Atlantic Narratives Part 18

'It's my trick,' consented Jeems.

Neither spoke of the approaching end, but when they had sat staring at each other a time,--for mad men's minds move with but a mock agility, Zadoc said,--

'Put the second apple under the tin cup in the middle of the raft, and keep it there.'

When the apple was safe, Zadoc held out his right hand.

'Until I wake, Jeems!' he said.

'It is safe there,' was the answer.

And Zadoc lay down on the soggy timbers, satisfied, with faith in the honor of his starving mate.

To Jeems, who watched, the sea looked as never in his life before. For years he had enslaved it. As a tough Mount Desert fisher-boy, he had bound it to his childish will; and in many later years afloat had thrown back its innumerable challenges with all contempt until the Last Time.

In sailors' lives, birth and the marriage-day bow down to the Last Time.

It always comes, when Fortune or the years have made them blindly bold.

His courage fled before the onslaught of these terrible seas which, high above the level of his blurring eyes, swept up in a torturous parade, as if Death maddened his victims by pa.s.sing his grand divisions in review.

Besides, the pain of hunger so outgrew all reason! It cut through the man's thin body like the blade of a great and sudden sorrow in one's heart, through and through, ever returning, never going!

A greater sea than the others rolled underneath the raft, and shook the loose boards so that the tin dipper rolled on its inverted rim, and then fell tinkling back again. Jeems crawled to where he could lift the dipper and see beneath. The second apple lay secure, its plump sides a shocking contrast to the terrors of the raft. Jeems looked hard. A cruel pain shot from his throat to his heels in a tearing red-hot spiral. The first apple had so cooled his mouth! Water began running off Jeems's chin. If he could only run his fingers down those rounding sides, maybe they would catch some of the orchard smell.

Jeems clapped the dipper down with a sudden muscular fury, and kicked Zadoc into sense with such vigor that he fell exhausted from the effort.

'I was so lonesome, I thought I might go off,' he explained, adding, 'Zadoc, what's your family?'

'Five and the wife, G.o.d help 'em,' said Zadoc, not dramatically either, but just dully, as if it was what his mind had grown to know very much better than anything else. 'Have you?'

'No,' said Jeems. 'Years ago, I called on a pretty girl over to Somesville, but nothing came of it.'

'Just as well now,' said Zadoc coldly; adding, half in dream, 'I recollect _all_ them Somesville girls was pretty. 'Lizabeth come from there.'

'Who?' asked Jeems.

''Lizabeth,--the wife,--why, she was your sister, Jeems!'

'So she was! I forgot!'

Many madmen speak in the past tense at the stage where they seem to look back on their proper selves.

The sun neared the west.

'Lie down again,' said Jeems; 'I'll watch.'

'Any sail--that time before?'

'No sail, Zadoc.'

The wind dropped near night, and Jeems lay on the raft with eyes that glowed back the red reflection of the setting sun. As it moved toward the liquid line of sea, its brilliance fell into the smother of a cloud through which its sides shone with the softened, satin polish of the second apple as Jeems last saw it. The thought struck him in the middle of his heart, which began leaping as when, at nineteen, a girl's smooth fingers lingered on his own. He hungered for sight of the second apple as for nothing else in the whole of the world before. He wished the raft might roll so violently as to throw off the dipper, and then, before he realized, his own foot had kicked it into the ocean and the apple smiled before him, securely laid between two great planks at the bottom of the raft. Zadoc slept. Jeems was alone with the second apple!

He looked at it between caked lids and let his eyes rove over and over its rare beauties. For the first time since he was born, his whole being--the knotted body whose abundant energies had been quite absorbed by the arduous doings of his roving life, and the big heart of him where the rich red of the blood was pent and packed with never a bit of an outlet for relief--thrilled with the keen, delicious mystery of Desire. His meagre lips, crackling like snake-skin, repeated in monotone, as if to hold his conscience under some mesmeric charm, 'I must! I must!'

The mere thought of the cool heart of the fruit made his pulse spring as if whipped. To imagine the exquisite satisfaction which would follow his teeth as they sank slowly, slowly--sank farther and farther through those moistening walls until, at the very acme of delight, they met!

Christ! He was on it in an instant, holding it with both hands and not lifting it, but just putting his face down and keeping it so in a pa.s.sionate embrace. He _would_ eat, if he died for it. He _must_--

''Lizabeth!' It was Zadoc, dreaming.

''Lizabeth! Good old girl. Good girl. Bye-bye, home at sundown. Good old, good--ah-h-h-h!'

The voice fell away in an idiotic sigh. Jeems sprang to his feet and stood swaying with the raft, the image of his sister in his eyes. Off east, where the gray shades grew, he saw her walking on the sea, her long hair blown before, like a cloud of jet-black flame, and her face all lovely.

''Lizabeth!' Jeems spread his arms; but she did not see him, for she looked at Zadoc as he lay there at her brother's feet, and her eyes rained love, which calmed the sea like oil.

And then Jeems saw himself as if from far. ''Lizabeth!' he cried; but she did not hear, so he held his two arms up toward the sky and whispered, 'G.o.d, G.o.d, _G.o.d_! Forgive Jeems Harb.u.t.t, a wicked sinner,--and take him,'--his voice sank to a low, unhuman key,--'and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever--O G.o.d!'

And with arms still raised in suppliance for his great unselfish soul, he sprang out backward to the darkening sea.

THE PURPLE STAR

BY REBECCA HOOPER EASTMAN

I

WHEN the Fifth Graders returned in the fall, they knew, to a boy and a girl, that they were to go to Room H, and they knew, too, that by pa.s.sing over the threshold they would automatically become the elderly and dignified Sixth Grade. Proud and disdainful were Sixth Graders, in that they carried the largest geographies made; highly pedantic, too, were they, because they coped with mysterious inst.i.tutions called fractions, which occupied the clean, unexplored back part of one's arithmetic. Fearsomely learned were they in words of seven, eight, and nine syllables. To be one of such was to be indeed Grown Up. When the new cla.s.s, half-timorous, and wholly suspicious, entered Room H, they were startled to find their thirty names already written in a neat column on the blackboard, with an imperative 'DO NOT ERASE' underneath.

How on earth had Miss Prawl found out their names?

It was hard for Theodora Bowles to take her seat inconspicuously, as if she were no better than stupid Freddy Beal; as if, in fact, she had not been for five years the leader of the cla.s.s. Theodora, however, was not nearly so obscure as she supposed; for Miss Prawl, in secret session with the Fifth-Grade teacher, had been informed that Theodora was so quick-witted that she usually called out the answer before the teacher had finished putting the question. Furthermore, whenever the cla.s.s was asked to recite in concert, she invariably shouted the answer first, and then the rest of the cla.s.s repeated what Theodora had said, and were therefore always right. The fact that she knew more than any one but the teacher had made Theodora's life one delightful arrogance of intellectual supremacy. Pretending that she was royalty in disguise, Theodora gazed impatiently at Miss Prawl, and wondered how long it would be before the new teacher found out how bright she was.

After all the children were located at desks corresponding to the ones they had occupied in Grades Five, Four, Three, Two, and One, Miss Prawl opened a drawer of her shiny, spotless desk, and took out a box which proved to contain six new pieces of different-colored chalk, lying side by side. The combination of the bright colors was so alluring that every child immediately resolved to save up for just such an outfit, in order to play hopscotch in colors. With every eager eye riveted upon her, Miss Prawl took out the piece of pink chalk, and made a very beautiful pink star on the blackboard, directly after Stella Appleton's name. Stella, it may be said, always had a good deal of undeserved prominence, because her name began with an A.

'If, at the end of the week, Stella or any one of the rest of you is perfect in spelling, that person will get a pink star after his name,'

announced Miss Prawl. And she put away the pink chalk, and drew a blue-chalk star after Freddy Beal's name. 'You will all receive blue stars if you are perfect in arithmetic,' she continued. 'And yellow--'

she drew a yellow star--'yellow is for perfect geography. Green'--she made a green star--'green is for perfect reading; and red--'Miss Prawl paused impressively--'red is for perfect deportment.'

After this entrancing monologue, Miss Prawl rubbed out the explanatory stars, replaced the chalk carefully in the box, and waited. Theodora's hand at once shot up into the air.

'Well?' asked Miss Prawl.

'My-name's-Theodora-Bowles,' said Theodora. 'And there's a piece of purple chalk in your box, Miss Prawl, that you didn't say anything about. And so I wondered if you hadn't forgotten to tell us about purple stars.'

The whole cla.s.s leaned forward in breathless expectancy, proud of their discerning Theodora.

'I am very glad that you asked me this question, Theodora,' said Miss Prawl. 'I keep the purple chalk for a very special, wonderful reason.'Thirty pairs of glistening eyes grew rounder. 'The purple star,'