“A military gent I see”—Thackeray, “The Newcomes.”
“A military gent I see”—Thackeray, “The Newcomes.”
Four weeks of the European fury had become history, but as yet the district around Beulah preserved its accustomed indifference to outside influences. In staid self-sufficiency farmers garnered their harvest, for, if the war ever entered their heads, it was soon dismissed as a far-away happening which could never have relation to themselves. Great Britain had conducted campaigns before, when, as now, a veteran here or there might heed the alarm and be off to his favorite sport, but it was never dreamed that the inviolate aloofness of Lantern Marsh, for instance, could ever be affected.
Farm lands continued, as usual, to be bought and sold. Bard, after much careful barter, procured the valuable estate of William Henry McBratney for a sum which he might have been ashamed to confess, save for personal vanity over his own close bargaining. The purchase, however, ended in a disappointment, for, on offering it to his elder son as a proposed wedding endowment, he discovered that William was averse to marrying, and the newly acquired property had therefore to lie idle. Hired help was not to be had, since already the excitement of war was drawing floaters to the cities and Bard had to content himself with the thought thatthe war would soon be ended and that William might by then have discovered a woman whom he would be willing to marry.
Mauney found in the war the first successful antidote to his long existing boredom, for, except when he was working, he was reading theMerlton Globeand following events with keenest interest. One day at noon, a large, green motor-car drove suddenly up the lane, and two uniformed officers enquired of Bard if he had any horses to sell. It was to be an army purchase, and Bard, after sending them away empty, bethought himself seriously, with an air of brewing plans.
“Bill,” he said, “if this here war goes on, I’d like to own a few horses. But then,” he added, “’tain’t goin’ to last!”
Meanwhile, Mauney had heard that men were enlisting in Lockwood. Like a flash, he imagined the possibilities of offering himself as a recruit. It was the first time that he had connected the war in any way with himself, and it was mostly his long-cherished craving to leave home that made him do so. The first real breath of the actual war entered the Bard household one evening at supper when Mauney said to his father:
“Dad, I’d love to go to war!”
Bard was rendered speechless; William smiled sarcastically at his father, and then all, including hired help, stopped eating and stared at Mauney.
“You!” gasped Bard. “Well, what put that in your head?”
William laughed quietly.
“I guess they’d never take him, Dad,” he said.
“What do you know about soldierin’?” Bard demanded. “Why, you’d be a nice-lookin’ outfit. Nowlook here,” he said in a tone of ominous finality; “you can just get that idea out o’ your head, right away, understand me. You ain’t goin’ to no war, and the sooner you realize it the better for you.”
That night, however, Mauney did not sleep. The germ of unrest had been inoculated into his blood. His glimpse of a solution for his troubles had turned his mind so irrevocably toward the new purpose that he did not even undress, but lay wakeful and undecided. He knew his father’s present attitude well enough, but he did not know what his attitude would be in case he were defied.
When the first breezes of morning moved the cotton curtains of his window, showing grey in the dawning light, Mauney got up and sat by the window, gazing at the indistinct outlines of trees, listening to the stirring birds and the distant call of a rooster. He felt that he was listening to these particular sounds for the last time. As it grew lighter he tip-toed to the attic for an old leather valise, brought it to his room, and packed up his few belongings. Then, when he heard movement in the kitchen, he went down. The woman, busy at the stove, turned and looked at his valise.
“Where are you goin’, Maun?” she asked, a little dubiously.
“To Lockwood.”
“What for?” she continued, searching his face.
“To enlist.”
She made no reply, but applied herself quietly to her task of preparing breakfast. When Bard came in he saw Mauney sitting on the step that led to the dining-room with his valise on the floor beside him.
“What are you doin’ with your Sunday clothes on?”he asked, while his narrow eyes fell to notice the valise. “Where are yuh goin’?”
“Lockwood.”
“What for?”
“To enlist.”
Bard stamped across the floor to the wash basin and began vigorously washing his hands. Only the unnecessary splashing of water and the rattling of the basin expressed his mental condition. When he finished he walked to his place at the table and sat down.
“Annie,” he said very softly, “give me them eggs.”
The woman obeyed with great punctiliousness as if dreading the storm of language soon to escape the paternal lips. Bard ate in silence, never once looking up. Then, pushing his plate from him, he loaded his pipe, lit it, and for the first time glanced at Mauney.
“When are you goin’?” he asked, as casually as if it were to Beulah for the evening mail.
“This morning,” said Mauney.
“How are you going to get there?” Bard continued, in ominous calmness.
“I thought perhaps Snowball would drive me down,” said Mauney, uncertain at what instant to expect a volcano of abuse.
For a moment or two Bard stood thoughtfully by the window, evidently weighing the situation.
“Well, Maun, I tell yuh,” he said at length. “There ain’t no chanct in the world of ’em takin’ a kid like you. But I guess maybe the best way to cure you is to let you go down and get it over with. When you get down there and see the hull outfit lined up you’ll change yer mind, anyhow. Tell yuh what I’ll do. I’ll let Snowball and you off fer the day. Snowball’s gettin’ kindo’ stale on the job, too, and maybe a drive to Lockwood would sort o’ brace him up. But, mind, I don’t want to hear no more damned nonsense after you get home, understand me.”
At noon that day old Charlie, covered with lather from the twenty-mile journey, drew Mauney and the hired man into the town of Lockwood. Mauney sat leaning back, absent-mindedly watching the road, while Snowball held the reins and occasionally touched the horse’s flanks with the whip.
A great weight had fallen from Mauney’s shoulders the moment they had passed out of his father’s farmyard and, during the drive in the sultry morning air, his imagination had moved quickly. He felt the great doors of the world opening to receive him. He felt that he was proceeding now into the mystery of real life long denied him. The war was truly a secondary consideration. He knew nothing about the practical side of campaigning. Dimly, though, he fancied that once he reached the Lockwood armouries, some one there would take him admiringly by the hand with expressions of welcome and commendation for his noble decision.
When they had passed along King Street they came to the wide green upon whose upper portion reposed the grey stone armouries with its mullioned windows, its turrets, its scalloped parapets, and its tall flag-pole bearing a huge flag that floated lazily in the breeze. A dozen men in ordinary clothes stood in several groups near the huge doorway, while an occasional soldier in uniform walked stiffly across the lawn to disappear beneath the arch. After noting that his suitcase wassafely bestowed in the bottom of the buggy, Mauney got out and adjusted his tie and soft hat.
“Snowball,” he said, “you stay here till I come back. I’m going to see if this is where to enlist.”
“I guess I’ll g-go in with you, Maun!” stammered the hired man as he got out and began tying the horse to a pavement ring. “I hain’t never worried much about soldierin’, but may’s well see the doin’s now as I’m here. Wait a minute, Maun.”
Together they walked across the green and soon came up with a group of civilians who were talking about the war. One of them was a veteran of several campaigns, for he wore a line of medals pinned to his vest and kept his coat well pulled back to display them. He pointed Mauney to the doorway.
As they were about to enter, an erect individual, neatly uniformed, with waxed moustache and a short, black stick held under one Of his straight arms, advanced to meet them.
“What do you want?” he demanded, crisply.
“I want to enlist,” Mauney explained.
“Recruits?” he snapped haughtily, and pointed with his finger. “To the right, fall in line behind the others and wait your turn.”
Mauney thanked him and turned to the hired man.
“You better wait for me outside, Snowball!” he said.
The crisp individual in uniform glanced quickly at Snowball, his eyes keenly studying him.
“You may wait here,” he said, “if you choose.”
The interior of the armouries was so dark that until Mauney’s eyes became accustomed to the dimness, he paused, unable to see the queue of civilians who were standing in line in front of a frosted-glass door. Hethen made his way over the flag-stones and took up his position in the rear. From a skylight in the high roof a beam of light fell through the dusty air of the big room and, striking in a huge square pattern on the centre of the floor, revealed two teams of horses dragging a field-gun down the middle of the drill-space. The rattle and din, increased by the shouted commands of some visible officers, were so deafening that Mauney did not notice the frosted-glass door open to receive six of his companions. He moved up and patiently waited his turn. At last his time came and he entered with five of his fellow recruits.
In the meantime Snowball sat on the edge of a green box at the entrance, smoking his pipe. The sergeant who had so leniently granted him permission to remain was at a short distance, tête-a-tête with a second sergeant who wore a dangle of white, red and green ribbons from the peak of his cap. The first sergeant pointed toward Snowball, made a gesture with his hands, at which the other nodded, and advanced toward the unsuspecting servant.
“Hello, my man,” said the sergeant, slapping Snowball genially on the back. “How old are you?”
“Forty-five or six,” he replied, looking up curiously.
“Stand up, won’t you?”
Snowball obeyed, rather dubiously.
“My word!” remarked the sergeant, feigning to be overcome with admiring surprise. “You’re a splendid specimen. Where did you get that chest?”
“I g-guess hard work done that,” he said, commencing to giggle.
“You’re just the kind of a man we’re looking for,sir,” said the sergeant, placing one hand on Snowball’s bosom and the other on his back. “Take a long breath.”
He inspired deeply, casting a sharp, doubtful glance at the sergeant.
“I say, but you’re well put together, sir,” remarked the latter. “You’d make a fine soldier, I reckon.”
For an instant Snowball’s tilted face turned hesitatingly toward his flatterer. Then he began once more to laugh.
“You can’t fool me, so you can’t,” he said, sitting down and avoiding the sergeant’s eyes.
“But I’m not trying to fool you, sir,” he averted. “You’d be an A1 man, I swear.”
Snowball shuffled his feet, and drew vigorously on his pipe.
“They wouldn’t take me, so they wouldn’t,” he said seriously with a jerk of his head toward the doorway.
“Well,” said the sergeant, “would you go, if they found you fit?”
“Hain’t no use t-talking about it,” Snowball responded in a melancholy tone. “So they hain’t!”
“Try them, sir, try them—won’t you?”
“Come with me, sir,” he added, taking Snowball’s arm, when much to his surprise, the latter rose and accompanied him.
Mauney passed his physical examination and was led into a second room. He noticed that none of the others had been taken there. Behind a desk sat a young, clear-faced man with bone-rimmed spectacles, engaged in looking through a pile of documents.
“Doctor Poynton,” said the sergeant, who brought him in, “would you report on this recruit’s vision. The M.O. just sent him in.”
“All right,” nodded the doctor, as the sergeant went out.
For fully five minutes Mauney stood motionless, waiting for the eye-examination to commence, while the doctor continued reading the documents before him and idly smoking a cigar. When his impatience had nearly gotten the better of him and he felt tempted to remind the medical man of his presence, the latter turned in his chair and placed a stool on the floor a few feet from his desk.
“Sit down there!” he said in a distant tone, without looking at Mauney, who obeyed and awaited further instructions.
Doctor Poynton threw away the butt of his cigar and, opening a drawer, selected another from a box. This he lighted and blew out the match, meanwhile continuing uninterruptedly in his reading of the documents.
Mauney, greatly elated at the success of his physical examination, found his present occupation of waiting greatly to his dislike. Why should they examine his eyes? He had never had any trouble with them. He controlled his impatience, however, as best he could, until, after many minutes, the doctor looked up.
“Now, then,” he said. “Look at that card on the wall over yonder. Can you see the letters?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, read them. First letter?”
“E.”
“Next line!”
Mauney read four lines and paused.
“You can’t read the fifth line?”
“I’m afraid not.”
From a drawer, the doctor produced a testing frame,perched it on Mauney’s nose, and slipped two lenses before his eyes.
“Can you read it now?” he asked.
“No, it’s worse than ever.”
He removed the lenses and put in two others.
“Now.”
Mauney read it accurately.
“All right,” said Poynton, removing the frame, and scribbling some hieroglyphics on a slip of paper. “That’s all I want. Take this chit in to Captain Blackburn.”
“Where’s he?”
“He’s the officer who examined you.”
“Thank you,” said Mauney, returning to the room from which he had come. There were still half a dozen recruits stripped, undergoing examination. He waited until Captain Blackburn should be disengaged.
“Ever had rheumatism?” Blackburn was asking one of the candidates, while he percussed his chest.
“No,” said a voice which seemed very familiar to Mauney.
“Cough! All right! Now turn around.”
As the recruit turned, Mauney was astonished to behold the sun-burned face of Snowball. He would have exclaimed aloud, but already he felt the humility of a private soldier restraining him in an officer’s presence.
Blackburn, after applying the bell of his stethoscope to various areas on Snowball’s back, snapped the instrument from his ears.
“That’s all—go along—pass him fit, sergeant! Next!”
Snowball scrambled into his clothes and walked quickly towards Mauney.
“For heaven’s sake, Snowball, did you enlist?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Shake on it.”
Mauney grasped the hired man’s hand and gave it a powerful shaking. “You’re a brick, Snowball. Just wait outside for me, I got through too, but there’s some red-tape about my eyes.”
When the recruits were all examined and were dressing, Capt. Blackburn pointed at Mauney.
“Get your eyes tested, boy?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Bring me the report.”
Sticking on a pair of spectacles Blackburn glanced over the slip of paper.
“Too bad,” he said. “You’re unfit. Sergeant, mark off M. Bard as unfit for service.”
“But I’m all right,” expostulated Mauney.
“No you’re not, boy.”
“Yes, I am.”
Blackburn stiffened up.
“Do you realize to whom you’re talking?” he snapped.
A sergeant walked quickly forward and tapped Mauney’s knuckles with his stick.
“Hands down at your side!” he barked. “You’re speaking to an officer. Address him as ‘sir!’”
Blackburn tossed the eye-report on the top of his desk, leisurely removed his spectacles, and then calmly nodded at the sergeant who was standing stiffly nearby.
“That’s all, sergeant!” he said, indifferently, with a slight nod toward Mauney.
“Very good, sir,” bawled the sergeant, clicking hismetal-plated heels together and saluting. Then, seizing Mauney by the arm, he led him toward the door.
“You can’t join—may as well go home,” he said, opening the door.
“But I never had any trouble with my eyes,” Mauney argued, as the sergeant shoved him out into the big room of the Armouries.
“Don’t matter. You’re unfit!”
Bang! The door closed in his face.
“Good is a man’s death which destroys the evils of life.”—Publilius Synus.
“Good is a man’s death which destroys the evils of life.”—Publilius Synus.
Bard delayed two years before he began horse-breeding in earnest. By that time the war had become a fixture, with more promise of an endless continuance than an early peace, and as it was impossible to hire help for farm work, he grew weary of carrying on his arduous agricultural labor with only his two sons to assist him. Consequently he determined to put less soil under seed and to confine his attentions to horses, since the army would afford an apparently inexhaustible market for their purchase. The news of his new determination was received with gladness by William, who had begun to tire of his strenuous labors, and with indifference by Mauney, who, since his rejection at Lockwood, had remained at home, mechanically submitting to his fate, and caring little what turn events might take.
A month previously the casualty lists had contained the name of Snowball, who had been killed in action in France.
“Don’t seem natural,” Bard had admitted simply, “Poor old Snowball. If he hadn’t been such a fool he’d be right here to-day, same as the rest of us.”
But Mauney questioned whether the fate of their former servant was not indeed preferable to his own.In quiet moments—too quiet and too numerous for his liking—he secretly envied Snowball, for it seemed that a few months of death-rewarded struggle in France were infinitely easier than the drab years of Lantern Marsh promising no release. Long since he had forgotten his reception on returning from Lockwood—the jeers, the confident “I told you so” of his father, the stern promise of sterner treatment if he repeated the nonsense. The cause of his rejection by the army seemed unbelievably trivial, but on later consulting a civil oculist in Lockwood some kind of eye-trouble was discovered, with the result that Mauney adopted glasses. Even with this correction he was advised that he would not be able to qualify for general service abroad, and the prospect of entering home service in some dismal camp dissuaded him from further efforts to be accepted. By this time a few of the younger set in Beulah had enlisted, thereby establishing among their relatives a local cult of patriots who were never backward in snobbishly cutting others who had not gone. William was too thick-skinned to feel this, while Mauney was proud enough never to explain his very sufficient reason for remaining at home.
Then came rumors of conscription, the first feature of the war that promised to affect the Bard household. Bard himself was furious for he saw plainly that his elder son fell into the first group of unmarried men who would be called up. Mauney took a silent delight in the discomfiture of both. As the date approached for the new law to go into force he kept picturing the cataclysm of feelings that would be aroused, the unwilling departure of his husky brother and his father’s unavailing expostulation. It was the latter which really delighted Mauney, since he had come to regard hisfather’s will as the one stupendously efficient thing in life, never to be crossed or defeated. A great eagerness possessed him to see the law in force and to behold, just for once, with his own eyes, the spectacle of his father’s spiritual collapse. The time approached with much rebellious comment from within his own home and that of other farmers who had until now had few reminders of war except higher prices for all their products. At last the evening arrived, the last evening of freedom for all potential conscripts, and Mauney sat in the kitchen with his father, awaiting the return of his brother who had gone to Beulah apparently to make a closer survey of the impending situation. At a late hour, William returned.
“Well?” said Bard, eagerly rising as his son entered the kitchen, “What about it?”
“It’s all right,” William replied with a sly smile. “They won’t get me, Dad.”
He had married Evelyn Boyce.
Mauney’s astonishment was only less than his instinctive hatred of an action so basely material and selfish. When he learned the facts of William’s evening sojourn in the village he flushed and regarded his brother with eyes that the brother could read only too plainly.
“What’s the matter?” William blurted.
“With whom?” Mauney asked.
“You.”
“I’m feeling sorry.”
“What for?”
“For Evelyn Boyce, of course.”
William’s face colored quickly and the big veins of his neck stood out. He stood, stiffening his arms, then with a savage glare, he shook his fist at his brother.
“You better keep your mouth shut,” he fumed, “or I’ll shut it for you. What I do is my business, not yours.”
In this principle William had the full paternal support and Mauney once more witnessed the complete success of his father’s will. The plans had been made out carefully, beforehand. It was not many days until the bride was established with her husband on the McBratney farm and only three were left at the old homestead. Mrs. William Bard was a brainless, pretty girl of small physique, with a novel love of chickens, and of a screeching gramophone whose music could be heard each evening, when the wind was in the east. Occasionally she accompanied her husband on short evening visits to her father-in-law’s, and quite won Bard’s affections by sitting on his knee and lighting matches for him on the sole of her shoe. Toward her brother-in-law she adopted a surprising attitude of coquetry, that displeased her husband, and caused Mauney a degree of nausea. It was soon evident that she was not born to be the wife of William Bard. Beneath her empty hilarity there was to be gradually discerned a growing girlish discontent with things. Her attentions to her father-in-law grew less spontaneous and her flirting manner with Mauney came to have suggestions of pathetic appeal. Mauney felt that he could read beneath the surface the awakening to consciousness of one, who, having been bought for a purpose, would insist on demanding her price, for, vapid though her mind was, she possessed a sharp sense of justice in matters affecting herself. In the following summer William purchased a motor-car under pressure, and began taking his wife for evening drives, much to the elder Bard’s outspoken disapproval.
“There’s too much gadding about, Bill,” he said one day as they talked matters over. “You’ve got to cut out this here flyin’ all over the country.”
“What am I goin’ to do?” demanded William, impatiently. “You know I didn’t want to marry her, but you advised me to. So now, you can put up with what I got, see!”
Life offered no solution for Mauney’s inner troubles. If there had been one cheerful event to annul the interminable gloom of these years of war, or one friend to brighten the unlifting fogs that settled down upon him like the vapors of Lantern Marsh itself, he might have borne his discontent with greater patience. But the raw wound in his nature, made by no sudden sword-gash, but worn there by the attrition of dreary seasons, grew more unbearable. Every hope that had dared to rise had been forced down as by a vigilant, hateful fate. Every finer instinct had met its counterpart of external opposition. Every aspiration that trembled gently upward had been tramped by heavy feet, as violets in the path of horses. He had lived with his newspaper. He had watched the verdure of the springtimes fade beneath the dry suns of autumn, the green apples of his orchard redden and fall to earth, the birds of the swamp wing away to their southern homes, when ice bound the Lantern Marsh in its grip and biting winds hurled the snow in deep banks about the home. And as unchanging as the seasons he had watched his father’s character deepen to its fixed qualities of greed and selfishness.
But an end was in sight.
Through the hot summer of endless labor in the fields, and of endless mind gropings, came vague breezes that touched his cheeks with promise of liberty. Theybreathed a new hope that he scarcely dared to heed, for these mysterious breezes, as if they were the breath of fearless gentle angels, brought indistinguishable whisperings, to which he more and more bent his ear. Pausing in the field to lean momentarily on the handle of his hay-fork his eye turned quickly as if to catch an elusive presence that he felt nearby. But there was no one. He was quite alone save for his father and the others casting up great cocks of hay upon the wagon. But as he sat of an evening on the front steps of the farmhouse this haunting presence would come again, eluding his gaze that sought it among the orchard trees, heavy with their apple harvest. In his room at night he felt it directly behind him, and came to realize at length that it was the man he wanted to be, the prefigurement of a new Mauney Bard.
And the wisps of angel breath, with their sybilline intonations, began to be articulate, telling of a world of promise for the valiant, of knowledge, of friends, of hope.
He had waited for life to help him, but it offered no help. With spirits partially crushed by the mundane atmosphere and the endlessly sordid philosophy of his detested home he had waited in dejection. But, in the summer of 1916, recognizing at length that no power existed to help him but himself, he openly rebelled. One day he went to his father after dinner, as the latter smoked idly in the kitchen, chatting with the hired woman. Mauney was finally beside himself.
“Look here,” he said without introduction, “I’m just about through with you and Lantern Marsh. Here I’ve been cooped up for years, just simply staying because there was nothing else to do. I want an education and,by heavens, I’m going to have it. I think you ought to give me enough to go to college. But if you won’t, I’m going anyway.”
The woman, recognizing the private nature of their conversation, left them alone in the room.
The weight of Mauney’s ultimatum lay as heavily on Bard’s face as the noon sun on the yard outside the window. For minutes he sat with his head between his large, knotty hands, staring blankly at the table oil-cloth, Mauney felt a flickering pity for him, presented thus with a flat proposition from which no selfish escape seemed possible. Bard did not speak, nor did his face betray his thoughts. It was the tired face of a man weary with his efforts to coerce life, confronted at last with a problem that lay beyond his personal power.
“Well,” he said, looking up at length like one, who, though unable to command, still hopes to barter. “If you’ll stay on here I’ll will you the farm and give you a quarter interest in the business now.”
“Dad, you don’t understand,” said Mauney, “I want education. I’m sick of farming and don’t intend to stay with it. I want to go to College and, as I told you, I’m going, anyway—”
“All right,” said Bard simply and nodded his head many times. “You may regret this, boy, I think you will. Your first duty is to me. And I—”
The sound of horses’ steps distracted his attention and, turning toward the window, he recognized a well-known stallion being led by a man in a sulky.
“There’s Thompson, now,” he said. “I have to go to the barn. But that’s all I’ve got to say, Maun.” He paused to strike the table with his fist. “Stay with me and I’ll share up. But if you want to pull out, you doit on your own hook. Not a cent from me, sir—not a cent!”
He walked toward the door, but turned to cast a glance at Mauney’s serious face.
“You better think it over,” he said. “It’s a purty big step, sir—a purty big step, I tell yuh.”
As he left to direct Thompson and the stallion to the barn, Mauney buried his face in his arms.
There could be no turning back on his resolve. His father’s offer was no inducement. Life at Lantern Marsh had taken all these years to reach its logical termination—he must go. To himself he owed something and the debt disturbed him. Beyond the confines of the present he dreamed of self development and a great happiness. He did not know how long he had sat at the table, thrilled by his new determination, but it must have been many minutes. He was suddenly disturbed by the sound of hurrying feet and by the woman’s voice, as she dashed into the kitchen.
“Maun!” she cried excitedly. “Get into Thompson’s gig and go get the doctor. Your father’s hurt!”
“What happened him?” asked Mauney, rising.
“Don’t know. He was in with the horses. Hurry Maun, fer God’s sake, I’m afraid he’s killed by the way Thompson ran out.”
Mauney ran across the yard to untie Thompson’s horse, but could see no evidence of tragedy. The sun lay heavily upon the manure pile and no sound disturbed the blue shadows of the stable windows. As he jumped into the sulky and, reaching for the whip, drove quickly down the lane, he saw the woman running toward the barn with a pail of water. His mind was a blank during that race to Beulah. He forgot everything that hadturned in his brain a few moments before. He only felt that something horrible had happened. He caught mental images of his father’s face, rendered grotesque and abominable, but he put the pictures from him, and glanced for relief at the placid meadows along which he was flying at top speed. It seemed that he would never complete his journey when, all at once, he pulled up the lathered horse by Dr. Horne’s lamp post.
He jumped out and had run only half-way to the office door when he beheld the burly physician, bare-headed, carrying his satchel.
“What’s the matter, young fellow?” he asked.
“My father’s kicked by a horse,” Mauney quickly explained, “and I guess it’s bad.”
“Where is he?”
“Down in our barn.”
Horne pointed to the office.
“Go in there, young fellow,” he said. “On the back of the back door is the key to my barn. Hitch up my horse and follow me. I’ll drive this race horse of Thompson’s. Take your time, young fellow,” he added, as Mauney ran toward the office. “You aren’t the doctor. Just drive down slow, mind.”
Later when Mauney had nervously succeeded in hitching up Doctor Horne’s horse and was driving quickly homeward he wondered why he had been asked to drive so slowly. The horse seemed in good condition and in the habit of running, so he made no effort to stop him. Suddenly, though, at the outskirts of the town, as they passed the last houses, the horse slowed down to an easy trot, a matter of habit, too, as Mauney humorously reflected. At length, he reached home, but saw nobodyin the yard. Thompson’s horse was wandering slowly by the end of the drive shed, nibbling the short grass. Mauney got out and tied the doctor’s horse to the iron weight which he had taken from the buggy. For a moment he gazed toward the barn. There was the open stable door, the empty windows, the enlarging blue shadow of the building creeping toward the end of the manure heap, but no movement, save that of a white hen, picking in the straw that littered the ground. He slowly turned and entered the kitchen where, stretched upon the sofa, he discovered the woman, sobbing hysterically.
“How is he?” Mauney asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” she managed to say, turning over on her face and biting her finger. “I went over to get Bill, but he’s in the back field. I guess you better get him, Maun. I—I can’t walk no further!”
On his way to the lane Mauney saw the doctor, in his shirt sleeves, coming across the barnyard toward the kitchen. He waited for him, reflecting that he had never seen the physician walk so slowly.
“Well, Mauney,” he said seriously, as he came up. “God knows this isn’t the kind of thing I like to do. I feel damned sorry for you.”
“Is he—is he dead, doctor?”
Horne slowly nodded his big, black head, while tears filled his big, black eyes.
“Yes, sir, poor Seth Bard,” he said with a sigh. “He was a good farmer, was Seth. He never knew what hit him. Well, that’s the way it goes.”
“The house is a fine house when good folks are within.”—George Herbert’s Collection, 1639.
“The house is a fine house when good folks are within.”—George Herbert’s Collection, 1639.
Mauney was seated in the green-upholstered seat of a railway car, with a ticket in his pocket marked Merlton. His baggage, consisting of a new trunk and two new leather suit-cases, was safely on board, or so he found himself anxiously hoping from time to time, as the train quickened its speed. He wore a new grey serge suit, purchased in Lockwood, the town from whose outskirts he was now passing, a suit that clung neatly to his big shoulders with a strange, new feeling of smartness. On his head reposed an attractive grey, soft hat with a black band, itself as new as the rest—as new as all the weird experiences of the present day which had kept him busy and curious. He was dazed by the rapid events, as if he had not become implicated voluntarily, but was being led by a magic power.
He was going to Merlton. That was the only fact of which he was momentarily certain, except that his brother William had motored him to Lockwood the previous night, and that he had sat beside Evelyn in the back seat, trying to steal time to think of a multitude of different matters that naturally flooded his mind. But he found it quite impossible and gave over eventuallyto her sentimental jabber concerning the marvellous character of his newly-contemplated life in Merlton, how much she herself would love to be coming, and how tedious life would be at Lantern Marsh without him. “Tedious,” scarcely described it, for, since the death of his father, especially during the unpleasant process of settling the estate, in which process William had proved to be a very difficult person, he had realized a great tragedy in the atmosphere of the place. It depended not only on memories of his father’s end, but equally also upon William’s implanted selfishness. There had been scenes in the lawyer’s office between the brothers, and William’s contentiousness had created a hateful situation from which Mauney had glided easily along peaceful exits of least resistance. As a result the brother retained the original farm besides money, and Mauney took for his share twelve thousand dollars, with half the proceeds from the sale of the McBratney farm sometime in sight.
It had all been too drastically tragic to be tedious. Nothing quite so upsetting and revolutionary had ever occurred as the sudden death of his father. It had altered everything, like the stroke of a magician’s wand. Here he was, for example, dressed as well as any man on the train, departing, probably forever, from scenes which until recently had been prison-like. Here he was, with more nerve than sense—or so he felt—launching without advice from anybody, straight at the metropolis, drawn thither like a shad-fly to an arc-light. Here he was with money enough and more for an education, but without the faintest idea of how to go about it. Above all, here he was, the loneliest chap imaginable, without one friend to talk to, and nothing ahead but a bleakhorizon of uncertain years and an absolutely unfamiliar world.
He almost longed, by a natural reversion of feeling, for the old times at home, for his father cursing him roundly, for William’s sneers, for poor old Snowball’s silent laughter, doubly silent now, and for the hired woman’s rough sympathy.
During these cogitations he frequently interrupted himself to finger his vest pocket and be assured that he had lost neither the ticket markedMerltonnor the baggage checks. The casual observer, knowing nothing of Mauney’s previous existence, would have received an impression of a young, well-to-do man, of kindly disposition, of keen sensibilities, and of, perhaps, unusual powers of mind. He might have passed for a young commercial traveller, save that his eyes possessed a glamor of imagination too vivid to have long withstood the prosaic details of business, and yet, on the other hand, though his bright face, nearly smiling, might have been that of an artist, there was about him a certain air of staid reserve that negatived the impression.
But these golden opinions about the young man in the grey suit, were, to be sure, purely from without, since there existed within Mauney a much poorer estimate. He would have said that of all the people on this train he was unquestionably the most ignorant, the most awkward, the most lamentably inexperienced. He was going forth into the enigmatical universe unsupported, but with a kind of mock self-assurance approaching bluff. And he was stepping very rapidly along, pushed by uninvited and irrevocable events, with inelegant steps, as if his body were being bunted from behind. A big truck-load of baggage at the LockwoodStation platform had given him the same feeling a few moments previously. He wished the train would go more slowly, because of the importance of the journey. After all it was the real transition, the deportation from one phase of life to the unrealized next one, and certainly no occasion for being hurtled along with terrific speed, but rather one for slow adjustment of mind and body. He had never worn as stiff a collar, but the clothier in Lockwood must be relied upon. The seat of his trousers seemed tight, but that too, was undoubtedly a matter for the ruling judgment of an expert.
Well, he would try to bluff it bravely. Just what he would do on reaching Merlton was uncertain. There were the hotels, if necessary, but he felt that the sooner he got right down to work the better for his peace of mind. He wanted to go to the university, but knew that, unless he could discover some way of circumventing a high school training, college halls were very distant. Here again he would have to rely on expert opinion. In fact, he philosophized that he was now in a world where he was no longer independent. The lazy come and go of Lantern Marsh was realized to be at an end. He was now exploring hazy territory and so decided to keep out his feelers. There was nothing else for it than to be patient and wait, and go easy, and keep his feelers out. After all it was a wonderfully thrilling experience, containing as much opportunity for spiritual enjoyment as for discomfort.
Pulling down his collar out of the crease of his neck he cast his eye at a book which his seat companion was reading. The title at the top of the page was “Biochemistry.” The reader was a young, black-haired fellow with an eager, enthusiastic face, but with a deep,vertical crotchet of puckered skin between his eyebrows. That he was not reading for pleasure was doubly evident from his impatient manner of turning over new pages and from the monotonous tone in which, from time to time, he half spoke what he read. At length he finished a chapter, slammed the book shut and sat comfortably back with a sigh of relief. Mauney would not have ventured to speak to him, and was therefore pleasantly surprised, anon, to be addressed by the other.
“Awful stuff this!” said the stranger, tapping the closed volume with his knuckle.
“What is Biochemistry?” Mauney enquired curiously.
“Oh!” drawled the other, with a perplexed look, “it’s the study of the chemical processes that go on in the animal body—awful headache, this stuff! Are you going to Merlton?”
“Yes,” nodded Mauney.
“Go to the University?”
“Not yet.”
“But you are later, eh?”
“I don’t know,” Mauney explained. “I want to go, but I haven’t had enough education to get in.”
“You don’t need much, I can assure you,” said the other. “You’ve got your Collegiate off, I suppose?”
“No. Just public school.”
“Well, of course that means a devil of a lot of preliminary ahead of you, and they’re getting crankier up there every minute about that stuff. By the way,” he said, after stealing an appraising glance at Mauney’s face and clothing. “My name is Lee.”
Mauney took his proffered hand and shook it warmly.
“Bard is mine,” he said, a little awkwardly.
“We may as well know each other, Mr. Bard,” said Lee, sitting up and smiling. “I’m just going back to the city to write off some sups. Do you know what I mean? Well, I hope you don’t ever learn by experience. I got ploughed in Biochemistry, this spring. Do you know what I mean? Well, at the exams, you see, I went down hard on this stuff. So I’ve got to plug it up and write it off, now.”
Lee followed his explanation by a glance of curiosity at Mauney’s face before smiling indulgently.
“You’ll get on to these college expressions sooner or later. Of course I like my work well enough,” he explained, “and I shouldn’t have dropped on this dope, didn’t expect to either—it’s kind of made me bolsheviki for the present. I hope you’ll pardon my seeming rudeness if I continue to sink myself in this book?”
“Certainly, shoot into the dope, hard,” ventured Mauney.
With a look of surprise Lee settled down into the depths of the seat and, before commencing a new chapter, stole a sly, curious glance at his new acquaintance, while Mauney, faintly satisfied at his recent attempt at slang, found courage and a somewhat new belief in his own powers of adaptation.
Lee, buried in a new chapter, continued to frown, slap the pages, and repeat ill-temperedly passage after passage, while Mauney would turn from the window and its vision of long farm lands turning rapidly past like the spokes of a great wheel, to snatch a glance over his companion’s shoulders, to read perhaps a snatch of technical treatise concerning the combustion of fatty acids (whatever they might be), or to notice complicated designs of apparatus, reminding him of puzzles he hadseen in theBeulah Weekly. Lee, he noticed, was an appealing sort, though delicate, with long, thin hands and a thin body that bent easily into his slouched attitude of reading. Over his vest he wore a thin, low-cut jersey whose front was decorated with a large, blue M, ornamented with wings sprouting from the two upright limbs of the letter. Mauney deduced that it stood for Merlton, probably being a trophy bestowed for prowess in some particular sport at the University of Merlton. At length Lee finished another chapter and closed the book with a snap, dropping it into his black hand-bag under the seat.
“That’s enough of that,” he said. “Pass or no pass I’m not going to read any more of it. And, more than that, I’m going to see a good show to-night. What do you say if we go?”
“How long before we reach Merlton?” Mauney asked.
Lee glanced at his wrist watch. “It’s two-forty. We don’t get there till six-thirty. Deuce of a long trip! It’ll be too late to do anything but a show.”
“I’d like to go all right,” Mauney admitted, “but I want to find some place to stay.”
“What kind of digs are you after—you know, what kind of a place?”
“I haven’t a very good idea myself.”
Lee studied Mauney’s open face for a moment as if trying to decide what category to place him in. It was evident from his own expression that he found something likeable about his new acquaintance, for he smiled with combined indulgence and curiosity.
“What have you been working at, Mr. Bard?” he asked.
“Farming, all my life.”
“Oh, I see. Decided to shake the plough now?”
Mauney nodded. “Yes, I wouldn’t have stayed so long at it, only you know how circumstances sometimes determine a fellow’s fate.”
“Sure thing, you said something,” admitted Lee, a little sadly. “I’d have been in the army except for the astounding circumstance, quite a surprise to me, that some imaginative medical officer fancied he heard a menagerie inside of my chest. There’s never been a thing wrong with me,” he affirmed, “but just because that chap with the stethescope didn’t like the way I breathed, I am here to-day, plugging along in third year medicine. Why! I managed to clean up the intercollegiate tennis last fall. I cite that merely as evidence of health.”
“You can’t tell me anything about it,” Mauney laughed. “I got turned down on account of my eyes. But I only have to wear glasses when I read. Eyes are good. I’d have been away long ago except for that. It’s tough luck to get treated like that. However, I’m ready any time they want to take me. But, war or no war, Mr. Lee, I’m not going to beg them to take me. I practically did that once; so I feel it’s their move next.”
“Hear, hear! My heart’s in the right place, too. Though I hate to be regarded as a slacker by those who don’t know the details. Sometimes I think it takes as much grit to face the home forces as the Germans. I mean the why-aren’t-you-at-the-war brand. However, got to put up with it. Say,” he added presently. “How would you like to get a room at my boarding house?”
“Fine. Could I?”
“I believe you probably could,” he said, “It’s a queer sort of digs, but just unusual enough to be interesting.It’s worth making an effort to get into it, too. The bunch there are off the beaten path—never was quite able to size ’em up—but they all mind their own business. You know,” he said reflectively, “I’ve been there over a year and I can’t tell you just what keeps me there. I guess it’s because we’re all rebels.”
“Rebels?” repeated Mauney, in great surprise.
“Surely,” nodded Lee with a broad smile breaking over his face. “Do you know what it means to be out of love with life?”
“I—I should say I do. That’s me exactly.”
“I thought so, Mr. Bard,” replied Lee with an intimate little sparkle in his eye. “I judged you to have something of the same spirit about you. Well, it’s a kind of grouch that lurks under the surface, if you will. Anyhow, it’s easily recognized by anyone who is a rebel himself.”
Mauney’s blue eyes narrowed as he glanced at his new friend’s face.
“Are you a rebel, Mr. Lee?” he asked seriously.
“Certainly,” said Lee. Then he laughed at Mauney’s sober aspect. “Don’t be alarmed. My disaffection has not, at present, any political aspect, you know. My rebellion is not against the government. It’s just a plain, homely, disposition of grouch.”
“I see,” smiled Mauney. “Do you know, I like that.”
“And I knew you would, my son,” continued Lee, almost affectionately. “You’ve got inoculated, somehow, with the same virus. You’ve caught the disease somewhere. We belong to a great fraternity that doesn’t wear any silver badge. A person has to be born to it, to some degree, and then he has to get properly messed up, into the bargain.”
“How do you mean—messed up?”
“Oh, just that everything goes wrong. Plans smashed, ideas smashed, everything smashed,” laughed Lee with just a small trace of queer seriousness in his face. “Fate picks out a few of us to join this big fraternity. We always know each other when we meet without any masonic sign. Our watchword is discontent—unexplainable discontent. We are just misfits, my son,” he concluded, with a slap at Mauney’s knee.
Mauney could not help liking his new friend who, though evidently not much older than himself, called him “my son” so easily, and who, either consciously or otherwise, had succeeded in establishing a most unexpected bond between them. But his skillful, verbal harangue on the present topic was still puzzling to him, so that, after a moment, he put a question.
“Do you mean that the people who live at this boarding house all belong to a secret fraternity?”
“Yes and no!” said Lee. “It’s a fraternity, as I’ve said, secret enough from all who don’t belong. But it hasn’t any organized constitution and no particular purpose or aim.” As he paused, his black eyes softened with a visionary aspect. “It’s distributed all over the world. You don’t join it. You’re either in it or not. If you’re in it you find it impossible to get too much worked up over any enthusiasm. You prefer irony to barbarous optimism. You retire by choice, into the shadow of things. Do you get me?”
“I think so, yes,” nodded Mauney. “You all feel out of gear with things, all the time.”
“That’s it. You can’t get an ideal which isn’t sooner or later rendered a mere idea. Your hands slip off from the round edges of everything you grasp. You knowbefore you start that your efforts will eventually peter down to child’s play. Well, well,” he said, pulling himself up out of his half reverie. “I suppose I’d better read some more biochemistry.”
“Do you like the study of medicine?” asked Mauney.
Lee smiled.
“I like it all right,” he nodded. “But it’s just like me to get the wrong angle on it. I keep wondering about the profession—it’s so damned illogical.”
“How do you mean?”
“We patch people up after they’re damaged, instead of trying to keep ’em from getting damaged. We throw out the life-line, but we don’t teach ’em to swim. It’s all topsy-turvy philosophy, upside down, cart before the horse. However,” he said with a drawl as he opened his hand-grip to take out his book, “I’ve decided not to revolutionize the world, just yet. It’s a game, my son, but worth playing, after all.”
He was soon lost in the pages of his big Biochemistry volume again, and Mauney contented himself with reconstructing Lee’s philosophy. It struck him as perhaps picturesque, but unnecessarily bleak. No, he did not quite agree with his new friend. There was use in things. Just the prospect of an education was sufficient now to lift Mauney into a mood of happiness. To turn from mental darkness to mental light, to learn of the mysterious forces that promulgated life on the globe and kept it living, to know how peoples had lived and how they lived now, to pierce the meaning of war. In short, to pick the pearls of knowledge from the vast, pebbled coast-line of life—this was a task and an opportunity that thrilled him with splendid resolve and high hopes.
When they reached Merlton Union the platforms borea busy swarm of humanity through which the two new friends made their way with difficulty to the great waiting room. Mauney had a sense of being suddenly dropped into a seething sea of being that emphasized his own minuteness. People sitting, tired and impatient. People walking eagerly about, searching for friends. People consulting official-looking clerks in information booths, or rushing at the heels of red-caps who carried their valises to departing trains. The great roar of the room rose to the high expanse of the roof, like the rushing sound heard in a sea-shell. Individual sounds were lost and swallowed up in the vague, but intense vibrations that beat back from the glazed ceiling, to be disturbed only by the deep, sonorous voice of a man by the gates who called the trains in measured periods, each speech ending in a wistful, sad inflection. Here were people, coming and going, as if it were the very business of life and not, as in Mauney’s case, the great epoch-making event of his whole existence. At the curb, outside the front entrance, he was dismayed by the mad rush of snorting taxi-cabs, pausing but long enough to take their passengers before darting off down the crowded street.
“I’ll tell you,” said Lee, pressing his long forefinger against Mauney’s vest buttons. “Suppose you give your baggage cheques to the city delivery here, then take my grip and go up to the boarding house. Tell Mrs. Manton I’ll be up later. You don’t need to say anything yet about getting a room there. Things are done very deliberately at seventy-three Franklin Street, as you’ll find. Tell her you’re waiting for me. Then just sort of edge in slowly. If she doesn’t ask you to sit down,just grab a chair and make yourself comfortable. Be sociable. Do you get me?”
Mauney nodded.
“I’m all for a show to-night,” Lee continued, “so I’ll be off to one now. If you’re hungry ask Gertrude for something to eat.”
“Who’s Gertrude?” asked Mauney.
“The landlady, Mrs. Manton. She’ll love you if you do. Don’t be bashful, see? And I’ll be home around midnight and we’ll have a chat before we turn in.”
Soon he had gone, leaving Mauney holding his grip and waving for a taxi. One promptly disjoined itself from a waiting line, while an attendant opened the door.
“Where, sir?” asked the driver, craning his neck about.
“No. seventy-three Franklin Street.”
He nodded and away they flew through congested thoroughfares, missing other motor cars by what seemed veritable hair-breadths, passing noisy street-cars, avoiding wary pedestrians who ventured across their way. After traversing what appeared to be the business section of the city, they began to pass along quieter streets and eventually stopped in front of a respectable red-brick house. Mauney paid the driver and got out to inspect the residence. It was a three storey building, squarish in appearance, with a side verandah leading to the only entrance. The cream-colored shades of the front lower room were drawn. As Mauney paused to survey the place a few drops of rain struck his face; so that he hurried up the broad steps, along the verandah to the door, and rang the bell. It was already growing dusk and he could make out nothing through the door-window. Presently a light was switched on and hesaw the figure of a man approaching, who, when he had opened the door, regarded Mauney silently from an expressionless face.
“Does Mrs. Manton live here?”
“Sure! Come in,” invited the man. He was about forty—short, thick-set, agreeable. His smooth, flabby face, devoid of color, was as grey as his short hair, and he had lazy, mirthful, grey eyes, and a lazy smile that exposed many gold teeth. He struck Mauney as a flippant individual. When he had closed the door he turned about and called, “Ho, Gertrude!” Then he faced Mauney again.
“Is it going to rain?” he asked good-naturedly.
“It’s raining now a little.”
The man produced a penknife, opened it, and pried with the blade between his gold-filled incisors. “I knew it was going to rain,” he said. “I’ve got the most expensive barometers here I could afford. These teeth have cost me more money than I’ve got in the bank, and they always ache before a storm. What do you know about that?”
Mauney smiled. “It’s hard luck; that’s all I can think of at the moment.” He was trying to follow Lee’s advice about being sociable, and striving with equal effort to gauge the stranger’s disposition and character. He remembered that Lee had also mentioned the importance of making himself at home. Accordingly, he now removed his hat and hung it on the hall rack, then walked to a hall chair and seated himself comfortably, while the stranger followed his movements with an amused, curious smile.
“Ho! Gertrude!” he called again. Then, after lighting a cigarette and flipping the burnt match into anempty brass jardiniere on the hall stand, he glanced at Mauney. “She’s still the same old Gert,” he explained, as if presupposing a former acquaintanceship to have existed between Mauney and his landlady.
“Is she?”
“Sure! She’s in on a little game in the dining room now. I guess she’s building up a jack-pot and don’t want to decamp.”
Just then a burst of mixed laughter was heard. The door at one side of the hall-way opened and Mauney obtained his first view of Mrs. Manton. Her appearance was not typical of landladies, as Mauney had fancied them. In fact her appearance denied that she was a landlady at all, but suggested that she had just walked out of a theatre at the opposite end from the audience. Mauney had seen pictures of actresses in magazines, and as he beheld Mrs. Manton the word “Spanish” flashed in his mind. She wore an extreme costume of black velvet, with yellow silk facings, and an artificial red poppy stuck into her heavy stock of jet-black hair. About her neck was a long string of pearls, and on her fingers diamonds were flashing in the light. For a moment she regarded Mauney curiously, then walked, with an unhurried, precise, but rhythmic grace that suited her solid, short form, until she stood near him. He rose.
“Good-evening,” she said in a deep, purring voice that was very soothing. “I fear you have the advantage of me.”
“My name’s Bard,” he said quickly, smiled, and stuck out his hand.
“How do you do, Mr. Bard,” she replied with a brightening of her swarthy, pensive face.
“I came up to wait for Mr. Lee,” he explained.
“Well, Mr. Lee is home on his vacation, Mr. Bard, and won’t be back till about October, you know.”
“Oh, yes, he will,” Mauney corrected. “He’ll be here to-night! I just came up on the train with him. You see he got ploughed in biochemistry, and had to come up to write the dope off. Stars and sups, you know.”
“Indeed,” she exclaimed. “Poor old Max! Well, we will be glad to have Max with us again, eh Freddie?”
“You bet. He’s sure a winner, Gertrude,” replied the man who was now introduced to Mauney as Stalton.
“Fred,” she said, “you better go up and see if Max’s room’s all right, will you?”
“Sure thing.”
“And now Mr. Bard,” said Mrs. Manton, indicating the dining-room door by a graceful gesture of her bejewelled hand. “We’ve got on a friendly game of poker, if you’d care to join with us while you wait for Max?”
“I’ve always been unlucky at poker,” prevaricated Mauney, who had never seen the game.
“Ho,” she laughed. “You’re like me. I’m the greatest she Jonah that has been discovered to date. Never mind, it’s only a nickel-ante.”
“That’s not much, is it?” he ventured.
“Of course, we never allow big games, you know,” she explained, as her dark eyes indulged in a scrutiny of his features. “Just a pastime. May be you’d prefer to read, or perhaps just watch the game?”
“Look here,” said Mauney, touching her on the breast with his forefinger, just as Lee had done with him at the Union Station. “I’m about starved—hungry as sin. Do you suppose you could rig me up a bite to eat?”
“Why, you poor boy!” she purred softly, and took hisarm to lead him to the dining room. “Just off the train. Of course you’ll have a snack directly.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Manton.”
“Not at all,” she said indifferently, in a tone that indicated that thanking was not quite normal to seventy-three Franklin Street. “Sadie Grote’s in here. She’ll fix you up.”
The dining-room was a spacious chamber with a large central table. A drop-lamp, whose large oval shade in the design of a huge yellow water lily hung low over the table, distributed a cone of light that revealed four or five people busy at cards about the table. Mauney’s eye caught the other details of the room—a large fire-place at one side, a long Chesterfield couch under the window at one end, with a man reclining on it, a sideboard, with a mirror and a display of glassware upon it, a cabinet gramophone, several large easy chairs, and a smoker’s ash stand.
“I can wait awhile for the grub,” said Mauney, who was really too excited with his new boarding house to be hungry.
“All right. We’ll all be eating after a while,” Mrs. Manton replied. Then, turning to the crowd, “This is Mr. Bard,” she said, simply, took her chair at the table and picked up her hand of cards. Mauney, left to his own devices, sat down in one of the easy chairs and familiarized himself with his surroundings. Besides his landlady were two other women, one addressed as Mrs. Dixon, a fleshy person of forty, with fat, ring-adorned fingers, the other, evidently Sadie Grote, a pretty wisp of a girl top-heavy with blonde hair. One of the men, known familiarly as “Doc,” was a painfully bald individual of fifty, whose speech and gesturesbreathed a foreign atmosphere, and whose erect body had a military poise. The other man, not over thirty, was heavily built, but had an effeminate smile that exposed teeth perfect enough to be envied by the most renowned beauty. He was called “Cliff,” and seemed to have been fascinated by Mrs. Manton, although she treated him with discouraging indifference.
The man on the sofa was completely absorbed in a newspaper, behind which his face was hidden. He lay for fully twenty minutes without moving a muscle, with his long legs stretched out to the very end of the couch. Suddenly he crushed the paper between his hands, and swung himself up to a sitting posture.
“The damned thieves!” he exclaimed in an English accent. “Cutting wages at a time like this. The working man in England to-day is usually either over military age or else crippled from war service. To think of the curs cutting down their wages now! Well, it’s only one more evidence of the fat-headed manner in which everything is done in England—England, the land of blunders!”
Mauney noticed with surprise that none of the people at the table were paying any attention to the irate Englishman’s declamation—the more remarkable that he should continue:
“If they go on messing things up much worse, the working man is going to kick over and raise a bit of hell, and it will serve the skunks jolly well right. I hope that they put so big a land tax on the capitalists that they will lose every square foot of property they possess. It’s not theirs, anyhow. It belongs to the working man.”
Mrs. Manton presently glanced in his direction tobehold him still bathed in the glow of his enthusiastic pronouncement.
“What’s wrong, Jolvin?” she purred softly. “Have they not yet recognized the rights of the working man? How discouraging!”
There was a note of sarcasm in her deep, melodious voice that irritated Jolvin. He had a long, thin face, scooped out at the temples and the cheeks, a narrow, black moustache directly under his long, thin nose, and a permanent dimple in the middle of his long chin. His long, narrow neck rose out of his collar like a jack-in-the-box, and he had an uncanny way of suddenly rotating his face, in conversation, full toward a speaker.