"A visitation of Providence!" repeated Mr. Ticks, slowly. "Yes, she is right. The sin of presumptuousness was visited upon that unhappy place."
"Do you mean to say"—Swift started up. Somehow he had forgotten Russell, its mysterious fate, his mission, everything but the girl. He had awaked to his duty. "Do you mean to say that the whole thing is due to e—?"
"Hold on! Look below!" interrupted the professor.
They clung to the ropes and glued their gaze upon the sight so far beneath them. The storm had magically cleared away. The sunlight now pierced the whole landscape for the first time since the disaster. The lost city, in black, shapeless ruins, lay directly beneath them.
"We will go down." The professor opened the safety-valve cautiously. "The devil has been chased away by the storm," he said emphatically.
Indeed, the baleful vapor had gone. As they swiftly descended strange sights met their eyes. They could still see everything microscopically for a radius of twenty miles around. Black specks were rushing up the stricken railroad tracks, along the roads, hurrying to the city of doom. Linemen began to extend the wires; trackmen began laying new tracks. Fully fifty thousand impatient men were madly plunging these twenty miles from different points of the circumference, converging toward Russell. The dead line had become a mysterious thing of the past. The danger to life was over, and it became an unprecedented race to see who would get first upon the spot.
"If this calm lasts, as I think it will, we will be on the ground two hours ahead of the crowd."
Swift's eyes sparkled in reportorial ecstasy.
There was no time now nor inclination for words. In ten minutes theHigh Tariffwas within a few hundred feet of the doomed city. Buzzards followed its descent curiously.
"My kingdom for a notebook!" cried Swift, in anguish.
"Take mine," said his companion, shyly, "and my stylo, too."
Swift would have been more moved by this attention had he not been absorbed in the sight at his feet.
"Do you mean," he turned to Mr. Ticks, "that this is all the effect of e——?"
"Look sharp, now!" interrupted Professor Ariel. "Stand ready to be cut down!" The Professor had manipulated the safety-valve so skilfully that in another minute they grazed the serrated ground. They were not hurt. One wide sweep of the professor's knife, and theHigh Tarifffreed now from all restraint, bounded away never to be seen again.
"I am sorry, Professor Ariel," said Swift, immediately, "that circumstances compel me to postpone my part of the contract. But, as we are responsible for your loss, I will guarantee that thePlanetwill make it all right."
The professor did not answer. Absorbed, he followed theHigh Tariffin its capricious departure with tender interest.
When the three turned and stared about them, they stood palsied by the terrible sight before them: a sight never permitted to mortal view before, and we pray that such be withheld from the gaze of our poor race henceforth forever.
The wide-awake, the proud, the busy city of Russell had vanished. Russell in its short and meteoric career had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on its tall, iron, fireproof blocks, its steel grain elevators, its gilded capitol, its granite churches, its hundred factories, its indestructible depots. Where were they? Where was the "busy hum of men"? Not a girder, not a column, not a trace of the complicated iron vertebræ of this metal city was left to mourn the grandeur of its structures. Not a corpse, not even a bone remained to tell the tale of the death agony.
Stricken as dumb as the lower brute creation, this one poor girl, the sole survivor of thirty thousand hopeful citizens, bereft of home, of friends, of employment, of hope, of everything in life but this hideous memory, uttered a low cry and sank senseless. Swift laid her gently on the parched, cracked ground; it was yet heated as if a conflagration had passed over the place. Where but five days ago haughty, frowning, iron blocks of stores, of hotels and exchanges stood, there were ragged gullies and deep fissures and jagged ravines, shining in the sunlight with a black, streaked crust. The sight was dreary and dead and deserted as if our travellers had been suddenly dropped upon the surface of the moon. The ground was riven as by some prehistoric upheaval. It looked as if subterranean springs of molten steel lava had spurted from the ground and had melted the unhappy city in their onward path and had carried it down in liquid solution to the lake.
Mr. Statis Ticks picked up a piece of this plutonian slag and examined it attentively.
"I didn't know that brick would melt like this," he said. Then again: "Here is platinum fused with iron and another substance I do not know." In a second or two he added:
"I see no remains of glass. It must have evaporated." He then took a few steps. "It is lucky," he said meditatively; "if we had been landed a few more feet to the left we should have been broiled to death. A part of this lava is still in a liquid state."
The three men looked each other in the eye. Swift forgot the girl. The professor forgot the balloon. Mr. Statis Ticks had forgotten his wife and seven children; but this was no unusual circumstance. The aeronaut, having less awe to the cubic inch in his make-up than his companions, was the first to speak.
"What does this gol-darned thing mean, anyhow?"
"Hush!" said Swift, recoiling.
But Mr. Statis Ticks bared his head before the extinct city.
"It means," said the student, solemnly, "the presumptuous impiety of man and the vengeance of Almighty God! It means," he added, slowly, "incalculable volts of uncontrollable electricity acting and acted upon by nascent oxygen and hydrogen. It means that Russell, the greatest producer of the electro-motor power on the continent, has been smitten by its servant. It means that man has outstripped his knowledge of this mysterious fluid, and has ignorantly converted through millions of inadequate conductors and faultily insulated wires the terrible, the unfathomed power of electricity into light and heat and force; that Russell was gradually becoming a gigantic storage battery, charged and surcharged, until the time when its electrostatic capacity had been criminally abused, the negative forces of the heavens concentrated over the obnoxious territory, and a discharge unparalleled in electrical experiments restored nature's equilibrium, and consumed in one unspeakable spark Russell and its blind inhabitants."
"My God! Can this happen to Boston?" cried the professor, trembling.
"Or New York?" asked Swift.
"Or to Chicago?" added the girl, faintly. She had revived and was looking about her in a ghastly way. "My mother used to live there."
This truly feminine view of a scientific subject passed unnoticed.
Mr. Ticks stood with his uncovered head yet bent before the annihilated city. He spread his two hands out, palms to the ground, with a gesture of indescribable significance, and made no reply.
Black, vitreous masses of melted conglomerate spread before them. Where had stood the city, the sloping plain offered no obstruction to the view. Russell, to the last splinter of iron or of wood, to the last chip of brick or stone, to the last bone of the last corpse, was fused into a terrible warning to the world by the rebellion of its own electricity.
"I guess none of 'em knew what struck 'em!" The professor hazarded this humane suggestion, feeling that the oppressive silence should be broken somehow.
"The Kremmler chair was nothing to it," said Swift.
"You are right," answered Mr. Ticks, gravely. "That was the only boon. So sudden and intense was the heat that men were ashes and the city was molten before nerves could convey sensation to the brain. In the fraction of a second, in the twinkling of a thought it was not, for God took it."
The four breathed heavily. Again Mr. Ticks broke the silence. He laid his hand paternally upon the young lady's shoulder.
"It is very fortunate, Miss Magnet, that you were the only thoroughly insulated person in this whole territory. The wooden boat, the inverted glasses saved you. You only had a normal amount of electricity in you. You were a poor conductor, otherwise you would have evaporated through the law of induction."
"I can't stand this any longer, or I'll be a fit candidate for an idiot asylum!" blurted out the professor finally. "I am dying for a chaw."
He cast impatient glances at a trackless, desolated grade a mile away. This grave of a great trunk line extended beyond their view.
The four had not stirred from where they had been dropped by the balloon. To do so they would have had to pick their way cautiously. Russell was like an extinct volcano. She was yet hot. But she did not smoke, as one might have expected. There were no smouldering embers left to produce smoke. Combustion had been instantaneous and complete.
But the travellers had no need to go sight-seeing. Everywhere was the same blackened, cooling, ferruginous slag. To see one square yard was to see the whole. The appalling thing about the effect was the cause. Civilization, ever ready with revengeful thrusts, as if protesting against the advance of science, had produced a new accident, a unique disaster.
Swift made an automatic motion for his watch.
"I must go," he said; "I must get my despatch to thePlanetin time for the evening edition. We will have a scoop on the whole world."
"I'm your man," said the professor. "We can foot it to the nearest telegraph station in four hours."
"Ah, I forgot," said Swift. "That will lose me the four o'clock edition. I'll have to hold the wire all night if I can get it. I'll wire such an account as no other paper will ever get. There isn't a minute to lose!" It was then that Mr. Statis Ticks, realizing, whether from calculation or from sympathy, that Miss Magnet could make no such forced march, and seeing that the girl only held herself together under the tension of the great excitement, gallantly proposed to remain by her and join the rest of the party that evening by the first team that could be chartered.
But the young lady unexpectedly refused the proposition. Her whole nature shrank from spending another minute in that blasted spot. It was therefore arranged, much to Mr. Ticks' disappointment (for he had hoped to add to his copious stock of mental notes by further investigation on the ground), that the girl should accompany them, as far as she was able, down the railroad, away from the lost city.
After a drink of lake water they started off, Swift supporting Miss Magnet on the one side and Mr. Ticks on the other, the professor stalking ahead.
"Even the lake tastes of it," said Swift. "Ugh!"
"Pass a current of electricity through a tumbler of water and there will be detected the same flavor, though not so strong," answered Mr. Ticks.
The party made two miles slowly. Despite all her Western courage and energy, Insula Magnet tottered by the way. To divert her attention, Mr. Ticks led her on to talk about the electrical wonders of the extinct city. The girl enlarged in a sad way upon its many and its curious uses. The baby carriages, she said, took their helpless occupants on an unaided turn around a large oval track in the park. They went by storage battery. One electrician could take the place of twenty nurses and control the power. Once in a while a baby died suddenly. The doctors invariably pronounced it a case of heart failure. Washing was now entirely done by electrical apparatus, likewise ironing and cooking. The great American problem of the "hired girl," Russell considered herself to have solved.
An ingenious arrangement had been recently devised to have the electricity supply the place of valet-de-chambre, but only a few had used it. One or two thought it a hardship to be aroused from bed whether one would or no, to be washed and summarily dressed by an implacable power that performed its set tasks stolidly in spite of anathemas and threats. Can a man abuse his electrical valet? Let him try it if he dare.
The phonograph was in universal use.The Phonograph Dailywas a rival—one cannot call it sheet, rather wax cylinder—just started, and the din made by those loquacious instruments was worse than the chatter of monkeys in the cocoanut groves of New Guinea.
Electric heaters warmed the rooms. Electric paper lighted them with a suffused and generous glow. No one used stairs. Electric elevators did all the arduous house-climbing. No one made calls any more, for it was an easy matter to ring your acquaintance up and see her in her drawing-room while you talked to her. Women made an elaborate toilet for such interviews. It was soon expected that conversation would be entirely dispensed with, for with a sensitive galvanoscope attached to the brain at a certain point, that was to be patented, the minutest current of thought could be registered upon a cylinder.
Authors would only need to fix their attention upon the plot; the delicate instrument would record it indelibly for their hearers' gratification.
The well-appointed electric coupé was always ready. There was no worry about oats and spavin and glanders. Miss Magnet told of many other new contrivances that electricity had now to perform. The development of this power through the new dynamos made it possible for men in Russell to dispense utterly with work. You went so far as to put five cents in the slot at any one of a hundred street corners, and your shoes were electrically polished to a patent leather shine. There was no more night, for carbon and incandescent lamps had stabbed the night so that any hovel was brighter than the average day. The girl stopped for breath and sat down. She was exhausted. Swift cheered her tenderly. But Mr. Ticks dryly remarked:
"Better a city without electricity than electricity without a city!"
The girl smiled at this heresy, and nodded her head emphatically in a feeble way. She could hardly move.
It was at this stage that Mr. Ticks seemed overcome with uneasiness. He got up and sat down again. He kicked the earth. He examined the charred sleepers. He dug for the lost rails. Then he awoke from his occupation with a sudden start as if rudely shaken from a dream. Swift was used to his colleague's idiosyncrasies. Besides he did not now notice them. He was otherwise occupied. But the professor could stand these performances no longer, and with rude emphasis he burst forth:
"Dang it, man, if you've got anything on your darned mind, jerk it out, if not—" Professor Ariel's manners had become decadent in proportion to the time that had elapsed since he and theHigh Tariffhad parted company.
"I—I—" interrupted Mr. Ticks, with a start. "The fact is, I cannot as yet account for that deadly atmosphere that enveloped this section. What was in it to kill? Its effect on me was unlike any other experience that I can recall. It is my inconsolable regret that it is not classified in my mind."
"Did you know," asked Miss Magnet, suddenly, "that a new land improvement company was started this spring for raising four crops a year? All the farms for twenty miles around were bought up. They spent over a million dollars in laying wires in the ground throughout the whole country, on the theory that these voltaic currents applied to grain and fruit and vegetables would excite such crops to quicker verdure and maturity. The company said that it was an experiment on a grand scale; but they were much laughed at. I said it was a dangerous scheme, and nearly lost my position in consequence. I have heard, though, that it was a great success."
During this recital Mr. Ticks' eyes glistened with excitement.
"Ah!" he said, "I am under a thousand obligations to you, young lady. Of course I could not conceive of such a thing, not knowing the facts. It is all plain now. The first discharge, enormous and deadly as it was, was not enough. This network of wires attracted the surplus electricity. The soil must be of such a quality as to convert this territory into an enormous secondary battery. The subsoil must have acted as a monstrous insulator. I shall subject it to a minute analysis. Are we on the verge of a new electrical discovery? Was this deadly phenomenon a hitherto unknown property of the electrical fluid? For to walk within the dead line was like walking into a saturated Leyden jar. Its effect must have also been to devitalize the oxygen and nitrogen of the atmosphere. The victim was electrified and suffocated to death at the same instant. At last I understand the complexity of my astonishing symptoms. The vibratory storm that we so narrowly escaped was not due to barometric depression, but came as a responsive consequence of this surcharged area. When that wire ladder was finally cut off and fell; when it reached a certain position; when one end touched the negative, the other the positive pole, then the current became completed and this gigantic battery was discharged. Had we not been rising at the rate of a hundred feet a second we should have been fused after the fashion of the inhabitants of this ghastly territory. The discharge once having taken place, this country is again free to man and beast."
"Gosh!" was all that the subdued professor could say.
And now the four travellers lifted up their eyes, and saw before them on the horizon black moving, indistinct masses, as if brobdignagian locusts were swarming up the track. Here were the hosts of careworn men, plunging impatiently toward the lost city for the news that the unaccountable and malignant power had hitherto denied them. The four needed courage to meet this unrestrained and desperate mob. Who were these in the van? What pallid faces, what haggard eyes, what piteous gestures! Alas, they were the mourners of the dead! Love had wrestled its way ahead of plunder, and grief had outrun greed. In the front ranks were women wailing and panting desperately to keep pace with unmanned men.
This woeful sight aroused Mr. Ticks. He raised his hands towards the lost city after the manner of an inspired prophet, and there and then uttered the following impassioned warning to humanity, which Swift took down in shorthand in the borrowed notebook:
"Woe unto you that multiply currents you cannot control! Woe unto you that net your country with the trap of sudden death! Woe unto you that toss innocent men on broken wires; that surprise your victims in the counting-house, the home, the street, with destructive bolts! Woe unto you that undermine and overcast the land with a mysterious foe! Behold! your dead shall rise in serried phalanx against you, and their mourners shall rend you to pieces!"
The only burst of eloquence known to the biography of this prosaic man subsided into apathetic silence. His hands dropped heavily at his sides. He turned away from Russell and beheld its blackened site no more.
The throng was now upon them. Multitudes of wild faces asked questions of the four. Who would answer these? Who could tell the terrible truth? The professor paled and walked behind Swift. Mr. Ticks shrank at the awful responsibility, and took refuge behind the professor. Swift halted and trembled.
"Go," he said to the girl. "Go! Only a woman can."
And she went. She stepped out alone—a few paces, and stood quite still. Instinctively the masses stopped before her. Eyes, sleepless with weeping and waiting, riveted themselves upon eyes that were still haunted with a portentous experience. The girl stretched out one hand in mute appeal, and then burst into tears and sobbed:
"Don't! Don't look like that! Oh, you poor people! I am the only one!"
Awestruck and silently, men and women enveloped her and ministered unto her. It was the advance guard of the Red Cross Society, led by Clara Barton, that sheltered this derelict and messenger of woe.
Set upon by a thousand men, Mr. Ticks and the professor told what they knew. Some cursed and doubted and pressed on. Some bowed their heads and turned back. But Swift, who had recognized Dubbs driving two powerful horses and unreeling two telegraph wires, one for the special use of the Associated Press and the other for thePlanet, accosted him, and sent the most famous message known to the American newspaper world since the close of the civil war.
It was a long message, and we can only give the more important headlines:
Russell is no more!Thirty thousand people killed by one unparalleled electric discharge.The gigantic spark fuses the whole city into one indistinguishable molten slag.Miraculous escape of one lady. The sole survivor.Thrilling rescue by thePlanetreporters in a special balloon.The reporters complete the circuit and touch off an over-charged storage battery with a circumference of one hundred and fifty miles.The territory that was impassable now open.Fifty thousand people race toward the lost city.Russell perished of her own electricity.Civilization's new and formidable danger.
Russell is no more!
Thirty thousand people killed by one unparalleled electric discharge.
The gigantic spark fuses the whole city into one indistinguishable molten slag.
Miraculous escape of one lady. The sole survivor.
Thrilling rescue by thePlanetreporters in a special balloon.
The reporters complete the circuit and touch off an over-charged storage battery with a circumference of one hundred and fifty miles.
The territory that was impassable now open.
Fifty thousand people race toward the lost city.
Russell perished of her own electricity.
Civilization's new and formidable danger.
Three months later, on a secular evening, the upholstered pews of an uptown church were filled with a fashionable audience. As the church bells tolled eight the organ pealed forth the wedding march. It was noticed with much comment that the vast audience-room was lighted with gas, the new electric lights being dispensed with. The bride, Miss Insula Magnet, had especially desired this.
When the solemn ceremony was ended, and when, amid the craning of necks, the bride and groom were walking down the white-ribboned aisle, a diversion happened that arrested the newly wedded couple. But this was not construed into an ill-omen. A diminutive messenger boy, with a super-experienced countenance, had met them half way to the vestibule, and, with a saucy smile, held up an envelope to Mr. Swift's face.
"It's half an hour late. Wires burned out. Guess you'll read it now!"
Mr. Statis Ticks, who, although well and worthily married, officiated in some unprecedented capacity as best man, gave Professor Ariel, one of the ushers, an intelligent glance. The latter, being the happy possessor of a new balloon (which he ingenuously calledReciprocity), supplied to him by the always generousPlanet, and fully elated by his present position, answered with a broad wink. Mr. Swift, unconscious of the thousands that were standing in their seats to look at him, and of the general buzz of interest, tore open the colored envelope with reportorial haste, and read as follows. It was cabled from his chief, the proprietor of thePlanet, now unavoidably detained in England:
"Congratulations. Advance of one thousand a year. Report after two months' bliss. God bless you!"
"Congratulations. Advance of one thousand a year. Report after two months' bliss. God bless you!"
Harland Slack sat in the café of the Parker House carelessly sipping whiskey and Apollinaris. He fondly cherished the thought that this combination was an excellent anti-intoxicant, a brain-quieter; on the same principle that B & S is supposed to clarify an Englishman's head. Harland Slack was an attractively repulsive man. He was tall, and vigorously put together. Evening dress was becoming to him. He never appeared after six o'clock without it: for it set off his long blond mustache, his fine artificially curled, blond hair, and his pale regular features to their best advantage. Seen from the front there were times when he was considered positively handsome, after the same fashion that an aristocratic French doll is admired. When he turned his profile, then there appeared certain hard lines of the check and weak lines of the forehead and chin that grated on austere physiognomists. The giddy set of fashionable women, at whose five o'clock teas he still remained theéprouvette positive, thought him adorable: the matrons with marriageable girls thought him debatable: if he chanced upon a spiritual woman, she considered him dangerous. The club men privately thought him unreliable.
It was not so in college before his father died. Then the main features of his life were promising. If he indulged in occasional gayety he did not lose all of his self-respect. His classmates noted in him a certain quality of strength or reserve that was supposed to emanate from himself rather than from the hard fact that his paternal allowance was only seven hundred a year, and that he was threatened with disinheritance if he ran into debt.
But now he had inherited. He had changed. His hands trembled. His eyes twitched. The corners of his mouth danced the dance of St. Vitus. He had terrible nightmares, and awoke with parched mouth and with disagreeable eyes, and with a rebellious head whose disorders required what he called "an eye-opener" to cause them to abate.
His best friends took him apart and said: "Now really, old fellow, this won't do. Its—playing the devil with you. Come now, knock off for a bit. I'll bet you a hundred dollars you can't confine yourself to claret for a month."
And Harland Slack would answer:
"Done! Have a cocktail?" He usually paid the bet before three hours were up. The limitation, he said, was too strict.
"I'll give him two years," said his nearest intimate; "and then—" He whistled The Dead March in Saul, and the fellows wagged their heads ominously over the sad case—and their ale.
In short, Harland was not only addicted to drink, but he was given over to it hand and soul. Yet he was very seldom drunk. He paused at that excessively polite stage which was the surveyor's line of inebriety. An eminent bar-keeper pointed him out one day and said:
"It isn't the boys that get drunk and then get over it, that go to the devil so fast: it's the fellows that take a little all day long and keep at it who can't be reformed."
So it naturally came about that while Harland Slack was in this benevolent mood, which usually lasted from ten in the morning till one in the morning, and which might aptly be described as betwixt Hell and Earth, he became the common prey of common humanity.
His was not to reason why;His was but to lend a fi'.Theirs was but to take and sigh:"I'll pay you sometime by and by."
His was not to reason why;His was but to lend a fi'.Theirs was but to take and sigh:"I'll pay you sometime by and by."
He seemed to take it as a compliment that his purse was everybody's bank, with a daily run on it. It was lucky for him that the enormous principal left by his economical father could not be touched. But at last, as it once in a while happens to the repleted, the unqualified ability to borrow, or rather, in this instance, to steal, led to a pall. Unlock every safe, unbar every vault, open up every store to pillage, and the robber, glutted with desire, will disappear. On the same principle, at the time of our historiette, Harland's friends, even his bar-room acquaintances, were overtaken by a sentiment of self-reproach or honor, and there was a general movement to swear off borrowing from this man who never refused a loan.
On the evening of which we speak Harland sat languidly waiting for a friend who had an appointment to accompany him to the club. It was early, scarcely eight, and he aimlessly fingered a loose roll of bills in his waistcoat pocket, smiled inanely at the man behind the desk, and then, despairing of entertainment, began to spin a trade-dollar on the polished table. The café was nearly empty, and he was to all purposes alone. This was a state which he dreaded above all others. Like Napoleon, in the company of even one he felt an inspiring confidence and security. When he was with people, he forgot that whiskey was an insisting necessity: he only thought he drank because he was a good fellow and "one of the boys."
Harland had never been visited by the uttermost penalty of his condition. It cannot be said that he never feared that state whose ugly name we omit when we can, or reduce to its significant initials; as if that reduced the horror of the fact. But he feared it: he feared it greatly. The possibility of delirium tremens unmanned him. Then he sweat drops of apprehension, and with vague, shuffling remorse promised himself to improve. He possessed all the weakness of Sydney Carton with none of that martyr's pathetic nobility or ability.
Harland Slack sat alone and began to scowl at the bottle of Apollinaris. His weak face looked haggard. Perhaps he felt that he had cast the key of his tomb through the grated door after he had immured himself within. He glared at the whiskey, and his thoughts cursed it; then he smiled and took another swallow. Even as he drank his mind wandered back to his college days when he was unimplicated in high treason against himself. He could not help remembering, sometimes: he seldom thought of the future.
The door opened. He tossed the remainder of his glass off, and looked around, expecting his companion. Then he turned back, disappointed. Then he looked again.
A stalwart man entered with an air of vitality which is often mistaken for authority. The vigorous development of his body gave a startling impression of height and power. He was dressed with elegant negligence. His dark beard was cut to a point, and he looked like a Parisian artist. Black eyes from under the brim of a silk hat compelled attention by reason of an imperious steadiness that indicated the possession of unusual self-control. The waiters jumped to serve this man. Harland was annoyed at this obsequiousness which he had never received. He tried to look haughtily indifferent, but he could not take his eyes from this person. The stranger returned his glance. He advanced upon the fashionable inebriate, and paused at his table. Harland Slack arose as if he were accepting a challenge, and trembled. The two looked at each other.
"I declare, old fellow. Is it you? Why, I haven't seen you since Class Day. You know me, Slack, don't you?"
The speaker smiled and took off his hat. This action heightened the impression of power which he had first made. His forehead was literally the dome of his body. It was as if the Creator had determined on granting this man an unusual supply of brains, and had then packed them in until the pressure had distended the frontal lobes. His brow was an overhanging arch, massive, high, compelling. This was so marked that the head gave almost a painful impression of superabundant intellectuality. Harland immediately recognized his classmate from that distinguishing feature. It was the only recognizable one left.
"Randolph?"
"The same. Do you live in Boston now?"
"Oh yes, of course. Sit down—and you?"
"I? I am a practising physician, now: that's all. Am just back from Paris a while ago, and have taken an office. I was telephoned suddenly to a patient out of town and ran in here for a chop before I went home."
The keen eyes of Dr. Alaric Randolph examined his vis-à-vis as he gave his brief explanation. He ordered his chops, declined an offer to drink, and noticed with professional intelligence Harland's demand for some more whiskey and the tremulous way with which it was taken. No words were necessary to tell this student of human miseries the nature of Harland Slack's disease.
Randolph was as much changed for the better as his classmate was for the worse. It was a wonder that they recognized each other at all. Harland felt the difference, but could not analyze it; while Randolph studied it more than he felt it. The college student who did not room in "Beck," and who was not a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, who had no time for society and theatricals, who was never seen at Carl's, who was suspected of being a little diffident, had suddenly become the patron; and the classmate whose father's wealth had given him an unassailable social rank, yielded with feeble will to his own unspoken instinct of inferiority.
Harland's face had become weazened since he had left college. His manly frame had shrunken. On the other hand, Alaric's features had expanded. His skull had filled out: even his frontal arch was rounded.
"What have you been doing in Paris, Randolph?" asked Harland with a good-natured laugh and a faint attempt at condescension.
Dr. Randolph looked across the table; his eyes twinkled over his classmate's tone, but he courteously answered:
"I've been experimenting there for five years. I went the usual round of hospitals and studied with Pasteur, and have raised scores of colonies of bacilli. Lately I have busied myself with investigations of too complex a nature to discuss. And you——"
"Oh,—I'm a—a member of the clubs, you know. I'm now engaged in breeding beagles. That takes lots of time you know. My father died some years ago, and I—eh—take care of the estate."
"So?" exclaimed Randolph with a German lengthening of the vowel sound. Then taking the opportunity while Harland was emptying his glass, he regarded him thoughtfully.
"Look here, Slack," said the young doctor after a moment's hesitation. "What do you say to spending the evening with me? I am lonely and want to talk over old days. You're done up and not fit to go to the club to-night."
Now Harland, though considerably astonished by the invitation, was also flattered.
"But my appointment! I never missed an appointment in my life, you know," wavered Harland unsteadily, while shifting his eyes to the door.
"Never mind that now. I'll leave word at the desk. Psst—garçon!"
The Doctor spoke masterfully; the gentleman obeyed him as readily as the servant. A pencil note, with strict injunctions for delivery solved the inebriate's sodden difficulty. Slack insisted upon adding that he would still meet his friend between ten and eleven o'clock. Randolph smiled indulgently, and they passed out into the cool air arm in arm. Randolph hailed a coupé and got his friend into it with pardonable alacrity.
Harland was unusually communicative that evening with the man from whom he would have hardly deigned to accept a cigarette in his college days. He could not understand the reason for what he considered this sudden social degradation. He accepted it in a dazed way, for he had been drinking steadily all day.
The cab stopped before one of the few stone houses less common in Boston than in New York, whose construction is at once singularly deceptive and honest. It had a frontage of seventeen feet.
"A good sized dog-kennel!" observed Harland Slack, glancing at it superciliously as he got out.
"These are my offices," answered Dr. Randolph urbanely, paying no attention to the half-maudlin discourtesy.
Supposing that one of these houses with a frontage of seventeen feet, has a depth of two hundred feet, and is five stories high? The dog-kennel assumes an area of nearly half an acre. There may be large rooms, almost a spacious salon in one of these insignificant homes. Seemingly unlimited space behind ridiculously narrow stone walls, is one of the many mysteries of city life.
Harland Slack sank upon the sofa, and languidly watched the Doctor turn up the gas.
"You haven't a nip of brandy, have you? I feel so confoundedly thirsty." Dr. Randolph looked at the speaker, whose wavering eye vainly strove to elude his. The Doctor seemed to be balancing in his mind whether to grant the guest his wish or not.
"Look here, old boy," said Harland, almost with a whine, "it isn't fair, doncherno, to bring a fellow in here and stare at him that way. My beagles wouldn't treat me so. I'm burning up with thirst. Just a little. That's hospitable, you know." He finished with a sigh and a fuddled look of entreaty. He had gone a half an hour without alcohol.
"I beg your pardon, Slack," said Randolph slowly, "of course you shall have it. But I would rather give you some cordial of mine first. It will take your thirst away sooner than your infernal liquor."
Slack nodded wearily, while the Doctor unlocked a black cabinet and took from thence a brittle flask and a liqueur glass. He held the flask up to the light before Slack's face. The liquid flamed yellow in the gaslight. It seemed to have concentrated in its ebullient elements the exhilaration of life. Now, the yellow cordial, even as the inebriate looked upon it, glowed and became incandescent. It seemed to be endowed with its own principle of energy. Harland Slack started up, and looked at this phenomenon more closely with intelligent astonishment.
"This," said Dr. Alaric Randolph observantly, "is the issue of many laborious years abroad. This is the theriaca against all vital poisons. Watch it; for even as you look upon it, you absorb its virtue."
There was no melodrama in the Doctor's action or accent. He spoke quite naturally. Harland was as much impressed by his friend's sincerity as by the singular appearance of thiselixir vitæ. He did not need to be urged to look at the glass again. It was a fountain of boiling light.
At this moment, a knock was heard at that door of the reception room which evidently led into the Doctor's inner office. Dr. Randolph started, quickly locked the door leading into the hall, and put the priceless flask gently upon a high bookcase. It was on a level with his face. The liquid shot bubbles of animation to the surface; and before Slack's eyes, as if gathering fire from the light or the heat, it slowly began to turn red. The languid debauchee now jumped nimbly to his feet and stood entranced before this beautiful, perplexing transformation.
"Keep your eyes on it for a moment, my friend," whispered Dr. Randolph: "watch it carefully for me. I wish to note its changes. It differs under variable conditions. Tell me about it. Do not touch it. When I come back you shall taste, and then—" Harland lost the last words as the physician hurried out.
Harland Slack, feeling a dull sense of scientific responsibility, fixed his eyes upon the occult fluid, watching its strange manifestations eagerly. His brain throbbed with thoughts. If the mere sight of this curious elixir could clear the clots of alcohol from his blood and his will, what might come of a draught? He walked for the first few moments about the room briskly. He stood erect: but he did not take his gaze from the flask, nor did he touch it. It now shot forth colors of the ruby. Along the rim played the fires of the spinel. These gave way to the glow of the garnet; which in turn vanished before gleams whose indescribable radiance is only likened to the blood of the pigeon. Harland was eager not to lose the lightest stage of this marvellous metamorphosis. With every new hue fresh streams of blood seemed to come into his heart. He felt so strangely that he soon began to doubt whether he were sober or not. He rubbed his eyes, and pinched his ears. Yes, he was awake and sane. This was no delirium of a caked brain. His mind was as clear as the waters of the Bermuda reefs. If he had been an opium eater, he might have thought these the legitimate effects of the dusky drug.
As soon as he had thoroughly assured himself of the validity of his reason he began to hear music. It came from the inner room whither the Doctor had gone. Without taking his eyes off of the blazing flask, Harland backed up to the door and listened. The strains sounded louder as he approached. There seemed to be a castanet, and a harp, and singing. In surprise he touched the door. It opened lightly. His curiosity proved stronger then the power of the elixir to restrain him, and he turned. A low cry of amazement leaped from his lips. He stopped irresolute and looked back. The glittering alembic was extinguished. The liquid shone but dully in the feeble jets of gas. What could there have been to fascinate, he mused, in that carafe of—water?
He forgot the Doctor. He abandoned the theriaca. He strode into the vast hall that opened up before him. As he advanced, his head whirled with a new intoxication. He wondered how so narrow a house could contain such a superb apartment. Then he perceived, or he fancied that two or more buildings had been thrown into one. It was the only explanation of the spacious area which his imagination afforded, and it satisfied him.
Before him extended a banquet-hall decorated with Oriental magnificence, and lighted with many lamps. In its centre was a sumptuous table. Black servants flitted noiselessly about. Upon a yellow rug at one side crouched a dark dancing girl, clad in gauze, waving a gauze scarf. She reminded him of something he had read about the celebrated dancers of the Maharajah of Mysore. This beautiful girl, with a bewitching effort at unconsciousness, arose and whirled down the long hall towards the young man, waving her bare arms to the accompaniment of stringed instruments and the measured drone of the players. Suddenly the dancer, with a blinding pirouette, wound her veils modestly about her, saluted Harland with a profound, mocking courtesy, and then pointing to the table wafted herself away. Harland was confounded. What strange orgy was this? What a scene from India dropped upon bleak, staid New England!
When he had accustomed his eyes to the blaze of light he saw that another woman was in the room. This one was reclining at the table. He recognized her immediately. This fact pleased him; for it assured him that he was still himself. It also troubled him, for he had solemnly vowed never to allow his eyes to rest upon her again. She had haunted him with her beauty and her insolence since he had forsworn her. There flashed his sapphire bracelet on her slender arm, and the Alexandrite for which he had sent to Russia, took to itself at her white throat alternate virulent moods of red and green. She was entrancing, and he loved her. She was his evil genius, and he feared her. She had flattered and despised him, and he hated her. How laughingly she had lured him with her jewelled hand and iridescent eyes down the pleasant path that brought up at his fatal vice! He thought of her polite orgies, her theatre suppers, her one o'clock germans, and her select parties at suburban hotels. To his besotted brain she was a scarlet witch and he fled from her, and returned, and fled again.
But what manner of man was this Doctor? Why would they trap him?—weak, sodden thing that he was, and knew that he was.
Now, as he looked upon her there was a snap in his heart, and her power upon him seemed to give away and break like a valve in the aorta. How was this possible? Could a mannotcare for her? With sudden surprising disdain he approached the beautiful creature before whom he had so often trembled. She did not look up at him, but threw herself back further on the couch and motioned to a servant for some wine. Something about her super-human grace revolted him. The music redoubled. The Indian dancer fanned him as she sped past. He did not notice her. He was above intoxication of the senses. What was this woman? What her wine? In a kind of sacred, cold revolt, he stood aloof. He was in an ecstasy of moral freedom. He advanced a step or two, looked down at her from his tall height and ejaculated brutally:
"Youhere?"
She did not look up at this insult. Her cheek, neck, and ears flushed and then became deadly pale. A sneer now spread itself over her chin and mouth.
"And why not, you poor fool?" The opprobrious epithet seemed feebly to express the infinite contempt in which she—even she—had held him. She had called him this with equal scorn more than once before, in her drawing-room, and he had never felt the shadow of resentment. He had been accustomed to laugh feebly and to turn the unpleasant personality away as well as he could. But now, he became aware of the contumely for the first time. He clenched his fists; he breathed heavily. He did not trust himself to speak. He ground his teeth. His thoughts became singularly clear. He took another step nearer. She turned her haughty head and smiled mockingly at him, clicking the glass with her finely-manicured finger.
"I did not know, sir, thatyouwere a friend of the great Doctor," she chirped in her falsetto voice, and her lip curled.
"Its a lie! I am not! He is a scoundrel!"
Harland spoke savagely. He could not understand this moral convulsion that within the last few minutes, had dominated his nature. He could only express it. What was this house? For the first time the query arose: What had he to do with a questionable evening?
"You are drunk, as usual," answered the woman with a pert upward motion of disgust.
At this, which he knew to be a libel for once, Harland's hand tore at his heart: a terrible rush of blood ran to his brain. The music hushed. The dark dancing-girl sank with exhaustion to her rug. The room was stifling. The air was heavy with the perfume of roses, and attar, and wine. Yet the young man's head was poised, his eyes were sane, his senses untouched. With a supreme effort he held his anger in check. The beauty, not realizing the extent to which she had tortured him, laughed aloud and contemptuously cried:
"Harland Slack, you are a coward. You dare not call your soul your own; for you are always drunk. Bah!" She made as if to draw herself from beyond his touch. He did not stir, but a frightful whiteness extended over his hands and face.
"Go on," he said metallically.
With a refinement of insolence difficult to describe, ignoring his person, she lookedthroughhim, and with a gesture ordered the music to begin again.
Harland stood motionless for a moment. Immovable, he fixed his gray eyes upon a little black square of court-plaster under the lobe of her left ear. The music crashed through the banquet-hall. The dancing-girl tried to distract the man of stone. He looked at that little black patch. Its wearer shrugged her shoulders significantly; then, as if wearied of the thought of him, she moved her white arm to the table and took up a glass flaming with champagne; waving it towards him she said malevolently:
"There! That's what you are waiting for. Drink and go!—Sot!" The viciousness of the act and word served as the key to the situation. Like rusting steel, Harland became unlocked. Oddly enough, at this crisis it occurred to him to question whether this were his old friend at all. Then who? Then what? Was the woman an embodiment of all the past evil of his own soul? By some horrible law of metempsychosis had his old spirit passed into this too fashionable married flirt at his side? That outstretched, mocking hand—was it what the abstainers called the "demon of drink?" How often he had laughed at the phrase, lighting his cigarette with their tracts!
At the fearful import of these thoughts, he felt himself endowed by a bidding higher than fate. Justice arose and compelled him. His eyes brightened before he did the deed. With a sweep, he shattered the hand that held the slender glass, and snatching up a silver knife from the table he poised it for an instant: then buried it to the hilt.
It struck just below her left ear. It obliterated the little black patch. With a sound more like a hiss than a cry the woman drooped to her divan. The music stopped with a frightened crash. The dancing-girl fled with a shriek; but Harland stood immovable, exultant, holding his hands ready to strangle if the wound did not kill. His face, but now so weak, had acquired an inexorable strength. Strange! At this moment he felt himself not a murderer, but a man.
He watched his victim dying, without a word; and when her curse was spent, he turned and walked triumphantly back through the wasted magnificence to the room from whence he had come.
He did not hurry. At first, he did not apprehend arrest. He felt as if he had accomplished a great deed. Without looking back he closed the door and sought for his hat. He put it on and made for the outer entrance. He tried it and found it locked.
Now at last he began to comprehend his situation. Terror fell upon him. Cold drops bathed him. The enormity of his act flashed upon his conscience.Kill!Kill awoman? He struggled at the window and the door. Both were impervious. He dared not go back. How could he look at her? Escape was cut off. His head became clotted with the old sensations. Fear, such as makes a man's heart stand still, assailed him. He looked in vain for the flask. It was gone. With a loud cry, he flung himself upon the sofa and fainted dead away.
How long he lay there of course he did not know. Soon, vague cerebrations began to torture his mind. It burned as if it were being recalled to life from a frozen state. Then, soaring upward from deeps beyond the deeps, supported through irremediable turmoil by an overwhelming power, he felt himself gently laid upon a couch. There was a moment when the brain, recovering its equilibrium, swam and spun. Then suddenly he found consciousness and emerged through the mist of pain. He tried to use his limbs, but could not rise. With an effort he strove to loosen his tongue, but could not speak. With desperate will he endeavored to open his eyes. Their lids were riveted together. This was no hallucination. He was never more alert nor more helpless.
He knew that some one was bending over him.
He felt two eyes examining his soul. He had the consciousness that there was nothing hid from this intense gaze. Then a commanding voice spoke to him, and a hand of unutterable persuasion touched his forehead.
"Harland Slack!" said the ringing voice. Beginning a little above a whisper it seemed to increase to oratorical tones: then it reverberated throughout his nature, and burst upon him like the rattle of thunder. "Harland Slack, you have had a terrible lesson. Harland Slack, you will not drink again!" Then after a pause in a different voice, "Now, Slack get up! You're all right now. Come!"
With a mighty wrench Harland, at his bidding, cast off the numbness from his body, the incubus from his will, and staggering to his feet opened his eyes.
Before him stood Dr. Alaric Randolph holding his hand and looking searchingly into his face.
This fact recalled to him his awful deed. He understood perfectly that he had committed a murder. He knew not how, or why, or where. With a tremulous look about him he burst into tears and clung for protection to his enigmatical host.
As tenderly as a hospital nurse Dr. Randolph led the criminal to a deep chair and placed him in it.
"There, there, old fellow. It's all right. You will come out of it all straight. I'll see you through. Trust me. There, take my hand. That will help you, see?"
The broken man, shuddering from weakness, clasped the sympathetic hand and wrung it. Harland sat still a long while with closed eyes. The doctor watched him professionally, even tenderly, at times anxiously.
"Now," he said, "I'll go and bring you ademitasse. It will set you on your feet."
"No, no!" cried Harland in terror, "don't leave me. I can't be left alone."
"But only to the next room."
The patient's hands relaxed, and he assented wearily. When the coffee came, he drank a little obediently.
"Now, my boy," said the Doctor, with what under the circumstances seemed to Harland a ghastly cheerfulness, "this will get you up entirely. When you finish it, I am going to send you to the Club!" At the mention of the Club Harland began to tremble.
"My God, Randolph! I can't go there. I'll be arrested." He glanced apprehensively at the outer door as if expecting a policeman. "Don't you know," he added in a whisper, "what I've done in your infernal place?"
"Nonsense!" replied Randolph lightly, "not a soul shall know you've been here. She deserved it. I'll take all the blame. Now brace up and be a man. Don't be nervous. You're feverish. You need a tonic before you start. What'll you drink?"
Harland looked at his host in a state divided between dementia and moral nausea. What manner of man was this American Doctor with his accursed Parisian education?
"I am horribly thirsty," he admitted: "I will take a glass of water, thank you."
He said this without surprise at himself, naturally and quite sincerely. He longed for it. It was the first request of the kind he had made for years. Randolph handed the water to him and watched him narrowly. Harland held up the glass to the light with a connoisseur's eye, smiled with satisfaction, and took the clear draught down at one swallow.
"Ah!" he said: "that is good. I feel better now. Now swear that you will save me. Don't give me up. Hide me somehow. It happened in your house, you know."
"Give yourself no concern," said the Doctor easily.
"Why, man," blazed Harland Slack, "don't you know that I've murdered somebody? It was a woman. I've murdered that woman you keep here. I am a murderer."
"Your Club is only two blocks off," answered the physician with astonishing indifference; "It will do you good to walk there. Trust me. Don't worry over it. Let me feel your hand. It's moist and soft. No fever; that's good. When you step foot into the Club you will never think of the affair again."
The Doctor quietly gave the criminal his hat and coat, put a cane into his hand, and conducted him to the door.
"Go!" he said, "go directly to your Club as usual. As a physician I order it. It is the best thing you can do."
Mutely the trembling man obeyed, and thus the two actors in this awful evening parted; so, perhaps, criminal and accomplice are wont to part in the extremity of great emergencies, as if nothing had happened out of the moral order of things.
Harland Slack walked into his fashionable Club slowly. As he did so, whether by reason of the familiar atmosphere, or the contrast to the scene from which he had escaped, he did not stop to consider, his crime dropped from his memory like the burden from Christian's back. He handed his outer garments to the liveried boy, and, as was his wont, turned towards the poker and billiard rooms. There were the usual number of useless gambling and playing men uselessly drinking. Harland Slack was greeted in the usual boisterous manner.
"Hilloa! What'll you take? Here, boy, bring the same old stuff to Mr. Slack."
The gossip proceeded, the chips rattled, the balls clicked, the smoke mounted, the liquors gurgled, and the regular Club life proceeded.
The friend of his appointment now joined him.
"By ——! You look as white as that foam there. You need a nerve restorer. You haven't been idiot enough to buck the tiger again, have you? What will you take?"
"No," said Harland slowly. "I have not gambled." He shook his head with a strange expression. He did not understand. The Club seemed different to him. It was not as entrancing or as necessary as usual. The odor of stale liquor and of staler tobacco nauseated him. Still, it did not occur to him that this was an unusual state of mind for him to be in.
The attendant placed the chased tray upon the table. His friend took the decanter from the boy and poured out the brown liquid into the delicate glasses. He then offered one to Harland and held up his own in token of courtesy.
"Well, here's to luck," he said, and nodded to Harland. Harland nodded in return. His nerves twitched him. What was this new sensation of repugnance? He lifted his glass higher to his mouth. He tried to put it to his lips. It would not go. He tried again. His arm refused him service. But the fumes of this familiar liquor mounted to his nostrils, which dilated with horror. What was this terrible thing which he was asked to drink? Never had he felt such physical repulsion. A shudder of disgust shook him. With a curse he dashed the glass to the floor, and glared suspiciously upon his companion.
"How dare you ask me to drink this stuff?" His voice rang with passion. "I loathe it! I cannot stand it. Let me go. This is an infernal den, and I will get out!"
The men around jumped up and held him. They thought that D. T. had come at last.
"Somebody send for the nearest expert," said his nearest friend.
This inebriate's first resistance to his dipsomania was interpreted darkly, with sundry shrugs and winks and gestures.
"It is too devilish bad," said his companion, "but I knew it would happen some day."
They called a cab and put him in and sent him home. But he gave no further evidence of insanity. His case became a seven days' gossip and warning behind the bulging windows of the great Club.
Harland Slack went straightway to Colorado, and came back a man. He went into law, and succeeded. It is well known that he does not drink. The committee elected a new heir to damnation in Harland's place at the Club.
At the end of an address delivered a year afterward before a close medical meeting Dr. Alaric Randolph said:
"A bit of bright, cut glass, and a healthy will, and the proportional training did this thing. I have not given the man's name, not only on account of his high social standing and marked mental ability, but also because he himself is still ignorant of the facts. I have no fear of a relapse. He has forgotten that he ever believed himself to have murdered a woman who never existed. But he has not forgotten that he no longer drinks. This case is now a tested cure. My first successful experiment in this great, unknown field, rests upon its facts. Alcoholism is probably as serious an illustration as we could present. The hypnotic therapeutics have come to stay."
It was the morning after my arrival. I had just come, jaded from examination papers, agued with the incessant ring of orations, abhorrent of the rustle of white tarlatans, distrustful of the future attitude of trustees, and utterly wilted from the effect of a country academy exhibition held in the heat of June in the torridest of Western towns. I had never seen the ocean, and before my window the glorious old Atlantic heaved solemnly. Its intermittent swash upon the rocks sent peace into my soul. I found myself near enough even to throw something into the water. The longing to communicate with this new friend, dreamed of for so many inland years, overpowered me. A box of buttons was all I had, and I leaned far out into the air, pungent with a mixture of fish and kelp, and cast into the deep these feminine necessities, one by one. Now a tiny disk of mother-of-pearl would glance on the float and bounce off into a gray ripple; and then a bit of jet would clatter on the red granite rocks, and be swallowed by a lapping wavelet that seemed to rise on purpose for this strange offering. Too soon the box was emptied of its contents; then there came a mad desire to throw cologne, shoes, satchel, anything, everything, myself, from the second-story window into this mysterious, beckoning, repelling Atlantic tide beneath me. Leaning on the sill, with my whole soul absorbed in this new Nirvana, I was suddenly and yet not unpleasantly aroused by a strident yell:
"Hellow, Scud! Wha'che got this mornin'?"
"Oh, no-thin', only twenty-six little 'uns, an' a couple bucket o' bait."
The answer came back in a deep, orotund, sing-song voice. It was the natural intoning of the man of the sea. Two boats shot from under a rocky headland a few hundred yards before me to the left. One of the boats made fast to some black corks that formed a huge rectangle in the water, and two men began pulling in a net. The one in the other boat, who answered to the name of Scud, stopped rowing for a moment, exchanged a word or two, and laughed aloud, then cast a critical look at the sun's altitude, and pulled lazily away. When he was at some distance, he rested on his oars, and hilloaed with that penetrating sea cry:
"I hope you'll get two barr'l. I guess thar's 'nough to go all round."
That undulatory cadence is entirely lacking in landsmen's tones. Still this was an extraordinarily joyous voice, as if the life of a fisherman were a dream without a care or a struggle. But Scud and his queer, green boat disappeared behind the jagged outline of the rocks, and I turned at the sound of the first bell to dress for breakfast.
"Well, how do you like your room? I hope that the fishermen didn't wake you up too early."
My cousin offered me some smoking flakes of fish, new to my limited experience. This, he said, was inland hake, and was caught that morning in Scud's trap. Now, although I was hitherto ignorant of this delicious fish with its paradoxical cognomen, I felt that Scud and I were already friends; and gravely informed my host that Scud had caught twenty-six little ones that morning. This piece of information was immediately greeted with impertinent hilarity.
"So Scud woke you up?" said my cousin. "He's always doing that. There was one nervous boarder here. She threatened to have him arrested for breaking the peace. But you might as well arrest a fog-whistle."
"Does he always get up as early in the morning?" I asked, apprehensively. "He must be a very energetic person. Do tell me about it. What are 'little 'uns'?"
I must confess to a degree of perplexity when the the whole family burst into further roars of laughter at my simple question.
"Scud energetic? Why, he is the easiest, the slowest, the sleepiest, the most lovable, good-natured fellow on the whole coast. He makes the surest and perhaps the best living of any of the fishermen around here. If he didn't get up early he wouldn't do even that. As it is, Salt does most of the work. Salt is his oldest boy," explained my cousin.
"I am sure Scud needs all he can make," interrupted Mabel (she is my cousin's wife), "with his dozen children and a wife to support, and only one trap to do it on."
"For my part," interposed the oldest daughter, with a pert motion of her head, "I am tired to death having to save clothes for that—You needn't look so shocked, mamma. Yes, I am. It's always 'Take care of that petticoat; Betty can use it;' or, 'That dress can be turned and made over nicely for the twins.' I declare I don't get a new dress but the whole Scud family troop over and inspect it, and criticise it, and quarrel over it, and gloat over it the first day I wear it. I caught two of their boys fighting over which of them should have Reginald's summer ulster when he was done with it."
"I shall give it to Tommy," observed her mother, in an absent, comfortable tone.
After breakfast my cousin rowed over to the station; the eldest two children took their guest, a boy of about sixteen, out fishing; while I eagerly accompanied Mabel across the rocks and fields to Scud's house—a little rented hut, hidden and sheltered from the east winds behind a huge barrack of a boarding-house.
How clear the day! How warm the sun! How hospitable this forbidding, granite-clad North Shore! As I look back upon that memorable morning it seemed as if the bay could never be ruffled by any but the tenderest breezes, or its bright water reflect any but the dazzling glare of the hottest sun. Clouds hovered over us, delicate and fleecy as the feathers of the marabou, and white and curly as the feathers of the ostrich. They radiated from a centre in translucent films, and shot out monstrous ciliated fingers like a fan. Such a sky was never seen in my part of the country, and I attributed this ravishing cloud phenomenon to the peculiar influence of the sea, being too ignorant to notice that these streamers shot out from the west. The stillness was intoxicating after the scurry of the school-room. And now even the water made no ripples on the beach. The sea was motionless, like a distilled elixir in a serrated alembic.
We stopped before a low, pitch-roofed house that looked as if it contained three rooms at most. The yard was piled up with wreckage and drift-wood. Who ever heard of a fisherman buying kindling? Within the gate four children were playing with twice as many cats and kittens. They were all fighting like animals between themselves for a plateful of scraps of fried fish. A baby would grab a piece from the plate, and offer the remainder to a grave tabby, which in turn distributed it to her offspring. Then the kittens and "humans" rolled and scratched, and shrieked and scratched again.
"Keep yer mouths shet out there, or I'll be after ye with a stick!" This maternal sentiment, spoken in a loud shrill voice, greeted us as we stepped within the gate.
"It's I, Betty. I have brought you a little something, and a friend who wants to see the children."
"Dear sakes! 'tain't you, is it?" The shrill voice was now modulated in an entirely different tone. "Ain't I glad you've come! Step right in and set down. No? Then I'll be out and see ye ez soon ez I've tended the baby."
"Baby!" I gasped, looking at the four fighting infants at my feet, none of whom looked over thirteen months. "Are these hers too?"
"These are the twins," answered Mabel, quite seriously. "They call them 'the twin.' These are the two sets, just a year apart. The baby was born a month ago. The baby isn't named. Let me see: these are Bessie and Maurie and Robbie and Susie."
"Why, I thought you knew better," protested the mother, in a grieved voice. "Susie is in the house there. That's Bessie." She wiped her hands on her apron, and thrust one of them out through a rent in the mosquito-netted door. "I'm glad to see any ofherfriends. Yes. Good mor'n'. The children? Laws sakes, they're round the house like pups!"
The face was remarkable for a pair of brilliant black eyes, an inheritance of Italian ancestry. She was not yet middle-aged, and her hair had turned prematurely gray. Her hands were bony, nervous hands, indicative of great executive capacity, but the incessant work had left them trembling.
"Are all your children here?" I asked, not knowing what else to say.
"Here's four of 'em. Come out here, you in there, an' I'll count ye." It was a pitiful sight to see these five plump, rosy youngsters pass in review before the frail, emaciated mother.
"But here are only nine," I ventured.
"Salt's missing, mother," said the eldest girl; "he's with father to the trap."
"So he is, Kittie. They've rowed round the cove with what they ketched. They'll be back d'rectly."
"But how do you manage, Mrs.—ah—Scud?" I asked. I am afraid there was a slight choke in my throat as I spoke. The mother cast a quick look at my face, and shoving her children into the house, one by one, said:
"Now go, Kittie; finish the dishes. You, Mamie, put the baby kearfully in the box. What did you hit Jim for, Sammy? Let me ketch you a-hitten your little brother agin an' I'll spank you. Now get in the house, all of ye. You see, miss," turning to me, "we manage somehow. If it wa'n't furher, we'd give up. There's that boy Jim, he took to swearing this spring. I declare it was jess awful to hear him go on. I spanked him, and Scud he switched him, but it wa'n't to no use. That boy talked jess scand'lous, till your cousin here, miss, she heerd him one mornin', an' took a white powder an' put a little on his tongue. It made Jim powerful sick. And, says she, 'If I hear you swearin' agin I'll pizen ye; an' you'll die in a minute an' never see God,' and I declare to goodness he was so skeared that I hain't heerd him swear since. There's Scud. Where's Salt, pa? Come here an' speak to the ladies. She's brought ye some ties."
"Salt's makin' the boat fast," began Scud, nodding with inimitable ease to his visitors. "I'm afraid ther's goin' to be—"
Scud stopped short in open-mouthed pleasure when he saw a couple of brilliant red and blue ties dangling from Betty's hand. He had come up the rocky path, whistling like a boy, with every line and pucker in his face on a broad smile. If Lavater had seen this fisherman's physiognomy he would have pronounced it indicative of incomparable good nature. Indeed, Scud's good nature went so far at times as to be incomparably inadequate to the demands of existence. If he happened to go for weeks without catching so much as a sculpin in his net, and the starvation of his youngsters stared him in the face, he showed none of the common symptoms of discouragement, such as swearing, drinking, beating his wife, or cursing his luck. He only whistled the blither, ran up bills at the butcher's and grocer's with irresistible faith, borrowed his "chaws" of his luckier mates, and laughed as if poverty were an excellent joke that Providence was cracking at him. Why shouldn't he appreciate it, even if it were at his own expense.
Scud was born "easy." Who could blame him? He gave up his lobster-pots because it took too much time to dry them and keep them in repair, and it was too cold and dangerous hauling them in stormy weather off the rocks. Scud found it too troublesome to underrun his trap more than twice a-day—once at six o'clock in the morning, then at six o'clock at night. Even when the mackerel or the herring struck, and every man who had a trap hovered over it night and day to keep the catch from mysteriously immaterializing, as well as to gather it in, Scud was satisfied with his diurnal visits. He "wa'n't a-goin' to keep a-runnin' to see the fish swim in. If they were fool 'nough to go in the trap, they could stay there till he underrun an' bailed 'em out." His methods of gaining a livelihood were unique on the coast; yet it was Scud who "stocked" eight hundred and fifty dollars that summer clean, two hundred dollars above any one else in the harbor. It was the saying among some of the jealous fishermen in the cove, who were not blessed with two pairs of twins, that "nobody 'arned so easy a livin' as Scud without doin' no work." But these indistinct murmurs never stimulated Scud nor impaired his good nature. Indeed, Scud was the happiest man that ever lived. What a dancing, laughing eye! What a catalogue of joys therein! What contagious, hopeful humor! What irrepressible buoyancy of spirits! Who could help loving Scud, as one loves a huge, long-coated St. Bernard dog? Scud was the laughing, joyous, piping Pan of the ocean. He smoked not, neither did he drink. He had no vices that debased him. Chewing is not a vice for a fisherman. But he did have a curious taste for candy. No present pleased him so much as a half a pound of caramels or of sugar-coated nuts. It was the sweet animal nature instinctively laying hold of sweets.
Scud's "easiness" was unmitigated—at times it was exasperating; but this made him all the fatter, the jollier, the more companionable; and as it succeeded so well, why not? Summer boarders were appreciative of Scud. He lived upon them. Twins?—they did it. It was a dime show, and the money was paid.
Two sets of authentic twins! It was enough to drain a woman's heart of sympathy, a woman's pocket of money; and the summer boarders were mostly women—married women, with husbands sweating in the city to support them; single women, school-teachers and that sort.
But Scud stood looking at the ties. He seldom bought clothes, any more than he purchased firewood or paid for his fish. They came to him. Here was a pair of trousers that was once a bishop's. That coat and vest were the velveteen relics of a posing artist. The cap was a yachtsman's gift, and the neckties came as a matter of course. Yet Scud never begged. And once when he caught one of his four-year-old boys insinuating to a summer boarder, with outstretched palm, that he would like a penny, Scud thrashed him within a centimeter of his life. New England fishermen will take a gift as a sort of neighborly accommodation to you; but he'll starve before he will ask you for it.