suffering is tied to age or time. As for getting
+over it, why, we all get over everything in the end, but no matter
+how desirable absolute peace is, few of us are willing to give up
+experience prematurely.”
+
+Later, I compared what Enfandin told me with what Tyss might have said.
+Did the responsibility of holding Tirzah lie with me and not with both
+of us, or with fate or chance? Or were events so circumscribed by
+inevitabilities that even to think of struggling with them was foolish?
+
+I also asked myself if I had been too proud, too hypersensitive. I had
+tried to make her see my viewpoint by arguing, by fighting hers; might
+it not be possible, without giving up essentials, to approach her more
+gently? To divert her, not from her ambitions, but from her contempt
+for mine?
+
+Full of resolves, I left the store after eight; eager walking brought
+me to our meeting place in Reservoir Square early, but the nearby
+churchbells had hardly sounded the quarter hour when she said, “Hodge.”
+
+Her unusual promptness was a good omen; I was filled with warm
+optimism. “Tirzah, I saw you this afternoon—”
+
+“Did you? I thought you were so busy with Sambo you would never look
+up.”
+
+“Why do you call him that? Do you think—”
+“Oh for Heavens sake, don’t start making speeches at me. I call him
+Sambo because it sounds nicer than Rastus.”
+
+All my resolutions about trying to see her point of view! “I call him
+M’sieu Enfandin because that’s his name.”
+
+“Have you no pride? No, I suppose you havent. Just some strange
+manners. Well, I can put up with your eccentricities, but other people
+wouldnt understand. What do you think Mrs Smythe would say?”
+
+“Never having met the lady, I havent the faintest idea.”
+
+“I have, and I agree with her. Would you like me to be chummy with a
+naked cannibal with a ring in his nose?”
+
+“But Enfandin doesnt wear a ring in his nose, and you must have seen
+he was fully dressed. Maybe he eats missionaries in secret, but that
+couldnt offend Mrs Smythe since appearances would be saved.”
+
+“I’m serious, Hodge.”
+
+“So am I. Enfandin is my only friend.”
+
+“You may be above appearances and considerations of decency but I’m
+not. If you ever appear in public with him again you can stop coming
+here. Because I won’t have anything more to do with you.”
+
+“But Tirzah ...” I began helplessly, overwhelmed by the impossibility
+of coping with the irrelevancies and inconsistencies of her stand. “But
+Tirzah....”
+
+“No,” she said firmly; “you’ll simply have to grow up, Hodge, and stop
+such childish exhibitions. Only friend indeed! Why I suppose if he
+appeared here right this minute, you’d talk to him.”
+
+“Well naturally. You’d hardly expect me to—”
+“But I do. That’s exactly what I’d expect. You to act like a civilized
+man.”
+
+I wasnt angry. I couldnt be angry with her. “If that’s civilization
+then I guess I don’t want to be civilized.”
+
+I detected astonishment in her voice. “You mean, actually mean, you
+intend to keep on acting this way?”
+
+Grandfather Backmaker must have been a stubborn man; I had my
+mother’s word I possessed no Hodgins traits. “Tirzah, what would you
+think of me if I turned on my only friend, the only thoroughly kind
+and understanding friend Ive ever had, just because Mrs Smythe has
+different notions of propriety than I have?”
+
+“I’d think you were beginning to understand things at last.”
+
+“I’m sorry, Tirzah.”
+
+“I mean it, Hodge, you know. I’ll never see you again.”
+
+“If you’d only listen to my side—”
+“You mean if I would only become a crank like you. But I don’t want to
+be a crank or a martyr. I don’t want to change the world. I’m normal.”
+
+“Tirzah—”
+“Goodbye, Hodge.”
+
+She walked away. I had the irrational feeling that if I called after
+her she might come back. Or at least stand still and wait to hear what
+I had to say. I kept my mouth obstinately closed; Enfandin had been
+right, the responsibility was mine. There were things I would not give
+up.
+
+My heroic mood must have lasted fully fifteen minutes. Then I hurried
+through the little park and across the street to the Smythe house.
+There were lights in the upper floors, but the basement, as always,
+was dark. I dared not knock or ring the bell; her admonitions were
+too firmly impressed on my mind. Instead, in a turmoil of emotions, I
+paced the flagged sidewalk until the suspicious eye of a patrolman was
+attracted; then I fled cravenly.
+
+I couldnt wait for the next day to write a long, chaotic letter
+begging her to let me talk to her, just to talk to her, for an hour,
+ten minutes, a minute. I offered to indent, to emigrate, to make a
+fortune by some inspired means if only she would hear me. I recalled
+moments together, I told her I loved her, said I would die without her.
+Having covered several pages with these sentiments I began all over and
+repeated them. It was dawn when I posted the letter in the pneumatic
+mail.
+
+Sleepless and tormented, I was of little use to Tyss next day. Would
+she telegraph? If she answered by pneumatic post her letter might be
+delivered in the afternoon. Or would she come to the bookstore?
+
+The second day I sent off two more letters and went up to Reservoir
+Square on the chance she might appear. I watched the house as though my
+concentration would force her to emerge. On the third day my letters
+came back, unopened.
+
+There is some catchphrase or other about the elasticity of youth. It is
+true it was only weeks before my misery abated, and weeks more before I
+was heart-whole again. But those weeks were long.
+
+The subject of Tirzah did not come up again between Enfandi and me. He
+must have sensed I had lost her, perhaps he even guessed his connection
+with the break, but he was too tactful to mention it and I was too sore.
+
+I don’t know if the episode precipitated some maturity in me, or if, as
+a result of grief and anger I tried to turn my mind away from the easy
+emotions and shield myself against further hurt. At any rate, whether
+there was a logical connection or not, it is from this period that I
+date my resolve to center my reading on history. Somewhat diffidently I
+spoke of this to him.
+
+“History? But certainly, Hodge. It is a noble study. But what is
+history? How is it written? How is it read? Is it a dispassionate
+chronicle of events scientifically determined and set down in the
+precise measure of their importance? Is this ever possible? Or is it
+the transmutation of the ordinary into the celebrated? Or the cunning
+distortion which gives a clearer picture than accurate blueprints?”
+
+“It seems to me facts are primary and interpretations come after,” I
+answered. “If we can find out the facts we can form our individual
+opinions on them.”
+
+“Perhaps. Perhaps. But take what is for me the central fact of all
+history.” He pointed to the crucifix. “As a Catholic the facts are
+plain to me; I believe what is written in the Gospels to be literally
+true: that the Son of Man died for me on that cross. But what were
+the facts for a contemporary Roman statesman? That an obscure local
+agitator threatened the stability of an uneasy province and was
+promptly executed in the approved Roman fashion as a warning to others.
+And for a contemporary fellow-countryman? That no such person existed.
+You think these facts are mutually exclusive? Yet you know no two
+people see exactly the same thing; too many honest witnesses have
+contradicted each other. Even the Gospels must be reconciled.”
+
+“You are saying that truth is relative.”
+
+“Am I? Then I shall have my tongue examined, or my head. Because I mean
+to say no such thing. Truth is absolute and for all time. But one man
+cannot envisage all of truth; the best he can do is see a single aspect
+of it whole. That is why I say to you, be a skeptic, Hodge. Always be
+the skeptic.”
+
+“Ay?” I was finding the admonition a little difficult to harmonize with
+his previous confession of faith.
+
+“For the believer skepticism is essential. How else is he to know false
+gods from true except by doubting both? One of the most pernicious of
+folk-sayings is, ‘I could scarcely believe my eyes?’ Why should you
+believe your eyes? You were given eyes to see with, not to believe
+with. Believe your mind, your intuition, your reason, your feelings if
+you like—but not your eyes unaided by any of these interpreters. Your
+eyes can see the mirage, the hallucination, as easily as the actual
+scenery. Your eyes will tell you nothing exists but matter—”
+“Not my eyes only, but my boss.”
+
+“Ay? What are you saying?” For all his amiability Enfandin enjoyed
+interruption in mid-discourse no more than any other teacher. But in
+a moment his irritation vanished and he listened to my description of
+Tyss’s mechanistic creed.
+
+“God have mercy on his soul,” he muttered at last. “Poor creature. He
+has liberated himself from the superstitions of religion in order to
+fall into superstition so abject no Christian can conceive it. Imagine
+to yourself—” he began to pace the floor “—time is circular, man is
+automaton, we are doomed to repeat the same gestures over and over,
+forever. Oh I say to you, Hodge, this is monstrous. The poor man. The
+poor man.”
+
+I nodded. “Yes. But what is the answer? Limitless space? Limitless
+time? They are almost as horrifying, because they are inconceivable and
+awful.”
+
+“And why should the inconceivable and awful be horrifying? Is our
+small human understanding the ultimate measuring stick and guide? But
+of course this is not the answer. The answer is that all—time, space,
+matter—all is illusion. All but the good God Himself. Nothing is real
+but Him. We are creatures of His fancy, figments of His imagination....”
+“Then where does free will come in?”
+
+“As a gift, naturally. Or supernaturally. How else? The greatest gift
+and the greatest responsibility.”
+
+I can’t say I was entirely satisfied with his exposition, though it was
+certainly more to my taste than Tyss’s. I returned to the conversation
+at intervals, both in my thoughts and when I saw him, but in the end I
+suppose all I really accepted was his admonition to be skeptical, which
+I doubt I always applied the way he meant me to.
+
+
+
+
+_7._ _OF CONFEDERATE AGENTS IN 1942_
+
+
+To anyone but the mooncalf I still was in the year of my majority
+it would have long since occurred with considerable force that
+Enfandin ought to be told of Tyss’s connection with the Negro-hating,
+anti-foreign Grand Army. And the thought once entertained, no matter
+how belatedly, would have been immediately translated into warning. For
+me it became a dilemma.
+
+If I exposed Tyss to Enfandin I would certainly be basely ungrateful to
+the man who had saved me from destitution and given me the opportunity
+I wanted so much. Membership in the Grand Army was a crime, even though
+the laws were laxly enforced, and I could hardly expect an official
+receiving the hospitality of the United States to conceal knowledge of
+a felony against his host, especially when the Grand Army was what it
+was. Yet if I kept silent I would be less than a friend.
+
+If I spoke I would be an informer; if I didnt, a hypocrite and worse.
+The fact that neither man, for totally different reasons, would
+condemn me whichever course I took increased rather than diminished my
+perplexity. I procrastinated, which meant I was actually protecting
+Tyss, and that this was against my sympathies increased my feeling of
+guilt.
+
+At this juncture a series of events involved me still deeper with the
+Grand Army and further complicated my relationship to both Tyss and
+Enfandin. It began the day a customer called himself to my attention
+with a selfconscious clearing of his throat.
+
+“Yes sir. Can I help you?”
+
+He was a fat little man with palpably false teeth, and hair hanging
+down behind over his collar. However the sum of his appearance was in
+no way ludicrous; rather he gave the impression of ease and authority,
+and an assurance so strong there was no necessity to buttress it.
+
+“Why, I was looking for—” he began, and then scrutinized me sharply.
+“Say, aint you the young fella I saw walking with a Nigra? Big black
+buck?”
+
+Seemingly everyone had been fascinated by the spectacle of two people
+of slightly different shades of color in company with each other. I
+felt myself reddening. “There’s no law against it, is there?”
+
+He made a gargling noise which I judged was laughter. “Wouldnt know
+about your damyankee laws, boy. For myself I’d say there’s no harm in
+it, no harm in it at all. Always did like to be around Nigras myself.
+But then I was rared among em. Most damyankees seem to think Nigras
+aint fitten company. Only goes to show how narrerminded and bigoted you
+folks can be. Present company excepted.”
+
+“M’sieu Enfandin is consul of the Republic of Haiti,” I said; “he’s a
+scholar and a gentleman.” As soon as the words were out I was bitterly
+sorry for their condescension and patronage. I felt ashamed, as if I
+had betrayed him by offering credentials to justify my friendship and
+implying it took special qualities to overcome the handicap of his
+color.
+
+“A mussoo, huh? Furrin and educated Nigra? Well, guess theyre all
+right.” His tone, still hearty, was slightly dubious. “Ben working here
+long?”
+
+“Nearly four years.”
+
+“Kind of dull, aint it?”
+
+“Oh no—I like to read, and there are plenty of books around here.”
+He frowned. “Should think a hefty young fella’d find more interesting
+things. Youre indented, of course? No? Well then youre a mighty lucky
+fella. In a way, in a way. Naturally youll be short on cash, ay? Unless
+you draw a lucky number in the lottery.”
+
+I told him I’d never bought a lottery ticket.
+
+He slapped his leg as though I’d just repeated a very good joke. “Aint
+that the pattrun,” he exclaimed; “aint that the pattrun! Necessity
+makes em have a lottery; Puritanism keeps em from buying tickets. Aint
+that the pattrun!” He gargled the humor of it for some time, while his
+eyes moved restlessly around the dim interior of the store. “And what
+do you read, ay? Sermons? Books on witches?”
+
+I admitted I’d dipped into both, and then, perhaps trying to impress
+him, explained my ambitions.
+
+“Going to be a professional historian, hey? Little out of my line, but
+I don’t suppose they’s many of em up North here.”
+
+“Not unless you count a handful of college instructors who dabble in it”
+
+He shook his head. “Young fella with your aims could do better down
+South, I’d think.”
+
+“Oh yes; some of the most interesting research is going on right now in
+Leesburg, Washington-Baltimore and the University of Lima. You are a
+Confederate yourself, sir?”
+
+“Southron, yes sir, I am that and mighty proud of it. Now look a-here,
+boy: I’ll lay all my cards on the table, face up. Youre a free man and
+you aint getting any pay here. Now how’d you like to do a little job
+for me? They’s good money in it; and I imagine I’d be able to fix up
+one of those deals—what do they call em? scholarships—at the University
+of Leesburg, after.”
+
+A scholarship at Leesburg. Where the Department of History was engaged
+on a monumental project—nothing less than a compilation of all known
+source material on the War of Southron Independence! It was only with
+the strongest effort that I refrained from agreeing blindly.
+
+“It sounds fine, Mr—?”
+“Colonel Tolliburr. Jest call me cunnel.”
+
+There wasnt anything remotely military in his bearing. “It sounds good
+to me, Colonel. What is the job?”
+
+He clicked his too regular teeth thoughtfully. “Hardly anything at all,
+m’boy, hardly anything at all. Just want you to keep a list for me.”
+
+He seemed to think this a complete explanation. “What kind of list,
+Colonel?”
+
+“Why, list of the people that come in here steady. Especially the ones
+don’t seem to buy anything, just talk to your boss. Names if you know
+em, but that aint real important, and a sort of rough description.
+Like five foot nine, blue eyes, dark hair, busted nose, scar on right
+eyebrow. And so on. Nothing real detailed. And a list of deliveries.”
+
+Was I tempted? I don’t really know. “I’m sorry, Colonel. I’m afraid I
+can’t help you.”
+
+“Not even for that scholarship and say, a hundred dollars in real
+money?”
+
+I shook my head.
+
+“They’s no harm in it, boy. Likely nothing’ll come of it.”
+
+“I’m sorry.”
+
+“Two hundred? I’m not talking about yankee slugs, but good CSA bills,
+each with a picture of President Jimmy right slapdash on the middle of
+it.”
+
+“It’s not a matter of money, Colonel Tolliburr.”
+
+He looked at me shrewdly. “Think it over, boy. No use being hasty.” He
+handed me a card. “Any time you change your mind come and see me or
+send me a telegram.”
+
+I watched him out of the store. The Grand Army must be annoying the
+mighty Confederacy. Tyss ought to know about the agent’s interest. And
+I knew I would be unable to tell him.
+
+“Suppose,” I asked Enfandin the next day, “suppose one were placed in
+the position of being an involuntary assistant in a—to a....”
+I was at a loss for words to describe the situation without being
+incriminatingly specific. I could not tell him about Tolliburr and
+my clear duty to let Tyss know of the colonel’s espionage without
+revealing Tyss’s connection with the Grand Army and thus uncovering my
+deceit in not warning Enfandin earlier. Whatever I said or failed to
+say, I was somehow culpable.
+
+He waited patiently while I groped, trying to formulate a question
+which was no longer a question. “You can’t do evil that good may come
+of it,” I burst out at last.
+
+“Quite so. And then?”
+
+“Well.... That might mean eventually giving up all action entirely,
+since we can never be sure even the most innocent act may not have bad
+consequences.”
+
+He nodded. “It might. The Manichaeans thought it did; they believed
+good and evil balanced and man was created in the image of Satan. But
+certainly there is a vast difference between this inhuman dogma and
+refusing to do consciously wicked deeds.”
+
+“Maybe,” I said dubiously.
+
+He looked at me speculatively. “A man is drowning in the river. I have
+a rope. If I throw him the rope he may not only climb to safety but
+take it from me and use it to garrote some honest citizen. Shall I
+therefore let him drown because I must not do good lest evil come of
+it?”
+
+“But sometimes they are so mixed up it is impossible to disentangle
+them.”
+
+“Impossible? Or very difficult?”
+
+“Um.... I don’t know.”
+
+“Are you not perhaps putting the problem too abstractly? Is not perhaps
+your situation—your hypothetical situation—one of being accessory
+to wrong rather than facing an alternative which means personal
+unhappiness?”
+
+Again I struggled for noncommittal words. He had formulated my dilemma
+about the Grand Army so far as it connected with giving up my place in
+the bookstore or telling him of Tyss’s bias. Yet not entirely. And why
+could I not let Tyss know of Colonel Tolliburr’s visit, which it was
+certainly my duty to do? Was this overscrupulousness only a means of
+avoiding any unpleasantness?
+
+“Yes,” I muttered at last.
+
+“It would be very nice if there were no drawbacks ever attached to the
+virtuous choice. Then the only ones who would elect to do wrong would
+be those of twisted minds, the perverse, the insane. Who would prefer
+the devious course if the straight one were just as easy? No, no, my
+dear Hodge; one cannot escape the responsibility for his choice simply
+because the other way means inconvenience or hardships or tribulation.”
+
+“Must we always act, whether we are sure of the outcome of our action
+or not?”
+
+“Not acting is also action; can we always be sure of the outcome of
+refusing to act?”
+
+Was it pettiness that made me contrast his position as an official of
+a small yet fairly secure power, well enough paid to live comfortably,
+with mine where a break with Tyss meant beggary and no further chance
+of fulfilling the ambition every day more important to me? _Did_
+circumstances alter cases, and was it easy for Enfandin to talk as he
+did, unconfronted with harsh alternatives?
+
+“You know, Hodge,” he said as though changing the subject, “I am what
+they call a career man, meaning I have no money except my salary. This
+might seem much to you, but it is really little, particularly since
+protocol says I must spend more than necessary. For the honor of my
+country. At home I have an establishment to keep up where my wife and
+children live—”
+
+I had wondered about his apparent bachelorhood.
+
+“—because to be rudely frank, I do not think they would be happy or
+safe in the United States on account of their color. Besides these
+expenses I make personal contributions for the assistance of black men
+who are—how shall we say it?—unhappily circumstanced in your country,
+for I have found the official allotment is never enough. Now I have
+been indiscreet; you know state secrets. Why do I tell you this?
+Because, my friend, I should like to help. Alas, I cannot offer money.
+But this I can do, if it will not offend your pride: I suggest you live
+here—it will be no more uncomfortable than the arrangements you have
+described in the store—and attend one of the colleges of the city. A
+medal or an order from the Haitian government judiciously conferred
+on an eminent educator—decorations cut so nicely across color-lines,
+perhaps because they don’t show their origin to the uninitiated—should
+take care of tuition fees. What do you say?”
+
+What could I say? That I did not deserve his generosity? The statement
+would be meaningless, a catchphrase, unless I explained that I’d not
+been open with him, and now even less than before was I able to do
+this. Or could I say that bare minutes earlier I had thought enviously
+and spitefully of him? Wretched and happy, I mumbled incoherent
+thanks, began a number of sentences and left them unfinished, lapsed
+into dazed silence.
+
+But the newly opened prospect cut through my introspection and
+scattered my self-reproaches. The future was too exciting to dwell in
+any other time; in a moment we were both sketching rapid plans and
+supplementing each other’s designs with revisions of our own. Words
+tumbled out; ideas were caught in mid-expression. We decided, we
+reconsidered, we returned to the first decisions.
+
+I was to give Tyss two weeks’ notice despite the original agreement
+making such nicety superfluous; Enfandin was to discuss matriculation
+with a professor he knew. My employer raised a quizzical eyebrow at my
+information.
+
+“Ah, Hodgins, you see how neatly the script works out. Nothing left to
+chance or choice. If you hadnt been relieved of your trifling capital
+by a man of enterprise whose methods were more successful than subtle
+you might have fumbled at the edge of the academic world for four years
+and then, having substituted a wad of unrelated facts for common sense
+and whatever ability to think you may have possessed, fumbled for the
+rest of your life at the edge of the economic world. You wouldnt have
+met George Pondible or gotten here where you could discover your own
+mind without adjustment to a professorial iron maiden.”
+
+“I thought it was all arbitrary.”
+
+He gave me a reproachful look. “Arbitrary and predetermined are not
+synonymous, Hodgins, nor does either rule out artistry. Mindless
+artistry of course, like that of the snowflake or crystal. And how
+artistic this development is! You will go on to become a professor
+yourself and construct iron maidens for promising students who might
+become your competitors. You will write learned histories, for you
+are—havent I said this before?—the spectator type. The part written
+for you does not call for you to be a participant, an instrument
+for—apparently—influencing events. Hence it is proper that you report
+them so future generations may get the illusion they arent puppets.”
+He grinned at me. At another time I would have been delighted to pounce
+on the assortment of inconsistencies he had just offered; at the moment
+I could think of nothing but my failure to mention the Confederate
+agent’s visit. It almost seemed his mechanist notions were valid and I
+was destined always to be the ungrateful recipient of kindness.
+
+“All right,” he said, swallowing the last of his bread and half-raw
+meat; “so long as your sentimentality impels you to respect obligations
+I can find work for you. Those boxes over there go upstairs. Pondible’s
+bringing a van around for them this afternoon.”
+
+Ive heard the assumption that working in a bookstore must be light and
+pleasant. Many times during the years with Roger Tyss I had reason
+to be thankful for my strength and farm training. The boxes were
+deceptively small but so heavy they could only have been solidly packed
+with paper. Even with Tyss carrying box for box with me I was vastly
+relieved when I had to quit to run an errand.
+
+When I got back he went out to make an offer on someone’s library.
+“There are only four left. The last two are paper-wrapped; didnt have
+enough boxes.”
+
+It was characteristic of him to leave the lighter packages for me. I
+ran up the stairs with one of the two remaining wooden containers.
+Returning, I tripped on the lowest step and sprawled forward.
+Reflexively I threw out my hands and landed on one of the paper
+parcels. The tight-stretched covering cracked and split under the
+impact; the contents—neatly tied rectangular bundles—spilled out.
+
+I had learned enough of the printing trade to recognize the brightly
+colored oblongs as lithographs, and I wondered as I stooped over to
+gather them up why such a job should have been given Tyss rather than a
+shop specializing in this work. Even under the gaslight the colors were
+hard and vigorous.
+
+Then I really looked at the bundle I was holding. ESPAÑA was enscrolled
+across the top; below it was the picture of a man with long nose and
+jutting underlip, flanked by two ornate figure fives, and beneath
+them the legend, CINCO PESETAS. Spanish Empire banknotes. Bundles and
+bundles of them.
+
+I needed neither expert knowledge nor minute scrutiny to tell me there
+was a fortune here in counterfeit money. The purpose in forging Spanish
+currency I could not see; that it was no private undertaking of Tyss’s
+but an activity of the Grand Army I was certain. Puzzled and worried,
+I rewrapped the bundles of notes into as neat an imitation of the
+original package as I could contrive.
+
+The rest of the day I spent casting uneasy glances at the mound of
+boxes and watching with apprehension the movement of anyone toward
+them. Death was the penalty for counterfeiting United States coins; I
+had no idea of the punishment for doing the same with foreign paper but
+I was sure even so minor an accessory as myself would be in a sad way
+if some officious customer should stumble against one of the packages.
+
+Tyss in no way acted like a guilty man, or even one with an important
+secret. He seemed unaware of any peril; doubtless he was daily in
+similar situations, only chance and my own lack of observation had
+prevented my discovering this earlier.
+
+Nor did he show anxiety when Pondible failed to arrive. Darkness came
+and the gaslamps went on in the streets. The heavy press of traffic
+outside dwindled, but the incriminating boxes remained undisturbed near
+the door. At last there was the sound of uncertain wheels slowing up
+outside and Pondible’s voice admonishing, “Wh-whoa!”
+
+I rushed out just as he was dismounting with slow dignity. “Who goes?”
+he asked; “Vance and give a countersign.”
+
+“It’s Hodge,” I said. “Let me help you.”
+
+“Hodge! Old friend; not seen long time!” (He had been in the store only
+the day before.) “Terrible sfortune, Hodge. Dri-driving wagon. Fell
+off. Fell off wagon I mean. See?”
+
+“Sure, I see. Let me hitch the horse for you. Mr Tyss is waiting.”
+
+“Avoidable,” he muttered, “nuvoidable, voidable. Fell off.”
+
+Tyss took him by the arm. “You come with me and rest awhile. Hodgins,
+you better start loading up; youll have to do the delivering now.”
+
+Rebellious refusal formed in my mind. Why should I be still further
+involved? He had no right to demand it of me; in self-protection I was
+bound to refuse. “Mr Tyss....”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+Two weeks would see me free of him, but nothing could wipe out the debt
+I owed him. “Nothing. Nothing,” I murmured and picked up one of the
+boxes.
+
+
+
+
+_8._ _IN VIOLENT TIMES_
+
+
+He gave me an address on Twenty-Sixth Street. “Sprovis is the name.”
+
+“All right,” I said as stolidly as I could.
+
+“Let them do the unloading. I see there’s a full feedbag in the van;
+that’ll be a good time to give it to the horse.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“They’ll load up another consignment and drive with you to the
+destination. Take the van back to the livery stable. Here’s money for
+your supper and carfare back here.”
+
+He thinks of everything, I reflected bitterly. Except that I don’t want
+to have anything to do with this.
+
+Driving slackly through the almost empty streets my resentment
+continued to rise, drowning, at least partly, my fear of being for some
+unfathomable reason stopped by a police officer and apprehended. Why
+should I be stopped? Why should the Grand Army counterfeit pesetas?
+
+The address, which I had trouble finding on the poorly lit
+thoroughfare, was one of those four-storey stuccos at least a century
+old, showing few signs of recent repair. Mr Sprovis, who occupied the
+basement, had one ear distinctly larger than the other, an anomaly I
+could not help attributing to a trick of constantly pulling on the
+lobe. He, like the others who came out with him to unload the van, wore
+the Grand Army beard.
+
+“I had to come instead of Pon—”
+“No names,” he growled. “Hear? No names.”
+
+“All right. I was told you’d unload and load up again.”
+
+“Yeah, yeah.”
+
+I slipped the strap of the feedbag over the horse’s ear and started
+toward Eighth Avenue.
+
+“Hey! Where you going?”
+
+“To get something to eat. Anything wrong with that?”
+
+I felt him peering suspiciously at me. “Guess not. But don’t keep us
+waiting, see? We’ll be ready to go in twenty minutes.”
+
+I did not like Mr Sprovis. In the automatic lunchroom where the dishes
+were delivered by a clever clockwork device as coins were deposited
+in the right slots, I gorged on fish and potatoes, but my pleasure at
+getting away for once from the unvarying bread and heart was spoiled by
+the thought of him. And I was at best no more than half through with
+the night’s adventure. What freight Sprovis and his companions were now
+loading in the van I had no idea. Except that it was nothing innocent.
+
+When I turned the corner into Twenty-Sixth Street again, the shadowy
+mass of the horse and van was gone from its place by the curb. Alarmed,
+I broke into a run and discovered it turning in the middle of the
+block. I jumped and caught hold of the dash, pulling myself aboard.
+“What’s the idea?”
+
+A fist caught me in the shoulder, almost knocking me back into the
+street. Zigzags of shock ran down my arm, terminating in numbing pain.
+Desperately I clung to the dash.
+
+“Hold it,” someone rumbled; “it’s the punk who came with. Let him in.”
+
+Another voice, evidently belonging to the man who’d hit me, admonished,
+“Want to watch yourself, chum. Not go jumping like that without
+warning. I might of stuck a shiv in your ribs instead of my hand.”
+
+I could only repeat, “What’s the idea of trying to run off with the
+van? I’m responsible for it.”
+
+“He’s responsible, see,” mocked another voice from the body of the van.
+“Aint polite not to wait on him.”
+
+I was wedged between the driver and my assailant; my shoulder ached and
+I was beginning to be really frightened now my first anger had passed.
+These were “action” members of the Grand Army; men who regularly
+committed battery, mayhem, arson, robbery and murder. I had been both
+foolhardy and lucky; realizing this it seemed diplomatic not to try for
+possession of the reins.
+
+I could hear the breathing and mumbling of others in back, but it didnt
+need this to tell me the van was over-loaded. We turned north on Sixth
+Avenue; the street lights showed Sprovis driving. “Gidap, gidap,” he
+urged, “get going!”
+
+“That’s a horse,” I protested; “not a locomotive.”
+
+“What do you know?” came from behind; “And we thought we was on the
+Erie.”
+
+“He’s tired,” I persisted, “and he’s pulling too much weight.”
+
+“Shut up,” ordered Sprovis quietly. “Shut up.” The quietness was not
+deceptive; it was ominous. I shut up.
+
+Speed was stupid on several counts. For one thing it called attention
+to the van at a time when most commercial vehicles had been stabled for
+the night and the traffic was almost entirely carriages, buggies, hacks
+and minibiles. I visualized the suspicious crowd which would gather
+immediately if our horse dropped from exhaustion. There was no hope
+that consciousness of an innocuous cargo made Sprovis bold; whatever we
+carried was bound to be as incriminating as the counterfeit bills.
+
+Disconnected scraps of conversation drifted from Sprovis’ companions.
+“I says, ‘Look here, youre making a nice profit from selling abroad.
+Either you....’”
+
+“And of course he put it all on a twenty-dollar ticket even though....”
+
+“‘ ... my taxes,’ he says. ‘You worry about your taxes,’ I says; ‘I’m
+worried about your contributions.’”
+
+A monotonous chuffing close behind us forced itself into my
+consciousness; when we turned eastward in the Forties I exclaimed,
+“There’s a minibile following us!”
+
+Even as I spoke the trackless engine pulled alongside and then darted
+ahead to pocket us by nosing diagonally toward the curb. The horse must
+have been too weak to shy; he simply stopped short and I heard the
+curses of the felled passengers behind me.
+
+“Not the cops anyway!”
+
+“Cons for a nickel!”
+
+“Only half a block from—”
+“Quick, break out the guns—”
+“Not those guns; one bang and we’re through. Air pistols, if anybody’s
+got one. Hands or knives. Get them all!”
+
+They piled out swiftly past me; I remained alone on the seat, an
+audience of one, properly ensconced. A few blocks away was the small
+park where Tirzah used to meet me. It was not believable that this was
+happening in one of New York’s quietest residential districts in the
+year 1942.
+
+An uneven, distorting light emphasized the abnormal speed of the
+incident that followed, making the action seem jumpy, as though the
+participants were caught at static moments, changing their attitudes
+between flashes of visibility. The tempo was so swift any possible
+spectators in the bordering windows or on the sidewalks wouldnt have
+had time to realize what was going on before it was all over.
+
+Four men from the minibile were met by five from the van. The odds were
+not too unequal, for the attackers had a discipline which Sprovis’
+force lacked. Their leader attempted to parley during one of those
+seconds of apparent inaction. “Hay you men—we got nothing against you.
+They’s a thousand dollars apiece in it for you—”
+
+A fist smacked into his mouth. The light caught his face as he
+was jolted back, but I hardly needed its revelation to confirm my
+recognition of Colonel Tolliburr’s voice.
+
+The Confederate agents had brass knuckles and black-jacks, Colonel
+Tolliburr had a sword-cane which he unsheathed with a glinting
+flourish. The Grand Army men flashed knives; no one seemed to be using
+air pistols or spring-powered guns.
+
+Both sides were intent on keeping the clash as quiet and inconspicuous
+as possible; no one shouted with anger or screamed in pain. This
+muffled intensity made the struggle more gruesome; the contenders
+fought their natural impulses as well as each other. I heard the impact
+of blows, the grunts of effort, the choked-back cries, the scraping of
+shoes on pavement and the thud of falls. One of the defenders fell, and
+two of the attackers, before the two remaining Southrons gave up the
+battle and attempted escape.
+
+With united impulse they started for the minibile, evidently realized
+they wouldnt have time to get up power, and began running down the
+street. Their moment of indecision did for them. As the four Grand
+Army men closed in I saw the Confederates raise their arms in the
+traditional gesture of surrender. Then they were struck down.
+
+I crept noiselessly down on the off-side of the van and hastened
+quietly away in the protection of the shadows.
+
+
+
+
+_9._ _BARBARA_
+
+
+For the next few days reading was pure pretense. I used the opened
+book to mask my privacy while I trembled not so much with fear as
+with horror. I had been brought up in a harsh enough world and murder
+was no novelty in New York; I had seen slain men before, but this was
+the first time I had been confronted with naked, merciless savagery.
+Though I believed Sprovis would have had no qualms about despatching an
+inconvenient witness if I had stayed on the van, I had no particular
+fear for my own safety, for my knowledge of what had happened became
+less dangerous daily. The terror of the deed itself however remained
+constant.
+
+I was not concerned solely with revulsion. Inquisitiveness looked out
+under loathing to make me wonder what lay behind the night’s events.
+What had really happened, and what did it all mean?
+
+From scraps of conversation accidentally heard or deliberately
+eavesdropped, from the newspapers, from deduction and remembered
+fragments, I reconstructed the picture which made the background. Its
+borders reached a long way from Astor Place.
+
+For years the world had been waiting, half in dread, half in
+resignation, for war to break out between the world’s two Great Powers,
+the German Union and the Confederate States. Some expected the point
+of explosion would be the Confederacy’s ally, the British Empire; most
+anticipated at least part of the war would be fought in the United
+States.
+
+The scheme of the Grand Army, or of that part of it which included
+Tyss, was apparently a farfetched and fantastic attempt to circumvent
+the probable course of history. The counterfeiting was an aspect of
+this attempt which was nothing less than trying to force the war to
+start, not through the Confederacy’s ally, but through the German
+Union’s—the Spanish Empire. With enormous amounts of the spurious
+currency circulated by emissaries posing as Confederate agents, the
+Grand Army hoped to embroil the Confederacy with Spain and possibly
+preserve the neutrality of the United States. It was an ingenuous idea
+evolved, I see now, by men without knowledge of the actual mechanics of
+world politics.
+
+If I ever had any sentimental notions about the Army they vanished now.
+Tyss’s mechanism may not have been purposefully designed to palliate,
+but it made it easy to justify actions like Sprovis’. I had no such
+convenient way of numbing my conscience. But even as I brooded over the
+weakness and cowardice which made me an accomplice, I looked forward to
+my release. I had not seen Enfandin since his offer; in a week I would
+leave the bookstore for his sanctuary, and I resolved my first act
+should be to tell him everything. And then that dream was exploded just
+as it was about to be realized.
+
+I do not know who it was broke into the consulate or for what reason,
+and was surprised in the act, shooting and wounding Enfandin so
+seriously he was unable to speak for the weeks before he was finally
+returned to Haiti to recuperate or die. He could not have gotten in
+touch with me and I was not permitted to see him; the police guard
+was doubly zealous to keep him from all contact since he was both an
+accredited diplomat and a black man.
+
+I did not know who shot him. It was most unlikely to be anyone
+connected with the Grand Army, but I did not know. I could not know.
+He _might_ have been shot by Sprovis or George Pondible. Since the
+ultimate chain could have led back to me, it did lead back to me. If
+this were the Manichaeism of which Enfandin had spoken, I could not
+help it
+
+The loss of my chance to escape from the bookstore was the least of my
+despair. It seemed to me I was caught by the inexorable, choiceless
+circumstance in which Tyss so firmly believed and Enfandin denied. I
+could escape neither my guilt nor the surroundings conducive to further
+guilt. I could not change destiny.
+
+Was all this merely the self-torture of any introverted young man?
+Possibly. I only know that for a long time, long as one in his early
+twenties measures time, I lost all interest in life, even dallying with
+thoughts of suicide. I put books aside distastefully or, which was
+worse, indifferently.
+
+I must have done my work around the store; certainly I recall no
+comments from Tyss about it. Neither can I remember anything to
+distinguish the succession of days. Obviously I ate and slept; there
+were undoubtedly long hours free from utter hopelessness. The details
+of those months have simply vanished.
+
+Nor can I say precisely when it was my despair began to lift. I know
+that one day—it was cold and the snow was deep on the ground, deep
+enough to keep the minibiles off the streets and cause the horse-cars
+trouble—I saw a girl walking briskly, red-cheeked, breathing in quick
+visible puffs, and my glance was not apathetic. When I returned to the
+bookstore I picked up Field Marshal Liddell-Hart’s _Life of General
+Pickett_ and opened it to the place where I had abandoned it. In a
+moment I was fully absorbed.
+
+Paradoxically, once I was myself again I was no longer the same Hodge
+Backmaker. For the first time I was determined to do what I wanted
+instead of waiting and hoping events would somehow turn out right for
+me. Somehow I was going to free myself from the bookstore and all its
+frustrations and evils.
+
+This resolution was reinforced by the discovery that I was exhausting
+the volumes around me. The books I sought now were rare and ever more
+difficult to find. Innocent of knowledge about academic life I imagined
+them ready to hand in any college library.
+
+Nor was I any longer satisfied with the printed word alone. My
+friendship with Enfandin had shown me how fruitful a personal,
+face-to-face relationship between teacher and student could be, and
+it seemed to me such ties could develop into ones between fellow
+scholars, a mutual, uncompetitive pursuit of knowledge.
+
+Additionally I wanted to search the real, the original sources:
+unpublished manuscripts of participants or onlookers, old diaries and
+letters, wills or accountbooks, which might shade a meaning or subtly
+change the interpretation of old, forgotten actions.
+
+My problems could be solved ideally by an instructorship at some
+college, but how was this to be achieved without the patronage of
+a Tolliburr or an Enfandin? I had no credentials worth a second’s
+consideration. Though the immigration bars kept out graduates of
+foreign universities, no college in the United States would accept a
+self-taught young man who had not only little Latin and less Greek,
+but no mathematics, languages, or sciences at all. For a long time I
+considered possible ways and means, both drab and dramatic; at last,
+more in a spirit of whimsical absurdity than sober hope, I wrote out
+a letter of application, setting forth the qualifications I imagined
+myself to possess, assaying the extent of my learning with a generosity
+only ingenuousness could palliate, and outlining the work I projected
+for my future. With much care and many revisions I set this composition
+in type. It was undoubtedly a foolish gesture, but not having access to
+so costly a machine as a typewriter, and not wanting to reveal this by
+penning the letters by hand, I resorted to this transparent device.
+
+Tyss picked up one of the copies I struck off and glanced over it. His
+expression was critical. “Is it too bad?” I asked despondently.
+
+“You should have used more leading. And lined it up and justified
+the lines and eliminated hyphens. Setting type can never be done
+mechanically or half-heartedly—that’s why no one yet has been able to
+invent a practical typesetting machine. I’m afraid you’ll never make a
+passable printer, Hodgins.”
+
+He was concerned only with typesetting, uninterested in the outcome. Or
+satisfied, since it was predetermined, that comment was superfluous.
+
+Government mails, never efficient and always expensive, being one of
+the favorite victims of holdup men, and pneumatic post limited to local
+areas, I dispatched the letters by Wells, Fargo to a comprehensive list
+of colleges. I can’t say I then waited for the replies to flow in, for
+though I knew the company’s system of heavily armed guards would insure
+delivery of my applications, I had little anticipation of any answers.
+As a matter of fact I put it pretty well out of my mind, dredging it up
+at rarer intervals, always a trifle more embarrassed by my presumption.
+
+It was several months later, toward the end of September, that the
+telegram came signed Thomas K Haggerwells. It read, ACCEPT NO OFFER
+TILL OUR REPRESENTATIVE EXPLAINS HAGGERSHAVEN.
+
+I hadnt sent a copy of my letter to York, Pennsylvania, where the
+telegram had originated, or anywhere near it. I knew of no colleges in
+that vicinity. And I had never heard of Mr (or Doctor or Professor)
+Haggerwells. I might have thought the message a mean joke, except that
+Tyss’s nature didnt run to such humor and no one else knew of the
+letters except those to whom they were addressed.
+
+I found no reference to Haggershaven in any of the directories I
+consulted, which wasnt too surprising considering the slovenly way
+these were put together. I decided that if such a place existed I could
+only wait patiently until the “representative,” if there really was
+one, arrived.
+
+Tyss having left for the day, I swept a little, dusted some,
+straightened a few of the books—any serious attempt to arrange the
+stock would have been futile—and took up a recent emendation of
+Creasy’s _Fifteen Decisive Battles_ by one Captain Eisenhower.
+
+I was so deep in the good captain’s analysis (he might have made a
+respectable strategist himself, given an opportunity) that I heard no
+customer enter, sensed no impatient presence. I was only recalled from
+my book by a rather sharp, “Is the proprietor in?”
+
+“No maam,” I answered, reluctantly abandoning the page. “He’s out for
+the moment. Can I help you?”
+
+My eyes, accustomed to the store’s poor light, had the advantage over
+hers, still adjusting from the sunlit street. Secure in my audacity, I
+measured her vital femininity, a quality which seemed, if such a thing
+is possible, impersonal. There was nothing overtly bold or provocative
+about her, though I’m sure my mother would have thinned her lips at the
+black silk trousers and the jacket which emphasized the contour of her
+breasts. At a time when women used every device to call attention to
+their helplessness and consequently their desirability and the implied
+need for men to protect them, she carried an air which seemed to say,
+Why yes, I am a woman: not furtively or brazenly or incidentally but
+primarily; what are you going to do about it?
+
+I recognized a sturdy sensuality as I recognized the fact that she was
+bareheaded, almost as tall as I, and rather large-boned; certainly
+there was nothing related to me about it. Nor was it connected with
+surface attributes; she was not beautiful and still further from being
+pretty, though she might have been called handsome in a way. Her hair,
+ginger-colored and clubbed low on her neck, waved crisply; her eyes
+appeared slate gray. (Later I learned they could vary from pale gray to
+blue-green.) The fleshly greediness was betrayed, if at all, only by
+the width and set of her lips, and that insolent expression.
+
+She smiled, and I decided I had been quite wrong in thinking her
+tone peremptory. “I’m Barbara Haggerwells. I’m looking for a Mr
+Backmaker”—she glanced at a slip of paper—“a Hodgins M Backmaker who
+evidently uses this as an accommodation address.”
+
+“I’m Hodge Backmaker,” I muttered in despair. “I—I work here.” I was
+conscious of not having shaved that morning, that my pants and jacket
+did not match, that my shirt was not clean.
+
+I suppose I expected her to say nastily, So I see! or the usual, It
+must be fascinating! Instead she said, “I wonder if youve run across
+_The Properties of X_ by Whitehead? Ive been trying to get a copy for a
+long time.”
+
+“Uh—I.... Is it a mystery story?”
+“I’m afraid not. It’s a book on mathematics by a mathematician very
+much out of favor. It’s hard to find, I suppose because the author is
+bolder than he is tactful.”
+
+So naturally and easily she led me away from my embarrassment and into
+talking of books, relieving me of self-consciousness and some of the
+mortification in being exposed at my humble job by the “representative”
+of the telegram. I admitted deficient knowledge of mathematics and
+ignorance of Mr Whitehead though I maintained, accurately, that the
+book was not in stock, while she assured me that only a specialist
+would have heard of so obscure a theoretician. This made me ask, with
+the awe one feels for an expert in an alien field, if she were a
+mathematician, to which she replied, “Heavens, no. I’m a physicist. But
+mathematics is my tool.”
+
+I looked at her with respect. Anyone, I thought, can read a few books
+and set himself up as an historian; to be a physicist means genuine
+learning. And I doubted she was much older than I.
+
+She said abruptly, “My father is interested in knowing something about
+you.”
+
+I acknowledged this with something between a nod and a bow. She had
+been examining and gauging me for the past half hour. “Your father is
+Thomas Haggerwells?”
+
+“Haggerwells of Haggershaven,” she confirmed, as though explaining
+everything. There was pride in her voice and a hint of superciliousness.
+
+“I’m dreadfully sorry, Miss Haggerwells, but I’m afraid I’m as ignorant
+of Haggershaven as of mathematics.”
+
+“I thought you said you’d been reading history. Odd youve come upon no
+reference to the Haven in the records of the past seventy-five years.”
+
+I shook my head helplessly. “I suppose my reading has been scattered.”
+Her look indicated agreement but not absolution. “Haggershaven is a
+college?”
+
+“No. Haggershaven is ... Haggershaven.” She resumed her equanimity,
+her air of smiling tolerance. “It’s hardly a college since it has no
+student body nor faculty. Rather, both are one at the haven. Anyone
+admitted is a scholar or potential scholar anxious to devote himself to
+learning. I mean for its own sake. Not many are acceptable.”
+
+She need hardly have added this; it seemed obvious I could not be
+one of the elect, even if I hadnt offended her by never having heard
+of Haggershaven. I knew I couldnt pass the most lenient of entrance
+examinations to ordinary colleges, much less to the dedicated place she
+represented.
+
+“There arent any formal requirements for fellowship,” she went on,
+“beyond the undertaking to work to full capacity, to pool all knowledge
+and hold back none from scholars anywhere, to contribute economically
+to the Haven in accordance with decisions of the majority of fellows,
+and to vote on questions without consideration of personal gain. There!
+That certainly sounds like the stuffiest manifesto delivered this year.”
+
+“It sounds too good to be true.”
+
+“Oh, it’s true enough.” She moved close and I caught the scent of her
+hair and skin. “But there’s another side. The haven is neither wealthy
+nor endowed. We have to earn our living. The fellows draw no stipend;
+they have food, clothes, shelter, whatever books and materials they
+need—no unessentials. We often have to leave our own individual work to
+do manual labor to bring in food or money for all.”
+
+“Ive read of such communities,” I said enthusiastically. “I thought
+they’d all disappeared fifty or sixty years ago.”
+
+“Have you and did you?” she asked contemptuously. “Youll be surprised
+to learn that Haggershaven is neither Owenite nor Fourierist. We are
+not fanatics nor saviors. We don’t live in phalansteries, practice
+group marriage or vegetarianism. Our organization is expedient, subject
+to revision, not doctrinaire. Contribution to the common stock is
+voluntary and we are not concerned with each other’s private lives.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, Miss Haggerwells. I didnt mean to annoy you.”
+
+“It’s all right. Perhaps I’m touchy; all my life Ive seen the squinty
+suspiciousness of the farmers all around, sure we were up to something
+immoral, or at least illegal. Youve no idea what a prickly armor you
+build around yourself when you know that every yokel is cackling,
+‘There goes one of them; I bet they ...’ whatever unconventional
+practice their imaginations can conceive at the moment. And the
+parallel distrust of the respectable schools. Detachedly, the haven may
+indeed be a refuge for misfits, but is it necessarily wrong not to fit
+into the civilization around us?”
+
+“I’m prejudiced. I certainly havent fitted in myself.”
+
+She didnt answer and I felt I had gone too far in daring an impulsive
+identification. Awkwardness made me blurt out further, “Do you ... do
+you think there’s any chance Haggershaven would accept me?” Whatever
+reserve I’d tried to maintain deserted me; my voice expressed only
+childish longing.
+
+“I couldnt say,” she answered primly. “Acceptance or rejection depends
+entirely on the vote of the whole fellowship. All I’m here to offer is
+train fare. Neither you nor the haven is bound.”
+
+“I’m perfectly willing to be bound,” I said fervently.
+
+“You may not be so rash after a few weeks.”
+
+I was about to reply when Little Aggie—so called to distinguish her
+from Fat Aggie who was in much the same trade, but more successful—came
+in. Little Aggie supplemented her nocturnal earnings around Astor Place
+by begging in the same neighborhood during the day.
+
+“Sorry, Aggie,” I said; “Mr Tyss didnt leave anything for you.”
+
+“Maybe the lady would help a poor working girl down on her luck,” she
+suggested, coming close. “My, that’s a pretty outfit you have. Looks
+like real silk, too.”
+
+Barbara Haggerwells drew away with anger and loathing on her face.
+“No,” she refused sharply. “No, nothing!” She turned to me. “I must be
+going. I’ll leave you to entertain your friend.”
+
+“Oh, I’ll go,” said Little Aggie cheerfully, “no need to get in an
+uproar. Bye-bye.”
+
+I was frankly puzzled; the puritanical reaction didnt seem consistent.
+I would have expected condescending amusement, disdainful tolerance
+or even haughty annoyance, but not this furious aversion. “I’m sorry
+Little Aggie bothered you. She’s really not a wicked character and she
+does have a hard time getting along.”
+
+“I’m sure you must enjoy her company immensely. I’m sorry we can’t
+offer similar attractions at the haven.”
+
+Apparently she thought my relations with Aggie were professional.
+Even so her attitude was odd. I could hardly flatter myself she
+was interested in me as a man, yet her flare-up seemed to indicate
+jealousy, a strange kind of jealousy, perhaps like the sensuality I
+attributed to her, as though the mere presence of another woman was an
+affront.
+
+“Please don’t go yet. For one thing—” I cast around for something
+to hold her till I could restore a more favorable impression. “—for
+one thing you havent told me how Haggershaven happened to get my
+application.”
+
+She gave me a cold, angry look. “Even though we’re supposed to be
+cranks, orthodox educators often turn such letters over to us. After
+all, they may want to apply themselves someday.”
+
+The picture this suddenly presented, of a serene academic life which
+was not so serene and secure after all, but prepared for a way to
+escape if necessary, was startling to me. I had taken it for granted
+that our colleges, even though they were far inferior to those of other
+countries, were stable and sheltered.
+
+When I expressed something of this, she laughed. “Hardly. The
+colleges have not only decayed, they have decayed faster than other
+institutions. They are mere hollow shells, ruined ornaments of the
+past. Instructors spy on each other to curry favor with the trustees
+and assure themselves of reappointment when the faculty is out
+periodically. Loyalty is the touchstone, but no one knows any more what
+the object of loyalty is supposed to be. Certainly it is no longer
+toward learning, for that is the least of their concerns.”
+
+She slowly allowed herself to be coaxed back into her previous mood,
+and again we talked of books. And now I thought there was a new warmth
+in her voice and glance, as though she had won some kind of victory,
+but how or over whom there was no indication.
+
+When she left I hoped she was not too prejudiced against me. For myself
+I readily admitted it would be easy enough to want her—if one were not
+afraid of the humiliations it was in her nature to inflict.
+
+
+
+
+_10._ _THE HOLDUP_
+
+
+This time I didnt offer Tyss two weeks’ notice. “Well Hodgins, I made
+all the appropriate valedictory remarks on a previous occasion, so
+I’ll not repeat them, except to say the precision of the script is
+extraordinary.”
+
+It seemed to me he was saying in a roundabout way that everything was
+for the best. For the first time I saw Tyss as slightly pathetic rather
+than sinister; extreme pessimism and vulgar optimism evidently met,
+like his circular time. I smiled indulgently and thanked him sincerely
+for all his kindness.
+
+In 1944 almost a hundred years had passed since New York and eastern
+Pennsylvania were first linked in a railroad network, yet I don’t
+suppose my journey differed much in speed or comfort from one which
+might have been taken by Granpa Hodgins’ father. The steam ferry
+carried me across the Hudson to Jersey. I had heard there were only
+financial, not technical obstacles to a bridge or tunnel. If the
+English and French could burrow under the Channel, as they had early
+in the century, and the Japanese complete their great tube beneath the
+Korea Strait, it was hard to see why a lesser work here was dismissed
+as the impractical suggestion of dreamers who believed the cost would
+be saved in a few years by running trains directly to Manhattan.
+
+Nor was the ferry the only antique survival on the trip. The cars were
+all ancient, obvious discards from Confederate or British American
+lines. Flat wheels were common; the wornout locomotives dragged them
+protestingly over the wobbly rails and uneven roadbed. First class
+passengers sat on napless plush or grease-glazed straw seats; second
+class passengers stood in the aisles or on the platforms; third class
+rode the roofs—safe enough at the low speed except for sudden jerks or
+jolts.
+
+There were so many different lines, each jealous of exclusive rights
+of way, that the traveler hardly got used to his particular car before
+he had to snatch up his baggage and hustle for the connecting train,
+which might be on the same track or at the same sooty depot, but was
+more likely to be a mile away. Even the adjective “connecting” was
+often ironical for it was not unusual to find time-tables arranged so a
+departure preceded an arrival by minutes, necessitating a stopover of
+anywhere from one hour to twelve.
+
+If anything could have quieted my excitement on the trip it was the
+view through the dirt-sprayed windows. “Fruitless” and “unfulfilled”
+were the words coming oftenest to my mind. I had forgotten during the
+past six years just how desolate villages and towns could look when
+their jerrybuilt structures were sunk in apathetic age without even
+the false rejuvenation of newer jerrybuilding. I had forgotten the
+mildewed appearance of tenant farmhouses, the unconvincing attempt to
+appear businesslike of false-fronted stores with clutters of hopeless
+merchandise in their dim windows, or the inadequate bluff of factories
+too small for any satisfactory production.
+
+Once away from New York it was clear how atypical the city was in its
+air of activity and usefulness. The countryside through which the
+tracks ran, between fields and pastures or down the center of main
+streets, should have been the industrial heart of a country bustling
+and vigorous. Instead one saw potentialities denied, projects withered,
+poverty and dilapidation.
+
+We crossed the Susquehanna on an old, old stone bridge that made
+one think of Meade’s valiant men, bloodily bandaged many of them,
+somnambulistically marching northward, helpless and hopeless after the
+Confederate triumph at Gettysburg, their only thought to escape Jeb
+Stuart’s pursuing cavalry. Indeed, every square mile now carried on
+its surface an almost visible weight of historical memories.
+
+York seemed old, gray and crabbed in the afternoon, but when I got off
+the train there I was too agitated with the prospect of being soon at
+Haggershaven to take any strong impression of the town. I inquired the
+way, and the surly response confirmed Barbara Haggerwells’ statement
+of local animosity. The distance, if my informant was accurate, was a
+matter of some ten miles.
+
+I started off down the highway, building and demolishing daydreams,
+thinking of Tyss and Tirzah, Enfandin and Miss Haggerwells, trying to
+picture her father and the fellows of the haven and for the thousandth
+time marshaling arguments for my acceptance in the face of scornful
+scrutiny. The early October sun was setting on the rich red and yellow
+leaves of the maples and oaks; I knew the air would become chilly
+before long, but exertion kept me warm. I counted on arriving at the
+haven in plenty of time to introduce myself before bedtime.
+
+Less than a mile out of town the highway assumed the familiar aspect of
+the roads around Wappinger Falls and Poughkeepsie: rutted, wavering,
+with deep, unexpected holes. The stone or rail fences on either side
+enclosed harvested cornfields, the broken stalks a dull brass with
+copper-colored pumpkins scattered through them. But the fences were in
+poor repair and the oft-mended wooden covered bridges over the creeks
+all had signs, DANGEROUS, Travel At Your Own Risk.
+
+There were few to share the highway with me: a farmer with an empty
+wagon, urging his team on and giving me a churlish glance instead of
+an invitation to ride; a horseman on an elegant chestnut picking his
+course carefully among the chuckholes, and a few tramps, each bent on
+his solitary way, at once defensive and aggressive. The condition of
+the bridges accounted for the absence of minibiles. However, just about
+twilight a closed carriage, complete with coachman and footman on the
+box, rolled haughtily by, stood for a moment outlined atop the slope up
+which I was trudging and then disappeared down the other side.
+
+I paid little attention except—remembering my boyhood and my father’s
+smithy—to visualize automatically the coachman pulling back on the
+reins and the footman thrusting forward with the brake as they eased
+the horses downward. So when I heard first a shout and then feminine
+screams my instant conclusion was that the carriage had overturned
+on the treacherous downgrade, broken an axle, or otherwise suffered
+calamity.
+
+My responsive burst of speed had almost carried me to the top when
+I heard the shots. First one, like the barking of an uncertain dog,
+followed by a volley, as though the pack were unleashed.
+
+I ran to the side of the road, close to the field, where I could see
+with less chance of being seen. Already the dusk was playing tricks,
+distorting the shape of some objects and momentarily hiding others. It
+could not however falsify the scene in the gully below. Four men on
+horseback covered the carriage with drawn revolvers; a fifth, pistol
+also in hand, had dismounted. His horse, reins hanging down, was
+peacefully investigating the roadside weeds.
+
+None of them attempted to stop the terrified rearing of the carriage
+team. Only their position, strung across the road, prevented a runaway.
+I could not see the footman, but the coachman, one hand still clutching
+the reins, was sprawled backward with his foot caught against the
+dashboard and his head hanging down over the wheel.
+
+The door on the far side was swung open. I thought for a moment the
+passengers had managed to escape. However as the unmounted highwayman
+advanced, waving his pistol, the other door opened and a man and two
+women descended into the roadway. Slowly edging forward I could now
+plainly hear the gang’s obscene whistles at sight of the women.
+
+“Well boys, here’s something to warm up a cold night. Hang on to them
+while I see what the mister has in his pockets.”
+
+The gentleman stepped in front, and with a slight accent said, “Take
+the girl by all means. She is but a peasant, a servant, and may afford
+you amusement. But the lady is my wife; I will pay you a good ransom
+for her and myself. I am Don Jaime Escobar y Gallegos, attached to the
+Spanish legation.”
+
+One of the men on horseback said, “Well now, that’s real kind of you,
+Don High-me. We might have taken you up on that, was you an American.
+But we can’t afford no company of Spanish Marines coming looking for
+us, so I guess we’ll have to pass up the ransom and settle for whatever
+youve got handy. And Missus Don and the hired girl. Don’t worry about
+her being a peasant; we’ll treat her and the madam exactly the same.”
+
+“Madre de Dios,” screamed the lady. “Mercy!”
+
+“It will be a good ransom,” said the Spaniard, “and I give you my word
+my government will not bother you.”
+
+“Sorry, chum,” returned the gangster. “You foreigners have a nasty
+habit of interfering with our domestic institutions and hanging men who
+make a living this way. Just can’t trust you.”
+
+The man on foot took a step forward. The nearest rider swung the maid
+up before him and another horseman reached for her mistress. Again she
+screamed; her husband brushed the hand aside and put his wife behind
+him. At that the gangster raised his pistol and shot twice. The man and
+woman dropped to the ground. The maid shrieked till her captor covered
+her mouth.
+
+“Now what did you want to do that for? Cutting our woman supply in half
+that way?”
+
+“Sorry. Mighty damn sorry. These things always happen to me.”
+
+Meanwhile another of the gang slid off his horse and the two went
+through the dead, stripping them of jewelry and whatever articles of
+clothing caught their fancy before searching the luggage and the coach
+itself for valuables. By the time they had finished it was fully dark
+and I had crept to within a few feet of them, crouching reasonably
+secure and practically invisible while they debated what to do with the
+horses. One faction was in favor of taking them along for spare mounts;
+the other, arguing that they were too easily identifiable, for cutting
+them out and turning them loose. The second group prevailing, they at
+last galloped away.
+
+A sudden thrashing in the cornstalks just beyond the fence startled
+me into rigidity. Something which might be human stumbled and crawled
+toward the carriage, snuffling and moaning, to throw itself down by the
+prostrate bodies, its anguished noises growing more high-pitched and
+chilling.
+
+I was certain this must be a passenger who had jumped from the off-side
+of the carriage at the start of the holdup, but whether man or woman it
+was impossible to tell. I moved forward gingerly, but somehow I must
+have betrayed my presence, for the creature, with a terrified groan,
+slumped inertly.
+
+My hands told me it was a woman I raised from the ground and the smell
+of her was the smell of a young girl. “Don’t be afraid, Miss,” I tried
+to reassure her; “I’m a friend.”
+
+I could hardly leave the girl lying in the road, nor did I feel equal
+to carrying her to Haggershaven which I reckoned must be about six
+miles further. I tried shaking her, rubbing her hands, murmuring
+encouragement, all the while wishing the moon would come up, feeling
+somehow it would be easier to revive her in the moonlight.
+
+“Miss,” I urged, “get up. You can’t stay here—they may come back.”
+Had I reached her? She stirred, whimpering with strange, muffled
+sounds. I dragged her to her knees and managed to get her arm over my
+shoulder. “Get up,” I repeated. “Get on your feet.”
+
+She moaned. I pulled her upright and adjusted my hold. Supporting her
+around the waist and impeded by my valise, I began an ungraceful,
+shuffling march. I could only guess at how much time had been taken
+up by the holdup and how slow our progress would be. It didnt seem
+likely we could get to Haggershaven before midnight, an awkward hour to
+explain the company of a strange girl. The possibility of leaving her
+at a hospitable farmhouse was remote; no isolated rural family in times
+like these would open their door with anything but deep suspicion or a
+shotgun blast.
+
+We had made perhaps a mile, a slow and arduous one, when the moon
+rose at last. It was full and bright, and showed my companion to be
+even younger than I had thought. The light fell on masses of curling
+hair, wildly disarrayed about a face unnaturally pale and lifeless yet
+extraordinarily beautiful. Her eyes were closed in a sort of troubled
+sleep, and she continued to moan, though at less frequent intervals.
+
+I had just decided to stop for a moment’s rest when we came upon one of
+the horses. The clumsily cut traces trailing behind him had caught on
+the stump of a broken sapling. Though still trembling he was over the
+worst of his fright; after patting and soothing him I got us onto his
+back and we proceeded in more comfortable if still not too dignified
+fashion.
+
+It wasnt hard to find Haggershaven; the sideroad to it was well kept
+and far smoother than the highway. We passed between what looked to be
+freshly plowed fields and came to a fair sized group of buildings, in
+some of which I was pleased to see lighted windows. The girl had still
+not spoken; her eyes remained closed and she moaned occasionally.
+
+Dogs warned of our approach. From a dark doorway a figure came forward
+with a rifle under his arm. “Who is it?”
+
+“Hodge Backmaker. Ive got a girl here who was in a holdup. She’s had a
+bad shock.”
+
+“All right,” he said, “let me hitch the horse. Then I’ll help you with
+the girl. My name’s Dorn. Asa Dorn.”
+
+I slid off and lifted the girl down. “I couldnt leave her in the road,”
+I offered in inane apology.
+
+“I’ll water and feed the horse after. Let’s go into the main kitchen;
+it’s warm there. Here,” he addressed the girl, “take my arm.”
+
+She made no response and I half carried her, with Dorn trying
+helpfully to share her weight. The building through which we led her
+was obviously an old farmhouse, enlarged and remodelled a number of
+times. Gaslights of a strange pattern, brighter than any I’d ever seen,
+revealed Asa Dorn as perhaps thirty with very broad shoulders and very
+long arms, and a dark, rather melancholy face. “There’s a gang been
+operating around here,” he informed me; “tried to shake the haven down
+for a contribution. That’s why I was on guard with the gun. Must be the
+same bunch.”
+
+We bustled our charge into a chair before a big fieldstone fireplace
+which gave the large room its look of welcome, though the even heat
+came from sets of steampipes under the windows. “Should we give her
+some soup? Or tea? Or shall I get Barbara or one of the other women?”
+
+His fluttering brushed the outside of my mind. Here in the light I
+instinctively expected to see some faint color in the girl’s cheeks
+or hands, but there was none. She looked no more than sixteen,
+perhaps because she was severely dressed in some school uniform. Her
+hair, which had merely been a disordered frame for her face in the
+moonlight, now showed itself as deeply black, hanging in thick, soft
+curls around her shoulders. Her features, which seemed made to reflect
+emotions—full, mobile lips, faintly slanted eyes, high nostrils—were
+instead impassive, devoid of vitality, and this unnatural quiescence
+was heightened by the dark eyes, now wide open and expressionless. Her
+mouth moved slowly, as though to form words, but nothing came forth
+except the faintest of guttural sounds.
+
+“She’s trying to say something.” I leaned forward as though by
+sympathetic magic to help the muscles which seemed to respond with such
+difficulty.
+
+“Why,” exclaimed Dorn, “she’s ... dumb!”
+
+She looked agonizedly toward him. I patted her arm helplessly.
+
+“I’ll go get—” he began.
+
+A door opened and Barbara Haggerwells blinked at us. “I thought I heard
+someone ride up, Ace. Do you suppose....” Then she caught sight of the
+girl. Her face set in those lines of strange anger I had seen in the
+bookstore.
+
+“Miss Haggerwells—”
+“Barbara—”
+Dorn and I spoke together. Either she did not hear us or we made no
+impression. She faced me in offended outrage. “Really, Mr Backmaker, I
+thought I’d explained there were no facilities here for this sort of
+thing.”
+
+“You misunderstand,” I said, “I happened—”
+Dorn broke in. “Barbara, she’s been in a holdup. She’s dumb....”
+
+Fury made her ugly. “Is that an additional attraction?”
+
+“Miss Haggerwells,” I tried again, “you don’t understand—”
+“I think I understand very well. Dumb or not, get the slut out of here!
+Get her out right now, I say!”
+
+“Barbara, youre not listening—”
+She continued to face me, her back to him. “I should have remembered
+you were a ladies’ man, Mr Self-taught Backmaker. No doubt you imagined
+Haggershaven to be some obscene liberty hall. Well, it isnt! You’d be
+wasting any further time you spent here. Get out!”
+
+
+
+
+_11._ _OF HAGGERSHAVEN_
+
+
+I suppose—recalling the inexplicable scene with Little Aggie—I was
+less astonished by her frenzy than I might have been. Besides, her
+rage and misunderstanding were anticlimactic after the succession of
+excitements I had been through that day. Instead of amazement I felt
+only uneasiness and tired annoyance.
+
+Dorn steered Barbara out of the room with a combination of persuasion
+and gentle force disguised as solicitous soothing, leaving the girl and
+me alone. “Well,” I said, “well....”
+
+The large eyes regarded me helplessly.
+
+“Well, youve certainly caused me a lot of trouble....”
+
+Dorn returned with two women, one middleaged, the other slightly
+younger, who flowed around the girl like soapy water, effectually
+sealing her away from all further masculine blunders, uttering little
+bubbly clucks and sudsy comfortings.
+
+“Overwork, Backmaker,” Dorn mumbled. “Barbara’s been overworking
+terribly. You mustnt think—”
+
+“I don’t,” I said. “I’m just sorry she couldnt be made to realize what
+actually happened.”
+
+“Hypersensitive; things that wouldnt ordinarily ... it’s overwork.
+Youve no idea. She wears herself out. Practically no nerves left.”
+
+His face, pleading for understanding, looked even more melancholy than
+before. I felt sorry for him and slightly superior; at the moment at
+least I didnt have to apologize for any female unpredictability. “OK,
+OK; there doesnt seem to be any great harm done. And the girl appears
+to be in good hands now.”
+
+“Oh she is,” he answered with evident relief at dropping the subject of
+Barbara’s behavior. “I don’t think there’s anything more we can do for
+her now; in fact I’d say we’re only in the way. How about meeting Mr
+Haggerwells now?”
+
+“Why not?” The last episode had doubtless finished me for good so far
+as Barbara was concerned; whatever neutral report she might have given
+her father originally could now be counted on for a damning revision. I
+might as well put a nonchalant face on matters before returning to the
+world outside Haggershaven.
+
+Thomas Haggerwells, large-boned like his daughter, with the ginger hair
+faded, and a florid, handsome complexion, made me welcome. “Historian
+ay, Backmaker? Delighted. Combination of art and science; Clio, most
+enigmatic of the muses. The ever-changing past, ay?”
+
+“I’m afraid I’m no historian yet, Mr Haggerwells. I’d like to be one.
+If Haggershaven will let me be part of it.”
+
+He patted me on the shoulder. “The fellows will do what they can,
+Backmaker; you can trust them.”
+
+“That’s right,” said Dorn cheerfully; “you look strong as an ox and
+historians can be kept happy with books and a few old papers.”
+
+“Ace is our cynic,” explained Mr Haggerwells; “very useful antidote to
+some of our soaring spirits.” He looked absently around and then said
+abruptly, “Ace, Barbara is quite upset.”
+
+I thought this extreme understatement, but Dorn merely nodded.
+“Misunderstanding, Mr H.”
+
+“So I gathered.” He gave a short, selfconscious laugh. “In fact that’s
+all I did gather. She said something about a woman....”
+
+“Girl, Mr H, just a girl.” He gave a quick outline of what had
+happened, glossing over Barbara’s hysterical welcome.
+
+“I see. Quite an adventure in the best tradition, ay Backmaker? And
+the victims killed in cold blood; makes you wonder about civilization.
+Savagery all around us.” He began pacing the flowered carpet.
+“Naturally we must help the poor creature. Shocking, quite shocking.
+But how can I explain to Barbara? She ... she came to me,” he said
+half proudly, half apprehensively. “I wouldnt want to fail her; I
+hardly know....” He pulled himself together. “Excuse me, Backmaker. My
+daughter is high-strung. I fear I’m allowing concern to interfere with
+our conversation.”
+
+“Not at all, sir,” I said. “I’m very tired; if you’ll excuse me....”
+
+“Of course, of course,” he answered gratefully. “Ace will show you
+your room. Sleep well—we’ll talk more tomorrow. And Ace—come back here
+afterward, will you?”
+
+Barbara Haggerwells had both Dorn and her father well cowed, I thought
+as I lay awake. Clearly she could brook not even the suspicion of
+rivalry, even when it was entirely imaginary. It would be rather
+frightening to be her father, or—as I suspected Ace might be—her lover,
+and subject to her tyrannical dominance.
+
+But it was neither Barbara nor overstimulation from the full day which
+caused my insomnia. A torment, successfully suppressed for hours,
+invaded me. Connecting the trip of the Escobars—“attached to the
+Spanish legation”—with the counterfeit pesetas was pure fantasy. But
+what is logic? I could not argue myself into reasonableness. I could
+not quench my feeling of responsibility with ridicule nor convincingly
+charge myself with perverse conceit in magnifying my trivial errands
+into accountability for all that flowed from the Grand Army—for much
+which might have flowed from the Grand Army. Guilty men cannot sleep
+because they feel guilty. It is the feeling, not the abstract guilt
+which keeps them awake.
+
+Nor could I pride myself on my chivalry in rescuing distressed
+maidens. I had only done what was unavoidable, grudgingly, without
+warmth or charity. There was no point in being aggrieved by Barbara’s
+misinterpretation with its disastrous consequences to my ambitions. I
+had not freely chosen to help; I had no right to resent a catastrophe
+which should properly have followed a righteous choice.
+
+At last I slept, only to dream Barbara Haggerwells was a great fish
+pursuing me over endless roads on which my feet bogged in clinging,
+tenacious mud. Opening my mouth to shout for help was useless; nothing
+came forth but a croak which sounded faintly like my mother’s favorite
+“Gumption!”
+
+In the clear autumn morning my notions of the night dwindled, even
+if they failed to disappear entirely. By the time I was dressed Ace
+Dorn showed up; we went to the kitchen where Ace introduced me to a
+middleaged man, Hiro Agati, whose close-cut stiff black hair stood
+perfectly and symmetrically erect all over his head.
+
+“Dr Agati’s a chemist,” remarked Ace, “condemned to be head chef for a
+while on account of being too good a cook.”
+
+“Believe that,” said Agati, “and you’ll believe anything. Truth is
+they always pick on chemists for hard work. Physicists like Ace never
+soil their hands. Well, so long as you can’t eat with the common folk,
+what’ll you have, eggs or eggs?”
+
+Agati was the first Oriental I’d ever seen. The great anti-Chinese
+massacres of the 1890’s, which generously included Japanese and indeed
+all with any sign of the epicanthic eyefold, had left few Asians to
+have descendants in the United States. I’m afraid I stared at him more
+than was polite, but he was evidently used to such rudeness for he paid
+no attention.
+
+“They finally got the girl to sleep,” Ace informed me. “Had to give her
+opium. No report yet this morning.”
+
+“Oh,” I said lamely, conscious I should have asked after her without
+waiting for him to volunteer the news. “Oh. Do you suppose we’ll find
+out who she is?”
+
+“Mr H telegraphed the sheriff first thing. It’ll all depend how
+interested he is, and that’s not likely to be very. What’s to drink,
+Hiro?”
+
+“Imitation tea, made from dried weeds; imitation coffee made from burnt
+barley. Which’ll you have?”
+
+I didnt see why he stressed the imitation; genuine tea and coffee were
+drunk only by the very rich. Most people preferred “tea” because it was
+less obnoxious than the counterfeit coffee. Perversely, I said, “Coffee
+please.”
+
+He set a large cup of brown liquid before me which had a tantalizing
+fragrance quite different from that given off by the beverage I was
+used to. I added milk and tasted, aware he was watching my reaction.
+
+“Why,” I exclaimed, “this is different. I never had anything like it in
+my life. It’s wonderful.”
+
+“C eight H ten O two,” said Agati with an elaborate air of
+indifference. “Synthetic. Specialty of the house.”
+
+“So chemists are good for something after all,” remarked Ace.
+
+“Give us a chance,” said Agati; “we could make beef out of wood and
+silk out of sand.”
+
+“Youre a physicist like B—like Miss Haggerwells?” I asked Ace.
+
+“I’m a physicist, but not like Barbara. No one is. She’s a genius. A
+great creative genius.”
+
+“Chemists create,” said Agati sourly; “physicists sit and think about
+the universe.”
+
+“Like Archimedes,” said Ace.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How shall I write of Haggershaven as my eyes first saw it twenty-two
+years ago? Of the rolling acres of rich plowed land, interrupted here
+and there by stone outcroppings worn smooth and round by time, and
+trees in woodlots or standing alone strong and unperturbed? Of the main
+building, grown by fits and starts from the original farmhouse into a
+great, rambling eccentricity stopping short of monstrosity only by its
+complete innocence of pretense? Shall I describe the two dormitories,
+severely functional, escaping harshness because they had not been built
+by carpenters and though sturdy enough, betrayed the amateur touch in
+every line? Or the cottages and apartments, two, four, at most six
+rooms, for the married fellows and their families? These were scattered
+all over, some so avid for privacy that one could pass unknowing within
+feet of the concealing trees or shrubbery, others bold in the sunshine
+on knolls or in hollows.
+
+I could tell of the small shops, the miniature laboratories, the
+inadequate observatory, the heterogeneous assortment of books which
+was both less and more than a library, the dozens of outbuildings. But
+these things were not the haven. They were merely the least of its
+possessions. For Haggershaven was not a material place at all, but a
+spiritual freedom. Its limits were only the limits of what its fellows
+could do or think or inquire. It was circumscribed only by the outside
+world, not by internal rules and taboos, competition or curriculum.
+
+Most of this I could see for myself, much of it was explained by Ace.
+“But how can you afford the time to take me all around this way?” I
+asked; “I must be interfering with your own work.”
+
+He grinned. “This is my period to be guide, counselor and friend to
+those whove strayed in here, wittingly or un. Don’t worry, after youre
+a fellow youll get told off for all the jobs, from shoveling manure to
+gilding weathercocks.”
+
+I sighed. “The chances of my getting to be a fellow are minus nothing.
+Especially after last night.”
+
+He didnt pretend to misunderstand. “Barbara’ll come out of it. She’s
+not always that way. As her father says, she’s high-strung, and she’s
+been working madly. And to tell the truth,” he went on in a burst of
+frankness, “she really doesnt get on too well with other women. She has
+a masculine mind.”
+
+I have often noticed that men not strikingly brilliant themselves
+attribute masculine minds to intelligent women on the consoling
+assumption that feminine minds are normally inferior. Ace however was
+manifestly innocent of any attempt to patronize.
+
+“Anyway,” he concluded, “she has only one vote.”
+
+I didnt know whether to take this as a pledge of support or mere
+politeness. “Isnt it wasteful, assigning a chemist like Dr Agati to
+kitchen work? Or isnt he a good chemist?”
+
+“Just about the best there is. His artificial tea and coffee would
+bring a fortune to the haven if there were a profitable market; even as
+it is it’ll bring a good piece of change. Wasteful? What would you have
+us do, hire cooks and servants?”
+
+“Theyre cheap enough.”
+
+“Or frightfully expensive. Specialization, the division of labor, is
+certainly not cheap in anything but dollars and cents, and not always
+then. And it’s unquestionably wasteful in terms of equality. And I
+don’t think there’s anyone at the haven who isn’t an egalitarian.”
+
+“But you do specialize and divide labor. Don’t tell me you swap your
+physics for Agati’s chemistry.”
+
+“In a way we do. Of course I don’t set up as an experimenter, any more
+than he does as a speculator. But there have been plenty of times Ive
+worked under his direction when he needed an assistant who didnt know
+anything but had a strong back.”
+
+“All right,” I said; “but I still don’t see why you can’t hire a cook
+and some dishwashers.”
+
+“Where would our equality be then? What would happen to our fellowship?”
+
+Haggershaven’s history, which I got little by little, was more than
+a link with the past; it was a possible hint of what might have been
+if the War of Southron Independence had not interrupted the American
+pattern. Barbara’s great-great-grandfather, Herbert Haggerwells,
+had been a Confederate major from North Carolina who, as conquerors
+sometimes do, had fallen in love with the then fat Pennsylvania
+countryside. After the war he had put everything—not much by Southron
+standards, but a fortune in depreciated, soon to be repudiated, United
+States greenbacks—into the farm which later formed the nucleus of
+Haggershaven. Then he married a local girl and transformed himself into
+a Northerner.
+
+Until I became too accustomed to notice it anymore I used to stare at
+his portrait in the library, picturing in idle fancy a possible meeting
+on the battlefield between this aristocratic gentleman with his curling
+mustache and daggerlike imperial and my own plebian Granpa Hodgins. But
+the chance of their ever having come face to face was much more than
+doubtful; I, who had studied both their likenesses, was the only link
+between them.
+
+“Hard looking character, ay?” commented Ace. “This was painted when
+he was mellow; imagine him twenty years earlier. Pistols cocked and
+Juvenal or Horace or Seneca in the saddlebags.”
+
+“He was a cavalry officer, then?”
+
+“I don’t know. Don’t think so as a matter of fact. Saddlebags was just
+my artistic touch. They say he was a holy terror; discipline and all
+that—it sort of goes with a man on horseback. And the old Roman boys
+are pure deduction; he was that type. Patronized several writers and
+artists; you know: ‘Drop down to my estate and stay a while’ and they
+stayed five or ten years.”
+
+But it was Major Haggerwells’ son who, seeing the deterioration of
+Northern colleges, had invited a few restive scholars to make their
+home with him. They were free to pursue their studies under an elastic
+arrangement which permitted them to be selfsupporting through work on
+the farm.
+
+Thomas Haggerwells’ father had organized the scheme further, attracting
+a larger number of schoolmen who contributed greatly to the material
+progress of the haven. They patented inventions, marketless at home,
+which brought regular royalties from more industrialized countries.
+Agronomists improved the haven’s crops and took in a steady income from
+seed. Chemists found ways of utilizing otherwise wasted byproducts;
+proceeds from scholarly works—and one more popular than scholarly—added
+to the funds. In his will, Volney Haggerwells left the properties to
+the fellowship.
+
+I suppose I expected there would be some uniformity, some basic type
+characterizing the fellows. Not that Barbara, or Ace, or Hiro Agati
+resembled a stereotype at any point, any more than I did myself, but
+then I was not one of the elect nor likely to be. Even after I had met
+more than half of them the notion persisted that there must be some
+stamp on them proclaiming what they were.
+
+Yet as I wandered about the haven, alone or with Ace, the people I met
+were quite diverse, more so by far than in the everyday world. There
+were the ebullient and the glum, the talkative and the laconic, the
+bustling and the slow-moving. Some were part of a family, others lived
+ascetically, withdrawn from the pleasures of the flesh.
+
+In the end I realized there was, if not a similarity, a strong bond.
+The fellows, conventional or eccentric, passionate or reserved, were
+all earnest, purposeful and, despite individual variations, tenacious.
+They were, though I hesitate to use so emotional a word, dedicated.
+The cruel struggle and suspicion, the frantic endeavor to improve
+one’s own financial, social, or political standing by maiming or
+destroying someone else intent on the same endeavor was either unknown
+or so subdued as to be imperceptible at the haven. Disagreements and
+jealousies existed, but they were different in kind rather than in
+degree from those to which I had been accustomed all my life. The
+pervasive fears which fostered the latter, the same fears which made
+lotteries and indenture frantic gambles to escape the wretchedness of
+life, could not circulate in the security of the haven.
+
+After the scene at my arrival, I didnt see Barbara again for some ten
+days. Even then it was but a glimpse, caught as she hurried in one
+direction and I sauntered in another. She threw me a single frigid
+glance and went on. Later, I was talking with Mr Haggerwells, who had
+proved to be not quite an amateur of history but more than a dabbler,
+when, without knocking, she burst into the room.
+
+“Father, I—” Then she caught sight of me. “Sorry. I didnt know you were
+entertaining.”
+
+His tone was that of one found in a guilty act. “Come in, come in,
+Barbara. Backmaker is after all something of a protégé of yours.
+Urania, you know—if one may stretch the ascription a bit—encouraging
+Clio.”
+
+“Really, Father!” She was regal. Wounded, scornful, but majestic. “I’m
+sure I don’t know enough about self-taught pundits to sponsor them. It
+seems too bad they have to waste your time—”
+
+He flushed. “Please, Barbara. You must, you really must control....”
+
+Her disapproval became open anger. “Must I? Must I? And stand by while
+every pretentious swindler usurps your attention? Oh, I don’t ask
+for any special favors as your daughter; I know too well I have none
+coming. But I should think at least the consideration due a fellow
+of the haven would prompt ordinary courtesy even where no natural
+affection exists!”
+
+“Barbara, please.... Oh, my dear girl, how can you ...?”
+
+But she was gone, leaving him distressed and me puzzled. Not at her
+lack of restraint but at her accusation that he lacked a father’s
+love for her. Nothing was clearer than his pride in her or his
+protective, baffled tenderness. It did not seem possible so willful a
+misunderstanding could be maintained.
+
+“You can’t judge Barbara by ordinary standards,” insisted Ace
+uncomfortably, when I told him what had happened.
+
+“I’m not judging her by any standards or at all,” I said; “I just don’t
+see how anyone could get things so wrong.”
+
+“She.... Her nature needs sympathy. Lots of it. She’s never had the
+understanding and encouragement she ought to have.”
+
+“It looks the other way around to me.”
+
+“That’s because you don’t know the background. She’s always been
+lonely. From childhood. Her mother was impatient of children and never
+found time for her.”
+
+“How do you know?” I asked.
+
+“Why ... she told me, of course.”
+
+“And you believed her. Without corroborative evidence. Is that what’s
+called the scientific attitude?”
+
+He stopped stock-still. “Look here, Backmaker—” a moment before I had
+been Hodge to him—“Look here, Backmaker, I’m damned tired of all the
+things people say about Barbara; the jeers and sneers and gossip by
+people who just aren’t good enough to breathe the same air with her,
+much less have the faintest notion of her mind and spirit—”
+“Come off it, Ace,” I interrupted. “I havent got anything against
+Barbara. The shoe is on the other foot. Tell her I’m all right, will
+you? Don’t waste time trying to convince me; I’m just trying to get
+along.”
+
+It was clear, not only from the slips which evaded Ace’s guard, but
+from less restrained remarks by other fellows, that Barbara’s tortured
+jealousy was a fixture of her character. She had created feuds,
+slandered and reviled fellows who had been guilty of nothing except
+trying to interest her father in some project in which she herself
+was not concerned. I learned much more also, much Ace had no desire
+to convey. But he was a poor hand at concealing anything, and it was
+clear he was helplessly subject to her, but without the usual kindly
+anesthetic of illusion. I guessed he had enjoyed her favors, but she
+evidently didnt bother to hide the fact that the privilege was not
+exclusive; perhaps indeed she insisted on his knowing. I gathered she
+was a fiercely moral polyandrist, demanding absolute fidelity without
+offering the slightest hope of reciprocal singlemindedness.
+
+
+
+
+_12._ _MORE OF HAGGERSHAVEN_
+
+
+Among the fellows was an Oliver Midbin, a student of what he chose to
+call the new and revolutionary science of Emotional Pathology. Tall
+and thin, with an incongruous little potbelly like an enlarged and
+far-slipped adamsapple, he pounced on me as a ready-made and captive
+audience for his theories.
+
+“Now this case of pseudo-aphonia—”
+“He means the dumb girl,” explained Ace, aside.
+
+“Nonsense. Dumbness is not even the statement of a symptom, but a very
+imperfect description. Pseudo-aphonia. Purely of an emotional nature.
+Of course if you take her to some medical quack he’ll convince himself
+and you and certainly her that there’s an impairment, or degeneration,
+or atrophy of the vocal cords—”
+
+“I’m not the girl’s guardian, Mr Midbin—”
+“Doctor. Philosophiae, Göttingen. Trivial matter.”
+
+“Excuse me, Dr Midbin. Anyway, I’m not her guardian so I’m not taking
+her anywhere. But, just as a theoretical question, suppose examination
+did reveal physical damage?”
+
+He appeared delighted, and rubbed his hands together. “Oh, it would. I
+assure you it would. These fellows always find what theyre looking for.
+If your disposition is sour theyll find warts on your duodenum. In a
+postmortem. In a postmortem. Whereas Emotional Pathology deals with the
+sour disposition and lets the warts, if any, take care of themselves.
+Matter is a function of the mind. People are dumb or blind or deaf for
+a purpose. Now what purpose can the girl have for muteness?”
+
+“No conversation?” I suggested. I didnt doubt Midbin was an authority,
+but his manner made flippancy almost irresistible.
+
+“I shall find out,” he said firmly. “This is bound to be a simpler
+maladjustment than Barbara’s—”
+
+“Aw, come on,” protested Ace.
+
+“Nonsense, Dorn; obscurantic nonsense. Reticence is a necessary
+ingredient of those medical ethics by which the quacks conceal
+incompetence. Mumbo jumbo to keep the layman from asking annoying
+questions. Priestly, not scientific approach. Art and mystery of
+phlebotomy. Don’t hold back knowledge; publish it to the world.”
+
+“I think Barbara wouldnt want her private thoughts published to the
+world. You have to draw the line somewhere.”
+
+Midbin put his head on one side and looked at Ace as though he were
+difficult to see. “Now that’s interesting, Dorn,” he said; “I wonder
+what turns a seeker after knowledge into a censor.”
+
+“Are you going to start exploring my emotional pathology now?”
+
+“Not interesting enough; not nearly interesting enough. Diagnosis while
+you wait; treatment in a few easy instalments. Barbara now—there’s a
+really beautiful case. Beautiful case; years of treatment and little
+sign of improvement. Of course she wouldnt want her thoughts known.
+Why? Because she’s happy with her hatred for her dead mother. Shocking
+to Mrs Grundy; doubly ditto to Mister. Exaggerated possessiveness
+toward her father makes her miserable. Thoughts known, misery
+ventilated: shame, condemnation, fie, fie. Her fantasy—”
+“Midbin!”
+
+“Her fantasy of going back to childhood (fascinating; adult employs
+infantile time-sequence, infantile magic, infantile hatreds) in order
+to injure her mother is a sick notion she cherishes the way a dog licks
+a wound. But without analogous therapy. Ventilate it. Ventilate it. Now
+this girl’s case is bound to be simpler. Younger if nothing else. And
+nice, overt symptoms. Bring her around tomorrow and we’ll begin.”
+
+“Me?” I asked.
+
+“Who else? Youre the only one she doesnt seem to distrust.”
+
+It was annoying to have the girl’s puppylike devotion observed and
+commented on. I realized she saw me as the only connection, however
+tenuous, with a normal past; I had assumed she would turn naturally
+after a few days to the women who took such open pleasure in fussing
+over her affliction. However she merely suffered their attentions; no
+matter how I tried to avoid her she sought me out, running to me with
+muted cries which should have been touching but were only painful.
+
+Mr Haggerwells’ telegram to the sheriff’s office at York had brought
+the reply that a deputy sheriff would visit the haven “when time
+permitted.” He had also telegraphed the Spanish legation who answered
+they knew no other Escobars than Don Jaime and his wife. The girl might
+be a servant or a stranger; it was no concern of His Most Catholic
+Majesty.
+
+The school uniform made it unlikely she was a servant but beyond this,
+little was deducible. She did not respond to questions in either
+Spanish or English, and it was impossible to tell if she understood
+their meaning, for her blank expression remained unchanged. When
+offered pencil and paper she handled them curiously, then let them
+slide to the floor.
+
+I wondered briefly if perhaps her intelligence was slightly subnormal,
+but this was met by a firm, even belligerent denial from Midbin, whose
+conclusion was confirmed, at least in my opinion, by her apparently
+excellent coordination, her personal neatness and fastidiousness which
+were far more delicate than any I’d been accustomed to.
+
+Midbin’s method of treatment smacked of the mystical. His subjects
+were supposed to relax on a couch and say whatever came into their
+minds. At least this was the clearest part of the explanation he gave
+when I rebelliously escorted the girl to his “office,” a large, bare
+room decorated only by some old European calendars by the popular
+academician, Picasso. The couch was a cot which Midbin himself used
+more conventionally at night.
+
+“All right,” I said; “just how are you going to manage?”
+
+“Convince her everything’s all right and I’m not going to hurt her.”
+
+“Sure,” I agreed. “Sure. Only: how?”
+
+He gave me one of his head-on-shoulder looks and turned to the girl who
+waited apathetically, with downcast eyes. “You lie down,” he suggested.
+
+“Me? I’m not dumb.”
+
+“Pretend you are. Lie down, close your eyes, say the first thing on
+your tongue. Without stopping to think about it.”
+
+“How can I say anything if I’m pretending to be dumb?” Grudgingly
+I complied, fancying a faint look of curiosity passing over the
+too-placid face. “‘No man bathes twice in the same stream,’” I muttered.
+
+He made me repeat the performance several times, then by pantomime
+urged her to imitate me. It was doubtful if she understood; in the end
+we nudged her gently into the required position. There was no question
+of relaxation; she lay there warily, tense and stiff even with her eyes
+closed.
+
+The whole business was so manifestly useless and absurd, to say nothing
+of being undignified, that I was tempted to walk out on it. Only
+ignoble calculation on Midbin’s voting for my acceptance in the haven
+kept me there.
+
+Looking at the form stretched out so rigidly, I could not but admit
+again that the girl was beautiful. But the admission was dispassionate;
+the beauty was abstract and neutral, the lovely young lines evoked no
+lust. I felt only vexation because her plight kept me from the wonders
+of Haggershaven.
+
+“What good can this possibly do?” I burst out after ten fruitless
+minutes. “Youre trying to find out why she can’t talk and she can’t
+talk to tell you why she can’t talk.”
+
+“Science explores all methods of approach,” Midbin answered loftily;
+“I’m searching for a technique which will reach her. Bring her back
+tomorrow.”
+
+I swallowed my annoyance and started out. The girl jumped up and
+pressed close to my side. Outdoors the air was crisp; I felt her
+suppress a slight shiver. “Now I suppose I’ll have to take you where
+it’s warm or find a wrap for you,” I scolded irritably. “I don’t know
+why I have to be your nursemaid.”
+
+She whimpered very softly and I was remorseful. None erf this was her
+fault; my callousness was inexcusable. But if she could only attach
+herself to some other protector and leave me alone....
+
+As one about to be banished I tried to cram everything into short days.
+I realized that these autumn weeks, spent in casual conversation or
+joining the familiar preparations for rural winter, were a period of
+thorough and critical probation. There was little I could do to sway
+the decision beyond the exhibition of an honest willingness to turn to
+whatever work needed doing, and to repeat, whenever the opportunity
+offered, that Haggershaven was literally a revelation to me, an island
+of civilization in the midst of a chaotic and savage sea. My dream was
+to make a landfall there.
+
+Certainly my meager background and scraps of reading would not persuade
+the men and women of the haven; I could only hope they might divine
+some promise in me. Against this hope I put Barbara’s enmity, a
+hostility now exacerbated by rage at Oliver Midbin for daring to devote
+to another, particularly another woman, the attention which had been
+her due, and the very technique used for her. I knew her persistence
+and I could not doubt she would move enough of the fellows to insure my
+rejection.
+
+The gang which had been operating in the vicinity, presumably the
+same one I had encountered, moved on. At least no further crimes were
+attributed to it. Once they were gone, Deputy Sheriff Beasley finally
+found time to visit Haggershaven in response to the telegram. He had
+evidently been there before without attaining much respect on either
+side. I got the distinct impression he would have preferred a more
+formal examination than the one which took place in Mr Haggerwells’
+study, with fellows drifting in and out, interrupting the proceedings
+with comments of their own.
+
+I think he doubted the girl’s dumbness. He barked his questions so
+loudly and brusquely they would have terrified a far more securely
+poised individual. She promptly went into dry hysterics, whereupon he
+turned his attention to me.
+
+I was apprehensive lest his questions explore my life with Tyss and
+my connection with the Grand Army, but apparently mere presence at
+Haggershaven indicated an innocence not unrelated to idiocy, at least
+so far as the more popular crimes were concerned. My passage of
+the York road and all the events leading up to it were outside his
+interest; he wanted only a succinct story of the holdup, reminding me
+of the late Colonel Tolliburr in his assumption that the lay eye ought
+normally to be photographic of the minutest detail.
+
+He was clearly dissatisfied with my account and left grumbling that
+it would be more to the point if bookworms learned to identify a man
+properly, instead of logarithms or trigonometry. I didn’t see exactly
+how this applied to me, since I was laudably ignorant of both subjects.
+
+If Officer Beasley was disappointed, Midbin was enchanted. Of course he
+had heard my narrative before, but this was the first time he’d savored
+its possible impact on the girl.
+
+“You see, her pseudo-aphonia is neither congenital nor of long
+standing. All logic leads to the conclusion that it’s the result of her
+terror during the experience. She must have wanted to scream, it must
+have been almost impossible for her not to scream, but for her very
+life she dared not. The instinctive, automatic reaction was the one she
+could not allow herself. She had to remain mute while she watched the
+murders.”
+
+For the first time it seemed possible there was more to Midbin than his
+garrulity.
+
+“She crushed back that natural, overwhelming impulse,” he went on. “She
+had to; her life depended on it. It was an enormous effort and the
+effect on her was in proportion; she achieved her object too well; when
+it was safe for her to speak again she couldnt.”
+
+It all sounded so plausible it was some time before I thought to ask
+him why she didnt appear to understand what we said, or why she didnt
+write anything when she was handed pencil and paper.
+
+“Communication,” he answered. “She had to cut off communication, and
+once cut off it’s not easy to restore. At least that’s one aspect.
+Another is more tricky. The holdup happened more than a month ago, but
+do you suppose the affected mind reckons so precisely? Is a precise
+reckoning possible? Duration may, for all we know, be an entirely
+subjective thing. Yesterday for you may be today for me. We recognize
+this to some extent when we speak of hours passing slowly or quickly.
+The girl may still be undergoing the agony of repressing her screams;
+the holdup, the murders, are not in the past for her, but the present.
+They are taking place in a long drawn out instant of time which may
+never end during her life. And if this is so, is it any wonder she is
+unable to relax, to let down her guard long enough to realize that the
+present is present and the crisis is past?”
+
+He pressed his middle thoughtfully. “Now, if it is possible to recreate
+in her mind by stimulus from without rather than by evocation from
+within the conditions leading up to and through the climacteric, she
+would have a chance to vent the emotions she was forced to swallow. She
+might, I don’t say she would, she might speak again.”
+
+I understood such a process would necessarily be lengthy, but as time
+passed I saw no indication he was reaching her at all, much less that
+he was getting any results. One of the Spanish-speaking fellows,
+a botanist who came and went from the haven at erratic intervals,
+translated my account of our meeting and read parts of it to the
+recumbent girl, following Midbin’s excited stage directions and
+interpolations. Nothing happened.
+
+Outside the futile duty of coaxing the girl to participate in Midbin’s
+sessions I had no obligations except those I took upon myself or could
+persuade others to delegate to me. Hiro Agati declared me hopelessly
+incompetent to help him in the kiln he had set up to make “hard
+glass,” a thick substance he hoped might take the place of cast iron
+in such things as woodstoves, or clay tile in flues. He conceded I was
+not entirely useless in the small garden surrounding their cottage
+where he, Mrs Agati—an architect, much younger than her husband and
+extremely diminutive—and their three children spent their spare time
+transplanting, rearranging, or preparing for the following season.
+
+Dr Agati was not only the first American Japanese I had ever met; his
+was the first family I had known who broke the unwritten rule of having
+only one child. Both he and Kimi Agati seemed unaware of the stern
+injunctions by Whigs and Populists alike that disaster would follow if
+the population of the country increased too fast. Fumio and Eiko didnt
+care, while Yoshio, at two, was just not interested.
+
+The Agatis represented for me one more pang at the thought of
+banishment from the haven. Since I knew neither chemistry nor
+architecture, our conversation had limits, but this was no drawback to
+the pleasure I took in their company. Often, after I was assured I was
+welcome there, I sat reading or simply silent while Hiro worked, the
+children ran in and out, and Kimi, who was conservative and didnt care
+for chairs, sat comfortably on the floor and sketched or calculated
+stresses.
+
+Gradually I progressed from the stage where I wanted decision on my
+application postponed as long as possible to one where I was impatient
+to have it over and done with. “Why?” asked Hiro. “Suspense is the
+condition we live in all our lives.”
+
+“Well, but there are degrees. You know about what you will be doing
+next year.”
+
+“Do I? What guarantees have I? The future is happily veiled. When I
+was your age I despaired because no one would accept the indentures of
+a Japanese. (We are still called Japanese even though our ancestors
+migrated at the time of the abortive attempt to overthrow the Shogunate
+and restore the Mikado in 1868.) Suspense instead of certainty would
+have been a pleasure.”
+
+“Anyway,” said Kimi practically, “it may be months before the next
+meeting.”
+
+“What do you mean? Isnt there a set time for such business?” Sure there
+must be, I had never dared ask the exact date.
+
+Hiro shook his head. “Why should there be? The next time the fellows
+pass on an appropriation or a project, we’ll decide whether there’s
+room for an historian.”
+
+“But ... as Kimi says, it might not be for months.”
+
+“Or it might be tomorrow,” replied Hiro.
+
+“Don’t worry, Hodge,” said Fumio, “Papa will vote for you, and Mother
+too.”
+
+Hiro grunted.
+
+When it did come it was anticlimactic. Hiro, Midbin, and several others
+with whom I’d scarcely exchanged a word recommended me, and Barbara
+simply ignored my existence. I was a full fellow of Haggershaven, with
+all the duties and privileges appertaining. I was also securely at home
+for the first time since I left Wappinger Falls more than six years
+before. I knew that in all its history few had ever cut themselves off
+from the haven, still fewer had ever been asked to resign.
+
+At a modest celebration in the big kitchen that night, the haven
+revealed more of the talents it harbored. Hiro produced a gallon
+of liquor he had distilled from sawdust and called cellusaki. Mr
+Haggerwells pronounced it fit for a cultivated palate, following with
+an impromptu discourse on drinking through the ages. Midbin sampled
+enough of it to imitate Mr. Haggerwells’ lecture and then, as an
+inspired afterthought, to demonstrate how Mr Haggerwells might mimic
+Midbin’s parody. Ace and three others sang ballads; even the dumb girl,
+persuaded to sip a little of the cellusaki under the disapproving eyes
+of her self-appointed guardians, seemed to become faintly animated. If
+anyone noted the absence of Barbara Haggerwells, no one commented on it.
+
+Fall became winter. Surplus timber was hauled in from the woodlots and
+the lignin extracted by compressed air, a method perfected by one of
+the fellows. Lignin was the fuel used in our hot water furnaces and
+provided the gas for the reflecting jets which magnified a tiny flame
+into strong illumination. All of us took part in this work, but just as
+I had not been able to help Hiro to his satisfaction in the laboratory,
+so here too my ineptness with things mechanical soon caused me to be
+set to more congenial tasks in the stables.
+
+I did not repine at this, for though I was delighted with the society
+of the others, I found it pleasurable to be alone, to sort out my
+thoughts, to slow down to the rhythm of the heavy percherons or enjoy
+the antics of the two young foals. The world and time were somewhere
+shut outside; I felt contentment so strong as to be beyond satisfaction
+or any active emotion.
+
+I was currying a dappled mare one afternoon and reflecting how the
+steam-plow used on the great wheat ranches of British America deprived
+the farmers not merely of fertilizer but also of companionship, when
+Barbara, her breath still cloudy from the cold outside, came in and
+stood behind me. I made an artificial cowlick on the mare’s flank, then
+brushed it glossy smooth again.
+
+“Hello,” she said.
+
+“Uh ... hello, Miss Haggerwells.”
+
+“Must you, Hodge?”
+
+I roughed up the mare’s flank once more. “Must I what? I’m afraid I
+don’t understand.”
+
+She came close, as close as she had in the bookstore, and I felt my
+breath quicken. “I think you do. Why do you avoid me? And call me
+‘Miss Haggerwells’ in that prim tone? Do I look so old and ugly and
+forbidding?”
+
+This, I thought, is going to hurt Ace. Poor Ace, befuddled by a
+Jezebel; why can’t he attach himself to a nice quiet girl who won’t
+tear him in pieces every time she follows her inclinations?
+
+I smoothed the mare’s side for the last time and put down the currycomb.
+
+“I think you are the most exciting woman Ive ever met, Barbara,” I
+said.
+
+
+
+
+_13._ _TIME_
+
+
+“Hodge.”
+
+“Barbara?”
+
+“Is it really true youve never written your mother since you left home?”
+
+“Why should I write her? What could I say? Perhaps if my first plans
+had come to something, I might have. But to tell her I worked for
+six years for nothing would only confirm her opinion of my lack of
+gumption.”
+
+“I wonder if your ambitions in the end don’t amount to a wish to prove
+her wrong.”
+
+“Now you sound like Midbin,” I said, but I wasnt annoyed. I much
+preferred her present questions to those I’d heard from her in the past
+weeks: Do you love me? Are you sure? Really love, I mean; more than any
+other woman? Why?
+
+“Oliver has had accidental flashes of insight.”
+
+“Arent you substituting your own for what you think might be my
+motives?”
+
+“My mother hated me,” she stated flatly.
+
+“Well, it isnt a world where love is abundant; substitutes are cheap
+and available. But hate—that’s a strong word. How do you know?”
+“I know. What does it matter how? I’m not unfeeling, like you.”
+
+“Me? Now what have I done?”
+
+“You don’t care about anyone. Not me or anyone else. You don’t want me;
+just any woman would do.”
+
+I considered this. “I don’t think so, Barbara—”
+“See! You don’t think so. Youre not sure, and anyway you wouldnt hurt
+my feelings needlessly. Why don’t you be honest and tell the truth.
+You’d just as soon it was that streetwalker in New York. Maybe you’d
+rather. You miss her, don’t you?”
+
+“Barbara, Ive told you a dozen times I never—”
+“And Ive told you a dozen times youre a liar! I don’t care. I really
+don’t care.”
+
+“All right.”
+
+“How can you be so phlegmatic? So unfeeling? Nothing means anything to
+you. Youre a real, stolid peasant. And you smell like one too, always
+reeking of the stable.”
+
+“I’m sorry,” I said mildly; “I’ll try to bathe more often.”
+
+Her taunts and jealous fits, her insistent demands did not ruffle me.
+I was too pleased with the wonders of life to be disturbed. All I’d
+dreamed Haggershaven could mean when I was sure I would never be part
+of it was fulfilled and more than fulfilled. Haggershaven and Barbara;
+Eden and Lilith.
+
+At first it seemed the bookstore years were wasted, but I soon realized
+the value of that catholic and serendipitous reading as a preparation
+for this time. I was momentarily disappointed that there was no one
+at the haven to whom I could turn for that personal, face-to-face,
+student-teacher relationship on which I’d set so great a store, but
+if there was no historical scholar among the fellows to tutor me, I
+was surrounded by those who had learned the discipline of study. There
+was none to discuss the details of the industrial revolution or the
+failure of the Ultramontane Movement in Catholicism and the policies of
+Popes Adrian VII, VIII and IX, but all could show me scheme and method.
+I began to understand what thorough exploration of a subject meant
+as opposed to sciolism, and I threw myself into my chosen work with
+furious zest.
+
+I also began to understand the central mystery of historical theory.
+When and what and how and where, but the when is the least. Not
+chronology but relationship is ultimately what the historian deals in.
+The element of time, so vital at first glance, assumes a constantly
+more subordinate character. That the past is past becomes ever less
+important. Except for perspective it might as well be the present or
+the future or, if one can conceive it, a parallel time. I was not
+investigating a petrification but a fluid. Were it possible to know
+fully the what and how and where one might learn the why, and assuredly
+if one grasped the why he could place the when at will.
+
+During that winter I read philosophy, psychology, archaeology,
+anthropology. My energy and appetite were prodigious, as they needed to
+be. I saw the field of knowledge, not knowledge in the abstract, but
+things I wanted to know, things I had to know, expanding in front of me
+with dizzying speed while I crawled and crept and stumbled over ground
+I should have covered years before.
+
+Yet if I had studied more conventionally I would never have had the
+Haven or Barbara. Novelists speak lightly of gusts of passion, but it
+was nothing less than irresistible force which drove me to her, day
+after day. Looking back on what I had felt for Tirzah Vame with the
+condescension twenty-four has toward twenty, I saw my younger self
+only as callow, boyish and slightly obtuse. I was embarrassed by the
+torments I had suffered.
+
+With Barbara I lived only in the present, shutting out past and future.
+This was only partly due to the intensity, the fierceness of our
+desire; much came from Barbara’s own troubled spirit. She herself was
+so avid, so demanding, that yesterday and tomorrow were irrelevant to
+the insistent moment. The only thing saving me from enslavement like
+poor Ace was the belief, correct or incorrect I am to this day not
+certain, that to yield the last vestige of detachment and objectivity
+would make me helpless, not just before her, but to accomplish my ever
+more urgent ambitions.
+
+Still I know much of my reserve was unnecessary, a product of fear, not
+prudence. I denied much I could have given freely and without harm;
+my guard protected what was essentially empty. My fancied advantage
+over Ace, based on my having always had an easy, perhaps too easy
+way with women, was no advantage at all. I foolishly thought myself
+master of the situation because her infidelities, if such a word can
+be used where faithfulness is explicitly ruled out, did not bother
+me. I believed I had grown immensely wise since the time when the
+prospect of Tirzah’s rejection had made me miserable. I was wrong; my
+sophistication was a lack, not an achievement
+
+Do I need to say that Barbara was no wanton, moved by light and fickle
+voluptuousness? The puritanism of our time, expressing itself in
+condemnations and denials, molded her as it molded our civilization.
+She was driven by urges deeper and darker than sensuality; her
+mad jealousies were provoked by an unappeasable need for constant
+reassurance. She had to be dominant, she had to be courted by more
+than one man; she had to be told constantly what she could never truly
+believe: that she was uniquely desired.
+
+I wondered that she did not burn herself out, not only with conflicting
+passions, but with her fury of work. Sleep was a weakness she despised,
+yet she craved far more of it than she allowed herself; she rationed
+her hours of unconsciousness and drove herself relentlessly. Ace’s
+panegyrics on her importance as a physicist I discounted, but older
+and more objective colleagues spoke of her mathematical concepts, not
+merely with respect, but with awe.
+
+She did not discuss her work with me; our intimacy stopped short of
+such exchanges. I got the impression she was seeking the principles of
+heavier-than-air flight, a chimera which had long intrigued inventors.
+It seemed a pointless pursuit, for it was manifest such levitation
+could no more replace our safe, comfortable guided balloons than
+minibiles could replace the horse.
+
+Spring made all of us single-minded farmers until the fields were
+plowed and sown. No one grudged these days, for the Haven’s economic
+life was based first of all on its land, and we were happy in the work
+itself. Not until the most feverish competition with time began to
+slacken could we return to our regular activities.
+
+I say “all of us,” but I must except the dumb girl. She greeted the
+spring with the nearest approach to cheerfulness she had displayed;
+there was a distinct lifting of her apathy. Unexpectedly she revealed
+a talent which had survived the shock to her personality or had been
+resurrected like the pussywillows and crocuses by the warm sun. She
+was a craftsman with needle and thread. Timidly at first, but gradually
+growing bolder, she contrived dresses of gayer and gayer colors in
+place of the drab school uniform; always, on the completion of a new
+creation, running to me as though to solicit my approval.
+
+This innocent if embarrassing custom could hardly escape Barbara’s
+notice, but her anger was directed at me, not the girl. My “devotion”
+was not only absurd, she told me, it was also conspicuous and
+degrading. My taste was inexplicable, running as it did to immature,
+deranged cripples.
+
+Naturally when the girl took up the habit of coming to the edge of the
+field where I was plowing, waiting gravely motionless for me to drive
+the furrow toward her, I anticipated still further punishment from
+Barbara’s tongue. The girl was not to be swayed from her practice; at
+least I did not have the heart to speak roughly to her, and so she
+daily continued to stand through the long hours watching me plow,
+bringing me a lunch at noon and docilely sharing a small portion of it.
+
+The planting done, Midbin began the use of a new technique, showing
+her drawings of successive stages of the holdup, again nagging and
+pumping me for details to sharpen their accuracy. Her reactions pleased
+him immensely, for she responded to the first ones with nods and the
+throaty sounds we recognized as understanding or agreement. The scenes
+of the assault itself, of the shooting of the coachman, the flight of
+the footman, and her own concealment in the cornfield evoked whimpers,
+while the brutal depiction of the Escobars’ murder made her cower and
+cover her eyes.
+
+I suppose I am not particularly tactful; still I had been careful
+not to mention any of this to Barbara. Midbin, however, after a very
+gratifying reaction to one of the drawings, said casually, “Barbara
+hasnt been here for a long time. I wish she would come back.”
+
+When I repeated this she stormed at me. “How dare you discuss me with
+that ridiculous fool?”
+
+“Youve got it all wrong. There wasnt any discussion. Midbin only said—”
+“I know what Oliver said. I know his whole silly vocabulary.”
+
+“He only wants to help you.”
+
+“Help me? Help _me_? What’s wrong with me?”
+
+“Nothing, Barbara. Nothing.”
+
+“Am I dumb or blind or stupid?”
+
+“Please, Barbara.”
+
+“Just unattractive. I know. Ive seen you with that creature. How you
+must hate me to flaunt her before everyone!”
+
+“You know I only go with her to Midbin’s because he insists.”
+
+“What about your little lovers’ meetings in the woodlot when you were
+supposed to be plowing? Do you think I didnt know about them?”
+
+“Barbara, I assure you they were perfectly harmless. She—”
+“Youre a liar. More than that, youre a sneak and a hypocrite. Yes, and
+a mean, crawling sycophant as well. I know you must detest me, but it
+suits you to suffer me because of the haven. I’m not blind; youve used
+me, deliberately and calculatedly for your own selfish ends.”
+
+Midbin could explain and excuse her outbursts by his “emotional
+pathology.” Ace accepted and suffered them as inescapable, so did her
+father, but I saw no necessity of being always subject to her tantrums.
+I told her so, adding, not too heatedly I think, “Maybe we shouldn’t
+see each other alone after this.”
+
+She stood perfectly immobile and silent, as if I were still speaking.
+“All right,” she said at last. “All right; yes ... yes. Don’t.”
+
+Her apparent calm deceived me completely; I smiled with relief.
+
+“That’s right, laugh. Why shouldnt you? You have no feelings, no more
+than you have an intelligence. You are an oaf, a clod, a real bumpkin.
+Standing there with a silly grin on your face. Oh I hate you! How I
+hate you!”
+
+She wept, she shrilled, she rushed at me and then turned away, crying
+she hadnt meant it, not a word of it. She cajoled, begging forgiveness
+for all she’d said, tearfully promising to control herself after this,
+moaning that she needed me, and finally, when I didnt repulse her,
+exclaiming it was her love for me which tormented her so and drove her
+to such scenes. It was a wretched, degrading moment, and not the least
+of its wretchedness and degradation was that I recognized the erotic
+value of her abjection. Detachedly I might pity, fear or be repelled;
+at the same time I had to admit her sudden humility was exciting.
+
+Perhaps this storm changed our relationship for the better, or at
+least eased the constraint between us. At any rate it was after this
+she began speaking to me of her work, putting us on a friendlier, less
+furious plane. I learned now how completely garbled was my notion of
+what she was doing.
+
+“Heavier-than-air flying-machines!” she cried. “How utterly absurd!”
+
+“All right. I didnt know.”
+
+“My work is theoretical. I’m not a vulgar mechanic.”
+
+“All right, all right.”
+
+“I’m going to show that time and space are aspects of the same entity.”
+
+“All right,” I said, thinking of something else.
+
+“What is time?”
+
+“Uh?... Dear Barbara, since I don’t know anything I can slide
+gracefully out of that one. I couldnt even begin to define time.”
+
+“Oh, you could probably define it all right—in terms of itself. I’m not
+dealing with definitions but concepts.”
+
+“All right, conceive.”
+
+“Hodge, like all stuffy people your levity is ponderous.”
+
+“Excuse me. Go ahead.”
+
+“Time is an aspect.”
+
+“So you mentioned. I once knew a man who said it was an illusion. And
+another who said it was a serpent with its tail in its mouth.”
+
+“Mysticism.” The contempt with which she spoke the word brought a
+sudden image of Roger Tyss saying “metaphysics” with much the same
+inflection. “Time, matter, space and energy are all aspects of the
+cosmic entity. Interchangeable aspects. Theoretically it should be
+possible to translate matter into terms of energy and space into terms
+of time; matter-energy into space-time.”
+
+“It sounds so simple I’m ashamed of myself.”
+
+“To put it so crudely the explanation is misleading: suppose matter is
+resolved into its component....”
+
+“Atoms?” I suggested, since she seemed at loss for a word.
+
+“No, atoms are already too individualized, too separate. Something more
+fundamental than atoms. We have no word because we can’t quite grasp
+the concept yet. Essence, perhaps, or the theological ‘spirit.’ If
+matter....”
+
+“A man?”
+
+“Man, turnip or chemical compound,” she answered impatiently; “if
+resolved into its essence it can presumably be reassembled, another
+wrong word, at another point of the time-space fabric.”
+
+“You mean ... like yesterday?”
+
+“No—and yes. What is ‘yesterday’? A thing? An aspect? An idea? Or a
+relationship? Oh, words are useless things; even with mathematical
+symbols you can hardly.... But someday I’ll establish it. Or lay the
+groundwork for my successors. Or the successors of my successors.”
+I nodded. Midbin was at least half right; Barbara was emotionally
+sick. For what was this “theory” of hers but the rationalization of
+a daydream, the daydream of discovering a process for reaching back
+through time to injure her dead mother and so steal all of her father’s
+affections?
+
+
+
+
+_14._ _MIDBIN’S EXPERIMENT_
+
+
+At the next meeting of the fellows Midbin asked an appropriation for
+experimental work and the help of haven members in the project. Since
+the extent of both requests was modest, their granting would ordinarily
+have been a formality. But Barbara asked politely if Dr Midbin wouldnt
+like to elaborate a little on the purposes of his experiment.
+
+I knew her manner was a danger signal. Nevertheless Midbin merely
+answered goodhumoredly that he proposed to test a theory of whether
+an emotionally induced physical handicap could be cured by recreating
+in the subject’s mind the shock which had caused—to use a loose,
+inaccurate term—the impediment.
+
+“I thought so. He wants to waste the haven’s money and time on a little
+tart he’s having an affair with while important work is held up for
+lack of funds.”
+
+One of the women called out, “Oh, Barbara, no,” and there were
+exclamations of disapproval. I saw Kimi Agati look steadfastly down
+in embarrassment. Mr Haggerwells, after trying unsuccessfully to hold
+Barbara’s eye, said, “I must apologize for my daughter—”
+“It’s all right,” interrupted Midbin. “I understand Barbara’s notions.
+I’m sure no one here really thinks there is anything improper between
+the girl and me. Outside of this, Barbara’s original question seems
+quite in order. Quite in order. Briefly, as most of you know, I’ve
+been trying to restore speech to a subject who lost it—again I use
+an inaccurate term for convenience—during an afflicting experience.
+Preliminary explorations indicate good probability of satisfactory
+response to my proposed method, which is simply to employ a kinematic
+camera like those making entertainment photinugraphs—”
+
+“He wants to turn the haven into a tinugraph mill with the fellows as
+mummers!”
+
+“Only this once, Barbara, only this once. Not regularly; not as
+routine.”
+
+At this point her father insisted the request be voted on without
+any more discussion. I was tempted to vote with Barbara, the only
+dissident, for I foresaw Midbin’s tinugraph would undoubtedly rely
+heavily on cooperation from me, but I didnt have the courage. Instead I
+merely abstained, like Midbin himself and Ace.
+
+The first effect of Midbin’s program was to free me from obligation,
+for he decided there was no point continuing the sessions with the dumb
+girl as before. All his time was taken up anyway with photography—no
+one at the haven had specialized in it—kinematic theory, the art of
+pantomime, and the relative merit of different makes of cameras, all
+manufactured abroad.
+
+The girl, who had never lost her tenseness and apprehension during
+the interviews, nevertheless clung to the habit of being escorted to
+Midbin’s workroom. Since it was impossible to convey to her that the
+sessions were temporarily suspended, she appeared regularly, always in
+a dress with which she had taken manifest pains, and there was little I
+could do but walk her to Midbin’s and back. I was acutely conscious of
+the ridiculousness of these parades and expectant of retribution from
+Barbara afterward, so I was to some extent relieved when Midbin finally
+made his decision and procured camera and film.
+
+Now I had to set the exact scene where the holdup had taken place, not
+an easy thing to do, for one rise looks much like another at twilight
+and all look differently in daylight. Then I had to approximate the
+original conditions as nearly as possible. Here Midbin was partially
+foiled by the limitations of his medium, being forced to use the camera
+in full sunlight instead of at dusk.
+
+I dressed and instructed the actors in their parts, rehearsing and
+directing them throughout. The only immunity I got was Midbin’s
+concession that I neednt play the role of myself, since in my early
+part of spectator I would be hidden anyway, and the succor was omitted
+as irrelevant to the therapeutic purpose. Midbin himself did nothing
+but tend the camera.
+
+Any tinugraph mill would have snorted at our final product and
+certainly no tinugraph lyceum would have condescended to show it. After
+some hesitation Midbin had decided not to make a phonoto, feeling the
+use of sound would add no value and considerable expense, so the film
+didnt even have this feature to recommend it. Fortunately for whatever
+involuntary professional pride was involved, no one was present at the
+first showing but the girl and me, Ace to work the magic-lantern, and
+Midbin.
+
+In the darkened room the pictures on the screen gave—after the first
+minutes—such an astonishing illusion that when one of the horsemen
+rode toward the camera we all reflexively shrank back. Despite its
+amateurishness the tinugraph seemed an artistic success to us, but
+it was no triumph in justifying its existence. The girl reacted no
+differently than she had toward the drawings; if anything her response
+was less satisfactory. The inarticulate noises ran the same scale from
+dismay to terror; nothing new was added. Nevertheless Midbin, his
+adamsapple working joyously up and down, slapped Ace and me on the
+back, predicting he’d have her talking like a politician before the
+year was out.
+
+I suppose the process was imperceptible; certainly there was no
+discernible difference between one showing and the next. The boring
+routine continued day after day and so absolute was Midbin’s confidence
+that we were not too astonished after some weeks when, at the moment
+“Don Jaime” folded in simulated death, she fainted and remained
+unconscious for some time.
+
+After this we expected—at least Ace and I did, Midbin only rubbed his
+palms together—that the constraint on her tongue would be suddenly
+and entirely lifted. It wasnt, but a few showings later, at the same
+crucial point, she screamed. It was a genuine scream, clear and
+piercing, bearing small resemblance to the strangling noises we were
+accustomed to. Midbin had been vindicated; no mute could have voiced
+that full, shrill cry.
+
+Pursuing another of his theories, he soon gave up the idea of helping
+her express the words in her mind in Spanish. Instead he concentrated
+on teaching her English. His method was primitive, consisting of
+pointing solemnly to objects and repeating their names in an artificial
+monotone.
+
+“She’ll have an odd way of speaking,” remarked Ace; “all nouns,
+singular nouns at that, said with a mouthful of pebbles. I can just
+imagine the happy day: ‘Man chair wall girl floor;’ and you bubbling
+back, ‘Carpet ceiling earth grass.’”
+
+“I’ll supply the verbs as needed,” said Midbin; “first things first.”
+
+She must have been paying at least as much attention to our
+conversation as to his instruction for, unexpectedly, one day she
+pointed to me and said quite clearly, “Hodge ... Hodge ...”
+
+I was discomposed, but not with the same vexation I had felt at her
+habit of seeking me out and following me around. There was a faint,
+bashful pleasure, and a feeling of gratitude for such steadfastness.
+
+She must have had some grounding in English, for while she utilized
+the nouns Midbin had supplied, she soon added, tentatively and
+questioningly, a verb or adjective here and there. “I ... walk ...?”
+Ace’s fear of her acquiring Midbin’s dead inflection was groundless;
+her voice was low and charmingly modulated; we were enchanted listening
+to her elementary groping among words.
+
+Conversation or questioning was as yet impossible. Midbin’s, “What
+is your name?” brought forth no response save a puzzled look and a
+momentary sinking back into dullness. But several weeks later she
+touched her breast and said shyly, “Catalina.”
+
+Her memory then, was not impaired, at least not totally. There was no
+way of telling yet what she remembered and what self-protection had
+forced her to forget, for direct questions seldom brought satisfactory
+answers at this stage. Facts concerning herself she gave out
+sporadically and without relation to our curiosity.
+
+Her name was Catalina García; she was the much younger sister of Doña
+Maria Escobar, with whom she lived. So far as she knew she had no other
+relatives. She did not want to go back to school; they had taught her
+to sew, they had been kind, but she had not been happy there. Please—we
+would not send her away from Haggershaven, would we?
+
+Midbin acted now like a fond parent who was both proud of his child’s
+accomplishments and fearful lest she be not quite ready to leave his
+solicitous care. He was far from satisfied at restoring her speech;
+he probed and searched, seeking to know what she had thought and felt
+during the long months of muteness.
+
+“I do not know, truly I do not know,” she protested toward the end of
+one of these examinations. “I would say, yes; sometimes I knew you
+were talking to me, or Hodge.” Here she looked at me steadily for an
+instant, to make me feel both remorseful and proud. “But it was like
+someone talking a long way off, so I never quite understood, nor was
+even sure it was I who was being spoken to. Often—at least it seemed
+often, perhaps it was not—often, I tried to speak, to beg you to tell
+me if you were real people talking to me, or just part of a dream. That
+was very bad, because when no words came I was more afraid than ever,
+and when I was afraid the dream became darker and darker.”
+Afterward, looking cool and fresh and strangely assured, she came upon
+me while I was cultivating young corn. A few weeks earlier I would have
+known she had sought me out; now it might be an accident.
+
+“But I knew more surely when it was you who spoke, Hodge,” she said
+abruptly. “In my dream you were the most real.” Then she walked
+tranquilly away.
+
+Barbara, who had studiedly said nothing further about what Midbin was
+doing, commented one day, apparently without rancor, “So Oliver appears
+to have proved a theory. How nice for you.”
+
+“What do you mean?” I inquired guardedly; “How is it nice for me?”
+
+“Why, you won’t have to chaperone the silly girl all over any more. She
+can ask her way around now.”
+
+“Oh yes; that’s right,” I mumbled.
+
+“And we won’t have to quarrel over her any more,” she concluded.
+
+“Sure,” I said. “That’s right.”
+
+Mr Haggerwells again communicated with the Spanish diplomats, recalling
+his original telegram and mentioning the aloof reply. He was answered
+in person by an official who acted as though he himself had composed
+the disclaiming response. Perhaps he had, for he made it quite clear
+that only devotion to duty made it possible to deal at all with such
+savages as inhabited the United States.
+
+He confirmed the existence of one Catalina García and consulted a
+photograph, carefully shielded in his hand, comparing it with the
+features of our Catalina, at last satisfying himself they were the
+same. This formality finished, he spoke rapidly to Catalina in Spanish.
+She shook her head and looked confused. “Tell him I can hardly
+understand, Hodge; ask him to speak in English, please.”
+
+The diplomat looked furious. Midbin explained hastily that the shock
+which had caused her muteness had not entirely worn off. Unquestionably
+she would recover her full memory in time, but for the present there
+were still areas of forgetfulness. Her native language was part of the
+past, he went on, happy with a new audience, and the past was something
+to be pushed away since it contained the terrible moment. English on
+the other hand—”
+
+“I understand,” said the diplomat stiffly, resolutely addressing
+none of us. “It is clear. Very well then. The Señorita García is
+heir—heiress to an estate. Not a very big one, I regret to say. A
+moderate estate.”
+
+“You mean land and houses?” I asked curiously.
+
+“A moderate estate,” he repeated, looking attentively at his gloved
+hand. “Some shares of stock, some bonds, some cash. The details will be
+available to the señorita.”
+
+“It doesnt matter,” said Catalina timidly.
+
+Having put us all, and particularly me, in our place as rude and nosey
+barbarians, he went on more pleasantly, “According to the records of
+the embassy, the señorita is not yet eighteen. As an orphan living in
+foreign lands she is a ward of the Spanish Crown. The señorita will
+return with me to Philadelphia where she will be suitably accommodated
+until repatriation can be arranged. I feel certain that in the proper
+surroundings, hearing her natural tongue, she will soon regain its use.
+The—ah—institution may submit a bill for board and lodging during her
+stay.”
+
+“Does he mean—take me away from here? For always?” Catalina, who had
+seemed so mature a moment before, suddenly acted like a frightened
+child.
+
+“He only wants to make you comfortable and take you among your own
+people,” said Mr Haggerwells. “Perhaps it is a bit sudden....”
+
+“I can’t. Do not let him take me away. Hodge, Hodge—do not let him take
+me away.”
+
+“Señorita, you do not understand—”
+“No, no. I won’t. Hodge, Mr Haggerwells, do not let him!”
+
+“But my dear—”
+It was Midbin who cut Mr Haggerwells off. “I cannot guarantee against
+a relapse, even a reversion to the pseudo-aphonia if this emotional
+tension is maintained. I must insist that Catalina is not to continue
+the conversation now.”
+
+“No one’s going to take you away by force,” I assured her, finally
+finding my courage once Midbin had asserted himself.
+
+The official shrugged, managing to intimate in the gesture his opinion
+that the haven was of a very shady character indeed and had quite
+possibly engineered the holdup itself.
+
+“If the señorita genuinely wishes to remain for the present—” a lifted
+eyebrow loaded the “genuinely” with meaning “—I have no authority at
+the moment to inquire into influences that have persuaded her. No, none
+at all. Nor can I remove her by—ah—I will not insist. No. Not at all.”
+“That is very understanding of you, sir,” said Mr Haggerwells. “I’m
+sure everything will be all right eventually.”
+
+The diplomat bowed stiffly. “Of course the—ah—institution understands
+it can hope for no further compensation—”
+
+“None has been given or asked for. None will be,” said Mr Haggerwells
+in what was, for him, a sharp tone.
+
+The gentleman from the legation bowed. “The señorita will naturally be
+visited from time to time by an official. Without note—notification.
+She may be removed whenever His Most Catholic Majesty sees fit. And
+of course none of her estate will be released before the eighteenth
+birthday. The whole affair is entirely irregular.”
+
+After he left I reproached myself for not asking what Don Jaime’s
+mission had been that fateful evening, or at least for not trying to
+find out what his function with the Spanish legation was. Probably he
+could in no way be connected with the counterfeiting of the pesetas. By
+making no attempt to learn any facts which might have lessened the old
+feeling of guilty responsibility I kept it uneasily alive.
+
+These reproaches were pushed aside when Catalina put her head against
+my collarbone, sobbing with relief. “There, there,” I said, “there,
+there.”
+
+“Uncouth,” reflected Mr Haggerwells. “Compensation indeed!”
+
+“Dealing with natives,” said Midbin. “Probably courteous enough to
+Frenchmen or Afrikanders.”
+
+I patted Catalina’s quivering shoulders. Child or not, now she was able
+to talk I had to admit I no longer found her devotion so tiresome.
+Though I was definitely uneasy lest Barbara discover us in this
+attitude.
+
+
+
+
+_15._ _GOOD YEARS_
+
+
+And now I come to the period of my life which stands in such sharp
+contrast to what had gone before. Was it really eight years I spent
+at Haggershaven? The arithmetic is indisputable: I arrived in 1944
+at the age of twenty-three; I left in 1952 at the age of thirty-one.
+Indisputable, but not quite believable; as with the happy countries
+which are supposed to have no history I find it hard to go over those
+eight years and divide them by remarkable events. They blended too
+smoothly, too contentedly into one another.
+
+Crops were harvested, stored or marketed; the fields were plowed in the
+fall and again in the spring and sown anew. Three of the older fellows
+died, another became bedridden. Five new fellows were accepted; two
+biologists, a chemist, a poet, a philologist. It was to the last I
+played the same part Ace had to me, introducing him to the sanctuary of
+the haven, seeing its security and refuge afresh and deeply thankful
+for the fortune that had brought me to it.
+
+There was no question about success in my chosen profession, not even
+the expected alternation of achievement and disappointment. Once
+started on the road I kept on going at an even, steady pace. For what
+would have been my doctoral thesis I wrote a paper on _The Timing
+of General Stuart’s Maneuvers During August 1863 in Pennsylvania_.
+This received flattering comment from scholars as far away as the
+Universities of Lima and Cambridge; because of it I was offered
+instructorships at highly respectable schools.
+
+I could not think of leaving the haven. The world into which I had
+been born had never been fully revealed for what it was until I had
+escaped from it. Secrecy and ugliness; greed, fear and callousness;
+meanness, avarice, cunning, deceit and self-worship were as close
+around as the nearest farmhouses. The idea of returning to that world
+and of entering into daily competition with other underpaid, overdriven
+drudges striving fruitlessly to apply a dilute coating of culture to
+the unresponsive surface of unwilling students had little attraction.
+
+In those eight years, as I broadened my knowledge I narrowed my
+field. Undoubtedly it was presumptuous to take the War of Southron
+Independence as my specialty when there were already so many
+comprehensive works on the subject and so many celebrated historians
+engaged with this special event. However, my choice was made not out of
+self-importance but fascination, and undoubtedly it was the proximity
+of the scene which influenced the selection of my goal, the last
+thirteen months of the war, from General Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania
+to the capitulation at Reading. I saw the whole vast design:
+Gettysburg, Lancaster, the siege of Philadelphia, the disastrous Union
+counter-thrust in Tennessee, the evacuation of Washington, and finally
+the desperate effort to break out of Lee’s trap which ended at Reading.
+I could spend profitable years filling in the details.
+
+My monographs were published in learned Confederate and British
+journals—there were none in the United States—and I rejoiced when
+they brought attention, not so much to me as to Haggershaven. I could
+contribute only this notice and my physical labor; on the other hand
+I asked little beyond food, clothing and shelter—just books. My
+field trips I took on foot, often earning my keep by casual labor
+for farmers, paying for access to private collections of letters or
+documents by indexing and arranging them.
+
+The time devoted to scholarship did not alone distinguish those eight
+years, nor even the security of the haven. I have spoken of the simple,
+easy manner in which the Agatis admitted me to their friendship, but
+they were not the only ones with whom there grew ties of affection and
+understanding. With very few exceptions the fellows of Haggershaven
+quickly learned to shed the suspicion and aloofness, so necessary a
+protection elsewhere, and substitute acceptance. The result was a
+tranquillity I had never experienced before, so that I think of those
+years as set apart, a golden period, a time of perpetual warm sunshine.
+
+Between Barbara and me the turbulent, ambivalent passion swept back and
+forth, the periods of estrangement seemingly only a generating force
+to bring us together again. Hate and love, admiration and distaste,
+impatience and pity were present on both sides. Only on hers there was
+jealousy as well; perhaps if I had not been indifferent whenever she
+chose to respond to some other man she might not have felt the errant
+desire so strongly. Perhaps not; there was a moral urge behind her
+behavior. She sneered at women who yielded to such temptations. To her
+they were not temptations but just rewards; she did not yield, she took
+them as her due.
+
+Sometimes I wondered if her neurosis did not verge on insanity; I’m
+sure for her part she must often have stood off and appraised me as a
+mistake. I know there were many times when I wished there would be no
+more reconciliation between us.
+
+Yet no amount of thinking could cancel the swift hunger I felt in her
+presence or the deep mutual satisfaction of physical union. Frequently
+we were lovers for as long as a month before the inevitable quarrel,
+followed by varying periods of coolness. During the weeks of distance I
+remembered how she could be tender and gracious as well as ardent, just
+as during our intimacy I remembered her ruthlessness and dominance.
+
+It was not only her temperamental outbursts nor even her unappeasable
+craving for love and affection which thrust us apart. Impediments
+which, in the beginning, had appeared inconsequential assumed more
+importance all the time. It was increasingly hard for her to leave her
+work behind even for moments. She was never allowed to forget, either
+by her own insatiable drive or by outside acknowledgment that she
+was already one of the foremost physicists in the world. She had been
+granted so many honorary degrees she no longer traveled to receive
+them; offers from foreign governments of well-paid jobs connected with
+their munitions industries were common. Articles were written about
+her equation of matter, energy, space and time, acclaiming her as a
+revolutionary thinker; though she dismissed them as evaluation of
+elementary work, they nevertheless added to her isolation and curtailed
+her freedom.
+
+Midbin was, in his way, as much under her spell as Ace or myself.
+His triumph over Catalina’s dumbness he took lightly now it was
+accomplished; stabilizing Barbara’s emotions was the victory he wanted.
+She, on her side, had lost whatever respect she must have had for him
+in the days when she had submitted to his treatment. On the very rare
+occasions when the whim moved her to listen to his entreaties—usually
+relayed through Ace or me—and grant him time, it seemed to be only for
+the opportunity of making fun of his efforts. Patiently he tried new
+techniques of exploration and expression.
+
+“But it’s not much use,” he said once, dolefully; “she doesnt _want_ to
+be helped.”
+
+“Wanting seemed to have little to do with making Catty talk,” I pointed
+out. “Couldnt you....”
+
+“Make a tinugraph of Barbara’s traumatic shock? If I had the materials
+there would be no necessity.”
+
+Perhaps there was less malice in her mockery now Catty was no longer
+the focus of his theories about emotional pathology; perhaps she
+forgave him for her temporary displacement, but she did not withhold
+her contempt. “Oliver, you should have been a woman,” she told him;
+“you would have been impossible as a mother, but what a grandmother you
+would have made!”
+
+That Catty herself had in her own way as strong a will as Barbara was
+demonstrated in her determination to become part of Haggershaven. Her
+reaction to the visit of the Spanish official was translated into an
+unyielding program. She had gone resolutely to Thomas Haggerwells,
+telling him she knew quite well she had neither the aptitudes nor
+qualifications for admission to fellowship, nor did she ask it. All
+she wanted was to live in what she regarded as her only home. She would
+gladly do any work from washing dishes to making clothes—anything she
+was asked. When she came of age she would turn over whatever money she
+inherited to the haven without conditions.
+
+He had patiently pointed out that a Spanish subject was a citizen of
+a far wealthier and more powerful nation than the United States; as
+an heiress she could enjoy the luxuries and distractions of Madrid or
+Havana and eventually make a suitable marriage. How silly it would
+be to give up all these advantages to become an unnoticed, penniless
+drudge for a group of cranks near York, Pennsylvania.
+
+“He was quite right you know, Catty,” I said when she told me about the
+interview.
+
+She shook her head vigorously, so the loose black curls swirled back
+and forth. “You think so, Hodge, because you are a hard, prudent
+Yankee.”
+
+I opened my eyes rather wide; this was certainly not the description I
+would have applied to myself.
+
+“And also because you have Anglo-Saxon chivalry, always rescuing
+maidens in distress and thinking they must sit on a cushion after
+that and sew a fine seam. Well, I can sew a fine seam, but sitting on
+cushions would bore me. Women are not as delicate as you think, Hodge.
+Nor as terrifying.”
+
+Was this last directed toward Barbara? Perhaps Catty had claws.
+“There’s a difference,” I said, “between cushion-sitting and living
+where books and pictures and music are not regarded with suspicion.”
+
+“That’s right,” she agreed; “Haggershaven.”
+
+“No, Haggershaven is an anomaly in the United States and in spite of
+everything it cannot help but be infected by the rest of the country. I
+meant the great, successful nations who can afford the breathing-spaces
+for culture.”
+
+“But you do not go to them.”
+
+“No. This is my country.”
+
+“And it will be mine too. After all it was made in the first place
+by people willing to give up luxuries. Besides you are contradicting
+yourself: if Haggershaven cannot avoid being infected by what is
+outside it, neither can any other spot. Part of the world cannot be
+civilized if another part is backward.”
+
+There was no doubt her demure expression hid stern resolution. Whatever
+else it hid was not so certain. Evidently Mr Haggerwells realized the
+quality of her determination for eventually he proposed to the fellows
+that she be allowed to stay and the offer of her money be rejected.
+The motion was carried, with only Barbara, who spoke long and bitterly
+against it, voting “no.”
+
+In accepting Catty out of charity, the fellows unexpectedly made an
+advantageous bargain. Not merely because she was always eager to help,
+but for her specific contribution to the haven’s economy. Before this,
+clothing the haven had been a haphazard affair; suits or dresses were
+bought with money which would otherwise have been contributed to the
+general fund, or if the fellow had no outside income, by a grant from
+the same fund. Catty’s artistry with the needle made a revolution. Not
+only did she patch and mend and alter; she designed and made clothes,
+conveying some of her enthusiasm to the other women. The haven was
+better and more handsomely clad and a great deal of money was saved.
+Only Barbara refused to have her silk trousers and jackets made at home.
+
+It was not entirely easy to adjust to the new Catty, the busy,
+efficient, selfreliant creature. Her expressive voice could be
+enchanting even when she was speaking nonsense—and Catty rarely
+spoke nonsense. I don’t mean she was priggish or solemn, quite the
+contrary; her spontaneous laughter was quick and frequent. But she was
+essentially not frivolous; she felt deeply, her loyalties were strong
+and enduring.
+
+I missed her former all too open devotion to me. It had caused
+embarrassment, impatience, annoyance; now it was withdrawn I felt
+deprived and even pettish at its lack. Not that I had anything to offer
+in return or considered that any emotion was called for from me. Though
+I didnt express it to myself so openly at the time, what I regretted
+was the sensually valuable docility of a beautiful woman. Of course
+there was a confusion here: I was regretting what had never been, for
+Catty and the nameless dumb girl were different individuals. Even her
+always undeniable beauty was changed and heightened; what I really
+wanted was for the Catty of now to act like the Catty of then. And
+without any reciprocal gesture from me.
+
+The new Catty no more than the old was disingenuous or coquettish. She
+was simply mature, dignified, selfcontained and just a trifle amusedly
+aloof. Also she was very busy. She did not pretend to any interest
+in other men; at the same time she had clearly outgrown her childish
+dependence on me. She refused any competition with Barbara. When I
+sought her out she was there, but she made no attempt to call me to her.
+
+I was not so unversed that I didnt occasionally suspect this might be
+a calculated tactic. But when I recalled the utter innocence of her
+look I reflected I would have to have a very nice conceit of myself
+indeed to believe the two most attractive women at Haggershaven were
+contending for me.
+
+I don’t know precisely when I began to see Catty with a predatory male
+eye. Doubtless it was during one of those times when Barbara and I had
+quarrelled, and when she had called attention to Catty by accusing me
+of dallying with her. I was essentially as polygamous as Barbara was
+polyandrous or Catty monogamous; once the idea had formed I made no
+attempt to reject it.
+
+Nor, for a very long time, did I accept it in any way except
+academically. There are sensual values also in tantalizing, and if
+these values are perverse I can only say I was still immature in
+many ways. Additionally there must have been an element of fear of
+Catty, the same fear which maintained a reserve against Barbara. For
+the time being at least it seemed much pleasanter to talk lightly
+and inconsequentially with her; to laugh and boast of my progress,
+to discuss Haggershaven and the world, than to face our elementary
+relationship.
+
+My fourth winter at the haven had been an unusually mild one; spring
+was early and wet. Kimi Agati who, with her children, annually gathered
+quantities of mushrooms from the woodlots and pastures, claimed this
+year’s supply was so large that she needed help, and conscripted
+Catty and me. Catty protested she didnt know a mushroom from a
+toadstool; Kimi immediately gave her a brief but thorough course in
+thallophytology. “And Hodge will help you; he’s a country boy.”
+
+“All right,” I said. “I make no guarantees though; I havent been a
+country boy for a long time.”
+
+“I’m not so sure,” said Kimi thoughtfully. “You two take the small
+southeast woodlot; Fumio can have the big pasture, Eiko the small one;
+Yosh and I will pick in the west woodlot.”
+
+We carried a picnic lunch and nests of large baskets which were to be
+put by the edge of the woodlots when full; late in the afternoon a cart
+would pick them up and bring them in for drying. The air was warm even
+under the leafless branches; the damp ground steamed cosily.
+
+“Kimi was certainly right,” I commented. “Theyre thick as can be.”
+
+“I don’t see....” She stooped gracefully; “Oh, is this one?”
+
+“Yes,” I said, “And there, and there. Not that white thing over there
+though.”
+
+We filled our first baskets without moving more than a few yards. “At
+this rate we’ll have them all full by noon.”
+
+“And go back for more?”
+
+“I suppose. Or just wander around.”
+
+“Oh.... Look, Hodge—what’s this?”
+“What?”
+
+“This.” She showed me the puffball in her hands, looking inquiringly up.
+
+I looked down casually; suddenly there was nothing casual between us
+any more, nor ever would be again. I looked down at a woman I wanted
+desperately, feverishly, immediately. The shock of desire was a weight
+on my chest, expelling the air from my lungs.
+
+“Goodness—is it some rare specimen or something?”
+“Puffball,” I managed to say. “No good.”
+
+I hardly spoke, I could hardly speak, as we filled our second baskets.
+I was sure the pounding of my heart must show through my shirt, and
+several times I thought I saw her looking curiously at me. “Let’s eat
+now,” I suggested hoarsely.
+
+I found a pine with low-hanging boughs and tore down enough to make
+a dry, soft place to sit while Catty unpacked our picnic. “Here’s an
+egg,” she said; “I’m starved.”
+
+We ate; that is, she ate and I pretended to. I was half dazed, half
+terrified. I watched her swift motions, the turn of her head, the
+clean, sharp way she bit into the food, and averted my eyes every time
+her glance crossed mine.
+
+“Well,” she murmured at last; “I suppose we mustnt sit idle any longer.
+Come on, lazy; back to work.”
+
+“Catty,” I whispered. “Catty.”
+
+“What is it, Hodge?”
+
+“Wait.”
+
+Obediently she paused. I reached over and took her in my arms. She
+looked at me, not startled, but questioning. Just as my mouth reached
+hers she moved slightly so that I kissed her cheek instead of her lips.
+She did not struggle but lay passively, with the same questioning
+expression.
+
+I held her, pressing her against the pine boughs, and found her mouth.
+I kissed her eyes and throat and mouth again. Her eyes stayed open and
+she did not respond. I undid the top of her dress and pressed my face
+between her breasts.
+
+“Hodge.”
+
+I paid no attention.
+
+“Hodge, wait. Listen to me. If this is what you want you know I will
+not try to stop you. But Hodge, be sure. Be very sure.”
+
+“I want you, Catty.”
+
+“Do you? Really want _me_, I mean.”
+
+“I don’t know what you mean. I want you.”
+
+But it was already too late; I had made the fatal error of pausing to
+listen. Angrily I moved away, picked up my basket and sullenly began
+to search for mushrooms again. My hands still trembled and there was a
+quiver in my legs. To complement my mood a cloud drifted across the sun
+and the warm woods became chilly.
+
+“Hodge.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“Please don’t be angry. Or ashamed. If you are I shall be sorry.”
+
+“I don’t understand.”
+
+She laughed. “Oh my dear Hodge. Isnt that what men always say to women?
+And isnt it always true?”
+
+Suddenly the day was no longer spoiled. The tension melted and we went
+on picking mushrooms with a new and fresh innocence.
+
+After this I could no longer keep all thoughts of Catty out of the
+intimacy with Barbara; now for the first time her jealousy had grounds.
+I felt guilty toward both, not because I desired both, but because I
+didnt totally desire either.
+
+Now, years later, I condemn myself for the lost rapturous moments; at
+the time I procrastinated and hesitated as though I had eternity in
+which to make decisions. I was, as Tyss had said, the spectator type,
+waiting to be acted upon, waiting for events to push me where they
+would.
+
+
+
+
+_16._ _OF VARIED SUBJECTS_
+
+
+“I can’t think of anything more futile,” said Kimi, “than to be an
+architect at this time in the United States.”
+
+Her husband grinned. “You forgot to add, ‘of Oriental extraction.’”
+
+Catty said, “Ive never understood. Of course I don’t remember too
+well, but it seems to me Spanish people don’t have the same racial
+fanaticism. Certainly the Portuguese, French and Dutch don’t. Even the
+English are not quite so certain of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Only the
+Americans, in the United States and the Confederate States too, judge
+everything by color.”
+
+“The case of the Confederacy is reasonably simple,” I said. “There are
+about fifty million Confederate citizens and two hundred and fifty
+million subjects. If white supremacy wasnt the cornerstone of Southron
+policy a visitor couldnt tell the ruling class at a glance. Even as
+it is he sometimes has a hard time, what with sunburn. It’s more
+complicated here. Remember, we lost a war, the most important war in
+our history, which was not unconnected with skin color.”
+
+“In Japan,” said Hiro, “the lighter colored people, the Ainu, used to
+be looked down on. Just as the Christians were once driven underground
+at exactly the same time they themselves drove the Jews underground in
+Spain and Portugal.”
+
+“The Jews,” murmured Catty vaguely; “are there still Jews?”
+
+“Oh yes,” I said. “Several millions in Uganda-Eretz which the British
+made a self-governing dominion back in 1933 under the first Labour
+cabinet. And numbers most everywhere else, except in the German Union
+since the massacres of 1905-1913.”
+
+“Which were much more thorough than the anti-Oriental massacres in the
+United States,” supplied Hiro.
+
+“Much more thorough,” I agreed. “After all, scattered handfuls of
+Asians were left alive here.”
+
+“My parents and Kimi’s grandparents among them. How lucky they were to
+be American Japanese instead of European Jews.”
+
+“There are Jews in the United States,” announced Kimi. “I met one once.
+She was a theosophist and told me I ought to learn the wisdom of the
+East.”
+
+“Very few of them. There were about two hundred thousand at the close
+of the War of Southron Independence on both sides of the border. After
+the election of 1872, General Grant’s Order Number Ten, expelling all
+Jews from the Department of the Missouri, which had been rescinded
+immediately by President Lincoln, was retroactively re-enacted by
+President Butler, in spite of the fact that the United States no longer
+controlled that territory. Henceforth Jews were treated like all other
+colored peoples, Negroes, Orientals, Indians and South Sea Islanders:
+as undesirables to be bribed to leave or to be driven out of the
+country.”
+
+“This is very dull stuff,” said Hiro. “Let me tell you about a hydrogen
+reaction—”
+
+“No, please,” begged Catty. “Let me listen to Hodge.”
+
+“Good heavens,” exclaimed Kimi, “when do you ever do anything else? I’d
+think you’d be tired by now.”
+
+“She will marry him one of these days,” predicted Hiro; “then the poor
+fellow will never be allowed to disguise a lecture as a conversation
+again.”
+
+Catty blushed, a deep red blush. I laughed to cover some constraint.
+Kimi said, “Go-betweens are out of fashion; youre a century behind
+times, Hiro. I suppose you think a woman ought to walk two paces
+respectfully behind her husband. Actually, it’s only in the United
+States women can’t vote or serve on juries.”
+
+“Except in the state of Deseret,” I reminded her.
+
+“That’s just bait; the Mormons gave us equality because they were
+running short of women.”
+
+“Not the way I heard it. The Latter Day Saints have been the nearest
+thing to a prosperous group in the country. Women have been moving
+there for years, it’s so easy to get married. All the grumbling about
+polygamy has come from men who can’t stand the competition.”
+
+Catty glanced at me, then looked away.
+
+Had she, I wondered afterward, been thinking how Barbara would have
+rejected my observation furiously? Or about that day in the spring? Or
+about Hiro’s earlier comment? I thought about it, briefly, myself.
+
+I also thought of how easily Catty fitted in with the Agatis and
+contrasted it with the tension everyone would have felt if Barbara had
+been there. One could love Barbara, or hate her or dislike her or even,
+I supposed, be indifferent to her; the one thing impossible was to be
+comfortable with her.
+
+The final choice (was it final? I don’t know. I shall never know now)
+hardened when I had been nearly six years at Haggershaven. It had been
+“on” between Barbara and me for the longest stretch I could recall and
+I had even begun to wonder if some paradoxical equilibrium had not been
+established which would allow me to be her lover without vexation and
+at the same time innocently enjoy a bond with Catty.
+
+As always when the hostility between us slackened, Barbara spoke of
+her work. In spite of such occasional confidences it was still not her
+habit to talk of it with me. That intimacy was obviously reserved for
+Ace, and I didnt begrudge him it, for after all he understood what it
+was all about and I didnt. This time she was so full of the subject she
+could not hold back, even from one who could hardly distinguish between
+thermodynamics and kinesthetics.
+
+“Hodge,” she said, gray eyes greenish with excitement, “I’m not going
+to write a book.”
+
+“That’s nice,” I answered idly. “New, too. Saves time, paper,
+ink. Sets a different standard; from now on scholars will be known
+as ‘Jones, who didnt write _The Theory of Tidal Waves’_,‘Smith,
+unauthor of _Gas and Its Properties_,’ or ‘Backmaker, non-recorder of
+_Gettysburg And After_.’”
+
+“Silly. I only meant it’s become customary to spend a lifetime
+formulating principles; then someone else comes along and puts your
+principles into practice. It seems more sensible for me to demonstrate
+my own conclusions instead of writing about them.”
+
+“Yes, sure. Youre going to demonstrate ... uh ...?”
+
+“Cosmic entity, of course. What do you think Ive been talking about?”
+
+I tried to remember what she had said about cosmic entity. “You mean
+youre going to try to turn matter into space or something like that?”
+
+“Something like that. I intend to translate matter-energy into terms of
+space-time.”
+
+“Oh,” I said, “equations and symbols and all that.”
+
+“I just said I wasnt going to write a book.”
+
+“But how—” I started up as the impact struck me. “Youre going to ...” I
+groped for words. “Youre going to build a ... an engine which will move
+through time?”
+
+“Putting it crudely. But close enough for a layman.”
+
+“You once told me your work was theoretical. That you were no vulgar
+mechanic.”
+
+“I’ll become one.”
+
+“Barbara, youre crazy! As a philosophical abstraction this theory of
+yours is interesting—”
+
+“Thank you. It’s always nice to know one has amused the yokelry.”
+
+“Barbara, listen to me. Midbin—”
+“I havent the faintest interest in Oliver’s stodgy fantasies.”
+
+“He has in yours though, and so have I. Don’t you see, this
+determination of yours is based on the fantasy of going back through
+time to—uh—injure your mother—”
+
+“Oliver Midbin is a coarse, stupid, insensate lout. He has taught the
+dumb to speak, but he’s too much of a fool to understand anyone of
+normal intelligence. He has a set of idiotic theories about diseased
+emotions and he fits all facts into them even if it means chopping them
+up to do it or inventing new ones to piece them out. Injure my mother
+indeed! I have no more interest in her than she ever had in me.”
+
+“Ah, Barbara—”
+“‘Ah Barbara,’” she mimicked. “Run along to your pompous windbag of a
+Midbin or your oh-so-willing cow-eyed Spanish doxy—”
+
+“Barbara, I’m talking as a friend. Leave Midbin and Catty and
+personalities out of it and just look at it this way. Don’t you see
+the difference between promulgating a theory and trying a practical
+demonstration which will certainly appear to the world as going over
+the borderline into charlatanism? Like a spiritualist medium or—”
+“That’s enough! ‘Charlatan’! You unspeakable guttersnipe. What do you
+know of anything beyond the seduction of cretins? Go back to your
+trade, you errand boy!”
+
+I seemed to remember that once before an incident had ended precisely
+this way. “Barbara—”
+
+Her hand caught me across my mouth. Then she strode away.
+
+The fellows of Haggershaven were not enthusiastic for her project.
+Even as she outlined it to them in more sober language than she had
+to me it still sounded outlandish, like the recurrent idea of a
+telegraph without wires or a rocket to the moon. Besides, 1950 was a
+bad year. The war was coming closer; at the least, what was left of
+the independence of the United States was likely to be extinguished.
+Our energies had to be directed toward survival rather than new and
+expensive ventures. Still, Barbara Haggerwells was a famous figure
+commanding great respect, and she had cost them little so far, beyond
+paper and pencils. Reluctantly the fellows voted an appropriation.
+
+An old barn, not utilized for years, but still sound, was turned over
+to Barbara, and Kimi was delighted to plan, design and supervise the
+necessary changes. Ace and a group of the fellows attacked the job
+vigorously, sawing and hammering, bolting iron beams together, piping
+in gas for reflecting lights to enable them to work at night as well.
+
+I believe I took no more interest than was inescapable as a fellow
+of Haggershaven. I had no doubt that the money and labor were being
+wasted, and I foresaw a terrible disappointment for Barbara when she
+realized the impossibility of her project. For myself I did not think
+she would play any further part of importance in my life.
+
+We had not spoken since the quarrel, nor was there inclination on
+either side toward coming together again. I could not guess at
+Barbara’s feelings; mine were those of relief, unmixed with regret.
+I would not have erased all there had been between us, but I was
+satisfied to have it in the past. The raging desire vanished, gradually
+replaced by an affection of sorts; I wanted no more of that tempestuous
+passion, instead I felt aloofly protective and understanding.
+
+For at last I was absorbed with Catty. The raw hunger of the moment
+when I first realized I wanted her came back with renewed force, but
+now other, more diffused feelings were equally part of my emotion. I
+knew she could make me jealous as Barbara could not; at the same time I
+could see tranquillity beyond turbulent wanting, a tranquillity never
+possible with Barbara.
+
+But my belated realization of what Catty meant to me was no reaction to
+Barbara or connected with the breaking of that tie. The need for Catty
+was engendered by Catty alone, and for Catty apart from anything I had
+ever felt for another. It was in some ways an entirely new hunger,
+as the man’s need transcends the youth’s. I understood now what her
+question in the woodlot meant and at last I could truthfully answer.
+
+She kissed me back, freely and strongly. “I love you, Hodge,” she said;
+“I have loved you even through the bad dream of not being able to
+speak.”
+
+“When I was so unfeeling.”
+
+“I loved you even when you were impatient; I tried to make myself
+prettier for you. You know you have never said I was pretty.”
+
+“You arent, Catty. Youre extraordinarily beautiful.”
+
+“I think I would rather be pretty. Beauty sounds forbidding. Oh, Hodge,
+if I did not love you so much I would not have stopped you that day.”
+
+“I’m not sure I understand that.”
+
+“No? Well, it is not necessary now. Sometimes I wondered if I had been
+right after all, or if you would think it was because of Barbara.”
+
+“Wasnt it?”
+
+“No. I was never jealous of her. We Garcías are supposed to have
+Morisco blood; perhaps I have the harem outlook of my dark Muslim
+ancestors. Would you like me to be your black concubine?”
+
+“No,” I said. “I’d like you to be my wife. In any colors you have.”
+
+“Spoken with real gallantry; you will be a courtier yet, Hodge. But
+that was a proposal, wasnt it?”
+
+“Yes,” I answered grimly; “if you will consider one from me. I can’t
+think of any good reason why you should.”
+
+She put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “I don’t
+know what reason has to do with it. It is what I always intended; that
+was why I blushed so when Hiro Agati blurted out what everyone could
+see.”
+
+Later I said, “Catty, can you ever forgive me for the wasted years? You
+say you werent jealous of Barbara, but surely if she and I—that is ...
+anyway, forgive me.”
+
+“Dear Hodge, there’s nothing to forgive. Love is not a business
+transaction, nor a case at law in which justice is sought, nor a reward
+for having good qualities. I understand you, Hodge, better I think than
+you understand yourself. You are not satisfied with what is readily
+obtained, otherwise you would have been content back in—what is the
+name?—Wappinger Falls. I have known this for a long time and I could,
+I think—you must excuse my vanity—have interested you at any moment by
+pretending fickleness. Just as I could have held you if I had given in
+that day. Besides, I think you will make a better husband for realizing
+you could not deal with Barbara.”
+
+I can’t say I entirely enjoyed this speech. I felt, in fact, rather
+humiliated, or at least healthily humbled. Which was no doubt what she
+intended, and as it should be. I never had the idea she was frail or
+insipid.
+
+Nor did Catty’s explanation of a harem outlook satisfactorily account
+for the sudden friendliness of the two women after the engagement was
+announced. That Barbara should soften so toward a successful rival was
+incomprehensible and also disturbing.
+
+Because both were fully occupied they actually spent little time
+together, but Catty visited the workshop, as they called the converted
+barn, whenever she had the chance and her real admiration for Barbara
+grew so that I heard too often of her genius, courage and imagination.
+I could hardly ask Catty to forego society I had so recently found
+enchanting nor establish a taboo against mention of a name I had lately
+whispered with ardor; still I felt a little foolish, and not quite as
+important as I might otherwise have thought myself.
+
+Not that Catty didnt have proper respect and enthusiasm for my
+fortunes. I had completed my notes for _Chancellorsville to the
+End_—that is, I had a mass of clues, guideposts, keys, ideas, and
+emphases which would serve as skeleton for a work which might take
+years to write—and Catty was the audience to whom I explained and
+expounded and used as a prototype of the reader I might reach. Volume
+one was roughly drafted, and we were to be married as soon as it
+was finished, shortly after my thirtieth and Catty’s twenty-fourth
+birthday. There was little doubt the book would bring an offer from one
+of the great Confederate universities, but Catty was firm for a cottage
+like the Agatis’, and I could not conceive of being foolish enough to
+leave Haggershaven.
+
+From Catty’s talk I knew Barbara was running into increasing
+difficulties now the workshop was complete and actual construction
+begun of what was referred to, with unnecessary crypticism I thought,
+as HX-1. The impending war created scarcities, particularly of
+such materials as steel and copper, of which latter metal HX-1
+seemed inordinately greedy. I was not surprised when the fellows
+apologetically refused Barbara a new appropriation.
+
+Next day Catty said, “Hodge, you know the haven wouldnt take my money.”
+
+“And quite right too. Let the rest of us put in what we get; we owe it
+to the haven anyway. But the debt is the other way round in your case
+and you should keep your independence.”
+
+“Hodge, I’m going to give it all to Barbara for her HX-1.”
+
+“What? Oh, nonsense!”
+
+“Is it any more nonsensical for me to put in money I didnt do anything
+to get than for her and Ace to put in time and knowledge and labor?”
+
+“Yes, because she’s got a crazy idea and Ace has never been quite sane
+where she’s concerned. If you go ahead and do this you’ll be as crazy
+as they are.”
+
+When Catty laughed I remembered with a pang the long months when that
+lovely sound had been strangled by terror inside her. I also thought
+with shame of my own failure; had I appreciated her when her need was
+greatest I might have eased the long, painful ordeal of restoring her
+voice.
+
+“Perhaps I am crazy. Do you think the haven would make me a fellow on
+that basis? Anyway, I believe in Barbara even if the rest of you don’t.
+Not that I’m criticizing; you were right to be cautious. You have more
+to consider than demonstration of the truth of a theory which can’t
+conceivably have a material value; I don’t have to take any such long
+view. Anyway I believe in her. Or perhaps I feel I owe her something.
+With my money she can finish her project. I only tell you this because
+you may not want to marry me under the circumstances.”
+
+“You think I’m marrying you for your money?”
+
+She smiled. “Dear Hodge. You are in some ways so young; I hear the
+wounded dignity in your voice. No, I know very well you arent marrying
+me for money, that it never occurred to you it might be a good idea.
+That would be too practical, too grown up, too un-Hodgelike. I think
+you might not want to marry a woman who’d give all her money away.
+Especially to Barbara Haggerwells.”
+
+“Catty, are you doing this absurd thing to get rid of me? Or to test
+me?”
+
+This time she again laughed loud. “Now I’m sure you will marry me after
+all and turn out to be a puzzled but amenable husband. You are my true
+Hodge, who studies a war because he can’t understand anything simpler
+or subtler.”
+
+She wasnt to be dissuaded from the quixotic gesture. I might not
+understand subtleties but I was sure I understood Barbara well enough.
+Foreseeing her request for more funds would be turned down, she must
+have cultivated Catty deliberately in order to use her. Now she’d
+gotten what she wanted I confidently expected her to drop Catty or
+revert to her accustomed virulence.
+
+She did neither. If anything the amity grew. Catty’s vocabulary added
+words like “magnet,” “coil,” “induction,” “particle,” “light-year,”
+“continuum” and many others either incomprehensible or uninteresting to
+me. Breathlessly she described the strange, asymmetric structure taking
+shape in the workshop, while my mind was busy with Ewell’s Corps and
+parrott guns and the weather chart of southern Pennsylvania for July,
+1863.
+
+The great publishing firm of Ticknor, Harcourt & Knopf contracted for
+my book—there was no publisher in the United States equipped to handle
+it—and sent me a sizable advance in Confederate dollars which became
+even more sizable converted into our money. I read the proofs of volume
+one in a state of semiconsciousness, sent the inevitable telegram
+changing a footnote on page 99, and waited for the infuriating mails to
+bring me my complimentary copies. The day after they arrived (with a
+horrifying typographical error right in the middle of page 12), Catty
+and I were married.
+
+Dear Catty. Dear, dear Catty.
+
+With the approval of the fellows we used part of the publisher’s
+advance for a honeymoon. We spent it—that part of it in which we
+had time for anything except being alone together—going over nearby
+battlefields of the last year of the War of Southron Independence.
+
+It was Catty’s first excursion away from Haggershaven since the
+night I brought her there. Looking at the world outside through
+her perceptions, at once insulated and made hypersensitive by her
+new status, I was shocked afresh at the harsh indifference, the
+dull poverty, the fear, brutality, frenzy and cynicism highlighting
+the strange resignation to impending fate which characterized our
+civilization. It was not a case of eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow
+we die; rather it was, let us live meanly and trust to luck—tomorrow’s
+luck is bound to be worse.
+
+We settled down in the autumn of 1951 in a cottage designed by
+Kimi and built by the fellows during our absence. It gave on the
+Agatis’ cherished garden and we were both moved by this evidence of
+love, particularly after what we had seen and heard on our trip. Mr
+Haggerwells made a speech, filled with classical allusions, welcoming
+us back as though we had been gone for years; Midbin looked anxiously
+into Catty’s face as though to assure himself I had not, in my new role
+as husband, treated her so ill as to bring on a new emotional upset;
+and the other fellows made appropriate gestures. Even Barbara stopped
+by long enough to comment that the house was ridiculously small, but
+she supposed Kimi’s movable partitions helped.
+
+I immediately began working on volume two and Catty took up her sewing
+again. She also resumed her visits to Barbara’s workshop; again I heard
+detailed accounts of my former sweetheart’s progress. HX-1 was to be
+completed in the late spring, or early summer. I was not surprised at
+Barbara’s faith surviving actual construction of the thing, but that
+such otherwise level-headed people as Ace and Catty could envisage
+breathlessly the miracles about to happen was beyond me. Ace, even
+after all these years, was still bemused—but Catty ...?
+
+Just before the turn of the year I got the following letter:
+
+                      LEE & WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
+                         Department of History
+
+                               Leesburg, District of Calhounia, CSA.
+                                                  December 19, 1951
+
+  Mr. Hodgins M. Backmaker
+  “Haggershaven”
+  York,
+  Pennsylvania, USA.
+
+  _Sir_:
+
+ _On page 407 of_ Chancellorsville to the End, _volume I_, Turning
+ Tides, _you write, “Chronology and topography—timing and the use of
+ space—were to be the decisive factors, rather than population and
+ industry. Stuart’s detachment, which might have proved disastrous,
+ turned out extraordinarily fortunate for Lee, as we shall see in the
+ next volume. Of course the absence of cavalry might have been decisive
+ if the Round Tops had not been occupied by the Southrons on July
+ 1....”_
+
+ _Now, sir, evidently in your forthcoming analysis of Gettysburg you
+ hold (as I presume most Yankees do) to the theory of fortuitousness.
+ We Southrons naturally ascribe the victory to the supreme genius of
+ General Lee, regarding the factors of time and space not as forces in
+ themselves but as opportunities for the display of his talents._
+
+ _Needless to say, I hardly expect you to change your opinions, rooted
+ as they must be in national pride. I only ask that before you commit
+ them, and the conclusions shaped by them, to print, you satisfy
+ yourself as an historian, of their validity in this particular case.
+ In other words, sir, as one of your readers (and may I add, one who
+ has enjoyed your work), I should like to be assured that you have
+ studied this classic battle as carefully as you have the engagements
+ described in volume I._
+
+  _With earnest wishes for your success,
+  I remain, sir
+  Cordially yours,
+      Jefferson Davis Polk_
+
+This letter from Dr Polk, the foremost historian of our day, author
+of the monumental biography, _The Great Lee_, produced a crisis in
+my life. Had the Confederate professor pointed out flaws in my work,
+or even reproached me for undertaking it at all without adequate
+equipment I would, I trust, have acknowledged the reproof and continued
+to the best of my ability. But this letter was an accolade. Without
+condescension Dr Polk admitted me to the ranks of serious historians,
+only asking me to consider the depth of my evaluation.
+
+Truth is, I was not without increasing doubts of my own. Doubts I had
+not allowed to rise to the surface of my mind and disturb my plans.
+Polk’s letter brought them into the open.
+
+I had read everything available. I had been over the ground between the
+Maryland line, South Mountain, Carlisle and the haven until I could
+draw a detail map from memory. I had turned up diaries, letters and
+accounts which had not only never been published, but which were not
+known to exist until I hunted them down. I had so steeped myself in
+the period I was writing about that sometimes the two worlds seemed
+interchangeable and I could live partly in one, partly in the other.
+
+Yet with all this, I was not sure I had the whole story, even in the
+sense of wholeness that historians, knowing they can never collect
+every detail, accept. I was not sure I had the grand scene in
+perfectly proper perspective. I admitted to myself the possibility
+that I had perhaps been too rash, too precipitate, in undertaking
+_Chancellorsville to the End_ so soon. I knew the shadowy sign, the
+one which says in effect, _You are ready_, had not been given. My
+confidence was shaken.
+
+Was the fault in me, in my temperament and character, rather than in my
+preparation and use of materials? Was I drawing back from committing
+myself, from acting, from doing? That I had written the first volume
+was no positive answer, for it was but the fraction of a whole deed; if
+I withdrew now I could still preserve my standing as an onlooker.
+
+But not to act was itself an action and answered neither Dr Polk nor
+myself. Besides, what could I do? The entire work was contracted for.
+The second volume was promised for delivery some eighteen months hence.
+My notes for it were complete; this was no question of revising, but
+of wholly re-examining, revaluing and probably discarding them for an
+entirely new start. It was a job so much bigger than the original,
+one so discouraging, I felt I couldnt face it. It would be corrupt to
+produce a work lacking absolute conviction and cowardly to produce none.
+
+Catty responded to my awkward recapitulation in a way at once
+heartening and strange. “Hodge,” she said, “youre changing and
+developing, and for the better, even though I love you as you were.
+Don’t be afraid to put the book aside for a year—ten years if you have
+to. You must do it so it will satisfy yourself; never mind what the
+publishers or the public say. But Hodge, you mustnt, in your anxiety,
+or your foolish fear of passiveness, you mustnt try any shortcuts.
+Promise me that.”
+
+“I don’t know what youre talking about, Catty dear. There are no
+shortcuts in writing history.”
+
+She looked at me thoughtfully. “Remember that, Hodge. Oh, remember it.”
+
+
+
+
+_17._ _HX-1_
+
+
+I could not bring myself to follow the promptings of my conscience and
+Catty’s advice, nor could I use my notes as though Dr Polk’s letter
+had never come to shatter my complacency. As a consequence—without
+deliberately committing myself to abandon the book—I worked not at
+all, thus adding to my feelings of guilt and unworthiness. The tasks
+assigned by the fellows for the general welfare of the haven were
+not designed to take a major part of my time, and though I produced
+all sorts of revolutions in the stables and barns, I still managed
+to wander about, fretful and irritable, keeping Catty from her work,
+interrupting the Agatis and Midbin—I could not bring myself to discuss
+my problems with him—and generally making myself a nuisance. Inevitably
+I found my way into Barbara’s workshop.
+
+She and Ace had done a thorough job on the old barn. I thought I
+recognized Kimi’s touch in the structural changes of the walls, the
+strong beams and rows of slanted-in windows which admitted light and
+shut out glare, but the rest must have been shaped by Barbara’s needs.
+
+Iron beams held up a catwalk running in a circle about ten feet
+overhead. On the catwalk there were at intervals what appeared to be
+batteries of telescopes, all pointed inward and downward at the center
+of the floor. Just inside the columns was a continuous ring of clear
+glass, perhaps four inches in diameter, fastened to the beams with
+glass hooks. Closer inspection proved the ring not to be in one piece
+but in sections, ingeniously held together with glass couplings. Back
+from this circle, around the walls, were various engines, all enclosed
+except for dial faces and regulators and all dwarfed by a mammoth one
+towering in one corner. From the roof was suspended a large, polished
+reflector.
+
+There was no one in the barn and I wandered about, cautiously avoiding
+the mysterious apparatus. For a moment I meditated, basely perhaps,
+that all this had been paid for with my wife’s money. Then I berated
+myself, for Catty owed all to the haven, as I did. The money might have
+been put to better use, but there was no guarantee it would have been
+more productive allotted to astronomy or zoology. During eight years
+I’d seen many promising schemes come to nothing.
+
+“Like it, Hodge?”
+
+Barbara had come up, unheard, behind me. This was the first time we had
+been alone together since our break, two years before.
+
+“It looks like a tremendous amount of work,” I evaded.
+
+“It was a tremendous amount of work.” For the first time I noticed
+that her cheeks were flushed. She had lost weight and there were deep
+hollows beneath her eyes. “This construction has been the least of it.
+Now it’s done. Or has begun. Depending how you look at it.”
+
+“All done?”
+
+She nodded, triumph accenting the strained look on her face. “First
+test today.”
+
+“Oh well ... in that case—”
+“Don’t go, Hodge. Please. I meant to ask you and Catty to the more
+formal trial, but now youre here for the preliminary I’m glad. Ace and
+Father and Oliver will be along in a minute.”
+
+“Midbin?”
+
+The familiar arrogance showed briefly. “I insisted. It’ll be nice
+to show him the mind can produce something besides fantasies and
+hysterical hallucinations.”
+
+I started to speak, then swallowed my words. The dig at Catty was
+insignificant compared with the supreme confidence, the abnormal
+assurance prompting invitations to witness a test which could only
+reveal the impossibility of applying her cherished theories. I felt
+an overwhelming pity. “Surely,” I said at last, seeking to make some
+preparation for the disillusionment certain to come, “surely you don’t
+expect it to work the first time?”
+
+“Why not? There are sure to be adjustments to be made, allowances
+for erratic chronology caused by phenomena like the pull of comets
+and so forth. There might even have to be major alterations, though
+I doubt it. It may be some time before Ace can set me down at the
+exact year, month, day, hour and minute agreed upon. But the fact of
+space-time-energy-matter correspondence can just as well be established
+this afternoon as next year.”
+
+She was unbelievably at ease for someone whose lifework was about to be
+weighed. I have shown more nervousness discussing a disputed date with
+the honorary secretary of a local historical society.
+
+“Sit down,” she invited; “there’s nothing to do or see till Ace comes.
+Ive missed you, Hodge.”
+
+I felt this was a dangerous remark, and wished I’d stayed far away from
+the workshop. I hooked my leg over a stool—there were no chairs—and
+coughed to hide the fact I was afraid to answer, Ive missed you too;
+and afraid not to.
+
+“Tell me about your own work, Hodge. Catty says youre having
+difficulties.”
+
+I was faintly annoyed with Catty, but whether for confiding in Barbara
+at all or specifically for revealing something unheroic, I didnt
+stop to consider. At any rate this annoyance diluted my feeling of
+disloyalty for conversing with Barbara at all. Or it may be the old,
+long-established bond—I almost wrote, of sympathy, but it was so much
+more complex than the word indicates—was reawakened by proximity
+and put me in the mood to tell my troubles. It is even possible I
+had the altruistic purpose of fortifying Barbara against inevitable
+disappointment on a misery-loves-company basis. Be that as it may, I
+found myself pouring out the whole story.
+
+She jumped up and took my hands in hers. Her eyes were gray and warm.
+“Hodge! It’s wonderful—don’t you see?”
+
+“Oh....” I was completely confused. “I ... uh....”
+
+“The solution. The answer. The means. Look: now you can go back, back
+to the past in your own person. You can see everything with your own
+eyes instead of relying on accounts of what other people said happened.”
+
+“But ... but—”
+“You can verify every fact, study every move, every actor. You can
+write history as no one ever did before, for youll be writing as a
+witness, yet with the perspective of a different period. Youll be
+taking the mind of the present, with its judgment and its knowledge of
+the patterns, back to receive the impressions of the past. It almost
+seems HX-1 was devised especially for this.”
+
+There was no doubt she believed, that she was really and unselfishly
+glad her work could aid mine. I was overcome by pity, helpless
+to soften the disillusionment so soon to come and filled with an
+irrational hatred of the thing she had built and which was about to
+destroy her.
+
+I was saved from having to mask my emotions by the arrival of her
+father, Ace, and Midbin. Thomas Haggerwells began tensely, “Barbara,
+Ace tells me you intend to try out this—this machine on yourself. I
+can’t believe you would be so foolhardy.”
+
+Midbin didnt wait for her to reply. I thought with something of
+a shock, Midbin has gotten old; I never noticed it. “Listen to
+me. There’s no point now in saying part of your mind realizes the
+impossibility of this demonstration and that it’s willing for you to
+annihilate yourself in the attempt and so escape from conflicts which
+have no resolution. Although it’s something you must be at least partly
+aware of. But consider objectively the danger involved in meddling with
+unknown natural laws—”
+
+Ace Dorn, who looked as strained as they in contrast to Barbara’s ease,
+growled, “Let’s go.”
+
+She smiled reassuringly at us. “Please, Father, don’t worry; there’s no
+danger. And Oliver....”
+
+Her smile was almost mischievous and very unlike the Barbara I had
+known. “Oliver, HX-1 owes more to you than you will ever know.”
+
+She ducked under the transparent ring and walked to the center of the
+floor, glancing up at the reflector, moving an inch or two to stand
+directly beneath it. “The controls are already adjusted to minus
+fifty-two years and a hundred and fifty-three days,” she informed us
+conversationally. “Purely arbitrary. One date is good as another, but
+January 1, 1900 is an almost automatic choice. I’ll be gone sixty
+seconds. Ready, Ace?”
+
+“Ready.” He had been slowly circling the engines, checking the dials.
+He took his place before the largest, the monster in the corner,
+holding a watch in his hand. “Three forty-three and ten,” he announced.
+
+Barbara was consulting her own watch. “Three forty-three and ten,” she
+confirmed. “Make it at three forty-three and twenty.”
+
+“OK. Good luck.”
+
+“You might at least try it on an animal first,” burst out Midbin, as
+Ace twirled the valve under his hand. The transparent ring glowed, the
+metal reflector threw back a dazzling light. I blinked. When I opened
+my eyes the light was gone and the center of the workshop was empty.
+
+No one moved. Ace frowned over his watch. I stared at the spot where
+Barbara had stood. I don’t think my mind was working; I had the feeling
+my lungs and heart certainly were not. I was a true spectator, with all
+faculties save sight and hearing suspended.
+
+“ ... on an animal first.” Midbin’s voice was querulous.
+
+“Oh, God ...” muttered Thomas Haggerwells.
+
+Ace said casually—too casually, “The return is automatic. Set
+beforehand for duration. Thirty more seconds.”
+
+Midbin said, “She is ... this is....” He sat down on a stool and bent
+his head almost to his knees.
+
+Mr Haggerwells groaned, “Ace, Ace—you should have stopped her.”
+“Ten seconds,” said Ace firmly.
+
+Still I couldnt think with any clarity. She had stood there; then she
+was gone. What ...? Midbin was right: we had let her go to destruction.
+Certainly more than a minute had passed by now.
+
+The ring glowed and the brilliant light was reflected. “It did, oh, it
+did!” Barbara cried. “It did!”
+
+She stood perfectly still, overwhelmed. Then she came out of the
+circle and kissed Ace, who patted her gently on the back. I suddenly
+noticed the pain of holding my breath and released a tremendous
+sigh. Barbara kissed her father and Midbin—who was still shaking his
+head—and, after the faintest hesitation, me. Her lips were ice-cold.
+
+The shock of triumph made her voluble. Striding up and down, she spoke
+with extraordinary rapidity, without pause, almost a little drunkenly.
+In her excitement her words cluttered her tongue; from time to time she
+had to go back and repeat a phrase or sentence to make it intelligible.
+
+When the light flashed, she too involuntarily closed her eyes. She had
+felt a strange, terrifying weightlessness, an awful disembodiment,
+for which she had been unprepared. She thought she had not actually
+been unconscious, even for an instant, though she had an impression
+of ceasing to exist as a unique collection of memories, and of being
+somehow dissolved. Then she had opened her eyes.
+
+At first she was shocked to find the barn as it had been all her life,
+abandoned and dusty. Then she realized she had indeed moved through
+time; the disappearance of the engines and reflector showed she had
+gone back to the unremodelled workshop.
+
+Now she saw the barn was not quite as she had known it, even in her
+childhood, for while it was unquestionably abandoned, it had evidently
+not long been so. The thick dust was not so thick as she remembered,
+the sagging cobwebs not so dense. Straw was still scattered on the
+floor; it had not yet been entirely carried away by mice or inquisitive
+birds. Alongside the door hung bits of harness beyond repair, some
+broken bridles, and a faded calendar on which the ink of the numerals
+1897 was still bright.
+
+The minute she had allotted this first voyage seemed fantastically
+short and incredibly long. All the paradoxes she had brushed aside as
+of no immediate concern now confronted her. Since she had gone back to
+a time before she was born, she must have existed as a visitor prior
+to her own conception; she could presumably be present during her own
+childhood and growth, and by making a second and third visit, multiply
+herself as though in facing mirrors, so that an infinite number of
+Barbara Haggerwells could occupy a single segment of time.
+
+A hundred other parallel speculations raced through her mind without
+interfering with her rapid and insatiable survey of the commonplace
+features of the barn, features which could never really be commonplace
+to her since they proved all her speculations so victoriously right.
+
+Suddenly she shivered with the bitter cold and burst into
+teeth-chattering laughter. She had made such careful plans to visit on
+the First of January—and had never thought to take along a warm coat.
+
+She looked at her watch; only twenty seconds had passed. The temptation
+to defy her agreement with Ace not to step outside the tiny circle
+of HX-1’s operating field on the initial experiment was almost
+irresistible. She longed to touch the fabric of the past, to feel
+the worn boards of the barn, to handle as well as look. Again her
+thoughts whirled with speculation; again the petty moment stretched and
+contracted. She spent eternity and instantaneity at once.
+
+Suppose.... But she had a thousand suppositions and questions. Was she
+really herself in the flesh, or in some mental projection? A pinch
+would do no good; that might be projection also. Would she be visible
+to the people of the time, or was she a ghost from the future? Oh,
+there was so much to learn, so much to encounter!
+
+When the moment of return came, she again experienced the feeling of
+dissolution, followed immediately by the light. When she opened her
+eyes she was back.
+
+Midbin rubbed his belly and then his thinning hair. “Hallucination,” he
+propounded at last; “a logical, consistent hallucination. Answer to an
+overriding wish.”
+
+“You mean Barbara was never gone?” asked Ace. “Was she visible to
+you—or Mr H or Hodge—during that minute?”
+
+“Illusion,” said Midbin; “group illusion brought on by suggestion and
+anxiety.”
+
+“Nonsense,” exclaimed Barbara. “Unless youre accusing Ace and me of
+faking youll have to account for what you just called the logical
+consistency of it. Your group illusion and my individual hallucination
+fitting so neatly together.”
+
+Midbin recovered some of his poise. “The two phenomena are separate,
+connected only by some sort of emotional hypnosis. Certainly your
+daydream of having been back in 1900 is an emotionally induced
+aberration.”
+
+“And your daydream that I wasn’t here for a minute?”
+
+“The eyes are quickly affected by the feelings. Note tears, ‘seeing
+red’ and so forth.”
+
+“Very well, Oliver. The only thing to do is to let you try HX-1
+yourself.”
+
+“Hay, my turn’s supposed to be next,” protested Ace.
+
+“Of course. But no one is going to use it again today. Tomorrow
+morning. Bring Catty, Hodge, if she wants to come, but please don’t
+say anything to anyone else till weve made further demonstrations,
+otherwise we’ll be besieged by fellows wanting to take short jaunts
+into popular years.”
+
+I had little inclination to discuss what had happened with anyone, even
+Catty. Not that I shared Midbin’s theory of nothing material having
+taken place; I knew I’d not seen Barbara for sixty seconds and I was
+convinced her account of them was accurate. What confused me was the
+shock to my preconceptions involved in her proof. If time and space,
+matter and energy were the same, as fog and ice and water are the same,
+then I—the physical I at least—and Catty, the world and the universe
+must be, as Enfandin had insisted, mere illusion. In that sense Midbin
+had been right.
+
+I went furtively to the workshop next day without telling Catty, as
+though we were all engaged in some dark necromancy, some sacrilegious
+rite. Apparently I was the only one who had spent an anxious night; Mr
+Haggerwells looked proud, Barbara looked satisfied, Ace cocky, and even
+Midbin, for no understandable reason, benign.
+
+“All here?” inquired Ace. “I’m eager as a fox in a hen-house. Three
+minutes in 1885. Why 1885? I don’t know; a year when nothing much
+happened, I suppose. Ready, Barbara?”
+
+He returned to report he had found the barn well occupied by both
+cattle and fowl, and been scared stiff of discovery when the dogs set
+up a furious barking.
+
+“That pretty well settles the question of corporeal presence,” I
+remarked.
+
+“Not at all,” said Mr Haggerwells unexpectedly. “Dogs are notoriously
+psychic.”
+
+“Ah,” cried Ace, bringing his hands from behind his back; “look at
+this. I could hardly have picked it up with psychic feelers.”
+
+“This” was a newlaid egg, sixty-seven years old. Or was it? Trips in
+time are confusing that way.
+
+Barbara was upset, more than I thought warranted. “Oh, Ace, how could
+you be so foolish? We darent be anything but spectators, as unseen as
+possible.”
+
+“Why? Ive a notion to court my grandmother and wind up as my own
+grandfather.”
+
+“Don’t be stupid. The faintest indication of our presence, the
+slightest impingement on the past, may change the whole course of
+events. We have no way of knowing what actions have no consequences—if
+there can be any. Goodness knows what your idiocy with the egg has
+done. It’s absolutely essential not to betray ourselves in any way.
+Please remember this in future.”
+
+“You mean, ‘Remember this in past,’ don’t you?”
+
+“Ace, this isnt a joke.”
+
+“It isn’t a wake either. I can’t see the harm in bringing back tangible
+proof. Loss of one egg isnt going to send the prices up for 1885
+and cause retroactive inflation. Youre making a mountain out of a
+molehill—or an omelette out of a single egg.”
+
+She shrugged helplessly. “Oliver, I hope you won’t be so foolish.”
+
+“Since I don’t expect to arrive in, say, 1820, I can safely promise
+neither to steal eggs nor court Ace’s female ancestors.”
+
+He was gone for five minutes. The barn had apparently not yet been
+built in 1820 and he found himself on a slight rise in a field of wild
+hay. The faint snick of scythes, and voices not too far off, indicated
+mowers. He dropped to the ground. His view of the past was restricted
+to tall grass and some persistent ants who explored his face and hands
+until the time was up and he returned with broken spears of ripe hay
+clinging to his clothes.
+
+“At least that’s what I imagined I saw,” he concluded.
+
+“Did you imagine these?” asked Ace, pointing to the straws.
+
+“Probably. It’s at least as likely as time-travel.”
+
+“But what about corroboration? Your experience, and Barbara’s and Ace’s
+confirm each other. Doesnt that mean anything?”
+
+“Certainly. Only I’m not prepared to say what. The mind can do
+anything; anything at all. Create boils and cancers. Why not ants and
+grass? I don’t know. I don’t know....”
+
+After more fruitless argument, he and I left the workshop. I was again
+reminded of Enfandin—Why should I believe my eyes? I felt though that
+Midbin was carrying skepticism beyond rational limits; Barbara’s case
+was proved.
+
+“Yes, yes,” he answered when I said this. “Why not?”
+
+I puzzled over his reply. Then he added abruptly, “No one can help her
+now.”
+
+
+
+
+_18._ _THE WOMAN TEMPTED ME_
+
+
+Gently, Catty said, “Ive never understood why you cut yourself off from
+the past the way you have, Hodge.”
+
+“Ay? What do you mean?”
+
+“Well, youve not communicated with your father or mother since you left
+home, fourteen years ago. You say you had a dear friend in the man from
+Haiti, yet youve never tried to find out whether he lived or died.”
+
+“Oh, that way. I thought you meant ... something different.” By not
+taking advantage of Barbara’s offer I certainly was cutting myself off
+from the past.
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“Well, I guess more or less everyone at the haven has done the same
+thing. Let outside ties grow weak, I mean. You for one—”
+“But I have no parents, no friends anywhere else. All my life is here.”
+
+“Well, so is mine.”
+
+“Ah, dear Hodge; it is unlike you to be so indifferent.”
+
+“Catty darling, you were brought up comfortably in an atmosphere
+knowing nothing of indenting or sharecropping, of realizing the only
+escape from wretchedness was in a miracle—usually translated as a
+winning number in the lottery. I can’t convey to you the meaning of
+utterly loveless surroundings, I can only say that affection was a
+luxury my mother and father couldnt afford.”
+
+“Perhaps not; but you can afford it. Now. And nothing of what you have
+said applies to Enfandin.”
+
+I squirmed shamefacedly. My ingratitude and callousness must be
+apparent to everyone; even Barbara, I remembered, had once asked me
+much the same questions Catty asked now. How could I explain, even to
+my own satisfaction, how procrastination and guilt made it impossible
+for me to take the simple steps to discover what had happened to my
+friend? By a tremendous effort I might have broken through the inertia
+years ago, just after Enfandin had been wounded, but each day and month
+between confirmed the impossibility more strongly. “Let the past take
+care of itself,” I muttered.
+
+“Oh Hodge! What a thing for an historian to say.”
+
+“Catty, I can’t.”
+
+The conversation made me nervous and fidgetty. It also made me remember
+much I preferred to let fade: the Grand Army, Sprovis, the counterfeit
+pesetas.... All the evil I had unwillingly abetted. If a man did
+nothing, literally nothing, all his life, then he might be free of
+culpability. Manichaeism, said Enfandin. No absolution.
+
+My idleness, I knew very well, heightened all these feelings of
+degradation. Were I able to continue in the happy, cocksure way I
+had gone about my note-gathering and the writing of volume one, I
+would have neither the time nor susceptibility to be plagued by this
+disquiet. As it was I seemed to be able to do nothing but act as
+audience for what was going on in the workshop.
+
+With childish eagerness Barbara and Ace explored HX-1’s possibilities
+for the next two months. They quickly learned that its range was
+limited to little more than a century, though this limit was subject
+to slight variations. When they tried to operate beyond this range
+the translation simply didnt take place, though the same feeling of
+dissolution occurred. When the light faded they were still in the
+present. Midbin’s venture into the hayfield had been a freak, possibly
+due to peculiar weather conditions at both ends of the journey. They
+set 1850 as a safe limit, with an undefined marginal zone further back
+which was not to be hazarded lest conditions change during the journey
+and the traveler be lost.
+
+Why this limit existed at all was a matter of dispute between them,
+a dispute of which I must admit I understood little. Barbara spoke
+of subjective factors which seemed to mean that HX-1 worked slightly
+differently in the case of each person it transported; Ace of magnetic
+fields and power relays, which didnt mean anything to me at all. The
+only thing they agreed on was that the barrier was not immutable; HX-2
+or 3 or 20, if they were ever built, would undoubtedly overcome it.
+
+Nor would HX-1 work in reverse; the future remained closed, probably
+for similar reasons, whatever they were. Here again they disputed, Ace
+holding an HX could be built for this purpose, Barbara insisting that
+new equations would have to be worked out.
+
+They confirmed their tentative theory that time spent in the past
+consumed an equal amount of time in the present; they could not return
+to a point a minute after departure when they had been gone for an
+hour. As near as I could understand, this was because duration was
+set in the present. In order to come back to a time-point not in
+correspondence with the period actually spent, another HX, or at least
+another set of controls, would have to be taken into the past. And then
+they would not work since HX-1 could not penetrate the future.
+
+The most inconvenient circumscription was the inability of one person
+to visit the same past moment twice. When the attempt was made the
+feeling of dissolution did not occur, the light went on and off with no
+effect upon the would-be traveler standing beneath it. Here Barbara’s
+“subjective factor” was triumphant, but why, or how it worked, they
+did not know. Nor did they know what would happen to a traveler who
+attempted to overlap by being already on the spot prior to a previous
+visit; it was too dangerous to try.
+
+Within these limits they roamed almost at will. Ace spent a full
+week in October 1896, walking as far as Philadelphia, enjoying the
+enthusiasm and fury of the presidential campaign. Knowing President
+Bryan was not only going to be elected, but would serve three terms,
+he found it hard indeed to obey Barbara’s stricture and not cover
+confident Whig bets on Major McKinley.
+
+Though both sampled the war years they brought back nothing useful to
+me, no information or viewpoint I couldnt have got from any of a score
+of books. Lacking historians’ interests or training, their tidbits were
+those of curious onlookers, not probing chroniclers. It was tantalizing
+to know that Barbara had seen Secretary Stanton at the York depot or
+that Ace had overheard a farmer say casually that Southron scouts
+had stopped at his place the day before and they had thought neither
+incident worth investigating further.
+
+I grew increasingly fretful. I held long colloquies with myself which
+always ended inconclusively. _Why not?_ I asked. _Surely this is the
+unique opportunity. Never before has it been possible for an historian
+to check back at will, to select a particular moment for personal
+scrutiny, to write of the past with the detachment of the present and
+the accuracy of an eyewitness knowing specifically what to look for.
+Why don’t you take advantage of HX-1 and see for yourself?_
+
+Against this I objected—what? Fear? Uneasiness? The “subjective factor”
+in HX-1? The superstitious notion that I might be tampering with a
+taboo, with matters forbidden to human shortcomings? _You mustnt try
+any shortcuts. Promise me that, Hodge._ Well, Catty was a darling. She
+was my beloved wife, but she was neither scholar nor oracle. On what
+grounds did she protest? Woman’s intuition? A respectable phrase, but
+what did it mean? And didnt Barbara, who first suggested my using HX-1,
+have womanly intuition also?
+
+A half-dozen times I tried to steer our talk in the direction of my
+thoughts; each time I allowed the words to drift to another topic. What
+was the use of upsetting her? _Promise me that, Hodge._ But I had not
+promised. This was something I had to settle for myself.
+
+What was I afraid of? Because I’d never grasped anything to do with
+the physical sciences did I attribute some anthropomorphism to their
+manifestations and like a savage fear the spirit imprisoned in what I
+didnt understand? (But HX-1 _did_ have subjective factors.) I had never
+thought of myself as hidebound, but I was acting like a ninety-yearold
+professor asked to use a typewriter instead of a goose quill.
+
+I recalled Tyss’s, “You are the spectator type, Hodgins.” And once
+I had called him out of my memory I couldnt escape his familiar,
+sardonic, interminable argument. _Why are you fussing yourself,
+Hodgins? What is the point of all this introspective debate? Don’t
+you know your choice has already been made? And that you have acted
+according to it an infinite number of times and will do so an infinite
+number of times again? Relax, Hodgins; you have nothing to worry about.
+Free will is an illusion; you cannot alter what you are about to decide
+under the impression that you have decided._
+
+My reaction to this imagined interjection was frenzied, unreasonable. I
+cursed Tyss and his damnable philosophy. I cursed the insidiousness of
+his reasoning which had planted seed in my brain to sprout at a moment
+like this.
+
+Yet in spite of the violence of my rejection of the words I attributed
+to Tyss, I accepted one of them. I relaxed. The decision had been made.
+Not by mechanistic forces, nor by blind response to stimulus, but by my
+own desire.
+
+And now to my aid came the image of Tyss’s antithesis, René Enfandin.
+_Be a skeptic, Hodge; be always the skeptic. Prove all things; hold
+fast to that which is true. Joking Pilate, asking,_ What is truth? _was
+blind. But you can see more aspects of the absolute truth than any man
+has had a chance to see before. Can you use the chance well, Hodge?
+That is the only question._
+
+Once I could answer it with a vigorous affirmative, and so buttress the
+determination to go, I was faced with the problem of telling Catty. I
+could not shut her out of so important a move. I told myself I could
+not bear the thought of her anxiety; that she would worry despite
+the fact others had frequently used HX-1, for my object could not be
+accomplished in a matter of minutes or hours. I was sure she would be
+sick with apprehension during the days I would be gone. No doubt this
+was all true, but I also remembered, _Promise me, Hodge_....
+
+I finally took the weak, the ineffective course. I said I’d decided
+the only way to face my problem was to go to Gettysburg and spend
+three or four days going over the actual field. Here, I explained
+unconvincingly, I thought I might at last come to the conclusion
+whether to scrap all my work and start afresh, or not.
+
+Her faintly oblique eyes were inscrutable. She pretended to believe me
+and begged me to take her along. After all, we had spent our honeymoon
+on battlefields.
+
+Would it be possible? Two people had never stood under the reflector
+together, but surely it would work? I was tempted, but I could not
+subject Catty to the risk, however slight. Besides, how could I explain?
+
+“But Catty, with you there I’d be thinking of you instead of the
+problem.”
+
+“Ah, Hodge, have we already been married so long you must get away from
+me to think?”
+
+“No matter how long, that time will never come. Perhaps I’m wrong,
+Catty. It’s just a feeling I have.”
+
+Her look was tragic with understanding. “You must do as you think
+right. Don’t ... don’t be gone too long, my dear.”
+
+I dressed in clothes I often used for walking trips, clothes which bore
+no mark of any fashion and might pass as current wear among the poorer
+classes in any era of the past hundred years. I put a packet of dried
+beef in my pocket and started for the workshop.
+
+As soon as I left the cottage I laughed at my hypersensitivity, at
+all the to-do I’d made over lying to Catty. This was but the first
+excursion; I planned others for the months after Gettysburg. There was
+no reason why she shouldnt accompany me on them. I grew lighthearted as
+my conscience eased and I even congratulated myself on my skill in not
+having told a single technical falsehood to Catty. I began to whistle,
+never a habit of mine, as I made my way along the path to the workshop.
+
+Barbara was alone. Her ginger hair gleamed in the light of a gas globe;
+her eyes were green as they always were when she was exultant. “Well,
+Hodge?”
+
+“Well, Barbara, I....”
+
+“Have you told Catty?”
+
+“Not exactly. How did you know?”
+
+“I knew before you did, Hodge. After all, we’re not strangers. All
+right. How long do you want to stay?”
+
+“Four days.”
+
+“That’s long for a first trip. Don’t you think you’d better try a few
+sample minutes?”
+
+“Why? Ive seen you and Ace go often enough and heard your accounts.
+I’ll take care of myself. Have you got it down fine enough yet so you
+can invariably pick the hour of arrival?”
+
+“Hour and minute,” she answered confidently. “What’ll it be?”
+
+“About midnight of June 30, 1863,” I answered. “I want to come back on
+the night of July Fourth.”
+
+“Youll have to be more exact than that. For the return, I mean. The
+dials are set on seconds.”
+
+“All right, make it midnight going and coming then.”
+
+“Have you a watch that keeps perfect time?”
+
+“I don’t know about perfect—”
+“Take this one. It’s synchronized with the master control clock.” She
+handed me a large, rather awkward timepiece which had two independent
+faces side by side. “We had a couple made like this; the duplicate
+dials were useful before we were able to control HX-1 so exactly. One
+shows 1952 Haggershaven time.”
+
+“Ten thirty-three and fourteen seconds,” I said.
+
+“Yes. The other will show 1863 time. You won’t be able to reset the
+first dial—but for goodness sake remember to keep it wound—and set the
+second for ... 11:54, zero. That means in six minutes youll leave, to
+arrive at midnight. Remember to keep that one wound too, for youll
+go by that regardless of variations in local clocks. Whatever else
+happens, be in the center of the barn at midnight—allow yourself some
+leeway—by midnight, July Fourth. I don’t want to have to go wandering
+around 1863 looking for you.”
+
+“You won’t. I’ll be here.”
+
+“Five minutes. Now then, food.”
+
+“I have some,” I answered, slapping my pocket.
+
+“Not enough. Take this concentrated chocolate along. I suppose it
+won’t hurt to drink the water if youre not observed, but avoid their
+food. One never knows what chain might be started by the casual
+theft—or purchase, if you had enough old coins—of a loaf of bread. The
+possibilities are limitless and frightening. Listen: how can I impress
+on you the importance of doing nothing that could possibly change the
+future—our present? I’m sure to this day Ace doesnt understand, and I
+tremble every moment he spends in the past. The most trivial action
+may begin a series of disastrous consequences. Don’t be seen, don’t be
+heard. Make your trip as a ghost.”
+
+“Barbara, I promise I’ll neither assassinate General Lee nor give the
+North the idea of a modern six-barreled cannon.”
+
+“Four minutes. It’s not a joke, Hodge.”
+
+“Believe me,” I said, “I understand.”
+
+She looked at me searchingly. Then she shook her head and began making
+her round of the engines, adjusting the dials. I slid under the
+glass ring as I’d so often seen her do and stood casually under the
+reflector. I was not in the least nervous. I don’t think I was even
+particularly excited.
+
+“Three minutes,” said Barbara.
+
+I patted my breast pocket. Notebook, pencils. I nodded.
+
+She ducked under the ring and came toward me. “Hodge....”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+She put her arms on my shoulders, leaning forward. I kissed her, a
+little absently. “Clod!”
+
+I looked at her closely, but there were none of the familiar signs of
+anger. “A minute to go, it says here,” I told her.
+
+She drew away and went back. “All set. Ready?”
+
+“Ready,” I answered cheerfully. “See you midnight, July Fourth, 1863.”
+
+“Right. Goodbye, Hodge. Glad you didnt tell Catty.”
+
+The expression on her face was the strangest I’d ever seen her wear. I
+could not, then or now, quite interpret it. Doubt, malice, suffering,
+vindictiveness, entreaty, love, were all there as her hand moved the
+switch. I began to answer something—perhaps to bid her wait—then the
+light made me blink and I too experienced the shattering feeling of
+transition. My bones seemed to fly from each other; every cell in my
+body exploded to the ends of space.
+
+The instant of translation was so brief it is hard to believe all the
+multitude of impressions occurred simultaneously. I was sure my veins
+were drained of blood, my brain and eyeballs dropped into a bottomless
+void, my thoughts pressed to the finest powder and blown a universe
+away. Most of all, I knew the awful sensation of being, for that tiny
+fragment of time, not Hodgins McCormick Backmaker, but part of an _I_
+in which the I that was me merged all identity.
+
+Then I opened my eyes. I was emotionally shaken; my knees and wrists
+were watery points of helplessness, but I was alive and functioning,
+with my individuality unimpaired. The light had vanished. I was in
+darkness save for faint moonlight coming through the cracks in the
+barn. The sweetish smell of cattle was in my nostrils, and the slow,
+ponderous stamp of hooves in my ears. I had gone back through time.
+
+
+
+
+_19._ _GETTYSBURG_
+
+
+The barking of the dogs was frenzied, filled with the hoarse note
+indicating they had been raising the alarm for a long time without
+being heeded. I knew they must have been baying at the alien smells
+of soldiers for the past day, so I was not apprehensive that their
+scent of me would bring investigation. How Barbara and Ace had escaped
+detection on journeys which didnt coincide with abnormal events was
+beyond me; with such an unnerving racket in prospect I would either
+have given up the trips or moved the apparatus.
+
+Strange, I reflected, that the cows and horses were undisturbed. That
+no hysterical chicken leaped from the roost in panic. Only the dogs
+scented my unnatural presence. Dogs who, as Mr Haggerwells remarked,
+are supposed to sense things beyond the perceptions of man.
+
+Warily I picked my way past the livestock and out of the barn,
+fervently hoping the dogs were tied, for I had no mind to start my
+adventure by being bitten. Barbara’s warnings seemed inadequate
+indeed; one would think she or Ace might have devised some method of
+neutralizing the infernal barking. But of course they could hardly do
+so without violating her rule of non-interference.
+
+Once out on the familiar Hanover road every petty feeling of doubt or
+disquiet fell away and all the latent excitement took hold of me. I was
+gloriously in 1863, half a day and some thirty miles from the battle
+of Gettysburg. If there is a paradise for historians I had achieved it
+without the annoyance of dying first. I swung along at a good pace,
+thankful I had trained myself for long tramps, so that thirty miles in
+less than ten hours was no monstrous feat. The noise of the dogs died
+away behind me and I breathed the night air joyfully.
+
+I had already decided I dared not attempt to steal a ride on the
+railroad, even supposing the cars were going through. As I turned off
+the Hanover road and took the direct one to Gettysburg, I knew I would
+not be able to keep on it for any length of time. Part of Early’s
+Confederate division was moving along it from recently occupied York;
+Stuart’s cavalry was all around; trifling skirmishes were being fought
+on or near it; Union troops, regulars as well as the militia called
+out by Governor Curtin for the emergency, were behind and ahead of me,
+marching for the Monocacy and Cemetery Ridge.
+
+Leaving the highway would hardly slow me down, for I knew every
+sideroad, lane, path or shortcut, not only as they existed in my day,
+but as they had been in the time where I was now. I was going to need
+this knowledge even more on my return, for on the Fourth of July this
+road, like every other, would be glutted with beaten Northern troops,
+supplies and wounded left behind, frantically trying to reorganize as
+they were harassed by Stuart’s cavalry and pressed by the victorious
+men of Hill, Longstreet, and Ewell. It was with this in mind I had
+allowed disproportionately longer for coming back.
+
+I saw my first soldier a few miles further on, a jagged shadow sitting
+by the roadside with his boots off, massaging his feet. I guessed him
+Northern from his kepi, but this was not conclusive, for many Southron
+regiments wore kepis also. I struck off quietly into the field and
+skirted around him. He never looked up.
+
+At dawn I estimated I was halfway, and except for the sight of that
+single soldier I might have been taking a nocturnal stroll through a
+countryside at peace. I was tired but certainly not worn out, and I
+knew I could count on nervous energy and happy excitement to keep me
+going long after my muscles began to protest. Progress would be slower
+from now on—Confederate infantry must be just ahead—even so, I should
+be at Gettysburg by six or seven.
+
+The sudden drumming of hooves brushed me off the dusty pike and
+petrified me into rigidity as a troop dressed in gray and dirty tan
+galloped by screaming, “Eeeeee-yeeee” exultantly. The gritty cloud they
+stirred up settled slowly; I felt the particles sting my face and eyes.
+It would be the sideroads from now on, I determined.
+
+Others had the same impulse; the sideroads were well populated.
+Although I knew the movement of every division and of many regiments,
+and even had some considerable idea of the civilian dislocation, the
+picture around me was jumbled and turbulent. Farmers, merchants,
+workers in overalls rode or tramped eastward; others, identical in
+dress and obvious intensity of effort, pushed westward. I passed
+carriages and carts with women and children traveling at various
+speeds both ways. Squads and companies of blue-clad troops marched
+along the roads or through the fields, trampling the crops, a confused
+sound of singing, swearing, or aimless talk hanging above them like a
+fog. Spaced by pacific intervals, men in gray or butternut, otherwise
+indistinguishable, marched in the same direction. I decided I could
+pass unnoticed in the milling crowds.
+
+It is not easy for the historian, ten, fifty or five hundred years away
+from an event, to put aside for a moment the large concepts of currents
+and forces, or the mechanical aids of statistics, charts, maps, neat
+plans and diagrams in which the migration of men, women and children is
+indicated by an arrow, or a brigade of half-terrified, half-heroic men
+becomes a neat little rectangle. It is not easy to see behind source
+material, to visualize state papers, reports, letters, diaries as
+written by men who spent most of their lives sleeping, eating, yawning,
+eliminating, squeezing blackheads, lusting, looking out of windows,
+or talking about nothing in general with no one in particular. We are
+too impressed with the pattern revealed to us—or which we think has
+been revealed to us—to remember that for the participants history is a
+haphazard affair, apparently aimless, produced by human beings whose
+concern is essentially with the trivial and irrelevant. The historian
+is always conscious of destiny. The participants rarely—or mistakenly.
+
+So to be set down in the midst of crisis, to be at once involved and
+apart, is to experience a constant series of shocks against which there
+is no anesthetic. The soldiers, the stragglers, the refugees, the farm
+boys shouting at horses, the tophatted gentlemen cursing the teamsters,
+the teamsters cursing back; the looters, pimps, gamblers, whores,
+nurses and newspapermen were indisputably what they appeared: vitally
+important to themselves, of little interest to anyone else. Yet at the
+same time they were a paragraph, a page, a chapter, a whole series of
+volumes.
+
+I’m sure I was faithful to the spirit if not the letter of Barbara’s
+warnings, and that none of the hundreds whom I passed or who passed
+me noted my presence, except cursorily. I, on the other hand, had to
+repress the constant temptation to peer into every face for signs which
+could not tell me what fortune or misfortune the decision of the next
+three days would bring to it.
+
+A few miles from town the crowded disorder became even worse, for the
+scouts from Ewell’s Corps, guarding the Confederate left flank on the
+York Road, acted like a cork in a bottle. Because I, unlike the other
+travelers, knew this, I cut sharply south to get back on the circuitous
+Hanover road I had left shortly after midnight, and crossing the bridge
+over Rock Creek, stumbled into Gettysburg.
+
+The two and a half storey brick houses with their purplish slate roofs
+were placid and charming in the hot July sun. A valiant rooster pecked
+at horsedung in the middle of the street heedless of the swarming
+soldiers, any of whom might take a notion for roast chicken. Privates
+in the black hats of the Army of the Potomac, cavalrymen with wide
+yellow stripes and cannoneers with red ones on the seams of their
+pants, swaggered importantly. Lieutenants with hands resting gracefully
+on sword hilts, captains with arms thrust in unbuttoned tunics,
+colonels smoking cigars, all moved back and forth across the street,
+out of and into houses and stores, each clearly intent on some business
+which would affect the course of the war. Now and then a general
+rode his horse through the crowd, slowly and thoughtfully, oppressed
+by the cares of rank. Soldiers spat, leered at an occasional woman,
+sat dolefully on handy stoops, or marched smartly toward an unknown
+destination. On the courthouse staff the flag hung doubtfully in the
+limp summer air. Every so often there was a noise like poorly organized
+thunder.
+
+Imitating the adaptable infantrymen, I found an unoccupied stoop and
+sat down after a curious glance at the house, wondering whether it
+contained someone whose letters or diaries I had read. Drawing out
+my packet of dried beef, I munched away without taking any of my
+attention from the sights and sounds and smells around me. Only I knew
+how desperately these soldiers would fight this afternoon and all day
+tomorrow. I alone knew how they would be caught in the inescapable trap
+on July Third and finally routed, to begin the last act of the war.
+That major, I thought, so proud of his new-won golden oak leaves, may
+have an arm or leg shot off vainly defending Culp’s Hill; that sergeant
+over there may lie faceless under an apple tree before nightfall.
+
+Soon these men would be swept away from the illusory shelter of the
+houses and out onto the ridges where they would be pounded into defeat
+and disaster. There was nothing for me now in Gettysburg itself, though
+I could have spent days absorbing the color and feeling. Already I
+had tempted fate by my casual appearance in the heart of town. At any
+moment someone might speak to me, to ask for a light or a direction; an
+ill-considered word or action of mine might change, with ever-widening
+consequences, the course of the future. I had been foolish enough long
+enough; it was time for me to go to the vantage point I had decided
+upon and observe without peril of being observed.
+
+I rose and stretched, my bones protesting. But a couple of miles
+more would see me clear of all danger of chance encounter with a too
+friendly or inquisitive soldier or civilian. I gave a last look,
+trying to impress every detail on my memory, and turned south on the
+Emmitsburg Road.
+
+This was no haphazard choice. I knew where and when the crucial, the
+decisive move upon which all the other moves depended would take place.
+While thousands of men were struggling and dying on other parts of the
+battleground, a Confederate advance force, unnoticed, disregarded,
+would occupy the position which would eventually dominate the scene
+and win the battle—and the war—for the South. Heavy with knowledge no
+one else possessed I made my way toward a farm on which there was a
+wheatfield and a peach orchard.
+
+
+
+
+_20._ _BRING THE JUBILEE_
+
+
+A great battle in its first stages is as tentative, uncertain, and
+indefinite as a courtship just begun. At the beginning the ground was
+there for either side to take without protest; the other felt no surge
+of possessive jealousy. I walked unscathed along the Emmitsburg Road;
+on my left I knew there were Union forces concealed, on my right the
+Southrons maneuvered. In a few hours, to walk between the lines would
+mean instant death, but now the declaration had not been made, the
+vows had not been finally exchanged. It was still possible for either
+party to withdraw; no furious heat bound the two indissolubly together.
+I heard the periodic shell and the whine of a minie bullet; mere
+flirtatious gestures so far.
+
+Despite the hot sun the grass was cool and lush. The shade in the
+orchard was velvety. From a low branch I picked a near ripe peach and
+sucked the wry juice. I sprawled on the earth and waited. For miles
+around, men from Maine and Wisconsin, from Georgia and North Carolina,
+assumed the same attitude. But I knew for what I was waiting; they
+could only guess.
+
+Some acoustical freak dimmed the noises in the air to little more
+than amplification of the normal summer sounds. Did the ground really
+tremble faintly, or was I translating my mental picture of the marching
+armies, the great wagon trains, the heavy cannon, the iron-shod horses
+into an imagined physical effect? I don’t think I dozed, but certainly
+my attention withdrew from the rows of trees with their scarred and
+runneled bark, curving branches and graceful leaves, so that I was
+taken unaware by the unmistakable clump and creak of mounted men.
+
+The blue-uniformed cavalry rode slowly through the peach orchard.
+They seemed like a group of aimless hunters returning from the futile
+pursuit of a fox; they chatted, shouted at each other, walked their
+horses abstractedly. One or two had their sabres out; they rose in
+their saddles and cut at the branches overhead in pure, pointless
+mischief.
+
+Behind them came the infantrymen, sweating and swearing, more serious.
+Some few had wounds, others were without their muskets. Their dark blue
+tunics were carelessly unbuttoned, their lighter pants were stained
+with mud and dust and grass. They trampled and thrashed around like men
+long weary. Quarrels rose among them swiftly and swiftly petered out.
+No one could mistake them for anything but troops in retreat
+
+After they had passed, the orchard was still again, but the stillness
+had a different quality from what had gone before. The leaves did not
+rustle, no birds chirped, there were no faint betrayals of the presence
+of chipmunks or squirrels. Only if one listened very closely was the
+dry noise of insects perceptible. But I heard the guns now. Clearly and
+louder. And more continuously—much more continuously. It was not yet
+the full roar of battle, but death was authentic in its low rumble.
+
+Then the Confederates came. Cautiously, but not so cautiously that one
+could fail to recognize they represented a victorious, invading army.
+Shabby they certainly were, as they pushed into the orchard, but alert
+and confident. Only a minority had uniforms which resembled those
+prescribed by regulation and these were torn, grimy and scuffed. Many
+of the others wore the semiofficial butternut—crudely dyed homespun,
+streaked and muddy brown. Some had ordinary clothes with military hats
+and buttons; a few were dressed in federal blue trousers with gray or
+butternut jackets.
+
+Nor were their weapons uniform. There were long rifles, short carbines,
+muskets of varying age, and I noticed one bearded soldier with a
+ponderous shotgun. But whatever their dress or arms, their bearing was
+the bearing of conquerors. If I alone on the field that day knew for
+sure the outcome of the battle, these Confederate soldiers were close
+behind in sensing the future.
+
+The straggling Northerners had passed me by with the clouded perception
+of the retreating. These Southrons, however, were steadfastly attentive
+to every sight and sound. Too late I realized the difficulty of
+remaining unnoticed by such sharp, experienced eyes. Even as I berated
+myself for my stupidity, a great, whiskery fellow in what must once
+have been a stylish bottle-green coat pointed his gun at me.
+
+“Yank here boys!” Then to me, “What you doing here, fella?”
+
+Three or four came up and surrounded me curiously. “Funniest lookin
+damyank I ever did see. Looks like he just fell out of a bathtub.”
+
+Since I had walked all night on dusty roads I could only think their
+standards of cleanliness were not high. And indeed this was confirmed
+by the smell coming from them: the stink of sweat, of clothes long
+slept in, of unwashed feet and stale tobacco.
+
+“I’m a noncombatant,” I said foolishly.
+
+“Whazzat?” asked the beard. “Some kind of Baptist?”
+
+“Naw,” corrected one of the others. “It’s a law-word. Means not all
+right in the head.”
+
+“Looks all right in the foot though. Let’s see your boots, Yank. Mine’s
+sure wore out.”
+
+What terrified me now was not the thought of my boots being stolen,
+or of being treated as a prisoner, or even the remote chance of being
+shot as a spy. A greater, more indefinite catastrophe was threatened by
+my exposure. These men were the advance company of a regiment due to
+sweep through the orchard and the wheatfield, explore that bit of wild
+ground known as the Devil’s Den and climb up Little Round Top closely
+followed by an entire Confederate brigade. This was the brigade which
+held the Round Top for several hours until artillery was brought up,
+artillery which dominated the entire field and gave the South victory
+at Gettysburg.
+
+There was no allowance for a pause, no matter how trifling, in the
+peach orchard, in any of the accounts I’d read or heard of. The hazard
+Barbara had warned so insistently against had happened. I had been
+discovered, and the mere discovery had altered the course of history.
+
+I tried to shrug it off. Delay of a few minutes could hardly make a
+significant difference. All historians agreed that the capture of the
+Round Tops was an inevitability; the Confederates would have been
+foolish to overlook them—in fact it was hardly possible they could,
+prominent as they were both on maps and in physical reality—and they
+had occupied them hours before the Federals made a belated attempt to
+take them. I had been unbelievably stupid to expose myself, but I had
+created no repercussions likely to spread beyond the next few minutes.
+
+“Said let’s see them boots. Aint got all day to wait.”
+
+A tall officer with a pointed imperial and a sandy, faintly reddish
+mustache whose curling ends shone waxily came up, revolver in hand.
+“What’s going on here?”
+
+“Just a Yank, Capn. Making a little change of footgear.” The tone was
+surly, almost insolent.
+
+The galloons on the officer’s sleeve told me the title was not
+honorary. “I’m a civilian, Captain,” I protested. “I realize I have no
+business here.”
+
+The captain looked at me coldly, with an expression of disdainful
+contempt. “Local man?” he asked.
+
+“Not exactly. I’m from York.”
+
+“Too bad. Thought you could tell me about the Yanks up ahead. Jenks,
+leave the civilian gentleman in full possession of his boots.”
+
+There was rage behind that sneer, a hateful anger apparently directed
+at me for being a civilian, at his men for their obvious lack of
+respect, at the battle, the world. I suddenly realized his face was
+intimately familiar. Irritatingly, because I could connect it with no
+name, place or circumstance.
+
+“How long have you been in this orchard, Mister Civilian-From-York?”
+
+The effort to identify him nagged me, working in the depths of my
+mind, obtruding even into that top layer which was concerned with what
+was going on.
+
+What was going on? _Too bad. Thought you could tell me about the Yanks
+up ahead. How long have you been in this orchard?_
+
+Yanks up ahead? There werent any. There wouldnt be, for hours.
+
+“I said, ‘How long you been in this orchard?’”
+
+Probably an officer later promoted to rank prominent enough to have his
+picture in one of the minor narratives. Yet I was certain his face was
+no likeness I’d seen once in a steel engraving and dismissed. These
+were features often encountered....
+
+“Sure like to have them boots. If we aint fightin for Yankee boots,
+what the hell we fightin for?”
+
+What could I say? That I’d been in the orchard for half an hour? The
+next question was bound to be, Had I seen Federal troops? Whichever way
+I answered I would be betraying my role of spectator.
+
+“Hey Capn—this fella knows something. Lookit the silly grin!”
+Was I smiling? In what? Terror? Perplexity? In the mere effort of
+keeping silent, so as to be involved no further?
+
+“Tell yah—he’s laughin cuz he knows somethin!”
+Let them hang me, let them strip me of my boots; from here on I was
+dumb as dear Catty had been once.
+
+“Out with it man—youre in a tight spot. Are there Yanks up ahead?”
+The confusion in my mind approached chaos. If I knew the captain’s
+eventual rank I could place him. Colonel Soandso. Brigadier-General
+Blank. What had happened? Why had I let myself be discovered? Why had I
+spoken at all and made silence so hard now?
+
+“Yanks up ahead—they’s Yanks up ahead!”
+“Quiet you! I asked him—he didnt say there were Yanks ahead.”
+“Hay! Damyanks up above. Goin to mow us down!”
+
+“Fella says the bluebellies are layin fur us!”
+
+Had the lie been in my mind, to be telepathically plucked by the
+excited soldiers? Was even silence no refuge from participation?
+
+“Man here spotted the whole Fed artillery up above, trained on us!”
+
+“Pull back, boys! Pull back!”
+
+I’d read often enough of the epidemic quality of a perfectly
+unreasonable notion. A misunderstood word, a baseless rumor, an
+impossible report, was often enough to set a group of armed men—squad
+or army—into senseless mob action. Sometimes the infection made for
+feats of heroism, sometimes for panic. This was certainly less than
+panic, but my nervous, meaningless smile conveyed a message I had never
+sent.
+
+“It’s a trap. Pull back boys—let’s get away from these trees and out
+where we can see the Yanks!”
+
+The captain whirled on his men. “Here, damn you,” he shouted furiously,
+“you all gone crazy? The man said nothing. There’s no trap!”
+
+The men moved slowly, sullenly away. “I heard him,” one of them
+muttered, looking accusingly toward me.
+
+The captain’s shout became a yell. “Come back here! Back here, I say!”
+
+His raging stride overtook the still irresolute men. He grabbed the one
+called Jenks by the shoulder and whirled him about. Jenks tried to jerk
+free. There was fear on his face, and hate. “Leave me go, damn you,” he
+screamed, “Leave me go!”
+
+The captain yelled at his men again. Jenks snatched at the pistol with
+his left hand; the officer pulled the gun away. Jenks brought his
+musket upright against the captain’s body, the muzzle just under his
+chin, and pushed—as though the firearm somehow gave him leverage. They
+wrestled briefly, then the musket went off.
+
+The captain’s hat flew upward, and for an instant he stood, bareheaded,
+in the private’s embrace. Then he fell. Jenks wrenched his musket free
+and disappeared.
+
+When I came out of my shock I walked over to the body. The face had
+been blown off. Shreds of human meat dribbled bloodily on the gray
+collar and soiled the fashionably long hair. I had killed a man.
+Through my interference with the past I had killed a man who had been
+destined to longer life and even some measure of fame. I was the guilty
+sorcerer’s apprentice.
+
+I stooped down to put my hands inside his coat for papers which would
+tell me who he was and satisfy the curiosity which still basely
+persisted. It was not shame which stopped me. Just nausea, and remorse.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I saw the Battle of Gettysburg. I saw it with all the unique advantages
+of a professional historian thoroughly conversant with the patterns,
+the movements, the details, who knows where to look for the coming
+dramatic moment, the recorded decisive stroke. I fulfilled the
+chroniclers’ dream.
+
+It was a nightmare.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+To begin with, I slept. I slept not far from the captain’s body in the
+peach orchard. This was not callousness, but physical and emotional
+exhaustion. When I went to sleep the guns were thundering; when I
+woke they were thundering louder. It was late afternoon. I thought
+immediately, this is the time for the futile Union charge against the
+Round Tops.
+
+But the guns were not sounding from there. All the roar was northward,
+from the town. I knew how the battle went; I had studied it for years.
+Only now it wasn’t happening the way it was written down in the books.
+
+True, the first day was a Confederate victory. But it was not the
+victory we knew. It was just a little different, just a little short
+of the triumph recorded. And on the second day, instead of the
+Confederates getting astride the Taneytown Road and into the position
+from which they tore Meade’s army to bits from three sides, I witnessed
+a terrible encounter in the peach orchard and the wheatfield—places
+known to be safely behind the Southron lines.
+
+All my life I’d heard of Pickett’s charge on the third day. Of how
+the disorganized Federals were given the final killing blow in their
+vitals. Well, I saw Pickett’s charge on the third day and it was not
+the same charge in the historic place. It was a futile attempt to storm
+superior positions (positions, by established fact, in Lee’s hands
+since July First) ending in slaughter and defeat.
+
+Defeat for the South, not the North. Meade’s army was not broken; the
+Confederates could not scatter and pursue them now. The Capitulation,
+if it ever took place, would come under different circumstances. The
+independence of the Confederate States might not be acknowledged for
+years. If at all.
+
+All because the North held the Round Tops.
+
+Years more of killing, and possibly further years of guerrilla warfare.
+Thousands and thousands of dead, their blood on my hands. A poisoned
+continent, an inheritance of hate. Because of me.
+
+I cannot tell you how I got back to York. If I walked, it was
+somnambulistically. Possibly I rode the railroad or in a farmer’s cart.
+Part of my mind, a tiny part that kept coming back to pierce me no
+matter how often I crushed it out, remembered those who died, those
+who would have lived, but for me. Another part was concerned only with
+the longing to get back to my own time, to the haven, to Catty. A
+much larger part was simply blank, except for the awesome, incredible
+knowledge that the past could be changed—that the past _had_ been
+changed.
+
+I must have wound my watch—Barbara’s watch—for it was ten oclock on
+the night of July Fourth when I got to the barn. Ten oclock by 1863
+time; the other dial showed it to be 8:40, that would be twenty of
+nine in the morning, 1952 time. In two hours I would be home, safe
+from the nightmare of happenings that never happened, of guilt for
+the deaths of men not supposed to die, of the awful responsibility of
+playing destiny. If I could not persuade Barbara to smash her damnable
+contrivance I would do so myself.
+
+The dogs barked madly, but I was sure no one heeded. It was the Fourth
+of July, and a day of victory and rejoicing for all Pennsylvanians. I
+stole into the barn and settled myself in the exact center, even daring
+the use of a match, my last one, to be sure I’d be directly under the
+reflector when it materialized.
+
+I could not sleep, though I longed to blot out the horror and wake
+in my own time. Detail by detail I went over what I had seen,
+superimposing it like a palimpsest upon the history I’d always known.
+Sleep would have kept me from this wretched compulsion and from
+questioning my sanity, but I could not sleep.
+
+I have heard that in moments of overwhelming shock some irrelevancy,
+some inconsequential matter persistently forces itself on the
+attention. The criminal facing execution thinks, not of his imminent
+fate or of his crime, but of the cigarette stub he left burning in
+his cell. The bereaved widow dwells, not on her lost husband, but on
+tomorrow’s laundry. So it was with me. Behind that part of my mind
+re-living the past three days, a more elementary part gnawed at the
+identification of the slain captain.
+
+I knew that face. Particularly did I know that face set in a sneer,
+distorted with anger. But I could not remember it in Confederate
+uniform. I could not remember it with sandy mustaches. And yet the
+sandy, reddish hair, revealed in that terrible moment when his hat
+flew off, was as familiar as part of the face. Oh, I thought, if I
+could only place it once and for all and free my mind at least of this
+trivial thing.
+
+I wished there were some way I could have seen the watch, to
+concentrate on the creeping progress of the hands and distract
+myself from the wave after wave of wretched meditations which flowed
+over me. But the moonlight was not strong enough to make the face
+distinguishable, much less the figures on the dials. There was no
+narcotic.
+
+As one always is at such times I was convinced the appointed moment
+had passed unnoticed. Something had gone wrong. Over and over I had to
+tell myself that minutes seem hours in the waiting dark; it might feel
+like two or three in the morning to me; it was probably barely eleven.
+No use. A minute—or an hour or a second—later I was again positive
+midnight had passed.
+
+Finally I began to suffer a monstrous illusion. I began to think it
+was getting lighter. That dawn was coming. Of course I knew it could
+not be; what I fancied lifting darkness was only a sick condition
+of swollen, overtired eyes. Dawn does not come to Pennsylvania at
+midnight, and it was not yet midnight. At midnight I would be back at
+Haggershaven, in 1952.
+
+Even when the barn was fully lighted by the rising sun and I could see
+the cattle peaceful in their stalls I refused to believe what I saw. I
+took out my watch only to find something had disturbed the works; the
+hands registered five oclock. Even when the farmer, milk pails over
+arm, started in surprise, exclaiming, “Hay, what you doing here?”—even
+then, I did not believe.
+
+Only when, as I opened my mouth to explain to my involuntary host,
+did something happen. The puzzle which had pursued me for three days
+suddenly solved itself. I knew why the face of the Southron captain
+had been so familiar. Familiar beyond any of the better known warriors
+on either side. I had indeed known that face intimately; seen those
+features enraged or sneering. The nose, the mouth, the eyes, the
+expression were Barbara Haggerwells’. The man dead in the peach orchard
+was the man whose portrait hung in the library of Haggershaven, its
+founder, Herbert Haggerwells. Captain Haggerwells—never to become a
+major now, or buy this farm. Never to marry a local girl or beget
+Barbara’s great grandfather. Haggershaven had ceased to exist in the
+future.
+
+
+
+
+_21._ _FOR THE TIME BEING_
+
+
+I am writing this, as I said, in 1877. I am a healthy man of
+forty-five, no doubt with many years ahead of me. I might live to be a
+hundred, except for an illogical feeling that I must die before 1921.
+However, eighty-nine should be enough for anyone. So I have ample time
+to put my story down. Still, better to have it down and done with;
+should anything happen to me tomorrow it will be on paper.
+
+For what? As confession and apology? As an inverted substitute for the
+merciful amnesia which ought to have erased my memory as well as my
+biography? (I have written to Wappinger Falls; there are no records of
+any Hodgins family, or of Backmakers. Does this mean the forces I set
+in motion destroyed Private Hodgins as well as Captain Haggerwells? Or
+only that the Hodginses and Backmakers settled elsewhere? In either
+case I am like Adam—in this world—a special, parentless creation.)
+There is no one close enough to care, or intimate enough to accept my
+word in the face of all reason. I have not married in this time, nor
+shall I. I write only as old men talk to themselves.
+
+The rest of my personal story is simple. The name of the farmer who
+found me in his barn was Thammis; they had need of a hired hand and I
+stayed on. I had no desire to go elsewhere; in fact I could not bear to
+leave what was—and will never be—Haggershaven.
+
+In the beginning I used to go to the location of the Agati’s garden and
+look across at the spot where I left our cottage and Catty. It was an
+empty pilgrimage. Now I content myself with the work which needs doing.
+I shall stay here till I die.
+
+Catty. Haggershaven. Are they really gone, irrevocably lost, in a
+future which never existed, which couldnt exist, once the chain of
+causation was broken? Or do they exist after all, in a universe in
+which the South won the battle of Gettysburg and Major Haggerwells
+founded Haggershaven? Could another Barbara devise a means to reach
+that universe? I would give so much to believe this, but I cannot. I
+simply cannot.
+
+Children know about such things. They close their eyes and pray,
+“Please God, make it didnt happen.” Often they open their eyes to find
+it happened anyway, but this does not shake their faith that many times
+the prayer is granted. Adults smile, but can any of them be sure the
+memories they cherish were the same yesterday? Do they _know_ that a
+past cannot be expunged? Children know it can.
+
+And once lost, that particular past can never be regained. Another
+and another perhaps, but never the same one. There are no parallel
+universes—though this one may be sinuous and inconstant.
+
+That this world is a better place than the one into which I was born,
+and promises to grow still better, seems true. What idealism lay behind
+the Southron cause triumphed in the reconciliation of men like Lee;
+what was brutal never got the upper hand as it did in my world. The
+Negro is free; black legislatures pass advanced laws in South Carolina;
+black congressmen comport themselves with dignity in Washington. The
+Pacific railroad is built, immigrants pour in to a welcoming country to
+make it strong and wealthy; no one suggests they should be shut out or
+hindered.
+
+There are rumors of a deal between northern Republicans and southern
+Democrats, betraying the victory of the Civil War—how strange it is
+still, after fourteen years, to use this term instead of the familiar
+War of Southron Independence—in return for the presidency. If this is
+true, my brave new world is not so brave.
+
+It may not be so new either. Prussia has beaten France and proclaimed
+a German Empire; is this the start in a different way of the German
+Union? Will 1914 see an Emperors’ War—there is none in France
+now—leaving Germany facing ... whom?
+
+Any one of the inventions of my own time would make me a rich man
+if I could reproduce them, or cared for money. With mounting steel
+production and the tremendous jump in population, what a success the
+minible would be. Or the tinugraph. Or controllable balloons.
+
+The typewriter I have seen. It has developed along different and
+clumsier lines; inevitably, I suppose, given initial divergence. It may
+mean greater advances; more likely not. The universal use of gaslight
+must be far in the future if it is to come at all; certainly its advent
+is delayed by all this talk of inventing electric illumination. If we
+couldnt put electricity to work it’s unlikely my new contemporaries
+will be able to. Why, they havent even made the telegraph cheap and
+convenient.
+
+And something like HX-1? It is inconceivable. Could it be that in
+destroying the future in which Haggershaven existed I have also
+destroyed the only dimension in which time travel was possible?
+
+So strangely easily I can write the words, “I destroyed.”
+
+Catty.
+
+But what of Tyss’s philosophy? Is it possible I shall be condemned
+to repeat the destruction throughout eternity? Have I written these
+lines an infinite number of times before? Or is the mercy envisaged by
+Enfandin a reality? And what of Barbara’s expression as she bade me
+goodbye? Could she possibly
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Editorial note by Frederick Winter Thammis: Quite recently, in the
+summer of 1953 to be exact, I commissioned the remodelling of my family
+home near York, Pennsylvania. Among the bundles of old books and
+papers stored in the attic was a box of personal effects, labelled “H
+M Backmaker.” In it was the manuscript concluding with an unfinished
+sentence, reproduced above.
+
+My father used to tell me that when he was a boy there was an old
+man living on the farm, nominally as a hired hand, but actually as a
+pensioner, since he was beyond the age of useful labor. My father
+said the children considered him not quite right in his mind, but
+very entertaining, for he often repeated long, disjointed narratives
+of an impossible world and an impossible society which they found as
+fascinating as the Oz books. On looking back, he said, Old Hodge talked
+like an educated man, but this might simply be the impression of young,
+uncultivated minds.
+
+Clearly it was in some attempt to give form and unity to his tales
+that the old man wrote his fable down, and then was too shy to submit
+it for publication. This is the only reasonable way to account for its
+existence. Of course he says he wrote it in 1877, when he was far from
+old, and disconcertingly, analysis of the paper shows it might have
+been written then.
+
+Two other items should be noted. In the box of Backmaker’s belongings
+there was a watch of unknown manufacture and unique design. Housed in a
+cheap nickel case, the jeweled movement is of extraordinary precision
+and delicacy. The face has two dials, independently set and wound.
+
+The second is a quotation. It can be matched by similar quotations
+in any of half a hundred volumes on the Civil War. I pick this only
+because it is handy. From W. E. Woodward’s _Years of Madness_, p. 202:
+
+“ ... Union troops that night and next morning took a position on
+Cemetery Hill and Round Top.... The Confederates could have occupied
+this position but they failed to do so. It was an error with momentous
+consequences.”
+
+
+
+
+                           About Ward Moore
+
+
+On the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, there is a small hill
+called Little Round Top. One morning in July, 1863, the Confederate
+Army made the tactical error of not occupying this hill. It was a
+mistake that cost them victory in a battle which—in the view of many
+historians—was the turning point of the Civil War. In the ninety years
+since Gettysburg one question has never been far from the minds of
+most Southerners—and a good many Yankees, too: What if the battle had
+gone the other way, what if the South had won the war? Ward Moore—a
+Northerner himself—has settled the matter at last in a book that might
+be called imaginative historical fiction, an excursion into the world
+of might-have-been so filled with exact and convincing detail that, for
+a few hours, it seems true.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The author of _Bring the Jubilee_ was born in Madison, New Jersey, in
+1903. “From the age of five,” he writes, “books have been for me the
+essential narcotic; as a natural consequence I detested school. When
+this detestation did not bring on psychosomatic illnesses to save me
+from the hated classrooms, I was not above malingering or playing
+hooky—now a lost art, but one practiced in my generation. Three weeks
+short of graduation I quit high school and have not been inside a
+school house since, except to vote.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+“My first short story was written at the age of eleven and was followed
+by a flood of juvenilia, some little of which was unfortunately
+published. Happily, markets and industry died simultaneously; I wrote
+only desultorily until my first novel _Breathe the Air Again_ was
+published in 1942. This was acclaimed by Max Eastman in the American
+Mercury, who predicted that I would fall heir to ‘the cloak of Upton
+Sinclair.’ Something went wrong with the tailoring arrangements; my
+next novel was _Greener Than You Think_ (Sloane, 1947), a satirical
+fantasy.”
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In addition to these two novels, Mr. Moore has published a number of
+short stories in such disparate media as Amazing Stories and Harper’s
+Bazaar, Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Reporter, Science Fiction
+Quarterly and Tomorrow.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He concludes: “I have been intensely interested in the history of the
+Civil War ever since—at the age of six—I came across a book with nice
+black woodcuts showing the firing on Fort Sumter and the burning of
+Richmond. As an amateur I’ve read hundreds of dull volumes and a score
+of fascinating ones on the Irrepressible Conflict. A novel based on the
+concept ‘what would have happened if the South had won at Gettysburg,’
+was practically inevitable. _Bring the Jubilee_ is it.”
+
+
+
+
+                           _The Idea Behind_
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Bring The Jubilee , by Ward Moore.
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+<body>
+<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Bring the Jubilee, by Ward Moore</p>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you
+are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the
+country where you are located before using this eBook.
+</div>
+
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Bring the Jubilee</p>
+<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Ward Moore</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: March 18, 2022 [eBook #67652]</p>
+<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p>
+  <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Tim Lindell, Les Galloway and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)</p>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BRING THE JUBILEE ***</div>
+<hr class="chap" />
+
+<div class="transnote">
+<h3> Transcriber’s Notes</h3>
+
+<p>Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations
+in hyphenation been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation
+remains unchanged. Note in particular that the apostrophe is very
+rarely used to indicate abbreviation.</p>
+
+<p>The cover was prepared by the transcriber and is placed in the public
+domain.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="half-title">Bring<br />
+the<br />
+Jubilee</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="half-title">By Ward Moore</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="center">_<i>Breathe the Air Again</i><br />
+<i>Greener Than You Think</i><br />
+<i>Bring the Jubilee</i></p>
+
+<p class="spaced"><small>This is an original novel—not a reprint—published by FARRAR, STRAUS &amp;
+YOUNG, INC. The low price of $2.00 is made possible by large printings
+of combined editions</small>.</p>
+
+
+<div class="chap"></div>
+
+<table class="standard" summary="">
+<tr>
+<td class= "tdl_br"> &nbsp; </td>
+<td class="tdl"><h1>Bring<br />the<br />Jubilee</h1>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class= "tdl_br"><span class="large">WARD<br />MOORE</span></td>
+<td> &nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+
+<p class="spaced nind"><span style="margin-left: 1em;">FARRAR, STRAUS and YOUNG, Inc.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">NEW YORK</span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="center small">Copyright 1952 Fantasy House, Inc.<br />
+Copyright 1953 Ward Moore<br />
+All rights reserved. Manufactured in the  U. S. A.<br />
+Library of Congress catalog card number: 53-10417</p>
+
+<p class="center small">BACK COVER MAP: BETTMANN ARCHIVE</p>
+
+
+
+
+<p class="center spaced"><i>For<br />
+TONY BOUCHER and MICK McCOMAS<br />
+who liked this story</i></p>
+
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+<div class="stanza">
+<div class="verse indent2"><small>What he will he does, and does so much</small></div>
+<div class="verse indent2"><small>That proof is call’d impossibility</small></div>
+<div class="verse indent10">—<small><i>Troilus and Cressida</i></small></div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+ <hr class="small" />
+
+<p><small>It is always the puzzle of the nature of time that brings our thoughts
+to a standstill. And if time is so fundamental that an understanding
+of its true nature is for ever beyond our reach, then so also in
+all probability is a decision in the age-long controversy between
+determination and free will.</small></p>
+<p class="right">—<small><i>The Mysterious Universe</i> by James Jeans</small></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Contents">Contents</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<table class="standard" summary="">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C1">I</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Life in the Twenty-Six States</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">1</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C2">II</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Of Decisions, Minibiles, and Tinugraphs</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">12</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C3">III</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>A Member of the Grand Army</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">22</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C4">IV</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Tyss</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">32</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C5">V</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Of Whigs and Populists</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">42</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C6">VI</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Enfandin</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">50</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C7">VII</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Of Confederate Agents in 1942</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">61</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C8">VIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>In Violent Times</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">71</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C9">IX</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Barbara</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">76</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C10">X</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>The Holdup</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">86</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C11">XI</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Of Haggershaven</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">95</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C12">XII</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>More of Haggershaven</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">106</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C13">XIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Time</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">116</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C14">XIV</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Midbin’s Experiment</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">124</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C15">XV</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Good Years</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">132</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C16">XVI</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Of Varied Subjects</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">142</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C17">XVII</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>HX-1</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">156</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C18">XVIII</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>The Woman Tempted Me</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">166</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C19">XIX</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Gettysburg</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">175</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C20">XX</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>Bring the Jubilee</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">181</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#C21">XXI</a></td>
+<td class="tdl"><i>For the Time Being</i></td>
+<td class="tdl">191</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C1"><i>1. LIFE IN THE TWENTY-SIX STATES</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Although I am writing this in the year 1877,
+I was not born until 1921. Neither the dates nor the tenses
+are error—let me explain:</p>
+
+<p>I was born, as I say, in 1921, but it was not until the
+early 1930’s, when I was about ten, that I began to understand
+what a peculiarly frustrate and disinherited world
+was about me. Perhaps my approach to realization was
+through the crayon portrait of Granpa Hodgins which
+hung, very solemnly, over the mantel.</p>
+
+<p>Granpa Hodgins after whom I was named, perhaps a
+little grandiloquently, Hodgins McCormick Backmaker,
+had been a veteran of the War of Southron Independence.
+Like so many young men he had put on a shapeless blue
+uniform in response to the call of the ill-advised and headstrong—or
+martyred—Mr Lincoln. Depending on which
+of my lives’ viewpoints you take.</p>
+
+<p>Granpa lost an arm on the Great Retreat to Philadelphia
+after the fall of Washington to General Lee’s victorious
+Army of Northern Virginia, so his war ended some six
+months before the capitulation at Reading and the acknowledgment
+of the independence of the Confederate
+States on July 4, 1864. One-armed and embittered, Granpa
+came home to Wappinger Falls and, like his fellow
+veterans, tried to remake his life in a different and increasingly
+hopeless world.</p>
+
+<p>On its face the Peace of Richmond was a just and even
+generous disposition of a defeated foe by the victor. (Both
+sides—for different reasons—remembered the mutiny of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</span>
+the Unreconstructed Federals in the Armies of the Cumberland
+and the Tennessee who, despite defeat at Chattanooga,
+could not forget Vicksburg or Port Hudson and
+fought bloodily against the order to surrender.) The South
+could easily have carved the country up to suit its most
+fiery patriots, even to the point of detaching the West and
+making a protectorate of it. Instead the chivalrous Southrons
+contented themselves with drawing the new boundary
+along traditional lines. The Mason-Dixon gave them Delaware
+and Maryland, but they generously returned the panhandle
+of western Virginia jutting above it. Missouri was
+naturally included in the Confederacy, but of the disputed
+territory Colorado and Deseret were conceded to the old
+Union; only Kansas and California as well as—for obvious
+defensive reasons—Nevada’s tip went to the South.</p>
+
+<p>But the Peace of Richmond had also laid the cost of
+the war on the beaten North and this was what crippled
+Granpa Hodgins more than the loss of his arm. The postwar
+inflation entered the galloping stage during the Vallandigham
+Administration, became dizzying in the time
+of President Seymour and precipitated the food riots of
+1873 and ’74. It was only after the election of President
+Butler by the Whigs in 1876 and the reorganization and
+drastic deflation following that money and property became
+stable, but by this time all normal values were destroyed.
+Meanwhile the indemnities had to be paid regularly
+in gold. Granpa and hundreds of thousands like him
+just never seemed to get back on their feet.</p>
+
+<p>How well I remember, as a small boy in the 1920’s and
+’30s, my mother and father talking bitterly of how the War
+had ruined everything. They were not speaking of the then
+fairly recent Emperors’ War of 1914-16, but of the War
+of Southron Independence which still, nearly seventy years
+later, blighted what was left of the United States.</p>
+
+<p>Nor were they unique or peculiar in this. Men who
+slouched in the smithy while Father shod their horses, or
+gathered every month around the postoffice waiting for the
+notice of the winning lottery numbers to be put up, as often
+cursed the Confederates or discussed what might have
+been if Meade had been a better general or Lee a worse<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</span>
+one, as they did the new-type bicycles with clockwork
+auxiliaries to make pedaling uphill easier, or the latest
+scandal about the French Emperor, Napoleon VI.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to imagine what it must have been like in Granpa
+Hodgins’ day, to visualize the lost past—that strange bright
+era when, if it could be believed, folk like ourselves and
+our neighbors had owned their farms outright and didnt
+pay rent to the bank or give half the crop to a landlord. I
+searched the wiggling crayon lines that composed Granpa
+Hodgins’ face for some sign that set him apart from his
+descendants.</p>
+
+<p>“But what did he <i>do</i> to lose the farm?” I used to ask my
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>“Do? Didnt do anything. Couldnt help himself. Go
+along now and do your chores; Ive a terrible batch of work
+to get out.”</p>
+
+<p>How could Granpa’s not doing anything result so disastrously?
+I could not understand this any more than I could
+the bygone time when a man could nearly always get a job
+for wages which would support himself and a family, before
+the system of indenture became so common that practically
+the only alternative to pauperism was to sell oneself
+to a company.</p>
+
+<p>Indenting I understood all right, for there was a mill in
+Wappinger Falls which wove a shoddy cloth very different
+from the goods my mother produced on her handloom.
+Mother, even in her late forties, could have indented there
+for a good price, and she admitted that the work would
+be easier than weaving homespun to compete with their
+product. But, as she used to say with an obstinate shake
+of her head, “Free I was born and free I’ll die.”</p>
+
+<p>In Granpa Hodgins’ day, if one could believe the folktales
+or family legends, men and women married young
+and had large families; there might have been five generations
+between him and me instead of two. And many
+uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers and sisters. Now late marriages
+and only children were the rule.</p>
+
+<p>If it hadnt been for the War—This was the basic theme
+stated with variations suited to the particular circumstance.
+If it hadnt been for the War the most energetic young men<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span>
+and women would not turn to emigration; visiting foreigners
+would not come as to a slum; and the great powers
+would think twice before sending troops to restore order
+every time one of their citizens was molested. If it hadnt
+been for the War the detestable buyer from Boston—detestable
+to my mother, but rather fascinating to me with
+his brightly colored vest and smell of soap and hair tonic—would
+not have come regularly to offer her a miserable price
+for her weaving.</p>
+
+<p>“Foreigner!” she would always exclaim after he left;
+“sending good cloth out of the country.”</p>
+
+<p>Once my father ventured, “He’s only doing what he’s
+paid for.”</p>
+
+<p>“Trust a Backmaker to stand up for foreigners. Like
+father, like son; suppose you’d let the whole thieving crew
+in if you had your way.”</p>
+
+<p>So was first hinted the scandal of Grandfather Backmaker.
+No enlarged portrait of him hung anywhere, much
+less over the mantel. I got the impression my father’s father
+had been not only a foreigner by birth, but a shady character
+in his own right, a man who kept on believing in the
+things for which Granpa Hodgins fought after they were
+proved wrong. I don’t know how I learned that Grandfather
+Backmaker had made speeches advocating equal
+rights for Negroes or protesting the mass lynchings so popular
+in the North, in contrast to the humane treatment accorded
+these non-citizens in the Confederacy. Nor do I
+remember where I heard he had been run out of several
+places before finally settling in Wappinger Falls or that
+all his life people had muttered darkly at his back, “Dirty
+Abolitionist!”—a very deep imprecation indeed. I only
+know that as a consequence of this taint my father, a meek,
+hardworking, worried little man, was completely dominated
+by my mother who never let him forget that a
+Hodgins or a McCormick was worth dozens of Backmakers.</p>
+
+<p>I must have been a sore trial to her for I showed no
+sign of proper Hodgins gumption, such as she displayed
+herself and which surely kept us all—though precariously—free.
+For one thing I was remarkably unhandy and awk<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span>ward,
+of little use in the hundred necessary chores around
+our dilapidated house. I could not pick up a hammer at
+her command to do something about fixing the loose
+weatherboards on the east side without mashing my thumb
+or splitting the aged, unpainted wood. I could not hoe the
+kitchen garden without damaging precious vegetables and
+leaving weeds intact. I could shovel snow in the winter at
+a tremendous rate for I was strong and had endurance, but
+work requiring manual dexterity baffled me. I fumbled in
+harnessing Bessie, our mare, or hitching her to the cart
+for my father’s trips to Poughkeepsie, and as for helping
+him on the farm or in his smithy I’m afraid my efforts
+drove that mild man nearest to a temper he ever came. He
+would lay the reins on the plowhorse’s back or his hammer
+down on the anvil and say mournfully:</p>
+
+<p>“Better see if you can help your mother, Hodge. Youre
+only in my way here.”</p>
+
+<p>On only one score did I come near pleasing Mother: I
+learned to read and write early, and exhibited some proficiency.
+But even here there was a flaw; she looked upon
+literacy as something which distinguished Hodginses and
+McCormicks from the ruck who had to make their mark,
+as an accomplishment which might somehow and unspecifiedly
+lead away from poverty. I found reading an end in
+itself, which probably reminded her of my father’s laxity
+or Grandfather Backmaker’s subversion.</p>
+
+<p>“Make something of yourself, Hodge,” she admonished
+me often. “You can’t change the world”—an obvious allusion
+to Grandfather Backmaker—“but you can do something
+with it as it is if you try hard enough. There’s always
+some way out.”</p>
+
+<p>Yet she did not approve of the postoffice lottery, on
+which so many pinned their hopes of escape from poverty
+or indenture. In this she and my father were agreed; both
+believed in hard work rather than chance.</p>
+
+<p>Still, chance could help even the steadiest toiler. I remember
+the time a minibile—one of the small, trackless
+locomotives—broke down not a quarter of a mile from
+Father’s smithy. This was a golden, unparalleled, unbelievable
+opportunity. Minibiles, like any other luxury, were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>
+rare in the United States though they were common
+enough in prosperous countries like the German Union
+or the Confederacy. We had to rely for our transportation
+on the never-failing horse or on the railroads, wornout and
+broken down as they were. For decades the great issue in
+Congress was the never completed Pacific transcontinental
+line, though British America had one and the Confederate
+States seven. (Sailing balloons, economical and fairly common,
+were still looked upon with some suspicion.) Only
+a rare millionaire with connections in Frankfurt, Washington-Baltimore
+or Leesburg could afford to indulge in a
+costly and complicated minibile requiring a trained driver
+to bounce it over the rutted and chuckholed roads. Only an
+extraordinarily adventurous spirit would leave the tar-surfaced
+streets of New York or its sister city of Brooklyn,
+where the minibiles’ solid rubber tires could at worst find
+traction on the horse or cable-car rails, for the morasses
+or washboard roads which were the only highways north
+of the Harlem River.</p>
+
+<p>When one did, the jolting, jouncing and shaking inevitably
+broke or disconnected one of the delicate parts in its
+complex mechanism. Then the only recourse—apart from
+telegraphing back to the city if the traveler broke down
+near an instrument—was to the closest blacksmith. Smiths
+rarely knew much of the principles of the minibiles, but
+with the broken part before them they could fabricate a
+passable duplicate and, unless the machine had suffered
+severe damage, put it back in place. It was customary for
+such a craftsman to compensate himself for the time taken
+away from horseshoeing or spring-fitting—or just absently
+chewing on an oatstraw—by demanding exorbitant remuneration,
+amounting to perhaps twenty-five or thirty
+cents an hour, thus avenging his rural poverty and self-sufficiency
+upon the effete wealth and helplessness of the
+urban excursionist.</p>
+
+<p>Such a golden opportunity befell my father, as I said,
+during the fall of 1933, when I was twelve. The driver had
+made his way to the smithy, leaving the owner of the minibile
+marooned and fuming in the enclosed passenger seat.
+A hasty visit convinced Father, who could repair a clock<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>
+or broken rake with equal dexterity, that his only course
+was to bring the machine to the forge where he could heat
+and straighten a part not easy to disassemble. (The driver,
+the owner, and Father all repeated the name of the part
+often enough, but so inept have I been with “practical”
+things all my life that I couldnt recall it ten minutes, much
+less thirty years later.)</p>
+
+<p>“Hodge, run and get the mare and ride over to
+Jones’s. Don’t try to saddle her—go bareback. Ask Mr
+Jones to kindly lend me his team.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll give the boy a quarter dollar for himself if he’s back
+with the team in twenty minutes,” added the owner of the
+minibile, sticking his head out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>I won’t say I was off like the wind, for my life’s work has
+given me a distaste for exaggeration or hyperbole, but I
+moved faster than I ever had before. A quarter, a whole
+shining silver quarter, a day’s full wage for the boy who
+could find odd jobs, half the day’s pay of a grown man
+who wasnt indented or worked extra hours—all for myself,
+to spend as I wished!</p>
+
+<p>I ran all the way back to the barn, led Bessie out by her
+halter and jumped on her broad back, my enthralling daydream
+growing and deepening each moment. With my
+quarter safely got I could perhaps persuade my father to
+take me along on his next trip to Poughkeepsie; in the
+shops there I could find some yards of figured cotton for
+Mother, or a box of cigars to which Father was partial but
+rarely bought for himself, or an unimagined something for
+Mary McCutcheon, some three years older than I, with
+whom it had so recently become disturbing as well as imperative
+to wrestle—in secret of course so as not to show
+oneself unmanly in sporting with a weak girl instead of
+another boy.</p>
+
+<p>It never even occurred to me, as it would have to most,
+to invest in an eighth of a lottery ticket. Not only were my
+parents sternly against this popular gamble, but I myself
+felt a strangely puritanical aversion to meddling with my
+fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Or I could take the entire quarter into Newman’s Book
+and Clock Store. Here I could not afford one of the latest<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>
+English or Confederate books—even the novels I disdained
+cost fifty cents in their original and thirty in the pirated
+United States’ edition—but what treasures there were in
+the twelve-and-a-half cent reprints and the dime classics!</p>
+
+<p>With Bessie’s legs moving steadily beneath me I pored
+over in my imagination Mr Newman’s entire stock, which
+I knew by heart from examinations lulled by the steady
+ticking of his other, and no doubt more salable, merchandise.
+My quarter would buy two reprints, but I would read
+them in as many evenings and be no better off than before
+until their memory faded and I could read them again.
+Better to invest in paperbacked adventure stories giving
+sharp, breathless pictures of life in the West or rekindling
+the glories of the War. True, they were written almost entirely
+by Confederate authors and I was, perhaps thanks
+to Granpa Hodgins and my mother, a devout partisan of
+the lost cause of Sheridan and Sherman and Thomas. But
+patriotism couldnt steel me against the excitement of the
+Confederate paperbacks; literature simply ignored the
+boundary stretching to the Pacific.</p>
+
+<p>I had finally determined to invest all my twenty-five
+cents, not in five paperbound volumes but in ten of the
+same in secondhand or shopworn condition, when I suddenly
+realized that I had been riding Bessie for some considerable
+time. I looked around, rather dazed by the abrupt
+translation from the dark and slightly musty interior of
+Newman’s store to the bright countryside, to find with dismay
+that Bessie hadnt taken me to the Jones farm after
+all but on some private tour of her own in the opposite
+direction.</p>
+
+<p>I’m afraid this little anecdote is pointless—it was momentarily
+pointed enough for me that evening, for in addition
+to the loss of the promised quarter I received a thorough
+whacking with a willow switch from my mother after
+my father had, as usual, dolefully refused his parental
+duty—except perhaps that it shows how in pursuing the
+dream I could lose the reality.</p>
+
+<p>My feeling that books were a part of life, and the most
+important part, was no passing phase. Other boys in their
+early teens dreamed of going to the wilds of Dakotah,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>
+Montana or Wyoming, indenting to a company run by a
+young and beautiful woman—this was also a favorite paperback
+theme—discovering the loot hidden by a gang, or
+emigrating to Australia or the South African Republic. Or
+else they faced the reality of indenture, carrying on the
+family farm, or petty trade. I only wanted to be allowed
+to read.</p>
+
+<p>I knew this ambition, if that is the proper word, to be
+outrageous and unheard of. It was also practically impossible.
+The school at Wappinger Falls, a survival from the
+days of compulsory attendance and an object of doubt in
+the eyes of the taxpayers, taught as little as possible as
+quickly as possible. Parents needed the help of their children
+to survive or to build up a small reserve in the illusory
+hope of buying free of indenture. Both my mother and my
+teachers looked askance at my longing to persist past an
+age when my contemporaries were making themselves
+economically useful.</p>
+
+<p>Nor, even supposing I had the fees, could the shabby,
+fusty Academy at Poughkeepsie—originally designed for
+the education of the well-to-do—provide what I wanted.
+Not that I was clear at all as to just what this was; I
+only knew that commercial arithmetic, surveying, or any
+of the other subjects taught there, were not the answer
+to my desires.</p>
+
+<p>There was certainly no money for any college. Our position
+had grown slowly worse; my father talked of selling
+the smithy and indenting. My dreams of Harvard or Yale
+were as idle as Father’s of making a good crop and getting
+out of debt. Nor did I know then, as I was to find out
+later, that the colleges were increasingly provincialized and
+decayed, contrasting painfully with the flourishing universities
+of the Confederacy and Europe. The average man
+asked what the United States needed colleges for anyway;
+those who attended them only learned discontent and to
+question time-honored institutions. Constant scrutiny of
+the faculties, summary firing of all instructors suspected
+of abnormal ideas, did not seem to improve the situation
+or raise the standards of teaching.</p>
+
+<p>My mother, now that I was getting beyond the switching<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>
+age, lectured me firmly and at length on idleness and self-indulgence.
+“It’s a hard world, Hodge, and no one’s going
+to give you anything you don’t earn. Your father’s an easy-going
+man; too easy-going for his own good, but he always
+knows where his duty lies.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, maam,” I responded politely, not quite seeing
+what she was driving at.</p>
+
+<p>“Hard, honest work—that’s the only thing. Not hoping
+or wishing or thinking miracles will happen to you. Work
+hard and keep yourself free. Don’t depend on circumstances
+or other people, and don’t blame them for your
+own shortcomings. Be your own man. That’s the only way
+you’ll ever be where you want to.”
+She spoke of responsibility and duty as though they
+were measurable quantities, but the gentler parts of such
+equations, the factors of affection and pity, were never
+mentioned. I don’t want to give the impression that ours
+was a particularly puritanical family; I know our neighbors
+had of necessity much the same grim outlook. But I felt
+guiltily vulnerable, not merely on the score of wanting
+more schooling, but because of something else which
+would have shocked my mother beyond forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>My early tussles with Mary McCutcheon had the natural
+consequences, but she had found me a too-youthful partner
+and had taken her interests elsewhere. For my part I
+now turned to Agnes Jones, a suddenly alluring young
+woman grown from the skinny kid I’d always brushed
+away. Agnes sympathized with my aspirations and encouraged
+me most pleasantly. However her specific plans for
+my future were limited to marrying her and helping her
+father on his farm, which seemed no great advance over
+what I could look forward to at home.</p>
+
+<p>And there I was certainly no asset; I ate three hearty
+meals a day and occupied a bed. I was conscious of the
+looks and smiles which followed me. A great lout of seventeen,
+too lazy to do a stroke of work, always wandering
+around with his head in the clouds or lying with his nose
+stuck in a book. Too bad; and the Backmakers such industrious
+folks too. I could feel what the shock of my be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>havior
+with Agnes added to my idleness would be to my
+mother.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I was neither depraved nor very different from the
+other youths of Wappinger Falls, who not only took their
+pleasures where they found them, but often more forcibly
+than persuasively. I did not analyze it fully or clearly, but
+I was at least to some extent aware of the essentially loveless
+atmosphere around me. The rigid convention of late
+marriages bred an exaggerated respect for chastity which
+had two sides: sisters’ and daughters’ honor was sternly
+avenged with no protest from society, and undiscovered
+seduction produced that much more gratification. But both
+retribution and venery were somewhat mechanical; they
+were the expected rather than the inescapable passions.
+Revivalists—and we country people had a vast fondness
+for those itinerants who came periodically to castigate us
+for our sins—denounced our laxity and pointed to the
+virtues of our grandparents and greatgrandparents. We
+accepted their advice with such modifications as suited us,
+which was not at all what they intended.</p>
+
+<p>And this was how I took my mother’s admonition to be
+my own man. What debts I owed her and my father
+seemed best discharged by relieving them of the burden of
+my keep, since I was clearly not fitting myself to reverse
+the balance. The notion that there was an emotional obligation
+on either side hardly occurred to me; I doubt if it
+did to them. Toward Agnes Jones I felt no debt at all.</p>
+
+<p>A few months after my seventeenth birthday I packed
+my three most cherished books in my good white cotton
+shirt, and having bade a most romantic goodbye to Agnes,
+one which would certainly have consummated her hopes
+had her father come upon us, I left Wappinger Falls and
+set out for New York.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C2"><i>2.</i> <i>OF DECISIONS, MINIBILES,
+AND TINUGRAPHS</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I thought I could do the walk of some eighty miles
+in four days, allowing time to swap work for food, supposing
+I found farmers or housewives agreeable to the
+exchange. June made it no hardship to sleep outdoors, and
+the old post road ran close enough to the Hudson for any
+bathing I might want to do.</p>
+
+<p>The dangers of the trip were part of the pattern of life
+in the United States in 1938. I didnt particularly fear being
+robbed by a roving gang for I was sure organized predators
+would disdain so obviously unprofitable a prey, and individual
+thieves I felt I could take care of, but I was not
+anxious to be picked up as a vagrant by any of the three
+police forces, national, state, or local. As a freeman I was
+more exposed to this chance than an indent would be, with
+a work-card on his person and a company behind him. A
+freeman was fair game for the constables, state troopers,
+or revenuers to recruit, after a perfunctory trial, into one
+of the chain gangs upon whom the roads, canals and other
+public works were dependent.</p>
+
+<p>Some wondered why the roads were so bad in spite of
+all this apparent surplus of labor and were dubious of the
+explanation that surfacing was expensive and it was impossible
+to maintain unsurfaced highways in good condition.
+Only the hint that prisoners had been seen working
+around the estates of the great Whig families or had been
+lent to some enterprise operated by foreign capital brought
+knowing nods.</p>
+
+<p>At seventeen possible disasters are not brooded over.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>
+I resolved to be wary, and then dismissed thoughts of police,
+gangs and all unpleasantness. The future was mine to
+make as my mother had insisted, and I was taking the first
+steps in shaping it.</p>
+
+<p>I started off briskly, passing at first through villages long
+familiar; then, getting beyond the territory I had known
+all my life, I slowed down often enough to gaze at something
+new and strange, or to wander into wood or pasture
+for wild strawberries or early blueberries. I covered less
+ground than I had intended by the time I found a farmhouse,
+after inquiring at several others, where the woman
+was willing to give me supper and even let me sleep in the
+barn in return for splitting a sizable stack of logs into
+kindling and milking two cows.</p>
+
+<p>Exercise and hot food must have counteracted the excitement
+of the day, for I fell asleep immediately and didnt
+waken till quite a while after sunup. It was another warm,
+fine morning; soon the post road led, not between shabby
+villages and towns or struggling farms, but past the stone
+or brick walls of opulent estates. Now and then I caught
+a glimpse between old, well-tended trees of magnificent
+houses either a century old or built to resemble those dating
+from that prosperous time. I could not but share the
+general dislike for the wealthy Whigs who owned these
+places, their riches contrasting with the common poverty
+and deriving from exploitation of the United States as a
+colony, but I could not help enjoying the beauty of their
+surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>The highway was better traveled here also; I passed
+other walkers, quite a few wagons, a carriage or two, several
+peddlers and a number of ladies and gentlemen on
+horseback. This was the first time I’d seen women riding
+astride, a practice shocking to the sensitivities of Wappinger
+Falls which also condemned the fashion, imported
+from the Chinese Empire by way of England, of feminine
+trousers. Having learned that women were bipedal, both
+customs seemed sensible to me.</p>
+
+<p>I had the post road to myself for some miles between
+turns when I heard a commotion beyond the stone wall to
+my left. This was followed by an angry shout and shrill<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span>
+words impossible to distinguish. My progress halted, I instinctively
+shifted my bundle to my left hand as though to
+leave my right free for defence, but against what I had no
+idea.</p>
+
+<p>The shouts came closer; a boy of about my own age
+scrambled frantically over the wall, dislodging some of
+the smaller lichen-covered rocks on top and sending them
+rolling into the ditch. He looked at me, startled, then
+paused for a long instant at the road’s edge, undecided
+which way to run.</p>
+
+<p>He was barefoot and wore a jute sack as a shirt, with
+holes cut for his arms, and ragged cotton pants. His face
+was little browner than my own had often been at the end
+of a summer’s work under a burning sun.</p>
+
+<p>He came to the end of indecision and started across the
+highway, legs pumping high, head turned watchfully. A
+splendid tawny stallion cleared the wall in a soaring jump,
+his rider bellowing, “There you are, you damned black
+coon!”</p>
+
+<p>He rode straight for the fugitive, quirt upraised, lips
+thickened and eyes rolling in rage. The victim dodged and
+turned; in no more doubt than I that the horseman meant
+to ride him down. He darted by me, so close I heard the
+labored rasp of breathing.</p>
+
+<p>The rider swerved, and he too twisted around me as
+though I were the post at the far turn of a racecourse. Reflexively
+I put out my hand to grab at the reins and stop
+the assault. Indeed, my fingers actually touched the leather
+and grasped it for a fraction of a second before they fell
+away.</p>
+
+<p>Then I was alone in the road again as both pursued and
+pursuer vaulted back over the fence. The whole scene of
+anger and terror could not have lasted two minutes; I
+strained my ears to hear the shouts coming from farther
+and farther away. Quiet fell again; a squirrel flirted his
+tail and sped down one tree trunk and up another. The
+episode might never have happened.</p>
+
+<p>I shifted my bundle back and began walking again—less
+briskly now. My legs felt heavy and there was an involuntary
+twitch in the muscles of my arm.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p>
+
+<p>Why hadnt I held on to the rein and delayed the hunter,
+at least long enough to give his quarry a fair start? What
+had made me draw back? It had not been fear, at least in
+the usual sense, for I knew I wasnt timorous of the horseman.
+I was sure I could have dragged him down if he had
+taken his quirt to me.</p>
+
+<p>Yet I had been afraid. Afraid of interfering, of meddling
+in affairs which were no concern of mine, of risking action
+on quick judgment. I had been immobilized by the fear of
+asserting my sympathies, my presumptions, against events.</p>
+
+<p>Walking slowly down the road I experienced deep
+shame. I might, I could have saved someone from hurt; I
+had perhaps had the power for a brief instant to change
+the course of a whole life. I had been guilty of a cowardice
+far worse than mere fear for my skin. I could have wept
+with mortification—done anything, in fact, but turn back
+and try to rectify my failure.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the day was gloomy as I alternately taunted
+and feebly excused myself. The fugitive might have been
+a trespasser or a servant; his fault might have been slowness,
+rudeness, theft or attempted murder. Whatever it
+was, any retaliation the white man chose could be inflicted
+with impunity. He would not be punished or even tried
+for it. Popular opinion was unanimous for Negro emigration
+to Africa, voluntary or forced; those who went westward
+to join the unconquered Sioux or Nez Perce were
+looked upon as depraved. Any Negro who didnt embark
+for Liberia or Sierra Leone, regardless of whether he had
+the fare or not, deserved anything that happened to him in
+the United States.</p>
+
+<p>It was because I held, somewhat vaguely, a stubborn refusal
+to accept this conventional view, a refusal never precisely
+reasoned and little more, perhaps, than romantic
+rebellion against my mother in favor of my disreputable
+Grandfather Backmaker, that I suffered. I couldnt excuse
+my failure on the grounds that action would have been
+considered outrageous. It would not have been considered
+outrageous by me.</p>
+
+<p>I pushed self-contempt at my passivity aside as best I
+could and strove to recapture the mood of yesterday, suc<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>ceeding
+to some extent as the memory of the scene came
+back less insistently. I even tried pretending the episode
+had perhaps not been quite as serious as it seemed, or that
+the pursued had somehow in the end evaded the pursuer.
+I could not make what had happened not happen; the best
+I could do was minimize my culpability.</p>
+
+<p>That night I slept a little way from the road and in
+the morning started off at dawn. Although I was now little
+more than twenty miles from the metropolis the character
+of the country had hardly changed. Perhaps the farms were
+smaller and closer together, their juxtaposition to the estates
+more incongruous. But traffic was continual now,
+with no empty stretches on the roads, and the small towns
+had horse-drawn cars running on iron tracks embedded in
+the cobbles.</p>
+
+<p>It was late afternoon when I crossed Spuyten Duyvil
+Creek to Manhattan. Between me and the city now lay a
+wilderness of squatters’ shacks made of old boards, barrel-staves
+and other discarded rubbish. Lean goats and mangy
+cats nosed through rubble heaps of broken glass and earthenware
+demijohns. Mounds of garbage lay beside aimless
+creeks struggling blindly for the rivers. As clearly as though
+it had been proclaimed on signposts this was an area of
+outcasts and fugitives, of men and women ignored and
+tolerated by the law so long as they kept within the confines
+of their horrible slum.</p>
+
+<p>Strange and repugnant as the place was, I hesitated to
+keep on going and arrive in the city at nightfall, but it
+seemed unlikely there was a place to sleep among the
+shacks. Once away from the order and sobriety of the post
+road one could be lost in the squalid maze; undefined
+threats of vaguely dreadful fates seemed to rise from it
+like vapors.</p>
+
+<p>Then the fading light revealed the anomaly of a venerable
+mansion set far back from the highway, with grounds as
+yet unusurped by the encroaching stews. The house was
+in ruins; the surrounding gardens lost in brush and weeds.
+Evidently a watchman or caretaker guarded its forlorn
+dignity or had very recently abandoned it; I could not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>
+imagine its remaining long without being entirely overrun
+otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost fully dark as I made my way cautiously
+toward the remains of an old summerhouse. Its roof was
+fallen in and it was densely enclosed by ancient rosebushes
+whose thorns, I thought, when they pricked my
+fingers as I struggled through them, ought to give warning
+of any intruder. For weatherworthiness this shelter had
+little advantage over the hovels, yet somehow the fact that
+it had survived seemed to make it a more secure retreat.</p>
+
+<p>I stretched out on the dank boards and slept fitfully, disturbed
+by dreams that the old mansion was filled with
+people from a past time who begged me to save them
+from the slumdwellers and their house from being further
+ravaged. Brokenly I protested I was helpless—in true
+dream manner I then became helpless, unable to move—that
+I could not interfere with what had to happen; they
+moaned and wrung their hands and faded away. Still, I
+slept, and in the morning the cramps in my muscles and
+the aches in my bones disappeared in the excitement of the
+remaining miles to the city.</p>
+
+<p>And how suddenly it grew up around me, not as though
+it was a fixed collection of buildings which I approached,
+but as if I stood still while the wood and stone, iron and
+brick, sprang into being all about.</p>
+
+<p>New York, in 1938, had a population of nearly a million,
+having grown very slowly since the close of the War
+of Southron Independence. Together with the half million
+in the city of Brooklyn this represented by far the largest
+concentration of people in the United States, though of
+course it could not compare with the great Confederate
+centers of Washington, now including Baltimore and Alexandria,
+St Louis, or Leesburg (once Mexico City).</p>
+
+<p>The change from the country and the dreadful slums
+through which I had passed was startling. Cable-cars
+whizzed northward as far as Fifty-ninth Street on the west
+side and all the way to Eighty-seventh on the east, while
+horse-cars furnished convenient crosstown transportation
+every few blocks. Express steam trains ran through bridged<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>
+cuts on Madison Avenue, an engineering achievement of
+which New Yorkers were vastly proud.</p>
+
+<p>Bicycles, rare around Wappinger Falls, were thick as
+flies, darting ahead and alongside drayhorses pulling wallowing
+vans, carts or wagons. Prancing trotters drew
+private carriages, buggies, broughams, victorias, hansoms,
+dogcarts or sulkies; neither the cyclists, coachmen nor
+horses seemed overawed or discommoded by occasional
+minibiles chuffing their way swiftly and implacably over
+cobblestones or asphalt.</p>
+
+<p>Incredibly intricate traceries of telegraph wires swarmed
+overhead, crossing and recrossing at all angles, slanting
+upward into offices and flats or downward to stores, a reminder
+that no urban family with pretensions to gentility
+would be without the clacking instrument in the parlor,
+that every child learned the Morse code before he could
+read. Thousands of sparrows considered the wires properly
+their own; they perched and swung, quarreled and scolded
+on them, leaving only to satisfy their voracity upon the
+steaming mounds of horsedung below.</p>
+
+<p>The country boy who had never seen anything more
+metropolitan than Poughkeepsie was tremendously impressed.
+Buildings of eight or ten storeys were common,
+and there were many of fourteen or fifteen, serviced by
+pneumatic English lifts, that same marvelous invention
+which permitted the erection of veritable skyscrapers in
+Washington and Leesburg.</p>
+
+<p>Above them balloons moved gracefully through the air,
+guided and controlled as skillfully as old-time sailing vessels.
+These were not entirely novel to me; I had seen
+more of them than I had minibiles, but never so many as
+here. In a single hour, gawking upward, I counted seven,
+admiring how nicely calculated their courses were, for they
+seldom came so low as to endanger lives beneath by having
+to throw out sandbags in order to rise. That they could
+so maneuver over buildings of greatly uneven height
+showed this to be the air age indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Most exciting of all was the great number of people who
+walked, rode, or merely stood around on the streets. It
+seemed hardly believable so many humans could crowd<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>
+themselves so closely. Beggars pleaded, touts wheedled,
+peddlers hawked, newsboys shouted, bootblacks chanted.
+Messengers pushed their way, loafers yawned, ladies
+shopped, drunks staggered. For long moments I paused,
+standing stock still, not thinking of going on, merely watching
+the spectacle.</p>
+
+<p>How far I walked, how many different parts of the city
+I explored that day, I have no idea. I felt I had hardly
+begun to fondle the sharp edge of wonder when it was
+twilight and the gas lamps, lit simultaneously by telegraph
+sparks, gleamed and shone on nearly every corner. Whatever
+had been drab and dingy in daylight—and even my
+eyes had not been blind to the dirt and decay—became in
+an instant magically enchanting, softened and shadowed
+into mysterious beauty. I breathed the dusty air with a
+relish I had never known in the country and felt I was inhaling
+some elixir for the spirit.</p>
+
+<p>But spiritual sustenance is not quite enough for a seventeen-year-old,
+especially one who is beginning to be hungry
+and tired. I was desperately anxious to hoard the three
+precious dollars in my pocket, for I had little idea how to
+go about replacing them, once they were spent. I could not
+do without eating, however, so I stopped in at the first
+gaslit bakery, buying, after some consideration, a penny
+loaf, and walked on through the entrancing streets, munching
+at it and feeling like an historical character.</p>
+
+<p>Now the fronts of the tinugraph lyceums were lit up by
+porters with long tapers, so that they glowed yellow and inviting,
+each heralded with a boldly lettered broadside or
+dashingly drawn cartoon advertising the amusement to be
+found within. I was tempted to see for myself this magical
+entertainment of pictures taken so close together they gave
+the illusion of motion, but the lowest admission price was
+five cents. Some of the more garish theaters, which specialized
+in the incredible phonotos—tinugraphs ingeniously
+combined with a sound-producing machine operated by
+compressed air, so that the pictures seemed not only to
+move but to talk—actually charged ten or even fifteen
+cents for an hour’s spectacle.</p>
+
+<p>By this time I ached with tiredness; the insignificant<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>
+bundle of shirt and books had become a burden. I was
+pressed by the question of where to sleep and began thinking
+more kindly than I would have believed possible of
+last night’s slum. I didnt connect my need with the glass
+transparencies behind which gaslight shone through the
+unpainted letters of BEDS, ROOMS, or HOTEL, for my
+mind was hazily fixed on some urban version of the inn
+at Wappinger Falls or the Poughkeepsie Commercial
+House.</p>
+
+<p>I became more and more confused as fatigue blurred
+impressions of still newer marvels, so that I am not entirely
+sure whether it was one or a succession of girls who
+offered delights for a quarter. I know I was solicited by
+crimps for the Confederate Legion who operated openly
+in defiance of United States law, and an incredible number
+of beggars accosted me.</p>
+
+<p>At last I thought of asking directions. But without realizing
+it I had wandered from the thronged wooden or
+granite sidewalks of the brightly lit avenues into an unpeopled,
+darkened area where the buildings were low and
+frowning, where the flicker of a candle or the yellow of a
+kerosene lamp in windows far apart were uncontested by
+any streetlights.</p>
+
+<p>All day my ears had been pressed by the clop of hooves,
+the rattling of iron tires or the puffing of minibiles; now the
+empty street was unnaturally still. The suddenly looming
+figure of another walker seemed the luckiest of chances.</p>
+
+<p>“Excuse me, friend,” I said. “Can you tell me where’s
+the nearest inn, or anywhere I can get a bed for the night
+cheap?”</p>
+
+<p>I felt him peering at me. “Rube, huh? Much money
+you got?”</p>
+
+<p>“Th—Not very much. That’s why I want to find cheap
+lodging.”
+“OK, Reuben. Come along.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, don’t trouble to show me. Just give me an idea
+how to get there.”</p>
+
+<p>He grunted. “No trouble, Reuben. No trouble at all.”</p>
+
+<p>Taking my arm just above the elbow in a firm grip be
+steered me along. For the first time I began to feel alarm.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span>
+However, before I could attempt to shrug free he had
+shoved me into the mouth of an alley, discernible only
+because its absolute blackness contrasted with the relative
+darkness of the street.</p>
+
+<p>“Wait—” I began.</p>
+
+<p>“In here, Reuben. Soundest night’s sleep youve had in
+a long time. And cheap—it’s free.”
+I started to break loose and was surprised to find he no
+longer held me. Before I could even begin to think, a
+terrific blow fell on the right side of my head and I traded
+the blackness of the alley for the blackness of insensibility.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C3"><i>3.</i> <i>A MEMBER OF THE GRAND ARMY</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I was recalled to consciousness by a smell.
+More accurately a cacophony of smells. I opened my eyes
+and shut them against the unbearable pain of light; I
+groaned at the equally unbearable pain in my skullbones.
+Feverishly and against my will I tried to identify the walloping
+odors around me.</p>
+
+<p>The stink of death and rottenness was thick. I knew
+there was an outhouse—many outhouses—nearby. The
+ground I lay on, where it was not stony, was damp with
+the water of endless dishwashings and launderings. The
+noisomeness of offal suggested that the garbage of many
+families had never been buried, but left to rot in the alley
+or near it. In addition there was the smell of death, not
+the sweetish effluvium of blood, such as any country boy
+who has helped butcher a bull-calf or hog knows, but the
+unmistakable stench of corrupt, maggotty flesh. Besides
+all this there was the spoor of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>A new discomfort at last forced my eyes open for the
+second time. A hard surface was pressing painful knobs
+into my exposed skin. I looked and felt around me.</p>
+
+<p>The knobs were the scattered cobbles of a fetid alley;
+not a foot away was the cadaver of a dog, thoroughly putrescent;
+beyond him a drunk retched and groaned. A
+trickle of liquid swill wound its way delicately over the
+moldy earth between the stones. My coat, shirt, and shoes
+were gone, so was the bundle with my books. There was
+no use searching my pocket for the three dollars. I knew I
+was lucky the robber had left me my pants and my life.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span></p>
+
+<p>A middleaged man, at least he looked middleaged to
+my youthful eye, regarded me speculatively over the head
+of the drunk. A pale, elliptical scar interrupted the wrinkles
+on his forehead, its upper point making a permanent part
+in his thin hair. Tiny red veins marked his nose; his eyes
+were bloodshot.</p>
+
+<p>“Pretty well cleaned yuh out, huh boy?”</p>
+
+<p>I nodded—and then was sorry for the motion.</p>
+
+<p>“Reward of virtue. Assuming you was virtuous, which
+I assume. Come to the same end as me, stinking drunk.
+Only I still got my shirt. Couldnt hock it no matter how
+thirsty I got.”</p>
+
+<p>I groaned.</p>
+
+<p>“Where yuh from boy? What rural—see, sober now—precincts
+miss you?”
+“Wappinger Falls, near Poughkeepsie. My name’s
+Hodge Backmaker.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well now, that’s friendly of you, Hodge. I’m George
+Pondible. Periodic. Just tapering off.”</p>
+
+<p>I hadnt an idea what Pondible was talking about. Trying
+to understand made my head worse.</p>
+
+<p>“Took everything, I suppose? Havent a nickel left to
+help a hangover?”</p>
+
+<p>“My head,” I mumbled, quite superfluously.</p>
+
+<p>He staggered to his feet. I slowly sat up, tenderly touching
+the lump over my ear with my fingertips.</p>
+
+<p>“Best thing—souse it in the river. Take more to fix
+mine.”
+“But ... can I go through the streets like this?”</p>
+
+<p>“Right,” he said. “Quite right.”</p>
+
+<p>He stooped down and put one hand beneath the drunk,
+who murmured unintelligibly. With the other he removed
+the jacket, a maneuver betraying practice, for it elicited
+no protest from the victim. He then performed the still
+more delicate operation of depriving him of his shirt and
+shoes, tossing them all to me. They were a loathsome collection
+of rags not fit to clean a manurespreader. The
+jacket was torn and greasy, the pockets hanging like the
+ears of a dog; the shirt was a filthy tatter, the shoes shapeless
+fragments of leather with great gapes in the soles.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span></p>
+
+<p>“It’s stealing,” I protested.</p>
+
+<p>“Right. Put them on and let’s get out of here.”</p>
+
+<p>The short walk to the river was through streets lacking
+the glamour of those of the day before. The tenements
+were smokestreaked, with steps between the parting bricks
+where mortar had fallen out; great hunks of wall were kept
+in place only by the support of equally crazy ones abutting.
+The wretched things I wore were better suited than Pondible’s
+to this neighborhood, though his would have marked
+him tramp and vagrant in Wappinger Falls.</p>
+
+<p>The Hudson too was soiled, with an oily scum and
+debris, so that I hesitated to dip even the purloined shirt,
+much less my aching head. But urged on by Pondible I
+climbed down the slimy stones between two docks and
+pushing the flotsam aside, ducked myself in the unappetizing
+water.</p>
+
+<p>“Fixes your head,” said Pondible with more assurance
+than accuracy. “Now for mine.”</p>
+
+<p>The sun was hot and the shirt dried on my back as we
+walked away from the river, the jacket over my arm. Now
+that my mind was clearing my despair grew rapidly; for a
+moment I wished I had waded farther into the Hudson
+and drowned.</p>
+
+<p>Admitting any plans I’d had were nebulous and impractical,
+they had yet been plans of a kind, something
+in which I could put, or force, my hopes. My appearance
+had been presentable, I had the means to keep myself fed
+and sheltered for a few weeks at least. Now everything
+was changed, any future was gone, literally knocked out
+of existence and I had nothing to look forward to, nothing
+on which to exert my energies and dreams. To go back to
+Wappinger Falls was out of the question, not simply to
+dodge the bitterness of admitting defeat so quickly, but
+because I knew how relieved my mother and father must
+have been to be freed of my uselessness. Yet I had nothing
+to expect in the city except starvation or a life of petty
+crime.</p>
+
+<p>Pondible guided me into a saloon, a dark, secretive
+place, gaslit even this early, with a steam piano tinkling
+the popular, mournful tune, <i>Mormon Girl</i>:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">There’s a girl in the state of Deseret</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">I love and I’m trying to for-get.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Forget her for my tired feet’s sake</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Don’t wanna walk to the Great Salt Lake.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">They ever build that railroad toooo the ocean</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">I’d return my Mormon girl’s devotion.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">But the tracks stop short in Ioway....</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>I couldnt remember the next line. Something about Injuns
+say.</p>
+
+<p>“Shot,” Pondible ordered the bartender, “and buttermilk
+for my chum here.”</p>
+
+<p>The bartender kept on polishing the wood in front of
+him with a wet, dirty rag. “Got any jack?”</p>
+
+<p>“Pay you tomorrow, friend.”</p>
+
+<p>The bartender’s uninterrupted industry said clearly,
+then drink tomorrow.</p>
+
+<p>“Listen,” argued Pondible; “I’m tapering off. You know
+me. Ive spent plenty of money here.”</p>
+
+<p>The bartender shrugged. “I don’t own the place; anything
+goes over the bar has to be rung up on the cash
+register.”</p>
+
+<p>“Youre lucky to have a job that pays wages.”</p>
+
+<p>“Times I’m not so sure. Why don’t you indent?”</p>
+
+<p>Pondible looked shocked. “At my age? What would a
+company pay for a wornout old carcass? A hundred dollars
+at the top. Then a release in a couple of years with a
+med holdback so I’d have to report every week somewhere.
+No, friend, Ive come through this long a free man—in a
+manner of speaking—and I’ll stick it out. Let’s have that
+shot; you can see for yourself I’m tapering off. Youll get
+your jack tomorrow.”
+I could see the bartender was weakening; each refusal
+was less surly and at last, to my astonishment, he set out a
+glass and bottle for Pondible and an earthenware mug of
+buttermilk for me. To my astonishment, I say, for credit
+was rarely extended on any scale, large or small. The inflation,
+though sixty years in the past, had left indelible
+impressions; people paid cash or did without. Debt was
+not only disgraceful, it was dangerous; the notion things<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>
+could be paid for while, or even after, they were being
+used was as unthinkable as was the idea of circulating
+paper money instead of silver or gold.</p>
+
+<p>I drank my buttermilk slowly, gratefully aware Pondible
+had ordered the most filling and sustaining liquid in the
+saloon. For all his unprepossessing appearance and peculiar
+moral notions, my new acquaintance seemed to
+have a rude wisdom as well as a rude kindliness.</p>
+
+<p>He swallowed his whiskey and called for a quart pot of
+light beer which he sipped slowly. “That’s the trick of it,
+Hodge. Avoid the second shot. If you can.” He sipped
+again. “Now what?”</p>
+
+<p>“What?” I repeated.</p>
+
+<p>“Now what are you going to do? What’s your aim in
+life anyway?”</p>
+
+<p>“None—now. I ... wanted to learn. To study.”
+He frowned. “Out of books?”</p>
+
+<p>“How else?”</p>
+
+<p>“Books is mostly written and printed in foreign countries.”</p>
+
+<p>“There might be more written here if more people had
+time to learn.”</p>
+
+<p>Pondible wiped specks of froth from his beard with the
+back of his hand. “Might and mightnt. Oh, some of my
+best friends are book-readers, don’t get me wrong, boy.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’d thought,” I burst out, “I’d thought to try Columbia
+College. To offer—to beg to be allowed to do any kind of
+work for tuition.”
+“Hmm. I doubt it would have worked.”</p>
+
+<p>“Anyway I can’t go now, looking like this.”</p>
+
+<p>“Might be as well. We need fighters, not readers.”</p>
+
+<p>“‘We?’”</p>
+
+<p>He did not explain. “Well, you could always take the
+advice our friend here gave me and indent. A young
+healthy lad like you could get yourself a thousand or
+twelve hundred dollars—”
+“Sure. And be a slave for the rest of my life.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, indenting aint slavery. It’s better. And worse. For
+one thing the company buys you won’t hold you after you
+arent worth your keep. Not that long, on account of book<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span>keeping;
+they lose when they break even. So they cancel
+your indenture without a cent payment. Course theyll
+take a med holdback so as to get a dollar or two for your
+corpse, but that’s a long time away for you.”</p>
+
+<p>An inconceivably long time. The medical holdback was
+the least of my distaste, though it had played a large part
+in the discussions at home. My mother had heard that
+cadavers for dissection were shipped to foreign medical
+schools like so much cargo. She was shocked not so much
+at the thought of the scientific use of her dead body as at
+its disposal outside the United States.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” I said. “A long time away. So I wouldnt be a
+slave for life; just thirty or forty years. Till I wasnt any
+good to anyone, including myself.”</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to be enjoying himself as he drank his beer.
+“Youre a gloomy gus, Hodge. Taint’s bad’s that. Indenting’s
+pretty strictly regulated. That’s the idea anyway. I
+aint saying the big companies don’t get away with a lot.
+You can’t be made to work over sixty hours a week. Ten
+hours a day. With twelve hundred dollars you could get
+all the education you want in your spare time and then
+turn your learning to account by making enough to buy
+yourself free.”</p>
+
+<p>I tried to think about it dispassionately, though goodness
+knows I’d been over the ground often enough. It was
+true the amount, a not improbable one, would see me
+through college. But Pondible’s notion of turning my
+“learning to account” I knew to be a fantasy. Perhaps in
+the Confederate States or the German Union knowledge
+was rewarded with wealth, or at least a comfortable living,
+but any study I pursued—I knew my own “impracticality”
+well enough by now—was bound to yield few material
+benefits in the backward United States, which existed as
+a nation at all only on the sufferance and unresolved rivalries
+of the great powers. I’d be lucky to struggle through
+school and eke out some kind of living as a freeman; I
+could hardly hope to earn enough to buy back an indenture
+on what was left of my time after subtracting sixty hours
+a week.</p>
+
+<p>“It wouldnt work,” I said despondently.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span></p>
+
+<p>Pondible nodded, as though this were the conclusion
+he had expected me to come to. “Well then,” he said,
+“there’s the gangs.”</p>
+
+<p>I looked my horror.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed. “Forget your country rearing. What’s
+right? What the strongest country or the strongest man
+says it is. The government says gangs are wrong, but the
+government aint strong enough to stop them. And maybe
+they don’t do as much killing as people think. Only when
+somebody works against them—just like the government.
+Sure they have to be paid off, but it’s just like taxes. If you
+leave the parsons’ sermons out of it there’s no difference
+joining the gangs than the army—if we had one—or the
+Confederate Legion—”
+“They tried to recruit me yesterday. Are they always
+so....”</p>
+
+<p>“Bold?” For the first time Pondible looked angry and I
+thought the scar on his forehead turned whiter. “Yes,
+damn them. The Legion must be half United States citizens.
+When they have to put down a disturbance or run
+some little cockroach country they send off the Confederate
+Legion—made up of men who ought to be the backbone
+of an army of our own.”
+“But the police—don’t they ever try to stop them?”
+“What’d I tell you about right being what the strongest
+country says it is? Sure we got laws against recruiting into
+a foreign army. So we squawk. And what have we got to
+back it up with? So the Confederate Legion goes right on
+recruiting the men who have to beg for a square meal in
+their own country. Well, the government is pretty near as
+bad off when it comes to the gangs. Best it can do is pick
+off some of the little ones and forget about the big ones.
+Most of the gangsters never even get shot at. They all live
+high, high as anybody in the twenty-six states, and every
+so often there’s a dividend—more than a workman makes
+in a lifetime.”
+I began to be sure my benefactor was a gangster. And
+yet ... if this were so why had he wheedled credit from
+the barkeep? Was it simply an elaborate blind? It seemed
+hardly worth it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span></p>
+
+<p>“A dividend,” I said, “or a rope.”</p>
+
+<p>“Most gangsters die of old age. Or competition. Aint
+one been hung I can think of the last five-six years. But I
+see youve no stomach for it. Tell me, Hodge—you Whig
+or Populist?”
+The sudden change of subject bewildered me. “Why
+... Populist, I guess.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh ... I don’t know....” I thought of some of
+the discussions that used to go on among the men around
+the smithy. “The Whigs’ ‘Property, Protection, Permanent
+Population’ —what does it mean to me?”
+“Tell you, boy, means this: Property for the Confederates
+who own factories here and don’t want to pay taxes.
+Protection for foreign capital to come in and buy or hire.
+Permanent Population—cheap native labor. Build up a
+prosperous employing class.”
+“Yes, I know. I can’t see how it helps. Ive heard Whigs
+at home say the money’s bound to seep down from above,
+but it seems awfully roundabout. And not very efficient.”</p>
+
+<p>He reached over and clapped me lightly on the shoulder.
+“That’s my boy,” he said. “They can’t fool you.”</p>
+
+<p>I wasnt entirely pleased by his commendation. “And
+protection means paying more for things than theyre
+worth.”</p>
+
+<p>“Taint only that, Hodge, it’s a damn lie as well. Whigs
+never even tried protection when they was in. Didnt dast.
+Knew the other countries wouldnt let them.”</p>
+
+<p>“As for ‘permanent population’ ... well, those who
+can’t make a living are going to go on emigrating to prosperous
+countries. Permanent population means dwindling
+population if it means anything.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah,” he said. “You got a head on your shoulders,
+Hodge. Youre all right; books won’t hurt you. But what
+about emigrating? Yourself, I mean?”</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, chewing on a soggy corner of his mustache.
+“Don’t want to leave the old ship, huh?”</p>
+
+<p>I don’t suppose I would have put it exactly that way, or
+even fully formulated the thought. I was willing to ex<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>change
+the familiar for the unknown—up to a certain
+point. The thought of giving up the country in which I’d
+been born was repugnant. Call it loyalty, or a sense of
+having ties with the past, or just stubbornness. “Something
+like that,” I said.</p>
+
+<p>“Well now, let’s see what weve got.” He stuck up a dirty
+and slightly tremulous hand, turning down a finger as he
+stated each point. “One, patriot; two, Populist; three, don’t
+like indenting; four, prosperity’s got to come from the poor
+upward, not the rich down.” He hesitated, holding his
+thumb. “You heard of the Grand Army?”</p>
+
+<p>“Who hasnt? Not much difference between them and
+the regular gangs.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now what makes you say that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why ... everybody knows it”</p>
+
+<p>“Do, huh? Maybe they know it all wrong. Look here
+now—and remember about the Confederate Legion riding
+over the laws of the United States—what would you
+think ought to be done about foreigners from the strong
+countries who come here and walk all over us? Or the
+Whigs who do their dirty work for them?”
+“I don’t know,” I said. “Not murder, certainly.”</p>
+
+<p>“Murder,” he repeated. “That’s a word, Hodge. Means
+what you want it to mean. Wasnt murder back during the
+War when Union soldiers was trying to keep the country
+from being split up. Taint murder today when somebody’s
+hung for rape or counterfeiting. Anyhow the Grand Army
+don’t go in for murder.”</p>
+
+<p>I said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, accidents happen; wouldnt deny it. Maybe they
+get a little rougher than they intend with Whig traitors or
+Confederate agents, but you can’t make bacon out of a
+live hog. Point is the Grand Army’s the only thing in the
+country that even tries to restore it to what it once was.
+What was fought for in the War.”</p>
+
+<p>I don’t know whether it was the thought of Grandfather
+Backmaker or the unassuaged guilt for the miserable
+figure I had cut only three days back that made me ask,
+“And do they want to give the Negroes equality?”</p>
+
+<p>He drew back sharply, shock showing clearly on his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>
+face. “Touch of the tarbrush in you, boy? By—” He bent
+forward, looking at me searchingly. “No, I can see you
+aint. Just some notions youll outgrow. You just don’t understand.
+We might have won that war if it hadnt been for
+the Abolitionists.”</p>
+
+<p>Would we? I’d heard it said often enough; it would
+have been presumptuous to doubt it.</p>
+
+<p>“The darkies are better off among their own,” he said;
+“they never should have been here in the first place; black
+and white can’t mix. Leave ideas like that alone, Hodge;
+there’s plenty and enough to be done. Chase the foreigners
+out, teach their flunkies a lesson, build the country up
+again.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you trying to get me to join the Grand Army?”</p>
+
+<p>Pondible finished his beer. “Won’t answer that one, boy.
+Let’s say I just want to get you somewheres to sleep, three
+meals a day, and some of that education youre so fired up
+about. Come along.”</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C4"><i>4.</i> <i>TYSS</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>He took me to a bookseller’s and stationery store
+on Astor Place with a printshop in the basement and the
+man to whom he introduced me was the owner, Roger
+Tyss. I spent almost six years there, and when I left neither
+the store nor its contents nor Tyss himself seemed to have
+changed or aged.</p>
+
+<p>I know books were sold and others bought to take their
+places on the shelves or to be piled towerwise on the floor.
+I helped cart in many rolls of sulphide paper and bottles of
+printers’ ink, and delivered many bundles of damp pamphlets,
+broadsides, letterheads and envelopes. Inked ribbons
+for typewriting machines, penpoints, ledgers and
+daybooks, rulers, paperclips, legal forms and cubes of
+indiarubber came and went. Yet the identical, invincible
+disorder, the synonymous dogeared volumes, the indistinguishable
+stock, the unaltered cases of type seemed fixed
+for six years, all covered by the same film of dust which
+responded to vigorous sweeping only by rising into the
+air and immediately settling back on precisely the same
+spots.</p>
+
+<p>Roger Tyss grew six years older and I can only charge
+it to the heedless eye of youth that I saw no signs of that
+aging. Like Pondible and, as I learned, so many members
+of the Grand Army, he wore a beard. His was closely
+trimmed, wiry and grizzled. Above the beard and across
+his forehead were many fine lines which always held some
+of the grime of the store or printing press. You did not
+dwell long on either beard or wrinkles however; what held
+you were his eyes: large, dark, fierce and compassionate.
+You might have dismissed him at first glance as simply<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>
+an undersized, stoopshouldered, slovenly printer, had it not
+been for those eyes which seemed in perpetual conflict
+with his other features.</p>
+
+<p>“Robbed and bludgeoned, ay?” he said with a curious
+disrespect for sequence after Pondible had explained me
+to him. “Dog eats dog, and the survivors survive. Backmaker,
+ay? Is that an American name?”</p>
+
+<p>So far as I knew, I said, it was.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, well; let’s not pry too deeply. So you want to
+learn. Why?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why?” The question was too big for an answer, yet an
+answer of some kind was expected. “I guess because
+there’s nothing else so important.”</p>
+
+<p>“Wrong,” he said triumphantly, “wrong and illusory.
+Since nothing is ultimately important there can be no
+degrees involved. Books are the waste-product of the human
+mind.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yet you deal in them,” I ventured.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m alive and I shall die too; this doesnt mean I approve
+of either life or death. Well, if you are going to learn
+you are going to learn; there’s nothing I can do about it
+As well here as another place.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Gratitude, Hodgins”—he never then nor later condescended
+to the familiar “Hodge” nor did I ever address or
+even think of him except as Mr Tyss—“Gratitude, Hodgins,
+is an emotion disagreeable both to the giver and to
+the receiver. We do what we must; gratitude, pity, love,
+hate, all that cant, is superfluous.”</p>
+
+<p>I considered this statement reflectively.</p>
+
+<p>“Look you,” he went on, “I’ll feed you and lodge you,
+teach you to set type and give you the run of the books.
+I’ll pay you no money; you can steal from me if you must
+You can learn as much here in four months as in a college
+in four years—if you persist in thinking it’s learning you
+want—or you can learn nothing. I’ll expect you to do the
+work I think needs doing; any time you don’t like it youre
+free to go.”
+And so our agreement, if so simple and unilateral a
+statement can be called an agreement, was made within<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span>
+ten minutes after he met me for the first time. For six
+years the store was home and school, and Roger Tyss was
+employer, teacher and father to me. He was never my
+friend. Rather he was my adversary. I respected him and
+the longer I knew him the deeper became my respect, but
+it was an ambivalent feeling and attached only to those
+qualities which he himself would have scorned. I detested
+his ideas, his philosophy and many of his actions, and this
+detestation grew until I was no longer able to live near
+him. But I am getting ahead of my story.</p>
+
+<p>Tyss knew books, not merely as a bookman knows them—binding,
+size, edition, value—but as a scholar. He
+seemed to have read enormously and on every conceivable
+subject, many of them quite useless in practical application.
+(I remember a long discourse on heraldry, filled with
+terms like “paley-bendy” or, “fusils conjoined in fess,
+gules” and “sable demi-lions.” He regarded such erudition,
+indeed any erudition, contemptuously. When I asked
+why he had bothered to pick it up, his retort was, “Why
+have you bothered to pick up calluses, Hodgins?”)</p>
+
+<p>As a printer he followed the same pattern; he was not
+concerned solely with setting up a neat page; he sometimes
+spent hours laying out some trivia, which could have
+interested only its author, until he struck a proof which
+satisfied him. He wrote much on his own account: poetry,
+essays, manifestoes, composing directly from the font, running
+off a single proof which he read—always expressionlessly—and
+immediately destroyed before pieing the type.</p>
+
+<p>I slept on a mattress kept under one of the counters
+during the day; Tyss had a couch hardly more luxurious,
+downstairs by the flatbed press. Each morning before it
+was time to open he sent me across town on the horse-cars
+to the Washington Market to buy six pounds of beef—twelve
+on Saturdays, for the market, unlike the bookstore,
+was closed Sundays. It was always the same cut, heart of
+ox or cow, dressed by the butcher in thin strips. After I
+had been with him long enough to tire of the fare, but not
+long enough to realize the obstinacy of his nature, I begged
+him to let me substitute pork or mutton, or at least some
+other part of the beef, like brains or tripe which were even<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span>
+cheaper. He always answered, “The heart, Hodgins. Purchase
+the heart; it is the vital food.”</p>
+
+<p>While I was on my errand he would buy three loaves of
+yesterday’s bread, still tolerably fresh; when I returned he
+took a long two-pronged fork, our only utensil, for the
+establishment was innocent of either cutlery or dishes, and
+spearing a strip of heart held it over the gas flame of a
+light standard until it was sooted and toasted rather than
+broiled. We tore the loaves with our fingers and with a
+hunk of bread in one hand and a strip of heart in the other
+we each ate a pound of meat and half a loaf of bread for
+breakfast, dinner, and supper.</p>
+
+<p>“Man is uniquely a savage eater of carrion,” he informed
+me, chewing vigorously. “What lion or tiger would
+relish another’s ancient, putrefying kill? What vulture or
+hyena displays human ferocity? Too, we are cannibals at
+heart. We eat our gods; we have always eaten our gods.”</p>
+
+<p>“Isnt that figurative, or poetic, Mr Tyss? I mean, doesnt
+it refer to the grain of wheat which is ‘killed’ by the harvester
+and buried by the sower?”</p>
+
+<p>“You think the gods were modelled on John Barleycorn
+and not John Barleycorn on them—to conceal their fate?
+I fear you have a higher opinion of mankind than is warranted,
+Hodgins.”
+“I’m not sure I know what you mean by gods.”</p>
+
+<p>“Embodiments or personifications of human aspirations.
+The good, the true, the beautiful—with winged feet
+or bull’s body.”
+“How about ... oh, Chronos? Or Satan?”</p>
+
+<p>He licked his fingers of the meat juices, obviously
+pleased. “Satan. An excellent example. Epitome of man’s
+futile longing to upset and defy the divine plan—I use the
+word ‘divine’ derisively, Hodgins—; who does not admire
+and reverence Lucifer in his heart? Well, having made a
+god out of the devil we eat him daily in a two-fold sense:
+by swallowing the myth of his enmity (a truer friend there
+never was), and by digesting his great precepts of pride
+and curiosity and strength. And you see for yourself how
+he finds interesting thoughts for idle minds to speculate
+on. Let’s get to work.”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>
+He expected me to work, but he was far from a hard or
+inconsiderate master. In 1938-44, when the country was
+being ground deeper into colonialism, there were few employers
+so lenient. I read much, generally when I pleased,
+and despite his jeers at learning in the abstract he encouraged
+me, even going to the length, if a particular book was
+not to be found in his considerable stock, of letting me get
+it from one of his competitors, to be written up against
+his account.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was he scrupulous about the time I took on his
+errands. I continued to ramble and sight-see the city much
+as though I had nothing else to do. And if, from time to
+time, I discovered there were girls in New York who didnt
+look too unkindly on a tall youth even though he still carried
+some of the rustic air of Wappinger Falls, he never
+questioned why the walk of half a mile took me a couple
+of hours.</p>
+
+<p>True, he kept to his original promise never to pay me
+wages, but he often handed me coins for pocketmoney,
+evidently satisfied I wasnt stealing, and he replaced my
+makeshift wardrobe with worn but decent clothing.</p>
+
+<p>He had not exaggerated the possibilities of the books
+surrounding me. His brief warning, “—you can learn
+nothing,” was lost on me. I suppose a different temperament
+might have become surfeited with paper and print; I
+can only say I wasnt. I nibbled, tasted, gobbled books.
+After the store was shut I hooked a student lamp to the
+nearest gasjet by means of a long tube, and lying on my
+pallet with a dozen volumes handy, I read till I was no
+longer able to keep my eyes open or understand the words.
+Often I woke in the morning to find the light still burning
+and my fingers holding the pages open.</p>
+
+<p>I think one of the first books to influence me strongly
+was the monumental <i>Causes of American Decline and
+Decay</i> by the always popular expatriate historian, Henry
+Adams. I was particularly impressed by the famous passage
+in which he reproves the “stay-at-home” Bostonian essayists,
+William and Henry James, for their quixotic sacrifice
+and espousal of a long-lost cause. History, said Sir Henry,
+who had renounced his United States citizenship and been<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span>
+knighted by William V, history is never directed or diverted
+by well-intentioned individuals; it is the product of
+forces with geographical, not moral roots.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly the learned expatriate was right, but my instinctive
+sympathies lay with the Jameses, in spite of the
+fact that I had not found their books enjoyable. This was
+due at least partly to the fact that the small editions were
+badly printed and marred, at least so foreign critics
+claimed, by an excessive use of Yankee colloquialisms,
+consciously employed to demonstrate patriotism and disdain
+of imported elegance. For some reason, obscure to
+me then, I did not mention Adams to Tyss, though I usually
+turned to him with each of my fresh discoveries. When
+he came upon me with an open book he would glance at
+the running title over my shoulder and begin talking, either
+of the particular work or of its topic. What he had to say
+gave me an insight I might otherwise have missed, and
+turned me to other writers, other aspects. He respected no
+authority simply because it was acclaimed or established;
+he prodded me to examine every statement, every hypothesis
+no matter how commonly accepted.</p>
+
+<p>Early in my employment I was attracted to a large
+framed parchment he kept hanging, slightly askew and
+highly attractive to dust, over his typecase. It was simply
+but beautifully printed in 16 point Baskerville; I knew
+without being told that he had set it himself:</p>
+
+<p>
+<i>The Body of<br />
+Benjamin Franklin<br />
+Printer<br />
+Like the Cover of an Old Book<br />
+Stripped of Its Lettering and Gilding<br />
+Lies Here<br />
+Food for Worms.<br />
+But the Work Shall Not Be Lost<br />
+For it will, As he Believed,<br />
+Come Forth Again<br />
+In a new and Better Edition<br />
+Revised &amp; Corrected<br />
+By<br />
+The Author.</i><br />
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span></p>
+
+<p>When he caught me admiring it Tyss laughed. “Felicitous,
+isnt it, Hodgins? But a lie, a perverse and probably
+hypocritical lie. There is no Author; the book of life is
+simply a mess of pied type, a tale told by an idiot, full of
+sound and fury, signifying nothing. There is no plan, no
+synopsis to be filled in with pious hopes or sanctimonious
+actions. There is nothing but a vast emptiness in the
+universe.”</p>
+
+<p>“The other day you told me we admired the devil for
+rebelling against a plan.”</p>
+
+<p>He grinned. “So you expect consistency instead of truth
+from me, Hodgins. There is no plan, authored by a Mind;
+it is this no-plan against which Lucifer fought. But there
+is a plan too, a mindless plan, which accounts for all our
+acts.”</p>
+
+<p>I had been reading an obscure Irish theologian, a Protestant
+curate of some forsaken parish, so ill-esteemed he
+had been forced to publish his sermons himself, named
+George B Shaw, and I had been impressed by his forceful
+style. I quoted him to Tyss, perhaps as much to preen myself
+as to counter his argument.</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense. Ive seen the good parson’s book with its
+eighteenth-century logic and its quaint rationalism, and
+know it for a waste of ink and paper. Man does not think;
+he only thinks he thinks. An automaton, he responds to
+external stimuli; he cannot order his thought.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean that there’s no free will? Not even a marginal
+minimum of choice?”</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly. The whole thing is an illusion. We do what
+we do because someone else has done what he did; he did
+it because still another someone did what he did. Every
+action is the rigid result of another action.”</p>
+
+<p>“But there must have been a beginning,” I objected.
+“And if there was a beginning, choice existed if only for
+that split second. And if choice exists once it can exist
+again.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have the makings of a metaphysician, Hodgins,”
+he said witheringly, for metaphysics was one of the most
+despised words in his vocabulary. “The reasoning is infantile.
+Answering you and the Reverend Shaw on your<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span>
+own level, I could say that time is a convention and that
+all events occur simultaneously. Or if I grant its dimension
+I can ask, What makes you think time is a simple straight
+line running flatly through eternity? Why do you assume
+that time isnt curved? Can you conceive of its end? Can
+you really imagine its beginning? Of course not; then why
+arent both the same? The serpent with its tail in its mouth?”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean we not only play a prepared script but repeat
+the identical lines over and over and over for infinity?
+There’s no heaven in your cosmos, only an unimaginable,
+never-ending hell.”</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders. “That you should spout
+emotional apologetics at me is part of what you call the
+script, Hodgins. You didnt select the words nor speak them
+voluntarily. They were called into existence by what I
+said, which in turn was mere response to what went before.”</p>
+
+<p>Weakly I was forced back to a more elementary attack.
+“You don’t act in accordance with your own conviction.”</p>
+
+<p>He snorted. “A thoughtless remark, excusable only because
+automatic. How could I act differently? Like you, I
+am a prisoner of stimuli.”</p>
+
+<p>“How pointless to risk ruin and imprisonment as a member
+of the Grand Army when no one can change what’s
+predestined.”</p>
+
+<p>“Pointless or not, emotions and reflections are responses
+just as much as actions. I can no more help engaging
+myself in the underground than I can help breathing,
+or my heart beating, or dying when the time comes. Nothing,
+they say, is certain but death and taxes; actually everything
+is certain. Everything,” he repeated firmly.</p>
+
+<p>I went back to sorting some pamphlets which were to be
+sold for wastepaper, shaking my head. His theory was unassailable;
+every attack was discounted by the very nature
+of the thesis. That it was false I didnt doubt; its impregnability
+made its falseness still more terrifying.</p>
+
+<p>There were fully as many imaginary discussions with
+Tyss as real ones. Yet even in these disembodied arguments
+I could gain no advantage. Why do you look back
+on the War of Southron Independence with regret for what<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>
+might have been, if no might-have-been is possible? I asked
+him mentally, knowing his answer, I cannot help myself,
+was no answer at all.</p>
+
+<p>The logical illogic of it was only one of the multitude of
+contradictions in him. The Grand Army to which he was
+devoted was a violent organization of violent men. He himself
+was an advocate and implement of violence—one
+illegal paper, the <i>True American</i>, came from his press and
+I often saw crumpled proofs of large type warnings to “Get
+Out of Town you Conf. TRAITOR or the GA will HANG
+YOU!” Yet cruelty, other than intellectually, was repugnant
+to him; his vindictiveness toward the Whigs and Confederates
+rose from commiseration for the condition into
+which they had plunged the country.</p>
+
+<p>Pondible and the others who bore an indefinable resemblance
+to each other, bearded or not, came to the store on
+Grand Army business, and I was sure many of the errands
+I was sent on advanced or were supposed to advance the
+Grand Army’s cause. Those who signed receipts with an
+X—and in the beginning at least Tyss was strict about
+assurance of delivery—seemed unlikely customers for the
+sort of merchandise we handled.</p>
+
+<p>I was relieved, but puzzled and perhaps a little piqued,
+that aside from the very first conversation with Pondible,
+no attempt was made to persuade me into the organization.
+Tyss must have perceived this, for he explained
+obliquely.</p>
+
+<p>“There’s the formative type, Hodgins, and the spectator
+type. One acts, and the other is acted upon. One changes
+events, the other observes them. Of course,” he went on
+hastily, “I’m not talking metaphysical rubbish. When I say
+the formative type changes events I merely mean he reacts
+to a given stimulus in a positive way while the spectator
+reacts to the same circumstances negatively, both reactions
+being inevitable and inescapable. Naturally, events are
+never changed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why can’t one be one type sometimes and the other at
+other times? Ive certainly heard of men of action who have
+sat down to write their memoirs.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are confusing the after-effect of action with non<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span>action,
+the dying ripples on a pond into which a stone has
+been tossed with the still surface of one which has never
+been disturbed. No, Hodgins, the two types are completely
+distinct and unchangeable. The Swiss police chief, Carl
+Jung, has refined and improved the classifications of Lombroso,
+showing how the formative type can always be detected.”</p>
+
+<p>I felt he was talking pure nonsense, even though I had
+never read Lombroso or heard of Chief Jung.</p>
+
+<p>“To the formative type the spectator seems useless, to
+the spectator the man of action is faintly absurd. A born
+observer would find the earnest efforts of the Grand Army—the
+formation of skeleton companies, the appointment
+of officers, the secret drills, the serious attempt to become
+a real army—lacking in humor and repellent.”
+“You think I’m the spectator type, Mr Tyss?”</p>
+
+<p>“No doubt about it, Hodgins. Certain features might be
+deceptive at first sight: the wide-spaced eyes, the restrained
+fleshiness of the mouth, the elevation of the nostril; but
+they subordinate to more subtle indicators. No question
+but that Chief Jung would put you down as an observer.”</p>
+
+<p>If his fantastic reasoning and curious manner of classifying
+personalities as though they were zoological specimens
+could relieve me of having to refuse pointblank to join
+the Grand Army I was content. While this hardly alleviated
+my disturbance at being, no matter how remotely,
+accessory to mayhem, kidnaping and murder I compromised
+with my conscience by trying to believe I might after
+all be mistaken in thinking I was being used. There were
+times when I felt I ought boldly to declare myself and
+leave the store but when I faced the prospect of having to
+find a way to eat and sleep, even if I put aside the imperative
+necessity of books, I lacked the courage.</p>
+
+<p>Spectator? Why not? Spectators had no difficult decisions
+to make.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C5"><i>5.</i> <i>OF WHIGS AND POPULISTS</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>A country defeated in a bitter war and
+divested of half its territory loses its drive and spirit and
+suffers a shock which is communicated to all its people. For
+generations its citizens brood over what has happened, preoccupied
+with the past and dreaming of a miraculous
+change, until time brings apathy or a reversal of history.
+The Grand Army, with its crude and brutal philosophy
+and methods, was pride’s answer to defeat.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the only answer; the two major political
+parties had others. The realistic Whigs wanted to fit the
+country and its economy into actual world conditions, to
+subordinate it wholly and openly to the great manufacturing
+nations and accept with gratitude foreign capital and
+foreign protection. The immediate result would be more
+prosperity for the propertied classes; they contended this
+would mean a gradual raising of the standard of living
+since employers could hire more hands, and indenture,
+faced by competition with wages, would dwindle away.</p>
+
+<p>This the Populists denied. The government, they insisted
+when they were out of office, should create industries, forbid
+indenting, buy up the indentures of skilled workers and
+offer high enough pay to create new markets, and defy the
+world by building a new army and navy. That they never
+put their program into effect they laid to the wily tricks of
+the Whigs.</p>
+
+<p>The presidential election of 1940 was as violent as if the
+office were really a prize to be sought rather than a practically
+empty title, with all real power now held by the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>
+Majority Leader of the House and his cabinet of Committee
+Chairmen. As early as May one of the leading contenders
+for the Populist nomination was shot and badly crippled;
+the Cleveland hall where the Whig convention was
+being held was fired by an arsonist.</p>
+
+<p>I would not be old enough to vote for two years, yet I
+too had campaign fever. Jennings Lewis, the Populist, was
+perhaps the ugliest candidate ever offered, with a hairless,
+skeletonlike face; Dewey, the Whig nominee, had a certain
+handsomeness, which might have been an asset if the persistent
+advocates of woman suffrage had ever gotten their
+way.</p>
+
+<p>Traditionally, candidates never ventured west of Chicago,
+concentrating their appearances in New York and
+New England and leaving the campaign in the sparsely
+settled trans-Mississippi to local politicians. This year both
+office-seekers used every device to reach the greatest number
+of voters. Dewey made a grand tour in his balloon-train;
+Lewis was featured in a series of short phonotos
+which were shown free. Dewey spoke several times daily
+to small groups; Lewis specialized in enormous weekly
+rallies followed by torchlight parades.</p>
+
+<p>One of these Populist rallies was held in Union Square
+early in September; outgoing President George Norris
+spoke, and ex-President Norman Thomas, the only Populist
+to serve two terms since the beloved Bryan. Tyss indulgently
+gave me permission to leave the store a couple of
+hours before the meeting was to commence so I might get
+a place from which to see and hear all that was going on.
+Though he characterized all elections as meaningless exercises
+devised to befuddle, he had been active in this one in
+some mysterious and secretive way.</p>
+
+<p>The square was already well filled when I arrived, with
+the more acrobatic members of the audience perched on
+the statues of LaFayette and Washington. Calliopes played
+patriotic airs, and a compressed air machine shot up puffs
+of smoke which momentarily spelled out the candidate’s
+name. Resigned to pantomime glimpses of what was going
+on, I moved around the outside edge of the crowd, thinking
+I might just as well leave altogether.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Please don’t step on my foot so firmly. Or is that part
+of the Populist tradition?”</p>
+
+<p>“Excuse me, Miss; I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”</p>
+
+<p>We were close enough to a light standard for me to see
+she was young and well-dressed, hardly the sort of girl to
+be found at a political meeting, few of which ever counted
+much of a feminine audience.</p>
+
+<p>She rubbed her instep briefly. “It’s all right,” she conceded
+grudgingly. “Serves me right for being curious about
+the mob.”</p>
+
+<p>She was plump and pretty, with a small, discontented
+mouth and pale hair worn long over her shoulders. “There’s
+not much to see from here,” I said; “unless youre enthusiastic
+enough to be satisfied with a bare look at the important
+people, perhaps you’d let me help you to the streetcar.
+For my clumsiness.”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me thoughtfully. “I can manage by myself.
+But if you feel you owe me something for trampling me,
+maybe you’ll explain why anyone comes to these ridiculous
+gatherings.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why ... to hear the speakers.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hardly any of them can. Only those close up.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well then, to show their support of the party, I guess.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s what I thought. It’s a custom or rite or something
+like that. A stupid amusement.”</p>
+
+<p>“But cheap,” I said. “And those who vote for Populists
+usually havent much money.”</p>
+
+<p>“Maybe that’s why,” she answered. “If they found more
+useful things to do they’d earn money; then they wouldnt
+vote for Populists.”</p>
+
+<p>“A virtuous circle. If everyone voted Whig we’d all be
+rich as Whigs.”</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders, a gesture I found pleasing.
+“It’s easy enough to be envious of those who are better off;
+it’s a lot harder to become better off yourself.”</p>
+
+<p>“I can’t argue with you on that, Miss ... um ...?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why Mister Populist, do ladies always tell you their
+names when you step on their feet?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m not usually lucky enough to find feet to step on that
+have lovely ladies attached,” I answered boldly. “I won’t<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>
+deny Populist leanings, but my name is really Hodge Backmaker.”</p>
+
+<p>Hers was Tirzah Vame, and she was indentured to a
+family of wealthy Whigs who owned a handsome modern
+castiron and concrete house near the Reservoir at Forty-second
+Street and Fifth Avenue. She had used the apt word
+“curious” in characterizing herself but it was, as I soon
+found out, a cold and inflexible curiosity which explored
+only what she thought might be useful or which impressed
+her as foolish. She was interested in the nature of anything
+fashionable or popular or much talked of, the idea of being
+concerned with anything even vaguely abstract struck her
+as preposterous.</p>
+
+<p>She had indented, not out of stark economic necessity,
+but calculatedly, believing she could achieve economic security
+through indenture. This seemed paradoxical to me,
+even when I contrasted my “free” condition with her bound
+one. Certainly she seemed to have minimum restriction on
+her time; soon after our introduction at the rally she was
+meeting me almost every evening in Reservoir Square
+where we sat for hours talking on a bench or walking
+briskly when the autumn weather chilled our blood.</p>
+
+<p>I did not long flatter myself that her interest—perhaps
+tolerance would be a better word—was due to any strong
+attraction exerted by me. If anything she was, I think,
+slightly repelled by my physical presence, which carried to
+her some connotation of ordinary surroundings and contrasted
+with the well-fed smooth surfaces of her employers
+and their friends. The first time I kissed her she shuddered
+slightly; then, closing her eyes, she allowed me to kiss her
+again.</p>
+
+<p>She did not resist me when I pressed my lovemaking; she
+led me quietly to her room in the big house on my transparent
+plea that the outdoors was now too cold even for
+conversation. I was no accomplished seducer, but even in
+my awkward eagerness I could see she had made up her
+mind I was to succeed.</p>
+
+<p>That her complaisance was not the result of passion was
+soon obvious; there was not so much a failure on my part
+to arouse her as a refusal on hers to be aroused beyond an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>
+inescapable degree. Even as she permitted our intimacy
+she remained as virginal, aloof and critical as before.</p>
+
+<p>“It seems hardly worth the trouble. Imagine people talking
+and writing and thinking about nothing else.”</p>
+
+<p>“Tirzah dear—”
+“And the liberties that seem to go with it. I don’t think
+of you as any more dear than I did an hour ago. If people
+must indulge in this sort of thing, and I suppose they must
+since it’s been going on for a long time, I think it could be
+conducted with more dignity.”</p>
+
+<p>As my infatuation increased her coolness did not lessen;
+curiosity alone seemed to move her. She was amused at my
+pathetic search for knowledge. “What good is your learning
+ever going to do you? It’ll never get you a penny.”</p>
+
+<p>I smoothed the long, pale hair and kissed her ear. “Suppose
+it doesnt?” I argued lazily; “There are other things
+besides money.”</p>
+
+<p>She drew away. “That’s what those who can’t get it always
+say.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what do people who can get it say?”</p>
+
+<p>“That it’s the most important thing of all,” she answered
+earnestly. “That it will buy all the other things.”</p>
+
+<p>“It will buy you free of your indenture,” I admitted,
+“but you have to get it first.”</p>
+
+<p>“Get it first? I never let it go. I still have the contract
+payment.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then what was the point of indenting at all?”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me wonderingly. “Havent you ever
+thought about serious things? Only books and politics and
+all that? How could I get opportunities without indenting?
+I doubt if the Vames are much of a cut above the Backmakers;
+well, youre a general drudge and I’m a governess
+and tutor and even in a way a sort of distant friend to
+Mrs Smythe.”</p>
+
+<p>“That sounds suspiciously like snobbery to me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Does it? Well, I’m a snob; Ive never denied it. I want
+to live like a lady, to have a good house with servants and
+carriages and minibiles, to travel to civilized countries,
+with a place in Paris or Rome or Vienna. You can love the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>
+poor and cheer for the Populists; I love the rich and the
+Whigs.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s all very well,” I objected, “but even though you
+have your indenting money and can buy back your freedom
+any moment you want it, how does this help you get
+rich?”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think I keep my money in my pocket? It’s invested,
+every cent. People who come to this house give me
+tips; not just money, though there’s enough of that to add
+a bit to my original capital, but tips on what to buy and
+sell. By the time I’m thirty I should be well off. Of course
+I may marry a rich man sooner.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s an awfully cold-blooded way of looking at marriage,”
+I remonstrated.</p>
+
+<p>“Is it?” she asked indifferently. “Well, youve been telling
+me I’m cold-blooded anyway. I may as well be cold-blooded
+profitably.”</p>
+
+<p>“If that’s the way you feel I don’t understand what
+we’re doing here at this moment. I’d have thought you’d
+have picked a more profitable lover.”</p>
+
+<p>She was unruffled. “You didnt think about it at all. If
+you had, you would have seen I could hardly encourage
+any of the men from the class into which I intend to marry.
+Great ladies can laugh at gossip, but the faintest whisper
+about someone like me would be damaging. Scandal would
+be unavoidable if I appeared to be anything in this house
+but a chilly prude.”</p>
+
+<p>An appearance not too deceitful, I considered, sickly
+jealous at the thought of men who might have been in my
+place if they had been as anonymous, as inconsequential
+as I. But this writhing jealousy was little more painful than
+my frustration at having been made a convenience, a trial
+experiment. Almost anyone of equal unimportance, anyone
+who was not a fellow-servant or a familiar in the house
+would have done as well as I, anyone unlikely ever to come
+face to face with Mrs Smythe, much less talk to her.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back, trying to recapture for a moment that
+vanished past, I have a sad, quizzical welling of pity for the
+girl Tirzah and the boy Hodge. How gravely we took our
+moral and political differences; how lightly the flying<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>
+moments of union. We said and did all the wrong things, all
+the things which fostered the antagonism between us and
+none of the things which might have softened our youthful
+self-assurance. We wrangled and argued: Dewey and
+Lewis, Whig versus Populist, materialist against idealist,
+reality opposing principle. It all seems so futile now; it all
+appeared so vital then.</p>
+
+<p>Added to the almost unanimous distrust and hatred of all
+foreigners in the United States, we regarded the Confederates
+in particular as the cause of all our misfortunes.
+We not only blamed and feared them, but looked upon
+them as sinister, so Populist orators had a ready-made response
+every time they referred to the Whigs as Southron
+tools.</p>
+
+<p>Contrary to the accepted view in the United States, I
+was sure the victors in the War of Southron Independence
+had been men of the highest probity, and the noblest among
+them was their second president. Yet I also knew that immediately
+after the Peace of Richmond less dedicated individuals
+became increasingly powerful in the new nation.
+As Sir John Dahlberg remarked, “Power tends to corrupt.”</p>
+
+<p>From his first election in 1865 until his death ten years
+later, President Lee had been the prisoner of an increasingly
+strong and imperialistic congress. He had opposed
+the invasion and conquest of Mexico by the Confederacy,
+undertaken on the pretext of restoring order during the
+conflict between the republicans and the emperor. However
+he had too profound a respect for the constitutional processes
+to continue this opposition in the face of joint resolutions
+by the Confederate House and Senate.</p>
+
+<p>Lee remained a symbol, but as the generation which had
+fought for independence died, the ideals he symbolized
+faded. Negro emancipation, enacted largely because of
+pressure from men like Lee, soon revealed itself as a device
+for obtaining the benefits of slavery without its obligations.
+The freedmen on both sides of the new border were without
+franchise, and for all practical purposes without civil
+rights. Yet while the old Union first restricted and then
+abolished immigration, the Confederacy encouraged it,
+making the newcomers subjects like the Latin-Americans<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>
+who made up so much of the Southron population after
+the Confederacy expanded southward, limiting full citizenship
+to posterity of enfranchised residents in the Confederate
+States on July Fourth 1864.</p>
+
+<p>The Populists claimed the Whigs were Confederate
+agents; the Whigs retorted that the Populists were visionaries
+and demagogues who tolerated if they did not actually
+encourage the activities of the Grand Army. The Populists
+replied by pointing to their platform which denounced
+illegal organizations and lawless methods. I was not too
+impressed by this, knowing how busy Tyss, Pondible and
+their associates had been ever since the campaign started.</p>
+
+<p>On election night Tyss closed the store and we walked
+the few blocks to Wanamaker &amp; Stewarts drygoods store
+where a big screen showed the returns between tinugraphs
+puffing the firm’s merchandise. From the first it was apparent
+the unpredictable electorate preferred Dewey to
+Lewis. State after state, hitherto staunchly Populist, turned
+to the Whigs for the first time since William Hale Thompson
+defeated President Thomas R Marshall back in 1920
+and again Alfred E Smith in 1924, before Smith gained the
+great popularity which gave him the presidency four years
+later. Only Massachusetts, Connecticut, Dakotah and Oregon
+went for Lewis; his own Minnesota along with twenty-one
+other states plumped for Dewey.</p>
+
+<p>Disappointed as I was, I could not but note Tyss’s cheerful
+air. When I asked him what satisfaction he could find
+in so overwhelming a defeat he smiled and said, “What
+defeat, Hodgins? Did you think we wanted the Populists to
+win? To elect Jennings Lewis with his program of world
+peace conferences? Really Hodgins, I’m afraid you learn
+nothing day by day.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean the Grand Army wanted Dewey all along?”</p>
+
+<p>“Dewey or another; we prefer a Whig administration
+which presents a fixed target to a Populist one wavering all
+over the place.”</p>
+
+<p>Of course it should have occurred to me that Tyss and
+Tirzah would wind up on the same side. It was a measure
+of my innocence that it never had.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C6"><i>6.</i> <i>ENFANDIN</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Tirzah’s question, “What good is your learning
+ever going to do you?” bothered me from time to time. Not
+that I was burdened by any vast amount of knowledge, but
+presumably I would get more—and then what? It was true
+I expected no rewards from reading except the pleasure it
+gave me, but the future, to use a topheavy word, could not
+be entirely disregarded. I could not see myself spending a
+lifetime in the bookstore. I was grateful to Tyss, despite his
+disdain of this emotion, for the opportunities he had given
+me, but not grateful enough to reconcile myself to becoming
+another Tyss, especially one without his vitalizing involvement
+with the Grand Army.</p>
+
+<p>Other courses were neither numerous nor inviting. To
+follow Tirzah’s own example might have seemed feasible
+if one ignored the vast differences of situation and character,
+to say nothing of those between a hulking youth and
+a pretty girl. I could hardly hope to find a wealthy family
+who would buy my services, put me to congenial tasks, and
+look with tolerance on my efforts to advance myself right
+out of their employment. Even if such a chance existed I
+could not have utilized it as she did; I should undoubtedly
+confuse one stock with another or neglect to buy what I
+was told until too late, winding up with lottery tickets and
+losing the stubs.</p>
+
+<p>My helpless uncertainty only added to my disadvantage
+with her. I had no hope her coolness would change to
+either ardor or affection. At any moment she might decide
+her curiosity was satisfied and find the awkwardness,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>
+inconveniences, and what must have been to her the sordidness
+of the affair too great.</p>
+
+<p>We were a strange pair of young lovers. When we talked
+we argued opposing views or spoke sedately of things not
+near our hearts. When we walked together in the streets
+or fled the gaslit pavements for the moon over Reservoir
+Square we neither held hands nor kissed impulsively. Because
+prudence forbade the slightest physical contact save
+in utmost privacy there were no innocent touchings or
+accidental brushing of hands against hips or arms against
+arms, and our secret embraces were guilty simply because
+they were secret.</p>
+
+<p>Often I dreamed of a miraculous change, either in circumstances
+or in her attitude, to dissolve the walls between
+us; beneath the hope was only expectation of an abrupt
+and final break. Yet when it came at last, after more than
+a year, it was not the result, as I had agonizedly anticipated,
+of some successful speculation or an offer of marriage, but
+of natural and normal actions of my own.</p>
+
+<p>Among the customers to whom I frequently delivered
+parcels of books was a Monsieur René Enfandin who lived
+on Eighth Street, not far from Fifth Avenue. M Enfandin
+was Consul for the Republic of Haiti; the house he occupied
+was distinguished from otherwise equally drab neighbors
+by a large red and blue escutcheon over the doorway.
+He did not use the entire dwelling himself, reserving only
+the parlor floor for the office of the consulate and living
+quarters; the rest was let to other tenants.</p>
+
+<p>Tyss’s anti-foreign bias caused him to jeer at Enfandin
+behind his back and embark on discourses which proved
+by anthropometry and frequent references to Lombroso
+and Chief Jung that Negroes were incapable of self-government.
+I noticed however that he treated the consul no
+differently, either in politeness or honesty, from his other
+patrons, and by this time I knew Tyss well enough to attribute
+this courtesy not to the self-interest of a tradesman
+but to that compassion which he suppressed so sternly
+under the contradictions of his nature.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time I paid little attention to Enfandin, beyond
+noting the wide range of interests revealed by the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>
+books he bought. I sensed that, like myself, he was inclined
+to shyness. He had an arrangement whereby he turned
+back most of his purchases for credit on others. I saw that
+if he hadnt, his library would have soon dispossessed him;
+as it was, books covered all the space not taken by the paraphernalia
+of his office and bedroom with the exception of
+a bit of bare wall on which hung a large crucifix. He seemed
+always to have a volume in his large, dark brown hand,
+politely closed over his thumb or open for eager sampling.</p>
+
+<p>Enfandin was tall and strong-featured, notable in any
+company. In the United States where a black man was,
+more than anything else, a reminder of the disastrous war
+and Mr Lincoln’s proclamation, he was the permanent target
+of rowdy boys and adult hoodlums. Even the diplomatic
+immunity of his post was poor protection, for it was
+believed, not without justification, that Haiti, the only
+American republic south of the Mason-Dixon line to preserve
+its independence, was disrupting the official if sporadically
+executed policy of deporting Negroes to Africa
+by encouraging their emigration to its own shores or, what
+was even more annoying, assisting them to flee to the unconquered
+Indians of Idaho or Montana.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond a “Good morning” or “Thank you” I doubt if
+we exchanged a hundred words until the time I saw a copy
+of Randolph Bourne’s <i>Fragment</i> among his selections.
+“That’s not what you think it is,” I exclaimed brashly; “it’s
+a novel.”</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me gravely. “You also admire Bourne?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh yes.” I felt a trifle foolish, not only for having thrust
+my advice upon him, but for the inadequacy of my comment
+on a writer who had so many pertinent things to say
+and had been persecuted for saying them. I was conscious
+too of Tyss’s opinion: How could a cripple like Bourne
+speak to whole and healthy men?</p>
+
+<p>“But you do not approve of fiction, is that so?” Enfandin
+had no discernible accent but often his English was uncolloquial
+and sometimes it was overly careful and stiff.</p>
+
+<p>I thought of the adventure tales I had once swallowed
+so breathlessly. “Well ... it does seem to be a sort of a
+waste of time.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span></p>
+
+<p>He nodded. “Time, yes.... We waste it or save it or
+use it—one would almost think we mastered it instead of
+the other way around. Yet are all novels really a waste of
+the precious dimension? Perhaps you underestimate the
+value of invention.”
+“No,” I said; “but what value has the invention of happenings
+that never happened, or characters who never
+existed?”</p>
+
+<p>“Who is to say what never happened? It is a matter of
+definition.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right,” I said; “suppose the characters exist in the
+author’s mind, like the events; where does the value of the
+invention come in?”</p>
+
+<p>“Where the value of any invention comes in,” he answered.
+“In its purpose or use. A wheel spinning aimlessly
+is worth nothing; the same wheel on a cart or a pulley
+changes destiny.”</p>
+
+<p>“You can’t learn anything from fairy tales,” I persisted
+stubbornly.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled. “Maybe you havent read the right fairy
+tales.”</p>
+
+<p>I soon discovered in him a quick and penetrating sympathy
+which was at times almost telepathic. He listened to
+my callow opinions patiently, offering observations of his
+own without diffidence and without didacticism. The understanding
+and encouragement I did not expect or want
+from Tyss he gave me generously. To him, as I never could
+to Tirzah, I talked of my hopes and dreams; he listened
+patiently and did not seem to think them foolish or impossible
+of accomplishment. I do not minimize what Tyss
+did for me by saying that without Enfandin I would have
+taken much less profit from the books my employer gave
+me access to.</p>
+
+<p>I was drawn to him more and more; I’m not sure why
+he interested himself in me, unless there was a reason in
+the remark he made once: “Ay, we are alike, you and I.
+The books, always the books. And for themselves, not to
+become rich or famous like sensible people. Are we not
+foolish? But it is a pleasant folly and a sometimes blameless
+vice.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span></p>
+
+<p>I wanted anxiously to speak of Tirzah, not only because
+it is an urgent necessity for lovers to mention the name at
+least of their beloved a hundred times a day or more, but
+in the nebulous hope he could somehow give me an answer
+to her as well as to her question. I approached the topic in
+a number of different ways; each time our conversation
+moved on without my having told him about her.</p>
+
+<p>Often, after I had delivered an armful of books to the
+consulate and we had talked of a wide range of things—for,
+unlike me, he had no self-consciousness about what interested
+him, whether others might consider it trivial or
+not—he would walk back to the bookstore with me, leaving
+a note on his door. The promise that he would be “Back
+in 10 minutes” was, I’m afraid, seldom fulfilled, for he
+became so deeply engrossed that he was unaware of time.</p>
+
+<p>The occasion which was to be so important to me sprang
+from a discussion of non-resistance to evil, a subject on
+which he had much to say. We were just passing Wanamaker
+&amp; Stewarts and he had just triumphantly reviewed
+the amazing decision of the Japanese Shogun to abolish all
+police forces, when I became conscious that someone was
+staring fixedly at me.</p>
+
+<p>A minibile, highslung and obviously custom-built, moved
+slowly down the street. Its brass brightwork, bumpers like
+two enormous tackheads, hub rims like delicate eyelets in
+the center of the great spokes, rococo lamps, rain gutters
+and door handles, was dazzling. In the jump-seat, facing a
+lady of majestic demeanor, was Tirzah. Her head was
+turned ostentatiously away from us.</p>
+
+<p>Enfandin halted as I did. “Ah,” he murmured; “you
+know the ladies?”</p>
+
+<p>“The girl. The lady is her employer.”</p>
+
+<p>“I caught only a glimpse of the face, but it is a pretty
+one.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. Oh yes....” I wanted desperately to say more, to
+thank him as though Tirzah’s looks were somehow to my
+credit, to praise her and at the same time call her cruel and
+hardhearted. “Oh yes....”</p>
+
+<p>“She is perhaps a particular friend?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span></p>
+
+<p>I nodded. “Very particular.” We walked on in silence.</p>
+
+<p>“That is nice. But she is perhaps a little unhappy over
+your prospects?”</p>
+
+<p>“How did you know?”</p>
+
+<p>“It was not too hard to infer. You have been concealed
+from the mistress; the young lady is impressed by wealth;
+you are the idealistic one who is not.”</p>
+
+<p>At last I was able to talk. I explained her indenture, her
+ambitious plans, and how I expected her to end everything
+between us at any moment. “And there’s nothing I can do
+about it,” I finished bitterly.</p>
+
+<p>“That is right, Hodge. There is nothing you can do
+about it because—You will forgive me if I speak plainly,
+brutally even?”
+“Go ahead. Tirzah—” what a joy it was just to say the
+name “—Tirzah has told me often enough how unrealistic
+I am.”
+“That was not what I meant. I would say there is nothing
+you can do about it because there is nothing you wish
+to do about it.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean? I’d do anything I could....”</p>
+
+<p>“Would you? Give up books, for instance?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why should I? What good would that do?”</p>
+
+<p>“I do not say you should or that it would do good. I
+only try to show that the young lady, charming and important
+as she is, is not the most magnetic or important
+thing in your life. Romantic love is a curious byproduct of
+west European feudalism that Africans and Asiatics can
+only criticize gingerly. You shake your head with obstinacy;
+you do not believe me. Good, then I have not hurt you.”</p>
+
+<p>“I can’t see that youve helped me much, either.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay! What did you expect from the black man of Haiti?
+Miracles?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing less will do any good I’m afraid. Now I suppose
+youll tell me I’ll get over it in time; that it’s just an
+adolescent languishing anyway.”</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me reproachfully. “No, Hodge. I hope I
+should never be the one to think suffering is tied to age
+or time. As for getting over it, why, we all get over every<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span>thing
+in the end, but no matter how desirable absolute
+peace is, few of us are willing to give up experience prematurely.”</p>
+
+<p>Later, I compared what Enfandin told me with what
+Tyss might have said. Did the responsibility of holding
+Tirzah lie with me and not with both of us, or with fate
+or chance? Or were events so circumscribed by inevitabilities
+that even to think of struggling with them was foolish?</p>
+
+<p>I also asked myself if I had been too proud, too hypersensitive.
+I had tried to make her see my viewpoint by
+arguing, by fighting hers; might it not be possible, without
+giving up essentials, to approach her more gently? To divert
+her, not from her ambitions, but from her contempt for
+mine?</p>
+
+<p>Full of resolves, I left the store after eight; eager walking
+brought me to our meeting place in Reservoir Square
+early, but the nearby churchbells had hardly sounded the
+quarter hour when she said, “Hodge.”</p>
+
+<p>Her unusual promptness was a good omen; I was filled
+with warm optimism. “Tirzah, I saw you this afternoon—”
+“Did you? I thought you were so busy with Sambo you
+would never look up.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why do you call him that? Do you think—”
+“Oh for Heavens sake, don’t start making speeches at
+me. I call him Sambo because it sounds nicer than Rastus.”</p>
+
+<p>All my resolutions about trying to see her point of view!
+“I call him M’sieu Enfandin because that’s his name.”</p>
+
+<p>“Have you no pride? No, I suppose you havent. Just some
+strange manners. Well, I can put up with your eccentricities,
+but other people wouldnt understand. What do you
+think Mrs Smythe would say?”</p>
+
+<p>“Never having met the lady, I havent the faintest idea.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have, and I agree with her. Would you like me to be
+chummy with a naked cannibal with a ring in his nose?”</p>
+
+<p>“But Enfandin doesnt wear a ring in his nose, and you
+must have seen he was fully dressed. Maybe he eats missionaries
+in secret, but that couldnt offend Mrs Smythe
+since appearances would be saved.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m serious, Hodge.”</p>
+
+<p>“So am I. Enfandin is my only friend.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span></p>
+
+<p>“You may be above appearances and considerations of
+decency but I’m not. If you ever appear in public with him
+again you can stop coming here. Because I won’t have
+anything more to do with you.”</p>
+
+<p>“But Tirzah ...” I began helplessly, overwhelmed by
+the impossibility of coping with the irrelevancies and inconsistencies
+of her stand. “But Tirzah....”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” she said firmly; “you’ll simply have to grow up,
+Hodge, and stop such childish exhibitions. Only friend indeed!
+Why I suppose if he appeared here right this minute,
+you’d talk to him.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well naturally. You’d hardly expect me to—”
+“But I do. That’s exactly what I’d expect. You to act
+like a civilized man.”</p>
+
+<p>I wasnt angry. I couldnt be angry with her. “If that’s
+civilization then I guess I don’t want to be civilized.”</p>
+
+<p>I detected astonishment in her voice. “You mean, actually
+mean, you intend to keep on acting this way?”</p>
+
+<p>Grandfather Backmaker must have been a stubborn
+man; I had my mother’s word I possessed no Hodgins
+traits. “Tirzah, what would you think of me if I turned on
+my only friend, the only thoroughly kind and understanding
+friend Ive ever had, just because Mrs Smythe has
+different notions of propriety than I have?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’d think you were beginning to understand things at
+last.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sorry, Tirzah.”</p>
+
+<p>“I mean it, Hodge, you know. I’ll never see you again.”</p>
+
+<p>“If you’d only listen to my side—”
+“You mean if I would only become a crank like you.
+But I don’t want to be a crank or a martyr. I don’t want
+to change the world. I’m normal.”</p>
+
+<p>“Tirzah—”
+“Goodbye, Hodge.”</p>
+
+<p>She walked away. I had the irrational feeling that if I
+called after her she might come back. Or at least stand
+still and wait to hear what I had to say. I kept my mouth
+obstinately closed; Enfandin had been right, the responsibility
+was mine. There were things I would not give up.</p>
+
+<p>My heroic mood must have lasted fully fifteen minutes.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>
+Then I hurried through the little park and across the
+street to the Smythe house. There were lights in the upper
+floors, but the basement, as always, was dark. I dared not
+knock or ring the bell; her admonitions were too firmly
+impressed on my mind. Instead, in a turmoil of emotions,
+I paced the flagged sidewalk until the suspicious eye of a
+patrolman was attracted; then I fled cravenly.</p>
+
+<p>I couldnt wait for the next day to write a long, chaotic
+letter begging her to let me talk to her, just to talk to her,
+for an hour, ten minutes, a minute. I offered to indent, to
+emigrate, to make a fortune by some inspired means if only
+she would hear me. I recalled moments together, I told her
+I loved her, said I would die without her. Having covered
+several pages with these sentiments I began all over and
+repeated them. It was dawn when I posted the letter in the
+pneumatic mail.</p>
+
+<p>Sleepless and tormented, I was of little use to Tyss next
+day. Would she telegraph? If she answered by pneumatic
+post her letter might be delivered in the afternoon. Or
+would she come to the bookstore?</p>
+
+<p>The second day I sent off two more letters and went up
+to Reservoir Square on the chance she might appear. I
+watched the house as though my concentration would force
+her to emerge. On the third day my letters came back,
+unopened.</p>
+
+<p>There is some catchphrase or other about the elasticity
+of youth. It is true it was only weeks before my misery
+abated, and weeks more before I was heart-whole again.
+But those weeks were long.</p>
+
+<p>The subject of Tirzah did not come up again between
+Enfandi and me. He must have sensed I had lost her, perhaps
+he even guessed his connection with the break, but
+he was too tactful to mention it and I was too sore.</p>
+
+<p>I don’t know if the episode precipitated some maturity
+in me, or if, as a result of grief and anger I tried to turn
+my mind away from the easy emotions and shield myself
+against further hurt. At any rate, whether there was a logical
+connection or not, it is from this period that I date my
+resolve to center my reading on history. Somewhat diffidently
+I spoke of this to him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p>
+
+<p>“History? But certainly, Hodge. It is a noble study. But
+what is history? How is it written? How is it read? Is it a
+dispassionate chronicle of events scientifically determined
+and set down in the precise measure of their importance?
+Is this ever possible? Or is it the transmutation of the ordinary
+into the celebrated? Or the cunning distortion which
+gives a clearer picture than accurate blueprints?”</p>
+
+<p>“It seems to me facts are primary and interpretations
+come after,” I answered. “If we can find out the facts we
+can form our individual opinions on them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps. Perhaps. But take what is for me the central
+fact of all history.” He pointed to the crucifix. “As a
+Catholic the facts are plain to me; I believe what is written
+in the Gospels to be literally true: that the Son of Man
+died for me on that cross. But what were the facts for a
+contemporary Roman statesman? That an obscure local
+agitator threatened the stability of an uneasy province and
+was promptly executed in the approved Roman fashion as
+a warning to others. And for a contemporary fellow-countryman?
+That no such person existed. You think these facts
+are mutually exclusive? Yet you know no two people see
+exactly the same thing; too many honest witnesses have
+contradicted each other. Even the Gospels must be reconciled.”</p>
+
+<p>“You are saying that truth is relative.”</p>
+
+<p>“Am I? Then I shall have my tongue examined, or my
+head. Because I mean to say no such thing. Truth is absolute
+and for all time. But one man cannot envisage all of
+truth; the best he can do is see a single aspect of it whole.
+That is why I say to you, be a skeptic, Hodge. Always be
+the skeptic.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay?” I was finding the admonition a little difficult to
+harmonize with his previous confession of faith.</p>
+
+<p>“For the believer skepticism is essential. How else is he
+to know false gods from true except by doubting both? One
+of the most pernicious of folk-sayings is, ‘I could scarcely
+believe my eyes?’ Why should you believe your eyes? You
+were given eyes to see with, not to believe with. Believe
+your mind, your intuition, your reason, your feelings if you
+like—but not your eyes unaided by any of these inter<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span>preters.
+Your eyes can see the mirage, the hallucination,
+as easily as the actual scenery. Your eyes will tell you
+nothing exists but matter—”
+“Not my eyes only, but my boss.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay? What are you saying?” For all his amiability Enfandin
+enjoyed interruption in mid-discourse no more
+than any other teacher. But in a moment his irritation
+vanished and he listened to my description of Tyss’s mechanistic
+creed.</p>
+
+<p>“God have mercy on his soul,” he muttered at last. “Poor
+creature. He has liberated himself from the superstitions
+of religion in order to fall into superstition so abject no
+Christian can conceive it. Imagine to yourself—” he began
+to pace the floor “—time is circular, man is automaton, we
+are doomed to repeat the same gestures over and over, forever.
+Oh I say to you, Hodge, this is monstrous. The poor
+man. The poor man.”
+I nodded. “Yes. But what is the answer? Limitless space?
+Limitless time? They are almost as horrifying, because they
+are inconceivable and awful.”</p>
+
+<p>“And why should the inconceivable and awful be horrifying?
+Is our small human understanding the ultimate
+measuring stick and guide? But of course this is not the
+answer. The answer is that all—time, space, matter—all
+is illusion. All but the good God Himself. Nothing is real
+but Him. We are creatures of His fancy, figments of His
+imagination....”
+“Then where does free will come in?”</p>
+
+<p>“As a gift, naturally. Or supernaturally. How else? The
+greatest gift and the greatest responsibility.”</p>
+
+<p>I can’t say I was entirely satisfied with his exposition,
+though it was certainly more to my taste than Tyss’s. I returned
+to the conversation at intervals, both in my thoughts
+and when I saw him, but in the end I suppose all I really
+accepted was his admonition to be skeptical, which I doubt
+I always applied the way he meant me to.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C7"><i>7.</i> <i>OF CONFEDERATE AGENTS
+IN 1942</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>To anyone but the mooncalf I still was in the year
+of my majority it would have long since occurred with considerable
+force that Enfandin ought to be told of Tyss’s
+connection with the Negro-hating, anti-foreign Grand
+Army. And the thought once entertained, no matter how
+belatedly, would have been immediately translated into
+warning. For me it became a dilemma.</p>
+
+<p>If I exposed Tyss to Enfandin I would certainly be basely
+ungrateful to the man who had saved me from destitution
+and given me the opportunity I wanted so much. Membership
+in the Grand Army was a crime, even though the laws
+were laxly enforced, and I could hardly expect an official
+receiving the hospitality of the United States to conceal
+knowledge of a felony against his host, especially when the
+Grand Army was what it was. Yet if I kept silent I would
+be less than a friend.</p>
+
+<p>If I spoke I would be an informer; if I didnt, a hypocrite
+and worse. The fact that neither man, for totally different
+reasons, would condemn me whichever course I took increased
+rather than diminished my perplexity. I procrastinated,
+which meant I was actually protecting Tyss, and
+that this was against my sympathies increased my feeling
+of guilt.</p>
+
+<p>At this juncture a series of events involved me still
+deeper with the Grand Army and further complicated my
+relationship to both Tyss and Enfandin. It began the day
+a customer called himself to my attention with a selfconscious
+clearing of his throat.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Yes sir. Can I help you?”</p>
+
+<p>He was a fat little man with palpably false teeth, and
+hair hanging down behind over his collar. However the
+sum of his appearance was in no way ludicrous; rather he
+gave the impression of ease and authority, and an assurance
+so strong there was no necessity to buttress it.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, I was looking for—” he began, and then scrutinized
+me sharply. “Say, aint you the young fella I saw
+walking with a Nigra? Big black buck?”</p>
+
+<p>Seemingly everyone had been fascinated by the spectacle
+of two people of slightly different shades of color in company
+with each other. I felt myself reddening. “There’s no
+law against it, is there?”</p>
+
+<p>He made a gargling noise which I judged was laughter.
+“Wouldnt know about your damyankee laws, boy. For myself
+I’d say there’s no harm in it, no harm in it at all. Always
+did like to be around Nigras myself. But then I was rared
+among em. Most damyankees seem to think Nigras aint
+fitten company. Only goes to show how narrerminded and
+bigoted you folks can be. Present company excepted.”</p>
+
+<p>“M’sieu Enfandin is consul of the Republic of Haiti,” I
+said; “he’s a scholar and a gentleman.” As soon as the
+words were out I was bitterly sorry for their condescension
+and patronage. I felt ashamed, as if I had betrayed him by
+offering credentials to justify my friendship and implying
+it took special qualities to overcome the handicap of his
+color.</p>
+
+<p>“A mussoo, huh? Furrin and educated Nigra? Well,
+guess theyre all right.” His tone, still hearty, was slightly
+dubious. “Ben working here long?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nearly four years.”</p>
+
+<p>“Kind of dull, aint it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh no—I like to read, and there are plenty of books
+around here.”
+He frowned. “Should think a hefty young fella’d find
+more interesting things. Youre indented, of course? No?
+Well then youre a mighty lucky fella. In a way, in a way.
+Naturally youll be short on cash, ay? Unless you draw a
+lucky number in the lottery.”</p>
+
+<p>I told him I’d never bought a lottery ticket.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span></p>
+
+<p>He slapped his leg as though I’d just repeated a very
+good joke. “Aint that the pattrun,” he exclaimed; “aint that
+the pattrun! Necessity makes em have a lottery; Puritanism
+keeps em from buying tickets. Aint that the pattrun!” He
+gargled the humor of it for some time, while his eyes moved
+restlessly around the dim interior of the store. “And what
+do you read, ay? Sermons? Books on witches?”</p>
+
+<p>I admitted I’d dipped into both, and then, perhaps trying
+to impress him, explained my ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>“Going to be a professional historian, hey? Little out of
+my line, but I don’t suppose they’s many of em up North
+here.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not unless you count a handful of college instructors
+who dabble in it”</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. “Young fella with your aims could
+do better down South, I’d think.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh yes; some of the most interesting research is going
+on right now in Leesburg, Washington-Baltimore and the
+University of Lima. You are a Confederate yourself, sir?”</p>
+
+<p>“Southron, yes sir, I am that and mighty proud of it.
+Now look a-here, boy: I’ll lay all my cards on the table,
+face up. Youre a free man and you aint getting any pay
+here. Now how’d you like to do a little job for me? They’s
+good money in it; and I imagine I’d be able to fix up one
+of those deals—what do they call em? scholarships—at the
+University of Leesburg, after.”
+A scholarship at Leesburg. Where the Department of
+History was engaged on a monumental project—nothing
+less than a compilation of all known source material on
+the War of Southron Independence! It was only with the
+strongest effort that I refrained from agreeing blindly.</p>
+
+<p>“It sounds fine, Mr—?”
+“Colonel Tolliburr. Jest call me cunnel.”</p>
+
+<p>There wasnt anything remotely military in his bearing.
+“It sounds good to me, Colonel. What is the job?”</p>
+
+<p>He clicked his too regular teeth thoughtfully. “Hardly
+anything at all, m’boy, hardly anything at all. Just want you
+to keep a list for me.”</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to think this a complete explanation. “What
+kind of list, Colonel?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Why, list of the people that come in here steady. Especially
+the ones don’t seem to buy anything, just talk to your
+boss. Names if you know em, but that aint real important,
+and a sort of rough description. Like five foot nine, blue
+eyes, dark hair, busted nose, scar on right eyebrow. And
+so on. Nothing real detailed. And a list of deliveries.”</p>
+
+<p>Was I tempted? I don’t really know. “I’m sorry, Colonel.
+I’m afraid I can’t help you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not even for that scholarship and say, a hundred dollars
+in real money?”</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head.</p>
+
+<p>“They’s no harm in it, boy. Likely nothing’ll come of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sorry.”</p>
+
+<p>“Two hundred? I’m not talking about yankee slugs, but
+good CSA bills, each with a picture of President Jimmy
+right slapdash on the middle of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s not a matter of money, Colonel Tolliburr.”</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me shrewdly. “Think it over, boy. No use
+being hasty.” He handed me a card. “Any time you change
+your mind come and see me or send me a telegram.”</p>
+
+<p>I watched him out of the store. The Grand Army must
+be annoying the mighty Confederacy. Tyss ought to know
+about the agent’s interest. And I knew I would be unable
+to tell him.</p>
+
+<p>“Suppose,” I asked Enfandin the next day, “suppose
+one were placed in the position of being an involuntary
+assistant in a—to a....”
+I was at a loss for words to describe the situation without
+being incriminatingly specific. I could not tell him about
+Tolliburr and my clear duty to let Tyss know of the
+colonel’s espionage without revealing Tyss’s connection
+with the Grand Army and thus uncovering my deceit in not
+warning Enfandin earlier. Whatever I said or failed to say,
+I was somehow culpable.</p>
+
+<p>He waited patiently while I groped, trying to formulate
+a question which was no longer a question. “You can’t do
+evil that good may come of it,” I burst out at last.</p>
+
+<p>“Quite so. And then?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well.... That might mean eventually giving up all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span>
+action entirely, since we can never be sure even the most
+innocent act may not have bad consequences.”</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. “It might. The Manichaeans thought it did;
+they believed good and evil balanced and man was created
+in the image of Satan. But certainly there is a vast difference
+between this inhuman dogma and refusing to do consciously
+wicked deeds.”</p>
+
+<p>“Maybe,” I said dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at me speculatively. “A man is drowning in
+the river. I have a rope. If I throw him the rope he may not
+only climb to safety but take it from me and use it to garrote
+some honest citizen. Shall I therefore let him drown
+because I must not do good lest evil come of it?”</p>
+
+<p>“But sometimes they are so mixed up it is impossible to
+disentangle them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Impossible? Or very difficult?”</p>
+
+<p>“Um.... I don’t know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you not perhaps putting the problem too abstractly?
+Is not perhaps your situation—your hypothetical situation—one
+of being accessory to wrong rather than facing
+an alternative which means personal unhappiness?”
+Again I struggled for noncommittal words. He had formulated
+my dilemma about the Grand Army so far as it
+connected with giving up my place in the bookstore or telling
+him of Tyss’s bias. Yet not entirely. And why could I
+not let Tyss know of Colonel Tolliburr’s visit, which it
+was certainly my duty to do? Was this overscrupulousness
+only a means of avoiding any unpleasantness?</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” I muttered at last.</p>
+
+<p>“It would be very nice if there were no drawbacks ever
+attached to the virtuous choice. Then the only ones who
+would elect to do wrong would be those of twisted minds,
+the perverse, the insane. Who would prefer the devious
+course if the straight one were just as easy? No, no, my
+dear Hodge; one cannot escape the responsibility for his
+choice simply because the other way means inconvenience
+or hardships or tribulation.”</p>
+
+<p>“Must we always act, whether we are sure of the outcome
+of our action or not?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Not acting is also action; can we always be sure of the
+outcome of refusing to act?”</p>
+
+<p>Was it pettiness that made me contrast his position as an
+official of a small yet fairly secure power, well enough paid
+to live comfortably, with mine where a break with Tyss
+meant beggary and no further chance of fulfilling the ambition
+every day more important to me? <i>Did</i> circumstances
+alter cases, and was it easy for Enfandin to talk as he did,
+unconfronted with harsh alternatives?</p>
+
+<p>“You know, Hodge,” he said as though changing the
+subject, “I am what they call a career man, meaning I have
+no money except my salary. This might seem much to you,
+but it is really little, particularly since protocol says I must
+spend more than necessary. For the honor of my country.
+At home I have an establishment to keep up where my
+wife and children live—”
+I had wondered about his apparent bachelorhood.</p>
+
+<p>“—because to be rudely frank, I do not think they would
+be happy or safe in the United States on account of their
+color. Besides these expenses I make personal contributions
+for the assistance of black men who are—how shall we say
+it?—unhappily circumstanced in your country, for I have
+found the official allotment is never enough. Now I have
+been indiscreet; you know state secrets. Why do I tell you
+this? Because, my friend, I should like to help. Alas, I cannot
+offer money. But this I can do, if it will not offend
+your pride: I suggest you live here—it will be no more
+uncomfortable than the arrangements you have described
+in the store—and attend one of the colleges of the city. A
+medal or an order from the Haitian government judiciously
+conferred on an eminent educator—decorations cut so
+nicely across color-lines, perhaps because they don’t show
+their origin to the uninitiated—should take care of tuition
+fees. What do you say?”
+What could I say? That I did not deserve his generosity?
+The statement would be meaningless, a catchphrase, unless
+I explained that I’d not been open with him, and now even
+less than before was I able to do this. Or could I say that
+bare minutes earlier I had thought enviously and spitefully
+of him? Wretched and happy, I mumbled incoherent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span>
+thanks, began a number of sentences and left them unfinished,
+lapsed into dazed silence.</p>
+
+<p>But the newly opened prospect cut through my introspection
+and scattered my self-reproaches. The future was
+too exciting to dwell in any other time; in a moment we
+were both sketching rapid plans and supplementing each
+other’s designs with revisions of our own. Words tumbled
+out; ideas were caught in mid-expression. We decided, we
+reconsidered, we returned to the first decisions.</p>
+
+<p>I was to give Tyss two weeks’ notice despite the original
+agreement making such nicety superfluous; Enfandin was
+to discuss matriculation with a professor he knew. My employer
+raised a quizzical eyebrow at my information.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, Hodgins, you see how neatly the script works out.
+Nothing left to chance or choice. If you hadnt been relieved
+of your trifling capital by a man of enterprise whose methods
+were more successful than subtle you might have
+fumbled at the edge of the academic world for four years
+and then, having substituted a wad of unrelated facts for
+common sense and whatever ability to think you may have
+possessed, fumbled for the rest of your life at the edge of
+the economic world. You wouldnt have met George Pondible
+or gotten here where you could discover your own
+mind without adjustment to a professorial iron maiden.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought it was all arbitrary.”</p>
+
+<p>He gave me a reproachful look. “Arbitrary and predetermined
+are not synonymous, Hodgins, nor does either
+rule out artistry. Mindless artistry of course, like that of
+the snowflake or crystal. And how artistic this development
+is! You will go on to become a professor yourself and construct
+iron maidens for promising students who might become
+your competitors. You will write learned histories,
+for you are—havent I said this before?—the spectator type.
+The part written for you does not call for you to be a participant,
+an instrument for—apparently—influencing
+events. Hence it is proper that you report them so future
+generations may get the illusion they arent puppets.”
+He grinned at me. At another time I would have been
+delighted to pounce on the assortment of inconsistencies
+he had just offered; at the moment I could think of nothing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>
+but my failure to mention the Confederate agent’s visit. It
+almost seemed his mechanist notions were valid and I was
+destined always to be the ungrateful recipient of kindness.</p>
+
+<p>“All right,” he said, swallowing the last of his bread and
+half-raw meat; “so long as your sentimentality impels you
+to respect obligations I can find work for you. Those boxes
+over there go upstairs. Pondible’s bringing a van around for
+them this afternoon.”</p>
+
+<p>Ive heard the assumption that working in a bookstore
+must be light and pleasant. Many times during the years
+with Roger Tyss I had reason to be thankful for my strength
+and farm training. The boxes were deceptively small but
+so heavy they could only have been solidly packed with
+paper. Even with Tyss carrying box for box with me I was
+vastly relieved when I had to quit to run an errand.</p>
+
+<p>When I got back he went out to make an offer on someone’s
+library. “There are only four left. The last two are
+paper-wrapped; didnt have enough boxes.”</p>
+
+<p>It was characteristic of him to leave the lighter packages
+for me. I ran up the stairs with one of the two remaining
+wooden containers. Returning, I tripped on the lowest step
+and sprawled forward. Reflexively I threw out my hands
+and landed on one of the paper parcels. The tight-stretched
+covering cracked and split under the impact; the contents—neatly
+tied rectangular bundles—spilled out.</p>
+
+<p>I had learned enough of the printing trade to recognize
+the brightly colored oblongs as lithographs, and I wondered
+as I stooped over to gather them up why such a job should
+have been given Tyss rather than a shop specializing in this
+work. Even under the gaslight the colors were hard and
+vigorous.</p>
+
+<p>Then I really looked at the bundle I was holding. ESPAÑA
+was enscrolled across the top; below it was the picture
+of a man with long nose and jutting underlip, flanked
+by two ornate figure fives, and beneath them the legend,
+CINCO PESETAS. Spanish Empire banknotes. Bundles
+and bundles of them.</p>
+
+<p>I needed neither expert knowledge nor minute scrutiny
+to tell me there was a fortune here in counterfeit money.
+The purpose in forging Spanish currency I could not see;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>
+that it was no private undertaking of Tyss’s but an activity
+of the Grand Army I was certain. Puzzled and worried, I
+rewrapped the bundles of notes into as neat an imitation of
+the original package as I could contrive.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the day I spent casting uneasy glances at the
+mound of boxes and watching with apprehension the movement
+of anyone toward them. Death was the penalty for
+counterfeiting United States coins; I had no idea of the
+punishment for doing the same with foreign paper but I
+was sure even so minor an accessory as myself would be
+in a sad way if some officious customer should stumble
+against one of the packages.</p>
+
+<p>Tyss in no way acted like a guilty man, or even one with
+an important secret. He seemed unaware of any peril;
+doubtless he was daily in similar situations, only chance
+and my own lack of observation had prevented my discovering
+this earlier.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did he show anxiety when Pondible failed to arrive.
+Darkness came and the gaslamps went on in the streets.
+The heavy press of traffic outside dwindled, but the incriminating
+boxes remained undisturbed near the door. At
+last there was the sound of uncertain wheels slowing up
+outside and Pondible’s voice admonishing, “Wh-whoa!”</p>
+
+<p>I rushed out just as he was dismounting with slow dignity.
+“Who goes?” he asked; “Vance and give a countersign.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s Hodge,” I said. “Let me help you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hodge! Old friend; not seen long time!” (He had been
+in the store only the day before.) “Terrible sfortune, Hodge.
+Dri-driving wagon. Fell off. Fell off wagon I mean. See?”</p>
+
+<p>“Sure, I see. Let me hitch the horse for you. Mr Tyss
+is waiting.”</p>
+
+<p>“Avoidable,” he muttered, “nuvoidable, voidable. Fell
+off.”</p>
+
+<p>Tyss took him by the arm. “You come with me and rest
+awhile. Hodgins, you better start loading up; youll have
+to do the delivering now.”</p>
+
+<p>Rebellious refusal formed in my mind. Why should I be
+still further involved? He had no right to demand it of me;
+in self-protection I was bound to refuse. “Mr Tyss....”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Yes?”</p>
+
+<p>Two weeks would see me free of him, but nothing could
+wipe out the debt I owed him. “Nothing. Nothing,” I murmured
+and picked up one of the boxes.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C8"><i>8.</i> <i>IN VIOLENT TIMES</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>He gave me an address on Twenty-Sixth Street.
+“Sprovis is the name.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right,” I said as stolidly as I could.</p>
+
+<p>“Let them do the unloading. I see there’s a full feedbag
+in the van; that’ll be a good time to give it to the horse.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“They’ll load up another consignment and drive with you
+to the destination. Take the van back to the livery stable.
+Here’s money for your supper and carfare back here.”</p>
+
+<p>He thinks of everything, I reflected bitterly. Except that
+I don’t want to have anything to do with this.</p>
+
+<p>Driving slackly through the almost empty streets my resentment
+continued to rise, drowning, at least partly, my
+fear of being for some unfathomable reason stopped by a
+police officer and apprehended. Why should I be stopped?
+Why should the Grand Army counterfeit pesetas?</p>
+
+<p>The address, which I had trouble finding on the poorly
+lit thoroughfare, was one of those four-storey stuccos at
+least a century old, showing few signs of recent repair. Mr
+Sprovis, who occupied the basement, had one ear distinctly
+larger than the other, an anomaly I could not help attributing
+to a trick of constantly pulling on the lobe. He, like
+the others who came out with him to unload the van, wore
+the Grand Army beard.</p>
+
+<p>“I had to come instead of Pon—”
+“No names,” he growled. “Hear? No names.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right. I was told you’d unload and load up again.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yeah, yeah.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span></p>
+
+<p>I slipped the strap of the feedbag over the horse’s ear
+and started toward Eighth Avenue.</p>
+
+<p>“Hey! Where you going?”</p>
+
+<p>“To get something to eat. Anything wrong with that?”</p>
+
+<p>I felt him peering suspiciously at me. “Guess not. But
+don’t keep us waiting, see? We’ll be ready to go in twenty
+minutes.”</p>
+
+<p>I did not like Mr Sprovis. In the automatic lunchroom
+where the dishes were delivered by a clever clockwork device
+as coins were deposited in the right slots, I gorged on
+fish and potatoes, but my pleasure at getting away for once
+from the unvarying bread and heart was spoiled by the
+thought of him. And I was at best no more than half
+through with the night’s adventure. What freight Sprovis
+and his companions were now loading in the van I had
+no idea. Except that it was nothing innocent.</p>
+
+<p>When I turned the corner into Twenty-Sixth Street
+again, the shadowy mass of the horse and van was gone
+from its place by the curb. Alarmed, I broke into a run and
+discovered it turning in the middle of the block. I jumped
+and caught hold of the dash, pulling myself aboard. “What’s
+the idea?”</p>
+
+<p>A fist caught me in the shoulder, almost knocking me
+back into the street. Zigzags of shock ran down my arm,
+terminating in numbing pain. Desperately I clung to the
+dash.</p>
+
+<p>“Hold it,” someone rumbled; “it’s the punk who came
+with. Let him in.”</p>
+
+<p>Another voice, evidently belonging to the man who’d
+hit me, admonished, “Want to watch yourself, chum. Not
+go jumping like that without warning. I might of stuck a
+shiv in your ribs instead of my hand.”</p>
+
+<p>I could only repeat, “What’s the idea of trying to run
+off with the van? I’m responsible for it.”</p>
+
+<p>“He’s responsible, see,” mocked another voice from the
+body of the van. “Aint polite not to wait on him.”</p>
+
+<p>I was wedged between the driver and my assailant; my
+shoulder ached and I was beginning to be really frightened
+now my first anger had passed. These were “action” members
+of the Grand Army; men who regularly committed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span>
+battery, mayhem, arson, robbery and murder. I had been
+both foolhardy and lucky; realizing this it seemed diplomatic
+not to try for possession of the reins.</p>
+
+<p>I could hear the breathing and mumbling of others in
+back, but it didnt need this to tell me the van was over-loaded.
+We turned north on Sixth Avenue; the street lights
+showed Sprovis driving. “Gidap, gidap,” he urged, “get
+going!”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s a horse,” I protested; “not a locomotive.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you know?” came from behind; “And we
+thought we was on the Erie.”</p>
+
+<p>“He’s tired,” I persisted, “and he’s pulling too much
+weight.”</p>
+
+<p>“Shut up,” ordered Sprovis quietly. “Shut up.” The
+quietness was not deceptive; it was ominous. I shut up.</p>
+
+<p>Speed was stupid on several counts. For one thing it
+called attention to the van at a time when most commercial
+vehicles had been stabled for the night and the traffic was
+almost entirely carriages, buggies, hacks and minibiles. I
+visualized the suspicious crowd which would gather immediately
+if our horse dropped from exhaustion. There was
+no hope that consciousness of an innocuous cargo made
+Sprovis bold; whatever we carried was bound to be as incriminating
+as the counterfeit bills.</p>
+
+<p>Disconnected scraps of conversation drifted from
+Sprovis’ companions. “I says, ‘Look here, youre making
+a nice profit from selling abroad. Either you....’”</p>
+
+<p>“And of course he put it all on a twenty-dollar ticket
+even though....”</p>
+
+<p>“‘ ... my taxes,’ he says. ‘You worry about your taxes,’
+I says; ‘I’m worried about your contributions.’”</p>
+
+<p>A monotonous chuffing close behind us forced itself into
+my consciousness; when we turned eastward in the Forties
+I exclaimed, “There’s a minibile following us!”</p>
+
+<p>Even as I spoke the trackless engine pulled alongside
+and then darted ahead to pocket us by nosing diagonally
+toward the curb. The horse must have been too weak to
+shy; he simply stopped short and I heard the curses of the
+felled passengers behind me.</p>
+
+<p>“Not the cops anyway!”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Cons for a nickel!”</p>
+
+<p>“Only half a block from—”
+“Quick, break out the guns—”
+“Not those guns; one bang and we’re through. Air pistols,
+if anybody’s got one. Hands or knives. Get them all!”</p>
+
+<p>They piled out swiftly past me; I remained alone on the
+seat, an audience of one, properly ensconced. A few blocks
+away was the small park where Tirzah used to meet me.
+It was not believable that this was happening in one of
+New York’s quietest residential districts in the year 1942.</p>
+
+<p>An uneven, distorting light emphasized the abnormal
+speed of the incident that followed, making the action seem
+jumpy, as though the participants were caught at static
+moments, changing their attitudes between flashes of visibility.
+The tempo was so swift any possible spectators in
+the bordering windows or on the sidewalks wouldnt have
+had time to realize what was going on before it was all
+over.</p>
+
+<p>Four men from the minibile were met by five from the
+van. The odds were not too unequal, for the attackers had
+a discipline which Sprovis’ force lacked. Their leader attempted
+to parley during one of those seconds of apparent
+inaction. “Hay you men—we got nothing against you.
+They’s a thousand dollars apiece in it for you—”
+A fist smacked into his mouth. The light caught his face
+as he was jolted back, but I hardly needed its revelation to
+confirm my recognition of Colonel Tolliburr’s voice.</p>
+
+<p>The Confederate agents had brass knuckles and black-jacks,
+Colonel Tolliburr had a sword-cane which he unsheathed
+with a glinting flourish. The Grand Army men
+flashed knives; no one seemed to be using air pistols or
+spring-powered guns.</p>
+
+<p>Both sides were intent on keeping the clash as quiet and
+inconspicuous as possible; no one shouted with anger or
+screamed in pain. This muffled intensity made the struggle
+more gruesome; the contenders fought their natural impulses
+as well as each other. I heard the impact of blows,
+the grunts of effort, the choked-back cries, the scraping of
+shoes on pavement and the thud of falls. One of the defenders
+fell, and two of the attackers, before the two re<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span>maining
+Southrons gave up the battle and attempted
+escape.</p>
+
+<p>With united impulse they started for the minibile, evidently
+realized they wouldnt have time to get up power,
+and began running down the street. Their moment of indecision
+did for them. As the four Grand Army men closed in
+I saw the Confederates raise their arms in the traditional
+gesture of surrender. Then they were struck down.</p>
+
+<p>I crept noiselessly down on the off-side of the van and
+hastened quietly away in the protection of the shadows.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C9"><i>9.</i> <i>BARBARA</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>For the next few days reading was pure pretense.
+I used the opened book to mask my privacy while I
+trembled not so much with fear as with horror. I had been
+brought up in a harsh enough world and murder was no
+novelty in New York; I had seen slain men before, but this
+was the first time I had been confronted with naked, merciless
+savagery. Though I believed Sprovis would have had
+no qualms about despatching an inconvenient witness if I
+had stayed on the van, I had no particular fear for my
+own safety, for my knowledge of what had happened became
+less dangerous daily. The terror of the deed itself
+however remained constant.</p>
+
+<p>I was not concerned solely with revulsion. Inquisitiveness
+looked out under loathing to make me wonder what
+lay behind the night’s events. What had really happened,
+and what did it all mean?</p>
+
+<p>From scraps of conversation accidentally heard or deliberately
+eavesdropped, from the newspapers, from deduction
+and remembered fragments, I reconstructed the picture
+which made the background. Its borders reached a
+long way from Astor Place.</p>
+
+<p>For years the world had been waiting, half in dread,
+half in resignation, for war to break out between the world’s
+two Great Powers, the German Union and the Confederate
+States. Some expected the point of explosion would be the
+Confederacy’s ally, the British Empire; most anticipated at
+least part of the war would be fought in the United States.</p>
+
+<p>The scheme of the Grand Army, or of that part of it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span>
+which included Tyss, was apparently a farfetched and fantastic
+attempt to circumvent the probable course of history.
+The counterfeiting was an aspect of this attempt which was
+nothing less than trying to force the war to start, not
+through the Confederacy’s ally, but through the German
+Union’s—the Spanish Empire. With enormous amounts
+of the spurious currency circulated by emissaries posing as
+Confederate agents, the Grand Army hoped to embroil the
+Confederacy with Spain and possibly preserve the neutrality
+of the United States. It was an ingenuous idea evolved,
+I see now, by men without knowledge of the actual mechanics
+of world politics.</p>
+
+<p>If I ever had any sentimental notions about the Army
+they vanished now. Tyss’s mechanism may not have been
+purposefully designed to palliate, but it made it easy to
+justify actions like Sprovis’. I had no such convenient way
+of numbing my conscience. But even as I brooded over the
+weakness and cowardice which made me an accomplice, I
+looked forward to my release. I had not seen Enfandin
+since his offer; in a week I would leave the bookstore for
+his sanctuary, and I resolved my first act should be to tell
+him everything. And then that dream was exploded just
+as it was about to be realized.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know who it was broke into the consulate or
+for what reason, and was surprised in the act, shooting and
+wounding Enfandin so seriously he was unable to speak
+for the weeks before he was finally returned to Haiti to recuperate
+or die. He could not have gotten in touch with
+me and I was not permitted to see him; the police guard
+was doubly zealous to keep him from all contact since he
+was both an accredited diplomat and a black man.</p>
+
+<p>I did not know who shot him. It was most unlikely to be
+anyone connected with the Grand Army, but I did not
+know. I could not know. He <i>might</i> have been shot by
+Sprovis or George Pondible. Since the ultimate chain could
+have led back to me, it did lead back to me. If this were
+the Manichaeism of which Enfandin had spoken, I could
+not help it</p>
+
+<p>The loss of my chance to escape from the bookstore was
+the least of my despair. It seemed to me I was caught by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>
+the inexorable, choiceless circumstance in which Tyss so
+firmly believed and Enfandin denied. I could escape neither
+my guilt nor the surroundings conducive to further guilt.
+I could not change destiny.</p>
+
+<p>Was all this merely the self-torture of any introverted
+young man? Possibly. I only know that for a long time, long
+as one in his early twenties measures time, I lost all interest
+in life, even dallying with thoughts of suicide. I put books
+aside distastefully or, which was worse, indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>I must have done my work around the store; certainly I
+recall no comments from Tyss about it. Neither can I remember
+anything to distinguish the succession of days.
+Obviously I ate and slept; there were undoubtedly long
+hours free from utter hopelessness. The details of those
+months have simply vanished.</p>
+
+<p>Nor can I say precisely when it was my despair began
+to lift. I know that one day—it was cold and the snow was
+deep on the ground, deep enough to keep the minibiles off
+the streets and cause the horse-cars trouble—I saw a girl
+walking briskly, red-cheeked, breathing in quick visible
+puffs, and my glance was not apathetic. When I returned to
+the bookstore I picked up Field Marshal Liddell-Hart’s
+<i>Life of General Pickett</i> and opened it to the place where
+I had abandoned it. In a moment I was fully absorbed.</p>
+
+<p>Paradoxically, once I was myself again I was no longer
+the same Hodge Backmaker. For the first time I was determined
+to do what I wanted instead of waiting and hoping
+events would somehow turn out right for me. Somehow I
+was going to free myself from the bookstore and all its
+frustrations and evils.</p>
+
+<p>This resolution was reinforced by the discovery that I
+was exhausting the volumes around me. The books I
+sought now were rare and ever more difficult to find. Innocent
+of knowledge about academic life I imagined them
+ready to hand in any college library.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was I any longer satisfied with the printed word
+alone. My friendship with Enfandin had shown me how
+fruitful a personal, face-to-face relationship between
+teacher and student could be, and it seemed to me such<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>
+ties could develop into ones between fellow scholars, a mutual,
+uncompetitive pursuit of knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>Additionally I wanted to search the real, the original
+sources: unpublished manuscripts of participants or onlookers,
+old diaries and letters, wills or accountbooks,
+which might shade a meaning or subtly change the interpretation
+of old, forgotten actions.</p>
+
+<p>My problems could be solved ideally by an instructorship
+at some college, but how was this to be achieved without
+the patronage of a Tolliburr or an Enfandin? I had no
+credentials worth a second’s consideration. Though the
+immigration bars kept out graduates of foreign universities,
+no college in the United States would accept a
+self-taught young man who had not only little Latin and
+less Greek, but no mathematics, languages, or sciences at
+all. For a long time I considered possible ways and means,
+both drab and dramatic; at last, more in a spirit of whimsical
+absurdity than sober hope, I wrote out a letter of
+application, setting forth the qualifications I imagined myself
+to possess, assaying the extent of my learning with a
+generosity only ingenuousness could palliate, and outlining
+the work I projected for my future. With much care and
+many revisions I set this composition in type. It was undoubtedly
+a foolish gesture, but not having access to so
+costly a machine as a typewriter, and not wanting to reveal
+this by penning the letters by hand, I resorted to this transparent
+device.</p>
+
+<p>Tyss picked up one of the copies I struck off and glanced
+over it. His expression was critical. “Is it too bad?” I asked
+despondently.</p>
+
+<p>“You should have used more leading. And lined it up
+and justified the lines and eliminated hyphens. Setting type
+can never be done mechanically or half-heartedly—that’s
+why no one yet has been able to invent a practical typesetting
+machine. I’m afraid you’ll never make a passable
+printer, Hodgins.”
+He was concerned only with typesetting, uninterested
+in the outcome. Or satisfied, since it was predetermined,
+that comment was superfluous.</p>
+
+<p>Government mails, never efficient and always expensive,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>
+being one of the favorite victims of holdup men, and pneumatic
+post limited to local areas, I dispatched the letters
+by Wells, Fargo to a comprehensive list of colleges. I can’t
+say I then waited for the replies to flow in, for though I
+knew the company’s system of heavily armed guards would
+insure delivery of my applications, I had little anticipation
+of any answers. As a matter of fact I put it pretty well out
+of my mind, dredging it up at rarer intervals, always a trifle
+more embarrassed by my presumption.</p>
+
+<p>It was several months later, toward the end of September,
+that the telegram came signed Thomas K Haggerwells.
+It read, <span class="allsmcap">ACCEPT NO OFFER TILL OUR REPRESENTATIVE
+EXPLAINS HAGGERSHAVEN</span>.</p>
+
+<p>I hadnt sent a copy of my letter to York, Pennsylvania,
+where the telegram had originated, or anywhere near it. I
+knew of no colleges in that vicinity. And I had never heard
+of Mr (or Doctor or Professor) Haggerwells. I might have
+thought the message a mean joke, except that Tyss’s nature
+didnt run to such humor and no one else knew of the letters
+except those to whom they were addressed.</p>
+
+<p>I found no reference to Haggershaven in any of the directories
+I consulted, which wasnt too surprising considering
+the slovenly way these were put together. I decided that
+if such a place existed I could only wait patiently until the
+“representative,” if there really was one, arrived.</p>
+
+<p>Tyss having left for the day, I swept a little, dusted some,
+straightened a few of the books—any serious attempt to
+arrange the stock would have been futile—and took up a
+recent emendation of Creasy’s <i>Fifteen Decisive Battles</i> by
+one Captain Eisenhower.</p>
+
+<p>I was so deep in the good captain’s analysis (he might
+have made a respectable strategist himself, given an opportunity)
+that I heard no customer enter, sensed no impatient
+presence. I was only recalled from my book by a rather
+sharp, “Is the proprietor in?”</p>
+
+<p>“No maam,” I answered, reluctantly abandoning the
+page. “He’s out for the moment. Can I help you?”</p>
+
+<p>My eyes, accustomed to the store’s poor light, had the
+advantage over hers, still adjusting from the sunlit street.
+Secure in my audacity, I measured her vital femininity, a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>
+quality which seemed, if such a thing is possible, impersonal.
+There was nothing overtly bold or provocative about
+her, though I’m sure my mother would have thinned her
+lips at the black silk trousers and the jacket which emphasized
+the contour of her breasts. At a time when women
+used every device to call attention to their helplessness and
+consequently their desirability and the implied need for
+men to protect them, she carried an air which seemed to
+say, Why yes, I am a woman: not furtively or brazenly or
+incidentally but primarily; what are you going to do about
+it?</p>
+
+<p>I recognized a sturdy sensuality as I recognized the fact
+that she was bareheaded, almost as tall as I, and rather
+large-boned; certainly there was nothing related to me
+about it. Nor was it connected with surface attributes; she
+was not beautiful and still further from being pretty, though
+she might have been called handsome in a way. Her hair,
+ginger-colored and clubbed low on her neck, waved crisply;
+her eyes appeared slate gray. (Later I learned they could
+vary from pale gray to blue-green.) The fleshly greediness
+was betrayed, if at all, only by the width and set of her
+lips, and that insolent expression.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, and I decided I had been quite wrong in
+thinking her tone peremptory. “I’m Barbara Haggerwells.
+I’m looking for a Mr Backmaker”—she glanced at a slip
+of paper—“a Hodgins M Backmaker who evidently uses
+this as an accommodation address.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m Hodge Backmaker,” I muttered in despair. “I—I
+work here.” I was conscious of not having shaved that
+morning, that my pants and jacket did not match, that my
+shirt was not clean.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I expected her to say nastily, So I see! or the
+usual, It must be fascinating! Instead she said, “I wonder
+if youve run across <i>The Properties of X</i> by Whitehead? Ive
+been trying to get a copy for a long time.”</p>
+
+<p>“Uh—I.... Is it a mystery story?”
+“I’m afraid not. It’s a book on mathematics by a mathematician
+very much out of favor. It’s hard to find, I suppose
+because the author is bolder than he is tactful.”</p>
+
+<p>So naturally and easily she led me away from my em<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span>barrassment
+and into talking of books, relieving me of self-consciousness
+and some of the mortification in being exposed
+at my humble job by the “representative” of the telegram.
+I admitted deficient knowledge of mathematics and
+ignorance of Mr Whitehead though I maintained, accurately,
+that the book was not in stock, while she assured me
+that only a specialist would have heard of so obscure a
+theoretician. This made me ask, with the awe one feels for
+an expert in an alien field, if she were a mathematician, to
+which she replied, “Heavens, no. I’m a physicist. But
+mathematics is my tool.”</p>
+
+<p>I looked at her with respect. Anyone, I thought, can read
+a few books and set himself up as an historian; to be a
+physicist means genuine learning. And I doubted she was
+much older than I.</p>
+
+<p>She said abruptly, “My father is interested in knowing
+something about you.”</p>
+
+<p>I acknowledged this with something between a nod and
+a bow. She had been examining and gauging me for the
+past half hour. “Your father is Thomas Haggerwells?”</p>
+
+<p>“Haggerwells of Haggershaven,” she confirmed, as
+though explaining everything. There was pride in her voice
+and a hint of superciliousness.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m dreadfully sorry, Miss Haggerwells, but I’m afraid
+I’m as ignorant of Haggershaven as of mathematics.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought you said you’d been reading history. Odd
+youve come upon no reference to the Haven in the records
+of the past seventy-five years.”</p>
+
+<p>I shook my head helplessly. “I suppose my reading has
+been scattered.” Her look indicated agreement but not
+absolution. “Haggershaven is a college?”</p>
+
+<p>“No. Haggershaven is ... Haggershaven.” She resumed
+her equanimity, her air of smiling tolerance. “It’s hardly a
+college since it has no student body nor faculty. Rather,
+both are one at the haven. Anyone admitted is a scholar
+or potential scholar anxious to devote himself to learning.
+I mean for its own sake. Not many are acceptable.”</p>
+
+<p>She need hardly have added this; it seemed obvious I
+could not be one of the elect, even if I hadnt offended her
+by never having heard of Haggershaven. I knew I couldnt<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>
+pass the most lenient of entrance examinations to ordinary
+colleges, much less to the dedicated place she represented.</p>
+
+<p>“There arent any formal requirements for fellowship,”
+she went on, “beyond the undertaking to work to full capacity,
+to pool all knowledge and hold back none from
+scholars anywhere, to contribute economically to the Haven
+in accordance with decisions of the majority of fellows, and
+to vote on questions without consideration of personal gain.
+There! That certainly sounds like the stuffiest manifesto
+delivered this year.”</p>
+
+<p>“It sounds too good to be true.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, it’s true enough.” She moved close and I caught the
+scent of her hair and skin. “But there’s another side. The
+haven is neither wealthy nor endowed. We have to earn
+our living. The fellows draw no stipend; they have food,
+clothes, shelter, whatever books and materials they need—no
+unessentials. We often have to leave our own individual
+work to do manual labor to bring in food or money
+for all.”
+“Ive read of such communities,” I said enthusiastically.
+“I thought they’d all disappeared fifty or sixty years ago.”</p>
+
+<p>“Have you and did you?” she asked contemptuously.
+“Youll be surprised to learn that Haggershaven is neither
+Owenite nor Fourierist. We are not fanatics nor saviors.
+We don’t live in phalansteries, practice group marriage or
+vegetarianism. Our organization is expedient, subject to
+revision, not doctrinaire. Contribution to the common stock
+is voluntary and we are not concerned with each other’s
+private lives.”</p>
+
+<p>“I beg your pardon, Miss Haggerwells. I didnt mean to
+annoy you.”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s all right. Perhaps I’m touchy; all my life Ive seen
+the squinty suspiciousness of the farmers all around, sure
+we were up to something immoral, or at least illegal. Youve
+no idea what a prickly armor you build around yourself
+when you know that every yokel is cackling, ‘There goes
+one of them; I bet they ...’ whatever unconventional practice
+their imaginations can conceive at the moment. And
+the parallel distrust of the respectable schools. Detachedly,
+the haven may indeed be a refuge for misfits, but is it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span>
+necessarily wrong not to fit into the civilization around us?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m prejudiced. I certainly havent fitted in myself.”</p>
+
+<p>She didnt answer and I felt I had gone too far in daring
+an impulsive identification. Awkwardness made me blurt
+out further, “Do you ... do you think there’s any chance
+Haggershaven would accept me?” Whatever reserve I’d
+tried to maintain deserted me; my voice expressed only
+childish longing.</p>
+
+<p>“I couldnt say,” she answered primly. “Acceptance or
+rejection depends entirely on the vote of the whole fellowship.
+All I’m here to offer is train fare. Neither you nor
+the haven is bound.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m perfectly willing to be bound,” I said fervently.</p>
+
+<p>“You may not be so rash after a few weeks.”</p>
+
+<p>I was about to reply when Little Aggie—so called to
+distinguish her from Fat Aggie who was in much the same
+trade, but more successful—came in. Little Aggie supplemented
+her nocturnal earnings around Astor Place by begging
+in the same neighborhood during the day.</p>
+
+<p>“Sorry, Aggie,” I said; “Mr Tyss didnt leave anything
+for you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Maybe the lady would help a poor working girl down
+on her luck,” she suggested, coming close. “My, that’s a
+pretty outfit you have. Looks like real silk, too.”</p>
+
+<p>Barbara Haggerwells drew away with anger and loathing
+on her face. “No,” she refused sharply. “No, nothing!”
+She turned to me. “I must be going. I’ll leave you to entertain
+your friend.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I’ll go,” said Little Aggie cheerfully, “no need to
+get in an uproar. Bye-bye.”</p>
+
+<p>I was frankly puzzled; the puritanical reaction didnt
+seem consistent. I would have expected condescending
+amusement, disdainful tolerance or even haughty annoyance,
+but not this furious aversion. “I’m sorry Little Aggie
+bothered you. She’s really not a wicked character and she
+does have a hard time getting along.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sure you must enjoy her company immensely. I’m
+sorry we can’t offer similar attractions at the haven.”</p>
+
+<p>Apparently she thought my relations with Aggie were
+professional. Even so her attitude was odd. I could hardly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span>
+flatter myself she was interested in me as a man, yet her
+flare-up seemed to indicate jealousy, a strange kind of jealousy,
+perhaps like the sensuality I attributed to her, as
+though the mere presence of another woman was an
+affront.</p>
+
+<p>“Please don’t go yet. For one thing—” I cast around for
+something to hold her till I could restore a more favorable
+impression. “—for one thing you havent told me how
+Haggershaven happened to get my application.”
+She gave me a cold, angry look. “Even though we’re supposed
+to be cranks, orthodox educators often turn such
+letters over to us. After all, they may want to apply themselves
+someday.”</p>
+
+<p>The picture this suddenly presented, of a serene academic
+life which was not so serene and secure after all, but
+prepared for a way to escape if necessary, was startling
+to me. I had taken it for granted that our colleges, even
+though they were far inferior to those of other countries,
+were stable and sheltered.</p>
+
+<p>When I expressed something of this, she laughed. “Hardly.
+The colleges have not only decayed, they have decayed
+faster than other institutions. They are mere hollow shells,
+ruined ornaments of the past. Instructors spy on each other
+to curry favor with the trustees and assure themselves of
+reappointment when the faculty is out periodically. Loyalty
+is the touchstone, but no one knows any more what the
+object of loyalty is supposed to be. Certainly it is no longer
+toward learning, for that is the least of their concerns.”</p>
+
+<p>She slowly allowed herself to be coaxed back into her
+previous mood, and again we talked of books. And now
+I thought there was a new warmth in her voice and glance,
+as though she had won some kind of victory, but how or
+over whom there was no indication.</p>
+
+<p>When she left I hoped she was not too prejudiced against
+me. For myself I readily admitted it would be easy enough
+to want her—if one were not afraid of the humiliations it
+was in her nature to inflict.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C10"><i>10.</i> <i>THE HOLDUP</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>This time I didnt offer Tyss two weeks’ notice.
+“Well Hodgins, I made all the appropriate valedictory remarks
+on a previous occasion, so I’ll not repeat them, except
+to say the precision of the script is extraordinary.”</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to me he was saying in a roundabout way that
+everything was for the best. For the first time I saw Tyss
+as slightly pathetic rather than sinister; extreme pessimism
+and vulgar optimism evidently met, like his circular time.
+I smiled indulgently and thanked him sincerely for all his
+kindness.</p>
+
+<p>In 1944 almost a hundred years had passed since New
+York and eastern Pennsylvania were first linked in a railroad
+network, yet I don’t suppose my journey differed
+much in speed or comfort from one which might have been
+taken by Granpa Hodgins’ father. The steam ferry carried
+me across the Hudson to Jersey. I had heard there were
+only financial, not technical obstacles to a bridge or tunnel.
+If the English and French could burrow under the Channel,
+as they had early in the century, and the Japanese
+complete their great tube beneath the Korea Strait, it was
+hard to see why a lesser work here was dismissed as the
+impractical suggestion of dreamers who believed the cost
+would be saved in a few years by running trains directly
+to Manhattan.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was the ferry the only antique survival on the trip.
+The cars were all ancient, obvious discards from Confederate
+or British American lines. Flat wheels were common;
+the wornout locomotives dragged them protestingly over<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>
+the wobbly rails and uneven roadbed. First class passengers
+sat on napless plush or grease-glazed straw seats; second
+class passengers stood in the aisles or on the platforms;
+third class rode the roofs—safe enough at the low speed
+except for sudden jerks or jolts.</p>
+
+<p>There were so many different lines, each jealous of exclusive
+rights of way, that the traveler hardly got used to
+his particular car before he had to snatch up his baggage
+and hustle for the connecting train, which might be on
+the same track or at the same sooty depot, but was more
+likely to be a mile away. Even the adjective “connecting”
+was often ironical for it was not unusual to find time-tables
+arranged so a departure preceded an arrival by minutes,
+necessitating a stopover of anywhere from one hour
+to twelve.</p>
+
+<p>If anything could have quieted my excitement on the
+trip it was the view through the dirt-sprayed windows.
+“Fruitless” and “unfulfilled” were the words coming oftenest
+to my mind. I had forgotten during the past six years
+just how desolate villages and towns could look when their
+jerrybuilt structures were sunk in apathetic age without
+even the false rejuvenation of newer jerrybuilding. I had
+forgotten the mildewed appearance of tenant farmhouses,
+the unconvincing attempt to appear businesslike of false-fronted
+stores with clutters of hopeless merchandise in their
+dim windows, or the inadequate bluff of factories too small
+for any satisfactory production.</p>
+
+<p>Once away from New York it was clear how atypical
+the city was in its air of activity and usefulness. The countryside
+through which the tracks ran, between fields and
+pastures or down the center of main streets, should have
+been the industrial heart of a country bustling and vigorous.
+Instead one saw potentialities denied, projects withered,
+poverty and dilapidation.</p>
+
+<p>We crossed the Susquehanna on an old, old stone bridge
+that made one think of Meade’s valiant men, bloodily
+bandaged many of them, somnambulistically marching
+northward, helpless and hopeless after the Confederate triumph
+at Gettysburg, their only thought to escape Jeb Stuart’s
+pursuing cavalry. Indeed, every square mile now<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span>
+carried on its surface an almost visible weight of historical
+memories.</p>
+
+<p>York seemed old, gray and crabbed in the afternoon, but
+when I got off the train there I was too agitated with the
+prospect of being soon at Haggershaven to take any strong
+impression of the town. I inquired the way, and the surly
+response confirmed Barbara Haggerwells’ statement of
+local animosity. The distance, if my informant was accurate,
+was a matter of some ten miles.</p>
+
+<p>I started off down the highway, building and demolishing
+daydreams, thinking of Tyss and Tirzah, Enfandin and
+Miss Haggerwells, trying to picture her father and the
+fellows of the haven and for the thousandth time marshaling
+arguments for my acceptance in the face of scornful
+scrutiny. The early October sun was setting on the rich
+red and yellow leaves of the maples and oaks; I knew the
+air would become chilly before long, but exertion kept me
+warm. I counted on arriving at the haven in plenty of time
+to introduce myself before bedtime.</p>
+
+<p>Less than a mile out of town the highway assumed the
+familiar aspect of the roads around Wappinger Falls and
+Poughkeepsie: rutted, wavering, with deep, unexpected
+holes. The stone or rail fences on either side enclosed
+harvested cornfields, the broken stalks a dull brass with
+copper-colored pumpkins scattered through them. But the
+fences were in poor repair and the oft-mended wooden
+covered bridges over the creeks all had signs, DANGEROUS,
+Travel At Your Own Risk.</p>
+
+<p>There were few to share the highway with me: a farmer
+with an empty wagon, urging his team on and giving me a
+churlish glance instead of an invitation to ride; a horseman
+on an elegant chestnut picking his course carefully
+among the chuckholes, and a few tramps, each bent on his
+solitary way, at once defensive and aggressive. The condition
+of the bridges accounted for the absence of minibiles.
+However, just about twilight a closed carriage, complete
+with coachman and footman on the box, rolled haughtily
+by, stood for a moment outlined atop the slope up which I
+was trudging and then disappeared down the other side.</p>
+
+<p>I paid little attention except—remembering my boyhood<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>
+and my father’s smithy—to visualize automatically the
+coachman pulling back on the reins and the footman thrusting
+forward with the brake as they eased the horses downward.
+So when I heard first a shout and then feminine
+screams my instant conclusion was that the carriage had
+overturned on the treacherous downgrade, broken an axle,
+or otherwise suffered calamity.</p>
+
+<p>My responsive burst of speed had almost carried me to
+the top when I heard the shots. First one, like the barking
+of an uncertain dog, followed by a volley, as though the
+pack were unleashed.</p>
+
+<p>I ran to the side of the road, close to the field, where I
+could see with less chance of being seen. Already the dusk
+was playing tricks, distorting the shape of some objects
+and momentarily hiding others. It could not however falsify
+the scene in the gully below. Four men on horseback covered
+the carriage with drawn revolvers; a fifth, pistol also
+in hand, had dismounted. His horse, reins hanging down,
+was peacefully investigating the roadside weeds.</p>
+
+<p>None of them attempted to stop the terrified rearing of
+the carriage team. Only their position, strung across the
+road, prevented a runaway. I could not see the footman,
+but the coachman, one hand still clutching the reins, was
+sprawled backward with his foot caught against the dashboard
+and his head hanging down over the wheel.</p>
+
+<p>The door on the far side was swung open. I thought for
+a moment the passengers had managed to escape. However
+as the unmounted highwayman advanced, waving his
+pistol, the other door opened and a man and two women
+descended into the roadway. Slowly edging forward I
+could now plainly hear the gang’s obscene whistles at sight
+of the women.</p>
+
+<p>“Well boys, here’s something to warm up a cold night.
+Hang on to them while I see what the mister has in his
+pockets.”</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman stepped in front, and with a slight accent
+said, “Take the girl by all means. She is but a peasant, a
+servant, and may afford you amusement. But the lady is
+my wife; I will pay you a good ransom for her and myself.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>
+I am Don Jaime Escobar y Gallegos, attached to the Spanish
+legation.”</p>
+
+<p>One of the men on horseback said, “Well now, that’s real
+kind of you, Don High-me. We might have taken you up
+on that, was you an American. But we can’t afford no company
+of Spanish Marines coming looking for us, so I guess
+we’ll have to pass up the ransom and settle for whatever
+youve got handy. And Missus Don and the hired girl. Don’t
+worry about her being a peasant; we’ll treat her and the
+madam exactly the same.”</p>
+
+<p>“Madre de Dios,” screamed the lady. “Mercy!”</p>
+
+<p>“It will be a good ransom,” said the Spaniard, “and I
+give you my word my government will not bother you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sorry, chum,” returned the gangster. “You foreigners
+have a nasty habit of interfering with our domestic institutions
+and hanging men who make a living this way. Just
+can’t trust you.”</p>
+
+<p>The man on foot took a step forward. The nearest rider
+swung the maid up before him and another horseman
+reached for her mistress. Again she screamed; her husband
+brushed the hand aside and put his wife behind him.
+At that the gangster raised his pistol and shot twice. The
+man and woman dropped to the ground. The maid shrieked
+till her captor covered her mouth.</p>
+
+<p>“Now what did you want to do that for? Cutting our
+woman supply in half that way?”</p>
+
+<p>“Sorry. Mighty damn sorry. These things always happen
+to me.”</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile another of the gang slid off his horse and
+the two went through the dead, stripping them of jewelry
+and whatever articles of clothing caught their fancy before
+searching the luggage and the coach itself for valuables.
+By the time they had finished it was fully dark and
+I had crept to within a few feet of them, crouching reasonably
+secure and practically invisible while they debated
+what to do with the horses. One faction was in favor of
+taking them along for spare mounts; the other, arguing
+that they were too easily identifiable, for cutting them out
+and turning them loose. The second group prevailing, they
+at last galloped away.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span></p>
+
+<p>A sudden thrashing in the cornstalks just beyond the
+fence startled me into rigidity. Something which might be
+human stumbled and crawled toward the carriage, snuffling
+and moaning, to throw itself down by the prostrate bodies,
+its anguished noises growing more high-pitched and chilling.</p>
+
+<p>I was certain this must be a passenger who had jumped
+from the off-side of the carriage at the start of the holdup,
+but whether man or woman it was impossible to tell. I
+moved forward gingerly, but somehow I must have betrayed
+my presence, for the creature, with a terrified groan,
+slumped inertly.</p>
+
+<p>My hands told me it was a woman I raised from the
+ground and the smell of her was the smell of a young girl.
+“Don’t be afraid, Miss,” I tried to reassure her; “I’m a
+friend.”</p>
+
+<p>I could hardly leave the girl lying in the road, nor did
+I feel equal to carrying her to Haggershaven which I reckoned
+must be about six miles further. I tried shaking her,
+rubbing her hands, murmuring encouragement, all the
+while wishing the moon would come up, feeling somehow it
+would be easier to revive her in the moonlight.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss,” I urged, “get up. You can’t stay here—they may
+come back.”
+Had I reached her? She stirred, whimpering with strange,
+muffled sounds. I dragged her to her knees and managed
+to get her arm over my shoulder. “Get up,” I repeated.
+“Get on your feet.”</p>
+
+<p>She moaned. I pulled her upright and adjusted my hold.
+Supporting her around the waist and impeded by my valise,
+I began an ungraceful, shuffling march. I could only
+guess at how much time had been taken up by the holdup
+and how slow our progress would be. It didnt seem likely
+we could get to Haggershaven before midnight, an awkward
+hour to explain the company of a strange girl. The
+possibility of leaving her at a hospitable farmhouse was
+remote; no isolated rural family in times like these would
+open their door with anything but deep suspicion or a
+shotgun blast.</p>
+
+<p>We had made perhaps a mile, a slow and arduous one,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>
+when the moon rose at last. It was full and bright, and
+showed my companion to be even younger than I had
+thought. The light fell on masses of curling hair, wildly
+disarrayed about a face unnaturally pale and lifeless yet
+extraordinarily beautiful. Her eyes were closed in a sort of
+troubled sleep, and she continued to moan, though at less
+frequent intervals.</p>
+
+<p>I had just decided to stop for a moment’s rest when we
+came upon one of the horses. The clumsily cut traces
+trailing behind him had caught on the stump of a broken
+sapling. Though still trembling he was over the worst of his
+fright; after patting and soothing him I got us onto his
+back and we proceeded in more comfortable if still not
+too dignified fashion.</p>
+
+<p>It wasnt hard to find Haggershaven; the sideroad to it
+was well kept and far smoother than the highway. We
+passed between what looked to be freshly plowed fields
+and came to a fair sized group of buildings, in some of
+which I was pleased to see lighted windows. The girl had
+still not spoken; her eyes remained closed and she moaned
+occasionally.</p>
+
+<p>Dogs warned of our approach. From a dark doorway a
+figure came forward with a rifle under his arm. “Who is it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Hodge Backmaker. Ive got a girl here who was in a
+holdup. She’s had a bad shock.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right,” he said, “let me hitch the horse. Then I’ll
+help you with the girl. My name’s Dorn. Asa Dorn.”</p>
+
+<p>I slid off and lifted the girl down. “I couldnt leave her
+in the road,” I offered in inane apology.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll water and feed the horse after. Let’s go into the
+main kitchen; it’s warm there. Here,” he addressed the girl,
+“take my arm.”</p>
+
+<p>She made no response and I half carried her, with Dorn
+trying helpfully to share her weight. The building through
+which we led her was obviously an old farmhouse, enlarged
+and remodelled a number of times. Gaslights of a
+strange pattern, brighter than any I’d ever seen, revealed
+Asa Dorn as perhaps thirty with very broad shoulders and
+very long arms, and a dark, rather melancholy face.
+“There’s a gang been operating around here,” he informed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>
+me; “tried to shake the haven down for a contribution.
+That’s why I was on guard with the gun. Must be the
+same bunch.”</p>
+
+<p>We bustled our charge into a chair before a big fieldstone
+fireplace which gave the large room its look of welcome,
+though the even heat came from sets of steampipes under
+the windows. “Should we give her some soup? Or tea? Or
+shall I get Barbara or one of the other women?”</p>
+
+<p>His fluttering brushed the outside of my mind. Here in
+the light I instinctively expected to see some faint color in
+the girl’s cheeks or hands, but there was none. She looked
+no more than sixteen, perhaps because she was severely
+dressed in some school uniform. Her hair, which had
+merely been a disordered frame for her face in the moonlight,
+now showed itself as deeply black, hanging in thick,
+soft curls around her shoulders. Her features, which seemed
+made to reflect emotions—full, mobile lips, faintly slanted
+eyes, high nostrils—were instead impassive, devoid of vitality,
+and this unnatural quiescence was heightened by the
+dark eyes, now wide open and expressionless. Her mouth
+moved slowly, as though to form words, but nothing came
+forth except the faintest of guttural sounds.</p>
+
+<p>“She’s trying to say something.” I leaned forward as
+though by sympathetic magic to help the muscles which
+seemed to respond with such difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>“Why,” exclaimed Dorn, “she’s ... dumb!”</p>
+
+<p>She looked agonizedly toward him. I patted her arm
+helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll go get—” he began.</p>
+
+<p>A door opened and Barbara Haggerwells blinked at us.
+“I thought I heard someone ride up, Ace. Do you suppose....”
+Then she caught sight of the girl. Her face set in
+those lines of strange anger I had seen in the bookstore.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Haggerwells—”
+“Barbara—”
+Dorn and I spoke together. Either she did not hear us
+or we made no impression. She faced me in offended outrage.
+“Really, Mr Backmaker, I thought I’d explained there
+were no facilities here for this sort of thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“You misunderstand,” I said, “I happened—”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>
+Dorn broke in. “Barbara, she’s been in a holdup. She’s
+dumb....”</p>
+
+<p>Fury made her ugly. “Is that an additional attraction?”</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Haggerwells,” I tried again, “you don’t understand—”
+“I think I understand very well. Dumb or not, get the
+slut out of here! Get her out right now, I say!”</p>
+
+<p>“Barbara, youre not listening—”
+She continued to face me, her back to him. “I should
+have remembered you were a ladies’ man, Mr Self-taught
+Backmaker. No doubt you imagined Haggershaven to be
+some obscene liberty hall. Well, it isnt! You’d be wasting
+any further time you spent here. Get out!”</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C11"><i>11.</i> <i>OF HAGGERSHAVEN</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I suppose—recalling the inexplicable scene with
+Little Aggie—I was less astonished by her frenzy than I
+might have been. Besides, her rage and misunderstanding
+were anticlimactic after the succession of excitements I had
+been through that day. Instead of amazement I felt only
+uneasiness and tired annoyance.</p>
+
+<p>Dorn steered Barbara out of the room with a combination
+of persuasion and gentle force disguised as solicitous
+soothing, leaving the girl and me alone. “Well,” I said,
+“well....”</p>
+
+<p>The large eyes regarded me helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, youve certainly caused me a lot of trouble....”</p>
+
+<p>Dorn returned with two women, one middleaged, the
+other slightly younger, who flowed around the girl like
+soapy water, effectually sealing her away from all further
+masculine blunders, uttering little bubbly clucks and sudsy
+comfortings.</p>
+
+<p>“Overwork, Backmaker,” Dorn mumbled. “Barbara’s
+been overworking terribly. You mustnt think—”
+“I don’t,” I said. “I’m just sorry she couldnt be made to
+realize what actually happened.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hypersensitive; things that wouldnt ordinarily ...
+it’s overwork. Youve no idea. She wears herself out. Practically
+no nerves left.”</p>
+
+<p>His face, pleading for understanding, looked even more
+melancholy than before. I felt sorry for him and slightly
+superior; at the moment at least I didnt have to apologize
+for any female unpredictability. “OK, OK; there doesnt<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span>
+seem to be any great harm done. And the girl appears to
+be in good hands now.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh she is,” he answered with evident relief at dropping
+the subject of Barbara’s behavior. “I don’t think there’s
+anything more we can do for her now; in fact I’d say we’re
+only in the way. How about meeting Mr Haggerwells now?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why not?” The last episode had doubtless finished me
+for good so far as Barbara was concerned; whatever neutral
+report she might have given her father originally could
+now be counted on for a damning revision. I might as well
+put a nonchalant face on matters before returning to the
+world outside Haggershaven.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Haggerwells, large-boned like his daughter,
+with the ginger hair faded, and a florid, handsome complexion,
+made me welcome. “Historian ay, Backmaker?
+Delighted. Combination of art and science; Clio, most
+enigmatic of the muses. The ever-changing past, ay?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m afraid I’m no historian yet, Mr Haggerwells. I’d
+like to be one. If Haggershaven will let me be part of it.”</p>
+
+<p>He patted me on the shoulder. “The fellows will do what
+they can, Backmaker; you can trust them.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s right,” said Dorn cheerfully; “you look strong
+as an ox and historians can be kept happy with books and
+a few old papers.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ace is our cynic,” explained Mr Haggerwells; “very
+useful antidote to some of our soaring spirits.” He looked
+absently around and then said abruptly, “Ace, Barbara
+is quite upset.”</p>
+
+<p>I thought this extreme understatement, but Dorn merely
+nodded. “Misunderstanding, Mr H.”</p>
+
+<p>“So I gathered.” He gave a short, selfconscious laugh.
+“In fact that’s all I did gather. She said something about a
+woman....”</p>
+
+<p>“Girl, Mr H, just a girl.” He gave a quick outline of
+what had happened, glossing over Barbara’s hysterical
+welcome.</p>
+
+<p>“I see. Quite an adventure in the best tradition, ay Backmaker?
+And the victims killed in cold blood; makes you
+wonder about civilization. Savagery all around us.” He
+began pacing the flowered carpet. “Naturally we must help<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>
+the poor creature. Shocking, quite shocking. But how can
+I explain to Barbara? She ... she came to me,” he said
+half proudly, half apprehensively. “I wouldnt want to fail
+her; I hardly know....” He pulled himself together. “Excuse
+me, Backmaker. My daughter is high-strung. I fear
+I’m allowing concern to interfere with our conversation.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not at all, sir,” I said. “I’m very tired; if you’ll excuse
+me....”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course, of course,” he answered gratefully. “Ace
+will show you your room. Sleep well—we’ll talk more tomorrow.
+And Ace—come back here afterward, will you?”
+Barbara Haggerwells had both Dorn and her father well
+cowed, I thought as I lay awake. Clearly she could brook
+not even the suspicion of rivalry, even when it was entirely
+imaginary. It would be rather frightening to be her father,
+or—as I suspected Ace might be—her lover, and subject
+to her tyrannical dominance.</p>
+
+<p>But it was neither Barbara nor overstimulation from the
+full day which caused my insomnia. A torment, successfully
+suppressed for hours, invaded me. Connecting the
+trip of the Escobars—“attached to the Spanish legation”—with
+the counterfeit pesetas was pure fantasy. But what is
+logic? I could not argue myself into reasonableness. I could
+not quench my feeling of responsibility with ridicule nor
+convincingly charge myself with perverse conceit in magnifying
+my trivial errands into accountability for all that
+flowed from the Grand Army—for much which might have
+flowed from the Grand Army. Guilty men cannot sleep because
+they feel guilty. It is the feeling, not the abstract guilt
+which keeps them awake.</p>
+
+<p>Nor could I pride myself on my chivalry in rescuing distressed
+maidens. I had only done what was unavoidable,
+grudgingly, without warmth or charity. There was no point
+in being aggrieved by Barbara’s misinterpretation with its
+disastrous consequences to my ambitions. I had not freely
+chosen to help; I had no right to resent a catastrophe which
+should properly have followed a righteous choice.</p>
+
+<p>At last I slept, only to dream Barbara Haggerwells was
+a great fish pursuing me over endless roads on which my
+feet bogged in clinging, tenacious mud. Opening my mouth<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>
+to shout for help was useless; nothing came forth but a
+croak which sounded faintly like my mother’s favorite
+“Gumption!”</p>
+
+<p>In the clear autumn morning my notions of the night
+dwindled, even if they failed to disappear entirely. By the
+time I was dressed Ace Dorn showed up; we went to the
+kitchen where Ace introduced me to a middleaged man,
+Hiro Agati, whose close-cut stiff black hair stood perfectly
+and symmetrically erect all over his head.</p>
+
+<p>“Dr Agati’s a chemist,” remarked Ace, “condemned to
+be head chef for a while on account of being too good a
+cook.”</p>
+
+<p>“Believe that,” said Agati, “and you’ll believe anything.
+Truth is they always pick on chemists for hard work.
+Physicists like Ace never soil their hands. Well, so long as
+you can’t eat with the common folk, what’ll you have, eggs
+or eggs?”</p>
+
+<p>Agati was the first Oriental I’d ever seen. The great anti-Chinese
+massacres of the 1890’s, which generously included
+Japanese and indeed all with any sign of the epicanthic
+eyefold, had left few Asians to have descendants in
+the United States. I’m afraid I stared at him more than was
+polite, but he was evidently used to such rudeness for he
+paid no attention.</p>
+
+<p>“They finally got the girl to sleep,” Ace informed me.
+“Had to give her opium. No report yet this morning.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh,” I said lamely, conscious I should have asked after
+her without waiting for him to volunteer the news. “Oh.
+Do you suppose we’ll find out who she is?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr H telegraphed the sheriff first thing. It’ll all depend
+how interested he is, and that’s not likely to be very.
+What’s to drink, Hiro?”</p>
+
+<p>“Imitation tea, made from dried weeds; imitation coffee
+made from burnt barley. Which’ll you have?”</p>
+
+<p>I didnt see why he stressed the imitation; genuine tea
+and coffee were drunk only by the very rich. Most people
+preferred “tea” because it was less obnoxious than the
+counterfeit coffee. Perversely, I said, “Coffee please.”</p>
+
+<p>He set a large cup of brown liquid before me which had
+a tantalizing fragrance quite different from that given off<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>
+by the beverage I was used to. I added milk and tasted,
+aware he was watching my reaction.</p>
+
+<p>“Why,” I exclaimed, “this is different. I never had anything
+like it in my life. It’s wonderful.”</p>
+
+<p>“C eight H ten O two,” said Agati with an elaborate air
+of indifference. “Synthetic. Specialty of the house.”</p>
+
+<p>“So chemists are good for something after all,” remarked
+Ace.</p>
+
+<p>“Give us a chance,” said Agati; “we could make beef
+out of wood and silk out of sand.”</p>
+
+<p>“Youre a physicist like B—like Miss Haggerwells?” I
+asked Ace.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m a physicist, but not like Barbara. No one is. She’s
+a genius. A great creative genius.”</p>
+
+<p>“Chemists create,” said Agati sourly; “physicists sit
+and think about the universe.”</p>
+
+<p>“Like Archimedes,” said Ace.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>How shall I write of Haggershaven as my eyes first saw
+it twenty-two years ago? Of the rolling acres of rich plowed
+land, interrupted here and there by stone outcroppings
+worn smooth and round by time, and trees in woodlots or
+standing alone strong and unperturbed? Of the main building,
+grown by fits and starts from the original farmhouse
+into a great, rambling eccentricity stopping short of monstrosity
+only by its complete innocence of pretense? Shall
+I describe the two dormitories, severely functional, escaping
+harshness because they had not been built by carpenters
+and though sturdy enough, betrayed the amateur touch
+in every line? Or the cottages and apartments, two, four, at
+most six rooms, for the married fellows and their families?
+These were scattered all over, some so avid for privacy
+that one could pass unknowing within feet of the concealing
+trees or shrubbery, others bold in the sunshine on
+knolls or in hollows.</p>
+
+<p>I could tell of the small shops, the miniature laboratories,
+the inadequate observatory, the heterogeneous assortment
+of books which was both less and more than a library, the
+dozens of outbuildings. But these things were not the
+haven. They were merely the least of its possessions. For<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span>
+Haggershaven was not a material place at all, but a spiritual
+freedom. Its limits were only the limits of what its fellows
+could do or think or inquire. It was circumscribed only by
+the outside world, not by internal rules and taboos, competition
+or curriculum.</p>
+
+<p>Most of this I could see for myself, much of it was explained
+by Ace. “But how can you afford the time to take
+me all around this way?” I asked; “I must be interfering
+with your own work.”</p>
+
+<p>He grinned. “This is my period to be guide, counselor
+and friend to those whove strayed in here, wittingly or un.
+Don’t worry, after youre a fellow youll get told off for all
+the jobs, from shoveling manure to gilding weathercocks.”</p>
+
+<p>I sighed. “The chances of my getting to be a fellow are
+minus nothing. Especially after last night.”</p>
+
+<p>He didnt pretend to misunderstand. “Barbara’ll come
+out of it. She’s not always that way. As her father says,
+she’s high-strung, and she’s been working madly. And to
+tell the truth,” he went on in a burst of frankness, “she
+really doesnt get on too well with other women. She has a
+masculine mind.”</p>
+
+<p>I have often noticed that men not strikingly brilliant
+themselves attribute masculine minds to intelligent women
+on the consoling assumption that feminine minds are normally
+inferior. Ace however was manifestly innocent of
+any attempt to patronize.</p>
+
+<p>“Anyway,” he concluded, “she has only one vote.”</p>
+
+<p>I didnt know whether to take this as a pledge of support
+or mere politeness. “Isnt it wasteful, assigning a chemist
+like Dr Agati to kitchen work? Or isnt he a good chemist?”</p>
+
+<p>“Just about the best there is. His artificial tea and coffee
+would bring a fortune to the haven if there were a profitable
+market; even as it is it’ll bring a good piece of change.
+Wasteful? What would you have us do, hire cooks and
+servants?”</p>
+
+<p>“Theyre cheap enough.”</p>
+
+<p>“Or frightfully expensive. Specialization, the division of
+labor, is certainly not cheap in anything but dollars and
+cents, and not always then. And it’s unquestionably waste<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span>ful
+in terms of equality. And I don’t think there’s anyone
+at the haven who isn’t an egalitarian.”</p>
+
+<p>“But you do specialize and divide labor. Don’t tell me
+you swap your physics for Agati’s chemistry.”</p>
+
+<p>“In a way we do. Of course I don’t set up as an experimenter,
+any more than he does as a speculator. But there
+have been plenty of times Ive worked under his direction
+when he needed an assistant who didnt know anything but
+had a strong back.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right,” I said; “but I still don’t see why you can’t
+hire a cook and some dishwashers.”</p>
+
+<p>“Where would our equality be then? What would happen
+to our fellowship?”</p>
+
+<p>Haggershaven’s history, which I got little by little, was
+more than a link with the past; it was a possible hint of
+what might have been if the War of Southron Independence
+had not interrupted the American pattern. Barbara’s
+great-great-grandfather, Herbert Haggerwells, had been a
+Confederate major from North Carolina who, as conquerors
+sometimes do, had fallen in love with the then fat Pennsylvania
+countryside. After the war he had put everything—not
+much by Southron standards, but a fortune in depreciated,
+soon to be repudiated, United States greenbacks—into
+the farm which later formed the nucleus of
+Haggershaven. Then he married a local girl and transformed
+himself into a Northerner.</p>
+
+<p>Until I became too accustomed to notice it anymore I
+used to stare at his portrait in the library, picturing in idle
+fancy a possible meeting on the battlefield between this
+aristocratic gentleman with his curling mustache and daggerlike
+imperial and my own plebian Granpa Hodgins.
+But the chance of their ever having come face to face was
+much more than doubtful; I, who had studied both their
+likenesses, was the only link between them.</p>
+
+<p>“Hard looking character, ay?” commented Ace. “This
+was painted when he was mellow; imagine him twenty
+years earlier. Pistols cocked and Juvenal or Horace or
+Seneca in the saddlebags.”</p>
+
+<p>“He was a cavalry officer, then?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know. Don’t think so as a matter of fact. Saddle<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span>bags
+was just my artistic touch. They say he was a holy
+terror; discipline and all that—it sort of goes with a man
+on horseback. And the old Roman boys are pure deduction;
+he was that type. Patronized several writers and
+artists; you know: ‘Drop down to my estate and stay a
+while’ and they stayed five or ten years.”
+But it was Major Haggerwells’ son who, seeing the deterioration
+of Northern colleges, had invited a few restive
+scholars to make their home with him. They were free to
+pursue their studies under an elastic arrangement which
+permitted them to be selfsupporting through work on the
+farm.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Haggerwells’ father had organized the scheme
+further, attracting a larger number of schoolmen who contributed
+greatly to the material progress of the haven. They
+patented inventions, marketless at home, which brought
+regular royalties from more industrialized countries. Agronomists
+improved the haven’s crops and took in a steady
+income from seed. Chemists found ways of utilizing otherwise
+wasted byproducts; proceeds from scholarly works—and
+one more popular than scholarly—added to the funds.
+In his will, Volney Haggerwells left the properties to the
+fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I expected there would be some uniformity,
+some basic type characterizing the fellows. Not that Barbara,
+or Ace, or Hiro Agati resembled a stereotype at any
+point, any more than I did myself, but then I was not one
+of the elect nor likely to be. Even after I had met more than
+half of them the notion persisted that there must be some
+stamp on them proclaiming what they were.</p>
+
+<p>Yet as I wandered about the haven, alone or with Ace,
+the people I met were quite diverse, more so by far than
+in the everyday world. There were the ebullient and the
+glum, the talkative and the laconic, the bustling and the
+slow-moving. Some were part of a family, others lived
+ascetically, withdrawn from the pleasures of the flesh.</p>
+
+<p>In the end I realized there was, if not a similarity, a
+strong bond. The fellows, conventional or eccentric, passionate
+or reserved, were all earnest, purposeful and, despite
+individual variations, tenacious. They were, though<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span>
+I hesitate to use so emotional a word, dedicated. The cruel
+struggle and suspicion, the frantic endeavor to improve
+one’s own financial, social, or political standing by maiming
+or destroying someone else intent on the same endeavor
+was either unknown or so subdued as to be imperceptible
+at the haven. Disagreements and jealousies existed, but
+they were different in kind rather than in degree from those
+to which I had been accustomed all my life. The pervasive
+fears which fostered the latter, the same fears which made
+lotteries and indenture frantic gambles to escape the wretchedness
+of life, could not circulate in the security of the
+haven.</p>
+
+<p>After the scene at my arrival, I didnt see Barbara again
+for some ten days. Even then it was but a glimpse, caught
+as she hurried in one direction and I sauntered in another.
+She threw me a single frigid glance and went on. Later, I
+was talking with Mr Haggerwells, who had proved to be
+not quite an amateur of history but more than a dabbler,
+when, without knocking, she burst into the room.</p>
+
+<p>“Father, I—” Then she caught sight of me. “Sorry. I
+didnt know you were entertaining.”</p>
+
+<p>His tone was that of one found in a guilty act. “Come in,
+come in, Barbara. Backmaker is after all something of a
+protégé of yours. Urania, you know—if one may stretch
+the ascription a bit—encouraging Clio.”
+“Really, Father!” She was regal. Wounded, scornful, but
+majestic. “I’m sure I don’t know enough about self-taught
+pundits to sponsor them. It seems too bad they have to
+waste your time—”
+He flushed. “Please, Barbara. You must, you really
+must control....”</p>
+
+<p>Her disapproval became open anger. “Must I? Must I?
+And stand by while every pretentious swindler usurps your
+attention? Oh, I don’t ask for any special favors as your
+daughter; I know too well I have none coming. But I
+should think at least the consideration due a fellow of the
+haven would prompt ordinary courtesy even where no
+natural affection exists!”</p>
+
+<p>“Barbara, please.... Oh, my dear girl, how can
+you ...?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span></p>
+
+<p>But she was gone, leaving him distressed and me puzzled.
+Not at her lack of restraint but at her accusation that
+he lacked a father’s love for her. Nothing was clearer than
+his pride in her or his protective, baffled tenderness. It did
+not seem possible so willful a misunderstanding could be
+maintained.</p>
+
+<p>“You can’t judge Barbara by ordinary standards,” insisted
+Ace uncomfortably, when I told him what had happened.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m not judging her by any standards or at all,” I said;
+“I just don’t see how anyone could get things so wrong.”</p>
+
+<p>“She.... Her nature needs sympathy. Lots of it. She’s
+never had the understanding and encouragement she ought
+to have.”</p>
+
+<p>“It looks the other way around to me.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s because you don’t know the background. She’s
+always been lonely. From childhood. Her mother was impatient
+of children and never found time for her.”</p>
+
+<p>“How do you know?” I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Why ... she told me, of course.”</p>
+
+<p>“And you believed her. Without corroborative evidence.
+Is that what’s called the scientific attitude?”</p>
+
+<p>He stopped stock-still. “Look here, Backmaker—” a
+moment before I had been Hodge to him—“Look here,
+Backmaker, I’m damned tired of all the things people say
+about Barbara; the jeers and sneers and gossip by people
+who just aren’t good enough to breathe the same air with
+her, much less have the faintest notion of her mind and
+spirit—”
+“Come off it, Ace,” I interrupted. “I havent got anything
+against Barbara. The shoe is on the other foot. Tell
+her I’m all right, will you? Don’t waste time trying to convince
+me; I’m just trying to get along.”</p>
+
+<p>It was clear, not only from the slips which evaded Ace’s
+guard, but from less restrained remarks by other fellows,
+that Barbara’s tortured jealousy was a fixture of her character.
+She had created feuds, slandered and reviled fellows
+who had been guilty of nothing except trying to interest her
+father in some project in which she herself was not concerned.
+I learned much more also, much Ace had no desire<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>
+to convey. But he was a poor hand at concealing anything,
+and it was clear he was helplessly subject to her, but without
+the usual kindly anesthetic of illusion. I guessed he had
+enjoyed her favors, but she evidently didnt bother to hide
+the fact that the privilege was not exclusive; perhaps indeed
+she insisted on his knowing. I gathered she was a fiercely
+moral polyandrist, demanding absolute fidelity without
+offering the slightest hope of reciprocal singlemindedness.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C12"><i>12.</i> <i>MORE OF HAGGERSHAVEN</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Among the fellows was an Oliver Midbin, a
+student of what he chose to call the new and revolutionary
+science of Emotional Pathology. Tall and thin, with an incongruous
+little potbelly like an enlarged and far-slipped
+adamsapple, he pounced on me as a ready-made and captive
+audience for his theories.</p>
+
+<p>“Now this case of pseudo-aphonia—”
+“He means the dumb girl,” explained Ace, aside.</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense. Dumbness is not even the statement of a
+symptom, but a very imperfect description. Pseudo-aphonia.
+Purely of an emotional nature. Of course if you
+take her to some medical quack he’ll convince himself
+and you and certainly her that there’s an impairment, or
+degeneration, or atrophy of the vocal cords—”
+“I’m not the girl’s guardian, Mr Midbin—”
+“Doctor. Philosophiae, Göttingen. Trivial matter.”</p>
+
+<p>“Excuse me, Dr Midbin. Anyway, I’m not her guardian
+so I’m not taking her anywhere. But, just as a theoretical
+question, suppose examination did reveal physical damage?”</p>
+
+<p>He appeared delighted, and rubbed his hands together.
+“Oh, it would. I assure you it would. These fellows always
+find what theyre looking for. If your disposition is sour
+theyll find warts on your duodenum. In a postmortem. In a
+postmortem. Whereas Emotional Pathology deals with the
+sour disposition and lets the warts, if any, take care of
+themselves. Matter is a function of the mind. People are
+dumb or blind or deaf for a purpose. Now what purpose
+can the girl have for muteness?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span></p>
+
+<p>“No conversation?” I suggested. I didnt doubt Midbin
+was an authority, but his manner made flippancy almost
+irresistible.</p>
+
+<p>“I shall find out,” he said firmly. “This is bound to be a
+simpler maladjustment than Barbara’s—”
+“Aw, come on,” protested Ace.</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense, Dorn; obscurantic nonsense. Reticence is a
+necessary ingredient of those medical ethics by which the
+quacks conceal incompetence. Mumbo jumbo to keep the
+layman from asking annoying questions. Priestly, not scientific
+approach. Art and mystery of phlebotomy. Don’t
+hold back knowledge; publish it to the world.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think Barbara wouldnt want her private thoughts
+published to the world. You have to draw the line somewhere.”</p>
+
+<p>Midbin put his head on one side and looked at Ace as
+though he were difficult to see. “Now that’s interesting,
+Dorn,” he said; “I wonder what turns a seeker after knowledge
+into a censor.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you going to start exploring my emotional pathology
+now?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not interesting enough; not nearly interesting enough.
+Diagnosis while you wait; treatment in a few easy instalments.
+Barbara now—there’s a really beautiful case. Beautiful
+case; years of treatment and little sign of improvement.
+Of course she wouldnt want her thoughts known.
+Why? Because she’s happy with her hatred for her dead
+mother. Shocking to Mrs Grundy; doubly ditto to Mister.
+Exaggerated possessiveness toward her father makes her
+miserable. Thoughts known, misery ventilated: shame,
+condemnation, fie, fie. Her fantasy—”
+“Midbin!”</p>
+
+<p>“Her fantasy of going back to childhood (fascinating;
+adult employs infantile time-sequence, infantile magic, infantile
+hatreds) in order to injure her mother is a sick
+notion she cherishes the way a dog licks a wound. But
+without analogous therapy. Ventilate it. Ventilate it. Now
+this girl’s case is bound to be simpler. Younger if nothing
+else. And nice, overt symptoms. Bring her around tomorrow
+and we’ll begin.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Me?” I asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Who else? Youre the only one she doesnt seem to
+distrust.”</p>
+
+<p>It was annoying to have the girl’s puppylike devotion
+observed and commented on. I realized she saw me as the
+only connection, however tenuous, with a normal past; I
+had assumed she would turn naturally after a few days to
+the women who took such open pleasure in fussing over her
+affliction. However she merely suffered their attentions; no
+matter how I tried to avoid her she sought me out, running
+to me with muted cries which should have been touching
+but were only painful.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Haggerwells’ telegram to the sheriff’s office at York
+had brought the reply that a deputy sheriff would visit the
+haven “when time permitted.” He had also telegraphed the
+Spanish legation who answered they knew no other Escobars
+than Don Jaime and his wife. The girl might be a
+servant or a stranger; it was no concern of His Most
+Catholic Majesty.</p>
+
+<p>The school uniform made it unlikely she was a servant
+but beyond this, little was deducible. She did not respond
+to questions in either Spanish or English, and it was impossible
+to tell if she understood their meaning, for her
+blank expression remained unchanged. When offered pencil
+and paper she handled them curiously, then let them
+slide to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>I wondered briefly if perhaps her intelligence was slightly
+subnormal, but this was met by a firm, even belligerent
+denial from Midbin, whose conclusion was confirmed, at
+least in my opinion, by her apparently excellent coordination,
+her personal neatness and fastidiousness which were
+far more delicate than any I’d been accustomed to.</p>
+
+<p>Midbin’s method of treatment smacked of the mystical.
+His subjects were supposed to relax on a couch and say
+whatever came into their minds. At least this was the clearest
+part of the explanation he gave when I rebelliously
+escorted the girl to his “office,” a large, bare room decorated
+only by some old European calendars by the popular
+academician, Picasso. The couch was a cot which Midbin
+himself used more conventionally at night.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span></p>
+
+<p>“All right,” I said; “just how are you going to manage?”</p>
+
+<p>“Convince her everything’s all right and I’m not going
+to hurt her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sure,” I agreed. “Sure. Only: how?”</p>
+
+<p>He gave me one of his head-on-shoulder looks and
+turned to the girl who waited apathetically, with downcast
+eyes. “You lie down,” he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>“Me? I’m not dumb.”</p>
+
+<p>“Pretend you are. Lie down, close your eyes, say the
+first thing on your tongue. Without stopping to think about
+it.”</p>
+
+<p>“How can I say anything if I’m pretending to be dumb?”
+Grudgingly I complied, fancying a faint look of curiosity
+passing over the too-placid face. “‘No man bathes twice
+in the same stream,’” I muttered.</p>
+
+<p>He made me repeat the performance several times, then
+by pantomime urged her to imitate me. It was doubtful if
+she understood; in the end we nudged her gently into the
+required position. There was no question of relaxation;
+she lay there warily, tense and stiff even with her eyes
+closed.</p>
+
+<p>The whole business was so manifestly useless and absurd,
+to say nothing of being undignified, that I was tempted
+to walk out on it. Only ignoble calculation on Midbin’s
+voting for my acceptance in the haven kept me there.</p>
+
+<p>Looking at the form stretched out so rigidly, I could not
+but admit again that the girl was beautiful. But the admission
+was dispassionate; the beauty was abstract and neutral,
+the lovely young lines evoked no lust. I felt only vexation
+because her plight kept me from the wonders of Haggershaven.</p>
+
+<p>“What good can this possibly do?” I burst out after ten
+fruitless minutes. “Youre trying to find out why she can’t
+talk and she can’t talk to tell you why she can’t talk.”</p>
+
+<p>“Science explores all methods of approach,” Midbin
+answered loftily; “I’m searching for a technique which will
+reach her. Bring her back tomorrow.”</p>
+
+<p>I swallowed my annoyance and started out. The girl
+jumped up and pressed close to my side. Outdoors the air
+was crisp; I felt her suppress a slight shiver. “Now I sup<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span>pose
+I’ll have to take you where it’s warm or find a wrap
+for you,” I scolded irritably. “I don’t know why I have to
+be your nursemaid.”</p>
+
+<p>She whimpered very softly and I was remorseful. None
+erf this was her fault; my callousness was inexcusable. But
+if she could only attach herself to some other protector
+and leave me alone....</p>
+
+<p>As one about to be banished I tried to cram everything
+into short days. I realized that these autumn weeks, spent
+in casual conversation or joining the familiar preparations
+for rural winter, were a period of thorough and critical
+probation. There was little I could do to sway the decision
+beyond the exhibition of an honest willingness to turn to
+whatever work needed doing, and to repeat, whenever the
+opportunity offered, that Haggershaven was literally a revelation
+to me, an island of civilization in the midst of a
+chaotic and savage sea. My dream was to make a landfall
+there.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly my meager background and scraps of reading
+would not persuade the men and women of the haven; I
+could only hope they might divine some promise in me.
+Against this hope I put Barbara’s enmity, a hostility now
+exacerbated by rage at Oliver Midbin for daring to devote
+to another, particularly another woman, the attention which
+had been her due, and the very technique used for her. I
+knew her persistence and I could not doubt she would
+move enough of the fellows to insure my rejection.</p>
+
+<p>The gang which had been operating in the vicinity, presumably
+the same one I had encountered, moved on. At
+least no further crimes were attributed to it. Once they
+were gone, Deputy Sheriff Beasley finally found time to
+visit Haggershaven in response to the telegram. He had
+evidently been there before without attaining much respect
+on either side. I got the distinct impression he would have
+preferred a more formal examination than the one which
+took place in Mr Haggerwells’ study, with fellows drifting
+in and out, interrupting the proceedings with comments of
+their own.</p>
+
+<p>I think he doubted the girl’s dumbness. He barked his
+questions so loudly and brusquely they would have terri<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span>fied
+a far more securely poised individual. She promptly
+went into dry hysterics, whereupon he turned his attention
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>I was apprehensive lest his questions explore my life
+with Tyss and my connection with the Grand Army, but
+apparently mere presence at Haggershaven indicated an
+innocence not unrelated to idiocy, at least so far as the
+more popular crimes were concerned. My passage of the
+York road and all the events leading up to it were outside
+his interest; he wanted only a succinct story of the holdup,
+reminding me of the late Colonel Tolliburr in his assumption
+that the lay eye ought normally to be photographic of
+the minutest detail.</p>
+
+<p>He was clearly dissatisfied with my account and left
+grumbling that it would be more to the point if bookworms
+learned to identify a man properly, instead of logarithms
+or trigonometry. I didn’t see exactly how this applied to me,
+since I was laudably ignorant of both subjects.</p>
+
+<p>If Officer Beasley was disappointed, Midbin was enchanted.
+Of course he had heard my narrative before, but
+this was the first time he’d savored its possible impact on
+the girl.</p>
+
+<p>“You see, her pseudo-aphonia is neither congenital nor
+of long standing. All logic leads to the conclusion that it’s
+the result of her terror during the experience. She must
+have wanted to scream, it must have been almost impossible
+for her not to scream, but for her very life she dared
+not. The instinctive, automatic reaction was the one she
+could not allow herself. She had to remain mute while she
+watched the murders.”</p>
+
+<p>For the first time it seemed possible there was more to
+Midbin than his garrulity.</p>
+
+<p>“She crushed back that natural, overwhelming impulse,”
+he went on. “She had to; her life depended on it. It was an
+enormous effort and the effect on her was in proportion;
+she achieved her object too well; when it was safe for her
+to speak again she couldnt.”</p>
+
+<p>It all sounded so plausible it was some time before I
+thought to ask him why she didnt appear to understand<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span>
+what we said, or why she didnt write anything when she
+was handed pencil and paper.</p>
+
+<p>“Communication,” he answered. “She had to cut off
+communication, and once cut off it’s not easy to restore.
+At least that’s one aspect. Another is more tricky. The
+holdup happened more than a month ago, but do you suppose
+the affected mind reckons so precisely? Is a precise
+reckoning possible? Duration may, for all we know, be an
+entirely subjective thing. Yesterday for you may be today
+for me. We recognize this to some extent when we speak of
+hours passing slowly or quickly. The girl may still be undergoing
+the agony of repressing her screams; the holdup,
+the murders, are not in the past for her, but the present.
+They are taking place in a long drawn out instant of time
+which may never end during her life. And if this is so, is it
+any wonder she is unable to relax, to let down her guard
+long enough to realize that the present is present and the
+crisis is past?”</p>
+
+<p>He pressed his middle thoughtfully. “Now, if it is possible
+to recreate in her mind by stimulus from without
+rather than by evocation from within the conditions leading
+up to and through the climacteric, she would have a
+chance to vent the emotions she was forced to swallow.
+She might, I don’t say she would, she might speak again.”</p>
+
+<p>I understood such a process would necessarily be lengthy,
+but as time passed I saw no indication he was reaching her
+at all, much less that he was getting any results. One of
+the Spanish-speaking fellows, a botanist who came and
+went from the haven at erratic intervals, translated my
+account of our meeting and read parts of it to the recumbent
+girl, following Midbin’s excited stage directions and
+interpolations. Nothing happened.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the futile duty of coaxing the girl to participate
+in Midbin’s sessions I had no obligations except those I
+took upon myself or could persuade others to delegate to
+me. Hiro Agati declared me hopelessly incompetent to help
+him in the kiln he had set up to make “hard glass,” a thick
+substance he hoped might take the place of cast iron in
+such things as woodstoves, or clay tile in flues. He conceded
+I was not entirely useless in the small garden surrounding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span>
+their cottage where he, Mrs Agati—an architect, much
+younger than her husband and extremely diminutive—and
+their three children spent their spare time transplanting,
+rearranging, or preparing for the following season.</p>
+
+<p>Dr Agati was not only the first American Japanese I
+had ever met; his was the first family I had known who
+broke the unwritten rule of having only one child. Both he
+and Kimi Agati seemed unaware of the stern injunctions
+by Whigs and Populists alike that disaster would follow
+if the population of the country increased too fast. Fumio
+and Eiko didnt care, while Yoshio, at two, was just not
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>The Agatis represented for me one more pang at the
+thought of banishment from the haven. Since I knew
+neither chemistry nor architecture, our conversation had
+limits, but this was no drawback to the pleasure I took in
+their company. Often, after I was assured I was welcome
+there, I sat reading or simply silent while Hiro worked,
+the children ran in and out, and Kimi, who was conservative
+and didnt care for chairs, sat comfortably on the floor
+and sketched or calculated stresses.</p>
+
+<p>Gradually I progressed from the stage where I wanted
+decision on my application postponed as long as possible
+to one where I was impatient to have it over and done with.
+“Why?” asked Hiro. “Suspense is the condition we live in
+all our lives.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, but there are degrees. You know about what you
+will be doing next year.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do I? What guarantees have I? The future is happily
+veiled. When I was your age I despaired because no one
+would accept the indentures of a Japanese. (We are still
+called Japanese even though our ancestors migrated at the
+time of the abortive attempt to overthrow the Shogunate
+and restore the Mikado in 1868.) Suspense instead of certainty
+would have been a pleasure.”</p>
+
+<p>“Anyway,” said Kimi practically, “it may be months
+before the next meeting.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean? Isnt there a set time for such
+business?” Sure there must be, I had never dared ask the
+exact date.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span></p>
+
+<p>Hiro shook his head. “Why should there be? The next
+time the fellows pass on an appropriation or a project,
+we’ll decide whether there’s room for an historian.”</p>
+
+<p>“But ... as Kimi says, it might not be for months.”</p>
+
+<p>“Or it might be tomorrow,” replied Hiro.</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t worry, Hodge,” said Fumio, “Papa will vote for
+you, and Mother too.”</p>
+
+<p>Hiro grunted.</p>
+
+<p>When it did come it was anticlimactic. Hiro, Midbin,
+and several others with whom I’d scarcely exchanged a
+word recommended me, and Barbara simply ignored my
+existence. I was a full fellow of Haggershaven, with all the
+duties and privileges appertaining. I was also securely at
+home for the first time since I left Wappinger Falls more
+than six years before. I knew that in all its history few had
+ever cut themselves off from the haven, still fewer had ever
+been asked to resign.</p>
+
+<p>At a modest celebration in the big kitchen that night,
+the haven revealed more of the talents it harbored. Hiro
+produced a gallon of liquor he had distilled from sawdust
+and called cellusaki. Mr Haggerwells pronounced it
+fit for a cultivated palate, following with an impromptu
+discourse on drinking through the ages. Midbin sampled
+enough of it to imitate Mr. Haggerwells’ lecture and then,
+as an inspired afterthought, to demonstrate how Mr Haggerwells
+might mimic Midbin’s parody. Ace and three
+others sang ballads; even the dumb girl, persuaded to sip a
+little of the cellusaki under the disapproving eyes of her
+self-appointed guardians, seemed to become faintly animated.
+If anyone noted the absence of Barbara Haggerwells,
+no one commented on it.</p>
+
+<p>Fall became winter. Surplus timber was hauled in from
+the woodlots and the lignin extracted by compressed air, a
+method perfected by one of the fellows. Lignin was the fuel
+used in our hot water furnaces and provided the gas for
+the reflecting jets which magnified a tiny flame into strong
+illumination. All of us took part in this work, but just as I
+had not been able to help Hiro to his satisfaction in the
+laboratory, so here too my ineptness with things mechani<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>cal
+soon caused me to be set to more congenial tasks in
+the stables.</p>
+
+<p>I did not repine at this, for though I was delighted with
+the society of the others, I found it pleasurable to be
+alone, to sort out my thoughts, to slow down to the rhythm
+of the heavy percherons or enjoy the antics of the two
+young foals. The world and time were somewhere shut
+outside; I felt contentment so strong as to be beyond satisfaction
+or any active emotion.</p>
+
+<p>I was currying a dappled mare one afternoon and reflecting
+how the steam-plow used on the great wheat
+ranches of British America deprived the farmers not merely
+of fertilizer but also of companionship, when Barbara, her
+breath still cloudy from the cold outside, came in and stood
+behind me. I made an artificial cowlick on the mare’s flank,
+then brushed it glossy smooth again.</p>
+
+<p>“Hello,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>“Uh ... hello, Miss Haggerwells.”</p>
+
+<p>“Must you, Hodge?”</p>
+
+<p>I roughed up the mare’s flank once more. “Must I what?
+I’m afraid I don’t understand.”</p>
+
+<p>She came close, as close as she had in the bookstore, and
+I felt my breath quicken. “I think you do. Why do you
+avoid me? And call me ‘Miss Haggerwells’ in that prim
+tone? Do I look so old and ugly and forbidding?”</p>
+
+<p>This, I thought, is going to hurt Ace. Poor Ace, befuddled
+by a Jezebel; why can’t he attach himself to a nice
+quiet girl who won’t tear him in pieces every time she follows
+her inclinations?</p>
+
+<p>I smoothed the mare’s side for the last time and put
+down the currycomb.</p>
+
+<p>“I think you are the most exciting woman Ive ever met,
+Barbara,” I said.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C13"><i>13.</i> <i>TIME</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>“Hodge.”</p>
+
+<p>“Barbara?”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it really true youve never written your mother since
+you left home?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why should I write her? What could I say? Perhaps if
+my first plans had come to something, I might have. But
+to tell her I worked for six years for nothing would only
+confirm her opinion of my lack of gumption.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder if your ambitions in the end don’t amount to
+a wish to prove her wrong.”</p>
+
+<p>“Now you sound like Midbin,” I said, but I wasnt annoyed.
+I much preferred her present questions to those I’d
+heard from her in the past weeks: Do you love me? Are
+you sure? Really love, I mean; more than any other
+woman? Why?</p>
+
+<p>“Oliver has had accidental flashes of insight.”</p>
+
+<p>“Arent you substituting your own for what you think
+might be my motives?”</p>
+
+<p>“My mother hated me,” she stated flatly.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it isnt a world where love is abundant; substitutes
+are cheap and available. But hate—that’s a strong word.
+How do you know?”
+“I know. What does it matter how? I’m not unfeeling,
+like you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Me? Now what have I done?”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t care about anyone. Not me or anyone else.
+You don’t want me; just any woman would do.”</p>
+
+<p>I considered this. “I don’t think so, Barbara—”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>
+“See! You don’t think so. Youre not sure, and anyway
+you wouldnt hurt my feelings needlessly. Why don’t you
+be honest and tell the truth. You’d just as soon it was that
+streetwalker in New York. Maybe you’d rather. You miss
+her, don’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Barbara, Ive told you a dozen times I never—”
+“And Ive told you a dozen times youre a liar! I don’t
+care. I really don’t care.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right.”</p>
+
+<p>“How can you be so phlegmatic? So unfeeling? Nothing
+means anything to you. Youre a real, stolid peasant. And
+you smell like one too, always reeking of the stable.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sorry,” I said mildly; “I’ll try to bathe more often.”</p>
+
+<p>Her taunts and jealous fits, her insistent demands did
+not ruffle me. I was too pleased with the wonders of life to
+be disturbed. All I’d dreamed Haggershaven could mean
+when I was sure I would never be part of it was fulfilled
+and more than fulfilled. Haggershaven and Barbara; Eden
+and Lilith.</p>
+
+<p>At first it seemed the bookstore years were wasted, but
+I soon realized the value of that catholic and serendipitous
+reading as a preparation for this time. I was momentarily
+disappointed that there was no one at the haven to whom
+I could turn for that personal, face-to-face, student-teacher
+relationship on which I’d set so great a store, but if there
+was no historical scholar among the fellows to tutor me, I
+was surrounded by those who had learned the discipline
+of study. There was none to discuss the details of the industrial
+revolution or the failure of the Ultramontane
+Movement in Catholicism and the policies of Popes Adrian
+VII, VIII and IX, but all could show me scheme and
+method. I began to understand what thorough exploration
+of a subject meant as opposed to sciolism, and I threw myself
+into my chosen work with furious zest.</p>
+
+<p>I also began to understand the central mystery of historical
+theory. When and what and how and where, but the
+when is the least. Not chronology but relationship is ultimately
+what the historian deals in. The element of time,
+so vital at first glance, assumes a constantly more subordinate
+character. That the past is past becomes ever less<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>
+important. Except for perspective it might as well be the
+present or the future or, if one can conceive it, a parallel
+time. I was not investigating a petrification but a fluid.
+Were it possible to know fully the what and how and where
+one might learn the why, and assuredly if one grasped the
+why he could place the when at will.</p>
+
+<p>During that winter I read philosophy, psychology, archaeology,
+anthropology. My energy and appetite were prodigious,
+as they needed to be. I saw the field of knowledge,
+not knowledge in the abstract, but things I wanted to know,
+things I had to know, expanding in front of me with dizzying
+speed while I crawled and crept and stumbled over
+ground I should have covered years before.</p>
+
+<p>Yet if I had studied more conventionally I would never
+have had the Haven or Barbara. Novelists speak lightly of
+gusts of passion, but it was nothing less than irresistible
+force which drove me to her, day after day. Looking back
+on what I had felt for Tirzah Vame with the condescension
+twenty-four has toward twenty, I saw my younger self only
+as callow, boyish and slightly obtuse. I was embarrassed
+by the torments I had suffered.</p>
+
+<p>With Barbara I lived only in the present, shutting out
+past and future. This was only partly due to the intensity,
+the fierceness of our desire; much came from Barbara’s
+own troubled spirit. She herself was so avid, so demanding,
+that yesterday and tomorrow were irrelevant to the
+insistent moment. The only thing saving me from enslavement
+like poor Ace was the belief, correct or incorrect I
+am to this day not certain, that to yield the last vestige of
+detachment and objectivity would make me helpless, not
+just before her, but to accomplish my ever more urgent
+ambitions.</p>
+
+<p>Still I know much of my reserve was unnecessary, a
+product of fear, not prudence. I denied much I could have
+given freely and without harm; my guard protected what
+was essentially empty. My fancied advantage over Ace,
+based on my having always had an easy, perhaps too easy
+way with women, was no advantage at all. I foolishly
+thought myself master of the situation because her infidelities,
+if such a word can be used where faithfulness is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span>
+explicitly ruled out, did not bother me. I believed I had
+grown immensely wise since the time when the prospect of
+Tirzah’s rejection had made me miserable. I was wrong;
+my sophistication was a lack, not an achievement</p>
+
+<p>Do I need to say that Barbara was no wanton, moved
+by light and fickle voluptuousness? The puritanism of our
+time, expressing itself in condemnations and denials,
+molded her as it molded our civilization. She was driven
+by urges deeper and darker than sensuality; her mad jealousies
+were provoked by an unappeasable need for constant
+reassurance. She had to be dominant, she had to be
+courted by more than one man; she had to be told constantly
+what she could never truly believe: that she was
+uniquely desired.</p>
+
+<p>I wondered that she did not burn herself out, not only
+with conflicting passions, but with her fury of work. Sleep
+was a weakness she despised, yet she craved far more of it
+than she allowed herself; she rationed her hours of unconsciousness
+and drove herself relentlessly. Ace’s panegyrics
+on her importance as a physicist I discounted, but older
+and more objective colleagues spoke of her mathematical
+concepts, not merely with respect, but with awe.</p>
+
+<p>She did not discuss her work with me; our intimacy
+stopped short of such exchanges. I got the impression she
+was seeking the principles of heavier-than-air flight, a
+chimera which had long intrigued inventors. It seemed a
+pointless pursuit, for it was manifest such levitation could
+no more replace our safe, comfortable guided balloons
+than minibiles could replace the horse.</p>
+
+<p>Spring made all of us single-minded farmers until the
+fields were plowed and sown. No one grudged these days,
+for the Haven’s economic life was based first of all on its
+land, and we were happy in the work itself. Not until the
+most feverish competition with time began to slacken could
+we return to our regular activities.</p>
+
+<p>I say “all of us,” but I must except the dumb girl. She
+greeted the spring with the nearest approach to cheerfulness
+she had displayed; there was a distinct lifting of her
+apathy. Unexpectedly she revealed a talent which had survived
+the shock to her personality or had been resurrected<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>
+like the pussywillows and crocuses by the warm sun. She
+was a craftsman with needle and thread. Timidly at first,
+but gradually growing bolder, she contrived dresses of
+gayer and gayer colors in place of the drab school uniform;
+always, on the completion of a new creation, running to
+me as though to solicit my approval.</p>
+
+<p>This innocent if embarrassing custom could hardly escape
+Barbara’s notice, but her anger was directed at me,
+not the girl. My “devotion” was not only absurd, she told
+me, it was also conspicuous and degrading. My taste was
+inexplicable, running as it did to immature, deranged
+cripples.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally when the girl took up the habit of coming to
+the edge of the field where I was plowing, waiting gravely
+motionless for me to drive the furrow toward her, I anticipated
+still further punishment from Barbara’s tongue. The
+girl was not to be swayed from her practice; at least I did
+not have the heart to speak roughly to her, and so she daily
+continued to stand through the long hours watching me
+plow, bringing me a lunch at noon and docilely sharing a
+small portion of it.</p>
+
+<p>The planting done, Midbin began the use of a new technique,
+showing her drawings of successive stages of the
+holdup, again nagging and pumping me for details to
+sharpen their accuracy. Her reactions pleased him immensely,
+for she responded to the first ones with nods and
+the throaty sounds we recognized as understanding or
+agreement. The scenes of the assault itself, of the shooting
+of the coachman, the flight of the footman, and her own
+concealment in the cornfield evoked whimpers, while the
+brutal depiction of the Escobars’ murder made her cower
+and cover her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose I am not particularly tactful; still I had been
+careful not to mention any of this to Barbara. Midbin, however,
+after a very gratifying reaction to one of the drawings,
+said casually, “Barbara hasnt been here for a long time. I
+wish she would come back.”</p>
+
+<p>When I repeated this she stormed at me. “How dare
+you discuss me with that ridiculous fool?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Youve got it all wrong. There wasnt any discussion.
+Midbin only said—”
+“I know what Oliver said. I know his whole silly vocabulary.”</p>
+
+<p>“He only wants to help you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Help me? Help <i>me</i>? What’s wrong with me?”</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing, Barbara. Nothing.”</p>
+
+<p>“Am I dumb or blind or stupid?”</p>
+
+<p>“Please, Barbara.”</p>
+
+<p>“Just unattractive. I know. Ive seen you with that creature.
+How you must hate me to flaunt her before everyone!”</p>
+
+<p>“You know I only go with her to Midbin’s because he
+insists.”</p>
+
+<p>“What about your little lovers’ meetings in the woodlot
+when you were supposed to be plowing? Do you think I
+didnt know about them?”</p>
+
+<p>“Barbara, I assure you they were perfectly harmless.
+She—”
+“Youre a liar. More than that, youre a sneak and a
+hypocrite. Yes, and a mean, crawling sycophant as well. I
+know you must detest me, but it suits you to suffer me
+because of the haven. I’m not blind; youve used me, deliberately
+and calculatedly for your own selfish ends.”</p>
+
+<p>Midbin could explain and excuse her outbursts by his
+“emotional pathology.” Ace accepted and suffered them
+as inescapable, so did her father, but I saw no necessity of
+being always subject to her tantrums. I told her so, adding,
+not too heatedly I think, “Maybe we shouldn’t see each
+other alone after this.”</p>
+
+<p>She stood perfectly immobile and silent, as if I were still
+speaking. “All right,” she said at last. “All right; yes ...
+yes. Don’t.”</p>
+
+<p>Her apparent calm deceived me completely; I smiled
+with relief.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s right, laugh. Why shouldnt you? You have no
+feelings, no more than you have an intelligence. You are
+an oaf, a clod, a real bumpkin. Standing there with a silly
+grin on your face. Oh I hate you! How I hate you!”</p>
+
+<p>She wept, she shrilled, she rushed at me and then turned<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span>
+away, crying she hadnt meant it, not a word of it. She cajoled,
+begging forgiveness for all she’d said, tearfully promising
+to control herself after this, moaning that she needed
+me, and finally, when I didnt repulse her, exclaiming it
+was her love for me which tormented her so and drove her
+to such scenes. It was a wretched, degrading moment, and
+not the least of its wretchedness and degradation was that
+I recognized the erotic value of her abjection. Detachedly
+I might pity, fear or be repelled; at the same time I had to
+admit her sudden humility was exciting.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps this storm changed our relationship for the
+better, or at least eased the constraint between us. At any
+rate it was after this she began speaking to me of her work,
+putting us on a friendlier, less furious plane. I learned now
+how completely garbled was my notion of what she was
+doing.</p>
+
+<p>“Heavier-than-air flying-machines!” she cried. “How
+utterly absurd!”</p>
+
+<p>“All right. I didnt know.”</p>
+
+<p>“My work is theoretical. I’m not a vulgar mechanic.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right, all right.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m going to show that time and space are aspects of
+the same entity.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right,” I said, thinking of something else.</p>
+
+<p>“What is time?”</p>
+
+<p>“Uh?... Dear Barbara, since I don’t know anything
+I can slide gracefully out of that one. I couldnt even begin
+to define time.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, you could probably define it all right—in terms of
+itself. I’m not dealing with definitions but concepts.”
+“All right, conceive.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hodge, like all stuffy people your levity is ponderous.”</p>
+
+<p>“Excuse me. Go ahead.”</p>
+
+<p>“Time is an aspect.”</p>
+
+<p>“So you mentioned. I once knew a man who said it was
+an illusion. And another who said it was a serpent with its
+tail in its mouth.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mysticism.” The contempt with which she spoke the
+word brought a sudden image of Roger Tyss saying “metaphysics”
+with much the same inflection. “Time, matter,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>
+space and energy are all aspects of the cosmic entity. Interchangeable
+aspects. Theoretically it should be possible to
+translate matter into terms of energy and space into terms
+of time; matter-energy into space-time.”</p>
+
+<p>“It sounds so simple I’m ashamed of myself.”</p>
+
+<p>“To put it so crudely the explanation is misleading: suppose
+matter is resolved into its component....”</p>
+
+<p>“Atoms?” I suggested, since she seemed at loss for a
+word.</p>
+
+<p>“No, atoms are already too individualized, too separate.
+Something more fundamental than atoms. We have no
+word because we can’t quite grasp the concept yet. Essence,
+perhaps, or the theological ‘spirit.’ If matter....”</p>
+
+<p>“A man?”</p>
+
+<p>“Man, turnip or chemical compound,” she answered impatiently;
+“if resolved into its essence it can presumably
+be reassembled, another wrong word, at another point of
+the time-space fabric.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean ... like yesterday?”</p>
+
+<p>“No—and yes. What is ‘yesterday’? A thing? An aspect?
+An idea? Or a relationship? Oh, words are useless things;
+even with mathematical symbols you can hardly.... But
+someday I’ll establish it. Or lay the groundwork for my
+successors. Or the successors of my successors.”
+I nodded. Midbin was at least half right; Barbara was
+emotionally sick. For what was this “theory” of hers but
+the rationalization of a daydream, the daydream of discovering
+a process for reaching back through time to injure
+her dead mother and so steal all of her father’s affections?</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C14"><i>14.</i> <i>MIDBIN’S EXPERIMENT</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>At the next meeting of the fellows Midbin asked
+an appropriation for experimental work and the help of
+haven members in the project. Since the extent of both
+requests was modest, their granting would ordinarily have
+been a formality. But Barbara asked politely if Dr Midbin
+wouldnt like to elaborate a little on the purposes of his
+experiment.</p>
+
+<p>I knew her manner was a danger signal. Nevertheless
+Midbin merely answered goodhumoredly that he proposed
+to test a theory of whether an emotionally induced physical
+handicap could be cured by recreating in the subject’s mind
+the shock which had caused—to use a loose, inaccurate
+term—the impediment.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought so. He wants to waste the haven’s money
+and time on a little tart he’s having an affair with while
+important work is held up for lack of funds.”</p>
+
+<p>One of the women called out, “Oh, Barbara, no,” and
+there were exclamations of disapproval. I saw Kimi Agati
+look steadfastly down in embarrassment. Mr Haggerwells,
+after trying unsuccessfully to hold Barbara’s eye, said, “I
+must apologize for my daughter—”
+“It’s all right,” interrupted Midbin. “I understand Barbara’s
+notions. I’m sure no one here really thinks there is
+anything improper between the girl and me. Outside of
+this, Barbara’s original question seems quite in order. Quite
+in order. Briefly, as most of you know, I’ve been trying to
+restore speech to a subject who lost it—again I use an inaccurate
+term for convenience—during an afflicting expe<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span>rience.
+Preliminary explorations indicate good probability
+of satisfactory response to my proposed method, which is
+simply to employ a kinematic camera like those making
+entertainment photinugraphs—”
+“He wants to turn the haven into a tinugraph mill with
+the fellows as mummers!”</p>
+
+<p>“Only this once, Barbara, only this once. Not regularly;
+not as routine.”</p>
+
+<p>At this point her father insisted the request be voted on
+without any more discussion. I was tempted to vote with
+Barbara, the only dissident, for I foresaw Midbin’s tinugraph
+would undoubtedly rely heavily on cooperation from
+me, but I didnt have the courage. Instead I merely abstained,
+like Midbin himself and Ace.</p>
+
+<p>The first effect of Midbin’s program was to free me from
+obligation, for he decided there was no point continuing
+the sessions with the dumb girl as before. All his time was
+taken up anyway with photography—no one at the haven
+had specialized in it—kinematic theory, the art of pantomime,
+and the relative merit of different makes of cameras,
+all manufactured abroad.</p>
+
+<p>The girl, who had never lost her tenseness and apprehension
+during the interviews, nevertheless clung to the habit
+of being escorted to Midbin’s workroom. Since it was impossible
+to convey to her that the sessions were temporarily
+suspended, she appeared regularly, always in a dress with
+which she had taken manifest pains, and there was little I
+could do but walk her to Midbin’s and back. I was acutely
+conscious of the ridiculousness of these parades and expectant
+of retribution from Barbara afterward, so I was
+to some extent relieved when Midbin finally made his decision
+and procured camera and film.</p>
+
+<p>Now I had to set the exact scene where the holdup had
+taken place, not an easy thing to do, for one rise looks much
+like another at twilight and all look differently in daylight.
+Then I had to approximate the original conditions as nearly
+as possible. Here Midbin was partially foiled by the limitations
+of his medium, being forced to use the camera in
+full sunlight instead of at dusk.</p>
+
+<p>I dressed and instructed the actors in their parts, rehears<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span>ing
+and directing them throughout. The only immunity I
+got was Midbin’s concession that I neednt play the role of
+myself, since in my early part of spectator I would be hidden
+anyway, and the succor was omitted as irrelevant to
+the therapeutic purpose. Midbin himself did nothing but
+tend the camera.</p>
+
+<p>Any tinugraph mill would have snorted at our final product
+and certainly no tinugraph lyceum would have condescended
+to show it. After some hesitation Midbin had decided
+not to make a phonoto, feeling the use of sound
+would add no value and considerable expense, so the film
+didnt even have this feature to recommend it. Fortunately
+for whatever involuntary professional pride was involved,
+no one was present at the first showing but the girl and me,
+Ace to work the magic-lantern, and Midbin.</p>
+
+<p>In the darkened room the pictures on the screen gave—after
+the first minutes—such an astonishing illusion that
+when one of the horsemen rode toward the camera we all
+reflexively shrank back. Despite its amateurishness the tinugraph
+seemed an artistic success to us, but it was no triumph
+in justifying its existence. The girl reacted no differently
+than she had toward the drawings; if anything her
+response was less satisfactory. The inarticulate noises ran
+the same scale from dismay to terror; nothing new was
+added. Nevertheless Midbin, his adamsapple working joyously
+up and down, slapped Ace and me on the back, predicting
+he’d have her talking like a politician before the
+year was out.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose the process was imperceptible; certainly there
+was no discernible difference between one showing and the
+next. The boring routine continued day after day and so
+absolute was Midbin’s confidence that we were not too
+astonished after some weeks when, at the moment “Don
+Jaime” folded in simulated death, she fainted and remained
+unconscious for some time.</p>
+
+<p>After this we expected—at least Ace and I did, Midbin
+only rubbed his palms together—that the constraint on her
+tongue would be suddenly and entirely lifted. It wasnt, but
+a few showings later, at the same crucial point, she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>
+screamed. It was a genuine scream, clear and piercing,
+bearing small resemblance to the strangling noises we were
+accustomed to. Midbin had been vindicated; no mute could
+have voiced that full, shrill cry.</p>
+
+<p>Pursuing another of his theories, he soon gave up the
+idea of helping her express the words in her mind in Spanish.
+Instead he concentrated on teaching her English. His
+method was primitive, consisting of pointing solemnly to
+objects and repeating their names in an artificial monotone.</p>
+
+<p>“She’ll have an odd way of speaking,” remarked Ace;
+“all nouns, singular nouns at that, said with a mouthful of
+pebbles. I can just imagine the happy day: ‘Man chair wall
+girl floor;’ and you bubbling back, ‘Carpet ceiling earth
+grass.’”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll supply the verbs as needed,” said Midbin; “first
+things first.”</p>
+
+<p>She must have been paying at least as much attention to
+our conversation as to his instruction for, unexpectedly,
+one day she pointed to me and said quite clearly, “Hodge
+... Hodge ...”</p>
+
+<p>I was discomposed, but not with the same vexation I
+had felt at her habit of seeking me out and following me
+around. There was a faint, bashful pleasure, and a feeling
+of gratitude for such steadfastness.</p>
+
+<p>She must have had some grounding in English, for while
+she utilized the nouns Midbin had supplied, she soon added,
+tentatively and questioningly, a verb or adjective here and
+there. “I ... walk ...?” Ace’s fear of her acquiring Midbin’s
+dead inflection was groundless; her voice was low and
+charmingly modulated; we were enchanted listening to her
+elementary groping among words.</p>
+
+<p>Conversation or questioning was as yet impossible. Midbin’s,
+“What is your name?” brought forth no response
+save a puzzled look and a momentary sinking back into
+dullness. But several weeks later she touched her breast
+and said shyly, “Catalina.”</p>
+
+<p>Her memory then, was not impaired, at least not totally.
+There was no way of telling yet what she remembered and
+what self-protection had forced her to forget, for direct
+questions seldom brought satisfactory answers at this stage.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span>
+Facts concerning herself she gave out sporadically and
+without relation to our curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Her name was Catalina García; she was the much
+younger sister of Doña Maria Escobar, with whom she
+lived. So far as she knew she had no other relatives. She
+did not want to go back to school; they had taught her to
+sew, they had been kind, but she had not been happy there.
+Please—we would not send her away from Haggershaven,
+would we?</p>
+
+<p>Midbin acted now like a fond parent who was both
+proud of his child’s accomplishments and fearful lest she be
+not quite ready to leave his solicitous care. He was far from
+satisfied at restoring her speech; he probed and searched,
+seeking to know what she had thought and felt during the
+long months of muteness.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not know, truly I do not know,” she protested toward
+the end of one of these examinations. “I would say,
+yes; sometimes I knew you were talking to me, or Hodge.”
+Here she looked at me steadily for an instant, to make me
+feel both remorseful and proud. “But it was like someone
+talking a long way off, so I never quite understood, nor was
+even sure it was I who was being spoken to. Often—at
+least it seemed often, perhaps it was not—often, I tried to
+speak, to beg you to tell me if you were real people talking
+to me, or just part of a dream. That was very bad, because
+when no words came I was more afraid than ever, and when
+I was afraid the dream became darker and darker.”
+Afterward, looking cool and fresh and strangely assured,
+she came upon me while I was cultivating young corn. A
+few weeks earlier I would have known she had sought me
+out; now it might be an accident.</p>
+
+<p>“But I knew more surely when it was you who spoke,
+Hodge,” she said abruptly. “In my dream you were the
+most real.” Then she walked tranquilly away.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara, who had studiedly said nothing further about
+what Midbin was doing, commented one day, apparently
+without rancor, “So Oliver appears to have proved a
+theory. How nice for you.”</p>
+
+<p>“What do you mean?” I inquired guardedly; “How is it
+nice for me?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Why, you won’t have to chaperone the silly girl all over
+any more. She can ask her way around now.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh yes; that’s right,” I mumbled.</p>
+
+<p>“And we won’t have to quarrel over her any more,” she
+concluded.</p>
+
+<p>“Sure,” I said. “That’s right.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr Haggerwells again communicated with the Spanish
+diplomats, recalling his original telegram and mentioning
+the aloof reply. He was answered in person by an official
+who acted as though he himself had composed the disclaiming
+response. Perhaps he had, for he made it quite clear
+that only devotion to duty made it possible to deal at all
+with such savages as inhabited the United States.</p>
+
+<p>He confirmed the existence of one Catalina García and
+consulted a photograph, carefully shielded in his hand,
+comparing it with the features of our Catalina, at last satisfying
+himself they were the same. This formality finished,
+he spoke rapidly to Catalina in Spanish. She shook her
+head and looked confused. “Tell him I can hardly understand,
+Hodge; ask him to speak in English, please.”</p>
+
+<p>The diplomat looked furious. Midbin explained hastily
+that the shock which had caused her muteness had not entirely
+worn off. Unquestionably she would recover her full
+memory in time, but for the present there were still areas
+of forgetfulness. Her native language was part of the past,
+he went on, happy with a new audience, and the past was
+something to be pushed away since it contained the terrible
+moment. English on the other hand—”
+“I understand,” said the diplomat stiffly, resolutely addressing
+none of us. “It is clear. Very well then. The Señorita
+García is heir—heiress to an estate. Not a very big one,
+I regret to say. A moderate estate.”
+“You mean land and houses?” I asked curiously.</p>
+
+<p>“A moderate estate,” he repeated, looking attentively at
+his gloved hand. “Some shares of stock, some bonds, some
+cash. The details will be available to the señorita.”</p>
+
+<p>“It doesnt matter,” said Catalina timidly.</p>
+
+<p>Having put us all, and particularly me, in our place as
+rude and nosey barbarians, he went on more pleasantly,
+“According to the records of the embassy, the señorita is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span>
+not yet eighteen. As an orphan living in foreign lands she
+is a ward of the Spanish Crown. The señorita will return
+with me to Philadelphia where she will be suitably accommodated
+until repatriation can be arranged. I feel certain
+that in the proper surroundings, hearing her natural tongue,
+she will soon regain its use. The—ah—institution may submit
+a bill for board and lodging during her stay.”
+“Does he mean—take me away from here? For always?” Catalina, who had seemed so mature a moment before,
+suddenly acted like a frightened child.</p>
+
+<p>“He only wants to make you comfortable and take you
+among your own people,” said Mr Haggerwells. “Perhaps
+it is a bit sudden....”</p>
+
+<p>“I can’t. Do not let him take me away. Hodge, Hodge—do
+not let him take me away.”
+“Señorita, you do not understand—”
+“No, no. I won’t. Hodge, Mr Haggerwells, do not let
+him!”</p>
+
+<p>“But my dear—”
+It was Midbin who cut Mr Haggerwells off. “I cannot
+guarantee against a relapse, even a reversion to the pseudo-aphonia
+if this emotional tension is maintained. I must
+insist that Catalina is not to continue the conversation
+now.”</p>
+
+<p>“No one’s going to take you away by force,” I assured
+her, finally finding my courage once Midbin had asserted
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>The official shrugged, managing to intimate in the gesture
+his opinion that the haven was of a very shady character
+indeed and had quite possibly engineered the holdup
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>“If the señorita genuinely wishes to remain for the present—” a lifted eyebrow loaded the “genuinely” with meaning
+“—I have no authority at the moment to inquire into
+influences that have persuaded her. No, none at all. Nor
+can I remove her by—ah—I will not insist. No. Not at all.”
+“That is very understanding of you, sir,” said Mr Haggerwells.
+“I’m sure everything will be all right eventually.”</p>
+
+<p>The diplomat bowed stiffly. “Of course the—ah—insti<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span>tution
+understands it can hope for no further compensation—”
+“None has been given or asked for. None will be,” said
+Mr Haggerwells in what was, for him, a sharp tone.</p>
+
+<p>The gentleman from the legation bowed. “The señorita
+will naturally be visited from time to time by an official.
+Without note—notification. She may be removed whenever
+His Most Catholic Majesty sees fit. And of course none of
+her estate will be released before the eighteenth birthday.
+The whole affair is entirely irregular.”
+After he left I reproached myself for not asking what
+Don Jaime’s mission had been that fateful evening, or at
+least for not trying to find out what his function with the
+Spanish legation was. Probably he could in no way be connected
+with the counterfeiting of the pesetas. By making no
+attempt to learn any facts which might have lessened the
+old feeling of guilty responsibility I kept it uneasily alive.</p>
+
+<p>These reproaches were pushed aside when Catalina put
+her head against my collarbone, sobbing with relief. “There,
+there,” I said, “there, there.”</p>
+
+<p>“Uncouth,” reflected Mr Haggerwells. “Compensation
+indeed!”</p>
+
+<p>“Dealing with natives,” said Midbin. “Probably courteous
+enough to Frenchmen or Afrikanders.”</p>
+
+<p>I patted Catalina’s quivering shoulders. Child or not,
+now she was able to talk I had to admit I no longer found
+her devotion so tiresome. Though I was definitely uneasy
+lest Barbara discover us in this attitude.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C15"><i>15.</i> <i>GOOD YEARS</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>And now I come to the period of my life which
+stands in such sharp contrast to what had gone before. Was
+it really eight years I spent at Haggershaven? The arithmetic
+is indisputable: I arrived in 1944 at the age of twenty-three;
+I left in 1952 at the age of thirty-one. Indisputable,
+but not quite believable; as with the happy countries
+which are supposed to have no history I find it hard to go
+over those eight years and divide them by remarkable
+events. They blended too smoothly, too contentedly into
+one another.</p>
+
+<p>Crops were harvested, stored or marketed; the fields
+were plowed in the fall and again in the spring and sown
+anew. Three of the older fellows died, another became
+bedridden. Five new fellows were accepted; two biologists,
+a chemist, a poet, a philologist. It was to the last I played
+the same part Ace had to me, introducing him to the sanctuary
+of the haven, seeing its security and refuge afresh
+and deeply thankful for the fortune that had brought me
+to it.</p>
+
+<p>There was no question about success in my chosen profession,
+not even the expected alternation of achievement
+and disappointment. Once started on the road I kept on
+going at an even, steady pace. For what would have been
+my doctoral thesis I wrote a paper on <i>The Timing of General
+Stuart’s Maneuvers During August 1863 in Pennsylvania</i>.
+This received flattering comment from scholars as
+far away as the Universities of Lima and Cambridge; be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span>cause
+of it I was offered instructorships at highly respectable
+schools.</p>
+
+<p>I could not think of leaving the haven. The world into
+which I had been born had never been fully revealed for
+what it was until I had escaped from it. Secrecy and ugliness;
+greed, fear and callousness; meanness, avarice, cunning,
+deceit and self-worship were as close around as the
+nearest farmhouses. The idea of returning to that world
+and of entering into daily competition with other underpaid,
+overdriven drudges striving fruitlessly to apply a
+dilute coating of culture to the unresponsive surface of unwilling
+students had little attraction.</p>
+
+<p>In those eight years, as I broadened my knowledge I
+narrowed my field. Undoubtedly it was presumptuous to
+take the War of Southron Independence as my specialty
+when there were already so many comprehensive works on
+the subject and so many celebrated historians engaged with
+this special event. However, my choice was made not out
+of self-importance but fascination, and undoubtedly it was
+the proximity of the scene which influenced the selection
+of my goal, the last thirteen months of the war, from
+General Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania to the capitulation
+at Reading. I saw the whole vast design: Gettysburg, Lancaster,
+the siege of Philadelphia, the disastrous Union
+counter-thrust in Tennessee, the evacuation of Washington,
+and finally the desperate effort to break out of Lee’s trap
+which ended at Reading. I could spend profitable years
+filling in the details.</p>
+
+<p>My monographs were published in learned Confederate
+and British journals—there were none in the United States—and
+I rejoiced when they brought attention, not so much
+to me as to Haggershaven. I could contribute only this
+notice and my physical labor; on the other hand I asked
+little beyond food, clothing and shelter—just books. My
+field trips I took on foot, often earning my keep by casual
+labor for farmers, paying for access to private collections
+of letters or documents by indexing and arranging them.</p>
+
+<p>The time devoted to scholarship did not alone distinguish
+those eight years, nor even the security of the haven. I
+have spoken of the simple, easy manner in which the Agatis<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span>
+admitted me to their friendship, but they were not the only
+ones with whom there grew ties of affection and understanding.
+With very few exceptions the fellows of Haggershaven
+quickly learned to shed the suspicion and aloofness,
+so necessary a protection elsewhere, and substitute acceptance.
+The result was a tranquillity I had never experienced
+before, so that I think of those years as set apart, a
+golden period, a time of perpetual warm sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Between Barbara and me the turbulent, ambivalent passion
+swept back and forth, the periods of estrangement
+seemingly only a generating force to bring us together
+again. Hate and love, admiration and distaste, impatience
+and pity were present on both sides. Only on hers there was
+jealousy as well; perhaps if I had not been indifferent
+whenever she chose to respond to some other man she
+might not have felt the errant desire so strongly. Perhaps
+not; there was a moral urge behind her behavior. She
+sneered at women who yielded to such temptations. To her
+they were not temptations but just rewards; she did not
+yield, she took them as her due.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes I wondered if her neurosis did not verge on
+insanity; I’m sure for her part she must often have stood
+off and appraised me as a mistake. I know there were
+many times when I wished there would be no more reconciliation
+between us.</p>
+
+<p>Yet no amount of thinking could cancel the swift hunger
+I felt in her presence or the deep mutual satisfaction of
+physical union. Frequently we were lovers for as long as
+a month before the inevitable quarrel, followed by varying
+periods of coolness. During the weeks of distance I remembered
+how she could be tender and gracious as well as
+ardent, just as during our intimacy I remembered her
+ruthlessness and dominance.</p>
+
+<p>It was not only her temperamental outbursts nor even
+her unappeasable craving for love and affection which
+thrust us apart. Impediments which, in the beginning, had
+appeared inconsequential assumed more importance all the
+time. It was increasingly hard for her to leave her work
+behind even for moments. She was never allowed to forget,
+either by her own insatiable drive or by outside acknowl<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span>edgment
+that she was already one of the foremost physicists
+in the world. She had been granted so many honorary
+degrees she no longer traveled to receive them; offers from
+foreign governments of well-paid jobs connected with their
+munitions industries were common. Articles were written
+about her equation of matter, energy, space and time, acclaiming
+her as a revolutionary thinker; though she dismissed
+them as evaluation of elementary work, they nevertheless
+added to her isolation and curtailed her freedom.</p>
+
+<p>Midbin was, in his way, as much under her spell as Ace
+or myself. His triumph over Catalina’s dumbness he took
+lightly now it was accomplished; stabilizing Barbara’s emotions
+was the victory he wanted. She, on her side, had lost
+whatever respect she must have had for him in the days
+when she had submitted to his treatment. On the very rare
+occasions when the whim moved her to listen to his entreaties—usually
+relayed through Ace or me—and grant
+him time, it seemed to be only for the opportunity of making
+fun of his efforts. Patiently he tried new techniques of
+exploration and expression.</p>
+
+<p>“But it’s not much use,” he said once, dolefully; “she
+doesnt <i>want</i> to be helped.”</p>
+
+<p>“Wanting seemed to have little to do with making Catty
+talk,” I pointed out. “Couldnt you....”</p>
+
+<p>“Make a tinugraph of Barbara’s traumatic shock? If I
+had the materials there would be no necessity.”</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps there was less malice in her mockery now Catty
+was no longer the focus of his theories about emotional
+pathology; perhaps she forgave him for her temporary displacement,
+but she did not withhold her contempt. “Oliver,
+you should have been a woman,” she told him; “you would
+have been impossible as a mother, but what a grandmother
+you would have made!”</p>
+
+<p>That Catty herself had in her own way as strong a will
+as Barbara was demonstrated in her determination to become
+part of Haggershaven. Her reaction to the visit of the
+Spanish official was translated into an unyielding program.
+She had gone resolutely to Thomas Haggerwells, telling him
+she knew quite well she had neither the aptitudes nor qualifications
+for admission to fellowship, nor did she ask it. All<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span>
+she wanted was to live in what she regarded as her only
+home. She would gladly do any work from washing dishes
+to making clothes—anything she was asked. When she
+came of age she would turn over whatever money she inherited
+to the haven without conditions.</p>
+
+<p>He had patiently pointed out that a Spanish subject was
+a citizen of a far wealthier and more powerful nation than
+the United States; as an heiress she could enjoy the luxuries
+and distractions of Madrid or Havana and eventually make
+a suitable marriage. How silly it would be to give up all
+these advantages to become an unnoticed, penniless drudge
+for a group of cranks near York, Pennsylvania.</p>
+
+<p>“He was quite right you know, Catty,” I said when she
+told me about the interview.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head vigorously, so the loose black curls
+swirled back and forth. “You think so, Hodge, because you
+are a hard, prudent Yankee.”</p>
+
+<p>I opened my eyes rather wide; this was certainly not
+the description I would have applied to myself.</p>
+
+<p>“And also because you have Anglo-Saxon chivalry, always
+rescuing maidens in distress and thinking they must
+sit on a cushion after that and sew a fine seam. Well, I can
+sew a fine seam, but sitting on cushions would bore me.
+Women are not as delicate as you think, Hodge. Nor as
+terrifying.”</p>
+
+<p>Was this last directed toward Barbara? Perhaps Catty
+had claws. “There’s a difference,” I said, “between cushion-sitting
+and living where books and pictures and music are
+not regarded with suspicion.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s right,” she agreed; “Haggershaven.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Haggershaven is an anomaly in the United States
+and in spite of everything it cannot help but be infected by
+the rest of the country. I meant the great, successful nations
+who can afford the breathing-spaces for culture.”</p>
+
+<p>“But you do not go to them.”</p>
+
+<p>“No. This is my country.”</p>
+
+<p>“And it will be mine too. After all it was made in the
+first place by people willing to give up luxuries. Besides
+you are contradicting yourself: if Haggershaven cannot
+avoid being infected by what is outside it, neither can<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span>
+any other spot. Part of the world cannot be civilized if another
+part is backward.”</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt her demure expression hid stern
+resolution. Whatever else it hid was not so certain. Evidently
+Mr Haggerwells realized the quality of her determination
+for eventually he proposed to the fellows that she
+be allowed to stay and the offer of her money be rejected.
+The motion was carried, with only Barbara, who spoke long
+and bitterly against it, voting “no.”</p>
+
+<p>In accepting Catty out of charity, the fellows unexpectedly
+made an advantageous bargain. Not merely because
+she was always eager to help, but for her specific contribution
+to the haven’s economy. Before this, clothing the
+haven had been a haphazard affair; suits or dresses were
+bought with money which would otherwise have been contributed
+to the general fund, or if the fellow had no outside
+income, by a grant from the same fund. Catty’s artistry with
+the needle made a revolution. Not only did she patch and
+mend and alter; she designed and made clothes, conveying
+some of her enthusiasm to the other women. The haven
+was better and more handsomely clad and a great deal of
+money was saved. Only Barbara refused to have her silk
+trousers and jackets made at home.</p>
+
+<p>It was not entirely easy to adjust to the new Catty, the
+busy, efficient, selfreliant creature. Her expressive voice
+could be enchanting even when she was speaking nonsense—and
+Catty rarely spoke nonsense. I don’t mean she was
+priggish or solemn, quite the contrary; her spontaneous
+laughter was quick and frequent. But she was essentially
+not frivolous; she felt deeply, her loyalties were strong and
+enduring.</p>
+
+<p>I missed her former all too open devotion to me. It had
+caused embarrassment, impatience, annoyance; now it was
+withdrawn I felt deprived and even pettish at its lack. Not
+that I had anything to offer in return or considered that any
+emotion was called for from me. Though I didnt express it
+to myself so openly at the time, what I regretted was the
+sensually valuable docility of a beautiful woman. Of course
+there was a confusion here: I was regretting what had never
+been, for Catty and the nameless dumb girl were different<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span>
+individuals. Even her always undeniable beauty was
+changed and heightened; what I really wanted was for
+the Catty of now to act like the Catty of then. And without
+any reciprocal gesture from me.</p>
+
+<p>The new Catty no more than the old was disingenuous
+or coquettish. She was simply mature, dignified, selfcontained
+and just a trifle amusedly aloof. Also she was very
+busy. She did not pretend to any interest in other men; at
+the same time she had clearly outgrown her childish dependence
+on me. She refused any competition with Barbara.
+When I sought her out she was there, but she made
+no attempt to call me to her.</p>
+
+<p>I was not so unversed that I didnt occasionally suspect
+this might be a calculated tactic. But when I recalled the
+utter innocence of her look I reflected I would have to have
+a very nice conceit of myself indeed to believe the two most
+attractive women at Haggershaven were contending for me.</p>
+
+<p>I don’t know precisely when I began to see Catty with a
+predatory male eye. Doubtless it was during one of those
+times when Barbara and I had quarrelled, and when she
+had called attention to Catty by accusing me of dallying
+with her. I was essentially as polygamous as Barbara was
+polyandrous or Catty monogamous; once the idea had
+formed I made no attempt to reject it.</p>
+
+<p>Nor, for a very long time, did I accept it in any way except
+academically. There are sensual values also in tantalizing,
+and if these values are perverse I can only say I was
+still immature in many ways. Additionally there must have
+been an element of fear of Catty, the same fear which maintained
+a reserve against Barbara. For the time being at
+least it seemed much pleasanter to talk lightly and inconsequentially
+with her; to laugh and boast of my progress, to
+discuss Haggershaven and the world, than to face our elementary
+relationship.</p>
+
+<p>My fourth winter at the haven had been an unusually
+mild one; spring was early and wet. Kimi Agati who, with
+her children, annually gathered quantities of mushrooms
+from the woodlots and pastures, claimed this year’s supply
+was so large that she needed help, and conscripted Catty
+and me. Catty protested she didnt know a mushroom from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span>
+a toadstool; Kimi immediately gave her a brief but thorough
+course in thallophytology. “And Hodge will help you;
+he’s a country boy.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right,” I said. “I make no guarantees though; I
+havent been a country boy for a long time.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m not so sure,” said Kimi thoughtfully. “You two take
+the small southeast woodlot; Fumio can have the big pasture,
+Eiko the small one; Yosh and I will pick in the west
+woodlot.”</p>
+
+<p>We carried a picnic lunch and nests of large baskets
+which were to be put by the edge of the woodlots when
+full; late in the afternoon a cart would pick them up and
+bring them in for drying. The air was warm even under
+the leafless branches; the damp ground steamed cosily.</p>
+
+<p>“Kimi was certainly right,” I commented. “Theyre thick
+as can be.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t see....” She stooped gracefully; “Oh, is this
+one?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” I said, “And there, and there. Not that white
+thing over there though.”</p>
+
+<p>We filled our first baskets without moving more than a
+few yards. “At this rate we’ll have them all full by noon.”</p>
+
+<p>“And go back for more?”</p>
+
+<p>“I suppose. Or just wander around.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh.... Look, Hodge—what’s this?”
+“What?”</p>
+
+<p>“This.” She showed me the puffball in her hands, looking
+inquiringly up.</p>
+
+<p>I looked down casually; suddenly there was nothing
+casual between us any more, nor ever would be again. I
+looked down at a woman I wanted desperately, feverishly,
+immediately. The shock of desire was a weight on my chest,
+expelling the air from my lungs.</p>
+
+<p>“Goodness—is it some rare specimen or something?”
+“Puffball,” I managed to say. “No good.”</p>
+
+<p>I hardly spoke, I could hardly speak, as we filled our
+second baskets. I was sure the pounding of my heart must
+show through my shirt, and several times I thought I saw
+her looking curiously at me. “Let’s eat now,” I suggested
+hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span></p>
+
+<p>I found a pine with low-hanging boughs and tore down
+enough to make a dry, soft place to sit while Catty unpacked
+our picnic. “Here’s an egg,” she said; “I’m starved.”</p>
+
+<p>We ate; that is, she ate and I pretended to. I was half
+dazed, half terrified. I watched her swift motions, the turn
+of her head, the clean, sharp way she bit into the food,
+and averted my eyes every time her glance crossed mine.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” she murmured at last; “I suppose we mustnt sit
+idle any longer. Come on, lazy; back to work.”</p>
+
+<p>“Catty,” I whispered. “Catty.”</p>
+
+<p>“What is it, Hodge?”</p>
+
+<p>“Wait.”</p>
+
+<p>Obediently she paused. I reached over and took her in
+my arms. She looked at me, not startled, but questioning.
+Just as my mouth reached hers she moved slightly so that
+I kissed her cheek instead of her lips. She did not struggle
+but lay passively, with the same questioning expression.</p>
+
+<p>I held her, pressing her against the pine boughs, and
+found her mouth. I kissed her eyes and throat and mouth
+again. Her eyes stayed open and she did not respond. I undid
+the top of her dress and pressed my face between her
+breasts.</p>
+
+<p>“Hodge.”</p>
+
+<p>I paid no attention.</p>
+
+<p>“Hodge, wait. Listen to me. If this is what you want
+you know I will not try to stop you. But Hodge, be sure. Be
+very sure.”</p>
+
+<p>“I want you, Catty.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you? Really want <i>me</i>, I mean.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know what you mean. I want you.”</p>
+
+<p>But it was already too late; I had made the fatal error
+of pausing to listen. Angrily I moved away, picked up my
+basket and sullenly began to search for mushrooms again.
+My hands still trembled and there was a quiver in my legs.
+To complement my mood a cloud drifted across the sun
+and the warm woods became chilly.</p>
+
+<p>“Hodge.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes?”</p>
+
+<p>“Please don’t be angry. Or ashamed. If you are I shall
+be sorry.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I don’t understand.”</p>
+
+<p>She laughed. “Oh my dear Hodge. Isnt that what men
+always say to women? And isnt it always true?”</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the day was no longer spoiled. The tension
+melted and we went on picking mushrooms with a new
+and fresh innocence.</p>
+
+<p>After this I could no longer keep all thoughts of Catty
+out of the intimacy with Barbara; now for the first time
+her jealousy had grounds. I felt guilty toward both, not because
+I desired both, but because I didnt totally desire
+either.</p>
+
+<p>Now, years later, I condemn myself for the lost rapturous
+moments; at the time I procrastinated and hesitated as
+though I had eternity in which to make decisions. I was,
+as Tyss had said, the spectator type, waiting to be acted
+upon, waiting for events to push me where they would.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C16"><i>16.</i> <i>OF VARIED SUBJECTS</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>“I can’t think of anything more futile,” said Kimi,
+“than to be an architect at this time in the United States.”</p>
+
+<p>Her husband grinned. “You forgot to add, ‘of Oriental
+extraction.’”</p>
+
+<p>Catty said, “Ive never understood. Of course I don’t remember
+too well, but it seems to me Spanish people don’t
+have the same racial fanaticism. Certainly the Portuguese,
+French and Dutch don’t. Even the English are not quite so
+certain of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Only the Americans, in
+the United States and the Confederate States too, judge
+everything by color.”</p>
+
+<p>“The case of the Confederacy is reasonably simple,” I
+said. “There are about fifty million Confederate citizens
+and two hundred and fifty million subjects. If white supremacy
+wasnt the cornerstone of Southron policy a visitor
+couldnt tell the ruling class at a glance. Even as it is he
+sometimes has a hard time, what with sunburn. It’s more
+complicated here. Remember, we lost a war, the most important
+war in our history, which was not unconnected with
+skin color.”</p>
+
+<p>“In Japan,” said Hiro, “the lighter colored people, the
+Ainu, used to be looked down on. Just as the Christians
+were once driven underground at exactly the same time
+they themselves drove the Jews underground in Spain and
+Portugal.”</p>
+
+<p>“The Jews,” murmured Catty vaguely; “are there still
+Jews?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Oh yes,” I said. “Several millions in Uganda-Eretz
+which the British made a self-governing dominion back in
+1933 under the first Labour cabinet. And numbers most
+everywhere else, except in the German Union since the
+massacres of 1905-1913.”</p>
+
+<p>“Which were much more thorough than the anti-Oriental
+massacres in the United States,” supplied Hiro.</p>
+
+<p>“Much more thorough,” I agreed. “After all, scattered
+handfuls of Asians were left alive here.”</p>
+
+<p>“My parents and Kimi’s grandparents among them. How
+lucky they were to be American Japanese instead of European
+Jews.”</p>
+
+<p>“There are Jews in the United States,” announced Kimi.
+“I met one once. She was a theosophist and told me I
+ought to learn the wisdom of the East.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very few of them. There were about two hundred thousand
+at the close of the War of Southron Independence on
+both sides of the border. After the election of 1872, General
+Grant’s Order Number Ten, expelling all Jews from
+the Department of the Missouri, which had been rescinded
+immediately by President Lincoln, was retroactively re-enacted
+by President Butler, in spite of the fact that the
+United States no longer controlled that territory. Henceforth
+Jews were treated like all other colored peoples, Negroes,
+Orientals, Indians and South Sea Islanders: as undesirables
+to be bribed to leave or to be driven out of the
+country.”</p>
+
+<p>“This is very dull stuff,” said Hiro. “Let me tell you
+about a hydrogen reaction—”
+“No, please,” begged Catty. “Let me listen to Hodge.”</p>
+
+<p>“Good heavens,” exclaimed Kimi, “when do you ever
+do anything else? I’d think you’d be tired by now.”</p>
+
+<p>“She will marry him one of these days,” predicted Hiro;
+“then the poor fellow will never be allowed to disguise a
+lecture as a conversation again.”</p>
+
+<p>Catty blushed, a deep red blush. I laughed to cover some
+constraint. Kimi said, “Go-betweens are out of fashion;
+youre a century behind times, Hiro. I suppose you think
+a woman ought to walk two paces respectfully behind her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span>
+husband. Actually, it’s only in the United States women
+can’t vote or serve on juries.”</p>
+
+<p>“Except in the state of Deseret,” I reminded her.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s just bait; the Mormons gave us equality because
+they were running short of women.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not the way I heard it. The Latter Day Saints have
+been the nearest thing to a prosperous group in the country.
+Women have been moving there for years, it’s so easy to
+get married. All the grumbling about polygamy has come
+from men who can’t stand the competition.”</p>
+
+<p>Catty glanced at me, then looked away.</p>
+
+<p>Had she, I wondered afterward, been thinking how Barbara
+would have rejected my observation furiously? Or
+about that day in the spring? Or about Hiro’s earlier comment?
+I thought about it, briefly, myself.</p>
+
+<p>I also thought of how easily Catty fitted in with the
+Agatis and contrasted it with the tension everyone would
+have felt if Barbara had been there. One could love Barbara,
+or hate her or dislike her or even, I supposed, be
+indifferent to her; the one thing impossible was to be comfortable
+with her.</p>
+
+<p>The final choice (was it final? I don’t know. I shall never
+know now) hardened when I had been nearly six years at
+Haggershaven. It had been “on” between Barbara and me
+for the longest stretch I could recall and I had even begun
+to wonder if some paradoxical equilibrium had not been
+established which would allow me to be her lover without
+vexation and at the same time innocently enjoy a bond with
+Catty.</p>
+
+<p>As always when the hostility between us slackened, Barbara
+spoke of her work. In spite of such occasional confidences
+it was still not her habit to talk of it with me. That
+intimacy was obviously reserved for Ace, and I didnt begrudge
+him it, for after all he understood what it was all
+about and I didnt. This time she was so full of the subject
+she could not hold back, even from one who could hardly
+distinguish between thermodynamics and kinesthetics.</p>
+
+<p>“Hodge,” she said, gray eyes greenish with excitement,
+“I’m not going to write a book.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s nice,” I answered idly. “New, too. Saves time,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span>
+paper, ink. Sets a different standard; from now on scholars
+will be known as ‘Jones, who didnt write <i>The Theory of
+Tidal Waves’</i>,‘Smith, unauthor of <i>Gas and Its Properties</i>,’
+or ‘Backmaker, non-recorder of <i>Gettysburg And After</i>.’”</p>
+
+<p>“Silly. I only meant it’s become customary to spend a
+lifetime formulating principles; then someone else comes
+along and puts your principles into practice. It seems more
+sensible for me to demonstrate my own conclusions instead
+of writing about them.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, sure. Youre going to demonstrate ... uh ...?”</p>
+
+<p>“Cosmic entity, of course. What do you think Ive been
+talking about?”</p>
+
+<p>I tried to remember what she had said about cosmic entity.
+“You mean youre going to try to turn matter into
+space or something like that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Something like that. I intend to translate matter-energy
+into terms of space-time.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh,” I said, “equations and symbols and all that.”</p>
+
+<p>“I just said I wasnt going to write a book.”</p>
+
+<p>“But how—” I started up as the impact struck me.
+“Youre going to ...” I groped for words. “Youre going
+to build a ... an engine which will move through time?”</p>
+
+<p>“Putting it crudely. But close enough for a layman.”</p>
+
+<p>“You once told me your work was theoretical. That you
+were no vulgar mechanic.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll become one.”</p>
+
+<p>“Barbara, youre crazy! As a philosophical abstraction
+this theory of yours is interesting—”
+“Thank you. It’s always nice to know one has amused
+the yokelry.”</p>
+
+<p>“Barbara, listen to me. Midbin—”
+“I havent the faintest interest in Oliver’s stodgy fantasies.”</p>
+
+<p>“He has in yours though, and so have I. Don’t you see,
+this determination of yours is based on the fantasy of going
+back through time to—uh—injure your mother—”
+“Oliver Midbin is a coarse, stupid, insensate lout. He
+has taught the dumb to speak, but he’s too much of a fool
+to understand anyone of normal intelligence. He has a set<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span>
+of idiotic theories about diseased emotions and he fits all
+facts into them even if it means chopping them up to do it
+or inventing new ones to piece them out. Injure my mother
+indeed! I have no more interest in her than she ever had
+in me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, Barbara—”
+“‘Ah Barbara,’” she mimicked. “Run along to your
+pompous windbag of a Midbin or your oh-so-willing cow-eyed
+Spanish doxy—”
+“Barbara, I’m talking as a friend. Leave Midbin and
+Catty and personalities out of it and just look at it this
+way. Don’t you see the difference between promulgating a
+theory and trying a practical demonstration which will certainly
+appear to the world as going over the borderline into
+charlatanism? Like a spiritualist medium or—”
+“That’s enough! ‘Charlatan’! You unspeakable guttersnipe.
+What do you know of anything beyond the seduction
+of cretins? Go back to your trade, you errand boy!”</p>
+
+<p>I seemed to remember that once before an incident had
+ended precisely this way. “Barbara—”
+Her hand caught me across my mouth. Then she strode
+away.</p>
+
+<p>The fellows of Haggershaven were not enthusiastic for
+her project. Even as she outlined it to them in more sober
+language than she had to me it still sounded outlandish, like
+the recurrent idea of a telegraph without wires or a rocket
+to the moon. Besides, 1950 was a bad year. The war was
+coming closer; at the least, what was left of the independence
+of the United States was likely to be extinguished. Our
+energies had to be directed toward survival rather than new
+and expensive ventures. Still, Barbara Haggerwells was a
+famous figure commanding great respect, and she had cost
+them little so far, beyond paper and pencils. Reluctantly
+the fellows voted an appropriation.</p>
+
+<p>An old barn, not utilized for years, but still sound, was
+turned over to Barbara, and Kimi was delighted to plan,
+design and supervise the necessary changes. Ace and a
+group of the fellows attacked the job vigorously, sawing
+and hammering, bolting iron beams together, piping in gas<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span>
+for reflecting lights to enable them to work at night as well.</p>
+
+<p>I believe I took no more interest than was inescapable
+as a fellow of Haggershaven. I had no doubt that the money
+and labor were being wasted, and I foresaw a terrible disappointment
+for Barbara when she realized the impossibility
+of her project. For myself I did not think she would
+play any further part of importance in my life.</p>
+
+<p>We had not spoken since the quarrel, nor was there inclination
+on either side toward coming together again. I
+could not guess at Barbara’s feelings; mine were those of
+relief, unmixed with regret. I would not have erased all
+there had been between us, but I was satisfied to have it
+in the past. The raging desire vanished, gradually replaced
+by an affection of sorts; I wanted no more of that tempestuous
+passion, instead I felt aloofly protective and understanding.</p>
+
+<p>For at last I was absorbed with Catty. The raw hunger
+of the moment when I first realized I wanted her came back
+with renewed force, but now other, more diffused feelings
+were equally part of my emotion. I knew she could make
+me jealous as Barbara could not; at the same time I could
+see tranquillity beyond turbulent wanting, a tranquillity
+never possible with Barbara.</p>
+
+<p>But my belated realization of what Catty meant to me
+was no reaction to Barbara or connected with the breaking
+of that tie. The need for Catty was engendered by Catty
+alone, and for Catty apart from anything I had ever felt
+for another. It was in some ways an entirely new hunger,
+as the man’s need transcends the youth’s. I understood now
+what her question in the woodlot meant and at last I
+could truthfully answer.</p>
+
+<p>She kissed me back, freely and strongly. “I love you,
+Hodge,” she said; “I have loved you even through the bad
+dream of not being able to speak.”</p>
+
+<p>“When I was so unfeeling.”</p>
+
+<p>“I loved you even when you were impatient; I tried to
+make myself prettier for you. You know you have never
+said I was pretty.”</p>
+
+<p>“You arent, Catty. Youre extraordinarily beautiful.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I think I would rather be pretty. Beauty sounds forbidding.
+Oh, Hodge, if I did not love you so much I would not
+have stopped you that day.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m not sure I understand that.”</p>
+
+<p>“No? Well, it is not necessary now. Sometimes I wondered
+if I had been right after all, or if you would think
+it was because of Barbara.”</p>
+
+<p>“Wasnt it?”</p>
+
+<p>“No. I was never jealous of her. We Garcías are supposed
+to have Morisco blood; perhaps I have the harem
+outlook of my dark Muslim ancestors. Would you like me
+to be your black concubine?”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” I said. “I’d like you to be my wife. In any colors
+you have.”</p>
+
+<p>“Spoken with real gallantry; you will be a courtier yet,
+Hodge. But that was a proposal, wasnt it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” I answered grimly; “if you will consider one from
+me. I can’t think of any good reason why you should.”</p>
+
+<p>She put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my
+eyes. “I don’t know what reason has to do with it. It is
+what I always intended; that was why I blushed so when
+Hiro Agati blurted out what everyone could see.”</p>
+
+<p>Later I said, “Catty, can you ever forgive me for the
+wasted years? You say you werent jealous of Barbara, but
+surely if she and I—that is ... anyway, forgive me.”
+“Dear Hodge, there’s nothing to forgive. Love is not a
+business transaction, nor a case at law in which justice is
+sought, nor a reward for having good qualities. I understand
+you, Hodge, better I think than you understand
+yourself. You are not satisfied with what is readily obtained,
+otherwise you would have been content back in—what is
+the name?—Wappinger Falls. I have known this for a long
+time and I could, I think—you must excuse my vanity—have
+interested you at any moment by pretending fickleness.
+Just as I could have held you if I had given in that
+day. Besides, I think you will make a better husband for
+realizing you could not deal with Barbara.”
+I can’t say I entirely enjoyed this speech. I felt, in fact,
+rather humiliated, or at least healthily humbled. Which was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span>
+no doubt what she intended, and as it should be. I never
+had the idea she was frail or insipid.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did Catty’s explanation of a harem outlook satisfactorily
+account for the sudden friendliness of the two
+women after the engagement was announced. That Barbara
+should soften so toward a successful rival was incomprehensible
+and also disturbing.</p>
+
+<p>Because both were fully occupied they actually spent little
+time together, but Catty visited the workshop, as they
+called the converted barn, whenever she had the chance
+and her real admiration for Barbara grew so that I heard
+too often of her genius, courage and imagination. I could
+hardly ask Catty to forego society I had so recently found
+enchanting nor establish a taboo against mention of a name
+I had lately whispered with ardor; still I felt a little foolish,
+and not quite as important as I might otherwise have
+thought myself.</p>
+
+<p>Not that Catty didnt have proper respect and enthusiasm
+for my fortunes. I had completed my notes for <i>Chancellorsville
+to the End</i>—that is, I had a mass of clues, guideposts,
+keys, ideas, and emphases which would serve as skeleton
+for a work which might take years to write—and Catty
+was the audience to whom I explained and expounded and
+used as a prototype of the reader I might reach. Volume
+one was roughly drafted, and we were to be married as
+soon as it was finished, shortly after my thirtieth and Catty’s
+twenty-fourth birthday. There was little doubt the book
+would bring an offer from one of the great Confederate
+universities, but Catty was firm for a cottage like the
+Agatis’, and I could not conceive of being foolish enough
+to leave Haggershaven.</p>
+
+<p>From Catty’s talk I knew Barbara was running into increasing
+difficulties now the workshop was complete and
+actual construction begun of what was referred to, with
+unnecessary crypticism I thought, as HX-1. The impending
+war created scarcities, particularly of such materials as
+steel and copper, of which latter metal HX-1 seemed inordinately
+greedy. I was not surprised when the fellows
+apologetically refused Barbara a new appropriation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span></p>
+
+<p>Next day Catty said, “Hodge, you know the haven
+wouldnt take my money.”</p>
+
+<p>“And quite right too. Let the rest of us put in what we
+get; we owe it to the haven anyway. But the debt is the
+other way round in your case and you should keep your
+independence.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hodge, I’m going to give it all to Barbara for her
+HX-1.”</p>
+
+<p>“What? Oh, nonsense!”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it any more nonsensical for me to put in money I
+didnt do anything to get than for her and Ace to put in
+time and knowledge and labor?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, because she’s got a crazy idea and Ace has never
+been quite sane where she’s concerned. If you go ahead and
+do this you’ll be as crazy as they are.”</p>
+
+<p>When Catty laughed I remembered with a pang the long
+months when that lovely sound had been strangled by terror
+inside her. I also thought with shame of my own
+failure; had I appreciated her when her need was greatest
+I might have eased the long, painful ordeal of restoring
+her voice.</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps I am crazy. Do you think the haven would
+make me a fellow on that basis? Anyway, I believe in
+Barbara even if the rest of you don’t. Not that I’m criticizing;
+you were right to be cautious. You have more to consider
+than demonstration of the truth of a theory which
+can’t conceivably have a material value; I don’t have to
+take any such long view. Anyway I believe in her. Or perhaps
+I feel I owe her something. With my money she can
+finish her project. I only tell you this because you may
+not want to marry me under the circumstances.”</p>
+
+<p>“You think I’m marrying you for your money?”</p>
+
+<p>She smiled. “Dear Hodge. You are in some ways so
+young; I hear the wounded dignity in your voice. No, I
+know very well you arent marrying me for money, that it
+never occurred to you it might be a good idea. That would
+be too practical, too grown up, too un-Hodgelike. I think
+you might not want to marry a woman who’d give all her
+money away. Especially to Barbara Haggerwells.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Catty, are you doing this absurd thing to get rid of me?
+Or to test me?”</p>
+
+<p>This time she again laughed loud. “Now I’m sure you
+will marry me after all and turn out to be a puzzled but
+amenable husband. You are my true Hodge, who studies
+a war because he can’t understand anything simpler or
+subtler.”</p>
+
+<p>She wasnt to be dissuaded from the quixotic gesture. I
+might not understand subtleties but I was sure I understood
+Barbara well enough. Foreseeing her request for more
+funds would be turned down, she must have cultivated
+Catty deliberately in order to use her. Now she’d gotten
+what she wanted I confidently expected her to drop Catty
+or revert to her accustomed virulence.</p>
+
+<p>She did neither. If anything the amity grew. Catty’s vocabulary
+added words like “magnet,” “coil,” “induction,”
+“particle,” “light-year,” “continuum” and many others
+either incomprehensible or uninteresting to me. Breathlessly
+she described the strange, asymmetric structure taking
+shape in the workshop, while my mind was busy with
+Ewell’s Corps and parrott guns and the weather chart of
+southern Pennsylvania for July, 1863.</p>
+
+<p>The great publishing firm of Ticknor, Harcourt &amp; Knopf
+contracted for my book—there was no publisher in the
+United States equipped to handle it—and sent me a sizable
+advance in Confederate dollars which became even more
+sizable converted into our money. I read the proofs of
+volume one in a state of semiconsciousness, sent the inevitable
+telegram changing a footnote on page 99, and
+waited for the infuriating mails to bring me my complimentary
+copies. The day after they arrived (with a horrifying
+typographical error right in the middle of page 12),
+Catty and I were married.</p>
+
+<p>Dear Catty. Dear, dear Catty.</p>
+
+<p>With the approval of the fellows we used part of the
+publisher’s advance for a honeymoon. We spent it—that
+part of it in which we had time for anything except being
+alone together—going over nearby battlefields of the last
+year of the War of Southron Independence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was Catty’s first excursion away from Haggershaven
+since the night I brought her there. Looking at the world
+outside through her perceptions, at once insulated and
+made hypersensitive by her new status, I was shocked
+afresh at the harsh indifference, the dull poverty, the fear,
+brutality, frenzy and cynicism highlighting the strange resignation
+to impending fate which characterized our civilization.
+It was not a case of eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow
+we die; rather it was, let us live meanly and trust
+to luck—tomorrow’s luck is bound to be worse.</p>
+
+<p>We settled down in the autumn of 1951 in a cottage
+designed by Kimi and built by the fellows during our absence.
+It gave on the Agatis’ cherished garden and we were
+both moved by this evidence of love, particularly after
+what we had seen and heard on our trip. Mr Haggerwells
+made a speech, filled with classical allusions, welcoming
+us back as though we had been gone for years; Midbin
+looked anxiously into Catty’s face as though to assure himself
+I had not, in my new role as husband, treated her so ill
+as to bring on a new emotional upset; and the other fellows
+made appropriate gestures. Even Barbara stopped by
+long enough to comment that the house was ridiculously
+small, but she supposed Kimi’s movable partitions helped.</p>
+
+<p>I immediately began working on volume two and Catty
+took up her sewing again. She also resumed her visits to
+Barbara’s workshop; again I heard detailed accounts of
+my former sweetheart’s progress. HX-1 was to be completed
+in the late spring, or early summer. I was not surprised
+at Barbara’s faith surviving actual construction of
+the thing, but that such otherwise level-headed people as
+Ace and Catty could envisage breathlessly the miracles
+about to happen was beyond me. Ace, even after all these
+years, was still bemused—but Catty ...?</p>
+
+<p>Just before the turn of the year I got the following letter:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p>
+LEE &amp; WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY<br />
+Department of History<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>
+Leesburg, District of Calhounia, CSA.<br />
+December 19, 1951<br />
+<br />
+Mr. Hodgins M. Backmaker<br />
+“Haggershaven”<br />
+York,<br />
+Pennsylvania, USA.<br />
+<br />
+<i>Sir</i>:<br />
+</p>
+
+<p><i>On page 407 of</i> Chancellorsville to the End, <i>volume
+I</i>, Turning Tides, <i>you write, “Chronology and topography—timing
+and the use of space—were to be the
+decisive factors, rather than population and industry.
+Stuart’s detachment, which might have proved disastrous,
+turned out extraordinarily fortunate for Lee, as
+we shall see in the next volume. Of course the absence
+of cavalry might have been decisive if the Round Tops
+had not been occupied by the Southrons on July 1....”</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Now, sir, evidently in your forthcoming analysis of
+Gettysburg you hold (as I presume most Yankees do)
+to the theory of fortuitousness. We Southrons naturally
+ascribe the victory to the supreme genius of
+General Lee, regarding the factors of time and space
+not as forces in themselves but as opportunities for the
+display of his talents.</i></p>
+
+<p><i>Needless to say, I hardly expect you to change your
+opinions, rooted as they must be in national pride. I
+only ask that before you commit them, and the conclusions
+shaped by them, to print, you satisfy yourself
+as an historian, of their validity in this particular case.
+In other words, sir, as one of your readers (and may
+I add, one who has enjoyed your work), I should like<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span>
+to be assured that you have studied this classic battle
+as carefully as you have the engagements described in
+volume I.</i></p>
+
+<p>
+<i>With earnest wishes for your success,<br />
+I remain, sir<br />
+Cordially yours,<br />
+Jefferson Davis Polk</i><br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This letter from Dr Polk, the foremost historian of our
+day, author of the monumental biography, <i>The Great Lee</i>,
+produced a crisis in my life. Had the Confederate professor
+pointed out flaws in my work, or even reproached me
+for undertaking it at all without adequate equipment I
+would, I trust, have acknowledged the reproof and continued
+to the best of my ability. But this letter was an accolade.
+Without condescension Dr Polk admitted me to the
+ranks of serious historians, only asking me to consider the
+depth of my evaluation.</p>
+
+<p>Truth is, I was not without increasing doubts of my own.
+Doubts I had not allowed to rise to the surface of my mind
+and disturb my plans. Polk’s letter brought them into the
+open.</p>
+
+<p>I had read everything available. I had been over the
+ground between the Maryland line, South Mountain, Carlisle
+and the haven until I could draw a detail map from
+memory. I had turned up diaries, letters and accounts
+which had not only never been published, but which were
+not known to exist until I hunted them down. I had so
+steeped myself in the period I was writing about that sometimes
+the two worlds seemed interchangeable and I could
+live partly in one, partly in the other.</p>
+
+<p>Yet with all this, I was not sure I had the whole story,
+even in the sense of wholeness that historians, knowing
+they can never collect every detail, accept. I was not sure
+I had the grand scene in perfectly proper perspective. I admitted
+to myself the possibility that I had perhaps been
+too rash, too precipitate, in undertaking <i>Chancellorsville to
+the End</i> so soon. I knew the shadowy sign, the one which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span>
+says in effect, <i>You are ready</i>, had not been given. My
+confidence was shaken.</p>
+
+<p>Was the fault in me, in my temperament and character,
+rather than in my preparation and use of materials? Was
+I drawing back from committing myself, from acting, from
+doing? That I had written the first volume was no positive
+answer, for it was but the fraction of a whole deed; if I
+withdrew now I could still preserve my standing as an
+onlooker.</p>
+
+<p>But not to act was itself an action and answered neither
+Dr Polk nor myself. Besides, what could I do? The entire
+work was contracted for. The second volume was promised
+for delivery some eighteen months hence. My notes for it
+were complete; this was no question of revising, but of
+wholly re-examining, revaluing and probably discarding
+them for an entirely new start. It was a job so much bigger
+than the original, one so discouraging, I felt I couldnt
+face it. It would be corrupt to produce a work lacking absolute
+conviction and cowardly to produce none.</p>
+
+<p>Catty responded to my awkward recapitulation in a
+way at once heartening and strange. “Hodge,” she said,
+“youre changing and developing, and for the better, even
+though I love you as you were. Don’t be afraid to put the
+book aside for a year—ten years if you have to. You must
+do it so it will satisfy yourself; never mind what the publishers
+or the public say. But Hodge, you mustnt, in your
+anxiety, or your foolish fear of passiveness, you mustnt try
+any shortcuts. Promise me that.”
+“I don’t know what youre talking about, Catty dear.
+There are no shortcuts in writing history.”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me thoughtfully. “Remember that, Hodge.
+Oh, remember it.”</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C17"><i>17.</i> <i>HX-1</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I could not bring myself to follow the promptings
+of my conscience and Catty’s advice, nor could I use my
+notes as though Dr Polk’s letter had never come to shatter
+my complacency. As a consequence—without deliberately
+committing myself to abandon the book—I worked not at
+all, thus adding to my feelings of guilt and unworthiness.
+The tasks assigned by the fellows for the general welfare
+of the haven were not designed to take a major part of my
+time, and though I produced all sorts of revolutions in the
+stables and barns, I still managed to wander about, fretful
+and irritable, keeping Catty from her work, interrupting
+the Agatis and Midbin—I could not bring myself to discuss
+my problems with him—and generally making myself a
+nuisance. Inevitably I found my way into Barbara’s workshop.</p>
+
+<p>She and Ace had done a thorough job on the old barn.
+I thought I recognized Kimi’s touch in the structural
+changes of the walls, the strong beams and rows of slanted-in
+windows which admitted light and shut out glare, but
+the rest must have been shaped by Barbara’s needs.</p>
+
+<p>Iron beams held up a catwalk running in a circle about
+ten feet overhead. On the catwalk there were at intervals
+what appeared to be batteries of telescopes, all pointed
+inward and downward at the center of the floor. Just inside
+the columns was a continuous ring of clear glass, perhaps
+four inches in diameter, fastened to the beams with
+glass hooks. Closer inspection proved the ring not to be in
+one piece but in sections, ingeniously held together with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span>
+glass couplings. Back from this circle, around the walls,
+were various engines, all enclosed except for dial faces and
+regulators and all dwarfed by a mammoth one towering in
+one corner. From the roof was suspended a large, polished
+reflector.</p>
+
+<p>There was no one in the barn and I wandered about,
+cautiously avoiding the mysterious apparatus. For a moment
+I meditated, basely perhaps, that all this had been
+paid for with my wife’s money. Then I berated myself, for
+Catty owed all to the haven, as I did. The money might
+have been put to better use, but there was no guarantee
+it would have been more productive allotted to astronomy
+or zoology. During eight years I’d seen many promising
+schemes come to nothing.</p>
+
+<p>“Like it, Hodge?”</p>
+
+<p>Barbara had come up, unheard, behind me. This was the
+first time we had been alone together since our break, two
+years before.</p>
+
+<p>“It looks like a tremendous amount of work,” I evaded.</p>
+
+<p>“It was a tremendous amount of work.” For the first
+time I noticed that her cheeks were flushed. She had lost
+weight and there were deep hollows beneath her eyes. “This
+construction has been the least of it. Now it’s done. Or has
+begun. Depending how you look at it.”</p>
+
+<p>“All done?”</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, triumph accenting the strained look on her
+face. “First test today.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh well ... in that case—”
+“Don’t go, Hodge. Please. I meant to ask you and Catty
+to the more formal trial, but now youre here for the preliminary
+I’m glad. Ace and Father and Oliver will be along
+in a minute.”</p>
+
+<p>“Midbin?”</p>
+
+<p>The familiar arrogance showed briefly. “I insisted. It’ll
+be nice to show him the mind can produce something besides
+fantasies and hysterical hallucinations.”</p>
+
+<p>I started to speak, then swallowed my words. The dig
+at Catty was insignificant compared with the supreme
+confidence, the abnormal assurance prompting invitations
+to witness a test which could only reveal the impossibility<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span>
+of applying her cherished theories. I felt an overwhelming
+pity. “Surely,” I said at last, seeking to make some preparation
+for the disillusionment certain to come, “surely you
+don’t expect it to work the first time?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why not? There are sure to be adjustments to be
+made, allowances for erratic chronology caused by phenomena
+like the pull of comets and so forth. There might
+even have to be major alterations, though I doubt it. It
+may be some time before Ace can set me down at the exact
+year, month, day, hour and minute agreed upon. But the
+fact of space-time-energy-matter correspondence can just
+as well be established this afternoon as next year.”</p>
+
+<p>She was unbelievably at ease for someone whose lifework
+was about to be weighed. I have shown more nervousness
+discussing a disputed date with the honorary secretary
+of a local historical society.</p>
+
+<p>“Sit down,” she invited; “there’s nothing to do or see till
+Ace comes. Ive missed you, Hodge.”</p>
+
+<p>I felt this was a dangerous remark, and wished I’d stayed
+far away from the workshop. I hooked my leg over a stool—there
+were no chairs—and coughed to hide the fact I
+was afraid to answer, Ive missed you too; and afraid not to.</p>
+
+<p>“Tell me about your own work, Hodge. Catty says youre
+having difficulties.”</p>
+
+<p>I was faintly annoyed with Catty, but whether for confiding
+in Barbara at all or specifically for revealing something
+unheroic, I didnt stop to consider. At any rate this
+annoyance diluted my feeling of disloyalty for conversing
+with Barbara at all. Or it may be the old, long-established
+bond—I almost wrote, of sympathy, but it was so much
+more complex than the word indicates—was reawakened
+by proximity and put me in the mood to tell my troubles.
+It is even possible I had the altruistic purpose of fortifying
+Barbara against inevitable disappointment on a misery-loves-company
+basis. Be that as it may, I found myself
+pouring out the whole story.</p>
+
+<p>She jumped up and took my hands in hers. Her eyes
+were gray and warm. “Hodge! It’s wonderful—don’t you
+see?”
+“Oh....” I was completely confused. “I ... uh....”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span></p>
+
+<p>“The solution. The answer. The means. Look: now you
+can go back, back to the past in your own person. You can
+see everything with your own eyes instead of relying on
+accounts of what other people said happened.”</p>
+
+<p>“But ... but—”
+“You can verify every fact, study every move, every
+actor. You can write history as no one ever did before,
+for youll be writing as a witness, yet with the perspective
+of a different period. Youll be taking the mind of the present,
+with its judgment and its knowledge of the patterns,
+back to receive the impressions of the past. It almost seems
+HX-1 was devised especially for this.”</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt she believed, that she was really and
+unselfishly glad her work could aid mine. I was overcome
+by pity, helpless to soften the disillusionment so soon to
+come and filled with an irrational hatred of the thing she
+had built and which was about to destroy her.</p>
+
+<p>I was saved from having to mask my emotions by the
+arrival of her father, Ace, and Midbin. Thomas Haggerwells
+began tensely, “Barbara, Ace tells me you intend to
+try out this—this machine on yourself. I can’t believe you
+would be so foolhardy.”
+Midbin didnt wait for her to reply. I thought with something
+of a shock, Midbin has gotten old; I never noticed it.
+“Listen to me. There’s no point now in saying part of your
+mind realizes the impossibility of this demonstration and
+that it’s willing for you to annihilate yourself in the attempt
+and so escape from conflicts which have no resolution. Although
+it’s something you must be at least partly aware of.
+But consider objectively the danger involved in meddling
+with unknown natural laws—”
+Ace Dorn, who looked as strained as they in contrast to
+Barbara’s ease, growled, “Let’s go.”</p>
+
+<p>She smiled reassuringly at us. “Please, Father, don’t
+worry; there’s no danger. And Oliver....”</p>
+
+<p>Her smile was almost mischievous and very unlike the
+Barbara I had known. “Oliver, HX-1 owes more to you
+than you will ever know.”</p>
+
+<p>She ducked under the transparent ring and walked to
+the center of the floor, glancing up at the reflector, moving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span>
+an inch or two to stand directly beneath it. “The controls
+are already adjusted to minus fifty-two years and a hundred
+and fifty-three days,” she informed us conversationally.
+“Purely arbitrary. One date is good as another, but
+January 1, 1900 is an almost automatic choice. I’ll be gone
+sixty seconds. Ready, Ace?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ready.” He had been slowly circling the engines, checking
+the dials. He took his place before the largest, the
+monster in the corner, holding a watch in his hand. “Three
+forty-three and ten,” he announced.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara was consulting her own watch. “Three forty-three
+and ten,” she confirmed. “Make it at three forty-three
+and twenty.”</p>
+
+<p>“OK. Good luck.”</p>
+
+<p>“You might at least try it on an animal first,” burst out
+Midbin, as Ace twirled the valve under his hand. The
+transparent ring glowed, the metal reflector threw back a
+dazzling light. I blinked. When I opened my eyes the light
+was gone and the center of the workshop was empty.</p>
+
+<p>No one moved. Ace frowned over his watch. I stared at
+the spot where Barbara had stood. I don’t think my mind
+was working; I had the feeling my lungs and heart certainly
+were not. I was a true spectator, with all faculties save sight
+and hearing suspended.</p>
+
+<p>“ ... on an animal first.” Midbin’s voice was querulous.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, God ...” muttered Thomas Haggerwells.</p>
+
+<p>Ace said casually—too casually, “The return is automatic.
+Set beforehand for duration. Thirty more seconds.”</p>
+
+<p>Midbin said, “She is ... this is....” He sat down on a
+stool and bent his head almost to his knees.</p>
+
+<p>Mr Haggerwells groaned, “Ace, Ace—you should have
+stopped her.”
+“Ten seconds,” said Ace firmly.</p>
+
+<p>Still I couldnt think with any clarity. She had stood
+there; then she was gone. What ...? Midbin was right: we
+had let her go to destruction. Certainly more than a minute
+had passed by now.</p>
+
+<p>The ring glowed and the brilliant light was reflected. “It
+did, oh, it did!” Barbara cried. “It did!”</p>
+
+<p>She stood perfectly still, overwhelmed. Then she came<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span>
+out of the circle and kissed Ace, who patted her gently
+on the back. I suddenly noticed the pain of holding my
+breath and released a tremendous sigh. Barbara kissed her
+father and Midbin—who was still shaking his head—and,
+after the faintest hesitation, me. Her lips were ice-cold.</p>
+
+<p>The shock of triumph made her voluble. Striding up
+and down, she spoke with extraordinary rapidity, without
+pause, almost a little drunkenly. In her excitement her
+words cluttered her tongue; from time to time she had to
+go back and repeat a phrase or sentence to make it intelligible.</p>
+
+<p>When the light flashed, she too involuntarily closed her
+eyes. She had felt a strange, terrifying weightlessness, an
+awful disembodiment, for which she had been unprepared.
+She thought she had not actually been unconscious, even
+for an instant, though she had an impression of ceasing to
+exist as a unique collection of memories, and of being somehow
+dissolved. Then she had opened her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>At first she was shocked to find the barn as it had been
+all her life, abandoned and dusty. Then she realized she
+had indeed moved through time; the disappearance of the
+engines and reflector showed she had gone back to the unremodelled
+workshop.</p>
+
+<p>Now she saw the barn was not quite as she had known
+it, even in her childhood, for while it was unquestionably
+abandoned, it had evidently not long been so. The thick
+dust was not so thick as she remembered, the sagging cobwebs
+not so dense. Straw was still scattered on the floor;
+it had not yet been entirely carried away by mice or inquisitive
+birds. Alongside the door hung bits of harness beyond
+repair, some broken bridles, and a faded calendar on which
+the ink of the numerals 1897 was still bright.</p>
+
+<p>The minute she had allotted this first voyage seemed fantastically
+short and incredibly long. All the paradoxes she
+had brushed aside as of no immediate concern now confronted
+her. Since she had gone back to a time before she
+was born, she must have existed as a visitor prior to her
+own conception; she could presumably be present during
+her own childhood and growth, and by making a second
+and third visit, multiply herself as though in facing mirrors,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span>
+so that an infinite number of Barbara Haggerwells could
+occupy a single segment of time.</p>
+
+<p>A hundred other parallel speculations raced through her
+mind without interfering with her rapid and insatiable survey
+of the commonplace features of the barn, features
+which could never really be commonplace to her since they
+proved all her speculations so victoriously right.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she shivered with the bitter cold and burst into
+teeth-chattering laughter. She had made such careful plans
+to visit on the First of January—and had never thought
+to take along a warm coat.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at her watch; only twenty seconds had
+passed. The temptation to defy her agreement with Ace not
+to step outside the tiny circle of HX-1’s operating field on
+the initial experiment was almost irresistible. She longed
+to touch the fabric of the past, to feel the worn boards of
+the barn, to handle as well as look. Again her thoughts
+whirled with speculation; again the petty moment stretched
+and contracted. She spent eternity and instantaneity at
+once.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose.... But she had a thousand suppositions and
+questions. Was she really herself in the flesh, or in some
+mental projection? A pinch would do no good; that might
+be projection also. Would she be visible to the people of
+the time, or was she a ghost from the future? Oh, there
+was so much to learn, so much to encounter!</p>
+
+<p>When the moment of return came, she again experienced
+the feeling of dissolution, followed immediately by the
+light. When she opened her eyes she was back.</p>
+
+<p>Midbin rubbed his belly and then his thinning hair.
+“Hallucination,” he propounded at last; “a logical, consistent
+hallucination. Answer to an overriding wish.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean Barbara was never gone?” asked Ace. “Was
+she visible to you—or Mr H or Hodge—during that minute?”
+“Illusion,” said Midbin; “group illusion brought on by
+suggestion and anxiety.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nonsense,” exclaimed Barbara. “Unless youre accusing
+Ace and me of faking youll have to account for what you
+just called the logical consistency of it. Your group illusion<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span>
+and my individual hallucination fitting so neatly together.”</p>
+
+<p>Midbin recovered some of his poise. “The two phenomena
+are separate, connected only by some sort of emotional
+hypnosis. Certainly your daydream of having been back in
+1900 is an emotionally induced aberration.”</p>
+
+<p>“And your daydream that I wasn’t here for a minute?”</p>
+
+<p>“The eyes are quickly affected by the feelings. Note
+tears, ‘seeing red’ and so forth.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well, Oliver. The only thing to do is to let you
+try HX-1 yourself.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hay, my turn’s supposed to be next,” protested Ace.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course. But no one is going to use it again today.
+Tomorrow morning. Bring Catty, Hodge, if she wants to
+come, but please don’t say anything to anyone else till
+weve made further demonstrations, otherwise we’ll be besieged
+by fellows wanting to take short jaunts into popular
+years.”</p>
+
+<p>I had little inclination to discuss what had happened
+with anyone, even Catty. Not that I shared Midbin’s theory
+of nothing material having taken place; I knew I’d not seen
+Barbara for sixty seconds and I was convinced her account
+of them was accurate. What confused me was the shock to
+my preconceptions involved in her proof. If time and space,
+matter and energy were the same, as fog and ice and water
+are the same, then I—the physical I at least—and Catty,
+the world and the universe must be, as Enfandin had insisted,
+mere illusion. In that sense Midbin had been right.</p>
+
+<p>I went furtively to the workshop next day without telling
+Catty, as though we were all engaged in some dark
+necromancy, some sacrilegious rite. Apparently I was the
+only one who had spent an anxious night; Mr Haggerwells
+looked proud, Barbara looked satisfied, Ace cocky, and
+even Midbin, for no understandable reason, benign.</p>
+
+<p>“All here?” inquired Ace. “I’m eager as a fox in a hen-house.
+Three minutes in 1885. Why 1885? I don’t know; a
+year when nothing much happened, I suppose. Ready,
+Barbara?”</p>
+
+<p>He returned to report he had found the barn well occupied
+by both cattle and fowl, and been scared stiff of discovery
+when the dogs set up a furious barking.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span></p>
+
+<p>“That pretty well settles the question of corporeal
+presence,” I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>“Not at all,” said Mr Haggerwells unexpectedly. “Dogs
+are notoriously psychic.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah,” cried Ace, bringing his hands from behind his
+back; “look at this. I could hardly have picked it up with
+psychic feelers.”</p>
+
+<p>“This” was a newlaid egg, sixty-seven years old. Or was
+it? Trips in time are confusing that way.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara was upset, more than I thought warranted. “Oh,
+Ace, how could you be so foolish? We darent be anything
+but spectators, as unseen as possible.”</p>
+
+<p>“Why? Ive a notion to court my grandmother and wind
+up as my own grandfather.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t be stupid. The faintest indication of our presence,
+the slightest impingement on the past, may change
+the whole course of events. We have no way of knowing
+what actions have no consequences—if there can be any.
+Goodness knows what your idiocy with the egg has done.
+It’s absolutely essential not to betray ourselves in any way.
+Please remember this in future.”
+“You mean, ‘Remember this in past,’ don’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ace, this isnt a joke.”</p>
+
+<p>“It isn’t a wake either. I can’t see the harm in bringing
+back tangible proof. Loss of one egg isnt going to send the
+prices up for 1885 and cause retroactive inflation. Youre
+making a mountain out of a molehill—or an omelette out
+of a single egg.”
+She shrugged helplessly. “Oliver, I hope you won’t be
+so foolish.”</p>
+
+<p>“Since I don’t expect to arrive in, say, 1820, I can safely
+promise neither to steal eggs nor court Ace’s female ancestors.”</p>
+
+<p>He was gone for five minutes. The barn had apparently
+not yet been built in 1820 and he found himself on a slight
+rise in a field of wild hay. The faint snick of scythes, and
+voices not too far off, indicated mowers. He dropped to the
+ground. His view of the past was restricted to tall grass
+and some persistent ants who explored his face and hands<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span>
+until the time was up and he returned with broken spears
+of ripe hay clinging to his clothes.</p>
+
+<p>“At least that’s what I imagined I saw,” he concluded.</p>
+
+<p>“Did you imagine these?” asked Ace, pointing to the
+straws.</p>
+
+<p>“Probably. It’s at least as likely as time-travel.”</p>
+
+<p>“But what about corroboration? Your experience, and
+Barbara’s and Ace’s confirm each other. Doesnt that mean
+anything?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly. Only I’m not prepared to say what. The
+mind can do anything; anything at all. Create boils and
+cancers. Why not ants and grass? I don’t know. I don’t
+know....”</p>
+
+<p>After more fruitless argument, he and I left the workshop.
+I was again reminded of Enfandin—Why should I
+believe my eyes? I felt though that Midbin was carrying
+skepticism beyond rational limits; Barbara’s case was
+proved.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes,” he answered when I said this. “Why not?”</p>
+
+<p>I puzzled over his reply. Then he added abruptly, “No
+one can help her now.”</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C18"><i>18.</i> <i>THE WOMAN TEMPTED ME</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>Gently, Catty said, “Ive never understood why you
+cut yourself off from the past the way you have, Hodge.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ay? What do you mean?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, youve not communicated with your father or
+mother since you left home, fourteen years ago. You say
+you had a dear friend in the man from Haiti, yet youve
+never tried to find out whether he lived or died.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, that way. I thought you meant ... something
+different.” By not taking advantage of Barbara’s offer I
+certainly was cutting myself off from the past.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I guess more or less everyone at the haven has
+done the same thing. Let outside ties grow weak, I mean.
+You for one—”
+“But I have no parents, no friends anywhere else. All
+my life is here.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, so is mine.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, dear Hodge; it is unlike you to be so indifferent.”</p>
+
+<p>“Catty darling, you were brought up comfortably in an
+atmosphere knowing nothing of indenting or sharecropping,
+of realizing the only escape from wretchedness was
+in a miracle—usually translated as a winning number in
+the lottery. I can’t convey to you the meaning of utterly
+loveless surroundings, I can only say that affection was a
+luxury my mother and father couldnt afford.”
+“Perhaps not; but you can afford it. Now. And nothing
+of what you have said applies to Enfandin.”</p>
+
+<p>I squirmed shamefacedly. My ingratitude and callous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span>ness
+must be apparent to everyone; even Barbara, I remembered,
+had once asked me much the same questions
+Catty asked now. How could I explain, even to my own
+satisfaction, how procrastination and guilt made it impossible
+for me to take the simple steps to discover what had
+happened to my friend? By a tremendous effort I might
+have broken through the inertia years ago, just after Enfandin
+had been wounded, but each day and month between
+confirmed the impossibility more strongly. “Let the
+past take care of itself,” I muttered.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh Hodge! What a thing for an historian to say.”</p>
+
+<p>“Catty, I can’t.”</p>
+
+<p>The conversation made me nervous and fidgetty. It also
+made me remember much I preferred to let fade: the
+Grand Army, Sprovis, the counterfeit pesetas.... All the
+evil I had unwillingly abetted. If a man did nothing, literally
+nothing, all his life, then he might be free of culpability.
+Manichaeism, said Enfandin. No absolution.</p>
+
+<p>My idleness, I knew very well, heightened all these feelings
+of degradation. Were I able to continue in the happy,
+cocksure way I had gone about my note-gathering and the
+writing of volume one, I would have neither the time nor
+susceptibility to be plagued by this disquiet. As it was I
+seemed to be able to do nothing but act as audience for
+what was going on in the workshop.</p>
+
+<p>With childish eagerness Barbara and Ace explored
+HX-1’s possibilities for the next two months. They quickly
+learned that its range was limited to little more than a century,
+though this limit was subject to slight variations.
+When they tried to operate beyond this range the translation
+simply didnt take place, though the same feeling of
+dissolution occurred. When the light faded they were still
+in the present. Midbin’s venture into the hayfield had been
+a freak, possibly due to peculiar weather conditions at both
+ends of the journey. They set 1850 as a safe limit, with an
+undefined marginal zone further back which was not to be
+hazarded lest conditions change during the journey and
+the traveler be lost.</p>
+
+<p>Why this limit existed at all was a matter of dispute between
+them, a dispute of which I must admit I understood<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span>
+little. Barbara spoke of subjective factors which seemed to
+mean that HX-1 worked slightly differently in the case of
+each person it transported; Ace of magnetic fields and
+power relays, which didnt mean anything to me at all. The
+only thing they agreed on was that the barrier was not immutable;
+HX-2 or 3 or 20, if they were ever built, would
+undoubtedly overcome it.</p>
+
+<p>Nor would HX-1 work in reverse; the future remained
+closed, probably for similar reasons, whatever they were.
+Here again they disputed, Ace holding an HX could be
+built for this purpose, Barbara insisting that new equations
+would have to be worked out.</p>
+
+<p>They confirmed their tentative theory that time spent in
+the past consumed an equal amount of time in the present;
+they could not return to a point a minute after departure
+when they had been gone for an hour. As near as I could
+understand, this was because duration was set in the present.
+In order to come back to a time-point not in correspondence
+with the period actually spent, another HX,
+or at least another set of controls, would have to be taken
+into the past. And then they would not work since HX-1
+could not penetrate the future.</p>
+
+<p>The most inconvenient circumscription was the inability
+of one person to visit the same past moment twice. When
+the attempt was made the feeling of dissolution did not
+occur, the light went on and off with no effect upon the
+would-be traveler standing beneath it. Here Barbara’s
+“subjective factor” was triumphant, but why, or how it
+worked, they did not know. Nor did they know what would
+happen to a traveler who attempted to overlap by being
+already on the spot prior to a previous visit; it was too
+dangerous to try.</p>
+
+<p>Within these limits they roamed almost at will. Ace
+spent a full week in October 1896, walking as far as Philadelphia,
+enjoying the enthusiasm and fury of the presidential
+campaign. Knowing President Bryan was not only going
+to be elected, but would serve three terms, he found it
+hard indeed to obey Barbara’s stricture and not cover confident
+Whig bets on Major McKinley.</p>
+
+<p>Though both sampled the war years they brought back<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span>
+nothing useful to me, no information or viewpoint I
+couldnt have got from any of a score of books. Lacking
+historians’ interests or training, their tidbits were those of
+curious onlookers, not probing chroniclers. It was tantalizing
+to know that Barbara had seen Secretary Stanton at
+the York depot or that Ace had overheard a farmer say
+casually that Southron scouts had stopped at his place the
+day before and they had thought neither incident worth
+investigating further.</p>
+
+<p>I grew increasingly fretful. I held long colloquies with
+myself which always ended inconclusively. <i>Why not?</i> I
+asked. <i>Surely this is the unique opportunity. Never before
+has it been possible for an historian to check back at will,
+to select a particular moment for personal scrutiny, to
+write of the past with the detachment of the present and
+the accuracy of an eyewitness knowing specifically what to
+look for. Why don’t you take advantage of HX-1 and see
+for yourself?</i></p>
+
+<p>Against this I objected—what? Fear? Uneasiness? The
+“subjective factor” in HX-1? The superstitious notion that
+I might be tampering with a taboo, with matters forbidden
+to human shortcomings? <i>You mustnt try any shortcuts.
+Promise me that, Hodge.</i> Well, Catty was a darling. She was
+my beloved wife, but she was neither scholar nor oracle.
+On what grounds did she protest? Woman’s intuition? A
+respectable phrase, but what did it mean? And didnt Barbara,
+who first suggested my using HX-1, have womanly
+intuition also?</p>
+
+<p>A half-dozen times I tried to steer our talk in the direction
+of my thoughts; each time I allowed the words to drift
+to another topic. What was the use of upsetting her?
+<i>Promise me that, Hodge.</i> But I had not promised. This was
+something I had to settle for myself.</p>
+
+<p>What was I afraid of? Because I’d never grasped anything
+to do with the physical sciences did I attribute some
+anthropomorphism to their manifestations and like a savage
+fear the spirit imprisoned in what I didnt understand? (But
+HX-1 <i>did</i> have subjective factors.) I had never thought of
+myself as hidebound, but I was acting like a ninety-year<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span>old
+professor asked to use a typewriter instead of a goose
+quill.</p>
+
+<p>I recalled Tyss’s, “You are the spectator type, Hodgins.”
+And once I had called him out of my memory I couldnt
+escape his familiar, sardonic, interminable argument. <i>Why
+are you fussing yourself, Hodgins? What is the point of all
+this introspective debate? Don’t you know your choice has
+already been made? And that you have acted according to
+it an infinite number of times and will do so an infinite
+number of times again? Relax, Hodgins; you have nothing
+to worry about. Free will is an illusion; you cannot alter
+what you are about to decide under the impression that you
+have decided.</i></p>
+
+<p>My reaction to this imagined interjection was frenzied,
+unreasonable. I cursed Tyss and his damnable philosophy.
+I cursed the insidiousness of his reasoning which had
+planted seed in my brain to sprout at a moment like this.</p>
+
+<p>Yet in spite of the violence of my rejection of the words
+I attributed to Tyss, I accepted one of them. I relaxed. The
+decision had been made. Not by mechanistic forces, nor by
+blind response to stimulus, but by my own desire.</p>
+
+<p>And now to my aid came the image of Tyss’s antithesis,
+René Enfandin. <i>Be a skeptic, Hodge; be always the skeptic.
+Prove all things; hold fast to that which is true. Joking
+Pilate, asking,</i> What is truth? <i>was blind. But you can see
+more aspects of the absolute truth than any man has had a
+chance to see before. Can you use the chance well, Hodge?
+That is the only question.</i></p>
+
+<p>Once I could answer it with a vigorous affirmative, and
+so buttress the determination to go, I was faced with the
+problem of telling Catty. I could not shut her out of so important
+a move. I told myself I could not bear the thought
+of her anxiety; that she would worry despite the fact others
+had frequently used HX-1, for my object could not be
+accomplished in a matter of minutes or hours. I was sure
+she would be sick with apprehension during the days I
+would be gone. No doubt this was all true, but I also remembered,
+<i>Promise me, Hodge</i>....</p>
+
+<p>I finally took the weak, the ineffective course. I said I’d
+decided the only way to face my problem was to go to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span>
+Gettysburg and spend three or four days going over the
+actual field. Here, I explained unconvincingly, I thought I
+might at last come to the conclusion whether to scrap all
+my work and start afresh, or not.</p>
+
+<p>Her faintly oblique eyes were inscrutable. She pretended
+to believe me and begged me to take her along. After all,
+we had spent our honeymoon on battlefields.</p>
+
+<p>Would it be possible? Two people had never stood under
+the reflector together, but surely it would work? I was
+tempted, but I could not subject Catty to the risk, however
+slight. Besides, how could I explain?</p>
+
+<p>“But Catty, with you there I’d be thinking of you instead
+of the problem.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, Hodge, have we already been married so long you
+must get away from me to think?”</p>
+
+<p>“No matter how long, that time will never come. Perhaps
+I’m wrong, Catty. It’s just a feeling I have.”</p>
+
+<p>Her look was tragic with understanding. “You must do
+as you think right. Don’t ... don’t be gone too long,
+my dear.”</p>
+
+<p>I dressed in clothes I often used for walking trips, clothes
+which bore no mark of any fashion and might pass as current
+wear among the poorer classes in any era of the past
+hundred years. I put a packet of dried beef in my pocket
+and started for the workshop.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as I left the cottage I laughed at my hypersensitivity,
+at all the to-do I’d made over lying to Catty. This
+was but the first excursion; I planned others for the months
+after Gettysburg. There was no reason why she shouldnt
+accompany me on them. I grew lighthearted as my conscience
+eased and I even congratulated myself on my skill
+in not having told a single technical falsehood to Catty. I
+began to whistle, never a habit of mine, as I made my way
+along the path to the workshop.</p>
+
+<p>Barbara was alone. Her ginger hair gleamed in the light
+of a gas globe; her eyes were green as they always were
+when she was exultant. “Well, Hodge?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Barbara, I....”</p>
+
+<p>“Have you told Catty?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not exactly. How did you know?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I knew before you did, Hodge. After all, we’re not
+strangers. All right. How long do you want to stay?”</p>
+
+<p>“Four days.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s long for a first trip. Don’t you think you’d better
+try a few sample minutes?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why? Ive seen you and Ace go often enough and heard
+your accounts. I’ll take care of myself. Have you got it
+down fine enough yet so you can invariably pick the hour
+of arrival?”</p>
+
+<p>“Hour and minute,” she answered confidently. “What’ll
+it be?”</p>
+
+<p>“About midnight of June 30, 1863,” I answered. “I want
+to come back on the night of July Fourth.”</p>
+
+<p>“Youll have to be more exact than that. For the return,
+I mean. The dials are set on seconds.”</p>
+
+<p>“All right, make it midnight going and coming then.”</p>
+
+<p>“Have you a watch that keeps perfect time?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t know about perfect—”
+“Take this one. It’s synchronized with the master control
+clock.” She handed me a large, rather awkward timepiece
+which had two independent faces side by side. “We had a
+couple made like this; the duplicate dials were useful before
+we were able to control HX-1 so exactly. One shows 1952
+Haggershaven time.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ten thirty-three and fourteen seconds,” I said.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. The other will show 1863 time. You won’t be
+able to reset the first dial—but for goodness sake remember
+to keep it wound—and set the second for ... 11:54,
+zero. That means in six minutes youll leave, to arrive at
+midnight. Remember to keep that one wound too, for youll
+go by that regardless of variations in local clocks. Whatever
+else happens, be in the center of the barn at midnight—allow
+yourself some leeway—by midnight, July Fourth.
+I don’t want to have to go wandering around 1863 looking
+for you.”
+“You won’t. I’ll be here.”</p>
+
+<p>“Five minutes. Now then, food.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have some,” I answered, slapping my pocket.</p>
+
+<p>“Not enough. Take this concentrated chocolate along. I
+suppose it won’t hurt to drink the water if youre not ob<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span>served,
+but avoid their food. One never knows what chain
+might be started by the casual theft—or purchase, if you
+had enough old coins—of a loaf of bread. The possibilities
+are limitless and frightening. Listen: how can I impress on
+you the importance of doing nothing that could possibly
+change the future—our present? I’m sure to this day Ace
+doesnt understand, and I tremble every moment he spends
+in the past. The most trivial action may begin a series of
+disastrous consequences. Don’t be seen, don’t be heard.
+Make your trip as a ghost.”
+“Barbara, I promise I’ll neither assassinate General Lee
+nor give the North the idea of a modern six-barreled cannon.”</p>
+
+<p>“Four minutes. It’s not a joke, Hodge.”</p>
+
+<p>“Believe me,” I said, “I understand.”</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me searchingly. Then she shook her head
+and began making her round of the engines, adjusting the
+dials. I slid under the glass ring as I’d so often seen her do
+and stood casually under the reflector. I was not in the
+least nervous. I don’t think I was even particularly excited.</p>
+
+<p>“Three minutes,” said Barbara.</p>
+
+<p>I patted my breast pocket. Notebook, pencils. I nodded.</p>
+
+<p>She ducked under the ring and came toward me.
+“Hodge....”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes?”</p>
+
+<p>She put her arms on my shoulders, leaning forward. I
+kissed her, a little absently. “Clod!”</p>
+
+<p>I looked at her closely, but there were none of the familiar
+signs of anger. “A minute to go, it says here,” I
+told her.</p>
+
+<p>She drew away and went back. “All set. Ready?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ready,” I answered cheerfully. “See you midnight,
+July Fourth, 1863.”</p>
+
+<p>“Right. Goodbye, Hodge. Glad you didnt tell Catty.”</p>
+
+<p>The expression on her face was the strangest I’d ever
+seen her wear. I could not, then or now, quite interpret it.
+Doubt, malice, suffering, vindictiveness, entreaty, love,
+were all there as her hand moved the switch. I began to
+answer something—perhaps to bid her wait—then the
+light made me blink and I too experienced the shattering<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span>
+feeling of transition. My bones seemed to fly from each
+other; every cell in my body exploded to the ends of space.</p>
+
+<p>The instant of translation was so brief it is hard to believe
+all the multitude of impressions occurred simultaneously.
+I was sure my veins were drained of blood, my
+brain and eyeballs dropped into a bottomless void, my
+thoughts pressed to the finest powder and blown a universe
+away. Most of all, I knew the awful sensation of being, for
+that tiny fragment of time, not Hodgins McCormick Backmaker,
+but part of an <i>I</i> in which the I that was me merged
+all identity.</p>
+
+<p>Then I opened my eyes. I was emotionally shaken; my
+knees and wrists were watery points of helplessness, but I
+was alive and functioning, with my individuality unimpaired.
+The light had vanished. I was in darkness save for
+faint moonlight coming through the cracks in the barn.
+The sweetish smell of cattle was in my nostrils, and the
+slow, ponderous stamp of hooves in my ears. I had gone
+back through time.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C19"><i>19.</i> <i>GETTYSBURG</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>The barking of the dogs was frenzied, filled with
+the hoarse note indicating they had been raising the alarm
+for a long time without being heeded. I knew they must
+have been baying at the alien smells of soldiers for the
+past day, so I was not apprehensive that their scent of me
+would bring investigation. How Barbara and Ace had escaped
+detection on journeys which didnt coincide with
+abnormal events was beyond me; with such an unnerving
+racket in prospect I would either have given up the trips
+or moved the apparatus.</p>
+
+<p>Strange, I reflected, that the cows and horses were undisturbed.
+That no hysterical chicken leaped from the roost
+in panic. Only the dogs scented my unnatural presence.
+Dogs who, as Mr Haggerwells remarked, are supposed to
+sense things beyond the perceptions of man.</p>
+
+<p>Warily I picked my way past the livestock and out of
+the barn, fervently hoping the dogs were tied, for I had no
+mind to start my adventure by being bitten. Barbara’s
+warnings seemed inadequate indeed; one would think she
+or Ace might have devised some method of neutralizing
+the infernal barking. But of course they could hardly do
+so without violating her rule of non-interference.</p>
+
+<p>Once out on the familiar Hanover road every petty feeling
+of doubt or disquiet fell away and all the latent excitement
+took hold of me. I was gloriously in 1863, half a day
+and some thirty miles from the battle of Gettysburg. If
+there is a paradise for historians I had achieved it without
+the annoyance of dying first. I swung along at a good pace,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span>
+thankful I had trained myself for long tramps, so that thirty
+miles in less than ten hours was no monstrous feat. The
+noise of the dogs died away behind me and I breathed the
+night air joyfully.</p>
+
+<p>I had already decided I dared not attempt to steal a ride
+on the railroad, even supposing the cars were going
+through. As I turned off the Hanover road and took the
+direct one to Gettysburg, I knew I would not be able to
+keep on it for any length of time. Part of Early’s Confederate
+division was moving along it from recently occupied
+York; Stuart’s cavalry was all around; trifling skirmishes
+were being fought on or near it; Union troops, regulars as
+well as the militia called out by Governor Curtin for the
+emergency, were behind and ahead of me, marching for
+the Monocacy and Cemetery Ridge.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving the highway would hardly slow me down, for
+I knew every sideroad, lane, path or shortcut, not only as
+they existed in my day, but as they had been in the time
+where I was now. I was going to need this knowledge even
+more on my return, for on the Fourth of July this road,
+like every other, would be glutted with beaten Northern
+troops, supplies and wounded left behind, frantically trying
+to reorganize as they were harassed by Stuart’s cavalry
+and pressed by the victorious men of Hill, Longstreet, and
+Ewell. It was with this in mind I had allowed disproportionately
+longer for coming back.</p>
+
+<p>I saw my first soldier a few miles further on, a jagged
+shadow sitting by the roadside with his boots off, massaging
+his feet. I guessed him Northern from his kepi, but this
+was not conclusive, for many Southron regiments wore
+kepis also. I struck off quietly into the field and skirted
+around him. He never looked up.</p>
+
+<p>At dawn I estimated I was halfway, and except for the
+sight of that single soldier I might have been taking a nocturnal
+stroll through a countryside at peace. I was tired
+but certainly not worn out, and I knew I could count on
+nervous energy and happy excitement to keep me going
+long after my muscles began to protest. Progress would be
+slower from now on—Confederate infantry must be just
+ahead—even so, I should be at Gettysburg by six or seven.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span></p>
+
+<p>The sudden drumming of hooves brushed me off the
+dusty pike and petrified me into rigidity as a troop dressed
+in gray and dirty tan galloped by screaming, “Eeeeee-yeeee”
+exultantly. The gritty cloud they stirred up settled
+slowly; I felt the particles sting my face and eyes. It would
+be the sideroads from now on, I determined.</p>
+
+<p>Others had the same impulse; the sideroads were well
+populated. Although I knew the movement of every division
+and of many regiments, and even had some considerable
+idea of the civilian dislocation, the picture around
+me was jumbled and turbulent. Farmers, merchants, workers
+in overalls rode or tramped eastward; others, identical
+in dress and obvious intensity of effort, pushed westward.
+I passed carriages and carts with women and children traveling
+at various speeds both ways. Squads and companies
+of blue-clad troops marched along the roads or through
+the fields, trampling the crops, a confused sound of singing,
+swearing, or aimless talk hanging above them like a
+fog. Spaced by pacific intervals, men in gray or butternut,
+otherwise indistinguishable, marched in the same direction.
+I decided I could pass unnoticed in the milling crowds.</p>
+
+<p>It is not easy for the historian, ten, fifty or five hundred
+years away from an event, to put aside for a moment the
+large concepts of currents and forces, or the mechanical
+aids of statistics, charts, maps, neat plans and diagrams in
+which the migration of men, women and children is indicated
+by an arrow, or a brigade of half-terrified, half-heroic
+men becomes a neat little rectangle. It is not easy to see
+behind source material, to visualize state papers, reports,
+letters, diaries as written by men who spent most of their
+lives sleeping, eating, yawning, eliminating, squeezing
+blackheads, lusting, looking out of windows, or talking
+about nothing in general with no one in particular. We are
+too impressed with the pattern revealed to us—or which
+we think has been revealed to us—to remember that for
+the participants history is a haphazard affair, apparently
+aimless, produced by human beings whose concern is essentially
+with the trivial and irrelevant. The historian is
+always conscious of destiny. The participants rarely—or
+mistakenly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span></p>
+
+<p>So to be set down in the midst of crisis, to be at once
+involved and apart, is to experience a constant series of
+shocks against which there is no anesthetic. The soldiers,
+the stragglers, the refugees, the farm boys shouting at
+horses, the tophatted gentlemen cursing the teamsters, the
+teamsters cursing back; the looters, pimps, gamblers,
+whores, nurses and newspapermen were indisputably what
+they appeared: vitally important to themselves, of little interest
+to anyone else. Yet at the same time they were a
+paragraph, a page, a chapter, a whole series of volumes.</p>
+
+<p>I’m sure I was faithful to the spirit if not the letter of
+Barbara’s warnings, and that none of the hundreds whom
+I passed or who passed me noted my presence, except cursorily.
+I, on the other hand, had to repress the constant
+temptation to peer into every face for signs which could
+not tell me what fortune or misfortune the decision of the
+next three days would bring to it.</p>
+
+<p>A few miles from town the crowded disorder became
+even worse, for the scouts from Ewell’s Corps, guarding
+the Confederate left flank on the York Road, acted like a
+cork in a bottle. Because I, unlike the other travelers, knew
+this, I cut sharply south to get back on the circuitous Hanover
+road I had left shortly after midnight, and crossing
+the bridge over Rock Creek, stumbled into Gettysburg.</p>
+
+<p>The two and a half storey brick houses with their purplish
+slate roofs were placid and charming in the hot July
+sun. A valiant rooster pecked at horsedung in the middle
+of the street heedless of the swarming soldiers, any of
+whom might take a notion for roast chicken. Privates in
+the black hats of the Army of the Potomac, cavalrymen
+with wide yellow stripes and cannoneers with red ones
+on the seams of their pants, swaggered importantly. Lieutenants
+with hands resting gracefully on sword hilts, captains
+with arms thrust in unbuttoned tunics, colonels smoking
+cigars, all moved back and forth across the street, out
+of and into houses and stores, each clearly intent on some
+business which would affect the course of the war. Now
+and then a general rode his horse through the crowd,
+slowly and thoughtfully, oppressed by the cares of rank.
+Soldiers spat, leered at an occasional woman, sat dolefully<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span>
+on handy stoops, or marched smartly toward an unknown
+destination. On the courthouse staff the flag hung doubtfully
+in the limp summer air. Every so often there was a
+noise like poorly organized thunder.</p>
+
+<p>Imitating the adaptable infantrymen, I found an unoccupied
+stoop and sat down after a curious glance at the
+house, wondering whether it contained someone whose
+letters or diaries I had read. Drawing out my packet of
+dried beef, I munched away without taking any of my
+attention from the sights and sounds and smells around
+me. Only I knew how desperately these soldiers would
+fight this afternoon and all day tomorrow. I alone knew
+how they would be caught in the inescapable trap on July
+Third and finally routed, to begin the last act of the war.
+That major, I thought, so proud of his new-won golden
+oak leaves, may have an arm or leg shot off vainly defending
+Culp’s Hill; that sergeant over there may lie faceless
+under an apple tree before nightfall.</p>
+
+<p>Soon these men would be swept away from the illusory
+shelter of the houses and out onto the ridges where they
+would be pounded into defeat and disaster. There was
+nothing for me now in Gettysburg itself, though I could
+have spent days absorbing the color and feeling. Already
+I had tempted fate by my casual appearance in the heart of
+town. At any moment someone might speak to me, to ask
+for a light or a direction; an ill-considered word or action
+of mine might change, with ever-widening consequences,
+the course of the future. I had been foolish enough long
+enough; it was time for me to go to the vantage point I had
+decided upon and observe without peril of being observed.</p>
+
+<p>I rose and stretched, my bones protesting. But a couple
+of miles more would see me clear of all danger of chance
+encounter with a too friendly or inquisitive soldier or civilian.
+I gave a last look, trying to impress every detail on my
+memory, and turned south on the Emmitsburg Road.</p>
+
+<p>This was no haphazard choice. I knew where and when
+the crucial, the decisive move upon which all the other
+moves depended would take place. While thousands of
+men were struggling and dying on other parts of the battleground,
+a Confederate advance force, unnoticed, disre<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span>garded,
+would occupy the position which would eventually
+dominate the scene and win the battle—and the war—for
+the South. Heavy with knowledge no one else possessed I
+made my way toward a farm on which there was a wheatfield
+and a peach orchard.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C20"><i>20.</i> <i>BRING THE JUBILEE</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>A great battle in its first stages is as tentative,
+uncertain, and indefinite as a courtship just begun. At the
+beginning the ground was there for either side to take without
+protest; the other felt no surge of possessive jealousy. I
+walked unscathed along the Emmitsburg Road; on my left
+I knew there were Union forces concealed, on my right the
+Southrons maneuvered. In a few hours, to walk between
+the lines would mean instant death, but now the declaration
+had not been made, the vows had not been finally
+exchanged. It was still possible for either party to withdraw;
+no furious heat bound the two indissolubly together.
+I heard the periodic shell and the whine of a minie bullet;
+mere flirtatious gestures so far.</p>
+
+<p>Despite the hot sun the grass was cool and lush. The
+shade in the orchard was velvety. From a low branch I
+picked a near ripe peach and sucked the wry juice. I
+sprawled on the earth and waited. For miles around, men
+from Maine and Wisconsin, from Georgia and North Carolina,
+assumed the same attitude. But I knew for what I was
+waiting; they could only guess.</p>
+
+<p>Some acoustical freak dimmed the noises in the air to
+little more than amplification of the normal summer
+sounds. Did the ground really tremble faintly, or was I
+translating my mental picture of the marching armies, the
+great wagon trains, the heavy cannon, the iron-shod horses
+into an imagined physical effect? I don’t think I dozed, but
+certainly my attention withdrew from the rows of trees
+with their scarred and runneled bark, curving branches and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span>
+graceful leaves, so that I was taken unaware by the unmistakable
+clump and creak of mounted men.</p>
+
+<p>The blue-uniformed cavalry rode slowly through the
+peach orchard. They seemed like a group of aimless hunters
+returning from the futile pursuit of a fox; they chatted,
+shouted at each other, walked their horses abstractedly.
+One or two had their sabres out; they rose in their saddles
+and cut at the branches overhead in pure, pointless mischief.</p>
+
+<p>Behind them came the infantrymen, sweating and swearing,
+more serious. Some few had wounds, others were without
+their muskets. Their dark blue tunics were carelessly
+unbuttoned, their lighter pants were stained with mud and
+dust and grass. They trampled and thrashed around like
+men long weary. Quarrels rose among them swiftly and
+swiftly petered out. No one could mistake them for anything
+but troops in retreat</p>
+
+<p>After they had passed, the orchard was still again, but
+the stillness had a different quality from what had gone
+before. The leaves did not rustle, no birds chirped, there
+were no faint betrayals of the presence of chipmunks or
+squirrels. Only if one listened very closely was the dry
+noise of insects perceptible. But I heard the guns now.
+Clearly and louder. And more continuously—much more
+continuously. It was not yet the full roar of battle, but
+death was authentic in its low rumble.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Confederates came. Cautiously, but not so cautiously
+that one could fail to recognize they represented a
+victorious, invading army. Shabby they certainly were, as
+they pushed into the orchard, but alert and confident. Only
+a minority had uniforms which resembled those prescribed
+by regulation and these were torn, grimy and scuffed.
+Many of the others wore the semiofficial butternut—crudely
+dyed homespun, streaked and muddy brown. Some
+had ordinary clothes with military hats and buttons; a few
+were dressed in federal blue trousers with gray or butternut
+jackets.</p>
+
+<p>Nor were their weapons uniform. There were long rifles,
+short carbines, muskets of varying age, and I noticed one
+bearded soldier with a ponderous shotgun. But whatever<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span>
+their dress or arms, their bearing was the bearing of conquerors.
+If I alone on the field that day knew for sure the
+outcome of the battle, these Confederate soldiers were
+close behind in sensing the future.</p>
+
+<p>The straggling Northerners had passed me by with the
+clouded perception of the retreating. These Southrons,
+however, were steadfastly attentive to every sight and
+sound. Too late I realized the difficulty of remaining unnoticed
+by such sharp, experienced eyes. Even as I berated
+myself for my stupidity, a great, whiskery fellow in
+what must once have been a stylish bottle-green coat
+pointed his gun at me.</p>
+
+<p>“Yank here boys!” Then to me, “What you doing here,
+fella?”</p>
+
+<p>Three or four came up and surrounded me curiously.
+“Funniest lookin damyank I ever did see. Looks like he
+just fell out of a bathtub.”</p>
+
+<p>Since I had walked all night on dusty roads I could only
+think their standards of cleanliness were not high. And
+indeed this was confirmed by the smell coming from them:
+the stink of sweat, of clothes long slept in, of unwashed
+feet and stale tobacco.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m a noncombatant,” I said foolishly.</p>
+
+<p>“Whazzat?” asked the beard. “Some kind of Baptist?”</p>
+
+<p>“Naw,” corrected one of the others. “It’s a law-word.
+Means not all right in the head.”</p>
+
+<p>“Looks all right in the foot though. Let’s see your boots,
+Yank. Mine’s sure wore out.”</p>
+
+<p>What terrified me now was not the thought of my boots
+being stolen, or of being treated as a prisoner, or even the
+remote chance of being shot as a spy. A greater, more indefinite
+catastrophe was threatened by my exposure. These
+men were the advance company of a regiment due to sweep
+through the orchard and the wheatfield, explore that bit of
+wild ground known as the Devil’s Den and climb up Little
+Round Top closely followed by an entire Confederate brigade.
+This was the brigade which held the Round Top for
+several hours until artillery was brought up, artillery which
+dominated the entire field and gave the South victory at
+Gettysburg.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span></p>
+
+<p>There was no allowance for a pause, no matter how
+trifling, in the peach orchard, in any of the accounts I’d
+read or heard of. The hazard Barbara had warned so insistently
+against had happened. I had been discovered, and
+the mere discovery had altered the course of history.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to shrug it off. Delay of a few minutes could
+hardly make a significant difference. All historians agreed
+that the capture of the Round Tops was an inevitability;
+the Confederates would have been foolish to overlook
+them—in fact it was hardly possible they could, prominent
+as they were both on maps and in physical reality—and
+they had occupied them hours before the Federals made a
+belated attempt to take them. I had been unbelievably
+stupid to expose myself, but I had created no repercussions
+likely to spread beyond the next few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>“Said let’s see them boots. Aint got all day to wait.”</p>
+
+<p>A tall officer with a pointed imperial and a sandy, faintly
+reddish mustache whose curling ends shone waxily came
+up, revolver in hand. “What’s going on here?”</p>
+
+<p>“Just a Yank, Capn. Making a little change of footgear.”
+The tone was surly, almost insolent.</p>
+
+<p>The galloons on the officer’s sleeve told me the title was
+not honorary. “I’m a civilian, Captain,” I protested. “I
+realize I have no business here.”</p>
+
+<p>The captain looked at me coldly, with an expression of
+disdainful contempt. “Local man?” he asked.</p>
+
+<p>“Not exactly. I’m from York.”</p>
+
+<p>“Too bad. Thought you could tell me about the Yanks
+up ahead. Jenks, leave the civilian gentleman in full possession
+of his boots.”</p>
+
+<p>There was rage behind that sneer, a hateful anger apparently
+directed at me for being a civilian, at his men for their
+obvious lack of respect, at the battle, the world. I suddenly
+realized his face was intimately familiar. Irritatingly, because
+I could connect it with no name, place or circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>“How long have you been in this orchard, Mister Civilian-From-York?”</p>
+
+<p>The effort to identify him nagged me, working in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span>
+depths of my mind, obtruding even into that top layer
+which was concerned with what was going on.</p>
+
+<p>What was going on? <i>Too bad. Thought you could tell
+me about the Yanks up ahead. How long have you been in
+this orchard?</i></p>
+
+<p>Yanks up ahead? There werent any. There wouldnt be,
+for hours.</p>
+
+<p>“I said, ‘How long you been in this orchard?’”</p>
+
+<p>Probably an officer later promoted to rank prominent
+enough to have his picture in one of the minor narratives.
+Yet I was certain his face was no likeness I’d seen once in a
+steel engraving and dismissed. These were features often
+encountered....</p>
+
+<p>“Sure like to have them boots. If we aint fightin for
+Yankee boots, what the hell we fightin for?”</p>
+
+<p>What could I say? That I’d been in the orchard for half
+an hour? The next question was bound to be, Had I seen
+Federal troops? Whichever way I answered I would be
+betraying my role of spectator.</p>
+
+<p>“Hey Capn—this fella knows something. Lookit the
+silly grin!”
+Was I smiling? In what? Terror? Perplexity? In the
+mere effort of keeping silent, so as to be involved no
+further?</p>
+
+<p>“Tell yah—he’s laughin cuz he knows somethin!”
+Let them hang me, let them strip me of my boots; from
+here on I was dumb as dear Catty had been once.</p>
+
+<p>“Out with it man—youre in a tight spot. Are there Yanks
+up ahead?”
+The confusion in my mind approached chaos. If I knew
+the captain’s eventual rank I could place him. Colonel
+Soandso. Brigadier-General Blank. What had happened?
+Why had I let myself be discovered? Why had I spoken at
+all and made silence so hard now?</p>
+
+<p>“Yanks up ahead—they’s Yanks up ahead!”
+“Quiet you! I asked him—he didnt say there were Yanks
+ahead.”
+“Hay! Damyanks up above. Goin to mow us down!”</p>
+
+<p>“Fella says the bluebellies are layin fur us!”</p>
+
+<p>Had the lie been in my mind, to be telepathically plucked<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span>
+by the excited soldiers? Was even silence no refuge from
+participation?</p>
+
+<p>“Man here spotted the whole Fed artillery up above,
+trained on us!”</p>
+
+<p>“Pull back, boys! Pull back!”</p>
+
+<p>I’d read often enough of the epidemic quality of a perfectly
+unreasonable notion. A misunderstood word, a baseless
+rumor, an impossible report, was often enough to set
+a group of armed men—squad or army—into senseless
+mob action. Sometimes the infection made for feats of
+heroism, sometimes for panic. This was certainly less than
+panic, but my nervous, meaningless smile conveyed a message
+I had never sent.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a trap. Pull back boys—let’s get away from these
+trees and out where we can see the Yanks!”
+The captain whirled on his men. “Here, damn you,” he
+shouted furiously, “you all gone crazy? The man said nothing.
+There’s no trap!”</p>
+
+<p>The men moved slowly, sullenly away. “I heard him,”
+one of them muttered, looking accusingly toward me.</p>
+
+<p>The captain’s shout became a yell. “Come back here!
+Back here, I say!”</p>
+
+<p>His raging stride overtook the still irresolute men. He
+grabbed the one called Jenks by the shoulder and whirled
+him about. Jenks tried to jerk free. There was fear on his
+face, and hate. “Leave me go, damn you,” he screamed,
+“Leave me go!”</p>
+
+<p>The captain yelled at his men again. Jenks snatched at
+the pistol with his left hand; the officer pulled the gun
+away. Jenks brought his musket upright against the captain’s
+body, the muzzle just under his chin, and pushed—as
+though the firearm somehow gave him leverage. They
+wrestled briefly, then the musket went off.</p>
+
+<p>The captain’s hat flew upward, and for an instant he
+stood, bareheaded, in the private’s embrace. Then he fell.
+Jenks wrenched his musket free and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>When I came out of my shock I walked over to the body.
+The face had been blown off. Shreds of human meat dribbled
+bloodily on the gray collar and soiled the fashionably
+long hair. I had killed a man. Through my interference<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span>
+with the past I had killed a man who had been destined to
+longer life and even some measure of fame. I was the
+guilty sorcerer’s apprentice.</p>
+
+<p>I stooped down to put my hands inside his coat for
+papers which would tell me who he was and satisfy the
+curiosity which still basely persisted. It was not shame
+which stopped me. Just nausea, and remorse.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>I saw the Battle of Gettysburg. I saw it with all the
+unique advantages of a professional historian thoroughly
+conversant with the patterns, the movements, the details,
+who knows where to look for the coming dramatic moment,
+the recorded decisive stroke. I fulfilled the chroniclers’
+dream.</p>
+
+<p>It was a nightmare.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>To begin with, I slept. I slept not far from the captain’s
+body in the peach orchard. This was not callousness, but
+physical and emotional exhaustion. When I went to sleep
+the guns were thundering; when I woke they were thundering
+louder. It was late afternoon. I thought immediately,
+this is the time for the futile Union charge against the
+Round Tops.</p>
+
+<p>But the guns were not sounding from there. All the roar
+was northward, from the town. I knew how the battle went;
+I had studied it for years. Only now it wasn’t happening the
+way it was written down in the books.</p>
+
+<p>True, the first day was a Confederate victory. But it was
+not the victory we knew. It was just a little different, just a
+little short of the triumph recorded. And on the second
+day, instead of the Confederates getting astride the Taneytown
+Road and into the position from which they tore
+Meade’s army to bits from three sides, I witnessed a terrible
+encounter in the peach orchard and the wheatfield—places
+known to be safely behind the Southron lines.</p>
+
+<p>All my life I’d heard of Pickett’s charge on the third day.
+Of how the disorganized Federals were given the final killing
+blow in their vitals. Well, I saw Pickett’s charge on the
+third day and it was not the same charge in the historic
+place. It was a futile attempt to storm superior positions<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span>
+(positions, by established fact, in Lee’s hands since July
+First) ending in slaughter and defeat.</p>
+
+<p>Defeat for the South, not the North. Meade’s army was
+not broken; the Confederates could not scatter and pursue
+them now. The Capitulation, if it ever took place, would
+come under different circumstances. The independence of
+the Confederate States might not be acknowledged for
+years. If at all.</p>
+
+<p>All because the North held the Round Tops.</p>
+
+<p>Years more of killing, and possibly further years of
+guerrilla warfare. Thousands and thousands of dead, their
+blood on my hands. A poisoned continent, an inheritance
+of hate. Because of me.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot tell you how I got back to York. If I walked,
+it was somnambulistically. Possibly I rode the railroad or
+in a farmer’s cart. Part of my mind, a tiny part that kept
+coming back to pierce me no matter how often I crushed it
+out, remembered those who died, those who would have
+lived, but for me. Another part was concerned only with
+the longing to get back to my own time, to the haven, to
+Catty. A much larger part was simply blank, except for the
+awesome, incredible knowledge that the past could be
+changed—that the past <i>had</i> been changed.</p>
+
+<p>I must have wound my watch—Barbara’s watch—for it
+was ten oclock on the night of July Fourth when I got to
+the barn. Ten oclock by 1863 time; the other dial showed
+it to be 8:40, that would be twenty of nine in the morning,
+1952 time. In two hours I would be home, safe from the
+nightmare of happenings that never happened, of guilt for
+the deaths of men not supposed to die, of the awful responsibility
+of playing destiny. If I could not persuade Barbara
+to smash her damnable contrivance I would do so myself.</p>
+
+<p>The dogs barked madly, but I was sure no one heeded.
+It was the Fourth of July, and a day of victory and rejoicing
+for all Pennsylvanians. I stole into the barn and settled
+myself in the exact center, even daring the use of a match,
+my last one, to be sure I’d be directly under the reflector
+when it materialized.</p>
+
+<p>I could not sleep, though I longed to blot out the horror
+and wake in my own time. Detail by detail I went over<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span>
+what I had seen, superimposing it like a palimpsest upon
+the history I’d always known. Sleep would have kept me
+from this wretched compulsion and from questioning my
+sanity, but I could not sleep.</p>
+
+<p>I have heard that in moments of overwhelming shock
+some irrelevancy, some inconsequential matter persistently
+forces itself on the attention. The criminal facing execution
+thinks, not of his imminent fate or of his crime, but of
+the cigarette stub he left burning in his cell. The bereaved
+widow dwells, not on her lost husband, but on tomorrow’s
+laundry. So it was with me. Behind that part of my mind
+re-living the past three days, a more elementary part
+gnawed at the identification of the slain captain.</p>
+
+<p>I knew that face. Particularly did I know that face set in
+a sneer, distorted with anger. But I could not remember it
+in Confederate uniform. I could not remember it with
+sandy mustaches. And yet the sandy, reddish hair, revealed
+in that terrible moment when his hat flew off, was as familiar
+as part of the face. Oh, I thought, if I could only
+place it once and for all and free my mind at least of this
+trivial thing.</p>
+
+<p>I wished there were some way I could have seen the
+watch, to concentrate on the creeping progress of the
+hands and distract myself from the wave after wave of
+wretched meditations which flowed over me. But the moonlight
+was not strong enough to make the face distinguishable,
+much less the figures on the dials. There was no
+narcotic.</p>
+
+<p>As one always is at such times I was convinced the appointed
+moment had passed unnoticed. Something had
+gone wrong. Over and over I had to tell myself that minutes
+seem hours in the waiting dark; it might feel like two
+or three in the morning to me; it was probably barely
+eleven. No use. A minute—or an hour or a second—later
+I was again positive midnight had passed.</p>
+
+<p>Finally I began to suffer a monstrous illusion. I began
+to think it was getting lighter. That dawn was coming. Of
+course I knew it could not be; what I fancied lifting darkness
+was only a sick condition of swollen, overtired eyes.
+Dawn does not come to Pennsylvania at midnight, and it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span>
+was not yet midnight. At midnight I would be back at
+Haggershaven, in 1952.</p>
+
+<p>Even when the barn was fully lighted by the rising sun
+and I could see the cattle peaceful in their stalls I refused
+to believe what I saw. I took out my watch only to find
+something had disturbed the works; the hands registered
+five oclock. Even when the farmer, milk pails over arm,
+started in surprise, exclaiming, “Hay, what you doing
+here?”—even then, I did not believe.</p>
+
+<p>Only when, as I opened my mouth to explain to my
+involuntary host, did something happen. The puzzle which
+had pursued me for three days suddenly solved itself. I
+knew why the face of the Southron captain had been so
+familiar. Familiar beyond any of the better known warriors
+on either side. I had indeed known that face intimately;
+seen those features enraged or sneering. The nose,
+the mouth, the eyes, the expression were Barbara Haggerwells’.
+The man dead in the peach orchard was the man
+whose portrait hung in the library of Haggershaven, its
+founder, Herbert Haggerwells. Captain Haggerwells—never
+to become a major now, or buy this farm. Never to
+marry a local girl or beget Barbara’s great grandfather.
+Haggershaven had ceased to exist in the future.</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="C21"><i>21.</i> <i>FOR THE TIME BEING</i></h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>I am writing this, as I said, in 1877. I am a healthy
+man of forty-five, no doubt with many years ahead of me.
+I might live to be a hundred, except for an illogical feeling
+that I must die before 1921. However, eighty-nine should
+be enough for anyone. So I have ample time to put my
+story down. Still, better to have it down and done with;
+should anything happen to me tomorrow it will be on
+paper.</p>
+
+<p>For what? As confession and apology? As an inverted
+substitute for the merciful amnesia which ought to have
+erased my memory as well as my biography? (I have written
+to Wappinger Falls; there are no records of any Hodgins
+family, or of Backmakers. Does this mean the forces I
+set in motion destroyed Private Hodgins as well as Captain
+Haggerwells? Or only that the Hodginses and Backmakers
+settled elsewhere? In either case I am like Adam—in
+this world—a special, parentless creation.) There is no
+one close enough to care, or intimate enough to accept my
+word in the face of all reason. I have not married in this
+time, nor shall I. I write only as old men talk to themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of my personal story is simple. The name of the
+farmer who found me in his barn was Thammis; they had
+need of a hired hand and I stayed on. I had no desire to go
+elsewhere; in fact I could not bear to leave what was—and
+will never be—Haggershaven.</p>
+
+<p>In the beginning I used to go to the location of the
+Agati’s garden and look across at the spot where I left our<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span>
+cottage and Catty. It was an empty pilgrimage. Now I content
+myself with the work which needs doing. I shall stay
+here till I die.</p>
+
+<p>Catty. Haggershaven. Are they really gone, irrevocably
+lost, in a future which never existed, which couldnt exist,
+once the chain of causation was broken? Or do they exist
+after all, in a universe in which the South won the battle of
+Gettysburg and Major Haggerwells founded Haggershaven?
+Could another Barbara devise a means to reach
+that universe? I would give so much to believe this, but I
+cannot. I simply cannot.</p>
+
+<p>Children know about such things. They close their eyes
+and pray, “Please God, make it didnt happen.” Often they
+open their eyes to find it happened anyway, but this does
+not shake their faith that many times the prayer is granted.
+Adults smile, but can any of them be sure the memories
+they cherish were the same yesterday? Do they <i>know</i> that
+a past cannot be expunged? Children know it can.</p>
+
+<p>And once lost, that particular past can never be regained.
+Another and another perhaps, but never the same
+one. There are no parallel universes—though this one may
+be sinuous and inconstant.</p>
+
+<p>That this world is a better place than the one into which
+I was born, and promises to grow still better, seems true.
+What idealism lay behind the Southron cause triumphed in
+the reconciliation of men like Lee; what was brutal never
+got the upper hand as it did in my world. The Negro is free;
+black legislatures pass advanced laws in South Carolina;
+black congressmen comport themselves with dignity in
+Washington. The Pacific railroad is built, immigrants pour
+in to a welcoming country to make it strong and wealthy;
+no one suggests they should be shut out or hindered.</p>
+
+<p>There are rumors of a deal between northern Republicans
+and southern Democrats, betraying the victory of the
+Civil War—how strange it is still, after fourteen years, to
+use this term instead of the familiar War of Southron Independence—in
+return for the presidency. If this is true, my
+brave new world is not so brave.</p>
+
+<p>It may not be so new either. Prussia has beaten France
+and proclaimed a German Empire; is this the start in a dif<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span>ferent
+way of the German Union? Will 1914 see an Emperors’
+War—there is none in France now—leaving Germany
+facing ... whom?</p>
+
+<p>Any one of the inventions of my own time would make
+me a rich man if I could reproduce them, or cared for
+money. With mounting steel production and the tremendous
+jump in population, what a success the minible would
+be. Or the tinugraph. Or controllable balloons.</p>
+
+<p>The typewriter I have seen. It has developed along different
+and clumsier lines; inevitably, I suppose, given initial
+divergence. It may mean greater advances; more likely not.
+The universal use of gaslight must be far in the future if it
+is to come at all; certainly its advent is delayed by all this
+talk of inventing electric illumination. If we couldnt put
+electricity to work it’s unlikely my new contemporaries will
+be able to. Why, they havent even made the telegraph
+cheap and convenient.</p>
+
+<p>And something like HX-1? It is inconceivable. Could it
+be that in destroying the future in which Haggershaven
+existed I have also destroyed the only dimension in which
+time travel was possible?</p>
+
+<p>So strangely easily I can write the words, “I destroyed.”</p>
+
+<p>Catty.</p>
+
+<p>But what of Tyss’s philosophy? Is it possible I shall be
+condemned to repeat the destruction throughout eternity?
+Have I written these lines an infinite number of times before?
+Or is the mercy envisaged by Enfandin a reality?
+And what of Barbara’s expression as she bade me goodbye?
+Could she possibly</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>Editorial note by Frederick Winter Thammis: Quite recently,
+in the summer of 1953 to be exact, I commissioned
+the remodelling of my family home near York, Pennsylvania.
+Among the bundles of old books and papers stored
+in the attic was a box of personal effects, labelled “H M
+Backmaker.” In it was the manuscript concluding with an
+unfinished sentence, reproduced above.</p>
+
+<p>My father used to tell me that when he was a boy there
+was an old man living on the farm, nominally as a hired
+hand, but actually as a pensioner, since he was beyond the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span>
+age of useful labor. My father said the children considered
+him not quite right in his mind, but very entertaining, for
+he often repeated long, disjointed narratives of an impossible
+world and an impossible society which they found as
+fascinating as the Oz books. On looking back, he said, Old
+Hodge talked like an educated man, but this might simply
+be the impression of young, uncultivated minds.</p>
+
+<p>Clearly it was in some attempt to give form and unity to
+his tales that the old man wrote his fable down, and then
+was too shy to submit it for publication. This is the only
+reasonable way to account for its existence. Of course he
+says he wrote it in 1877, when he was far from old, and
+disconcertingly, analysis of the paper shows it might have
+been written then.</p>
+
+<p>Two other items should be noted. In the box of Backmaker’s
+belongings there was a watch of unknown manufacture
+and unique design. Housed in a cheap nickel case,
+the jeweled movement is of extraordinary precision and
+delicacy. The face has two dials, independently set and
+wound.</p>
+
+<p>The second is a quotation. It can be matched by similar
+quotations in any of half a hundred volumes on the Civil
+War. I pick this only because it is handy. From W. E.
+Woodward’s <i>Years of Madness</i>, p. 202:</p>
+
+<p>“ ... Union troops that night and next morning took a
+position on Cemetery Hill and Round Top.... The Confederates
+could have occupied this position but they failed
+to do so. It was an error with momentous consequences.”</p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" />
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="About_Ward_Moore">About Ward Moore</h2>
+</div>
+
+
+<p>On the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, there is a
+small hill called Little Round Top. One morning in July,
+1863, the Confederate Army made the tactical error of not
+occupying this hill. It was a mistake that cost them victory
+in a battle which—in the view of many historians—was
+the turning point of the Civil War. In the ninety years since
+Gettysburg one question has never been far from the minds
+of most Southerners—and a good many Yankees, too: What
+if the battle had gone the other way, what if the South had
+won the war? Ward Moore—a Northerner himself—has
+settled the matter at last in a book that might be called
+imaginative historical fiction, an excursion into the world of
+might-have-been so filled with exact and convincing detail
+that, for a few hours, it seems true.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The author of <i>Bring the Jubilee</i> was born in Madison, New
+Jersey, in 1903. “From the age of five,” he writes, “books
+have been for me the essential narcotic; as a natural consequence
+I detested school. When this detestation did not
+bring on psychosomatic illnesses to save me from the hated
+classrooms, I was not above malingering or playing hooky—now
+a lost art, but one practiced in my generation. Three
+weeks short of graduation I quit high school and have not
+been inside a school house since, except to vote.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>“My first short story was written at the age of eleven and
+was followed by a flood of juvenilia, some little of which was
+unfortunately published. Happily, markets and industry died
+simultaneously; I wrote only desultorily until my first novel
+<i>Breathe the Air Again</i> was published in 1942. This was
+acclaimed by Max Eastman in the American Mercury, who
+predicted that I would fall heir to ‘the cloak of Upton Sinclair.’
+Something went wrong with the tailoring arrangements;
+my next novel was <i>Greener Than You Think</i> (Sloane,
+1947), a satirical fantasy.”</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>In addition to these two novels, Mr. Moore has published a
+number of short stories in such disparate media as Amazing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span>
+Stories and Harper’s Bazaar, Fantasy and Science Fiction
+and The Reporter, Science Fiction Quarterly and Tomorrow.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>He concludes: “I have been intensely interested in the history
+of the Civil War ever since—at the age of six—I came across
+a book with nice black woodcuts showing the firing on Fort
+Sumter and the burning of Richmond. As an amateur I’ve
+read hundreds of dull volumes and a score of fascinating
+ones on the Irrepressible Conflict. A novel based on the concept
+‘what would have happened if the South had won at
+Gettysburg,’ was practically inevitable. <i>Bring the Jubilee</i> is it.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span></p>
+
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>The Idea Behind</i><br />
+
+DUAL EDITIONS</p>
+
+
+<p>An agreement unusual in American publishing has been
+made between <span class="smcap">Farrar, Straus</span> and <span class="smcap">Young, Inc.</span>, and <span class="smcap">Ballantine
+Books, Inc.</span> We believe that through simultaneous publication
+of new titles in paperbound and trade editions it is
+possible to secure broader distribution of good books at a considerable
+saving to the reader and with substantially greater
+royalty income for the author. At a time when costs are consistently
+rising, large printings of combined editions make
+possible a lower price for the trade editions, while nation-wide
+distribution of the paperbound edition makes immediately
+available to a great new audience the best in current fiction
+and non-fiction.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb" />
+
+<p>The convenient-sized, permanent, hard-cover editions may
+be obtained through any bookstore at a saving of approximately
+60% of the cost of similar books published in the
+regular way. The paperbound original editions (not reprints)
+are priced at 35 and 50c and are distributed through 100,000
+outlets.</p>
+
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