Chapter V––The Dominance of the Evolved
The keen joy of life was warmly flooding Ichabod Maurice this spring day. Not life for the sake of an ambition or a duty, but delight in the mere animal pleasure of existence. He had risen early, and, a neighbor with him, they had driven forth: stars all about, perpendicular, horizontal, save in the reddening east, upon their long day’s drive to the sawmill. The two teams plodded along steadily, their footfall muffled in the soft prairie loam; the earth elsewhere soundless, with a silence which even yet was a marvel to the city man.
The majesty of it held him silent until day dawned, and with the coming of the sun there woke in unison the chorus of joyous animal life. Then Ichabod, his long legs dangling over the dashboard, lifted up a voice untrained as the note of a loon, and sang lustily, until his companion 179 on the wagon ahead,––boy-faced, man-bodied,––grinned perilously.
The long-visaged man was near happiness that morning,––unbelievably near. By nature unsocial, by habit, city inbred, artificially taciturn, there came with the primitive happiness of the moment the concomitant primitive desire for companionship. He smiled self-tolerantly when, obeying an instinct, he wound the lines around the seat, and went ahead to the man, who grinned companionably as he made room beside him.
“God’s country, this.” Ichabod’s hand made an all-including gesture, as he seated himself comfortably, his hat low over his eyes.
“Yes, sir,” and the grin was repeated.
The tall man reflected. Sunburned, roughly dressed, unshaven as he, Maurice, was, this boy-man never failed the word of respect. Ichabod examined him curiously out of his shaded lids. Big brown hands; body strong as a bull; powerful shoulders; neck turned like a model; a soft chin under a soft, light beard; gentle blue eyes––all in all, a face so open that its very legibility 180 seemed a mark. It reddened now, under the scrutiny.
“Pardon,” said Ichabod. “I was thinking how happy you are.”
“Yes, sir.” And the face reddened again.
Ichabod smiled.
“When is it to be, Ole?”
The big body wriggled in blissful embarrassment.
“As soon as the house is built,”––confusedly.
“You’re building very fast, eh?”
The Swede grinned confirmation. Words were of value to Ole.
“I see the question was superfluous,” and Ichabod likewise smiled in genial comradery. A moment later, however, the smile vanished.
“You’re very content as it is, Ole,” he digressed, equivocally; “but––supposing––Minna were already the wife of a friend?”
The Swede stared in breathless astonishment.
“She isn’t, though” he gasped at length in startled protest.
“But supposing––”
“It would be so. I couldn’t help it.” 181
“You’d do nothing?” rank anarchy in the suggestion.
“What would there be to do?”
Ichabod temporized.
“Supposing again, she loved you, and didn’t love her husband?” Ole scratched his head, seeing very devious passages beyond. “That would be different,” and he crossed his legs.
Ichabod smiled. The world over, human nature is fashioned from one mould.
“Supposing, once more, it’s a year from now,––five years from now. You’ve married Minna, but you’re not happy. She’s grown to hate you,––to love another man?”
Ole’s faith was beautiful.
“It’s not to be thought of. It’s impossible!”
“But supposing,” urged Ichabod.
The boy-man was silent for a very long minute; then his face darkened, and the soft jaw grew hard.
“I don’t know––” he said slowly,––“I don’t know, but I think I kill that man.”
Ichabod did not smile this time.
“We’re all much alike, Ole. I think you would.” 182
They drove on; far past the town, now; the sun high in the sky; dew sparkling like prisms innumerable; the prairie colorings soft as a rug––its varied greens of groundwork blending with the narrow line of fresh breaking rolling at their feet.
“You were born in this country?” asked Ichabod suddenly.
“In Iowa. It’s much like this––only rougher.”
“You’ll live here, always?”
The Swede shook his head and the boy’s face grew older.
“No; some day, we’re going to the city––Minna and I. We’ve planned.”
Ichabod was thoughtful a minute.
“I’m a friend of yours, Ole.”
“A very good friend,” repeated the mystified Swede.
“Then, listen, and don’t forget.” The voice was vibrant, low, but the boy heard it clearly above the noise of the wagon. “Don’t do it, Ole; in God’s name, don’t do it! Stay here, you’ll be happy.” He looked the open-mouthed listener deep in the eyes. “If you ever say a 183 prayer, let it be the old one, even though it be an insult to a just God:––‘Lead us not into temptation.’ Avoid, as you would avoid death, the love of money, the fever of unrest, the desire to become greater than your fellows, the thirst to know and to taste all things, which is the spirit of the city. Live close to Nature, where all is equal and all is good; where sleep comes in the time of sleep, and work when it is day. Do that labor which comes to you at the moment, leaving to-morrow to Nature.” He crossed his long legs, and pressed his hat down over his eyes. “Accept life as Nature gives it, day by day. Don’t question, and you’ll find it good.” He repeated himself slowly. “That’s the secret. Don’t doubt, or question anything.”
In the Swede’s throat there was a rattling, which presaged speech, but it died away.
“Do you love children, Ole?” asked Ichabod, suddenly.
The boy face flushed. Ole was very young.
“I––” he lagged.
“Of course you do. Every living human being does. It’s the one good instinct, which even the lust of gain doesn’t down. It’s the tie that 184 binds,––the badge of brotherhood which makes the world one.” He gently laid his hand on the broad shoulder beside him.
“Don’t be ashamed to say you love children, boy, though the rest of the world laugh,––for they’re laughing at a lie. They’ll tell you the parental instinct is dying out with the advance of civilization; that the time will come when man will educate himself to his own extinction. It’s false, I tell you, absolutely false.” Ichabod had forgotten himself, and he rushed on, far above the head of the gaping Swede.
“There’s one instinct in the world, the instinct of parenthood, which advances eternal, stronger, infinitely, as man’s mind grows stronger. So unvarying the rule that it’s almost an index of civilization itself, advancing from a crude instinct of the body-base and animal––until it reaches the realm of the mind: the highest, the holiest of man’s desires: yet stronger immeasurably, as with the educated, things of the mind are stronger than things of the body. Those who deny this are fools, or imposters,––I know not which. To do so is to strike at the very foundation of human nature,––but impotently,––for 185 in fundamentals, human nature is good.” Unconsciously, a smile flashed over the long face.
“Talk about depopulating the earth! All the wars of primitive man were inadequate. The vices of civilization have likewise failed. Even man’s mightiest weapon, legislation, couldn’t stay the tide for a moment, if it would. While man is man, and woman is woman, that long, above government, religion,––life and death itself,––will reign supreme the eternal instinct of parenthood.”
Ichabod caught himself in his own period and stopped, a little ashamed of his earnestness. He sat up in the seat preparatory to returning to his own wagon, then dropped his hand once more on the boy’s shoulder.
“I’m old enough to be your father, boy, and have done, in all things, the reverse of what I advised you. Therefore, I know I was wrong. We may sneer and speak of poetry when the words proceed from another, my boy; but, as inevitable as death, there comes to every man the knowledge that he stands accursed of Nature, 186 who hasn’t heard the voice of his own child call ‘father!’”
He clambered down, leaving the speechless Ole sprawling on the wagon-seat. Back in his own wagon, he smiled broadly to himself.
“Strange, how easily the apple falls when it’s ripe,” he soliloquized.
They drove on clear to the mill without another word; without even a grin from the broad-faced Ole, who sat in ponderous thought in the wagon ahead. To a nature such as his the infrequency of a new idea gives it the force of a cataclysm; during its presence, obliterating everything else.
It was nearly noon when they reached the narrow fringe of trees and underbrush––deciduous and wind-tortured all––which bordered the big, muddy, low-lying Missouri; and soon they could hear the throb of the engine at the mill, and the swish of the saw through the green lumber; a sound that heard near by, inevitably carries the suggestion of scalpel and living flesh. Nothing but green timber was sawed thereabout in those days. The country was settling 187 rapidly, lumber was imperative, and available timber very, very limited.
Returning, the heavy loads grumbled slowly along, so slowly that it was nearly evening, and their shadows preceded them by rods when they reached the little prairie town. They stopped to water their teams; and Ole, true to the instincts of his plebeian ancestry, went in search of a glass of beer. He returned, quickly, his face very red.
“A fellow in there is talking about––about Mrs. Maurice,” he blurted.
“In the saloon, Ole?”
The Swede repeated the story, watching the tall man from the corner of his eye.
A man, very drunk, was standing by the bar, and telling how, in coming to town, he had seen a buggy drive away from the Maurice home very fast. He had thought it was the doctor’s buggy and had stopped in to see if any one was sick.
The fellow had grinned here and drank some more, before finishing the story; the surrounding audience winking at each other meanwhile, and drinking in company. 188
Then he went on to tell how Camilla Maurice had sat just inside the doorway, her face in her hands, sobbing,––so hard she hadn’t noticed him; and––and––it wasn’t the doctor who had been there at all!
Ichabod had been holding a pail of water so that a horse might drink. At the end he motioned Ole very quietly, to take his place.
“Finish watering them, and––wait for me, please.”
It was far from what the Swede had expected; but he accepted the task, obediently.
The only saloon of the town stood almost exactly opposite Hans Becher’s place, flush with the street. A long, low building, communicating with the outer world by one door––sans glass––its single window in front and at the rear lit it but imperfectly at midday, and now at early evening made faces almost indistinguishable, and cast kindly shadow over the fly specks and smoke stains of a low roof. A narrow pine bar, redolent of tribute absorbed from innumerable passing “schooners,” stretched the entire length of the room at one side; and back of it, in shirt sleeves and stained apron, presided the 189 typical bar-keeper of the frontier. All this Ichabod saw as he stepped inside; then, himself in shadow, he studied the group before him.
Railroad and cattle men, mostly, made up the gathering, with a scant sprinkling of farmers and others unclassified. A big, ill-dressed fellow was repeating the tale of scandal for the benefit of a newcomer; the narrative moving jerkily over hiccoughs, like hurdles.
“––I drew up to th’ house quick, an’ went up th’ path quiet like,”––he tapped thunderously on the bar with a heavy glass for silence––“quiet––sh-h––like; an’ when I come t’ th’ door, ther’ ’t was open, an’––as I hope––hope t’ die,... drink on me, b’ys, aller y’––set ’m up, Barney ol’ b’y, m’ treat,... hope t’ die, ther’ she sat, like this––” He looked around mistily for a chair, but none was convenient, and he slid flat to the floor in their midst, his face in his hands, blubbering dismally in imitation.... “Sat (hic) like this; rockin’ an’ moanin’ n’ callin’ his name: Asa––Asa––Asa––(hic) Arnold––’shure ’s I’m a sinner she––”
He did not finish. Very suddenly the surrounding 190 group had scattered, and he peered up through maudlin tears to learn the cause. One man alone stood above him. The room had grown still as a church.
The drunken one blinked his watery eyes and showed his yellow teeth in a convivial grin.
“G’d evnin’, pard.... Serve th’––th’ gem’n, Barney; m’ treat.” Again the teeth obtruded. “Was jes’––”
“Get up!”
He of the story winked harder than before.
“Bless m’––” He paused for an expletive, hiccoughed, and forgetting what had caused the halt, stumbled on:––“Didn’ rec’gniz’ y’ b’fore. Shake, ol’ boy. S––sh-sorry for y’.” Tears rose copiously. “Tough––when feller’s wife––”
Interrupting suddenly a muffled sound like the distant exhaust of a big engine––the meeting of a heavy boot with an obstacle on the floor. “Get up!”
A very mountain of human brawn resolved itself upward; a hand on its hips; a curse on its lips.
“You’ll apologize.”
“You damned lantern-faced––” No hiccough now, but a pause from pure physical impotence, pending a doubtful struggle against a half-dozen men.
“Order, gentlemen!” demanded the bar-keeper, adding emphasis by hammering a heavy bottle on the bar.
“Let him go,” commanded Ichabod very quietly; but they all heard through the confusion. “Let him go.”
The country was by no means the wild West of the story-papers, but it was primitive, and no man thought, then, of preventing the obviously inevitable.
Ichabod held up his hand, suggestively, imperatively, and the crowd fell back, silent,––leaving him facing the big man.
“You’ll apologize!” The thin jaw showed clear, through the shade of brown stubble on Ichabod’s face.
For answer, the big man leaning on the bar exhibited his discolored teeth and breathed hard.
“How shall it be?” asked Ichabod.
A grimy hand twitched toward a grimier hip.
“You’ve seen the likes of this––” 192
Ichabod turned toward the spectators.
“Will any man lend me––”
“Here––”
“Here––”
“And give us a little light.”
“Outside,” suggested the saloon-keeper.
“We’re not advertising patent medicine,” blazed Ichabod, and the lamps were lit immediately.
Once more the long-visaged man appealed to the group lined up now against the bar.
“Gentlemen––I never carried a revolver a half-hour in my life. Is it any more than fair that I name the details?”
“Name ’m and be quick,” acquiesced his big opponent before the others could speak.
“Thanks, Mr. Duggin,” with equal swiftness. “These, then, are the conditions.” For three seconds, that seemed a minute, Ichabod looked steadily between his adversary’s bushy eyebrows. “The conditions,” he repeated, “are, that starting from opposite ends of the room, we don’t fire until our toes touch in the middle line.” 193
“Good!” commended a voice; but it was not big Duggin who spoke.
“I’ll see that it’s done, too,”––added a listening cattleman, grasping Ichabod by the hand.
“And I.”
The building had been designed as a bowling-alley and was built the entire length of the lot. With an alacrity born of experience, the long space opposite the bar was cleared, and the belligerents stationed one at either end, their faces toward the wall. Midway between them a heavy line had been drawn with chalk, and beside it stood a half-dozen grim men, their hands resting suggestively on their hips. The room was again very quiet, and from out-of-doors penetrated the shrill sound of a schoolboy whistling “Annie Laurie” with original variations. So exotic seemed the entire scene in its prairie setting, that it might have been transferred bodily from the stage of a distant theatre and set down here,––by mistake.
“Now,” directed a voice. “You understand, men. You’re to face and walk to the line. When your feet touch––fire; and,” warningly––“remember, 194 not before. Ready, gentlemen. Turn.”
Ichabod faced about, the cocked revolver in his hand, the name Asa Arnold singing in his ears. A terrible cold-white anger was in his heart against the man opposite, who had publicly caused the resurrection of this hated, buried thing. For a moment it blotted out all other sensations; then, rushing, crowding came other thoughts,––vision from boyhood down. In the space of seconds, faded scenes of the dead past took on sudden color and as suddenly vanished. Faces, he had forgotten for years, flashed instantaneously into view. Voices long hushed in oblivion, re-embodied, spoke in accents as familiar as his own. Inwardly he was seething with the myriad shifting pictures of a drowning man. Outwardly he walked those half-score steps to the line, unflinchingly; came to certain death,––and waited: personification of all that is cool and deliberate––of the sudden abundant nerve in emergencies which comes only to the highly evolved.
Duggin, the big man, turned likewise at the word and came part way swiftly; then stopped, 195 his face very pale. Another step he took, with another pause, and with great drops of perspiration gathering on his face, and on the backs of his hands. Yet another start, and he came very near; so near that he gazed into the blue of Ichabod’s eyes. They seemed to him now devil’s eyes, and he halted, looking at them, fingering the weapon in his hand, his courage oozing at every pore.
Out of those eyes and that long, thin face stared death; not hot, sudden death, but nihility, cool, deliberate, that waited for one! The big beads on his forehead gathered in drops and ran down his cheeks. He tried to move on, but his legs only trembled beneath him. The hopeless, unreasoning terror of the frightened animal, the raw recruit, the superstitious negro, was upon him. The last fragment of self-respect, of bravado even, was in tatters. No object on earth, no fear of hereafter, could have made him face death in that way, with those eyes looking into his.
The weapon shook from Duggin’s hand to the floor,––with a sound like the first clatter of gravel on a coffin lid; and in abasement absolute 196 he dropped his head; his hands nerveless, his jaw trembling.
“I beg your pardon––and your wife’s,” he faltered.
“It was all a lie? You were drunk?” Ichabod crossed the line, standing over him.
A rustle and a great snort of contempt went around the room; but Duggin still felt those terrible eyes upon him.
“I was very drunk. It was all a lie.”
Without another word Ichabod turned away, and almost immediately the other men followed, the door closing behind them. Only the bar-keeper stood impassive, watching.
That instant the red heat of the liquor returned to the big man’s brain and he picked up the revolver. Muttering, he staggered over to the bar.
“D––n him––the hide-faced––” he cursed. “Gimme a drink, Barney. Whiskey, straight.”
“Not a drop.”
“What?”
“Never another drop in my place so long as I live.”
“Get out! You coward!”
“But, Barney––”
“Not another word. Go.”
Again Duggin was sober as he stumbled out into the evening.
Ichabod moved slowly up the street, months aged in those last few minutes. Reaction was inevitable, and with it the future instead of the present, stared him in the face. He had crowded the lie down the man’s throat, but well he knew it had been useless. The story was true, and it would spread; no power of his could prevent. He could not deceive himself, even. That name! Again the white anger born of memory, flooded him. Curses on the name and on the man who had spoken it! Why must the fellow have turned coward at the last moment? Had they but touched feet over the line––
Suddenly Ichabod stopped, his hands pressed to his head. Camilla, home––alone! And he had forgotten! He hurried back to the waiting Swede, an anathema that was not directed at another, hot on his lips. 198
“All ready, Ole,” he announced, clambering to the seat.
The boy handed up the lines lingeringly.
“Here, sir.” Then uncontrollable, long-repressed curiosity broke the bounds of deference. “You––heard him, sir?”
“Yes.”
Ole edged toward his own wagon.
“It wasn’t so?”
“Duggin swore it was a lie.”
“He––”
“He swore it was false, I say.”
They drove out into the prairie and the night; the stars looking down, smiling, as in the morning which was so long ago, the man had smiled,––looking upward.
“Tiny, tiny mortal,” they twinkled, each to the other. “So small and hot, and rebellious. Tiny, tiny, mortal!”
But the man covered his face with his hands, shutting them out. 199