The Hundred, and Other Stories

by Gertrude Hall Brownell

She began desperately to run. He saw her clutch her poor little ruined head, and heard her cry out, breaking into sobs: "Oh, my hair! Oh, my hair!"

He dropped in the grass, face downward, and pressed his hands over his ears, trembling. It all seemed so strange, so out of proportion.

In the late afternoon of that same hot day the crabbed little bell on Madame Finibald's door snapped to let in a tired, dusty youth, whose dejected face was so flushed, one's thought at sight of him turned at once on sunstroke. He leaned wearily over the counter and asked a few questions, at which madame's liver seemed so shaken she could not keep a hold on her good manners. At the height of her voice she began berating all the world, and one absent person. Fraisier tried to calm her, with vague, soothing motions of his hands patting down the air. When she subsided enough for him to be heard, he pointed to a long tail of shining hair in the window, and spoke again, growing redder, if possible, than before—so red that his eyes watered, and he had to shade them a moment, leaning his elbows on the counter. She unhitched the hair, shaking it brutally. He put out his hands in remonstrance. She flung it down before him with a forbidding proposition and a deep snort of malice. Meekly he emptied his purse on the counter, unfolding the bills, spreading out the silver and lucky pieces to count, reserving only for himself a crumpled ticket.

She watched him with gleeful, avaricious eyes. After computation, he rose without breath of argument and went down the street to pawn his watch and studs and cigarette-case, returning solvent.

He left with a rather unsightly parcel in his hand; the cover was burst in more than one place. Madame Finibald had not been so particular as she sometimes was in the selection of her wrapping-paper. He had no overcoat and no pocket large enough to put his prize in; he was forced to hold it, conscious how it was heavy and soft and its contents gleamed through the holes.

He got home at dark, reporting to his landlady with his back to the light. He wanted nothing to eat: there were lamps and voices in the dining-room. He could not go to bed, worn out as he was: on the porch below his window was singing and picking of strings.

He went forth into the fields. At last, beyond all sounds but the summer's own, he sank on the grass. He did not look up once at the stars, but lay sprawling with his forehead on his crossed arms, and let his heart torture itself at its own good leisure. He drank deeper and deeper of its dark bitterness, forcing himself recklessly to it, reaching a sort of desperate drunkenness. It seemed to his inexperience there could be nothing worse at any time in this life to taste.

He woke long hours afterwards, wondering a little at first, feeling somewhat stiff. The air was warm and still, tremulous with crickets—thrilled through with the shaken baubles of the summer's myriad little jesters. In his sleep he had rolled over; his face was to heaven. The sky was faint with starlight; the Milky Way was a road of diamond sand; the great constellations had hung themselves with solemn jewels; down near the rim of the world watched far-spaced large earnest beacon-lights—but above, the tiniest irresponsible stars twinkled in and out, like shining ants in ant-hills. He looked, almost wondering why his eyes felt so queer—sore besides heavy; why his breast felt so heavy. He rose sitting; he was on a hillock. Like an opaque reproduction of the transparent, lightsome sky looked the ground about him, which the scythe had this season respected; it was dark dotted with daisies. He rubbed his aching head a little, then lay back again, the grass shooting coolly up along his cheeks. After the sound, dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion from which he had waked, because he had drained it to satisfaction, his head was numbed, but, the little it worked, clear in its working; his heart was sore, but quieted. Something had changed; all wore another aspect; all seemed farther removed. Hours had gone by already, a month would go—a year—fifteen years. This would be lived out of memory. If it is realized that a thing must cease, has it not begun to die already? At the first one must be patient, and take suffering as a matter of course. He stretched his limbs wearily, not entirely deceived by himself, nor unaware of depths of heartache under this film of philosophy that had scummed them over in sleep. He drew his hot palms over the grass; his hand came upon the parcel that he had not dared to leave behind nor to open, that he never would have the strength to open—and his philosophy was severely shaken. His heart was near bursting out afresh; he laid his face on the wretched, soft, dead little bundle, and agonized.

Then he revolted against this suffering that seemed to him undeserved, disproportionate. He was not a bad fellow; looking into his heart, he could declare truthfully that it was not in him to willingly harm anything—give any one pain. Why should he feel so endlessly mean, so endlessly miserable? He appealed to Minnie, his reasonable Minnie of old, against this state of things. He defended himself to her; she defended him to himself. When all was said, he had at no time done anything to blame, had that day said nothing that was not wise and for the best, that he would not in like case be forced to say over again. He had been taken unawares; he had not expressed himself with tact—he had been fatally slow. The fact remained that the girl could not have stayed by him, setting the whole country-side agog. But if his heart still refused to be at peace about this matter, let it be assured he meant to seek till he found the girl; it must be easy enough to find her, though he had failed that day. Alas! poor little forlorn head, shorn of its great gleaming beauty—poor little discrowned head, at this hour full of what thoughts, God knew! He would make all things right to her; he was extravagantly ready to pay any price; he was lavish of his future, free of all the gods gave him to give. At the same time that he made these protestations to himself and to her, and he was sincere in making them, he knew that Minnie would never look at him again—he knew that she had understood how he was changed with the change in her; it was beyond his governing, but she must be forgiven for not forgiving it. And looking into his man's heart, he wondered at the mystery of it.

In that hour of being honest, after revolting at it, reasoning about it, trying to sophisticate it away, he came back always to a hopeless contemplation of it as a simple fact, not to be done away with. In the face of it he might clear himself of all blame, perhaps, but he remained humiliated and full of a vague pity. As he lay in the grass so, plucking heedlessly in the dark at the little tufts, emptied of all pride under the lofty stars, a dreamy mood followed upon what degree of success he had in suppressing feelings he was determined not to endure, so did they hurt! His thoughts in search of soothing travelled back to days before last spring, when he could hardly have conceived what he had this night been suffering. Peaceful period, but without great charm, he decided, loyal to his altered taste. He thought of the past spring, the soft awakening all without and within a man—the tender, vast burgeoning, fluttering, shimmering, outreaching! He judged it sadly from a midsummer night. Not all were flowers that put forth in that mad amenity of nature; no, not all flowers.