“Where are you going?” John asked when Jack was dressed.
“Back to the hotel,” Jack says. “You looked after everything?”
“Yes,” John says. “It’s all looked after.”
“I’m going to lie down a while,” Jack says.
“I’ll come around for you about a quarter to seven and we’ll go and eat.”
“All right.”
Up at the hotel Jack took off his shoes and his coat and lay down for a while. I wrote a letter. I looked over a couple of times and Jack wasn’t sleeping. He was lying perfectly still but every once in a while his eyes would open. Finally he sits up.
“Want to play some cribbage, Jerry?” he says.
“Sure,” I said.
He went over to his suitcase and got out the cards and the cribbage board. We played cribbage and he won three dollars off me. John knocked at the door and came in.
“Want to play some cribbage, John?” Jack asked him.
John put his kelly down on the table. It was all wet. His coat was wet too.
“Is it raining?” Jack asks.
“It’s pouring,” John says. “The taxi I had, got tied up in the traffic and I got out and walked.”
“Come on, play some cribbage,” Jack says.
“You ought to go and eat.”
“No,” says Jack. “I don’t want to eat yet.”
So they played cribbage for about half an hour and Jack won a dollar and a half off him.
“Well, I suppose we got to go eat,” Jack says. He went to the window and looked out.
“Is it still raining?”
“Yes.”
“Let’s eat in the hotel,” John says.
“All right,” Jack says, “I’ll play you once more to see who pays for the meal.”
After a little while Jack gets up and says, “You buy the meal, John,” and we went downstairs and ate in the big dining-room.
After we ate we went upstairs and Jack played cribbage with John again and won two dollars and a half off him. Jack was feeling pretty good. John had a bag with him with all his stuff in it. Jack took off his shirt and collar and put on a jersey and a sweater, so he wouldn’t catch cold when he came out, and put his ring clothes and his bathrobe in a bag.
“You all ready?” John asks him. “I’ll call up and have them get a taxi.”
Pretty soon the telephone rang and they said the taxi was waiting.
We rode down in the elevator and went out through the lobby, and got in a taxi and rode around to the Garden. It was raining hard but there was a lot of people outside on the streets. The Garden was sold out. As we came in on our way to the dressing-room I saw how full it was. It looked like half a mile down to the ring. It was all dark. Just the lights over the ring.
“It’s a good thing, with this rain, they didn’t try and pull this fight in the ball park,” John said.
“They got a good crowd,” Jack says.
“This is a fight that would draw a lot more than the Garden could hold.”
“You can’t tell about the weather,” Jack says.
John came to the door of the dressing-room and poked his head in. Jack was sitting there with his bathrobe on, he had his arms folded and was looking at the floor. John had a couple of handlers with him. They looked over his shoulder. Jack looked up.
“Is he in?” he asked.
“He’s just gone down,” John said.
We started down. Walcott was just getting into the ring. The crowd gave him a big hand. He climbed through between the ropes and put his two fists together and smiled, and shook them at the crowd, first at one side of the ring, then at the other, and then sat down. Jack got a good hand coming down through the crowd. Jack is Irish and the Irish always get a pretty good hand. An Irishman don’t draw in New York like a Jew or an Italian but they always get a good hand. Jack climbed up and bent down to go through the ropes and Walcott came over from his corner and pushed the rope down for Jack to go through. The crowd thought that was wonderful. Walcott put his hand on Jack’s shoulder and they stood there just for a second.
“So you’re going to be one of these popular champions,” Jack says to him. “Take your goddam hand off my shoulder.”
“Be yourself,” Walcott says.
This is all great for the crowd. How gentlemanly the boys are before the fight! How they wish each other luck!
Solly Freedman came over to our corner while Jack is bandaging his hands and John is over in Walcott’s corner. Jack puts his thumb through the slit in the bandage and then wrapped his hand nice and smooth. I taped it around the wrist and twice across the knuckles.
“Hey,” Freedman says. “Where do you get all that tape?”
“Feel of it,” Jack says. “It’s soft, ain’t it? Don’t be a hick.”
Freedman stands there all the time while Jack bandages the other hand, and one of the boys that’s going to handle him brings the gloves and I pull them on and work them around.
“Say, Freedman,” Jack asks, “what nationality is this Walcott?”
“I don’t know,” Solly says. “He’s some sort of a Dane.”
“He’s a Bohemian,” the lad who brought the gloves said.
The referee called them out to the centre of the ring and Jack walks out. Walcott comes out smiling. They met and the referee put his arm on each of their shoulders.
“Hello, popularity,” Jack says to Walcott.
“Be yourself.”
“What do you call yourself ‘Walcott’ for?” Jack says. “Didn’t you know he was a nigger?”
“Listen—” says the referee, and he gives them the same old line. Once Walcott interrupts him. He grabs Jack’s arm and says, “Can I hit when he’s got me like this?”
“Keep your hands off me,” Jack says. “There ain’t no moving-pictures of this.”
They went back to their corners. I lifted the bathrobe off Jack and he leaned on the ropes and flexed his knees a couple of times and scuffed his shoes in the rosin. The gong rang and Jack turned quick and went out. Walcott came toward him and they touched gloves and as soon as Walcott dropped his hands Jack jumped his left into his face twice. There wasn’t anybody ever boxed better than Jack. Walcott was after him, going forward all the time with his chin on his chest. He’s a hooker and he carries his hands pretty low. All he knows is to get in there and sock. But every time he gets in there close, Jack has the left hand in his face. It’s just as though it’s automatic. Jack just raises the left hand up and it’s in Walcott’s face. Three or four times Jack brings the right over but Walcott gets it on the shoulder or high up on the head. He’s just like all these hookers. The only thing he’s afraid of is another one of the same kind. He’s covered everywhere you can hurt him. He don’t care about a left-hand in his face.
After about four rounds Jack has him bleeding bad and his face all cut up, but every time Walcott’s got in close he’s socked so hard he’s got two big red patches on both sides just below Jack’s ribs. Every time he gets in close, Jack ties him up, then gets one hand loose and uppercuts him, but when Walcott gets his hands loose he socks Jack in the body so they can hear it outside in the street. He’s a socker.
It goes along like that for three rounds more. They don’t talk any. They’re working all the time. We worked over Jack plenty too, in between the rounds. He don’t look good at all but he never does much work in the ring. He don’t move around much and that left-hand is just automatic. It’s just like it was connected with Walcott’s face and Jack just had to wish it in every time. Jack is always calm in close and he doesn’t waste any juice. He knows everything about working in close too and he’s getting away with a lot of stuff. While they were in our corner I watched him tie Walcott up, get his right hand loose, turn it and come up with an uppercut that got Walcott’s nose with the heel of the glove. Walcott was bleeding bad and leaned his nose on Jack’s shoulder so as to give Jack some of it too, and Jack sort of lifted his shoulder sharp and caught him against the nose, and then brought down the right hand and did the same thing again.
Walcott was sore as hell. By the time they’d gone five rounds he hated Jack’s guts. Jack wasn’t sore; that is, he wasn’t any sorer than he always was. He certainly did used to make the fellows he fought hate boxing. That was why he hated Kid Lewis so. He never got the Kid’s goat. Kid Lewis always had about three new dirty things Jack couldn’t do. Jack was as safe as a church all the time he was in there, as long as he was strong. He certainly was treating Walcott rough. The funny thing was it looked as though Jack was an open classic boxer. That was because he had all that stuff too.
After the seventh round Jack says, “My left’s getting heavy.”
From then he started to take a beating. It didn’t show at first. But instead of him running the fight it was Walcott was running it, instead of being safe all the time now he was in trouble. He couldn’t keep him out with the left hand now. It looked as though it was the same as ever, only now instead of Walcott’s punches just missing him they were just hitting him. He took an awful beating in the body.
“What’s the round?” Jack asked.
“The eleventh.”
“I can’t stay,” Jack says. “My legs are going bad.”
Walcott had been just hitting him for a long time. It was like a baseball catcher pulls the ball and takes some of the shock off. From now on Walcott commenced to land solid. He certainly was a socking-machine. Jack was just trying to block everything now. It didn’t show what an awful beating he was taking. In between the rounds I worked on his legs. The muscles would flutter under my hands all the time I was rubbing them. He was sick as hell.
“How’s it go?” he asked John, turning around, his face all swollen.
“It’s his fight.”
“I think I can last,” Jack says. “I don’t want this bohunk to stop me.”
It was going just the way he thought it would. He knew he couldn’t beat Walcott. He wasn’t strong any more. He was all right though. His money was all right and now he wanted to finish it off right to please himself. He didn’t want to be knocked out.
The gong rang and we pushed him out. He went out slow. Walcott came right out after him. Jack put the left in his face and Walcott took it, came in under it and started working on Jack’s body. Jack tried to tie him up and it was just like trying to hold on to a buzz-saw. Jack broke away from it and missed with the right. Walcott clipped him with a left-hook and Jack went down. He went down on his hands and knees and looked at us. The referee started counting. Jack was watching us and shaking his head. At eight John motioned to him. You couldn’t hear on account of the crowd. Jack got up. The referee had been holding Walcott back with one arm while he counted.
When Jack was on his feet Walcott started toward him.
“Watch yourself, Jimmy,” I heard Solly Freedman yell to him.
Walcott came up to Jack looking at him. Jack stuck the left hand at him. Walcott just shook his head. He backed Jack up against the ropes, measured him and then hooked the left very light to the side of Jack’s head and socked the right into the body as hard as he could sock, just as low as he could get it. He must have hit him five inches below the belt. I thought the eyes would come out of Jack’s head. They stuck way out. His mouth come open.
The referee grabbed Walcott. Jack stepped forward. If he went down there went fifty thousand bucks. He walked as though all his insides were going to fall out.
“It wasn’t low,” he said. “It was a accident.”
The crowd were yelling so you couldn’t hear anything.
“I’m all right,” Jack says. They were right in front of us. The referee looks at John and then he shakes his head.
“Come on, you polak son-of-a-bitch,” Jack says to Walcott.
John was hanging onto the ropes. He had the towel ready to chuck in. Jack was standing just a little way out from the ropes. He took a step forward. I saw the sweat come out on his face like somebody had squeezed it and a big drop went down his nose.
“Come on and fight,” Jack says to Walcott.
The referee looked at John and waved Walcott on.
“Go in there, you slob,” he says.
Walcott went in. He didn’t know what to do either. He never thought Jack could have stood it. Jack put the left in his face. There was such a hell of a lot of yelling going on. They were right in front of us. Walcott hit him twice. Jack’s face was the worst thing I ever saw,—the look on it! He was holding himself and all his body together and it all showed on his face. All the time he was thinking and holding his body in where it was busted.
Then he started to sock. His face looked awful all the time. He started to sock with his hands low down by his side, swinging at Walcott. Walcott covered up and Jack was swinging wild at Walcott’s head. Then he swung the left and it hit Walcott in the groin and the right hit Walcott right bang where he’d hit Jack. Way low below the belt. Walcott went down and grabbed himself there and rolled and twisted around.
The referee grabbed Jack and pushed him toward his corner. John jumps into the ring. There was all this yelling going on. The referee was talking with the judges and then the announcer got into the ring with the megaphone and says, “Walcott on a foul.”
The referee is talking to John and he says, “What could I do? Jack wouldn’t take the foul. Then when he’s groggy he fouls him.”
“He’d lost it anyway,” John says.
Jack’s sitting on the chair. I’ve got his gloves off and he’s holding himself in down there with both hands. When he’s got something supporting it his face doesn’t look so bad.
“Go over and say you’re sorry,” John says into his ear. “It’ll look good.”
Jack stands up and the sweat comes out all over his face. I put the bathrobe around him and he holds himself in with one hand under the bathrobe and goes across the ring. They’ve picked Walcott up and they’re working on him. There’re a lot of people in Walcott’s corner. Nobody speaks to Jack. He leans over Walcott.
“I’m sorry,” Jack says. “I didn’t mean to foul you.”
Walcott doesn’t say anything. He looks too damned sick.
“Well, you’re the champion now,” Jack says to him. “I hope you get a hell of a lot of fun out of it.”
“Leave the kid alone,” Solly Freedman says.
“Hello, Solly,” Jack says. “I’m sorry I fouled your boy.”
Freedman just looks at him.
Jack went to his corner walking that funny jerky way and we got him down through the ropes and through the reporters’ tables and out down the aisle. A lot of people want to slap Jack on the back. He goes out through all that mob in his bathrobe to the dressing-room. It’s a popular win for Walcott. That’s the way the money was bet in the Garden.
Once we got inside the dressing-room Jack lay down and shut his eyes.
“We want to get to the hotel and get a doctor,” John says.
“I’m all busted inside,” Jack says.
“I’m sorry as hell, Jack,” John says.
“It’s all right,” Jack says.
He lies there with his eyes shut.
“They certainly tried a nice double-cross,” John said.
“Your friends Morgan and Steinfelt,” Jack said. “You got nice friends.”
He lies there, his eyes are open now. His face has still got that awful drawn look.
“It’s funny how fast you can think when it means that much money,” Jack says.
“You’re some boy, Jack,” John says.
“No,” Jack says. “It was nothing.”
A SIMPLE ENQUIRY
Outside, the snow was higher than the window. The sunlight came in through the window and shone on a map on the pine-board wall of the hut. The sun was high and the light came in over the top of the snow. A trench had been cut along the open side of the hut, and each clear day the sun, shining on the wall, reflected heat against the snow and widened the trench. It was late March. The major sat at a table against the wall. His adjutant sat at another table.
Around the major’s eyes were two white circles where his snow-glasses had protected his face from the sun on the snow. The rest of his face had been burned and then tanned and then burned through the tan. His nose was swollen and there were edges of loose skin where blisters had been. While he worked at the papers he put the fingers of his left hand into a saucer of oil and then spread the oil over his face, touching it very gently with the tips of his fingers. He was very careful to drain his fingers on the edge of the saucer so there was only a film of oil on them, and after he had stroked his forehead and his cheeks, he stroked his nose very delicately between his fingers. When he had finished he stood up, took the saucer of oil and went into the small room of the hut where he slept. “I’m going to take a little sleep,” he said to the adjutant. In that army an adjutant is not a commissioned officer. “You will finish up.”
“Yes, signor maggiore,” the adjutant answered. He leaned back in his chair and yawned. He took a paper-covered book out of the pocket of his coat and opened it; then laid it down on the table and lit his pipe. He leaned forward on the table to read and puffed at his pipe. Then he closed the book and put it back in his pocket. He had too much paper-work to get through. He could not enjoy reading until it was done. Outside, the sun went behind a mountain and there was no more light on the wall of the hut. A soldier came in and put some pine branches, chopped into irregular lengths, into the stove. “Be soft, Pinin,” the adjutant said to him. “The major is sleeping.”
Pinin was the major’s orderly. He was a dark-faced boy, and he fixed the stove, putting the pine wood in carefully, shut the door, and went into the back of the hut again. The adjutant went on with his papers.
“Tonani,” the major called.
“Signor maggiore?”
“Send Pinin in to me.”
“Pinin!” the adjutant called. Pinin came into the room. “The major wants you,” the adjutant said.
Pinin walked across the main room of the hut toward the major’s door. He knocked on the half-opened door. “Signor maggiore?”
“Come in,” the adjutant heard the major say, “and shut the door.”
Inside the room the major lay on his bunk. Pinin stood beside the bunk. The major lay with his head on the rucksack that he had stuffed with spare clothing to make a pillow. His long, burned, oiled face looked at Pinin. His hands lay on the blankets.
“You are nineteen?” he asked.
“Yes, signor maggiore.”
“You have ever been in love?”
“How do you mean, signor maggiore?”
“In love—with a girl?”
“I have been with girls.”
“I did not ask that. I asked if you had been in love—with a girl.”
“Yes, signor maggiore.”
“You are in love with this girl now? You don’t write her. I read all your letters.”
“I am in love with her,” Pinin said, “but I do not write her.”
“You are sure of this?”
“I am sure.”
“Tonani,” the major said in the same tone of voice, “can you hear me talking?”
There was no answer from the next room.
“He can not hear,” the major said. “And you are quite sure that you love a girl?”
“I am sure.”
“And,” the major looked at him quickly, “that you are not corrupt?”
“I don’t know what you mean, corrupt.”
“All right,” the major said. “You needn’t be superior.”
Pinin looked at the floor. The major looked at his brown face, down and up him, and at his hands. Then he went on, not smiling, “And you don’t really want—” the major paused. Pinin looked at the floor. “That your great desire isn’t really—” Pinin looked at the floor. The major leaned his head back on the rucksack and smiled. He was really relieved: life in the army was too complicated. “You’re a good boy,” he said. “You’re a good boy, Pinin. But don’t be superior and be careful some one else doesn’t come along and take you.”
Pinin stood still beside the bunk.
“Don’t be afraid,” the major said. His hands were folded on the blankets. “I won’t touch you. You can go back to your platoon if you like. But you had better stay on as my servant. You’ve less chance of being killed.”
“Do you want anything of me, signor maggiore?”
“No,” the major said. “Go on and get on with whatever you were doing. Leave the door open when you go out.”
Pinin went out, leaving the door open. The adjutant looked up at him as he walked awkwardly across the room and out the door. Pinin was flushed and moved differently than he had moved when he brought in the wood for the fire. The adjutant looked after him and smiled. Pinin came in with more wood for the stove. The major, lying on his bunk, looking at his cloth-covered helmet and his snow-glasses that hung from a nail on the wall, heard him walk across the floor. The little devil, he thought, I wonder if he lied to me.
TEN INDIANS
Afterone Fourth of July, Nick, driving home late from town in the big wagon with Joe Garner and his family, passed nine drunken Indians along the road. He remembered there were nine because Joe Garner, driving along in the dusk, pulled up the horses, jumped down into the road and dragged an Indian out of the wheel rut. The Indian had been asleep, face down in the sand. Joe dragged him into the bushes and got back up on the wagon-box.
“That makes nine of them,” Joe said, “just between here and the edge of town.”
“Them Indians,” said Mrs. Garner.
Nick was on the back seat with the two Garner boys. He was looking out from the back seat to see the Indian where Joe had dragged him alongside of the road.
“Was it Billy Tabeshaw?” Carl asked.
“No.”
“His pants looked mighty like Billy.”
“All Indians wear the same kind of pants.”
“I didn’t see him at all,” Frank said. “Pa was down into the road and back up again before I seen a thing. I thought he was killing a snake.”
“Plenty of Indians’ll kill snakes to-night, I guess,” Joe Garner said.
“Them Indians,” said Mrs. Garner.
They drove along. The road turned off from the main highway and went up into the hills. It was hard pulling for the horses and the boys got down and walked. The road was sandy. Nick looked back from the top of the hill by the schoolhouse. He saw the lights of Petoskey and, off across Little Traverse Bay, the lights of Harbour Springs. They climbed back in the wagon again.
“They ought to put some gravel on that stretch,” Joe Garner said. The wagon went along the road through the woods. Joe and Mrs. Garner sat close together on the front seat. Nick sat between the two boys. The road came out into a clearing.
“Right here was where Pa ran over the skunk.”
“It was further on.”
“It don’t make no difference where it was,” Joe said without turning his head. “One place is just as good as another to run over a skunk.”
“I saw two skunks last night,” Nick said.
“Where?”
“Down by the lake. They were looking for dead fish along the beach.”
“They were coons probably,” Carl said.
“They were skunks. I guess I know skunks.”
“You ought to,” Carl said. “You got an Indian girl.”
“Stop talking that way, Carl,” said Mrs. Garner.
“Well, they smell about the same.”
Joe Garner laughed.
“You stop laughing, Joe,” Mrs. Garner said. “I won’t have Carl talk that way.”
“Have you got an Indian girl, Nickie?” Joe asked.
“No.”
“He has too, Pa,” Frank said. “Prudence Mitchell’s his girl.”
“She’s not.”
“He goes to see her every day.”
“I don’t.” Nick, sitting between the two boys in the dark, felt hollow and happy inside himself to be teased about Prudence Mitchell. “She ain’t my girl,” he said.
“Listen to him,” said Carl. “I see them together every day.”
“Carl can’t get a girl,” his mother said, “not even a squaw.”
Carl was quiet.
“Carl ain’t no good with girls,” Frank said.
“You shut up.”
“You’re all right, Carl,” Joe Garner said. “Girls never got a man anywhere. Look at your pa.”
“Yes, that’s what you would say,” Mrs. Garner moved close to Joe as the wagon jolted. “Well, you had plenty of girls in your time.”
“I’ll bet Pa wouldn’t ever have had a squaw for a girl.”
“Don’t you think it,” Joe said. “You better watch out to keep Prudie, Nick.”
His wife whispered to him and Joe laughed.
“What you laughing at?” asked Frank.
“Don’t you say it, Garner,” his wife warned. Joe laughed again.
“Nickie can have Prudence,” Joe Garner said. “I got a good girl.”
“That’s the way to talk,” Mrs. Garner said.
The horses were pulling heavily in the sand. Joe reached out in the dark with the whip.
“Come on, pull into it. You’ll have to pull harder than this to-morrow.”
They trotted down the long hill, the wagon jolting. At the farmhouse everybody got down. Mrs. Garner unlocked the door, went inside, and came out with a lamp in her hand. Carl and Nick unloaded the things from the back of the wagon. Frank sat on the front seat to drive to the barn and put up the horses. Nick went up the steps and opened the kitchen door. Mrs. Garner was building a fire in the stove. She turned from pouring kerosene on the wood.
“Good-by, Mrs. Garner,” Nick said. “Thanks for taking me.”
“Oh shucks, Nickie.”
“I had a wonderful time.”
“We like to have you. Won’t you stay and eat some supper?”
“I better go. I think Dad probably waited for me.”
“Well, get along then. Send Carl up to the house, will you?”
“All right.”
“Good-night, Nickie.”
“Good-night, Mrs. Garner.”
Nick went out the farmyard and down to the barn. Joe and Frank were milking.
“Good-night,” Nick said. “I had a swell time.”
“Good-night, Nick,” Joe Garner called. “Aren’t you going to stay and eat?”
“No, I can’t. Will you tell Carl his mother wants him?”
“All right. Good-night, Nickie.”
Nick walked barefoot along the path through the meadow below the barn. The path was smooth and the dew was cool on his bare feet. He climbed a fence at the end of the meadow, went down through a ravine, his feet wet in the swamp mud, and then climbed up through the dry beech woods until he saw the lights of the cottage. He climbed over the fence and walked around to the front porch. Through the window he saw his father sitting by the table, reading in the light from the big lamp. Nick opened the door and went in.
“Well, Nickie,” his father said, “was it a good day?”
“I had a swell time, Dad. It was a swell Fourth of July.”
“Are you hungry?”
“You bet.”
“What did you do with your shoes?”
“I left them in the wagon at Garner’s.”
“Come on out to the kitchen.”
Nick’s father went ahead with the lamp. He stopped and lifted the lid of the ice-box. Nick went on into the kitchen. His father brought in a piece of cold chicken on a plate and a pitcher of milk and put them on the table before Nick. He put down the lamp.
“There’s some pie too,” he said. “Will that hold you?”
“It’s grand.”
His father sat down in a chair beside the oilcloth-covered table. He made a big shadow on the kitchen wall.
“Who won the ball game?”
“Petoskey. Five to three.”
His father sat watching him eat and filled his glass from the milk-pitcher. Nick drank and wiped his mouth on his napkin. His father reached over to the shelf for the pie. He cut Nick a big piece. It was huckleberry pie.
“What did you do, Dad?”
“I went out fishing in the morning.”
“What did you get?”
“Only perch.”
His father sat watching Nick eat the pie.
“What did you do this afternoon?” Nick asked.
“I went for a walk up by the Indian camp.”
“Did you see anybody?”
“The Indians were all in town getting drunk.”
“Didn’t you see anybody at all?”
“I saw your friend, Prudie.”
“Where was she?”
“She was in the woods with Frank Washburn. I ran onto them. They were having quite a time.”
His father was not looking at him.
“What were they doing?”
“I didn’t stay to find out.”
“Tell me what they were doing.”
“I don’t know,” his father said. “I just heard them threshing around.”
“How did you know it was them?”
“I saw them.”
“I thought you said you didn’t see them.”
“Oh, yes, I saw them.”
“Who was it with her?” Nick asked.
“Frank Washburn.”
“Were they—were they——”
“Were they what?”
“Were they happy?”
“I guess so.”
His father got up from the table and went out the kitchen screen door. When he came back Nick was looking at his plate. He had been crying.
“Have some more?” His father picked up the knife to cut the pie.
“No,” said Nick.
“You better have another piece.”
“No, I don’t want any.”
His father cleared off the table.
“Where were they in the woods?” Nick asked.
“Up back of the camp.” Nick looked at his plate. His father said, “You better go to bed, Nick.”
“All right.”
Nick went into his room, undressed, and got into bed. He heard his father moving around in the living-room. Nick lay in the bed with his face in the pillow.
“My heart’s broken,” he thought. “If I feel this way my heart must be broken.”
After a while he heard his father blow out the lamp and go into his own room. He heard a wind come up in the trees outside and felt it come in cool through the screen. He lay for a long time with his face in the pillow, and after a while he forgot to think about Prudence and finally he went to sleep. When he awoke in the night he heard the wind in the hemlock trees outside the cottage and the waves of the lake coming in on the shore, and he went back to sleep. In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken.
A CANARY FOR ONE
Thetrain passed very quickly a long, red stone house with a garden and four thick palm-trees with tables under them in the shade. On the other side was the sea. Then there was a cutting through red stone and clay, and the sea was only occasionally and far below against rocks.
“I bought him in Palermo,” the American lady said. “We only had an hour ashore and it was Sunday morning. The man wanted to be paid in dollars and I gave him a dollar and a half. He really sings very beautifully.”
It was very hot in the train and it was very hot in thelit saloncompartment. There was no breeze came through the open window. The American lady pulled the window-blind down and there was no more sea, even occasionally. On the other side there was glass, then the corridor, then an open window, and outside the window were dusty trees and an oiled road and flat fields of grapes, with gray-stone hills behind them.
There was smoke from many tall chimneys—coming into Marseilles, and the train slowed down and followed one track through many others into the station. The train stayed twenty-five minutes in the station at Marseilles and the American lady bought a copy ofThe Daily Mailand a half-bottle of Evian water. She walked a little way along the station platform, but she stayed near the steps of the car because at Cannes, where it stopped for twelve minutes, the train had left with no signal of departure and she had only gotten on just in time. The American lady was a little deaf and she was afraid that perhaps signals of departure were given and that she did not hear them.
The train left the station in Marseilles and there was not only the switch-yards and the factory smoke but, looking back, the town of Marseilles and the harbor with stone hills behind it and the last of the sun on the water. As it was getting dark the train passed a farmhouse burning in a field. Motor-cars were stopped along the road and bedding and things from inside the farmhouse were spread in the field. Many people were watching the house burn. After it was dark the train was in Avignon. People got on and off. At the news-stand Frenchmen, returning to Paris, bought that day’s French papers. On the station platform were negro soldiers. They wore brown uniforms and were tall and their faces shone, close under the electric light. Their faces were very black and they were too tall to stare. The train left Avignon station with the negroes standing there. A short white sergeant was with them.
Inside thelit saloncompartment the porter had pulled down the three beds from inside the wall and prepared them for sleeping. In the night the American lady lay without sleeping because the train was arapideand went very fast and she was afraid of the speed in the night. The American lady’s bed was the one next to the window. The canary from Palermo, a cloth spread over his cage, was out of the draft in the corridor that went into the compartment wash-room. There was a blue light outside the compartment, and all night the train went very fast and the American lady lay awake and waited for a wreck.
In the morning the train was near Paris, and after the American lady had come out from the wash-room, looking very wholesome and middle-aged and American in spite of not having slept, and had taken the cloth off the birdcage and hung the cage in the sun, she went back to the restaurant-car for breakfast. When she came back to thelit saloncompartment again, the beds had been pushed back into the wall and made into seats, the canary was shaking his feathers in the sunlight that came through the open window, and the train was much nearer Paris.
“He loves the sun,” the American lady said. “He’ll sing now in a little while.”
The canary shook his feathers and pecked into them. “I’ve always loved birds,” the American lady said. “I’m taking him home to my little girl. There—he’s singing now.”
The canary chirped and the feathers on his throat stood out, then he dropped his bill and pecked into his feathers again. The train crossed a river and passed through a very carefully tended forest. The train passed through many outside of Paris towns. There were tram-cars in the towns and big advertisements for the Belle Jardinière and Dubonnet and Pernod on the walls toward the train. All that the train passed through looked as though it were before breakfast. For several minutes I had not listened to the American lady, who was talking to my wife.
“Is your husband American too?” asked the lady.
“Yes,” said my wife. “We’re both Americans.”
“I thought you were English.”
“Oh, no.”
“Perhaps that was because I wore braces,” I said. I had started to say suspenders and changed it to braces in the mouth, to keep my English character. The American lady did not hear. She was really quite deaf; she read lips, and I had not looked toward her. I had looked out of the window. She went on talking to my wife.
“I’m so glad you’re Americans. American men make the best husbands,” the American lady was saying. “That was why we left the Continent, you know. My daughter fell in love with a man in Vevey.” She stopped. “They were simply madly in love.” She stopped again. “I took her away, of course.”
“Did she get over it?” asked my wife.
“I don’t think so,” said the American lady. “She wouldn’t eat anything and she wouldn’t sleep at all. I’ve tried so very hard, but she doesn’t seem to take an interest in anything. She doesn’t care about things. I couldn’t have her marrying a foreigner.” She paused. “Some one, a very good friend, told me once, ‘No foreigner can make an American girl a good husband.’ ”
“No,” said my wife, “I suppose not.”
The American lady admired my wife’s travelling-coat, and it turned out that the American lady had bought her own clothes for twenty years now from the same maison de couturier in the Rue Saint Honoré. They had her measurements, and a vendeuse who knew her and her tastes picked the dresses out for her and they were sent to America. They came to the post-office near where she lived up-town in New York, and the duty was never exorbitant because they opened the dresses there in the post-office to appraise them and they were always very simple-looking and with no gold lace nor ornaments that would make the dresses look expensive. Before the present vendeuse, named Thérèse, there had been another vendeuse, named Amélie. Altogether there had only been these two in the twenty years. It had always been the same couturier. Prices, however, had gone up. The exchange, though, equalized that. They had her daughter’s measurements now too. She was grown up and there was not much chance of their changing now.
The train was now coming into Paris. The fortifications were levelled but grass had not grown. There were many cars standing on tracks—brown wooden restaurant-cars and brown wooden sleeping-cars that would go to Italy at five o’clock that night, if that train still left at five; the cars were marked Paris-Rome, and cars, with seats on the roofs, that went back and forth to the suburbs with, at certain hours, people in all the seats and on the roofs, if that were the way it were still done, and passing were the white walls and many windows of houses. Nothing had eaten any breakfast.
“Americans make the best husbands,” the American lady said to my wife. I was getting down the bags. “American men are the only men in the world to marry.”
“How long ago did you leave Vevey?” asked my wife.
“Two years ago this fall. It’s her, you know, that I’m taking the canary to.”
“Was the man your daughter was in love with a Swiss?”
“Yes,” said the American lady. “He was from a very good family in Vevey. He was going to be an engineer. They met there in Vevey. They used to go on long walks together.”
“I know Vevey,” said my wife. “We were there on our honeymoon.”
“Were you really? That must have been lovely. I had no idea, of course, that she’d fall in love with him.”
“It was a very lovely place,” said my wife.
“Yes,” said the American lady. “Isn’t it lovely? Where did you stop there?”
“We stayed at the Trois Couronnes,” said my wife.
“It’s such a fine old hotel,” said the American lady.
“Yes,” said my wife. “We had a very fine room and in the fall the country was lovely.”
“Were you there in the fall?”
“Yes,” said my wife.
We were passing three cars that had been in a wreck. They were splintered open and the roofs sagged in.
“Look,” I said. “There’s been a wreck.”
The American lady looked and saw the last car. “I was afraid of just that all night,” she said. “I have terrific presentiments about things sometimes. I’ll never travel on arapideagain at night. There must be other comfortable trains that don’t go so fast.”
Then the train was in the dark of the Gare de Lyons, and then stopped and porters came up to the windows. I handed bags through the windows, and we were out on the dim longness of the platform, and the American lady put herself in charge of one of three men from Cook’s who said: “Just a moment, madame, and I’ll look for your name.”
The porter brought a truck and piled on the baggage, and my wife said good-by and I said good-by to the American lady, whose name had been found by the man from Cook’s on a typewritten page in a sheaf of typewritten pages which he replaced in his pocket.
We followed the porter with the truck down the long cement platform beside the train. At the end was a gate and a man took the tickets.
We were returning to Paris to set up separate residences.