Atlantic Narratives: Modern Short Stories Part 25

'It's Jim,' he said, and heard his wife's carol of surprise. He could see her tiptoeing at their telephone. 'I'm all right,' he shouted in response to her eager words; and the thought of their little sitting-room, and the kids playing behind her, warmed his blood. 'I got run away with on the plains, but I'm all right--' Her frightened e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n thrilled him with loving pride--'honest I am.' And then suddenly a wave of generous emotion mounted to his head. 'Martha,' he called quickly,--'tell Casey not to sell out Waldron--tell him right away. I'll explain to-morrow.'

The connection roared and failed. He hung up the instrument. The quiet room, the gently moving woman, the immensity without, rushed back on his sight. Exhilarated, clear-hearted, looking heaven in the face, he asked the necessary questions, mounted his horse, and pushed onward.

Hamden was already a blotch upon the horizon. 'Say, it's great to get into a _big_ country,' he murmured, lifted his bare head to the free air, and in a curious exaltation of mind rode on dreamily. He noticed the flowers in the coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, watched the wild doves flying with their quick, strong wing-beats, and swung his eye joyfully around the blue horizons that receded until one felt the curve and pitch of the world.

The mood lasted until Cargan reached the first straggling houses of the village street, so that he entered upon the rutty highway between dirt sidewalks with regret, as one whose holiday was ending. He scarcely noticed the loiterers who stared at him, or thought of his streaked face, his trousers split at the knee, his hat lost on the wild ride.

But as he plodded onward the atmosphere of town had its effect. His eye began to take note of the size of the shops glittering under their false fronts, the new houses behind rows of stiff young trees, the number and make of automobiles. His subconsciousness grasped the financial level of Hamden, although his thoughts were still in the wide s.p.a.ces of the plains. A boy ran out from the side-walk to sell him a paper. He stuck it in his side pocket, and suddenly began to feel like a man of this world again.

'Say, sonny,' he called; 'who sells land in this burg?--Dubell--John Dubell?--Thanks.'

He went more and more slowly.

A drug-store, blazing with marble and onyx in the afternoon sun, made Cargan's dry throat wrinkle with thirst. He pulled his horse toward that side of the street. There was a row of customers along the soda-water counter, and through the open windows came sc.r.a.ps of conversation: two boys were teasing each other about a girl; a group of men were talking auctions, options, prices, real estate. He drank their talk in greedily, with a pang of homesickness and a rush of returning common sense.

Dismounting stiffly, he tied his horse, and stood for an instant on the cement pavement, feeling his dirt and tatters, wondering if they would throw him out for a b.u.m. Then he slid inside the door, and ordered a chocolate soda.

The clerk was reading the paper while he juggled the milk-shakes.

Cargan, carefully concealing his torn trousers, climbed a stool, and began to look back upon the vagaries of the day with sullen wonder. He brushed furtively at the caked dust on his legs, remembering, irritably, the elegance of Waldron, whom he had saved. In the mirror of the soda fountain he saw himself, torn, dirty, shrinking, and the sight filled him with disgust and anger. He felt as ridiculous as when he had come out with a gla.s.s too much from the Stoneham bar, and tripped over the steps of the main entrance. 'Gimme a cigar,' he called to the boy at the magazine counter; bit off the end, lit it, and began to think business.

The clerk, swirling a cataract of milk from gla.s.s to gla.s.s, revealed the inner sheet of the paper propped before him. Cargan read beneath his arm the full-page advertis.e.m.e.nt of a land sale--the land sale he had come through all this tomfoolery to reach. His eyes bulged as he saw that they were going to throw a thousand acres on the market. 'Good gosh,' he gulped inwardly, 'what a chance!' It was a sure thing for the man with the money.

The last of his fine sentiments evaporated. Except for Waldron he could have scooped it all in; but now four hundred was all he dared touch,--and perhaps not that. Raging against his softness back there on the plains, which seemed a hardly recognizable world, he ground his teeth, and coughed and choked over his soda. Soft-headed donkey! The reaction was complete.

Suddenly a little thought no bigger than a minute rose in one corner of his brain, and spread, and spread. He looked furtively at the clock over the clerk's head, and saw that it was only half-past two. With guilty deliberation he rose and walked slowly toward the door of the telephone booth, keeping back from full consciousness just what he was about to do. Then he slammed himself within, and shouted Casey's address to the operator. As he waited, his wrath mounted. 'What in heck was the matter with me anyway!' He smoked furiously in the stifling box.

'Go ahead,' said the operator,--and, at the word, 'Hey there, Casey,' he yelled at the dim voice on the wires, 'I've gotta have five thousand quick! Sell that Benningham Common--yes, Waldron's.' At the name his anger broke loose. 'The old high-brow tried to bluff me. What!!--' The connection failed and left him gasping.

'What! Sold it! He told you to!--No, I dunno anything about a court decision. Up 15 points on a merger! Well what do you think--' He gulped down the sudden reversal and felt for words. 'Say, tell him,--' he licked his lips,--'tell him I'm sure glad I saved him. I'm sure glad.'

The wires roared again,--and Cargan, putting down the receiver grinned shamefacedly into the dirty mirror. But gradually a sense of conscious virtue began to trickle pleasantly through his veins. 'I'm sure glad,' he repeated more vigorously; 'carryin' him to-day was what did it.' A vision of Mrs. Waldron's happy face rose to bless him; the exhilaration of the morning coursed back into his heart, with a comfortable feeling of good business about it. He felt better and better. From somewhere a saying floated into his head: 'Doing good unto others is the only happiness.' 'By heck, that's true,' he commented aloud, and sat smoking peacefully, his mind aglow with pleasant thoughts.

The bell whirred raucously. He saw that he had forgotten to replace the receiver, and putting it to his ear caught Casey's voice again:--

'Say, Carg, Jim Smith's in the office, and won't leave till he's heard from you. Montana Pacific's off two points more. Say, do you want to carry _him_? He says he's done for if you sell him out.'

A fire of indignation rushed through Cargan. 'What d' you think I am--a d.a.m.ned philanthropist?' he yelled. 'Sell out the old gambler! Sell him out!' And he hung up.

NOTHING

BY ZEPHINE HUMPHREY

This is not going to be an easy story to write. Its theme is precisely that which I have chosen for my t.i.tle; and naturally its positive significance is not obvious. But I must somehow get the thing into words. The spiritual value which I found in the experience may come home to some reader. At any rate, it is good for us all to stop now and then and challenge the conventional standards of our lives.

To begin with, I presume that there are few sympathetic students of humanity who will not agree with me that the strain of mysticism which sometimes appears in the New England character is one of the most interesting and touching of all the manifestations of our human nature.

It is so unexpected! The delicate pearl in the rough oyster is not more apparently incongruous, rarer, or more priceless. Nay, it is more than that. The development is so impossible as to be always a miracle, freshly wrought by the finger of G.o.d.

There are all sorts of elements in it which do not appear in other kinds of mysticism: humor (that unfailing New England salt!), reserve, and a paradoxical mixture of independence and deference. It knows how inexplicable it must seem to its environment, how it must fret its oyster; so it effaces itself as much as possible. But it yields not one jot of its integrity. It holds a hidden, solitary place apart--like a rare orchid in the woods, like a hermit thrush. Even to those who love it, it will not lightly or often reveal itself. But when it does--well, I would take a weary, barefoot pilgrimage for the sake of the experience which I had last summer. And here I may as well begin my narrative.

I

I sat behind her in the little country church; and when I had studied her profile for a few moments, I was glad of a chance to rise and sing the Doxology. She was a woman of fifty-odd, a typical Vermonter, with the angular frame and features peculiar to her cla.s.s. Her mouth was large, her cheek-bones high; her thin, dark hair, streaked with gray, was drawn smoothly down behind her ears. But her expression!--that gave her away. Not flagrantly, of course. To discover her one had to be temperamentally on the watch for her. Apparently, like all the rest of us, she was looking at the flowers before the pulpit; but I was sure that her wide blue eyes were really intent on something behind and beyond. Her mouth brooded, her forehead dreamed, her whole face pondered grave and delectable matters. I am afraid that I did not hear much of the sermon that morning.

When church was over, I followed her out, and waited to see in what direction she turned her homeward steps. Then I made up my mind to devote the next week to taking walks in that same direction. The minister's wife saw me looking after her, and approached me with a smile which I understood. She was about to say, 'That is one of our native oddities, a real character. I see that she interests you. Shall I take you to see her? You will find her a curious and amusing study.' But I headed her off by letting the wind blow my handkerchief away. n.o.body should tell me anything about my mystic--not even what her name was, or where she lived!

I was fully prepared not to find her for several days. I went forth in quest of her in the spirit in which I always start out to find a hermit thrush--ready to be disappointed, to wait, humbly aware that the best rewards demand and deserve patience. But she was not so securely hidden as the thrush. Her little house gave her away to my seeking, as her expression, the day before, had given her away to my sympathy.

It was just the house for her: low and white, under a big tree, on the side of a brook-threaded hill, a little apart from the village. I recognized it the instant I saw it; and when I had read the name--'Hesper Sherwood'--on the mailbox by the side of the road, I confidently turned in at the gate.

She was working in her garden, clad in a blue-checked gingham ap.r.o.n and a blue sunbonnet. When she heard my footsteps, she looked up slowly, turning in my direction, and, for the first time, I saw her full face.

It was even better than her profile. Oh! when human features can be moulded to such quietness and confidence, what an inexplicable pity it is that they ever learn the trick of fretfulness! In Hesper Sherwood, humanity for once looked like a child of G.o.d.

I was not sure at first that she saw me distinctly. Perhaps the sun dazzled her shaded eyes. Her expectant expression held itself poised a little uncertainly, as if she were doubtful of the exact requirements of the situation. But when I said something--commonplace enough and yet heartful--about the beauty of the view from her gate, her face lighted and she came forward.

'It's better from the house,' she said, shyly, yet eagerly. 'Won't you come up and see?'

It was indeed as fair a prospect as threshold ever opened out upon.

Close at hand was the green hillside, dropping down to the smiling summer valley; and beyond were the mountains, big and blue, with their heads in the brilliant sky and with cloud-shadows trailing slowly over them. Directly across the way, they were ma.s.sive; in the distance, where the valley opened out to the south, they were hazy and tender. One of them loomed above the little house, and held it in its hand. Everywhere, they were commanding presences; and it was clear that the house had taken up its position wholly on their account.

Plain enough in itself it was, that house. Its three small rooms were meagrely furnished; and its windows were curtainless, inviting the eyes beyond themselves. It was utterly restful. It made me want to go home and burn up half the things I possess. Later, as I came to know it and its owner better, I understood what perfect counterparts they were. She, too, invited the gaze beyond herself.

It is, of course, not my intention to trace the development of our friendship. Though we trusted each other from the beginning, we took the whole summer to feel our way into each other's lives. It was a beautiful experience. I would not have hurried it. But now I want to proceed at once to the conversation in which she finally told me explicitly what had not happened to her. It was but the definite statement of what I had known all along: that here was a life which G.o.d had permitted Himself the luxury of keeping apart for his own delectation.

We were sitting out on the front steps, in the face of the mountains and valley; and we had said nothing for a long time. Our silence had brought us so close that when she began to speak, my ear ignored the uttered words and I felt as if my thoughts were reading hers.

'It's queer about folks' lives isn't it?' she said thoughtfully--though I am not sure that she was any more aware of her lips than I was of my ears. 'How they follow one line; how the same things keep happening to them, over and over. I suppose it's what people call Fate. There's no getting away from it.

'Take my brother Silas. As a boy, he was always making the luckiest trades; couldn't seem to help it. Then when he married and moved to his new farm, he began to get rich; and now he couldn't stop his money if he wanted to. He must be worth fifteen thousand dollars.

'Take my sister Persis. She's had eleven children.

'Take my uncle Rufus. He's been around the world three times, and is just starting again.

'Take--'

She paused and hesitated.

'You,' I supplied softly.

'Well, yes, take me.' She turned and flashed a sudden smile at me. 'I've always wanted everything, and I've had--nothing.'

She spoke the word as if it were the pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow.

'It took me a long time to understand,' she went on quietly, as I made no comment. 'I suppose that was natural. I was young; and I had never happened to hear of a case like mine. At first, I thought that, just because I wanted a thing, I was bound to have it. There was my mother.'