A story teller's story

by Sherwood Anderson

The man on the beach began gathering a great pile of sticks and bits of driftwood, preparative to building a fire, and now and then he turned his head to look toward the approaching boats. That there was a woman among his visitors bothered him. Women were always interfering with business. Why had they wanted to bring a woman? “To the deuce with women!” he growled, making his way through the deep sand with a great pile of sticks in his arms.

Then the boat had landed and there was the old Harry to pay. A revolutionary party in one of the South American republics had gone to pieces and nearly all its members had been arrested and were to be executed. There was no money to pay for the firearms that were to have been shipped, and the little band of men, now standing on the lonely beach and facing the smugglers, had barely escaped with their lives. They had rowed out to sea in two boats and had been picked up by a steamer, and one among them had in his possession money enough to bribe the steamer captain to bring them to this spot, where they were to have landed, just at this time, under quite different circumstances.

Different circumstances indeed!

The lady of the party—well, she was something special—the daughter of one of the wealthiest sugar planters of her native land, she had given her young soul to the cause of the revolution and when the smash came had been compelled to fly with the others. Her own father disowned her in a moment of cowardice and the death sentence was out against her. What else could she do but flee?

If they had brought nothing else, they had brought food ashore from the ship, and the party might as well eat, since they would, in any event, have to spend the night on the beach. In the morning, it was the hope expressed by the leader of the party, that the firearms smuggler would guide them inland. They had friends in America but had they landed at a regular port of entry it might well have turned out that their own government would have asked the American government to send them home—to face the consequences of their folly.

With a grim smile on his cruel lips my fanciful father had heard them out in silence and now began building a fire. Night came and he moved softly about. A strange and new impulse had come into his hard and cruel heart. He had fallen instantly in love with the young female leader of revolution from the foreign land and was trying to figure out how he could get away from the others and have a talk with her.

At last when food had been prepared and eaten, he spoke, agreeing to perform all that had been asked of him, but declaring that the young woman could not be compelled to spend the night in such a place. Speaking in the Spanish language—with which he was marvelously conversant—he commanded the others to stay by the fire while he took the young woman inland to where, some two miles away, he declared he had some horses concealed in the stable of an oyster thief, a friend of his who lived up the bay.

The others consenting, he and the young woman set off. She was very beautiful and, as they had all been seated about the fire, she had kept her eyes almost constantly upon the American.

He was of the type of which American heroes are made, you see, and she had, in her young girlhood, read American novels. In American novels, as in American plays—as everyone knows—a man can, just as well as not, be a horse thief, a desperado, a child-kidnapper, a gentleman burglar, or a well-poisoner for years and years, and then, in an instant, become the sweetest and most amiable fellow possible, and with perfect manners too. It is one of the most interesting things about us Americans. No doubt it came to us from the English. It seems to be an Anglo-Saxon trait and a very lovely one too. All anyone need do is to mention in the presence of any one of us at any time the word “mother,” or leave one of us alone in the darkness in a forest in a lonely cabin on a mountain at night with a virgin.

With some of us—that is to say, with those of us who have gone into politics—the same results can sometimes be had by speaking of the simple and humble laboring man, but it is the virgin that gets us every shot. In bringing out all the best in us she is a hundred per cent. efficient.