III
All waited for the coming of John's brother, David Marquis. David was an elder brother, retired from business on some pretext or other, now loitering his way profitably and pleasantly through the later half of his life. It had been his custom to visit them frequently, spending weeks at a time idling about the house, quiet, keen of look, ready to talk with interest on any general topic, but incommunicative of opinion on any personal matter. Rachel had always felt, as she saw his observant eye first upon John and then upon her, that he saw the difference between them and sympathized with her. For this reason, although she had never criticized John to him, she had sometimes spoken freely of herself and of her own tastes and wishes; and he had listened, quietly as ever, but responsively.
She had a sort of feeling now that she would find her poise through him when he came. A sympathetic eye would help her to adjust the degree of her grief to the limits of her previous feeling.
It was eight o'clock when he arrived. The pretext of dinner in the house was over, and even the neighborly and professional attentions of the day were withdrawn. Rachel descended from her room in the quiet house at the sound of his entrance, and met gratefully the brotherly kindliness of his manner. They sat a few minutes in the hall, in question and answer of his journey and of the accident and all the circumstantial things which cluster about death itself. Rachel answered freely and fully, discovering a relief in breaking the instinctive repression of the day, and finding the sort of rest she had hoped for from his presence. David listened to her quietly, as he had always done, with his ready eye upon her.
At last he rose, turning away from her with a comprehensive look about him.
'Where is he?' he asked abruptly.
'In the library,' said Rachel, with a movement to lead the way for him.
'In there?' exclaimed David, with the emphasis of surprise. Then he closed his lips again and followed her, without meeting her questioning look.
But inside the door he paused again. Rachel had, constrained by long habit, looked first at the room, as she entered, and then at the casket, as a separate thing. The room had so long served to give her poise that she felt a sort of appeal to it even now. David's eyes rested first on the casket and then swept the room in a disapproving look.
'Why is he here?' he asked, with a curtness in his easy voice which Rachel had never heard from him before.
'Why—' she began hesitatingly, and then added vaguely, 'It seemed best.'
'Best for him?' responded David with the same curtness.
Then he turned and dropped his head slowly over the figure in the coffin, and Rachel slipped away. David's manner seemed to put her entirely outside of the occasion.
Later he joined her where she waited in the dim parlor. The still chilliness of the room was stiffening and depressing, but she had not made a fire because its open cheerfulness would not have seemed appropriate. David walked up and down the long room a few minutes in a silence which Rachel, not knowing his mood, did not break.
Then he said, as abruptly as before, 'Can you have him moved in the morning?'
'Moved?—Where?'
Rachel had not supposed that her brother-in-law would have the same feeling of incongruity that she had.
'Anywhere but there. Here—I don't know—there is no place in the house that seems to belong to him. The hall might do—at least he went through there every day,' he finished with an irony none too subtle.
He began to walk up and down the length of the room, alternately facing her with a challenging air, and turning abruptly away again when he had neared her seat. But Rachel, absorbed still in her mood, was unappreciative of his manner.
'John never fitted into the house very well, anywhere,' she said, with reserved regret.
'Fitted into it!' exclaimed David, as he turned toward her at the end of the room. 'My—Did the house ever fit into him? It is the business of a house to suit the people that live in it,' he flung over his shoulder as he wheeled away again.
Rachel was silent, puzzled at this surprising change of manner in David, and not knowing how much of his emotion was merely the impatience of grief.
'Is there a corner of the house where it is appropriate for him to lie now, except that little cubby-hole of his upstairs?' demanded David, continuing, but as one who knows that an answer is impossible.
He suddenly abandoned his walk and came over and sat down opposite her, in front of the empty fireplace. He sat silent a moment, his gray figure drooping in a big chair. Rachel, looking carefully at him for the first time, noted with a kind of surprise the mark of brokenness and relaxation upon him, of submission to tremendous grief. It had not occurred to her that John could be mourned in that way. After a moment he said quietly, 'This house has never been a home for John.'
'I was always hoping,' said Rachel, as if this subject were one which they had discussed before and agreed upon, 'that he would feel more at home here in time.'
'What would have been necessary to bring that about?' asked David quietly.
'Well,' said Rachel, with reluctance in criticism even greater than usual, 'he would have had to change in many ways.'
'In what ways?' persisted David.
Rachel hesitated again. The thing, when baldly said, seemed so much harsher than when it was merely held in thought.
'John's taste was different from that of the people who made the house,' she said.
'Yes, I know. These pictures, and the old books in the library, and so on. Is that what you mean?'
'Well, the insides of the books, and other pictures which we don't have—and so on,' she finished indefinitely.
'Yes. You thought John was crude and rather coarse in feeling.'
'Oh, no—not that indeed!'
'You wouldn't call it just that, of course. But the difference between you was the same, whether it put you up high or him down low. Isn't that so? You were sorry for yourself because John was not on your level?'
'Yes,' admitted Rachel, reluctantly voicing the word.
'Were you ever sorry enough for John because you were not on his level?—There are different kinds of lonesomeness,' he added after a pause. 'I never saw a worse case than John's.'
Rachel sat upright, looking at him in a sort of amazement, as much at himself as at the idea. She had never dreamed that behind his apparently sympathetic observation of her lay any condemnation of her attitude.
He met her look with one as direct, and asked, in a way which made the question a sort of arraignment, 'Did it ever occur to you what a tragedy John's life was?'
Rachel merely shook her head slowly as she tried to connect, in an impersonal sort of way, the notion of tragedy with John—John the successful, the obstinate, the simple in desire, the objective. There had been no real disappointment in all his life. She looked back half-indignantly at David, rejecting the suggestion.
David rose and took a turn up and down the parlor again, pausing in the shadows at the farther end of the room. Then he came back to his seat and faced her determinedly.
'What I had always hoped was that you would come to understand John without any outside interference. I came back over and over to see, but I always kept from butting in.' He paused again. 'I wouldn't say anything now, only your tone, your "Poor John" way, shows you are just the same as ever. I won't have him buried without your knowing something more about him—if I can show you,' he added more gently.
'Please tell me,' said Rachel quietly. Her mind was still half as much on David as on what he was going to say.
'There is nothing to tell that you should not have seen for yourself. You were his wife and you lived with him. From the time you came to this house one side of John's life ended. In a way he had no home and no—wife. A man wants a companion.'
Rachel almost spoke, in startled contradiction. It was she who had been uncompanioned.
'You were proud, I know, of never finding fault with John. Don't you know that he would have been glad if you had openly found fault with him? As it was, it seemed as if you thought him hopeless. When he said things about the house or anything in it, he really wanted you to contradict him and argue with him, and give him a way to come to the same place where you were—don't you see?'
'Did he tell you?'
'No. But of course I used to sit round with him a good deal. And I had always been used to understanding him,' he added, with a drop in his voice. 'John had a lot of imagination,' he went on.
Rachel looked up in real surprise.
'I could see every year how the house was getting more on his nerves. Sometimes when he was feeling it more than usual he would say little things that I understood. For him it was like living with some one who didn't want him round. But he might have liked it.'
'You don't understand,' said Rachel, as if pricked into coming to her own defense. 'John didn't like the way the house came to us in the first place. You didn't know—'
'Yes, I did,' he responded as she hesitated, 'I found out.'
'And yet,' she went on, 'we used the house and the money—'
'You haven't known much about the business for several years, have you? Of course you do know that the house has been in your name from the beginning, almost. But you don't know that the few thousands Richard Hughes left have been invested for you ever since two years after he died. It crippled John for a while after he took it out of the business. But he always took good care of that money—it amounts to quite a little now.'
'John didn't like it because Richard—' Rachel hesitated again.
'You thought he was jealous. He did that after one day when you weeded out a lot of his books and put them away in some corner. And it was after he had those New York electric men here that evening and you seemed not to want to have them in the library, that he bought that corner of ground over there and made his garden. Don't you understand?'
Rachel dropped her face upon her hands, partly for relief from David's serious face, which forebore to rebuke her and yet of necessity did so, partly to close herself in with her own bewilderment. To reconstruct John's life meant to take a new view of her own also.
David leaned suddenly toward her. 'If John had been jealous, wouldn't he have had reason, Rachel? I know you weren't—untrue to him. But still—' He felt the formulation of the thought with her.
'I haven't judged you harshly, Rachel,' he went on in a moment, 'but it is not right that a man's brother should know him better than his wife does. I had to make you know, even at the last.'
Then, as if he were compelled to say the final hard thing, he added, 'Wasn't there something you had already thought you should do when everything was in your hands?'
Rachel, startled and flushing, faced him again, in involuntary confession. 'I had always thought it would be right to carry out a plan of Richard Hughes's.'
'Yes, I know. I am sure that was only a momentary notion of his. He had a great habit of making notes of things. His will was made only a few days before he died, and that idea was probably earlier. I was an executor, you remember. But anyway, several years ago John made a large gift to the library of Richard's college, in Richard's name. He took no chances on being unfair. He should have told you,' he added, 'but John had a hard sort of pride to manage, and I suppose he never did.'
'No,' said Rachel, 'he never did.'
She rose, with a sudden dropping of her hands at her sides, as if relinquishing something they had held, and moved vaguely toward the door.
'Don't you think,' pursued David, 'that he might be brought in here—or somewhere?'
Rachel hesitated, her hand faltering on the door-frame. 'No,' she said at last, 'let him stay there now.' And she herself went out through the dim chill hall. She lingered a moment at the closed library door, and then went slowly on up to her own empty room.
OF WATER AND THE SPIRIT[8]
BY MARGARET PRESCOTT MONTAGUE
'I WANT to tell you—I must tell you all about it.'
With a kind of grave finality, the little woman in the deck chair next to mine snapped together the collapsible drinking-cup with which she had been playing, and sat up, laying a small eager hand on my arm. It was as if her groping thoughts had suddenly pushed open a door into action. I wondered if she guessed that I had been peeping at her from under dropped lids. She had the colorless make-up of a small middle-aged mouse, but her expression was amazing. It startled and arrested one. All the old lines of the face were set to small ambitions and sordid desires, but the look which should have accompanied these lines was clean gone—wiped into something big and still and simple—and her manner was that of an earnest child.
'I was in Belgium when it commenced,' she began. 'But I guess I better go back and tell it all right from the beginning,' she broke off.
'Please do,' I begged.
I did my best to speak naturally, but my voice seemed to break some spell, for her face blurred suddenly to self-consciousness.
'I—I reckon I ought to apologize for speaking to a stranger,' she stammered primly. And now her words exactly matched all the old small lines of her face. It was as if her little self, aware of something big and overwhelming that threatened to sweep her out of her depth, made a desperate clutch at conventionality.
'But I want to hear,' I protested eagerly. 'Please tell me.'
She must have seen that I was in earnest, for the little conventional self disappeared at that, and she answered simply, 'And I want to tell you—it seems like I've just got to tell you.'
It was September, 1914. We homing Americans were churning through an extraordinarily blue ocean toward New York and peace, while back there, just over our shoulders, a mad world was running red.
'It was like bein' torn all to pieces and put together again different,' she said. 'But I'll go back like I said, and start right from the beginning.'
For a moment she was silent, staring thoughtfully down at the cheap little metal cup, screwing the rings softly round and round, and drawing, as it were, inspiration from the sight of it.
'I come from Johnson's Falls,' she began at length. 'You wouldn't know where that is. It's just a little place down in West Virginia, but it's right close to the Virginia state line, and we have some mighty nice people in town. Why,' she exclaimed, 'I reckon we have some of the very best blood in the South there! But—but that isn't what I set out to tell you,' she caught herself up.
She fell into such a prolonged silence, turning the little cup, and looking at it, that at last I ventured a question to start her again.
'And I suppose,' I said, 'you belong to one of the oldest families there.'
I was sorry as soon as I had said it.
'No, I don't,' she answered simply, looking straight up at me. 'That was how it all commenced. My father kept the livery stable. But of course it wouldn't matter—keepin' a livery, I mean—if your family was all right. Jeff Randolph kept the grocery. Being a Randolph, of course he could. But my name's Smithson—Sadie Virginia Smithson—and my grandfather was a carpenter. I'm a dressmaker myself. That's the reason they didn't elect me to the Laurel Literary Society.' She paused a moment. 'I reckon you wouldn't understand about the Laurel Literary Society?' she questioned a trifle wistfully.
'Perhaps not,' I admitted.
'Well, it's a literary society, of course. The members read papers, and all like that, but it's a heap more'n that. Belonging to it kind of marks a person out in Johnson's Falls and gives 'em the—the—well, I reckon you'd call it the entray to all the best homes in town. If you don't belong—well, I reckon it came kinder harder on me, not belonging, than it did on some of the others. Why, I'd have said the girls that started it were my very best friends. We'd played together as children, and I called 'em all by their first names, and they knew I was just as smart, an' liked readin' an' all that just as well as any of 'em did. So when I wasn't asked to join—well, it just seemed to knock me right out. I wasn't but nineteen then, an' when you're young things hurt more, I reckon. Anyhow the slight of it got just fixed in my mind, an' I made a kind of a vow that I'd belong to that society some day if I died for it. And then, after a while it came to me, maybe if I could just save money enough to go abroad, they'd ask me to read a paper before the society when I got back, 'cause mighty few people have traveled much from our town.—Well,' she looked thoughtfully away at the blue water, many an' many a night I've put myself to sleep thinking how it would be when I read that paper. You know, when you're young and kind of unhappy and slighted, how you make up things to sort of comfort yourself?'
'Well, I could just see the whole thing, me standing there reading an' all, and when I'd get through I could almost hear the applause. They'd some of 'em have on gloves, you know, so it would sound softer an' more genteel-like than just common bare-hand clapping. Well, it takes time for a country dressmaker to save. It took me twenty years. I did have most enough once, but then my sister was taken sick an' what I'd saved had to go for her. But I just gritted my teeth an' commenced again, and at last this spring I had enough, an' I joined a party and went. Ours wasn't a regular party. It was just a professor an' his wife who were goin' anyhow, an' would take a couple of ladies with them, so there were just the four of us. Well, we traveled for a month or more, an' you better b'lieve I stretched my eyes to see all there was to see. An' then, all at once, the world just tipped itself right over an' went crazy.
'We were in Brussels when it came. The professor was sure everything would quiet down in a little bit, an' he said we'd better stay right there. And anyhow, it wasn't easy to get away. It was all just awful, with one country after another slipping in. Only things came so quick a person didn't hardly have time to catch their breath an' think "how awful," 'fore something worse was jumping right on top of it. Well, we stayed and stayed, till at last the Germans came. It certainly was a sight to see 'em—but I ain't goin' to tell about that, I'm just goin' to skip right along to what I set out to tell.
'The professor and his wife had left their only child, a mighty sickly little thing, with her grandmother in Paris, and when things got so bad they were pretty near distracted to get to her. Well, one morning the professor came in and told us he'd run across a young American, a Mr. Grenville, who was being sent to Paris on some special diplomatic business. He had a big automobile, and he thought maybe he could get it fixed to take us all, too. It looked like a mighty crazy thing to do, but there wasn't any holdin' the professor an' his wife on account of their child, and me and the other lady, we was afraid to be left behind. Well, after a lot of runnin' around from one official to another, they did finally get it all fixed for us to go, an' the next day we started out with an American flag on the front of our car. Of course we were stopped a lot of times and all our papers gone through and everything, but each time they let us go on account of Mr. Grenville bein' a United States official. We'd started early, an' by noon we'd come a right smart piece, an' about that time we began to hear firing on in front. Did you ever hear them big guns?' she broke off to ask, her childlike eyes questioning me.
I shook my head.
'Well, you needn't never want to hear 'em,' she said. 'When they commenced we all kind of looked at one another, an' I reckon we was all scared. Anyhow, I know I was. Why, at home I'm 'fraid of a thunderstorm. But still we kept on. The sound of the firin' got louder an' louder, but it was never very close, and along late in the afternoon it sort of died off, an' we commenced to draw breath again, and think everything was goin' to be all right. I'm 'most sure now we must have missed the way, for just about that time we ran upon a piece of road that was all tore up. There were big holes in it from the shells, an' those tall poplars alongside were all snapped off, an' their branches stripped down like a child peels a switch. You could smell the fresh sap like you can in lumber camps at home. Well, we had to slow up an' kind of pick our way, and on round the very next turn we ran right up on them.'
'On the fighting!' I gasped.
'No—no; the fightin' was all over then. Just for a flash, comin' on 'em so quick like, I didn't know what they were. They looked like little sprawled brown heaps. But in the second I was wonderin', one of 'em flung up an arm and groaned.'
'How awful!' I cried aghast.
'Yes,' she assented simply, 'it certainly was awful. My words ain't big enough to tell you how awful. Runnin' up on 'em so unexpected like that, kind of cut my breath right off an' choked me. There they were, layin' all about acrost the road, an' in a wheat-field alongside, with the sun just shining down like it was any kind of a summer day. A good many of 'em were dead, but there were a plenty that weren't. They blocked the road so we had to stop, an' right where we stopped there was a young man layin' flung over on his back. He'd snatched his shirt open at the breast, an' the blood had all dripped down into the dust of the road. He opened his eyes, an' stared right up in my face, an' cried, "Water, for God's sake!" He said it over an' over in the awfullest voice, an' like it was one word—"Water-for-God's-sake, water-for-God's-sake"—like that. I had this little drinkin' cup, an' there was a good-sized creek just a piece across the field, so I grabbed my hand-bag an' jumped out. Well, at that all of 'em in the car commenced to holler an' scream at me to get back, that we couldn't stop—it wouldn't be safe—an' we couldn't do anything, an' anyhow the stretcher-bearers would be along d'rectly. But I just said, "He wants water, an' I've got my cup here, an' there's the branch, an' anyhow," I says, "he looks kind of like my sister's oldest boy," an' with that I started on to the creek.
'Well, the professor an' Mr. Grenville jumped out of the car an' came runnin' after me, but I just turned 'round an' looked at 'em. "You all go on," I says. "He asked me for water for God's sake, an' if you try to put me back in that car I'll fight you like a wildcat." I never did anything like that,—fightin', I mean,'—she broke off to explain earnestly, 'but I would have, an' I reckon they knew it. The professor tried to argue. "You'll be a raving maniac if you stay here," he says. "Well," I says, "look what's here now—what difference does it make if I am?" Somehow that was the way I felt. Everything was so awful it didn't seem to matter whether anything awful happened to me or not. So I just kept on to the creek, and Mr. Grenville said, "For Heaven's sake, let her stay if she can do anything. I wish to God I could stay too." But he couldn't, he was carryin' some mighty important dispatches that he just had to get on with. An' then he calls out to me, "Good luck and God bless you, Miss Smithson!" An' when I looked back he was standin' with his hat off. He was a mighty nice young man. But all the time the other ladies in the car was screamin' an' hollerin' for them to come on, so they had to go.'
'They left you all alone!' I cried.
'They had to,' she returned. 'Mr. Grenville had to get on with his dispatches, an' it was the last chance the professor an' his wife had of gettin' through to their child. An' the other lady—Well, she couldn't do nothin' but scream anyhow. By the time I was comin' back from the creek the car was just pullin' out of sight. Somehow, to see it go like that gave me a kind of funny feelin'. I was scared, I reckon, but all the same I felt kind of still too. It seemed like for the last few weeks I'd been hustled along in a wild kind of a torrent, but now I'd touched bottom an' got my feet under me. I reckon a woman does touch bottom when there's anything she can do—anyhow, one raised to work like I've been does. But, oh, my Lord!' she cried suddenly, dropping her face to her hands, 'I wish I could keep from seein' it all still—an' hearin' it too! Did you ever hear a man scream?' she demanded. 'Not just groan, but shriek, an' scream?'
'In hospitals,' I said, uncertainly, 'I've heard people screaming when they were coming out of ether.'
She shook her head. 'That's different. You knew there were people, nurses and doctors, to do things for 'em; but out there there wasn't anything but the trampled wheat, an' the big empty sky. There was plenty of 'em who wanted water, an' begged an' cried for it; but I just said, "I'll be back to you all presently," an' went on to the first one. He was kind of delirious, but he could drink the water, an' was mighty glad to get it. I brushed the flies all away, an' spread a clean handkerchief over his wound,—he was too far gone to try an' do anything else for him,—an' went on back to the creek. Water, that was the main thing they wanted. The most of 'em that could be were bandaged already. Some of the medical outfit had been around an' got 'em tied up, but after that, I reckon the fightin' must of changed an' cut 'em off from their friends, for the stretcher-bearers didn't come, an' didn't come.
'It was all so strange an' kind of shut away there, like destruction had lit for a spell an' then flown on to the next place. The wheat was all laid over an' tramped, and lumpy with khaki bodies, an' with caps an' guns an' things flung around in it, an' the red sun sailin' down an' down in the West, an' every here an' there awful splatters of blood in the wheat. But I didn't have time to look an' think too much—an' it was mighty lucky I didn't have. They were all English an' had run upon a German battery an' been shot to pieces 'fore they hardly knew what was happenin.' I guess some of 'em must have got away, but there was a plenty that didn't. They'd been layin' there since dawn, an'—an' they were hungry—' her voice broke. 'An' I didn't have anything to give 'em,' she whispered.
'They say after a while you get kind of numb to things,' she went on presently, with her grave simplicity. 'I don't know how that is, but I know the things I saw made me stop every now an' then down by the creek out of sight, an' just wring an' wring my hands together in a kind of rage of pity. Once, goin' through the wheat, I tramped on something soft, an' when I looked, it was—it was just a piece of a man. I thought I'd lay right down then an' die, but I says to myself, "They want water, they want water"—an' that way I kind of drove myself on. But all the time I could see my heart under my waist just jumpin' up an' down, like it was fightin' to jump out an' run away. An' then another time—' But she broke off. 'No,' she said, 'I won't tell about that. It's so peaceful here with that blue water an' sunshine an' all, I reckon I oughtn't to tell what it's like underneath when Hell takes the lid off. An' maybe some day the Lord'll let me forget.
'But it's funny,' she went on again presently, 'how your mind grabs ahold of any foolish thing to steady you.' She paused, staring down at the little cup as though she drew remembrance from it. 'I recollect as I went back and forth, back and forth, weaving out paths through the wheat, a silly song that we used to sing to a game at school kept runnin' in my head:—
| I don't want none of your weevily wheat, |
| An' I don't want none of your barley; |
| An' I don't want none of your weevily wheat |
| To bake a cake for Charley. |
'I was mighty glad it did. For all it was so silly, it kept me from flyin' right off the handle. An' so I kept on an' on, carryin' 'em water. Some of the men thought it was funny I should be there, an' they wanted to talk an' ask me questions; but the most of 'em were sufferin' too bad to care, an' some of 'em were busy goin' along into the next world, an' were done with bein' surprised over anything in this. Most of 'em called me "Nurse" or "Sister," an' some way I liked to have 'em do it. Some of 'em certainly were brave, too. Why, I saw one young fella jump straight up to his feet an' fling his arms out wide, an' holler right up at the sky, "Are we downhearted?—No!" an' pitch over dead. You know,' she paused to explain simply, her extraordinarily childlike eyes lifted to mine for understanding and sympathy, 'it just seems to snatch the heart right out of you to see a person stand up to death like that—'specially when they're so young, like that little fella.'
'Of course,' she went on after a moment, 'I didn't just give 'em water. I'd do any other little thing I could besides. An' every time I could do anything, I certainly was glad. Doing things seemed to ease up a little that terrible rage of pity I felt. I took my skirt off an 'rolled it up for a pillow for a little fella who couldn't move an' was layin' with his head in a kind of a sink-hole. He tried to thank me but he couldn't,—he just sobbed,—but he caught ahold of my hand an' kissed it. That made me cry. It was so sort of young an' pretty of him. After that I went on for a spell with the tears just pourin' down my cheeks. But presently I found the one who couldn't drink the water, an' I quit cryin' then. My tears weren't big enough; only God's would have been big enough for that.
'The man's face was all gone,—eyes, mouth, everything,—an' still he was alive. He must have heard me an' known somebody was there, for he commenced to scream an' moan, tryin' to say things down in his throat, an' to reach out his hands an' flop about—O my God! It was like a chicken with its head off! I thought I'd have to run. But I didn't. I just sort of fell down beside him, an' caught ahold of his hands, an' patted them an' talked to him like you do to a child in a nightmare. I don't know what I said at first. Just a crazy jumble of pity, I reckon; but after a little bit I found I was prayin'. I know I needed it, an' it seemed to help him too, for after a little bit, he stopped that awful tryin' to speak down in his throat, an' lay still just grippin' my hands. I was so crazy I couldn't think of a thing to say but "God bless us an' keep us an' make his face to shine upon us an' be merciful unto us." An' I just said that over an' over.
'I guess it wasn't the words that he wanted, it was the feelin' of havin' God there in all that awful dark and blood, an' some human bein' beside him who was sorry. Anyhow, every time I'd stop he'd snatch at my wrists so hard it would hurt; look.' She broke off to push up her gray sleeve, and there on her thin wrist, still vividly black and blue, were the bruised prints of fingers. 'But I was glad to be hurt—I wanted to be hurt. I wanted to have a share in all the sufferin'. It just seemed like my heart would break. An',' she added with great simplicity, 'I reckon that's just what it did do, for I know I broke through into something bigger than I ever had been.
'Well, after a while, God did have mercy on that poor soul, for he quit pullin' at my hands, and began to die, an' when I came 'round again to him he was gone. But that got me started, an' I left off sayin' that foolishness about the weevily wheat, an' said the little prayer instead. I said it to myself first, but after a little bit, I found I was sayin' it out loud. I don't know why, but it seemed like I had to say it every time I gave one of 'em water. Just "God bless us an' keep us an' make his face to shine upon us and be merciful unto us." It was somehow like a child's game—like havin' to touch every tree-box goin' along the street, or steppin' over every crack. Each one of 'em had to have the water an' the little prayer, an' then on to the next, or back down to the creek for more. Most of 'em didn't seem to notice, but some of 'em laughed, an' some stared like I was crazy,—an' maybe I was a little,—an' again some of 'em were glad of it.
'So I kep' on an' on, an' the sun went down, an' the dark came, an' it seemed like a kind of a lid had shut us away from all the world. It wasn't right dark, for the stars were shinin'. It was about that time that I found the little officer. He was dyin', off in the wheat all to himself, an' he got me to take down some messages for his folks. I wrote 'em in my diary. I had a pocket flashlight in my bag, an' it made a round eye of light that stared out at every word I wrote. They were the simplest kind of words. Just love, love to mother, and love to father, and Snippy and Peg, an' good-bye to 'em all, an' how he was glad to die for England. But they look mighty strange jumpin' out there in my diary alongside of travel notes about Brussels. It's like something big an' terrible had smashed its fist right through all the little fancy things.
'But it was funny,' she went on after a minute, 'how sort of like children so many of the men were, so trusting an' helpless. There was one little fella always said the same thing to me every time I came 'round. "They'll sure be around for us soon now, won't they, sister?" he'd say. An' I'd always answer, "Oh, yes, just in a little bit now." An' he'd settle back again, so trusting an' satisfied, an' like I really knew. That was the way they all seemed to me—just children. Even the ones that cursed an' screamed at me. An' another funny thing,' she added lifting her grave child's eyes to mine: 'I've never been married—never known what it was to have children—but that night all those men were my children, even the biggest an' roughest of 'em. I felt 'em all here'—She held her hands tight against her breast. 'An' I b'lieve I would have died for any one of 'em. I reckon bein' so crazy with pity had stretched me up out of bein' a scary old maid into bein' a mother.
'I recollect there was two loose horses gallopin' about. They were wild with fear, an' they'd gallop as hard as ever they could in one direction, an' then they'd wheel 'round an' come to a stand with their heads up, an' their tails cocked, an' nicker, an' snort over what they smelt, an' then take out again. Well, once they came chargin' right down on us, an' I thought sure they were goin' right over the men. I never stopped to think: I ran straight out in front of 'em wavin' my arms an' hollerin'. They just missed gallopin' right over me. But I didn't care; I b'lieve I'd almost have been glad. It was like I said—I wanted to be hurt too. That was because it was all so lonesome for 'em. Death an' sufferin' is a lonesome thing,' she stated gravely. 'When they'd scream, I felt like I'd tear my heart out to help 'em. But all I could do was just to stand on the outside like, an' watch 'em sufferin' an' maybe dryin' inside there all alone. That's why it seemed like bein' hurt too would make it easier.
'Well, along late in the night, the guns broke out again awful loud, an' presently off against the sky I saw red streaks of flame go up in two places, an' I knew they were towns on fire. I just stopped still an' looked, an' thought what it was like with the folks scurryin' 'round like rats, an' the fire an' the shells rainin' down on 'em. "That's Hell—right over there," I says out loud to myself, an' then I went on down to the creek faster than ever. Maybe I was gettin' kind of lightheaded then, an' God knows it was enough to make anybody so; anyhow, I felt like I had to hold Hell back. It was loose right over there, an' the only thing that held it off was the cup of water an' the little prayer. So I kept on back an' forth, back an' forth from the creek, faster an' faster. I thought if I missed one of 'em it would let Hell in on all the rest, so I kept on an' on. The guns were boomin', an' the flames goin' up into the sky, an' all Hell was loose, but the little prayer an' the cup of water was holdin' it back. An' then at last, when it commenced to freshen for dawn, I knew I'd won.'
She drew a deep breath, and paused, looking up at me with clear, far-away eyes.
'That was because I knew He was there,' she said.
'He?' I questioned, awestruck by her tone.
She nodded. 'Yes, God,' she answered simply. 'An' after that, that terrible lonesomeness melted all away. I knew that though I had to stand outside an' see 'em suffer, He was inside there with 'em—closer to 'em even than they was to themselves. So I knew it wasn't really lonesome for 'em, even if they were sufferin' an' dyin'. An' I'm right sure that a good many of 'em got to know that, too—anyhow, the faces of some of the ones that had died looked that way when I saw 'em in the mornin'. Maybe it was because I cared so much myself that I kind of broke through into knowin' how much more God cared. Folks always talk like He was a father 'way off in the sky, but I got to know that night that what was really God was something big an' close right in your own heart, that was a heap more like a big mother.
'An' it was all bigger an' sort of simpler than I'd ever thought it would be. Right over there was Hell an' big guns, an' men killin' each other, but here where we were, were just stars overhead, an' folks that you could do things for, an' God. I reckon that's the way,' she said with her grave simplicity, 'when things get too awful you suffer through to God, an' He turns you back to the simplest things—just the little prayer, an' the cup of water for men that were like sick children. This is the cup,' she added, holding it out for my inspection. 'An'—an' that's all, I reckon,' she concluded. 'When daylight came, the stretcher-bearers did get through to us. There was a sort of doctor officer with them, an' I never in my life saw any one look so tired.
'"Who are you, an' what in thunder are you doing here?" he stormed out at me—only I don't say it as strong as he did.
'I reckon I must have looked like a wild woman. I had lost my hat and my hair was all falling down, an' I only had on my short alpaca underskirt, 'cause I'd taken off my dress skirt to make a pillow like I said; but I just stood right up in the midst of all those poor bodies, an' says, "I'm Miss Smithson—Sadie Virginia Smithson—an' I've been holdin' Hell back all night."
'I knew I was talkin' crazy but I didn't care—like the way you do comin' out of ether.
'He stared at me for a spell, an' then he says, kind of funny, "Well, Miss Sadie Virginia, I'm glad you held some of it back, for everybody else in the world was letting it loose last night."
'He was mighty kind to me, though, an' helped get me to one of the base hospitals, an' from there over to England. But I don't know what happened to the professor an' his party.'
'Well,' I ventured after a long pause, and not knowing quite what to say, 'the Laurel Literary Society will be glad enough to have you belong to it now.'
She flashed bolt upright at that, her eyes staring at me.
'But—but you don't understand,' she cried breathlessly. 'I've been face to face with war an' death an' Hell an' God,—I've been born again,—do you reckon any of them little old things matter now?'
I was stunned by the white look of her face.
'What does matter—now?' I whispered at last.
'Nothin',' she answered, 'nothin' but God an' love an' doin' things for folks. That was why I had to tell you.'
MR. SQUEM
BY ARTHUR RUSSELL TAYLOR
'WHY do we go on perpetuating an uncomfortable breed?'
The man who was shaving at the mirror-paneled door of the Pullman smoking compartment looked at his questioner on the leather seat opposite.
'Give it up,' he answered. 'Why is a hen?'
The first man rapped his pipe empty on the edge of a cuspidor.
'You answer the question,' he said, 'in the only possible way—by asking another.'
'Right,' answered the shaver; and began to run the hot water.
A closely built man, in a suit so heavily striped as to seem stripes before it was a suit, lurched into the compartment and settled himself to his paper and cigar.
'That monkey-on-a-stick,' he presently broke out, 'is still taking good money away from the asses who go to hear him rant about God and Hell and all the rest, up in Boston. I am so damn tired of him, and of that rich rough-neck Freeze. It's the limit.'
'Pretty much,' said the man with the pipe. 'I was reading about the Belgians just before you came in, and when I jumped away from them I lit on some things about Poland. Then I wondered aloud to this gentleman why we go on multiplying—increasing such an uncomfortable breed. Modoc gods and degenerate millionaires make one wonder more.'
'What is your line, may I ask?' inquired the stripe-suited man.
'Religion.'
'The hell—I beg your pardon. If you mean that you're a preacher or something like that, all I've got to say is, you're a funny one. It's your job, isn't it, to be dead sure that everything's all right, or somehow going to be all right—no matter about all the mussed-upness? Yes, that's certainly your job. Yet here you are, asking why we go on stocking the world with kids. I might ask that,—I'm in rubber tires,—but not you. Yes, I might—only I don't.'
The man who had been shaving had resumed his tie, collar, and coat, and now lighted a cigarette.
'I lay my money,' he said, 'on one thing: that, if men let themselves go, they wind up shortly with God—or with what would be God if there were any. You've come to it early—through the Ledger. You'd have got to it sooner or later, though, if you'd been talking about hunting-dogs—provided you'd have let yourselves go.'
'Well, now,' asked the closely built man, 'what is your line?'
'Education.'
'High-brow company! Seems to me the pair of you ought to be silencers for a plain business man like me. Rubber is my line—not how the world is run. My opinion on that is small change, sure. Yet I think it ought to be run,—the world, I mean,—even if it's mussed-up to the limit, and I think it's up to us to keep it running. The parson here—if he is a parson—asks why we should; that is, if I get him. And then I think there's a manager of it all in the central office—a manager, understand, though he never seems to show up around the works, and certainly does seem to have some of the darnedest ways. The professor here—if he is a professor—doesn't sense any manager; that is, if I get him straight, with his "if there were any." That was what you said, wasn't it? I'm a picked chicken on religion and education, but, honest, both those ideas would mean soft tires for me—yes, sir, soft tires.'
'Broad Street, gentlemen,' said the porter at the door.
The Reverend Allan Dare walked away from the train and down the street. He was Episcopally faced and Episcopally trim, and he was having considerable difficulty in holding his universe together. This is not pleasant at forty-two, when you want your universe held together and things settled and calm. He had an uncomfortable sense that this difficulty had jolted into plain sight on the car.
'Ass!' he addressed himself briefly. 'To let your sag and unsettlement loose in that way! To say such a thing as you said, and in such a place! To parade your momentary distrust of life! Ass—oh, ass!'
He said—or thought—a Prayer-Book collect, one which seemed rather suited to asses, and continued,—
'I suppose I'm three-tenths sag—no more; and "He knoweth whereof we are made," and what a devil of a world it is to be in just now. But that rubber man on the car—he isn't sag at all. Heavens, his crudeness! His beastly clothes, and the bare shaved welt around the back of his neck, and that awful seal ring! But he's fastened. Life is worth pushing at and cheering for—and there's a manager, if he has "the darnedest ways." I'd give something for an every-minute mood like that—a carrying night-and-day sureness like that. He's not illuminated—lucky dog!'
Professor William Emory Browne had changed cars and was continuing his journey. In his lap lay a volume of essays just put forth by a member of his craft, a college professor. He opened it,—it chanced at page 27,—and his eye was caught by the name of his own specialty. He read:—
'Philosophy is the science which proves that we can know nothing of the soul. Medicine is the science which tells that we know nothing of the body. Political Economy is that which teaches that we know nothing of the laws of wealth; and Theology the critical history of those errors from which we deduce our ignorance of God.'
'Confound it!' ejaculated Professor Browne, and closed the book.
'Room for one more?' inquired a voice, and the rubber-tire man slid into the seat.
'I just pulled off a little thing out here,' he said, 'that ought to put a small star in my crown. A down-and-out—a tough looker—says to me, "Please, mister, give me a dime. I'm hungry." And I says to him, "Get out! What you want is a good drink—go get it," and slips him a quarter. Talk about gratitude! To think there are men—you know it and I know it and he was afraid of it—who'd have steered him to a quick-lunch and put him against soft-boiled eggs!'
'"Man's inhumanity to man"'—
'Sure! Nothing but that ever makes me any trouble about things. Tear ninety, George,'—this to the conductor,—'and burn this panetella some time. You said you were in education,' he went on. 'I've just blown myself to a Universal History—five big volumes, with lots of maps and pictures and flags of all nations and hanging gardens of Babylon and such things. Gave down thirty-five for it, and my name is printed—Peter B. Squem—on the first page of every book. Now,'—Mr. Squem grew quite earnest,—'you'd say, wouldn't you, that if a man could take those books down,—chew them up, you understand, and take them down,—he'd have an education? Not the same, of course, as normal school or college, and yet an education.'
'I think, if you know what's good for you, you will steer clear of what you call an education. I think I should stick to rubber tires, and a few comfortable certainties—and peace.'
Mr. Squem stared. 'How's that?' he inquired. 'Education is your line, you were saying, and yet you queer your stuff. I'd get quick word from the house, if I handled Mercury tires that way.'
'But you wouldn't,' rejoined Professor Browne, 'you wouldn't, because tires mean something. Tires are your life-preserver—they are shaped like life-preservers, aren't they?'
'You've got me going,' said Mr. Squem, 'and no mistake. I don't mind telling you I'd hoped to get some hunch from you—on education. You see, my clothes are right, I always have a room with bath, and I get two hundred a month and fifty on the side. I read the papers—and the magazine section on Sunday—and I got through four books last year. And yet there's something not there—by Keefer, not there! I'd give something to get it there—to slide it under, somehow, and bring the rest of me up to regular manicuring and ice-cream forks and the way my clothes fit!'
Mr. Squem was interrupted in the expression of this craving. There was a tremendous jar; the car tore and bumped with an immense pounding over the ties, then careened and sprawled down a short bank and settled on its side. People who have been through such an experience will require no description. To others none can be given. In the bedlam chaos and jumble, and chorus of shrieks and smashing glass, Professor Browne, struggling up through the bodies which had been hurled upon him, was conscious of a pain almost intolerably sharp in his leg, and then of a sort of striped whirlwind which seemed to be everywhere at once, extricating, calming, ordering, comforting—and swearing. It was like a machine-gun:—
'Keep your clothes on, nothing's going to bite you—just a little shake-up—Yes, chick, we'll find your ma—No, you don't climb over those people; sit down or I'll help you—To hell with your valise, pick up that child!—There go the axes; everybody quiet now, just where he is—You with the side-whiskers get back, back, hear me!—Now, children first, hand 'em along—women next, so—men last—Why didn't you say you was a doctor? Get out there quick; some of those people have got broke and need you!'
Professor Browne was one of these last. Lifted by Peter Squem and a very scared brakeman, he lay on two Pullman mattresses at the side of the track, waiting for the rabbit-faced country doctor to reach him. He was suffering very much,—it seemed to him that he had never really known pain before,—but his attention went to a white-haired lady near by—a slight, slender woman, with breeding written all over her. She had made her way from the drawing-room of the Pullman, and leaned heavily upon her maid, in a state approaching collapse. Professor Browne was impressed by her air of distinction even in the midst of his pain. Then he saw a striped arm supportingly encircle her, and a hand dominated by an enormous seal ring press to her lips an open bottle of Scotch.
'Let it trickle down, auntie—right down. It's just what you need,' said Peter B. Squem.
'What did you think of when the car stopped rolling?'
Professor Browne, lying in his bed, asked this question of Mr. Squem, sitting at its side. The latter had got the professor home to his house and his housekeeper after the accident the day before, had found the best surgeon in town and stood by while he worked, had in a dozen ways helped a bad business to go as well as possible, and now, having remained over night, was awaiting the hour of his train.
'Think of? Nothing. No time. I was that cross-eyed boy you've heard about—the one at the three-ringed circus. Did you see that newly-wed rooster,—I'll bet he was that,—the one with the celluloid collar? "Good-bye, Maude!" he yells, and then tries to butt himself through the roof. He wouldn't have left one sound rib in the car if I hadn't pinned him. No, I hadn't any time to think.'
He produced and consulted a watch—one that struck the professor as being almost too loud an ornament for a Christmas tree. An infant's face showed within as the case opened.
'Your baby?' inquired Professor Browne.
'Never. Not good enough. This kid I found—where do you suppose? On a picture-postal at a news-stand. The picture was no good—except the kid; and I cut him out, you see. Say, do you know the picture was painted by a man out in Montana? Yes, sir, Montana. They had the cards made over in Europe somewhere,—Dagoes, likely,—and when they put his name on it, they didn't do a thing to that word Montana. Some spelling!'
'Why, what you have there,' said the professor, taking the watch with interest, 'is the Holy Child of Andrea Mantegna's Circumcision,—it's in the Uffizi at Florence. Singularly good it is, too. I'm very much wrapped up in the question, raised in a late book, of Mantegna's influence upon Giovanni Bellini. There's a rather fine point made in connection with another child in this same picture—a larger one, pressing against his mother's knees.'
Mr. Squem was perfectly uncomprehending. 'Come again,' he remarked. 'No, you needn't, either, for I don't know anything about the rest of the picture. I told you it was no good. There was an old party in a funny bathrobe and with heavy Belshazzars, I remember—but the picture was this.'
He rose and began to get into his overcoat.
'There's one thing about this kid,' he said, in a casual tone which somehow let earnestness through. 'I know a man,—he travels out of Phillie, and he's some booze-artist and other things that go along,—who's got one of those little "Josephs." You know, those little dolls that Catholics tote around? Separate him from it? Not on your life. Why, he missed it one night on a sleeper, and he cussed and reared around, and made the coon rout everybody out till he found it. It's luck, you see. Now this kid'—Mr. Squem was pulling on his gloves—'isn't luck, but he works like luck. He talks to me, understand, and'—here a pause—'he puts all sorts of cussedness on the blink. You can't look at him and be an Indian. I was making the wrong sort of date in Trenton one day, and I saw him just in time—sent the girl word I'd been called out of town. I was figuring on the right time to pinch a man in the door,—he'd done me dirty,—and I saw him again. Good-night! I'm never so punk that he doesn't ginger me—doesn't look good to me. The management is mixed up with him—and I hook up to him. Here's the taxi. So long, professor.—Rats! I haven't done one little thing. Good luck to your game leg!'
It was Sunday morning, and service was under way in the Church of the Holy Faith. For the thousandth time the Reverend Allan Dare had dearly-beloved his people, assembled to the number of four hundred before him, exhorting them in such forthright English as cannot be written nowadays, not to dissemble nor cloak their sins before God, and to accompany him unto the throne of the heavenly grace. He had had a sick feeling, as he read this exhortation, so full of pound, rhythm, heart-search, and splendid good sense, to the courteous abstractedness in the pews.
'Heavens!' he had thought, 'once this burnt in!' He had wanted to shriek,—or fire a pistol in the air,—and then crush the meaning into his people; crush God into them, yes, and into himself.
He was four-tenths sag that morning—the Rev. Allan Dare. In the Jubilate, a small choir-boy—a phenomenon who was paid a thousand a year, and was responsible for the presence of not a few of the four hundred—had sung 'Be sure ye that the Lord he is God,' to the ravishment of the congregation—not of the rector, who stood looking dead ahead. The First Lesson had been all about Jonadab, the son of Rechab, and drinking no wine—frightful ineptness! What could it mean to any one? how help any one? Here was Life, with all its cruel tangles, tighter and more choking every day. Here was Arnold's darkling plain, and the confused alarms and the ignorant armies clashing by night.
There came back to Dare the creed he had heard in the smoking compartment: 'I think it ought to be run,—the world,—even if it's mussed-up to the limit, and I think it's up to us to keep it running. I think there's a manager of it all in the central office—a manager, understand, though he never seems to show up around the works, and certainly does seem to have some of the darnedest ways.'
'O God!' breathed Allan Dare, 'there are so many things—so many things!'
It was the same Sunday. Professor William Emory Browne was for the first time on crutches, and stood supported by them at his window.
'Back again,' he ruminated. 'I can probably drive to my classes in another week. Then the same old grind, showing ingenuous youth—who fortunately will not see it—how "the search hath taught me that the search is vain." Ho, hum! How very kind, that Mr. Squem,—he did so much for me,—and how very funny! I should like to produce him at the seminar—with his just-right clothes, his dream of culture via his Universal History, his approach to reality through a picture postal-card!'
He turned on himself almost savagely. Then,—
'What the devil are you patronizing him for? Don't you see that he is hooked to something and you are not, that he is warm and you are freezing, that he is part of the wave,—the wave, man,—and that you are just a miserable, tossing clot?'
It was the same Sunday. Mr. Squem sat in his room—extremely dennish, smitingly red as to walls, oppressive with plush upholstery. A huge deerhead, jutting from over the mantel, divided honors with a highly-colored September Morn, affrontingly framed. On a shelf stood a small bottle. It contained a finger of Mr. Squem, amputated years before, in alcohol.
On the knees of the owner of the room was Volume One of the Universal History—Number 32, so red-ink figures affirmed, of a limited edition of five hundred sets. Mr. Squem's name was displayed, in very large Old English, on the fly-leaf, and above was an empty oval wherein his portrait might be placed.
'No use,' soliloquized the owner of this treasure, 'no use. If I could chew it up and get it down,—or two of it,—that wouldn't slide under the thing that isn't there. Nothing will ever put me in the class of Professor Browne or that preacher on the car, or bring the rest of me up to my clothes.'
He rose and stretched.
'Maybe,' he said, addressing a huge chocolate-colored bust of an Indian lady, 'maybe I can catch up to those fellows some time—but not here. Noon, I bet,'—looking at his watch,—'and it is to eat.'
He contemplated the Mantegna baby.
'So long,' he said, 'you're running things,' and snapped his watch.
BIOGRAPHICAL AND INTERPRETATIVE
NOTES
THE PRELIMINARIES
Cornelia A. P. Comer, accomplished critic, essayist, and writer of short stories, was educated at Vassar, and afterwards engaged in journalistic work in the Middle West and California. She now lives in Seattle.
The plot of The Preliminaries might readily be told in a single paragraph. Its significance lies in its lucid and austere psychology. The young Mr. Oliver Pickersgill appears in four distinct situations; and as we watch him in company with the four dominating and diverse personalities in turn, we are engrossed in the swift and poignant play of his feelings—feelings which finally deepen into a sincere and settled consciousness of attained truth and a confident loyalty to an imprisoned convict. The verisimilitude of both situation and conversation is complete; and in the process there is no exhaustion of emotional values. Henry James would not have treated the situations with more clarity.
The author's further treatment of the problems connected with marriage is seen in two other noteworthy Atlantic stories—The Kinzer Portraits and The Long Inheritance.
BUTTERCUP-NIGHT
John Galsworthy, an English 'novelist of much distinction, and a playwright who has proved that the possession of ideas is not incompatible with popular success. Endowed with an exquisite sense of pity, he has put that sentiment to many chivalrous uses, and since the war he has written in the public service on behalf of various patriotic and humanitarian objects.' Thus Mr. Galsworthy was described in the London Gazette as a recipient of the honor of knighthood in the list of New Year (1918) Honors, his declination not having been received in time to forestall the publication.
Buttercup-Night is hardly a story at all. In company with Mr. Galsworthy we live out the quiet but impressive experience of a single evening, night, and morning, all the while breathing the atmosphere of a rare June beauty that completely wins us to its æsthetic favor and repose. The incident of the sick horse, so gently cared for by the faithful keeper, secures our sympathy but does not draw us away from the more insistent wooing of the charms of the buttercup-night and the morning radiance of a suddenly awakened glow of blooming yellow. The commonplace writer would use the scene for romantic effect; Galsworthy enhances the beauty of the setting by a homely but sincere realism. The significant merits of the style are its purity, its restraint, and its complete adaptability to the hoveringly quiescent mood.
HEPATICAS
Anne Douglas Sedgwick (Madame Basil de Sélincourt) is of American birth, but has lived in England since her childhood. For many years she has found an admiring audience as a writer of novels and short stories. In 1908 she was married to M. de Sélincourt.
The title of the story hints at a reliance upon mere setting. And the hepatica bed, with all that its associations signify, certainly makes its generous atmospheric contribution to the charm of the narrative. But as domestic entanglements begin to ensue, our interest in the flowers is soon shifted to plot and theme. Our sustained sympathy rests with the mother—the mother who has created in her home an atmosphere of the truest and most sensibly refined culture. The promising son, sharing this atmosphere and even enriching it, yields while at Aldershot before the war to the superficial charm of a chorus girl, and marries her. Her loud and garish presence in the home of quiet beauty and repose provides an interesting but tragic study in contrast, and makes us continually more anxious as we watch its influence upon the mother, yearning pityingly for her absent son, yet plaintively relieved when news comes that he has been killed in the war. Death has released him from the grim necessity of living his mismated life and caring for the child born of parents of such divergent types. The supreme merit of the mother's character lies in her willing acceptance of the burdening problem. The strength of the story, as we view it in its entirety, rests in a skillful merging of effects which allows final emphasis upon character portrayal and thematic situation.
POSSESSING PRUDENCE
Amy Wentworth Stone is a resident of Boston, who combines a pleasant sense of the ludicrous with a rare understanding of the spirit of childhood.
This miniature sketch of Amy Wentworth Stone's is admirably handled, and sparkles with the best and kindliest humor—a humor that is in no sense spoiled by the sins that rest so lightly upon the imaginative soul of little Prudence Jane. Her sins hark quickly back to the childhood periods of each reader who sympathetically remembers the world of fancy which conflicted so loudly with dull realism. The charm of this humorous tracery will invite a rereading of Miss Stone's similar triumph in Capital Punishments, published in the Atlantic for November, 1913.
THE GLORY-BOX
Elizabeth Ashe is the pen name of Georgiana Pentlarge, a young and promising story-writer living in Boston.
The Glory-Box is an unforgettable story. Its accuracy in the matter of minor household details and commonplace neighborliness creates an atmosphere of intimate realism which readily wins our sympathetic credence in situation and event. We grow easily familiar with the three or four characters who are introduced, and then we discover our interest centering in two of these—Eunice, the sweetheart, and Stephen, the lover—as, in their separated lives, each in fancy penetrates the daily routine and comes fondly to rest in thoughts and plans of marriage. The story interest is enhanced by the contrast of their daily routine. Eunice's time is spent in teaching, relieved by friendly village companionship; Stephen's in the arduous work of the Columbia Law School, relieved by glimpses of fashionable life in Washington Square. All this routine and hope and relaxation end in the tragedy that the earlier realism of the story grimly accentuates and intensifies. The art of the story lies in the author's quiet control of situations which might so easily, in the hands of a lesser craftsman, run a riotous course in the field of pseudo-sentiment.
THE SPIRIT OF THE HERD
Dallas Lore Sharp, well known as a keen observer both of nature and of human nature, is Professor of English at Boston University.
I have asked permission to extract this episode from a longer article. Professor Sharp was as generous in this as he has been helpful in other matters relating to selections which make up this volume of narratives.
The paragraphs which precede the present beginning are expository in nature, and while they bear interestingly upon the incident, they are not a necessary part of the narrative. The selection breathes the very atmosphere of highly hazardous adventure; and even though the writer quickly generates in us a feeling of confidence in the superior powers of Ranchman Wade and Peroxide Jim, we nevertheless restlessly live through the moments of the wild stampede as it makes its mad and frightened way along the perilous edge of the rim-rock.
IN THE PASHA'S GARDEN
H. G. Dwight is the son of an American missionary to the Near East, and lived for many years in Constantinople. Being compelled to leave Turkey after her entrance into the war, he returned to the United States and is now in the government service.
Mr. Dwight in this Stamboul romance has invested his scenes with the languorous and mystical spirit of the orientalism in which his characters so naturally move. We are here far away from the O. Henry type of story, with its startling cleverness, crisp humor, and ingenious surprise. We share instead the leisure and luxury of this eastern way of living—felt all the more strongly because of the presence of the French wife whose independent customs and bearing offend the servants of the easy-going Pasha. The interest, however, is not confined to the atmosphere. We are soon breathing the mystery of the kiosque—a mystery which the author never fully solves, but leaves silently merged in the intangible charm of the pervading orientalism.
LITTLE SELVES
Mary Lerner, a story-writer of Cambridge, Massachusetts, first won attention by the publication of 'Little Selves' in the Atlantic Monthly.
I have included this selection because it reveals so delicately and so immediately that quality which we may somewhat paradoxically call romantic realism. The scenes which Miss Lerner's old Irish woman so intimately recalls are all peopled by the real creatures of a remembered past, principally her little selves as they lived through their childish joys and sorrows and swiftly sequent perplexities. But each of these experiences, so intimately and realistically portrayed, is seen through memories tinged with the charm of a happy Celtic romance.
THE FAILURE
Charles Caldwell Dobie is a young writer living in San Francisco.
Mr. Dobie has in this story shown himself more than a mere realist. The realistic details of John Scidmore's home, the early-morning routine of the insurance office, the evening splendor of Julia Norris's hotel apartments,—all are graphically re-created. But the central idea is an ethical one—John Scidmore's wavering action in the midst of a business situation where a frank admission of gross neglect was morally imperative. His immediate failure to meet the situation is grimly contrasted with his wife's expressed faith in his honesty. The story presents a graphic instance of a righteous act silently directed by a strongly influencing personality. It closes with this particular problem solved; but we end the reading with many interesting and conflicting surmises concerning the future domestic life in the Scidmore home.
BUSINESS IS BUSINESS
Henry Seidel Canby, essayist and critic and occasional writer of stories, is a Professor of English at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale University. His books include several volumes on the short story.
The commercial theme has been freely exploited by the popular magazine writers. When it is written merely for the sake of getting in line with a popular trend, it is likely to be empty and blusterous. In Mr. Canby's story we are, of course, interested in the business atmosphere; but we are more deeply interested in the portrayal of character. Cargan is most fully drawn, and we watch him with increasing keenness as we see him dominated by the various moods which the other personalities and the shifting incidents and the changing environment engender. The skill shown in the rapid but graphic sketching of Mrs. Cargan and Mrs. Waldron is equally engaging. The story is perfect in its mastery of narrative technique.
NOTHING
Zephine Humphrey (Mrs. Fahnestock), long a contributor of essays and stories to the Atlantic, is the author of a novel entitled Grail-Fire.
In this and other contributions to the Atlantic Miss Humphrey has shown an acute sensitiveness to atmosphere and personality. We are here charmingly led into an intimate understanding of the surroundings and character of the little blind woman who lives her lonely life in the simple cottage where, in preparation for the imminent affliction, she had long ago learned to do her work in the silent dark. The story has almost no plot interest, for we trace no significant movement of events—except the few which are fragmentarily imparted in confidential retrospect. The quietness of the style is in thorough keeping with the secured tone—one of those happy revelations so difficult to accomplish, yet when once accomplished suggesting, by its inevitable touch, the easy process of mastership.
A MOTH OF PEACE
Mrs. Katharine Fullerton Gerould, distinguished as a writer of essays and stories and novels, is the wife of Gordon Hall Gerould, Professor at Princeton.
Aside from the unusually strong and flowing style here so impressively revealed, we have a story marked by a sympathetic penetration into the atmosphere of Andecy—an atmosphere, when first felt, richly laden with the languor of a lonely and pervading provincial peace. This peace is suddenly broken by the rumors and processes of war, and we feel the dread of the impending German attack and the personal solicitude of Miss Stanley, the American heroine lovingly anxious for the fate of her English fiancé. Nearer and nearer comes the threatened danger. Finally the heroine goes out to meet the troop of enemy soldiers without the gates—whether to meet a tragic end, the author does not say.
There is little dialogue and little haste in the action. The narrative is continuously guided by the controlling spirit of Miss Stanley, who grimly triumphs over the fear and dread of the perilous situation. Her body may have suffered defeat; her soul is splendidly victorious. The author's skill at the end is finely revealed in the graphic portrayal of the psychology of the situation.
IN NO STRANGE LAND
Katharine Butler, a young writer of few and distinctive stories, lives at Danvers, Massachusetts.
The significant merit of this story is the mystical creation of a man's experience with death. The things of earth and heaven become perplexingly intermingled. Realism becomes strongly blended with the thoughts that move in weird circles on the tenuous wings of wanton fancy, and we live a puzzled moment as we try to visualize the man's experiences in his new realm of consciousness with its 'incredible freedom and joy.' The whole narrative is wrought in the delicate tracery of one whose temperament is obviously the temperament of a poet.
LITTLE BROTHER
Madeleine Z. Doty, of New York, learned the true story of 'Little Brother' when at The Hague, in the summer of 1915, as a delegate to the Woman's International Congress. Miss Doty is a lawyer by profession; by practice, a writer, investigator, and traveler.
With terrible concreteness Little Brother weights our soul-sense with the horror and tragedy of war. The story is told with a bared realism which the poignancy of the occasion freely extenuates. In short crisp sentences the opening scene is exposed. There follow in dizzy succession and in the same quick-breathing style the little tragic ordeals that fill the story with a terrible passion. It penetrates the very essence of our being and starkly confronts us with the bleak mystery of the existing condition of world-carnage—a carnage that wantonly wreaks its unselected vengeance on little sufferers unskilled and unschooled in squaring their strength to ill-proportioned trials.
WHAT ROAD GOETH HE?
'F. J. Louriet' is a pseudonym representing the dual authorship of Captain and Mrs. F. J. Green, long of Australia and now of Honolulu.
By the free but not too lavish use of sea terms and common sailor talk, we are brought into immediate and intimate knowledge of the affairs of a ship floundering in a storm. Through graphic sensory images, with their vivid and varied appeals, the whole perilous situation is wonderfully intensified. Seldom indeed are details better massed to secure an intended effect. But the interest later comes to centre in the great theme of sacrifice—a sacrifice all the more significant because it is performed with such absolute spontaneity. The story is a noteworthy example of strong effect secured with great economy of time and material.
THE CLEARER SIGHT
Ernest Starr, a writer of occasional stories, lives in North Carolina.
The most interesting element in Mr. Ernest Starr's narrative is the dramatic conflict of emotions. Placed first in the gnomish atmosphere of a chemical laboratory, the tone soon changes from scientific to ethical—each interest being intensified and directed by the deep emotion of romantic love. A serious accident in the laboratory creates the crisis; it reveals to Noakes, the young scientist, the inexcusable baseness in his character—a baseness which allowed him to act with direct disloyalty to his employer and with somewhat obvious disloyalty to the ideals cherished by the girl whom he loved. The situation is finally relieved by his confessions and by the physician's hope that the young scientist's physical blindness is not necessarily permanent.
The author shows unusual skill in dialogue, in analysis, and in the handling of both conventional and dramatic situations.
THE GARDEN OF MEMORIES
C. A. Mercer is an American author who has, unfortunately, been altogether silent of late years.
In this story the traditions and influence of Hawthorne are picturesquely revived. The experience is one which is a bit fragile and tenuous, but to readers who reproduce in their fancy the more delicate picturings of their childhood, who delight in the re-creation of mood, who frequently re-live their childhood sentiments—to all such will come a sense of pleasure in the contemplation of the tracery here so artistically etched.
THE CLEAREST VOICE
Margaret Sherwood, a singularly sincere and graceful writer, is Professor of English Literature at Wellesley College.
The clear voice which here speaks under Miss Sherwood's guidance is the voice of the absent. And, individually, as we read the story, we listen sympathetically to the separate messages of those voices which have entered sympathetically into our past experiences and wisely guided or wisely thwarted our separate deeds.
A Harvard graduate who had taken Professor Charles Eliot Norton's course in fine arts was years afterward selecting a cravat pin in a jeweler's shop in Paris. As he finally decided upon one of plain, simple, and silently impressive design, he said, 'I think Professor Norton would have chosen this.' In decisions minor and in decisions major, we are almost invariably influenced by the unconscious thought of those whose counsel we value. This significant truth Miss Sherwood has impressively revealed in The Clearest Voice.
THE MARBLE CHILD
E. Nesbit (Mrs. Hubert Bland) is an English writer who for many years has enjoyed widespread and deserved popularity as a writer of children's books.
'The world where children live is so full of amazing and incredible-looking things that turn out to be quite real.' This sentence from the story supplies us with the theme the wording of the bald analyst requires. For him who simply reads for the mere narrative, no such analyzing is really necessary—provided there still linger with him the manifold fancies that peopled his childhood. Of course Ernest was an extraordinary child—like Shelley or William Blake, it may be. Just such a child as Hawthorne would adore. To appreciate the story in all its fineness, we must ourselves have something of that abnormality. Else we shall be as impervious as the crinolined aunts, and as unsympathetic toward Ernest's experience as are some readers to Hawthorne's fanciful Snow Image.
THE ONE LEFT
E. V. Lucas is an English essayist, a lover and biographer of Lamb, known for many delicate and appreciative essays, and for books of travel in familiar places. It is semi-occasionally only that Mr. Lucas addresses himself to fiction.
This admirably written story—so brief as to be little more than a sketch—is rich in emotional values which are safely held within the bonds of restraint. Scientifically, I am told there is nothing wrong in the description of the ingenious device which provides the means for the expression of the emotion, though readers unfamiliar with such devices may question the verisimilitude of the action. It is but one instance among thousands which provide modern literature with a broadened range within the field of realism.
THE LEGACY OF RICHARD HUGHES
Margaret Lynn, member of the English Department of the State University of Kansas, at Lawrence, is best known for her sympathetic appreciation of prairie life.
This story is a tragedy—the tragedy of a wife's failure to understand the finer side of her husband's nature. She learns her misjudgment all too late—when the husband lies dead. The emotional values are the greater because the reader inevitably contemplates the long years they lived together in their isolation. The psychology of the situation is portrayed with remarkable clarity. The method is very different from the method of such writers as de Maupassant. De Maupassant's analysis and dissecting is usually done with cold and relentless indifference; Miss Lynn's processes are here carried out determinedly, but with full and lingering sympathy.
OF WATER AND THE SPIRIT
Margaret P. Montague, living among the West Virginia mountains, has written many successful stories of the Hill people whom she knows so well.
The chain of incidents narrated by the simple-hearted Virginia dressmaker is of absorbing interest, and seems to be the real experiences of one who had actually endured the tragedy of having lived in the horror of the aftermath of battle. But even more interesting than these scenes of pitiful suffering is the effect produced upon the woman who endures it all. Her whole attitude toward life was changed. What matters it now that her father was not an aristocratic Virginian? What if she were a poor dressmaker at the little village of Johnson's Falls? What though she was not elected a member of the Laurel Literary Society? She had been face to face with war and death and Hell and God. The little things of life had unconsciously sunk away and the great enduring themes had boldly emerged to re-create her spiritual self.
MR. SQUEM
Reverend Arthur Russell Taylor, Rector of the Episcopal Church at York, Pennsylvania, whose career as a writer of fiction opened so auspiciously with 'Mr. Squem' and a few companion stories, died very suddenly early in January, 1918.
Here the central interest is in character. In creating such a personage as Mr. Squem, the writer of this story has boldly penetrated the veneer of culture and shown us that the character elements which are of enduring worth may be far aloof from any knowledge of art or religion or philosophy, or any form of polite learning.
It is interesting to note the part which the railroad wreck plays in this story. While there is enough in the situation to have made the wreck a point of central objective interest, it is utilized here simply as the background for the display of Mr. Squem—genial, direct, efficient, ingenuous, dominating, interestingly crude.
In the February, 1918, Atlantic Mr. Squem is equally interesting in a different environment.
Soon after the death of Reverend Arthur Russell Taylor, Bishop James Henry Darlington sent to the Atlantic office an interesting appreciation of Dr. Taylor's work and character. From Bishop Darlington we learn that Dr. Taylor 'had for years been suffering from a tumor on the brain which had totally destroyed the sight of one eye and which by its pressure caused him constant pain, sleepless nights, and the gradual failing of the other eye. Like Robert Louis Stevenson, he was cheerful and brightened the lives of others until the very last, and almost his final writings were sent to The Atlantic.'
| The following corrections were made by the etext transcriber: |
| the chops looks so tasty=>the chops look so tasty |
| had never critized=>had never criticized |
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 113, p. 733.
[2] The Atlantic Monthly, vol. 86, p. 180.
[3] Atlantic stories.
[4] Atlantic stories.
[5] Atlantic stories.
[6] Atlantic stories.
[7] Published also in Professor Sharp's book, Where Rolls the Oregon, and here reprinted through the courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Company.
[8] Published also in book form and here republished through the courtesy of E. P. Dutton & Co.