Dodging the low trolley-wire which hung about five feet above the rails, we crawled across the coupling between two of the cars to the other side of the entry, and walked to the left, past the locomotive where the motorman was still sitting in his low seat, waiting to pull out his train of empty cars into the sudden darkness of the tunnel beyond. Then, for the first time, I learned that mines are echoless, and that sound—like light—is absorbed by the blotter-like walls of the tunnels.
We walked down the entry between the rails, and after a hundred yards turned with the switch in the track sharply to the right, and again on. Sense of direction or angles was lost, and, like the faces in a foreign race of people, whereone can see little or no individuality, so here, each corner seemed the same, and in a hundred yards I was utterly lost. Above was the smooth, black roof; below, the ties and the rails; and on either side, behind the two long rows of props, the face of the coal-seam, which glittered and sparkled in the light from our pit-lamps like a dull diamond.
We talked a little. My companion asked me where I had worked before, how much I knew of mines, and a few other questions; and still we walked on, dodging the low wire that comes level with one’s ear, and stumbling over the layer of broken coal that lay strewn here and there between the rails.
The silence was like the darkness—a total absence of sound, rather than stillness, as my first impression of the mine had been that of an absence of light, rather than of darkness. The smoking lights in our caps seemed to press out through the blackness twenty feet around us, where the light disappeared and was gone. And always in front of us, out of the black darkness, the two long lines of props on either side of the track stepped one by one into the yellow haze of light and sank again into darkness behind us as we walked.
The air was cool and damp, but as we turned the last corner, the dampness seemed suddenly gone from it. It was warmer and closer. Here the track swerved up from one of the main tunnels into a 'room'; and at the end, or 'heading' of this room, which we reached a few minutes later, empty and waiting for its first load, stood one of the square cars which I had seen before at the mine-bottom and which we passed several times on sidings by the track. The car was pushed up to the end of the track and its wheels 'spragged' by two blocks of coal. Here the tunnel suddenly ended, and from the blank back 'face' a rough,broken pile of coal streamed down on both sides of the car and reared up before it against the roof.
'Just shovel 'er full, then wait till the motor takes her out and sends in an empty, and fill that one. I’ll look in on you once in a while and see how you’re getting along.'
Then he turned and walked down the track and left me in the dim light of my single pit-lamp.
In the first days of coal-mining—as in many mines to-day where modern methods have not superseded those of old-time miners—a man did all the work. With his hand-drill he bored into the face of the coal at the head of his room, or entry, and from his keg of powder he made long cartridges and inserted them into his drill-holes. Then, when the coal was blasted down, and he had broken it with a pick, he loaded it with his shovel into a car; and trimming square the face of the tunnel, propping when necessary, he pushed on and on until he broke through and joined the next tunnel or completed the required length of that single entry.
But to-day these conditions are, in most instances, changed. The work begins with the 'machine-men,' who operate the 'chain-machines.' In order that the blast may dislodge by gravity an even block of coal, of the dimensions of the cross-section of the tunnel, these men cut with their machines a 'sump-cut,' or, in other words, carve out an opening level with the floor, about six inches high and six feet deep, at the end of the tunnel. The machines—which are propelled by electricity—consist of a motor and a large oblong disk, about which travels an endless chain containing sharp steel 'bits' or picks. The machine is braced, the current turned on, and the disk advanced against the coal, automatically advancing as the bits grind out thecoal. As soon as the machine has entered to the full six feet, the disk is withdrawn and the cut continued until it extends across the entire face.
In the evening the drillers, with their powerful air-drills, bore a series of five or six six-foot 'shot-holes,' four along the roof, and two on each side for the 'rib-shots.' Then a third crew of men, the 'shot-firers,' fill the deep drill-hole with long cartridges of coarse black powder, and blast down the coal, which falls broken and crumbled into the cut prepared by the machine-men. In the morning, when the ever-moving current of air, forced into the mine by the fan at the mouth of the air-shaft, has cleared away the dust and smoke, the loaders enter the mine, and all day long load into the ever-ready cars the coal that has been blasted down, until the 'place' is cleaned up, and their work is done. Then they move on to another 'place'; and so the work goes on in a perfect system of rotation.
My companion had told me, as we walked from the mine-bottom, that his name was Billy Wild. 'Call me Billy,' he said; and as we walked down the track to the main entry, he turned and called over his shoulder, 'You’re in Room 27, third west-south. That’s where you are, if you want to know.'
The light in my lamp was burning low, and I sat down on a pile of coal beside the track, lifted it out of the socket in my cap, and pried up the wick with a nail which one of the men 'on top' had given me for the purpose. Then I stripped to the waist and began to load, shovelful after shovelful, each lifted four feet and turned over into the waiting car, for two long hours, sometimes stopping to break with my pick great blocks of coal that were too large to lift, even with my hands. Then, finally, lumps of coal began to show above the edge of the car, and I 'trimmed' it, lifting some of the larger pieces to my knees, then againstmy chest, and then throwing them up on the top of the pile.
The noise of the shovel scraping against the floor and the clatter of the coal as the great pile slid down and filled each hole that I dug out at its foot, filled the tunnel with friendly sounds; but when the car was loaded and I slipped on my coat and sat down on a pile of fine coal-dust beside the track to wait, silence suddenly submerged me. I could hear my heart beat, and curious noises sang in my ears. Up in the roof, under the stratum of slate above the coal, came a trickling sound like running water—the sound of gas seeping out through the crevices in the coal. I was wet with sweat, and my face, hands, and body were black where the great cloud of dust which my shovel had created had smeared my wet skin. Dull pains in the small of my back caught me when I moved, and every muscle in my body ached. (In a week my hands had blistered, the blisters had broken, and over the cracked flesh ingrained with coal-dust healing callouses had begun to form.)
Then, far off in the distance, came a muffled, grinding sound that grew louder and louder—a sound that almost terrified. A dull, yellow light, far down in the mouth of the room, outlined the square of the tunnel; and then, around the corner came the headlight of the electric 'gathering' or switching locomotive, and above it, the bobbing yellow flames of two pit-lamps. With a grinding roar, the motor struck the upgrade and came looming up the tunnel, filling it with its bulk. There was sound, and the silence was gone. The coupling of the locomotive locked with the coupling of the waiting car, and they rumbled away.
Once more the locomotive came, this time with an 'empty' to be filled. In the old days, mules were used to 'gather' the loaded cars, and, in fact, are still employed in most mines to-day; but electricity permits bigger loads, andthe dozen or two of mules that lived in the mine were used only where it was impossible to run the locomotives.
At the end of the week I was given a companion, or 'buddy.' Our lockers in the wash-house were near together, and we usually went down on the same hoist; but some mornings I would find Jim ahead of me, waiting by the scale-house. Jim rarely took the full benefit of the wash-house privileges, and morning found him with the dirt and grime of the work of the previous day still on his face. He was a Greek, short, with a thin, black moustache, which drooped down into two 'rat-tail' points. Around each eye a heavy black line of coal-dust was penciled, as though by an actor’s crayon. His torn black working clothes, greasy with oil dripped from his pit-lamp, hung on him like rags on a scarecrow.
From the scale-house we walked up the now familiar entries in 'third west-south' to the room where we worked, and dug out our picks and shovels from under a pile of coal where we had hidden them the night before. Then, in the still, close air of the silent room, we began each morning to fill the first car.
Down in the scale-house, where the cars were hauled over the scales set in the track, before being dumped into the bins between the rails, Old Man Davis took the weights; and when the loader’s number—a small brass tag with his number stamped upon it—was given to him, he marked down opposite it the pounds of coal to the loader’s credit; and so each day on the great sheet, smooched with his dusty hands, stood a record of each man’s strength measured in tons of coal.
When Jim and I worked together, we took turns hanging our numbers inside the car; and each night we remembered to whose credit the last car had been; and the next morning, if my number had been hung in the last car of the daybefore, Jim would pull one of his tags out of his pocket and hang it on the hook just inside the edge of the empty car. Then, he on one side and I on the other, we worked, shovelful after shovelful, until the coal showed above the edge. And then came the 'trimming' with the great blocks that had to be lifted and pushed with our chests and arms up on the top of the filled car.
Time went slowly then, for we could load a car together in less than an hour; and sometimes it took an hour and a half before the 'gathering' motor would come grinding up into the room to give us an 'empty.' In those long half-hours we would sit together on a pile of coal-dust beside the track and try to talk to each other.
Jim was a Greek, and from what I was able to gather, he came from somewhere in the southern part of the peninsula. I remembered a little Homer, and I often tried stray words on him; but my pronunciation of the Greek of ancient Athens was not the Greek of Jim Bardas; and although he recognized attempts at his own tongue and oftentimes the meaning of the words, it was not until we discovered a system of writing that we began to get along. Mixed in with the coal that had been blasted down by the shot-firers the night before, we occasionally found strips of white paper from the cartridges. We always saved these and laid them beside our dinner-pails; and when the car was filled and we had sat down again in the quiet beside the track, we would take our pit-lamps out of our caps and, rubbing our fingers in the greasy gum of oil and coal-dust that formed under the lamp-spout, we would write Greek words with our fingers on the white strips of paper.
Jim knew some English: the word for coal, car, loader—and he learned that my name was Joe, and called me 'My friend,' and 'buddie.' Then sometimes, after the fascination of writing words had worn away, we would sit still andlisten to the gas or for the approach of the motor; and sometimes, when the wicks in our lamps had burned low, I would take out of my pocket the round ball of lamp-wick, and, like old women with a skein of yarn, we would wind back and forth, from his fingers to my own, sixteen strands of lamp-wick; and then, tying the end in a rude knot and breaking it off, stick the skein of wick down the spout of the lamp until only the end remained in sight. Next, lifting the little lid on the top, we would fill the body with oil, shaking it until the wick was thoroughly soaked so that it would burn.
To the ear accustomed to the constant sound of a living world, the stillness of a coal-mine, where the miles of cross-cuts and entries and the unyielding walls swallow up all sounds and echo, is a silence that is complete; but, as one becomes accustomed to the silence through long hours of solitary work, sounds become audible that would escape an ear less trained. The trickling murmur of the gas; the spattering fall of a lump of coal, loosened by some mysterious force from a cranny in the wall; the sudden knocking and breaking of a stratum far up in the rock above; or the scurry of a rat off somewhere in the darkness—strike on the ear loud and startlingly. The eye, too, becomes trained to penetrate the darkness; but the darkness is so complete that there is a limit, the limit of the rays cast by the pit-lamp.
There is a curious thing that I have noticed, and as I have never heard it mentioned by any of the other men, perhaps it is an idea peculiar to myself; but on days when I entered the mine, with the strong yellow sunlight and the blue sky as a last memory of the world above, I carried with me a condition of fair weather that seemed to penetratedown into the blackness of the entries and make my pit-lamp burn a little more brightly. On days when we entered the mine with a gray sky above, or with a cold rain beating in our faces, there was a depression of spirits that made the blackness more dense and unyielding, and the lights from the lamps seemed less cheerful.
Sometimes the roof was bad in the rooms, and I soon learned from the older miners to enter my room each morning testing gingerly with my pit-lamp for the presence of gas, and reaching far up with my pick, tapping on the smooth stone roof to test its strength. If the steel rang clean against the stone, the roof was good; but if it sounded dull and drummy, it might be dangerous. Sometimes, when the roof was weak, we would call for the section boss and prop up the loosened stone; but more often, the men ran their risk. We worked so many days in safety that it seemed strange that death could come; and when it did come, it came so suddenly that there was a surprise, and the next day we began to forget.
I had heard much of the dangers that the miner is exposed to, but little has been said of the risks to which the men through carelessness subject themselves. Death comes frequently to the coal-miners from a 'blown-out shot.' When the blast is inserted in the drill-hole, several dummy cartridges are packed in for tamping. If these are properly made and tamped, the force of the explosion will tear down the coal properly; but if the man has been careless in his work, the tamps will blow out like shot from a gun-barrel, and igniting such gas or coal-dust as may be present, kill or badly burn the shot-firers. The proper tamping is wet clay, but it is impossible to convince the men of it, and nine out of ten will tamp their holes with dummies filled with coal-dust (itself a dangerous explosive) scooped up from the side of the track. Again, powder-kegs are sometimesopened in a manner which seems almost the act of an insane man. Rather than take the trouble to unscrew the cap in the head of the tin powder-keg and pour out the powder through its natural opening, the miner will drive his pick through the head of the keg and pour the powder from the jagged square hole he has punched. And these are but two of the many voluntary dangers which a little care on the part of the men themselves would obviate.
A mine always seems more or less populated when the day-shift is down; for during the hours of the working day, in every far corner, at the head of every entry and room, there are men drilling, loading, and ever pushing forward its boundaries. At five o’clock the long line of blackened miners which is formed at the foot of the hoisting-shaft begins to leave the mine; and by six o’clock, with the exception of a few inspectors and fire-bosses, the mine is deserted.
The night-shift began at eight, and it was as though night had suddenly been hastened forward, to step from the soft evening twilight on the hoist, and, in a brief second, leave behind the world and the day and plunge back into the darkness of the mine.
We were walking up the track from the mine-bottom toward six west-south—Billy Wild, Pat Davis, two track-repairers, and I. As we turned the corner by the run-around, there came suddenly from far off in the thick stillness a faint tremor and a strong current of air. The 'shooters' were at work. For a quarter of a mile we walked on, stopping every once in a while to listen to the far-off 'boom' of the blasts that came through the long tunnels, faint and distant, as though muffled by many folds of heavy cloth. We pushed open the big trappers' door just beyond where First and Second Right turn off from the main entry, and came into the faint yellow glow of a single electric lamp that hung from the low beamed roof.
Beside the track, in a black niche cut in the wall of coal, two men were working. A safe twenty feet from them their lighted pit-lamps flared where they were hung by the hooks from one of the props. Round, black cans of powder tumbled together in the back of the alcove, a pile of empty paper tubes and great spools of thick, white fuse lay beside them. We sat down on the edge of the track, at a safe distance from the open powder, and watched them as they blew open the long, white tubes and with a battered funnel poured in the coarse grains of powder, until the smooth, round cartridge was filled, a yard or two of white fuse hanging from its end. In fifteen minutes they had finished, and one of the men gathered in his arms the pile of completed cartridges and joined us in the main entry.
A few minutes later, as we neared the heading, a sudden singing 'boom' came down strongly against the air-current and bent back the flames in our pit-lamps. Far off in the blackness ahead, a point of light marked the direction of the tunnel; another appeared. Suddenly, from the thick silence, came the shrill whine of the air-drills. A couple of lamps, like yellow tongues of flame, shone dimly in the head of the tunnel, and the air grew thick with a flurry of fine coal-dust. Then, below the bobbing lights appeared the bodies of two men, stripped to the waist, the black coating of dust that covered them moist with gleaming streaks of sweat.
'How many holes have you drilled?' yelled Wild, his voice drowned by the scream of the long air-drill as the writhing bit tore into the coal.
There was a final convulsive grind as the last inch of the six-foot drill sank home, then the sudden familiar absence of sound save for the hiss of escaping air.
'All done here.'
Slowly the two men pulled the long screw blade from theblack breast of the coal, the air-hose writhing like a wounded snake about their ankles. The driller who had spoken wiped his sweaty face with his hands, his eyes blinking with the dust. He picked up his greasy coat from beside the track and wrapped it around his wet shoulders.
'Look out for the gas!' he shouted. 'There is a bit here, up high.'
He raised his lamp slowly to the jagged roof. A quick blue flame suddenly expanded from the lamp and puffed down at him as he took away his hand.
In the black end of the tunnel six small holes, each an inch and a half in diameter and six feet deep, invisible in the darkness and against the blackness of the coal, marked where the blasts were to be placed. On the level floor, stretching from one wall of the entry to the other, the undercut had been ground out with the chain-machines by the machine-men during the afternoon; and as soon as the blasts were in and the fuses lighted, the sudden wrench of these charges would tear down a solid block of coal six feet deep by the height and depth of the entry, to fall crushed and broken into the sump-cut, ready for the loaders on the following morning.
Selecting and examining each cartridge, the shooters charged the drill-holes. Two cartridges of black powder, tamped in with a long copper-headed rod; then dummies of clay for wads, leaving hanging like a great white cord from each charged drill-hole a yard of the long, white fuse.
We turned and tramped down the tunnel and squatted on the track a safe fifty yards away. Down at the end of the tunnel we had just deserted, bobbed the tiny flames of the lights in the shooters' pit-caps. There was a faint glow of sparks. 'Coming!' they yelled out through the darkness, and we heard them running as we saw their lights grow larger.
For a minute we silently waited. Then, from the far end of the tunnel, muffled and booming like the breaking of a great wave in some vast cave, came a singing roar, now like the screech of metal hurled through the air, and the black end of the tunnel flamed suddenly defiant; a solid square of crimson flames, like the window of a burning house; and a roar of flying air drove past us, putting out our lights and throwing us back against the rails.
'It’s a windy one,' yelled Wild. 'Look out for the rib-shots.'
Like a final curtain in a darkened theatre, a slow pall of heavy smoke sank down from the roof, and as it touched the floor, a second burst of flame tore it suddenly upward, and far down the entry, the trappers' door banged noisily in the darkness. Then we crept back slowly, breathing hard in an air thick with dust and the smell of the burnt black powder, to the end of the tunnel, where the whole face had been torn loose—a great pile of broken coal against the end of the entry.
Often, bits of paper from the cartridges, lighted by the blast, will start a fire in the piles of coal-dust left by the machine-men; and before the shooters leave a room that has been blasted, an examination must be made in order to prevent the possibility of fire.
All night long we moved from one entry to another, blasting down in each six feet more of the tunnel, which would be loaded out on the following day; and it was four in the morning before the work was finished.
It was usually between four and five in the morning when we left the mine. As we stepped from the hoist and left behind us the confining darkness, the smoky air, and the sense of oppression and silence of the mine below, the soft, fresh morning air in the early dawn, or sometimes the cool rain, seemed never more refreshing. One does notnotice the silence of a mine so much upon leaving the noise of the outer world and entering the maze of tunnels on the day’s work, as when stepping off the hoist in the early morning hours, when the world is almost still: the sudden sense of sound and of living things emphasizes, by contrast, the silence of the underworld. There is a noise of life, and the very motion of the air seems to carry sounds. A dog barking half a mile away in the sleeping town sounds loud and friendly, and there seems to be a sudden clamor that is almost bewildering.
It is natural that a mine should have its superstitions. The darkness of the underworld, the silence, the long hours of solitary work, are all conditions ideal to the birth of superstition; and when the workmen are drawn from many nationalities, it is again but natural that the same should be true of their superstitions.
One night when Carlson, the general manager, was sitting in his office, there was a knock at the door, and two loaders, from the Hartz Mountains, came into the room, talking excitedly, with Little Dick, the interpreter. Their story was disconnected, but Carlson gathered the main facts. They had been working in the northwest corner of the mine, in an older part of the workings, and on their way out that afternoon, as they were passing an abandoned room, they had noticed several lights far up at its heading. Knowing that the room was no longer being worked, and curious as to who should be there, they had walked up quietly toward the lights. Here their story became more confused. There were two men, they insisted, and they were certain that they were dwarfs. They had noticed them carefully, and described them as little men, with great picks, who were digging or burying something in theclay floor at the foot of one of the props. A sudden terror had seized them, and they had not delayed to make further investigation; but on the way out they had talked together and had decided that these two strange creatures had been burying some treasure: 'a pot of gold,' one of them argued.
Carlson was interested. The questions and answers grew more definite and more startling. The two men whom they had seen were certainly hump-backed. They were wielding enormous picks, and one of the loaders believed that he had seen them put something into the hole. Then came their request that they might be allowed to go back that night into the mine, and with their own tools go to this abandoned room and dig for the buried treasure. It was against precedent to allow any but the night-shift into the mine; but superstitions are demoralizing, and the best remedy seemed to be to allow them to prove themselves mistaken. An hour later they were lowered on the hoist; and all that night, alone in the silence of the mine, they dug steadily in the heading of the abandoned room; but no treasure was discovered. All the next night they dug; and it was not until seven nights' labor had turned over a foot and a half of the hard clay of the entire heading that they abandoned their search.
It is the custom of the men, when they leave the mine at the close of the shift, to hide their tools; and the imaginations of the loaders, worked upon by eight hours of solitary work, had doubtless seen in the forms of two of their companions who were hiding their shovels the traditional gnomes of their own Hartz Mountains.
In another part of the mine another superstition was given birth that led to a more unfortunate result. This time it happened among the Croatians, and, unfortunately, the story was told throughout the boarding-houses before thebosses learned of it, so that one morning a great section of the mine was abandoned by the men.
Up in the headings of one of the entries—so the story went—lived the ghost of a white mule. As the men worked with the coal before them, and the black emptiness of the tunnel behind, this phantom mule would materialize silently from the wall of the entry, and with the most diabolical expression upon its face, creep quietly down behind its intended victim, who—all unconscious of its presence—would be occupied in loading his car. If the man turned, and for even a fraction of a second his eyes rested upon the phantom, the shape would suddenly disappear; but if he were less fortunate, and that unconscious feeling of a presence behind him did not compel him to turn his eyes, the phantom mule would sink his material teeth deep into the miner’s shoulder; and death would follow. It was fortunate, indeed, that the only two men who had been visited by this unpleasant apparition had turned and observed him.
Perhaps it had been the sudden white glare cast from the headlight of a locomotive far down the entry, or perhaps it had been entirely the imagination, but, at all events, a man had come from his work early one afternoon inspired with this strange vision, and the next day another man also had seen it. The story was noised around, and two days later the men stuck firmly to their determination that they would not enter that part of the mine.
Fortunately for the superintendent, a crowd of Bulgarians had just arrived from East St. Louis, seeking employment. The Croatians were sent into another part of the mine to work, a mile from the haunted entries, where there were no unpleasant ghosts of white mules to disturb their labors; and so long as the mine remained in operation, there is no further record of the unpleasant ramblings of thisfantastical animal; at least, none of the Bulgarians ever saw it.
With the mule came the ghost of a little white dog; but for some curious reason, although the dog was reported by many to have run out from abandoned rooms and barked at the men as they stumbled up the entry, but little attention was paid to it, and it seemed to possess no particularly disturbing influence.
There were many Negroes in the mine and they, too, had their 'h’ants' and superstitions; but these were of a more ordinary nature. In Room 2, third west-south, a sudden fall of rock from the roof had caught two miners. Tons of stone had followed, and in a second, two men had been crushed, killed, and buried. Death must have been instantaneous, and months of labor would have been required to recover the bodies, which were probably crushed out of human resemblance; but even years after this happened, Room 2 was one that was carefully avoided by all the Negroes, and if it ever became necessary for one of them to pass it alone, he would always go by on the run; for back under the tons of white shale that came down straight across the room-mouth the ghosts of Old Man Gleason and another, whose name was forgotten, still remained—immortal.
It was to prevent the establishment of such superstitions that the shift was always called off for the day if a man was killed in the mine; and in the morning, when the men returned to their work, the boss of the section in which the unfortunate miner had met his death took particular care to place several men together at that place, in order that no superstition might grow up around it.
'WILBUR, dear,' said Aunt Susan, 'Rosa is very busy with the washing this morning, and if you will go down into the garden and gather this basket full of peas and then shell them for her to cook for dinner, I will—' Aunt Susan paused to reflect a moment, then continued, 'I will give you a new ball for a birthday present.'
Aunt Susan smiled kindly at the flashing look of intense joy that Wilbur lifted to her face as he seized the basket she was holding out to him.
'I—I’d just love to have it!' he exclaimed.
He was quite overcome with emotion, and tore away toward the garden at top speed.
Wilbur’s mother was ill, and Wilbur had been sent to visit Aunt Susan in order that the house might be quiet. Aunt Susan was really Wilbur’s father’s aunt. She was grandma’s sister, and she was very old. Grandma was not old. Her hair was white, but it went in nice squiggles around her face, and she wore big hats with plumes and shiny, rustly dresses, and high-heeled shoes. And when she kissed you she clasped you in a powerful embrace against her chest. Grandma was not old. But Aunt Susan, with her smooth gray hair and her wrinkled face and spectacles, her plain black dress and little shawl, and her funny cloth shoes, seemed to Wilbur a being inconceivably stricken of old. You felt intensely sorry for her for being so old. You were so sorry that you felt it inside of you; it was almost as if your stomach ached. And she was always kind and gentle. You felt that it would be a grievous thing to hurt her feelings or trouble her in any way.
Wilbur’s birthday came on Thursday and this was only Monday. A long time to wait. Wilbur needed a ball very badly. He had made friends with a number of boys here in Aunt Susan’s town, and the baseball season was at its height. Wilbur’s friends owned several perfectly worthy bats and two or three gloves, but there was a serious lack of balls.
That afternoon, joining the boys on the vacant lot where they played, Wilbur informed them with great satisfaction of Aunt Susan’s promise.
'My aunt is going to give me a new ball on my birthday,' he said to them.
They were more than pleased with the news. Wilbur found himself the centre of flattering interest. He told them that he guessed it would be a regular league ball.
Wilbur exerted himself earnestly to be helpful to Aunt Susan and Rosa all day on Tuesday and Wednesday. He felt that he could not do enough for Aunt Susan, and also that it would be well to remind her of her promise by constant acts of courtesy and service, for it was a long time before Thursday. But it did not seem possible that any one could really forget an affair so important and so agreeable as the purchase of a ball.
Wilbur knew where Aunt Susan would get the ball: at Reiter’s store, of course. Reiter kept a store where books and magazines and athletic goods were sold. He kept all the standard things; the ball would be of a good make, Wilbur was sure.
Aunt Susan did not often go down town. Except when busy about her housekeeping, she was likely to spend the time rocking in her old-fashioned rocker on the front porch, with a work-basket beside her, occupying herself with needlework or knitting. She knitted a great deal. There were many bright-colored wools in her work-basket.
On Wednesday afternoon Wilbur’s heart gave an excited jump when he saw Aunt Susan coming downstairs tying her little bonnet over her gray hair. Her black silk shopping-bag hung on her arm. Wilbur did not doubt that she was going down town with an eye single to Reiter’s store. He assumed an unconscious air, just as one did when mother went shopping before Christmas. He watched Aunt Susan out of sight, and afterward hung about the front yard till he saw her returning. He ran to open the gate for her and took her parasol and bag, looking up at her with bright, trustful eyes. The bag seemed quite full of small parcels as he carried it for Aunt Susan.
Wilbur fell asleep that night wondering whether Aunt Susan would put the ball on the breakfast-table next morning, where he would see it when he entered the dining-room. Perhaps she would bring it after he was asleep, and place it on the chair beside his bed, or perhaps on the old-fashioned bureau. There were many happy possibilities.
When the window opposite his bed began to grow bright with the pink and gold of sunrise, Wilbur woke and sat up, looking first at the chair, then at the bureau. No, it was not in the room. It would be in the dining-room, then. When he went downstairs he was surprised to find that Aunt Susan had not yet left her room. In the kitchen Rosa was only beginning her preparations for breakfast. Wilbur spent a long time, a restless but happy hour, waiting, idling about the dewy garden and the front yard, feeding the chickens and playing with the cat.
At last Rosa rang the bell and Wilbur went into the house. Aunt Susan, seated at the breakfast table, greeted him affectionately.
'Many happy returns, dear!' she said, holding out her hand.
She drew him to her and kissed his cheek. Now, surely— But the ball was not on the table beside his plate. He could not see it anywhere in the room.
The breakfasts at Aunt Susan’s were always good. There would be fried chicken and waffles, or muffins, and squashy corn bread. Indeed all meal-times at Aunt Susan’s would have been periods of unmixed joy if Aunt Susan had not felt obliged to keep up a steady conversation. Aunt Susan made small talk laboriously. It distracted your mind. She had a strange delusion that one was avidly interested in one’s schoolbooks. She constantly dwelt upon the subject of school. It made things difficult, for school was over now and all its rigors happily forgotten. This morning, what with Aunt Susan’s talk and his excitement, Wilbur could hardly eat anything.
Breakfast was over. Aunt Susan and Rosa were in the pantry consulting on housekeeping matters. Wilbur sat down in a rocking-chair on the front porch and waited. He waited and waited, rocking violently. And then at last he heard Aunt Susan calling him.
He was out of his chair and in the hall like a flash.
'Yes’m,' he answered. 'Yes’m. What is it, Aunt Susan?'
Aunt Susan was coming down the stairs.
'Here is the ball I promised you, dear,' she said. She placed in his outstretched hand—
Wilbur had visualized it so vividly, had imagined the desired thing with such intensity, that it was as if a strange transformation had taken place before his eyes. He was holding, not the hard, heavy, white ball he had seemed actually to see, with its miraculously perfect stitching and the trim lettering of the name upon it: a curious, soft thing lay in his hand, a home-made ball constructed of wools. There seemed to be millions of short strands of bright-colored wools, all held together in the centre by some meansand sticking out in every direction. Their smoothly clipped ends formed the surface of the ball.
It was the kind of thing you would give a baby in a go-cart.
Wilbur stood and gazed at it. The kind of thing you would give a baby in a go-cart! Then he looked up at Aunt Susan, and suddenly the sense of his great disappointment was lost in that immense, aching pity for her. She was so old, and she had made it herself, thinking it would please him.
'It’s—it’s awful pretty!' Wilbur stammered.
He felt inexpressibly sorry for Aunt Susan. How could any one be so utterly without comprehension!
Aunt Susan patted his cheek.
'You have been a good boy,' she said. 'I hope you will enjoy playing at ball with your little friends.'
Wilbur went cold. The other fellows! He foresaw well enough their attitude toward his misfortune. To them it would seem a subject for unsparing derision. The kind of thing you would give a baby in a go-cart! And he had said, 'I guess it will be a regular league ball.'
Aunt Susan went away upon her housekeeping activities, and Wilbur, after standing for a while turning the woolly ball in his hands, went upstairs to his room. He hid the ball under the neatly folded garments in the upper drawer of the bureau. It was a relief to get it out of sight. He had a heavy, sickish feeling in his chest. The more he thought over his trouble, the greater it seemed. A great dread of having the other boys know about it possessed him. He felt that he could not possibly bear the ignominy.
The morning dragged itself heavily away. Wilbur remained indoors. He could not go out for fear the other fellows might see him. He winced painfully at the thought of meeting them.
Rosa baked a fine cake for him, decorating it tastefully with nine pink candles, but Wilbur regarded it wanly.
At dinner Aunt Susan noticed his lack of appetite and fussed over him anxiously, dismaying his soul with dark hints of doses of medicine.
'I don’t feel a bit sick, Aunt Susan,' he protested; 'honest, I don’t.'
He felt almost desperate. He was heavy-hearted with his disappointment, oppressed with the fear of discovery; and now he must be harried and pursued with threats of medicine.
It was a miserable afternoon. Wilbur undertook to write a letter to his mother. Usually Aunt Susan was obliged to urge him to his duty, but to-day it offered an excuse to remain indoors, and Wilbur seized it gladly. Writing a letter was a business that took time and effort. After a while, as Wilbur sat in the attitude of composition, with his legs wrapped around the legs of his chair and his shoulders hunched over the table, Aunt Susan’s anxious eye detected the fact that he was not writing but was absently chewing his pencil.
'Wilbur, dear,' Aunt Susan said, 'you are staying in the house too much. Put your letter away now and run out of doors. I think you need the fresh air. You can finish your letter to-morrow.'
'Oh, I would rather finish it now, please,' Wilbur said; 'you know poppa is coming to see us this evening, and if I get it done I can give it to him to take to mamma.'
He hastily stuck out his tongue and, breathing heavily, began to write.
Throughout the afternoon Wilbur contrived by one excuse or another to remain in the house. After the early tea Aunt Susan sat down in one of the porch rockers with her knitting and Wilbur sedately took another. With greateffort he sustained the conversation which Aunt Susan considered necessary. Presently, with a throb of alarm, Wilbur saw Henry, the boy who lived next door, climbing the fence dividing the two yards. With fascinated dread Wilbur watched him approach. He stood still at the foot of the porch steps.
'Hello,' he said in his deep and husky voice.
'Hello,' Wilbur replied coldly.
'Good evening, Henry,' said Aunt Susan; 'sit down and make us a visit. How is your father? How is your mother? When is your married sister coming home for a visit?' And so on.
Henry sat down on the steps, answering Aunt Susan with weary civility. Wilbur rocked and rocked with nervous violence. Sitting in a chair like a grown person, he felt a certain aloofness from Henry on the steps. It was a poor enough security, but he clung to it. And then suddenly Aunt Susan was saying,—
'Wilbur, get the ball I gave you and play a game of ball with Henry.'
The moment of discovery had come. And Wilbur found himself wondering dully what Aunt Susan’s idea of a ball game could be like. His mind seemed to fumble stiffly with the unimportant thought. He rose heavily. Henry had snapped up briskly from his place on the steps as Aunt Susan spoke.
'That’s right!' he said. 'Let’s get out there in the road and warm up.'
Wilbur turned to enter the house.
'I’ll go with you,' Henry said.
They ascended the stairs, Wilbur lagging on every step and Henry breasting forward like a homeward-bound horse. They crossed the little upstairs hall and stood at the door of Wilbur’s room. The woolly ball lay on the bureau, its manycolors garish in the sunset. Wilbur had left it in the drawer, but Rosa had been in the room putting away his freshly ironed clothes, and had taken it out and placed it on top of the bureau for all the world to see.
Wilbur shut his eyes and waited for a bitter outcry from Henry. There was, however, a moment of silence, and then Henry demanded impatiently,—
'Well, where is it at?'
Wilbur opened his eyes and regarded Henry stupidly. Henry then did not even recognize the strange, bright object on the bureau as a ball. Probably he took it for a pincushion. The shock of the unexpected reprieve made Wilbur feel faint and confused.
'It’s here—it’s right in this room,' he stammered.
'In the bruy-yo?' Henry asked, pointing toward the old-fashioned bureau.
'I—I left it in the top drawer of the bruy-yo.'
Henry went and opened the drawers one by one and rummaged in them.
'It ain’t here!' he exclaimed; 'I bet somebody’s stolen it from you! The colored girl! I bet she’s stolen it!'
'Aw, she wouldn’t steal! She’s nice!' Wilbur exclaimed; but even as he spoke, he saw his mistake. Henry had made the descent to a course of deceit, of hideous disloyalty to a dear friend, fearfully easy! Wilbur descended. 'Maybe,' he faltered,' maybe she needed a ball awfully and just had to take it! Maybe she needed it awfully!'
'Well, ain’t you going to try to get it back from her?'
'Oh, no!' Wilbur cried in horror. 'I won’t say a word about it. It would hurt her feelings. She’s nice—'
'Well, I bet if it was my ball and anybody stole it I would raise an awful row!'
'I won’t say anything about it,' Wilbur repeated. 'It would hurt her feelings. And I guess you better go homenow, Henry. Maybe your mother is wondering where you are.'
Wilbur adopted the formula with which other boys' mothers were wont to put him on the social inclined plane. He felt a desperate need to be rid of Henry. Henry departed without resentment.
A little later Wilbur’s father came. It was a comfort to have poppa there. Wilbur’s tired spirit leaned against his big, quiet strength. In the dusk Aunt Susan and poppa sat on the porch and talked. Wilbur stood beside poppa’s chair. It was peaceful and cool in the late evening. Wilbur liked to hear the noise the katydids made in the trees. It went on, over and over and over—
Suddenly, as if recollecting something he had forgotten, poppa put his hand into his coat pocket and drew out—It was the ball of Wilbur’s dreams. Poppa, still talking to Aunt Susan, was holding it out to him. He saw it in all its utterly desirable excellence, its natty charms, hard and heavy and smooth and gleaming white. Wilbur’s small brown fingers curved themselves feebly upon its taut sides. He did not speak, but his long-lashed eyes, brooding upon the perfection within his grasp, lifted for a moment to his father’s face a deep look of such intensity that poppa was startled.
'It’s your birthday, old chap,' he said, putting his arm around Wilbur. 'I thought you might like a new ball.'
He felt Wilbur trembling slightly and wondered whether, in spite of the little fellow’s seemingly perfect health, he could be an over-strung and nervous child.
'Now you have two balls,' Aunt Susan said fatuously, rocking herself in her old rocker.
'Yes’m,' said Wilbur.
From the security of his immense felicity he smiled at her kindly, very kindly, very indulgently, for how could she understand?
ITwas my smallest brother who called him that, because, at the time of their meeting, he could not manage the whole of his very long name. But his friends took it up presently, liking the ridiculous yet oddly caressing sound of it, until all who knew him well knew him only as Babanchik.
I remember him first as a chance guest in my father’s house by the side of the Black Sea—a big, deep-chested man in a badly wrinkled pongee suit, who missed his train because we children had drawn him into a game of hide-and-seek. I can still hear his laughter-filled voice demanding fiercely, 'Where are they? Where are they?' as he flung himself about the room, making wide détours to avoid our feet, which protruded from under the cloth-hung table, while the train, with his car attached, paused a moment at the 'half station' at the far end of the pasture and went roaring on along the shore. He stayed the night with us, and our child-world changed forthwith.
During the two years which followed, the play-times of Babanchik and his children were inextricably bound with ours, and the distance between our homes grew very short. At Christmas we danced around the scintillating tree in his spacious Tiflis house, and at Easter he helped us with the beating of the innumerable eggs which go into the Easter bread of Russia, spattering the kitchen wall most dreadfully.
Business brought him often to Batum, which lay just over the hill from us—so often that we fell into the habitof racing down to the pasture-bars every Saturday to wait for the afternoon train. It was long and wearying, that walk back, on the days when the train clattered by without pausing. But on other days, when, just this side of the cliff, the engine whistled to announce the stop,—when we listened, breathless, for the setting of the brakes, when we saw his huge figure swing lightly from the steps, coat-pockets bulging with mysteries, and heard the gay voice shouting that his own car would not come by until Monday,—the walk home was a march of triumph. Two summers we spent together in a half-starved Georgian village high in the Caucasus Mountains, where we lived on bread and eggs, both reeking with the wild garlic which grew thick among the wheat; ran, bare of head and foot, over the pine-grown canons; and loved every moment of it.
It was in those two summers that we came to know Babanchik best and to adore him accordingly. We might emulate the manners of Manya, his young-lady daughter of twelve; we might acknowledge the leadership of his harum-scarum son Kolya; but it was Babanchik who really counted. It was he who led our marvelous expeditions to the neighboring peaks, his clothes steaming with the effort of that leadership—he who showed us where to look for mushrooms, and later fried those mushrooms for us, surreptitiously, lest mother begrudge us the butter where no new supply was to be had. His mind it was which settled, wisely and fairly, all our momentous quarrels, and invented countless new and fascinating games when we had tired of the everlasting croquet. But for him we should never have bathed in the yellow water of the mad Kura, water so muddy that it left great streaks across the bath-towels; but for him we should never have been forgiven for robbing the little forest church of candles with which to rub the porch floor whenever we wanted to dance.
That the merry existence of his vacations was but a small part of his life, we knew, even as we guessed that the man who frolicked with us lived only in the hours of play. For often at tea-time on the porch we came upon the other Babanchik, a bitter and fearsome man who talked to father in a voice which, to us, was the voice of a stranger. They made us very wretched, those tea-times, when from an obscure porch corner we watched him striding up and down along the railing, the smile gone from his eyes, his cheeks flushed, his arms waving wildly. For we could never understand why the man who taught us that it was cruel to step on ants, seemed so ready and eager, at those times, to throttle some one, we knew not whom, unless it were the terrible creature he called the Russian government. It all hurt us inexpressibly. Yet hour after hour we watched him and listened to his long, involved denunciations of oppression and dishonesty and selfishness and class-distinction and many other long words which we could not grasp. And most difficult to fathom was his oft-repeated assertion that he was doing all that talking in behalf of us.
'It is for the children that I fight!' he would shout, stamping feverishly up and down the long porch; 'for my Manya and Kolya, and for your boys and girls and all the countless thousands of others whose lot has been cast with this accursed country! I must fight, for I know what will come to them! Their souls will be dwarfed and crippled by our stupid schools and our stupid laws, and their minds poisoned and embittered by suspicion and hatred and the damning sense of their impotence, as long as conditions here remain what they are! Our lives are behind us, yours and mine. But we must make theirs different for them, must keep them away from strait-jacket regulations, must keep them happy and trustful and brave! It is forthis that I fight! And I would fight if I knew that I could not change a word of our laws and our statutes!'
He did fight. Unceasingly, along with his rouad, work,—he was one of the managers of a Caucasian railrotine—went the bigger work of making his corner of the world a better place for those who came behind him. He fought in the ranks of his employees, that the least of these might claim justice and equality; pleaded with school boards and schoolmasters for patience and generosity toward their charges; and fought—and this was the most bitter fight of all—against those who held in their hands the destinies of his city.
In all this he was severely handicapped. An Armenian by birth, which in itself matters even in cosmopolitan Caucasus, he had inherited the ungovernable temper and unbridled tongue of his people; and this, coupled with his love for truth, worked him unceasing woe among the hidebound conservatism of his associates.
All this Babanchik knew. And yet, in spite of the knowledge, he had a dream of becoming a member of the city Duma, that he might have a real voice in the direction of the city’s fortunes. It should not have been a thing so difficult of attainment. Time after time his name was proposed for the city ballot; time after time hordes of enthusiastic friends made his election a certainty; and time after time, as the deciding day drew near, his candidature was suppressed, his name withheld from the ballot, his adherents silenced—and the dream remained a dream. No one knew just when it happened, or just how: he was an Armenian and a revolutionist, a freethinker and an enemy of the government, marked 'neblagonadejny' (not to be depended upon) in the police-books of the city—and no country knows so well as does Russia how best to curtail the activities of such men.
What he could do in spite of these drawbacks, he did. Was he not our undauntable Babanchik? If he could not insure fair play for the men of his railroad, he could give them of his advice and sympathy, and they forgot to ask for more. If additional factory windows did not come into being at his command, he could still lend his money to those of the workers who fell victims to the foul air; and how beautifully he lost his temper when a borrower spoke of interest! And if school boards and schoolmasters remained unyielding in their demands upon the children he loved, at least the holidays were his, when he could take those children on long walks in the open and teach them to respect their souls and not to step on ants.
All of which we learned much later. At the time, he was merely our Babanchik, without whom the world could no longer be imagined; who came in the evening to blow out our candles because he had guessed that the memory of his good-night laugh cheated the dark of its dangers; whose rumbling shout awakened us in the morning and opened up for us a new day of unsuspected possibilities.
The third summer we did not go to the mountains. Some one else was sharing Babanchik’s cottage in the Georgian village; he was leading a band of new children in search of mushrooms and adventure. But we were too excited to care, even in the face of this.
A new unrest hung over our house. All the day long father was showing strangers about the place, pointing out to them the value of the untouched forest, the richness of the pasture land, the clearness of the drinking water, the glories of the mountains and the sea. In the sun-filled glass room which served as library mother was superintending the sorting and packing of books. And a placid-facedwoman with the patience of a saint was fitting our squirming bodies into trim, tight-fitting clothes, which, after the loose, shapeless things we had always worn, vexed us endlessly. We were going to America.
Babanchik came to us often in those last weeks, inexpressibly saddened by our impending departure; and his discussions, to which father listened a bit abstractedly now, grew ever more violent. Though their invariable ending filled us with an unexpected hope:—
'When my work is done here, I will come to you, in the United States. I cannot, now—there is still so much to be done for my weaker friends. But when I am very tired, so tired that I can no longer endure it, I shall take my children and come to you—to forget the Russia that I hate.'
So we parted. We leaned over the rail of an Odessa steamer, our arms overflowing with the packages he had brought us; and he stood on the edge of the wharf, waving his hat and smiling. But tears were running down his brown cheeks and losing themselves in his beard.
The new life, the new language, new interests, caught us. From the first Russia seemed very far behind. Several letters followed us. Kolya wrote three or four in his uneven round hand—funny little letters which began, 'We have two ducks and two puppies. How many dogs have you?' and which were properly answered in kind. After that, we forgot very quickly.
But Babanchik did not forget. Once every month we found in our mail-box a fat, square, carelessly addressed envelope, which held a letter for father and a folded note for each of us. The notes were full of gay nonsense, stories and rhymes and caricatures; but father grew very thoughtful over the letters.
Life was pressing Babanchik hard. He was still withoutthought of defeat. But his enemies were bringing more stringent methods into the combat; he was now being constantly watched. Other troubles were even harder to bear. The government was consciously setting the hot-headed Georgians and Armenians at each other’s throats, that neither might have time to think of greater issues. And Babanchik could but stand by and watch the suffering of his people. Manya was in school, in the hands of narrow and incompetent teachers, teachers selected for their political views. Kolya’s turn would soon come. After that, so ran the letters, his children would have the choice between becoming power-seeking sycophants of the government, and going, as he had gone, into battle with it, knowing beforehand of their certain defeat. He could not take them away from it—yet. But he realized, he said, that each day, besides giving to him its measure of sorrow, brought a little nearer the fulfillment of his new dream. He was beginning to study English.
The years marched on. The square envelopes came less often, but they came, still full of their old-time warmth for us—full, too, of increasing enmity toward the country which we had left. Manya had gone to Petrograd to attend women’s 'courses.' Two years later Kolya followed her, and entered the University in the same city at the time I was enrolled in mine. And when, a care-free sophomore, I was working off surplus energy in basket-ball and dramatics, a new alarm crept into Babanchik’s letters. Manya and Kolya were becoming involved in the revolutionary movement.
It is hard, in these clean war days, to remember the murky chaos of the Russia of 1904-06. If a revolution could have come at all, it would have come in those years, and it would have been led by students. The younger minds were afire with visions of freedom,—irrepressiblecombinations of deep conviction and the ardor of youth,—visions which took no cognizance of the wide and weary space which lies between desire and accomplishment. Class-rooms were hotbeds of revolutionary plots,—mad, illogical, glorious plots,—for which their authors, usually still in their teens, paid so heavily. Too heavily, for the government, alarmed, was losing its head a bit.
The heart of Babanchik beat fearfully. 'I am proud of the trend of their convictions,' he wrote, 'but sometimes I am a little afraid. They can so easily be led into a spectacular prank, a bit of mischief for which the government might take it into its head to punish them too harshly. And though we have all become accustomed to that sort of thing, it would hurt me sorely to have them spend two or three months in prison.'
He conjectured mildly. There was news one day, in our American newspapers, of the attempted assassination of a Petrograd official. We passed it by—attempted assassinations were no rare events just then—until the next letter came from Babanchik, a letter of two brief paragraphs. Both Manya and Kolya were implicated in the crime. Manya had waved her handkerchief from a window which commanded a view of the official’s residence; Kolya had passed the signal to twenty fellow conspirators. All had been caught and all had confessed. The official was unhurt and there was hope of a light sentence. Still—the two or three months of prison lengthened into a prospective two or three years.
Once more he conjectured mildly. Manya was sentenced to be hanged. Kolya, because of extreme youth, was punished by life-imprisonment. We read the story of it, scarce believing, page after anguished page in a handwriting we did not recognize. We never knew—no one ever did know, save Babanchik himself—all that went after that. Hisletters no longer came regularly, and, when they did come, were so incoherent with rage and despair that we gathered little information from them. We learned, however, that by some superhuman means he had obtained a stay in the execution of the sentence, had taken a leave of absence from his office in Tiflis, had called in all the money which he had loaned, borrowed what additional money he could, and had gone to Petrograd. At the end of eighteen months there was a new trial, and we were left to guess of much that went between.
It was not difficult to guess, in part. His way to that new trial had lain along the ways of personal influence, and the men who possessed that influence were the officials whom all his life he had hated and who knew him only as one 'not to be depended upon.' Could he have abandoned to their fate the twenty whom he did not even know, and worked for his children alone, his task would have been less difficult; but then he would not have been Babanchik.
So for eighteen months he worked; seeking audience in the studies of his enemies, humbling himself before their insolent eyes, accepting from them what taunts they chose to give, holding in calm control the hot temper which was hourly made less manageable by the strain under which he lived, pleading where he longed to curse, smiling where he would kill—and knowing, with a knowledge which made all these things possible, that a careless word on his part would take forever from twenty-two youngsters the one hope to which they clung. And so he accomplished the inconceivable. Somehow the new trial was held, somehow the twenty-two sentences were made lighter, unbelievably lighter. For Manya was sent into a far province and given hard labor for life, and Kolya would be free in ten years. But what those eighteen months did to theloving big soul of Babanchik can best be told in the barely legible words of the letter which brought us the news.
'It has finished us at last, this country! It has strangled my children and torn my heart to shreds! I burn with shame at the thought of being its subject, and there is no wretchedness which I hold too great for it, no plague which I would not send upon it if I could! I long to take the first steamer away from it.'
But he had his lost fortune to recover before he could go. There were his debts, too; and the children needed money, even in prison. He went back to his work with redoubled energy. But as he fought for the money which would bring him to America, he found himself fighting against a new enemy. The splendid body had not been able to with-stand the ravages upon his mind; he remembered suddenly that he was nearly seventy. He spoke little of this,—perhaps he would not believe it, quite,—but there was dejection in every word he wrote. And we began to wonder whether we should ever see our Babanchik again.
Yet in the winter of 1913 he came to us, a tired and feeble old man. There was a burned-out look in his eyes, and his wrinkled pongee suit hung limp from stooping shoulders. The journey across Siberia had been hard, that across the Pacific still more trying; there had been an alarming wireless from the nurse who accompanied him. But he reached us, and as I remember the sound of his laugh on that first day twenty years ago, so shall I never forget the ineffable happiness in his face when he stood, a few days after his coming, and looked out over our sunlit valley.
'Peace,' he said, 'and joy. And the end of Russia forever. God has been good.'
He built for himself a tiny bungalow in a corner of our garden,—one that could be moved when Kolya shouldhave come to him,—and was soon deeply engrossed in the simple tasks in which erstwhile busy men sometimes find such keen delight. All day long he spaded and raked and planted, wrote letters home, and went on ever-lengthening walks; but evening brought him to our living-room where, beside the humming samovar, we swung the conversation round to his wild Caucasian tales.
The stories he told were not new; we had heard them all many times before. Accounts of his own trips in pathless mountains, adventures of the danger-loving Georgians, legends of his own people, the Armenians—they had lost not a shade of their interest in the years which had gone since those other winter evenings, when the sea raged just beyond the pasture-bars and made us crowd close to the fireplace and to him. Often, too, he talked of his children, but always it was of their life before Manya had waved her handkerchief from a window. Only of Russia itself he would not speak, nor would he read our Russian newspapers.
'Let her be,' he once said, 'the vampire! I ask only to forget.'
And we thought that he did forget, for the months brought to him an ever-deepening contentment. His shoulders were squaring themselves into old accustomed lines, the illness which had menaced gave no sign. Spring found him searching for a plot of land which would be his own, for Kolya had but two more years to serve.
And then, in the summer, came the war.
We translated the news to Babanchik—he had never finished learning his English. A smile twisted his mouth.
'Retribution!' he said; and there was something verydreadful in his uplifted hand. 'I pray that Germany will destroy all Russia.'
We turned upon him in indignation. Under our accusing eyes his arm came down and hung limp by his side. He swung on his heel and left us, muttering as he went,—
'Nothing but German shells will ever break down her prisons.'
There followed the weeks and months of tense living. The Russian papers were filled with opportunities for the new work; names of old friends appeared in committee lists. As for us, we could but talk of it endlessly, and dream of it, wait for the morning paper, and talk again. We still saw Babanchik every day, but, every day, he mattered less. We could, and did, accept without comment his attitude toward the country which still held our affection, but, somehow, we had lost interest in his stories.
The war went on. The enemy was halted before Paris; the Russians swarmed over Prussia and were promptly driven back, far over their own boundary. Riga began to figure in the dispatches, and life seemed a solemn thing—so solemn that we had no time at all for noticing that something was very much amiss with Babanchik, until he said one evening, diffidently,—
'If you could ask your doctor to stop in—some day.'
We stared at him curiously. Why did he have that ghastly look about him? He was perfectly well only the day before—or was it last week—or was it a month ago? When was it that we had really looked at him? What had checked so suddenly the straightening of his shoulders? We could not say. But we were vaguely ashamed.
The doctor was terse and explicit.
'There is nothing wrong, chronically, save a general hardening of the arteries and a very high blood-pressure. He must have had bad news recently, a sorrow of some sort.'
'Nothing new,' I contradicted. 'He has been perfectly happy until now.'
'The war perhaps? or Russian reverses?'
'Oh,' I answered lightly, 'he cares nothing for the war, and Russian reverses would cause him no sorrow.'
The doctor left no medicine.
'Keep him amused,' he ordered, 'and don’t let him grow excited. That is the only remedy.'
Keep him amused! With no thought in our minds, no word on our tongues which did not deal with the war, the war of which he never spoke, with which he had no concern!
It was the youngest brother who broke through our quandary.
'I think we have all been blind—and stupid! Babanchik never asks for war news. But why does he always happen to be about when the paper comes in the morning? Why does he never change the subject as long as we talk of the battles? Haven’t you seen the embarrassed look on his face when Germany claims victory? And why didn’t he need the doctor until Warsaw was endangered?'
Thus did we chance upon the truth. Though even then we were not certain—not until a letter, six months delayed, came to him from Kolya. Babanchik’s hands shook when he laid it down.
'The little rat! What do you think he has done? He has sent a petition to the Tsar, the Tsar himself! To beg to be released from prison that he may join the army. He promises to go to the most dangerous position, to do the hardest work, if the Tsar will only set him free and let him fight. The blessed little rat!'
'Fight?' I asked, and looked Babanchik straight in the face, 'fight for Russia?'
The embarrassed look came into his eyes. But, even then, he did not at once capitulate.
'O my dear,' he replied, 'youth forgets so easily!'
After that it was not difficult to keep him amused. But to keep him from growing excited was not a task for human minds. Already he was fighting with Kolya. At night he lay awake, gleefully devising a thousand sly schemes whereby, single-handed, Kolya should take captive a hundred Germans; the days he spent in filling his letters to the boy with a detailed description of these schemes. Each morning we were introduced to marvels of unheard-of strategy, and called upon to translate from the newspaper every word of the long and conflicting dispatches. He was forgetting to eat, he had no time for exercise. An alarming shortness of breath followed, and we sent for the doctor again. The latter’s visit was short, his opinion no less so:—
'If he continues to live at this tension he will not last until winter. Keep him quiet.'
And he left some pills.
And then came another letter from Kolya. I stepped into Babanchik’s room a few minutes after he had read it and found him at his open window, staring out at the sky. He brushed his hands across his eyes before he turned and held out the letter to me.
'Read it, my dear.'
The uneven round handwriting was pathetically reminiscent of the letters which used to deal with ducks and puppies, and there was boyish heartbreak in every word of the curt, matter-of-fact sentences. Kolya’s petition had not been granted.
'And now, father,' the letter ran on, 'you will have to come back. We are the men of our family. And, since the Tsar has decided that I must not help, the honor of that family rests with you. For, if you fail, I also fail.'
I looked up over the page. What could he do, a sick old man, in a country which was calling forth the finest of itsyoung strength? He answered my unspoken question, hastily.
'There is much for me. The wounded are coming home; I could read to them in the hospitals, and tell stories—you know how well I tell stories. And I can count cars—that is the logical work for one who had been so long with the road. Right in Tiflis I can count them,—supply-trains go out from there,—and release a younger man for the front. Will you get me a schedule of the sailings of Japanese steamers, my dear?'
So came his decision. At dinner-time he could not eat. Morning found him with a newspaper in his hand. Out of his meagre knowledge of English he was trying to decipher the flaming headlines. He waved away the suggestion of breakfast. Food interfered with his breathing, he said; but would we not bring in his trunks and suitcases? By afternoon he was shivering, and the tea I made for him failed to warm his hands. And once more we called the doctor.
He fought with all the strength which was left him, our gentle Babanchik, fought with tears of helpless fury coursing down his face, when we took him from the chaos of his packing and put him to bed. And a hard three months began for all of us.
It was a cold and cheerless autumn of early rains. The doctor came every day. And every day I sat at the bedside, translating to him Babanchik’s entreaties and commands. I had procured for him the schedule of Japanese steamers, and he had marked the dates of their sailing with red ink.
'Tell him,' he would say, his unsteady forefinger on the first of these, 'that I must be fit for travel by this date. Tell him to give me more medicine—I shall take two pills every half hour. Tell him I cannot wait.'
And again, two or three days later, his finger back on the page,—
'There is no use in trying to catch this boat now. But tell him that the next one goes two weeks later. Surely he can cure me in two weeks; tell him that that’s fourteen days.'