If You Touch Them They Vanish Part 6

"If I had the power," he thought, "I'd settle this region with innocent people who have been accused of crimes."

At this suggestion the component parts of his nature began a discussion.

_Reason:_ How would you know they were innocent?

_Truthfulness:_ They'd tell me. And I'd know.

_Sn.o.bbishness:_ Very few people in your station of life are accused of crime.

_Cynicism:_ And very few of them are innocent.

_Sn.o.bbishness:_ You wouldn't care to a.s.sociate with people of lower station than yourself.

_Affection:_ I love Martha better than anybody in the world.

_Reason:_ Think of something more sensible.

_Love of Detail:_ I wonder how we could dispose of sewage without polluting lakes and streams? I must send for books on the disposal of sewage.

_Love of the Beautiful:_ I should like to settle the whole valley without changing the look of it--from here.

_Eyes_ (roving from one group of screening trees to the next): It can be done. Put your village on the east side of the big lake, back of the hardwood ridge. Do you remember Placid Brook? That will flow through the main street. It will be kept clean and well stocked with trout, so that the old men can fish from the bridges. Above the village there shall be a path along the brook, all in the shade. Can't you see the girls and boys walking, two and two?

_Love of Detail:_ All the houses in the village must be white. Who is going to make the laws?

_Ego:_ I am. Because I own the valley. And put up the money.

_Modesty:_ But there will be lots of men wiser than I am. And they will help.

_Sudden Impulse:_ The women shall have votes.

_Childishness:_ The men shan't.

_Reason:_ Now I wonder. It's never been tried, and maybe it's what the world is waiting for and striving for.

_Touch of Genius and Prophecy:_ It shall be tried. It is what the world needs. No votes for men. No men on juries....

_Memory:_ (Things too recent and poignant for utterance.)

_Vague Idea Gathered at School:_ Am I going to stand for being taxed without representation?

_Sense of Justice:_ No.

_Self-confidence:_ But if I can't influence some woman's vote I may as well drown myself.

_Reason:_ Some men have no influence over anybody. _They_ won't stand for taxation without representation.

The Poor Boy (as a whole) gives up with reluctance the idea of a government of the ladies, by the ladies, and for the ladies.

_Wish to Do the Next Best Thing:_ Let it be a government by commission--a commission of three. A man and a woman--and--

_Touch of Genius:_ The children must be represented. They shall elect a child.

_Sense of the Ridiculous:_ Upon a platform of "Baseball in the streets--longer vacations, and more of them."

_Reason:_ The child must not be related to the other members of the commission. We are against affairs of state being influenced by a slipper.

_Sense of Decency, Good Form, Breeding, etc.:_ Candidates shall not vote for themselves; nor stump the valley proclaiming at the top of their lungs that they alone can keep the country from going to the dogs.

_Fondness for an Occasional Gla.s.s of Champagne:_ How about liquor?

_Self-control:_ If _everybody_ else will do without it, _I_ will.

_Human Nature:_ We must encourage early marriages.

_Ego:_ Of course, you exempt yourself.

_Whole System of Nerves and Circulation:_ I do not!

_Fastidiousness:_ She must be so and so and so (but he only succeeded in conjuring up a vague shadow of a girl).

Beginning like this (or something like it), deliberately, and thinking up things as he went along, the Poor Boy's imagination suddenly stepped in and took such a terrific grip of the situation that little by little the idea of a model settlement became as real as the most vivid and logical dream.

The valley was under three feet of snow. There was four feet of snow upon the surrounding hills and mountains, but already the engineers, headed by the Poor Boy, had been at work, and the masons and the carpenters. And many miles of ditches had been dug, and dams built, and a powerhouse, and roads (always among trees--so that the natural beauty of the valley was not so much as scratched), and already the village was complete, with its white houses and white school (with its longer holidays and more of them), its white library with the long lovely colonnade, commission house facing it, gardens in front of every dwelling, and pairs of lovers strolling by Placid Brook.

Furthermore the village was full of people already, and half a dozen of them had been so clearly designed by the Poor Boy's imagination that he could see them, every line of their faces, every detail of their clothes. He knew every intonation of their voices. When he talked with them, he did not have to make up their answers--they just came. And better, other people, at first dim figureheads, were becoming clearer and more vivid all the time, so it seemed sure that before long he would know even the dogs of his settlement by sight.

The greatest difficulty in the game that he was playing lay in the imperfection of his memory. As he built each house in the village he saw it as plainly as I see the pages on which I am writing, but leaving it to go at the next house he had to return again and again to fix the image of the first. For instance, he got the whole village built, and lying in his bed that night could only remember with real distinction the commission house, the library, and one dwelling house, far down the main street. The rest was vague--houses--white houses--not high--not crowded, but all blurred and without detail, as if seen through tears.

He built the village, parts of it, four or five times before it became a definite thing to him. Before he could stop, let us say, before the Browns' house and take pleasure in the trim of their front door, before he could see the heliotrope growing in the snow-white jardiniere in the living-room window, before he knew that Mrs. Brown made cookies every Friday, and that if you went round to the kitchen door and were very hungry and polite she gave them away while they were still hot and crisp.

It was precisely to call on Mrs. Brown that the Poor Boy had been so eager to leave his own house. Realities began for him at the bottom of the cliff. The road to the village crossed the glade in the pine woods--the snow was packed and icy with much travel, with the sliding of runners and the semicircular marks of horses' hoofs. As the Poor Boy sped along on his skis, he met people in sleighs and was overtaken and pa.s.sed by others. They were his people--his alone. He had cheerful words for all of them, and they for him. They were hazy--a little--to the eye, but here and there he caught a face clearly and did not forget it again--a baby in a blue-and-white blanket coat, that had bright red cheeks and that smiled and showed two brand-new teeth; a boy with bare hands and red knuckles (the Poor Boy sent him a pair of warm mittens from the village store), and ears (one bigger than the other) which stuck straight out.

The Poor Boy came to a halt suddenly where a stream too vigorous to be ice-bound crossed the road (under a concrete bridge that had been built only the day before), ran out over a ledge of smooth granite and fell thirty feet with a roar.

"Yes," said the Poor Boy, "there's got to be a sawmill with a red roof and flower-boxes in the windows, and this is just the place for it or I'm very much mistaken.... I wonder ... I wish to the deuce Mr. Tinker was here, he's the best man we've got on water-power. The woods are full of trees that ought to be cut for the benefit of the others. Yardsley was showing me about them only yesterday. But this is a matter for Tinker."

The Poor Boy listened and heard sleigh-bells. They came swiftly nearer.

"Wonder who this is?"

Around the nearest turn of the road toward the village came a powerful roan horse, drawing a cutter; in the cutter sat an enormous man, but the Poor Boy had already recognized the horse.

"I'm d.a.m.ned," said he; "Tinker!"

He waved both arms and called a joyous greeting. The cutter came to a halt on the bridge.

"Just the man I wanted to see," said the Poor Boy. "I want advice and help. Yardsley says we're letting a lot of timber go to waste. Now how about a sawmill--right _here_?"