Life at High Tide Part 1

Life at High Tide.

by Various.

Edited By William Dean Howells and Henry Mills Alden.

PREFACE

There is a tide in the affairs of men Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

Thus the poet--and poetry, of the old order at least, always waiting upon great events, has found in the high-tide flotations of masterful heroes to fortune themes most flatteringly responsive to its own high tension.

The writer of fiction has no such afflatus, no such high pitch of life, as to outward circ.u.mstance, in his representation of it, as the poet has; and therefore his may seem to the academic critic the lesser art--but it is nearer to the realities of common human existence.

He deals with plain men and women, and the un-majestic moments of their lives.

"Life at High Tide"--the t.i.tle selected for this little volume of short stories, and having a real significance for each of them, which the reader may find out for himself--does not reflect the poet's meaning, and, least of all, its easy optimism. In every one of these stories is presented a critical moment in one individual life-- sometimes, as in "The Gla.s.s Door" and in "Elizabeth and Davie,"

in two lives; but it leads not to or away from fortune--it simply discloses character; also, in situations like those so vividly depicted in "Keepers of a Charge" and "A Yearly Tribute," the tense strain of modern circ.u.mstance. In all these real instances there are luminous points of idealism--of an idealism implicit but translucent.

The authors here represented have won exceptional distinction as short-story writers, and the examples given of their work not only are typical of the best periodical fiction of a very recent period--all of them having been published within five years--but ill.u.s.trate the distinctive features, as unprecedented in quality as they are diversified in character, which mark the extreme advance in this field of literature.

H. M. A.

THE IMMEDIATE JEWEL

BY MARGARET DELAND

"_Good name, in man and woman, dear my lord, Is_ the immediate jewel of their souls."

--_Oth.e.l.lo_.

I

When James Graham, carpenter, enlisted, it was with the a.s.surance that if he lost his life his grateful country would provide for his widow.

He did lose it, and Mrs. Graham received, in exchange for a husband and his small earnings, the sum of $12 a month. But when you own your own very little house, with a dooryard for chickens (and such stray dogs and cats as quarter themselves upon you), and enough gra.s.s for a cow, and a friendly neighbor to remember your potato-barrel, why, you can get along--somehow. In Lizzie Graham's case n.o.body knew just how, because she was not one of the confidential kind. But certainly there were days in winter when the house was chilly, and months when fresh meat was unknown, and years when a new dress was not thought of. This state of things is not remarkable, taken in connection with an income of $144 a year, and a New England village where people all do their own work, so that a woman has no chance to hire out.

All the same, Mrs. Graham was not an object of charity. Had she been that, she would have been promptly sent to the Poor Farm. No sentimental consideration of a grateful country would have moved Jonesville to philanthropy; it sent its paupers to the Poor Farm with prompt common sense.

When Jonesville's old school-teacher, Mr. Nathaniel May, came wandering back from the great world, quite penniless, almost blind, and with a faint mist across his pleasant mind, Jonesville saw nothing for him but the Poor Farm.... Nathaniel had been away from home for many years; rumors came back, occasionally, that he was going to make his fortune by some patent, and Jonesville said that if he did it would be a good thing for the town, for Nathaniel wasn't one to forget his friends.

"He'll give us a library," said Jonesville, grinning; "Nat was a great un for books." However, Jonesville was still without its library, when, one August day, the stage dropped a gentle, forlorn figure at the door of Dyer's Hotel.

"I'm Nat May," he said; "well, it's good to get home!"

He brought with him, as the sum of his possessions, a dilapidated leather hand-bag full of strange wheels and little reflectors, and small, scratched lenses; the poor clothes upon his back; and twenty-four cents in his pocket. He walked hesitatingly, with one hand outstretched to feel his way, for he was nearly blind; but he recognized old friends by their voices, and was full of simple joy at meeting them.

"I have a very wonderful invention," he said, in his eager voice, his blind eyes wide and luminous; "and very valuable. But I have not been financially successful, so far. I shall be, of course. But in the city no one seemed willing to wait for payment for my board, so the authorities advised me to come home; and, in fact, a.s.sisted me to do so. But when I finish my invention, I shall have ample means."

Jonesville, lounging on the porch of Dyer's Hotel, grinned, and said, "That's all right, Nat; you'll be a rich man one of these days!" And then it tapped its forehead significantly, and whispered, "Too bad!"

and added (with ill-concealed pleasure at finding new misfortune to talk about) that the Selectmen had told Mr. Dean, the superintendent, that he could call at Dyer's Hotel--to which Nathaniel, peacefully and pennilessly, had drifted--and take him out to the Farm.

"Sam Dyer says he'll keep him till next week," Mrs. b.u.t.terfield told Lizzie Graham; "but, course, he can't just let him set down at the hotel for the rest of his natural life. And Nat May would do it, you know."

"I believe he would," Lizzie Graham admitted; "he was always kind of simple that way, willin' to take and willin' to give. Don't you mind how he used to be always sharin' anything he had? James used to say Nat never knowed his own things belonged to him."

"Folks like that don't never get rich," Mrs. b.u.t.terfield said; "but there! you like 'em."

The two women were walking down a stony hillside, each with a lard-pail full of blueberries. It was a hot August afternoon; a northwest wind, harsh and dry, tore fiercely across the scrub-pines and twinkling birches of the sun-baked pastures. Lizzie Graham held on to her sun-bonnet, and stopped in a sc.r.a.p of shade under a meagre oak to get breath.

"My! I don't like wind," she said, laughing.

"Let's set down a while," Mrs. b.u.t.terfield suggested.

"I'd just as leaves," Lizzie said, and took off her blue sunbonnet and fanned herself. She was a pretty woman still, though she was nearly fifty; her hair was russet red, and blew about her forehead in little curls; her eyes, brown like a brook in shady places, and kind. It was a mild face, but not weak. Below them the valley shimmered in the heat; the gra.s.s was hot and brittle underfoot; popples bent and twisted in a scorching wind, and a soft, dark glitter of movement ran through the pines on the opposite hillside.

"The Farm ain't got a mite of shade round it," Lizzie said; "just sets there at the crossroads and bakes."

"You was always great for trees," Mrs. b.u.t.terfield said; "your house is too dark for my taste. If I was you, I'd cut down that biggest ellum."

"Cut it down! Well, I suppose you'll laugh, but them trees are real kind o' friends. There! I knowed you'd laugh; but I wouldn't cut down a tree any more 'an I'd--I don't know what!"

"They do darken."

"Some. But only in summer; and then you want 'em to. And the Poor Farm ain't got a sc.r.a.p of shade!--I wonder if he feels it, bein' sent there?"

"I ain't seen, him, but Josh, told me he was terrible broke up over it.

Told me he just set and wrung his hands when Hiram Wells told him he'd got to go. Josh said it was real pitiful. But what can you do? He's 'bout blind; and he ain't just right, either."

"How ain't he just right?"

"Well, you know, Nathaniel was always one of the dreamin' kind; a real good man, but he wa'n't like folks."

Lizzie nodded.

"And if you remember, he was all the time inventin' things. Well, now he's got set that he can invent a machine so as you can see the dead.

I mean spirits. Well, of course he's crazy. Josh says he's crazy as a bluefish. But what's troublin' him now is that he can't finish his machine. He says that if he goes to the Farm, what with him bein'

blindish and not able to do for himself, that his gla.s.ses and wheels--and dear knows what all that he's got for ghost-seein'--will get all smashed up. An' I guess he's 'bout right. They're terrible crowded, Mis' Dean says. Nat allows that if he could stay at Dyer's, or some place, a couple of months, where he could work, quiet, he'd make so much money that he'd pay his board ten times over. Crazy. But then, I can't help bein' sorry for him. Some folks don't mind the troubles of crazy folks, but I don't know why they ain't as hard to bear as sensible folks' troubles."

"Harder maybe," Lizzie said.

"Josh said he just set and wrung his hands together, and he says to Hiram Wells, he says, 'Gimme a month--and I'll finish it. For the sake,' he says, 'of the blessed dead.' Gave you goose-flesh, Josh said."

"You can see that he believes in his machine."

"Oh, he's just as sure as he's alive!"

"But why can't he finish it at the Farm? I guess Mis' Dean would give him a closet to keep it in."