Utterly sat for three hours with Eleanor Bent on her mother's porch, talking. He did not arrive until eight o'clock, which was late in Waltonville, and she had been nervously watching for him for an hour. She was consumed with impatience to hear what he had to say. If her story had not been accepted, she wished to know it at once; if, perchance, he had come to advise her to write no more—that also she wished to know at once. She did not wish the young man—if that gorgeously clad young man were really the messenger of the gods—to stay long; she needed, after the excitement of the day, to be alone, to be quiet, to touch her piano in the darkness, the piano dedicated in such a surprising and poetic way.
She was too restless to play it now. She sat for a while beside her mother, who was sewing beneath the pleasant lamp; then she struck a few chords; then she went out to the porch, calling to her mother not to expect anything.
"They might merely be sending an agent to town to ask people to subscribe to their old magazine, or even to ask me to be agent. John Simms has been and he is going away. That is it, I am sure, mother."
When she saw approaching through the twilightthe tall figure of the stranger, she summoned Mrs. Bent and let that frightened little woman greet him.
Utterly anticipated in the evening's call a pleasant experience. The wide landscape lay soft and beautiful in the moonlight, a panorama spread for his delectation. He called it, in the city-dweller's metaphor, a beautiful stage-set. After she had greeted him, Mrs. Bent went back to her work. Except for a few moments an hour later when she came out to put on the porch table a tray with a plate of cake and tinkling glasses, Utterly saw her no more.
He regarded the young woman before him with a critical eye. She was beautiful, of that there was no question. She was talented also, and though she was still immature and provincial, she was not awkward or self-conscious. She accepted the announcement which he had come to make as quietly as any of the older, more sophisticated women with whom he associated would have accepted it.
"I hope you are pleased."
"Very much," answered Eleanor in a quiet voice which belied the tumult within. It seemed to her that she could hardly breathe.
"And you will keep on writing?"
"Oh,yes!" said Eleanor.
"You keep notebooks, I suppose, and record all your impressions?"
"Yes."
"And you read a great deal?"
"Yes."
"How do you mean to get new impressions? Are you going to stay here?" Utterly's voice now disparaged Waltonville.
"I had not thought of going away," said Eleanor. "I have just graduated to-day and I haven't any particular plans."
"You and your mother are alone?"
"Yes."
"Couldn't you have a winter in New York?"
"I had thought that sometime I might go to Boston," said Eleanor.
Utterly sniffed the air. He had, he said, little opinion of Boston as an experience. Boston was of the past. No one got experience of anything but the past there, and the past one ought to try to get away from.
"A writer must have stimulation," he went on. "A woman's talent is, in far greater degree than a man's, dependent upon outside influences; it is far less self-nourished and self-originated; she must have life, though not too much life, and she must hold herself in a measure separate from it."
Utterly added to this sage prescription a "don't you know," and Eleanor answered with a hesitating "yes." She was, in spite of her confusion, a little amused. Utterly had come half a day too late; had he presented himself last evening instead of this, he might have made a deeper impression.
Presently he ceased to ask questions and began to orate. In this audience he found none of the stupid dullness which he had observed in Dr. Scott, none of the silent unresponsiveness of Dr. Lister.All that he would have said yesterday to his fellow travelers if they had had minds to understand, all that he would have said to-day to Dr. Lister and Dr. Scott, if they had had ears to hear, all that he would have said at any time to any one who would listen, he said now. He discussed schools of writing, ancient and modern; he discussed the influence of Shelley upon the young Browning, the place of Edgar Allan Poe in American literature and in English literature as a whole, and finally, the ethics of biographical writing. The heat with which he spoke upon the last topic was the sudden bursting into flame of the embers which had smoldered since the afternoon. Had the world a right to all it could learn of the lives of geniuses, or had it not? It most assuredly had, declared Utterly. An author's acts in the world, an artist's, a musician's, were as much the property of the world as they were the property of the recording angel—if modern theology had not banished that person from modern life. He spoke of the invaluable revelations of old letters, which proved so clearly that no matter how long the world believed that writers evolved from their inner consciousness the material of their work, in the end it was proved to have a foundation in actual experience. Time and scholarly investigation were showing what was long suspected and long denied, that Charlotte Brontë's own life had furnished her with her "stuff."
Experience in life, however, must, so said Utterly, go only so far, must stop short before a man or woman was bound to obligations which would robhim of his freedom. Only a few great men had been men of family, or, being men of family, had got on with their families. There was Byron, for instance, and there was Shelley, and there were dozens of others on the tip of his tongue.
To the most of this fluent outpouring his dazzled audience made only polite general responses. She knew, thank fortune! a good deal about each of the authors whom he mentioned. Shelley she had read from cover to cover and Byron also, and Charlotte Brontë, of course. But she did not know much about them as human beings, Dr. Scott having an old-fashioned way of requiring a reading of the works of great authors, rather than a knowledge of their lives.
Finally Utterly spoke of the works of Basil Everman. One could almost make up Basil Everman's life from his works, so clearly did they indicate the storm and stress of spirit in which he must constantly have lived.
"I believe I don't know who Basil Everman was," confessed Eleanor, mortified by her own ignorance. "Was he related to Dr. Lister?"
"Of course you don't know!" Utterly leaned back in his chair, his voice sharp with sarcasm. "It is apparently the deliberate intention of this community not only to quench all sparks of divine fire, but to hide their ashes. Basil Everman was the brother of the wife of your college president; he grew up in this town, a person of extraordinary mind; he died. But nobody remembers him or seems to want to remember him. It is an attitude notpeculiar to Waltonville; it is characteristic of Keokuk, Ishpeming, and many other communities, bourgeois, intolerable, insane."
When Utterly went at eleven o'clock, Eleanor flew to her mother. She was excited and elated, her wonderful day had sloped to no anticlimax.
"They have taken my story, mother, and I am to have seventy-five dollars!"
"Seventy-five dollars! Land of love!" repeated Mrs. Bent. "Why, Eleanor!" Mrs. Bent's cheeks grew red, then pale.
"Mr. Utterly thinks that I really can amount to something. He thinks we should go to New York, mother, and sometime to Europe. He says one must have many different things to write about, and of course that is true. Are you pleased, mother?"
"Oh, yes!" Mrs. Bent gasped, as though events were happening too fast for her to follow.
"And, mother, did you ever know any one by the name of Basil Everman when you lived here long ago?"
Mrs. Bent rose and gathered her work together. Her face reddened again with the flush which came and went so easily. She looked not only startled, but frightened. For some reason Eleanor remembered the long-past encounter with drunken Bates on the shady street. As Mrs. Bent answered, she walked out into the darkened kitchen, her voice coming back with a muffled sound.
"He didn't talk about Basil Everman!"
"Yes, he did. He said that Basil Everman wrotewonderfully, and that nobody in Waltonville appreciated him or was willing to tell anything about him. Did you know him, mother?"
"Yes," answered Mrs. Bent. "I knew him." She came back into the lamplight. "Ain't you sleepy, Eleanor?" But Eleanor was not to be thus easily turned away. Basil Everman was Richard Lister's uncle and that was enough to make him interesting.
"Did you know him well, mother?"
Mrs. Bent put out her hand toward the lamp.
"Start upstairs, then I'll outen the light."
"Did you say you knew him well, mother?"
"Not so very well."
"Did you know about his writing?"
"No."
"Is Richard anything like him?"
"No."
"Was he anything like Mrs. Lister?"
"No." Mrs. Bent turned out the lamp and followed Eleanor up the stairs. At the head she bade her good-night. At the window of her room, which looked toward the garden and the houses of the town, she sat a long time. There was on her face the same expression of alarm that had rested there when she sat in the parlor listening to Richard and Eleanor play. It was the expression of one who felt herself to be entangled in a net from which there was no escape.
Eleanor was certain that she should not close her eyes. She had been waiting hours for this moment, when she might sit down by her window and think of Richard Lister, of the crisp waves of his hair,of his strong young hands which moved so swiftly. It seemed to her that he had played not only upon the piano, but upon her, making her fingers fly faster and more lightly than they had ever moved. Her heart expanded, her soul seemed to burgeon and to bloom.
She wanted to think not only of this day's experience, but of the past. She had seen Richard daily at college for four years, she had sat with him in the same classes, but she had never known that he was like this! She had met him, also, coming and going from Thomasina's. He must have made, though she was unconscious of it at the time, a deep impression upon her, because she could recall every motion of his light-stepping figure as he moved from the flag walk to let her pass. She remembered the straight line in which his coat fell from his shoulders as he sat at Thomasina's piano, she could see his flashing smile. She tried to remember the details of the appearance of others, and decided with satisfaction that she had forgotten them. She heard the clock strike twelve, then one, and still she sat by the window, every faculty alert, the heavenly consciousness of expansion and growth growing keener. She remembered hours of discouragement when time moved so slowly and nothing seemed to get done. Now everything moved toward a happy conclusion. The moonlight had never shone so soft, the night air had never been so sweet.
After she had gone to bed, a tiny misgiving crept into her pleasant meditations, the forerunner of a score of anxious questions which had long beenshaping themselves without her knowledge. For a moment she could not quite grasp the cause, and lay still, her heart beating faster and faster. She had done—she realized it now in a flash—a dreadful thing. In "Professor Ellenborough's Last Class" she had made humorous use of some of the small mannerisms of the college professors. Little habits of Dr. Lister's were described; his constant swinging of his foot, the tendency of his shoelaces to dangle, and his drawing-in of his breath with a click against his cheek. Dr. Scott's den was there, though in reality Eleanor's material was drawn from Dr. Green's office. But she had come since morning to look at Dr. Lister and Dr. Scott from a different angle, and it seemed to her that in using them even to so small an extent she had done a monstrous thing.
The isolation of her mother and herself, their complete separation from Waltonville and its citizens, became for the first time a source of anxiety. Hitherto she had been indifferent to the fact that she was almost unacquainted with Mrs. Lister. Now it became a serious matter.
She remembered that her volume of Mozart Sonatas had appeared mysteriously—that was why Richard had come to the house and not to see her! The duets had been an afterthought, suggested by the new piano. He had merely happened to have the book with him, being on his way doubtless to Thomasina's. He would come to-morrow to fetch it—it was evidently his dear, careless way to leave things about—and then he would come no more.
If he did not come again—Eleanor looked out over the moonlit fields and faced another problem, more serious than the recollection of Dr. Lister's dangling shoelaces—or if he came to-morrow and took his book away and made her feel that they were strangers, then she would suspect that for Richard and the Listers, and therefore for Waltonville, she and her mother were unknown because they were unknowable. If Waltonville were merely careless or thoughtless or indifferent—that was nothing. But if Waltonville were deliberate, that was another matter.
She could not sleep, though she longed now intensely to sleep. Another disturbing thought roused her to greater wakefulness. Her mother seemed always to have ample supplies of money for their needs. But the price of the beautiful piano must have been enormous—had her mother been unwisely extravagant? She should be told about their affairs.
When, at last, she fell asleep, it was to disturbing dreams. Bates appeared to threaten her and she fled from him. She called upon Richard Lister to rescue her, and Richard proved to be not himself, but Dr. Green, who would have none of her. This imaginary behavior of Dr. Green was not unjust, since all day Eleanor had not thought of him who was next to her mother her best friend.
In the morning Utterly continued the search which was the chief object of his visit to Waltonville. Passing the house of Dr. Green soon after breakfast, he beheld that gentleman sitting inside his window. Dr. Green looked up absent-mindedly and bowed. Utterly stopped short.
"I have had an amusing time hunting for my Basil Everman," said he in his high, clear voice.
Dr. Green laid his paper on his knee and looked over his spectacles.
"Did you find him?"
"I found he was Mrs. Lister's brother, but not much more. They seem singularly averse to answering questions about him, to say nothing of offering any information."
"Possibly there isn't anything to offer," said Dr. Green, returning to his paper.
Thus dismissed, Utterly departed, having taken a long and astonished stare into Dr. Green's chaotic office, and having decided that he never saw a spot better suited to the harboring of germs.
Now he sought the cemetery beside the college church, and there gave expression to a "By Jove!" The building copied exactly the old Colonial church first built on that spot, and was as beautiful in proportions and design as any Colonial building hehad ever seen. Still looking up, he walked round it, gazing at the tall steeple with its fine lantern and at the high, narrow windows with their delicate, diamond-patterned old glass. Then with another "By Jove!" he began to search for the family plot of the Evermans.
Without difficulty he found the place where Richard Everman and his wife lay side by side under heavy slabs of marble. Of their son Basil there was no memorial. For a while he wandered about reading names and inscriptions, then, shaking his head in strong disapproval of death and all its emblems, he passed through the gate once more and out to the street. He decided that he would wander about and steep himself in Waltonville's primitive atmosphere. He grew more and more baffled and angry, and more certain that information was being kept from him. Descriptive sentences formed themselves tantalizingly in his mind. "Here in this quiet spot, surrounded by quiet influences, belonging to the family of a clergyman, growing up under the shadow of the old church, was developing one of the most somber geniuses to which our nation has given birth." Until noon, still constructing sentences, he wandered unhappily.
In the afternoon he returned to the Listers' for his magazines. Again Dr. Lister sat on the porch; Utterly said to himself angrily that his manner was as stolid as his mind was stupid.
Dr. Lister agreed with him that Basil Everman's contributions to "Willard's Magazine" were remarkable, that they gave extraordinary promise.
"Then it is certain that Basil Everman had extraordinary experience of life, and that that experience is the property of those interested in him."
"Not necessarily." Dr. Lister reversed the position of his knees as was his habit. He now made what was for him a long speech. "I have talked at length with Mrs. Lister about him. Even after these many years it is difficult for her to speak of him. There is apparently no foundation whatsoever for your supposition that he led a life in any way different from the ordinary life of a young man in this community. He was an omnivorous reader, and, I gather, a reader of most careful taste. It is my judgment that any one who carried about with him volumes of Euripides and Æschylus did not—"
"Did he do that?" Utterly took out his notebook.
"—Did not need any personal experience with the strange contrarieties of the human mind or the strange twists of fate in order to write either 'Roses of Pæstum' or 'Bitter Bread.' I am sorry for your disappointment, Mr. Utterly, but there really is nothing beside the simple facts which we have told you. If there were any possibility of establishing a posthumous fame for Basil, surely an affectionate sister would be the last to withhold information leading to such a result! I think—if you will allow a much older man to express an opinion—I think you are building upon entirely false premises. The constructive power of the human imagination is greater than you are willing to believe. What deep or wide experience could this young man have had? He could not have been much over twenty whenhe wrote these articles. They were published—at least two were published—before he died, and then he was less than twenty-five. He must have been living here at home when they were written. He had never been away from home except for occasional visits to Baltimore. His ability to imagine the heat, the blue sky, the loneliness of Pæstum without ever having been to Italy is proved beyond a doubt; why could he not picture the heat and the passion of the human heart of which each one of us has such conclusive proof within him?"
Utterly did not care for general speculations.
"How did he happen to die in Baltimore?" he asked.
"He happened to be there on business when he was smitten with malignant diphtheria," explained Dr. Lister again patiently. "His death occurred about the same time as that of his father. Mrs. Lister lost in a short period her father and her brother. She lost also in a sense her home, since her father's death made it necessary to call a new president to the college. She returned to this house upon her marriage. You will understand, I am sure, how gladly she would furnish you with information if it would in the slightest degree give her brother that fame for which he probably longed. You will understand also, I am sure, that your inquiry, since it is so unlikely to bear any profitable fruit, is trying to her."
"But it will be profitable."
"My dear sir, the world has moved too far and too fast for this small contribution, excellent as itis, to be of great account!" Dr. Lister spoke with politeness, but there had crept into his voice at last a note of impatience. He thought again of a nap. Mrs. Lister had accepted an invitation to Mrs. Scott's for the evening, and an evening at Mrs. Scott's was not to be endured without all possible physical and mental fortifying of one's self. He wished most earnestly that the young man would go.
"And he left nothing else?"
"Nothing."
"No notes?"
"Nothing."
Utterly bade his host farewell and went across the campus and out the gate. For a second he was convinced that his errand was a fool's errand. But "Bitter Bread" and "Roses of Pæstum" did exist—an account of their author was valuable, even if he had never written another line. Debating with himself whether he should now shake the dust of Waltonville from his feet or whether he should make another effort to shake from its stupid mind some of the recollections which in spite of all testimony to the contrary must exist, he walked back to the hotel. There, he discovered, the question had been decided for him. The four-o'clock train, which had gone, was the last train that day. He was almost as angry as he would have been if the B. & N. had arranged its schedule to try his patience and if Basil Everman had lived his brief life, had written his great works, and had died to spite him.
Then, as he turned away from questioning the landlord, he took heart once more. Above the damp,unpleasant bar with its dripping glasses, its show of tawdry bottles, hung, faded and fly-blown, the picture described in "Bitter Bread." Utterly set his lips and swung out his hands with a crack of the joints.
The Listers notwithstanding, the stolid landlord behind the bar notwithstanding, he would learn what was to be learned about Basil Everman. Even if Basil Everman had never written anything, he would still pursue his search.
At that moment he found before him and close to him a vessel of testimony more important than the old picture. This was one of the miserable sodden creatures whom he had seen in the bar-room and on the hotel porch, perhaps the most forlorn and disreputable of them all. It was afternoon; he had recovered from the morning's stupor and evening drowsiness was not yet upon him.
"You were asking yesterday about young Basil Everman," said he with a thick tongue. "I knew young Basil Everman."
Utterly's loathing of the bloated face, the soiled clutching hand, was not as keen as his pleasure.
"I was a good friend to him," said the drunkard.
Utterly drew the miserable creature across the hall to a dark little parlor where dampness and the odor of beer were only a shade less unpleasant, that same parlor where Margie Ginter had entertained her admiring friends. There he sat him down in the most comfortable chair.
"What is your name?"
"My name is Bates."
"What do you do for a living?"
Bates explained that he was a lawyer, but that business was poor and he could not really earn a living. It had not always been this way; when Basil Everman was young, things had been different, very different. He had associated with the best people then, he had had plenty of money. Now he had nothing. Contemplating his misery, Bates wept.
With leaping heart Utterly took his measure.
"I will give you five dollars if you will tell me everything you know about Basil Everman."
At this munificent offer Bates wept again and made an unsuccessful effort to stroke the hand of his benefactor, who realized that he might have purchased the commodity he was bargaining for with a quarter of a dollar.
Bates began making apologies for himself, to which Utterly listened impatiently and which he presently cut short.
"About Basil Everman," said he. "Did you know him when he was a boy?"
Bates said that he had known Basil always. Weeping he described Basil in his childhood.
"He would hold my hand, this one." He put out his hand palsied by dissipation. "I would tell him stories and stories."
"And then you knew him when he was a young man?" said Utterly briskly.
Bates blinked at him uncomprehendingly. The brief period of sobriety was passing. He was already, in anticipation, drunk upon Utterly's bounty. Thenhe mumbled something about a pretty girl. Utterly leaned forward, his soul crying Eureka! But the well was almost dry. Bates could only complain that Basil had got a girl away from him, that Mary Alcestis would never speak to him nowadays, and that he had had bad luck for thirty years. Utterly closed the door; he coaxed, he cajoled, he suggested. But Bates only wept or smiled in a maudlin way. Presently he began to whine for his five dollars in a loud tone, and angry, yet encouraged, Utterly gave him his easily earned fee and let him go.
Now, Utterly determined, he would shake Waltonville. He would go to Mrs. Scott's party and sit by the gilt table which he had seen through the window, and shake Waltonville well.
Mrs. Scott did not announce, when she sent Cora round the campus with her invitations, that Mr. Utterly was to be her guest. She was not certain, in the first place, that he would remain in Waltonville—what kept him here she could not imagine. In the second place, she preferred to behave as though distinguished persons were her daily visitors. She invited, besides the three Listers, and Thomasina Davis, who had that afternoon returned from Philadelphia, Dr. Green and Professor and Mrs. Myers of the German Department. The college society was limited in summer when all but a few of the faculty sought a cooler spot.
She liked to give parties, having an unalterable conviction that upon her depended the literary and social life of the feminine portion of Waltonville. Her parties were not like Mrs. Lister's, to which the ladies took their sewing and where there were many good things to eat. She set her astonished and frightened guests down to little tables, furnished them with paper and pencil and required them to write, beside the words "Popular Bishop" or "Little Misses' Adoration" or "Curiosity Depicter," the names of the famous individuals whose initials were thus indicated and whose qualities or achievements were thus described. In planning herentertainments she always had consideration for the slight attainments of her guests and never included from her long list of eminent persons "Eulogizes Antipodes" or "Eminently Zealous" or "Won England's Greatness."
For this party she provided no entertainment. Mr. Utterly would be there, and during her impatient waiting inside her screen door she had heard that he did not lack words or a will to use them. Thomasina Davis could talk well when she wished, and there were Richard and Cora to sing and play. Moreover, there was herself!
Cora put on one of her prettiest dresses, and, parasol and little bag in hand, devoted a large part of the morning to her errand. At the Myerses she did not linger; at the Listers she sat long enough to be certain that Richard was nowhere about; at Thomasina's she stayed for an hour, enjoying the cool, pleasant parlor and the quiet, and wishing that Richard would come. She admired the chintz curtains which Thomasina substituted for her winter hangings, she liked the bare floors and the cool gray walls which her mother thought were so very homely and she loved to listen to Thomasina's voice. Thomasina seemed to be so complete, and though she gave so much to other people, she seemed to be so wholly sufficient for herself. It must be dreadful, Cora thought, to grow old and not to have been married, even though one had everything else, good looks and a lovely house and beautiful clothes and perfect independence. Even those could not compensate for being an old maid. But Thomasinareally seemed not to mind. She could, Cora believed, always be happy with her books and her music and her flowers. One always felt, when one was leaving her on a rainy morning after one's lesson, when the day looked interminable, that it did not look interminable to her, and that even if she were alone she would still be content. Cora wished that she herself did not care so desperately for other people, especially for Richard Lister. She had hoped in vain to see him this morning either at his mother's or here. But his mother said that he would come to the party—there was that to look forward to.
Having dispatched her messenger and having set herself and her maid to the baking of cake and her husband to the turning of the ice-cream freezer, Mrs. Scott was relieved to see that the stranger was still in Waltonville after the four-o'clock train had gone. She grew more and more elated as the hours passed. She had read of the curious and interesting behavior of celebrated persons at parties—perhaps she would henceforth have her own anecdotes to relate. She had asked a number of persons about Basil Everman, including her black 'Celie, who rolled her eyes and promised to inquire of the older members of the settlement. She reported that 'Manda had said there was no harm in Marse Basil and that Virginia's mother had said there was no good in him. He didn't do much of anything and he was "pow'ful good-lookin'."
When she thought of Eleanor Bent, Mrs. Scott's curiosity grew torturing in its keenness. Was Eleanor trying to get some sort of literaryposition? Dr. Scott, when questioned, said that she was the best pupil he had, the best he had ever had, he believed, but that she was hardly prepared for any literary position.
"Besides, the Bents wouldn't know of any," said Mrs. Scott.
Dr. Scott was on the last lap of his task. Back and arms ached and perspiration streamed from his body. When Mrs. Scott asked in sudden uneasiness whether she had better provide a game of authors or some similar entertainment, he looked up at her with the expression of a kindly, inoffensive animal prepared for sacrifice and entirely aware of the intentions of his master. He longed for his quiet study, longed for his comfortable chair, longed for his English magazine with a new article by Pater. The prospect of an evening spent in company with the stranger and with the Myerses was almost intolerable. Even the Listers and Dr. Green and Thomasina Davis, for whom he had usually the friendliest regard, seemed to acquire unpleasant qualities. When Mrs. Scott suggested his hanging Chinese lanterns from the roof of the porch, he rebelled and fled.
Utterly arrived early, and Mrs. Scott, to her intense annoyance, was not quite ready to receive him, nor was Dr. Scott. While she struggled with the most elaborate of her dresses and her husband labored with his necktie, Utterly sat on the front porch with Cora, who answered him in monosyllables. Cora was always ready for everything, and in her quiet way was equal to any task which mightfall to her lot. She did not like the stranger, and when he began to sing the praises of Eleanor Bent's appearance and pretty manners and bright mind, she felt a sharp antagonism. She was thankful when her mother billowed noisily down the stairway, her silk skirts rustling, for then she could sit chin on hand on the step and look off toward the dim bulk of the Lister house.
As Mrs. Scott reached the porch, Professor and Mrs. Myers came into sight. Except with a view to providing a sufficient number for her party, Mrs. Scott had no special reason for inviting them. Professor Myers spoke English with difficulty, and his wife scarcely spoke at all in any language, and never upon subjects which did not have to do with the nursery or the kitchen. Mrs. Scott felt that neither was worthy for an instant of the brilliant give-and-take of her own conversation.
Beside the tall stranger Professor Myers looked like a fat and very dull cherub. When Utterly addressed Mrs. Myers, with what was to Mrs. Scott delightful courtesy, she looked upon his overtures with an emotion which was plainly alarm. She answered him only with a shake of the head and a faint smile which to Mrs. Scott savored of imbecility.
Before Mrs. Scott could "save him," as she phrased it, from the Myerses, the Listers had come. At sight of Utterly in the midst of her friends, Mrs. Lister gave a little gasp and tightened her grasp on her husband's arm.
"Would you like to go home, mother?" askedDr. Lister, himself annoyed. "I'll make excuses for you, and Richard and I will go on."
"What's the matter?" asked Richard, from the other side of his mother. Thus Mrs. Lister liked to walk and sit and live, beside and close to the two whom she loved.
"Nothing is the matter," said she in an even tone, and, more erect than ever, she mounted the steps and replied to Mrs. Scott's greetings. She selected a chair as far from Mr. Utterly as possible. He, she was sure, looked sorry to see her. Had he meant to conduct a sort of symposium about Basil? But she had come in the nick of time and she would stay and if necessary outstay him.
When Thomasina Davis arrived in her soft, flowing gray dress with her great red fan in her hand, Utterly almost gave audible expression to his favorite "By Jove!" Here was, at last, he said to himself, a real person, here was some one with spirit and sense, and, unless he read all signs wrongly, with a mind. There was a little stir among Mrs. Scott's guests. Mrs. Lister's face lost its stiff look as she cried, "Why, Thomasina, when did you come back?" Dr. Scott's face glowed, and Richard and Cora sprang up from the step and escorted her in, one on each side.
Thomasina had a singularly bright glance and a singularly winning smile. She bestowed them both upon the tall stranger who greeted her with the lowest of bows. She wondered where Mrs. Scott had found this citizen of the world. She did not accept the offer of his chair, but swept back to sit by Mrs.Lister and to bestow upon Mrs. Myers just as beaming a smile. Once established she talked to Mrs. Myers about her babies. She spoke English and Mrs. Myers German, but there was perfect understanding between them.
Dr. Green was the only guest who had not arrived. He had no patients at this hour; indeed, he sat deliberately waiting until it drew near the time when Waltonville customarily served its ice-cream. Upon arriving he would take a sardonic delight in complimenting Dr. Scott upon the excellence of his product. He believed that every married man had his symbol of subjection, every Hercules his distaff. Dr. Scott's was an ice-cream freezer. His failure to arrive on time did not disturb any one, least of all his hostess. She established herself beside Utterly and looked up at him with an expression which had been used long ago with telling effect upon Dr. Scott, but which was now reserved for persons of greater brilliancy and promise.
She asked leading questions, putting into practice for once the precept that it is more polite to let others talk than to talk one's self. What was being done in Boston in a literary way? She looked amazed, yet became immediately sympathetic when Utterly laughed at Boston. Such iconoclasm was daring and delightful. What, then, was doing in New York? Utterly answered at length. As he had discoursed to Eleanor Bent, so he now discoursed to Mrs. Scott and her guests, especially to Thomasina Davis. American literature, if such athing as American literature could be said to exist, was in a parlous state. America had never done much of importance. There were, of course, Poe and Whitman, but—
"But Longfellow!" cried Mrs. Scott.
Utterly laughed.
"A few sonnets! You don't take Longfellow seriously, my dear Mrs. Scott."
Up to this moment Mrs. Scott had taken Longfellow very seriously indeed.
"And Bryant! And Whittier!" she cried in more explosive tones. "'Thanatopsis,' Mr. Utterly! And 'Snow-Bound'!"
"The feeble expression of a little talent at peace with itself and the world."
"Oh, naughty, naughty!" cried Mrs. Scott, playfully. "You astonish me!" She looked about at her neighbors as if to say, "Oh, see what I've got!"
No one else made any response. If silence is a tribute to eloquence and a plea for further utterance, Utterly was thoroughly justified in going on. He could see the shimmer of Thomasina's beautiful dress, the slow waving to and fro of her great fan, and once or twice the gleam of her bright eyes. He fancied that Thomasina hung upon his words. He sought to surpass himself, and little by little he shed his veneer of fine manners. To the mouth agape beside him he brought large mouthfuls. There were anecdotes of celebrated writers, true and untrue, pleasant and unpleasant, new and ancient, widely circulated or unknown, published and sometimes not fit for publication. This man,the author of peculiarly spiritual essays and exhortations, was in private life peculiarly unspiritual and evil. For a day each week his long-suffering wife imprisoned him in a room and the next day herself carried the products of his sober meditation to the publishers so that she and her children might live. The last chapters of Lawrence Miller's brilliant novel had been written in prison. Edward Dillingham did not dare to leave a little Western town where, unknown, he had found for many years a haven.
But the moral state of American writers was, as Utterly pictured it, nothing to compare with that of literary men abroad. He wandered now into the past and demolished famous reputations, as sacred in Waltonville as those of Biblical heroes and heroines.
Mrs. Scott was enchanted. Trying with all her might to impress upon her tenacious memory each incident, each smart expression, she paid small heed to her other guests, and did not observe that upon Dr. Lister's countenance astonishment struggled with weariness, that Professor Myers was half and Mrs. Myers wholly asleep, and that Thomasina was perfectly silent and that therefore she neither admired nor agreed.
On the step Cora and Richard exchanged an occasional whisper, and once or twice Richard turned an impertinently inquiring face toward the speaker. Cora was amused and made no effort to restrain him.
It became at last evident to Mrs. Scott that herguest was not receiving that attention which his parts deserved. Professor Myers, awaking as if from a dream, sat up in his chair with a loud exclamation.
"It is true, there is nothing worth in American literature, nothing!"
Utterly had left that subject so far behind that Professor Myers's inattention was clear even to Mrs. Scott. Thus recalled to the fact that all were not able to enjoy the mental food which she found palatable, she summoned Cora and Richard to the piano, and they obeyed promptly, Miss Thomasina following after. Utterly at once left his place on the porch and went in to sit beside Thomasina on the parlor sofa.
Cora sang in a pretty voice to Richard's accompaniment. Once or twice he corrected her in his commanding young way and she obeyed smilingly and gratefully. To Thomasina the state of Cora's mind was as plain as the blush on her cheek.
Then the two played furiously together. The piano was a generation younger than the Lister piano, but it had long since passed its first youth. As a demonstration of digital agility and of power to make a loud noise, the performance was a success; otherwise it was worse than a failure. Cora glanced out of the corner of her eye at Richard. Upon his face was an expression of excitement. It frightened her in a vague way, and she was thankful when Thomasina called a gentle "Quietly, children!"
Utterly bent toward Thomasina.
"Have you lived long in Waltonville, Miss Davis?"
"All my life." Thomasina answered without that pleasant enthusiasm inciting to further talk which was one of her chief charms. She liked this stranger less and less. "That is about forty-five years."
Utterly was about to express a polite doubt of Thomasina's having lived anywhere that long, but thought better of it.
"It is a very interesting town, isn't it?"
"Very," answered Thomasina shortly.
"One feels that the lives spent here must be happy."
"Not necessarily. The average of happiness is probably no higher here than elsewhere. People carry the material of happiness in their hearts."
Utterly listened a little impatiently. It was a period when abstract opinions fell oftener from the lips of men than of women.
"Did you ever know Basil Everman?" he asked.
Thomasina laid her crimson fan across her knees. The children came suddenly to a climax and somewhat boisterously, went to bring in the refreshments provided by Mrs. Scott, the sound of voices from the porch had sunk to a gentle murmur. Into Thomasina's face came a bewildered expression; she looked at the same time incredulous, and intensely desirous of hearing more.
"Did I know Basil Everman?" She repeated the question as though she were trying to make herself believe that it had really been uttered.
"Yes," said Utterly, "Basil Everman."
"I knew him all his life."
"Will you tell me about him?"
"Tell you what about him?"
"Tell me what he looked like, how he spoke and walked—all your impressions of him."
Thomasina lifted her fan and held it spread out against her breast as though it were a shield. She could not quite trust the stranger, though he had uttered a magic name.
"What doyouknow about him?"
"He published some anonymous work in 'Willard's Magazine' and we are anxious to learn everything we can about his history."
"Basil Everman!" said Thomasina again, slowly. Then the words came rapidly, as rapidly as she could speak. "How he looked? He was tall and very slender. I should say his most remarkable feature was his eyes. They were gray with flecks of black in them. They seemed almost to give out light. Webster's eyes are said to have had that effect. If you had ever seen Basil, you would know what that meant. He was extraordinarily quick of mind and speech and motion. Sometimes, as a boy, he seemed to give an impression of actual flight. He had mentally also the gift of wings. He seemed to live in a different world, to have deeper emotions and more vivid mental experiences than the rest of mankind. He was the most radiant person I ever knew—I think that is the best word for him. He was a creature of great promise. He—"
Utterly turned his head to follow the direction of Thomasina's gaze, which seemed to expand asher speech ceased. He could not see the white, startled face of Mrs. Lister, cameo-like, against the black foliage of the honeysuckle vines. It was plain to Thomasina that what she was saying gave Mrs. Lister distress. Moreover, she remembered, now that her first bewilderment had passed, the stranger's astonishing and ill-natured gossip.
"And then?" Utterly was sure of his quarry at last.
"There isn't much more." From Thomasina's voice the life had gone. "He died when he was a very young man."
Utterly looked about him furiously. He did not know what had stopped Thomasina, but, moved either from within or without, she had paused. He raised his voice so that Dr. Green, approaching, heard him many yards away.
"Basil Everman was a great writer," he declared for Mrs. Lister's benefit. "Worth a dozen Longfellows and Bryants and Whittiers. The world has a right to know all about him, and those who keep back the facts of his life are cheating him of the fame which he deserves, they are willfully and intentionally doing him an injury. It is a strange thing that here in this college community, where one would expect an interest in literature, nobody is interested or can tell anything or will tell anything about this man. I would give," cried Utterly in conclusion, "a thousand dollars for one of his stories!"
Mrs. Scott said "Gracious alive!" Then Dr. Green began to talk in a loud voice about nothing.He saw Mrs. Lister's white, shocked face and watched a little uneasily the rapid pulse in her neck. He continued to talk until Richard and Cora had finished passing the ice-cream and cake. The stranger seemed to be drowned by his words.
Then every one sat dully. Utterly said no more. Mrs. Lister waited for him to go. He waited for Thomasina and she waited for Mrs. Lister. Finally Mrs. Myers rose, still half asleep. Thomasina found Utterly at her side.
"May I come to see you to-morrow morning?"
"Yes."
"Would you like to see Basil Everman's stories?"
"Yes."
"I'd quite forgotten about Basil Everman," said Dr. Green as he and Thomasina passed through the campus gate. "He was Mrs. Lister's brother and he has been dead for many years, hasn't he?"
"Yes."
"Did you know that he was a writer?"
"Yes."
"And that he published what he wrote?"
"No."
"I think he had just gone away when I entered college. This man Utterly was at Commencement. I never saw a man I liked less. What did you do while you were away?"
"I bought some clothes and visited an old friend and selected a piano, a very fine piano for Eleanor Bent."
"She plays well, doesn't she?"
"Yes, but not as well as Richard Lister." In thedarkness Thomasina turned upon Dr. Green an inquiring glance. "It is the finest piano in the county."
Dr. Green did not seem interested in Eleanor Bent's piano. "This man said he found some stories of Basil Everman's; wasn't that it?"
"Yes."
"Was Basil Everman an extraordinary person?"
Thomasina stumbled a little on the brick pavement whose roughnesses she should have known thoroughly.
"There have been two persons in Waltonville in fifty years who have been ambitious," said she grimly. "I was one, and Basil Everman was the other. In addition to his ambition, Basil had genius. He could have done anything. He is dead, he died before he had really lived. And here am I, burning to the socket!"
Dr. Green looked at Thomasina in amazement. They had traversed the flag walk and had come to her broad doorstone upon which a light from within shone dimly. It was evident that she was deeply stirred. Dr. Green was not in the habit of giving much thought to the problems of other people, and now it came upon him with a shock that she could hardly have arrived at the peaceful haven in which she seemed to spend her days without some sort of voyage to reach it. Disappointed ambition was enough to chasten any one, thought Dr. Green, and Dr. Green knew.
"You mean you would like to have been a musician?"
Thomasina answered cheerfully, already ashamed of herself.
"Yes," she said; "that is what I mean. Thank you for seeing me safely home."
Dr. Green bade her good-night, and went swiftly out the flag walk. Basil Everman's step could have been no more rapid or more light.
Inside her door Thomasina stripped from head and shoulders the filmy lace with which she had covered them. Then she went into her parlor and turned out the light and opened a long French door at the back of the room and sat down in a deep chair just inside it and looked out upon her garden. The garden was shut in by a high wall; in the center stood a pair of old, low-spreading apple trees; round its edge ran a flag walk, and between the wall and the walk were beds in which grew all manner of sweet flowers. Dr. Scott, when he first saw it, had said "San Marco!" and Thomasina's eyes had glowed.
"It has required the most Herculean of labors to establish it and the greatest Niagaras of water. You are the first human being who has known what I have tried to do. You have been there, of course?"
"No," answered Dr. Scott, sadly, "I have never been there."
Now the moon floated over its scented loveliness. There was neither sound nor motion except that of a moth, huge and heavy-winged. Thomasina herself sat perfectly still, her hands folded in her lap. Presently she raised them, one to each burning cheek.
"What is to come of this?" said she aloud.
After a while she rose and stepped out into the garden and began to pace up and down. An hour later, when even Mrs. Scott was asleep, Thomasina was still pacing up and down.
Dr. and Mrs. Lister did not cross the campus directly, but went round by one of the paths, since a direct course would have brought upon them the company of the Myerses. Mrs. Lister was trembling; her husband felt her lean more and more heavily upon him.
"Mother," said he impatiently, "what is the matter? What is it that troubles you?"
Mrs. Lister did not answer until they had reached the porch.
"They dare not drag poor Basil from his grave! I can't have it! It can't be!"
"But is there anything against Basil? Did he commit any crime? Did he wrong any one? This young man is ill-bred, but he is evidently sincere in his admiration. What is there to fear? What can be found out?"
Mrs. Lister answered hesitatingly, choosing her words.
"He did not get on with my father. He—he went away. He was always strange—we loved him dearly. I—oh, Thomas, he went away in anger and we couldn't find him; we never saw him or heard of him till he was dead. No one knew that he was alienated from us. I cannot endure it that any one should know!"
Then Richard came up on the porch.
"Little Cora might have amounted to somethingwith another mother," said he. "Who is this man Utterly? He sat there beside Miss Thomasina and rattled like a dry gourd full of seeds. What is his business here?"
Dr. Lister remembered that Richard had been out of the room when Utterly had said his say about Basil Everman. Mrs. Lister found in his absence one cause for thankfulness. She answered with an evasion and the three went into the house.
In the morning Utterly sought Thomasina early. He looked about her beautiful room and out into the quiet garden and his hopes rose. Here was atmosphere! If he had only seen Miss Davis first, he might have saved a great deal of time. He had accounted to himself for her sudden silence the evening before. Mrs. Lister was within hearing and her morbid attitude toward the memory of her brother was doubtless known to her friends. He had brought with him the copies of "Willard's Magazine" and had laid them on the table beside him.
Thomasina, cool and pretty in a white dress, sat in a winged chair inside her garden door and rested her slippered feet on a footstool. The excitement had disappeared from her brown eyes, and she had evidently slept in the few hours which she had allowed herself.
Utterly, who arrived with such high hopes, went away in anger. Thomasina either would or could tell him nothing; insisted, indeed, that there was nothing to tell.
"He was brighter than other people and he did things in a different way—if Mrs. Scott really thinks he was 'wild' as you say, that is the source of her impression. But she is a newcomer, and—"Thomasina hesitated, flushed, and then said exactly what she had determined not to say—"if it were not for her husband's position she would be entirely outside the circle in which Basil Everman moved."
"But Mrs. Lister does not speak of him frankly; there's no gainsaying that!"
"I dare say she didn't approve of everything he said or did. Few sisters do wholly approve of their brothers. The style of Basil's writing would probably not have been appreciated by one brought up on Maria Edgeworth. But she loved him with her whole soul. Did you ever read Maria Edgeworth, Mr. Utterly? Do you know about 'Rosamund and the Purple Jar'?"
Utterly brushed Maria Edgeworth aside. He was certain that while Mrs. Lister had risen up like a stone wall against him, this person was laughing at him.
"Did Basil Everman come here?"
"A thousand times. I chased him under the piano usually. He was a very dignified, polite little boy, and I was a very undignified and impolite little girl."
"Miss Davis—" Utterly moved impatiently in his chair—"I have journeyed all the way from New York to be told that this really extraordinary young man, of whom this whole community ought to be proud, was chased round the leg of the piano and that he had gray eyes. What do you suppose would become of literary biography or of any sort of biography if all the relatives and friends of talented men acted as you do?"
"I dare say it would be greatly improved," saidThomasina, smiling. "I dare say many of the facts which make biographies interesting are inventions."
The nearer Utterly approached the railroad station and the farther the B. & N. train drew him from Waltonville, the more certain did he become that he had been cheated.
During the days following his visit, Mrs. Lister told her husband more about Basil. The facts came out gradually. To Dr. Lister the revelation was almost incredible. It was not that the facts were so startling, but that Mary Alcestis could have remained silent all these years of their married life: she who was so open, so confiding, so dependent upon him for advice and sympathy in everything.
As she proceeded with her story, he was still more astonished at her amazing conclusions.
"Basil was different from other children even when he was a little boy. I remember that my mother said that he used to require less sleep than other children, and that when she would go to his crib, she would find him lying awake and staring in the strangest way at nothing. She used to be afraid when he was a little boy that he might go blind, he looked at her so steadily. He never cried loudly like other children when he was tired or hungry, but sat with great tears rolling down his cheeks. Even as a little boy he liked to be alone. He was forever disappearing and being found in queer places, such as a pew in the college church in the dark. Sometimes he would sit alone in the dark tank room in the third story. He said he had 'strange thoughts' there.
"As he grew older, he would not accommodate himself to the ways of the household, would not come to meals regularly. He didn't seem to care whether he ate or not. He didn't come to breakfast on time, and he would not go to bed at the proper hour. Then my father said he could not have any breakfast, and my father took his lamp away at nine o'clock.
"He would not study the subjects which were assigned to him. It was almost intolerable to my father as president of the college. He would not even open his mathematics. He said life was too short. I believe that was the only time he ever said anything in answer to my father. He took punishment without even crying out."
"Punishment!" repeated Dr. Lister.
Mrs. Lister gasped. "Once or twice my father punished him—corporally.
"Once he went away on a walking trip to the Ragged Mountains alone. We didn't know where he had gone, and when people asked where he was, we had to—to invent. My father used to try to pretend that it made no difference, that he had done his best and that God would not hold him responsible. But I used to hear him at his window at night. He used to pray there.
"Basil used to go down and sit at the edge of the colored settlement and hear them sing. It was as though he let himself dwell on all evil things."
"Oh, mother, not evil things!" protested Dr. Lister.
"Some of the songs were evil. You could hearhim singing them afterwards in his room. They were songs that made you shiver."
"Did he ever drink or gamble, or do anything of that kind?"
"I don't know certainly. My father kept some things from me. I know, though, that my father fetched him from the tavern once. He used to sing sometimes as he came home. You could hear him coming from far away."
"But, mother, surely you can see in 'Bitter Bread' why he went walking to the Ragged Mountains! He wanted new impressions, different impressions from those of humdrum people. Did you never suspect that he was trying to write? Did you never see anything he wrote? Didn't your father realize that here was no ordinary boy, here no ordinary talent?"
"My father found one of his stories and read it. It was then that he told Basil that he could not stay if he continued in his course. My father really didn't mean that he was to go away, but he took him at his word. Then we tried to find him again and again. His going away killed my father. All the clues led nowhere. We didn't hear anything about him till he was dead and buried. Then my father died." Mrs. Lister became excited. "I feel as though it would kill me. I thought at the time I couldn't live. Everything came at once."
"But, mother, it is all so long ago!"
"It is all as plain and dreadful as though it were yesterday. I have been afraid for twenty years that people would find out about Basil, that they wouldput this and that together. I have thought of Mrs. Scott finding it out and of how she would talk and talk and of all the tradespeople knowing, and—"
"But, my darling, what could they know?"
Mrs. Lister seemed suddenly to repent her vehemence.
"That he was alienated from us," said she. "Isn't that enough? And I shall never get over grieving for him. If he had done as my father wished he might have been here with us yet, and not be lying in his grave!"
"But he did live intensely. He probably got more happiness out of a day than ordinary mortals get out of a month. And you must learn not to grieve. It's unnatural. You have Richard and all your friends—and me!"
Mrs. Lister was slow to take comfort. For several days she did little but wander round the quiet house. It dawned upon her presently that the house was unusually quiet and that she had seen little of Richard since Commencement. In the thought of him she found at last her accustomed consolation. He was normal; he would give her no hours of misery as Basil had. He would do just what she wanted him to do—he wasdarling—even to think of him healed.
But where was Richard? Probably at Thomasina's. Mrs. Lister put on her bonnet and walked thither.
Richard was not there, and Thomasina in her trying way would talk of nothing but his musicaltalent. She had an annoying fashion of assuming that people agreed with her. When Mrs. Lister reached home, Richard had not come.
During the absence of his wife, Dr. Lister had visited the third story and looked through some of Basil's belongings. In the bottom of his little trunk lay his books, his tiny Euripides and his Æschylus with their poor print and their many notes. How strange it was to think of these books as the pocket companions of a young man! How mad to pick quarrels with any young man who went thus companioned!
The old bureau in which Mrs. Lister kept Basil's clothing was locked. From it came still a faint, indeterminate, sickening odor of disinfectants, and more faintly still that of tobacco. In the corner stood his stick, that stick which he had doubtless carried with him into the Ragged Mountains. Dr. Lister saw him suddenly, his cane held aloft like a banner, his eyes shining. He felt a chilling sensation along his spine. Then he smiled. Thus traditions of haunted rooms were established. The boy was dead,dead. Dr. Lister said the word aloud. The shrine was empty, deserted, forlorn.
For a long time he sat by the window in the dim, hot room. He meant to shake off the vague, uncanny sensations which he felt; he said to himself that he was too sober and too old for any such nonsense as this.
But while he sat still, his eyes now on the smooth white bed, now on a faded picture of Basil's mother above the bed, now on the bureau with its linencover and its beadwork pincushion, his heart began to throb. He remembered a picture of Basil somewhere in the house, a picture brighter, younger, less severe than the one in the family album; he must ask Mary Alcestis to find it for him. He saw the boy, eager, alert, with a sort of strangeness about him as his sister had said, the unnatural product of this puritanic household in which he was set to grow. He did not like regular meals—even Dr. Lister had hated them in his youth. He had not liked to go to bed when other people went or to get up when they got up. Did any boy ever like it in the history of the world? His father had once or twice punished him—"corporally." A portrait of Dr. Everman hung in the library—it was difficult to fancy that delicate hand clutching a weapon, especially a weapon brandished over his own flesh and blood!
Dr. Lister was a placid person to whom the consciousness of immortality was not ever present. He had had few personal griefs; he had had little Christian experience; he was not quite certain, indeed, that immortality was desirable. But now there swept into his heart, along with a passionate grief for this forgotten lad, a passionate demand that he should not be dead, but that he should have made up to him somewhere, somehow, his loss of the sunshine and the pleasant breeze and the chance to go on with what was unquestionably remarkable work.
He wished, though from quite another reason than Mrs. Lister's, that the stranger had not come.The search could lead nowhere; the boy was dead and all his unborn works had perished with him. The thought of him hurt, and in spite of his admonitions to his wife, Dr. Lister mourned him.