The best short stories of 1917, and the yearbook of the American short story
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Title: The best short stories of 1917, and the yearbook of the American short story
Editor: Edward J. O'Brien
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THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1917
AND THE
YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY
EDITED BY EDWARD J. O'BRIEN
EDITOR OF "THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1915," "THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF
1916," ETC.
[Illustration: SCIRE QVOD SCIENDVM]
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1918, by The Boston Transcript Company
Copyright, 1917, by The Pictorial Review Company, The Century Company,
Charles Scribner's Sons, The Curtis Publishing Company, Harper &
Brothers, The Metropolitan Magazine Company, The Atlantic Monthly
Company, The Crowell Publishing Company, The International Magazine
Company, The Pagan Publishing Company, The Stratford Journal, and The
Boston Transcript Company
Copyright, 1918, by Edwina Stanton Babcock, Thomas Beer, Maxwell
Struthers Burt, Francis Buzzell, Irvin S. Cobb, Charles Caldwell Dobie,
H. G. Dwight, Edna Ferber, Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Susan Glaspell
Cook, Frederick Stuart Greene, Richard Matthews Hallet, Fannie Hurst,
Fanny Kemble Costello, Burton Kline, Vincent O'Sullivan, Lawrence Perry,
Mary Brecht Pulver, Wilbur Daniel Steele, and Mary Synon
Copyright, 1918, by Edward J. O'Brien
Copyright, 1918, by Small, Maynard & Company, Inc.
Fourth printing, January, 1919
Fifth printing, September, 1919
Sixth printing, August, 1920
Seventh printing, August, 1921
TO
WILBUR DANIEL STEELE
BY WAY OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Grateful acknowledgment for permission to include the stories and other
material in this volume is made to the following authors, editors,
publishers, and copyright holders:
To The Pictorial Review Company and Miss Edwina Stanton Babcock for
permission to reprint "The Excursion," first published in _The
Pictorial Review_; to The Century Company and Mr. Thomas Beer for
permission to reprint "Onnie," first published in _The Century
Magazine_; to Charles Scribner's Sons and Mr. Maxwell Struthers
Burt for permission to reprint "A Cup of Tea," first published in
_Scribner's Magazine_; to The Pictorial Review Company and Mr.
Francis Buzzell for permission to reprint "Lonely Places," first
published in _The Pictorial Review_; to The Curtis Publishing
Company and Mr. Irvin S. Cobb for permission to reprint "Boys Will
Be Boys," first published in _The Saturday Evening Post_; to Harper
and Brothers and Mr. Charles Caldwell Dobie for permission to
reprint "Laughter," first published in _Harper's Magazine_; to The
Century Company and Mr. H. G. Dwight for permission to reprint "The
Emperor of Elam," first published in _The Century Magazine_; to The
Metropolitan Magazine Company and Miss Edna Ferber for permission
to reprint "The Gay Old Dog," first published in _The Metropolitan
Magazine_; to The Atlantic Monthly Company and Mrs. Katharine
Fullerton Gerould for permission to reprint "The Knight's Move,"
first published in _The Atlantic Monthly_; to The Crowell
Publishing Company, the editor of _Every Week_, and Mrs. George
Cram Cook for permission to reprint "A Jury of Her Peers," by Susan
Glaspell, first published in _Every Week_ and _The Associated
Sunday Magazines_; to The Century Company and Captain Frederick
Stuart Greene for permission to reprint "The Bunker Mouse," first
published in _The Century Magazine_; to Mr. Paul R. Reynolds for
confirmation of Captain Greene's permission; to The Pictorial
Review Company and Mr. Richard Matthews Hallet for permission to
reprint "Rainbow Pete," first published in _The Pictorial Review_;
to The International Magazine Company, the editor of _The
Cosmopolitan Magazine_, and Miss Fannie Hurst for permission to
reprint "Get Ready the Wreaths," first published in _The
Cosmopolitan Magazine_; to the editor of _The Pagan_ and Mrs.
Vincent Costello for permission to reprint "The Strange-Looking
Man," by Fanny Kemble Johnson, first published in _The Pagan_; to
The Stratford Journal, the editor of _The Stratford Journal_, and
Mr. Burton Kline for permission to reprint "The Caller in the
Night," first published in _The Stratford Journal_; to The Boston
Transcript Company and Mr. Vincent O'Sullivan for permission to
reprint "The Interval," first published in _The Boston Evening
Transcript_; to Charles Scribner's Sons and Mr. Lawrence Perry for
permission to reprint "'A Certain Rich Man--,'" first published in
_Scribner's Magazine_; to The Curtis Publishing Company and Mrs.
Mary Brecht Pulver for permission to reprint "The Path of Glory,"
first published in _The Saturday Evening Post_; to The Pictorial
Review Company and Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele for permission to
reprint "Ching, Ching, Chinaman," first published in _The Pictorial
Review_; and to Harper and Brothers and Miss Mary Synon for
permission to reprint "None So Blind," first published in _Harper's
Magazine_.
Acknowledgments are specially due to _The Boston Evening
Transcript_ and _The Bookman_ for permission to reprint the large
body of material previously published in their pages.
I wish specially to express my gratitude to the following who have
materially assisted by their efforts and advice in making this year-book
of American fiction possible and more nearly complete:
Mrs. Padraic Colum, Mr. A. A. Boyden, Mr. Ellery Sedgwick, Mr. Henry A.
Bellows, Mr. Herman E. Cassino, Mr. G. G. Wyant, Mr. Burton Kline, Mr.
Douglas Z. Doty, Mr. Barry Benefield, Mr. T. R. Smith, Mr. Frederick
Lewis Allen, Mr. Henry J. Forman, Miss Honoré Willsie, Mr. Harold
Hersey, Mr. Bruce Barton, Miss Bernice Brown, Miss Mariel Brady, Mr.
William Frederick Bigelow, Mr. John Chapman Hilder, Mr. Thomas B.
Wells, Mr. Lee Foster Hartman, Mr. Sewell Haggard, Mr. Samuel W.
Hippler, Mr. Joseph Bernard Rethy, Mr. Karl Edwin Harriman, Mr.
Christopher Morley, Miss Margaret Anderson, Mrs. Hughes Cornell, Miss
Myra G. Reed, Mr. Merrill Rogers, Mr. Charles Hanson Towne, Mr. Carl
Hovey, Miss Sonya Levien, Mr. John T. Frederick, Mr. Ival McPeak, Mr.
Robert H. Davis, Mrs. R. M. Hallowell, Mr. Harold T. Pulsifer, Mr.
Wyndham Martyn, Mr. Frank Harris, Mr. Robert W. Sneddon, Miss Rose L.
Ellerbe, Mr. Arthur T. Vance, Miss Jane Lee, Mr. Joseph Kling, Mr.
William Marion Reedy, Mr. Leo Pasvolsky, Mr. Churchill Williams, Mr.
Robert Bridges, Mr. Waldo Frank, Mr. H. E. Maule, Mr. Henry L. Mencken,
Mr. Robert Thomas Hardy, Miss Anne Rankin, Mr. Henry T. Schnittkind, Dr.
Isaac Goldberg, Mr. Charles K. Field, Mrs. Mary Fanton Roberts, Miss
Sarah Field Splint, Miss Mabel Barker, Mr. Hayden Carruth, Mrs. Kathleen
Norris, Mrs. Ethel Hoe, Miss Mildred Cram, Miss Dorothea Lawrance Mann,
Miss Hilda Baker, Mr. William Stanley Braithwaite, Mr. Frank Owen, Mr.
Alexander Harvey, Mr. Seumas O'Brien, Madame Gaston Lachaise, Mr. John
J. Phillips, Mr. Sylvester Baxter, Miss Alice Brown, Mr. Francis
Buzzell, Mr. Will Levington Comfort, Mr. Robert A. Parker, Mr. Randolph
Edgar, Miss Augusta B. Fowler, Captain Frederick Stuart Greene, Mr.
Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, Mr. Reginald Wright Kauffman, Mr. J. B.
Kerfoot, Mrs. Elsie S. Lewars, Miss Jeannette Marks, Mr. W. M. Clayton,
Mr. Vincent O'Sullivan, Mr. Henry Wallace Phillips, Mr. Melville
Davisson Post, Mr. John D. Sabine, Mr. Richard Barker Shelton, Mrs. A.
M. Scruggs, Miss May Selley, Mr. Daniel J. Shea, Mr. Vincent Starrett,
Mr. M. M. Stearns, Mrs. Ann Watkins, Dr. Blanche Colton Williams, Mr.
Edward P. Nagel, Mr. G. Humphrey, Rev. J.-F. Raiche, Mr. Wilbur Daniel
Steele, Miss Louise Rand Bascom, Mr. Octavus Roy Cohen, Mr. Robert
Cumberland, Mr. Charles Divine, Mr. Frank C. Dodd, Mr. William R. Kane,
Mr. David Gibson, Miss Ida Warren Gould, Miss Ella E. Hirsch, Miss Marie
Louise Kinsella, Mr. Frank E. Lohn, Mrs. Margaret Medbury, Miss Anna
Mitchell, Mr. Robert W. Neal, Mr. Edwin Carty Ranck, Miss Anne B.
Schultze, Mrs. Celia Baldwin Whitehead, Mr. Horatio Winslow, Miss Kate
Buss, Mrs. E. B. Dewing, Mr. A. E. Dingle, Mr. Edmund R. Brown, Mr.
George Gilbert, Mr. Harry E. Jergens, Mr. Eric Levison, Mr. Robert
McBlair, Mrs. Vivien C. Mackenzie, Mr. W. W. Norman, Rev. Wilbur
Fletcher Steele, Mrs. Elizabeth C. A. Smith, Captain Achmed Abdullah,
Mr. H. H. Howland, Mr. Howard W. Cook, Mr. Newton A. Fuessle, Mr. B.
Guilbert Guerney, Mr. William H. Briggs, Mr. Francis Garrison, Mr.
Albert J. Klinck, Mr. Alfred A. Knopf, Miss Mary Lerner, Mr. H. F.
Jenkins, Mr. Guy Holt, Mr. H. S. Latham, Mr. H. L. Pangborn, Miss Maisie
Prim, Mr. S. Edgar Briggs, Mr. William Morrow, Mr. Sherwood Anderson,
Hon. W. Andrews, Miss Edwina Stanton Babcock, Mr. Thomas Beer, Mrs.
Fleta Campbell Springer, Miss Sarah N. Cleghorn, Mr. Irvin S. Cobb, Miss
Alice Cowdery, Miss Bertha Helen Crabbe, Mr. H. G. Dwight, Miss Edna
Ferber, Mrs. Elizabeth Irons Folsom, Miss Ellen Glasgow, Mrs. George
Cram Cook, Mr. Armistead C. Gordon, Miss Fannie Hurst, Mrs. Vincent
Costello, Mrs. E. Clement Jones, Mrs. Gerald Stanley Lee, Mr. Addison
Lewis, Mr. Edison Marshall, Mr. Edgar Lee Masters, Miss Gertrude Nafe,
Mr. Meredith Nicholson, Mr. Harvey J. O'Higgins, Mr. Lawrence Perry,
Mrs. Olive Higgins Prouty, Mrs. Mary Brecht Pulver, Mr. Benjamin
Rosenblatt, Mr. Herman Schneider, Professor Grant Showerman, Miss Mary
Synon, Mrs. Mary Heaton O'Brien, Mr. George Weston, and especially to
Mr. Francis J. Hannigan, to whom I owe invaluable cooperation in ways
too numerous to mention.
I shall be grateful to my readers for corrections, and particularly for
suggestions leading to the wider usefulness of this annual volume. In
particular, I shall welcome the receipt, from authors, editors, and
publishers, of stories published during 1918 which have qualities of
distinction, and yet are not printed in periodicals falling under my
regular notice. It is also my intention during 1918 to review all
volumes of short stories published during that year in the United
States. All communications and volumes submitted for review in "The Best
Short Stories of 1918" maybe addressed to me at _South Yarmouth,
Massachusetts_. For such assistance, I shall make due and grateful
acknowledgment in next year's annual.
If I have been guilty of any omissions in these acknowledgments, it is
quite unintentional, and I trust that I shall be absolved for my good
intentions.
E. J. O.
* * *
CONTENTS[1]
PAGE
INTRODUCTION. By the Editor xvii
THE EXCURSION. By Edwina Stanton Babcock 1
(From _The Pictorial Review_)
ONNIE. By Thomas Beer 20
(From _The Century Magazine_)
A CUP OF TEA. By Maxwell Struthers Burt 45
(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
LONELY PLACES. By Francis Buzzell 70
(From _The Pictorial Review_)
BOYS WILL BE BOYS. By Irvin S. Cobb 86
(From _The Saturday Evening Post_)
LAUGHTER. By Charles Caldwell Dobie 128
(From _Harper's Magazine_)
THE EMPEROR OF ELAM. By H. G. Dwight 147
(From _The Century Magazine_)
THE GAY OLD DOG. By Edna Ferber 208
(From _The Metropolitan Magazine_)
THE KNIGHT'S MOVE. By Katharine Fullerton Gerould 234
(From _The Atlantic Monthly_)
A JURY OF HER PEERS. By Susan Glaspell 256
(From _Every Week_)
THE BUNKER MOUSE. By Frederick Stuart Greene 283
(From _The Century Magazine_)
RAINBOW PETE. By Richard Matthews Hallet 307
(From _The Pictorial Review_)
GET READY THE WREATHS. By Fannie Hurst 326
(From _The Cosmopolitan Magazine_)
THE STRANGE-LOOKING MAN. By Fanny Kemble
Johnson 361
(From _The Pagan_)
THE CALLER IN THE NIGHT. By Burton Kline 365
(From _The Stratford Journal_)
THE INTERVAL. By Vincent O'Sullivan 383
(From _The Boston Evening Transcript_)
"A CERTAIN RICH MAN--." By Lawrence Perry 391
(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
THE PATH OF GLORY. By Mary Brecht Pulver 412
(From _The Saturday Evening Post_)
CHING, CHING, CHINAMAN. By Wilbur Daniel Steele 441
(From _The Pictorial Review_)
NONE SO BLIND. By Mary Synon 468
(From _Harper's Magazine_)
THE YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY
FOR 1917 483
Addresses of American Magazines Publishing Short
Stories 485
The Biographical Roll of Honor of American Short
Stories for 1917 487
The Roll of Honor of Foreign Short Stories in
American Magazines for 1917 506
The Best Books of Short Stories of 1917: A Critical
Summary 509
Volumes of Short Stories Published During 1917:
An Index 521
The Best Sixty-three American Short Stories of
1917: A Critical Summary 536
Magazine Averages for 1917 541
Index of Short Stories for 1917 544
[Note 1: The order in which the stories in this volume are printed
is not intended as an indication of their comparative excellence; the
arrangement is alphabetical by authors.]
INTRODUCTION
A year ago, in the introduction to "The Best Short Stories of 1916," I
pointed out that the American short story cannot be reduced to a
literary formula, because the art in which it finds its concrete
embodiment is a growing art. The critic, when he approaches American
literature, cannot regard it as he can regard any foreign literature.
Setting aside the question of whether our cosmopolitan population, with
its widely different kinds of racial heritage, is at an advantage or a
disadvantage because of its conflicting traditions, we must accept the
variety in substance and attempt to find in it a new kind of national
unity, hitherto unknown in the history of the world. The message voiced
in President Wilson's words on several occasions during the past year is
a true reflection of the message implicit in American literature.
Various in substance, it finds its unity in the new freedom of
democracy, and English and French, German and Slav, Italian and
Scandinavian bring to the common melting-pot ideals which are fused in a
national unity of democratic utterance.
It is inevitable, therefore, that in this stage of our national literary
development, our newly conscious speech lacks the sophisticated
technique of older literatures. But, perhaps because of this very
limitation, it is much more alert to the variety and life of the human
substance with which it deals. It does not take the whole of life for
granted and it often reveals the fresh naïveté of childhood in its
discovery of life. When its sophistication is complete, it is the
sophistication of English rather than of American literature, and is
derivative rather than original, for the most part, in its criticism of
life. I would specifically except, however, from this criticism the
work of three writers, at least, whose sophistication is the embodiment
of a new American technique. Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Wilbur Daniel
Steele, and H. G. Dwight have each attained a distinction in our
contemporary literature which places them at the head of their craft.
During the past year there has been much pessimistic criticism of the
American short story, some of it by Americans, and some by Europeans who
are now residing in our midst. To the European mind, trained in a
tradition where technique in story-writing is paramount, it is natural
that the American short story should seem to reveal grave deficiencies.
I am by no means disposed to minimize the weakness of American
craftsmanship, but I feel that at the present stage of our literary
development, discouragement will prove a very easy and fatal thing. The
typical point of view of the European critic, when justified, is
adequately reflected in an article by Mary M. Colum, which was published
in the Dial last spring: "Those of us who take an interest in literary
history will remember how particular literary forms at times seize hold
of a country: in Elizabethan England, it was the verse drama; in the
eighteenth century, it was the essay; in Scandinavia of a generation
ago, it was the drama again. At present America is in the grip of the
short story--so thoroughly in its grip indeed that, in addition to all
the important writers, nearly all the literate population who are not
writing movie scenarios are writing or are about to write short stories.
One reason for this is the general belief that this highly sophisticated
and subtle art is a means for making money in spare time, and so one
finds everybody, from the man who solicits insurance to the barber who
sells hair-tonics, engaged in writing, or in taking courses in the
writing, of short stories. Judging from what appears in the magazines,
one imagines that they get their efforts accepted. There is no doubt
that the butcher, the baker, and the candle-stick maker are easily
capable of producing the current short stories with the aids now
afforded."
Now this is the heart of the matter with which criticism has to deal. It
is regrettable that the American magazine editor is not more mindful of
his high calling, but the tremendous advertising development of the
American magazine has bound American literature in the chains of
commercialism, and before a permanent literary criticism of the American
short story can be established, we must fight to break these bonds. I
conceive it to be my essential function to begin at the bottom and
record the first signs of grace, rather than to limit myself to the top
and write critically about work which will endure with or without
criticism. If American critics would devote their attention for ten
years to this spade work, they might not win so much honor, but we
should find the atmosphere clearer at the end of that period for the
true exercise of literary criticism.
Nevertheless I contend that there is much fine work being accomplished
at present, which is buried in the ruck of the interminable commonplace.
I regard it as my duty to chronicle this work, and thus render it
accessible for others to discuss.
Mrs. Colum continues: "Apart from the interesting experiments in free
verse or polyphonic prose, the short story in America is at a low ebb.
Magazine editors will probably say the blame rests with their readers.
This may be so, but do people really read the long, dreary stories of
from five to nine thousand words which the average American magazine
editor publishes? Why a vivid people like the American should be so
dusty and dull in their short stories is a lasting puzzle to the
European, who knows that America has produced a large proportion of the
great short stories of the world."
I deny that the American short story is at a low ebb, and I offer the
present volume as a revelation of the best that is now being done in
this field. I agree with Mrs. Colum that the best stories are only to be
found after a laborious dusty search, but this is the proof rather than
the refutation of my position.
Despite the touch of paradox, Mrs. Colum makes two admirable suggestions
to remedy this condition of affairs. "A few magazine editors could do a
great deal to raise the level of the American short story. They could at
once eradicate two of the things that cause a part of the evil--the
wordiness and the commercial standardization of the story. By declining
short stories over three thousand words long, and by refusing to pay
more than a hundred dollars for any short story, they could create a new
standard and raise both the prestige of the short story and of their
magazines. They would then get the imaginative writers, and not the
exploiters of a commercial article."
I am not sure that the average American editor wishes to welcome the
imaginative writer, but assuming this to be true, I would modify Mrs.
Colum's suggestions and propose that, except in an unusual instance, the
short story should be limited to five thousand words, and that the
compensation for it should not exceed three hundred dollars.
To repeat what I have said in previous volumes of this series, for the
benefit of the reader as yet unacquainted with my standards and
principles of selection, I shall point out that I have set myself the
task of disengaging the essential human qualities in our contemporary
fiction which, when chronicled conscientiously by our literary artists,
may fairly be called a criticism of life. I am not at all interested in
formulas, and organized criticism at its best would be nothing more than
dead criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead.
What has interested me, to the exclusion of other things, is the fresh
living current which flows through the best of our work, and the
psychological and imaginative reality which our writers have conferred
upon it.
No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic
substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is
beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair
to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination
than we display at present.
During the past year I have sought to select from the stories published
in American magazines those which have rendered life imaginatively in
organic substance and artistic form. As the most adequate means to this
end, I have taken each short story by itself, and examined it
impartially. I have done my best to surrender myself to the writer's
point of view, and granting his choice of material and personal
interpretation of its value, have sought to test it by the double
standard of substance and form. Substance is something achieved by the
artist in every act of creation, rather than something already present,
and accordingly a fact or group of facts in a story only obtain
substantial embodiment when the artist's power of compelling imaginative
persuasion transforms them into a living truth. The first test of a
short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis is to report upon
how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected facts or incidents.
This test may be known as the test of substance.
But a second test is necessary if a story is to take high rank above
other stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance
into the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful selection and
arrangement of his material, and by the most direct and appealing
presentation of it in portrayal and characterization.
The short stories which I have examined in this study, as in previous
years, have fallen naturally into four groups. The first group consists
of those stories which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test
of substance or the test of form. These stories are listed in the
year-book without comment or a qualifying asterisk. The second group
consists of those stories which may fairly claim that they survive
either the test of substance or the test of form. Each of these stories
may claim to possess either distinction of technique alone, or more
frequently, I am glad to say, a persuasive sense of life in them to
which a reader responds with some part of his own experience. Stories
included in this group are indicated in the year-book index by a single
asterisk prefixed to the title. The third group, which is composed of
stories of still greater distinction, includes such narratives as may
lay convincing claim to a second reading, because each of them has
survived both tests, the test of substance and the test of form. Stories
included in this group are indicated in the year-book index by two
asterisks prefixed to the title.
Finally, I have recorded the names of a small group of stories which
possess, I believe, an even finer distinction--the distinction of
uniting genuine substance and artistic form in a closely woven pattern
with such sincerity that these stories may fairly claim a position in
our literature. If all of these stories by American authors were
republished, they would not occupy more space than six average novels.
My selection of them does not imply the critical belief that they are
great stories. It is simply to be taken as meaning that I have found the
equivalent of six volumes worthy of republication among all the stories
published during 1917. These stories are indicated in the year-book
index by three asterisks prefixed to the title, and are listed in the
special "Rolls of Honor." In compiling these lists, I have permitted no
personal preference or prejudice to influence my judgment consciously
for or against a story. To the titles of certain stories, however, in
the American "Roll of Honor," an asterisk is prefixed, and this
asterisk, I must confess, reveals in some measure a personal preference.
It is from this final short list that the stories reprinted in this
volume have been selected.
It has been a point of honor with me not to republish an English story,
nor a translation from a foreign author. I have also made it a rule not
to include more than one story by an individual author in the volume.
The general and particular results of my study will be found explained
and carefully detailed in the supplementary part of the volume.
The Yearbook for 1917 contains three new features. The Roll of Honor of
American Short Stories includes a short biographical sketch of each
author; a selection from the volumes of short stories published during
the past year is reviewed at some length; and, in response to numerous
requests, a list of American magazines publishing short stories, with
their editorial addresses, has been compiled.
Wilbur Daniel Steele and Katharine Fullerton Gerould are still at the
head of their craft. But during the past year the ten published stories
by Maxwell Struthers Burt and Charles Caldwell Dobie seem to promise a
future in our literature of equal importance to the later work of these
writers. Sherwood Anderson and Waldo Frank emerge as writers with a
great deal of importance to say, although they have not yet fully
mastered the art of saying it. The three new short story writers who
show most promise are Gertrude Nafe and Thomas Beer, whose first stories
appeared in the Century Magazine during 1917, and Elizabeth Stead Taber,
whose story, "The Scar," when it appeared in the Seven Arts, attracted
much favorable comment. Edwina Stanton Babcock and Lee Foster Hartman
have both published memorable stories, and "The Interval," which was
Vincent O'Sullivan's sole contribution to an American periodical during
1917, compels us to wonder why an artist, for whom men of such widely
different temperaments as Lionel Johnson, Remy de Gourmont, and Edward
Garnett had high critical esteem, finds the American public so
indifferent to his art.
Addison Lewis has published during the past year a series of stories in
Reedy's Mirror which have more of O. Henry's magic than the thousand
writers who have endeavored to imitate him to the everlasting injury of
American literature. Frederick Stuart Greene, in "The Bunker Mouse" and
"Molly McGuire, Fourteen," shows marked literary development, and
reinforces my belief that in him we have an important new story-teller.
I suppose the best war story of the year is "The Flying Teuton," by
Alice Brown, soon to be reprinted in book form.
I do not know whether it is an effect of the war or not, but during
1917, even more than during 1916, American magazines have been almost
absolutely devoid of humor. Save for Irvin S. Cobb, on whom the mantle
of Mark Twain has surely fallen, and for Seumas O'Brien, whom Mr. Dooley
must envy, I have found American fiction to be sufficiently solemn and
imperturbable.
I need not emphasize again the fine art of Fannie Hurst. Two years ago
Mr. Howells stated more truly than I can the significance of her work.
Comparing her with two other contemporaries, he wrote: "Miss Fannie
Hurst shows the same artistic quality, the same instinct for reality,
the same confident recognition of the superficial cheapness and
commonness of the stuff she handles; but in her stories she also attests
the right to be named with them for the gift of penetrating to the heart
of life. No one with the love of the grotesque which is the American
portion of the human tastes or passions, can fail of his joy in the play
of the obvious traits and motives of her Hebrew comedy, but he will fail
of something precious if he does not sound the depths of true and
beautiful feeling which underlies the comedy."
A similar distinction marks Edna Ferber's story entitled "The Gay Old
Dog."
Of the English short story writers who have published during the past
year in American periodicals, Mr. Galsworthy has presented the most
evenly distinguished work. Hardly second to his best are the six stories
by J. D. Beresford and D. H. Lawrence, both well known realists of the
younger generation. Stacy Aumonier has continued the promise of "The
Friends" with three new stories written in the same key. Although the
vein of his talent is a narrow one, it reveals pure gold. Good
Housekeeping has published three war stories by an Englishwoman, I. A.
R. Wylie, which I should have coveted for this book had they been by an
American author. But perhaps the best English short story of the year in
an American magazine was "The Coming of the Terror," by Arthur Machen,
since republished in book form.
Elsewhere I have discussed at some length the more important volumes of
short stories published during the year. "A Munster Twilight," by Daniel
Corkery is alone sufficient to mark a notable literary year. And "The
Echo of Voices," by Richard Curle is hardly second to it. Yet the year
has seen the publication of at least three other books by English
authors who are new to the reading public. Thomas Burke, Caradoc Evans,
and Arthur Machen have added permanent contributions to English
literature.
In "A Handbook on Story Writing," Dr. Blanche Colton Williams has
written the first definitive textbook on the subject. Its many
predecessors have either been content to deal with narrow branches in
the same field, or have exploited quite frankly and shamelessly the
commercial possibilities of story writing as a cheap trade. Dr.
Williams's book will not be in all likelihood superseded for many years
to come, and the effects of her work are already to be seen in the short
stories of many established writers.
In the death of Edward Thomas, England has lost a rare artist who, in
his particular field, was only rivalled by Richard Jefferies.
During the past year the Seven Arts and the Masses have ceased
publication. The Craftsman, which ceased publication a year ago, has
been succeeded by the Touchstone, which is already beginning to print
many interesting stories; and to the list of magazines which publish
short stories must now be welcomed the Bookman.
As it has been my happiness in past years to associate this annual with
the names of Benjamin Rosenblatt and Richard Matthews Hallet, whose
stories, "Zelig" and "Making Port," seemed to me respectively the best
short stories of 1915 and 1916, so it is my pleasure and honor this year
to dedicate the best that I have found in the American magazines as the
fruit of my labors to Wilbur Daniel Steele, who has contributed to
American literature, preëminently in "Ching, Ching, Chinaman," and
almost as finely in "White Hands" and "The Woman At Seven Brothers,"
three stories which take their place for finality, to the best of my
belief, in the great English line.
EDWARD J. O'BRIEN.
SOUTH YARMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS,
December 23, 1917.
THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1917
NOTE. The twenty stories which follow are arranged in the alphabetical
order of their authors' names. This arrangement does not imply any
precedence in merit of particular stories.
THE EXCURSION[2]
[Note 2: Copyright, 1917, by The Pictorial Review Company.
Copyright, 1918, by Edwina Stanton Babcock.]
BY EDWINA STANTON BABCOCK
From _The Pictorial Review_
Mrs. Tuttle arrived breathless, bearing a large gilt parrot-cage. She
swept up the gangway of the _Fall of Rome_ and was enthusiastically
received. There were, however, concealed titterings and suppressed
whispers. "My sakes! She's went and brought that bird."
"I won't believe it till I see it."
"There he sets in his gold coop."
Mrs. Turtle brought Romeo to the excursion with the same assurance that
a woman of another stamp brings her Pekingese dog to a restaurant table.
While the _Fall of Rome_ sounded a warning whistle, and hawsers were
loosed she adjusted her veil and took cognizance of fellow passengers.
In spite of wealth and "owning her own automobile," Mrs. Turtle's fetish
was democratic popularity. She greeted one after another.
"How do, Mis' Bridge, and Mister, too! Who's keeping store while you're
away?
"Carrie Turpin! You here? Where's Si? Couldn't come? Now that's too
bad!" After a long stare, "You're some fleshier, ain't you, Carrie?"
A large woman in a tan-colored linen duster came slowly down the deck, a
camp-stool in either hand. Her portly advance was intercepted by Mrs.
Tuttle.
"Mis' Tinneray! Same as ever!"
Mrs. Tinneray dropped the camp-stools and adjusted her smoked glasses;
she gave a start and the two ladies embraced.
Mrs. Tuttle said that "it beat all," and Mrs. Tinneray said "she never!"
Mrs. Tuttle, emerged from the embrace, re-adjusting her hat with
many-ringed fingers, inquiring, "How's the folks?"
Up lumbered Mr. Tinneray, a large man with a chuckle and pale eyes, who
was introduced by the well-known formula, "Mis' Tuttle, Mr. Tinneray,
Mr. Tinneray, Mis' Tuttle."
The Tinnerays said, "So you brought the bird along, hey?" Then, without
warning, all conversation ceased. The _Fall of Rome_, steaming slowly
away from the pier, whistled a sodden whistle, the flags flapped, every
one realized that the excursion had really begun.
This excursion was one of the frank displays of human hopes, yearnings,
and vanities, that sometimes take place on steamboats. Feathers had a
hectic brilliancy that proved secret, dumb longings. Pendants known as
"lavaleers" hung from necks otherwise innocent of the costly fopperies
of Versailles. Old ladies clad in princess dresses with yachting caps
worn rakishly on their grey hair, vied with other old ladies in
automobile bonnets, who, with opera glasses, searched out the meaning of
every passing buoy. Young girls carrying "mesh-bags," that subtle
connotation of the feminine character, extracted tooth-picks from them
or searched for bits of chewing gum among their over scented treasures.
As it was an excursion, the _Fall of Rome_ carried a band and booths
laden with many delicious superfluities such as pop-corn and the
misleading compound known as "salt-water taffy." There were, besides,
the blue and red pennants that always go on excursions, and the yellow
and pink fly-flappers that always come home from them; also there were
stacks of whistle-whips and slender canes with ivory heads with little
holes pierced through. These canes were bought only by cynical young men
whose new straw hats were fastened to their persons by thin black
strings. Each young man, after purchasing an ivory-headed cane retired
to privacy to squint through it undisturbed. Emerging from this privacy
the young man would then confer with other young men. What these joyless
young men saw when they squinted they never revealed. But among their
elders they spread the strong impression that it was the Capital at
Washington or Bunker Hill Monument.
Besides bottled soda and all soft drinks the _Fall of Rome_ carried
other stimuli in the shape of comic gentlemen--such beings, as, more or
less depressed in their own proper environment, on excursions suddenly
see themselves in their true light, irresistibly facetious. These funny
gentlemen, mostly husbands, seated themselves near to large groups of
indulgent women and kept up an exquisite banter directed at each other's
personal defects, or upon the idiosyncrasies of any bachelor or spinster
near. These funny gentlemen kept alluding to the excursion as the
"Exertion." If the boat rolled a little they said, "Now, Mother, don't
rock the boat."
"Here, girls, sit up close, we'll all go down together."
"Hold on to yer beau, Minnie. He'll fall overboard and where'll you git
another?"
The peals of laughter at these sallies were unfailing. The crunch of
peanuts was unfailing. The band, with a sort of plethoric indulgence,
played slow waltzes in which the bass instruments frequently misapplied
notes, but to the allure of which came youthful dancers lovely in proud
awkward poses.
Mrs. Tuttle meanwhile was the social center, demonstrating that
mysterious psychic force known as being the "life of the party." She
advanced upon a tall sallow woman in mourning, challenging, "Now Mis'
Mealer, why don't you just set and take a little comfort, it won't cost
you nothing? Ain't that your girl over there by the coffee fountain? I
should ha' known her by the reesemblance to you; she's rill refined
lookin'."
Mrs. Mealer, a tall, sallow widow with carefully maintained mourning
visage, admitted that this was so. Refinement, she averred, was in the
family, but she hinted at some obscure ailment which, while it made Emma
refined, kept her "mizzable."
"I brought her along," sighed Mrs. Mealer, "tain't as if neither of us
could take much pleasure into it, both of us being so deep in black fer
her Popper, but the styles is bound to do her good. Emma is such a great
hand for style."
"Yuess?" replied Mrs. Tuttle blandly. This lady in blue was not nearly
so interested in Emma as in keeping a circle of admirers hanging around
her cerulean presence, but even slightly encouraged, Mrs. Mealer warmed
to her topic.
"Style?" she repeated impressively, "style? Seems like Emma couldn't
never have enough of it. Where she got it I don't know. I wasn't never
much for dress, and give her Popper coat and pants, twuz all _he_
wanted. But Emma--ef you want to make her happy tie a bow onto suthin'."
Mrs. Tuttle nodded with ostentatious understanding. Rising, she seized
Romeo's cage and placed it more conspicuously near her. She was
critically watched by the older women. They viewed the thing with
mingled feelings, one or two going so far as to murmur darkly, "Her and
her parrot!"
Still, the lady's elegance and the known fact that she owned and
operated her own automobile cast a spell over most of her observers, and
many faces, as Mrs. Tuttle proceeded to draw out her pet, were screwed
into watchful and ingratiating benevolence.
Romeo, a blasé bird with the air of having bitter memories, affected for
a long time not to hear his mistress's blandishments. After looking
contemptuously into his seed-cup, he crept slowly around the sides of
his cage, fixing a cynical eye upon all observers.
"How goes it, Romeo?" appealed Mrs. Tuttle. Making sounds supposed to be
appreciated by birds, the lady put her feathered head down, suggesting,
"Ah there, Romeo?"
"Rubberneck," returned Romeo sullenly. To show general scorn, the bird
revolved on one claw round and round his swing; he looked dangerous,
repeating, "Rubberneck."
At this an interested group gathered around Mrs. Tuttle, who, affable
and indulgent, attempted by coaxings and flirtings of a fat bediamonded
finger to show Romeo off, but the pampered bird saw further opportunity
to offend.
"Rubberneck," screamed Romeo again. He ruffled up his neck feathers,
repeating "Rubberneck, I'm cold as the deuce; what's the matter with
Hannah; let 'em all go to grass."
Several of the youths with ivory-headed canes now forsook their
contemplations to draw near, grinning, to the parrot-cage.
Stimulated by these youths, Romeo reeled off more ribald remarks, things
that created a sudden chill among the passengers on the _Fall of Rome_.
Mrs. Tinneray, looked upon as a leader, called up a shocked face and
walked away; Mrs. Mealer after a faint "Excuse _me_," also abandoned the
parrot-cage; and Mrs. Bean, a small stout woman with a brown false
front, followed the large lady with blue spectacles and the tan linen
duster. On some mysterious pretext of washing their hands, these two
left the upper deck and sought the calm of the white and gold passenger
saloon. Here they trod as in the very sanctities of luxury.
"These carpets is nice, ain't they?" remarked Mrs. Bean.
Then alluding to the scene they had just left: "Ain't it comical how she
idolizes that there bird?"
Mrs. Tinneray sniffed. "And what she spends on him! 'Nitials on his
seed-cup--and some says the cage itself is true gold."
Mrs. Bean, preparing to wash her hands, removed her black skirt and
pinned a towel around her waist. "This here liquid soap is
nice"--turning the faucets gingerly--"and don't the boat set good onto
the water?" Then returning to the rich topic of Mrs. Tuttle and her
pampered bird, "Where's she get all her money for her ottermobile and
her gold cage?"
Mrs. Tinneray at an adjacent basin raised her head sharply, "You ain't
heard about the Tuttle money? You don't know how Mabel Hutch that was,
was hair to everything?"
Mrs. Bean confessed that she had not heard, but she made it evident that
she thirsted for information. So the two ladies, exchanging remarks
about sunburn and freckles, finished their hand-washing and proceeded to
the dark-green plush seats of the saloon, where with appropriate looks
of horror and incredulity Mrs. Bean listened to the story of the hairs
to the Hutches' money.
"Mabel was the favorite; her Pa set great store by her. There was
another sister--consumpted--she should have been a hair, but she died.
Then the youngest one, Hetty, she married my second cousin Hen
Cronney--well it seemed like they hadn't nothing but bad luck and her Pa
and Mabel sort of took against Hetty."
Mrs. Bean, herself chewing calculatingly, handed Mrs. Tinneray a bit of
sugared calamus-root.
"Is your cousin Hen dark-complexioned like your folks?" she asked
scientifically.
Mrs. Tinneray, narrowing both eyes, considered. "More auburn-inclined, I
should say--he ain't rill smart, Hen ain't, he gets took with spells now
and then, but I never held _that_ against him."
"Uh-huh!" agreed Mrs. Bean sympathetically.
"Well, then, Mabel Hutch and her Popper took against poor little Hetty.
Old man Hutch he died and left everything to Mabel, and she never goes
near her own sister!"
Mrs. Bean raised gray-cotton gloved hands signifying horror.
"St--st--st----!" she deplored. She searched in her reticule for more
calamus-root. "He didn't leave her _nothing_?"
"No, ma'am! This one!" With a jerk of the head, Mrs. Tinneray indicated
a dashing blue feather seen through a distant saloon window. "This one's
got it all; hair to everything."
"And what did she do--married a traveling salesman and built a tony
brick house. They never had no children, but when he was killed into a
railway accident she trimmed up that parrot's cage with crape--and
now,"--Mrs. Tinneray with increasing solemnity chewed her
calamus-root--"_now_ she's been and bought one of them ottermobiles and
runs it herself like you'd run your sewin'-machine, just as
_shameless_--"
Both of the ladies glared condemnation at the distant blue feather.
Mrs. Tinneray continued, "Hetty Cronney's worth a dozen of her. When I
think of that there bird goin' on this excursion and Hetty Cronney
stayin' home because she's too poor, I get _nesty_, Mrs. Bean, yes, I
do!"
"Don't your cousin Hetty live over to Chadwick's Harbor," inquired Mrs.
Bean, "and don't this boat-ride stop there to take on more folks?"
Mrs. Tinneray, acknowledging that these things were so, uncorked a small
bottle of cologne and poured a little of it on a handkerchief
embroidered in black forget-me-nots. She handed the bottle to Mrs. Bean
who took three polite sniffs and closed her eyes. The two ladies sat
silent for a moment. They experienced a detachment of luxurious abandon
filled with the poetry of the steamboat saloon. Psychically they were
affected as by ecclesiasticism. The perfume of the cologne and the throb
of the engines swept them with a sense of esthetic reverie, the thrill
of travel, and the atmosphere of elegance. Moreover, the story of the
Hutch money and the Hutch hairs had in some undefined way affiliated the
two. At last by tacit consent they rose, went out on deck and, holding
their reticules tight, walked majestically up and down. When they passed
Mrs. Turtle's blue feathers and the gold parrot-cage they smiled
meaningly and looked at each other.
* * *
As the _Fall of Rome_ approached Chadwick's Landing more intimate groups
formed. The air was mild, the sun warm and inviting, and the water an
obvious and understandable blue. Some serious-minded excursionists sat
well forward on their camp-stools discussing deep topics over
half-skinned bananas.
"Give me the Vote," a lady in a purple raincoat was saying, "Give me the
Vote and I undertake to close up every rum-hole in God's World."
A mild-mannered youth with no chin, upon hearing this, edged away. He
went to the stern, looking down for a long time upon the white path of
foam left in the wake of the _Fall of Rome_ and taking a harmonica from
his waistcoat pocket began to play, "Darling, I Am Growing Old." This
tune, played with emotional throbbings managed by spasmodic movements of
the hands over the sides of the mouth, seemed to convey anything but age
to Miss Mealer, the girl who was so refined. She also sat alone in the
stern, also staring down at the white water. As the wailings of the
harmonica ceased, she put up a thin hand and furtively controlled some
waving strands of hair. Suddenly with scarlet face the mild-mannered
youth moved up his camp-stool to her side.
"They're talkin' about closing up the rum-holes." He indicated the group
dominated by the lady in the purple raincoat. "They don't know what
they're talking about. Some rum-holes is real refined and tasty, some of
them have got gramophones you can hear for nothin'."
"Is that so?" responded the refined Miss Mealer. She smoothed her
gloves. She opened her "mesh" bag and took out an intensely perfumed
handkerchief. The mild-mannered youth put his harmonica in his pocket
and warmed to the topic.
"Many's the time I've set into a saloon listening to that Lady that
sings high up--higher than any piano can go. I've set and listened till
I didn't know where I was settin'--of course I had to buy a drink, you
understand, or I couldn't 'a' set."
"And they call that _vice_," remarked Miss Mealer with languid
criticism.
The mild-mannered youth looked at her gratefully. The light of reason
and philosophy seemed to him to shine in her eyes.
"You've got a piano to your house," he said boldly, "can you--ahem--play
classic pieces, can you play--ahem--'Asleep on the Deep'?"
In another group where substantial sandwiches were being eaten, the main
theme was religion and psychic phenomena with a strong leaning toward
death-bed experiences.
"And then, my sister's mother-in-law, she set up, and she says, 'Where
am I?' she says, like she was in a store or somethin', and she told how
she seen all white before her eyes and all like gentlemen in high silk
hats walkin' around."
There were sighs of comprehension, gasps of dolorous interest.
"The same with my Christopher!"
"Just like my aunt's step-sister afore she went!"
Mrs. Tuttle did not favor the grave character of these symposia.
With the assured manner peculiar to her, she swept into such circles
bearing a round box of candy, upon which was tied a large bow of satin
ribbon of a convivial shade of heliotrope. Opening this box she handed
it about, commanding, "Help yourself."
At first it was considered refined to refuse. One or two excursionists,
awed by the superfluity of heliotrope ribbon, said feebly, "Don't rob
yourself."
But Mrs. Tuttle met this restraint with practised raillery. "What you
all afraid of? It ain't poisoned! I got more where this come from." She
turned to the younger people. "Come one, come all! It's French-mixed."
Meanwhile Mrs. Bean and Mrs. Tinneray, still aloof and enigmatic, paced
the deck. Mrs. Tuttle, blue feathers streaming, teetered on her high
heels in their direction. Again she proffered the box. One of the
cynical youths with the ivory-headed canes was following her, demanding
that the parrot be fed a caramel. Once more the sky-blue figure bent
over the ornate cage; then little Mrs. Bean looked at Mrs. Tinneray with
a gesture of utter repudiation.
"Ain't she _terrible_?"
As the steamboat approached the wharf and the dwarf pines and yellow
sand-banks of Chadwick's Landing, a whispered consultation between these
two ladies resulted in one desperate attempt to probe the heart of Mabel
Hutch that was. Drawing camp-stools up near the vicinity of the parrot's
cage, they began with what might to a suspicious nature have seemed
rather pointed speculation, to wonder who might or might not be at the
wharf when the _Fall of Rome_ got in.
Once more the bottle of cologne was produced and handkerchiefs genteelly
dampened. Mrs. Bean, taking off her green glasses, polished them and
held them up to the light, explaining, "This here sea air makes 'em all
of a muck."
Suddenly she leaned over to Mrs. Tuttle with an air of sympathetic
interest.
"I suppose--er--your sister Hetty'll be comin' on board when we get to
Chadwick's Landing--her and her husband?"
Mrs. Tuttle fidgeted. She covered Romeo's cage with a curious
arrangement like an altar-cloth on which gay embroidered parrakeets of
all colors were supposed to give Romeo, when lonely, a feeling of
congenial companionship.
Mrs. Bean, thus evaded, screwed up her eyes tight, then opened them wide
at Mrs. Tinneray, who sat rigid, her gaze riveted upon far-off horizons,
humming between long sighs a favorite hymn. Finally, however, the
last-named lady leaned past Mrs. Bean and touched Mrs. Turtle's silken
knee, volunteering,
"Your sister Hetty likes the water, I know. You remember them days, Mis'
Tuttle, when we all went bathin' together down to old Chadwick's Harbor,
afore they built the new wharf?"
Mrs. Tinneray continued reminiscently.
"You remember them old dresses we wore--no classy bathin'-suits
then--but my--the mornings used to smell good! That path to the shore
was all wild roses and we used to find blueberries in them woods. Us
girls was always teasin' Hetty, her bathin'-dress was white muslin and
when it was wet it stuck to her all over, she showed through--my, how
we'd laugh, but yet for all," concluded Mrs. Tinneray sentimentally,
"she looked lovely--just like a little wet angel."
Mrs. Tuttle carefully smoothed her blue mitts, observing nervously,
"Funny how Mis' Tinneray could remember so far back."
"Is Hetty your sister by rights," suavely inquired Mrs. Bean, "or ony by
your Pa's second marriage, as it were?"
The owner of the overestimated parrot roused herself.
"By rights," she admitted indifferently, "I don't see much of her--she
married beneath her."
The tip of Mrs. Tinneray's nose, either from cologne inhalings or
sunburn, grew suddenly scarlet. However she still regarded the far-off
horizons and repeated the last stanza of her hymn, which stanza, sung
with much quavering and sighing was a statement to the effect that Mrs.
Tinneray would "cling to the old rugged cross." Suddenly, however, she
remarked to the surrounding Summer air,
_"Hen Cronney is my second cousin on the mother's side. Some thought he
was pretty smart until troubles come and his wife was done out of her
rights._"
The shaft, carefully aimed, went straight into Mrs. Turtle's blue bosom
and stuck there. Her eyes, not overintelligent, turned once in her
complacent face, then with an air of grandiose detachment, she occupied
herself with the ends of her sky-blue automobile veil.
"I'll have to fix this different," she remarked unconcernedly, "or else
my waves'll come out. Well, I presume we'll soon be there. I better go
down-stairs and primp up some." The high heels clattered away. Mrs. Bean
fixed a long look of horror on Mrs. Tinneray, who silently turned her
eyes up to heaven!
As the _Fall of Rome_ churned its way up to the sunny wharf of
Chadwick's Landing, the groups already on the excursion bristled with
excitement. Children were prepared to meet indulgent grandparents,
lovers their sweethearts, and married couples old school friends they
had not seen for years. From time to time these admonished their
offspring.
"Hypatia Smith, you're draggin' your pink sash, leave Mommer fix it.
There now, don't you dare to set down so Grammer can see you lookin'
good."
"Lionel Jones, you throw that old pop-corn overboard. Do you want to eat
it after you've had it on the floor?"
"Does your stomach hurt you, dear? Well, here don't cry Mommer'll give
you another cruller."
With much shouting of jocular advice from the male passengers the _Fall
of Rome_ was warped into Chadwick's Landing and the waiting groups came
aboard. As they streamed on, bearing bundles and boxes and all the
impedimenta of excursions, those already on board congregated on the
after-deck to distinguish familiar faces. A few persons had come down to
the landing merely to look upon the embarkation.
These, not going themselves on the excursion, maintained an air of
benevolent superiority that could not conceal vivid curiosity. Among
them, eagerly scanning the faces on deck was a very small thin woman
clad in a gingham dress, on her head a battered straw hat of accentuated
by-gone mode, and an empty provision-basket swinging on her arm. Mrs.
Tinneray peering down on her through smoked glasses, suddenly started
violently. "My sakes," she ejaculated, "my sakes," then as the dramatic
significance of the thing gripped her, "My--my--my, ain't that
_terrible_?"
Solemnly, with prunella portentousness, Mrs. Tinneray stole back of the
other passengers leaning over the rail up to Mrs. Bean, who turned to
her animatedly, exclaiming,
"They've got a new schoolhouse. I can just see the cupola--there's some
changes since I was here. They tell me there's a flag sidewalk in front
of the Methodist church and that young Baxter the express agent has
growed a mustache, and's got married."
Mrs. Tinneray did not answer. She laid a compelling hand on Mrs. Bean's
shoulder and turned her so that she looked straight at the small group
of home-stayers down on the wharf. She pointed a sepulchral finger,
"_That there, in the brown with the basket, is Hetty Cronney, own sister
to Mis' Josiah Tuttle._"
Mrs. Bean clutched her reticule and leaned over the rail, gasping with
interest.
"Ye don't say--that's her? My! My! My!"
In solemn silence the two regarded the little brown woman so unconscious
of their gaze. By the piteous wizened face screwed up in the sunlight,
by the faded hair, nut-cracker jaws, and hollow eyes they utterly
condemned Mrs. Tuttle, who, blue feathers floating, was also absorbed in
watching the stream of embarking excursionists.
Mrs. Tinneray, after a whispered consultation with Mrs. Bean went up
and nudged her; without ceremony she pointed,
"Your sister's down there on the wharf," she announced flatly, "come on
over where we are and you can see her."
Frivolous Mrs. Tuttle turned and encountered a pair of eyes steely in
their determination. Re-adjusting the gold cage more comfortably on its
camp-stool and murmuring a blessing on the hooked-beak occupant, the
azure lady tripped off in the wake of her flat-heeled friend.
Meanwhile Mr. Tinneray, standing well aft, was calling cheerfully down
to the little figure on the wharf.
"Next Summer you must git your nerve up and come along. Excursions is
all the rage nowadays. My wife's took in four a'ready."
But little Mrs. Cronney did not answer. Shading her eyes from the sun
glare, she was establishing recognizance with her cerulean relative who,
waving a careless blue-mitted hand, called down in girlish greeting,
"Heigho, Hetty, how's Cronney? Why ain't you to the excursion?"
The little woman on the wharf was seen to wince slightly. She shifted
her brown basket to the other arm, ignoring the second question.
"Oh, Cronney's good--ony he's low-spirited--seems as tho he couldn't get
no work."
"Same old crooked stick, hey?" Mrs. Tuttle called down facetiously.
Mrs. Bean and Mrs. Tinneray stole horrified glances at each other. One
planted a cotton-gloved hand over an opening mouth. But little Mrs.
Cronney, standing alone on the pier was equal to the occasion. She shook
out a small and spotless handkerchief, blowing her nose with elegant
deliberation before she replied,
"Well--I don't know as he needs to work _all_ the time; Cronney is
_peculiar_, you know, he's one of them that is high-toned and nifty
about money--he ain't like _some_, clutching onto every penny!"
By degrees, other excursionists, leaning over the railing, began to
catch at something spicy in the situation of these two sisters brought
face to face. At Mrs. Cronney's sally, one of the funny men guffawed his
approval. Groups of excursionists explained to each other that that lady
down there, her on the wharf, in the brown, was own sister to Mrs.
Josiah Tuttle!
The whistle of the _Fall of Rome_ now sounded for all aboard. It was a
dramatic moment, the possibilities of which suddenly gripped Mrs.
Tinneray. She clasped her hands in effortless agony. This lady, as she
afterward related to Mrs. Bean, felt mean! She could see in her mind's
eye, she said, how it all looked to Hetty Cronney, the _Fall of Rome_
with its opulent leisurely class of excursionists steaming away from her
lonely little figure on the wharf; while Mabel Tuttle, selfish devourer
of the Hutches' substance and hair to everything, would still be handing
aroun' her boxes of French-mixed and talking baby talk to that there
bird!
At the moment, Mrs. Tinneray's mind, dwelling upon the golden cage and
its over-estimated occupant, became a mere boiling of savage desires.
Suddenly the line of grim resolution hardened on her face. This look,
one that the Tinneray children invariably connected with the switch
hanging behind the kitchen door, Mr. Tinneray also knew well. Seeing it
now, he hastened to his wife.
"What's the matter, Mother, seasick? Here I'll git you a lemon."
Mrs. Tinneray, jaw set, eyes rolling, was able to intimate that she
needed no lemon, but she drew her husband mysteriously aside. She fixed
him with a foreboding glare, she said it was a wonder the Lord didn't
sink the boat! Then she rapidly sketched the tragedy--Mrs. Tuttle serene
and pampered on the deck, and Hetty Cronney desolate on the wharf! She
pronounced verdict.
"It's _terrible_--that's what it is!"
Mr. Tinneray with great sagacity said he'd like to show Mabel Tuttle
her place--then he nudged his wife and chuckled admiringly,
"But yet for all, Hetty's got her tongue in her head yet--say, ain't she
the little stinger?"
_Sotto voce_ Mr. Tinneray related to his spouse how Mabel Tuttle was
bragging about her brick house and her shower-bath and her automobile
and her hired girl, and how she'd druv herself and that there bird down
to Boston and back.
"Hetty, she just stands there, just as easy, and hollers back that
Cronney has bought a gramophone and how they sets by it day and night
listening, and how it's son and daughter to 'em. Then she calls up to
Mabel Tuttle, 'I should think you'd be afraid of meddlin' with them
ottermobiles, _your_ time of life.'"
Mr. Tinneray choked over his own rendition of this audacity, but his
wife sniffed hopelessly.
"_They_ ain't got no gramophone--_her_, with that face and hat?--Cronney
don't make nothing; they two could _live_ on what that Blue Silk Quilt
feeds that stinkin' parrot."
But Mr. Tinneray chuckled again, he seemed to be possessed with the
humor of some delightful secret. Looking carefully around him and seeing
every one absorbed in other things he leaned closer to his wife.
"She's liable to lose that bird," he whispered. "Them young fellers with
the canes--they're full of their devilment--well, they wanted I
shouldn't say nothing and I ain't sayin' nothing--only--"
Fat Mr. Tinneray, pale eyes rolling in merriment, pointed to the
camp-stool where once the parrot's cage had rested and where now no
parrot-cage was to be seen.
"As fur as I can see," he nudged his wife again, "that bird's liable to
get left ashore."
For a moment Mrs. Tinneray received this news stolidly, then a look of
comprehension flashed over her face. "What you talkin' about, Henry?"
she demanded. "Say, ain't you never got grown up? Where's Manda Bean?"
Having located Mrs. Bean, the two ladies indulged in a rapid whispered
conversation. Upon certain revelations made by Mrs. Bean, Mrs. Tinneray
turned and laid commands upon her husband.
"Look here," she said, "that what you told me is true--them young
fellers--" she fixed Mr. Tinneray with blue-glassed significant eyes,
adding _sotto voce_, "_You keep Mabel Tuttle busy_."
Fat Mr. Tinneray, chuckling anew, withdrew to the after-rail where the
azure lady still stood, chained as it were in a sort of stupor induced
by the incisive thrusts of the forlorn little woman on the wharf. He
joined in the conversation.
"So yer got a gramophone, hey," he called down kindly--"Say, that's
nice, ain't it?--that's company fer you and Cronney." He appealed to
Mrs. Tuttle in her supposed part of interested relative. "Keeps 'em from
gettin' lonesome and all," he explained.
That lady looking a pointed unbelief, could not, with the other
excursionists watching, but follow his lead.
"Why--er--ye-ess, that's rill nice," she agreed, with all the patronage
of the wealthy relative.
Little Mrs. Cronney's eyes glittered. The steamboat hands had begun
lifting the hawsers from the wharf piles and her time was short. She was
not going to be pitied by the opulent persons on the excursion. Getting
as it were into her stride, she took a bolder line of imagery.
"And the telephone," looking up at Mr. Tinneray. "I got friends in
Quahawg Junction and Russell Center--we're talkin' sometimes till nine
o'clock at night. I can pick up jelly receipts and dress-patterns just
so easy."
But Mrs. Tuttle now looked open incredulity. She turned to such
excursionists as stood by and registered emphatic denial. "Uh-huh?" she
called down in apparent acceptance of these lurid statements, at the
same time remarking baldly to Mr. Tinneray, who had placed himself at
her side,
"_She_ ain't got no telephone!"
At this moment something seemed to occur to little Mrs. Cronney. As she
gave a parting defiant scrutiny to her opulent sister her black eyes
snapped in hollow reminiscence and she called out,
"Say--how's your parrot? How's your beau--Ro-me-o?"
At this, understood to be a parting shot, the crowd strung along the
rail of the _Fall of Rome_ burst into an appreciative titter. Mrs.
Tuttle, reddening, made no answer, but Mr. Tinneray, standing by and
knowing what he knew, seized this opportunity to call down vociferously,
"Oh--he's good, Romeo is. But your sister's had him to the excursion and
he's got just a little seasick comin' over. Mis' Tuttle, yer sister, is
going to leave him with you, till she can come and take him home, by
land, ye know, in her ottermobile--she's coming to get you too, fer a
visit, ye know."
There was an effect almost as of panic on the _Fall of Rome_. Not only
did the big whistle for "all aboard" blow, but some one's new hat went
overboard and while every one crowded to one side to see it rescued, it
was not discovered that Romeo's cage had disappeared! In the confusion
of a band of desperadoes composed of the entire group of cynical young
men with ivory-headed canes, seized upon an object covered with
something like an altar-cloth and ran down the gangplank with it.
Going in a body to little Mrs. Cronney, these young men deposited a
glittering burden, the gold parrot-cage with the green bird sitting
within, in her surprised and gratified embrace. Like flashes these agile
young men jumped back upon the deck of the _Fall of Rome_ just before
the space between wharf and deck became too wide to jump. Meanwhile on
the upper deck, before the petrified Mrs. Tuttle could open her mouth,
Mr. Tinneray shouted instructions,
"Your sister wants you should keep him," he roared, "till she comes
over to see you in her
ottermobile--to--fetch--him--and--git--you--for--a--visit!"
Suddenly the entire crowd of excursionists on the after-deck of the
_Fall of Rome_ gave a rousing cheer. The gratified young men with the
ivory-headed canes suddenly saw themselves of the age of chivalry and
burst into ragtime rapture; the excursion, a mass of waving flags and
hats and automobile veils, made enthusiastic adieu to one faded little
figure on the wharf, who proud and happy gently waved back a gleaming
parrot's cage!
It was Mr. Tinneray, dexterous in all such matters, that caught at a
drooping cerulean form as it toppled over.
"I know'd she'd faint," the pale-eyed gentleman chuckled. He manfully
held his burden until Mrs. Tinneray and Mrs. Bean relieved him. These
ladies, practised in all smelling-bottle and cologne soothings, supplied
also verbal comfort.
"Them young fellows," they explained to Mrs. Tuttle, "is full of their
devilment and you can't never tell what they'll do next. But ain't it
_lucky_, Mis' Tuttle, that it's your own sister has charge of that
bird?"
When at last a pale and interesting lady in blue appeared feebly on
deck, wiping away recurrent tears, she was received with the most
perfect sympathy tempered with congratulations. There may have been a
few winks and one or two nods of understanding which she did not see,
but Mrs. Tuttle herself was petted and soothed like a queen of the
realm, only, to her mind was brought a something of obligation--the
eternal obligation of those who greatly possess--for every excursionist
said,
"My, yes! No need to worry--your sister will take care of that bird like
he was one of her own, and then you can go over in yer ottermobile to
git him--and when you fetch him you can take her home with yer--fer a
visit."
ONNIE[3]
[Note 3: Copyright, 1917, by The Century Company. Copyright, 1918,
by Thomas Beer.]
BY THOMAS BEER
From _The Century Magazine_
Mrs. Rawling ordered Sanford to take a bath, and with the clear vision
of seven years Sanford noted that no distinct place for this process had
been recommended. So he retired to a sun-warmed tub of rain-water behind
the stables, and sat comfortably armpit deep therein, whirring a rattle
lately worn by a snake, and presented to him by one of the Varian tribe,
sons of his father's foreman. Soaking happily, Sanford admired his
mother's garden, spread up along the slope toward the thick cedar
forest, and thought of the mountain strawberries ripening in this hot
Pennsylvania June. His infant brother Peter yelled viciously in the big
gray-stone house, and the great sawmill snarled half a mile away, while
he waited patiently for the soapless water to remove all plantain stains
from his brown legs, the cause of this immersion.
A shadow came between him and the sun, and Sanford abandoned the rattles
to behold a monstrous female, unknown, white-skinned, moving on majestic
feet to his seclusion. He sat deeper in the tub, but she seemed
unabashed, and stood with a red hand on each hip, a grin rippling the
length of her mouth.
"Herself says you'll be comin' to herself now, if it's you that's Master
San," she said.
Sanford speculated. He knew that all things have an office in this
world, and tried to locate this preposterous, lofty creature while she
beamed upon him.
"I'm San. Are you the new cook?" he asked.
"I am the same," she admitted.
"Are you a _good_ cook?" he continued. "Aggie wasn't. She drank."
"God be above us all! And whatever did herself do with a cook that drank
in this place?"
"I don't know. Aggie got married. Cooks _do_," said Sanford, much
entertained by this person. Her deep voice was soft, emerging from the
largest, reddest mouth he had ever seen. The size of her feet made him
dubious as to her humanity. "Anyhow," he went on, "tell mother I'm not
clean yet. What's your name?"
"Onnie," said the new cook. "An' would this be the garden?"
"Silly, what did you think?"
"I'm a stranger in this place, Master San, an' I know not which is why
nor forever after."
Sanford's brain refused this statement entirely, and he blinked.
"I guess you're Irish," he meditated.
"I am. Do you be gettin' out of your tub now, an' Onnie'll dry you," she
offered.
"I can't," he said firmly; "you're a lady."
"A lady? Blessed Mary save us from sin! A lady? Myself? I'm no such
thing in this world at all; I'm just Onnie Killelia."
She appeared quite horrified, and Sanford was astonished. She seemed to
be a woman, for all her height and the extent of her hands.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"As I am a Christian woman," said Onnie. "I never was a lady, nor could
I ever be such a thing."
"Well," said Sanford, "I don't know, but I suppose you can dry me."
He climbed out of his tub, and this novel being paid kind attention to
his directions. He began to like her, especially as her hair was of a
singular, silky blackness, suggesting dark mulberries, delightful to the
touch. He allowed her to kiss him and to carry him, clothed, back to the
house on her shoulders, which were as hard as a cedar trunk, but covered
with green cloth sprinkled with purple dots.
"And herself's in the libr'y drinkin' tea," said his vehicle, depositing
him on the veranda. "An' what might that be you'd be holdin'?"
"Just a rattle off a snake."
She examined the six-tiered, smoky rattle with a positive light in her
dull, black eyes and crossed herself.
"A queer country, where they do be bellin' the snakes! I heard the like
in the gover'ment school before I did come over the west water, but I
misbelieved the same. God's ways is strange, as the priests will be
sayin'."
"You can have it," said Sanford, and ran off to inquire of his mother
the difference between women and ladies.
Rawling, riding slowly, came up the driveway from the single lane of his
village, and found the gigantic girl sitting on the steps so absorbed in
this sinister toy that she jumped with a little yelp when he dismounted.
"What have you there?" he asked, using his most engaging smile.
"'Tis a snake's bell, your Honor, which Master San did be givin' me.
'Tis welcome indeed, as I lost off my holy medal, bein' sick, forever on
the steamship crossin' the west water."
"But--can you use a rattle for a holy medal?" said Rawling.
"The gifts of children are the blessin's of Mary's self," Onnie
maintained. She squatted on the gravel and hunted for one of the big
hair-pins her jump had loosened, then used it to pierce the topmost
shell. Rawling leaned against his saddle, watching the huge hands, and
Pat Sheehan, the old coachman, chuckled, coming up for the tired horse.
"You'll be from the West," he said, "where they string sea-shells."
"I am, an' you'll be from Dublin, by the sound of your speakin'. So was
my father, who is now drowned forever, and with his wooden leg," she
added mournfully, finding a cord in some recess of her pocket, entangled
there with a rosary and a cluster of small fishhooks. She patted the odd
scapular into the cleft of her bosom and smiled at Rawling. "Them in the
kitchen are tellin' me you'll be ownin' this whole country an' sixty
miles of it, all the trees an' hills. You'll be no less than a
President's son, then, your Honor."
Pat led the horse off hastily, and Rawling explained that his lineage
was not so interesting. The girl had arrived the night before, sent on
by an Oil City agency, and Mrs. Rawling had accepted the Amazon as
manna-fall. The lumber valley was ten miles above a tiny railroad
station, and servants had to be tempted with triple wages, were
transient, or married an employee before a month could pass. The valley
women regarded Rawling as their patron, heir of his father, and as
temporary aid gave feudal service on demand; but for the six months of
his family's residence each year house servants must be kept at any
price. He talked of his domain, and the Irish girl nodded, the rattles
whirring when she breathed, muffled in her breast, as if a snake were
crawling somewhere near.
"When my father came here," he said, "there wasn't any railroad, and
there were still Indians in the woods."
"Red Indians? Would they all be dead now? My brother Hyacinth is fair
departed his mind readin' of red Indians. Him is my twin."
"How many of you are there?"
"Twelve, your Honor," said Onnie, "an' me the first to go off, bein'
that I'm not so pretty a man would be marryin' me that day or this. An'
if herself is content, I am pleased entirely."
"You're a good cook," said Rawling, honestly. "How old are you?"
He had been puzzling about this; she was so wonderfully ugly that age
was difficult to conjecture. But she startled him.
"I'll be sixteen next Easter-time, your Honor."
"That's very young to leave home," he sympathized.
"Who'd be doin' the like of me any hurt? I'd trample the face off his
head," she laughed.
"I think you could. And now what do you think of my big son?"
The amazing Onnie gurgled like a child, clasping her hands.
"Sure, Mary herself bore the like among the Jew men, an' no one since
that day, or will forever. An' I must go to my cookin', or Master San
will have no dinner fit for him."
Rawling looked after her pink flannel petticoat, greatly touched and
pleased by this eulogy. Mrs. Rawling strolled out of the hall and
laughed at the narrative.
"She's appalling to look at, and she frightens the other girls, but
she's clean and teachable. If she likes San, she may not marry one of
the men--for a while."
"He'd be a bold man. She's as big as Jim Varian. If we run short of
hands, I'll send her up to a cutting. Where's San?"
"In the kitchen. He likes her. Heavens! if she'll only stay, Bob!"
Onnie stayed, and Mrs. Rawling was gratified by humble obedience and
excellent cookery. Sanford was gratified by her address, strange to him.
He was the property of his father's lumbermen, and their wives called
him everything from "heart's love" to "little cabbage," as their origin
might dictate; but no one had ever called him "Master San." He was San
to the whole valley, the first-born of the owner who gave their
children schools and stereopticon lectures in the union chapel, as his
father had before him. He went where he pleased, safe except from blind
nature and the unfriendly edges of whirling saws. Men fished him out of
the dammed river, where logs floated, waiting conversion into
merchantable planking, and the Varian boys, big, tawny youngsters, were
his body-guard. These perplexed Onnie Killelia in her first days at
Rawling's Hope.
"The agent's lads are whistlin' for Master San," she reported to Mrs.
Rawling. "Shall I be findin' him?"
"The agent's lads? Do you mean the Varian boys?"
"Them's them. Wouldn't Jim Varian be his honor's agent? Don't he be
payin' the tenantry an' sayin' where is the trees to be felled? I forbid
them to come in, as Miss Margot--which is a queer name!--is asleep
sound, an' Master Pete."
"Jim Varian came here with his honor's father, and taught his honor to
shoot and swim, also his honor's brother Peter, in New York, where we
live in winter. Yes, I suppose you'd call Jim Varian his honor's agent.
The boys take care of Master San almost as well as you do."
Onnie sniffed, balancing from heel to heel.
"Fine care! An' Bill Varian lettin' him go romping by the poison-ivy,
which God lets grow in this place like weeds in a widow's garden. An'
his honor, they do be sayin', sends Bill to a fine school, and will the
others after him, and to a college like Dublin has after. An' they
callin' himself San like he was their brother!"
As a volunteer nurse-maid Onnie was quite miraculous to her mistress.
Apparently she could follow Sanford by scent, for his bare soles left no
traces in the wild grass, and he moved rapidly, appearing at home
exactly when his stomach suggested. He was forbidden only the slate
ledges beyond the log basin, where rattlesnakes took the sun, and the
trackless farther reaches of the valley, bewildering to a small boy,
with intricate brooks and fallen cedar or the profitable yellow pine.
Onnie, crying out on her saints, retrieved him from the turn-table-pit
of the narrow-gauge logging-road, and pursued his fair head up the
blue-stone crags behind the house, her vast feet causing avalanches
among the garden beds. She withdrew him with railings from the
enchanting society of louse-infested Polish children, and danced
hysterically on the shore of the valley-wide, log-stippled pool when the
Varians took him to swim. She bore him off to bed, lowering at the
actual nurse. She filled his bath, she cut his toe-nails. She sang him
to sleep with "Drolien" and the heart-shattering lament for Gerald. She
prayed all night outside his door when he had a brief fever. When
trouble was coming, she said the "snake's bells" told her, talking
loudly; and petty incidents confirmed her so far that, after she found
the child's room ablaze from one of Rawling's cigarettes, they did not
argue, and grew to share half-way her superstition.
Women were scarce in the valley, and the well-fed, well-paid men needed
wives; and, as time went on, Honora Killelia was sought in marriage by
tall Scots and Swedes, who sat dumbly passionate on the back veranda,
where she mended Sanford's clothes. Even hawk-nosed Jim Varian, nearing
sixty, made cautious proposals, using Bill as messenger, when Sanford
was nine.
"God spare us from purgatory!" she shouted. "Me to sew for the eight of
you? Even in the fine house his honor did be givin' the agent I could
not stand the noise of it. An' who'd be mendin' Master San's clothes? Be
out of this kitchen, Bill Varian!"
Rawling, suffocated with laughter, reeled out of the pantry and fled to
his pretty wife.
"She thinks San's her own kid!" he gasped.
"She's perfectly priceless. I wish she'd be as careful of Margot and
Pete. I wish we could lure her to New York. She's worth twenty city
servants."
"Her theory is that if she stays here there's some one to see that Pat
Sheehan doesn't neglect--what does she call San's pony?" Rawling asked.
"The little horse. Yes, she told me she'd trample the face off Pat if
Shelty came to harm. She keeps the house like silver, too; and it's
heavenly to find the curtains put up when we get here. Heavens! listen!"
They were in Rawling's bedroom, and Onnie came up the curved stairs.
Even in list house-slippers she moved like an elephant, and Sanford had
called her, so the speed of her approach shook the square upper hall,
and the door jarred a little way open with the impact of her feet.
"Onnie, I'm not sleepy. Sing Gerald," he commanded.
"I will do that same if you'll be lyin' down still, Master San. Now,
this is what Conia sang when she found her son all dead forever in the
sands of the west water."
By the sound Onnie sat near the bed crooning steadily, her soft
contralto filling both stories of the happy house. Rawling went across
the hall to see, and stood in the boy's door. He loved Sanford as
imaginative men can who are still young, and the ugly girl's idolatry
seemed natural. Yet this was very charming, the simple room, the drowsy,
slender child, curled in his sheets, surrounded with song.
"Thank you, Onnie," said Sanford. "I suppose she loved him a lot. It's a
nice song. Goo' night."
As Onnie passed her master, he saw the stupid eyes full of tears.
"Now, why'll he be thankin' me," she muttered--"me that 'u'd die an'
stay in hell forever for him? Now I must go mend up the fish-bag your
Honor's brother's wife was for sendin' him an' which no decent fish
would be dyin' in."
"Aren't you going to take Jim Varian?" asked Rawling.
"I wouldn't be marryin' with Roosyvelt himself, that's President, an'
has his house built all of gold! Who'd be seein' he gets his meals, an'
no servants in the sufferin' land worth the curse of a heretic? Not the
agent, nor fifty of him," Onnie proclaimed, and marched away.
* * *
Sanford never came to scorn his slave or treat her as a servant. He was
proud of Onnie. She did not embarrass him by her all-embracing
attentions, although he weaned her of some of them as he grew into a
wood-ranging, silent boy, studious, and somewhat shy outside the feudal
valley. The Varian boys were sent, as each reached thirteen, to
Lawrenceville, and testified their gratitude to the patron by diligent
careers. They were Sanford's summer companions, with occasional visits
from his cousin Denis, whose mother disapproved of the valley and Onnie.
"I really don't see how Sanford can let the poor creature fondle him,"
she said. "Denny tells me she simply wails outside San's door if he
comes home wet or has a bruise. It's rather ludicrous, now that San's
fourteen. She writes to him at Saint Andrew's."
"I told her Saint Andrew's wasn't far from Boston, and she offered to
get her cousin Dermot--he's a bellhop at the Touraine--to valet him.
Imagine San with a valet at Saint Andrew's!" Rawling laughed.
"But San isn't spoiled," Peter observed, "and he's the idol of the
valley, Bob, even more than you are. Varian, McComas, Jansen--the whole
gang and their cubs. They'd slaughter any one who touched San."
"I don't see how you stand the place," said Mrs. Peter. "Even if the men
are respectful, they're so familiar. And anything could happen there.
Denny tells me you have Poles and Russians--all sorts of dreadful
people."
Her horror tinkled prettily in the Chinese drawing-room, but Rawling
sighed.
"We can't get the old sort--Scotch, Swedes, the _good_ Irish. We get any
old thing. Varian swears like a trooper, but he has to fire them right
and left all summer through. We've a couple of hundred who are there to
stay, some of them born there; but God help San when he takes it over!"
Sanford learned to row at Saint Andrew's, and came home in June with
new, flat bands of muscle in his chest, and Onnie worshiped with loud
Celtic exclamations, and bade small Pete grow up like Master San. And
Sanford grew two inches before he came home for the next summer,
reverting to bare feet, corduroys, and woolen shirts as usual. Onnie
eyed him dazedly when he strode into her kitchen for sandwiches against
an afternoon's fishing.
"O Master San, you're all grown up sudden'!"
"Just five foot eight, Onnie. Ling Varian's five foot nine; so's Cousin
Den."
"But don't you be goin' round the cuttin' camps up valley, neither.
You're too young to be hearin' the awful way these news hands do talk.
It's a sin to hear how they curse an' swear."
"The wumman's right," said Cameron, the smith, who was courting her
while he mended the kitchen range. "They're foul as an Edinburgh
fishwife--the new men. Go no place wi'out a Varian, two Varians, or one
of my lads."
"Good Lord! I'm not a kid, Ian!"
"Ye're no' a mon, neither. An' ye're the owner's first," said Cameron
grimly.
Rawling nodded when Sanford told him this.
"Jim carries an automatic in his belt, and we've had stabbings. Keep
your temper if they get fresh. We're in hot water constantly, San. Look
about the trails for whisky-caches. These rotten stevedores who come
floating in bother the girls and bully the kids. You're fifteen, and I
count on you to help keep the property decent. The boys will tell you
the things they hear. Use the Varians; Ling and Reuben are clever. I pay
high enough wages for this riffraff. I'll pay anything for good hands;
and we get dirt!"
Sanford enjoyed being a detective, and kept the Varians busy. Bill,
acting as assistant doctor of the five hundred, gave him advice on the
subject of cocaine symptoms and alcoholic eyes. Onnie raved when he
trotted in one night with Ling and Reuben at heel, their clothes rank
with the evil whiskey they had poured from kegs hidden in a cavern near
the valley-mouth.
"You'll be killed forever with some Polack beast! O Master San, it's not
you that's the polis. 'Tis not fit for him, your Honor. Some Irish pig
will be shootin' him, or a sufferin' Bohemyun."
"But it's the property, Onnie," the boy faltered. "Here's his honor
worked to death, and Uncle Jim. I've got to do something. They sell good
whisky at the store, and just smell me."
But Onnie wept, and Rawling, for sheer pity, sent her out of the
dining-room.
"She--she scares me!" Sanford said. "It's not natural, Dad, d' you
think?"
He was sitting on his bed, newly bathed and pensive, reviewing the day.
"Why not? She's alone here, and you're the only thing she's fond of.
Stop telling her about things or she'll get sick with worry."
"She's fond of Margot and Pete, but she's just idiotic about me. She did
scare me!"
Rawling looked at his son and wondered if the boy knew how attractive
were his dark, blue eyes and his plain, grave face. The younger children
were beautiful; but Sanford, reared more in the forest, had the forest
depth in his gaze and an animal litheness in his hard young body.
"She's like a dog," Sanford reflected. "Only she's a woman. It's sort
of--"
"Pathetic?"
"I suppose that's the word. But I _do_ love the poor old thing. Her
letters are rich. She tells me about all the new babies and who's
courting who and how the horses are. It _is_ pathetic."
* * *
He thought of Onnie often the next winter, and especially when she wrote
a lyric of thanksgiving after the family had come to Rawling's Hope in
April, saying that all would be well and trouble would cease. But his
father wrote differently:
"You know there is a strike in the West Virginia mines, and it has sent
a mass of ruffians out looking for work. We need all the people we can
get, but they are a pestiferous outfit. I am opening up a camp in Bear
Run, and our orders are enormous already, but I hate littering the
valley with these swine. They are as insolent and dirty as Turks. Pete
says the village smells, and has taken to the woods. Onnie says the new
Irish are black scum of Limerick, and Jim Varian's language isn't
printable. The old men are complaining, and altogether I feel like Louis
XVI in 1789. About every day I have to send for the sheriff and have
some thug arrested. A blackguard from Oil City has opened a dive just
outside the property, on the road to the station, and Cameron tells me
all sorts of dope is for sale in the hoarding-houses. We have
cocaine-inhalers, opium-smokers, and all the other vices."
After this outburst Sanford was not surprised when he heard from Onnie
that his father now wore a revolver, and that the overseers of the
sawmill did the same.
On the first of June Rawling posted signs at the edge of his valley and
at the railroad stations nearest, saying that he needed no more labor.
The tide of applicants ceased, but Mrs. Rawling was nervous. Pete
declared his intention of running away, and riding home in the late
afternoon, Margot was stopped by a drunken, babbling man, who seized her
pony's bridle, with unknown words. She galloped free, but next day
Rawling sent his wife and children to the seaside and sat waiting
Sanford's coming to cheer his desolate house, the new revolver cold on
his groin.
Sanford came home a day earlier than he had planned, and drove in a
borrowed cart from the station, furious when an old cottage blazed in
the rainy night, just below the white posts marking his heritage, and
shrill women screamed invitation at the horse's hoof-beats. He felt the
valley smirched, and his father's worn face angered him when they met.
"I almost wish you'd not come, Sonny. We're in rotten shape for a hard
summer. Go to bed, dear, and get warm."
"Got a six-shooter for me?"
"You? Who'd touch you? Some one would kill him. I let Bill have a gun,
and some other steady heads. You must keep your temper. You always have.
Ling Varian got into a splendid row with some hog who called Uncle
Jim--the usual name. Ling did him up. Ah, here's Onnie. Onnie, here's--"
The cook rushed down the stairs, a fearful and notable bed-gown covering
her night-dress, and the rattles chattering loudly.
"God's kind to us. See the chest of him! Master San! Master San!"
"Good Lord, Onnie. I wasn't dead, you know! Don't _kill_ a fellow!"
For the first time her embrace was an embarrassment; her mouth on his
cheek made him flush. She loved him so desperately, this poor stupid
woman, and he could only be fond of her, give her a sort of tolerant
affection. Honesty reddened his face.
"Come on and find me a hard-boiled egg, there's a--"
"A hard-boiled egg? Listen to that, your Honor! An' it's near the
middle of the night! No, I'll not be findin' hard-boiled eggs for
you--oh, he's laughin' at me! Now you come into the dinin'-room, an'
I'll be hottin' some milk for you, for you're wet as any drowned little
cat. An' the mare's fine, an' I've the fishin'-sticks all dusted, an'
your new bathin'-tub's to your bath-room, though ill fate follow that
English pig Percival that put it in, for he dug holes with his heels!
An' would you be wantin' a roast-beef sandwidge?"
"She's nearly wild," said Rawling as the pantry door slammed. "You must
be careful, San, and not get into any rows. She'd have a fit. What is
it?"
"What do you do when you can't--care about a person as much as they care
about you?"
"Put up with it patiently." Rawling shrugged. "What else _can_ you do?"
"I'm sixteen. She keeps on as if I were six. S-suppose she fell in love
with me? She's not old--very old."
"It's another sort of thing, Sonny. Don't worry," said Rawling, gravely,
and broke off the subject lest the boy should fret.
Late next afternoon Sanford rode down a trail from deep forest, lounging
in the saddle, and flicking brush aside with a long dog-whip. There was
a rain-storm gathering, and the hot air swayed no leaf. A rabbit,
sluggish and impertinent, hopped across his path and wandered up the
side trail toward Varian's cottage. Sanford halted the mare and
whistled. His father needed cheering, and Ling Varian, if obtainable,
would make a third at dinner. His intimate hurtled down the tunnel of
mountain ash directly and assented.
"Wait till I go back and tell Reuben, though. I'm cooking this week.
Wish Onnie 'd marry dad. Make her, can't you? Hi, Reu! I'm eating at the
house. The beef's on, and dad wants fried onions. Why won't she have
dad? _You're_ grown up."
He trotted beside the mare noiselessly, chewing a birch spray, a hand on
his friend's knee.
"She says she won't get married. I expect she'll stay here as long as
she lives."
"I suppose so, but I wish she'd marry dad," said Ling. "All this
trouble's wearing him out, and he won't have a hired girl if we could
catch one. There's a pile of trouble, San. He has rows every day. Had a
hell of a row with Percival yesterday."
"Who's this Percival? Onnie was cursing him out last night," Sanford
recollected.
"He's an awful big hog who's pulling logs at the runway. Used to be a
plumber in Australia. Swears like a sailor. He's a--what d' you call
'em? You know, a London mucker?"
"Cockney?"
"Yes, that's it. He put in your new bath-tub, and Onnie jumped him for
going round the house looking at things. Dad's getting ready to fire
him. He's the worst hand in the place. I'll point him out to you."
The sawmill whistle blew as the trail joined open road, and they passed
men, their shirts sweat-stained, nodding or waving to the boys as they
spread off to their houses and the swimming-place at the river bridge.
A group gathered daily behind the engine-yard to play horseshoe quoits,
and Sanford pulled the mare to a walk on the fringes of this half-circle
as old friends hailed him and shy lads with hair already sun-bleached
wriggled out of the crowd to shake hands, Camerons, Jansens, Nattiers,
Keenans, sons of the faithful. Bill Varian strolled up, his medical case
under an arm.
"I'm eating with you. The boss asked me. He feels better already. Come
in and speak to dad. He's hurt because _he's_ not seen you, and you
stopped to see Ian at the forge. Hi, Dad!" he called over the felt hats
of the ring, "here's San."
"Fetch him in, then," cried the foreman.
Bill and Ling led the nervous mare through the group of pipe-smoking,
friendly lumbermen, and Varian hugged his fosterling's son.
"Stop an' watch," he whispered. "They'll like seein' you, San. Onnie's
been tellin' the women you've growed a yard."
Sanford settled to the monotony of the endless sport, saluting known
brown faces and answering yelps of pleasure from the small boys who
squatted against the high fence behind the stake.
"That's Percival," said Ling, as a man swaggered out to the
pitching-mark.
"Six foot three," Bill said, "and strong as an ox. Drinks all the time.
Think he dopes, too."
Sanford looked at the fellow with a swift dislike for his vacant, heavy
face and his greasy, saffron hair. His bare arms were tattooed boldly
and in many colors, distorted with ropes of muscle. He seemed a little
drunk, and the green clouds cast a copper shade into his lashless eyes.
"Can't pitch for beans," said Ling as the first shoe went wide. When the
second fell beside it, the crowd laughed.
"Now," said Ian Cameron, "he'll be mad wi' vainglory. He's a camstearlie
ring' it an' a claverin' fu'."
"Ho! larf ahead!" snapped the giant. "'Ow's a man to 'eave a bloody
thing at a bloody stike?"
The experts chuckled, and he ruffled about the ring, truculent,
sneering, pausing before Varian, with a glance at Sanford.
"Give me something with some balance. Hi can show yer. Look!"
"I'm looking," said the foreman; "an' I ain't deaf, neither."
"'Ere's wot you blighters carn't 'eave. Learned it in Auckland, where
there's _real_ men." He fumbled in his shirt, and the mare snorted as
the eight-inch blade flashed out of its handle under her nose. "See?
That's the lidy! Now watch! There's a knot-'ole up the palings there."
The crowd fixed a stare on the green, solid barrier, and the knife
soared a full twenty yards, but missed the knot-hole and rattled down.
There was flat derision in the following laughter, and Percival dug his
heel in the sod.
"Larf ahead! Hany one else try 'er?"
"Oh, shut up!" said some one across the ring. "We're pitchin' shoes."
Percival slouched off after his knife, and the frieze of small boys
scattered except a lint-haired Cameron who was nursing a stray cat
busily, cross-legged against the green boarding.
"Yon's Robert Sanford Cameron," said the smith. "He can say half his
catechism."
"Good kid," said Sanford. "I never could get any--"
Percival had wandered back and stood a yard off, glaring at Bill as the
largest object near.
"Think I can't, wot?"
"I'm not interested, and you're spoiling the game," said Bill, who
feared nothing alive except germs, and could afford to disregard most of
these. Sanford's fingers tightened on his whip.
"Ho!" coughed the cockney. "See! You--there!"
Robert Cameron looked up at the shout. The blade shot between the
child's head and the kitten and hummed gently, quivering in the wood.
"Hi could 'a' cut 'is throat," said Percival so complacently that
Sanford boiled.
"You scared him stiff," he choked. "You hog! Don't--"
"'Ello, 'oo's the young dook?"
"Look out," said a voice. "That's San, the--"
"Ho! 'Im with the Hirish gal to 'elp 'im tike 'is bloody barth nights?
'Oo's _he_? She's a--"
A second later Sanford knew that he had struck the man over the face
with his whip, cutting the phrase. The mare plunged and the whole crowd
congested about the bellowing cockney as Bill held Cameron back, and
huge Jansen planted a hand on Rawling's chest.
"No worry," he said genially. "Yim an' us, Boss, our job."
Varian had wedged his hawk face close to the cockney's, now purple
blotched with wrath, and Rawling waited.
"Come to the office an' get your pay. You hear? Then you clear out. If
you ain't off the property in an hour you'll be dead. You hear?"
"He ought to," muttered Ling, leading the mare away. "Dad hasn't yelled
that loud since that Dutchman dropped the kid in the--hello, it's
raining!"
"Come on home, Sonny," said Rawling, "and tell us all about it. I didn't
see the start."
But Sanford was still boiling, and the owner had recourse to his godson.
Ling told the story, unabridged, as they mounted toward the house.
"Onnie'll hear of it," sighed Rawling. "Look, there she is by the
kitchen, and that's Jennie Cameron loping 'cross lots. Never mind, San.
You did the best you could; don't bother. Swine are swine."
The rain was cooling Sanford's head, and he laughed awkwardly.
"Sorry I lost my temper."
"I'm not. Jennie's telling Onnie. Hear?"
The smith's long-legged daughter was gesticulating at the kitchen
trellis, and Onnie's feet began a sort of war-dance in the wet grass as
Rawling approached.
"Where is this sufferin' pig, could your honor be tellin' me? God be
above us all! With my name in his black, ugly mouth! I _knew_ there'd be
trouble; the snake's bells did be sayin' so since the storm was comin'.
An' him three times the bigness of Master San! Where'd he be now?"
"Jim gave him an hour to be off the property, Onnie."
"God's mercy he had no knife in his hand, then, even with the men by an'
Master San on his horse. Blessed Mary! I will go wait an' have speech
with this Englishman on the road."
"You'll go get dinner, Onnie Killelia," said Rawling. "Master San is
tired, Bill and Ling are coming--and look there!"
The faithful were marching Percival down the road to the valley-mouth in
the green dusk. He walked between Jansen and Bill, a dozen men behind,
and a flying scud of boys before.
"An' Robbie's not hurt," said Miss Cameron, "an' San ain't, neither; so
don't you worry, Onnie. It's all right."
Onnie laughed.
"I'd like well to have seen the whip fly, your Honor. The arm of him!
Will he be wantin' waffles to his dinner? Heyah! more trouble yet!" The
rattles had whirred, and she shook her head. "A forest fire likely now?
Or a child bein' born dead?"
"Father says she's fëy," Jennie observed as the big woman lumbered off.
"You mean she has second sight? Perhaps. Here's a dollar for Robbie, and
tell Ian he's lucky."
* * *
Bill raced up as the rain began to fall heavily in the windless gray of
six o'clock. He reported the cockney gone and the men loud in admiration
of Sanford; so dinner was cheerful enough, although Sanford felt limp
after his first attack of killing rage. Onnie's name on this animal's
tongue had maddened him, the reaction made him drowsy; but Ling's winter
at Lawrenceville and Bill's in New York needed hearing. Rawling left the
three at the hall fireplace while he read a new novel in the library.
The rain increased, and the fall became a continuous throbbing so steady
that he hardly heard the telephone ring close to his chair; but old
Varian's voice came clear along the wire.
"Is that you, Bob? Now, listen. One of them girls at that place down the
station road was just talkin' to me. She's scared. She rung me up an'
Cameron. That dam' Englishman's gone out o' there bile drunk, swearin'
he'll cut San's heart out, the pup! He's gone off wavin' his knife. Now,
he knows the house, an' he ain't afraid of nothin'--when he's drunk. He
might get that far an' try breakin' in. You lock up--"
"Lock up? What with?" asked Rawling. "There's not a lock in the place.
Father never had them put in, and I haven't."
"Well, don't worry none. Ian's got out a dozen men or so with lights an'
guns, an' Bill's got his. You keep Bill an' Ling to sleep down-stairs.
Ian's got the men round the house by this. The hog'll make noise enough
to wake the dead."
"Nice, isn't it, Uncle Jim, having this whelp out gunning for San! I'll
keep the boys. Good-night," he said hastily as a shadow on the rug
engulfed his feet. The rattles spoke behind him.
"There's a big trouble sittin' on my soul," said Onnie. "Your Honor
knows there's nothing makes mortal flesh so wild mad as a whipping, an'
this dog does know the way of the house. Do you keep the agent's lads
to-night in this place with guns to hand. The snake's bells keep
ringin'."
"My God! Onnie, you're making me believe in your rattles! Listen.
Percival's gone out of that den down the road, swearin' he'll kill San.
He's drunk, and Cameron's got men out."
"That 'u'd be the why of the lanterns I was seein' down by the forge.
But it's black as the bowels of purgatory, your Honor, an' him a strong,
wicked devil, cruel an' angry. God destroy him! If he'd tread on a
poison snake! No night could be so black as his heart."
"Steady, Onnie!"
"I'm speakin' soft. Himself's not able to hear," she said, her eyes half
shut. She rocked slowly on the amazing feet. "Give me a pistol, your
Honor. I'll be for sleepin' outside his door this night."
"You'll go to bed and keep your door open. If you hear a sound, yell
like perdition. Send Bill in here. Say I want him. That's all. There's
no danger, Onnie; but I'm taking no chances."
"We'll take no chances, your Honor."
She turned away quietly, and Rawling shivered at this cool fury. The
rattles made his spine itch, and suddenly his valley seemed like a place
of demons. The lanterns circling on the lawn seemed like frail
glow-worms, incredibly useless, and he leaned on the window-pane
listening with fever to the rain.
"All right," said Bill when he had heard. "'Phone the sheriff. The man's
dangerous, sir. I doctored a cut he had the other day, and he tells me
he can see at night. That's a lie, of course, but he's light on his
feet, and he's a devil. I've seen some rotten curs in the hospitals, but
he's worse."
"Really, Billy, you sound as fierce as Onnie. She wanted a gun."
The handsome young man bit a lip, and his great body shook.
"This is San," he said, "and the men would kill any one who touched you,
and they'd burn any one who touched San. Sorry if I'm rude."
"We mustn't lose our heads." Rawling talked against his fear. "The man's
drunk. He'll never get near here, and he's got four miles to come in a
cold rain. But--"
"May I sleep in San's room?"
"Then he'll know. I don't want him to, or Ling, either; they're
imaginative kids. This is a vile mess, Billy."
"Hush! Then I'll sleep outside his door. I _will_, sir!"
"All right, old man. Thanks. Ling can sleep in Pete's room. Now I'll
'phone Mackintosh."
But the sheriff did not answer, and his deputy was ill. Rawling
shrugged, but when Varian telephoned that there were thirty men
searching, he felt more comfortable.
"You're using the wires a lot, Dad," said Sanford, roaming in. "Anything
wrong? Where's Ling to sleep?"
"In Pete's room. Good-night, Godson. No, nothing wrong."
But Sanford was back presently, his eyes wide.
"I say, Onnie's asleep front of my door and I can't get over her. What's
got into the girl?"
"She's worried. Her snake's bells are going, and she thinks the house'll
burn down. Let her be. Sleep with me, and keep my feet warm, Sonny."
"Sure," yawned Sanford. "'Night, Billy."
"Well," said Bill, "that settles that, sir. She'd hear anything, or I
will, and you're a light sleeper. Suppose we lock up as much as we can
and play some checkers?"
They locked the doors, and toward midnight Cameron rapped at the library
window, his rubber coat glistening.
"Not a print of the wastrel loon, sir; but the lads will bide out the
night. They've whusky an' biscuits an' keep moving."
"I'll come out myself," Rawling began, but the smith grunted.
"Ye're no stirrin' oot yer hoos, Robert Rawling! Ye're daft! Gin you met
this ganglin' assassinator, wha'd be for maister? San's no to lack a
father. Gae to yer bit bed!"
"Gosh!" said Bill, shutting the window, "_he's_ in earnest. He forgot to
try to talk English even. I feel better. The hog's fallen into a hole
and gone to sleep. Let's go up."
"I suppose if I tell Onnie San's with me, she'll just change to my
door," Rawling considered; "but I'll try. Poor girl, she's faithful as a
dog!"
They mounted softly and beheld her, huddled in a blanket, mountainous,
curled outside Sanford's closed door, just opposite the head of the
stairs. Rawling stooped over the heap and spoke to the tangle of
blue-shadowed hair.
"Onnie Killelia, go to bed."
"Leave me be, your Honor. I'm--"
Sleep cut the protest. The rattles sounded feebly, and Rawling stood up.
"Just like a dog," whispered Bill, stealing off to a guest-room. "I'll
leave my door open." He patted the revolver in his jacket and grinned
affectionately. "Good-night, Boss."
Rawling touched the switch inside his own door, and the big globe set in
the hall ceiling blinked out. They had decided that, supposing the
cockney got so far, a lightless house would perplex his feet, and he
would be the noisier. Rawling could reach this button from his bed, and
silently undressed in the blackness, laying the automatic on the bedside
table, reassured by all these circling folk, Onnie, stalwart Bill, and
the loyal men out in the rain. Here slept Sanford, breathing happily, so
lost that he only sighed when his father crept in beside him, and did
not rouse when Rawling thrust an arm under his warm weight to bring him
closer, safe in the perilous night.
The guest-room bed creaked beneath Bill's two hundred pounds of muscle,
and Ling snored in Peter's room. Rawling's nerves eased on the mattress,
and hypnotic rain began to deaden him, against his will. He saw Percival
sodden in some ditch, his knife forgotten in brandy's slumbers. No shout
came from the hillside. His mind edged toward vacancy, bore back when
the boy murmured once, then he gained a mid-state where sensation was
not, a mist.
* * *
He sat up, tearing the blankets back, because some one moved in the
house, and the rain could be heard more loudly, as if a new window were
open. He swung his legs free. Some one breathed heavily in the hall.
Rawling clutched his revolver, and the cold of it stung. This might be
Onnie, any one; but he put his finger on the switch.
"Straight hover--hover the way it was," said a thick, puzzled voice.
"There, that one! 'Is bloody barth!"
The rattles whirred as if their first owner lived. Rawling pressed the
switch.
"Your Honor!" Onnie screamed. "Your Honor! Master San! Be lockin' the
door inside, Master San! Out of this, you! You!"
Rawling's foot caught in the doorway of the bright hall, and he
stumbled, the light dazzling on the cockney's wet bulk hurling itself
toward the great woman where she stood, her arms flung cruciform,
guarding the empty room. The bodies met with a fearful jar as Rawling
staggered up, and there came a crisp explosion before he could raise his
hand. Bill's naked shoulder cannoned into him, charging, and Bill's
revolver clinked against his own. Rawling reeled to the stair-head,
aiming as Bill caught at the man's shirt; but the cockney fell backward,
crumpling down, his face purple, his teeth displayed.
"In the head!" said Bill, and bent to look, pushing the plastered curls
from a temple. The beast whimpered and died; the knife rattled on the
planks.
"Dad," cried Sanford, "what on--"
"Stay where you are!" Rawling gasped, sick of this ugliness, dizzy with
the stench of powder and brandy. Death had never seemed so vile. He
looked away to the guardian where she knelt at her post, her hands
clasped on the breast of her coarse white robe as if she prayed, the
hair hiding her face.
"I'll get a blanket," Bill said, rising. "There come the men! That you,
Ian?"
The smith and a crowd of pale faces crashed up the stairs.
"God forgie us! We let him by--the garden, sir. Alec thought he--"
"Gosh, Onnie!" said Bill, "excuse _me_! I'll get some clothes on. Here,
Ian--"
"Onnie," said Sanford, in the doorway--"Onnie, what's the matter?"
As if to show him this, her hands, unclasping, fell from the dead bosom,
and a streak of heart's blood widened from the knife-wound like the
ribbon of some very noble order.
A CUP OF TEA[4]
[Note 4: Copyright, 1917, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright,
1918, by Maxwell Struthers Burt.]
BY MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT
From _Scribner's Magazine_.
Young Burnaby was late. He was always late. One associated him with
lateness and certain eager, impossible excuses--he was always coming
from somewhere to somewheres, and his "train was delayed," or his huge
space-devouring motor "had broken down." You imagined him, enveloped in
dust and dusk, his face disguised beyond human semblance, tearing up and
down the highways of the world; or else in the corridor of a train,
biting his nails with poorly concealed impatience. As a matter of fact,
when you saw him, he was beyond average correctly attired, and his
manner was suppressed, as if to conceal the keenness that glowed behind
his dark eyes and kept the color mounting and receding in his sunburnt
cheeks. All of which, except the keenness, was a strange thing in a man
who spent half his life shooting big game and exploring. But then, one
imagined that Burnaby on the trail and Burnaby in a town were two
entirely different persons. He liked his life with a thrust to it, and
in a great city there are so many thrusts that, it is to be supposed,
one of Burnaby's temperament hardly has hours enough in a day to
appreciate all of them and at the same time keep appointments.
On this February night, at all events, he was extremely late, even
beyond his custom, and Mrs. Malcolm, having waited as long as she
possibly could, sighed amusedly and told her man to announce dinner.
There were only three others besides herself in the drawing-room,
Masters--Sir John Masters, the English financier--and his wife, and
Mrs. Selden, dark, a little silent, with a flushed, finely cut face and
a slightly sorrow-stricken mouth. And already these people had reached
the point where talk is interesting. People did in Mrs. Malcolm's house.
One went there with anticipation, and came away with the delightful, a
little vague, exhilaration that follows an evening where the perfection
of the material background--lights, food, wine, flowers--has been almost
forgotten in the thrill of contact with real persons, a rare enough
circumstance in a period when the dullest people entertain the most. In
the presence of Mrs. Malcolm even the very great forgot the suspicions
that grow with success and became themselves, and, having come once,
came again vividly, overlooking other people who really had more right
to their attentions than had she.
This was the case with Sir John Masters. And he was a very great man
indeed, not only as the world goes but in himself: a short, heavy man,
with a long, heavy head crowned with vibrant, still entirely dark hair
and pointed by a black, carefully kept beard, above which arose--"arose"
is the word, for Sir John's face was architectural--a splendid, slightly
curved nose--a buccaneering nose; a nose that, willy-nilly, would have
made its possessor famous. One suspected, far back in the yeoman strain,
a hurried, possibly furtive marriage with gypsy or Jew; a sudden
blossoming into lyricism on the part of a soil-stained Masters.
Certainly from somewhere Sir John had inherited an imagination which was
not insular. Dangerous men, these Sir Johns, with their hooked noses and
their lyric eyes!
Mrs. Malcolm described him as fascinating. There was about him that
sense of secret power that only politicians, usually meretriciously, and
diplomats, and, above all, great bankers as a rule possess; yet he
seldom talked of his own life, or the mission that had brought him to
New York; instead, in his sonorous, slightly Hebraic voice, he drew
other people on to talk about themselves, or else, to artists and
writers and their sort, discovered an amazing, discouraging knowledge of
the trades by which they earned their living. "One feels," said Mrs.
Malcolm, "that one is eyeing a sensitive python. He uncoils
beautifully."
They were seated at the round, candle-lit table, the rest of the room in
partial shadow, Sir John looking like a lost Rembrandt, and his blonde
wife, with her soft English face, like a rose-and-gray portrait by
Reynolds, when Burnaby strode in upon them ... strode in upon them, and
then, as if remembering the repression he believed in, hesitated, and
finally advanced quietly toward Mrs. Malcolm. One could smell the snowy
February night still about him.
"I'm so sorry," he said. "I--"
"You broke down, I suppose," said Mrs. Malcolm, "or the noon train from
Washington was late for the first time in six years. What do you do in
Washington, anyway? Moon about the Smithsonian?"
"No," said Burnaby, as he sank into a chair and unfolded his napkin.
"Y'see--well, that is--I ran across a fellow--an Englishman--who knew a
chap I met last summer up on the Francis River--I didn't exactly meet
him, that is, I ran into him, and it wasn't the Francis River really, it
was the Upper Liara, a branch that comes in from the northwest. Strange,
wasn't it?--this fellow, this Englishman, got to talking about tea, and
that reminded me of the whole thing." He paused on the last word and,
with a peculiar habit that is much his own, stared across the table at
Lady Masters, but over and through her, as if that pretty pink-and-white
woman had entirely disappeared,--and the warm shadows behind her,--and
in her place were no one could guess what vistas of tumbling rivers and
barren tundras.
"Tea!" ejaculated Mrs. Malcolm.
Burnaby came back to the flower-scented circle of light.
"Yes," he said soberly, "tea. Exactly."
Mrs. Malcolm's delicate eyebrows rose to a point. "What," she asked, in
the tones of delighted motherhood overlaid with a slight exasperation
which she habitually used toward Burnaby, "has tea got to do with a man
you met on the Upper Liara last summer and a man you met this afternoon?
Why tea?"
"A lot," said Burnaby cryptically, and proceeded to apply himself to his
salad, for he had refused the courses his lateness had made him miss.
"Y'see," he said, after a moment's reflection, "it was this way--and
it's worth telling, for it's queer. I ran into this Terhune this
afternoon at a club--a big, blond Englishman who's been in the army, but
now he's out making money. Owns a tea house in London. Terhune &
Terhune--perhaps you know them?" He turned to Sir John.
"Yes, very well. I imagine this is Arthur Terhune."
"That's the man. Well, his being in tea and that sort of thing got me to
telling him about an adventure I had last summer, and, the first crack
out of the box, he said he remembered the other chap perfectly--had
known him fairly well at one time. Odd, wasn't it, when you come to
think of it? A big, blond, freshly bathed Englishman in a club, and that
other man away up there!"
"And the other man? Is he in the tea business too?" asked Mrs. Selden.
She was interested by now, leaning across the table, her dark eyes
catching light from the candles. It was something--to interest Mrs.
Selden.
"No," said Burnaby abruptly. "No. He's in no business at all, except
going to perdition. Y'see, he's a squaw-man--a big, black squaw-man,
with a nose like a Norman king's. The sort of person you imagine in
evening clothes in the Carleton lounge. He might have been anything but
what he is."
"I wonder," said Sir John, "why we do that sort of thing so much more
than other nations? Our very best, too. It's odd."
"It was odd enough the way it happened to me, anyhow," said Burnaby.
"I'd been knocking around up there all summer, just an Indian and
myself--around what they call Fort Francis and the Pelly Lakes, and
toward the end of August we came down the Liara in a canoe. We were
headed for Lower Post on the Francis, and it was all very lovely until,
one day, we ran into a rapid, a devil of a thing, and my Indian got
drowned."
"How dreadful!" murmured Lady Masters.
"It was," agreed Burnaby; "but it might have been worse--for me, that
is. It couldn't have been much worse for the poor devil of an Indian,
could it? But I had a pretty fair idea of the country, and had only
about fifty miles to walk, and a little waterproof box of grub turned up
out of the wreck, so I wasn't in any danger of starving. It was lonely,
though--it's lonely enough country, anyhow, and of course I couldn't
help thinking about that Indian and the way big rapids roar. I couldn't
sleep when night came--saw black rocks sticking up out of white water
like the fangs of a mad dog. I was pretty near the horrors, I guess. So
you can imagine I wasn't sorry when, about four o'clock of the next
afternoon, I came back to the river again and a teepee standing up all
by itself on a little pine-crowned bluff. In front of the teepee was an
old squaw--she wasn't very old, really, but you know how Indians
get--boiling something over a fire in a big pot. 'How!' I said, and she
grunted. 'If you'll lend me part of your fire, I'll make some tea,' I
continued. 'And if you're good, I'll give you some when it's done.' Tea
was one of the things cached in the little box that had been saved. She
moved the pot to one side, so I judged she understood, and I trotted
down to the river for water and set to work. As you can guess, I was
pretty anxious for any kind of conversation by then, so after a while I
said brightly: 'All alone?' She grunted again and pointed over her
shoulder to the teepee. 'Well, seeing you're so interested,' said I,
'and that the tea's done, we'll all go inside and ask your man to a
party--if you'll dig up two tin cups. I've got one of my own.' She
raised the flap of the teepee and I followed her. I could see she wasn't
a person who wasted words. Inside a little fire was smouldering, and
seated with his back to us was a big, broad-shouldered buck, with a dark
blanket wrapped around him. 'Your good wife,' I began cheerily--I was
getting pretty darned sick of silence--'has allowed me to make some tea
over your fire. Have some? I'm shipwrecked from a canoe and on my way to
Lower Post. If you don't understand what I say, it doesn't make the
slightest difference, but for God's sake grunt--just once, to show
you're interested.' He grunted. 'Thanks!' I said, and poured the tea
into the three tin cups. The squaw handed one to her buck. Then I sat
down.
"There was nothing to be heard but the gurgling of the river outside and
the rather noisy breathing we three made as we drank; and then--very
clearly, just as if we'd been sitting in an English drawing-room--in the
silence a voice said: 'By Jove, that's the first decent cup of tea I've
had in ten years!' Yes, just that! 'By Jove, that's the first decent cup
of tea I've had in ten years!' I looked at the buck, but he hadn't
moved, and then I looked at the squaw, and she was still squatting and
sipping her tea, and then I said, very quietly, for I knew my nerves
were still ragged, 'Did any one speak?' and the buck turned slowly and
looked me up and down, and I saw the nose I was talking about--the nose
like a Norman king's. I was rattled, I admit; I forgot my manners.
'You're English!' I gasped out; and the buck said very sweetly: 'That's
none of your damned business.'"
Burnaby paused and looked about the circle of attentive faces. "That's
all. But it's enough, isn't it? To come out of nothing, going nowheres,
and run into a dirty Indian who says: 'By Jove, that's the first decent
cup of tea I've had in ten years!' And then along comes this Terhune
and says that he knows the man."
Mrs. Malcolm raised her chin from the hand that had been supporting it.
"I don't blame you," she said, "for being late."
"And this man," interrupted Sir John's sonorous voice, "this squaw-man,
did he tell you anything about himself?"
Burnaby shook his head. "Not likely," he answered. "I tried to draw him
out, but he wasn't drawable. Finally he said: 'If you'll shut your
damned mouth I'll give you two dirty blankets to sleep on. If you won't,
I'll kick you out of here.' The next morning I pulled out, leaving him
crouched over the little teepee fire nursing his knees. But I hadn't
gone twenty yards when he came to the flap and called out after me: 'I
say!' I turned about sullenly. His dirty face had a queer, cracked smile
on it. 'Look here! Do you--where did you get that tea from, anyway?
I--there's a lot of skins I've got; I don't suppose you'd care to trade,
would you?' I took the tea out of the air-tight box and put it on the
ground. Then I set off down river. Henderson, the factor at Lower Post,
told me a little about him: his name--it wasn't assumed, it seems; and
that he'd been in the country about fifteen years, going from bad to
worse. He was certainly at 'worse' when I saw him." Burnaby paused and
stared across the table again with his curious, far-away look. "Beastly,
isn't it?" he said, as if to himself. "Cold up there now, too! The snow
must be deep." He came back to the present. "And I suppose, you know,"
he said, smiling deprecatingly at Mrs. Selden, "he's just as fond of
flowers and lights and things as we are."
Mrs. Selden shivered.
"Fonder!" said Sir John. "Probably fonder. That sort is. It's the poets
of the world who can't write poetry who go to smash that way. They ought
to take a term at business, and"--he reflected--"the business men, of
course, at poetry." He regarded Burnaby with his inscrutable eyes, in
the depths of which danced little flecks of light.
"What did you say this man's name was?" asked Lady Masters, in her soft
voice. She had an extraordinary way of advancing, with a timid rush, as
it were, into the foreground, and then receding again, melting back into
the shadows. She rarely ever spoke without a sensation of astonishment
making itself felt. "She is like a mist," thought Mrs. Malcolm.
"Bewsher," said Burnaby--"Geoffrey Boisselier Bewsher. Quite a name,
isn't it? He was in the cavalry. His family are rather swells in an
old-fashioned way. He is the fifth son--or seventh, or whatever it
is--of a baronet and, Terhune says, was very much in evidence about
London twenty-odd years ago. Terhune used to see him in clubs, and every
now and then dining out. Although he himself, of course, was a much
younger man. Very handsome he was, too, Terhune said, and a favorite.
And then one day he just disappeared--got out--no one knows exactly why.
Terhune doesn't. Lost his money, or a woman, or something like that. The
usual thing, I suppose. I--You didn't hurt yourself, did you?"...
He had paused abruptly and was looking across the table; for there had
been a little tinkle and a crash of breaking glass, and now a pool of
champagne was forming beside Lady Masters's plate, and finding its way
in a thin thread of gold along the cloth. There was a moment's silence,
and then she advanced again out of the shadows with her curious soft
rush. "How clumsy I am!" she murmured. "My arm--My bracelet! I--I'm so
sorry!" She looked swiftly about her, and then at Burnaby. "Oh, no! I'm
not cut, thanks!" Her eyes held a pained embarrassment. He caught the
look, and her eyelids flickered and fell before his gaze, and then, as
the footman repaired the damage, she sank back once more into the
half-light beyond the radiance of the candles. "How shy she is!" thought
Burnaby. "So many of these English women are. She's an important woman
in her own right, too." He studied her furtively.
Into the soft silence came Sir John's carefully modulated voice.
"Barbara and I," he explained, "will feel this very much. We both knew
Bewsher." His eyes became somber. "This is very distressing," he said
abruptly.
"By Jove!" ejaculated Burnaby, and raised his head like an alert hound.
"How odd it all is!" said Mrs. Malcolm. But she was wondering why men
are so queer with their wives--resent so much the slightest social
clumsiness on their part, while in other women--provided the offense is
not too great--it merely amuses them. Even the guarded manners of Sir
John had been disturbed. For a moment he had been very angry with the
shadow that bore his name; one could tell by the swift glance he had
cast in her direction. After all, upsetting a glass of champagne was a
very natural sequel to a story such as Burnaby had told, a story about a
former acquaintance--perhaps friend.
Sir John thoughtfully helped himself to a spoonful of his dessert before
he looked up; when he did so he laid down his spoon and sat back in his
chair with the manner of a man who has made a sudden decision. "No," he
said, and an unexpected little smile hovered about his lips, "it isn't
so odd. Bewsher was rather a figure of a man twenty years ago. Shall I
tell you his history?"
To Mrs. Malcolm, watching with alert, humorous eyes, there came a
curious impression, faint but distinct, like wind touching her hair; as
if, that is, a door into the room had opened and shut. She leaned
forward, supporting her chin in her hand.
"Of course," she said.
Sir John twisted between his fingers the stem of his champagne-glass and
studied thoughtfully the motes of at the heart of the amber wine. "You
see," he began thoughtfully, "it's such a difficult story to
tell--difficult because it took twenty-five--and, now that Mr. Burnaby
has furnished the sequel, forty-five years--to live; and difficult
because it is largely a matter of psychology. I can only give you the
high lights, as it were. You must fill in the rest for yourselves. You
must imagine, that is, Bewsher and this other fellow--this Morton. I
can't give you his real name--it is too important; you would know it.
No, it isn't obviously dramatic. And yet--" his voice suddenly became
vibrant--"such things compose, as a matter of fact, the real drama of
the world. It--" he looked about the table swiftly and leaned forward,
and then, as if interrupting himself, "but what _was_ obviously
dramatic," he said--and the little dancing sparks in the depths of his
eyes were peculiarly noticeable--"was the way I, of all people, heard
it. Yes. You see, I heard it at a dinner party like this, in London; and
Morton--the man himself--told the story." He paused, and with
half-closed eyes studied the effect of his announcement.
"You mean--?" asked Burnaby.
"Exactly." Sir John spoke with a certain cool eagerness. "He sat up
before all those people and told the inner secrets of his life; and of
them all I was the only one who suspected the truth. Of course, he was
comparatively safe, none of them knew him well except myself, but think
of it! The bravado--the audacity! Rather magnificent, wasn't it?" He
sank back once more in his chair.
Mrs. Malcolm agreed. "Yes," she said. "Magnificent and insulting."
Sir John smiled. "My dear lady," he asked, "doesn't life consist largely
of insults from the strong to the weak?"
"And were all these people so weak, then?"
"No, in their own way they were fairly important, I suppose, but
compared to Morton they were weak--very weak--Ah, yes! I like this
custom of smoking at table. Thanks!" He selected a cigarette
deliberately, and stooped toward the proffered match. The flame
illumined the swarthy curve of his beard and the heavy lines of his dark
face. "You see," he began, straightening up in his chair, "the whole
thing--that part of it, and the part I'm to tell--is really, if you
choose, an allegory of strength, of strength and weakness. On the one
side Morton--there's strength, sheer, undiluted power, the thing that
runs the world; and on the other Bewsher, the ordinary man, with all his
mixed-up ideas of right and wrong and the impossible, confused thing he
calls a 'code'--Bewsher, and later on the girl. She too is part of the
allegory. She represents--what shall I say? A composite portrait of the
ordinary young woman? Religion, I suppose. Worldly religion. The
religion of most of my good friends in England. A vague but none the
less passionate belief in a heaven populated by ladies and gentlemen who
dine out with a God who resembles royalty. And coupled with this
religion the girl had, of course, as have most of her class, a very
distinct sense of her own importance in the world; not that
exactly--personally she was over-modest; a sense rather of her
importance as a unit of an important family, and a deep-rooted
conviction of the fundamental necessity of unimportant things: parties,
and class-worship, and the whole jumbled-up order as it is. The usual
young woman, that is, if you lay aside her unusual beauty. And, you see,
people like Bewsher and the girl haven't much chance against a man like
Morton, have they? Do you remember the girl, my dear?" he asked, turning
to his wife.
"Yes," murmured Lady Masters.
"Well, then," continued Sir John, "you must imagine this Morton, an ugly
little boy of twelve, going up on a scholarship to a great public
school--a rather bitter little boy, without any particular prospects
ahead of him except those his scholarship held out; and back of him a
poor, stunted life, with a mother in it--a sad dehumanized creature, I
gathered, who subsisted on the bounty of a niggardly brother. And this,
you can understand, was the first thing that made Morton hate virtue
devoid of strength. His mother, he told me, was the best woman he had
ever known. The world had beaten her unmercifully. His earliest
recollection was hearing her cry at night.... And there, at the school,
he had his first glimpse of the great world that up to then he had only
dimly suspected. Dramatic enough in itself, isn't it?--if you can
visualize the little dark chap. A common enough drama, too, the Lord
knows. We people on top are bequeathing misery to our posterity when we
let the Mortons of the world hate the rich. And head and shoulders above
the other boys of his age at the school was Bewsher; not that
materially, of course, there weren't others more important; Bewsher's
family was old and rich as such families go, but he was very much a
younger son, and his people lived mostly in the country; yet even then
there was something about him--a manner, an adeptness in sports, an
unsought popularity, that picked him out; the beginnings of that Norman
nose that Mr. Burnaby has mentioned. And here"--Sir John paused and
puffed thoughtfully at his cigarette--"is the first high light.
"To begin with, of course, Morton hated Bewsher and all he represented,
hated him in a way that only a boy of his nature can; and then, one
day--I don't know exactly when it could have been, probably a year or
two after he had gone up to school--he began to see quite clearly what
this hate meant; began to see that for such as he to hate the Bewshers
of the world was the sheerest folly--a luxury far beyond his means.
Quaint, wasn't it? In a boy of his age! You can imagine him working it
out at night, in his narrow dormitory bed, when the other boys were
asleep. You see, he realized, dimly at first, clearly at last, that
through Bewsher and his kind lay the hope of Morton and his kind. Nice
little boys think the same thing, only they are trained not to admit
it. That was the first big moment of Morton's life, and with the
determination characteristic of him he set out to accomplish what he had
decided. In England we make our future through our friends, in this
country you make it through your enemies. But it wasn't easy for Morton;
such tasks never are. He had a good many insults to swallow. In the end,
however, from being tolerated he came to be indispensable, and from
being indispensable eventually to be liked. He had planned his campaign
with care. Carefulness, recklessly carried out, has been, I think, the
guiding rule of his life. He had modelled himself on Bewsher; he walked
like Bewsher; tried to think like Bewsher--that is, in the less
important things of life--and, with the divination that marks his type
of man, the little money he had, the little money that as a schoolboy he
could borrow, he had spent with precision on clothes and other things
that brought him personal distinction; in what people call necessities
he starved himself. By the time he was ready to leave school you could
hardly have told him from the man he had set out to follow: he was
equally well-mannered; equally at his ease; if anything, more conscious
of prerogative than Bewsher. He had come to spend most of his holidays
at Bewsher's great old house in Gloucestershire. That, too, was an
illumination. It showed him what money was made for--the sunny quiet of
the place, the wheels of a spacious living that ran so smoothly, the
long gardens, the inevitableness of it all. Some day, he told himself,
he would have just such a house. He has. It is his mistress. The world
has not allowed him much of the poetry that, as you must already see,
the man has in him; he takes it out on his place.
"It was in Morton's last year at Oxford, just before his graduation,
that the second great moment of his life occurred. He had done well at
his college, not a poor college either; and all the while, you must
remember, he was borrowing money and running up bills. But this didn't
bother him. He was perfectly assured in his own mind concerning his
future. He had counted costs. In that May, Bewsher, who from school had
gone to Sandhurst, came up on a visit with two or three other fledgling
officers, and they had a dinner in Morton's rooms. It turned into rather
a 'rag,' as those things do, and it was there, across a flower-strewn,
wine-stained table, that Morton had his second revelation. He wasn't
drunk--he never got drunk; the others were. The thing came in upon him
slowly, warmingly, like the breeze that stirred the curtains. He felt
himself, as never before, a man. You can see him sitting back in his
chair, in the smoke and the noise and the foolish singing, cool, his
eyes a little closed. He knew now that he had passed the level of these
men; yes, even the shining mark Bewsher had set. He had gone on, while
they had stood still. To him, he suddenly realized, and to such as he,
belonged the heritage of the years, not to these men who thought they
held it. These old gray buildings stretching away into the May dusk, the
history of a thousand years, were his. These sprawled young aristocrats
before him--they, whether they eventually came to know it or not, they,
and Bewsher with them--would one day do his bidding: come when he
beckoned, go when he sent. It was a big thought, wasn't it, for a man of
twenty-two?" Sir John paused and puffed at his cigarette.
"That was the second high light," he continued, "and the third did not
come until fifteen years later. Bewsher went into the Indian army--his
family had ideas of service--and Morton into a banking-house in London.
And there, as deliberately as he had taken them up, he laid aside for
the time being all the social perquisites which he had with so much
pains acquired. Do you know--he told me that for fifteen years not once
had he dined out, except when he thought his ambitions would be
furthered by so doing, and then, as one turns on a tap, he turned on the
charm he now knew himself to possess. It is not astonishing, is it, when
you come to think of it, that eventually he became rich and famous?
Most people are unwilling to sacrifice their youth to their future. He
wasn't. But it wasn't a happy time. He hated it. He paid off his debts,
however, and at the end of the fifteen years found himself a big man in
a small way, with every prospect of becoming a big man in a big way.
Then, of course--such men do--he began to look about him. He wanted
wider horizons, he wanted luxury, he wanted a wife; and he wanted them
as a starved man wants food. He experienced comparatively little
difficulty in getting started. Some of his school and university friends
remembered him, and there was a whisper about that he was a man that
bore watching. But afterward he stuck. The inner citadel of London is by
no means as assailable as the outer fortifications lead one to suppose.
"They say a man never has a desire but there's an angel or a devil to
write it down. Morton had hardly made his discovery when Bewsher turned
up from India, transferred to a crack cavalry regiment; a sunburnt,
cordial Bewsher, devilishly determined to enjoy the fulness of his
prime. On his skirts, as he had done once before, Morton penetrated
farther and farther into the esoteric heart of society. I'm not sure
just how Bewsher felt toward Morton at the time; he liked him, I think;
at all events, he had the habit of him. As for Morton, he liked Bewsher
as much as he dared; he never permitted himself to like any one too
much.
"I don't know how it is with you, but I have noticed again and again
that intimate friends are prone to fall in love with the same woman:
perhaps it is because they have so many tastes in common; perhaps it is
jealousy--I don't know. Anyhow, that is what happened to these two,
Morton first, then Bewsher; and it is characteristic that the former
mentioned it to no one, while the latter was confidential and expansive.
Such men do not deserve women, and yet they are often the very men women
fall most in love with. At first the girl had been attracted to Morton,
it seems; he intrigued her--no doubt the sense of power about him; but
the handsomer man, when he entered the running, speedily drew ahead. You
can imagine the effect of this upon her earlier suitor. It was the first
rebuff that for a long time had occurred to him in his ordered plan of
life. He resented it and turned it over in his mind, and eventually, as
it always does to men of his kind, his opportunity came. You see, unlike
Bewsher and his class, all his days had been an exercise in the
recognition and appreciation of chances. He isolated the inevitable fly
in the ointment, and in this particular ointment the fly happened to be
Bewsher's lack of money and the education the girl had received. She was
poor in the way that only the daughter of a great house can be. To
Morton, once he was aware of the fly, and once he had combined the
knowledge of it with what these two people most lacked, it was a simple
thing. They lacked, as you have already guessed, courage and directness.
On Morton's side was all the dunder-headism of an aristocracy, all its
romanticism, all its gross materialism, all its confusion of ideals. But
you mustn't think that he, Morton, was cold or objective in all this:
far from it; he was desperately in love with the girl himself, and he
was playing his game like a man in a corner--all his wits about him, but
fever in his heart.
"There was the situation, an old one--a girl who dare not marry a poor
man, and a poor man cracking his brains to know where to get money from.
I dare say Bewsher never questioned the rightness of it all--he was too
much in love with the girl, his own training had been too similar. And
Morton, hovering on the outskirts, talked--to weak people the most fatal
doctrine in the world--the doctrine of power, the doctrine that each man
and woman can have just what they want if they will only get out and
seek it. That's true for the big people; for the small it usually spells
death. They falter on methods. They are too afraid of unimportant
details. His insistence had its results even more speedily than he had
hoped. Before long the girl, too, was urging Bewsher on to effort. It
isn't the first time goodness has sent weakness to the devil. Meanwhile
the instigator dropped from his one-time position of tentative lover to
that of adviser in particular. It was just the position that at the time
he most desired.
"Things came to a head on a warm night in April. Bewsher dropped in upon
Morton in his chambers. Very handsome he looked, too, I dare say, in his
evening clothes, with an opera-coat thrown back from his shoulders. I
remember well myself his grand air, with a touch of cavalry swagger
about it. I've no doubt he leaned against the chimney-piece and tapped
his leg with his stick. And the upshot of it was that he wanted money.
"Oh, no! not a loan. It wasn't as bad as that. He had enough to screw
along with himself; although he was frightfully in debt. He wanted a big
sum. An income. To make money, that was. He didn't want to go into
business if he could help it; hadn't any ability that way; hated it. But
perhaps Morton could put him in the way of something? He didn't mind
chances."
"Do you see?" Sir John leaned forward. "And he never realized the
vulgarity of it--that product of five centuries, that English gentleman.
Never realized the vulgarity of demanding of life something for nothing;
of asking from a man as a free gift what that man had sweated for and
starved for all his life; yes, literally, all his life. It was an
illumination, as Morton said, upon that pitiful thing we call 'class.'
He demanded all this as his right, too; demanded power, the one precious
possession. Well, the other man had his code as well, and the first
paragraph in it was that a man shall get only what he works for. Can you
imagine him, the little ugly man, sitting at his table and thinking all
this? And suddenly he got to his feet. 'Yes,' he said, 'I'll make you a
rich man.' But he didn't say he would keep him one. That was the third
high light--the little man standing where all through the ages had stood
men like him, the secret movers of the world, while before them,
supplicating, had passed the beauty and the pride of their times. In the
end they all beg at the feet of power--the kings and the fighting men.
And yet, although this was the great, hidden triumph of his life, and,
moreover, beyond his hopes a realization of the game he had been
playing--for it put Bewsher, you see, utterly in his power--Morton said
at the moment it made him a little sick. It was too crude; Bewsher's
request too unashamed; it made suddenly too cheap, since men could ask
for it so lightly, all the stakes for which he, Morton, had sacrificed
the slow minutes and hours of his life. And then, of course, there was
this as well: Bewsher had been to Morton an ideal, and ideals can't die,
even the memory of them, without some pain."
Mrs. Malcolm, watching with lips a little parted, said to herself: "He
has uncoiled too much."
"Yes"--Sir John reached out his hand and, picking up a long-stemmed rose
from the table, began idly to twist it in his fingers. "And that was the
end. From then on the matter was simple. It was like a duel between a
trained swordsman and a novice; only it wasn't really a duel at all, for
one of the antagonists was unaware that he was fighting. I suppose that
most people would call it unfair. I have wondered. And yet Bewsher, in a
polo game, or in the game of social life, would not have hesitated to
use all the skill and craft he knew. But, you say, he would not have
played against beginners. Well, he had asked himself into this game; he
had not been invited. And so, all through that spring and into the
summer and autumn the three-cornered contest went on, and into the
winter and on to the spring beyond. Unwittingly, the girl was playing
more surely than ever into Morton's hand. The increasing number of
Bewsher's platitudes about wealth, about keeping up tradition, about
religion, showed that. He even talked vaguely about giving up the army
and going into business. 'It must have its fascinations, you know,' he
remarked lightly. In the eyes of both of them Morton had become sort of
fairy godfather--a mysterious, wonderful gnome at whose beck gold leaped
from the mountainside. It was just the illusion he wished to create. In
the final analysis the figure of the gnome is the most beloved figure in
the rotten class to which we belong.
"And then, just as spontaneously as it had come, Bewsher's money began
to melt away--slowly at first; faster afterward until, finally, he was
back again to his original income. This was a time of stress, of hurried
consultations, of sympathy on the part of Morton, of some rather ugly
funk on the part of Bewsher; and Morton realized that in the eyes of the
girl he was rapidly becoming once more the dominant figure. It didn't do
him much good"--Sir John broke the stem of the rose between his fingers.
"Soon there was an end to it all. There came, finally, a very unpleasant
evening. This too was in April; April a year after Bewsher's visit to
Morton's chambers, only this time the scene was laid in an office.
Bewsher had put a check on the desk. 'Here,' he said, 'that will tide me
over until I can get on my feet,' and his voice was curiously thick; and
Morton, looking down, had seen that the signature wasn't genuine--a
clumsy business done by a clumsy man--and, despite all his training,
from what he said, a little cold shiver had run up and down his back.
This had gone farther than he had planned. But he made no remark, simply
pocketed the check, and the next day settled out of his own pockets
Bewsher's sorry affairs; put him back, that is, where he had started,
with a small income mortgaged beyond hope. Then he sent a note to the
girl requesting an interview on urgent business. She saw him that night
in her drawing-room. She was very lovely. Morton was all friendly
sympathy. It wasn't altogether unreal, either. I think, from what he
told me, he was genuinely touched. But he felt, you know--the urge, the
goad, of his own career. His kind do. Ultimately they are not their own
masters. He showed the girl the check--not at first, you understand,
but delicately, after preliminary discussion; reluctantly upon repeated
urging. 'What was he to do? What would she advise? Bewsher was safe, of
course; he had seen to that; but the whole unintelligible, shocking
aspect of the thing!' He tore the check up and threw it in the fire. He
was not unaware that the girl's eyes admired him. It was a warm night.
He said good-by and walked home along the deserted street. He
remembered, he told me, how sweet the trees smelled. He was not happy.
You see, Bewsher had been the nearest approach to a friend he had ever
had.
"That practically finished the sordid business. What the girl said to
Bewsher Morton never knew; he trusted to her conventionalized religion
and her family pride to break Bewsher's heart, and to Bewsher's
sentimentality to eliminate him forever from the scene. In both surmises
he was correct; he was only not aware that at the same time the girl had
broken her own heart. He found that out afterward. And Bewsher
eliminated himself more thoroughly than necessary. I suppose the shame
of the thing was to him like a blow to a thoroughbred, instead of an
incentive, as it would have been to a man of coarser fibre. He went from
bad to worse, resigned from his regiment, finally disappeared.
Personally, I had hoped that he had begun again somewhere on the
outskirts of the world. But he isn't that sort. There's not much of the
Norman king to him except his nose. The girl married Morton. He gave her
no time to recover from her gratitude. He felt very happy, he told me,
the day of his wedding, very elated. It was one of those rare occasions
when he felt that the world was a good place. Another high light, you
see. And it was no mean thing, if you consider it, for a man such as he
to marry the daughter of a peer, and at the same time to love her. He
was not a gentleman, you understand, he could never be that--it was the
one secret thing that always hurt him--no amount of brains, no amount of
courage could make him what he wasn't; he never lied to himself as most
men do; so he had acquired a habit of secretly triumphing over those who
possessed the gift. The other thing that hurt him was when, a few months
later, he discovered that his wife still loved Bewsher and always would.
And that"--Sir John picked up the broken rose again--"is, I suppose, the
end of the story."
There was a moment's silence and then Burnaby lifted his pointed chin.
"By George!" he said, "it _is_ interesting to know how things really
happen, isn't it? But I think--you have, haven't you, left out the real
point. Do you--would you mind telling just why you imagine Morton did
this thing? Told his secret before all those people? It wasn't like him,
was it?"
Sir John slowly lighted another cigarette, and then he turned to Burnaby
and smiled. "Yes," he said, "it was extremely like him. Still, it's very
clever of you, very clever. Can't you guess? It isn't so very
difficult."
"No," said Burnaby, "I can't guess at all."
"Well, then, listen." And to Mrs. Malcolm it seemed as if Sir John had
grown larger, had merged in the shadows about him; at least he gave that
impression, for he sat up very straight and threw back his shoulders.
For a moment he hesitated, then he began, "You must go back to the
dinner I was describing," he said--"the dinner in London. I too was
intrigued as you are, and when it was over I followed Morton out and
walked with him toward his club. And, like you, I asked the question. I
think that he had known all along that I suspected; at all events, it is
characteristic of the man that he did not try to bluff me. He walked on
for a little while in silence, and then he laughed abruptly. 'Yes,' he
said, 'I'll tell you. Yes. Just this. What there is to be got, I've got;
what work can win I've won; but back of it all there's something else,
and back even of that there's a careless god who gives his gifts where
they are least deserved. That's one reason why I talked as I did
to-night. To all of us--the men like me--there comes in the end a time
when we realize that what a man can do we can do, but that love, the
touch of other people's minds, these two things are the gifts of the
careless god. And it irritates us, I suppose, irritates us! We want them
in a way that the ordinary man who has them cannot understand. We want
them as damned souls in hell want water. And sometimes the strain's too
much. It was to-night. To touch other minds, even for a moment, even if
they hate you while you are doing it, that's the thing! To lay yourself,
just once, bare to the gaze of ordinary people! With the hope, perhaps,
that even then they may still find in you something to admire or love.
Self-revelation! Every man confesses sometime. It happened that I chose
a dinner party. Do you understand?'" It was almost as if Sir John
himself had asked the question.
"And then"--he was speaking in his usual calm tones again--"there
happened a curious thing, a very curious thing, for Morton stopped and
turned toward me and began to laugh. I thought he would never stop. It
was rather uncanny, under the street lamp there, this usually rather
quiet man. 'And that,' he said at length, 'that's only half the story.
The cream of it is this: the way I myself felt, sitting there among all
those soft, easily lived people. That's the cream of it. To flout them,
to sting them, to laugh at them, to know you had more courage than all
of them put together, you who were once so afraid of them! To feel
that--even if they knew it was about yourself you were talking--that
even then they were afraid of you, and would to-morrow ask you back
again to their houses. That's power! That's worth doing! After all, you
can keep your love and your sympathy and your gentlemen; it's only to
men like me, men who've sweated and come up, that moments arise such as
I've had to-night.' And then, 'It's rather a pity,' he said, after a
pause, 'that of them all you alone knew of whom I was talking. Rather a
pity, isn't it?'" Sir John hesitated and looked about the table. "It
was unusual, wasn't it?" he said at length gently. "Have I been too
dramatic?"
In the little silence that followed, Mrs. Malcolm leaned forward, her
eyes starry. "I would rather," she said, "talk to Bewsher in his teepee
than talk to Morton with all his money."
Sir John looked at her and smiled--his charming smile. "Oh, no, you
wouldn't," he said. "Oh, no! We say those things, but we don't mean
them. If you sat next to Morton at dinner you'd like him; but as for
Bewsher you'd despise him, as all right-minded women despise a failure.
Oh, no; you'd prefer Morton."
"Perhaps you're right," sighed Mrs. Malcolm; "pirates are fascinating, I
suppose." She arose to her feet. Out of the shadows Lady Masters
advanced to meet her. "She _is_ like a mist," thought Mrs. Malcolm.
"Exactly like a rather faint mist."
Burnaby leaned over and lit a cigarette at one of the candles. "And, of
course," he said quietly, without raising his head, "the curious thing
is that this fellow Morton, despite all his talk of power, in the end is
merely a ghost of Bewsher, after all, isn't he?"
Sir John turned and looked at the bowed sleek head with a puzzled
expression. "A ghost!" he murmured. "I don't think I quite understand."
"It's very simple," said Burnaby, and raised his head. "Despite all
Morton has done, in the things worth while, in the things he wants the
most, he can at best be only a shadow of the shadow Bewsher has left--a
shadow of a man to the woman who loves Bewsher, a shadow of a friend to
the men who liked Bewsher, a shadow of a gentleman to the gentlemen
about him. A ghost, in other words. It's the inevitable end of all
selfishness. I think Bewsher has rather the best of it, don't you?"
"I--I had never thought of it in quite that light," said Sir John, and
followed Mrs. Malcolm.
They went into the drawing-room beyond--across a hallway, and up a
half-flight of stairs, and through glass doors. "Play for us!" said Mrs.
Malcolm, and Burnaby, that remarkable young man, sat down to the piano
and for perhaps an hour made the chords sob to a strange music, mostly
his own.
"That's Bewsher!" he said when he was through, and had sat back on his
stool, and was sipping a long-neglected cordial.
"Br-r-r-!" shivered Mrs. Selden from her place by the fire. "How
unpleasant you are!"
Sir John looked troubled. "I hope," he said, "my story hasn't depressed
you too much. Burnaby's was really worse, you know. Well, I must be
going." He turned to Mrs. Malcolm. "You are one of the few women who can
make me sit up late."
He bade each in turn good-night in his suave, charming, slightly Hebraic
manner. To Burnaby he said: "Thank you for the music. Improvisation is
perhaps the happiest of gifts."
But Burnaby for once was awkward. He was watching Sir John's face with
the curious, intent look of a forest animal that so often possessed his
long, dark eyes. Suddenly he remembered himself. "Oh, yes," he said
hastily, "I beg your pardon. Thanks, very much."
"Good-night!" Sir John and Lady Masters passed through the glass doors.
Burnaby paused a moment where he had shaken hands, and then, with the
long stride characteristic of him, went to the window and, drawing aside
the curtain, peered into the darkness beyond. He stood listening until
the purr of a great motor rose and died on the snow-muffled air. "He's
gone!" he said, and turned back into the room. He spread his arms out
and dropped them to his sides. "Swastika!" he said. "And God keep us
from the evil eye!"
"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Malcolm.
"Sir John," said Burnaby. "He has 'a bad heart.'"
"Stop talking your Indian talk and tell us what you mean."
Burnaby balanced himself on the hearth. "Am I to understand you don't
know?" he asked. "Well, Morton's Masters, and 'the girl's' Lady Masters,
and Bewsher--well, he's just a squaw-man."
"I don't believe it!" said Mrs. Malcolm. "He wouldn't dare."
"Wouldn't dare?" Burnaby laughed shortly. "My dear Minna, he'd dare
anything if it gave him a sense of power."
"But why--why did he choose us? We're not so important as all that?"
"Because--well, Bewsher's name came up. Because, well, you heard what he
said--self-revelation--men who had sweated. Because--" suddenly Burnaby
took a step forward and his jaw shot out--"because that shadow of his,
that wife of his, broke a champagne-glass when I said Geoffrey
Boisselier Bewsher; broke her champagne-glass and, I've no doubt, cried
out loud in her heart. Power can't buy love--no; but power can stamp to
death anything that won't love it. That's Masters. I can tell a
timber-wolf far off. Can you see him now in his motor? He'll have turned
the lights out, and she--his wife--will be looking out of the window at
the snow. All you can see of him would be his nose and his beard and the
glow of his cigar--except his smile. You could see that when the car
passed a corner lamp, couldn't you?"
"I don't believe it yet," said Mrs. Malcolm. "It's too preposterous."
LONELY PLACES[5]
[Note 5: Copyright, 1917, by The Pictorial Review Company.
Copyright, 1918, by Francis Buzzell.]
BY FRANCIS BUZZELL
From _The Pictorial Review_
She was not quite forty years old, but so aged was she in appearance
that another twenty-five years would not find her perceptibly older. And
to the people of Almont she was still Abbie Snover, or "that Snover
girl." Age in Almont is not reckoned in years, but by marriage, and by
children, and grandchildren.
Nearly all the young men of Abbie's generation had gone to the City,
returning only in after years, with the intention of staying a week or
two weeks, and leaving at the end of a day, or two days. So Abbie never
married.
It had never occurred to Abbie to leave Almont because all the young men
had gone away. She had been born in the big house at the foot of Tillson
Street; she had never lived anywhere else; she had never slept anywhere
but in the black walnut bed in the South bedroom.
At the age of twenty-five, Abbie inherited the big house, and with it
hired-man Chris. He was part of her inheritance. Her memory of him, like
her memory of the big house, went back as far as her memory of herself.
Every Winter evening, between seven and eight o'clock, Abbie lighted the
glass-handled lamp, placed it on the marble-topped table in the parlor
window, and sat down beside it. The faint light of this lamp, gleaming
through the snow-hung, shelving evergreens, was the only sign that the
big house was there, and occupied. When the wind blew from the West she
could occasionally hear a burst of laughter from the boys and girls
sliding down Giddings's Hill; the song of some young farmer driving
home. She thought of the Spring, when the snow would disappear, and the
honeysuckle would flower, and the wrens would again occupy the old
teapots hung in the vines of the dining-room porch.
The things that made the people of Almont interesting to each other and
drew them together meant nothing to Abbie Snover. When she had become
too old to be asked in marriage by any one, she had stopped going to
dances and to sleigh-rides, and no one had asked her why. Then she had
left the choir.
Except when she went to do her marketing, Abbie was never seen on the
streets.
For fifteen years after Amos Snover died, Abbie and Old Chris lived
alone in the big house. Every Saturday morning, as her mother had done
before her, Abbie went to the grocery store, to the butcher shop, and to
"Newberry's." She always walked along the East side of Main Street, Old
Chris, with the market-basket, following about three feet behind her.
And every Saturday night Old Chris went down-town to sit in the back of
Pot Lippincott's store and visit with Owen Frazer, who drove in from the
sixty acres he farmed as a "renter" at Mile Corners. Once every week
Abbie made a batch of cookies, cutting the thin-rolled dough into the
shape of leaves with an old tin cutter that had been her mother's. She
stored the cookies in the shiny tin pail that stood on the shelf in the
clothes-press of the downstairs bedroom, because that was where her
mother had always kept them, to be handy and yet out of reach of the
hired help. And when Jennie Sanders's children came to her door on their
way home from school she gave them two cookies each, because her mother
had always given her two.
Once every three months "the Jersey girls," dressed in black broadcloth,
with black, fluted ruffles around their necks, and black-flowered
bonnets covering their scanty hair, turned the corner at Chase's Lane,
walked three blocks to the foot of Tilson Street, and rang Abbie
Snover's door-bell.
As Old Chris grew older and less able, Abbie was compelled to close off
first one room and then another; but Old Chris still occupied the back
chamber near the upstairs woodroom, and Abbie still slept in the South
bedroom.
Early one October afternoon, Jim East, Almont's express agent and keeper
of the general store, drove his hooded delivery cart up to the front
steps of the big house. He trembled with excitement as he climbed down
from the seat.
"Abbie Snover! Ab--bie!" he called. "I got somethin' for you! A package
all the way from China! Just you come an' look!"
Jim East lifted the package out of the delivery cart, carried it up the
steps, and set it down at Abbie's feet.
"Just you look, Abbie! That there crate's made of little fishin' poles,
an' what's inside's all wrapped up in Chinee mats!"
Old Chris came around from the back of the house. Jim East grabbed his
arm and pointed at the bamboo crate:
"Just you put your nose down, Chris, an' smell. Ain't that foreign?"
Abbie brought her scissors. Carefully she removed the red and yellow
labels.
"There's American writin' on 'em, too," Jim East hastened to explain,
"'cause otherwise how'd I know who it was _for_, hey?"
Abbie carried the labels into the parlor and looked for a safe place for
them. She saw the picture-album and put them in it. Then she hurried
back to the porch. Old Chris opened one end of the crate.
"It's a plant," Jim East whispered; "a Chinee plant."
"It's a dwarf orange-tree," Old Chris announced. "See, it says so on
that there card."
Abbie carried the little orange-tree into the parlor. Who could have
sent it to her? There was no one she knew, away off there in China!
"You be careful of that bamboo and the wrappings," she warned Old Chris.
"I'll make something decorative-like out of them."
Abbie waited until Jim East drove away in his delivery cart. Then she
sat down at the table in the parlor and opened the album. She found her
name on one of the labels--ABBIE SNOVER, ALMONT, MICHIGAN, U. S. A. It
seemed queer to her that her name had come all the way from China. On
the card that said that the plant was a dwarf orange-tree she found the
name--Thomas J. Thorington. Thomas? Tom? Tom Thorington! Why, the last
she had heard of Tom had been fifteen years back. He had gone out West.
She had received a picture of him in a uniform, with a gun on his
shoulder. She dimly recollected that he had been a guard at some
penitentiary. How long ago it seemed! He must have become a missionary
or something, to be away off in China. And he had remembered her! She
sat for a long time looking at the labels. She wondered if the queer
Chinese letters spelled ABBIE SNOVER, ALMONT, MICHIGAN. She opened the
album again and hunted until she found the picture of Tom Thorington in
his guard's uniform. Then she placed the labels next to the picture,
closed the album, and carefully fastened the adjustable clasp.
* * *
Under Abbie's constant attention, the little orange-tree thrived. A tiny
green orange appeared. Day by day she watched it grow, looking forward
to the time when it would become large and yellow. The days grew shorter
and colder, but she did not mind; every week the orange grew larger.
After the first snow, she moved the tree into the down-stairs bedroom.
She placed it on a little stand in the South window. The inside blinds,
which she had always kept as her mother liked them best--the lower
blinds closed, the top blinds opened a little to let in the morning
light--she now threw wide open so that the tree would get all of the
sun. And she kept a fire in the small sheet-iron stove, for fear that
the old, drafty wood furnace might not send up a steady enough heat
through the register. When the nights became severe, she crept down the
narrow, winding stairs, and through the cold, bare halls, to put an
extra chunk of hardwood into the stove. Every morning she swept and
dusted the room; the ashes and wood dirt around the stove gave her
something extra to do near the orange-tree. She removed the red and
white coverlet from the bed, and put in its place the fancy patch-quilt
with the green birds and the yellow flowers, to make the room look
brighter.
"Abbie Snover loves that orange-tree more'n anything in the world," Old
Chris cautioned the children when they came after cookies, "an' don't
you dare touch it, even with your little finger."
The growing orange was as wonderful to the children as it was to Abbie.
Instead of taking the cookies and hurrying home, they stood in front of
the tree, their eyes round and big. And one day, when Abbie went to the
clothes-press to get the cookie-pail, Bruce Sanders snipped the orange
from the tree.
The children were unnaturally still when Abbie came out of the
clothes-press. They did not rush forward to get the cookies. Abbie
looked quickly at the tree; the pail of cookies dropped from her hands.
She grabbed the two children nearest and shook them until their heads
bumped together. Then she drove them all in front of her to the door and
down the path to the gate, which she slammed shut behind them.
Once outside the gate the children ran, yelling: "Ab-bie Sno-ver,
na--aa--ah! Ab-bie Sno-ver, na--aa--ah!"
Abbie, her hands trembling, her eyes hot, went back into the house. That
was what came of letting them take fruit from the trees and vines in
the yard; of giving them cookies every time they rang her door-bell.
Well, there would be no more cookies, and Old Chris should be told never
to let them come into the yard again.
That evening, when the metallic hiccough of the well pump on the kitchen
porch told her that Old Chris was drawing up fresh water for the night,
Abbie went out into the kitchen to make sure that he placed one end of
the prop under the knob of the kitchen door and the other end against
the leg of the kitchen table.
"It'll freeze afore mornin'," said Old Chris.
"Yes," Abbie answered.
But she did not get up in the night to put an extra chunk of wood in the
stove of the down-stairs bedroom.
* * *
"Ab-bie Sno-ver, na--aa--ah! Ab-bie Sno-ver, na--aa--ah!"
Old Chris stopped shoveling snow to shake his fist at the yelling
children.
"Your Mas'll fix you, if you don't stop that screechin'!"
And they answered: "Ab-bie Sno-ver, an' old Chris! Ab-bie Sno-ver, an'
old Chris!"
Every day they yelled the two names as they passed the big house. They
yelled them on their way to and from school, and on their way to
Giddings's Hill to slide. The older boys took it up, and yelled it when
they saw Abbie and Old Chris on Main Street Saturday mornings. And
finally they rimed it into a couplet,
"Ab-bie Sno-ver, an' Old Chris--
We saw Chris an' Ab-bie kiss!"
It was too much. Abbie went to Hugh Perry's mother.
Mrs. Perry defended her young son. "He couldn't have done it," she told
Abbie. "He ain't that kind of a boy, and you can just tell that Old
Chris I said so. I guess it must be true, the way you're fussin'
round!"
Mrs. Perry slammed the door in Abbie's face. Then she whipped her young
son, and hated Abbie and Old Chris because they were responsible for it.
"That Abbie Snover came to my house," Mrs. Perry told Mrs. Rowles, "an'
said my Hugh had been a-couplin' her name with Old Chris's in a nasty
way. An' I told her--"
"The idea! the idea!" Mrs. Rowles interrupted.
"An' I told her it must be so, an' I guess it is," Mrs. Perry concluded.
Mrs. Rowles called upon Pastor Lucus's wife.
"Abbie Snover an' Old Chris was seen kissin'."
"It's scandalous," Mrs. Lucas told the pastor. "The town shouldn't put
up with it a minute longer. That's what comes of Abbie Snover not coming
to church since her Ma died."
On Saturday mornings when Abbie went down-town followed by Old Chris,
the women eyed her coldly, and the faces of the men took on quizzical,
humorous expressions. Abbie could not help but notice it; she was
disturbed. The time for "the Jersey girls" to call came around. Every
afternoon Abbie sat in the window and watched for them to turn the
corner at Chase's Lane. She brought out the polished apples which she
kept in the clothes-press all ready for some one, but "the Jersey girls"
did not come.
"You haven't heard of anybody being sick at the Jersey house, have you,
Chris?"
"Um? Nope!"
"Haven't seen Josie or Em Jersey anywhere lately?"
"Seen 'em at the post-office night afore last."
"H'mp!"
Abbie pushed the kettle to the front of the kitchen stove, poked up the
fire, and put in fresh sticks of wood. When the water boiled she poured
it into a blue-lacquered pail with yellow bands around the rim, carried
it up the steep back stairs, and got out fresh stockings.
An hour later Old Chris saw her climbing up Tillson street. He scratched
his head and frowned.
Abbie turned the corner at Chase's Lane. The snow, driven by the wind,
blinded her. She almost bumped into Viny Freeman.
"My, Viny! What you doing out on such a day?"
Viny Freeman passed her without answering.
"Seems she didn't see me," Abbie muttered. "What can she be doing away
down here on such a day? Must be something special to bring her out of
her lonely old house with her lame side. My! I almost bumped that hand
she's always holding up her pain with. My!"
Abbie turned into the Jersey gate and climbed the icy steps, hanging
onto the railing with both hands. She saw Em Jersey rise from her chair
in the parlor and go into the back sitting-room. Abbie pulled the
bell-knob and waited. No one answered. She pulled it again. No answer.
She rapped on the door with her knuckles. Big Mary, the Jersey hired
girl, opened the door part way.
"They ain't to home."
"Ain't to home?" exclaimed Abbie. "My land! Didn't I just see Em Jersey
through the parlor window?"
"No'm, you never did. They ain't to home."
"Well, I never! And their Ma and mine was cousins! They ain't sick or
nothing? Well!"
* * *
The snow melted; the streets ran with water and then froze. Old Chris no
longer came into the parlor in the evening to sit, his hands clasped
over his thin stomach, his bald head bent until his chin rested upon the
starched neckband of his shirt.
They ate in silence the meals which Abbie prepared: Old Chris at one end
of the long table, and Abbie at the other end.
In silence they went about their accustomed tasks.
Abbie, tired with a new weariness, sat in her chair beside the
marble-topped table. The village was talking about her; she knew it; she
felt it all around her. Well, let them talk!
But one day Almont sent a committee to her. It was composed of one man
and three women. Abbie saw them when they turned in at her gate--Pastor
Lucus Lorina Inman, Antha Ewell, and Aunt Alphie Newberry.
Abbie walked to the center of the parlor and stood there, her hands
clenched, her face set. The door-bell rang; for a moment her body
swayed. Then she went into the bay window and drew the blinds aside.
Antha Ewell saw her and jerked Pastor Lucus's arm. Pastor Lucus turned
and caught sight of Abbie; he thought that she had not heard the bell,
so he tapped the door panel with his fingers and nodded his head at her
invitingly, as if to say:
"See, we're waiting for you to let us in." Abbie's expression did not
change. Pastor Lucus tapped at the door again, this time hesitantly, and
still she looked at them with unseeing eyes. He tapped a third time,
then turned and looked at the three women. Aunt Alphie Newberry tugged,
at his arm, and the committee of four turned about without looking at
Abbie, and walked down the steps.
A few minutes later Abbie heard the door between the parlor and
dining-room open. Old Chris came in. For a moment or two neither spoke.
Old Chris fingered his cap.
"Abbie, I lived here forty-two years. I was here when you was born. I
carried you around in my arms a little bit of thing an' made you laugh."
Abbie did not turn away from the window.
"I know what they came for," Old Chris continued. "Your Ma--your Ma,
she'd never thought I'd have to go away from here."
Abbie could not answer him.
"I don't know who'll keep the furnace a-goin' when I'm gone, nor fill
the up-stairs woodroom."
Still no answer.
"I'm old now--I'll go to Owen Frazer's farm--down to Mile Corners. He'll
have some work I can do."
Old Chris stroked his baggy cheeks with trembling hands. Abbie still
looked out of the window.
"I'm a-goin' down to the post-office now," said Old Chris, as he turned
and went to the door. "Be there anything you want?"
Abbie shook her head; she could not find words. As Old Chris went down
the hall she heard him mumble, "I don't know what she'll do when I'm
gone."
That night Abbie sat in the parlor window longer than usual. It was a
white night; wet snow had been falling heavily all day. Some time
between eight and nine o'clock she arose from her chair and went into
the long, narrow dining-room. The pat-pat of her slippered feet aroused
Old Chris from his nodding over the _Farm Herald_. Finding that the hot
air was not coming up strong through the register over which he sat, the
old man slowly pushed his wool-socked feet into felt-lined overshoes and
tramped down into the cellar, picking up the kitchen lamp as he went.
Abbie followed as far as the kitchen. The pungent dry-wood smell that
came up the stairs when Old Chris swung open the door of the wood cellar
made her sniff. She heard the sounds as he loaded the wheelbarrow with
the sticks of quartered hardwood; the noise of the wheel bumping over
the loose boards as he pushed his load into the furnace-room. She went
back into the parlor and stood over the register. Hollow sounds came up
through the pipe as Old Chris leveled the ashes in the fire-box and
threw in the fresh sticks.
When Old Chris came up from the cellar and went out onto the porch to
draw up fresh water for the night, Abbie went back into the kitchen.
"It's snowin' hard out," said Old Chris.
"Yes," Abbie answered.
She led the way back into the dining-room. Old Chris placed the kitchen
lamp on the stand under the fruit picture and waited. For a few moments
they stood in the blast of hot air rising from the register. Then Abbie
took up the larger of the two lamps. Through the bare, high-ceilinged
rooms she went, opening and closing the heavy doors; on through the
cold, empty hall, up the stairs, into the South bedroom. While she was
closing the blinds she heard Old Chris stumble up the back stairs and
into the chamber he had occupied ever since she could remember.
The night after Old Chris had gone, Abbie took the brass dinner-bell
from the pantry shelf and set it on the chair beside her bed. Over the
back of the chair she placed her heavy, rabbit-lined coat; it would be
handy if any one disturbed her. Once or twice when she heard sounds, she
put out her hand and touched the bell; but the sounds did not recur. The
next night she tried sleeping in the down-stairs bedroom. The
blue-and-gray carpet, the blue fixings on the bureau and commode, the
blue bands around the wash-bowl and pitcher--all faded and
old-looking--reminded her of her mother and father, and would not let
her sleep. On the wall in front of her was a picture in a black frame of
a rowboat filled with people. It was called "From Shore to Shore."
Trying not to see it, her eyes were caught by a black-and-white print in
a gilt frame, called "The First Steps." How she had loved the picture
when she was a little girl; her mother had explained it to her many
times--the bird teaching its little ones to fly; the big, shaggy dog
encouraging its waddling puppies; the mother coaxing her baby to walk
alone.
At midnight Abbie got out of bed, picked up the dinner-bell by the
clapper, and went back up-stairs to the South bedroom.
The tall, bare walls of the big house, the high ceilings with their
centerpieces of plaster fruits and flowers, the cold whiteness, closed
her in. Having no one to talk to, she talked to herself: "It's snowin'
hard out----why! that was what Old Chris said the night before he went
away." She began to be troubled by a queer, detached feeling; she knew
that she had mislaid something, but just what she could not remember.
Forebodings came to her, distressing, disquieting. There would never be
any one for her to speak to--never! The big house grew terrible; the
rooms echoed her steps. She would have given everything for a little
house of two or three small, low-ceilinged rooms close to the sidewalk
on a street where people passed up and down.
A night came when Abbie forgot that Old Chris had gone away. She had
been sitting in her chair beside the marble-topped table, staring out
into the night. All day the wind had blown; snow was piled high around
the porch. Her thoughts had got back to her childhood. Somehow they had
centered around the old grandfather who, years before, had sat in the
same window. She saw him in his chair; heard his raspy old voice, "I
married Jane sixty-eight an' a half years ago, an' a half year in a
man's life is something, I'll bet you. An' I buried her thirty years
ago, an' that's a long time, too. We never tore each other's shirts.
Jane wanted to live a quiet life. She wanted one child, an' she was
tenacious 'bout that. She never wanted any more, an' she had three, an'
one of 'em was your Ma. She never wanted to be seen out with a baby in
her arms, Jane didn't. I made her get bundled up once or twice, an' I
hitched up the horse an' took her ridin' in my phaeton that cost two
hundred dollars.--You'll be in your dotage some day, Abbie. I've been in
my dotage for years now.--Oh, I altered my life to fit Jane's. I
expected I had a wife to go out and see the neighbors with. By gosh! we
never went across the street--I'll take on goodness some day, Abbie. By
goll! that's all I'm good for to take on now.--Oh, it beat all what a
boy I was. I and Mother broke our first team of oxen. When you get
children, Abbie, let them raise themselves up. They'll do better at it
than a poor father or mother can. I had the finest horses and the best
phaeton for miles around, but you never saw a girl a-ridin' by the side
of me.--Some men can't work alone, Abbie. They got to have the women
around or they quit. Don't you get that kind of a man, Abbie.--Oh, she
was renowned was my old mare, Kit. You never got to the end of her. She
lived to be more'n thirty year, an' she raised fourteen colts. She was a
darned good little thing she was. I got her for a big black mare that
weighed fourteen hundred pound, an' I made 'em give me ten dollars, too,
an' I got her colt with her--"
Abbie suddenly realized that she was shivering; that her feet were cold;
that it was long after nine o'clock. Old Chris must have fallen asleep
in his chair. She went to the dining-room door and opened it; the
dining-room was dark. Why?--why, of course! Old Chris had been gone for
more than three weeks. She took hold of the door to steady herself; her
hands shook. How could she have forgotten? Was she going crazy? Would
the loneliness come to that?
Abbie went to bed. All night she lay awake, thinking. The thoughts came
of themselves. What the town had to say didn't matter after all; the
town had paid her no attention for years; it was paying her no attention
now. Why, then, should she live without any one to speak to? "I'll go
and get Old Chris, that's what I'll do. I won't live here alone any
longer." And with this decision she went to sleep.
In the morning when Abbie opened the kitchen door and stepped out onto
the porch, frost lay thick upon the well pump.
She drew her shawl close around her and took hold of the pump-handle
with her mittened hands. When she had filled the pail she went back into
the kitchen. The sound of the wind made her shiver. To walk all the way
to Mile Corners on such a day required green tea, so Abbie drank three
cupfuls. Then, as on the day when she went out to call upon "the Jersey
girls," she carried hot water up-stairs and got out fresh stockings.
About nine o'clock three women of Pastor Lucus's church, standing on the
front steps of Aunt Alphie Newberry's house, saw Abbie struggling
through a drift.
"Why, there's Abbie Snover," said Jennie Chipman.
"She's turnin' down the road to Mile Corners," added Judie Wing.
Aunt Alphie Newberry opened the door to the three women:
"Whatever's the matter to be bringin' you callin' so early?"
"Ain't you heard yet?"
"We come to tell you."
"My! my! my! What can have happened?" Aunt Alphie exclaimed.
"Old Chris died last night--"
"Just after bein' middlin' sick for a day an'--"
"An' they say," Judie Wing interrupted, "that it was 'cause Abbie Snover
turned him out."
* * *
Abbie reached the end of the town sidewalk. Lifting her skirts high, she
waded through the deep snow to the rough-rutted track left by the
farmers' sleighs. Every little while she had to step off the road into
the deep snow to let a bob-sled loaded high with hay or straw pass on
its way into town. Some of the farmers recognized her; they spoke to her
with kindly voices, but she made no answer. Walking was hard; Owen
Frazer's farm was over the hill; there was a steep climb ahead of her.
And besides, Owen Frazer's house was no place for Old Chris. No one knew
anything about Owen Frazer and that woman of his; they hadn't been born
in Almont. How could she have let Old Chris go down there, anyway?
"Whoa up! Hey! Better climb in, Abbie, an' ride with me. This ain't no
day for walkin'. Get up here on the seat. I'll come down an' help you."
Abbie looked up at Undertaker Hopkins. In the box of his funeral wagon
was a black coffin with a sprinkling of snow on its top. Abbie shook her
head, but did not speak.
"Guess I shouldn't have asked you," Undertaker Hopkins apologized.
"Sorry! Get along as fast as you can, Abbie. It's gettin' mighty,
all-fired cold. It'll be a little sheltered when you get over the hill."
Undertaker Hopkins drove on. Abbie tried to keep her feet in the fresh
track made by the runners. She reached the top of the hill. Owen
Frazer's red barn stood up above the snow. Undertaker Hopkins and his
funeral wagon had disappeared.
"He must have turned down the Mill Road," Abbie muttered.
She reached the gate in front of the low, one-story farmhouse. A
shepherd dog barked as she went up the path. She rapped at the front
door. A woman appeared at the window and pointed to the side of the
house. Abbie's face expressed surprise and resentment. She backed down
the steps and made her way to the back door. The woman, Owen Frazer's
wife, let her into the kitchen.
"Owen! Here be Abbie Snover!"
Owen Frazer came in from the front of the house.
"Good day! Didn't expect you here. Pretty cold out, ain't it? Have a
chair."
Abbie did not realize how numb the cold had made her body until she
tried to sit down.
"Maggie, give her a cup of that hot tea," Owen Frazer continued. "She's
been almost froze, an' I guess she'll have a cup of tea. Hey! Miss
Snover?"
"I want to talk to Old Chris."
"Talk to Old Chris! Talk to Old Chris, you want to?"
Owen Frazer looked at his wife. Abbie Snover didn't know, yet she had
walked all the way to Mile Corners in the cold. He couldn't understand
it.
"What'd you come for, anyhow, Abbie Snover?"
"Now, Owen, you wait!" Owen Frazer's wife turned to Abbie:
"Got lonesome, did you, all by yourself in that big barn of a house?"
"I want to talk to Old Chris," Abbie repeated.
"Was you so fond of him, then?"
Abbie made no answer. Owen Frazer went over to the sink and looked out
of the window at the bed-tick smoldering on the rubbish heap. Owen
Frazer's wife pushed open the door of the sitting-room, then stood back
and turned to Abbie:
"You may be fine old family, Abbie Snover, but we're better. You turned
Old Chris out, an' now you want to talk to him. All right, talk to him
if you want to. He's in the parlor. Go on in now. Talk to him if you
want to--go on in!"
The animosity in Mrs. Frazer's voice shook Abbie; she was disturbed;
doubt came to her for the first time. As she went through the
sitting-room, fear slowed her steps. Perhaps they had turned Old Chris
away from her and she would have to go back alone, to live alone, for
all the remaining years of her life, in that big house.
BOYS WILL BE BOYS[6]
[Note 6: Copyright, 1917, by The Curtis Publishing Company.
Copyright, 1918, by Irvin S. Cobb.]
BY IRVIN S. COBB
From _The Saturday Evening Post_
When Judge Priest, on this particular morning, came puffing into his
chambers at the courthouse, looking, with his broad beam and in his
costume of flappy, loose white ducks, a good deal like an old-fashioned
full-rigger with all sails set, his black shadow, Jeff Poindexter, had
already finished the job of putting the quarters to rights for the day.
The cedar water bucket had been properly replenished; the jagged flange
of a fifteen-cent chunk of ice protruded above the rim of the bucket;
and alongside, on the appointed nail, hung the gourd dipper that the
master always used. The floor had been swept, except, of course, in the
corners and underneath things; there were evidences, in streaky scrolls
of fine grit particles upon various flat surfaces, that a dusting brush
had been more or less sparingly employed. A spray of trumpet flowers,
plucked from the vine that grew outside the window, had been draped over
the framed steel engraving of President Davis and his Cabinet upon the
wall; and on the top of the big square desk in the middle of the room,
where a small section of cleared green-blotter space formed an oasis in
a dry and arid desert of cluttered law journals and dusty documents, the
morning's mail rested in a little heap.
Having placed his old cotton umbrella in a corner, having removed his
coat and hung it upon a peg behind the hall door, and having seen to it
that a palm-leaf fan was in arm's reach should he require it, the
Judge, in his billowy white shirt, sat down at his desk and gave his
attention to his letters. There was an invitation from the Hylan B.
Gracey Camp of Confederate Veterans of Eddyburg, asking him to deliver
the chief oration at the annual reunion, to be held at Mineral Springs
on the twelfth day of the following month; an official notice from the
clerk of the Court of Appeals concerning the affirmation of a judgment
that had been handed down by Judge Priest at the preceding term of his
own court; a bill for five pounds of a special brand of smoking tobacco;
a notice of a lodge meeting--altogether quite a sizable batch of mail.
At the bottom of the pile he came upon a long envelope addressed to him
by his title, instead of by his name, and bearing on its upper
right-hand corner several foreign-looking stamps; they were British
stamps, he saw, on closer examination.
To the best of his recollection it had been a good long time since Judge
Priest had had a communication by post from overseas. He adjusted his
steel-bowed spectacles, ripped the wrapper with care and shook out the
contents. There appeared to be several inclosures; in fact, there were
several--a sheaf of printed forms, a document with seals attached, and a
letter that covered two sheets of paper with typewritten lines. To the
letter the recipient gave consideration first. Before he reached the end
of the opening paragraph he uttered a profound grunt of surprise; his
reading of the rest was frequently punctuated by small exclamations, his
face meantime puckering up in interested lines. At the conclusion, when
he came to the signature, he indulged himself in a soft low whistle. He
read the letter all through again, and after that he examined the forms
and the document which had accompanied it.
Chuckling under his breath, he wriggled himself free from the snug
embrace of his chair arms and waddled out of his own office and down the
long bare empty hall to the office of Sheriff Giles Birdsong. Within,
that competent functionary, Deputy Sheriff Breck Quarles, sat at ease in
his shirt sleeves, engaged, with the smaller blade of his pocketknife,
in performing upon his finger nails an operation that combined the fine
deftness of the manicure with the less delicate art of the farrier. At
the sight of the Judge in the open doorway he hastily withdrew from a
tabletop, where they rested, a pair of long thin legs, and rose.
"Mornin', Breck," said Judge Priest to the other's salutation. "No,
thank you, son. I won't come in; but I've got a little job for you. I
wisht, ef you ain't too busy, that you'd step down the street and see ef
you can't find Peep O'Day fur me and fetch him back here with you. It
won't take you long, will it?"
"No, suh--not very." Mr. Quarles reached for his hat and snuggled his
shoulder holster back inside his unbuttoned waistcoat. "He'll most
likely be down round Gafford's stable. Whut's Old Peep been doin',
Judge--gettin' himself in contempt of court or somethin'?" He grinned,
asking the question with the air of one making a little joke.
"No," vouchsafed the Judge; "he ain't done nothin'. But he's about to
have somethin' of a highly onusual nature done to him. You jest tell him
I'm wishful to see him right away--that'll be sufficient, I reckin."
Without making further explanation, Judge Priest returned to his
chambers and for the third time read the letter from foreign parts.
Court was not in session, and the hour was early and the weather was
hot; nobody interrupted him. Perhaps fifteen minutes passed. Mr. Quarles
poked his head in at the door.
"I found him, suh," the deputy stated. "He's outside here in the hall."
"Much obliged to you, son," said Judge Priest. "Send him on in, will
you, please?"
The head was withdrawn; its owner lingered out of sight of His Honor,
but within earshot. It was hard to figure the presiding judge of the
First Judicial District of the State of Kentucky as having business with
Peep O'Day; and, though Mr. Quarles was no eavesdropper, still he felt a
pardonable curiosity in whatsoever might transpire. As he feigned an
absorbed interest in a tax notice, which was pasted on a blackboard just
outside the office door, there entered the presence of the Judge a man
who seemingly was but a few years younger than the Judge himself--a man
who looked to be somewhere between sixty-five and seventy. There is a
look that you may have seen in the eyes of ownerless but
well-intentioned dogs--dogs that, expecting kicks as their daily
portion, are humbly grateful for kind words and stray bones; dogs that
are fairly yearning to be adopted by somebody--by anybody--being
prepared to give to such a benefactor a most faithful doglike devotion
in return.
This look, which is fairly common among masterless and homeless dogs, is
rare among humans; still, once in a while you do find it there too. The
man who now timidly shuffled himself across the threshold of Judge
Priest's office had such a look out of his eyes. He had a long simple
face, partly inclosed in gray whiskers. Four dollars would have been a
sufficient price to pay for the garments he stood in, including the
wrecked hat he held in his hands and the broken, misshaped shoes on his
feet. A purchaser who gave more than four dollars for the whole in its
present state of decrepitude would have been but a poor hand at
bargaining.
The man who wore this outfit coughed in an embarrassed fashion and
halted, fumbling his ruinous hat in his hands.
"Howdy do?" said Judge Priest heartily. "Come in!"
The other diffidently advanced himself a yard or two.
"Excuse me, suh," he said apologetically; "but this here Breck Quarles
he come after me and he said ez how you wanted to see me. 'Twas him ez
brung me here, suh."
Faintly underlying the drawl of the speaker was just a suspicion--a mere
trace, as you might say--of a labial softness that belongs solely and
exclusively to the children, and in a diminishing degree to the
grandchildren, of native-born sons and daughters of a certain small
green isle in the sea. It was not so much a suggestion of a brogue as it
was the suggestion of the ghost of a brogue; a brogue almost
extinguished, almost obliterated, and yet persisting through the
generations--South of Ireland struggling beneath south of Mason and
Dixon's Line.
"Yes," said the Judge; "that's right. I do want to see you." The tone
was one that he might employ in addressing a bashful child. "Set down
there and make yourself at home."
The newcomer obeyed to the extent of perching himself on the extreme
forward edge of a chair. His feet shuffled uneasily where they were
drawn up against the cross rung of the chair.
The Judge reared well back, studying his visitor over the tops of his
glasses with rather a quizzical look. In one hand he balanced the large
envelope which had come to him that morning.
"Seems to me I heared somewheres, years back, that your regular
Christian name was Paul--is that right?" he asked.
"Shorely is, suh," assented the ragged man, surprised and plainly
grateful that one holding a supremely high position in the community
should vouchsafe to remember a fact relating to so inconsequent an atom
as himself. "But I ain't heared it fur so long I come mighty nigh
furgittin' it sometimes, myself. You see, Judge Priest, when I wasn't
nothin' but jest a shaver folks started in to callin' me Peep--on
account of my last name bein O'Day, I reckin. They been callin' me so
ever since. Fust off, 'twas Little Peep, and then jest plain Peep; and
now it's got to be Old Peep. But my real entitled name is Paul, jest
like you said, Judge--Paul Felix O'Day."
"Uh-huh! And wasn't your father's name Philip and your mother's name
Katherine Dwyer O'Day?"
"To the best of my recollection that's partly so, too, suh. They both of
'em up and died when I was a baby, long before I could remember anything
a-tall. But they always told me my paw's name was Phil, or Philip. Only
my maw's name wasn't Kath--Kath--wasn't whut you jest now called it,
Judge. It was plain Kate."
"Kate or Katherine--it makes no great difference," explained Judge
Priest. "I reckin the record is straight this fur. And now think hard
and see ef you kin ever remember hearin' of an uncle named Daniel
O'Day--your father's brother."
The answer was a shake of the tousled head.
"I don't know nothin' about my people. I only jest know they come over
frum some place with a funny name in the Old Country before I was born.
The onliest kin I ever had over here was that there no-'count triflin'
nephew of mine--Perce Dwyer--him that uster hang round this town. I
reckin you call him to mind, Judge?"
The old Judge nodded before continuing:
"All the same, I reckin there ain't no manner of doubt but whut you had
an uncle of the name of Daniel. All the evidences would seem to p'int
that way. Accordin' to the proofs, this here Uncle Daniel of yours lived
in a little town called Kilmare, in Ireland." He glanced at one of the
papers that lay on his desktop; then added in a casual tone: "Tell me,
Peep, whut are you doin' now fur a livin'?"
The object of this examination grinned a faint grin of extenuation.
"Well, suh, I'm knockin' about, doin' the best I kin--which ain't much.
I help out round Gafford's liver' stable, and Pete Gafford he lets me
sleep in a little room behind the feed room, and his wife she gives me
my vittles. Oncet in a while I git a chancet to do odd jobs fur folks
round town--cuttin' weeds and splittin' stove wood and packin' in coal,
and sech ez that."
"Not much money in it, is there?"
"No, suh; not much. Folks is more prone to offer me old clothes than
they are to pay me in cash. Still, I manage to git along. I don't live
very fancy; but, then, I don't starve, and that's more'n some kin say."
"Peep, whut was the most money you ever had in your life--at one time?"
Peep scratched with a freckled hand at his thatch of faded whitish hair
to stimulate recollection.
"I reckin not more'n six bits at any one time, suh. Seems like I've
sorter got the knack of livin' without money."
"Well, Peep, sech bein' the case, whut would you say ef I was to tell
you that you're a rich man?"
The answer came slowly:
"I reckin, suh, ef it didn't sound disrespectful, I'd say you was
prankin' with me--makin' fun of me, suh."
Judge Priest bent forward in his chair.
"I'm not prankin' with you. It's my pleasant duty to inform you that at
this moment you are the rightful owner of eight thousand pounds."
"Pounds of whut, Judge?" The tone expressed a heavy incredulity.
"Why, pounds in money."
Outside, in the hall, with one ear held conveniently near the crack in
the door, Deputy Sheriff Quarles gave a violent start; and then, at
once, was torn between a desire to stay and hear more and an urge to
hurry forth and spread the unbelievable tidings. After the briefest of
struggles the latter inclination won; this news was too marvelously good
to keep; surely a harbinger and a herald were needed to spread it
broadcast.
Mr. Quarles tiptoed rapidly down the hall. When he reached the sidewalk
the volunteer bearer of a miraculous tale fairly ran. As for the man who
sat facing the Judge, he merely stared in a dull bewilderment.
"Judge," he said at length, "eight thousand pounds of money oughter make
a powerful big pile, oughten it?"
"It wouldn't weigh quite that much ef you put it on the scales,"
explained His Honor painstakingly. "I mean pounds sterlin'--English
money. Near ez I kin figger offhand, it comes in our money to somewheres
between thirty-five and forty thousand dollars--nearer forty than
thirty-five. And it's yours, Peep--every red cent of it."
"Excuse me, suh, and not meanin' to contradict you, or nothin' like
that; but I reckin there must be some mistake. Why, Judge, I don't
scursely know anybody that's ez wealthy ez all that, let alone anybody
that'd give me sech a lot of money."
"Listen, Peep: This here letter I'm holdin' in my hand came to me by
to-day's mail--jest a little spell ago. It's frum Ireland--frum the town
of Kilmare, where your people came frum. It was sent to me by a firm of
barristers in that town--lawyers we'd call 'em. In this letter they ask
me to find you and to tell you what's happened. It seems, from whut they
write, that your uncle, by name Daniel O'Day, died not very long ago
without issue--that is to say, without leavin' any children of his own,
and without makin' any will.
"It appears he had eight thousand pounds saved up. Ever since he died
those lawyers
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