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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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Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEST
SHORT STORIES OF 1920, AND THE YEARBOOK OF THE
AMERICAN SHORT STORY ***

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.

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]

Introduction. By the Editor
The Other Woman. By Sherwood Anderson (From The Little Review)
By Edwina Stanton Babcock (From Harper's
Gargoyle.
Magazine)
Ghitza. By Konrad Bercovici (From The Dial)
The Life of Five
By Edna Clare Bryner (From The Dial)
Points.
The Signal Tower. By Wadsworth Camp (From The Metropolitan)
The Parting Genius. By Helen Coale Crew (From The Midland)
By Katharine Fullerton Gerould (From Scribner's
Habakkuk.
Magazine)
The Judgment of By Lee Foster Hartman (From Harper's
Vulcan. Magazine)
The Stick-in-the-
By Rupert Hughes (From Collier's Weekly)
Muds.
By Grace Sartwell Mason (From Scribner's
His Job.
Magazine)
The Rending. By James Oppenheim (From The Dial)
By Arthur Somers Roche (From The
The Dummy-Chucker.
Cosmopolitan)
Butterflies. By Rose Sidney (From The Pictorial Review)
By Fleta Campbell Springer (From Harper's
The Rotter.
Magazine)
By Wilbur Daniel Steele (From The Pictorial
Out of Exile.
Review)
By Ethel Storm (From The Ladies' Home
The Three Telegrams.
Journal)
By John T. Wheelwright (From Scribner's
The Roman Bath.
Magazine)

By Stephen French Whitman (From Harper's
Amazement.
Magazine)
Sheener. By Ben Ames Williams (From Collier's Weekly)
By Frances Gilchrist Wood (From The Pictorial
Turkey Red.
Review)
The Yearbook of the American Short Story, October, 1919, to
September, 1920
Addresses of American Magazines Publishing Short Stories
The Bibliographical Roll of Honor of American Short Stories
The Roll of Honor of Foreign Short Stories in American Magazines
The Best Books of Short Stories of 1920: A Critical Summary
Volumes of Short Stories Published, October, 1919, to September,
1920: A Index
Articles on the Short Stories: An Index
Index of Short Stories in Books, November, 1918, to September,
1920
Index of Short Stories Published in American Magazines, October,
1919, to September, 1920

FOOTNOTES:
[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."

FOOTNOTES:
[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.

FOOTNOTES:
[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.

FOOTNOTES:
[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 keepin 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.

FOOTNOTES:
[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.

FOOTNOTES:
[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.

FOOTNOTES:
[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 Kathleen can hardly last so long,
I should think."
"Who is the other woman?"
"An heirloom. Melora Meigs. Miss Meigs, if you please. You know Mr.
Somers's aunt lived to an extreme old age in the place. Miss Meigs 'did' for
her. And since then she has been living on there. No one wanted the house
—the poor Somerses!—and she was used to it. She's an old thing herself,
and of course she hasn't the nerves of a sloth. Now she 'does' for Kathleen.
Of course later there'll have to be a nurse again. Kathleen mustn't die with
only Melora Meigs. I'm not sure, either, that Melora will last. She all
crooked over with rheumatism."
That was the gist of what I got out of Mildred Thurston. Letters to Miss
Somers elicited no real response—only a line to say that she wasn't strong
enough to write. None of her other female friends could get any
encouragement to visit her. It was perhaps due to Miss Thurston's mimicry
of Melora Meigs—she made quite a "stunt" of it—that none of them pushed
the matter beyond the first rebuff.

By summer-time I began to get worried myself. Perhaps I was a little
worried, vicariously, for Withrow. Remember that I thought he cared for
her. Miss Thurston's pity for Kathleen Somers was the kind that shuts the
door on the pitied person. If she had thought Kathleen Somers had a future,
she wouldn't have been so kind. I may give it to you as my private opinion
that Mildred Thurston wanted Withrow herself. I can't swear to it, even
now; but I suspected it sufficiently to feel that some one, for Withrow's sake
had better see Kathleen besides his exuberant and slangy cousin. She
danced a little too much on Kathleen Somers's grave. I determined to go
myself, and not to take the trouble of asking vainly for an invitation. I left
New York at the end of June.
With my perfectly ordinary notions of comfort in traveling, I found that it
would take me two days to get to Hebron. It was beyond all the resorts that
people flock to: beyond, and "cross country" at that. I must have journeyed
on at least three small, one-track railroads after leaving the Pullman at some
junction or other.
It was late afternoon when I reached Hebron; and nearly an hour later
before I could get myself deposited at Kathleen Somers's door. There was
no garden, no porch; only a long, weed-grown walk up to a stiff front door.
An orchard of rheumatic apple-trees was cowering stiffly to the wind in a
far corner of the roughly fenced-in lot; there was a windbreak of perishing
pines.
In the living-room Kathleen Somers lay on a cheap wicker chaise-longue,
staring at a Hindu idol that she held in her thin hands. She did not stir to
greet me; only transferred her stare from the gilded idol to dusty and
ungilded me. She spoke, of course; the first time in my life, too, that I had
ever heard her speak ungently.
"My good man, you had better go away. I can't put you up."
That was her greeting. Melora Meigs was snuffling in the hallway outside—
listening, I suppose.
"Oh, yes, you can. If you can't I'm sure Joel Blake will. I've come to stay a
while, Miss Somers."
"Can you eat porridge and salt pork for supper?"

"I can eat tenpenny nails, if necessary. Also I can sleep in the barn."
"Melora!" The old woman entered, crooked and grudging of aspect. "This
friend of my father's and mine has come to see me. Can he sleep in the
barn?"
I cannot describe the hostility with which Melora Meigs regarded me. It
was not a pointed and passionate hatred. That, one could have examined
and dealt with. It was, rather, a vast disgust that happened to include me.
"There's nothing to sleep on. Barn's empty."
"He could move the nurse's cot out there, if he really wants to. And I think
there's an extra washstand in the woodshed. You'll hardly need more than
one chair, just for a night," she finished, turning to me.
"Not for any number of nights, of course," I agreed suavely. I was angry
with Kathleen Somers, I didn't know quite why. I think it was the Hindu
idol. Nor had she any right to address me with insolence, unless she were
mad, and she was not that. Her eyes snapped very sanely. I don't think
Kathleen Somers could have made her voice snap.
Melora Meigs grunted and left the room. The grunt was neither assent nor
dissent; it was only the most inclusive disapproval: the snarl of an animal,
proceeding from the topmost of many layers of dislike.
"I'll move the things before dark, I think." I was determined to be cheerful,
even if I had to seem impertinent; though the notion of her sticking me out
in the barn enraged me.
"You won't mind Melora's locking the door between, of course. We always
do. I'm such a cockney, I'm timid; and Melora's very sweet about it."
It was almost too much, but I stuck it out. Presently, indeed, I got my way;
and moved—yes, actually lugged and lifted and dragged—the cot, the chair,
and the stand out through the dusty, half-rotted corridors and sheds to the
barn. I drew water at the tap in the yard and washed my perspiring face and
neck. Then I had supper with Miss Somers and Melora Meigs.
After supper my hostess lighted a candle. "We go to bed very early," she
informed me. "I know you'll be willing to smoke out-of-doors, it's so warm.

I doubt if Melora could bear tobacco in the house. And you won't mind her
locking up early. You can get into the barn from the yard any time, of
course. Men are never timid, I believe; but there's a horn somewhere, if
you'd like it. We have breakfast at six-thirty. Good-night."
Yes, it was Kathleen Somers's own voice, saying these things to me. I was
still enraged, but I must bide my time. I refused the horn, and went out into
the rheumatic orchard to smoke in dappled moonlight. The pure air soothed
me; the great silence restored my familiar scheme of things. Before I went
to bed in the barn, I could see the humor of this sour adventure. Oh, I would
be up at six-thirty!
Of course I wasn't. I overslept; and by the time I approached the house (the
woodshed door was still locked) their breakfast was long over. I fully
expected to fast until the midday meal, but Kathleen Somers relented. With
her own hands she made me coffee over a little alcohol lamp. Bread and
butter had been austerely left on the table. Miss Somers fetched me eggs,
which I ate raw. Then I went out into the orchard to smoke.
When I came back, I found Miss Somers as she had been the day before,
crouched listlessly in her long chair fondling her idol. I drew up a horsehair
rocking-chair and plunged in.
"Why do you play with that silly thing?"
"This?" She stroked the idol. "It is rather lovely, Father got it in Benares.
The carving is very cunningly done. Look at the nose and mouth. The rank
Hinduism of the thing amuses me. Perhaps it was cruel to bring it up here
where there are no other gods for it to play with. But it's all I've got. They
had to sell everything, you know. When I get stronger, I'll send it back to
New York and sell it too."
"Why did you keep it out of all the things you had?"
"I don't know. I think it was the first thing we ever bought in India. And I
remember Benares with so much pleasure. Wasn't it a pity we couldn't have
been there when everything happened?"
"Much better not, I should think. You needed surgeons."

"Just what I didn't need! I should have liked to die in a country that had
something to say for itself. I don't feel as though this place had ever existed,
except in some hideous dream."
"It's not hideous. It's even very beautiful—so wild and untouched; such
lovely contours to the mountains."
"Yes, it's very untouched." She spoke of it with just the same scorn I had in
old days heard her use for certain novelists. "Scarcely worth the trouble of
touching I should think—shouldn't you?"
"The beauty of it last night and this morning has knocked me over," I
replied hardily.
"Oh, really! How very interesting!" By which she meant that she was not
interested at all.
"You mean that you would like it landscape-gardened?" Really, she was
perverse. She had turned her back to the view—which was ripping, out of
her northern window. I could tell that she habitually turned her back on it.
"Oh, landscape-gardened? Well, it would improve it, no doubt. But it would
take generations to do it. The generations that have been here already don't
seem to have accomplished much. Humanly speaking, they have hardly
existed at all."
Kathleen Somers was no snob in the ordinary sense. She was an angel to
peasants. I knew perfectly what she meant by "humanly." She meant there
was no castle on the next hill.
"Are you incapable of caring for nature—just scenery?"
"Quite." She closed her eyes, and stopped her gentle, even stroking of the
idol.
"Of course you never did see America first," I laughed.
Kathleen Somers opened her eyes and spoke vehemently. "I've seen all
there is of it to see, in transit to better places. Seeing America first! That can
be borne. It's seeing America last that kills me. Seeing nothing else forever,
till I die."

"You don't care for just beauty, regardless," I mused.
"Not a bit. Not unless it has meant something to man. I'm a humanist, I'm
afraid."
Whether she was gradually developing remorse for my night in the
cobwebby barn, I do not know. But anyhow she grew more gentle, from this
point on. She really condescended to expound.
"I've never loved nature—she's a brute, and crawly besides. It's what man
has done with nature that counts; it's nature with a human past. Peaks that
have been fought for, and fought on, crossed by the feet of men, stared at by
poets and saints. Most of these peaks aren't even named. Did you know
that? Nature! What is Nature good for, I should like to know, except to kill
us all in the end? Don't Ruskinize to me, my dear man."
"I won't. I couldn't. But, all the same, beauty is beauty, wherever and
whatever. And, look where you will here, your eyes can't go wrong."
"I never look. I looked when I first came, and the stupidity, the emptiness,
the mere wood and dirt and rock of it seemed like a personal insult. I should
prefer the worst huddle of a Chinese city, I verily believe."
"You've not precisely the spirit of the pioneer, I can see."
"I should hope not. 'But, God if a God there be, is the substance of men,
which is man.' I have to stay in the man-made ruts. They're sacred to me. I'll
look with pleasure at the Alps, if only for the sake of Hannibal and Goethe;
but I never could look with pleasure at your untutored Rockies. They're so
unintentional, you know. Nature is nothing until history has touched her.
And as for this geological display outside my windows—you'll kindly
permit me to turn my back on it. It's not peevishness." She lifted her hand
protestingly. "Only, for weeks, I stared myself blind to see the beauty you
talk of. I can't see it. That's honest. I've tried. But there is none that I can
see. I am very conventional, you know, very self-distrustful. I have to wait
for a Byron to show it to me. American mountains—poor hulking things—
have never had a poet to look at them. At least, Poe never wasted his time
that way. I don't imagine that Poe would have been much happier here than
I am. I haven't even the thrill of the explorer, for I'm not the first one to see
them. A few thin generations of people have stared at these hills—and much

the hills have done for them! Melora Meigs is the child of these mountains;
and Melora's sense of beauty is amply expressed in the Orthodox church in
Hebron. This landscape, I assure you"—she smiled—"hasn't made good. So
much for the view. It's no use to me, absolutely no use. I give you full and
free leave to take it away with you if you want it. And I don't think the
house is much better. But I'm afraid I shall have to keep that for Melora
Meigs and me to live in." It was her old smile. The bitterness was all in the
words. No, it was not bitterness, precisely, for it was fundamentally as
impersonal as criticism can be. You would have thought that the mountains
were low-brows. I forebore to mention her ancestors who had lived here: it
would have seemed like quibbling. They had created the situation; but they
had only in the most literal sense created her.
"Why don't you get out?"
"I simply haven't money enough to live anywhere else. Not money enough
for a hall bedroom. This place belongs to me. The taxes are nothing. The
good farming land that went with it was sold long since. And I'm afraid I
haven't the strength to go out and work for a living. I'm very ineffectual,
besides. What could I do even if health returned to me? I've decided it's
more decent to stay here and die on three dollars a year than to sink my
capital in learning stenography."
"You could, I suppose, be a companion." Of course I did not mean it, but
she took it up very seriously.
"The people who want companions wouldn't want me. And the one thing
this place gives me is freedom—freedom to hate it, to see it intelligently for
what it is. I couldn't afford my blessed hatreds if I were a companion. And
there's no money in it, so that I couldn't even plan for release. It simply
wouldn't do."
Well, of course it wouldn't do. I had never thought it would. I tried another
opening.
"When is Withrow coming back?"
"I don't know. I haven't heard from him." She might have been telling a
squirrel that she didn't know where the other squirrel's nuts were.

"He has been far beyond civilization, I know. But I dare say he'll be back
soon. I hope you won't put him in the barn. I don't mind, of course, but his
feelings might be hurt."
"I shall certainly not let him come," she retorted. "He would have the grace
to ask first, you know."
"I shall make a point of telling him you want him." But even that could
strike no spark from her. She was too completely at odds with life to care. I
realized, too, after an hour's talk with her, that I had better go—take back
my fine proposition about making a long visit. She reacted to nothing I
could offer. I talked of books and plays, visiting virtuosos and picture
exhibitions. Her comments were what they would always have been, except
that she was already groping for the cue. She had been out of it for months;
she had given up the fight. The best things she said sounded a little stale and
precious. Her wit perished in the face of Nature's stare. Nature was a lady
she didn't recognize: a country cousin she'd never met. She couldn't even
"sit and play with similes." If she lived, she would be an old lady with a
clever past: an intolerable bore. But there was no need to look so far ahead.
Kathleen Somers would die.
Before dinner I clambered up or down (I don't remember which) to a brook
and gathered a bunch of wild iris for her. She had loved flowers of old; and
how deftly she could place a spray among her treasures! She shuddered.
"Take those things away! How dare you bring It inside the house?" By "It" I
knew she meant the wild natural world. Obediently I took the flowers out
and flung them over the fence. I knew that Kathleen Somers was capable of
getting far more pleasure from their inimitable hue than I; but even that
inimitable hue was poisoned for her because it came from the world that
was torturing her—the world that beat upon her windows, so that she turned
her back to the day; that stormed her ears, so that she closed them even to
its silence; that surrounded her, so that she locked every gate of her mind.
I left, that afternoon, very desolate and sorry. Certainly I could do nothing
for her. I had tried to shock her, stir her, into another attitude, but in vain.
She had been transplanted to a soil her tender roots could not strike into.
She would wither for a little under the sky, and then perish. "If she could
only have fallen in love!" I thought, as I left her, huddled in her wicker

chair. If I had been a woman, I would have fled from Melora Meigs even
into the arms of a bearded farmer; I would have listened to the most nasal
male the hills had bred. I would have milked cows, to get away from
Melora. But I am a crass creature. Besides, what son of the soil would want
her: unexuberant, delicate, pleasant in strange ways, and foreign to all
familiar things? She wouldn't even fall in love with Arnold Withrow, who
was her only chance. For I saw that Arnold, if he ever came, would, fatally,
love the place. She might have put up with the stock-broking, but she never
could have borne his liking the view. Yes, I was very unhappy as I drove
into Hebron; and when I finally achieved the Pullman at the Junction, I was
unhappier still. For I felt towards that Pullman as the lost child feels toward
its nurse; and I knew that Kathleen Somers, ill, poor, middle-aged, and a
woman, was a thousand times more the child of the Pullman than I.
I have told this in detail, because I hate giving things at second-hand. Yet
there my connection with Kathleen Somers ceased, and her tragedy
deepened before other witnesses. She stayed on in her hills; too proud to
visit her friends, too sane to spend her money on a flying trip to town, too
bruised and faint to fight her fate. The only thing she tried for was apathy. I
think she hoped—when she hoped anything—that her mind would go, a
little: not so much that she would have to be "put away"; but just enough so
that she could see things in a mist—so that the hated hills might, for all she
knew, be Alps, the rocks turn into castles, the stony fields into vineyards,
and Joel Blake into a Tuscan. Just enough so that she could re-create her
world from her blessed memories, without any sharp corrective senses to
interfere. That, I am sure, was what she fixed her mind upon through the
prolonged autumn; bending all her frail strength to turn her brain ever so
little from its rigid attitude to fact. "Pretending" was no good: it maddened.
If her mind would only pretend without her help! That would be heaven,
until heaven really came.... You can't sympathize with her, probably, you
people who have been bred up on every kind of Nature cult. I can hear you
talking about the everlasting hills. Don't you see, that was the trouble? Her
carefully trained imagination was her religion, and in her own way she was
a ritualist. The mountains she faced were unbaptized: the Holy Ghost had
never descended upon them. She was as narrow as a nun; but she could not
help it. And remember, you practical people who love woodchucks, that she
had nothing but the view to make life tolerable. The view was no mere

accessory to a normal existence. She lived, half-ill, in an ugly, not too
comfortable cottage, as far as the moon from any world she understood, in a
solitude acidulated by Melora Meigs. No pictures, no music, no plays, no
talk—and this, the whole year round. Would you like it yourselves, you
would-be savages with Adirondack guides? Books? Well: that was one of
life's little stupidities. She couldn't buy them, and no one knew what to send
her. Besides, books deferred the day when her mind should, ever so little,
go back on her. She didn't encourage gifts of literature. She was no
philosopher; and an abstraction was of no use to her unless she could turn it
to a larger concreteness, somehow enhancing, let us say, a sunset from the
Acropolis. I never loved Kathleen Somers, as men love women, but many a
time that year I would have taken her burden on myself, changed lives with
her, if that had been possible. It never could have been so bad for any of us
as for her. Mildred Thurston would have gone to the church sociables and
flirted as grossly as Hebron conventions permitted; I, at least, could have
chopped wood. But to what account could Kathleen Somers turn her
martyrdom?
Withrow felt it, too—not as I could feel it, for, as I foretold, he thought the
place glorious. He went up in the autumn when everything was crimson and
purple and gold. Yet more, in a sense, than I could feel it, for he did love her
as men love women. It shows you how far gone she was that she turned him
down. Many women, in her case, would have jumped at Withrow for the
sake of getting away. But she was so steeped in her type that she couldn't.
She wouldn't have married him before; and she wasn't going to marry him
for the sake of living in New York. She would have been ashamed to. A few
of us who knew blamed her. I didn't, really, though I had always suspected
that she cared for him personally. Kathleen Somers's love, when it came,
would be a very complicated thing. She had seen sex in too many countries,
watched its brazen play on too many stages, within theatres and without, to
have any mawkish illusions. But passion would have to bring a large retinue
to be accepted where she was sovereign. Little as I knew her, I knew that.
Yet I always thought she might have taken him, in that flaming October, if
he hadn't so flagrantly, tactlessly liked the place. He drank the autumn like
wine; he was tipsy with it; and his loving her didn't tend to sober him. The
consequence was that she drew away—as if he had been getting drunk on
some foul African brew that was good only to befuddle woolly heads with;

as if, in other words, he had not been getting drunk like a gentleman....
Anyhow, Arnold came back with a bad headache. She had found a gentle
brutality to fit his case. He would have been wise, I believe, to bring her
away, even if he had had to chloroform her to do it. But Withrow couldn't
have been wise in that way. Except for his incurable weakness for Nature,
he was the most delicate soul alive.
He didn't talk much to me about it, beyond telling me that she had refused
him. I made out the rest from his incoherences. He had not slept in the barn,
for they could hardly have let a cat sleep in the barn on such cold nights;
but Melora Meigs had apparently treated him even worse than she had
treated me. Kathleen Somers had named some of the unnamed mountains
after the minor prophets; as grimly as if she had been one of the people they
cursed. I thought that a good sign, but Withrow said he wished she hadn't:
she ground the names out so between her teeth. Some of her state of mind
came out through her talk—not much. It was from one or two casually seen
letters that I became aware of her desire to go a little—just a little—mad.
In the spring Kathleen Somers had a relapse. It was no wonder. In spite of
the Franklin stoves, her frail body must have been chilled to the bone for
many months. Relief settled on several faces, when we heard—I am afraid
it may have settled on mine. She had been more dead than alive, I judged,
for a year; and yet she had not been able to cure her sanity. That was
chronic. Death would have been the kindest friend that could arrive to her
across those detested hills. We—the "we" is a little vague, but several of us
scurried about—sent up a trained nurse, delaying somewhat for the sake of
getting the woman who had been there before; for she had the advantage of
having experienced Melora Meigs without resultant bloodshed. She was a
nice woman, and sent faithful bulletins; but the bulletins were bad. Miss
Somers seemed to have so little resistance: there was no interest there, she
said, no willingness to fight. "The will was slack." Ah, she little knew
Kathleen Somers's will! None of us knew, for that matter.
The spring came late that year, and in those northern hills there were weeks
of melting snow and raw, deep slush—the ugliest season we have to face
south of the Arctic circle. The nurse did not want any of her friends to
come; she wrote privately, to those of us who champed at the bit, that Miss
Somers was fading away, but not peacefully; she was better unvisited,

unseen. Miss Somers did not wish any one to come, and the nurse thought it
wiser not to force her. Several women were held back by that, and turned
with relief to Lenten opera. The opera, however, said little to Withrow at the
best of times, and he was crazed by the notion of not seeing her before she
achieved extinction. I thought him unwise, for many reasons: for one, I did
not think that Arnold Withrow would bring her peace. She usually knew
what she wanted—wasn't that, indeed, the whole trouble with her?—and
she had said explicitly to the nurse that she didn't want Arnold Withrow. But
by the end of May Withrow was neither to hold nor to bind: he went. I
contented myself with begging him at least not to poison her last hours by
admiring the landscape. I had expected my earnest request to shock him;
but, to my surprise, he nodded understandingly. "I shall curse the whole
thing out like a trooper, if she gives me the chance." And he got into his
daycoach—the Pullmans wouldn't go on until much later—a mistaken and
passionate knight.
Withrow could not see her the first evening, and he talked long and deeply
with the nurse. She had no hope to give him: she was mystified. It was her
opinion that Kathleen Somers's lack of will was killing her, speedily and
surely. "Is there anything for her to die of?" he asked. "There's nothing, you
might say, for her to live of," was her reply. The nurse disapproved of his
coming, but promised to break the news of his presence to her patient in the
morning.
Spring had by this time touched the hills. It was that divine first moment
when the whole of earth seems to take a leap in the night; when things are
literally new every morning. Arnold walked abroad late, filling his lungs
and nostrils and subduing his pulses. He was always faunishly wild in the
spring; and for years he hadn't had a chance to seek the season in her
haunts. But he turned in before midnight, because he dreaded the next day
supremely. He didn't want to meet that face to face until he had to. Melora
Meigs lowered like a thunderstorm, but she was held in check by the nurse.
I suppose Melora couldn't give notice: there would be nothing but the poor-
farm for her if she did. But she whined and grumbled and behaved in
general like an electrical disturbance. Luckily, she couldn't curdle the milk.
Withrow waked into a world of beauty. He walked for an hour before
breakfast, through woods all blurred with buds, down vistas brushed with

faint color. But he would have given the spring and all springs to come for
Kathleen Somers, and the bitter kernel of it was that he knew it. He was
sharp-faced and sad (I know how he looked) when he came back, with a
bunch of hepaticas, to breakfast.
The nurse was visibly trembling. You see, Kathleen Somers's heart had
never been absolutely right. It was a terrible responsibility to let her patient
face Withrow. Still, neither she nor any other woman could have held
Withrow off. Besides, as she had truly said, there was nothing explicitly for
Kathleen Somers to die of. It was that low vitality, that whispering pulse,
that listlessness; then, a draught, a shock, a bit of over-exertion and
something real and organic could speedily be upon her. No wonder the
woman was troubled. In point of fact, though she had taken up Miss
Somers's breakfast, she hadn't dared tell her the news. And finally, after
breakfast, she broke down. "I can't do it, Mr. Withrow," she wailed. "Either
you go away or I do."
Withrow knew at first only one thing: that he wouldn't be the one to go.
Then he realized that the woman had been under a long strain, what with
the spring thaws, and a delicate patient who wouldn't mend—and Melora to
fight with, on behalf of all human decency, every day.
"You go, then," he said finally. "I'll take care of her."
The nurse stared at him. Then she thought, presumably, of Kathleen
Somers's ineffable delicacy, and burst out laughing. Hysteria might, in all
the circumstances, be forgiven her.
Then they came back to the imminent question.
"I'll tell her when I do up her room," she faltered.
"All right. I'll give you all the time in the world. But she must be told I'm
here—unless you wish me to tell her myself." Withrow went out to smoke.
But he did not wish to succumb again to the intoxication Kathleen Somers
so disdained, and eventually he went into the barn, to shut himself away
from temptation. It was easier to prepare his vilifying phrases there.
To his consternation, he heard through the gloom the sound of sobbing. The
nurse, he saw, after much peering, sat on a dusty chopping-block, crying

unhealthily. He went up to her and seized her arm. "Have you told her?"
"I can't."
"My good woman, you'd better leave this afternoon."
"Not"—the tone itself was firm, through the shaky sobs—"until there is
some one to take my place."
"I'll telegraph for some one. You shan't see her again. But I will see her at
once."
Then the woman's training asserted itself. She pulled herself together, with
a little shake of self-disgust. "You'll do nothing of the sort. I'll attend to her
until I go. It has been a long strain, and, contrary to custom, I've had no
time off. I'll telegraph to the Registry myself. And if I can't manage until
then, I'll resign my profession." She spoke with sturdy shame.
"That's better." Withrow approved her. "I'm awfully obliged. But honestly,
she has got to know. I can't stand it, skulking round, much longer. And no
matter what happens to the whole boiling, I'm not going to leave without
seeing her."
"I'll tell her." The nurse rose and walked to the barn-door like a heroine.
"But you must stay here until I come for you."
"I promise. Only you must come. I give you half an hour."
"I don't need half an hour, thank you." She had recovered her professional
crispness. In the wide door she stopped. "It's a pity," she said irrelevantly,
"that she can't see how lovely this is." Then she started for the house.
"I believe you," muttered Withrow under his breath.
In five minutes the nurse came back, breathless, half-running. Arnold got up
from the chopping-block, startled. He believed for an instant (as he has
since told me) that it was "all over." With her hand on her beating heart the
woman panted out her words:
"She has come downstairs in a wrapper. She hasn't been down for weeks.
And she has found your hepaticas."

"Oh, hell!" Withrow was honestly disgusted. He had never meant to insult
Kathleen Somers with hepaticas. "Is it safe to leave her alone with them?"
He hardly knew what he was saying. But it shows to what a pass Kathleen
Somers had come that he could be frightened at the notion of her being left
alone with a bunch of hepaticas.
"She's all right, I think. She seemed to like them."
"Oh, Lord!" Withrow's brain was spinning. "Here, I'll go. If she can stand
those beastly flowers, she can stand me."
"No, she can't." The nurse had recovered her breath now. "I'll go back and
tell her, very quietly. If she could get down-stairs, she can stand it, I think.
But I'll be very careful. You come in ten minutes. If she isn't fit, I'll have got
her back to bed by that time."
She disappeared, and Withrow, his back to the view, counted out the
minutes. When the large hand of his watch had quite accomplished its
journey, he turned and walked out through the yard to the side door of the
house. Melora Meigs was clattering dish-pans somewhere beyond, and the
noise she made covered his entrance to the living-room. He drew a deep
breath: they were not there. He listened at the stairs: no sound up there—no
sound, at least, to rise above Melora's dish-pans, now a little less audible.
But this time he was not going to wait—for anything. He already had one
foot on the stairs when he heard voices and stopped. For just one second he
paused, then walked cat-like in the direction of the sounds. The front door
was open. On the step stood Kathleen Somers, her back to him, facing the
horizon. A light shawl hung on her shoulders, and the nurse's arm was very
firmly round her waist. They did not hear him, breathing heavily there in
the hall behind them.
He saw Kathleen Somers raise her arm slowly—with difficulty, it seemed.
She pointed at the noble shoulder of a mountain.
"That is Habakkuk," said her sweet voice. "I named them all, you know. But
I think Habakkuk is my favorite; though of course he's not so stunning as
Isaiah. Then they run down to Obadiah and Malachi. Joel is just peeping
over Habakkuk's left shoulder. That long bleak range is Jeremiah." She
laughed, very faintly. "You know, Miss Willis, they are really very

beautiful. Isn't it strange, I couldn't see it? For I honestly couldn't. I've been
lying there, thinking. And I found I could remember all their outlines, under
snow ... and this morning it seemed to me I must see how Habakkuk looked
in the spring." She sat down suddenly on the top step; and Miss Willis sat
down too, her arm still about her patient.
"It's very strange"—Withrow, strain though he did, could hardly make out
the words, they fell so softly—"that I just couldn't see it before. It's only
these last days.... And now I feel as if I wanted to see every leaf on every
tree. It wasn't so last year. They say something to me now. I don't think I
should want to talk with them forever, but you've no idea—you've no idea
—how strange and welcome it is for my eyes to find them beautiful." She
seemed almost to murmur to herself. Then she braced herself slightly
against the nurse's shoulder, and went on, in her light, sweet, ironic voice.
"They probably never told you—but I didn't care for Nature, exactly. I don't
think I care for it now, as some people do, but I can see that this is beautiful.
Of course you don't know what it means to me. It has simply changed the
world." She waved her hand again. "They never got by, before. I always
knew that line was line, and color was color, wherever or whoever. But my
eyes went back on me. My father would have despised me. He wouldn't
have preferred Habakkuk, but he would have done Habakkuk justice from
the beginning. Yes, it makes a great deal of difference to me to see it once,
fair and clear. Why"—she drew herself up as well as she could, so firmly
held—"it is a very lovely place. I should tire of it some time, but I shall not
tire of it soon. For a little while, I shall be up to it. And I know that no one
thinks it will be long."
Just then, Withrow's absurd fate caught him. Breathless, more passionately
interested than he had ever been in his life, he sneezed. He had just time,
while the two women were turning, to wonder if he had ruined it all—if she
would faint, or shriek, or relapse into apathy.
She did none of these things. She faced him and flushed, standing
unsteadily. "How long have you been cheating me?" she asked coldly. But
she held out her hand before she went upstairs with the nurse's arm still
round her.

Later he caught at Miss Willis excitedly. "Is she better? Is she worse? Is she
well? Or is she going to die?"
"She's shaken. She must rest. But she's got the hepaticas in water beside her
bed. And she told me to pull the shade up so that she could look out. She
has a touch of temperature—but she often has that. The exertion and the
shock would be enough to give it to her. I found her leaning against the
door-jamb. I hadn't a chance to tell her you were here. I can tell you later
whether you'd better go or stay."
"I'm going to stay. It's you who are going."
"You needn't telegraph just yet," the nurse replied dryly. She looked another
woman from the nervous, sobbing creature on the chopping-block.
The end was that Miss Willis stayed and Arnold Withrow went. Late that
afternoon he left Kathleen Somers staring passionately at the sunset. It was
not his moment, and he had the grace to know it. But he had not had to tell
her that the view was beastly; and, much as he loved her, I think that was a
relief to him.
None of us will ever know the whole of Kathleen Somers's miracle, of
course. I believe she told as much of it as she could when she said that she
had lain thinking of the outlines of the mountains until she felt that she must
go out and face them: stand once more outside, free of walls, and stare
about at the whole chain of the earth-lords. Perhaps the spring, which had
broken up the ice-bound streams, had melted other things besides.
Unwittingly—by unconscious cerebration—by the long inevitable storing
of disdained impressions—she had arrived at vision. That which had been,
for her, alternate gibberish and silence, had become an intelligible tongue.
The blank features had stirred and shifted into a countenance; she saw a
face, where she had seen only odds and ends of modelling grotesquely flung
abroad. With no stupid pantheism to befuddle her, she yet felt the earth a
living thing. Wood and stone, which had not even been an idol for her, now
shaped themselves to hold a sacrament. Put it as you please; for I can find
no way to express it to my satisfaction. Kathleen Somers had, for the first
time, envisaged the cosmic, had seen something less passionate, but more
vital, than history. Most of us are more fortunate than she: we take it for
granted that no loom can rival the petal of a flower. But to some creatures

the primitive is a cipher, hard to learn; and blood is spent in the struggle.
You have perhaps seen (and not simply in the old legend) passion come to a
statue. Rare, oh, rare is the necessity for such a miracle. But Kathleen
Somers was in need of one; and I believe it came to her.
The will was slack, the nurse had said; yet it sufficed to take her from her
bed, down the stairs, in pursuit of the voice—straight out into the newly
articulate world. She moved, frail and undismayed, to the source of
revelation. She did not cower back and demand that the oracle be served up
to her by a messenger. A will like that is not slack.
Now I will shuffle back into my own skin and tell you the rest of it very
briefly and from the rank outsider's point of view. Even had I possessed the
whole of Arnold Withrow's confidence, I could not deal with the delicate
gradations of a lover's mood. He passed the word about that Kathleen
Somers was not going to die—though I believe he did it with his heart in his
mouth, not really assured she wouldn't. It took some of us a long time to
shift our ground and be thankful. Withrow, with a wisdom beyond his habit,
did not go near her until autumn. Reports were that she was gaining all the
time, and that she lived out-of-doors staring at Habakkuk and his brethren,
gathering wild flowers and pressing them between her palms. She seemed
determined to face another winter there alone with Melora, Miss Willis
wrote. Withrow set his jaw when that news came. It was hard on him to stay
away, but she had made it very clear that she wanted her convalescent
summer to herself. When she had to let Miss Willis go—and Miss Willis
had already taken a huge slice of Kathleen's capital—he might come and
see her through the transition. So Withrow sweltered in New York all
summer, and waited for permission.
Then Melora Meigs was gracious for once. With no preliminary illness,
with just a little gasp as the sun rose over the long range of Jeremiah, she
died. Withrow, hearing this, was off like a sprinter who hears the signal. He
found laughter and wit abiding happily in Kathleen's recovered body.
Together they watched the autumn deepen over the prophets. Habakkuk, all
insults forgiven, was their familiar.
So they brought Kathleen Somers back from the hills to live. It was
impossible for her to remain on her mountainside without a Melora Meigs;

and Melora, unlike most tortures, was unreplaceable. Kathleen's world
welcomed her as warmly as if her exile had been one long suspense: a
gentle hyprocrisy we all forgave each other. Some one went abroad and left
an apartment for her use. All sorts of delicate little events occurred, half
accidentally, in her interest. Soon some of us began to gather, as of old.
Marvel of marvels, Withrow had not spoken in that crimson week of
autumn. Without jealousy he had apparently left her to Habakkuk. It was a
brief winter—for Kathleen Somers's body, a kind of spring. You could see
her grow, from week to week: plump out and bloom more vividly. Then, in
April, without a word, she left us—disappeared one morning, with no
explicit word to servants.
Withrow once more—poor Withrow—shot forth, not like a runner, but like
a hound on a fresh scent. He needed no time-tables. He leaped from the
telephone to the train.
He found her there, he told me afterward, sitting on the step, the door
unlocked behind her but shut.
Indeed, she never entered the house again; for Withrow bore her away from
the threshold. I do not think she minded, for she had made her point: she
had seen Habakkuk once more, and Habakkuk had not gone back on her.
That was all she needed to know. They meant to go up in the autumn after
their marriage, but the cottage burned to the ground before they got back
from Europe. I do not know that they have ever been, or whether they ever
will go, now. There are still a few exotic places that Kathleen Withrow has
not seen, and Habakkuk can wait. After all, the years are very brief in
Habakkuk's sight. Even if she never needs him again, I do not think he will
mind.

FOOTNOTES:
[8] Copyright, 1919, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright, 1921, by Katharine Fullerton Gerould.

THE JUDGMENT OF VULCAN[9]
By LEE FOSTER HARTMAN

From Harper's Magazine

To dine on the veranda of the Marine Hotel is the one delightful surprise
which Port Charlotte affords the adventurer who has broken from the
customary paths of travel in the South Seas. On an eminence above the
town, solitary and aloof like a monastery, and nestling deep in its garden of
lemon-trees, it commands a wide prospect of sea and sky. By day, the
Pacific is a vast stretch of blue, flat like a floor, with a blur of distant islands
on the horizon—chief among them Muloa, with its single volcanic cone
tapering off into the sky. At night, this smithy of Vulcan becomes a glow of
red, throbbing faintly against the darkness, a capricious and sullen beacon
immeasurably removed from the path of men. Viewed from the veranda of
the Marine Hotel, its vast flare on the horizon seems hardly more than an
insignificant spark, like the glowing cigar-end of some guest strolling in the
garden after dinner.
It may very likely have been my lighted cigar that guided Eleanor Stanleigh
to where I was sitting in the shadows. Her uncle, Major Stanleigh, had left
me a few minutes before, and I was glad of the respite from the queer
business he had involved me in. The two of us had returned that afternoon
from Muloa, where I had taken him in my schooner, the Sylph, to seek out
Leavitt and make some inquiries—very important inquiries, it seemed, in
Miss Stanleigh's behalf.
Three days in Muloa, under the shadow of the grim and flame-throated
mountain, while I was forced to listen to Major Stanleigh's persistent
questionnaire and Leavitt's erratic and garrulous responses—all this, as I
was to discover later, at the instigation of the Major's niece—had made me
frankly curious about the girl.

I had seen her only once, and then at a distance across the veranda, one
night when I had been dining there with a friend; but that single vision of
her remained vivid and unforgettable—a tall girl of a slender shapeliness,
crowned by a mass of reddish-gold hair that smoldered above the clear
olive pallor of her skin. With that flawless and brilliant coloring she was
marked for observation—had doubtless been schooled to a perfect
indifference to it, for the slow, almost indolent, grace of her movements was
that of a woman coldly unmindful of the gazes lingering upon her. She
could not have been more than twenty-six or -seven, but I got an
unmistakable impression of weariness or balked purpose emanating from
her in spite of her youth and glorious physique. I looked up to see her
crossing the veranda to join her uncle and aunt—correct, well-to-do English
people that one placed instantly—and my stare was only one of many that
followed her as she took her seat and threw aside the light scarf that
swathed her bare and gleaming shoulders.
My companion, who happened to be the editor of the local paper, promptly
informed me regarding her name and previous residence—the gist of some
"social item" which he had already put into print; but these meant nothing,
and I could only wonder what had brought her to such an out-of-the-way
part of the world as Port Charlotte. She did not seem like a girl who was
traveling with her uncle and aunt; one got rather the impression that she was
bent on a mission of her own and was dragging her relatives along because
the conventions demanded it. I hazarded to my companion the notion that a
woman like Miss Stanleigh could have but one of two purposes in this
lonely part of the world—she was fleeing from a lover or seeking one.
"In that case," rejoined my friend, with the cynical shrug of the newspaper
man, "she has very promptly succeeded. It's whispered that she is going to
marry Joyce—of Malduna Island, you know. Only met him a fortnight ago.
Quite a romance, I'm told."
I lifted my eyebrows at that, and looked again at Miss Stanleigh. Just at that
instant she happened to look up. It was a wholly indifferent gaze; I am
confident that she was no more aware of me than if I had been one of the
veranda posts which her eyes had chanced to encounter. But in the
indescribable sensation of that moment I felt that here was a woman who

bore a secret burden, although, as my informing host put it, her heart had
romantically found its haven only two weeks ago.
She was endeavoring to get trace of a man named Farquharson, as I was
permitted to learn a few days later. Ostensibly, it was Major Stanleigh who
was bent on locating this young Englishman—Miss Stanleigh's interest in
the quest was guardedly withheld—and the trail had led him a pretty chase
around the world until some clue, which I never clearly understood, brought
them to Port Charlotte. The major's immediate objective was an eccentric
chap named Leavitt who had marooned himself in Muloa. The island
offered an ideal retreat for one bent on shunning his own kind, if he did not
object to the close proximity of a restive volcano. Clearly, Leavitt did not.
He had a scientific interest in the phenomena exhibited by volcanic regions
and was versed in geological lore, but the rumors about Leavitt—practically
no one ever visited Muloa—did not stop at that. And, as Major Stanleigh
and I were to discover, the fellow seemed to have developed a genuine
affection for Lakalatcha, as the smoking cone was called by the natives of
the adjoining islands. From long association he had come to know its
whims and moods as one comes to know those of a petulant woman one
lives with. It was a bizarre and preposterous intimacy, in which Leavitt
seemed to find a wholly acceptable substitute for human society, and there
was something repellant about the man's eccentricity. He had various names
for the smoking cone that towered a mile or more above his head: "Old
Flame-eater," or "Lava-spitter," he would at times familiarly and
irreverently call it; or, again, "The Maiden Who Never Sleeps," or "The
Single-breasted Virgin"—these last, however, always in the musical Malay
equivalent. He had no end of names—romantic, splenetic, of opprobrium,
or outright endearment—to suit, I imagine, Lakalatcha's varying moods. In
one respect they puzzled me—they were of conflicting genders, some
feminine and some masculine, as if in Leavitt's loose-frayed imagination the
mountain that beguiled his days and disturbed his nights were
hermaphroditic.
Leavitt as a source of information regarding the missing Farquharson
seemed preposterous when one reflected how out of touch with the world
he had been, but, to my astonishment, Major Stanleigh's clue was right, for
he had at last stumbled upon a man who had known Farquharson well and
who was voluminous about him—quite willingly so. With the Sylph at

anchor, we lay off Muloa for three nights, and Leavitt gave us our fill of
Farquharson, along with innumerable digressions about volcanoes,
neoplatonism, the Single Tax, and what not. There was no keeping Leavitt
to a coherent narrative about the missing Farquharson. He was incapable of
it, and Major Stanleigh and myself had simply to wait in patience while
Leavitt, delighted to have an audience, dumped out for us the fantastic
contents of his mind, odd vagaries, recondite trash, and all. He was always
getting away from Farquharson, but, then, he was unfailingly bound to
come back to him. We had only to wait and catch the solid grains that now
and then fell in the winnowing of that unending stream of chaff. It was a
tedious and exasperating process, but it had its compensations. At times
Leavitt could be as uncannily brilliant as he was dull and boresome. The
conviction grew upon me that he had become a little demented, as if his
brain had been tainted by the sulphurous fumes exhaled by the smoking
crater above his head. His mind smoked, flickered, and flared like an
unsteady lamp, blown upon by choking gases, in which the oil had run low.
But of the wanderer Farquharson he spoke with precision and authority, for
he had shared with Farquharson his bungalow there in Muloa—a period of
about six months, it seemed—and there Farquharson had contracted a tropic
fever and died.
"Well, at last we have got all the facts," Major Stanleigh sighed with
satisfaction when the Sylph was heading back to Port Charlotte. Muloa,
lying astern, we were no longer watching. Leavitt, at the water's edge, had
waved us a last good-by and had then abruptly turned back into the forest,
very likely to go clambering like a demented goat up the flanks of his
beloved volcano and to resume poking about in its steaming fissures—an
occupation of which he never tired.
"The evidence is conclusive, don't you think?—the grave, Farquharson's
personal effects, those pages of the poor devil's diary."
I nodded assent. In my capacity as owner of the Sylph I had merely
undertaken to furnish Major Stanleigh with passage to Muloa and back, but
the events of the last three days had made me a party to the many
conferences, and I was now on terms of something like intimacy with the
rather stiff and pompous English gentleman. How far I was from sharing his

real confidence I was to discover later when Eleanor Stanleigh gave me
hers.
"My wife and niece will be much relieved to hear all this—a family matter,
you understand, Mr. Barnaby," he had said to me when we landed. "I should
like to present you to them before we leave Port Charlotte for home."
But, as it turned out, it was Eleanor Stanleigh who presented herself,
coming upon me quite unexpectedly that night after our return while I sat
smoking in the shadowy garden of the Marine Hotel. I had dined with the
major, after he had explained that the ladies were worn out by the heat and
general developments of the day and had begged to be excused. And I was
frankly glad not to have to endure another discussion of the deceased
Farquharson, of which I was heartily tired after hearing little else for the
last three days. I could not help wondering how the verbose and pompous
major had paraphrased and condensed that inchoate mass of bioraphy and
reminiscence into an orderly account for his wife and niece. He had
doubtless devoted the whole afternoon to it. Sitting under the cool green of
the lemon-trees, beneath a sky powdered with stars, I reflected that I, at
least, was done with Farquharson forever. But I was not, for just then
Eleanor Stanleigh appeared before me.
I was startled to hear her addressing me by name, and then calmly begging
me to resume my seat on the bench under the arbor. She sat down also, her
flame-colored hair and bare shoulders gleaming in the darkness. She was
the soul of directness and candor, and after a thoughtful, searching look into
my face she came to the point at once. She wanted to hear about
Farquharson—from me.
"Of course, my uncle has given me a very full account of what he learned
from Mr. Leavitt, and yet many things puzzle me—this Mr. Leavitt most of
all."
"A queer chap," I epitomized him. "Frankly, I don't quite make him out,
Miss Stanleigh—marooning himself on that infernal island and seemingly
content to spend his days there."
"Is he so old?" she caught me up quickly.

"No, he isn't," I reflected. "Of course, it's difficult to judge ages out here.
The climate, you know. Leavitt's well under forty, I should say. But that's a
most unhealthy spot he has chosen to live in."
"Why does he stay there?"
I explained about the volcano. "You can have no idea what an obsession it
is with him. There isn't a square foot of its steaming, treacherous surface
that he hasn't been over, mapping new fissures, poking into old lava-beds,
delving into the crater itself on favorable days——"
"Isn't it dangerous?"
"In a way, yes. The volcano itself is harmless enough. It smokes
unpleasantly now and then, splutters and rumbles as if about to obliterate all
creation, but for all its bluster it only manages to spill a trickle or two of
fresh lava down its sides—just tamely subsides after deluging Leavitt with a
shower of cinders and ashes. But Leavitt won't leave it alone. He goes
poking into the very crater, half strangling himself in its poisonous fumes,
scorching the shoes off his feet, and once, I believe, he lost most of his hair
and eyebrows—a narrow squeak. He throws his head back and laughs at
any word of caution. To my notion, it's foolhardy to push a scientific
curiosity to that extreme."
"Is it, then, just scientific curiosity?" mused Miss Stanleigh.
Something in her tone made me stop short. Her eyes had lifted to mine—
almost appealingly, I fancied. Her innocence, her candor, her warm beauty,
which was like a pale phosphorescence in the starlit darkness—all had their
potent effect upon me in that moment. I felt impelled to a sudden burst of
confidence.
"At times I wonder. I've caught a look in his eyes, when he's been down on
his hands and knees, staring into some infernal vent-hole—a look that is—
well, uncanny, as if he were peering into the bowels of the earth for
something quite outside the conceptions of science. You might think that
volcano had worked some spell over him, turned his mind. He prattles to it
or storms at it as if it were a living creature. Queer, yes; and he's impressive,
too, with a sort of magnetic personality that attracts and repels you violently

at the same time. He's like a cake of ice dipped in alcohol and set aflame. I
can't describe him. When he talks——"
"Does he talk about himself?"
I had to confess that he had told us practically not a word. He had discussed
everything under heaven in his brilliant, erratic way, with a fleer of
cynicism toward it all, but he had left himself out completely. He had given
us Farquharson with relish, and in infinite detail, from the time the poor
fellow first turned up in Muloa, put ashore by a native craft. Talking about
Farquharson was second only to his delight in talking about volcanoes. And
the result for me had been innumerable vivid but confused impressions of
the young Englishman who had by chance invaded Leavitt's solitude and
had lingered there, held by some attraction, until he sickened and died. It
was like a jumbled mosaic put together again by inexpert hands.
"Did you get the impression that the two men had very much in common?"
"Quite the contrary," I answered. "But Major Stanleigh should know——"
"My uncle never met Mr. Farquharson."
I was fairly taken aback at that, and a silence fell between us. It was
impossible to divine the drift of her questions. It was as if some profound
mistrust weighed upon her and she was not so much seeking to interrogate
me as she was groping blindly for some chance word of mine that might
illuminate her doubts.
I looked at the girl in silent wonder, yes, and in admiration of her bronze
and ivory beauty in the full flower of her glorious youth—and I thought of
Joyce. I felt that it was like her to have fallen in love simply but
passionately at the mere lifting of the finger of Fate. It was only another
demonstration of the unfathomable mystery, or miracle, which love is.
Joyce was lucky, indeed favored of the gods, to have touched the spring in
this girl's heart which no other man could reach, and by the rarest of
chances—her coming out to this remote corner of the world. Lucky Joyce! I
knew him slightly—a straightforward young fellow, very simple and whole-
souled, enthusiastically absorbed in developing his rubber lands in
Malduna.

Miss Stanleigh remained lost in thought while her fingers toyed with the
pendant of the chain that she wore. In the darkness I caught the glitter of a
small gold cross.
"Mr. Barnaby," she finally broke the silence, and paused. "I have decided to
tell you something. This Mr. Farquharson was my husband."
Again a silence fell, heavy and prolonged, in which I sat as if drugged by
the night air that hung soft and perfumed about us. It seemed incredible that
in that fleeting instant she had spoken at all.
"I was young—and very foolish, I suppose."
With that confession, spoken with simple dignity, she broke off again.
Clearly, some knowledge of the past she deemed it necessary to impart to
me. If she halted over her words, it was rather to dismiss what was
irrelevant to the matter in hand, in which she sought my counsel.
"I did not see him for four years—did not wish to.... And he vanished
completely.... Four years!—just a welcome blank!"
Her shoulders lifted and a little shiver went over her.
"But even a blank like that can become unendurable. To be always dragging
at a chain, and not knowing where it leads to...." Her hand slipped from the
gold cross on her breast and fell to the other in her lap, which it clutched
tightly. "Four years.... I tried to make myself believe that he was gone
forever—was dead. It was wicked of me."
My murmur of polite dissent led her to repeat her words.
"Yes, and even worse than that. During the past month I have actually
prayed that he might be dead.... I shall be punished for it."
I ventured no rejoinder to these words of self-condemnation. Joyce, I
reflected, mundanely, had clearly swept her off her feet in the ardor of their
first meeting and instant love.
"It must be a great relief to you," I murmured at length, "to have it all
definitely settled at last."

"If I could only feel that it was!"
I turned in amazement, to see her leaning a little forward, her hands still
tightly clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon the distant horizon where
the red spark of Lakalatcha's stertorous breathing flamed and died away.
Her breast rose and fell, as if timed to the throbbing of that distant flare.
"I want you to take me to that island—to-morrow."
"Why, surely, Miss Stanleigh," I burst forth, "there can't be any reasonable
doubt. Leavitt's mind may be a little flighty—he may have embroidered his
story with a few gratuitous details; but Farquharson's books and things—the
material evidence of his having lived there——"
"And having died there?"
"Surely Leavitt wouldn't have fabricated that! If you had talked with him
——"
"I should not care to talk with Mr. Leavitt," Miss Stanleigh cut me short. "I
want only to go and see—if he is Mr. Leavitt."
"If he is Mr. Leavitt!" For a moment I was mystified, and then in a sudden
flash I understood. "But that's preposterous—impossible!"
I tried to conceive of Leavitt in so monstrous a rôle, tried to imagine the
missing Farquharson still in the flesh and beguiling Major Stanleigh and
myself with so outlandish a story, devising all that ingenious detail to trick
us into a belief in his own death. It would indeed have argued a warped
mind, guided by some unfathomable purpose.
"I devoutly hope you are right," Miss Stanleigh was saying, with
deliberation. "But it is not preposterous, and it is not impossible—if you
had known Mr. Farquharson as I have."
It was a discreet confession. She wished me to understand—without the
necessity of words. My surmise was that she had met and married
Farquharson, whoever he was, under the spell of some momentary
infatuation, and that he had proved himself to be an unspeakable brute
whom she had speedily abandoned.

"I am determined to go to Muloa, Mr. Barnaby," she announced, with
decision. "I want you to make the arrangements, and with as much secrecy
as possible. I shall ask my aunt to go with me."
I assured Miss Stanleigh that the Sylph was at her service.

Mrs. Stanleigh was a large bland woman, inclined to stoutness and to
making confidences, with an intense dislike of the tropics and physical
discomforts of any sort. How her niece prevailed upon her to make that
surreptitious trip to Muloa, which we set out upon two days later, I have
never been able to imagine. The accommodations aboard the schooner were
cramped, to say the least, and the good lady had a perfect horror of
volcanoes. The fact that Lakalatcha had behind it a record of a century or
more of good conduct did not weigh with her in the least. She was
convinced that it would blow its head off the moment the Sylph got within
range. She was fidgety, talkative, and continually concerned over the state
of her complexion, inspecting it in the mirror of her bag at frequent
intervals and using a powder-puff liberally to mitigate the pernicious effects
of the tropic sun. But once having been induced to make the voyage, I must
admit she stuck manfully by her decision, ensconcing herself on deck with
books and cushions and numerous other necessities to her comfort, and
making the best of the sleeping quarters below. As the captain of the Sylph,
she wanted me to understand that she had intrusted her soul to my charge,
declaring that she would not draw an easy breath until we were safe again
in Port Charlotte.
"This dreadful business of Eleanor's," was the way she referred to our
mission, and she got round quite naturally to telling me of Farquharson
while acquainting me with her fears about volcanoes. Some years before,
Pompeii and Herculaneum had had a most unsettling effect upon her nerves.
Vesuvius was slightly in eruption at the time. She confessed to never having
had an easy moment while in Naples. And it was in Naples that her niece
and Farquharson had met. It had been, as I surmised, a swift, romantic
courtship, in which Farquharson, quite irreproachable in antecedents and
manners, had played the part of an impetuous lover. Italian skies had done

the rest. There was an immediate marriage, in spite of Mrs. Stanleigh's
protests, and the young couple were off on a honeymoon trip by themselves.
But when Mrs. Stanleigh rejoined her husband at Nice, and together they
returned to their home in Sussex, a surprise was in store for them. Eleanor
was already there—alone, crushed, and with lips absolutely sealed. She had
divested herself of everything that linked her to Farquharson; she refused to
adopt her married name.
"I shall bless every saint in heaven when we have quite done with this
dreadful business of Eleanor's," Mrs. Stanleigh confided to me from her
deck-chair. "This trip that she insists on making herself seems quite
uncalled for. But you needn't think, Captain Barnaby, that I'm going to set
foot on that dreadful island—not even for the satisfaction of seeing Mr.
Farquharson's grave—and I'm shameless enough to say that it would be a
satisfaction. If you could imagine the tenth part of what I have had to put up
with, all these months we've been traveling about trying to locate the
wretch! No, indeed—I shall stay right here on this boat and intrust Eleanor
to your care while ashore. And I should not think it ought to take long, now
should it?"
I confessed aloud that I did not see how it could. If by any chance the girl's
secret conjecture about Leavitt's identity was right, it would be verified in
the mere act of coming face to face with him, and in that event it would be
just as well to spare the unsuspecting aunt the shock of that discovery.
We reached Muloa just before nightfall, letting go the anchor in placid
water under the lee of the shore while the Sylph swung to and the sails
fluttered and fell. A vast hush lay over the world. From the shore the dark
green of the forest confronted us with no sound or sign of life. Above, and
at this close distance blotting out half the sky over our heads, towered the
huge cone of Lakalatcha with scarred and blackened flanks. It was in one of
its querulous moods. The feathery white plume of steam, woven by the
wind into soft, fantastic shapes, no longer capped the crater; its place had
been usurped by thick, dark fumes of smoke swirling sullenly about. In the
fading light I marked the red, malignant glow of a fissure newly broken out
in the side of the ragged cone, from which came a thin, white trickle of
lava.

There was no sign of Leavitt, although the Sylph must have been visible to
him for several hours, obviously making for the island. I fancied that he
must have been unusually absorbed in the vagaries of his beloved volcano.
Otherwise he would have wondered what was bringing us back again and
his tall figure in shabby white drill would have greeted us from the shore.
Instead, there confronted us only the belt of dark, matted green girdling the
huge bulk of Lakalatcha which soared skyward, sinister, mysterious,
eternal.
In the brief twilight the shore vanished into dim obscurity. Miss Stanleigh,
who for the last hour had been standing by the rail, silently watching the
island, at last spoke to me over her shoulder:
"Is it far inland—the place? Will it be difficult to find in the dark?"
Her question staggered me, for she was clearly bent on seeking out Leavitt
at once. A strange calmness overlay her. She paid no heed to Lakalatcha's
gigantic, smoke-belching cone, but, with fingers gripping the rail, scanned
the forbidding and inscrutable forest, behind which lay the answer to her
torturing doubt.
I acceded to her wish without protest. Leavitt's bungalow lay a quarter of a
mile distant. There would be no difficulty in following the path. I would
have a boat put over at once, I announced in a casual way which belied my
real feelings, for I was beginning to share some of her secret tension at this
night invasion of Leavitt's haunts.
This feeling deepened within me as we drew near the shore. Leavitt's failure
to appear seemed sinister and enigmatic. I began to evolve a fantastic image
of him as I recalled his queer ways and his uncanny tricks of speech. It was
as if we were seeking out the presiding deity of the island, who had
assumed the guise of a Caliban holding unearthly sway over its unnatural
processes.
With Williams, the boatswain, carrying a lantern, we pushed into the brush,
following the choked trail that led to Leavitt's abode. But the bungalow,
when we had reached the clearing and could discern the outlines of the
building against the masses of the forest, was dark and deserted. As we
mounted the veranda, the loose boards creaked hollowly under our tread;

the doorway, from which depended a tattered curtain of coarse burlap,
gaped black and empty.
The lantern, lifted high in the boatswain's hand, cleft at a stroke the
darkness within. On the writing-table, cluttered with papers and bits of
volcanic rock, stood a bottle and half-empty glass. Things lay about in
lugubrious disorder, as if the place had been hurriedly ransacked by a thief.
Some of the geological specimens had tumbled from the table to the floor,
and stray sheets of Leavitt's manuscripts lay under his chair. Leavitt's
books, ranged on shelving against the wall, alone seemed undisturbed.
Upon the top of the shelving stood two enormous stuffed birds, moldering
and decrepit, regarding the sudden illumination with unblinking, bead-like
eyes. Between them a small dancing faun in greenish bronze tripped a
Bacchic measure with head thrown back in a transport of derisive laughter.
For a long moment the three of us faced the silent, disordered room, in
which the little bronze faun alone seemed alive, convulsed with diabolical
mirth at our entrance. Somehow it recalled to me Leavitt's own cynical
laugh. Suddenly Miss Stanleigh made toward the photographs above the
bookshelves.
"This is he," she said, taking up one of the faded prints.
"Yes—Leavitt," I answered.
"Leavitt?" Her fingers tightened upon the photograph. Then, abruptly, it fell
to the floor. "Yes, yes—of course." Her eyes closed very slowly, as if an
extreme weakness had seized her.
In the shock of that moment I reached out to support her, but she checked
my hand. Her gray eyes opened again. A shudder visibly went over her, as if
the night air had suddenly become chill. From the shelf the two stuffed
birds regarded us dolefully, while the dancing faun, with head thrown back
in an attitude of immortal art, laughed derisively.
"Where is he? I must speak to him," said Miss Stanleigh.
"One might think he were deliberately hiding," I muttered, for I was at a
loss to account for Leavitt's absence.

"Then find him," the girl commanded.
I cut short my speculations to direct Williams to search the hut in the rear of
the bungalow, where, behind bamboo palings, Leavitt's Malay servant
maintained an aloof and mysterious existence. I sat down beside Miss
Stanleigh on the veranda steps to find my hands sooty from the touch of the
boards. A fine volcanic ash was evidently drifting in the air and now to my
ear, attuned to the profound stillness, the wind bore a faint humming sound.
"Do you hear that?" I whispered. It was like the far-off murmur of a
gigantic caldron, softly a-boil—a dull vibration that seemed to reach us
through the ground as well as through the air.
The girl listened a moment, and then started up. "I hear voices—
somewhere."
"Voices?" I strained my ears for sounds other than the insistent ferment of
the great cone above our heads. "Perhaps Leavitt——"
"Why do you still call him Leavitt?"
"Then you're quite certain——" I began, but an involuntary exclamation
from her cut me short.
The light of Williams's lantern, emerging from behind the bamboo palings,
disclosed the burly form of the boatswain with a shrinking Malay in tow.
He was jabbering in his native tongue, with much gesticulation of his thin
arms, and going into contortions at every dozen paces in a sort of
pantomime to emphasize his words. Williams urged him along
unceremoniously to the steps of the veranda.
"Perhaps you can get the straight of this, Mr. Barnaby," said the boatswain.
"He swears that the flame-devil in the volcano has swallowed his master
alive."
The poor fellow seemed indeed in a state of complete funk. With his thin
legs quaking under him, he poured forth in Malay a crazed, distorted tale.
According to Wadakimba, Leavitt—or Farquharson, to give him his real
name—had awakened the high displeasure of the flame-devil within the
mountain. Had we not observed that the cone was smoking furiously? And

the dust and heavy taint of sulphur in the air? Surely we could feel the very
tremor of the ground under our feet. All that day the enraged monster had
been spouting mud and lava down upon the white tuan, who had remained
in the bungalow, drinking heavily and bawling out maledictions upon his
enemy. At length, in spite of Wadakimba's efforts to dissuade him, he had
set out to climb to the crater, vowing to show the flame-devil who was
master. He had compelled the terrified Wadakimba to go with him a part of
the way. The white tuan—was he really a god, as he declared himself to be?
—had gone alone up the tortuous, fissured slopes, at times lost to sight in
yellowish clouds of gas and steam, while his screams of vengeance came
back to Wadakimba's ears. Overhead, Lakalatcha continued to rumble and
quiver and clear his throat with great showers of mud and stones.
Farquharson must have indeed parted with his reason to have attempted that
grotesque sally. Listening to Wadakimba's tale, I pictured the crazed man,
scorched to tatters, heedless of bruises and burns, scrambling up that
difficult and perilous ascent, and hurling his ridiculous blasphemy into the
flares of smoke and steam that issued from that vast caldron lit by
subterranean fires. At its simmering the whole island trembled. A mere
whiff of the monster's breath and he would have been snuffed out,
annihilated in an instant. According to Wadakimba, the end had indeed
come in that fashion. It was as if the mountain had suddenly given a deep
sigh. The blast had carried away solid rock. A sheet of flame had licked the
spot where Farquharson had been hurled headlong, and he was not.
Wadakimba, viewing all this from afar, had scuttled off to his hut. Later he
had ventured back to the scene of the tragedy. He had picked up
Farquharson's scorched helmet, which had been blown off to some distance,
and he also exhibited a pair of binoculars washed down by the tide of lava,
scarred and twisted by the heat, from which the lenses had melted away.
I translated for Miss Stanleigh briefly, while she stood turning over in her
hands the twisted and blackened binoculars, which were still warm. She
heard me through without question or comment, and when I proposed that
we get back to the Sylph at once, mindful of her aunt's distressed nerves,
she assented with a nod. She seemed to have lost the power of speech. In a
daze she followed as I led the way back through the forest.

Major Stanleigh and his wife deferred their departure for England until their
niece should be properly married to Joyce. At Eleanor's wish, it was a very
simple affair, and as Joyce's bride she was as eager to be off to his rubber-
plantation in Malduna as he was to set her up there as mistress of his
household. I had agreed to give them passage on the Sylph, since the next
sailing of the mail-boat would have necessitated a further fortnight's delay.
Mrs. Stanleigh, with visions of seeing England again, and profoundly
grateful to a benevolent Providence that had not only brought "this dreadful
business of Eleanor's" to a happy termination, but had averted Lakalatcha's
baptism of fire from descending upon her own head, thanked me profusely
and a little tearfully. It was during the general chorus of farewells at the last
moment before the Sylph cast off. Her last appeal, cried after us from the
wharf where she stood frantically waving a wet handkerchief, was that I
should give Muloa a wide berth.
It brought a laugh from Joyce. He had discovered the good lady's extreme
perturbation in regard to Lakalatcha, and had promptly declared for
spending a day there with his bride. It was an exceptional opportunity to
witness the volcano in its active mood. Each time that Joyce had essayed
this teasing pleasantry, which never failed to draw Mrs. Stanleigh's protests,
I observed that his wife remained silent. I assumed that she had decided to
keep her own counsel in regard to the trip she had made there.
"I'm trusting you not to take Eleanor near that dreadful island, Mr.
Barnaby," was the admonition shouted across the widening gap of water.
It was a quite unnecessary appeal, for Joyce, who was presently sitting with
his wife in a sheltered quarter of the deck, had not the slightest interest in
the smoking cone which was as yet a mere smudge upon the horizon.
Eleanor, with one hand in Joyce's possession, at times watched it with a
seemingly vast apathy until some ardent word from Joyce would draw her
eyes back to his and she would lift to him a smile that was like a caress. The
look of weariness and balked purpose that had once marked her expression
had vanished. In the week since she had married Joyce she seemed to have
grown younger and to be again standing on the very threshold of life with

girlish eagerness. She hung on Joyce's every word, communing with him
hour after hour, utterly content, indifferent to all the world about her.
In the cabin that evening at dinner, when the two of them deigned to take
polite cognizance of my existence, I announced to Joyce that I proposed to
hug the island pretty close during the night. It would save considerable
time.
"Just as you like, Captain," Joyce replied, indifferently.
"We may get a shower of ashes by doing so, if the wind should shift." I
looked across the table at Mrs. Joyce.
"But we shall reach Malduna that much sooner?" she queried.
I nodded. "However, if you feel any uneasiness, I'll give the island a wide
berth." I didn't like the idea of dragging her—the bride of a week—past that
place with its unspeakable memories, if it should really distress her.
Her eyes thanked me silently across the table. "It's very kind of you, but"—
she chose her words with significant deliberation—"I haven't a fear in the
world, Mr. Barnaby."
Evening had fallen when we came up on deck. Joyce bethought himself of
some cigars in his state-room and went back. For the moment I was alone
with his wife by the rail, watching the stars beginning to prick through the
darkening sky. The Sylph was running smoothly, with the wind almost aft;
the scud of water past her bows and the occasional creak of a block aloft
were the only sounds audible in the silence that lay like a benediction upon
the sea.
"You may think it unfeeling of me," she began, quite abruptly, "but all this
past trouble of mine, now that it is ended, I have completely dismissed.
Already it begins to seem like a horrid dream. And as for that island"—her
eyes looked off toward Muloa now impending upon us and lighting up the
heavens with its sudden flare—"it seems incredible that I ever set foot upon
it.
"Perhaps you understand," she went on, after a pause, "that I have not told
my husband. But I have not deceived him. He knows that I was once

married, and that the man is no longer living. He does not wish to know
more. Of course he is aware that Uncle Geoffrey came out here to—to see a
Mr. Leavitt, a matter which he has no idea concerned me. He thanks the
stars for whatever it was that did bring us out here, for otherwise he would
not have met me."
"It has turned out most happily," I murmured.
"It was almost disaster. After meeting Mr. Joyce—and I was weak enough
to let myself become engaged—to have discovered that I was still chained
to a living creature like that.... I should have killed myself."
"But surely the courts——"
She shook her head with decision. "My church does not recognize that sort
of freedom."
We were drawing steadily nearer to Muloa. The mountain was breathing
slowly and heavily—a vast flare that lifted fanlike in the skies and died
away. Lightning played fitfully through the dense mass of smoke and
choking gases that hung like a pall over the great cone. It was like the night
sky that overhangs a city of gigantic blast-furnaces, only infinitely
multiplied. The sails of the Sylph caught the ruddy tinge like a phantom
craft gliding through the black night, its canvas still dyed with the sunset
glow. The faces of the crew, turned to watch the spectacle, curiously fixed
and inhuman, were picked out of the gloom by the same fantastic light. It
was as if the schooner, with masts and riggings, etched black against the
lurid sky, sailed on into the Day of Judgment.
It was after midnight. The Sylph came about, with sails trembling, and lost
headway. Suddenly she vibrated from stem to stern, and with a soft grating
sound that was unmistakable came to rest. We were aground in what should
have been clear water, with the forest-clad shore of Muloa lying close off to
port.
The helmsman turned to me with a look of silly fright on his face, as the
wheel revolved useless in his hands. We had shelved with scarcely a jar
sufficient to disturb those sleeping below, but in a twinkling Jackson, the
mate, appeared on deck in his pajamas, and after a swift glance toward the

familiar shore turned to me with the same dumfounded look that had frozen
upon the face of the steersman.
"What do you make of this?" he exclaimed, as I called for the lead.
"Be quiet about it," I said to the hands that had started into movement.
"Look sharp now, and make no noise." Then I turned to the mate, who was
perplexedly rubbing one bare foot against the other and measuring with his
eye our distance from the shore. The Sylph should have turned the point of
the island without a mishap, as she had done scores of times.
"It's the volcano we have to thank for this," was my conjecture. "Its recent
activity has caused some displacement of the sea bottom."
Jackson's head went back in sudden comprehension. "It's a miracle you
didn't plow into it under full sail."
We had indeed come about in the very nick of time to avoid disaster. As
matters stood I was hopeful. "With any sort of luck we ought to float clear
with the tide."
The mate cocked a doubtful eye at Lakalatcha, uncomfortably close above
our heads, flaming at intervals and bathing the deck with an angry glare of
light. "If she should begin spitting up a little livelier ..." he speculated with a
shrug, and presently took himself off to his bunk after an inspection below
had shown that none of the schooner's seams had started. There was nothing
to do but to wait for the tide to make and lift the vessel clear. It would be a
matter of three or four hours. I dismissed the helmsman; and the watch
forward, taking advantage of the respite from duty, were soon recumbent in
attitudes of heavy sleep.
The wind had died out and a heavy torpor lay upon the water. It was as if
the stars alone held to their slow courses above a world rigid and inanimate.
The Sylph lay with a slight list, her spars looking inexpressibly helpless
against the sky, and, as the minutes dragged, a fine volcanic ash, like some
mortal pestilence exhaled by the monster cone, settled down upon the deck,
where, forward in the shadow, the watch curled like dead men.
Alone, I paced back and forth—countless soft-footed miles, it seemed,
through interminable hours, until at length some obscure impulse prompted

me to pause before the open skylight over the cabin and thrust my head
down. A lamp above the dining-table, left to burn through the night, feebly
illuminated the room. A faint snore issued at regular intervals from the half-
open door of the mate's state-room. The door of Joyce's state-room opposite
was also upon the hook for the sake of air.
Suddenly a soft thump against the side of the schooner, followed by a
scrambling noise, made me turn round. The dripping, bedraggled figure of a
man in a sleeping-suit mounted the rope ladder that hung over the side, and
paused, grasping the rail. I had withdrawn my gaze so suddenly from the
glow of the light in the cabin that for several moments the intruder from out
of the sea was only a blurred form with one leg swung over the rail, where
he hung as if spent by his exertions.
Just then the sooty vapors above the ragged maw of the volcano were rent
by a flare of crimson, and in the fleeting instant of unnatural daylight I
beheld Farquharson barefooted, and dripping with sea-water, confronting
me with a sardonic, triumphant smile. The light faded in a twinkling, but in
the darkness he swung his other leg over the rail and sat perched there, as if
challenging the testimony of my senses.
"Farquharson!" I breathed aloud, utterly dumfounded.
"Did you think I was a ghost?" I could hear him softly laughing to himself
in the interval that followed. "You should have witnessed Wadakimba's
fright at my coming back from the dead. Well, I'll admit I almost was done
for."
Again the volcano breathed in torment. It was like the sudden opening of a
gigantic blast-furnace, and in that instant I saw him vividly—his thin,
saturnine face, his damp black hair pushed sleekly back, his lips twisted to a
cruel smile, his eyes craftily alert, as if to some ambushed danger
continually at hand. He was watching me with a sort of malicious relish in
the shock he had given me.
"It was not your intention to stop at Muloa," he observed, dryly, for the
plight of the schooner was obvious.
"We'll float clear with the tide," I muttered.

"But in the meantime"—there was something almost menacing in his
deliberate pause—"I have the pleasure of this little call upon you."
A head lifted from among the inert figures and sleepily regarded us before it
dropped back into the shadows. The stranded ship, the recumbent men, the
mountain flaming overhead—it was like a phantom world into which had
been suddenly thrust this ghastly and incredible reality.
"Whatever possessed you to swim out here in the middle of the night?" I
demanded, in a harsh whisper.
He chose to ignore the question, while I waited in a chill of suspense. It was
inconceivable that he could be aware of the truth of the situation and
deliberately bent on forcing it to its unspeakable, tragic issue.
"Of late, Captain Barnaby, we seem to have taken to visiting each other
rather frequently, don't you think?"
It was lightly tossed off, but not without its evil implication; and I felt his
eyes intently fixed upon me as he sat hunched up on the rail in his sodden
sleeping-suit, like some huge, ill-omened bird of prey.
To get rid of him, to obliterate the horrible fact that he still existed in the
flesh, was the instinctive impulse of my staggered brain. But the peril of
discovery, the chance that those sleeping below might awaken and hear us,
held me in a vise of indecision.
"If I could bring myself to reproach you, Captain," he went on, ironically
polite, "I might protest that your last visit to this island savored to a too-
inquisitive intrusion. You'll pardon my frankness. I had convinced you and
Major Stanleigh that Farquharson was dead. To the world at large that
should have sufficed. That I choose to remain alive is my own affair. Your
sudden return to Muloa—with a lady—would have upset everything, if Fate
and that inspired fool of a Malay had not happily intervened. But now,
surely, there can be no doubt that I am dead?"
I nodded assent in a dumb, helpless way.
"And I have a notion that even you, Captain Barnaby, will never dispute
that fact."

He threw back his head suddenly—for all the world like the dancing faun—
and laughed silently at the stars.
My tongue was dry in my mouth as I tried to make some rejoinder. He
baffled me completely, and meanwhile I was in a tingle of fear lest the mate
should come up on deck to see what progress the tide had made, or lest the
sound of our voices might waken the girl in Joyce's state-room.
"I can promise you that," I attempted to assure him in weak, sepulchral
tones. "And now, if you like, I'll put you ashore in the small boat. You must
be getting chilly in that wet sleeping-suit."
"As a matter of fact I am, and I was wondering if you would not offer me
something to drink."
"You shall have a bottle to take along," I promised, with alacrity, but he
demurred.
"There is no sociability in that. And you seem very lonesome here—stuck
for two more hours at least. Come, Captain, fetch your bottle and we will
share it together."
He got down from the rail, stretched his arms lazily above his head, and
dropped into one of the deck chairs that had been placed aft for the
convenience of my two passengers.
"And cigars, too, Captain," he suggested, with a politeness that was almost
impertinence. "We'll have a cozy hour or two out of this tedious wait for the
tide to lift you off."
I contemplated him helplessly. There was no alternative but to fall in with
whatever mad caprice might seize his brain. If I opposed him, it would lead
to high and querulous words; and the hideous fact of his presence there—of
his mere existence—I was bound to conceal at all hazards.
"I must ask you to keep quiet," I said, stiffly.
"As a tomb," he agreed, and his eyes twinkled disagreeably in the darkness.
"You forget that I am supposed to be in one."

I went stealthily down into the cabin, where I secured a box of cigars and
the first couple of bottles that my hands laid hold of in the locker. They
proved to contain an old Tokay wine which I had treasured for several years
to no particular purpose. The ancient bottles clinked heavily in my grasp as
I mounted again to the deck.
"Now this is something like," he purred, watching like a cat my every
motion as I set the glasses forth and guardedly drew the cork. He saluted me
with a flourish and drank.
To an onlooker that pantomime in the darkness would have seemed utterly
grotesque. I tasted the fragrant, heavy wine and waited—waited in an agony
of suspense—my ears strained desperately to catch the least sound from
below. But a profound silence enveloped the schooner, broken only by the
occasional rhythmic snore of the mate.
"You seem rather ill at ease," Farquharson observed from the depths of the
deck chair when he had his cigar comfortably aglow. "I trust it isn't this
little impromptu call of mine that's disturbing you. After all, life has its
unusual moments, and this, I think, is one of them." He sniffed the bouquet
of his wine and drank. "It is rare moments like this—bizarre, incredible,
what you like—that compensate for the tedium of years."
His disengaged hand had fallen to the side of the chair, and I now observed
in dismay that a scarf belonging to Joyce's wife had been left lying in the
chair, and that his fingers were absently twisting the silken fringe.
"I wonder that you stick it out, as you do, on this island," I forced myself to
observe, seeking safety in the commonplace, while my eyes, as if
fascinated, watched his fingers toying with the ends of the scarf. I was
forced to accept the innuendo beneath his enigmatic utterances. His utter
baseness and depravity, born perhaps of a diseased mind, I could
understand. I had led him to bait a trap with the fiction of his own death, but
he could not know that it had been already sprung upon his unsuspecting
victims.
He seemed to regard me with contemptuous pity. "Naturally, you wonder. A
mere skipper like yourself fails to understand—many things. What can you
know of life cooped up in this schooner? You touch only the surface of

things just as this confounded boat of yours skims only the top of the water.
Once in a lifetime you may come to real grips with life—strike bottom, eh?
—as your schooner has done now. Then you're aground and quite helpless.
What a pity!"
He lifted his glass and drank it off, then thrust it out to be refilled. "Life as
the world lives it—bah!" he dismissed it with the scorn of one who counts
himself divested of all illusions. "Life would be an infernal bore if it were
not for its paradoxes. Now you, Captain Barnaby, would never dream that
in becoming dead to the world—in other people's belief—I have become
intensely alive. There are opened up infinite possibilities——"
He drank again and eyed me darkly, and then went on in his crack-brained
way, "What is life but a challenge to pretense, a constant exercise in
duplicity, with so few that come to master it as an art? Every one goes about
with something locked deep in his heart. Take yourself, Captain Barnaby.
You have your secrets—hidden from me, from all the world—which, if they
could be dragged out of you——"
His deep-set eyes bored through the darkness upon me. Hunched up in the
deck chair, with his legs crossed under him, he was like an animated
Buddha venting a dark philosophy and seeking to undermine my mental
balance with his sophistry.
"I'm a plain man of the sea," I rejoined, bluntly. "I take life as it comes."
He smiled derisively, drained his glass, and held it out again. "But you have
your secrets, rather clumsily guarded, to be sure——"
"What secrets?" I cried out, goaded almost beyond endurance.
He seemed to deprecate the vigor of my retort and lifted a cautioning hand.
"Do you want every one on board to hear this conversation?"
At that moment the smoke-wrapped cone of Lakalatcha was cleft by a sheet
of flame, and we confronted each other in a sort of blood-red dawn.
"There is no reason why we should quarrel," he went on, after darkness had
enveloped us again. "But there are times which call for plain speaking.
Major Stanleigh is probably hardly aware of just what he said to me under a

little artful questioning. It seems that a lady who—shall we say, whom we
both have the honor of knowing?—is in love. Love, mark you. It is always
interesting to see that flower bud twice from the same stalk. However, one
naturally defers to a lady, especially when one is very much in her way.
Place aux dames, eh? Exit poor Farquharson! You must admit that his was
an altruistic soul. Well, she has her freedom—if only to barter it for a new
bondage. Shall we drink to the happy future of that romance?"
He lifted to me his glass with ironical invitation, while I sat aghast and
speechless, my heart pounding against my ribs. This intolerable colloquy
could not last forever. I deliberated what I should do if we were surprised.
At the sound of a footfall or the soft creak of a plank I felt that I might lose
all control and leap up and brain him with the heavy bottle in my grasp. I
had an insane desire to spring at his throat and throttle his infamous
bravado, tumble him overboard and annihilate the last vestige of his
existence.
"Come, Captain," he urged, "you, too, have shared in smoothing the path
for these lovers. Shall we not drink to their happy union?"
A feeling of utter loathing went over me. I set my glass down. "It would be
a more serviceable compliment to the lady in question if I strangled you on
the spot," I muttered, boldly.
"But you are forgetting that I am already dead." He threw his head back as
if vastly amused, then lurched forward and held out his glass a little
unsteadily to be refilled.
He gave me a quick, evil look. "Besides, the noise might disturb your
passengers."
I could feel a cold perspiration suddenly breaking out upon my body. Either
the fellow had obtained an inkling of the truth in some incredible way, or
was blindly on the track of it, guided by some diabolical scent. Under the
spell of his eyes I could not manage the outright lie which stuck in my
throat.
"What makes you think I have passengers?" I parried, weakly.

With intent or not, he was again fingering the fringe of the scarf that hung
over the arm of the chair.
"It is not your usual practice, but you have been carrying them lately."
He drained his glass and sat staring into it, his head drooping a little
forward. The heavy wine was beginning to have its effect upon him, but
whether it would provoke him to some outright violence or drag him down
into a stupor, I could not predict. Suddenly the glass slipped from his
fingers and shivered to pieces on the deck. I started violently at the sound,
and in the silence that followed I thought I heard a footfall in the cabin
below.
He looked up at length from his absorbed contemplation of the bits of
broken glass. "We were talking about love, were we not?" he demanded,
heavily.
I did not answer. I was straining to catch a repetition of the sound from
below. Time was slipping rapidly away, and to sit on meant inevitable
discovery. The watch might waken or the mate appear to surprise me in
converse with my nocturnal visitor. It would be folly to attempt to conceal
his presence and I despaired of getting him back to the shore while his
present mood held, although I remembered that the small boat, which had
been lowered after we went aground, was still moored to the rail amidships.
Refilling my own glass, I offered it to him. He lurched forward to take it,
but the fumes of the wine suddenly drifted clear of his brain. "You seem
very much distressed," he observed, with ironic concern. "One might think
you were actually sheltering these precious love-birds."
Perspiration broke out anew upon my face and neck. "I don't know what
you are talking about," I bluntly tried to fend off his implications. I felt as if
I were helplessly strapped down and that he was about to probe me
mercilessly with some sharp instrument. I strove to turn the direction of his
thoughts by saying, "I understand that the Stanleighs are returning to
England."
"The Stanleighs—quite so," he nodded agreement, and fixed me with a
maudlin stare. Something prompted me to fill his glass again. He drank it

off mechanically. Again I poured, and he obediently drank. With an effort
he tried to pick up the thread of our conversation:
"What did you say? Oh, the Stanleighs ... yes, yes, of course." He slowly
nodded his head and fell silent. "I was about to say ..." He broke off again
and seemed to ruminate profoundly.... "Love-birds——" I caught the word
feebly from his lips, spoken as if in a daze. The glass hung dripping in his
relaxed grasp.
It was a crucial moment in which his purpose seemed to waver and die in
his clouded brain. A great hope sprang up in my heart, which was
hammering furiously. If I could divert his fuddled thoughts and get him
back to shore while the wine lulled him to forgetfulness.
I leaned forward to take the glass which was all but slipping from his hand
when Lakalatcha flamed with redoubled fury. It was as if the mountain had
suddenly bared its fiery heart to the heavens, and a muffled detonation
reached my ears.
Farquharson straightened up with a jerk and scanned the smoking peak,
from which a new trickle of white-hot lava had broken forth in a threadlike
waterfall. He watched its graceful play as if hypnotized, and began babbling
to himself in an incoherent prattle. All his faculties seemed suddenly awake,
but riveted solely upon the heavy laboring of the mountain. He was chiding
it in Malay as if it were a fractious child. When I ventured to urge him back
to shore he made no protest, but followed me into the boat. As I pushed off
and took up the oars he had eyes for nothing but the flaming cone, as if its
leaping fires held for him an Apocalyptic vision.
I strained at the oars as if in a race, with all eternity at stake, blindly urging
the boat ahead through water that flashed crimson at every stroke. The
mountain now flamed like a beacon, and I rowed for dear life over a sea of
blood.
Farquharson sat entranced before the spectacle, chanting to himself a kind
of insane ritual, like a Parsee fire-worshiper making obeisance before his
god. He was rapt away to some plane of mystic exaltation, to some
hinterland of the soul that merged upon madness. When at length the boat

crunched upon the sandy shore he got up unsteadily from the stern and
pointed to the pharos that flamed in the heavens.
"The fire upon the altar is lit," he addressed me, oracularly, while the fanatic
light of a devotee burned in his eyes. "Shall we ascend and prepare the
sacrifice?"
I leaned over the oars, panting from my exertions, indifferent to his
rhapsody.
"If you'll take my advice, you'll get back at once to your bungalow and strip
off that wet sleeping-suit," I bluntly counseled him, but I might as well have
argued with a man in a trance.
He leaped over the gunwale and strode up the beach. Again he struck his
priestlike attitude and invoked me to follow.
"The fire upon the altar waits," he repeated, solemnly. Suddenly he broke
into a shrill laugh and ran like a deer in the direction of the forest that
stretched up the slopes of the mountain.
The mate's face, thrust over the rail as I drew alongside the schooner,
plainly bespoke his utter bewilderment. He must have though me bereft of
my senses to be paddling about at that hour of the night. The tide had made,
and the Sylph, righting her listed masts, was standing clear of the shoal. The
deck was astir, and when the command was given to hoist the sails it was
obeyed with an uneasy alacrity. The men worked frantically in a bright,
unnatural day, for Lakalatcha was now continuously aflame and tossing up
red-hot rocks to the accompaniment of dull sounds of explosion.
My first glance about the deck had been one of relief to note that Joyce and
his wife were not there, although the commotion of getting under sail must
have awakened them. A breeze had sprung up which would prove a fair
wind as soon as the Sylph stood clear of the point. The mate gave a grunt of
satisfaction when at length the schooner began to dip her bow and lay over
to her task. Leaving him in charge, I started to go below, when suddenly
Mrs. Joyce, fully dressed, confronted me. She seemed to have materialized
out of the air like a ghost. Her hair glowed like burnished copper in the
unnatural illumination which bathed the deck, but her face was ashen, and
the challenge of her eyes made my heart stop short.

"You have been awake long?" I ventured to ask.
"Too long," she answered, significantly, with her face turned away, looking
down into the water. She had taken my arm and drawn me toward the rail.
Now I felt her fingers tighten convulsively. In the droop of her head and the
tense curve of her neck I sensed her mad impulse which the dark water
suggested.
"Mrs. Joyce!" I remonstrated, sharply.
She seemed to go limp all over at the words. I drew her along the deck for a
faltering step or two, while her eyes continued to brood upon the water
rushing past. Suddenly she spoke:
"What other way out is there?"
"Never that," I said, shortly. I urged her forward again. "Is your husband
asleep?"
"Thank God, yes!"
"Then you have been awake——"
"For over an hour," she confessed, and I detected the shudder that went over
her body.
"The man is mad——"
"But I am married to him." She stopped and caught at the rail like a prisoner
gripping at the bars that confine him. "I cannot—cannot endure it! Where
are you taking me? Where can you take me? Don't you see that there is no
escape—from this?"
The Sylph rose and sank to the first long roll of the open sea.
"When we reach Malduna——" I began, but the words were only torture.
"I cannot—cannot go on. Take me back!—to that island. Let me live
abandoned—or rather die——"
"Mrs. Joyce, I beg of you...."

The schooner rose and dipped again.
For what seemed an interminable time we paced the deck together while
Lakalatcha flamed farther and farther astern. Her words came in fitful
snatches as if spoken in a delirium, and at times she would pause and grip
the rail to stare back, wild-eyed, at the receding island.
Suddenly she started, and in a sort of blinding, noonday blaze I saw her face
blanch with horror. It was as if at that moment the heavens had cracked
asunder and the night had fallen away in chaos. Turning, I saw the cone of
the mountain lifting skyward in fragments—and saw no more, for the
blinding vision remained seared upon the retina of my eyes. Across the
water, slower paced, came the dread concussion of sound.
"Good God! It's carried away the whole island!" I heard the mate's voice
bellowing above the cries of the men. The Sylph scudded before the
approaching storm of fire redescending from the sky....
The first gray of the dawn disclosed Mrs. Joyce still standing by the rail, her
hand nestling within the arm of her husband, indifferent to the heavy
grayish dust that fell in benediction upon her like a silent shower of snow.

The island of Muloa remains to-day a charred cinder lapped about by the
blue Pacific. At times gulls circle over its blackened and desolate surface
devoid of every vestige of life. From the squat, truncated mass of
Lakalatcha, shorn of half its lordly height, a feeble wisp of smoke still
issues to the breeze, as if Vulcan, tired of his forge, had banked its fire
before abandoning it.

FOOTNOTES:
[9] Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers.
Copyright, 1921, by Lee Foster Hartman.

THE STICK-IN-THE-MUDS[10]
By RUPERT HUGHES

From Collier's Weekly

A skiff went prowling along the Avon River in the unhurried English
twilight that releases the sunset with reluctance and defers luxuriously the
roll call of the stars.
The skiff floated low, for the man alone in it was heavy and he was in no
greater haste than the northern night. Which was against the traditions, for
he was an American, an American business man.
He was making his way through the sky-hued water stealthily lest he
disturb the leisure of the swans, drowsy above their own images; lest he
discourage the nightingale trying a few low flute notes in the cathedral
tower of shadow that was a tree above the tomb of Shakespeare.
The American had never heard a nightingale and it was his first pilgrimage
to the shrine of the actor-manager whose productions Americans curiously
couple with the Bible as sacred lore.
During the day Joel Wixon had seen the sights of Stratford with the others
from his country and from England and the Continent. But now he wanted
to get close to Shakespeare. So he hired the skiff and declined the services
of the old boat lender.
And now he was stealing up into the rich gloom the church spread across
the river. He was pushing the stern of the boat foremost so that he could
feast his eyes. He was making so little speed that the only sounds were the
choked sob of the water where the boat cleaved it gently and the tinkle of
the drops that fell from the lazy oars with something of the delicate music
of the uncertain nightingale.

Being a successful business man, Wixon was a suffocated poet. The
imagination and the passion and the orderliness that brought him money
were the same energies that would have made him a success in verse. But
lines were not his line, and he was inarticulate and incoherent when beauty
overwhelmed him, as it did in nearly every form.
He shivered now before the immediate majesty of the scene, and the
historic meanings that enriched it as with an embroidered arras. Yet he gave
out no more words than an Æolian harp shuddering with ecstasy in a wind
too gentle to make it audible.
In such moods he hunted solitude, for he was ashamed to be seen, afraid to
be observed in the raptures that did not belong in the vocabulary of a
business man.
He had talked at noon about the fact that he and Shakespeare's father were
in wool, and he had annoyed a few modest Americans by comparing the
petty amount of the elder Shakespeare's trade with the vast total pouring
from his own innumerable looms driven with the electricity that the
Shakespeares had never dreamed of.
He had redeemed himself for his pretended brag by a meek admission:
"But I'm afraid my boy will never write another 'Hamlet.'"
Yet what could he know of his own son? How little Will Shakespeare's
father or his scandalized neighbors could have fancied that the scapegrace
good-for-naught who left the town for the town's good would make it
immortal; and, coming back to die and lie down forever beside the Avon,
would bring a world of pilgrims to a new Mecca, the shrine of the supreme
unique poet of all human time?
A young boy even now was sauntering the path along the other shore, so
lazily tossing pebbles into the stream that the swans hardly protested. It
came upon Wixon with a kind of silent lightning that Shakespeare had once
been such another boy skipping pebbles across the narrow river and peering
up into the trees to find out where the nightingale lurked.
Perhaps three hundred years from now some other shrine would claim the
pilgrims, the home perhaps of some American boy now groping through the

amber mists of adolescence or some man as little revered by his own
neighbors and rivals as the man Shakespeare was when he went back to
Avon to send back to London his two plays a year to the theatres.
Being a practical man, which is a man who strives to make his visions
palpable, Wixon thought of his own home town and the colony of boys that
prospered there in the Middle West.
He knew that no one would seek the town because of his birth there, for he
was but a buyer of fleeces, a carder of wools, a spinner of threads, and a
weaver of fabrics to keep folks' bodies warm. His weaves wore well, but
they wore out.
The weavers of words were the ones whose fabrics lasted beyond the power
of time and mocked the moths. Was there any such spinner in Carthage to
give the town eternal blazon to ears of flesh and blood? There was one who
might have been the man if——
Suddenly he felt himself again in Carthage. There was a river there too; not
a little bolt of chatoyant silk like the Avon, which they would have called a
"crick" back there. Before Carthage ran the incomprehensible floods of old
Mississippi himself, Father of Waters, deep and vast and swift. They had
lately swung a weir across it to make it work—a concrete wall a mile wide
and more, and its tumbling cascades spun no little mill wheels, but swirled
thundering turbines that lighted cities and ran street cars a hundred miles
away.
And yet it had no Shakespeare.
And yet again it might have had if——
The twilight was so deep now that he shipped his oars in the gloom and
gave himself back to the past.
He was in another twilight, only it was the counter twilight between star
quench and sun blaze.
Two small boys, himself one of them; his sworn chum, Luke Mellows, the
other, meeting in the silent street just as the day tide seeped in from the east
and submerged the stars.

Joel had tied a string to his big toe and hung it from his window. Luke had
done the same. They were not permitted to explode alarm clocks and ruin
the last sweets of sleep in either home. So they had agreed that the first to
wake should rise and dress with stealth, slip down the dark stairs of his
house, into the starlit street and over to the other's home and pull the toe
cord.
On this morning Luke had been the earlier out, and his triumphant yanks
had dragged Joel feet first from sleep, and from the bed and almost through
the window. Joel had howled protests in shrill whispers down into the
gloom, and then, untying his outraged toe, had limped into his clothes and
so to the yard.
The two children, in the huge world disputed still by the night, had felt an
awe of the sky and the mysteries going on there. The envied man who ran
up the streets of evenings lighting the gas street lamps was abroad again
already with his little ladder and his quick insect-like motions; only, now he
was turning out the lights, just as a similar but invisible being was
apparently running around heaven and putting out the stars.
Joel remembered saying: "I wonder if they're turnin' off the stars up there to
save gas too."
Luke did not like the joke. He said, using the word "funny" solemnly: "It's
funny to see light putting out light. The stars will be there all day, but we
won't be able to see 'em for the sun."
(Wixon thought of this now, and of how Shakespeare's fame had drowned
out so many stars. A man had told him that there were hundreds of great
writers in Shakespeare's time that most people never heard of.)
As the boys paused, the air quivered with a hoarse moo! as of a gigantic
cow bellowing for her lost calf. It was really a steamboat whistling for the
bridge to open the draw and let her through to the south with her raft of
logs.
Both of the boys called the boat by name, knowing her voice: "It's the
Bessie May Brown!" They started on a run to the bluff overlooking the
river, their short legs making a full mile of the scant furlong.

Often as Joel had come out upon the edge of that bluff on his innumerable
journeys to the river for fishing, swimming, skating, or just staring, it
always smote him with the thrill Balboa must have felt coming suddenly
upon the Pacific.
On this morning there was an unwonted grandeur: the whole vault of the
sky was curdled with the dawn, a reef of solid black in the west turning to
purple and to amber and finally in the east to scarlet, with a few late planets
caught in the meshes of the sunlight and trembling like dew on a spider's
web.
And the battle in the sky was repeated in the sea-like river with all of the
added magic of the current and the eddies and the wimpling rushes of the
dawn winds.
On the great slopes were houses and farmsteads throwing off the night and
in the river the Bessie May Brown, her red light and her green light trailing
scarfs of color on the river, as she chuffed and clanged her bell, and smote
the water with her stern wheel. In the little steeple of the pilot house a priest
guided her and her unwieldy acre of logs between the piers of the bridge
whose lanterns were still belatedly aglow on the girders and again in echo
in the flood.
Joel filled his little chest with a gulp of morning air and found no better
words for his rhapsody than: "Gee, but ain't it great?"
To his amazement, Luke, who had always been more sensitive than he,
shook his head and turned away.
"Gosh, what do you want for ten cents?" Joel demanded, feeling called
upon to defend the worthiness of the dawn.
Luke began to cry. He dropped down on his own bare legs in the weeds and
twisted his face and his fists in a vain struggle to fight off unmanly grief.
Joel squatted at his side and insisted on sharing the secret; and finally Luke
forgot the sense of family honor long enough to yield to the yearning for
company in his misery.
"I was up here at midnight last night, and I don't like this place any more."

"You didn't come all by yourself? Gee!"
"No, Momma was here too."
"What she bring you out here at a time like that for?"
"She didn't know I was here."
"Didn't know—What she doin' out here, then?"
"She and Poppa had a turble quar'l. I couldn't hear what started it, but finely
it woke me up and I listened, and Momma was cryin' and Poppa was
swearin'. And at last Momma said: 'Oh, I might as well go and throw myself
in the river,' and Poppa said: 'Good riddance of bad rubbish!' and Momma
stopped cryin' and she says: 'All right!' in an awful kind of a voice, and I
heard the front door open and shut."
"Gee!"
"Well, I jumped into my shirt and pants and slid down the rain pipe and ran
along the street, and there sure enough was Momma walkin' as fast as she
could.
"I was afraid to go near her. I don't know why, but I was. So I just sneaked
along after her. The street was black as pitch 'cep' for the street lamps, and
as she passed ever' one I could see she was still cryin' and stumblin' along
like she was blind.
"It was so late we didn't meet anybody at tall, and there wasn't a light in a
single house except Joneses, where somebody was sick, I guess. But they
didn't pay any attention, and at last she came to the bluff here. And I
follered. When she got where she could see the river she stopped and stood
there, and held her arms out like she was goin' to jump off or fly, or
somethin'. The moon was up, and the river was so bright you could hardly
look at it, and Momma stood there with her arms 'way out like she was on
the Cross, or something.
"I was so scared and so cold I shook like I had a chill. I was afraid she
could hear my teeth chatterin', so I dropped down in the weeds and thistles
to keep her from seein' me. It was just along about here too.

"By and by Momma kind of broke like somebody had hit her, then she
began to cry again and to walk up and down wringin' her hands. Once or
twice she started to run down the bluff and I started to foller; but she
stopped like somebody held her back, and I sunk down again.
"Then, after a long time, she shook her head like she couldn't, and turned
back. She walked right by me and didn't see me. I heard her whisperin': 'I
can't, I can't. My pore children!'
"Then she went back down the street and me after her wishin' I could go up
and help her. But I was afraid she wouldn't want me to know, and I just
couldn't go near her."
Luke wept helplessly at the memory of his poltroonery, and Joel tried
roughly to comfort him with questions.
"Gee! I don't blame you. I don't guess I could have either. But what was it
all about, d'you s'pose?"
"I don't know. Momma went to the front door, and it was locked, and she
stood a long, long while before she could bring herself to knock. Then she
tapped on it soft like. And by and by Poppa opened the door and said: 'Oh,
you're back, are you?" Then he turned and walked away, and she went in.
"I could have killed him with a rock, if she hadn't shut the door. But all I
could do was to climb back up the rain pipe. I was so tired and discouraged
I nearly fell and broke my neck. And I wisht I had have. But there wasn't
any more quar'l, only Momma kind of whimpered once or twice, and Poppa
said: 'Oh, for God's sake, shut up and lea' me sleep. I got to open the store in
the mornin', ain't I?' I didn't do much sleepin', and I guess that's why I woke
up first."
That was all of the story that Joel could learn. The two boys were shut out
by the wall of grown-up life. Luke crouched in bitter moodiness, throwing
clods of dirt at early grasshoppers and reconquering his lost dignity. At last
he said: "If you ever let on to anybody what I told you——"
"Aw, say!" was Joel's protest. His knighthood as a sworn chum was put in
question and he was cruelly hurt.

Luke took assurance from his dismay and said in a burst of fury: "Aw, I just
said that! I know you won't tell. But just you wait till I can earn a pile of
money. I'll take Momma away from that old scoundrel so fast it'll make his
head swim!" Then he slumped again. "But it takes so doggone long to grow
up, and I don't know how to earn anything."
Then the morning of the world caught into its irresistible vivacity the two
boys in the morning of their youth, and before long they had forgotten the
irremediable woes of their elders, as their elders also forgot the problems of
national woes and cosmic despair.
The boys descended the sidelong path at a jog, brushing the dew and
grasshoppers and the birds from the hazel bushes and the papaw shrubs, and
scaring many a dewy rabbit from cover.
At the bottom of the bluff the railroad track was the only road along the
river, and they began the tormenting passage over the uneven ties with
cinders everywhere for their bare feet. They postponed as long as they
could the delight of breakfast, and then, sitting on a pile of ties, made a
feast of such hard-boiled eggs, cookies, cheese, and crackers as they had
been able to wheedle from their kitchens the night before.
Their talk that morning was earnest, as boys' talk is apt to be. They debated
their futures as boys are apt to do. Being American boys, two things
characterized their plans: one, that the sky itself was the only limit to their
ambitions; the other, that they must not follow their fathers' businesses.
Joel's father was an editor; Luke's kept a hardware store.
So Joel wanted to go into trade and Luke wanted to be a writer.
The boys wrangled with the shrill intensity of youth. A stranger passing
might have thought them about to come to blows. But they were simply
noisy with earnestness. Their argument was as unlike one of the debates in
Vergil's Eclogues as possible. It was an antistrophe of twang and drawl:
"Gee, you durned fool, watcha want gointa business for?"
"Durned fool your own self! Watcha wanta be a writer for?"

Then they laughed wildly, struck at each other in mock hostility, and went
on with their all-day walk, returning at night too weary for books or even a
game of authors or checkers.
Both liked to read, and they were just emerging from the stratum of Old
Cap Collier, Nick Carter, the Kid-Glove Miner, and the Steam Man into
"Ivanhoe," "Scottish Chiefs," and "Cudjo's Cave." They had passed out of
the Oliver Optic, Harry Castlemon, James Otis era.
Joel Wixon read for excitement; Luke Mellows for information as to the
machinery of authorship.
Young as they were, they went to the theatre—to the op'ra house, which
never housed opera.
Joel went often and without price, since his father, being an editor, had the
glorious prerogative of "comps." Perhaps that was why Luke wanted to be a
writer.
Mr. Mellows, as hard as his own ware, did not believe in the theatre and
could not be bullied or wept into paying for tickets. But Luke became a
program boy and got in free, a precious privilege he kept secret as long as
possible, and lost as soon as his father noticed his absences from home on
play nights. Then he was whipped for wickedness and ordered to give up
the theatre forever.
Perhaps Luke would never suffer again so fiercely as he suffered from that
denial. It meant a free education and a free revel in the frequent
performances of Shakespeare, and of repertory companies that gave such
triumphs as "East Lynne" and "Camille," not to mention the road companies
that played the uproarious "Peck's Bad Boy," "Over the Garden Wall,"
"Skipped by the Light of the Moon," and the Charles Hoyt screamers.
The theatre had been a cloud-veiled Olympus of mystic exultations, of
divine terrors, and of ambrosial laughter. But it was a bad influence. Mr.
Mellows's theories of right and wrong were as simple and sharp as his own
knives: whatever was delightful and beautiful and laughterful was
manifestly wicked, God having plainly devised the pretty things as baits for
the devil's fishhooks.

Joel used to tell Luke about the plays he saw, and the exile's heart ached
with envy. They took long walks up the river or across the bridge into the
wonderlands that were overflowed in high-water times. And they talked
always of their futures. Boyhood was a torment, a slavery. Heaven was just
over the twenty-first birthday.
Joel got his future, all but the girl he planned to take with him up the grand
stairway of the palace he foresaw. Luke missed his future, and his girl and
all of his dreams.
Between the boys and their manhood stood, as usual, the fathers, strange
monsters, ogres, who seemed to have forgotten, at the top of the beanstalk,
that they had once been boys themselves down below.
After the early and unceasing misunderstandings as to motives and
standards of honor and dignity came the civil war over education.
Wouldn't you just know that each boy would get the wrong dad? Joel's
father was proud of Luke and not of Joel. He had printed some of Luke's
poems in the paper and called him a "precocious" native genius. Joel's
father wished that his boy could have had his neighbor's boy's gift. It was
his sorrow that Joel had none of the artistic leanings that are called "gifts."
He regretfully gave him up as one who would not carry on the torch his
father had set out with. He could not force his child to be a genius, but he
insisted that Joel should have an education. The editor had found himself
handicapped by a lack of the mysterious enrichment that a tour through
college gives the least absorbent mind. He was determined to provide it for
his boy, though Joel felt that every moment's delay in leaping into the
commercial arena was so much delay in arriving at gladiatorial eminence.
Luke's father had had even less education than Editor Wixon, but he was
proud of it. He had never gone far in the world, but he was one of those
men who are automatically proud of everything they do and derive even
from failure or humiliation a savage conceit.
He made Luke work in his store or out of it as a delivery boy during
vacations from such school terms as the law required. He saw the value of
education enough to make out bills and write dunning letters. "Books" to
him meant the doleful books that bookkeepers keep.

As for any further learning, he thought it a waste of time, a kind of
wantonness.
He felt that Providence had intentionally selected a cross for him in the son
who was wicked and foolish enough to want to read stories and see plays
and go to school for years instead of going right into business.
The thought of sending his boy through a preparatory academy and college
and wasting his youth on nonsense was outrageous. It maddened him to
have the boy plead for such folly. He tried in vain to whip it out of him.
Joel's ideas of education were exactly those of Mr. Mellows, but he did not
like Mr. Mellows because of the anguish inflicted on Luke. Joel used to beg
Luke to run away from home. But that was impracticable for two reasons:
Luke was not of the runaway sort, but meek, and shy, and obedient to a
fault.
Besides, while a boy can run away from school, he cannot easily run away
to school. If he did, he would be sent back, and if he were not sent back,
how was he to pay for his "tooition" and his board and books and clo'es?
It was Luke's influence that sent Joel away to boardin' school. He so longed
to go himself that Joel felt it foolish to deny himself the godlike
opportunity. So Luke went to school vicariously in Joel, as he got his other
experiences vicariously in books.
At school Joel found so much to do outside of his classes that he grew
content to go all the way. There was a glee club to manage, also an athletic
club; a paper to solicit ads and subscriptions for; class officers to be elected,
with all the delights of political maneuvering—a world in little to run with
all the solemnity and competition of the adult cosmos. So Joel was happy
and lucky and successful in spite of himself.
The day after Joel took train up the river to his academy Luke took the
position his father secured for him and entered the little back room where
the Butterly Bottling Works kept its bookkeepers on high stools.
The Butterly soda pop, ginger ales, and other soft drinks were triumphs of
insipidity, and their birch beer sickened the thirstiest child. But the making

and the marketing and even the drinking of them were matters of high
emprise compared to the keeping of the books.
One of the saddest, sweetest, greatest stories ever written is Ellis' Pigsispigs
Butler's fable of the contented little donkey that went round and round in
the mill and thought he was traveling far. But that donkey was blind and
had no dreams denied.
Luke Mellows was a boy, a boy that still felt his life in every limb, a boy
devoured with fantastic ambitions. He had a genius within that smothered
and struggled till it all but perished unexpressed. It lived only enough to be
an anguish. It hurt him like a hidden, unmentioned ingrowing toe nail that
cuts and bleeds and excruciates the fleet member it is meant to protect.
When Joel came home for his first vacation, with the rush of a young colt
that has had a good time in the corral but rejoices in the old pastures, his
first cry was for Luke. When he learned where he was, he hurried to the
Bottling Works. He was turned away with the curt remark that employees
could not be seen in business hours. In those days there were no machines
to simplify and verify the bookkeeper's treadmill task, and business hours
were never over.
Joel left word at Luke's home for Luke to call for him the minute he was
free. He did not come that evening, nor the next. Joel was hurt more than he
dared admit.
It was Sunday afternoon before Luke came round, a different Luke, a lean,
wan, worn-out shred of a youth. His welcome was sickly.
"Gee-min-ent-ly!" Joel roared. "I thought you was mad at me about
something. You never came near."
"I wanted to come," Luke croaked, "but nights, I'm too tired to walk
anywheres, and besides, I usually have to go back to the offus."
"Gee, that's damn tough," said Joel, who had grown from darn to damn.
Thinking to light Luke up with a congenial theme, Joel heroically forbore to
describe the marvels of academy life, and asked: "What you been readin'
lately? A little bit of everything, I guess, hey?"

"A whole lot of nothin'," Luke sighed. "I got no strength for readin' by the
time I shut my ledgers. I got to save my eyes, you know. The light's bad in
that back room."
"What you been writin', then?"
"Miles of figures and entries about one gross bottles lemon, two gross
sassaprilla, one gross empties returned."
"No more poetry?"
"No more nothin'."
Joel was obstinately cheerful. "Well, you been makin' money, anyways;
that's something."
"Yeh. I buy my own shoes and clo'es now and pay my board and lodgin' at
home. And paw puts the two dollars that's left into the savings bank. I got
nearly thirty dollars there now. I'll soon have enough for a winter soot and
overcoat."
"Gee, can't you go buggy ridin' even with Kit?"
"I could if I had the time and the price, and if her maw wasn't so poorly that
Kitty can't get away. I go over there Sunday afternoons sometimes, but her
maw always hollers for her to come in. She's afraid to be alone. Kit's had to
give up the high school account of her maw."
"How about her goin' away to be a great singer?"
Luke grinned at the insanity of such childish plans. "Oh, that's all off. Kit
can't even practice any more. It makes her mother nervous. And Kit had to
give up the church choir too. You'd hardly know her. She cries a lot about
lookin' so scrawny. O' course I tell her she's pirtier than ever, but that only
makes her mad. She can't go to sociables or dances or picnics, and if she
could she's got no clo'es. We don't have much fun together; just sit and
mope, and then I say: 'Well, guess I better mosey on home,' and she says:
'All right; see you again next Sunday, I s'pose. G'by.'"
The nightingale annoyed the owl and was hushed, and the poet rimed sums
in a daybook.

The world waited for them and needed them without knowing it; it would
have rewarded them with thrilled attention and wealth and fame. But
silence was their portion, silence and the dark and an ache that had no
voice.
Joel listened to Luke's elegy and groaned: "Gee!"
But he had an optimism like a powerful spring, and it struck back now with
a whirr: "I'll tell you what, Luke. Just you wait till I'm rich, then I'll give
you a job as vice president, and you can marry Kitty and live on Broadway,
in Noo York."
"I've got over believin' in Sandy Claus," said Luke.
Joel saw little of him during this vacation and less during the next. Being by
nature a hater of despair, he avoided Luke. He had fits of remorse for this,
and once he dared to make a personal appeal to old Mr. Mellows to send
Luke away to school. He was received with scant courtesy, and only
tolerated because he gave the father a chance to void some of his bile at the
worthlessness of Luke.
"He's no good; that's what's the matter of him. And willful too—he just
mopes around because he wants to show me I'm wrong. But he's only cuttin'
off his own nose to spite his face. I'll learn him who's got the most will
power."
Joel was bold enough to suggest: "Maybe Luke would be differ'nt if you'd
let him go to college. You know, Mr. Mellows, if you'll 'scuse my saying it,
there's some natures that are differ'nt from others. You hitch a race horse up
to a plow and you spoil a good horse and your field both. Seems to me as if,
if Luke got a chance to be a writer or a professor or something, he might
turn out to be a wonder. You can't teach a canary bird to be a hen, you know,
and——"
Mr. Mellows locked himself in that ridiculous citadel of ancient folly.
"When you're as old as I am, Joel, you'll know more. The first thing
anybody's got to learn in this world is to respect their parents."
Joel wanted to say: "I should think that depended on the parents."

But, of course, he kept silent, as the young usually do when they hear the
old maundering, and he gave up as he heard the stupid dolt returning to his
old refrain: "I left school when I was twelve years old. Ain't had a day
sence, and I can't say as I've been exactly a failure. Best hardware store in
Carthage and holdin' my own in spite of bad business."
Joel slunk away, unconvinced but baffled. One summer he brought all his
pressure to bear on Luke to persuade him to run away from his job and
strike out for the big city where the big opportunities grew.
But Luke shook his head. He lacked initiative. Perhaps that was where his
talent was not genius. It blistered him, but it made no steam.
Shakespeare had known enough to leave Stratford. He had had to hold
horses outside the theatre, and even then he had organized a little business
group of horse holders called "Shakespeare's boys." He had the business
sense, and he forced his way into the theatre and became a stockholder.
Shakespeare was always an adventurer. He had to work in a butcher's shop,
but before he was nineteen he was already married to a woman of twenty-
six, and none too soon for the first child's sake.
Luke Mellows had not the courage or the recklessness to marry Kitty,
though he had as good a job as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare would not let a
premature family keep him from his ambition.
He was twenty-one when he went to London, but he went.
London was a boom town then, about the size of Trenton, or Grand Rapids,
or Spokane, and growing fast. Boys were running away from the farms and
villages as they always have done. Other boys went to London from
Stratford. John Sadler became a big wholesale grocer and Richard Field a
publisher. They had as various reasons then as now.
But the main thing was that they left home. That might mean a noble or a
selfish ambition, but it took action.
Luke Mellows would not go. He dreaded to abandon his mother to the
father who bullied them both. He could not bear to leave Kitty alone with
the wretched mother who ruled her with tears.

Other boys ran or walked away from Carthage, some of them to become
failures, and some half successes, and some of them to acquire riches and
power. And other boys stayed at home.
Girls, too, had won obscurity by inertia or had swung into fame. Some of
the girls had stayed at home and gone wrong there. Some had gone away in
disgrace, and redeemed or damned themselves in larger parishes. There
were Aspasias and Joans of Arc in miniature, minor Florence Nightingales
and Melbas and Rosa Bonheurs. But they had all had to leap from the nest
and try their wings. Of those that did not take the plunge, none made the
flight.
Cowardice held some back, but the purest self-sacrifice others. Joel felt that
there ought to be a heaven for these latter, yet he hoped that there was no
hell for the former. For who can save himself from his own timidity, and
who can protect himself from his own courage?
Given that little spur of initiative, that little armor of selfish indifference to
the clinging hands at home, and how many a soul might not have reached
the stars? Look at the women who were crowding the rolls of fame of late
just because all womankind had broken free of the apron strings of alleged
respectability.
Joel had no proof that Luke Mellows would have amounted to much.
Perhaps, if he had ventured over the nest's edge, he would have perished on
the ground, trampled into dust by the fameward mob, or devoured by the
critics that pounce upon every fledgling and suck the heart out of all that
cannot fling them off.
But Joel could not surrender his childhood faith that Luke Mellows had
been meant for another Shakespeare. Yet Mellows had never written a play
or an act of a play. But, for that matter, neither had Shakespeare before he
went to London. He was only a poet at first, and some of his poems were
pretty poor stuff—if you took Shakespeare's name off it. And his first
poems had to be published by his fellow townsman Field.
There were the childish poems by Luke Mellows that Joel's father had
published in the Carthage "Clarion." Joel had forgotten them utterly, and

they were probably meritorious of oblivion. But there was one poem Luke
had written that Joel memorized.
It appeared in the "Clarion" years after Joel was a success in wool. His
father still sent him the paper, and in one number Joel was rejoiced to read
these lines:
THE ANONYMOUS

By Luke Mellows

Sometimes at night within a wooded park
Like an ocean cavern, fathoms deep in bloom,
Sweet scents, like hymns, from hidden flowers fume,
And make the wanderer happy, though the dark
Obscures their tint, their name, their shapely bloom.

So, in the thick-set chronicles of fame,
There hover deathless feats of souls unknown.
They linger like the fragrant smoke wreaths blown
From liberal sacrifice. Gone face and name;
The deeds, like homeless ghosts, live on alone.
Wixon, seated in the boat on Avon and lost in such dusk that he could
hardly see his hand upon the idle oar, recited the poem softly to himself,
intoning it in the deep voice one saves for poetry. It sounded wonderful to
him in the luxury of hearing his own voice upon the water and indulging his
own memory. The somber mood was perfect, in accord with the realm of
shadow and silence where everything beautiful and living was cloaked in
the general blur.
After he had heard his voice chanting the last long oh's of the final verse, he
was ashamed of his solemnity, and terrified lest some one might have heard
him and accounted him insane. He laughed at himself for a sentimental
fool.
He laughed too as he remembered what a letter of praise he had dictated to
his astonished stenographer and fired off at Luke Mellows; and at the
flippant letter he had in return.

Lay readers who send incandescent epistles to poets are apt to receive
answers in sardonic prose. The poet lies a little, perhaps, in a very sane
suspicion of his own transcendencies.
Luke Mellows had written:
"Dear Old Joel:
"I sure am much obliged for your mighty handsome letter. Coming to one of
the least successful wool-gatherers in the world from one of the most
successful wool distributors, it deserves to be highly prized. And is. I will
have it framed and handed down to my heirs, of which there are more than
there will ever be looms.
"You ask me to tell you all about myself. It won't take long. When the
Butterly Bottlery went bust, I had no job at all for six months, so I got
married to spite my father. And to please Kit, whose poor mother ceased to
suffer about the same time.
"The poor girl was so used to taking care of a poor old woman who couldn't
be left alone that I became her patient just to keep all her talents from going
to waste.
"The steady flow of children seems to upset the law of supply and demand,
for there is certainly no demand for more of my progeny and there is no
supply for them. But somehow they thrive.
"I am now running my father's store, as the old gentleman had a stroke and
then another. The business is going to pot as rapidly as you would expect,
but I haven't been able to kill it off quite yet.
"Thanks for advising me to go on writing immortal poetry. If I were
immortal, I might, but that fool thing was the result of about ten years' hard
labor. I tried to make a sonnet of it, but I gave up at the end of the decade
and called it whatever it is.
"Your father's paper published it free of charge, and so my income from my
poetry has been one-tenth of nothing per annum. Please don't urge me to do
any more. I really can't afford it.

"The poem was suggested to me by an ancient fit of blues over the fact that
Kit's once-so-beautiful voice would never be heard in song, and by the fact
that her infinite goodnesses will never meet any recompense or even
acknowledgment.
"I was bitter the first five years, but the last five years I began to feel how
rich this dark old world is in good, brave, sweet, lovable, heartbreakingly
beautiful deeds that simply cast a little fragrance on the dark and are gone.
They perfume the night and the busy daylight dispels them like the morning
mists that we used to watch steaming and vanishing above the old river. The
Mississippi is still here, still rolling along its eternal multitudes of snows
and flowers and fruits and fish and snakes and dead men and boats and
trees.
"They go where they came from, I guess—in and out of nothing and back
again.
"It is a matter of glory to all of us that you are doing so nobly. Keep it up
and give us something to brag about in our obscurity. Don't worry. We are
happy enough in the dark. We have our batlike sports and our owllike
prides, and the full sun would blind us and lose us our way.
"Kit sends you her love—and blushes as she says it. That is a very daring
word for such shy moles as we are, but I will echo it.
"Yours for old sake's sake. Luke."
Vaguely remembering this letter now Joel inhaled a bit of the merciful
chloroform that deadens the pain of thwarted ambition.
The world was full of men and women like Luke and Kit. Some had given
up great hopes because they were too good to tread others down in their
quest. Some had quenched great talents because they were too fearsome or
too weak or too lazy to feed their lamps with oil and keep them trimmed
and alight. Some had stumbled through life darkly with no gifts of talent,
without even appreciation of the talents of others or of the flowerlike
beauties that star the meadows.
Those were the people he had known. And then there were the people he
had not known, the innumerable caravan that had passed across the earth

while he lived, the inconceivable hosts that had gone before, tribe after
tribe, generation upon generation, nation at the heels of nation, cycle on era
on age, and the backward perpetuity from everlasting unto everlasting.
People, people, peoples—poor souls, until the thronged stars that make a
dust of the Milky Way were a lesser mob.
Here in this graveyard at Stratford lay men who might have overtopped
Shakespeare's glory if they had but "had a mind to." Some of them had been
held in higher esteem in their town. But they were forgotten, their names
leveled with the surface of their fallen tombstones.
Had he not cried out in his own Hamlet: "O God, I could be bounded in a
nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have
bad dreams—which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very substance of
the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream—and I hold ambition of so
airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow."
After all, the greatest of men were granted but a lesser oblivion than the
least. And in that overpowering thought there was a strange comfort, the
comfort of misery finding itself in an infinite company.
The night was thick upon Avon. The swans had gone somewhere. The lights
in the houses had a sleepy look. It was time to go to bed.
Joel yawned with the luxury of having wearied his heart with emotion. He
had thought himself out for once. It was good to be tired. He put his oars
into the stream and, dipping up reflected stars, sent them swirling in a
doomsday chaos after him with the defiant revenge of a proud soul who
scorns the universe that grinds him to dust.
The old boatman was surly with waiting. He did not thank the foreigner for
his liberal largeness, and did not answer his good night.
As Wixon left the river and took the road for his hotel, the nightingale (that
forever anonymous nightingale, only one among the millions of forgotten or
throttled songsters) revolted for a moment or two against the stifling doom
and shattered it with a wordless sonnet of fierce and beautiful protest
—"The tawny-throated! What triumph! hark!—what pain!"

It was as if Luke Mellows had suddenly found expression in something
better than words, something that any ear could understand, an ache that
rang.
Wixon stopped, transfixed as by flaming arrows. He could not understand
what the bird meant or what he meant, nor could the bird. But as there is no
laughter that eases the heart like unpacking it of its woes in something
beyond wording, so there is nothing that brightens the eyes like tears
gushing without shame or restraint.
Joel Wixon felt that it was a good, sad, mad world, and that he had been
very close to Shakespeare—so close that he heard things nobody had ever
found the phrases for—things that cannot be said but only felt, and
transmitted rather by experience than by expression from one proud worm
in the mud to another.

FOOTNOTES:
[10] Copyright, 1920, by P. F. Collier & Son, Inc.
Copyright, 1921, by Rupert Hughes.

HIS JOB[11]
By GRACE SARTWELL MASON

From Scribner's Magazine

Against an autumn sunset the steel skeleton of a twenty-story office
building in process of construction stood out black and bizarre. It flung up
its beams and girders like stern and yet airy music, orderly, miraculously
strong, and delicately powerful. From the lower stories, where masons
made their music of trowel and hammer, to the top, where steam-riveters
rapped out their chorus like giant locusts in a summer field, the great
building lived and breathed as if all those human energies that went to its
making flowed warm through its steel veins.
In the west window of a womans' club next door one of the members stood
looking out at this building. Behind her at a tea-table three other women sat
talking. For some moments their conversation had had a plaintive if not an
actually rebellious tone. They were discussing the relative advantages of a
man's work and a woman's, and they had arrived at the conclusion that a
man has much the best of it when it comes to a matter of the day's work.
"Take a man's work," said Mrs. Van Vechten, pouring herself a second cup
of tea. "He chooses it; then he is allowed to go at it with absolute freedom.
He isn't hampered by the dull, petty details of life that hamper us. He——"
"Details! My dear, there you are right," broke in Mrs. Bullen. Two men,
first Mrs. Bullen's father and then her husband, had seen to it that neither
the biting wind of adversity nor the bracing air of experience should ever
touch her. "Details! Sometimes I feel as if I were smothered by them.
Servants, and the house, and now these relief societies——"
She was in her turn interrupted by Cornelia Blair. Cornelia was a spinster
with more freedom than most human beings ever attain, her father having
worked himself to death to leave her well provided for. "The whole fault is

the social system," she declared. "Because of it men have been able to take
the really interesting work of the world for themselves. They've pushed the
dull jobs off onto us."
"You're right, Cornelia," cried Mrs. Bullen. She really had nothing to say,
but she hated not saying it. "I've always thought," she went on pensively,
"that it would be so much easier just to go to an office in the morning and
have nothing but business to think of. Don't you feel that way sometimes,
Mrs. Trask?"
The woman in the west window turned. There was a quizzical gleam in her
eyes as she looked at the other three. "The trouble with us women is we're
blind and deaf," she said slowly. "We talk a lot about men's work and how
they have the best of things in power and freedom, but does it occur to one
of us that a man pays for power and freedom? Sometimes I think that not
one of the women of our comfortable class would be willing to pay what
our men pay for the power and freedom they get."
"What do they pay?" asked Mrs. Van Vechten, her lip curling.
Mrs. Trask turned back to the window. "There's something rather wonderful
going on out here," she called. "I wish you'd all come and look."
Just outside the club window the steel-workers pursued their dangerous task
with leisurely and indifferent competence, while over their head a great
derrick served their needs with uncanny intelligence. It dropped its chain
and picked a girder from the floor. As it rose into space two figures sprang
astride either end of it. The long arm swung up and out; the two "bronco-
busters of the sky" were black against the flame of the sunset. Some one
shouted; the signalman pulled at his rope; the derrick-arm swung in a little
with the girder teetering at the end of the chain. The most interesting
moment of the steel-man's job had come, when a girder was to be jockeyed
into place. The iron arm swung the girder above two upright columns,
lowered it, and the girder began to groove into place. It wedged a little. One
of the men inched along, leaned against space, and wielded his bar. The
women stared, for the moment taken out of themselves. Then, as the girder
settled into place and the two men slid down the column to the floor, the
spectators turned back to their tea-table.

"Very interesting," murmured Mrs. Van Vechten; "but I hardly see how it
concerns us."
A flame leaped in Mary Trask's face. "It's what we've just been talking
about, one of men's jobs. I tell you, men are working miracles all the time
that women never see. We envy them their power and freedom, but we
seldom open our eyes to see what they pay for them. Look here, I'd like to
tell you about an ordinary man and one of his jobs." She stopped and
looked from Mrs. Bullen's perplexity to Cornelia Blair's superior smile, and
her eyes came last to Sally Van Vechten's rebellious frown. "I'm going to
bore you, maybe," she laughed grimly. "But it will do you good to listen
once in a while to something real."
She sat down and leaned her elbows on the table. "I said that he is an
ordinary man," she began; "what I meant is that he started in like the
average, without any great amount of special training, without money, and
without pull of any kind. He had good health, good stock back of him, an
attractive personality, and two years at a technical school—those were his
total assets. He was twenty when he came to New York to make a place for
himself, and he had already got himself engaged to a girl back home. He
had enough money to keep him for about three weeks, if he lived very
economically. But that didn't prevent his feeling a heady exhilaration that
day when he walked up Fifth Avenue for the first time and looked over his
battle-field. He has told me often, with a chuckle at the audacity of it, how
he picked out his employer. All day he walked about with his eyes open for
contractors' signs. Whenever he came upon a building in the process of
construction he looked it over critically, and if he liked the look of the job
he made a note of the contractor's name and address in a little green book.
For he was to be a builder—of big buildings, of course! And that night,
when he turned out of the avenue to go to the cheap boarding-house where
he had sent his trunk, he told himself that he'd give himself five years to set
up an office of his own within a block of Fifth Avenue.
"Next day he walked into the offices of Weil & Street—the first that headed
the list in the little green book—asked to see Mr. Weil, and, strangely
enough, got him, too. Even in those raw days Robert had a cheerful
assurance tempered with rather a nice deference that often got him what he
wanted from older men. When he left the offices of Weil & Street he had

been given a job in the estimating-room, at a salary that would just keep
him from starving. He grew lean and lost his country color that winter, but
he was learning, learning all the time, not only in the office of Weil &
Street, but at night school, where he studied architecture. When he decided
he had got all he could get out of the estimating and drawing rooms he
asked to be transferred to one of the jobs. They gave him the position of
timekeeper on one of the contracts, at a slight advance in salary.
"A man can get as much or as little out of being timekeeper as he chooses.
Robert got a lot out of it. He formulated that summer a working theory of
the length of time it should take to finish every detail of a building. He
talked with bricklayers, he timed them and watched them, until he knew
how many bricks could be laid in an hour; and it was the same way with
carpenters, fireproofers, painters, plasterers. He soaked in a thousand
practical details of building: he picked out the best workman in each gang,
watched him, talked with him, learned all he could of that man's particular
trick; and it all went down in the little green book. For at the back of his
head was always the thought of the time when he should use all this
knowledge in his own business. Then one day when he had learned all he
could learn from being timekeeper, he walked into Weil's office again and
proposed that they make him one of the firm's superintendents of
construction.
"Old Weil fairly stuttered with the surprise of this audacious proposition. He
demanded to know what qualifications the young man could show for so
important a position, and Robert told him about the year he had had with
the country builder and the three summer vacations with the country
surveyor—which made no impression whatever on Mr. Weil until Robert
produced the little green book. Mr. Weil glanced at some of the figures in
the book, snorted, looked hard at his ambitious timekeeper, who looked
back at him with his keen young eyes and waited. When he left the office he
had been promised a tryout on a small job near the offices, where, as old
Weil said, they could keep an eye on him. That night he wrote to the girl
back home that she must get ready to marry him at a moment's notice."
Mrs. Trask leaned back in her chair and smiled with a touch of sadness.
"The wonder of youth! I can see him writing that letter, exuberant,
ambitious, his brain full of dreams and plans—and a very inadequate supper

in his stomach. The place where he lived—he pointed it out to me once—
was awful. No girl of Rob's class—back home his folks were 'nice'—would
have stood that lodging-house for a night, would have eaten the food he did,
or gone without the pleasures of life as he had gone without them for two
years. But there, right at the beginning, is the difference between what a boy
is willing to go through to get what he wants and what a girl would or could
put up with. And along with a better position came a man's responsibility,
which he shouldered alone.
"'I was horribly afraid I'd fall down on the job,' he told me long afterward.
'And there wasn't a living soul I could turn to for help. The thing was up to
me alone!'"
Mrs. Trask looked from Mrs. Bullen to Mrs. Van Vechten. "Mostly they
fight alone," she said, as if she thought aloud. "That's one thing about men
we don't always grasp—the business of existence is up to the average man
alone. If he fails or gets into a tight place he has no one to fall back on, as a
woman almost always has. Our men have a prejudice against taking their
business difficulties home with them. I've a suspicion it's because we're so
ignorant they'd have to do too much explaining! So in most cases they
haven't even a sympathetic understanding to help them over the bad places.
It was so with Robert even after he had married the girl back home and
brought her to the city. His idea was to keep her from all worry and anxiety,
and so, when he came home at night and she asked him if he had had a
good day, or if the work had gone well, he always replied cheerfully that
things had gone about the same as usual, even though the day had been a
particularly bad one. This was only at first, however. The girl happened to
be the kind that likes to know things. One night, when she wakened to find
him staring sleepless at the ceiling, the thought struck her that, after all, she
knew nothing of his particular problems, and if they were partners in the
business of living why shouldn't she be an intelligent member of the firm,
even if only a silent one?
"So she began to read everything she could lay her hands on about the
business of building construction, and very soon when she asked a question
it was a fairly intelligent one, because it had some knowledge back of it.
She didn't make the mistake of pestering him with questions before she had
any groundwork of technical knowledge to build on, and I'm not sure that

he ever guessed what she was up to, but I do know that gradually, as he
found that he did not, for instance, have to draw a diagram and explain
laboriously what a caisson was because she already knew a good deal about
caissons, he fell into the habit of talking out to her a great many of the
situations he would have to meet next day. Not that she offered her advice
nor that he wanted it, but what helped was the fact of her sympathy—I
should say her intelligent sympathy, for that is the only kind that can really
help.
"So when his big chance came along she was ready to meet it with him. If
he succeeded she would be all the better able to appreciate his success; and
if he failed she would never blame him from ignorance. You must
understand that his advance was no meteoric thing. He somehow, by dint of
sitting up nights poring over blueprints and text-books and by day using his
wits and his eyes and his native shrewdness, managed to pull off with fair
success his first job as superintendent; was given other contracts to oversee;
and gradually, through three years of hard work, learning, learning all the
time, worked up to superintending some of the firm's important jobs. Then
he struck out for himself."
Mrs. Trask turned to look out of the west window. "It sounds so easy," she
mused. "'Struck out for himself.' But I think only a man can quite appreciate
how much courage that takes. Probably, if the girl had not understood
where he was trying to get to, he would have hesitated longer to give up his
good, safe salary; but they talked it over, she understood the hazards of the
game, and she was willing to take a chance. They had saved a tiny capital,
and only a little over five years from the day he had come to New York he
opened an office within a block of Fifth Avenue.
"I won't bore you with the details of the next two years, when he was
getting together his organization, teaching himself the details of office
work, stalking architects and owners for contracts. He acquired a slight
stoop to his shoulders in those two years and there were days when there
was nothing left of his boyishness but the inextinguishable twinkle in his
hazel eyes. There were times when it seemed to him as if he had put to sea
in a rowboat; as if he could never make port; but after a while small
contracts began to come in, and then came along the big opportunity. Up in
a New England city a large bank building was to be built; one of the

directors was a friend of Rob's father, and Rob was given a chance to put in
an estimate. It meant so much to him that he would not let himself count on
getting the contract; he did not even tell the partner at home that he had
been asked to put in an estimate until one day he came tearing in to tell her
that he had been given the job. It seemed too wonderful to be true. The
future looked so dazzling that they were almost afraid to contemplate it.
Only something wildly extravagant would express their emotion, so they
chartered a hansom cab and went gayly sailing up-town on the late
afternoon tide of Fifth Avenue; and as they passed the building on which
Robert had got his job as timekeeper he took off his hat to it, and she blew a
kiss to it, and a dreary old clubman in a window next door brightened
visibly!"
Mrs. Trask turned her face toward the steel skeleton springing up across the
way like the magic beanstalk in the fairy-tale. "The things men have taught
themselves to do!" she cried. "The endurance and skill, the inventiveness,
the precision of science, the daring of human wits, the poetry and fire that
go into the making of great buildings! We women walk in and out of them
day after day, blindly—and this indifference is symbolical, I think, of the
way we walk in and out of our men's lives.... I wish I could make you see
that job of young Robert's so that you would feel in it what I do—the
patience of men, the strain of the responsibility they carry night and day, the
things life puts up to them, which they have to meet alone, the dogged
endurance of them...."
Mrs. Trask leaned forward and traced a complicated diagram on the table-
cloth with the point of a fork. "It was his first big job, you understand, and
he had got it in competition with several older builders. From the first they
were all watching him, and he knew it, which put a fine edge to his
determination to put the job through with credit. To be sure, he was
handicapped by lack of capital, but his past record had established his
credit, and when the foundation work was begun it was a very hopeful
young man that watched the first shovelful of earth taken out. But when
they had gone down about twelve feet, with a trench for a retaining-wall,
they discovered that the owners' boring plan was not a trustworthy
representation of conditions; the job was going to be a soft-ground
proposition. Where, according to the owners' preliminary borings, he should
have found firm sand with a normal amount of moisture, Rob discovered

sand that was like saturated oatmeal, and beyond that quicksand and water.
Water! Why, it was like a subterranean lake fed by a young river! With the
pulsometer pumps working night and day they couldn't keep the water out
of the test pier he had sunk. It bubbled in as cheerfully as if it had eternal
springs behind it, and drove the men out of the pier in spite of every effort.
Rob knew then what he was up against. But he still hoped that he could sink
the foundations without compressed air, which would be an immense
expense he had not figured on in his estimate, of course. So he devised a
certain kind of concrete crib, the first one was driven—and when they got it
down beneath quicksand and water about twenty-five feet, it hung up on a
boulder! You see, below the stratum of sand like saturated oatmeal, below
the water and quicksand, they had come upon something like a New
England pasture, as thick with big boulders as a bun with currants! If he had
spent weeks hunting for trouble he couldn't have found more than was
offered him right there. It was at this point that he went out and wired a big
New York engineer, who happened to be a friend of his, to come up. In a
day or two the engineer arrived, took a look at the job, and then advised
Rob to quit.
"'It's a nasty job,' he told him. 'It will swallow every penny of your profits
and probably set you back a few thousands. It's one of the worst soft-ground
propositions I ever looked over.'
"Well that night young Robert went home with a sleep-walking expression
in his eyes. He and the partner at home had moved up to Rockford to be
near the job while the foundation work was going on, so the girl saw
exactly what he was up against and what he had to decide between.
"'I could quit,' he said that night, after the engineer had taken his train back
to New York, 'throw up the job, and the owners couldn't hold me because of
their defective boring plans. But if I quit there'll be twenty competitors to
say I've bit off more than I can chew. And if I go on I lose money; probably
go into the hole so deep I'll be a long time getting out.'
"You see, where his estimates had covered only the expense of normal
foundation work he now found himself up against the most difficult
conditions a builder can face. When the girl asked him if the owners would
not make up the additional cost he grinned ruefully. The owners were going

to hold him to his original estimate; they knew that with his name to make
he would hate to give up; and they were inclined to be almost as nasty as
the job.
"'Then you'll have all this work and difficulty for nothing?' the girl asked.
'You may actually lose money on the job?'
"'Looks that way,' he admitted.
"'Then why do you go on?' she cried.
"His answer taught the girl a lot about the way a man looks at his job. 'If I
take up the cards I can't be a quitter,' he said. 'It would hurt my record. And
my record is the equivalent of credit and capital. I can't afford to have any
weak spots in it. I'll take the gaff rather than have it said about me that I've
lain down on a job. I'm going on with this thing to the end.'"
Little shrewd, reminiscent lines gathered about Mrs. Trask's eyes. "There's
something exhilarating about a good fight. I've always thought that if I
couldn't be a gunner I could get a lot of thrills out of just handing up the
ammunition.... Well, Rob went on with the contract. With the first crib hung
up on a boulder and the water coming in so fast they couldn't pump it out
fast enough to dynamite, he was driven to use compressed air, and that
meant the hiring of a compressor, locks, shafting—a terribly costly business
—as well as bringing up to the job a gang of the high-priced labor that
works under air. But this was done, and the first crib for the foundation
piers went down slowly, with the sand-hogs—men that work in the caissons
—drilling and blasting their way week after week through that underground
New England pasture. Then, below this boulder-strewn stratum, instead of
the ledge they expected they struck four feet of rotten rock, so porous that
when air was put on it to force the water back great air bubbles blew up all
through the lot, forcing the men out of the other caissons and trenches. But
this was a mere dull detail, to be met by care and ingenuity like the others.
And at last, forty feet below street level, they reached bed-rock. Forty-six
piers had to be driven to this ledge.
"Rob knew now exactly what kind of a job was cut out for him. He knew he
had not only the natural difficulties to overcome, but he was going to have

to fight the owners for additional compensation. So one day he went into
Boston and interviewed a famous old lawyer.
"'Would you object,' he asked the lawyer, 'to taking a case against personal
friends of yours, the owners of the Rockford bank building?'
"'Not at all—and if you're right, I'll lick 'em! What's your case?'
"Rob told him the whole story. When he finished the famous man refused to
commit himself one way or the other; but he said that he would be in
Rockford in a few days, and perhaps he'd look at Robert's little job. So one
day, unannounced, the lawyer appeared. The compressor plant was hard at
work forcing the water back in the caissons, the pulsometer pumps were
sucking up streams of water that flowed without ceasing into the settling
tank and off into the city sewers, the men in the caissons were sending up
buckets full of silt-like gruel. The lawyer watched operations for a few
minutes, then he asked for the owners' boring plan. When he had examined
this he grunted twice, twitched his lower lip humorously, and said: 'I'll put
you out of this. If the owners wanted a deep-water lighthouse they should
have specified one—not a bank building.'
"So the battle of legal wits began. Before the building was done Joshua
Kent had succeeded in making the owners meet part of the additional cost
of the foundation, and Robert had developed an acumen that stood by him
the rest of his life. But there was something for him in this job bigger than
financial gain or loss. Week after week, as he overcame one difficulty after
another, he was learning, learning, just as he had done at Weil & Street's.
His hazel eyes grew keener, his face thinner. For the job began to develop
every freak and whimsy possible to a growing building. The owner of the
department store next door refused to permit access through his basement,
and that added many hundred dollars to the cost of building the party wall;
the fire and telephone companies were continually fussing around and
demanding indemnity because their poles and hydrants got knocked out of
plumb; the thousands of gallons of dirty water pumped from the job into the
city sewers clogged them up, and the city sued for several thousand dollars'
damages; one day the car-tracks in front of the lot settled and valuable time
was lost while the men shored them up; now and then the pulsometer
engines broke down; the sand-hogs all got drunk and lost much time; an

untimely frost spoiled a thousand dollars' worth of concrete one night. But
the detail that required the most handling was the psychological effect on
Rob's subcontractors. These men, observing the expensive preliminary
operations, and knowing that Rob was losing money every day the
foundation work lasted, began to ask one another if the young boss would
be able to put the job through. If he failed, of course they who had signed
up with him for various stages of the work would lose heavily. Panic began
to spread among all the little army that goes to the making of a big building.
The terra-cotta-floor men, the steel men, electricians and painters began to
hang about the job with gloom in their eyes; they wore a path to the
architect's door, and he, never having quite approved of so young a man
being given the contract, did little to allay their apprehensions. Rob knew
that if this kept up they'd hurt his credit, so he promptly served notice on the
architect that if his credit was impaired by false rumors he'd hold him
responsible; and he gave each subcontractor five minutes in which to make
up his mind whether he wanted to quit or look cheerful. To a man they
chose to stick by the job; so that detail was disposed of. In the meantime the
sinking of piers for one of the retaining-walls was giving trouble. One
morning at daylight Rob's superintendent telephoned him to announce that
the street was caving in and the buildings across the way were cracking.
When Rob got there he found the men standing about scared and helpless,
while the plate-glass windows of the store opposite were cracking like
pistols and the building settled. It appeared that when the trench for the
south wall had gone down a certain distance water began to rush in under
the sheeting as if from an underground river, and, of course, undermined the
street and the store opposite. The pumps were started like mad, two gangs
were put at work, with the superintendent swearing, threatening, and
pleading to make them dig faster, and at last concrete was poured and the
water stopped. That day Rob and his superintendent had neither breakfast
nor lunch; but they had scarcely finished shoring up the threatened store
when the owner of the store notified Rob that he would sue for damages,
and the secretary of the Y. W. C. A. next door attempted to have the
superintendent arrested for profanity. Rob said that when this happened he
and his superintendent solemnly debated whether they should go and get
drunk or start a fight with the sand-hogs; it did seem as if they were entitled
to some emotional outlet, all the circumstances considered!

"So after months of difficulties the foundation work was at last finished.
I've forgotten to mention that there was some little difficulty with the
eccentricities of the sub-basement floor. The wet clay ruined the first
concrete poured, and little springs had a way of gushing up in the boiler-
room. Also, one night a concrete shell for the elevator pit completely
disappeared—sank out of sight in the soft bottom. But by digging the trench
again and jacking down the bottom and putting hay under the concrete, the
floor was finished; and that detail was settled.
"The remainder of the job was by comparison uneventful. The things that
happened were all more or less in the day's work, such as a carload of stone
for the fourth story arriving when what the masons desperately needed was
the carload for the second, and the carload for the third getting lost and
being discovered after three days' search among the cripples in a Buffalo
freight-yard. And there was a strike of structural-steel work workers which
snarled up everything for a while; and always, of course, there were the
small obstacles and differences owners and architects are in the habit of
hatching up to keep a builder from getting indifferent. But these things were
what every builder encounters and expects. What Rob's wife could not
reconcile herself to was the fact that all those days of hard work, all those
days and nights of strain and responsibility, were all for nothing. Profits had
long since been drowned in the foundation work; Robert would actually
have to pay several thousand dollars for the privilege of putting up that
building! When the girl could not keep back one wail over this detail her
husband looked at her in genuine surprise.
"'Why, it's been worth the money to me, what I've learned,' he said. 'I've got
an education out of that old hoodoo that some men go through Tech and
work twenty years without getting; I've learned a new wrinkle in every one
of the building trades; I've learned men and I've learned law, and I've
delivered the goods. It's been hell, but I wouldn't have missed it!'"
Mrs. Trask looked eagerly and a little wistfully at the three faces in front of
her. Her own face was alight. "Don't you see—that's the way a real man
looks at his work; but that man's wife would never have understood it if she
hadn't been interested enough to watch his job. She saw him grow older and
harder under that job; she saw him often haggard from the strain and
sleepless because of a dozen intricate problems; but she never heard him

complain and she never saw him any way but courageous and often
boyishly gay when he'd got the best of some difficulty. And furthermore,
she knew that if she had been the kind of a woman who is not interested in
her husband's work he would have kept it to himself, as most American
husbands do. If he had, she would have missed a chance to learn a lot of
things that winter, and she probably wouldn't have known anything about
the final chapter in the history of the job that the two of them had fallen into
the habit of referring to as the White Elephant. They had moved back to
New York then, and the Rockford bank building was within two weeks of
its completion, when at seven o'clock one morning their telephone rang.
Rob answered it and his wife heard him say sharply: 'Well, what are you
doing about it?' And then: 'Keep it up. I'll catch the next train.'
"'What is it?' she asked, as he turned away from the telephone and she saw
his face.
"'The department store next to the Elephant is burning,' he told her.
'Fireproof? Well, I'm supposed to have built a fireproof building—but you
never can tell.'
"His wife's next thought was of insurance, for she knew that Robert had to
insure the building himself up to the time he turned it over to the owners.
'The insurance is all right?' she asked him.
"But she knew by the way he turned away from her that the worst of all
their bad luck with the Elephant had happened, and she made him tell her.
The insurance had lapsed about a week before. Rob had not renewed the
policy because its renewal would have meant adding several hundreds to his
already serious deficit, and, as he put it, it seemed to him that everything
that could happen to that job had already happened. But now the last
stupendous, malicious catastrophe threatened him. Both of them knew when
he said good-by that morning and hurried out to catch his train that he was
facing ruin. His wife begged him to let her go with him; at least she would
be some one to talk to on that interminable journey; but he said that was
absurd; and, anyway, he had a lot of thinking to do. So he started off alone.
"At the station before he left he tried to get the Rockford bank building on
the telephone. He got Rockford and tried for five minutes to make a
connection with his superintendent's telephone in the bank building, until

the operator's voice came to him over the wire: 'I tell you, you can't get that
building, mister. It's burning down!'
"'How do you know?' he besought her.
"'I just went past there and I seen it,' her voice came back at him.
"He got on the train. At first he felt nothing but a queer dizzy vacuum where
his brain should have been; the landscape outside the windows jumbled
together like a nightmare landscape thrown up on a moving-picture screen.
For fifty miles he merely sat rigidly still, but in reality he was plunging
down like a drowning man to the very bottom of despair. And then, like the
drowning man, he began to come up to the surface again. The instinct for
self-preservation stirred in him and broke the grip of that hypnotizing
despair. At first slowly and painfully, but at last with quickening facility, he
began to think, to plan. Stations went past; a man he knew spoke to him and
then walked on, staring; but he was deaf and blind. He was planning for the
future. Already he had plumbed, measured, and put behind him the fact of
the fire; what he occupied himself with now was what he could save from
the ashes to make a new start with. And he told me afterwards that actually,
at the end of two hours of the liveliest thinking he had ever done in his life,
he began to enjoy himself! His fighting blood began to tingle; his head
steadied and grew cool; his mind reached out and examined every aspect of
his stupendous failure, not to indulge himself in the weakness of regret, but
to find out the surest and quickest way to get on his feet again. Figuring on
the margins of timetables, going over the contracts he had in hand,
weighing every asset he possessed in the world, he worked out in minute
detail a plan to save his credit and his future. When he got off the train at
Boston he was a man that had already begun life over again; he was a
general that was about to make the first move in a long campaign, every
move and counter-move of which he carried in his brain. Even as he crossed
the station he was rehearsing the speech he was going to make at the
meeting of his creditors he intended to hold that afternoon. Then, as he
hastened toward a telephone-booth, he ran into a newsboy. A headline
caught his eye. He snatched at the paper, read the headlines, standing there
in the middle of the room. And then he suddenly sat down on the nearest
bench, weak and shaking.

"On the front page of the paper was a half-page picture of the Rockford
bank building with the flames curling up against its west wall, and
underneath it a caption that he read over and over before he could grasp
what it meant to him. The White Elephant had not burned; in fact, at the last
it had turned into a good elephant, for it had not only not burned but it had
stopped the progress of what threatened to be a very disastrous
conflagration, according to a jubilant despatch from Rockford. And Robert,
reading these lines over and over, felt an amazing sort of indignant
disappointment to think that now he would not have a chance to put to the
test those plans he had so minutely worked out. He was in the position of a
man that has gone through the painful process of readjusting his whole life;
who has mentally met and conquered a catastrophe that fails to come off.
He felt quite angry and cheated for a few minutes, until he regained his
mental balance and saw how absurd he was, and then, feeling rather foolish
and more than a little shaky, he caught a train and went up to Rockford.
"There he found out that the report had been right; beyond a few cracked
wire-glass windows—for which, as one last painful detail, he had to pay—
and a blackened side wall, the Elephant was unharmed. The men putting the
finishing touches to the inside had not lost an hour's work. All that dreadful
journey up from New York had been merely one last turn of the screw.
"Two weeks later he turned the Elephant over to the owners, finished, a
good, workmanlike job from roof to foundation-piers. He had lost money
on it; for months he had worked overtime his courage, his ingenuity, his
nerve, and his strength. But that did not matter. He had delivered the goods.
I believe he treated himself to an afternoon off and went to a ball-game; but
that was all, for by this time other jobs were under way, a whole batch of
new problems were waiting to be solved; in a week the Elephant was
forgotten."
Mrs. Trask pushed back her chair and walked to the west window. A strange
quiet had fallen upon the sky-scraper now; the workmen had gone down the
ladders, the steam-riveters had ceased their tapping. Mrs. Trask opened the
window and leaned out a little.
Behind her the three women at the tea-table gathered up their furs in
silence. Cornelia Blair looked relieved and prepared to go on to dinner at

another club, Mrs. Bullen avoided Mrs. Van Vechten's eye. In her rosy face
faint lines had traced themselves, as if vaguely some new perceptiveness
troubled her. She looked at her wristwatch and rose from the table hastily.
"I must run along," she said. "I like to get home before John does. You
going my way, Sally?"
Mrs. Van Vechten shook her head absently. There was a frown between her
dark brows; but as she stood fastening her furs her eyes went to the west
window, with an expression in them that was almost wistful. For an instant
she looked as if she were going over to the window beside Mary Trask; then
she gathered up her gloves and muff and went out without a word.
Mary Trask was unaware of her going. She had forgotten the room behind
her and her friends at the tea-table, as well as the other women drifting in
from the adjoining room. She was contemplating, with her little, absent-
minded smile, her husband's name on the builder's sign halfway up the
unfinished sky-scraper opposite.
"Good work, old Rob," she murmured. Then her hand went up in a quaint
gesture that was like a salute. "To all good jobs and the men behind them!"
she added.

FOOTNOTES:
[11] Copyright, 1920, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
Copyright, 1921, by Grace Sartwell Mason.

THE RENDING[12]
By JAMES OPPENHEIM

From The Dial

There is a bitter moment in youth, and this moment had come to Paul. He
had passed his mother's door without entering or even calling out to her, and
had climbed on doggedly to the top floor. Now he was shut in his sanctuary,
his room, sitting at his table. His head rested on a hand, his dark eyes had an
expression of confused anguish, a look of guilt and sternness mingled.... He
could no more have visited his mother, he told himself, than he could
voluntarily have chopped off his hand. And yet he was amazed at the
cruelty in himself, a hard cold cruelty which prompted the thought: "Even if
this means her death or my death, I shall go through with this."
It was because of such a feeling that he couldn't talk to his mother. Paul was
one of those sensitive youths who are delivered over to their emotions—
swept now and then by exaltation, now by despair, now by anguish or rage,
always excessive, never fully under control. He was moody, and always
seemed unable to say the right thing or do the right thing. Suddenly the
emotion used him as a mere instrument and came forth in a shameful
nakedness. But the present situation was by all odds the most terrible he had
faced: for against the cold cruelty, there throbbed, warm and unutterably
sweet, like a bird in a nest of iron, an intense childish longing and love....
You see, Paul was nineteen, the eldest son in a family of four, and his
mother was a widow. She was not poor; they lived in this large comfortable
house on a side street east of Central Park. But neither was she well off, and
Paul was very magnanimous; he had given up college and gone to work as a
clerk. Perhaps it wasn't only magnanimity, but also pride. He was proud to
be the oldest son, to play father, to advise with his mother about the
children, to be the man of the house. Yet he was always a mere child, living,
as his two sisters and his brother lived, in delicate response to his mother's

feelings and wishes. And he wanted to be a good son: he thought nothing
was more wonderful than a child who was good to his mother. She had
given all for her children, they in return must give all to her. But against this
spirit of sacrifice there arose a crude, ugly, healthy, monstrous force, a
terrible thing that kept whispering to him: "You can't live your mother's life:
you must live your own life."
Once, when he had said something conceited, his mother had flashed out at
him: "You're utterly selfish." This stung and humiliated him. Yet this
terrible monster in himself seemed concerned about nothing but self. It
seemed a sort of devil always tempting him to eat of forbidden fruit. Lovely
fruit, too. There was Agnes, for instance: Agnes, a mere girl, with a pigtail
down her back, daughter of the fishman on Third Avenue.
His mother held Agnes in horror. That her son should be in love with a
fishman's daughter! And all the child in Paul, responding so sensitively to
his mother's feelings, agreed to this. He had contempt for himself, he
struggled against the romantic Thousand and One Nights glamour, which
turned Third Avenue into a Lovers' Lane of sparkling lights. He struggled,
vainly. Poetry was his passion: and he steeped himself in Romeo and Juliet,
and in Keats's St. Agnes' Eve and The Pot of Basil.... It was then the great
struggle with his mother began, and the large house became a gloomy vault,
something dank, damp, sombre, something out of Poe, where a secret duel
to the death was being fought, mostly in undertones and sometimes with
sharp cries and stabbing words.
Now, this evening, with his head in his hand, he knew that the end had
already been reached. To pass his mother's door without a greeting,
especially since he was well aware that she was ill, was so unprecedented,
so violent an act, that it seemed to have the finality of something criminal.
His mother had said two days ago: "This can't go on. It is killing me."
"All right," he flashed. "It sha'n't. I'll get out."
"I suppose you'll marry," she said, "on fifteen a week."
He spoke bitterly:
"I'll get out of New York altogether. I'll work my way through college...."

She almost sneered at the suggestion. And this sneer rankled. He
telegraphed his friend, at a little freshwater college, and Samuel telegraphed
back: "Come." That day he drew his money from the bank, and got his
tickets for the midnight sleeper. And he did all this with perfect cruelty....
But now the time had come to go, and things were different. An autumn
wind was blowing out of the park, doubtless carrying seeds and dead
leaves, and gusting down the street, blowing about the sparkling lamps,
eddying in the area-ways, rapping in passing on the loose windows.... The
lights in the houses were all warm, because you saw only the glowing
yellow shades: Third Avenue was lit up and down with shop-windows, and
people were doing late marketing. It was a night when nothing seemed so
sweet, or sane, or comfortable, as a soft-lighted room, and a family sitting
together. Soft voices, familiarity, warm intimacy, the feeling of security and
ease, the unspoken welling of love and understanding: these belonged to
such a night, when the whole world seemed dying and there was only man
to keep the fires burning against death.
And so, out of its tomb, the little child in Paul stepped out again, beautiful
and sweet with love and longing. And this little child said to him: "Sacrifice
—surrender—let the hard heart melt with pity.... There is no freedom except
in love, which gives all." For a moment Paul's vivid imagination, which
presented everything to him like works of dramatic art, pictured himself
going down the steps, as once he had done, creeping to his mother's bed,
flinging himself down, sobbing and moaning, "Forgive me. Forgive me."
But just then he heard the stairs creak and thought that his eldest sister was
coming up to question him. His heart began a frightened throbbing: he
shook with a guilty fear, and at once he saved himself with a bitter
resurgence of cruel anger. He hated his sister, he told himself, with a livid
hatred. She always sided with his mother. She was bossy and smart and
high and mighty. He knew what he would do. He jumped up, went to the
door, and locked it. So—she could beat her head on the door, for all he
cared!
He packed. He got out his valise, and filled it with his necessaries. He
would let the rest go: the books, the old clothes. He was going to start life
all over again He was going to wipe out the past....

When he was finished, he anxiously opened his pocket-book to see if the
tickets were safe. He looked at them. It was now ten o'clock. Two hours—
and then the long train would pull out, and he would be gone.... To-morrow
morning they'd come downstairs. His sister probably would sit at the foot of
the table, instead of himself. The table would seem small with himself gone.
Perhaps the house would seem a little empty. Automatically they would
wait for the click of his key in the front door lock at seven in the evening.
He would not come home at all....
His mother might die. She had told him this was killing her.... It was so easy
for him to go, so hard for her to stay.... She had invested most of her capital
of hopes and dreams and love in him: he was the son; he was the first man.
And now he was shattering the very structure of her life....
Easy for him to go! He slumped into the chair again, at the table.... The
wind blew strongly, and he knew just how the grey street looked with its
spots of yellow sparkling lamplight; its shadows, its glowing windows....
He knew the smell of the fish-shop, the strange raw sea-smell, the sight of
glittering iridescent scales, the beauty of lean curved fishes, the red of
broiled lobsters, the pink-cheeked swarthy fishman, the dark loveliness of
Agnes.... He had written to Agnes. His mother didn't know of it, but he was
done with Agnes. Agnes meant nothing to him. She had only been a way
out, something to cling to, something to fight for in this fight for his life....
Fight for his life! Had he not read of this in books, how the young must slay
the old in order that life might go on, just as the earth must die in autumn so
that the seeds of spring may be planted? Had he not read Ibsen's Master
Builder, where the aging hero hears the dread doom which youth brings,
"the younger generation knocking at the door"? He was the younger
generation, he was the young hero. And now, at once, a vivid dramatization
took place in his brain: it unwound clear as hallucination. He forgot
everything else, he sat there as a writer sits, living his fiction, making
strange gestures with face and hands, muttering words under his breath....
In this phantasy, he saw himself rising, appearing a little older, a little
stronger, and on his face a look of divine compassion and understanding,
yet a firmness inexorable as fate. He repeated Hamlet's words: "For I am

cruel only to be kind." Blame life, fate, the gods who decree that a man
must live his own life: don't blame me.
He unlocked the door, crossed the big hall, stepped down the stairs. His
mother's door was shut. The younger generation must knock at it. He
knocked. A low, sad voice said: "Come." He opened the door.
This was the way it always was: a pin-point of light by the western window,
a newspaper pinned to the glass globe of the gas-jet to shield his mother's
eyes, the wide range of warm shadow, and in the shadow the two beds. But
his sister was not in one of them. His mother was alone....
He went to the bedside....
"Mother!"
"Paul!"
He took her hand.
"Are you feeling better?" he asked.
"A little more quiet, Paul...."
"I am very glad...."
Now there was silence.... Then he spoke quietly, honestly, candidly. It was
the only way. Why can't human beings be simple with one another, be
sweetly reasonable? Isn't a little understanding worth more than pride and
anger? To understand is to forgive. Surely any one must know that.
Starting to speak, he sat down on the chair beside the bed, still holding her
hand....
"Mother, come let's talk to one another. You think perhaps I have stopped
loving you. It isn't true. I love you deeply. All this is breaking my heart. But
how can I help it? Can't you see that I am young, and my life all before me?
The best of your life is behind you. You have lived, I haven't. You have
tasted the sweet mysteries of love, the agonies of death and birth, the terrors
of lonely struggle. And I must have these, too. I am hungry for them. I can't
help myself. I am like a leaf in the wind, like a rain-drop in the storm....

How can you keep me here? If you compel me, I'll become a shadow, all
twisted and broken. I won't be a man, but a helpless child. Perhaps I shall
go out of my mind. And what good will that do you? You will suffer more if
I stay, than if I go. Oh, understand me, mother, understand me!"
His mother began to cry. She spoke at first as she always spoke, and then
more like a mother in a poem.
"Understand? What do you understand? You know nothing about life. Oh, I
only wish you had children and your children turned against you! That's the
only way that you will ever learn.... I worked for you so hard. I gave up
everything for my children. And your father died, and I went on alone, a
woman with a great burden.... What sort of life have I had? Sacrifice, toil,
tears.... I skimped along. I wore the same dress year after year, for five, six
years.... I hung over your sickbeds, I taught you at my knees. I have known
the bitterness of child-bearing, and the bitter cry of children.... I have fought
alone for my little ones.... And you, Paul! You who were the darling of my
heart, my little man, you who said you would take your father's place and
take care of me and of your sisters and brother! You who were to repay me
for everything; to give me a future, to comfort my old age, the staff I leaned
on, my comfort, my son! I was proud of you as you grew up: so proud to
see your pride, and your ambition. I knew you would succeed, that you
would have fame and power and wealth, and I should be the proudest
mother in the world! This was my dream.... Now I see you a failure, one
who cares for nothing but self-indulgence and pleasure, a rolling stone, a
flitter from place to place, and I—I am an old woman, deserted, left alone to
wither in bitterness.... I gave everything to you—and you—you give back
despair, loneliness, anguish. I gave you life: you turn on me and destroy me
for the gift.... Oh, mother-love! What man will understand it—the piercing
anguish, the roots that clutch the deep heart?... I feel the chill of death
creeping over me...."
The tears rolled down Paul's cheeks. He pressed her hand now with both of
his.
"Oh, mother, but I do understand! I have understood always, I have tried so
hard to help you. I have tried so hard to be a good son. But this is something
greater than I. We are in the hands of God, mother, and it is the law that the

young must leave the old. Why do parents expect the impossible of their
children? Does not the Bible say, 'You must leave father and mother, and
cleave to me'? Didn't you leave grandmother and grandpa, to go to your
husband? Can't you remember when you were young, and your whole soul
carried you away to your own life and your own future? Mother, let us part
with understanding, let us part with love."
"But when are you going, Paul?"
"To-night."
His mother flung her arms about him desperately and clung to him....
"I can't let you go, Paul," she moaned.
"Oh, mother," he sobbed. "This is breaking my heart...."
"It is Agnes you are going to," she whispered.
"No, mother," he cried. "It is not Agnes. I am going to college. I shall never
marry. I shall still take care of you. Think—every vacation I will be back
here...."
She relaxed, lay back, and his inventions failed. He had a confused sense of
soothing her, of gentleness and reconciliation, of a last good-bye....
And now he sat, head on hand, slowly realizing again the little gas-lit room,
the shaking window, the autumn wind. A throb of fear pulsed through his
heart. He had passed his mother's door without greeting her. And there was
his valise, and here his tickets. And the time? It was nearly eleven.... A great
heaviness of futility and despair weighed him down. He felt incapable of
action. He felt that he had done some terrible deed—like striking his mother
in the face—something unforgivable, unreversible, struck through and
through with finality.... He felt more and more cold and brutal, with the
sullenness of the criminal who can't undo his crime and won't admit his
guilt....
Was it all over, then? Was he really leaving? Fear, and a prophetic breath of
the devastating loneliness he should yet know, came upon him, paralyzed
his mind, made him weak and aghast. He was going out into the night of
death, launching on his frail raft into the barren boundless ocean of

darkness, leaving the last landmarks, drifting out in utter nakedness and
loneliness.... All the future grew black and impenetrable; but he knew
shapes of terror, demons of longing and grief and guilt loomed there,
waiting for him. He knew that he was about to understand a little of life in a
very ancient and commonplace way: the way of experience and of reality:
that at first hand he was to have the taste against his palate of that bitterness
and desolation, that terror and helplessness, which make the songs and
fictions of man one endless tragedy.... Destiny was taking him, as the jailer
who comes to the condemned man's cell on the morning of the execution.
There was no escape. No end, but death....
He was leaving everything that was comfort in a bleak world, everything
that was safe and tried and known in a world of unthinkable perils and
mysteries. Only this he knew, still a child, still on the inside of his mother's
house.... He knew now how terrible, how deep, how human were the cords
that bound him to his mother, how fierce the love, by the fear and deadly
helplessness he felt.... What could he have been about all these months of
darkening the house, of paining his mother and the children, of bringing
matters to such inexorable finalities? Was he sane? Was he now possessed
of some demon, some beast of low desire? Freedom? What was freedom?
Could there be freedom without love?
And now, as he sat there, there came slow deliberate footsteps on the stairs.
There was no mistaking the sounds. It was Cora, his older sister.... His heart
palpitated wildly, he shook with fear, the colour left his cheeks, and he tried
to set his face and his throat like flint not to betray himself. She came
straight on. She knocked.
"Paul," she said in a peremptory tone, clothed with all the authority of his
mother....
He grew cold all over, his eyelids narrowed; he felt brutal....
"What is it?" he asked hard.
"Mother wants you to come right down."
"I will come," he said.

Her footsteps departed.... He rose slowly, heavily, like the man who must
now face the executioner.... He stuck his pocketbook back in his coat and
picked up his valise. Mechanically he looked about the room. Then he
unlocked and opened the door, shut off the gas, and went into the lighted
hall.
And as he descended the steps he felt ever smaller before the growing terror
of the world. Never had he been more of a child than at this moment: never
had he longed more fiercely to sob and cry out and give over everything....
How had this guilt descended upon him? What had he done? Why was all
this necessary? Who was forcing him through this strange and frightful
experience? He went on, lower and lower....
The door of his mother's room was a little open. It was all as it had always
been—the pin-point of light, the shading newspaper, the sick-room silence,
the warm shadow.... He paused a second to summon up strength, to combat
the monster of fear and guilt in his heart. He tried with all his little boyish
might to smooth out his face, to set it straight and firm. He pushed the door,
set down the valise, entered: pale, large-eyed, looking hard and desperate.
He did not see his sister at all, though she sat under the light. His mother he
hardly saw: had the sense of a towel binding her head, and the dim form
under the bedclothes. He stepped clumsily—he was trembling so—to the
foot of her bed, and grasped the brass rail for support....
His mother's voice was low and thick; a terrible voice. Her throat was
swollen, and she could speak only with difficulty. The voice accused him. It
said plainly: "It was you did this."
She said: "Paul, this has got to end."
His tongue seemed the fork of a snake, his words came with such deadly
coldness....
"It will end to-night."
"How ... to-night?"
"I'm leaving.... I'm going west...."
"West.... Where?"

"To Sam's...."
"Oh," said his mother....
There was a long cruel silence. He shut his eyes, overcome with a sort of
horror.... Then she turned her face a little away, and he heard the faintly
breathed words....
"This is the end of me...."
Still he said nothing. She turned toward him, with a groan.
"Have you nothing to say?"
Again he spoke with deadly coldness....
"Nothing...."
She waited a moment: then she spoke....
"You have no feelings. When you set out to do a thing, you will trample
over every one. I have never been able to do anything with you. You may
become a great man, Paul: but I pity any one who loves you, any one who
gets in your path. You will kill whatever holds you—always.... I was a fool
to give birth to you: a great fool to count on you.... Well, it's over.... You
have your way...."
He was amazed: he trembling there, guilty, afraid, horrified, his whole soul
beseeching the comfort of her arms! He a cold trampler?
He stood, with all the feeling of one who is falsely condemned, and yet with
all the guilt of one who has sinned....
And then, suddenly, a wild animal cry came from his mother's throat....
"Oh," she cried, "how terrible it is to have children!"
His heart echoed her cry.... The executioner's knife seemed to strike his
throat....
He stood a long while in the silence.... Then his mother turned in the bed,
sideways, and covered her face with the counterpane.... His sister rose up

stiffly, whispering:
"She's going to sleep."
He stood, dead.... He turned like a wound-up mechanism, went to the door,
picked up his valise, and fumbled his way through the house.... The outer
door he shut very softly....
He must take the Lexington Avenue car. Yes; that was the quickest way. He
faced west. The great wind of autumn came with a glorious gusto, doubtless
with flying seeds and flying leaves, chanting the song of the generations,
and of them that die and of them that are born.

FOOTNOTES:
[12] Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company.
Copyright, 1921, by James Oppenheim.

THE DUMMY-CHUCKER[13]
By ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

From The Cosmopolitan

There were many women on East Fourteenth Street. With the seeing eye of
the artist, the dummy-chucker looked them over and rejected them. Kindly-
seeming, generously fat, the cheap movie houses disgorged them. A dozen
alien tongues smote the air, and every one of them hinted of far lands of
poverty, of journeys made and hardships undergone. No better field for
beggary in all Manhattan's bounteous acreage.
But the dummy-chucker shook his head and shuffled ever westward. These
were good souls, but—they thought in cents. Worse than that, they
translated their financial thoughts into the pitiful coinage of their
birthplaces. And in the pocket of the dummy-chucker rested a silver dollar.
A gaunt man, who towered high, and whose tongue held the cadences of the
wide spaces, had slipped this dollar into the receptive hand of the dummy-
chucker. True, it was almost a fortnight ago, and the man might have gone
back to his Western home—but Broadway had yielded him up to the
dummy-chucker. Broadway might yield up such another.
At Union Square, the dummy-chucker turned north. Past the Flatiron
Building he shuffled, until, at length, the Tenderloin unfolded itself before
him. These were the happy hunting-grounds!
Of course—and he glanced behind him quickly—there were more fly cops
on Broadway than on the lower East Side. One of them had dug his bony
fingers between the shabby collar of the dummy-chucker's coat and the lank
hair that hung down his neck. He had yanked the dummy-chucker to his
feet. He had dragged his victim to a patrol-box; he had taken him to a police
station, whence he had been conveyed to Jefferson Market Court, where a
judge had sentenced him to a sojourn on Blackwell's Island.

That had been ten days ago. This very day, the municipal ferry had landed
the dummy-chucker, with others of his slinking kind, upon Manhattan's
shores again. Not for a long time would the memory of the Island menu be
effaced from the dummy-chucker's palate, the locked doors be banished
from his mental vision.
A man might be arrested on Broadway, but he might also get the money.
Timorously, the dummy-chucker weighed the two possibilities. He felt the
dollar in his pocket. At a street in the Forties, he turned westward. Beyond
Eighth Avenue there was a place where the shadow of prohibition was only
a shadow.
Prices had gone up, but, as Finisterre Joe's bartender informed him, there
was more kick in a glass of the stuff that cost sixty cents to-day than there
had been in a barrel of the old juice. And, for a good customer, Finisterre
Joe's bartender would shade the price a trifle. The dummy-chucker received
two portions of the crudely blended poison that passed for whisky in
exchange for his round silver dollar. It was with less of a shuffle and more
of a stride that he retraced his steps toward Broadway.
Slightly north of Times Square, he surveyed his field of action. Across the
street, a vaudeville house was discharging its mirth-surfeited audience. Half
a block north, laughing groups testified that the comedy they had just left
had been as funny as its press-agent claimed. The dummy-chucker shook
his head. He moved south, his feet taking on that shuffle which they had
lost temporarily.
"She Loved and Lost"—that was the name of the picture being run this
week at the Concorde. Outside was billed a huge picture of the star, a lady
who received more money for making people weep than most actors obtain
for making them laugh. The dummy-chucker eyed the picture approvingly.
He took his stand before the main entrance. This was the place! If he tried
to do business with a flock of people that had just seen Charlie Chaplin,
he'd fail. He knew! Fat women who'd left the twins at home with the
neighbor's cook in order that they might have a good cry at the Concorde—
these were his mutton-heads.
He reeled slightly as several flappers passed—just for practise. Ten days on
Blackwell's hadn't spoiled his form. They drew away from him; yet, from

their manners, he knew that they did not suspect him of being drunk. Well,
hurrah for prohibition, after all! Drunkenness was the last thing people
suspected of a hard-working man nowadays. He slipped his hand in his
pocket. They were coming now—the fat women with the babies at home,
their handkerchiefs still at their eyes. His hand slipped to his mouth. His
jaws moved savagely. One thing was certain: out of to-day's stake he'd buy
some decent-tasting soap. This awful stuff that he'd borrowed from the
Island——
The stoutest woman paused; she screamed faintly as the dummy-chucker
staggered, pitched forward, and fell at her short-vamped feet. Excitedly she
grasped her neighbor's arm.
"He's gotta fit!"
The neighbor bent over the prostrate dummy-chucker.
"Ep'lepsy," she announced. "Look at the foam on his lips."
"Aw, the poor man!"
"Him so strong-looking, too!"
"Ain't it the truth? These husky-looking men sometimes are the sickliest."
The dummy-chucker stirred. He sat up feebly. With his sleeve, he wiped
away the foam. Dazedly he spoke.
"If I had a bite to eat——"
He looked upward at the first stout woman. Well and wisely had he chosen
his scene. Movie tickets cost fractions of a dollar. There is always some
stray silver in the bead bag of a movie patron. Into the dummy-chucker's
outstretched palm fell pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters. There was present
to-day no big-hearted Westerner with silver dollars, but here was
comparative wealth. Already the dummy-chucker saw himself again at
Finisterre Joe's, this time to purchase no bottled courage but to buy
decantered ease.
"T'ank, ladies," he murmured. "If I can get a bite to eat and rest up——"

"'Rest up!'" The shrill jeer of a newsboy broke in upon his pathetic speech.
"Rest up again on the Island! That's the kind of a rest up you'll get, y' big
tramp."
"Can't you see the man's sick?" The stoutest one turned indignantly upon
the newsboy. But the scoffer held his ground.
"'Sick?' Sure he's sick! Eatin' soap makes anyone sick. Youse dames is easy.
He's chuckin' a dummy."
"'A dummy?'"
The dummy-chucker sat a bit straighter.
"Sure, ma'am. That's his game. He t'rows phony fits. He eats a bit of soap
and makes his mouth foam. Last week, he got pinched right near here——"
But the dummy-chucker heard no more. He rolled sidewise just as the cry:
"Police!" burst from the woman's lips. He reached the curb, rose, burst
through the gathering crowd, and rounded a corner at full speed.
He was half-way to Eighth Avenue, and burning lungs had slowed him to a
jog-trot, when a motor-car pulled up alongside the curb. It kept gentle pace
with the fugitive. A shrewd-featured young man leaned from its fashionably
sloped wheel.
"Better hop aboard," he suggested. "That policeman is fat, but he has
speed."
The dummy-chucker glanced over his shoulder. Looming high as the
Woolworth Building, fear overcoming the dwarfing tendency of distance,
came a policeman. The dummy-chucker leaped to the motor's running-
board. He climbed into the vacant front seat.
"Thanks, feller," he grunted. "A li'l speed, please."
The young man chuckled. He rounded the corner into Eighth Avenue and
darted north among the trucks.
At Columbus Circle, the dummy-chucker spoke.
"Thanks again, friend," he said. "I'll be steppin' off here."

His rescuer glanced at him.
"Want to earn a hundred dollars?"
"Quitcher kiddin'," said the dummy-chucker.
"No, no; this is serious," said the young man.
The dummy-chucker leaned luxuriously back in his seat.
"Take me anywhere, friend," he said.
Half-way round the huge circle at Fifty-ninth Street, the young man guided
the car. Then he shot into the park. They curved eastward. They came out
on Fifth Avenue, somewhere in the Seventies. They shot eastward another
half-block, and then the car stopped in front of an apartment-house. The
young man pressed the button on the steering-wheel. In response to the
short blast of the electric horn, a uniformed man appeared. The young man
alighted. The dummy-chucker followed suit.
"Take the car around to the garage, Andrews," said the young man. He
nodded to the dummy-chucker. In a daze, the mendicant followed his
rescuer. He entered a gorgeously mirrored and gilded hall. He stepped into
an elevator chauffeured by a West Indian of the haughtiest blood. The
dummy-chucker was suddenly conscious of his tattered garb, his ill-fitting,
run-down shoes. He stepped, when they alighted from the lift, as gingerly as
though he trod on tacks.
A servant in livery, as had been the waiting chauffeur downstairs, opened a
door. If he was surprised at his master's choice of guest, he was too well
trained to show it. He did not rebel even when ordered to serve sandwiches
and liquor to the dummy-chucker.
"You seem hungry," commented the young man.
The dummy-chucker reached for another sandwich with his left hand while
he poured himself a drink of genuine Scotch with his right.
"And thirsty," he grunted.
"Go to it," observed his host genially.

The dummy-chucker went to it for a good ten minutes. Then he leaned back
in the heavily upholstered chair which the man servant had drawn up for
him. He stared round him.
"Smoke?" asked his host.
The dummy-chucker nodded. He selected a slim panetela and pinched it
daintily between the nails of his thumb and forefinger. His host watched the
operation with interest.
"Why?" he asked.
"Better than cuttin' the end off," explained the dummy-chucker. "It's a good
smoke," he added, puffing.
"You know tobacco," said his host. "Where did you learn?"
"Oh, we all have our ups and downs," replied the dummy-chucker. "But
don't get nervous. I ain't goin' to tell you that I was a millionaire's son,
educated at Harvard. I'm a bum."
"Doesn't seem to bother you," said his host.
"It don't," asserted the dummy-chucker. "Except when the police butt into
my game. I just got off Blackwell's Island this morning."
"And almost went back this afternoon."
The dummy-chucker nodded.
"Almost," he said. His eyes wandered around the room. "Some dump!" he
stated. Then his manner became business-like. "You mentioned a hundred
dollars—what for?"
The young man shrugged.
"Not hard work. You merely have to look like a gentleman, and act like
——"
"Like a bum?" asked the dummy-chucker.
"Well, something like that."

The dummy-chucker passed his hand across his stubby chin.
"Shoot!" he said. "Anything short of murder—anything, friend."
His host leaned eagerly forward.
"There's a girl—" he began.
The dummy-chucker nodded.
"There always is," he interrupted. "I forgot to mention that I bar kidnaping,
too."
"It's barred," said the young man. He hitched his chair a trifle nearer his
guest. "She's beautiful. She's young."
"And the money? The coin? The good red gold?"
"I have enough for two. I don't care about her money."
"Neither do I," said the dummy-chucker; "so long as I get my hundred.
Shoot!"
"About a year ago," resumed the host, "she accepted, after a long courtship,
a young man by the name of—oh, let's call him Jones."
The dummy-chucker inhaled happily.
"Call him any darned thing you like," he said cheerily.
"Jones was a drunkard," said the host.
"And she married him?" The dummy-chucker's eyebrows lifted slightly.
"No. She told him that if he'd quit drinking she'd marry him. She stipulated
that he go without drink for one year."
The dummy-chucker reached for a fresh cigar. He lighted it and leaned back
farther in the comfortable chair.
"Jones," continued the young man, "had tried to quit before. He knew
himself pretty well. He knew that, even with war-time prohibition just
round the corner, he couldn't keep away from liquor. Not while he stayed in

New York. But a classmate of his had been appointed head of an expedition
that was to conduct exploration work in Brazil. He asked his classmate for a
place in the party. You see, he figured that in the wilds of Brazil there
wouldn't be any chance for drunkenness."
"A game guy," commented the dummy-chucker. "Well, what happened?"
"He died of jungle-fever two months ago," was the answer. "The news just
reached Rio Janeiro yesterday."
The dummy-chucker lifted his glass of Scotch.
"To a regular feller," he said, and drank. He set his glass down gently. "And
the girl? I suppose she's all shot to pieces?"
"She doesn't know," said the host quietly.
The dummy-chucker's eyebrows lifted again.
"I begin to get you," he said. "I'm the messenger from Brazil who breaks the
sad news to her, eh?"
The young man shook his head.
"The news isn't to be broken to her—not yet. You see—well, I was Jones'
closest friend. He left his will with me, his personal effects, and all that. So
I'm the one that received the wire of his death. In a month or so, of course,
it will be published in the newspapers—when letters have come from the
explorers. But, just now, I'm the only one that knows it."
"Except me," said the dummy-chucker.
The young man smiled dryly.
"Except you. And you won't tell. Ever wear evening clothes?"
The dummy-chucker stiffened. Then he laughed sardonically.
"Oh, yes; when I was at Princeton. What's the idea?"
His host studied him carefully.

"Well, with a shave, and a hair-cut, and a manicure, and the proper clothing,
and the right setting—well, if a person had only a quick glance—that
person might think you were Jones."
The dummy-chucker carefully brushed the ashes from his cigar upon a tray.
"I guess I'm pretty stupid to-night. I still don't see it."
"You will," asserted his host. "You see, she's a girl who's seen a great deal
of the evil of drink. She has a horror of it. If she thought that Jones had
broken his pledge to her, she'd throw him over."
"'Throw him over?' But he's dead!" said the dummy-chucker.
"She doesn't know that," retorted his host.
"Why don't you tell her?"
"Because I want to marry her."
"Well, I should think the quickest way to get her would be to tell her about
Jones——"
"You don't happen to know the girl," interrupted the other. "She's a girl of
remarkable conscience. If I should tell her that Jones died in Brazil, she'd
enshrine him in her memory. He'd be a hero who had died upon the battle-
field. More than that—he'd be a hero who had died upon the battle-field in a
war to which she had sent him. His death would be upon her soul. Her only
expiation would be to be faithful to him forever."
"I won't argue about it," said the dummy-chucker. "I don't know her. Only—
I guess your whisky has got me. I don't see it at all."
His host leaned eagerly forward now.
"She's going to the opera to-night with her parents. But, before she goes,
she's going to dine with me at the Park Square. Suppose, while she's there,
Jones should come in. Suppose that he should come in reeling, noisy,
drunk! She'd marry me to-morrow."
"I'll take your word for it," said the dummy-chucker. "Only, when she's
learned that Jones had died two months ago in Brazil——"

"She'll be married to me then," responded the other fiercely. "What I get, I
can hold. If she were Jones' wife, I'd tell her of his death. I'd know that,
sooner or later, I'd win her. But if she learns now that he died while
struggling to make himself worthy of her, she'll never give to another man
what she withheld from him."
"I see," said the dummy-chucker slowly. "And you want me to——"
"There'll be a table by the door in the main dining-room engaged in Jones'
name. You'll walk in there at a quarter to eight. You'll wear Jones' dinner
clothes. I have them here. You'll wear the studs that he wore, his cuff-links.
More than that, you'll set down upon the table, with a flourish, his
monogrammed flask. You'll be drunk, noisy, disgraceful——"
"How long will I be all that—in the hotel?" asked the dummy-chucker
dryly.
"That's exactly the point," said the other. "You'll last about thirty seconds.
The girl and I will be on the far side of the room. I'll take care that she sees
you enter. Then, when you've been quietly ejected, I'll go over to the mâitre
d'hôtel to make inquiries. I'll bring back to the girl the flask which you will
have left upon the table. If she has any doubt that you are Jones, the flask
will dispel it.
"And then?" asked the dummy-chucker.
"Why, then," responded his host, "I propose to her. You see, I think it was
pity that made her accept Jones in the beginning. I think that she cares for
me."
"And you really think that I look enough like Jones to put this over?"
"In the shaded light of the dining-room, in Jones' clothes—well, I'm risking
a hundred dollars on it. Will you do it?"
The dummy-chucker grinned.
"Didn't I say I'd do anything, barring murder? Where are the clothes?"
One hour and a half later, the dummy-chucker stared at himself in the long
mirror in his host's dressing-room. He had bathed, not as Blackwell's Island

prisoners bathe, but in a luxurious tub that had a head-rest, in scented water,
soft as the touch of a baby's fingers. Then his host's man servant had cut his
hair, had shaved him, had massaged him until color crept into the pale
cheeks. The sheerest of knee-length linen underwear touched a body that
knew only rough cotton. Silk socks, heavy, gleaming, snugly encased his
ankles. Upon his feet were correctly dull pumps. That the trousers were a
wee bit short mattered little. In these dancing-days, trousers should not be
too long. And the fit of the coat over his shoulders—he carried them in a
fashion unwontedly straight as he gazed at his reflection—balanced the
trousers' lack of length. The soft shirt-bosom gave freely, comfortably as he
breathed. Its plaited whiteness enthralled him. He turned anxiously to his
host.
"Will I do?" he asked.
"Better than I'd hoped," said the other. "You look like a gentleman."
The dummy-chucker laughed gaily.
"I feel like one," he declared.
"You understand what you are to do?" demanded the host.
"It ain't a hard part to act," replied the dummy-chucker.
"And you can act," said the other. "The way you fooled those women in
front of the Concorde proved that you——"
"Sh-sh!" exclaimed the dummy-chucker reproachfully. "Please don't remind
me of what I was before I became a gentleman."
His host laughed.
"You're all right." He looked at his watch. "I'll have to leave now. I'll send
the car back after you. Don't be afraid of trouble with the hotel people. I'll
explain that I know you, and fix matters up all right. Just take the table at
the right hand side as you enter——"
"Oh, I've got it all right," said the dummy-chucker. "Better slip me
something on account. I may have to pay something——"

"You get nothing now," was the stern answer. "One hundred dollars when I
get back here. And," he added, "if it should occur to you at the hotel that
you might pawn these studs, or the flask, or the clothing for more than a
hundred, let me remind you that my chauffeur will be watching one
entrance, my valet another, and my chef another."
The dummy-chucker returned his gaze scornfully.
"Do I look," he asked, "like the sort of man who'd steal?"
His host shook his head.
"You certainly don't," he admitted.
The dummy-chucker turned back to the mirror. He was still entranced with
his own reflection, twenty minutes later, when the valet told him that the car
was waiting. He looked like a millionaire. He stole another glance at
himself after he had slipped easily into the fur-lined overcoat that the valet
held for him, after he had set somewhat rakishly upon his head the soft
black-felt hat that was the latest accompaniment to the dinner coat.
Down-stairs, he spoke to Andrews, the chauffeur.
"Drive across the Fifty-ninth Street bridge first."
The chauffeur stared at him.
"Who you given' orders to?" he demanded.
The dummy-chucker stepped closer to the man.
"You heard my order?"
His hands, busily engaged in buttoning his gloves, did not clench. His voice
was not raised. And Andrews must have outweighed him by thirty pounds.
Yet the chauffeur stepped back and touched his hat.
"Yes, sir," he muttered.
The dummy-chucker smiled.

"The lower classes," he said to himself, "know rank and position when they
see it."
His smile became a grin as he sank back in the limousine that was his host's
evening conveyance. It became almost complacent as the car slid down
Park Avenue. And when, at length, it had reached the center of the great
bridge that spans the East River, he knocked upon the glass. The chauffeur
obediently stopped the car. The dummy-chucker's grin was absolutely
complacent now.
Down below, there gleamed lights, the lights of ferries, of sound steamers,
and—of Blackwell's Island. This morning, he had left there, a lying
mendicant. To-night, he was a gentleman. He knocked again upon the glass.
Then, observing the speaking-tube, he said through it languidly:
"The Park Square, Andrews."
An obsequious doorman threw open the limousine door as the car stopped
before the great hotel. He handed the dummy-chucker a ticket.
"Number of your car, sir," he said obsequiously.
"Ah, yes, of course," said the dummy-chucker. He felt in his pocket. Part of
the silver that the soft-hearted women of the movies had bestowed upon
him this afternoon found repository in the doorman's hand.
A uniformed boy whirled the revolving door that the dummy-chucker might
pass into the hotel.
"The coat-room? Dining here, sir? Past the news-stand, sir, to your left.
Thank you, sir." The boy's bow was as profound as though the quarter in his
palm had been placed there by a duke.
The girl who received his coat and hat smiled as pleasantly and
impersonally upon the dummy-chucker as she did upon the whiskered, fine-
looking old gentleman who handed her his coat at the same time. She called
the dummy-chucker's attention to the fact that his tie was a trifle loose.
The dummy-chucker walked to the big mirror that stands in the corner
made by the corridor that parallels Fifty-ninth Street and the corridor that
separates the tea-room from the dining-room. His clumsy fingers found

difficulty with the tie. The fine-looking old gentleman, adjusting his own
tie, stepped closer.
"Beg pardon, sir. May I assist you?"
The dummy-chucker smiled a grateful assent. The old gentleman fumbled a
moment with the tie.
"I think that's better," he said. He bowed as one man of the world might to
another, and turned away.
Under his breath, the dummy-chucker swore gently.
"You'd think, the way he helped me, that I belonged to the Four Hundred."
He glanced down the corridor. In the tea-room were sitting groups who
awaited late arrivals. Beautiful women, correctly garbed, distinguished-
looking men. Their laughter sounded pleasantly above the subdued strains
of the orchestra. Many of them looked at the dummy-chucker. Their eyes
rested upon him for that well-bred moment that denotes acceptance.
"One of themselves," said the dummy-chucker to himself.
Well, why not? Once again he looked at himself in the mirror. There might
be handsomer men present in this hotel, but—was there any one who wore
his clothes better? He turned and walked down the corridor.
The mâitre d'hôtel stepped forward inquiringly as the dummy-chucker
hesitated in the doorway.
"A table, sir?"
"You have one reserved for me. This right-hand one by the door."
"Ah, yes, of course, sir. This way, sir."
He turned toward the table. Over the heads of intervening diners, the
dummy-chucker saw his host. The shaded lights upon the table at which the
young man sat revealed, not too clearly yet well enough, the features of a
girl.
"A lady!" said the dummy-chucker, under his breath. "The real thing!"

As he stood there, the girl raised her head. She did not look toward the
dummy-chucker, could not see him. But he could see the proud line of her
throat, the glory of her golden hair. And opposite her he could see the
features of his host, could note how illy that shrewd nose and slit of a
mouth consorted with the gentle face of the girl. And then, as the mâitre
d'hôtel beckoned, he remembered that he had left the flask, the
monogrammed flask, in his overcoat pocket.
"Just a moment," he said.
He turned and walked back toward the corner where was his coat. In the
distance, he saw some one, approaching him, noted the free stride, the
carriage of the head, the set of the shoulders. And then, suddenly, he saw
that the "some one" was himself. The mirror was guilty of the illusion.
Once again he stood before it, admiring himself. He summoned the face of
the girl who was sitting in the dining-room before his mental vision. And
then he turned abruptly to the check-girl.
"I've changed my mind," he said. "My coat, please."

He was lounging before the open fire when three-quarters of an hour later
his host was admitted to the luxurious apartment. Savagely the young man
pulled off his coat and approached the dummy-chucker.
"I hardly expected to find you here," he said.
The dummy-chucker shrugged.
"You said the doors were watched. I couldn't make an easy getaway. So I
rode back here in your car. And when I got here, your man made me wait,
so—here we are," he finished easily.
"'Here we are!' Yes! But when you were there—I saw you at the entrance to
the dining-room—for God's sake, why didn't you do what you'd agreed to
do?"

The dummy-chucker turned languidly in his chair. He eyed his host
curiously.
"Listen, feller," he said: "I told you that I drew the line at murder, didn't I?"
"'Murder?' What do you mean? What murder was involved?"
The dummy-chucker idly blew a smoke ring.
"Murder of faith in a woman's heart," he said slowly. "Look at me! Do I
look the sort who'd play your dirty game?"
The young man stood over him.
"Bannon," he called. The valet entered the room. "Take the clothes off this
—this bum!" snapped the host. "Give him his rags."
He clenched his fists, but the dummy-chucker merely shrugged. The young
man drew back while his guest followed the valet into another room.
Ten minutes later, the host seized the dummy-chucker by the tattered sleeve
of his grimy jacket. He drew him before the mirror.
"Take a look at yourself, you—bum!" he snapped. "Do you look, now, like
the sort of man who'd refuse to earn an easy hundred?"
The dummy-chucker stared at himself. Gone was the debonair gentleman of
a quarter of an hour ago. Instead, there leered back at him a pasty-faced,
underfed vagrant, dressed in the tatters of unambitious, satisfied poverty.
"Bannon," called the host, "throw him out!"
For a moment, the dummy-chucker's shoulders squared, as they had been
squared when the dinner jacket draped them. Then they sagged. He offered
no resistance when Bannon seized his collar. And Bannon, the valet, was a
smaller man than himself.
He cringed when the colored elevator-man sneered at him. He dodged when
little Bannon, in the mirrored vestibule raised a threatening hand. And he
shuffled as he turned toward Central Park.

But as he neared Columbus Circle, his gait quickened. At Finisterre Joe's
he'd get a drink. He tumbled in his pockets. Curse the luck! He'd given
every cent of his afternoon earnings to doormen and pages and coat-room
girls!
His pace slackened again as he turned down Broadway. His feet were
dragging as he reached the Concorde moving-picture theater. His hand,
sunk deep in his torn pocket, touched something. It was a tiny piece of soap.
As the audience filed sadly out from the teary, gripping drama of "She
Loved And Lost," the dummy-chucker's hand went from his pocket to his
lips. He reeled, staggered, fell. His jaws moved savagely. Foam appeared
upon his lips. A fat woman shrank away from him, then leaned forward in
quick sympathy.
"He's gotta fit!" she cried.
"Ep'lepsy," said her companion pityingly.

FOOTNOTES:
[13] Copyright, 1920, by The International Magazine Company.
Copyright, 1921, by Arthur Somers Roche.

BUTTERFLIES[14]
By ROSE SIDNEY

From The Pictorial Review

The wind rose in a sharp gust, rattling the insecure windows and sighing
forlornly about the corners of the house. The door unlatched itself, swung
inward hesitatingly, and hung wavering for a moment on its sagging hinges.
A formless cloud of gray fog blew into the warm, steamy room. But
whatever ghostly visitant had paused upon the threshold, he had evidently
decided not to enter, for the catch snapped shut with a quick, passionate
vigor. The echo of the slamming door rang eerily through the house.
Mart Brenner's wife laid down the ladle with which she had been stirring
the contents of a pot that was simmering on the big, black stove, and
dragging her crippled foot behind her, she hobbled heavily to the door.
As she opened it a new horde of fog-wraiths blew in. The world was a gray,
wet blanket. Not a light from the village below pierced the mist, and the
lonely army of tall cedars on the black hill back of the house was hidden
completely.
"Who's there?" Mrs. Brenner hailed. But her voice fell flat and muffled. Far
off on the beach she could dimly hear the long wail of a fog-horn.
The faint throb of hope stilled in her breast. She had not really expected to
find any one at the door unless perhaps it should be a stranger who had
missed his way at the cross-roads. There had been one earlier in the
afternoon when the fog first came. But her husband had been at home then
and his surly manner quickly cut short the stranger's attempts at
friendliness. This ugly way of Mart's had isolated them from all village
intercourse early in their life on Cedar Hill.

Like a buzzard's nest, their home hung over the village on the unfriendly
sides of the bleak slope. Visitors were few and always reluctant, even
strangers, for the village told weird tales of Mart Brenner and his kin. The
village said that he—and all those who belonged to him as well—were
marked for evil and disaster. Disaster had truly written itself throughout
their history. His mother was mad, a tragic madness of bloody prophecies
and dim fears; his only son a witless creature of eighteen, who for all his
height and bulk, spent his days catching butterflies in the woods on the hill,
and his nights in laboriously pinning them, wings outspread, upon the bare
walls of the house.
The room where the Brenner family lived its queer, taciturn life was
tapestried in gold, the glowing tapestry of swarms of outspread yellow
butterflies sweeping in gilded tides from the rough floors to the black
rafters overhead.
Olga Brenner herself was no less tragic than her family. On her face, written
in the acid of pain, was the history of the blows and cruelty that had warped
her active body. Owing to her crippled foot, her entire left side sagged
hopelessly and her arm swung away, above it, like a branch from a decayed
tree. But more saddening than her distorted body was the lonely soul that
looked out of her tired faded eyes.
She was essentially a village woman with a profound love of its intimacies
and gossip, its fence-corner neighborliness. The horror with which the
village regarded her, as the wife of Mart Brenner, was an eating sore. It was
greater than the tragedy of her poor, witless son, the hatred of old Mrs.
Brenner, and her ever-present fear of Mart. She had never quite given up
her unreasoning hope that some day some one might come to the house in
one of Mart's long, unexplained absences and sit down and talk with her
over a cup of tea. She put away the feeble hope again as she turned back
into the dim room and closed the door behind her.
"Must have been that bit of wind," she meditated. "It plays queer tricks
sometimes."
She went to the mantel and lighted the dull lamp. By the flicker she read the
face of the clock.

"Tobey's late!" she exclaimed uneasily. Her mind never rested from its fear
for Tobey. His childlike mentality made him always the same burden as
when she had rocked him hour after hour, a scrawny mite of a baby on her
breast.
"It's a fearful night for him to be out!" she muttered.
"Blood! Blood!" said a tragic voice from a dark corner by the stove. Barely
visible in the ruddy half-dark of the room a pair of demoniac eyes met hers.
Mrs. Brenner threw her shriveled and wizened mother-in-law an angry and
contemptuous glance.
"Be still!" she commanded. "'Pears to me that's all you ever say—blood!"
The glittering eyes fell away from hers in a sullen obedience. But the tragic
voice went on intoning stubbornly, "Blood on his hands! Red! Dripping! I
see blood!"
Mrs. Brenner shuddered. "Seems like you could shut up a spell!" she
complained.
The old woman's voice trailed into a broken and fitful whispering. Olga's
commands were the only laws she knew, and she obeyed them. Mrs.
Brenner went back to the stove. But her eyes kept returning to the clock and
thence to the darkening square of window where the fog pressed heavily
into the very room.
Out of the gray silence came a shattering sound that sent the ladle crashing
out of Mrs. Brenner's nerveless hand and brought a moan from the dozing
old woman!
It was a scream, a long, piercing scream, so intense, so agonized that it went
echoing about the room as tho a disembodied spirit were shrieking under
the rafters! It was a scream of terror, an innocent, a heart-broken scream!
"Tobey!" cried Mrs. Brenner, her face rigid.
The old woman began to pick at her ragged skirt, mumbling "Blood! Blood
on his hands! I see it!"

"That was on the hill," said Mrs. Brenner slowly, steadying her voice.
She put her calloused hand against her lips and stood listening with
agonized intentness. But now the heavy, foggy silence had fallen again. At
intervals came the long, faint wail of the fog-horn. There was no other
sound. Even the old woman in the shadowy corner had ceased her
mouthing.
Mrs. Brenner stood motionless, with her hand against her trembling lips,
her head bent forward for four of the dull intervals between the siren-call.
Then there came the sound of steps stumbling around the house. Mrs.
Brenner, with her painful hobble, reached the door before the steps paused
there, and threw it open.
The feeble light fell on the round, vacant face of her son, his inevitable
pasteboard box, grim with much handling, clutched close to his big breast,
and in it the soft beating and thudding of imprisoned wings.
Mrs. Brenner's voice was scarcely more than a whisper, "Tobey!" but it rose
shrilly as she cried, "Where you been? What was that scream?"
Tobey stumbled past her headlong into the house, muttering, "I'm cold!"
She shut the door and followed him to the stove, where he stood shaking
himself and beating at his damp clothes with clumsy fingers.
"What was that scream?" she asked him tensely. She knotted her rough
fingers as she waited for his answer.
"I dunno," he grunted sullenly. His thick lower lip shoved itself forward,
baby-fashion.
"Where you been?" she persisted.
As he did not answer she coaxed him, "Aw, come on, Tobey. Tell ma.
Where you been?"
"I been catching butterflies," he answered. "I got a big one this time," with
an air of triumph.
"Where was you when you heard the scream?" she asked him cunningly.

He gave a slow shake of his head. "I dunno," he answered in his dull voice.
A big shiver shook him. His teeth chattered and he crouched down on his
knees before the open oven-door.
"I'm cold," he complained. Mrs. Brenner came close to him and laid her
hand on his wet, matted hair. "Tobey's a bad boy," she scolded. "You
mustn't go out in the wet like this. Your hair's soaked."
She got down stiffly on her lame knees. "Sit down," she ordered, "and I'll
take off your shoes. They're as wet as a dish-rag."
"They're full of water, too," Tobey grumbled as he sprawled on the floor,
sticking one big, awkward foot into her lap. "The water in there makes me
cold."
"You spoil all your pa's shoes that away," said Mrs. Brenner, her head bent
over her task. "He told you not to go round in the wet with 'em any more.
He'll give you a lashing if he comes in and sees your shoes. I'll have to try
and get 'em dry before he comes home. Anyways," with a breath of deep
relief, "I'm glad it ain't that red clay from the hill. That never comes off."
The boy paid no attention to her. He was investigating the contents of his
box, poking a fat, dirty forefinger around among its fluttering contents.
There was a flash of yellow wings, and with a crow of triumph the boy shut
the lid.
"The big one's just more than flapping," he chuckled. "I had an awful hard
time to catch him. I had to run and run. Look at him, Ma," the boy urged.
She shook her head.
"I ain't got the time," she said, almost roughly. "I got to get these shoes off'n
you afore your father gets home, Tobey, or you'll get a awful hiding. Like as
not you'll get it anyways, if he's mad. Better get into bed."
"Naw!" Tobey protested. "I seen pa already. I want my supper out here! I
don't want to go to bed!"
Mrs. Brenner paused. "Where was pa?" she asked.
But Tobey's stretch of coherent thinking was past. "I dunno!" he muttered.

Mrs. Brenner sighed. She pulled off the sticky shoes and rose stiffly.
"Go get in bed," she said.
"Aw, Ma, I want to stay up with my butterflies," the boy pleaded. Two big
tears rolled down his fat cheeks. In his queer, clouded world he had learned
one certain fact. He could almost always move his mother with tears.
But this time she was firm. "Do as I told you!" she ordered him. "Mebbe if
you're in bed your father won't be thinking about you. And I'll try to dry
these shoes afore he thinks about them." She took the grimy box from his
resisting fingers, and, holding it in one hand, pulled him to his feet and
pushed him off to his bedroom.
When she had closed the door on his wail she returned and laid the box on
the shelf. Then she hurried to gather up the shoes. Something on her hand as
she put it out for the sodden shoes caught her eye and she straightened,
holding her hand up where the feeble light from the shelf caught it.
"I've cut myself," she said aloud. "There's blood on my hand. It must 'a'
been on those lacings of Tobey's."
The old woman in the corner roused. "Blood!" she screeched. "Olga! Blood
on his hands!"
Mrs. Brenner jumped. "You old screech-owl!" she cried. She wiped her
hand quickly on her dirty apron, and held it up again to see the cut. But
there was no cut on her hand! Where had that blood come from? From
Tobey's shoes?
And who was it that had screamed on the hill? She felt herself enwrapped in
a mist of puzzling doubts.
She snatched up the shoes, searching them with agonized eyes. But the wet
and pulpy mass had no stain. Only the wet sands and the slimy water-weeds
of the beach clung to them.
Then where had the blood come from? It was at this instant that she became
conscious of shouts on the hillside. She limped to the door and held it open
a crack. Very faintly she could see the bobbing lights of torches. A voice
carried down to her.

"Here's where I found his hat. That's why I turned off back of these trees.
And right there I found his body!"
"Are you sure he's dead?" quavered another voice.
"Stone-dead!"
Olga Brenner shut the door. But she did not leave it immediately. She stood
leaning against it, clutching the wet shoes, her staring eyes glazing.
Tobey was strong. He had flown into childish rages sometimes and had hurt
her with his undisciplined strength. Where was Mart? Tobey had seen him.
Perhaps they had fought. Her mind refused to go further. But little subtle
undercurrents pressed in on her. Tobey hated and feared his father. And
Mart was always enraged at the sight of his half-witted son. What had
happened? And yet no matter what had occurred, Tobey had not been on the
hill. His shoes bore mute testimony to that. And the scream had been on the
slope. She frowned.
Her body more bent than ever, she hobbled slowly over to the stove and laid
the shoes on the big shelf above it, spreading them out to the rising heat.
She had barely arranged them when there was again the sound of
approaching footsteps. These feet, however, did not stumble. They were
heavy and certain. Mrs. Brenner snatched at the shoes, gathered them up,
and turned to run. But one of the lacings caught on a nail on the shelf. She
jerked desperately at the nail, and the jerking loosened her hold of both the
shoes. With a clatter they fell at her feet.
In that moment Mart Brenner stood in the doorway. Poverty, avarice, and
evil passions had minted Mart Brenner like a devil's coin. His shaggy head
lowered in his powerful shoulders. His long arms, apelike, hung almost to
his knees. Behind him the fog pressed in, and his rough, bristly hair was
beaded with diamonds of moisture.
"Well?" he snapped. A sardonic smile twisted his face. "Caught you, didn't
I?"
He strode forward. His wife shrank back, but even in her shivering terror
she noticed, as one notices small details in a time of peril, that his shoes

were caked with red mud and that his every step left a wet track on the
floor.
"He didn't do 'em no harm," she babbled. "They're just wet. Please, Mart,
they ain't harmed a mite. Just wet. That's all. Tobey went on the beach with
'em. It won't take but a little spell to dry 'em."
Her husband stooped and snatched up the shoes. She shrank into herself,
waiting the inevitable torrent of his passion and the probable blow. Instead,
as he stood up he was smiling. Bewildered, she stared at him in a dull
silence.
"No harm done," he said, almost amiably. Shaking with relief, she stretched
out her hand.
"I'll dry 'em," she said. "Give me your shoes and I'll get the mud off."
Her husband shook his head. He was still smiling.
"Don't need to dry 'em. I'll put 'em away," he replied, and, still tracking his
wet mud, he went into Tobey's room.
Her fear flowed into another channel. She dreaded her husband in his black
rages, but she feared him more now in his unusual amiability. Perhaps he
would strike Tobey when he saw him. She strained her ears to listen.
A long silence followed his exit. But there was no outcry from Tobey, no
muttering nor blows. After a few moments, moving quickly, her husband
came out. She raised her heavy eyes to stare at him. He stopped and looked
intently at his own muddy tracks.
"I'll get a rag and wipe up the mud right off."
As she started toward the nail where the rag hung, her husband put out a
long arm and detained her. "Leave it be," he said. He smiled again.
She noticed, then, that he had removed his muddy shoes and wore the wet
ones. He had fully laced them, and she had almost a compassionate moment
as she thought how wet and cold his feet must be.
"You can put your feet in the oven, Mart, to dry 'em."

Close on her words she heard the sound of footsteps and a sharp knock
followed on the sagging door. Mart Brenner sat down on a chair close to the
stove and lifted one foot into the oven. "See who's there!" he ordered.
She opened the door and peered out. A group of men stood on the step, the
faint light of the room picking out face after face that she recognized—
Sheriff Munn; Jim Barker, who kept the grocery in the village; Cottrell
Hampstead, who lived in the next house below them; young Dick Roamer,
Munn's deputy; and several strangers.
"Well?" she asked ungraciously.
"We want to see Brenner!" one of them said.
She stepped back. "Come in," she told them. They came in, pulling off their
caps, and stood huddled in a group in the center of the room.
Her husband reluctantly stood up.
"Evening!" he said, with his unusual smile. "Bad out, ain't it?"
"Yep!" Munn replied. "Heavy fog. We're soaked."
Olga Brenner's pitiful instinct of hospitality rose in her breast.
"I got some hot soup on the stove. Set a spell and I'll dish you some," she
urged.
The men looked at each other in some uncertainty. After a moment Munn
said, "All right, if it ain't too much bother, Mrs. Brenner."
"Not a bit," she cried eagerly. She bustled about, searching her meager
stock of chinaware for uncracked bowls.
"Set down?" suggested Mart.
Munn sat down with a sigh, and his companions followed his example.
Mart resumed his position before the stove, lifting one foot into the
capacious black maw of the oven.
"Must 'a' got your feet wet, Brenner?" the sheriff said with heavy jocularity.

Brenner nodded, "You bet I did," he replied. "Been down on the beach all
afternoon."
"Didn't happen to hear any unusual noise down there, did you?" Munn
spoke with his eyes on Mrs. Brenner, at her task of ladling out the thick
soup. She paused as though transfixed, her ladle poised in the air.
Munn's eyes dropped from her face to the floor. There they became fixed on
the tracks of red clay.
"No, nothin' but the sea. It must be rough outside to-night, for the bay was
whinin' like a sick cat," said Mart calmly.
"Didn't hear a scream, or nothing like that, I suppose?" Munn persisted.
"Couldn't hear a thing but the water. Why?"
"Oh—nothing," said Munn.
Mrs. Brenner finished pouring out the soup and set the bowls on the table.
Chairs clattered, and soon the men were eating. Mart finished his soup
before the others and sat back smacking his lips. As Munn finished the last
spoonful in his bowl he pulled out a wicked-looking black pipe, crammed it
full of tobacco and lighted it.
Blowing out a big blue breath of the pleasant smoke, he inquired, "Been
any strangers around to-day?"
Mart scratched his head. "Yeah. A man come by early this afternoon. He
was aiming to climb the hill. I told him he'd better wait till the sun come
out. I don't know whether he did or not."
"See anybody later—say about half an hour ago?"
Mart shook his head. "No. I come up from the beach and I didn't pass
nobody."
The sheriff pulled on his pipe for a moment. "That boy of yours still
catching butterflies?" he asked presently.

Mart scowled. He swung out a long arm toward the walls with their floods
of butterflies. But he did not answer.
"Uh-huh!" said Munn, following the gesture with his quiet eyes. He puffed
several times before he spoke again.
"What time did you come in, Brenner, from the beach?"
Mrs. Brenner closed her hands tightly, the interlaced fingers locking
themselves.
"Oh, about forty minutes ago, I guess it was. Wasn't it, Olga?" Mart said
carelessly.
"Yes." Her voice was a breath.
"Was your boy out to-day?"
Mart looked at his wife. "I dunno."
Munn's glance came to the wife.
"Yes."
"How long ago did he come in?"
"About an hour ago." Her voice was flat and lifeless.
"And where had he been?" Munn's tone was gentle but insistent.
Her terrified glance sought Mart's face. "He'd been on the beach!" she said
in a defiant tone.
Mart continued to look at her, but there was no expression in his face. He
still wore his peculiar affable smile.
"Where did these tracks come from, on the floor?"
Swift horror fastened itself on Mrs. Brenner.
"What's that to you?" she flared.

She heard her husband's hypocritical and soothing tones, "Now, now, Olga!
That ain't the way to talk to these gentlemen. Tell them who made these
tracks."
"You did!" she cried. All about her she could feel the smoothness of a
falling trap.
Mart smiled still more broadly.
"Look here, Olga, don't get so warm over it. You're nervous now. Tell the
gentlemen who made those tracks."
She turned to Munn desperately. "What do you want to know for?" she
asked him.
The sharpness of her voice roused old Mrs. Brenner, drowsing in her corner.
"Blood!" she cried suddenly. "Blood on his hands!"
In the silence that followed, the eyes of the men turned curiously toward the
old woman and then sought each other with speculative stares. Mrs.
Brenner, tortured by those long significant glances, said roughly, "That's
Mart's mother. She ain't right! What are you bothering us for?"
Dick Roamer put out a hand to plead for her, and tapped Munn on the arm.
There was something touching in her frightened old face.
"A man—a stranger was killed upon the hill," Munn told her.
"What's that got to do with us?" she countered.
"Not a thing, Mrs. Brenner, probably, but I've just to make sure where every
man in the village was this afternoon."
Mrs. Brenner's lids flickered. She felt the questioning intentness of Sheriff
Munn's eyes on her stolid face and she felt that he did not miss the tremor
of her eyes.
"Where was your son this afternoon?"
She smiled defiance. "I told you, on the beach."

"Whose room is that?" Munn's forefinger pointed to Tobey's closed door.
"That's Tobey's room," said his mother.
"The mud tracks go into that room. Did he make those tracks, Mrs.
Brenner?"
"No! Oh, no! No!" she cried desperately. "Mart made those when he came
in. He went into Tobey's room!"
"How about it, Brenner?"
Mart smiled with an indulgent air. "Heard what she said, didn't you?"
"Is it true?"
Mart smiled more broadly. "Olga'll take my hair off if I don't agree with
her," he said.
"Let's see your shoes, Brenner?"
Without hesitation Mart lifted one heavy boot and then the other for Munn's
inspection. The other silent men leaned forward to examine them.
"Nothing but pieces of seaweed," said Cottrell Hampstead.
Munn eyed them. Then he turned to look at the floor.
"Those are about the size of your tracks, Brenner. But they were made in
red clay. How do you account for that?"
"Tobey wears my shoes," said Brenner.
Mrs. Brenner gasped. She advanced to Munn.
"What you asking all these questions for?" she pleaded.
Munn did not answer her. After a moment he asked, "Did you hear a scream
this afternoon?"
"Yes," she answered.
"How long after the screaming did your son come in?"

She hesitated. What was the best answer to make? Bewildered, she tried to
decide. "Ten minutes or so," she said.
"Just so," agreed Munn. "Brenner, when did you come in?"
A trace of Mart's sullenness rose in his face. "I told you that once," he said.
"I mean how long after Tobey?"
"I dunno," said Mart.
"How long, Mrs. Brenner?"
She hesitated again. She scented a trap. "Oh, 'bout ten to fifteen minutes, I
guess," she said.
Suddenly she burst out passionately, "What you hounding us for? We don't
know nothing about the man on the hill. You ain't after the rest of the folks
in the village like you are after us. Why you doing it? We ain't done
nothing."
Munn made a slight gesture to Roamer, who rose and went to the door, and
opened it. He reached out into the darkness. Then he turned. He was
holding something in his hand, but Mrs. Brenner could not see what it was.
"You chop your wood with a short, heavy ax, don't you, Brenner?" said
Munn.
Brenner nodded.
"It's marked with your name, isn't it?"
Brenner nodded again.
"Is this the ax?"
Mrs. Brenner gave a short, sharp scream. Red and clotted, ever the handle
marked with bloody spots, the ax was theirs.
Brenner started to his feet. "God!" he yelped, "that's where that ax went!
Tobey took it!" More calmly he proceeded. "This afternoon before I went

down on the beach I thought I'd chop some wood on the hill. But the ax was
gone. So after I'd looked sharp for it and couldn't find it, I gave it up."
"Tobey didn't do it!" Mrs. Brenner cried thinly. "He's as harmless as a baby!
He didn't do it! He didn't do it!"
"How about those clay tracks, Mrs. Brenner? There is red clay on the hill
where the man was killed. There is red clay on your floor." Munn spoke
kindly.
"Mart tracked in that clay. He changed shoes with Tobey. I tell you that's the
truth." She was past caring for any harm that might befall her.
Brenner smiled with a wide tolerance. "It's likely, ain't it, that I'd change
into shoes as wet as these?"
"Those tracks are Mart's!" Olga reiterated hysterically.
"They lead into your son's room, Mrs. Brenner. And we find your ax not far
from your door, just where the path starts for the hill." Munn's eyes were
grave.
The old woman in the corner began to whimper, "Blood and trouble! Blood
and trouble all my days! Red on his hands! Dripping! Olga! Blood!"
"But the road to the beach begins there too," Mrs. Brenner cried, above the
cracked voice, "and Tobey saw his pa before he came home. He said he did.
I tell you, Mart was on the hill. He put on Tobey's shoes. Before God I'm
telling you the truth."
Dick Roamer spoke hesitatingly, "Mebbe the old woman's right, Munn.
Mebbe those tracks are Brenner's."
Mrs. Brenner turned to him in wild gratitude.
"You believe me, don't you?" she cried. The tears dribbled down her face.
She saw the balance turning on a hair. A moment more and it might swing
back. She turned and hobbled swiftly to the shelf. Proof! More proof! She
must bring more proof of Tobey's innocence!
She snatched up his box of butterflies and came back to Munn.

"This is what Tobey was doin' this afternoon!" she cried in triumph. "He
was catchin' butterflies! That ain't murder, is it?"
"Nobody catches butterflies in a fog," said Munn.
"Well, Tobey did. Here they are." Mrs. Brenner held out the box. Munn took
it from her shaking hand. He looked at it. After a moment he turned it over.
His eyes narrowed. Mrs. Brenner turned sick. The room went swimming
around before her in a bluish haze. She had forgotten the blood on her hand
that she had wiped off before Mart came home. Suppose the blood had been
on the box.
The sheriff opened the box. A bruised butterfly, big, golden, fluttered up out
of it. Very quietly the sheriff closed the box, and turned to Mrs. Brenner.
"Call your son," he said.
"What do you want of him? Tobey ain't done nothing. What you tryin' to do
to him?"
"There is blood on this box, Mrs. Brenner."
"Mebbe he cut himself." Mrs. Brenner was fighting. Her face was chalky
white.
"In the box, Mrs. Brenner, is a gold watch and chain. The man who was
killed, Mrs. Brenner, had a piece of gold chain to match this in his
buttonhole. The rest of it had been torn off."
Olga made no sound. Her burning eyes turned toward Mart. In them was all
of a heart's anguish and despair.
"Tell 'em, Mart! Tell 'em he didn't do it!" she finally pleaded.
Mart's face was inscrutable.
Munn rose. The other men got to their feet.
"Will you get the boy or shall I?" the sheriff said directly to Mrs. Brenner.
With a rush Mrs. Brenner was on her knees before Munn, clutching him
about the legs with twining arms. Tears of agony dripped over her seamed

face.
"He didn't do it! Don't take him! He's my baby! He never harmed anybody!
He's my baby!" Then with a shriek, as Munn unclasped her arms, "Oh, my
God! My God!"
Munn helped her to her feet. "Now, now, Mrs. Brenner, don't take on so," he
said awkwardly. "There ain't going to be no harm come to your boy. It's to
keep him from getting into harm that I'm taking him. The village is a mite
worked up over this murder and they might get kind of upset if they thought
Tobey was still loose. Better go and get him, Mrs. Brenner."
As she stood unheeding, he went on, "Now, don't be afraid. Nothing'll
happen to him. No jedge would sentence him like a regular criminal. The
most that'll happen will be to put him some safe place where he can't do
himself nor no one else any more harm."
But still Mrs. Brenner's set expression did not change.
After a moment she shook off his aiding arm and moved slowly to Tobey's
door. She paused there a moment, resting her hand on the latch, her eyes
searching the faces of the men in the room. With a gesture of dreary
resignation she opened the door and entered, closing it behind her.
Tobey lay in his bed asleep. His rumpled hair was still damp from the fog.
His mother stroked it softly while her slow tears dropped down on his face
with its expression of peaceful childhood.
"Tobey!" she called. Her voice broke in her throat. The tears fell faster.
"Huh?" He sat up, blinking at her.
"Get into your clothes, now! Right away!" she said.
He stared at her tears. A dismal sort of foreboding seemed to seize upon
him. His face began to pucker. But he crawled out of his bed and began to
dress himself in his awkward fashion, casting wistful and wondering
glances in her direction.
She watched him, her heart growing heavier and heavier. There was no one
to protect Tobey. She could not make those strangers believe that Mart had

changed shoes with Tobey. Neither could she account for the blood-stained
box and the watch with its length of broken chain. But if Tobey had been on
the beach he had not been on the hill, and if he hadn't been on the hill he
couldn't have killed the man they claimed he had killed. Mart had been on
the hill. Her head whirled. Some place fate, destiny, something had
blundered. She wrung her knotted hands together.
Presently Tobey was dressed. She took him by the hand. Her own hand was
shaking, and very cold and clammy. Her knees were weak as she led him
toward the door. She could feel them trembling so that every step was an
effort. And her hand on the knob had barely strength to turn it. But turn it
she did and opened the door.
"Here he is!" she cried chokingly. She freed her hand and laid it on his
shoulder.
"Look at him," she moaned. "He couldn't 'a' done it. He's—he's just a boy!"
Sheriff Munn rose. His men rose with him.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Brenner," he said. "Terrible sorry. But you can see how it
is. Things look pretty black for him."
He paused, looked around, hesitated for a moment. Finally he said, "Well, I
guess we'd better be getting along."
Mrs. Brenner's hand closed with convulsive force on Tobey's shoulder.
"Tobey!" she screamed desperately, "where was you this afternoon? All
afternoon?"
"On the beach," mumbled Tobey, shrinking into himself.
"Tobey! Tobey! Where'd you get blood on the box?"
He looked around. His cloudy eyes rested on her face helplessly.
"I dunno," he said.
Her teeth were chattering now; she laid her hand on his other shoulder.

"Try to remember, Tobey. Try to remember. Where'd you get the watch, the
pretty watch that was in your box?"
He blinked at her.
"The pretty bright thing? Where did you get it?"
His eyes brightened. His lips trembled into a smile.
"I found it some place," he said. Eagerness to please her shone on his face.
"But where? What place?" The tears again made rivulets on her cheeks.
He shook his head. "I dunno."
Mrs. Brenner would not give up.
"You saw your pa this afternoon, Tobey?" she coached him softly.
He nodded.
"Where'd you see him?" she breathed.
He frowned. "I—I saw pa——" he began, straining to pierce the cloud that
covered him.
"Blood! Blood!" shrieked old Mrs. Brenner. She half-rose, her head thrust
forward on her shriveled neck.
Tobey paused, confused. "I dunno," he said.
"Did he give you the pretty bright thing? And did he give you the ax—" she
paused and repeated the word loudly—"the ax to bring home?"
Tobey caught at the word. "The ax?" he cried. "The ax! Ugh! It was all
sticky!" He shuddered.
"Did pa give you the ax?"
But the cloud had settled. Tobey shook his head. "I dunno," he repeated his
feeble denial.

Munn advanced. "No use, Mrs. Brenner, you see. Tobey, you'll have to
come along with us."
Even to Tobey's brain some of the strain in the atmosphere must have
penetrated, for he drew back. "Naw," he protested sulkily, "I don't want to."
Dick Roamer stepped to his side. He laid his hand on Tobey's arm. "Come
along," he urged.
Mrs. Brenner gave a smothered gasp. Tobey woke to terror. He turned to
run. In an instant the men surrounded him. Trapped, he stood still, his head
lowered in his shoulders.
"Ma!" he screamed suddenly. "Ma! I don't want to go! Ma!"
He fell on his knees. Heavy childish sobs racked him. Deserted, terrified, he
called upon the only friend he knew.
"Ma! Please, Ma!"
Munn lifted him up. Dick Roamer helped him, and between them they drew
him to the door, his heart-broken calls and cries piercing every corner of the
room.
They whisked him out of Mrs. Brenner's sight as quickly as they could. The
other men piled out of the door, blocking the last vision of her son, but his
bleating cries came shrilling back on the foggy air.
Mart closed the door. Mrs. Brenner stood where she had been when Tobey
had first felt the closing of the trap and had started to run. She looked as
though she might have been carved there. Her light breath seemed to do
little more than lift her flat chest.
Mart turned from the door. His eyes glittered. He advanced upon her
hungrily like a huge cat upon an enchanted mouse.
"So you thought you'd yelp on me, did you?" he snarled, licking his lips.
"Thought you'd put me away, didn't you? Get me behind the bars, eh?"
"Blood!" moaned the old woman in the corner. "Blood!"

Mart strode to the table, pulling out from the bosom of his shirt a lumpy
package wrapped in his handkerchief. He threw it down on the table. It fell
heavily with a sharp ringing of coins.
"But I fooled you this time! Mart wasn't so dull this time, eh?" He turned
toward her again.
Between them, disturbed in his resting-place on the table, the big bruised
yellow butterfly raised himself on his sweeping wings.
Mart drew back a little. The butterfly flew toward Olga and brushed her
face with a velvety softness.
Then Brenner lurched toward her, his face black with fury, his arm upraised.
She stood still, looking at him with wide eyes in which a gleam of light
showed.
"You devil!" she said, in a little, whispering voice. "You killed that man!
You gave Tobey the watch and the ax! You changed shoes with him! You
devil! You devil!"
He drew back for a blow. She did not move. Instead she mocked him, trying
to smile.
"You whelp!" she taunted him. "Go on and hit me! I ain't running! And if
you don't break me to bits I'm going to the sheriff and I'll tell him what you
said to me just now. And he'll wonder how you got all that money in your
pockets. He knows we're as poor as church-mice. How you going to explain
what you got?"
"I ain't going to be such a fool as to keep it on me!" Mart crowed with
venomous mirth. "You nor the sheriff nor any one won't find it where I'm
going to put it!"
The broken woman leaned forward, baiting him. The strange look of
exaltation and sacrifice burned in her faded eyes. "I've got you, Mart!" she
jeered. "You're going to swing yet! I'll even up with you for Tobey! You
didn't think I could do it, did you? I'll show you! You're trapped, I tell you!
And I done it!"

She watched Mart swing around to search the room and the blank window
with apprehensive eyes. She sensed his eerie dread of the unseen. He
couldn't see any one. He couldn't hear a sound. She saw that he was wet
with the cold perspiration of fear. It would enrage him. She counted on that.
He turned back to his wife in a white fury. She leaned toward him, inviting
his blows as martyrs welcome the torch that will make their pile of fagots a
blazing bier.
He struck her. Once. Twice. A rain of blows given in a blind passion that
drove her to her knees, but she clung stubbornly, with rigid fingers to the
table-edge. Although she was dazed she retained consciousness by a sharp
effort of her failing will. She had not yet achieved that for which she was
fighting.
The dull thud of the blows, the confusion, the sight of the blood drove the
old woman in the corner suddenly upright on her tottering feet. Her rheumy
eyes glared affrighted at the sight of the only friend she recognized in all
her mad, black world lying there across the table. She stood swaying in a
petrified terror for a moment. Then with a thin wail, "He's killing her!" she
ran around them and gained the door.
With a mighty effort Olga Brenner lifted her head so that her face, swollen
beyond recognition, was turned toward her mother-in-law. Her almost
sightless eyes fastened themselves on the old woman.
"Run!" she cried. "Run to the village!"
The mad woman, obedient to that commanding voice, flung open the door
and lurched over the threshold and disappeared in the fog. It came to Mart
that the woman running through the night with her wail of terror was the
greatest danger he would know. Olga Brenner saw his look of sick terror.
He started to spring after the mad woman, forgetful of the half-conscious
creature on her knees before him.
But as he turned, Olga, moved by the greatness of her passion, forced
strength into her maimed body. With a straining leap she sprawled herself
before him on the floor. He stumbled, caught for the table, and fell with a
heavy crash, striking his head on a near-by chair. Olga raised herself on her
shaking arms and looked at him. Minute after minute passed, and yet he lay

still. A second long ten minutes ticked itself off on the clock, which Olga
could barely see. Then Mart opened his eyes, sat up, and staggered to his
feet.
Before full consciousness could come to him again, his wife crawled
forward painfully and swiftly coiled herself about his legs. He struggled,
still dizzy from his fall, bent over and tore at her twining arms, but the more
he pulled the tighter she clung, fastening her misshapen fingers in the lacing
of his shoes. He swore! And he became panic-stricken. He began to kick at
her, to make lunges toward the distant door. Kicking and fighting, dragging
her clinging body with him at every move, that body which drew him back
one step for every two forward steps he took, at last he reached the wall. He
clutched it, and as his hand slipped along trying to find a more secure hold
he touched the cold iron of a long-handled pan hanging there.
With a snarl he snatched it down, raised it over his head, and brought it
down upon his wife's back. Her hands opened spasmodically and fell flat at
her sides. Her body rolled over, limp and broken. And a low whimper came
from her bleeding lips.
Satisfied, Mart paused to regain his breath. He had no way of knowing how
long this unequal fight had been going on. But he was free. The way of
escape was open. He laid his hand on the door.
There were voices. He cowered, cast hunted glances at the bloody figure on
the floor, bit his knuckles in a frenzy.
As he looked, the eyes opened in his wife's swollen face, eyes aglow with
triumph. "You'll swing for it, Mart!" she whispered faintly. "And the
money's on the table! Tobey's saved!"
Rough hands were on the door. A flutter of breath like a sigh of relief
crossed her lips and her lids dropped as the door burst open to a tide of men.
The big yellow butterfly swung low on his golden wings and came to rest
on her narrow, sunken breast.

FOOTNOTES:
[14] Copyright, 1920, by The Pictorial Review Company.
Copyright, 1921, by Rose Sidney.

THE ROTTER[15]
By FLETA CAMPBELL SPRINGER

From Harper's Magazine

In the taxi Ayling suddenly realized that there was no need for all this haste.
After twenty-five years, and a loitering, circuitous journey home—six
weeks to the day since he had said good-by to India—this last-minute rush
was, to say the least, illogical, particularly as there was no one in London
waiting for him; no one who was even aware of his arrival. Indeed, it was
likely that there was no one in London who was aware of his existence,
except, perhaps, the clerk of the club, to whom he had telegraphed ahead
for accommodations.
The rigidity of his posture, straining forward there on his seat, became
suddenly painful and absurd. He tried to relax, but the effort was more than
it was worth, and he sat forward again, looking out.
Yes, things were familiar enough—but familiar like old photographs one
has forgotten the significance of. The emotion had gone out of them. It was
the new things, the unfamiliar contours, that were most apparent, that
seemed to thrust upon his consciousness the city's gigantic, self-centered
indifference. Yet it was just that quality that he had loved most in London.
She had let him alone. She had been—he recalled the high-flown phrase of
his youth—the supremely indifferent friend! Perhaps, he thought to himself,
when one is fifty, one cares less to be "let alone"; less for indifference as the
supreme attribute of a friend.
He felt a queer sweep of homesickness for India, whence he had come; but
to feel homesick for India was ridiculous, since he had just come out of
India because he was homesick for England. He had been homesick for
England, he had been telling himself, for all those twenty-five years.
Well! here he was. Home!

Strange he hadn't thought of the automobiles and the electricity, and the
difference they would make.
The taxi backed suddenly, gears shifted, and drew up alongside the curb.
Looking out, Ayling recognized the high, familiar street door of the club.
Something about it had been changed, or replaced, he couldn't quite make
out what. The driver opened the door, lifted out Ayling's bag, and deposited
it expertly with a swing on the step. Then he waited respectfully while
Ayling fished in his pockets for change. Having received it, he leaped with
great agility to the seat, shifted gears, chugged, backed and turned, and was
abruptly round the corner and out of sight.
At the desk, Ayling experienced a momentary surprise to find himself
actually expected.
"Mr. Ayling? Yes, sir. Your room is ready, I believe." The clerk rang a bell,
and began to give instructions about Mr. Ayling's luggage.
Ayling felt that he ought to ask for some one, inquire if some of the old
members were in; but, standing there, he could not think of a single name
except names of a few non-resident members like himself, men who were at
that moment in India.
"Will you go up, sir?"
"Later," said Ayling. "Just send up my things."
He crossed the foyer and entered the lounge. Here, as before in the streets, it
was the changes of which he was most aware—figured hangings in place of
the old red velours, the upholstery renewed on the old chairs and divans.
Strangers sat here and there in the familiar nooks, strangers who looked up
at him with a mild curiosity and returned to their papers or their cigars. He
wandered on through the rooms, seeking—without quite saying so to
himself—seeking a familiar face, and found none. Even the proportions of
the rooms seemed changed; he could hardly have said just how; not much,
but slightly, though, all in all, the club was the same. Names began to come
back to him; memories resurrected themselves, rose out of corners to greet
him as he passed. They began to give him a queer sense of his own
unreality, as if he himself were only another memory.... Abruptly he turned,
made his way back to the desk, and asked to be shown to his room. There

he spent an hour puttering aimlessly, adjusting his things, putting in the
time.
Then he dressed and went down to a solitary dinner. There was a great
activity in the club at that hour, comings and goings, in parties of four and
five. He found a kind of dolorous amusement in seeing now much more at
home all the youngsters about him seemed than he. And he had been at
home there when they were in the nursery doing sums.
Here and there at the tables were older men, men of his own age, and he
reflected that among them might easily be some of his boyhood friends. He
would never know them now. He searched their faces for a familiar feature,
watched them for a gesture he might recognize. But in the end he gave it up.
"Old town," he said to himself, "old town, by Jove! you've forgotten me!"
That night he went alone to a theater, walked back through the crowds to
the club, and went immediately to bed. He was grateful to find himself
suddenly very tired.
The next morning he rose late and did not leave his room until noon, when
he went down to a solitary lunch. After lunch he stopped at the clerk's
window and inquired about one or two old members. The clerk looked up
the names. After a good deal of inquiry and fussing about, he ascertained
that one of the gentlemen was in China, one was dead, and a third about
whom Ayling also inquired could not be traced at all. Ayling went out and
walked for a while through the streets, but was driven back to the club by
the chill drizzle which suddenly began to descend.

He sat down in a chair near a window that had been his favorite. Settled
there, he remembered the position of a near-by bell, just under the window-
curtain.... Yes, there it was. He rang, and a waiter came—a rotund, pink-
faced, John-Bullish waiter, with little white tufts on each cheek. Ayling
ordered a whisky-and-soda, and when presently the waiter brought it Ayling
asked how long he had been in the service of the club.
"Thirty-five years, sir."

Ayling looked at the old man in astonishment. "Do you remember me?" he
asked.
The old waiter, schooled to remember at first glance if he remembered at
all, looked afresh at Ayling. "I see so many faces, sir—I couldn't just at the
moment say—"
"And I suppose," said Ayling, "you've brought me whisky-and-soda here, to
this very chair, no end of times. What's your name?"
"Chedsey, sir."
"Seems familiar—" He shook his head. "You don't recall a Mr. Ayling—
twenty-five or thirty years ago?"
"Ayling, sir? I recall there was a member of that name.... You're not Mr.
Ayling, sir?"
"We're not very flattering, either of us, it seems. But then, privilege of the
aged, I suppose."
"Beg pardon, sir. I'm sorry—I ought to remember you."
"We're wearing masks, Chedsey, you and I."
"You're right, sir, I'm afraid."
They regarded each other, those two, Chedsey, rotund and pink, looking
down upon Ayling, long and lean, with fine wrinkles about his eyes, and
hair considerably grayed, wondering, both of them, why names should be
so much more enduring than they themselves had been.
It was not until Ayling had begun to ask Chedsey for news of old friends,
and chanced almost at once to mention Lonsdale, that both he and the old
waiter exclaimed in the same breath, "Major Lonsdale!" as if the Major's
name had been a key to open the doors of both their memories.
"And you're young Mr. Dick Ayling! I remember you perfectly now!"
Chedsey beamed. How could he have failed to remember any one of those
gay young friends of the major's?
"And where," asked Ayling, "is the major now?"

"Major Lonsdale, sir—has been gone seven years. Hadn't you heard?"
Lonsdale gone! Lonsdale dead! Lonsdale had begun life so brilliantly.
Ayling did feel left over and old.
"What happened?" he asked, and Chedsey, glad to talk of the major, told
how he had left the club to be Major Lonsdale's man just after he came back
from the Boer War. How things hadn't seemed to go well with the major
after that; he lost money—just how, Chedsey didn't say, but gave one to
understand that it was a misfortune beyond the major's control. In the end
he was forced to give up his house, and Chedsey came back to the club. A
few years later the major was taken with pneumonia, quite suddenly, and
died. Did Mr. Ayling know Major Lonsdale's wife?
"Yes," said Ayling. "What became of Mrs. Lonsdale?"
"Here in London, sir."
"Wasn't there," asked Ayling, "a child, a little girl?"
"Ah, Miss Peggy, sir!" It was plain that "Miss Peggy" was one of Chedsey's
enthusiasms. A young lady now ... and soon to be married to a fine young
gentleman of one of the best Scotch families.... She'll have a title some
day.... Picture in the Sketch recently—perhaps he could find it for Mr.
Ayling.
"Never mind," said Ayling, who was not thinking of Miss Peggy at all, but
of her parents, young Major Harry Lonsdale, and his pretty wife.—He
remembered her as a bride—Bessie, the major had called her—a graceful
young creature with brown hair and brown-flecked eyes, already at that age
a charming hostess in the fine old house Harry Lonsdale had inherited from
his father.
"They are living in Cambridge Terrace," Chedsey was saying. "Would Mr.
Ayling like the address?"
Ayling wrote down the address Chedsey gave him, and put it away in his
pocket, with no more definite idea than that some day, if opportunity
offered, he might look her up, for his old friend's sake.

He began to inquire about other men—Carrington, Farnsby, Blake. Dead,
all three of them—Farnsby only last spring. Was it some fate that pursued
his particular friends? But those men had all, he reflected, been older than
he. And yet, he recalled the words of his doctor:
"A man's as old as his arteries. You've been too long out here. Be sensible,
Ayling.... Go home—take it easy—rest. You'll have a long time yet...."
Just a week later, to the day, Ayling stepped into a telephone-booth, looked
up Mrs. Lonsdale's number, and telephoned. He had not counted upon
loneliness.

At forty-five Bessie Lonsdale had encountered one of those universal
experiences which invariably give us, as individuals, so strong a sense of
surprise. She had discovered suddenly, upon completion of the task to
which she had so long given her energies, that she had become the task; that
she no longer had any identity apart from it. And her consciousness of
having arrived at exactly the place where hundreds before her must have
arrived had only added to the strangeness of her experience.
A week ago she had seen her twenty-year-old daughter off to the north of
Scotland for a month's visit to the family which she was soon to enter as a
bride. It seemed to her that Peggy had never been so lovely as when she
said good-by to her at the station that day, slim, fragrant, shining-eyed, and
looking very patrician indeed in her smart sable jacket (cut from the
luxurious sable cape that had been part of her mother's trousseau), with the
violets pinned into the buttonhole. And Bessie Lonsdale had seen with pride
and no twinge of jealousy the admiration in the eyes of that aristocratic, if
somewhat stern-faced, old lady who was to be Peggy's mother-in-law, and
who, with true Scotch propriety, had come all the way down to London to
take her home with her.
"I don't like leaving you alone," Peggy had said, as they kissed each other
good-by. "You're going to let yourself be dull."

And her mother had patted the soft cheek, and replied: "I'm going to enjoy
every minute of it. I mean to have a good rest and get acquainted with
myself."
When, a few moments later, she waved them good-by as the train moved
slowly out of the station, Bessie Lonsdale had turned away with a long-
drawn and involuntary sigh—a sigh of thanksgiving and relief.
Peggy at last was safe! Her happiness and her future assured. All those
years of hoping and holding steady had come now to this happy end. Ever
since her husband's early death Bessie Lonsdale had centered herself upon
the future of her child. She had had only her few hundred a year saved from
the wreck of her husband's affairs, but she had set her course, and, with an
air of sailing in circles for pleasure's sake, stood clear of the rocks and
shoals. She had never borrowed; she had never apologized; had never been
considered a poor relation, or spoken of as pathetic or "brave." Her little flat
was an achievement. It was astonishing how she had managed at once so
much simplicity, so much downright comfort, and so charming an
atmosphere. She had done so much with so little, yet hers were not anxious
rooms, like the rooms of so many women of small means. They had space,
repose, good cheer, even an air of luxury. It was the home of a gentlewoman
who could make a little better than "the best of things." She had even
entertained a little, now and then—more of late, now that Peggy's education
was complete—but this at the cost of many economies in the right quarter,
and many extravagances also rightly placed.
Call this "climbing" if you will, and a stress upon false values. Bessie
Lonsdale gave herself to no such futile speculations as that. She was too
busy at her task. She was neither so young nor so hypocritical as to pretend
that these things were to be despised. She had done only what every other
mother in the world wishes to do—to guide and protect her child and see
her future provided for; only she had done it more efficiently than most; had
brought, perhaps, a greater fitness or a greater consecration to the task. And
the success of her achievement lay in the art with which she had concealed
all trace of effort and strain. Peggy herself would have been first to laugh at
the notion that her mother had had anything whatever to do with her falling
in love with Andrew McCrae. She believed that it was by the sheer
prodigality of the Fates that, besides being in love with her, romantically, as