The best short stories of 1920, and the yearbook of the American short story
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Title: The best short stories of 1920, and the yearbook of the American short story
Editor: Edward J. O'Brien
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THE
BEST SHORT STORIES
OF 1920
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"
"THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1917"
"THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1918"
"THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1919"
"THE GREAT MODERN ENGLISH STORIES," ETC.
[Illustration]
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1919, by Charles Scribner's Sons, The Pictorial Review
Company, The Curtis Publishing Company, and Harper & Brothers.
Copyright, 1920, by The Boston Transcript Company.
Copyright, 1920, by Margaret C, Anderson, Harper & Brothers, The Dial
Publishing Company, Inc., The Metropolitan Magazine Company, John T.
Frederick, P. F. Collier & Son, Inc., Charles Scribner's Sons, The
International Magazine Company, and The Pictorial Review Company.
Copyright, 1921, by Sherwood Anderson, Edwina Stanton Babcock, Konrad
Bercovici, Edna Clare Bryner, Charles Wadsworth Camp, Helen Coale Crew,
Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Lee Foster Hartman, Rupert Hughes, Grace
Sartwell Mason, James Oppenheim, Arthur Somers Roche, Rose Sidney, Fleta
Campbell Springer, Wilbur Daniel Steele, Ethel Dodd Thomas, John T.
Wheelwright, Stephen French Whitman, Ben Ames Williams, and Frances
Gilchrist Wood.
Copyright, 1921, by Small, Maynard & Company, Inc.
TO
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
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, and
publishers:
To Miss Margaret C. Anderson, the Editor of _Harper's Magazine_, the
Editor of _The Dial_, the Editor of _The Metropolitan_, Mr. John T.
Frederick, the Editor of _Scribner's Magazine_, the Editor of _Collier's
Weekly_, the Editor of _The Cosmopolitan Magazine_, the Editor of _The
Pictorial Review_, the _Curtis Publishing Company_, Mr. Sherwood
Anderson, Miss Edwina Stanton Babcock, Mr. Konrad Bercovici, Miss Edna
Clare Bryner, Mr. Wadsworth Camp, Mrs. Helen Coale Crew, Mrs. Katharine
Fullerton Gerould, Mr. Lee Foster Hartman, Major Rupert Hughes, Mrs.
Grace Sartwell Mason, Mr. James Oppenheim, Mr. Arthur Somers Roche, Mrs.
Rose Sidney, Mrs. Fleta Campbell Springer, Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele,
Mrs. A. E. Thomas, Mr. John T. Wheelwright, Mr. Stephen French Whitman,
Mr. Ben Ames Williams, and Mrs. Frances Gilchrist Wood.
Acknowledgments are specially due to _The Boston Evening Transcript_ for
permission to reprint the large body of material previously published in
its pages.
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 printed during the period between October, 1920
and September, 1921 inclusive, which have qualities of distinction, and
yet are not printed in periodicals falling under my regular notice. Such
communications may be addressed to me at _Forest Hill, Oxfordshire,
England_.
E. J. O.
CONTENTS[1]
PAGE
#Introduction.# By the Editor xiii
#The Other Woman.# By Sherwood Anderson 3
(From _The Little Review_)
#Gargoyle.# By Edwina Stanton Babcock 12
(From _Harper's Magazine_)
#Ghitza.# By Konrad Bercovici 36
(From _The Dial_)
#The Life of Five Points.# By Edna Clare Bryner 49
(From _The Dial_)
#The Signal Tower.# By Wadsworth Camp 66
(From _The Metropolitan_)
#The Parting Genius.# By Helen Coale Crew 83
(From _The Midland_)
#Habakkuk.# By Katharine Fullerton Gerould 90
(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
#The Judgment of Vulcan.# By Lee Foster Hartman 116
(From _Harper's Magazine_)
#The Stick-in-the-Muds.# By Rupert Hughes 148
(From _Collier's Weekly_)
#His Job.# By Grace Sartwell Mason 169
(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
#The Rending.# By James Oppenheim 187
(From _The Dial_)
#The Dummy-Chucker.# By Arthur Somers Roche 198
(From _The Cosmopolitan_)
#Butterflies.# By Rose Sidney 214
(From _The Pictorial Review_)
#The Rotter.# By Fleta Campbell Springer 236
(From _Harper's Magazine_)
#Out of Exile.# By Wilbur Daniel Steele 266
(From _The Pictorial Review_)
#The Three Telegrams.# By Ethel Storm 293
(From _The Ladies' Home Journal_)
#The Roman Bath.# By John T. Wheelwright 312
(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
#Amazement.# By Stephen French Whitman 320
(From _Harper's Magazine_)
#Sheener.# By Ben Ames Williams 348
(From _Collier's Weekly_)
#Turkey Red.# By Frances Gilchrist Wood 359
(From _The Pictorial Review_)
#The Yearbook of the American Short Story,
October, 1919, To September, 1920# 375
Addresses of American Magazines Publishing
Short Stories 377
The Bibliographical Roll of Honor of American
Short Stories 379
The Roll of Honor of Foreign Short Stories in
American Magazines 390
The Best Books of Short Stories of 1920: A
Critical Summary 392
Volumes of Short Stories Published, October,
1919, to September, 1920: A Index 414
Articles on the Short Stories: An Index 421
Index of Short Stories in Books, November,
1918, to September, 1920 434
Index of Short Stories Published in American
Magazines, October, 1919, to September, 1920 456
FOOTNOTE:
[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
I suppose there is no one of us who can honestly deny that he is
interested in one way or another in the American short story. Indeed, it
is hard to find a man anywhere who does not enjoy telling a good story.
But there are some people born with the gift of telling a good story
better than others, and of telling it in such a way that a great many
people can enjoy its flavor. Most of you are acquainted with some one
who is a gifted story-teller, provided that he has an audience of not
more than one or two people. And if you chance to live in the same house
with such a man, I think you will find that, no matter how good his
story may have been when you first heard it, it tends to lose its savor
after he has become thoroughly accustomed to telling it and has added it
to his private repertory.
A writer of good stories is really a man who risks telling the same
story to many thousand people. Did you ever take such a risk? Did you
ever start to tell a story to a stranger, and try to make your point
without knowing what sort of a man he was? If you did, what was your
experience? You decided, didn't you, that story-telling was an art, and
you wondered perhaps if you were ever going to learn it.
The American story-teller in the magazines is in very much the same
position, except that we have much more patience with him. Usually he is
a man who has told his story a good many times before. The first time he
told it we clapped him on the back, as he deserved perhaps, and said
that he was a good fellow. His publishers said so too. And it _was_ a
good story that he told. The trouble was that we wanted to hear it
again, and we paid him too well to repeat it. But just as your story
became rather less interesting the twenty-third time you told it, so
the stories I have been reading more often than not have made a similar
impression upon me. I find myself begging the author to think up another
story.
Of course, you have not felt obliged to read so many stories, and I
cannot advise you to do so. But it has made it possible for me to see in
some sort of perspective, just where the American short story is going
as well as what it has already achieved. It has made me see how American
writers are weakening their substance by too frequent repetition, and it
has helped me to fix the blame where it really lies.
Now this is a matter of considerable importance. One of the things we
should be most anxious to learn is the psychology of the American
reader. We want to know how he reacts to what he reads in the magazine,
whether it is a short story, an article, or an advertisement. We want to
know, for example, what holds the interest of a reader of the _Atlantic
Monthly_, and what holds the interest of the reader of the _Ladies' Home
Journal_.
It is my belief that the difference between these various types of
readers is pretty largely an artificial difference, in so far as it
affects the quality of entertainment and imaginative interest that the
short story has to offer. Of course, there are exceptional cases, and I
have some of these in mind, but for the most part I can perceive no
essential difference between the best stories in the _Saturday Evening
Post_ and the best stories in _Harper's Magazine_ for example. The
difference that every one feels, and that exists, is one of emphasis
rather than of type. It is a difference which is shown by averages
rather than one which affects the best stories in either magazine. Human
nature is the same everywhere, and when an artist interprets it
sympathetically, the reader will respond to his feeling wherever he
finds it.
It has been my experience that the reader is likely to find this warmly
sympathetic interpretation of human nature, its pleasures and its
sorrows, its humor and its tragedy, most often in the American magazines
that talk least about their own merit. We are all familiar with the
sort of magazine that contents itself with saying day in and day out
ceaselessly and noisily: "The _Planet Magazine_ is the greatest magazine
in the universe. The greatest literary artists and the world's greatest
illustrators contribute to our pages." And it stops there. It has
repeated this claim so often that it has come to believe it. Such a
magazine is the great literary ostrich. It hides by burying its eyes in
the sand.
It is an axiom of human nature that the greatest men do not find it
necessary or possible to talk about their own greatness. They are so
busy that they have never had much time to think about it. And so it is
with the best magazines, and with the best short stories. The man who
wrote what I regard as the best short story published in 1915 was the
most surprised man in Brooklyn when I told him so.
The truth of the matter is that we are changing very rapidly, and that a
new national sense in literature is accompanying that change. There was
a time, and in fact it is only now drawing to a close, when the short
story was exploited by interested moneymakers who made such a loud noise
that you could hear nothing else without great difficulty. The most
successful of these noisemakers are still shouting, but their heart is
in it no longer. The editor of one of the largest magazines in the
country said to me not long ago that he found the greatest difficulty
now in procuring short stories by writers for whom his magazine had
trained the public to clamor. The immediate reason which he ascribed for
this state of affairs was that the commercial rewards offered to these
writers by the moving picture companies were so great, and the
difference in time and labor between writing scenarios and developing
finished stories was so marked, that authors were choosing the more
attractive method of earning money. The excessive commercialisation of
literature in the past decade is now turned against the very magazines
which fostered it. The magazines which bought and sold fiction like soap
are beginning to repent of it all. They have killed the goose that laid
the golden eggs.
This fight for sincerity in the short story is a fight that is worth
making. It is at the heart of all that for which I am striving. The
quiet sincere man who has something to tell you should not be talked
down by the noisemakers. He should have his hearing. He is real. And we
need him.
That is why I have set myself the annual task of reading so many short
stories. I am looking for the man and woman with something to say,--who
cares very much indeed about how he says it. I am looking for the man
and woman with some sort of a dream, the man or woman who sees just a
little bit more in the pedlar he passes on the street than you or I do,
and who wishes to devote his life to telling us about it. I want to be
told my own story too, so that I can see myself as other people see me.
And I want to feel that the storyteller who talks to me about these
things is as much in earnest as a sincere clergyman, an unselfish
physician, or an idealistic lawyer. I want to feel that he belongs to a
profession that is a sort of priesthood, and not that he is holding down
a job or running a bucket shop.
I have found this writer with a message in almost every magazine I have
studied during the year. He is just as much in earnest in _Collier's
Weekly_ as he is in _Scribner's Magazine_. I do not find him often, but
he is there somewhere. And he is the only man for whom it is worth our
while to watch. I feel that it is none of my business whether I like and
agree with what he has to say or not. All that I am looking for is to
see whether he means what he says and makes it as real as he can to me.
I accept his substance at his own valuation, but I want to know what he
makes of it.
Each race that forms part of the substance in our great melting pot is
bringing the richest of its traditions to add to our children's
heritage. That is a wonderful thing to think about. Here, for example,
is a young Jewish writer, telling in obscurity the stories of his people
with all the art of the great Russian masters. And Irishmen are bringing
to us the best of their heritage, and men and women of many other races
contribute to form the first national literature the world has ever seen
which is not based on a single racial feeling. Why are we not more
curious about the ragman's story and that of the bootblack and the man
who keeps the fruit store? Don't you suppose life is doing things to the
boy in the coat-room as interesting as anything in all the romances?
Isn't life changing us in the most extraordinary ways, and do we not
wish to know in what manner we are to meet and adapt ourselves to these
changes? There is a humble writer in an attic up there who knows all
about it, if you care to listen to him. The trouble is that he is so
much interested in talking about life that he forgets to talk about
himself, and we are too lazy to listen to any one who forgets to blow
his own trumpet. But the magazines are beginning to look for him, and,
wonderful to say, they are beginning to find him, and to discover that
he is more interesting and humanly popular than the professional chef
who may be always depended upon to cook his single dish in the same old
way, but who has never had time to learn anything else.
Now what is the essential point of all that I have been trying to say?
It is simply this. If we are going to do anything as a nation, we must
be honest with ourselves and with everybody else. If we are story
writers or story readers, and practically every one is either one or the
other in these days, we must come to grips with life in the fiction we
write or read. Sloppy sentimentality and slapstick farce ought to bore
us frightfully, especially if we have any sense of humor. Life is too
real to go to sleep over it.
To repeat what I have said in these pages in previous years, 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
formulæ, and organised 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.
The present record covers the period from October, 1919, to September,
1920, inclusive. During this period, I have sought to select from the
stories published in American magazines those which have rendered life
imaginatively in organic substance and artistic 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 attain 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 conveniently called the test of
substance.
But a second test is necessary if the story is to take 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 materials, 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
yearbook 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 yearbook 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 yearbook 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 five novels of
average length. My selection of them does not imply the critical belief
that they are great stories. A year which produced one great story would
be an exceptional one. It is simply to be taken as meaning that I have
found the equivalent of five volumes worthy of republication among all
the stories published during the period under consideration. These
stories are indicated in the yearbook index by three asterisks prefixed
to the title, and are listed in the special "Roll of Honor." In
compiling these lists, I have permitted no personal preference or
prejudice to consciously influence my judgment. To the titles of certain
stories, however, in the "Rolls of Honor," an asterisk is prefixed, and
this asterisk, I must confess, reveals in some measure a personal
preference, for which, perhaps, I may be indulged. 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.
As in past years it has been my pleasure and honor to associate this
annual with the names of Benjamin Rosenblatt, Richard Matthews Hallet,
Wilbur Daniel Steele, Arthur Johnson, and Anzia Yezierska, so it is my
wish to dedicate this year the best that I have found in the American
magazines as the fruit of my labors to Sherwood Anderson, whose stories,
"The Door of the Trap," "I Want to Know Why," "The Other Woman," and
"The Triumph of the Egg" seem to me to be among the finest imaginative
contributions to the short story made by an American artist during the
past year.
#Edward J. O'Brien.#
#Forest Hill, Oxon, England,#
November 8, 1920.
THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1920
#Note.#--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.
THE OTHER WOMAN[2]
BY SHERWOOD ANDERSON
From _The Little Review_
"I am in love with my wife," he said--a superfluous remark, as I had not
questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten
minutes and then he said it again. I turned to look at him. He began to
talk and told me the tale I am now about to set down.
The thing he had on his mind happened during what must have been the
most eventful week of his life. He was to be married on Friday
afternoon. On Friday of the week before he got a telegram announcing his
appointment to a government position. Something else happened that made
him very proud and glad. In secret he was in the habit of writing verses
and during the year before several of them had been printed in poetry
magazines. One of the societies that give prizes for what they think the
best poems published during the year put his name at the head of their
list. The story of his triumph was printed in the newspapers of his home
city, and one of them also printed his picture.
As might have been expected, he was excited and in a rather highly
strung nervous state all during that week. Almost every evening he went
to call on his fiancée, the daughter of a judge. When he got there the
house was filled with people and many letters, telegrams and packages
were being received. He stood a little to one side and men and women
kept coming to speak with him. They congratulated him upon his success
in getting the government position and on his achievement as a poet.
Everyone seemed to be praising him, and when he went home to bed he
could not sleep. On Wednesday evening he went to the theatre and it
seemed to him that people all over the house recognized him. Everyone
nodded and smiled. After the first act five or six men and two women
left their seats to gather about him. A little group was formed.
Strangers sitting along the same row of seats stretched their necks and
looked. He had never received so much attention before, and now a fever
of expectancy took possession of him.
As he explained when he told me of his experience, it was for him an
altogether abnormal time. He felt like one floating in air. When he got
into bed after seeing so many people and hearing so many words of praise
his head whirled round and round. When he closed his eyes a crowd of
people invaded his room. It seemed as though the minds of all the people
of his city were centered on himself. The most absurd fancies took
possession of him. He imagined himself riding in a carriage through the
streets of a city. Windows were thrown open and people ran out at the
doors of houses. "There he is. That's him," they shouted, and at the
words a glad cry arose. The carriage drove into a street blocked with
people. A hundred thousand pairs of eyes looked up at him. "There you
are! What a fellow you have managed to make of yourself!" the eyes
seemed to be saying.
My friend could not explain whether the excitement of the people was due
to the fact that he had written a new poem or whether, in his new
government position, he had performed some notable act. The apartment
where he lived at that time was on a street perched along the top of a
cliff far out at the edge of the city and from his bedroom window he
could look down over trees and factory roofs to a river. As he could not
sleep and as the fancies that kept crowding in upon him only made him
more excited, he got out of bed and tried to think.
As would be natural under such circumstances, he tried to control his
thoughts, but when he sat by the window and was wide awake a most
unexpected and humiliating thing happened. The night was clear and fine.
There was a moon. He wanted to dream of the woman who was to be his
wife, think out lines for noble poems or make plans that would affect
his career. Much to his surprise his mind refused to do anything of the
sort.
At a corner of the street where he lived there was a small cigar store
and newspaper stand run by a fat man of forty and his wife, a small
active woman with bright grey eyes. In the morning he stopped there to
buy a paper before going down to the city. Sometimes he saw only the fat
man, but often the man had disappeared and the woman waited on him. She
was, as he assured me at least twenty times in telling me his tale, a
very ordinary person with nothing special or notable about her, but for
some reason he could not explain being in her presence stirred him
profoundly. During that week in the midst of his distraction she was the
only person he knew who stood out clear and distinct in his mind. When
he wanted so much to think noble thoughts, he could think only of her.
Before he knew what was happening his imagination had taken hold of the
notion of having a love affair with the woman.
"I could not understand myself," he declared, in telling me the story.
"At night, when the city was quiet and when I should have been asleep, I
thought about her all the time. After two or three days of that sort of
thing the consciousness of her got into my daytime thoughts. I was
terribly muddled. When I went to see the woman who is now my wife I
found that my love for her was in no way affected by my vagrant
thoughts. There was but one woman in the world I wanted to live with me
and to be my comrade in undertaking to improve my own character and my
position in the world, but for the moment, you see, I wanted this other
woman to be in my arms. She had worked her way into my being. On all
sides people were saying I was a big man who would do big things, and
there I was. That evening when I went to the theatre I walked home
because I knew I would be unable to sleep, and to satisfy the annoying
impulse in myself I went and stood on the sidewalk before the tobacco
shop. It was a two story building, and I knew the woman lived upstairs
with her husband. For a long time I stood in the darkness with my body
pressed against the wall of the building and then I thought of the two
of them up there, no doubt in bed together. That made me furious.
"Then I grew more furious at myself. I went home and got into bed shaken
with anger. There are certain books of verse and some prose writings
that have always moved me deeply, and so I put several books on a table
by my bed.
"The voices in the books were like the voices of the dead. I did not
hear them. The words printed on the lines would not penetrate into my
consciousness. I tried to think of the woman I loved, but her figure had
also become something far away, something with which I for the moment
seemed to have nothing to do. I rolled and tumbled about in the bed. It
was a miserable experience.
"On Thursday morning I went into the store. There stood the woman alone.
I think she knew how I felt. Perhaps she had been thinking of me as I
had been thinking of her. A doubtful hesitating smile played about the
corners of her mouth. She had on a dress made of cheap cloth, and there
was a tear on the shoulder. She must have been ten years older than
myself. When I tried to put my pennies on the glass counter behind which
she stood my hand trembled so that the pennies made a sharp rattling
noise. When I spoke the voice that came out of my throat did not sound
like anything that had ever belonged to me. It barely arose above a
thick whisper. 'I want you,' I said. 'I want you very much. Can't you
run away from your husband? Come to me at my apartment at seven
to-night.'
"The woman did come to my apartment at seven. That morning she did not
say anything at all. For a minute perhaps we stood looking at each
other. I had forgotten everything in the world but just her. Then she
nodded her head and I went away. Now that I think of it I cannot
remember a word I ever heard her say. She came to my apartment at seven
and it was dark. You must understand this was in the month of October. I
had not lighted a light and I had sent my servant away.
"During that day I was no good at all. Several men came to see me at my
office, but I got all muddled up in trying to talk with them. They
attributed my rattle-headedness to my approaching marriage and went away
laughing.
"It was on that morning, just the day before my marriage, that I got a
long and very beautiful letter from my fiancée. During the night before
she also had been unable to sleep and had got out of bed to write the
letter. Everything she said in it was very sharp and real, but she
herself, as a living thing, seemed to have receded into the distance. It
seemed to me that she was like a bird, flying far away in distant skies,
and I was like a perplexed bare-footed boy standing in the dusty road
before a farm house and looking at her receding figure. I wonder if you
will understand what I mean?
"In regard to the letter. In it she, the awakening woman, poured out her
heart. She of course knew nothing of life, but she was a woman. She lay,
I suppose, in her bed feeling nervous and wrought up as I had been
doing. She realized that a great change was about to take place in her
life and was glad and afraid too. There she lay thinking of it all. Then
she got out of bed and began talking to me on the bit of paper. She told
me how afraid she was and how glad too. Like most young women she had
heard things whispered. In the letter she was very sweet and fine. 'For
a long time, after we are married, we will forget we are a man and
woman,' she wrote. 'We will be human beings. You must remember that I am
ignorant and often I will be very stupid. You must love me and be very
patient and kind. When I know more, when after a long time you have
taught me the way of life, I will try to repay you. I will love you
tenderly and passionately. The possibility of that is in me, or I would
not want to marry at all. I am afraid but I am also happy. O, I am so
glad our marriage time is near at hand.'
"Now you see clearly enough into what a mess I had got. In my office,
after I read my fiancée's letter, I became at once very resolute and
strong. I remember that I got out of my chair and walked about, proud of
the fact that I was to be the husband of so noble a woman. Right away I
felt concerning her as I had been feeling, about myself before I found
out what a weak thing I was. To be sure I took a strong resolution that
I would not be weak. At nine that evening I had planned to run in to see
my fiancée. 'I'm all right now,' I said to myself. 'The beauty of her
character has saved me from myself. I will go home now and send the
other woman away.' In the morning I had telephoned to my servant and
told him that I did not want him to be at the apartment that evening and
I now picked up the telephone to tell him to stay at home.
"Then a thought came to me. 'I will not want him there in any event,' I
told myself. 'What will he think when he sees a woman coming to my place
on the evening before the day I am to be married?' I put the telephone
down and prepared to go home. 'If I want my servant out of the apartment
it is because I do not want him to hear me talk with the woman. I cannot
be rude to her. I will have to make some kind of an explanation,' I said
to myself.
"The woman came at seven o'clock, and, as you may have guessed, I let
her in and forgot the resolution I had made. It is likely I never had
any intention of doing anything else. There was a bell on my door, but
she did not ring, but knocked very softly. It seems to me that
everything she did that evening was soft and quiet but very determined
and quick. Do I make myself clear? When she came I was standing just
within the door, where I had been standing and waiting for a half hour.
My hands were trembling as they had trembled in the morning when her
eyes looked at me and when I tried to put the pennies on the counter in
the store. When I opened the door she stepped quickly in and I took her
into my arms. We stood together in the darkness. My hands no longer
trembled. I felt very happy and strong.
"Although I have tried to make everything clear I have not told you what
the woman I married is like. I have emphasized, you see, the other
woman. I make the blind statement that I love my wife, and to a man of
your shrewdness that means nothing at all. To tell the truth, had I not
started to speak of this matter I would feel more comfortable. It is
inevitable that I give you the impression that I am in love with the
tobacconist's wife. That's not true. To be sure I was very conscious of
her all during the week before my marriage, but after she had come to me
at my apartment she went entirely out of my mind.
"Am I telling the truth? I am trying very hard to tell what happened to
me. I am saying that I have not since that evening thought of the woman
who came to my apartment. Now, to tell the facts of the case, that is
not true. On that evening I went to my fiancée at nine, as she had asked
me to do in her letter. In a kind of way I cannot explain the other
woman went with me. This is what I mean--you see I had been thinking
that if anything happened between me and the tobacconist's wife I would
not be able to go through with my marriage. 'It is one thing or the
other with me,' I had said to myself.
"As a matter of fact I went to see my beloved on that evening filled
with a new faith in the outcome of our life together. I am afraid I
muddle this matter in trying to tell it. A moment ago I said the other
woman, the tobacconist's wife, went with me. I do not mean she went in
fact. What I am trying to say is that something of her faith in her own
desires and her courage in seeing things through went with me. Is that
clear to you? When I got to my fiancée's house there was a crowd of
people standing about. Some were relatives from distant places I had not
seen before. She looked up quickly when I came into the room. My face
must have been radiant. I never saw her so moved. She thought her letter
had affected me deeply, and of course it had. Up she jumped and ran to
meet me. She was like a glad child. Right before the people who turned
and looked inquiringly at us, she said the thing that was in her mind.
'O, I am so happy,' she cried. 'You have understood. We will be two
human beings. We will not have to be husband and wife.'
"As you may suppose, everyone laughed, but I did not laugh. The tears
came into my eyes. I was so happy I wanted to shout. Perhaps you
understand what I mean. In the office that day when I read the letter my
fiancée had written I had said to myself, 'I will take care of the dear
little woman.' There was something smug, you see, about that. In her
house when she cried out in that way, and when everyone laughed, what I
said to myself was something like this: 'We will take care of
ourselves.' I whispered something of the sort into her ears. To tell you
the truth I had come down off my perch. The spirit of the other woman
did that to me. Before all the people gathered about I held my fiancée
close and we kissed. They thought it very sweet of us to be so affected
at the sight of each other. What they would have thought had they known
the truth about me God only knows!
"Twice now I have said that after that evening I never thought of the
other woman at all. That is partially true but sometimes in the evening
when I am walking alone in the street or in the park as we are walking
now, and when evening comes softly and quickly as it has come to-night,
the feeling of her comes sharply into my body and mind. After that one
meeting I never saw her again. On the next day I was married and I have
never gone back into her street. Often however as I am walking along as
I am doing now, a quick sharp earthy feeling takes possession of me. It
is as though I were a seed in the ground and the warm rains of the
spring had come. It is as though I were not a man but a tree.
"And now you see I am married and everything is all right. My marriage
is to me a very beautiful fact. If you were to say that my marriage is
not a happy one I could call you a liar and be speaking the absolute
truth. I have tried to tell you about this other woman. There is a kind
of relief in speaking of her. I have never done it before. I wonder why
I was so silly as to be afraid that I would give you the impression I am
not in love with my wife. If I did not instinctively trust your
understanding I would not have spoken. As the matter stands I have a
little stirred myself up. To-night I shall think of the other woman.
That sometimes occurs. It will happen after I have gone to bed. My wife
sleeps in the next room to mine and the door is always left open. There
will be a moon to-night, and when there is a moon long streaks of light
fall on her bed. I shall awake at midnight to-night. She will be lying
asleep with one arm thrown over her head.
"What is that I am talking about? A man does not speak of his wife lying
in bed. What I am trying to say is that, because of this talk, I shall
think of the other woman to-night. My thoughts will not take the form
they did the week before I was married. I will wonder what has become of
the woman. For a moment I will again feel myself holding her close. I
will think that for an hour I was closer to her than I have ever been to
anyone else. Then I will think of the time when I will be as close as
that to my wife. She is still, you see, an awakening woman. For a moment
I will close my eyes and the quick, shrewd, determined eyes of that
other woman will look into mine. My head will swim and then I will
quickly open my eyes and see again the dear woman with whom I have
undertaken to live out my life. Then I will sleep and when I awake in
the morning it will be as it was that evening when I walked out of my
dark apartment after having had the most notable experience of my life.
What I mean to say, you understand, is that, for me, when I awake, the
other woman will be utterly gone."
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Copyright, 1920, by Margaret C. Anderson. Copyright, 1921, by
Sherwood Anderson.
GARGOYLE[3]
By EDWINA STANTON BABCOCK
From _Harper's Magazine_
Gargoyle stole up the piazza steps. His arms were full of field flowers.
He stood there staring over his burden.
A hush fell upon tea- and card-tables. The younger women on the Strang
veranda glanced at one another. The girl at the piano hesitated in her
light stringing of musical sentences.
John Strang rose. "Not now, Gargoyle, old man." Taking the flowers from
the thin hands, he laid them on the rug at his wife's feet, then gently
motioned the intruder away. Gargoyle flitted contentedly down the broad
steps to the smooth drive, and was soon hidden by masses of rhododendron
on the quadrangle.
Only one guest raised questioning eyebrows as Strang resumed his seat.
This girl glanced over his shoulder at the aimless child straying off
into the trees.
"I should think an uncanny little person like that would get on Mrs.
Strang's nerves; he gives me the creeps!"
"Yes? Mrs. Strang is hardly as sensitive as you might suppose. What do
you say of a lady who enjoys putting the worms on her shrinking
husband's hook? Not only that, but who banters the worms, telling them
it's all for their own good?"
The mistress of Heartholm, looking over at the two, shook a deprecating
head. But Strang seemed to derive amusement from the guest's
disapproval.
Mockwood, where the Strangs lived, had its impressiveness partly
accounted for by the practical American name of "residential park."
This habitat, covering many thousands of acres, gave evidence of the
usual New World compromise between fantastic wealth and over-reached
restraint. Polished automobiles gliding noiselessly through massed
purple and silver shrubberies, receded into bland glooms of
well-thought-out boscage. The architecture, a judicious mixture of
haughty roofs and opulent chimneys, preened itself behind exclusive
screens of wall and vine, and the entire frontage of Mockwood presented
a polished elegance which did not entirely conceal a silent plausibility
of expense.
At Heartholm, the Strangs' place, alone, had the purely conventional
been smitten in its smooth face. The banker's country home was built on
the lines of his own physical height and mental breadth. Strang had
flung open his living-rooms to vistas of tree branches splashing against
the morning blue. His back stairs were as aspiring as the Apostles'
Creed, and his front stairs as soaring as the Canticle to the Sun. As he
had laid out his seven-mile drive on a deer track leading to a forest
spring, so had he spoken for his flowers the word, which, though it
freed them from the prunes and prisms of a landscape gardener, held
them, glorified vassals, to their original masters, sun and rain.
Strang and his love for untrammeled nature were hard pills for
Mockwooders to swallow. Here was a man who, while he kept one on the
alert, was to be deplored; who homesteaded squirrels, gave rabbits their
own licentious ways, was whimsically tolerant of lichens, mushrooms, and
vagabond vines. This was also the man who, when his gardener's wife gave
birth to a deaf and dumb baby, encouraged his own wife to make a pet of
the unfortunate youngster, and when he could walk gave him his freedom
of the Heartholm acres.
It was this sort of thing, Mockwooders agreed, that "explained" the
Strangs. It was the desultory gossip of fashionable breakfast tables how
Evelyn Strang was frequently seen at the gardener's cottage, talking to
the poor mother about her youngest. The gardener's wife had other
children, all strong and hearty. These went to school, survived the
rigors of "regents" examinations, and were beginning to talk of
"accepting" positions. There would never be any position for little
Gargoyle, as John Strang called him, to "accept."
"Let the child run about," the village doctors had advised. "Let him run
about in the sun and make himself useful."
But people who "run about in the sun" are seldom inclined to make
themselves useful, and no one could make Gargoyle so. It would have been
as well to try to train woodbine to draw water or to educate cattails to
write Greek. The little boy spent all of the day idling; it was a
curious, Oriental sort of idling. Callers at Heartholm grew
disapprovingly accustomed to the sight of the grotesque face and figure
peering through the shrubberies; they shrugged their shoulders
impatiently, coming upon the recumbent child dreamily gazing at his own
reflection in the lily-pond, looking necromantically out from the molten
purple of a wind-blown beech, or standing at gaze in a clump of iris.
Strang with his amused laugh fended off all protest and neighborly
advice.
"That's Gargoyle's special variety of hashish. He lives in a
flower-harem--in a five-year-old Solomon's Song. I've often seen the
irises kowtowing to him, and his attitude toward them is distinctly
personal and lover-like. If that little chap could only talk there would
be some fun, but what Gargoyle thinks would hardly fit itself to
words--besides, then"--Strang twinkled at the idea--"none of us would
fancy having him around with those natural eyes--that undressed little
mind."
It was in good-humored explanations like this that the Strangs managed
to conceal their real interest in Gargoyle. They did not remind people
of their only child, the brave boy of seven, who died before they came
to Mockwood. Under the common sense that set the two instantly to work
building a new home, creating new associations, lay the everlasting pain
of an old life, when, as parents of a son, they had seemed to tread
springier soil, to breathe keener, more vital air. And, though the
Strangs adhered patiently to the recognized technicalities of Mockwood
existence, they never lost sight of a hope, of which, against the
increasing evidence of worldly logic, their human hearts still made
ceaseless frantic attestation.
Very slowly, but very constructively, it had become a fierce though
governed passion with both--to learn something of the spiritual life
coursing back of the material universe. Equally slowly and inevitably
had the two come to believe that the little changeling at the lodge held
some wordless clue, some unconscious knowledge as to that outer sphere,
that surrounding, peopled ether, in which, under their apparent
rationality, the two had come to believe. Yet the banker and his wife
stood to Mockwooders for no special cult or fad; it was only between
themselves that their quest had become a slowly developing motive.
"Gargoyle was under the rose-arbor this morning." It was according to
custom that Evelyn Strang would relate the child's latest phase. "He sat
there without stirring such a long time that I was fascinated. I noticed
that he never picked a rose, never smelled one. The early sun fell
slanting through their petals till they glowed like thin little wheels
of fire. John dear, it was that scalloped fire which Gargoyle was
staring at. The flowers seemed to lean toward him, vibrating color and
perfumes too delicate for me to hear. _I_ only saw and smelled the
flowers; Gargoyle looked as if he _felt_ them! Don't laugh; you know we
look at flowers because when we were little, people always said, 'See
the pretty flower, smell the pretty flower,' but no one said, 'Listen
and see if you can hear the flower grow; be still and see if you can
catch the flower speaking.'"
Strang never did laugh, never brushed away these fantastic ideas.
Settling back in his piazza chair, his big hands locked together, he
would listen, amusing himself with his pet theory of Gargoyle's
"undressed mind."
"By the way," he said once, "that reminds me, have you ever seen our
young Solomon of the flower-harem smile?"
"Of course I haven't; neither have you." Young Mrs. Strang averred it
confidently. "He never has smiled, poor baby, nor cried--his mother
told me that long ago."
The banker kept his eyes on the treetops; he had his finger-tips nicely
balanced before he remarked, with seeming irrelevance:
"You know that nest in the tree we call the Siegfried tree?"
She nodded.
"The other day a bird fell out of it, one of the young ones, pushed out
by a housecleaning mother, I suppose. It killed the poor little
feathered gawk. I saw Gargoyle run, quick as a flash, and pick it up. He
pushed open the closing eyes, tried to place the bird on a hollyhock
stalk, to spread its wings, in every way to give it motion. When, after
each attempt, he saw it fall to the ground, he stood still, looking at
it very hard. Suddenly, to my surprise, he seemed to understand
something, to _comprehend_ it fully and delightedly. He laughed." Strang
stopped, looking intently at his wife.
"I can imagine that laugh," she mused.
Strang shook his head. "I don't think you can. It--it wasn't pleasant.
It was as uncanny as the rest of the little chap--a long, rattling,
eerie sound, as if a tree should groan or a butterfly curse; but
wait--there's more." In his earnestness Strang sat up, adding, "Then
Gargoyle got up and stretched out his hands, not to the sky, but to the
air all around him. It was as if--" Here Strang, the normal, healthy man
of the world, hesitated; it was only the father of the little boy who
had died who admitted in low tones: "You would have said--At least even
_I_ could imagine that Gargoyle--well--that he _saw_ something like a
released principle of life fly happily back to its main source--as if a
little mote like a sunbeam should detach itself from a clod and,
disembodied, dart back to its law of motion."
For a long time they were silent, listening to the call of an oven-bird
far back in the spring trees. At last Strang got up, filled his pipe,
and puffed at it savagely before he said, "Of course the whole thing's
damned nonsense." He repeated that a little brutally to his wife's
silence before in softened voice he added, "Only, perhaps you're right,
Evelyn; perhaps we, too, should be seeing that kind of thing,
understanding what, God knows, we long to understand, if we had
'undressed minds,' if we hadn't from earliest infancy been smeared all
over with the plaster-of-Paris of 'normal thinking.'"
Time flew swiftly by. The years at Heartholm were tranquil and happy
until Strang, taken by one of the swift maladies which often come to men
of his type, was mortally stricken. His wife at first seemed to feel
only the strange ecstasy that sometimes comes to those who have beheld
death lay its hand on a beloved body. She went coldly, rigidly, through
every detail of the final laying away of the man who had loved her to
the utmost power of his man's heart. Friends waited helplessly, dreading
the furious after-crash of this unnatural mental and bodily endurance.
Doctor Milton, Strang's life-long friend, who had fought for the
banker's life, watched her carefully, but there was no catalepsy, no
tranced woman held in a vise of endurance. Nothing Evelyn Strang did was
odd or unnatural, only she seemed, particularly before the burial, to be
waiting intently for some revelation, toward which her desire burned
consumingly, like a powerful flame.
Just before the funeral Strang's sister came to Doctor Milton.
"Evelyn!" in whispered response to his concerned look. "Oh, doctor, I
cannot think that this calmness is _right_ for her----" The poor,
red-eyed woman, fighting hard for her own composure, motioned to the
room where, with the cool lattices drawn, and a wave of flowers breaking
on his everlasting sleep, the master of Heartholm lay. "She has gone in
there with that little deaf-and-dumb child. I saw her standing with him,
staring all about her. Somehow it seemed to me that Gargoyle was
smiling--that he _saw_ something----!"
For long weeks Doctor Milton stayed on at Heartholm, caring for Mrs.
Strang. From time to time the physician also studied and questioned
Gargoyle. Questioned in verity, for the practised hand could feel rigid
muscles and undeveloped glands that answered more truthfully than
words. Whatever conclusions Milton arrived at, he divulged to no one but
Mrs. Strang. What he had to say roused the desolate woman as nothing
else could have done. To the rest of the world little or nothing was
explained. But, after the consent of the mother at the gardener's
cottage had been gained, Doctor Milton left Heartholm, taking Gargoyle
with him.
In the office of Dr. Pauli Mach, the professional tongue was freed.
Milton, with the half-quizzical earnestness habitual to him, told his
story, which was followed by the exchange of much interesting data.
The two fell back on the discussion of various schools where Gargoyle
might be put under observation. At last, feeling in the gravely polite
attention of the more eminent man a waning lack of interest, Milton
reluctantly concluded the interview.
"I'll write to Mrs. Strang and tell her your conclusions; she won't
accept them--her own husband humored her in the thing. What John Strang
himself believed I never really knew, but I think he had wisdom in his
generation."
Milton stood there, hesitating; he looked abstractedly at the apathetic
little figure of Gargoyle sitting in the chair.
"We talk of inherent human nature," said the doctor, slowly, "as if we
had all knowledge concerning the _possibilities_ of that nature's best
and worst. Yet I have sometimes wondered if what we call mentally askew
people are not those that possess attributes which society is not wise
enough to help them use wisely--mightn't such people be like
fine-blooded animals who sniff land and water where no one else suspects
any? Given a certain kink in a human brain, and there might result
capacity we ought to consider, even if we can't, in our admittably
systematized civilization, utilize it."
The Swiss doctor nodded, magnetic eyes and mouth smiling.
"Meanwhile"--in his slow, careful speech--"meanwhile we do what we can
to preserve the type which from long experience we know _wears_ best."
Milton nodded. He moved to go, one hand on Gargoyle's unresponsive
shoulder, when the office door swung open.
"Now this is real trouble," laughed a woman's fresh, deep-chested voice.
"Doctor Mach, it means using one of your tall measuring-glasses or
permitting these lovely things to wilt; some one has inundated us with
flowers. I've already filled one bath-tub; I've even used the buckets in
the operating-room."
The head nurse stood there, white-frocked, smiling, her stout arms full
of rosy gladioli and the lavender and white of Japanese iris. The two
doctors started to help her with the fragrant burden, but not before
Gargoyle sprang out of his chair. With a start, as if shocked into
galvanic motion, the boy sat upright. With a throttled cry he leaped at
the surprised woman. He bore down upon her flowers as if they had been a
life-preserver, snatching at them as if to prevent himself from being
sucked under by some strange mental undertow. The softly-colored bloom
might have had some vital magnetizing force for the child's blood, to
which his whole feeble nature responded. Tearing the colored mass from
the surprised nurse's arms, Gargoyle sank to the floor. He sat there
caressing the flowers, smiling, making uncouth efforts to speak. The
arms that raised him were gentle enough. They made no attempt to take
from him his treasures. They sat him on the table, watching the little
thin hands move ardently, yet with a curious deftness and delicacy, amid
the sheaf of color. As the visionary eyes peered first into one
golden-hearted lily, then into another, Milton felt stir, in spite of
himself, Strang's old conviction of the "undressed mind." He said
nothing, but stole a glance at the face of his superior. Doctor Mach was
absorbed. He stood the boy on the table before him. The nurse stripped
Gargoyle, then swiftly authoritative fingers traveled up and down the
small, thin frame.
* * * * *
Life at Heartholm went on very much the same. The tender-hearted
observer might have noted that the gardens held the same flowers year
after year, all the perennials and hardy blooms John Strang had loved.
No matter what had been his widow's courageous acceptance of modern
stoicism, the prevailing idea that incurable grief is merely "morbid,"
yet, in their own apartments where their own love had been lived, was
every mute image and eloquent trifle belonging to its broken arc. Here,
with Strang's books on occult science, with other books of her own
choosing, the wife lived secretly, unknown of any other human being, the
long vigil of waiting for some sign or word from the spirit of one who
by every token of religion and faith she could not believe dead--only to
her wistful earthly gaze, hidden. She also hid in her heart one
strangely persistent hope--namely, Gargoyle! Letters from Doctor Milton
had been full of significance. The last letter triumphantly concluded:
Your young John Strang Berber, alias Gargoyle, can talk now, with
only one drawback: as yet he doesn't know any words!
The rapidly aging mother at the gardener's cottage took worldly pride in
what was happening to her youngest.
"I allus knowed he was smart," the woman insisted. "My Johnny! To think
of him speaking his mind out like any one else! I allus took his part--I
could ha' told 'em he had his own notions!"
There was no doubt as to Gargoyle's having the "notions." As the slow
process of speech was taught and the miracle of fitting words to things
was given unto John Berber, alias Gargoyle, it was hard for those
watching over him to keep the riotous perceptions from retarding the
growing mechanistics. Close-mouthed the boy was, and, they said, always
would be; but watchful eyes and keen intuitions penetrated to the silent
orgies going on within him. So plainly did the fever of his education
begin to wear on his physical frame that wary Doctor Mach shook his
head. "Here I find too many streams of thought coursing through one
field," said the careful Swiss. "The field thus grows stony and bears
nothing. Give this field only one stream that shall be nourishing."
For other supernormal developments that "one stream" might have been
music or sports. For Gargoyle it happened to be flowers. The botanist
with whom he was sent afield not only knew his science, but guessed at
more than his science. His were the beatitudes of the blue sky; water,
rocks, and trees his only living testament. Under his tutelage, with the
eyes of Doctor Mach ever on his growing body, and with his own special
gifts of concentration and perception, at last came to Gargoyle the
sudden whisper of academic sanction--namely, "genius."
He himself seemed never to hear this whisper. What things--superimposed
on the new teeming world of material actualities--he _did_ hear, he
never told. Few could reach Berber; among fellow-students he was gay,
amiable, up to a certain point even frivolous; then, as each companion
in turn complained, a curtain seemed to drop, a colorless wrap of
unintelligibility enveloped him like a chameleon's changing skin; the
youth, as if he lived another life on another plane, walked apart.
Doctor Milton, dropping into the smoking-room of a popular confrère, got
a whiff of the prevailing gossip about his protégé.
"I'll be hanged if I can associate psychics with a biceps like Berber's;
somehow those things seem the special prerogative of anemic women in
white cheese-cloth fooling with 'planchette' and 'currents.'"
"You've got another guess," a growling neurologist volunteered. "Why
shouldn't psychic freaks have biceps? We keep forgetting that we've
dragged our fifty-year-old carcasses into an entirely new age--a
wireless, horseless, man-flying, star-chasing age. Why, after shock upon
shock of scientific discovery, shouldn't the human brain, like a
sensitive plate, be thinned down to keener, more sensitive,
perceptions?"
Some one remarked that in the case of Berber, born of a simple country
woman and her uneducated husband, this was impossible.
Another man laughed. "Berber may be a Martian, or perhaps he was
originally destined to be the first man on Jupiter. He took the wrong
car and landed on this globe. Why not? How do we know what agency
carries pollen of human life from planet to planet?"
Milton, smiling at it all, withdrew. He sat down and wrote a
long-deferred letter to Mrs. Strang.
I have asked John Berber if he would care to revisit his old home.
It seemed never to have occurred to him that he _had_ a home! When
I suggested the thing he followed it up eagerly, as he does every
new idea, asking me many keen questions as to his relatives, who
had paid for his education, etc. Of the actual facts of his cure he
knows little except that there was special functioning out of gear,
and that now the wheels have been greased. Doctor Mach is
desperately proud of him, especially of the way in which he
responds to _normal diversion-environments_ and _friendships_. You
must instruct his mother very carefully as to references to his
former condition. It is best that he should not dwell upon the
former condition. Your young friend, Gargoyle, sees no more spooks.
He is rapidly developing into a very remarkable and unconceited
horticulturist!
The first few days at Mockwood were spent at the little gardener's
cottage, from which the other youngsters had flown. Berber, quietly
moving about the tiny rooms, sitting buried in a scientific book or
taking long trips afield, was the recipient of much maternal flattery.
He accepted it all very gently; the young culturist had an air of quiet
consideration for every one and absolutely no consciousness of himself.
He presumed upon no special prerogatives, but set immediately to work to
make himself useful. It was while he was weeding the box borders leading
to the herb-gardens of Heartholm that Mrs. Strang first came upon him.
Her eyes, suddenly confronted with his as he got to his feet, dropped
almost guiltily, but when they sought his face a second time, Evelyn
Strang experienced a disappointment that was half relief. The sunburnt
youth, in khaki trousers and brown-flannel shirt, who knelt by the
border before her was John Strang Berber, Doctor Mach's human
masterpiece; this was not "Gargoyle."
"That is hardly suitable work for a distinguished horticulturist," the
mistress of Heartholm smiled at the wilting piles of pusley and sorrel.
White teeth flashed, deep eyes kindled. Berber rose and, going to a
garden seat, took up some bits of glass and a folded paper. He showed
her fragments of weed pressed upon glass plates, envelopes of seeds
preserved for special analyzation. "There's still a great undiscovered
country in weed chemistry," he eagerly explained, "perhaps an anodyne
for every pain and disease."
"Yes, and deadly poisons, too, for every failure and grief." The
mistress of Heartholm said it lightly as she took the garden seat,
thinking how pleasant it was to watch the resolute movements and
splendid physical development of the once weazened Gargoyle. She began
sorting out her embroidery silks as Berber, the bits of glass still in
his hand, stood before her. He was smiling.
"Yes, deadly poisons, too," agreeing with a sort of exultation, so
blithely, indeed, that the calmly moving fingers of the mistress of
Heartholm were suddenly arrested. A feeling as powerful and associative
as the scent of a strong perfume stole over Evelyn Strang.
Before she could speak Berber had resumed his weeding. "It's good to get
dictatorship over all this fight of growing," looking up for her
sympathy with hesitance, which, seen in the light of his acknowledged
genius, was the more significant. "You don't mind my taking Michael's
place? He was very busy this morning. I have no credentials, but my
mother seems to think I am a born gardener."
This lack of conceit, this unassuming practicality, the sort of thing
with which Gargoyle's mind had been carefully inoculated for a long
time, baffled, while it reassured Mrs. Strang. Also the sense of sacred
trust placed in her hands made her refrain from any psychic probing.
For a long while she found it easy to exert this self-control. The
lonely woman, impressed by the marvelous "cure" of John Berber,
magnetized by his youth and sunny enthusiasms back to the old dreaming
pleasure in the Heartholm gardens, might in the absorbed days to come
have forgotten--only there was a man's photograph in her bedroom, placed
where her eyes always rested on it, her hand could bring it to her lips;
the face looking out at her seemed to say but one thing:
"_You knew me--I knew you. What we knew and were to each other had not
only to do with our bodies. Men call me 'dead' but you know that I am
not. Why do you not study and work and pray to learn what I am become,
that you may turn to me, that I may reach to you?_"
Mockwooders, dropping in at Heartholm for afternoon tea, began to
accustom themselves to finding Mrs. Strang sitting near some flower-bed
where John Berber worked, or going with him over his great books of
specimens. The smirk the fashionable world reserves for anything not
usual in its experience was less marked in this case than it might have
been in others. Even those who live in "residential parks" are sometimes
forced (albeit with a curious sense of personal injury) to accept the
idea that they who have greatly suffered find relief in "queer" ways.
Mockwooders, assisting at the Heartholm tea-hour, and noting Berber
among other casual guests, merely felt aggrieved and connoted
"queerness."
For almost a year, with the talking over of plans for John Strang's
long-cherished idea of a forest garden at Heartholm, there had been no
allusion between mistress and gardener to that far-off fantasy, the life
of little Gargoyle. During the autumn the two drew plans together for
those spots which next spring were to blossom in the beech glade. They
sent to far-off countries for bulbs, experimented in the Heartholm
greenhouses with special soils and fertilizers, and differences of heat
and light; they transplanted, grafted, and redeveloped this and that
woodland native. Unconsciously all formal strangeness wore away,
unconsciously the old bond between Gargoyle and his mistress was
renewed.
Thus it was, without the slightest realization as to what it might lead,
that Evelyn Strang one afternoon made some trifling allusion to Berber's
association with the famous Doctor Mach. As soon as she had done so,
fearing from habit for some possible disastrous result, she tried
immediately to draw away from the subject. But the forbidden spring had
been touched--a door that had long been closed between them swung open.
Young Berber, sorting dahlia bulbs into numbered boxes, looked up; he
met her eyes unsuspiciously.
"I suppose," thoughtfully, "that that is the man to whom I should feel
more grateful than to any other human being."
The mistress of Heartholm did not reply. In spite of her tranquil air,
Evelyn Strang was gripped with a sudden apprehension. How much, how
little, did Berber know? She glanced swiftly at him, then bent her head
over her embroidery. The colored stream of Indian summer flowed around
them. A late bird poured out his little cup of song.
"My mother will not answer my questions." Young Berber, examining two
curiously formed bulbs, shook the earth from them; he stuffed them into
his trousers pocket. "But Michael got talking yesterday and told me--Did
you know, Mrs. Strang? I was thought to be an idiot until I was twelve
years old--born deaf and dumb?"
It was asked so naturally, with a scientific interest as impersonal as
if he were speaking of one of the malformed bulbs in his pocket, that at
first his mistress felt no confusion. Her eyes and hands busying
themselves with the vivid silks, she answered.
"I remember you as a little pale boy who loved flowers and did such odd,
interesting things with them. Mr. Strang and I were attracted to your
mysterious plays.... No, you never spoke, but we were not sure you could
not hear--and"--drawing a swift little breath--"we were always
interested in what--in what--you seemed--to _see_!"
There was a pause. He knelt there, busily sorting the bulbs. Suddenly
to the woman sitting on the garden bench the sun-bathed October gardens
seemed alive with the myriad questioning faces of the fall flowers;
wheels and disks like aureoled heads leaned toward her, mystical fire in
their eyes, the colored flames of their being blown by passionate desire
of revelation. "This is your moment," the flowers seemed to say to her.
"Ask him _now_."
But that she might not yet speak out her heart to John Berber his
mistress was sure. She was reminded of what Strang had so often said,
referring to their lonely quest--that actual existence was like a
forlorn shipwreck of some other life, a mere raft upon which, like grave
buffoons, the ragged survivors went on handing one another watersoaked
bread of faith, glassless binoculars of belief, oblivious of what
radiant coasts or awful headlands might lie beyond the enveloping mists.
Soon, the wistful woman knew, she would be making some casual
observations about the garden, the condition of the soil. Yet, if ever
the moment had come to question him who had once been "Gargoyle," that
moment was come now!
Berber lifted on high a mass of thickly welded bulbs clinging to a
single dahlia stalk. He met her gaze triumphantly.
"Michael says he planted only a few of this variety, the soft,
gold-hearted lavender. See what increase." The youth plunged supple
fingers into the balmy-scented loam, among the swelling tuber forms. "A
beautiful kind of ugliness," he mused. "I remember I used to think----"
The young gardener, as if he felt that the eyes fixed upon him were
grown suddenly too eager, broke abruptly off.
"Go on, John Berber. What you have to say is always interesting."
It was said calmly, with almost maternal encouragement, but the fingers
absorbed in the bright silks fumbled and erred. "Used to think"--words
such as these filtered like sunlight to the hope lying deep in Evelyn
Strang's heart.
But young Berber leaned upon his garden fork, looking past her. Over the
youth's face crept a curious expression of wrapt contemplation, of
super-occupation, whether induced by her words or not she could not
tell. Furtively Mrs. Strang studied him.... How soon would he drop that
mystical look and turn to her with the casual "educated" expression she
had come to know so well?
Suddenly, nervousness impelling her, she broke in upon his revery:
"How wonderful, with such dreams as you must have had, to be educated!
How very grateful you must be to Doctor Mach."
She heard her own words helplessly, as if in a dream, and, if the
unwisdom of this kind of conversation had impressed the mistress of
Heartholm before, now she could have bitten off her tongue with that
needless speech on it. Young Berber, however, seemed hardly to have
heard her; he stood there, the "Gargoyle" look still in his eyes, gazing
past his mistress into some surrounding mystery of air element. It was
to her, watching him, as if those brooding, dilated pupils might behold,
besides infinitesimal mystery of chemical atoms, other mysteries--colorless
pools of air where swam, like sea anemones, radiant forms of released
spirit; invisible life-trees trembling with luminous fruit of occult being!
When Berber turned this look, naked as a sword, back to Evelyn Strang,
she involuntarily shivered. But the boy's face was unconscious. His
expression changed only to the old casual regard as he said, very
simply:
"You see, I wish they had not educated me!"
The confession came with inevitable shock. If she received it with
apparent lightness, it was that she might, with all the powers a woman
understands, rise to meet what she felt was coming. The barrier down, it
was comparatively easy to stand in the breach, making her soft note of
deprecation, acknowledging playfully that the stress of so-called
"normal" life must indeed seem a burden to one who had hitherto talked
with flowers, played with shadows. Berber, however, seemed hardly to
hear her; there was no tenseness in the youth's bearing; he merely
gazed thoughtfully past her efforts, repeating:
"No--I wish they had not taught me. I have not really gained _knowledge_
by being taught."
Mrs. Strang was genuinely puzzled. Yet she understood; it was merely
_theories about life_ that he had gained. Again she called to mind a
sentence in Doctor Milton's letter: "I know that you have followed the
case in such a way as to understand what would be your responsibility
toward this _newly made_ human soul." Was it right to question Berber?
Could it be actually harmful to him to go on? And yet was it not her
only chance, after years of faithful waiting?
Trying to keep her voice steady, she reproached him:
"No? With all that being educated means, all the gift for humanity?"
The young fellow seemed not to get her meaning. He picked up the garden
fork. Thoughtfully scraping the damp earth from its prongs, he repeated,
"All that it means for humanity?"
"Why not"--urging the thing a little glibly--"why not? You can do your
part now; you will help toward the solving of age-long mysteries. You
must be steward of--of"--Mrs. Strang hesitated, then continued,
lamely--"of your special insight. Why--already you have begun--Think of
the weed chemistry." Had he noticed it? There was in her voice a curious
note, almost of pleading, though she tried to speak with authority.
John Berber, once called "Gargoyle," listened. The youth stood there,
his foot resting upon the fork but not driving it into the ground. He
caught her note of anxiety, laughing in light, spontaneous reassurance,
taking her point with ease.
"Oh--I know," shrugging his shoulders in true collegian's style. "I
understand my lesson." Berber met her look. "I had the gift of mental
_unrestraint_, if you choose to call it that," he summed up, "and was of
no use in the world. Now I have the curse of _mental restraint_ and can
participate with others in their curse." Suddenly aware of her helpless
dismay and pain, the boy laughed again, but this time with a slight
nervousness she had never before seen in him. "Why, we are not in
earnest, dear Mrs. Strang." It was with coaxing, manly respect that he
reminded her of that. "We are only joking, playing with an idea.... I
think you can trust me," added John Berber, quietly.
The surprised woman felt that she could indeed "trust" him; that Berber
was absolutely captain of the self which education had given him; but
that from time to time he had been conscious of another self he had been
unwise enough to let her see. She silently struggled with her own
nature, knowing that were she judicious she would take that moment to
rise and leave him. Such action, however, seemed impossible now. Here
was, perhaps, revelation, discovery! All the convictions of her lonely,
brooding life were on her. Temptation again seized her. With her longing
to have some clue to that spirit world she and her husband had believed
in, it seemed forewritten, imperative, inevitable, that she remain.
Trying to control herself, she fumbled desperately on:
"When you were little, Mr. Strang and I used to notice--we grew to
think--that because you had been shut away from contact with other
minds, because you had never been told _what_ to see, as children are
told, 'Look at the fire,' 'See the water,' and so forever regard those
things in just that way, not seeing--other things--Oh, we thought that
perhaps--perhaps----"
It was futile, incoherent; her tongue seemed to dry in her mouth.
Besides, the abashed woman needs must pause before a silence that to her
strained sense seemed rebuking. She glanced furtively up at the youth
standing there. It troubled the mistress of Heartholm to realize that
her protégé was staring gravely at her, as if she had proposed some
guilty and shameful thing.
At last Berber, with a boyish sigh, seemed to shake the whole matter
off. He turned to his bulbs; half at random he caught up a
pruning-knife, cutting vindictively into one of them. For the moment
there was silence, then the young gardener called his mistress's
attention to the severed root in his hand.
"A winy-looking thing, isn't it? See those red fibers? Why shouldn't
such roots, and nuts like those great, burnished horse-chestnuts
there--yes, and cattails, and poke-berries, and skunk cabbages, give
forth an entirely new outfit of fruits and vegetables?" Berber smiled
his young ruminating smile; then, with inevitable courtesy, he seemed to
remember that he had not answered her question. "I am not surprised that
you and Mr. Strang thought such things about me. I wonder that you have
not questioned me before--only you see _now_--I can't answer!" The boy
gave her his slow, serious smile, reminding her.
"You must remember that I am like a foreigner--only worse off, for
foreigners pick up a few words for their most vital needs, and I have no
words at all--for what--for what vital things I used to know--so that
perhaps in time I shall come to forget that I ever knew anything
different from--other persons' knowledge." Berber paused, regarding his
mistress intently, as if wistfully trying to see what she made of all
this. Then he continued:
"One of our professors at college died, and the men of his class were
gloomy; some even cried, others could not trust themselves to speak of
him.... I noticed that they all called him 'poor' Landworth.... I could
see that they felt something the way I do when I miss out on a chemical
experiment, or spoil a valuable specimen--only more so--a great deal
more." The boy knit his brows, puzzling it all out. "Well, it's queer. I
liked that professor, too; he was very kind to me--but when I saw him
dead I felt glad--glad! Why"--Berber looked at her searchingly--"I grew
to be afraid some one would find out _how_ glad!"
The young fellow, still anxiously searching her face, dropped his voice.
"You are the only person I dare tell this to--for I understand the
world--" She noted that he spoke as if "the world" were a kind of plant
whose needs he had fathomed. "But after that," concluded Berber,
speaking as if quite to himself--"after that I somehow came to see that
I had been--well, educated _backward_."
She moved impatiently; the youth, seeing the question in her face,
answered the demand of its trembling eagerness, explaining:
"Do you not see--I have--sometimes _known_, not 'guessed' nor
'believed,' but _known_ that death was a wonderful, happy thing--a
fulfilment, a satisfaction to him who dies--but I have been educated
backward into a life where people cannot seem to help regarding it as a
sad thing. And----"
"Yes?--Yes?" breathed the eager woman. "Tell me--tell me----"
But he had come suddenly to a full stop. As if appalled to find only
empty words, or no words at all, for some astounding knowledge he would
communicate to her, he stammered painfully; then, as if he saw himself
caught in guilt, colored furiously. Evelyn Strang could see the
inevitable limitations of his world training creep slowly over him like
cement hardening around the searching roots of his mind. She marveled.
She remembered Strang's pet phrase, "the plaster of Paris of so-called
'normal thinking.'" Then the youth's helpless appeal came to her:
"Do you not think that I am doing wrong to speak of these things?"
Berber asked, with dignity.
The mistress of Heartholm was silent. Recklessly she put by all Doctor
Mach's prophecies. She could not stop here; her whole soul demanded that
she go further. There were old intuitions--the belief that she and
Strang had shared together, that, under rationalized schemes of thought,
knowledge of inestimable hope was being hidden from the world. Here was
this boy of the infinite vision, of the "_backward educated_" mind,
ready to tell miraculous things of a hidden universe. Could she strike
him dumb? It would be as if Lazarus had come forth from the open grave
and men were to bandage again his ecstatic lips!
Suddenly, as if in answer to her struggle, Berber spoke. She was aware
that he looked at her curiously with a sort of patient disdain.
"The world is so sure, so contented, isn't it?" the youth demanded of
her, whether in innocence or irony she could not tell. "People are
trained, or they train themselves, by the millions, to think of things
in exactly one way." He who had once been "Gargoyle" looked piercingly
into the eyes of this one being to whom at least he was not afraid to
speak.
"Anything you or I might guess outside of what other people might
accept," the boy reminded her, austerely, "could be called by just one
unpleasant name." He regarded the face turned to his, recognizing the
hunger in it, with a mature and pitying candor, concluding: "After
to-day we must never speak of these things. I shall never dare, you must
never dare--and so--" He who had once been "Gargoyle" suddenly dropped
his head forward on his breast, muttering--"and so, that is all."
Evelyn Strang rose. She stood tall and imperious in the waning afternoon
light. She was bereaved mother, anguished wife; she was a dreamer driven
out of the temple of the dream, and what she had to do was desperate.
Her voice came hard and resolute.
"It is _not_ all," the woman doggedly insisted. The voiceless woe of one
who had lost a comrade by death was on her. In her eyes was fever let
loose, a sob, like one of a flock of imprisoned wild birds fluttered out
from the cage of years. "Oh no--no!" the woman pleaded, more as if to
some hidden power of negation than to the boy before her--"Oh no--no,
this _cannot_ be all, not for me! The world must never be told--it could
not understand; but _I_ must know, I _must_ know." She took desperate
steps back and forth.
"John Berber, if there is anything in your memory, your knowledge; even
if it is only that you have _imagined_ things--if they are so beautiful
or so terrible that you can never speak of them--for fear--for fear no
one would understand, you might, you might, even then, tell me--Do you
not hear? You might tell _me_. I authorize it, I command it."
The woman standing in the autumn gardens clenched her hands. She looked
round her into the clear air at the dense green and gold sunshine
filtering through the colored trees, the softly spread patens of the
cosmos, the vivid oriflammes of the chrysanthemums. Her voice was
anguished, as if they two stood at a secret door of which Berber alone
had the key, which for some reason he refused to use.
"I--of all the world," her whisper insisted. "If you might never speak
again--I should understand."
Berber, his face grown now quite ashen, looked at her. Something in her
expression seemed to transfix and bind him. Suddenly shutting his teeth
together, he stood up, his arms folded on his broad chest. The afternoon
shadows spread pools of darkness around their feet, the flowers seemed
frozen in shapes of colored ice, as his dark, controlled eyes fixed
hers.
"You--you dare?" the youth breathed, thickly.
She faced him in her silent daring. Then it seemed to her as if the sky
must roll up like a scroll and the earth collapse into a handful of dust
falling through space, for she knew that little Gargoyle of the
"undressed mind"--little Gargoyle, looking out of John Berber's trained
eyes as out of windows of ground glass, was flitting like a shadow
across her own intelligence, trying to tell her what things he had
always known about life and death, and the myriads of worlds spinning
back in their great circles to the Power which had set them spinning.
Not until after the first halting, insufficient words, in which the boy
sought to give his secret to the woman standing there, did she
comprehend anything of the struggle that went on within him. But when
suddenly Berber's arms dropped to his sides and she saw how he shivered,
as if at some unearthly touch on his temples, she was alert. Color was
surging into his face; his features, large, irregular, took on for the
instant a look of speechless, almost demoniac power; he seemed to be
swimming some mental tide before his foot touched the sands of language
and he could helplessly stammer:
"I cannot--It--it will not come--It is as I told you--I have been taught
no _words_--I _cannot_ say _what I know_."
His powerful frame stood placed among the garden surroundings like that
of a breathing statue, and his amazed companion witnessed this miracle
of physical being chained by the limitations of one environment, while
the soul of that being, clairaudient, clairvoyant, held correspondence
with another environment. She saw Berber smile as if with some exquisite
sense of beauty and rapture that he understood, but could not
communicate, then helplessly motion with his hands. But even while she
held her breath, gazing at him, a change came over the radiant features.
He looked at her again, his face worked; at last John Berber with a
muffled groan burst into terrible human tears.
She stood there helpless, dumfounded at his agony.
"You--you cannot speak?" she faltered.
For answer he dropped his face into his strong hands. He stood there,
his tall body quivering. And she knew that her dream was over.
She was forced to understand. John Berber's long and perfect world
training held him in a vise. His lips were closed upon his secret, and
she knew that they would be closed for evermore.
They remained, silently questioning each other, reading at last in each
other's speechlessness some comfort in this strange common knowledge,
for which, indeed, there were no human words, which must be forever
borne dumbly between them. Then slowly, with solemn tenderness, the
obligation of that unspoken knowledge came into Evelyn Strang's face.
She saw the youth standing there with grief older than the grief of the
world stabbing his heart, drowning his eyes. She laid a quiet hand on
his shoulder.
"I understand." With all the mother, all the woman in her, she tried to
say it clearly and calmly. "I understand; you need never fear me--and we
have the whole world of flowers to speak for us." She gazed pitifully
into the dark, storming eyes where for that one fleeting instant the
old look of "Gargoyle" had risen, regarding her, until forced back by
the trained intelligence Of "John Berber," which had always dominated,
and at last, she knew, had killed it. "We will make the flowers
speak--for us." Again she tried to speak lightly, comfortingly, but
something within the woman snapped shut like a door. Slowly she returned
to the garden seat. For a moment she faltered, holding convulsively to
it, then her eyes, blinded from within, closed.
Yet, later, when the mistress of Heartholm went back through the
autumnal garden to the room where were the books and treasures of John
Strang, she carried something in her hand. It was a lily bulb from which
she and Berber hoped to bring into being a new and lovely flower. She
took it into that room where for so many years the pictured eyes of her
husband had met hers in mute questioning, and stood there for a moment,
looking wistfully about her. Outside a light breeze sprang up, a single
dried leaf rustled against the window-pane. Smiling wistfully upon the
little flower-pot, Mrs. Strang set it carefully away in the dark.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Edwina
Stanton Babcock.
GHITZA[4]
#By# KONRAD BERCOVICI
From _The Dial_
That winter had been a very severe one in Roumania. The Danube froze
solid a week before Christmas and remained tight for five months. It was
as if the blue waters were suddenly turned into steel. From across the
river, from the Dobrudja, on sleds pulled by long-horned oxen, the
Tartars brought barrels of frozen honey, quarters of killed lambs,
poultry and game, and returned heavily laden with bags of flour and
rolls of sole leather. The whole day long the crack of whips and the
curses of the drivers rent the icy atmosphere. Whatever their
destination, the carters were in a hurry to reach human habitation
before nightfall--before the dreaded time when packs of wolves came out
to prey for food.
In cold, clear nights, when even the wind was frozen still, the
lugubrious howling of the wolf permitted no sleep. The indoor people
spent the night praying for the lives and souls of the travellers.
All through the winter there was not one morning but some man or animal
was found torn or eaten in our neighbourhood. The people of the village
at first built fires on the shores to scare the beasts away, but they
had to give it up because the thatched roofs of the huts in the village
were set on fire in windy nights by flying sparks. The cold cowed the
fiercest dogs. The wolves, crazed by hunger, grew more daring from day
to day. They showed their heads even in daylight. When Baba Hana, the
old gypsy fortune-teller, ran into the school-house one morning and
cried, "Wolf, wolf in the yard," the teacher was inclined to attribute
her scare to a long drink the night before. But that very night, Stan,
the horseshoer, who had returned late from the inn and had evidently not
closed the door as he entered the smithy, was eaten up by the beasts.
And the smithy stood in the centre of the village! A stone's throw from
the inn, and the thatch-roofed school, and the red painted church! He
must have put up a hard fight, Stan. Three huge dark brown beasts, as
big as cows' yearlings, were found brained. The body of big Stan had
disappeared in the stomachs of the rest of the pack. The high leather
boots and the hand that still gripped the handle of the sledgehammer
were the only remains of the man. There was no blood, either. It had
been lapped dry. That stirred the village. Not even enough to bury
him--and he had been a good Christian! But the priest ordered that the
slight remains of Stan be buried, Christian-like. The empty coffin was
brought to the church and all the rites were carried out as if the body
of Stan were there rather than in the stomachs of wild beasts.
But after Stan's death the weather began to clear as if it had been
God's will that such a price be paid for His clemency. The cold
diminished daily and in a few days reports were brought from everywhere
on the shore that the bridge of ice was giving way. Two weeks before
Easter Sunday it was warm enough to give the cows an airing. The air
cleared and the rays of the sun warmed man and beast. Traffic on the
frozen river had ceased. Suddenly one morning a whip cracked, and from
the bushes on the opposite shore of the Danube there appeared following
one another six tent wagons, such as used by travelling gypsies, each
wagon drawn by four horses harnessed side by side.
The people on our side of the Danube called to warn the travellers that
the ice was not thick enough to hold them. In a few minutes the whole
village was near the river, yelling and cursing like mad. But after they
realized that the intention was to cross the Danube at any cost, the
people settled down to watch what was going to happen. In front of the
first wagon walked a tall, grey-bearded man trying the solidity of the
ice with a heavy stick. Flanking the last wagon, in open lines, walked
the male population of the tribe. Behind them came the women and
children. No one said a word. The eyes of the whole village were on the
travellers, for every one felt that they were tempting Providence. Yet
each one knew that Murdo, the chief of the tribe, who was well known to
all, in fact to the whole Dobrudja, would not take such risks with his
people without good reason.
They had crossed to the middle of the frozen river in steady fashion,
when Murdo shouted one word and the feet of every man and beast stopped
short. The crossing of the river had been planned to the slightest
detail. The people on the shore were excited. The women began to cry and
the children to yell. They were driven inland by the men, who remained
to watch what was going on. No assistance was possible.
The tall chief of the gypsies walked to the left and chose another path
on the ice. The movement continued. Slowly, slowly, in silence the
gypsies approached the shore. Again they halted. Murdo was probing the
ice with his stick. We could see that the feet of the horses were
wrapped in bags, and instead of being shod each hoof was in a cushion
made of straw. As Murdo felt his way, a noise at first as of the tearing
of paper, but more distinct with every moment, came from somewhere in
the distance.
"Whoa, whoa, Murdo, the ice is breaking!" every one began to shout
excitedly. The noise grew louder and louder as it approached. One could
hear it coming steadily and gauge how much nearer it was. The ice was
splitting lengthwise in numberless sheets which broke up in smaller
parts and submerged gaily in the water, rising afterwards and climbing
one on top of the other, as in a merry embrace.
"Whoa, whoa, Murdo ..." but there was no time to give warning. With one
gesture Murdo had given his orders. The wagons spread as for a frontal
attack; the men seized the children and with the women at their heels
they ran as fast as their legs could take them. On the shore every one
fell to his knees in prayer. The strongest men closed their eyes, too
horrified to watch the outcome. The noise of the cracking of the ice
increased. A loud report, as of a dozen cannon, and the Danube was a
river again--and all, all the gypsies had saved themselves.
It was a gay afternoon, that afternoon, and a gay night also for the
whole village. It drank the inn out of everything. The gypsies had a
royal welcome. To all questions of why he had dared Providence, Murdo
answered, "There was no food for my people and horses. The Tartars have
none to sell."
Murdo and his tribe became the guests of the village. His people were
all lean. The men hardly carried themselves on their legs. Each one of
them had something to nurse. The village doctor amputated toes and
fingers; several women had to be treated for gangrene. The children of
the tribe were the only ones that had not suffered much. It was Murdo's
rule: "Children first, the horses next." The animals were stabled and
taken charge of by the peasants. The gypsies went to live in the huts of
the people in order to warm themselves back to life. Father liked Murdo,
and so the old chief came to live with us. The nights were long. After
supper we all sat in a semicircle around the large fireplace in which a
big log of seasoned oak was always burning.
I had received some books from a friend of the family who lived in the
capital of the country, Bucharest. Among them was Carlyle's Heroes and
Hero-Worship, translated into French. I was reading it when Murdo
approached the table and said, "What a small Bible my son is reading."
"It is not a Bible, it is a book of stories, Murdo."
"Stories! Well, that's another thing."
He looked over my shoulders into the book. As I turned the page he
asked:
"Is everything written in a book? I mean, is it written what the hero
said and what she answered and how they said it? Is it written all
about him and the villain? I mean are there signs, letters for
everything; for laughter, cries, love gestures? Tell me."
I explained as best I could and he marvelled. I had to give an example,
so I read a full page from a storybook.
"And is all that written in the book, my son? It is better than I
thought possible, but not so good as when one tells a story.... It is
like cloth woven by a machine, nice and straight, but it is not like the
kind our women weave on the loom--but it is good; it is better than I
thought possible. What are the stories in the book you are reading? Of
love or of sorrow?"
"Of neither, Murdo. Only about all the great heroes that have lived in
this world of cowards."
"About every one of them?" he asked again. "That's good. It is good to
tell the stories of the heroes."
He returned to the fireplace to light his pipe; then he came to me
again.
"If it is written in this book about all the great heroes, then there
must also be the record of Ghitza--the great Ghitza, our hero. The
greatest that ever lived. See, son, what is there said about him?"
I turned the pages one by one to the end of the book and then reported,
"Nothing, Murdo. Not even his name is mentioned."
"Then this book is not a good book. The man who wrote it did not know
every hero ... because not Alexander of Macedon and not even Napoleon
was greater than Ghitza...."
I sat near him at the fireplace and watched his wrinkled face while
Murdo told me the story of Ghitza as it should be written in the book of
heroes where the first place should be given to the greatest of them
all....
* * * * *
About the birth of people, I, Murdo, the chief of the gypsy tribe which
was ruled by the forefathers of my great-grandfather (who each ruled
close to a hundred years)--about the birth of people, I, Murdo, can say
this: That the seed of an oak gives birth to an oak, and that of a pine
to a pine. No matter where the seed be carried by the winds, if it is
the seed of an oak, an oak will grow; if it is the seed of a pine, a
pine. So though it never was known who was the father of Ghitza, we knew
him through his son. Ghitza's mother died because she bore him, the son
of a white man--she, the daughter of the chief of our tribe. It was
Lupu's rule to punish those who bore a child begotten from outside the
tribe. But the child was so charming that he was brought up in the tent
of one of our people. When Ghitza was ten years old, he worked alongside
the men; and there was none better to try a horse before a customer than
Ghitza. The oldest and slowest gathered all the strength it had and
galloped and ran when it felt the bare boy on its back. Old mares
frisked about like yearlings when he approached to mount them.
In his fifteenth summer he was a man, tall, broad, straight and lissom
as a locust tree. His face was like rich milk and his eyes as black as
the night. When he laughed or sang--and he laughed and sang all the
time--his mouth was like a rose in the morning, when the dewdrops hang
on its outer petals. And he was strong and good. If it happened that a
heavy cart was stuck in the mud of the road and the oxen could not budge
it, Ghitza would crawl under the cart, get on all fours, and lift the
cart clear of the mud. Never giving time to the driver to thank him, his
work done, he walked quickly away, whistling a song through a trembling
leaf between his lips. And he was loved by everybody; and the women died
just for the looks of him. The whole tribe became younger and happier
because of Ghitza. We travelled very much those days. Dobrudja belonged
yet to the Turks and was inhabited mostly by Tartars. The villages were
far apart and very small, so we could not stay long in any place.
When Ghitza was twenty, our tribe, which was then ruled by my mighty
grandfather, Lupu, happened to winter near Cerna Voda, a village on the
other side of the Danube. We sold many horses to the peasants that
winter. They had had a fine year. So our people had to be about the inn
a good deal. Ghitza, who was one of the best traders, was in the inn the
whole day. He knew every one. He knew the major and his wife and the two
daughters and chummed with his son. And they all loved Ghitza, because
he was so strong, so beautiful, and so wise. They never called him
"tzigan" because he was fairer than they were. And there was quite a
friendship between him and Maria, the smith's daughter. She was glad to
talk to him and to listen to his stories when he came to the smithy. She
helped her father in his work. She blew the bellows and prepared the
shoes for the anvil. Her hair was as red as the fire and her arms round
and strong. She was a sweet maid to speak to, and even the old priest
liked to pinch her arms when she kissed his hand.
Then came spring and the first Sunday dance in front of the inn. The
innkeeper had brought a special band of musicians. They were seated on a
large table between two trees, and all around them the village maidens
and the young men, locked arm in arm in one long chain of youth, danced
the Hora, turning round and round.
Ghitza had been away to town, trading. When he came to the inn, the
dance was already on. He was dressed in his best, wearing his new broad,
red silken belt with his snow-white pantaloons and new footgear with
silver bells on the ankles and tips. His shirt was as white and thin as
air. On it the deftest fingers of our tribe had embroidered figures and
flowers. On his head Ghitza wore a high black cap made of finest
Astrakhan fur. And he had on his large ear-rings of white gold. Ghitza
watched the dance for a while. Maria's right arm was locked with the arm
of the smith's helper, and her left with the powerful arm of the mayor's
son. Twice the long chain of dancing youths had gone around, and twice
Ghitza had seen her neck and bare arms, and his blood boiled. When she
passed him the third time, he jumped in, broke the hold between Maria
and the smith's helper, and locked his arm in hers.
Death could not have stopped the dance more suddenly. The musicians
stopped playing. The feet stopped dancing. The arms freed themselves and
hung limply.
The smith's helper faced Ghitza with his arm uplifted.
"You cursed tzigan! You low-born gypsy! How dare you break into our
dance? Our dance!" Other voices said the same.
Everybody expected blows, then knives and blood. But Ghitza just laughed
aloud and they were all calmed. He pinned the smith's helper's arm and
laughed. Then he spoke to the people as follows:
"You can see on my face that I am fairer than any of you. I love Maria,
but I will not renounce the people I am with. I love them. The smith's
helper knows that I could kill him with one blow. But I shall not do it.
I could fight a dozen of you together. You know I can. But I shall not
do it. Instead I shall outdance all of you. Dance each man and woman of
the village until she or he falls tired on the ground. And if I do this
I am as you are, and Maria marries me without word of shame from you."
And as he finished speaking he grasped the smith's helper around the
waist and called to the musicians:
"Play, play."
For a full hour he danced around and around with the man while the
village watched them and called to the white man to hold out. But the
smith's helper was no match for Ghitza. He dragged his feet and fell.
Ghitza, still fresh and vigorous, grasped another man and called to the
musicians to play an even faster dance than before. When that one had
fallen exhausted to the ground, Ghitza took on a third and a fourth.
Then he began to dance with the maidens. The fiddler's string broke and
the guitar player's fingers were numb. The sun went to rest behind the
mountains and the moon rose in the sky to watch over her little
children, the stars.
But Ghitza was still dancing. There was no trace of fatigue on his face
and no signs of weariness in his steps. The more he danced, the fresher
he became. When he had danced half of the village tired, and they were
all lying on the ground, drinking wine from earthen urns to refresh
themselves, the last string of the fiddle snapped and the musician
reeled from his chair. Only the flute and the guitar kept on.
"Play on, play on, you children of sweet angels, and I shall give to
each of you a young lamb in the morning," Ghitza urged them. But soon
the breath of the flutist gave way. His lips swelled and blood spurted
from his nose. The guitar player's fingers were so numb he could no
longer move them. Then some of the people beat the rhythm of the dance
with their open palms. Ghitza was still dancing on. They broke all the
glasses of the inn and all the bottles beating time to his dance.
The night wore away. The cock crew. Early dogs arose and the sun woke
and started to climb from behind the eastern range of mountains. Ghitza
laughed aloud as he saw all the dancers lying on the ground. Even Maria
was asleep near her mother. He entered the inn and woke the innkeeper,
who had fallen asleep behind the counter.
"Whoa, whoa, you old swindler! Wake up! Day is come and I am thirsty."
After a long drink, he went to his tent to play with the dogs, as he did
early every morning.
A little later, toward noon, he walked over to the smith's shop, shook
hands with Maria's father and kissed the girl on the mouth even as the
helper looked on.
"She shall be your wife, son," the smith said. "She will be waiting for
you when your tribe comes to winter here. And no man shall ever say my
daughter married an unworthy one."
The fame of our tribe spread rapidly. The tale of Ghitza's feat spread
among all the villages and our tribe was respected everywhere. People no
longer insulted us, and many another of our tribe now danced on Sundays
at the inn--yea, our girls and our boys danced with the other people of
the villages. Our trade doubled and tripled. We bartered more horses in
a month than we had at other times in a year. Ghitza's word was law
everywhere. He was so strong his honesty was not doubted. And he was
honest. An honest horse-trader! He travelled far and wide. But if Cerna
Voda was within a day's distance, Ghitza was sure to be there on Sunday
to see Maria.
To brighten such days, wrestling matches were arranged and bets were
made as to how long the strongest of them could stay with Ghitza. And
every time Ghitza threw the other man. Once in the vise of his two arms,
a man went down like a log.
And so it lasted the whole summer. But in whatever village our tribe
happened to be, the women were running after the boy. Lupu, the chief of
the tribe, warned him; told him that life is like a burning candle and
that one must not burn it from both ends at the same time. But Ghitza
only laughed and made merry.
"Lupu, old chief, didst thou not once say that I was an oak? Why dost
thou speak of candles now?"
And he carried on as before. And ever so good, and ever so merry, and
ever such a good trader.
Our tribe returned to Cerna Voda early that fall. We had many horses and
we felt that Cerna was the best place for them. Most of them were of the
little Tartar kind, so we thought it well for them to winter in the
Danube's valley.
Every Sunday, at the inn, there were wrestling matches. Young men, the
strongest, came from far-away villages. And they all, each one of them,
hit the ground when Ghitza let go his vise.
One Sunday, when the leaves had fallen from the trees and the harvest
was in, there came a Tartar horse-trading tribe to Cerna Voda.
And in their midst they had a big, strong man. Lupu, our chief, met
their chief at the inn. They talked and drank and praised each their
horses and men. Thus it happened that the Tartar chief spoke about his
strong man. The peasants crowded nearer to hear the Tartar's story. Then
they talked of Ghitza and his strength. The Tartar chief did not believe
it.
"I bet three of my horses that my man can down him," the Tartar chief
called.
"I take the bet against a hundred ducats in gold," the innkeeper
answered.
"It's a bet," the Tartar said.
"Any more horses to bet?" others called out.
The Tartar paled but he was a proud chief and soon all his horses and
all his ducats were pledged in bets to the peasants. That whole day and
the rest of the week to Sunday, nothing else was spoken about. The
people of our tribe pledged everything they possessed. The women gave
even their ear-rings. The Tartars were rich and proud and took every bet
that was offered. The match was to be on Sunday afternoon in front of
the inn. Ghitza was not in the village at all the whole week. He was in
Constantza, on the shores of the Black Sea, finishing some trade. When
he arrived home on Sunday morning he found the people of the village,
our people, the Tartars, and a hundred carriages that had brought people
from the surrounding villages camped in front of the inn. He jumped down
from his horse and looked about wondering from where and why so many
people at once! The men and the women were in their best clothes and the
horses all decorated as for a fair. The people gave him a rousing
welcome. Lupu called Ghitza aside and told him why the people had
gathered. Ghitza was taken aback but laughed instantly and slapped the
chief on the shoulders.
"It will be as you know, and the Tartars shall depart poor and
dishonoured, while we will remain the kings of the horse trade in the
Dobrudja honoured and beloved by all."
Oak that he was! Thus he spoke, and he had not even seen the other man,
the man he was to wrestle. He only knew he had to maintain the honour of
his tribe. At the appointed hour he came to the inn. The whole tribe was
about and around. He had stripped to the waist. He was good to look at.
On the ground were bundles of rich skins near rolls of cloth that our
men and women had bet against the Tartars. Heaps of gold, rings,
watches, ear-rings, and ducats were spread on the tables. Tartar horses
and oxen of our men and the people of the village were trooped
together, the necks tied to one long rope held on one side by one of our
men or a villager and at the other end by a Tartar boy. If Ghitza were
thrown, one of ours had just to let his end of the rope go and all
belonged to the other one. The smithy had pledged all he had, even his
daughter, to the winner; and many another daughter, too, was pledged.
Ghitza looked about and saw what was at stake: the wealth and honour of
his tribe and the wealth and honour of the village and the surrounding
villages.
Then the Tartar came. He was tall and square. His trunk rested on short,
stocky legs, and his face was black, ugly, and pock-marked. All shouting
ceased. The men formed a wide ring around the two wrestlers. It was so
quiet one could hear the slightest noise. Then the mayor spoke to the
Tartars and pointed to the Danube; the inn was right on its shore.
"If your man is thrown, this very night you leave our shore, for the
other side."
Ghitza kissed Maria and Lupu, the chief. Then the fight began.
A mighty man was Ghitza and powerful were his arms and legs. But it was
seen from the very first grip that he had burned the candle at both ends
at the same time. He had wasted himself in carouses. The two men closed
one another in their vises and each tried to crush the other's ribs.
Ghitza broke the Tartar's hold and got a grip on his head and twisted it
with all his might. But the neck of the devil was of steel. It did not
yield. Maria began to call to her lover:
"Twist his neck, Ghitza. My father has pledged me to him if he wins."
And many another girl begged Ghitza to save her from marrying a black
devil.
The Tartars, from another side, kept giving advice to their man.
Everybody shrieked like mad, and even the dogs howled. From Ghitza's
body the sweat flowed as freely as a river. But the Tartar's neck
yielded not and his feet were like pillars of steel embedded in rocks.
"Don't let his head go, don't let him go," our people cried, when it was
plain that all his strength had gone out of his arms. Achmed's
pear-shaped head slipped from between his arms as the Tartar wound his
legs about Ghitza's body and began to crush him. Ghitza held on with all
his strength. His face was blue black. His nose bled, and from his mouth
he spat blood. Our people cried and begged him to hold on. The eyes of
the Tartars shot fire, their white teeth showed from under their thick
lips and they called on Achmed to crush the Giaour. Oh! it seemed that
all was lost. All our wealth, the honour and respect Ghitza had won for
us; the village's wealth and all. And all the maidens were to be taken
away as slaves to the Tartars. One man said aloud so that Ghitza should
hear:
"There will not be a pair of oxen in the whole village to plough with;
not a horse to harrow with, and our maidens are pledged to the black
sons of the devil."
Ghitza was being downed. But, wait ... what happened! With the last of
his strength he broke the hold. A shout rose to rend the skies.
Bewildered Achmed lay stupefied and looked on. Tottering on his feet, in
three jumps Ghitza was on the high point of the shore--a splash--and
there was no more Ghitza. He was swallowed by the Danube. No Tartar had
downed him!
And so our people had back their wealth, and the people of the village
theirs. No honour was lost and the maidens remained in the village--only
Maria did not. She followed her lover even as the people looked on. No
one even attempted to stop her. It was her right. Where was she to find
one such as he? She, too, was from the seed of an oak.
* * * * *
"And now, son, I ask thee--if the book before thee speaks of all the
great heroes, why is it that Ghitza has not been given the place of
honour?"
The log was burning in the fireplace, but I said good night to Murdo. I
wanted to dream of the mighty Ghitza and his Maria. And ever since I
have been dreaming of ... her.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright,
1921, by Konrad Bercovici.
THE LIFE OF FIVE POINTS[5]
#By# EDNA CLARE BRYNER
From _The Dial_
A life went on in the town of Five Points. Five Points, the town was
called, because it was laid out in the form of a star with five points
and these points picked it out and circumscribed it. The Life that was
lived there was in this wise. Over the centre of the town it hung thick
and heavy, a great mass of tangled strands of all the colours that were
ever seen, but stained and murky-looking from something that oozed out
no one could tell from which of the entangling cords. In five directions
heavy strands came in to the great knot in the centre and from it there
floated out, now this way, now that, loose threads like tentacles,
seeking to fasten themselves on whatever came within their grasp. All
over the town thin threads criss-crossed back and forth in and out among
the heavy strands making little snarls wherever several souls lived or
were gathered together. One could see, by looking intently, that the
tangling knotted strands and threads were woven into the rough pattern
of a star.
Life, trembling through the mass in the centre, streamed back and forth
over the incoming strands, irregularly and in ever-changing volume,
pulling at the smaller knots here and there in constant disturbance. It
swayed the loosely woven mass above the schoolhouse, shaking out glints
of colour from the thin bright cords, golden yellows and deep blues,
vivid reds and greens. It twisted and untwisted the small black knot
above the town hotel. It arose in murky vapour from the large knots
above each of the churches. All over the town it quivered through the
fine entangling threads, making the pattern change in colour, loosening
and tightening the weaving. In this fashion Life came forth from the
body which it inhabited.
This is the way the town lay underneath it. From a large round of
foot-tramped earth five wide streets radiated out in as many directions
for a length of eight or ten houses and yards. Then the wide dirt street
became a narrow road, the narrow board walks flanking it on either side
stopped suddenly and faintly worn paths carried out their line for a
space of three minutes' walk when all at once up rose the wall of the
forest, the road plunged through and was immediately swallowed up. This
is the way it was in all five directions from Five Points.
Round about the town forests lay thick and dark like the dark heavens
around the cities of the sky, and held it off secure from every other
life-containing place. The roads that pierced the wall of the forest led
in deeper and deeper, cutting their way around shaggy foothills down to
swift streams and on and up again to heights, in and out of obscure
notches. They must finally have sprung out again through another wall of
forest to other towns. But as far as Five Points was concerned, they led
simply to lumber mills sitting like chained ravening creatures at safe
distances from one another eating slowly away at the thick woods as if
trying to remove the screen that held the town off to itself.
In the beginning there was no town at all, but miles and miles of virgin
forest clothing the earth that humped itself into rough-bosomed hills
and hummocks. Then the forest was its own. Birds nested in its dense
leafage, fish multiplied in the clear running streams, wild creatures
ranged its fastnesses in security. The trees, touched by no harsher hand
than that which turns the rhythmically changing seasons, added year by
year ring upon ring to their girths.
Suddenly human masters appeared. They looked at the girth of the trees,
appraised the wealth that lay hidden there, marked the plan of its
taking out. They brought in workers, cleared a space for head-quarters
in the midst of their great tracts, cut roads out through the forest,
and wherever swift streams crossed they set mills. The cleared space
they laid out symmetrically in a tree-fringed centre of common ground
encircled by a main street for stores and offices, with streets for
houses leading out to the edge of the clearing. In the south-east corner
of the town they set aside a large square of land against the forest for
a school-house.
Thus Five Points was made as nearly in the centre of the great uncut
region as it could well be and still be on the narrow-gauge railroad
already passing through to make junction with larger roads. In short
order there was a regular town with a station halfway down the street
where the railroad cut through and near it a town hotel with a bar; a
post office, several stores, a candy shop and a dentist's office
fronting the round of earth in the centre; five churches set each on its
own street and as far from the centre of the town as possible; and a
six-room school-house with a flagpole. One mile, two miles, five and six
miles distant in the forest, saw-mills buzzed away, strangely noisy amid
their silent clumsy lumbermen and mill folk.
One after another, all those diverse persons necessary for carrying on
the work of a small community drifted in. They cut themselves loose from
other communities and hastened hither to help make this new one, each
moved by his own particular reason, each bringing to the making of a
Life the threads of his own deep desire. The threads interlaced with
other threads, twisted into strands, knotted with other strands and the
Life formed itself and hung trembling, thick and powerful, over the
town.
The mill owners and managers came first, bringing strong warp threads
for the Life. They had to have the town to take out their products and
bring in supplies. They wanted to make money as fast as possible. "Let
the town go to hell!" they said. They cared little how the Life went so
that it did go. Most of them lived alternately as heads of families at
home two hundred miles away and as bachelors at their mills and extract
works.
Mr. Stillman, owner of hundreds of acres of forest, was different. He
wanted to be near at hand to watch his timber being taken out slowly and
carefully and meanwhile to bring up his two small sons, healthy and
virtuous, far away from city influences. He made a small farm up in the
high south-west segment of the town against the woods, with orchards and
sheep pasture and beehives and a big white farm-house, solidly built. He
became a deacon in the Presbyterian church and one of the corner-stones
of the town.
Mr. Goff, owner of mills six miles out, kept up a comfortable place in
town to serve as a half-way house between his mills and his home in a
city a couple of hundred miles distant. He believed that his appearance
as a regular townsman had a steadying influence on his workmen, that it
gave them faith in him. His placid middle-aged wife accompanied him back
and forth on his weekly visits to the mills and interested herself in
those of his workers who had families.
Mill Manager Henderson snapped at the chance to run the Company store as
well as to manage several mills. He saw in it something besides food and
clothing for his large family of red-haired girls. Although he lived
down at one of the mills he was counted as a townsman. He was a pillar
in the Methodist church and his eldest daughter played the piano there.
George Brainerd, pudgy chief clerk of the Company store, was hand in
glove with Henderson. He loved giving all his energies, undistracted by
family or other ties, to the task of making the Company's workers come
out at the end of the season in the Company's debt instead of having
cleared a few hundred dollars as they were made to believe, on the day
they were hired, would be the case. The percentage he received for his
cleverness was nothing to him in comparison with the satisfaction he
felt in his ability to manipulate.
Lanky Jim Dunn, the station agent, thirty-three and unmarried, satisfied
his hunger for new places by coming to Five Points. He hated old settled
lines of conduct. As station agent, he had a hand in everything and on
every one that came in and went out of the town. He held a sort of gauge
on the Life of the town. He chaffed all the girls who came down to see
the evening train come in and tipped off the young men as to what was
doing at the town hotel.
Dr. Smelter, thin-lipped and cold-eyed, elegant in manner and in dress,
left his former practice without regret. He opened his office in Five
Points hoping that in a new community obscure diseases did not flourish.
He was certain that lack of skill would not be as apparent there as in a
well-established village.
Rev. Trotman had been lured hither by the anticipation of a virgin field
for saving souls; Rev. Little, because he dared not let any of his own
fold be exposed to the pitfalls of an opposing creed.
Dave Fellows left off setting chain pumps in Gurnersville and renewed
his teaching experience by coming to Five Points to be principal of the
school. Dick Shelton's wife dragged her large brood of little girls and
her drunken husband along after Fellows in order to be sure of some one
to bring Dick home from the saloon before he drank up the last penny. It
made little difference to her where she earned the family living by
washing.
So they came, one after another, and filled up the town--Abe Cohen, the
Jew clothing dealer, Barringer, the druggist, Dr. Barton, rival of Dr.
Smelter and a far more highly skilled practitioner, Jake O'Flaherty, the
saloon-keeper, Widow Stokes, rag carpet weaver and gossip, Jeremy
Whitling, town carpenter, and his golden-blonde daughter Lucy,
school-teacher, Dr. Sohmer, dentist. Every small community needs these
various souls. No sooner is the earth scraped clean for a new village
than they come, one by one, until the town is complete. So it happened
in Five Points until there came to be somewhat fewer than a thousand
souls. There the town stood.
Stores and offices completely took up the circle of Main Street and
straggled a little down the residence streets. Under the fringe of trees
business hummed where side by side flourished Grimes' meat shop, the
drug store with the dentist's office above, Henderson's General Store,
as the Company store was called, Brinker's grocery store, the Clothing
Emporium, McGilroy's barber shop, Backus' hardware, and the post office.
The Five Points _Argus_ issued weekly its two pages from the dingy
office behind the drug store. Graham's Livery did a big business down
near the station.
Each church had gathered its own rightful members within its round of
Sunday and mid-week services, its special observances on Christmas, and
Easter, and Children's Day. In the spring of each year a one-ring circus
encamped for a day on the common ground in the centre of the town and
drew all the people in orderly array under its tent. On the Fourth of
July the whole town again came together in the centre common, in fashion
less orderly, irrespective of creed or money worth, celebrating the
deeds of their ancestors by drinking lemonade and setting off
firecrackers.
After a while no one could remember when it had been any different.
Those who came to town as little children grew into gawky youths knowing
no more about other parts of the world than their geography books told
them. When any one died, a strand in the Life hanging above the town
broke and flapped in the wind, growing more and more frayed with the
passing of time, until after a year or so its tatters were noticeable
only as a sort of roughness upon the pattern. When a child was born, a
thin tentacle from the central mass of strands reached out and fastened
itself upon him, dragging out his desire year by year until the strand
was thick and strong and woven in securely among the old scaly ones.
The folk who lived at the mills had hardly anything to do with the Life
of Five Points. They were merely the dynamo that kept the Life alive.
They were busied down in the woods making the money for the men who made
the town. They came to town only on Saturday nights. They bought a
flannel shirt and provisions at the Company store, a bag of candy at
Andy's for the hotel and then went back to have their weekly orgy in
their own familiar surroundings. They had little effect on the Life of
the town. That was contained almost entirely within the five points
where the road met the forest.
* * * * *
The Life of Five Points had one fearful enemy. Its home was in the black
forest. Without any warning it was likely to break out upon the town,
its long red tongues leaping out, striving to lick everything into its
red gullet. It was a thirsty animal. If one gave it enough water, it
went back into its lair. Five Points had only drilled wells in back
yards. The nearest big stream was a mile away.
Twice already during the existence of the Life the enemy had started
forth from its lair. The first time was not long after the town had
started and the pattern of Life was hardly more than indicated in the
loosely woven threads.
Down in the forest the people saw a long red tongue leaping. With brooms
and staves they ran to meet it far from their dwellings, beating it with
fury. As they felt the heat of its breath in their faces, they thought
of ministers' words in past sermons. Young desires and aspirations long
dormant began to throb into being. They prayed for safety. They promised
to give up their sins. They determined to be hard on themselves in the
performance of daily duties. The Life suspended above them untwisted its
loosely gathered in strands, the strands shone with a golden light and
entwined again in soft forms.
With death-dealing blows they laid the enemy black and broken about
Grant's Mills, a mile away, and then went back to their homes telling
each other how brave they had been. Pride swelled up their hearts. They
boasted that they could take care of themselves. Old habits slipped back
upon their aspirations and crushed them again into hidden corners. Life
gathered up its loose-woven pattern of dull threads and hung trembling
over the town.
Worsting the enemy brought the people more closely together. Suddenly
they seemed to know each other for the first time. They made changes,
entered into bonds, drew lines, and settled into their ways. Life grew
quickly with its strands woven tightly together into a weaving that
would be hard to unloose.
The mill managers made money. They saw to it that their mills buzzed
away continually. They visited their homes regularly. Mr. Stillman's
farm flourished. His apple trees were bearing. The school children
understood that they could always have apples for the asking. The
Stillman boys did not go to school. They had a tutor. Their father
whipped them soundly when they disobeyed him by going to play in the
streets of the town with the other children.
Dave Fellows had finally persuaded Dick Shelton to take a Cure. Dick
Shelton sober, it was discovered, was a man of culture and knew, into
the bargain, all the points of the law. So he was made Justice of the
Peace. His wife stopped taking in washing and spent her days trying to
keep the children out of the front room where Dick tried his cases.
Dave Fellows himself gave up the principalship of the school, finding
its meagre return insufficient to meet the needs of an increasing
family. Yielding to the persuasion of Henderson, he became contractor
for taking out timber at Trout Creek Mill. He counted on his two oldest
sons to do men's work during the summer when school was not in session.
Fellows moved his family into the very house in which Henderson had
lived. Henderson explained that he had to live in town to be near a
doctor for his ailing wife and sickly girls. The millmen told Dave
Fellows that Henderson was afraid of them because they had threatened
him if he kept on overcharging them at the Company store.
Abe Cohen did a thriving business in clothing. He had a long list of
customers heavily in debt to him through the promise that they could pay
whenever they got ready. He dunned them openly on the street so that
they made a wide detour in order to avoid going past his store.
Dr. Barton had established a reputation for kindness of heart as well as
skill in practice that threatened his rival's good will. Helen Barton,
the doctor's young daughter, perversely kept company with her father's
rival. Every one felt sorry for the father but secretly admired Dr.
Smelter's diabolic tactics.
* * * * *
Long-forgotten was the enemy when it came the second time. On a dark
night when Five Points lay heavy in its slumbers, it bore down upon the
north side of the town. Some sensitive sleeper, troubled in his dreams,
awoke to see the dreadful red tongues cutting across the darkness like
crimson banners. His cries aroused the town. All the fathers rushed out
against the enemy. The mothers dressed their children and packed best
things in valises ready to flee when there was no longer any hope.
For three days and three nights the enemy raged, leaping in to eat up
one house, two houses, beaten back and back, creeping up in another
place, beaten back again. The school boys took beaters and screamed at
the enemy as they beat.
The older ones remembered the first coming of the enemy. They said, "It
was a warning!" They prayed while fear shook their aching arms. The Life
of the town writhed and gleams of colour came out of its writhings and a
whiteness as if the red tongues were cleansing away impurities.
The mill managers brought their men to fight the enemy. "We mustn't let
it go," they said. Mr. Stillman had his two sons helping him. He talked
to them while they fought the enemy together. He spoke of punishment for
sin. His sons listened while the lust of fighting held their bodies.
Helen Barton knelt at her father's feet where he was fighting the enemy
and swore she would never see Dr. Smelter again. She knew he was a bad
man and could never bring her happiness.
Lyda, eldest daughter in the Shelton family, gathered her little sisters
about her, quieting their clamours while her mother wrung her hands and
said over and over again, "To happen when your papa was getting on so
nicely!" Lyda resolved that she would put all thoughts of marrying out
of her head. She would have to stop keeping company with Ned Backus,
the hardware man's son. It was not fair to keep company with a man you
did not intend to marry. She would stay for ever with her mother and
help care for the children so that her father would have a peaceful home
life and not be tempted.
All about, wherever they were, people prayed. They prayed until there
was nothing left in their hearts but prayer as there was nothing left in
their bodies but a great tiredness.
Then a heavy rain came and the red tongues drank greedily until they
were slaked and became little short red flickers of light on a soaked
black ground. The enemy was conquered. One street of the town was gone.
People ran to the church and held thanksgiving services. A stillness
brooded over the town. Life hardly moved; the strands hung slack.
Thanksgiving soon changed to revival. Services lasted a week. The
ministers preached terrible sermons, burning with terrible words.
"Repent before it is too late. Twice God has warned this town." People
vowed vows and sang as they had never sung before the hymns in their
church song-books. The strands of Life leapt and contorted themselves
but they could not pull themselves apart.
The revival ended. Building began. In a few months a street of houses
sprang up defiant in yellow newness. In and out of a pattern little
changed from its old accustomed aspect Life pulsated in great waves over
the heavy strands. In and out, up and down, it rushed, drawing threads
tightly together, knotting them in fantastic knots that only the
judgment day could undo.
* * * * *
Mr. Stillman's sons were now young men. The younger was dying of heart
trouble in a hospital in the city. The father had locked the elder in
his room for two weeks on bread and water until he found out exactly
what had happened between his son and the Barringers' hired girl. Guy
Stillman, full-blooded, dark, and handsome, with high cheek bones like
an Indian, declared vehemently that he would never marry the girl.
Dave Fellows had taken his sons out of school to help him the year
round in the woods. Sixteen-year-old Lawrence had left home and gone to
work in the town barber shop late afternoons and evenings in order to
keep on at his work in the high school grades just established. He vowed
he would never return home to be made into a lumber-jack. Dave's wife
was trying to persuade him to leave Five Points and go to the city where
her family lived. There the children could continue their schooling and
Dave could get work more suited to his ability than lumbering seemed to
be. Dave, too proud to admit that he had not the capacity for carrying
on this work successfully, refused to entertain any thought of leaving
the place. "If my family would stick by me, everything would come out
all right," he always said.
Lyda Shelton still kept company with Ned Backus. When he begged her to
marry him, she put him off another year until the children were a little
better able to care for themselves. Her next youngest sister had married
a dentist from another town and had not asked her mother to the wedding.
Lyda was trying to make it up to her mother in double devotion.
Helen Barton met Dr. Smelter once too often and her father made her
marry him. She had a child born dead. Now she was holding clandestine
meetings with Mr. Daly, a traveling salesman, home on one of his
quarterly visits to his family. He had promised to take Helen away with
him on his next trip and make a home for her in the city.
* * * * *
It was a sweltering hot Saturday in the first part of June. Every now
and then the wind blew in from the east picking up the dust in eddies.
Abe Cohen's store was closed. His children wandered up and down the
street, celebrating their sabbath in best clothes and chastened
behaviour. Jim Dunn was watching a large consignment of goods for the
Company store being unloaded. He was telling Earl Henderson, the
manager's nephew, how much it would cost him to get in with the poker
crowd.
George Brainerd had finished fixing up the Company's accounts. He
whistled as he worked. Dave Fellows was in debt three hundred dollars to
the Company. That would keep him another year. He was a good workman but
a poor manager. Sam Kent was in debt one hundred dollars. He would have
to stay, too. John Simpson had come out even. He could go if he wanted
to. He was a trouble-maker anyway....
Helen Barton sat talking with Daly in the thick woods up back of the
Presbyterian church. They were planning how to get away undetected on
the evening train.... "If she was good enough for you then, she's good
enough now," Mr. Stillman was saying to his defiant son. "You're not fit
for a better woman. You'll take care of her and that's the end of
it...."
Widow Stokes' half-witted son rode up from the Extract Works on an old
bony horse. He brought word that the enemy was at the Kibbard Mill, two
miles beyond the Works. People were throwing their furniture into the
mill pond, he said. Every one laughed. Mottie Stokes was always telling
big stories. The boy, puzzled, went round and round the town, stopping
every one he met, telling his tale. Sweat poured down his pale face.
At last he rode down to Trout Creek Mill and told Dave Fellows. Dave got
on the old grey mule and came up to town to find out further news. The
townsfolk, loafing under the trees around Main Street and going about on
little errands, shouted when they saw Dave come in on his mule beside
Mottie on the bony horse. "Two of a kind," was passed round the circle
of business and gossip, and sniggering went with it. Dave suggested that
some one go down to see just what had happened. Jeers answered him.
"Believe a fool? Not quite that cracked yet!" Dave went about uneasily
if he had business to attend to, but keeping an eye searching out in the
direction of the Works.
In an hour or so another rider came panting into town. Back of him
straggled families from the mills and works with whatever belongings
they could bring on their backs. Fear came into the hearts of the
citizens of Five Points. They shouted in anger to drive away their fear.
"Why didn't you stay and fight it? What'd you come up here for?"
"Too big, too big," cried the lumber folk, gesturing back over their
shoulders.
Far off a haze was gathering and in the haze a redness appeared, growing
slowly more and more distinct. The townsfolk stared in the direction of
the Works, unwilling to believe. Some one shouted, "Better be ready!"
Shortly every pump in the town had its hand and everything that could
hold water was being filled for the oncoming thirsty beast.
Dave Fellows galloped down the long hills, around curves, across the
bridge at the mill and up again to his home, told his family of the
approach of the enemy, directed them to pack up all the easily moved
furniture, harness the two mules and be ready to flee out through the
forest past Goff's Mills to the next station thirty miles further down
the railroad. No one could tell where the enemy would spread. He would
come back the minute that all hope was lost. The boys must stay at home
and take care of the place. "Bring Lawrence back with you," his wife
called after him, and he turned and waved his hand.
When he got back into town thousands of red tongues were bearing down
upon the station street. The enemy belched forth great hot breaths that
swept the sky ahead of it like giant firecrackers and falling upon the
houses to the east of the town ran from one to another eating its way up
the station street towards the centre of the town. Family after family
left their homes, carrying valuables, dragging their small children, and
scattered to the north and south of the advancing enemy. The town hotel
emptied itself quickly of its temporary family. Jim Dunn left the
station carrying the cash box and a bundle of papers.
From building to building the enemy leaped. Before it fled group after
group of persons from stores and homes. Methodically it went round the
circle of shops, the most rapacious customer the town had ever seen.
Quarters of beeves in the meat shop, bottles of liquids and powders on
the drug-store shelves, barrels and boxes of food in the grocery store,
suits of clothing in Abe Cohen's, the leather whips and carriage robes
in the hardware store, all went down its gullet with the most amazing
ease.
Swelled with its indiscriminate meal, it started hesitantly on its way
up the street that led to the Presbyterian Church. Now people lost their
heads and ran hither and thither, screaming and praying incoherently,
dragging their crying children about from one place to another, pumping
water frantically to offer it, an impotent libation to an insatiable
god. They knew that neither the beating of brooms nor the water from
their wells could quench the enemy that was upon them. Red Judgment Day
was at hand.
Meanwhile a peculiar thing happened. The Life that was hanging above the
town lifted itself up, high up, entire in its pattern, beyond the reach
of red tongues, of gusts from hot gullets--and there it stayed while the
enemy raged below.
Dave Fellows harangued the men who were beating away vainly, pouring
buckets of water on unquenchable tongues. He pointed to the forest up
the street back of the Presbyterian Church. He was telling them that the
only thing to do was to call forth another enemy to come down and do
battle with this one before it reached the church. "Yes, yes," they
chorused eagerly.
Craftily they edged around south of the enemy, scorching their faces
against its streaming flank, and ran swiftly far up the line of forest
past the church. There it was even at that moment that Helen Barton was
begging Daly to remember his promise and take her with him on the
evening train....
The men scooped up leaves and small twigs and bending over invoked their
champion to come forth and do battle for them. Presently it came forth,
shooting out little eager red tongues that danced and leaped, glad to be
coming forth, growing larger in leaps and bounds. Dave Fellows watched
anxiously the direction in which the hissing tongues sprang. "The wind
will take it," he said at last. Fitfully the breeze pressed up against
the back of the newly born, pushing more and more strongly as the
tongues sprang higher and higher, until finally it swept the full-grown
monster down the track towards where the other monster was gorging.
"For God's sake, Henry, take me with you, this evening, as you
promised," Helen was imploring Daly. "I can't stay here any longer. My
father--I wish now I had listened to him in the first place, long ago."
Daly did not hear her. He had risen to his feet and holding his head
back was drawing in great acrid breaths. His florid face went white.
"What is that?" he said hoarsely. Through the thick forest red tongues
broke out, sweeping towards them. Helen clutched Daly's arm, screaming.
He shook her off and turned to flee out by the church. There, too, red
tongues were leaping, curling back on themselves in long derisive
snarls. Daly turned upon her. "You ..."
The two enemies met at the church, red tongue leaping against red
tongue, crackling jaws breaking on crackling jaws, sizzling gullet
straining against sizzling gullet. A great noise like the rending of a
thousand fibres, a clap of red thunder, as the body of beast met the
body of beast, and both lay crumpled upon the ground together, their
long bodies writhing, bruised, red jaws snapping, red tongue eating red
tongue.
Upon them leaped the band of men spreading out the whole length of the
bodies and beat, beat, incessantly, desperately, tongue after tongue,
hour after hour, beat, beat. Lingeringly the enemy died, a hard death.
Three days it was dying and it had watchers in plenty. Whenever a red
tongue leaped into life, some one was there to lay it low. In the
night-time the men watched, and in the day the women and girls. The men
talked. "We will build it up again in brick," they said. "That is safer
and it looks better, too." The women talked, too. "I hope Abe will get
in some of those new lace curtains," they said.
Meanwhile families gathered themselves together. Those whose homes were
gone encamped picnic fashion in the schoolhouse or were taken in by
those whose houses were still standing. Two persons were missing when
the muster of the town was finally taken. They were Helen Barton and Mr.
Daly. Jim Dunn said he wasn't sure but he thought Daly left on the
morning train. Daly's wife said he told her he was not going until
evening.
They searched for Helen far and wide. No trace of her was ever found.
Her father stood in front of the Sunday School on the Sunday following
the death of the enemy and made an eloquent appeal for better life in
the town. "The wages of sin is death," he declared, "death of the soul
always, death of the body sometimes." The people thought him inspired.
Widow Stokes whispered to her neighbour, "It's his daughter he's
thinking of."
Dave Fellows was the only person who left the town. He went back to his
wife when he saw that the town was saved and said, "We might as well
move now that we're packed up. The town is cursed." Two days later they
took the train north from a pile of blackened timbers where the old
station had stood. Lawrence went with them.
The enemy had eaten up all the records in the Company store, and had
tried to eat up George Brainerd while he was attempting to save them.
The Company had to accept the workers' own accounts. George was going
about with his arm tied up, planning to keep a duplicate set of records
in a place unassailable by the enemy.
Abe Cohen wailed so about his losses and his little children that Mr.
Stillman set him up in a brand new stock of clothing. Abe was telling
every one, "Buy now. Pay when you like." And customers came as of old.
Guy Stillman married the Barringers' hired girl. His father established
them in a little home out at the edge of the town. The nearest neighbour
reported that Guy beat his wife.
Lyda married Ned Backus. "Suppose you had died," she told Ned. "I would
never have forgiven myself. You can work in papa's new grocery store.
He's going to start one as soon as we can get the building done. Mama
will have a son to help take care of her."
Life, its strands blackened by the strong breath of the enemy, settled
down once more over the town and hung there, secure in its pattern,
thick and powerful. Under it brick stores and buildings rose up and
people stood about talking, complacently planning their days. "It won't
come again for a long time," they said.
FOOTNOTE:
[5] Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright,
1921, by Edna Clare Bryner.
THE SIGNAL TOWER[6]
#By# WADSWORTH CAMP
From _The Metropolitan_
"I get afraid when you leave me alone this way at night."
The big man, Tolliver, patted his wife's head. His coarse laughter was
meant to reassure, but, as he glanced about the living-room of his
remote and cheerless house, his eyes were uneasy. The little boy, just
six years old, crouched by the cook-stove, whimpering over the remains
of his supper.
"What are you afraid of?" Tolliver scoffed.
The stagnant loneliness, the perpetual drudgery, had not yet conquered
his wife's beauty, dark and desirable. She motioned towards the boy.
"He's afraid, too, when the sun goes down."
For a time Tolliver listened to the wind, which assaulted the frame
house with the furious voices of witches demanding admittance.
"It's that----" he commenced.
She cut him short, almost angrily.
"It isn't that with me," she whispered.
He lifted the tin pail that contained a small bottle of coffee and some
sandwiches. He started for the door, but she ran after him, dragging at
his arm.
"Don't go! I'm afraid!"
The child was quiet now, staring at them with round, reflective eyes.
"Joe," Tolliver said gently, "will be sore if I don't relieve him on
time."
She pressed her head against his coat and clung tighter. He closed his
eyes.
"You're afraid of Joe," he said wearily.
Without looking up, she nodded. Her voice was muffled.
"He came last night after you relieved him at the tower. He knocked, and
I wouldn't let him in. It made him mad. He swore. He threatened. He said
he'd come back. He said he'd show us we couldn't kick him out of the
house just because he couldn't help liking me. We never ought to have
let him board here at all."
"Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I was afraid you'd be fighting each other in the tower; and it didn't
seem so bad until dark came on. Why didn't you complain to the railroad
when--when he tried to kiss me the other night?"
"I thought that was finished," Tolliver answered slowly, "when I kicked
him out, when I told him I'd punish him if he bothered you again. And
I--I was a little ashamed to complain to the superintendent about that.
Don't you worry about Joe, Sally, I'll talk to him now, before I let him
out of the tower. He's due to relieve me again at midnight, and I'll be
home then."
He put on his great coat. He pulled his cap over his ears. The child
spoke in a high, apprehensive voice.
"Don't go away, papa."
He stared at the child, considering.
"Put his things on, Sally," he directed at last.
"What for?"
"I'll send him back from the tower with something that will make you
feel easier."
Her eyes brightened.
"Isn't that against the rules?"
"Guess I can afford to break one for a change," he said. "I'm not likely
to need it myself to-night. Come, Sonny."
The child shrank in the corner, his pudgy hands raised defensively.
"It's only a little ways, and Sonny can run home fast," his mother
coaxed.
Against his ineffective reluctance she put on his coat and hat. Tolliver
took the child by the hand and led him, sobbing unevenly, into the
wind-haunted darkness. The father chatted encouragingly, pointing to two
or three lights, scattered, barely visible; beacons that marked
unprofitable farms.
It was, in fact, only a short distance to the single track railroad and
the signal tower, near one end of a long siding. In the heavy,
boisterous night the yellow glow from the upper windows, and the red and
green of the switch lamps, close to the ground, had a festive
appearance. The child's sobs drifted away. His father swung him in his
arms, entered the tower, and climbed the stairs. Above, feet stirred
restlessly. A surly voice came down.
"Here at last, eh?"
When Tolliver's head was above the level of the flooring he could see
the switch levers, and the table, gleaming with the telegraph
instruments, and dull with untidy clips of yellow paper; but the detail
that held him was the gross, expectant face of Joe.
Joe was as large as Tolliver, and younger. From that commanding
position, he appeared gigantic.
"Cutting it pretty fine," he grumbled.
Tolliver came on up, set the child down, and took off his overcoat.
"Fact is," he drawled, "I got held back a minute--sort of unexpected."
His eyes fixed the impatient man.
"What you planning to do, Joe, between now and relieving me at
midnight?"
Joe shifted his feet.
"Don't know," he said uncomfortably. "What you bring the kid for? Want
me to drop him at the house?"
Tolliver shook his head. He placed his hands on his hips.
"That's one thing I want to say to you, Joe. Just you keep away from the
house. Thought you understood that when you got fresh with Sally the
other night."
Joe's face flushed angrily.
"Guess I was a fool to say I was sorry about that. Guess I got to teach
you I got a right to go where I please."
Tolliver shook his head.
"Not to our house, if we don't want you."
The other leered.
"You so darned sure Sally don't want me?"
Impulsively Tolliver stepped forward, closing his fists.
"You drop that sort of talk, or----"
Joe interrupted, laughing.
"One thing's sure, Tolliver. If it came to a fight between me and you
I'd be almost ashamed to hit you."
Through his passion Tolliver recognized the justice of that appraisal.
Physically he was no match for the younger man.
"Things," he said softly, "are getting so we can't work here together."
"Then," Joe flung back, as he went down the stairs, "you'd better be
looking for another job."
Tolliver sighed, turning to the table. The boy played there, fumbling
with the yellow forms. Tolliver glanced at the top one. He called out
quickly to the departing man.
"What's this special, Joe?"
The other's feet stumped on the stairs again.
"Forgot," he said as his head came through the trap. "Some big-wigs
coming through on a special train along about midnight. Division
headquarters got nothing definite yet, but figure we'll have to get her
past thirty-three somewheres on this stretch. So keep awake."
Tolliver with an increasing anxiety continued to examine the yellow
slips.
"And thirty-three's late, and still losing."
Joe nodded.
"Makes it sort of uncertain."
"Seems to me," Tolliver said, "you might have mentioned it."
"Maybe," Joe sneered, "you'd like me to stay and do your job."
He went down the stairs and slammed the lower door.
Tolliver studied the slips, his ears alert for the rattling of the
telegraph sounder. After a time he replaced the file on the table and
looked up. The boy, quite contented now in the warm, interesting room,
stretched his fingers towards the sending key, with the air of a culprit
dazzled into attempting an incredible crime.
"Hands off, Sonny!" Tolliver said kindly. "You must run back to mother
now."
He opened a drawer beneath the table and drew out a polished
six-shooter--railroad property, designed for the defense of the tower
against tramps or bandits. The boy reached his hand eagerly for it. His
father shook his head.
"Not to play with, Sonny. That's for business. If you promise not to
touch it 'till you get home and hand it to mama, to-morrow I'll give you
a nickel."
The child nodded. Tolliver placed the revolver in the side pocket of the
little overcoat, and, the boy following him, went down stairs.
"You run home fast as you can," Tolliver directed. "Don't you be afraid.
I'll stand right here in the door 'till you get there. Nothing shall
hurt you."
The child glanced back at the festive lights with an anguished
hesitation. Tolliver had to thrust him away from the tower.
"A nickel in the morning----" he bribed.
The child commenced to run. Long after he had disappeared the troubled
man heard the sound of tiny feet scuffling with panic along the road to
home.
When the sound had died away Tolliver slammed the door and climbed the
stairs. He studied the yellow slips again, striving to fix in his mind
this problem, involving the safety of numerous human beings, that would
probably become his. He had a fear of abnormal changes in the schedule.
It had been impressed upon every signalman that thirty-three was the
road's most precious responsibility. It was the only solid Pullman train
that passed over the division. This time of year it ran crowded and was
erratic; more often than not, late. That fact created few difficulties
on an ordinary night; but, combined with such uncertainty of schedule,
it worried the entire division, undoubtedly, to have running, also on an
uncertain schedule, and in the opposite direction on that single track,
an eager special carrying important men. The superintendent, of course,
would want to get those flashy trains past each other without delay to
either. That was why these lonely towers, without receiving definite
instructions yet, had been warned to increase watchfulness.
Tolliver's restlessness grew. He hoped the meeting would take place
after Joe had relieved him, or else to the north or south.
It was difficult, moreover, for him to fix his mind to-night on his
professional responsibility. His duty towards his family was so much
more compelling. While he sat here, listening to every word beaten out
by the sounder, he pictured his wife and son, alone in the little house
nearly a half a mile away. And he wondered, while he, their only
protector, was imprisoned, what Joe was up to.
Joe must have been drunk when he tried to get in the house last night.
Had he been drinking to-night?
The sounder jarred rapidly.
"LR. LR. LR."
That was for the tower to the north. It was hard to tell from Joe's
manner. Perhaps that would account for his not having called attention
to the approaching presence of the special on the division.
Pound. Pound. Pound. The hard striking of the metal had the effect of a
trip-hammer on his brain.
"Allen reports special left Oldtown at 9.45."
Joe had certainly been drinking that night last week when he had got
fresh with Sally.
"Thirty-three still losing south of Anderson."
He jotted the words down and sent his O.K.'s while his head, it seemed
to him, recoiled physically from each rapid stroke of the little brass
bar.
Sonny, sent by his mother, had come to tell him that night, panting up
the stairs, his eyes wide and excited. Tolliver had looked from the
window towards his home, his face flushed, his fists clenched, his heart
almost choking him. Then he had seen Joe, loafing along the road in the
moonlight, and he had relaxed, scarcely aware of the abominable choice
he had faced.
"NT. NT. NT."
His own call. Tolliver shrank from the sharp blows. He forced himself to
a minute attention. It was division headquarters.
"Holding twenty-one here until thirty-three and the special have
cleared."
Twenty-one was a freight. It was a relief to have that off the road for
the emergency. He lay back when the striking at his head had ceased.
It was unfortunate that Joe and he alone should be employed at the
tower. Relieving each other at regular intervals, they had never been at
the house together. Either Tolliver had been there alone with his wife
and his son--or Joe had been. The two men had seen each other too
little, only momentarily in this busy room. They didn't really know each
other.
"LR. LR. LR."
Tolliver shook his head savagely. It had been a mistake letting Joe
board with them at all. Any man would fall in love with Sally. Yet
Tolliver had thought after that definite quarrel Joe would have known
his place; the danger would have ended.
It was probably this drinking at the country inn where Joe lived now
that had made the man brood. The inn was too small and removed to
attract the revenue officers, and the liquid manufactured and sold there
was designed to make a man daring, irrational, deadly.
Tolliver shrank from the assaults of the sounder.
Where was Joe now? At the inn, drinking; or----
He jotted down the outpourings of the voluble key. More and more it
became clear that the special and thirty-three would meet near his
tower, but it would almost certainly be after midnight when Joe would
have relieved him. He watched the clock, often pressing his fingers
against his temples in an attempt to make bearable the hammering at his
brain, unequal and persistent.
While the hands crawled towards midnight the wind increased, shrieking
around the tower as if the pounding angered it.
Above the shaking of the windows Tolliver caught another sound, gentle
and disturbing, as if countless fingers tapped softly, simultaneously
against the panes.
He arose and raised one of the sashes. The wind tore triumphantly in,
bearing a quantity of snowflakes that fluttered to the floor, expiring.
Under his breath Tolliver swore. He leaned out, peering through the
storm. The red and green signal lamps were blurred. He shrugged his
shoulders. Anyway, Joe would relieve him before the final orders came,
before either train was in the section.
Tolliver clenched his hands. If Joe didn't come!
He shrank from the force of his imagination.
He was glad Sally had the revolver.
He glanced at his watch, half believing that the clock had stopped.
There at last it was, both hands pointing straight up--midnight! And
Tolliver heard only the storm and the unbearable strokes of the
telegraph sounder. It was fairly definite now. Both trains were roaring
through the storm, destined almost certainly to slip by each other at
this siding within the next hour.
Where was Joe? And Sally and the boy alone at the house!
Quarter past twelve.
What vast interest could have made Joe forget his relief at the probable
loss of his job?
Tolliver glanced from the rear window towards his home, smothered in the
night and the storm. If he might only run there quickly to make sure
that Sally was all right!
The sounder jarred furiously. Tolliver half raised his hand, as if to
destroy it.
It was the division superintendent himself at the key.
"NT. NT. NT. Is it storming bad with you?"
"Pretty thick."
"Then keep the fuses burning. For God's sake, don't let the first in
over-run his switch. And clear the line like lightning. Those fellows
are driving faster than hell."
Tolliver's mouth opened, but no sound came. His face assumed the
expression of one who undergoes the application of some destructive
barbarity.
"I get afraid when you leave me alone this way at night."
He visualized his wife, beautiful, dark, and desirable, urging him not
to go to the tower.
A gust of wind sprang through the trap door. The yellow slips fluttered.
He ran to the trap. He heard the lower door bang shut. Someone was on
the stairs, climbing with difficulty, breathing hard. A hat, crusted
with snow, appeared. There came slowly into the light Joe's face, ugly
and inflamed; the eyes restless with a grave indecision.
Tolliver's first elation died in new uncertainty.
"Where you been?" he demanded fiercely.
Joe struggled higher until he sat on the flooring, his legs dangling
through the trap. He laughed in an ugly and unnatural note; and Tolliver
saw that there was more than drink, more than sleeplessness, recorded in
his scarlet face. Hatred was there. It escaped, too, from the streaked
eyes that looked at Tolliver as if through a veil. He spoke thickly.
"Don't you wish you knew?"
Tolliver stooped, grasping the man's shoulders. In each fist he clenched
bunches of wet cloth. In a sort of desperation he commenced to shake the
bundled figure.
"You tell me where you been----"
"NT. NT. NT."
Joe leered.
"Joe! You got to tell me where you been."
The pounding took Tolliver's strength. He crouched lower in an effort to
avoid it, but each blow struck as hard as before, forcing into his brain
word after word that he passionately resented. Places, hours,
minutes--the details of this vital passage of two trains in the
unfriendly night.
"Switch whichever arrives first, and hold until the other is through."
It was difficult to understand clearly, because Joe's laughter
persisted, crashing against Tolliver's brain as brutally as the sounder.
"You got to tell me if you been bothering Sally."
The hatred and the cunning of the mottled face grew.
"Why don't you ask Sally?"
Slowly Tolliver let the damp cloth slip from his fingers. He
straightened, facing more definitely that abominable choice. He glanced
at his cap and overcoat. The lazy clock hands reminded him that he had
remained in the tower nearly half an hour beyond his time. Joe was
right. It was clear he could satisfy himself only by going home and
asking Sally.
"Get up," he directed. "I guess you got sense enough to know you're on
duty."
Joe struggled to his feet and lurched to the table. Tolliver wondered at
the indecision in the other's eyes, which was more apparent. Joe fumbled
aimlessly with the yellow slips. Tolliver's fingers, outstretched toward
his coat, hesitated, as if groping for an object that must necessarily
elude them.
"Special!" Joe mumbled. "And--Hell! Ain't thirty-three through yet?"
He swayed, snatching at the edge of the table.
Tolliver lowered his hands. The division superintendent had pounded out
something about fuses. What had it been exactly? "Keep fuses burning."
With angry gestures he took his coat and cap down, and put them on while
he repeated all the instructions that had been forced into his brain
with the effect of a physical violence. At the table Joe continued to
fumble aimlessly.
"Ain't you listening?" Tolliver blurted out.
"Huh?"
"Why don't you light a fuse?"
It was quite obvious that Joe had heard nothing.
"Fuse!" Joe repeated.
He stooped to a box beneath the table. He appeared to lose his balance.
He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, his head drooping.
"What about fuse?" he murmured.
His eyes closed.
Tolliver pressed the backs of his hands against his face. If only his
suspense might force refreshing tears as Sonny cried away his infant
agonies!
Numerous people asleep in that long Pullman train, and the special
thundering down! Sally and Sonny a half mile away in the lonely house!
And that drink-inspired creature on the floor--what was he capable of in
relation to those unknown, helpless travelers? But what was he capable
of; what had he, perhaps, been capable of towards those two known ones
that Tolliver loved better than all the world?
Tolliver shuddered. As long as Joe was here Sally and Sonny would not be
troubled. But where had Joe been just now? How had Sally and Sonny fared
while Tolliver had waited for that stumbling step on the stairs? He had
to know that, yet how could he? For he couldn't leave Joe to care for
all those lives on the special and thirty-three.
He removed his coat and cap, and replaced them on the hook. He took a
fuse from the box and lighted it. He raised the window and threw the
fuse to the track beneath. It sputtered and burst into a flame, ruddy,
gorgeous, immense. It etched from the night distant fences and trees. It
bent the sparkling rails until they seemed to touch at the terminals of
crimson vistas. If in the storm the locomotive drivers should miss the
switch lamps, set against them, they couldn't neglect this bland banner
of danger, flung across the night.
When Tolliver closed the window he noticed that the ruddy glow filled
the room, rendering sickly and powerless the yellow lamp wicks. And
Tolliver clutched the table edge, for in this singular and penetrating
illumination he saw that Joe imitated the details of sleep; that beneath
half-closed lids, lurked a fanatical wakefulness, and final resolution
where, on entering the tower, he had exposed only indecision.
While Tolliver stared Joe abandoned his masquerade. Wide-eyed, he got
lightly to his feet and started for the trap.
Instinctively, Tolliver's hand started for the drawer where customarily
the revolver was kept. Then he remembered, and was sorry he had sent the
revolver to Sally. For it was clear that the poison in Joe's brain was
sending him to the house while Tolliver was chained to the tower. He
would have shot, he would have killed, to have kept the man here. He
would do what he could with his hands.
"Where you going?" he asked hoarsely.
Joe laughed happily.
"To keep Sally company while you look after the special and
thirty-three."
Tolliver advanced cautiously, watching for a chance. When he spoke his
voice had the appealing quality of a child's.
"It's my time off. If I do your work you got to stay at least."
Joe laughed again.
"No. It only needs you to keep all those people from getting killed."
Tolliver sprang then, but Joe avoided the heavier, clumsier man. He
grasped a chair, swinging it over his head.
"I'll teach you," he grunted, "to kick me out like dirt. I'll teach you
and Sally."
With violent strength he brought the chair down. Tolliver got his hands
up, but the light chair crashed them aside and splintered on his head.
He fell to his knees, reaching out blindly. He swayed lower until he lay
stretched on the floor, dimly aware of Joe's descending steps, of the
slamming of the lower door, at last of a vicious pounding at his bruised
brain.
"NT. NT. NT."
He struggled to his knees, his hands at his head.
"No, by God! I won't listen to you."
"Thirty-three cleared LR at 12:47."
One tower north! Thirty-three was coming down on him, but he was only
glad that the pounding had ceased. It commenced again.
"NT. NT. NT. Special cleared JV at 12:48."
Each rushing towards each other with only a minute's difference in
schedule! That was close--too close. But what was it he had in his mind?
Suddenly he screamed. He lurched to his feet and leant against the wall.
He knew now. Joe, with those infused and criminal eyes, had gone to
Sally and Sonny--to get even. There could be nothing in the world as
important as that. He must get after Joe. He must stop him in time.
"NT. NT. NT."
There was something in his brain about stopping a train in time.
"It only needs you to keep all those people from getting killed."
Somebody had told him that. What did it mean? What had altered here in
the tower all at once?
There was no longer any red.
"NT. NT. NT."
"I won't answer."
Where had he put his cap and coat. He needed them. He could go without.
He could kill a beast without. His foot trembled on the first step.
"NT. NT. NT. Why don't you answer? What's wrong. No O. K. Are you
burning fuses? Wake up. Send an O. K."
The sounder crashed frantically. It conquered him.
He lurched to the table, touched the key, and stuttered out:
"O. K. NT."
He laughed a little. They were in his block, rushing at each other, and
Joe was alone at the house with Sally and the child. O. K.!
He lighted another fuse, flung it from the window, and started with
automatic movements for the trap.
Let them crash. Let them splinter, and burn, and die. What was the lot
of them compared with Sally and Sonny?
The red glare from the fuse sprang into the room. Tolliver paused,
bathed in blood.
He closed his eyes to shut out the heavy waves of it. He saw women like
Sally and children like Sonny asleep in a train. It gave him an
impression that Sally and Sonny were, indeed, on the train. To keep them
safe it would be necessary to retard the special until thirty-three
should be on the siding and he could throw that lever that would close
the switch and make the line safe. He wavered, taking short steps
between the table and the trap. Where were Sally and Sonny? He had to
get that clear in his mind.
A bitter cold sprang up the trap. He heard the sobbing of a child.
"Sonny!"
It was becoming clear enough now.
The child crawled up the steps on his hands and knees. Tolliver took him
in his arms, straining at him passionately.
"What is it, Sonny? Where's mama?"
"Papa, come quick. Come quick."
He kept gasping it out until Tolliver stopped him.
"Joe! Did Joe come?"
The child nodded. He caught his breath.
"Joe broke down the door," he said.
"But mama had the gun," Tolliver said hoarsely.
The boy shook his head.
"Mama wouldn't let Sonny play with it. She locked it up in the cupboard.
Joe grabbed mama, and she screamed, and said to run and make you come."
In the tower, partially smothered by the storm, vibrated a shrill cry.
For a moment Tolliver thought his wife's martyrdom had been projected to
him by some subtle means. Then he knew it was the anxious voice of
thirty-three--the pleading of all those unconscious men and women and
little ones. He flung up his arms, releasing the child, and ran to the
table where he lighted another fuse, and threw it to the track. He
peered from the window, aware of the sobbing refrain of his son.
"Come quick! Come quick! Come quick!"
From far to the south drifted a fainter sibilation, like an echo of
thirty-three's whistle. To the north a glow increased. The snowflakes
there glistened like descending jewels. It was cutting it too close. It
was vicious to crush all that responsibility on the shoulders of one
ignorant man, such a man as himself, or Joe. What good would it do him
to kill Joe now? What was there left for him to do?
He jotted down thirty-three's orders.
The glow to the north intensified, swung slightly to the left as
thirty-three took the siding. But she had to hurry. The special was
whistling closer--too close. Thirty-three's locomotive grumbled abreast
of him. Something tugged at his coat.
"Papa! Won't you come quick to mama?"
The dark, heavy cars slipped by. The red glow of the fuse was overcome
by the white light from the south. The last black Pullman of
thirty-three cleared the points. With a gasping breath Tolliver threw
the switch lever.
"It's too late now, Sonny," he said to the importunate child.
The tower shook. A hot, white eye flashed by, and a blurred streak of
cars. Snow pelted in the window, stinging Tolliver's face. Tolliver
closed the window and picked up thirty-three's orders. If he had kept
the revolver here he could have prevented Joe's leaving the tower. Why
had Sally locked it in the cupboard? At least it was there now. Tolliver
found himself thinking of the revolver as an exhausted man forecasts
sleep.
Someone ran swiftly up the stairs. It was the engineer of thirty-three,
surprised and impatient.
"Where are my orders, Tolliver? I don't want to lie over here all
night."
He paused. His tone became curious.
"What ails you, Tolliver?"
Tolliver handed him the orders, trembling.
"I guess maybe my wife at the house is dead, or--You'll go see."
The engineer shook his head.
"You brace up, Tolliver. I'm sorry if anything's happened to your wife,
but we couldn't hold thirty-three, even for a murder."
Tolliver's trembling grew. He mumbled incoherently:
"But I didn't murder all those people----"
"Report to division headquarters," the engineer advised. "They'll send
you help to-morrow."
He hurried down the stairs. After a moment the long train pulled out,
filled with warm, comfortable people. The child, his sobbing at an end,
watched it curiously. Tolliver tried to stop his shaking.
There was someone else on the stairs now, climbing with an extreme
slowness. A bare arm reached through the trap, wavering for a moment
uncertainly. Ugly bruises showed on the white flesh. Tolliver managed to
reach the trap. He grasped the arm and drew into the light the dark hair
and the chalky face of his wife. Her wide eyes stared at him strangely.
"Don't touch me," she whispered. "What am I going to do?"
"Joe?"
"Why do you tremble so?" she asked in her colorless voice, without
resonance. "Why didn't you come?"
"Joe?" he repeated hysterically.
She drew away from him.
"You won't want to touch me again."
He pointed to the repellant bruises. She shook her head.
"He didn't hurt me much," she whispered, "because I--I killed him."
She drew her other hand from the folds of her wrapper. The revolver
dangled from her fingers. It slipped and fell to the floor. The child
stared at it with round eyes, as if he longed to pick it up.
She covered her face and shrank against the wall.
"I've killed a man----"
Through her fingers she looked at her husband fearfully. After a time
she whispered:
"Why don't you say something?"
His trembling had ceased. His lips were twisted in a grin. He, too,
wondered why he didn't say something. Because there were no words for
what was in his heart.
In a corner he arranged his overcoat as a sort of a bed for the boy.
"Won't you speak to me?" she sobbed. "I didn't mean to, but I had to.
You got to understand. I had to."
He went to the table and commenced to tap vigorously on the key. She ran
across and grasped at his arm.
"What you telling them?" she demanded wildly.
"Why, Sally!" he said. "What's the matter with you?--To send another man
now Joe is gone."
Truths emerged from his measureless relief, lending themselves to words.
He trembled again for a moment.
"If I hadn't stayed! If I'd let them smash! When all along it only
needed Joe to keep all those people from getting killed."
He sat down, caught her in his arms, drew her to his knee, and held her
close.
"You ain't going to scold?" she asked wonderingly.
He shook his head. He couldn't say any more just then; but when his
tears touched her face she seemed to understand and to be content.
So, while the boy slept, they waited together for someone to take Joe's
place.
FOOTNOTE:
[6] Copyright, 1920, by The Metropolitan Magazine Company. Copyright,
1921, by Charles Wadsworth Camp.
THE PARTING GENIUS[7]
#By# HELEN COALE CREW
From _The Midland_
"_The parting genius is with sighing sent._"
#Milton's# _Hymn on the Nativity._
It was high noon, blue and hot. The little town upon the southern slope
of the hills that shut in the great plain glared white in the intense
sunlight. The beds of the brooks in the valleys that cut their way
through the hill-clefts were dry and dusty; and the sole shade visible
lay upon the orchard floors, where the thick branches above cast
blue-black shadows upon the golden tangle of grasses at their feet. A
soft murmur of hidden creature-things rose like an invisible haze from
earth, and nothing moved in all the horizon save the black kites high in
the blue air and the white butterflies over the drowsy meadows. The
poppies that flecked the yellow wheat fields drooped heavily, spilling
the wine of summer from their cups. Nature stood at drowsy-footed pause,
reluctant to take up again the vital whirr of living.
At the edge of the orchard, near the dusty highway, under a huge
misshapen olive tree sat a boy, still as a carven Buddha save that his
eyes stood wide, full of dreams. His was a sensitive face, thoughtful
beyond his childish years, full of weariness when from time to time he
closed his eyes, full of dark brooding when the lids lifted again.
Presently he rose to his feet, and his two hands clenched tightly into
fists.
"I hate it!" he muttered vehemently.
At his side the grasses stirred and a portion of the blue shadow of the
tree detached itself and became the shadow of a man.
"Hate?" questioned a golden, care-free voice at his side. "Thou'rt
overyoung to hate. What is it thou dost hate?"
A young man had thrown himself down in the grass at the boy's side.
Shaggy locks hung about his brown cheeks; his broad, supple chest and
shoulders were bare; his eyes were full of sleepy laughter; and his
indolent face was now beautiful, now grotesque, at the color of his
thoughts. From a leathern thong about his neck hung a reed pipe, deftly
fashioned, and a bowl of wood carved about with grape-bunches dangled
from the twisted vine which girdled his waist. In one hand he held a
honey-comb, into which he bit with sharp white teeth, and on one arm he
carried branches torn from fig and almond trees, clustered with green
figs and with nuts. The two looked long at each other, the boy gravely,
the man smiling.
"Thou wilt know me another time," said the man with a throaty laugh.
"And I shall know thee. I have been watching thee a long time--I know
not why. But what is it thou dost hate? For me, I hate nothing. Hate is
wearisome."
The boy's gaze fixed itself upon the bright, insouciant face of the man
with a fascination he endeavored to throw off but could not. Presently
he spoke, and his voice was low and clear and deliberate.
"Hate is evil," he said.
"I know not what evil may be," said the man, a puzzled frown furrowing
the smooth brow for a swift moment. "Hunger, now, or lust, or sleep--"
"Hate is the thing that comes up in my throat and chokes me when I think
of tyranny," interrupted the boy, his eyes darkening.
"Why trouble to hate?" asked the man. He lifted his pipe to his lips and
blew a joyous succession of swift, unhesitant notes, as throbbing as the
heat, as vivid as the sunshine. His lithe throat bubbled and strained
with his effort, and his warm vitality poured through the mouthpiece of
the pipe and issued melodiously at the farther end. Noon deepened
through many shades of hot and slumberous splendor, the very silence
intensified by the brilliant pageant of sound. A great hawk at sail
overhead hung suddenly motionless upon unquivering wings. Every sheep in
the pasture across the road lifted a questioning nose, and the entire
flock moved swiftly nearer on a sudden impulse. And then the man threw
down his pipe, and the silence closed in softly upon the ebbing waves of
sound.
"Why trouble to hate?" he asked again, and sank his shoulder deeper into
the warm grass. His voice was as sleepy as the drone of distant bees,
and his dream-filmed eyes looked out through drooping lids. "I hate
nothing. It takes effort. It is easier to feel friendly with all
things--creatures, and men, and gods."
"I hate with a purpose," said the child, his eyes fixed, and brooding
upon an inward vision. The man rose upon his elbow and gazed curiously
at the boy, but the latter, unheeding, went on with his thoughts. "Some
day I shall be a man, and then I shall kill tyranny. Aye, kill! It is
tyranny that I hate. And hatred I hate; and oppression. But how I shall
go about to kill them, that I do not yet know. I think and think, but I
have not yet thought of a way."
"If," said the man, "thou could'st love as royally as thou could'st
hate, what a lover thou would'st become! For me, I love but lightly, and
hate not at all, yet have I been a man for aeons. How near art thou to
manhood?"
"I have lived nearly twelve years."
Like a flash the man leaped to his feet and turned his face westward
towards the sea with outstretched arms, and a look and gesture of utter
yearning gave poignancy and spirit to the careless, sleepy grace of his
face and figure. He seized the boy's arm. "See now," he cried, his voice
trembling upon the verge of music, "it is nearly twelve years that I
have been a wanderer, shorn of my strength and my glory! Look you, boy,
at the line of hills yonder. Behind those hills lie the blue sea-ridges,
and still beyond, lies the land where I dwelt. Ye gods, the happy
country!" Like a great child he stood, and his breast broke into sobs,
but his eyes glowed with splendid visions. "Apollo's golden shafts
could scarce penetrate the shadowy groves, and Diana's silver arrows
pierced only the tossing treetops. And underfoot the crocus flamed, and
the hyacinth. Flocks and herds fed in pastures rosy with blossoms, and
there were white altars warm with flame in every thicket. There were
dances, and mad revels, and love and laughter"--he paused, and the
splendor died from his face. "And then one starry night--still and clear
it was, and white with frost--fear stalked into the happy haunts, and an
ontreading mystery, benign yet dreadful. And something, I know not what,
drove me forth. _Aie! Aie!_ There is but the moaning of doves when the
glad hymns sounded, and cold ashes and dead drifted leaves on the once
warm altars!"
A sharp pull at his tunic brought his thoughts back to the present. The
child drew him urgently down into the long grass, and laid a finger upon
his lip; and at the touch of the small finger the man trembled through
all his length of limbs, and lay still. Up the road rose a cloud of dust
and the sound of determined feet, and presently a martial figure came in
sight, clad in bronze and leather helmet and cuirass, and carrying an
oblong shield and a short, broad-bladed sword of double edge. Short yet
agile, a soldier every inch, he looked neither to the right nor to the
left, but marched steadily and purposefully upon his business. His
splendid muscles, shining with sweat, gleamed satinwise in the hot sun.
A single unit, he was yet a worthy symbol of a world-wide efficiency.
The man and boy beneath the tree crouched low. "Art afraid?" whispered
the man. And the boy whispered back, "It is he that I hate, and all his
kind." His child-heart beat violently against his side, great beads
stood out upon his forehead, and his hands trembled. "If you but knew
the sorrow in the villages! Aye, in the whole country--because of him!
He takes the bread from the mouths of the pitiful poor--and we are all
so poor! The women and babes starve, but the taxes must be paid. Upon
the aged and the crippled, even, fall heavy burdens. And all because of
him and his kind!"
The man looked at the flushed face and trembling limbs of the boy, and
his own face glowed in a golden smile that was full of a sudden and
unaccustomed tenderness. "Why, see now," he whispered, "that is easily
overcome. Look! I will show thee the way." Lifting himself cautiously,
he crouched on all fours in the grass, slipping and sliding forward so
hiddenly that the keen ear and eagle eye of the approaching soldier took
note of no least ripple in the quiet grass by the roadside. It was the
sinuous, silent motion of a snake; and suddenly his eyes narrowed, his
lips drew back from his teeth, his ears pricked forward, along the ridge
of his bare back the hair bristled, and the locks about his face waved
and writhed as though they were the locks of Medusa herself. Ah, and
were those the flanks and feet of a man, or of a beast, that bore him
along so stealthily? The child watched him in a horror of fascination,
rooted to the spot in terror.
With the quickness of a flash it all happened--the martial traveller
taken unaware, the broad-bladed sword wrenched from his hand by
seemingly superhuman strength, a sudden hideous grip at his throat,
blows rained upon his head, sharp sobbing breaths torn from his panting
breast ... a red stain upon the dusty road ... a huddled figure ...
silence. And he who had been a man indeed a few brief, bright years, was
no more now than carrion; and he who through all his boasted aeons had
not yet reached the stature of a man stood above the dead body, his face
no longer menacing, but beautiful with a smiling delight in his deed.
And then suddenly the spell that held the child was broken, and he
leaped out upon the murderer and beat and beat and beat upon him with
helpless, puny child-fists, and all a child's splendid and ineffectual
rage. And at that the man turned and thrust the child from him in utter
astonishment, and the boy fell heavily back upon the road, the second
quiet figure lying there. And again the man's face changed, became
vacant, bewildered, troubled; and stooping, he lifted the boy in his
arms, and ran with him westward along the road, through the fields of
dead-ripe wheat, across the stubble of the garnered barley, fleet-footed
as a deer, till he could run no more.
In a little glen of hickory and oak, through whose misty-mellow depths a
small stream trickled, he paused at last and laid the boy upon a soft
and matted bed of thick green myrtle, and brought water in his two hands
to bathe the bruised head, whimpering the while. Then he chafed the
small bare feet and warmed them in his own warm breast; and gathering
handfuls of pungent mint and the sweet-scented henna, he crushed them
and held them to the boy's nostrils. And these devices failing, he sat
disconsolate, the curves of his mobile face falling into unwonted lines
of half-weary, half-sorrowful dejection. "I know not how it may be," he
said to himself, smiling whimsically, "but I seem to have caught upon my
lips the bitter human savor of repentance."
Utter silence held the little glen. The child lay unconscious, and the
man sat with his head in his hands, as one brooding. When the sun at
last neared the place of his setting, the boy's eyes opened. His gaze
fell upon his companion, and crowded and confused thoughts surged
through him. For some time he lay still, finding his bearings. And at
length the hatred that had all day, and for many days, filled his young
breast, melted away in a divine pity and tenderness, and the tears of
that warm melting rolled down his cheeks. The man near him, who had
watched in silence, gently put a questioning finger upon the wet cheeks.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Repentance," said the boy.
"I pity thee. Repentance is bitter of taste."
"No," said the boy. "It is warm and sweet. It moves my heart and my
understanding."
"What has become of thy hatred?"
"I shall never hate again."
"What wilt thou do, then?"
"I shall love," said the boy. "_Love_," he repeated softly. "_How came I
never to think of that before?_"
"Wilt thou love tyranny and forbear to kill the tyrant?"
The boy rose to his feet, and his young slenderness was full of strength
and dignity, and his face, cleared of its sombre brooding, was full of a
bright, untroubled decision. The cypresses upon the hilltops stood no
more resolutely erect, the hills themselves were no more steadfast.
"Nay," he said, laughing a little, boyishly, in pure pleasure at the
crystal fixity of his purpose. "Rather will I love the tyrant, and the
tyranny will die of itself. Oh, it is the way! It is the way! And I
could not think of it till now! Not till I saw thee killing and him
bleeding. Then I knew." Then, more gravely, he added, "I will begin by
loving thee."
"Thou hast the appearance of a young god," said the man slowly, "but if
thou wert a god, thou would'st crush thine enemies, not love them." He
sighed, and his face strengthened into a semblance of power. "I was a
god once myself," he added after some hesitation.
"What is thy name?" asked the boy.
"They called me once the Great God Pan. And thou?"
"My father is Joseph the carpenter. My mother calls me Jesus."
"_Ah_ ..." said Pan, "... _is it Thou?_"
Quietly they looked into each other's eyes; quietly clasped hands. And
with no more words the man turned westward into the depths of the glen,
drawing the sun's rays with him as he moved, so that the world seemed
the darker for his going. And as he went he blew upon his pipe a
tremulous and hesitating melody, piercing sweet and piercing sorrowful,
so that whosoever should hear it should clutch his throat with tears at
the wild pity of it, and the strange and haunting beauty. And the boy
stood still, watching, until the man was lost upon the edge of night.
Then he turned his face eastward, whence the new day comes, carrying
forever in his heart the echoes of a dying song.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] Copyright, 1920, by John T. Frederick. Copyright, 1921, by Helen
Coale Crew.
HABAKKUK[8]
#By# KATHARINE FULLERTON GEROULD
From _Scribner's Magazine_
When they carried Kathleen Somers up into the hills to die where her
ancestors had had the habit of dying--they didn't gad about, those early
Somerses; they dropped in their tracks, and the long grass that they had
mowed and stacked and trodden under their living feet flourished
mightily over their graves--it was held to be only a question of time. I
say "to die," not because her case was absolutely hopeless, but because
no one saw how, with her spent vitality, she could survive her exile.
Everything had come at once, and she had gone under. She had lost her
kin, she had lost her money, she had lost her health. Even the people
who make their meat of tragedy--and there are a great many of them in
all enlightened centres of thought--shook their heads and were sorry.
They thought she couldn't live; and they also thought it much, much
better that she shouldn't. For there was nothing left in life for that
sophisticated creature but a narrow cottage in a stony field, with
Nature to look at.
Does it sound neurotic and silly? It wasn't. Conceive her if you
can--Kathleen Somers, whom probably you never knew. From childhood she
had nourished short hopes and straightened thoughts. At least: hopes
that depend on the æsthetic passion are short; and the long perspectives
of civilized history are very narrow. Kathleen Somers had been fed with
the Old World: that is to say, her adolescent feet had exercised
themselves in picture-galleries and cathedrals and palaces; she had
seen all the right views, all the right ceremonies, and all the
censored picturesqueness. Don't get any Cook's tourist idea, please,
about Miss Somers. Her mother had died young, and her gifted father had
taken her to a hundred places that the school-teacher on a holiday never
gets to and thinks of only in connection with geography lessons. She had
followed the Great Wall of China, she had stood before the tomb of
Tamburlaine, she had shaded her eyes from the glare of Kaïrouan the
Holy, she had chaffered in Tiflis and in Trebizond. All this before she
was twenty-five. At that time her father's health broke, and they
proceeded to live permanently in New York. Her wandering life had
steeped her in delights, but kept her innocent of love-affairs. When you
have fed on historic beauty, on the great plots of the past, the best
tenor voices in the world, it is pretty hard to find a man who doesn't
in his own person, leave out something essential to romance. She had
herself no particular beauty, and therefore the male sex could get on
without her. A few fell in love with her, but she was too enchanted and
amused with the world in general to set to work at the painful process
of making a hero out of any one of them. She was a sweet-tempered
creature; her mental snobbishness was not a pose, but perfectly
inevitable; she had a great many friends. As she had a quick wit and the
historic imagination, you can imagine--remembering her bringing up--that
she was an entertaining person when she entered upon middle age: when,
that is, she was proceeding from the earlier to the later thirties.
It was natural that Kathleen Somers and her father--who was a bit
precious and pompous, in spite of his ironies--should gather about them
a homogeneous group. The house was pleasant and comfortable--they were
too sophisticated to be "periodic"--and there was always good talk
going, if you happened to be the kind that could stand good talk. Of
course you had to pass an examination first. You had at least to show
that you "caught on." They were high-brow enough to permit themselves
sudden enthusiasms that would have damned a low-brow. You mustn't like
"Peter Pan," but you might go three nights running to see some really
perfect clog-dancing at a vaudeville theatre. Do you see what I mean?
They were eclectic with a vengeance. It wouldn't do for you to cultivate
the clog-dancer _and_ like "Peter Pan," because in that case you
probably liked the clog-dancer for the wrong reason--for something other
than that sublimated skill which is art. Of course this is only a wildly
chosen example. I never heard either of them mention "Peter Pan." And
the proper hatreds were ever more difficult than the proper devotions.
You might let Shakespeare get on your nerves, provided you really
enjoyed Milton. I wonder if you do see what I mean? It must be perfect
of its kind, its kind being anything under heaven; and it must never,
never, never be sentimental. It must have art, and _parti pris_, and
point of view, and individuality stamped over it. No, I can't explain.
If you have known people like that, you've known them. If you haven't,
you can scarcely conceive them.
By this time you are probably hating the Somerses, father and daughter,
and I can't help it--or rather, I've probably brought it about. But when
I tell you that I'm not that sore myself, and that I loved them both
dearly and liked immensely to be with them, you'll reconsider a little,
I hope. They were sweet and straight and generous, both of them, and
they knew all about the grand manner. The grand manner is the most
comfortable thing to live with that I know. I used to go there a good
deal, and Arnold Withrow went even more than I did, though he wasn't
even hanging on to Art by the eyelids as I do. (I refer, of course, to
my little habit of writing for the best magazines, whose public
considers me intellectual. So I seem to myself, in the magazines ...
"but out in pantry, good Lord!" Anyhow, I generally knew at least what
the Somerses were talking about--the dears!) Withrow was a stock-broker,
and always spent his vacations in the veritable wilds, camping in virgin
forests, or on the edge of glaciers, or in the dust of American deserts.
He had never been to Europe, but he had been to Buenos Aires. You can
imagine what Kathleen Somers and her father felt about that: they
thought him too quaint and barbaric for words; but still not barbaric
enough to be really interesting.
I was just beginning to suspect that Withrow was in love with Kathleen
Somers in the good old middle-class way, with no drama in it but no end
of devotion, when the crash came. Mr. Somers died, and within a month of
his death the railroad the bonds of which had constituted his long-since
diminished fortune went into the hands of a receiver. There were a
pitiful hundreds a year left, besides the ancestral cottage--which had
never even been worth selling. His daughter had an operation, and the
shock of that, _plus_ the shock of his death, _plus_ the shock of her
impoverishment, brought the curtain down with a tremendous rush that
terrified the house. It may make my metaphor clearer if I put it that it
was the asbestos curtain which fell suddenly and violently; not the
great crimson drop that swings gracefully down at the end of a play. It
did not mark the end; it marked a catastrophe in the wings to which the
plot must give place.
Then they carried Kathleen Somers to the hills.
* * * * *
It was Mildred Thurston who told me about it first. Withrow would have
rushed to the hills, I think, but he was in British Columbia on an
extended trip. He had fought for three months and got them, and he
started just before Kathleen Somers had her sudden operation. Mildred
Thurston (Withrow's cousin, by the way) threw herself nobly into the
breach. I am not going into the question of Mildred Thurston here.
Perhaps if Withrow had been at home, she wouldn't have gone. I don't
know. Anyhow, when she rushed to Kathleen Somers's desolate retreat she
did it, apparently, from pure kindness. She was sure, like every one
else, that Kathleen would die; and that belief purged her, for the time
being, of selfishness and commonness and cheap gayety. I wouldn't take
Mildred Thurston's word about a state of soul; but she was a good
dictograph. She came back filled with pity; filled, at least, with the
means of inspiring pity for the exile in others.
After I had satisfied myself that Kathleen Somers was physically on the
mend, eating and sleeping fairly, and sitting up a certain amount, I
proceeded to more interesting questions.
"What is it like?"
"It's dreadful."
"How dreadful?"
Mildred's large blue eyes popped at me with sincere sorrow.
"Well, there's no plumbing, and no furnace."
"Is it in a village?"
"It isn't 'in' anything. It's a mile and a half from a station called
Hebron. You have to change three times to get there. It's half-way up a
hill--the house is--and there are mountains all about, and the barn is
connected with the house by a series of rickety woodsheds, and there are
places where the water comes through the roof. They put pails under to
catch it. There are queer little contraptions they call Franklin stoves
in most of the rooms and a brick oven in the kitchen. When they want
anything from the village, Joel Blake gets it, if he doesn't forget.
Ditto wood, ditto everything except meat. Some other hick brings that
along when he has 'killed.' They can only see one house from the front
yard, and that is precisely a mile away by the road. Joel Blake lives
nearer, but you can't see his house. You can't see anything--except the
woods and the 'crick' and the mountains. You can see the farmers when
they are haying, but that doesn't last long."
"Is it a beautiful view?"
"My dear man, don't ask me what a beautiful view is. My education was
neglected."
"Does Kathleen Somers think it beautiful?"
"She never looks at it, I believe. The place is all run down, and she
sits and wonders when the wall-paper will drop off. At least, that is
what she talks about, when she talks at all. That, and whether Joel
Blake will remember to bring the groceries. The two women never speak to
each other. Kathleen's awfully polite, but--well, you can't blame her.
And I was there in the spring. What it will be in the winter!--But
Kat
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