The Wood Fire in No. 3

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

"No—tarred hemp and roses." Then he added slowly and thoughtfully, as if he were recalling some incident in his past life: "Quite a different kind of girl, my boy, from Christine; about as different as—well, there isn't any comparison. Yes, tarred hemp and red roses; funny combination, isn't it?—and yet I never catch the odor of one without smelling the other. And the whole scene comes back, too, every detail: the rolling ship; the girl as she lay in her chair, the roses in her lap; the tones of the Captain's voice (I have sometimes heard them in my sleep); the glare of the overhead light, and then the splash. Queer things, these memories!"

Mac paused, and smoked on quietly.

I made no answer. If you want Mac at his best, never interrupt him. When he is in one of his reminiscent moods his philosophy, his knowledge of life, his wide personal experience, his many adventures by land and sea make him the most delightful of conversationalists, while his choice of words and marvellous powers of description—talking as a painter talks, one who sees and who, therefore, can make you see; using words as some men do pigments with all the force of their contrasts—make his descriptions but so many brilliantly colored pictures. Then his voice! Suddenly, without a moment's warning, your eyes fill up, leaving you wondering why, until you remember some throat tone that vibrated through you like the note of a violin.

When he is in one of these moods he rarely looks at me or at anyone who listens, especially when he is alone with some one of his chums—and we two were alone this afternoon, it being Varnishing Day, and all of the men at the Academy. He looks up at the ceiling, lying back in his chair, talking to some crack or stain in the plastering, or drops his head and talks to the smouldering coals, his human eyes fixed on the logs. This habit of talking to whatever is within the reach of his hands or legs—his brushes, palette, colors, the chair that gets in his way, the rug he stumbles over—is characteristic of the man; woodsmen have it who live alone in great forests. Mac's explanation is that he lived so much alone in his early life that he acquired the habit in self-defence. The fire, however, seems to understand, never answering back as it does to me when I try to punch it into life, but simmering away like a slow-boiling pot, giving out a steady glow for hours as it listens, nursing its heat until the master has finished or puts on another log.

Mac refilled his pipe, rested the tongs where his hand could grasp them, and continued, his big shoulders filling the chair, the light of the blaze on his humorous, kindly face.

"There are great contrasts in life, my boy, that never fail to interest me—big Rembrandt things that stand out sharp and solid, sudden as the exit from a foul shaft into a sunny winter's day, white and cold. And the reverse side—the black side. That is the worst of these contrasts, the darks always predominate—out of a yacht's warm cabin, for instance, into a merciless, hungry sea, without a moment's warning. No, nothing to do with my memory of tarred hemp and red roses; only to make my point clear to you," and Mac's head sank the lower in his chair. "Did you ever focus your mind, for one thing, on the contrasts that the two sides of a nine-inch brick wall of any house in town present? Did you never lie in your bed, with your head to the plaster, and wonder what was going on nine inches away from your ears? I have; I do it now. It may be sorrow or cruelty or death, if we did but know—some girl mourning for her lover; some woman crouching in fear; some silent body, cold in a sheet. Not always so, of course; many times the happiness is on their side and all the misery on ours; but the two atmospheres are never alike. Only nine inches of wall! Shut it out as we may, cover it with tapestries or pictures or paint, it is still within that many inches of our ears. What a blessing we can't see! Life would be a hell for some of us if we saw both sides of its brick walls at once. I try now and then to get a glimpse of both sides because of the effects I get of light and shadow—they always appeal to me. When I do I often get a heart wrench that upsets me for days, and yet the next opportunity I am at it again."

Once more Mac paused and looked into the fire, as if he were trying to recall to his mind, among its glowing, heaped-up coals, some picture in that rich past of his.

"And that old perfume of tarred hemp and roses," I asked, "does that suggest one of them?"

"Yes, one of the strangest I ever experienced; and yet it was only one of the things that goes on every day. A steamer's deck was the brick wall this time: On our side a cloudless sky, fresh air, light, chairs filling the length of the deck, whisperings in corners, two lovers hanging over the rail, some in the bow away from intruders. Now and then a line of song wafted from open cabin windows. Seaward, a stretch of steely blue dominated by a clear, round moon, its light flooding a pathway of silver to the very side of the ship, a pathway along which angels might have stepped—were stepping, if we could have seen.

"This was one of the times when I had both sides of the wall in review; she did not. Her heart and mind were on other things. No, nothing that you think, old man; not another Christine—I left all that behind me; not anybody in particular, really; just a girl I met on board. There were a dozen others as pretty—prettier. Our steamer chairs happened to come together, that was all. We were but two days out, and her roses were still fresh—big red ones that some of her friends had sent her. They lay in her lap over her steamer rug. I picked them up for her when they dropped to the deck, and so the acquaintance began.