Tramping on Life Part 130

Far off, at a respectful distance, a carol of rough, humorous voices sang the song, "_Happily Married_"!

"H-a-double-p-y," etc.

And we knew that my bluff had worked.

The next day we went through a let-down.

Hildreth was quite nerve-shaken, and so was Darrie.

But I strutted about with my chest out, the c.o.c.k of the walk.

But, nevertheless, and despite their bravery and the fiasco of the mob's attack, the hearts seemed to have left the bodies of both "my" women.

The cold weather that Darrie and the old settlers had predicted was now descending on the countryside....

One morning Hildreth timidly and haltingly proposed returning to her mother's flat in New York....

I could stay and finish my play and, having disposed of it, come likewise to the city, and rent a flat, and she would come and live with me again. I am sure she was sincere in this. Or I could come to New York, rent a furnished room somewhere, and she would be with me daily, as now....

Darrie seconded Hildreth's proposal.

And yet my heart broke as Hildreth rode off in the carriage that came for her. I kissed her, and I kissed her ... despite the stern, unbending figure of the aged, moral coachman in the seat.

Then, after she had started off, I pursued the carriage, overtook it by a short cut, cried out that I had still something I had forgotten to give her ... it was more kisses ... and I kissed and kissed her again and again.. and we both wept, with aching hearts.

Then the moral coachman unbent.

"--beg pardon," he ventured, "but I'm sorry for you two children ... oh, yes, I know all about you ... everybody knows ... and I wish you good luck."

Darrie stayed over for the night, after Hildreth left, in order to see to packing the latter's clothes in her trunk ... Hildreth had been too upset to tend to the packing....

The next day Darrie left, too.

"You have no more need of your chaperon," she laughed, a tear glinting in her eye....

So now I was left utterly alone....

And a h.e.l.lish winter descended upon the coast ... bitter, blowing, frosty winds that ate into the very bone and made a fellow curse G.o.d as he leaned obliquely against them.

I learned how little a summer cottage was worth--in winter.

Mrs. Rond lent me a huge-bellied stove, the fireplace no longer proving of comfort.

But though I kept the stove so hot that it glowed red, I still had to hug it close, my overcoat on, and a pair of huge, woollen socks that I'd bought at the general store down in West Grove.

But, despite the intense cold, I worked and worked ... my play, _Judas_ was nearing completion ... its publication would mean the beginning of my life as a man of letters, my "coming out" in the literary world.

I ate my food from open cans, not taking the trouble to cook.

At night (I had pulled my bed out close to the stove) I heaped all the blankets in the house over me, and still shivered ... I lived on the constant stimulus of huge draughts of coffee....

"Only a little while longer ... only a few days more ... and the play will then be finished ... and it will be published. And it will be produced.

"Then _the woman_, my first and only woman, she will be with me again forever ... I'll take her to Italy, away from all the mess that has cluttered about our love for each other."

One day, in an effort to keep the house warm--the one room I confined myself to, rather,--I stoked the stove so hot that the stovepipe grew red to the place where it went through the roof into the attic....

My mind, at the time, was in far-off Galilee. I was on the last scene of the last act of my play ... the disciples, after the crucifixion, were gathered in the upper room again, waiting for the resurrected Christ to appear to take the seat left vacant for Him....

I looked up from the page over which my frosty fingers crawled....

The boards were smoking faintly. If I didn't act quickly the house would catch fire ... I laughed at the thought of the curious climax it would present to the world; I imagined myself among the embers.

I must lessen the heat in the stove. I ran and brought in a bucket of water. I pried open the red-hot door of the stove with a stick that almost caught flame as I pried.

With a backward withdrawal, a forward heave, I shot the contents of the pail into the stove....

There followed a detonation like a siege gun.

The stove-lid shot so close to my head it was no joke ... it took out the whole window-sash and lit in the outside snow. The stove itself, balanced on bricks under its four feet, slumped sidewise, fortunately did not collapse to the floor ... the stovepipe fell, but the wire that held it up at the bend also prevented it from touching the carpet ...

the room was instantly full of suffocating soot and smoke.

I crawled forth like a scared animal ... found myself in the kitchen. In the mirror hanging there I looked like a Senegalese.

Then, finding myself unhurt, I laughed and laughed at myself, at the grotesqueness and irony of life, at everything ... but mostly at myself.

I righted the stove as best I could, brought the door in again from where it had bitten to the bottom of the snow drift, like an angry animal. It was still uncomfortably hot ... shifting it from hand to hand I managed to manoeuvre it back to a slant position on its hinges....

Before I could light another and more moderate fire, unexpectedly the inspiration for the completion of the last scene of _Judas_--the inspiration for which I had been waiting and hoping--rode in on me like a wave....