The Cassowary Part 9

and, later, as the time came when erring heads of families might be lingering out too late for their own good, the mentor started in with--

"Oh, Willie, we have missed you!"

and, a little later, after apparent consideration, wailed out despairingly:

"Oh, father, dear father, come home with me now."

It was charming! Still later, came soothing, familiar airs in a minor key, such as were sleep-encouraging, and there was no variation from this until six a.m., when there was an outbreak:

"I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up this morning!

The sergeant's worse than the private, The captain's worse than the sergeant!

The major's worse than the captain, The colonel's the worst of 'em all!

I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up, I can't get 'em up to-day!"

Ringing out over all the city was the reveille, but, as if in drowsy answer came a little later, almost like an echo--the lazy, listless,

"Let me dream again."

Evidently not what was approved of, for, sharply and indignantly, followed the peremptory demand to--

"Take your clothes and go."

And so, until the fog lifted, continued the interesting programme of the Siren. The people were delighted. No more was the name of the "Siren" a misnomer. The newspapers were full of praise of Hannibal Perkins, the inventor, and a dream, for once, was realized. Improvements were made by the elated genius. People in the city soon perceived that certain airs were played only at certain hours, so that one could tell what time of night it was while lying comfortably in bed. The invention was recognized as a boon to the community. The Board of Trade voted a neat lump sum to Hannibal Perkins, he was elected member of numerous scientific and musical societies, and negotiations were begun with the government looking to the introduction of the Siren in harbors everywhere.

Now comes reference to the action of a law of nature which has always been accounted curious, that law which is in direct contradiction of the old and popular saying that one cannot have too much of a good thing.

The months pa.s.sed, months of triumph and elation for Hannibal Perkins, and, at first, of enjoyment for those on land. Then in the city came a gradual change, though Hannibal, in the light-house, was not aware of it. There arose an anti-Siren party, and a clamorous one! It was the old story--they were "tired" of the same old tunes. They were all antiquated things it was declared. It was the result of that quality in the human ear and human nerves which enables them to endure the continual pa.s.sing of a railroad train, but not the too frequent repet.i.tion of a musical air. Even an effort to remedy this fault did not avail. There came two dread November weeks of almost continual fog, day and night, and, as the Siren gave four tunes an hour for variety's sake, it necessarily played ninety-six tunes a day, and there weren't enough popular airs in existence to keep this up without constant duplication, or worse! A new form of nervousness was seizing upon the mult.i.tude. Even the mayor, who had grown fat, was getting thin again.

On the other hand the Siren had a powerful supporting force in the officers and crews of every vessel entering the harbor. Most delightful was it to those gallant seamen, when the fog lay dense and sinister, to hear, at a greater distance from land than ever before, the sounds which guided them to safety and, at the same time, to recognize and be cheered by the notes of some familiar air. They heard the Siren only occasionally and to them there was no monotony. The whole shipping interest arose figuratively in arms against those who objected to the new order of things.

And so the case stands now. The government is considering the matter.

Doubtless the Perkins Siren will, in the end, be adopted--with modifications and restrictions. Hannibal Perkins is pondering over the question of why people get so maddeningly tired of a piece of music, from some favorite of the operas down to the latest bit of "rag-time."

They do not get tired of bread and beefsteak! Is the palate wiser than the ear? Even Hannibal Perkins cannot answer that question. Human nature is odd.

CHAPTER XI

THE PORTER'S STORY

From the beginning of the train's delay the porter of the sleeping car had attracted attention unostentatiously. This expression perhaps best describes the man's demeanor. He was, apparently, not much over thirty years of age, and a white man, but for that indefinable something which manifests itself in the bearing of a human being who, by unfortunate stress of circ.u.mstances, is fighting the world at a disadvantage. He was a blonde man, six feet in height. There was to his bearing a certain dignity. Yet, he was the porter of the car! It followed, as a practical certainty, that he was of African descent, however much of his blood had come in the intermingling with a preponderence in favor of the Anglo-Saxon.

He looked like a Viking, one of those who sometimes sailed down to Africa, after ravaging the Seine Valley, and taking toll of the monasteries and castles of the Spanish Peninsula en route,--but certainly not like one whose real ancestors, those who made the man, could have been African. The Colonel had recognized the fact that this big blonde man was one of Nature's mistakes in production under too sinister surroundings, and saw, too, that there was a story which might be told readily and impulsively and forcefully, and, perhaps most interestingly, under some momentum of the hour. He decided this to be the psychological moment.

"Will you not give us a story, now, John?" he said--he had learned the porter's name the day before, but half hesitated at the familiarity--"I've a fancy you may have more to tell than any of the rest of us. Will you let us know what it is?"

The porter glanced at him curiously but not in any protesting way. It could be seen that he recognized in the other man, a sympathizing human being and he rose to the occasion.

"I will tell you the story," he said, slowly, "though, really, save as possibly amusing somebody for the moment, I scarcely see the object, but it may be that it will afford me a little relief personally. Come to think of it, I don't know that I've ever had a chance to tell my story to intelligent human beings under anything like fair auspices. I'm going to tell it simply and truly. I'll leave the verdict to you. Your verdict cannot help me any, for you are as weak as I am in this case, but this is the story:

HIS PROBLEM

Is it well for me that I am a product of a University, that I am what I am?

Some time ago I read an exceedingly clever poem in some magazine, describing the sufferings of Pierrot, that inimitable and fascinating French modification of Harlequin, ever vainly seeking his elusive Columbine.

"I, who am Pierrot, pity me! Oh pity me!" he cries in his helpless desire for sympathy. Sometimes I feel like Pierrot, though my suffering is not as his.

I hesitate, somehow, at telling my own story lest I be misunderstood or offend in some manner. I have some courage and I'm not asking sympathy in any weak or maudlin way. I am but stating a case, a case with a problem attached and one which I have, so far, been unable to solve, though the quality of my life must depend upon the nature of the solution. I am neither whining nor begging. The story may or may not possess a degree of interest. I wish I could tell it better.

I am thirty-four years of age, and I think I can fairly say, am well educated; so thorough was my college course and so diligently did I apply myself, that I excel most graduates in the extent of my real acquirements. I have forgotten neither my cla.s.sics nor my mathematics and I read and speak French and German fluently. I keep myself familiar with what occurs in the field of literature. I chance to have a retentive memory and my perceptions are, it seems to me, at least reasonably keen.

I am six feet in height and, absurd as it may seem in me to say it, am a well formed, well set up man. I have clean cut features, rather aquiline than otherwise, grey eyes, light hair, which curls slightly, and a fair complexion. I am an athlete, trained from boyhood, and have borne myself, I hope, as a man should in encounters in the southwest, where brawn has for the moment counted for more than brains. I describe myself thus directly, but not conceitedly, because I want to be known as you see me, for just what I am. To discredit myself unjustly in the least, to tell less than the truth, would mar the justice of the premises upon which I make my case and from which I make clear, or at least try to make clear, the nature of the problem which has proved too difficult for me.

I have had ambitions, hopes and love. I have known men and women. I have become familiar with the affairs of the world. I am naturally of a buoyant and hopeful disposition and yet I, a strong man, am to-day perplexed, sad, almost hopeless. I have no inc.u.mbrances. A healthy, educated man of thirty-four, with no burden of the ordinary sort, and yet disheartened! I can imagine you saying, with an inflection of either pity or contempt. Well, what I have told of myself is the truth and I must take the consequences.

I was born in one of the southern states. One of my grandfathers was a man of standing, and one of my grandmothers was, I am told, a very beautiful woman. My father was also a man of note, a distinguished officer in the civil war who did well in battle. My mother was a woman of exceptional charms of person and character, but died when I was a mere child. I was educated by a wealthy brother of my father, who chanced to take an interest in me. Until the age of twelve I was the almost constant companion of his own son.

At the age of twelve, my cousin and I who had been so much together were separated, he going to a school in one of the great cities, I to one in a smaller town. After graduation at school we were each sent to college.

My cousin went to one of the great universities and I was sent to one of the smaller colleges of the country, but one where the curriculum was extensive and the requirements severe. I studied hard and graduated in the same year with my cousin. We met again at the old homestead and I found that, because of my close attention to my studies, perhaps, too, because of a somewhat quicker apprehension, I excelled him decidedly in acquirements. We pa.s.sed a not unpleasant month together, hunting and fishing in the old way, but, somehow, it was not the same as it had been when we were boys together. I noticed a change in my cousin's demeanor toward me. His manner was not unkindly, for he is one of the best and most generous of men, but there was a certain change, a certain distance of air which made it plain to me that we could never again be to each other what we had been as boys in the past. We separated each to go out into the world to struggle for himself; I, alone; he, with the influential family and a host of influential friends behind him. I have never seen him since.

Equipped as I was the natural course for me to pursue seemed to be to adopt for a time the work of teaching, not that I inclined toward it, but because it afforded opportunity to acquire a little capital which might enable me to take up a profession. I secured a school without much difficulty in a thriving southwestern town, and at the end of a course of three years had saved several hundred dollars. With the money thus obtained, I graduated at a famous law school, after which I studied diligently for a year in the office of a prominent attorney. I was clerk, porter, office boy, everything about the office, but the distinguished lawyer did me the honor, at the end of the year, to say that I was the most thorough student he had ever a.s.sisted and prophesied flatteringly as to my future. I was admitted to the bar with compliments from the examining judges as to my knowledge of the law. I at once established an office in a town of about two thousand people, where the outlook seemed exceptionally promising. I was entirely unknown in the little city, but for two years I prospered beyond my expectations. I knew the law and, as the event showed, I was strong with juries, possessing the power of interesting and winning the confidence of men to an exceptional degree. I won a number of cases, some of them important ones. I became known in the town and in the surrounding district as a public speaker of force and eloquence. Upon the lecture platform or political rostrum I felt as potent and at ease as in the court room. My future seemed a.s.sured. I found friends among the best people, my income was more than sufficient for my needs; in my rooms I was acc.u.mulating books of the world's literature. My law library was the best in the county. In all things I was flourishing and the world looked bright to me.

One day there came to the town wherein I had established myself a young man who had been in college with me. I was glad to see him and did what I could for him during his stay, though we were unlike in temperament and tastes, and his a.s.sociates and friends had all been different from mine. He soon left the place, and, not long after, I noticed a surprising change in the manner of the people toward me. I no longer received invitations to dinner nor to social gatherings. No reason was given me for the freezing indifference with which I was treated by my former friends. What was, from one point of view, a matter of as much importance, my business began to drop off; men who had placed their legal affairs in my hands no longer sought me for advice and only an occasional petty case in some justice's court came to afford me a livelihood. After a vain struggle with these intolerable conditions I gave up. I closed my office and left the city.

It was early in June, that year when I left the place where I had hoped to become a lifelong resident and useful citizen.

I drifted east and found myself in Boston. There I met two young men, seniors in college, but poor, who had engaged themselves as men of all work--partly as a midsummer lark, but chiefly for the money to be gained--to work in a great summer hotel in the mountains. A third man was needed, and they asked me if I would not go with them. I was ready for anything, and accepted the invitation.

The hotel was one of the largest in the mountains, and the numerous guests included wealthy and distinguished families from all parts of the country. That we were college-bred men and had students' ambitions also became known, and it came to pa.s.s, at last, that our duties for the day accomplished, we appeared in evening dress, and joined in the evening's amus.e.m.e.nts, laughed at in a friendly way, and jesting ourselves in return.

I cannot go into further details of the happenings of that summer at the mountain resort, where all was healthy and healthful except my own mentality, which had been made what it was by conditions over which I had no control. I prayed, and prayer, while it strengthened me, did not help me bow to the injustice under which I suffered. I thought and tried to find what a logical brain, a broad view of things, and a keen intelligence might do, and that did not help me. Ever, ever came the same inevitable deduction. I was a hunted wretch, pursued by a social and partly natural law, driven ever into a cul de sac, into a side gorge in the mountains of life, a short gorge with precipitous walls on either side and ending suddenly and briefly in a wall as perpendicular and high and smooth. True, I had for the moment escaped, for the instant I was free, but I knew that soon, inevitably, the cordon would hem me in and that I would be at the mercy of the pursuers--the unmalicious but instinctively impelled pursuers. Then came a respite from the torturing thought, a forgetfulness for the moment, a forgetfulness to be paid for.

I was the man with the boats and, as well the guide who conducted individuals or parties to and from all the picturesque or curious spots of the wild region round about the summer resort which shrewd capitalists had implanted in the heart of nature. So it came that I met all, or nearly all the guests, groups who had chaffed at me, and yet, knowing my status, made me one of them. Strong young men and good ones made me a comrade, fathers and mothers of broods of little children leaned on me, and at last and worse in the end, the occasional woman who thought for herself, knew nature for herself and wanted but to go out alone to meet her sister, that same Nature, became my companion. There was one among those who, to me, was above the other women. There was one among those--may the good G.o.d ever have her in his keeping--who, from no thought or fault of hers, has given me the greatest vision of happiness and also such sorrow as few men know.

Then I seemed to live for the first time and now it is still a thought deep in my mind that it was my only taste of real life when I held communion on lake and sh.o.r.e in that enchanted summer with the woman who held my heart in her white hands. No doubt I was guilty, frightfully guilty. What right has a pariah in a world of caste? But I am a human. I drifted and drifted. I cannot a.n.a.lyze my own feelings at the time. I knew that I was good and honest and as real in mind as she and yet, even then, I think I felt as if I were some vagrant who had wandered into a church and was inanely fumbling at the altar-cloth.

Like every other rainbow that ever spanned my miserable sky it disappeared, not gradually, as do other rainbows when the clouds part slowly and the sun shines out between them, but suddenly, leaving blackness. One wild but simply honest letter I wrote telling all things, and then came silence. There was only the information that one fair guest of the great summer resort had departed suddenly.

Yet in my letter I had told of nothing but a life of steadfast honor, principle, and high ambition and endeavor; I began to lose heart. I am a wanderer. What am I to do? I am a man without a country as much as was poor Nolan in Edward Everett Hale's immortal story, though unlike Nolan, I am blameless of even a moment's lapse of patriotism. I am without a country because my country will not give me what it gives to other men.

I am even without a race, for that to which I really belong neglects me and with that into which my own would thrust me I have nothing in common. The presence of a faint strain of alien blood is killing me by inches.

I am not black, I am white. Does one part of, perhaps, some African chieftain's blood offset thirty-one of white blood from good ancestors?

I do not believe in miscegenation. There is some subtle underlying law of G.o.d and nature which forbids the close contact in any way of the different races. It is to me a horror. But I am not black, I am white. A negro woman is to me as she is to any other white man. A negro man is to me as of a strange race. A white man is to me my brother. All my thoughts, all my yearnings, are to be with him, to talk with him, to sympathize with him in all the affairs of life, to help him and have him help me, to go to war with him, if need be, to die by his side. I am a white man. But there is that one thirty-second of pariah blood. "Pity me, oh pity me."

As I have said, I began to lose heart. There is no need to tell all the story. I remember it all. One or two incidents suffice to show the way I have traveled.

Once in an eastern city, I obtained work as a brakeman on a freight train on the railway. At first my fellow workers received me well, named me Byron, some knowing me among them, with rude but kindly chaffing at my pale face and studious habits, for when not at work I had ever a book in my hand.