“Some people New York ennobles; others, it drags straight down to H——.”
“Some people New York ennobles; others, it drags straight down to H——.”
With his eyes resting on the picture of Emerson, Edwin Dell said the word “Fortitude.” He repeated the word—“Fortitude, fortitude, fortitude, fortitude, fortitude,” until the gentle, dreamless sleep of innocence wrapped him in its platonic embrace. Valerie Keat dreamed of wild horses, rushing water, satyrs. . . .
For his frugal dinner next evening Edwin Dell avoided the Scarlet Hyena and went instead to the Esoteric Pussy-Cat, in a damp, artistic basement on Washington Square, South. It was so full of young men and older women eating the dollar dinner and discussing intimate problems that only one seat was left and that was in the window, where Edwin, perforce, had to eat his dinner in the most distressingly public fashion, while rude passers-by stopped to stare at him, presumably under the impression that he was advertising a dyspepsia cure. One passerby stopped much longer than the rest and pressed a retroussé nose against the window-pane. Edwin Dell’s heart began to knock like a poor motor taking a high hill.
Valerie Keat, for she it was, came bounding into the restaurant and greeted him like an old friend. She conjured up a chair and drew it to his table, uninvited. He looked appealingly at the other diners, seeking in all that throng one wise, kind, understanding face. He sought in vain. The faces of New Yorkers are hard, hard.
“Still damnationing the infants?” asked Valerie Keat, breezily.
“Levity on that subject is most unbecoming,” he said.
Unexpectedly her face grew sober under its film of cosmetics.
“You are right, Edwin,” said Valerie Keat. “I am too facetious. Perhaps you think I take nothing in life seriously. But I do, I assure you I do.”
“Ah, do you?” he said, hoping to convey the idea that it didn’t in the least matter to him. Then, to his surprise, he found himself adding the word “What?”
Her green eyes bored into his light blue eyes.
“Love,” she said, in a low, poignant voice.
Edwin beckoned the Japanese waiter.
“My bill, please, at once,” he directed.
“Vellygoo,” said the waiter, and brought it, discreetly folded, as all restaurant bills are, as if they were illicit billet doux. Edwin put his hand inside his coat pocket. Alarm and dismay congealed him. He had no money. Caring naught, as he did, for worldly goods, he had entirely forgotten that he had given away his allowance to the poor, and Aunt Charity had forgotten to send him a fresh supply of money. Doubtless she had sent it to the missionaries; so much of her income went there. He looked up, and there stood the waiter, suspicion in his oblique Nipponese eyes. Valerie Keat was quick to sense the situation.
“Broke?” she asked.
He nodded.
She bent over and from somewhere took a five dollar bill, which she tossed to the waiter. He came back with four dollars in change. Nonchalantly, Valerie Keat waved the money away.
“Keep the change, Ito,” she said. The waiter bowed himself back to the kitchen and fainted.
“I seldom tip more than two dollars,” the woman explained, “but Ito has a wife and nine kiddies. Don’t you just love kiddies, Ned?”
Had he misjudged the woman, Edwin Dell wondered?
“Besides,” went on Valerie Keat, and her voice broke a little, “he reminds me of my father.”
Clouds seemed to lift from Edwin Dell. Surely it was not possible to suspect the honorableness of the intentions of a woman who spoke like that about her father.
“Will you stop at my studio?” he heard Valerie Keat saying. “I want to give you a book I think you should read.”
“I only read books on ecclesiastical and theological subjects,” he said.
“That’s just what this book is,” she assured him.
But when they reached the door of her studio, something (was it his guardian angel?) made Edwin hesitate.
“Come on up,” she said, urgently.
“It’s rather late,” objected Edwin.
“Nonsense! It’s only nine. Come on.”
Mystery was in her smile; or was it mystery?
For one second, two seconds, possibly three seconds he wavered. Then on the wall of the building opposite he seemed to see written in fiery letters the warning words of his aunt.
SOME PEOPLE NEW YORK ENNOBLES; OTHERS IT DRAGS STRAIGHT DOWN TO H——.
SOME PEOPLE NEW YORK ENNOBLES; OTHERS IT DRAGS STRAIGHT DOWN TO H——.
His soul was a battle-field of conflicting emotions. What, he asked himself, would Emerson have done in a case like this? That thought steadied him.
“No,” he said. “A thousand nevers. I’ll wait here.”
Pain showed in the green eyes of Valerie Keat.
“Don’t you trust me?” she asked.
“I trust everyone,” said Edwin Dell, gently. “But then I am so very young.”
“It was your youth that attracted me,” she said; then added hastily, “Don’t misunderstand me. I am speaking purely in a professional sense. I am an artist, you know. I want you for a model.”
Edwin Dell shrank from her.
“Me?” he said. “A model?”
“Yes, why not?” Her manner was most reassuring. “I want to paint a Galahad or maybe a Parsifal. You’d be perfect. I suppose you know”—here she lowered her voice and her eyes were full of meaning—“that you are very handsome.”
“You must not say such things to me,” said Edwin Dell.
“Forgive me,” she murmured, “but I forgot myself.” Then, very businesslike, “But you will pose for me, won’t you?”
Edwin Dell drew back.
“You’ve been kind to me, Miss Keat,” he said, “but please don’t ask this thing of me. Ask anything, but not that.”
Her tone was hurt as she said:
“I only want to help you. I know you’re hard up. I pay some of my models ten dollars an hour.”
Remembering how she had spoken of her father, Edwin felt that he had been a brute, and he said:
“I’m very sorry. I don’t wish to seem ungrateful. Perhaps it is foolish of me to care about . . . some things; but I do. I think you’d better not stand out here any longer; it’s beginning to snow; you’ll catch your death of cold.”
Her eyes lingered on his.
“Would you care?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “After all, you are a human being.”
He thought there was hardness in her laugh.
“Thanks,” she said. “Then you won’t come?”
“I cannot,” he said.
“Very well. Another time, perhaps. I’ll get that book.”
She brought down to him a thick, much-thumbed volume.
“Are you sure it is theological?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, indeed,” she said. “It’s by the Rev. Mr. Rabelais. Well, bring it back when you’re finished and I’ll lend you Leaves of Grass. Good night, Ned.”
She held out a small hand; he found it warm.
“Remember,” she said, pressing his hand, “about my offer. Ten dollars an hour. I usually paint at night.”
Her eyes were like emeralds held before lighted candles.
Miss Venable met Edwin in the hall of his house. She was a lady whose face appeared to have been pickled, and she was pessimistic by nature and experience. Her faith in human nature had been erased by a life of running a rooming house; her roomers were always using her gas to terminate their lives. Briefly she informed Edwin that his rent was overdue. She would trouble him, etc. Always the soul of frankness, Edwin told her he had no money, but that he would be in funds in a day or two. He even tried to laugh a little to show her how unwarranted her fears about his solvency were. Under her freezing eyes and skeptic nose the laugh was hollow on both ends and cracked in the middle.
“I want ten dollars,” she said, “not promises. I must have my money by midnight or . . .”
“Or?”
In pantomime she indicated an exit.
“But, Miss Venable, you can’t mean . . .”
“What can’t I mean, young man?”
Edwin blanched.
“The streets,” he said.
One look at her stony countenance told him that the streets were precisely what she did mean.
He stumbled up to his room, dropped into a chair, and tried to collect his thoughts. In the rural calm of his sheltered life he had never felt the raw edge of existence before. This was stark life. He would read a bit to compose his mind, he decided. He opened the book Valerie Keat had given him.
Some words he knew, some he did not know, some he suspected. A hot flush of shame began to mantle his brow. At Chapter Four, he threw the book from him. He dare not lift his eyes to Emerson’s. Hardly knowing what he was doing, he marched down-stairs, holding the book at arm’s length before him. One idea was uppermost in his mind: he must take back the book to its owner.
He knocked with the gargoyle knocker, and Valerie Keat came to her studio door in a Chinese mandarin coat, thrown hurriedly about her.
“Ah,” she said, “it’s Infant Damnation himself! So you have come.”
“Yes,” he said, “I have come.”
“Well, step in. Don’t stand in the hall and wake the neighbors.”
He found himself inside the studio; the incense, the mellow lights, the warmth, the magnificence of it all left him incapable of speech. Then he remembered why he had come and thrust the book out at her.
“I could not sleep in the same house with this thing,” he said. She shrugged her shoulders and carelessly dropped the book on the tiger-skin rug. A Swiss cuckoo clock proclaimed that it was ten. Edwin shuddered; two hours to midnight . . . and the streets.
“Well, let’s begin,” said Valerie Keat, picking up a palette.
“Begin to what?” he asked, tremulously.
“I to paint,” she answered; “you to pose.”
“But, merciful Heavens, Miss Keat, you don’t think I came here for . . . that?”
“Then what did you come for?” Her eyes narrowed.
“To bring back that dreadful book.”
Her sardonic laugh jarred on his ear-drums.
“A man doesn’t come to a woman’s studio late at night to bring back a book,” she said.
“I must go, really I must,” declared Edwin, wondering, as he spoke, where to.
He put his hand on the door-knob; the door seemed to be locked.
“Please reconsider your decision,” said Valerie Keat. She turned on her most pathetic look. “If I could paint you it would mean everything to me; everything, do you understand? You have my artistic career at your mercy. Won’t you help me?”
He hesitated. To one so good at heart as he, such an appeal could not go unanswered.
“I’d like to,” he began, “but Emerson says——”
“Besides,” she broke in, “think of the ten dollars.”
Had she read his inmost thoughts?
“What possible harm could it do?” she argued. “Can’t you see I respect you? Won’t you trust me?”
“Let me think,” begged Edwin Dell. “Give me five minutes for quiet thought.”
Valerie Keat went to the buhlwork cabinet and took out a square bottle and a glass.
“Here,” she said. “This will help you think.”
“I never drink.”
“This is only juniper-berry juice and water. It’s a soft drink,” she told him.
Her eyes were so friendly, and he remembered how she had spoken of her father, so he poured half a glass of the pellucid drink down his dry throat. An agreeable sensation of warmth and well-being filled him. He emptied the glass. How bright the lights were!
He stood up and said:
“I have arrived at a decision.”
“Yes? What?” she asked, eagerly.
“I will be your model,” said Edwin Dell.
He sank back into his chair; there was a singing in his ears, a dancing before his eyes.
“Go ahead, paint me,” he said, almost withsang froid.
She came close to him and fastened on him intense eyes.
“You say you’ll be my model?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You know what that means.”
“I think so.”
“You’ll pose for the head?”
He nodded.
“You’ll pose for the shoulders?”
He gulped, but nodded. He felt his breath coming in short, cold pants; his brow was icy damp. He heard her low voice say:
“You’ll pose for . . . the figure?”
The room swam before his eyes; his cheeks were conflagrations; he drew in his breath with an effort, and gulped again.
“I’ll do . . . whatever models do,” he said.
Her eyes ran over him like flies over a cake; beneath them he trembled. How his heart throbbed! In a nightmare, he heard her say.
“Good! Go behind that screen.”
To Edwin Dell the lights were blurred now; the singing in his ears was frenzied. His pallid face was set. Walking like an automaton, he went behind the crimson screen. Slowly his quivering fingers fumbled with his polka-dot tie; his shoe lace seared his finger-tips. . . .
“Come, get a wiggle on. Don’t take all night. I’m waiting,” he heard the woman say. Her voice sounded, somehow, tense.
His teeth bit his bloodless lips; his nails dug into the palms of his hands.
“Fortitude,” whispered Edwin Dell.
Then he stepped out on the tiger-skin rug.
Came morn to the bedroom of Edwin Dell. Dully he opened his eyes. Had it all been a terrible dream?
He went to the window and scooped up a handful of snow and held it to his fevered brow. No, it had not all been a terrible dream. He dressed with leaden fingers. A letter had been slipped under his door and he opened it without interest. What could letters mean to him . . . now?
It was a note from his aunt. She told him to come home for Christmas, and enclosed a ticket to Crosby Corners, and a check. The check fluttered to the floor; the crooked smile of irony twisted his lips.
“Too late,” he said “too late.”
More like a machine than a man, he began to pack his straw suit-case. The last thing he did before leaving the room was to take down the picture of Emerson; Edwin did not look into those wise, kind, understanding eyes; he tore the picture into small pieces. Then, with bowed head, a wan, worn caricature of what had been Edwin Dell went slowly out into the snow-garbed metropolis.
It was Christmas eve in Crosby Corners. Thick snow was falling heavily and the wind whistled like a drunken demon; it was cold, bitter cold. Edwin Dell rapped with mittened hand on the door of the cozy farm-house and Aunt Charity opened it.
“Well, aunt,” he said, “I’ve come back.”
“For pity’s sake, close the door,” she said. “Hang up your coat and put your goloshes in the golosh-box.”
He did so. He sat there, silent, ashen.
“Why, Edwin Dell, what ails you? What is the matter?” she asked, sharply.
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” he faltered.
“Then why do you sigh?”
“It was the wind,” he replied. “Only the wind in the pines.”
“Fiddlesticks! I know a sigh. Stop moping, Edwin. This is Christmas eve.”
“It’s Christmas eve for some folks,” he said; “but just night for me.”
“What do you mean?” his aunt asked, fixing on him needle-pointed eyes.
He poked the glowing logs and made no reply.
“Edwin!”
“Yes, aunt.”
“Has anything happened?”
He poked the logs.
“Speak to me, Edwin. Tell me all.”
He poked the logs.
Aunt Charity put down her knitting, strode to him, placed her hands on his shoulders and bent a face lined with foreboding toward his.
“Edwin Dell,” she questioned, hoarsely; “what has New York done to you?”
He tried to avoid her alarmed eyes.
“Edwin Dell,” she cried, “I conjure you to answer me one question.”
“What?” His parched lips framed the word.
“Tell me, Edwin Dell, are you a . . . good boy?”
He made no answer.
“It can’t be,” cried his aunt. “Look me in the eye and I’ll know it isn’t so. Can you look me in the eye, Edwin Dell?”
He couldn’t.
She pushed him fiercely from her.
“My God,” she screamed. “Not that, not that?”
“Yes, Aunt Charity,” he groaned, “that.”
“Heaven give me strength in this dark hour,” she prayed. “That this thing should happen—and you a Tillotson. Tell me everything, I command you.”
“I was young,” was all he could say. “Nobody told me; I didn’t know.”
“Faugh,” she sneered, towering above him, her face working with wrath. “You might have guessed.”
“But she spoke so respectfully of her father,” sobbed Edwin Dell. “It was . . . that . . . or . . . the streets.”
His aunt scorched him with her outraged eyes.
“Which would Emerson have chosen?” she demanded.
“I was drugged,” he wept.
“Faugh! A likely story! Edwin Dell, put on your goloshes and leave this house.”
He cowered in his chair.
“Tonight? In this blizzard?” he quavered. “Where could I go?”
“Go to her,” said his aunt, and held the front door open.
Edwin Dell reached the studio of Valerie Keat late Christmas night. Inside he could hear the sounds of revelry—unrestrained laughter, bursts of song, a jazzing phonograph, the bursting of toy balloons, the popping of corks. Valerie Keat was holding high carnival. His heart was no bigger than a pea as he knocked. The door opened and a wave of hot air laden with confetti, tobacco smoke, incense and the fumes of alcohol rushed out and engulfed him. Inside he saw a mad whirlpool of gala-dressed dancers. Valerie Keat herself had opened the door; she stood there in an artful evening gown of shimmering silver, with no back whatsoever.
“Well?” she snapped.
“It is I. Edwin. Ned,” he said.
“So I see. What of it.” Her voice was icy.
“Where shall I put my goloshes?” he asked.
She pointed down the stairs behind him.
“That way. One after another,” she said.
He staggered as if from a blow.
“But you don’t mean . . . you can’t mean . . . Auntie has turned me out.”
“So do I. That makes it unanimous,” she said, puffing mockingly her cigaret.
“But it was because of . . . you,” he stammered. “Have you forgotten . . . so soon.”
“I’ve a poor memory,” she said unconcernedly.
“But you don’t mean . . . you can’t mean . . . Oh, think of your promises. . . .”
“Bah,” said Valerie Keat.
“Have you no compassion?”
“Not a bit.”
“No honor?”
“Nope.”
“Valerie Keat, think of your father!”
She flushed beneath her painted mask.
“You keep his name out of this,” she flashed. “Run along now to your damnation infants.”
“You say this to me?” His voice was wild. “To me? After my sacrifice?”
“Your sacrifice?” she jeered. “Do you tell all the others that?”
He reeled.
“The others?” he exclaimed aghast, “it’s a lie, a shameful lie, I tell you.”
“They all pull that one,” she gibed.
“All? All? Then there have been others, Valerie Keat? Then I was naught but the plaything of an idle hour?”
“Naught,” she replied.
“And you would fling me aside like a discarded glove?”
“That is just what I would fling you aside like,” she answered, unmoved.
“I see it all now,” said Edwin Dell, his voice the voice of one utterly crushed. “The veil lifts from my eyes. I’m just a man girls forget. You have drained the cup of pleasure, but it is I . . . I . . . who must pay . . . and pay.”
“Fair enough,” said Valerie Keat, in a voice like a file rasping steel. “Pay away. Good night.”
“Then you would have me go . . . out of your life . . . forever?”
“Or longer,” she said. “Shut the outside door after you.”
He did. The wind screamed down the alley; whirling snow dervishes danced round him. Ten thousand bright-lit windows bespoke the Christmas cheer within. Some people were happy. But on the once boyish face of Edwin Dell tiny hard pellets of ice formed; they were frozen tears. On he wandered through the night, he knew not whither. In time he reached a large building, and tottered in; it was a railroad station, a place where one bought tickets to go away. To go away? His brain caught at the idea.
He would go away. He went to the ticket window, and put down all his money, twenty-four dollars and seventy cents.
“Give me a ticket,” he said.
“Where to?” the ticket seller asked.
“I don’t care,” said Edwin Dell. “Anywhere. I want to go away . . . away from it all . . . away from this City of Broken Vows.”
The man sold him a ticket to Granville, Ohio.
“Oh, Pa! Oh, Pa!”
“What is it, Mary?”
“There’s a man lying in our wood-shed.”
“Fetch him in, daughter, fetch him in,” said Peter Wood, known in Granville and for miles around as “Big-hearted Peter.”
Presently Mary Wood returned carrying the unconscious form of Edwin Dell in her big strong arms. She was a Greek goddess of a girl, with the brow of Diana, the nose of Minerva, the chin of Venus and the shoulders of Juno. Tenderly she laid Edwin down beside the kitchen stove.
“He’ll be all right when he thaws out,” said the farmer.
“What lovely eyelashes he has,” said Mary Wood.
She was bending over him with a steaming cup of coffee when Edwin Dell slowly opened his eyes.
“Am I in Heaven?” he asked, faintly.
“Gracious sakes, no,” said Mary in her kind, contralto voice. “What makes you think so?”
“Because you look like an angel,” he answered.
Love was born in that minute.
Came spring to the world, and to Granville, and it brought back the color to the cheeks of Edwin Dell. He was strong enough to help Mary with the spring cleaning. They talked.
One evening, as the sun was sinking to rest in a cloudy bed of strawberries and oranges, Mary said:
“Edwin, let’s take a little walk.”
They walked together through the spring-scented eventide; on the peach trees blossoms were burgeoning; the vesper songs of mating birds could be heard.
“Let’s sit down with our backs to the silo,” suggested Mary. They sat. She turned her great, gray, honest eyes to him.
“Edwin,” she said, “folks are beginning to talk about us.”
“About us, Mary? What are they saying?”
She took a sudden interest in the toe of her shoe.
“Can’t you guess?” she said, softly.
“Yes,” he said, “I can guess. But, oh, Mary, I’m afraid that there are some dreams that can never come true.”
“I don’t understand, Edwin.”
“Mary, I must go away from here.”
“From Granville? From . . . from me?”
He nodded. She searched his face with her ardent eyes.
“Then,” she said, “you do not . . . care?”
“Do you, Mary?”
She laid her hand on his.
“Tremendously,” she said.
“Ah, if it could only be,” he sighed.
“Would June 14th at half past two be convenient for you?” asked Mary. “They’ll have finished painting the church by then.”
He turned grief-struck eyes to hers.
“Mary,” he said, “it cannot be.”
“Oh, Edwin, what do you mean?”
He spoke as if each word he muttered were a stab.
“There’s a reason,” he said, “why we can never be more than”—emotion nearly strangled him, but he finished—“friends.”
“Reason? What reason? Speak, Edwin, speak.”
“Simply this, Mary,” he answered, gravely. “I am unworthy of your love.”
“You unworthy, Edwin? No, no. You jest.”
“I never jest,” said Edwin Dell.
“Edwin,” she cried, “I cannot endure this suspense. Tell me, is there another?”
He hung his head.
“There was,” he said, “another.”
“You don’t mean . . . ?” she said in an anguished whisper.
“Yes,” he said, “I mean . . .”
Her grip on his hand tightened.
“Poor boy,” said Mary Wood, “poor boy.”
“I was young,” he said, brokenly, “and I was alone . . . alone in New York. Ah, New York, New York!”
He picked up his hat.
“Well,” he said, “I guess I’d better be running along now.”
“Stop!” cried Mary Wood.
He did not know how it happened but they found themselves in each other’s arms.
“The past,” he heard Mary Wood saying, close to his ear, “is past. The future lies ahead. I care not what you have been, Edwin Dell. It is what you are that I love.”
“Oh, Mary,” was all he could say. “Oh, Mary.”
“True love,” she whispered, “conquers all.”
And so, together, hand in hand, like little children, Edwin Dell and Mary Wood set out upon the shining road toward the bright promise of a new world.
THE UNFAMILIAR
WHO he was and what he was and where he came from no one knew. How he came to be in Crosby Corners was a mystery, and at harvesttime Connecticut farmers are too busy to peer into mysteries. He could not speak much English beyond “Yes,” “No,” “Hungry,” and “Go Hell.” He could gesture, however. He could gesture with his hands, his elbows, his eyes, his feet. He appeared to be trying by pantomime to convey the idea that he had been forcibly seized in his native land, which was remote, had been pressed into service aboard a ship, had been very ill at sea, had escaped at a port, had fled on a train, and had dropped, or been dropped, at Crosby Corners. The farmers, however, had no time to interpret pantomime. Farm-hands were scarce, and if a man had two hands and at least one good eye, they did not delve into his past or his pedigree; they put him to work. It was thus that the small, scared man in the velvet trousers entered the employ of Ben Crosby, richest farmer in that region.
“I found the little rascal,” Ben Crosby told his wife, “squealing like a pig in a hornet’s nest, and frightened almost out of his wits, with Constable Pettit marching him along by the ear. ‘Constable,’ I says, ‘what is that and where did you get it?’ He says to me: ‘I dunno what it is, Ben, but it looks foreign. I found it down by the railroad tracks trying to eat a raw potato. When I asked it what its name was, it said: “See.” ’ I says to the constable, ‘He may be a Gipsy or he may be a Hindu, and he looks as if he suspected you of being a cannibal. But,’ I says, ‘he seems wiry and he didn’t get that lovely tobacco-brown finish of his at a pink tea or from working in an office. Now I need hands worse than ducks need ponds. So turn him over to me ’stead of sticking him in the calaboose, and I’ll give him a job.’ Pettit didn’t want to be bothered with him, so he turned him over to me, and there he is out at the pump washing the dirtiest pair of hands I ever did see, and now and then rubbing his belly to show how hungry he is. I’ll send him to the back door, Hannah; you give him a lining of ham and eggs and pie, and then send him down to me. I’ll be in the twenty-acre lot.”
Presently there came a knock on the back door of the Crosby house. It was not at all a robust knock; it was a tap as faint and timid as a butterfly’s kick. Mrs. Crosby opened the door, and saw a small man standing there; his face was a rich brown, his eyes were black and apprehensive; he appeared to be ready to flee if the occasion demanded it. When he saw Mrs. Crosby, however, he bowed deeply. Such a bow had never before been executed in Crosby Corners except in the moving pictures. It was a sweeping, courtly thing, that bow, in which the small man swept off his wide felt hat and dusted the steps with it. Then he smiled; it was a humble, ingratiating smile. He looked toward the stove, where the sizzling ham was sending its aroma heavenward, and sighed. Mrs. Crosby pointed to a chair at the kitchen table, and he, with another bow, took it, and presently he was eating hungrily and freely. Mrs. Crosby now and then lifted an eye from her canning to regard the exotic stranger; she had a doubt or two at first whether it was quite safe for her to stay there. You never can tell what the foreigners may do, even if you are past forty and the mother of a grown daughter. She glanced into the dining-room, where, above the mantel, hung Grandpa Crosby’s Civil-War sword, a long, heavy weapon, and its presence reassured her. As she studied the man, she decided that any fear of him was quite groundless; if anything, he was afraid of her. His hair, she observed, was blue-black and long, but arranged in a way that suggested that he was a bit of a dandy. The stranger’s trousers surprised her greatly; they were of black velvet, really painfully tight, except at the bottom of each leg, where they flared out like bells. He had no belt, but instead a scarlet sash. His shirt, when new and clean, must have been a remarkable garment; it had been plaid silk, but it was now neither new nor clean. His boots were of patent leather and excessively pointed.
When he had eaten a very great deal he arose, bowed, smiled beatifically, and made gestures of gratitude. Mrs. Crosby pointed in the direction of the twenty-acre lot, and he understood. She saw him picking his way down the path; he was the first man she had ever seen whose gait at one and the same time included a mince and a swagger.
When Ben Crosby came in to his late supper that evening he announced:
“I was wrong about that new little fellow. He doesn’t seem to have done farm work. He’s willing enough, but he handles a hay-fork as dainty as if it was a toothpick. And, say, he certainly is the most scary human being I ever set eyes on. You should have seen him when the tractor came into the field with the mowing-machine. He gave a yelp and jumped on the stone wall, and if there’d been a tree handy, I guess he’d have climbed it. He looked as if he was afraid the machine would eat him. Pete High, who was driving it, said, ‘I guess it ain’t only his skin that’s yellow.’ I hope Pete isn’t right. I hate a coward.”
“Don’t you let Pete High pick on him,” admonished Mrs. Crosby. “Perhaps the man never saw a mowing-machine before. I remember how scared I was when I saw the first automobile come roaring and snorting along the road. And so were you, Ben Crosby.”
“Well, I didn’t let on I was,” replied her husband, harpooning a potato.
“No, you old hypocrite, maybe you didn’t; but I saw you looking around for a tree.”
He laughed, and was on the point of sending a potato to its final resting-place, when they both heard a cry—a high, terrified cry that came through the dusk. He started up.
“That’s not Janey?” he asked.
“No; she’s still in town taking her music lesson.”
“Who is it, then?” he asked quickly.
They heard the patter of running feet on the path outside; they heard the sound of feet landing after a leap to the porch; they heard someone banging frantically on the front door. Ben Crosby called out:
“What’s the matter?”
A flood of words in a strange tongue answered him.
“It’s Velvet Pants,” he exclaimed, and flung open the door. The small man, breathless, tumbled in.
“What in the name of thunderation?” demanded Ben Crosby. The small man pointed through the open door with quivering fingers.
“I don’t see anything out there but the evening,” said Ben Crosby.
“Ice!” cried the man, very agitated. “Ice!”
“What do you want ice for?” asked Ben Crosby.
The man made eloquent gestures; first he pointed at his own face, then he pointed outside; his index finger stabbed at the gloom once, twice, a dozen quick times.
“Ice! ice! ice! ice! ice! ice!” he said.
“Why, Ben, he means ‘eyes,’ ” exclaimed Mrs. Crosby.
“Eyes? What eyes, Hannah? I don’t see any eyes. There’s nothing out there but lightning-bugs.”
One of the circling fireflies flew quite near the open door. The small man saw it coming, and made an earnest, but only partly successful, attempt to climb into the grandfather’s clock that stood in the corner of the hall.
Ben Crosby threw back his head and laughed.
“Why, dog my cats! if the little cuss ain’t afraid of lightning-bugs!” he said. “Hey, Velvet Pants, look here.”
He plucked the man out of the clock with one big hand, and with the other captured the firefly, and held it near the stranger’s wide eyes.
“Look,” said Ben Crosby in the loud tone that is supposed to make the American language intelligible to those who do not understand it when it is spoken in an ordinary tone of voice. “Bug! Bug! No hurt! Lightning-bug. LIGHTNING-BUG!”
The small man pulled away from the insect.
“Not know lightning-boogs,” he said.
Ben released his hold on the small man, and pointed up-stairs; then Ben gave a highly realistic imitation of a snore. The man comprehended, and his velvet-clad legs twinkled up-stairs toward his bedroom. Ben Crosby returned to his supper, shaking his head.
“It beats me,” he remarked to his wife. “He’s afraid of mowing-machines and he’s afraid of lightning-bugs. I wonder if he’s afraid of the dark. I need farm-hands, but may I be fried like a smelt if I’ll tell ’em bedtime stories or sing ’em to sleep. What’s the world coming to, anyhow? Can you imagine a real, honest-to-goodness farm-hand like Pete High being afraid of lightning-bugs?”
“Boneheads are seldom afraid of anything,” remarked Mrs. Crosby, pouring buttermilk.
They heard the front door open.
“There’s Janey,” said Mrs. Crosby. “Hello, dear. Come right to the table. I’ve made ice-cream—coffee, the kind you like.”
Janey, daughter of the household, came in, bearing her guitar. She kissed both her parents. Janey was nearly eighteen, a pretty, elf-like girl. All the masculine hearts in Crosby Corners beat a little faster when she went down the village street; her blue eyes had been the cause of many black eyes. Her father told her of the new man, of his extraordinary velvet trousers, and of his still more extraordinary fears.
“Poor little fellow!” she said.
As the harvest days hurried along, Velvet Pants atoned somewhat for his lack of expertness as a farmer by his unfailing good nature. He even learned to speak a little English of a certain hesitant species, but he had little opportunity to talk with his fellow-workers. Mostly they ignored him, or, if they addressed him at all, did so loftily and with contempt; a man who paled at the sight of mowing-machines and lightning-bugs was not of their stout-hearted kind.
The incident at the swimming-hole added little to Velvet Pants’ reputation for bravery. The swimming-hole was Sandy Bottom, where all the workers, hot from their day in the fields, went for a cool plunge after work. They noticed that Velvet Pants never went with them.
“How does he keep so neat and clean?” they asked. It was Pete High who solved this mystery.
“Yesterday morning,” said Pete, “I woke up earlier than usual, and what do you suppose I see? Well, I hear a tap, tap, tap, like somebody was stealing down-stairs on his tiptoes. I peek out o’ the door, and it’s Velvet Pants. Just for fun, I follow him. He goes down to the creek, not to Sandy Bottom, but a couple of rods down-stream, where the water ain’t more than ankle-deep. He strips, and takes a stick about the size of a cane and goes like this, ‘Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah,’ and pokes at the bushes each time he says ‘ah.’ Then he gives one big loud ‘Ahhhhhhh,’ and lunges with his stick at the bushes; then he bows low, like he was an actor in a show. He takes a bath, then, dabbing a little water on himself like a cat does; but he doesn’t go in above his ankles. I guess he’s afraid of the water.”
“Mebbe he ain’t much on swimming,” said one of the other hands, “but he sure can twang a mean guitar. He’s giving Janey Crosby lessons.”
Pete High scowled.
“He is, is he? First I heard about it. Well, the first thing he knows he won’t know nothing. I’m not going to have any wop——”
“She likes him,” teased the other man. “Says he’s got such lovely manners; just like what you ain’t, Pete.”
“She don’t know how yella he is,” Pete High growled, “but she will.”
On Saturday afternoons most of Crosby Corners, men, women, and children, comes to Sandy Bottom, bringing bathing-suits. It is not a very big pool; at its deepest part it is not much over six feet deep.
How it happened that the small man with the velvet trousers should be passing Sandy Bottom that Saturday noon at the precise moment when freckled Johnny Nelson was floundering in the water and calling loudly for help does not matter. Why Johnny Nelson should be drowning at all is something of a puzzle, for he was the best swimmer in the county. It also happened that just as Johnny was going down for the ninth or tenth time and was calling piteously for Velvet Pants to dive in and save him, Janey Crosby and a party of girl friends came down to the pool.
They saw Velvet Pants, his dark face ivory colored, trying to reach Johnny with a young tree wrenched from the bank. The small man was a picture of frantic helplessness.
“Save me, Velvet Pants! Save me!” bawled Johnny, submerging, and coming up for the fourteenth time.
“Not know how,” screamed Velvet Pants in agony. “Not know how.”
Janey Crosby and her companions grew mildly hysterical; Johnny Nelson went down for the seventeenth and eighteenth time, respectively. Velvet Pants, finding that he could not reach Johnny with the tree, had fallen on his knees, and with clasped hands was praying aloud in his own tongue. Then, it also happened, that Pete High came racing through the bushes.
“I’ll save you, Johnny,” he cried dramatically. Overalls and all, he plunged in and brought the dripping Johnny to the bank. The prayers of Velvet Pants became prayers of thanksgiving. Pete High stood regarding him with disgust.
“Oh, Velvet Pants,” said Janey Crosby, “why didn’t you jump in and save him?”
Slowly, sadly the small man shrugged his shoulders.
“Not know water,” he said; “not know sweem.”
He did not seem nearly so abashed as he said this as he might very well have been in the circumstances; he said it very much as if he were stating a fact, a lamentable fact the truth of which he regretted, but a fact, nevertheless. He looked dismayed and surprised when Janey Crosby and the others turned away from him.
After that Velvet Pants was an outcast. The men spoke to him only when it was necessary to do so, and then briefly and even harshly. He did not seem to understand; he would try to tell them things, making many gestures; but he had not the words to make himself clear, nor had they the inclination to listen to him.
In the evening, when the men were sitting about the porch, competing for Janey Crosby’s smiles, there was no place for him there. He had tried to join in their talk and play, to be friendly, to be one of them; they froze him out, and still he did not seem to understand that they did it because he was so flagrant a coward. At last he seemed to accept his status as a pariah without really understanding it, for he would take his guitar, which he had constructed from the ruin of an old one, and go alone into the woods. It was said that he sang there to himself, sad songs in his native tongue.
Janey Crosby’s birthday came toward the end of the harvest season, and it was the most important social event of the year in Crosby Corners. All the village was invited, and all the village came, the girls in their fresh dimities, the men, soaped and collared and uncomfortable, but happy. They brought presents, as if they were bringing tribute to a queen, and Janey, as graciously as a reigning sovereign, took them all, and smiled.
The party was held in the masonic hall, and it was an affair of considerable tone, with dancing, two helpings of ice-cream all around, and a three-piece orchestra.
The dancing was half over. Janey and Pete High, her current partner, had gone out on the porch; a harvest moon silvered the village streets.
“Look,” exclaimed Pete, “what’s that sitting down there on the horseblock?”
“It’s a man,” said Janey, her eyes following his pointing finger.
“But who can it be?”
The girl looked again, and made out a small, bent figure sitting there, chin on hands, eyes turned toward the lighted hall, ears toward the music and the buzz and laughter of the guests.
“Why, it’s Velvet Pants!” she exclaimed.
“Shall I chase him away?” asked Pete, swelling out his chest and looking belligerent. Janey laid a restraining hand on his arm.
“No; don’t chase him, Pete. Let him stay. The poor fellow’s probably lonesome. Everybody is here but him.”
“He deserves to be lonesome,” said Pete; “he’s yella.”
“Would you jump in to save a person from drowning if you didn’t know how to swim?” asked Janey.
“Of course I would,” replied Pete, promptly. “Now, see here, Janey Crosby, don’t you go sticking up for that wop. He’s not fit to associate with white men.”
She sat gazing at the small, miserable figure; then she made a sudden resolution.
“I’m going to ask him to come up to the party,” she said.
“No, you ain’t.”
“Whose birthday is this, Pete High? I guess it won’t do any harm to give him a dish of ice-cream. You don’t have to associate with him. Run down and tell him I’d like to see him, Pete.”
Pete mumbled protests, but he went. Very diffidently, as if he momentarily expected to be kicked, Velvet Pants approached the porch. Janey Crosby saw that he was wearing a new, clean shirt, that his black locks had been parted and buttered, and that his shoes had been rigorously shined. Over his shoulder was slung his wreck of a guitar.
“This is my birthday, Velvet Pants,” said the girl. “I want you to help me celebrate it. Pete, will you get another plate of ice-cream?”
The small man seemed overcome; he bowed twice very low. Then he spoke. He spoke mechanically, as if the words had been often rehearsed.
“I haf no gif’ for you on your birthday, Mees Crosby, but I haf learn a song American to seeng for you. I hear heem on funnygraf. I hope you like.”
He said it humbly, but not without a certain pride that attends the accomplishment of a difficult feat.
Janey laughed delightedly.
“So you learned an American song just for my birthday? Well, now, wasn’t that a sweet idea! Wait! I’ll call the others; no, better still, you come in the hall and sing, so they can all hear.”
Velvet Pants looked horrified at this suggestion.
“But, no,” he protested. “I do not seeng good.”
“That’s all right. They won’t know the difference,” said Janey, laughingly. “Come along.”
She pushed him through the open doorway. The guests looked up; what would Janey Crosby do next?
“Folks,” announced Janey Crosby, “Mr. Velvet Pants is going to sing for us. He learned a little American song just for my birthday. Wasn’t that nice of him?”
It was evident from the face of Pete High, who stood in the doorway, that he did not think it was particularly nice.
The small brown man glanced uncertainly about the hall; then he began to play chords on his guitar. Some of the girls tittered. In a round, clear tenor Velvet Pants began to sing: