The figure of a woman sat crouched forward on one of the lowermost steps of the brownstone dwelling which was keeping a domestic tradition in a street mostly gone to shops and small restaurants and local express-offices. The house was black behind its closed shutters, and the woman remained sitting there because no one could have come out of its door for a year past to hunt her away. The neighborhood policeman faltered in going by, and then he kept on. The three people who came out of the large, old-fashioned hotel, half a block off, on their way for dinner to a Frenchtable d'hôtewhich they had heard of, stopped and looked at the woman. They were a father and his son and daughter, and it was something like a family instinct that controlled them, in their pause before the woman crouching on the steps.
It was the early dusk of a December day, and the day was very chilly. "She seems to be sick orsomething," the father vaguely surmised. "Or asleep."
The three looked at the woman, but they did nothing for a moment. They would rather have gone on, but they waited to see if anything would happen to release them from the spell that they seemed to have laid upon themselves. They were conditional New-Yorkers of long sojourn, and it was from no apparent motive that the son wore evening dress, which his unbuttoned overcoat discovered, and an opera-hat. He would not have dressed so for that problematical Frenchtable d'hôte; probably he was going on later to some society affair. He now put in effect the father's impulse to go closer and look at the woman.
"She seems to be asleep," he reported.
"Shouldn't you think she would take cold? She will get her death there. Oughtn't we to do something?" the daughter asked, but she left it to the father, and he said:
"Probably somebody will come by."
"That we could leave her to?" the daughter pursued.
"We could do that without waiting," the son commented.
"Well, yes," the father assented; but they did not go on. They waited, helplessly, and then somebody came by. It was a young girl, not verydefinite in the dusk, except that she was unmistakably of the working class; she was simply dressed, though with the New York instinct for clothes. Their having stopped there seemed to stay her involuntarily, and after a glance in the direction of their gaze she asked the daughter:
"Is she sick, do you think?"
"We don't know what's the matter. But she oughtn't to stay there."
Something velvety in the girl's voice had made its racial quality sensible to the ear; as she went up to the crouching woman and bent forward over her and then turned to them, a street lamp threw its light on her face, and they saw that she was a light shade of colored girl.
"She seems to be sleeping."
"Perhaps," the son began, "she's not quite—" But he did not go on.
The girl looked round at the others and suggested, "She must be somebody's mother!"
The others all felt abashed in their several sorts and degrees, but in their several sorts and degrees they all decided that there was something romantic, sentimental, theatrical in the girl's words, like something out of some cheap story-paper story.
The father wondered if that kind of thing was current among that kind of people. He had asort of esthetic pleasure in the character and condition expressed by the words.
"Well, yes," he said, "if she has children, or has had." The girl looked at him uncertainly, and then he added, "But, of course—"
The son went up to the woman again, and asked: "Aren't you well? Can we do anything for you? It won't do to stay here, you know." The woman only made a low murmur, and he said to his sister, "Suppose we get her up."
His sister did not come forward promptly, and the colored girl said, "I'll help you."
She took one arm of the woman and the son took the other, and they lifted her, without her connivance, to her feet and kept her on them. Then they walked her down the steps. On the level below she showed taller than either of them; she was bundled up in different incoherent wraps; her head was muffled, and she wore a battered bonnet at an involuntary slant.
"I don't know exactly what we shall do with her," the son said.
"We ought to get her home somehow," the daughter said.
The father proposed nothing, but the colored girl said, "If we keep walking her along, we'll come to a policeman and we can—"
A hoarse rumble of protest came from themuffled head of the woman, and the girl put her ear closer. "Want to go home? Well, the policeman will take you. We don't know where you live, and we haven't the time."
The woman seemed to have nothing to say further, and they began walking her westward; the colored girl supported her on one hand, and the son, in his evening dress and opera-hat, on the other.
The daughter followed in a vague anxiety, but the father went along, enjoying the anomaly, and happy in his relish of that phrase, "She must be somebody's mother." It now sounded to him like a catch from one of those New York songs, popular in the order of life where the mother represents what is best and holiest. He recalled a vaudeville ballad with the refrain of "A Boy's Best Friend is his Mother," which, when he heard it in a vaudeville theater, threatened the gallery floor under the applauding feet of the frenzied audience. Probably this colored girl belonged to that order of life; he wished he could know her social circumstance and what her outlook on the greater world might be. She seemed a kind creature, poor thing, and he respected her. "Somebody's mother"—he liked that.
They all walked westward, aimlessly, except that thetable d'hôtewhere they had meant to dinewas in that direction; they had heard of it as an amusingly harmless French place, and they were fond of such mild adventures.
The old woman contributed nothing to the definition of their progress. She stumbled and mumbled along, but between Seventh Avenue and Eighth she stubbornly arrested her guardians. "She says"—the colored girl translated some obscure avowal across her back—"she says she wants to go home, and she lives up in Harlem."
"Oh, well, that's good," the father said, with an optimistic amiability. "We'd better help walk her across to Ninth Avenue and put her on a car, and tell the conductor where to let her off."
He was not helping walk her himself, but he enjoyed his son's doing it in evening dress and opera-hat, with that kind colored girl on the other side of the mother; the composition was agreeably droll. The daughter did not like it, and she cherished the ideal of a passing policeman to take the old woman in charge.
No policeman passed, though great numbers of other people met them without apparently finding anything noticeable in the spectacle which their group presented. Among the crowds going and coming on the avenues which they crossed scarcely any turned to look at them, or was moved by the sense of anything odd in them.
The old woman herself did nothing to attract public notice till they were midway between Seventh and Eighth avenues. She mumbled something from time to time which the colored girl interpreted to the rest as her continued wish to go home. She was now clearer about her street and number. The girl, as if after question of her own generous spirit, said she did not see howshecould go with her; she was expected at home herself.
"Oh, you won't have to go with her; we'll just put her aboard the Ninth Avenue car," the father encouraged her. He would have encouraged any one; he was enjoying the whole affair.
At a certain moment, for no apparent reason, the mother decided to sit down on a door-step. It proved to be the door-step of a house where from time to time colored people—sometimes of one sex, sometimes of another—went in or came out. The door seemed to open directly into a large room where dancing and dining were going on concurrently. At a long table colored people sat eating, and behind their chairs on both sides of the room and at the ends of the table colored couples were waltzing.
The effect was the more curious because, except for some almost inaudible music, the scene passed in silence. Those who were eating were notvisibly incommoded by those revolving at their backs; the waltzers turned softly around and around, untempted by the table now before them, now behind them. When some of the diners or dancers came out, they stumbled over the old woman on the door-step without minding or stopping to inquire. Those outside, when they went in, fell over her with like equanimity and joined the strange company within.
The father murmured to himself the lines,
"'Vast forms that move fantasticallyTo a discordant melody—'"
"'Vast forms that move fantasticallyTo a discordant melody—'"
with a remote trouble of mind because the words were at once so graphic and yet so imperfectly applicable. The son and daughter exchanged a silent wonder as long as they could bear it; then the daughter asked the colored girl:
"What is it?"
"It's a boarding-house," the girl answered, simply.
"Oh," the daughter said.
Sounds of more decided character than before now came from the figure on the door-step.
"She seems to be saying something," the daughter suggested in general terms. "What is she saying?" she asked the colored girl.
The girl stooped over and listened. Then she answered, "She's swearing."
"Swearing? What about? Whom is she swearing at?"
"At me, I reckon. She says, why don't I take her home."
"Well, why doesn't she get up, then?"
"She says she won't."
"We can't carry her to the car," the daughter noted.
"Oh, why not?" the father merrily demanded.
The daughter turned to her brother. They were both very respectful to their father, but the son agreed with his sister when she said: "Papa would joke about anything. But this has passed a joke. We must get this old thing up and start her off."
Upon experiment they could not get the old thing up, even with the help of the kind colored girl. They had to let her be, and the colored girl reported, after stooping over her again, "She says she can't walk."
"She walked here well enough," the daughter said.
"Notverywell," the father amended.
His daughter did not notice him. She said to her brother: "Well, now you must go and find a policeman. It's strange none has gone by."
It was also strange that still their group remained without attracting the notice of the passers. Nobody stopped to speak or even stare; perhaps the phenomena of that boarding-househad ceased to have surprises for the public of the neighborhood, and they in their momentary relation to it would naturally be without interest.
The brother went away, leaving his sister with their father and that kind colored creature in charge of the old woman, now more and more quiescent on the door-step; she had ceased to swear, or even to speak. The brother came back after a time that seemed long, and said that he could not find a policeman anywhere, and at the same moment, as if the officer had been following at his heels, a policeman crossed the street from just behind him.
The daughter ran after him, and asked if he would not come and look at the old woman who had so steadfastly remained in their charge, and she rapidly explained.
"Sure, lady," the policeman said, and he turned from crossing the street and went up to the old woman. He laid his hand on her shoulder, and his touch seemed magical. "What's the matter? Can't you stand up?" She stood up as if at something familiar in the voice of authority. "Where do you live?" She gave an address altogether different from that she had given before—a place on the next avenue, within a block or two. "You'd better go home. You can walk, can't you?"
"I can walk well enough," she answered in a tone of vexation, and she made her word good by walking quite actively away in the direction she had given.
The kind colored girl became a part of the prevalent dark after refusing the thanks of the others. The daughter then fervently offered them to the policeman.
"That's all right, lady," he said, and the incident had closed except for her emotion at seeing him enter a police-station precisely across the street, where they could have got a dozen policemen in a moment.
"Well," the father said, "we might as well go to our Frenchtable d'hôtenow."
"Oh," the son said, as if that reminded him, "the place seems to be shut."
"Well, then, we might as well go back to the hotel," the father decided. "I dare say we shall do quite as well there."
On the way the young people laughed over the affair and their escape from it, especially at the strange appearance and disappearance of the kind colored girl, with her tag of sentiment, and at the instant compliance of the old woman with the suggestion of the policeman.
The father followed, turning the matter over in his mind. Did mere motherhood hallow thatold thing to the colored girl and her sort and condition? Was there a superstition of motherhood among such people which would endear this disreputable old thing to their affection and reverence? Did such people hold mothers in tenderer regard than people of larger means? Would a mother in distress or merely embarrassment instantly appeal to their better nature as a case of want or sickness in the neighborhood always appealed to their compassion? Would her family now welcome the old thing home from her aberration more fondly than the friends of one who had arrived in a carriage among them in a good street? But, after all, how little one knew of other people! How little one knew of one self, for that matter! How next to nothing one knew of Somebody's Mother! It did not necessarily follow from anything they knew of her that she was a mother at all. Her motherhood might be the mere figment of that kind colored girl's emotional fancy. She might be Nobody's Mother.
When it came to this the father laughed, too. Why, anyhow, were mothers more sacred than fathers? If they had found an old man in that old woman's condition on those steps, would that kind colored girl have appealed to them in his behalf as Somebody's Father?
He had gone down at Christmas, where our hostHad opened up his house on the Maine coast,For the week's holidays, and we were all,On Christmas night, sitting in the great hall,About the corner fireplace, while we toldStories like those that people, young and old,Have told at Christmas firesides from the first,Till one who crouched upon the hearth, and nursedHis knees in his claspt arms, threw back his head,And fixed our host with laughing eyes, and said,"This is so good, here—with your hickory logsBlazing like natural-gas ones on the dogs,And sending out their flicker on the wallAnd rafters of your mock-baronial hall,All in fumed-oak, and on your polished floor,And the steel-studded panels of your door—I think you owe the general make-believeSome sort of story that will somehow giveA more ideal completeness to our case,And make each several listener in his place—Or hers—sit up, with a real goose-flesh creepingAll over him—or her—in proper keepingWith the locality and hour and mood.Come!" And amid the cries of "Yes!" and "Good!"Our host laughed back; then, with a serious air,Looked around him on our hemicycle, whereHe sat midway of it. "Why," he began,But interrupted by the other man,He paused for him to say: "Nothing remote,But something with the actual Yankee noteOf here and now in it!" "I'll do my best,"Our host replied, "to satisfy a guest.What do you say to Barberry Cove? And wouldFive years be too long past?" "No, both are good.Go on!" "You noticed that big house to-dayClose to the water, and the sloop that lay,Stripped for the winter, there, beside the pier?Well, there she has lain just so, year after year;And she will never leave her pier again;But once, each spring she sailed in sun or rain,For Bay Chaleur—or Bay Shaloor, as theyLike better to pronounce it down this way.""I like Shaloor myself rather the best.But go ahead," said the exacting guest.And with a glance around at us that said,"Don't let me bore you!" our host went ahead."Captain Gilroy built the big house, and heStill lives there with his aging family.He built the sloop, and when he used to comeBack from the Banks he made her more his home,With his two boys, than the big house. The twoCounted with him a good half of her crew,Until it happened, on the Banks, one dayThe oldest boy got in a steamer's way,And went down in his dory. In the fallThe others came without him. That was allThat showed in either one of them exceptThat now the father and the brother sleptAshore, and not on board. When the spring cameThey sailed for the old fishing-ground the sameAs ever. Yet, not quite the same. The brother,If you believed what folks say, kissed his motherGood-by in going; and by general rumor,The father, so far yielding as to humorHis daughters' weakness, rubbed his stubbly cheekAgainst their lips. Neither of them would speak,But the dumb passion of their love and griefIn so much show at parting found relief."The weeks passed and the months. Sometimes they heardAt home, by letter, from the sloop, or wordOf hearsay from the fleet. But by and byAlong about the middle of July,A time in which they had no news began,And holding unbrokenly through August, ranInto September. Then, one afternoon,While the world hung between the sun and moon,And while the mother and her girls were sittingTogether with their sewing and their knitting,—Before the early-coming evening's gloomHad gathered round them in the living-room,Helplessly wondering to each other whenThey should hear something from their absent men,—They saw, all three, against the window-pane,A face that came and went, and came again,Three times, as though for each of them, aboutAs high up from the porch's floor withoutAs a man's head would be that stooped to stareInto the room on their own level there.Its eyes dwelt on them wistfully as ifLonging to speak with the dumb lips some griefThey could not speak. The women did not startOr scream, though each one of them, in her heart,Knew she was looking on no living face,But stared, as dumb as it did, in her place."Here our host paused, and one sigh broke from allOur circle whom his tale had held in thrall.But he who had required it of him spokeIn what we others felt an ill-timed joke:"Well, this is something like!" A girl said, "Don't!"As if it hurt, and he said, "Well, I won't.Go on!" And in a sort of muse our hostSaid: "I suppose we all expect a ghostWill sometimes come to us. But I doubt if weAre moved by its coming as we thought to be.At any rate, the women were not scared,But, as I said, they simply sat and staredTill the face vanished. Then the mother said,'It was your father, girls, and he is dead.'But both had known him; and now all went onMuch as before till three weeks more were gone,When, one night sitting as they sat before,Together with their mother, at the doorThey heard a fumbling hand, and on the walkUp from the pier, the tramp and muffled talkOf different wind-blown voices that they knewFor the hoarse voices of their father's crew.Then the door opened, and their father stoodBefore them, palpably in flesh and blood.The mother spoke for all, her own misgiving:'Father, is this your ghost? Or are you living?''I am alive!' 'But in this very placeWe saw your face look, like a spirit's face,There through that window, just three weeks ago,And now you are alive!' 'I did not knowThat I had come; all I know is that thenI wanted to tell you folks here that our BenWas dying of typhoid fever. He raved of youSo that I could not think what else to do.He's there in Bay Shaloor!'"Well, that's the end."And rising up to mend the fire our friendSeemed trying to shun comment; but in vain:The exacting guest came at him once again;"You must be going to fall down, I thought,There at the climax, when your story broughtThe skipper home alive and well. But no,You saved yourself with honor." The girl said, "Oh,"Who spoke before, "it's wonderful! But you,How could you think of anything so true,So delicate, as the father's wistful faceComing there at the window in the placeOf the dead son's! And then, that quaintest touch,Of half-apology—that he felt so much,Hehadto come! How perfectly New England! Well,I hope nobody will undertake to tellA common or garden ghost-story to-night."Our host had turned again, and at her lightAnd playful sympathy he said, "My dear,I hope that no one will imagine hereI have been inventing in the tale that's done.My little story's charm if it has oneIs from no skill of mine. One does not changeThe course of fable from its wonted rangeTo such effect as I have seemed to do:Only the fact could make my story true."
He had gone down at Christmas, where our hostHad opened up his house on the Maine coast,For the week's holidays, and we were all,On Christmas night, sitting in the great hall,About the corner fireplace, while we toldStories like those that people, young and old,Have told at Christmas firesides from the first,Till one who crouched upon the hearth, and nursedHis knees in his claspt arms, threw back his head,And fixed our host with laughing eyes, and said,"This is so good, here—with your hickory logsBlazing like natural-gas ones on the dogs,And sending out their flicker on the wallAnd rafters of your mock-baronial hall,All in fumed-oak, and on your polished floor,And the steel-studded panels of your door—I think you owe the general make-believeSome sort of story that will somehow giveA more ideal completeness to our case,And make each several listener in his place—Or hers—sit up, with a real goose-flesh creepingAll over him—or her—in proper keepingWith the locality and hour and mood.Come!" And amid the cries of "Yes!" and "Good!"Our host laughed back; then, with a serious air,Looked around him on our hemicycle, whereHe sat midway of it. "Why," he began,But interrupted by the other man,He paused for him to say: "Nothing remote,But something with the actual Yankee noteOf here and now in it!" "I'll do my best,"Our host replied, "to satisfy a guest.What do you say to Barberry Cove? And wouldFive years be too long past?" "No, both are good.Go on!" "You noticed that big house to-dayClose to the water, and the sloop that lay,Stripped for the winter, there, beside the pier?Well, there she has lain just so, year after year;And she will never leave her pier again;But once, each spring she sailed in sun or rain,For Bay Chaleur—or Bay Shaloor, as theyLike better to pronounce it down this way."
He had gone down at Christmas, where our hostHad opened up his house on the Maine coast,For the week's holidays, and we were all,On Christmas night, sitting in the great hall,About the corner fireplace, while we toldStories like those that people, young and old,Have told at Christmas firesides from the first,Till one who crouched upon the hearth, and nursedHis knees in his claspt arms, threw back his head,And fixed our host with laughing eyes, and said,"This is so good, here—with your hickory logsBlazing like natural-gas ones on the dogs,And sending out their flicker on the wallAnd rafters of your mock-baronial hall,All in fumed-oak, and on your polished floor,And the steel-studded panels of your door—I think you owe the general make-believeSome sort of story that will somehow giveA more ideal completeness to our case,And make each several listener in his place—Or hers—sit up, with a real goose-flesh creepingAll over him—or her—in proper keepingWith the locality and hour and mood.Come!" And amid the cries of "Yes!" and "Good!"Our host laughed back; then, with a serious air,Looked around him on our hemicycle, whereHe sat midway of it. "Why," he began,But interrupted by the other man,He paused for him to say: "Nothing remote,But something with the actual Yankee noteOf here and now in it!" "I'll do my best,"Our host replied, "to satisfy a guest.What do you say to Barberry Cove? And wouldFive years be too long past?" "No, both are good.Go on!" "You noticed that big house to-dayClose to the water, and the sloop that lay,Stripped for the winter, there, beside the pier?Well, there she has lain just so, year after year;And she will never leave her pier again;But once, each spring she sailed in sun or rain,For Bay Chaleur—or Bay Shaloor, as theyLike better to pronounce it down this way."
"I like Shaloor myself rather the best.But go ahead," said the exacting guest.And with a glance around at us that said,"Don't let me bore you!" our host went ahead.
"I like Shaloor myself rather the best.But go ahead," said the exacting guest.And with a glance around at us that said,"Don't let me bore you!" our host went ahead.
"Captain Gilroy built the big house, and heStill lives there with his aging family.He built the sloop, and when he used to comeBack from the Banks he made her more his home,With his two boys, than the big house. The twoCounted with him a good half of her crew,Until it happened, on the Banks, one dayThe oldest boy got in a steamer's way,And went down in his dory. In the fallThe others came without him. That was allThat showed in either one of them exceptThat now the father and the brother sleptAshore, and not on board. When the spring cameThey sailed for the old fishing-ground the sameAs ever. Yet, not quite the same. The brother,If you believed what folks say, kissed his motherGood-by in going; and by general rumor,The father, so far yielding as to humorHis daughters' weakness, rubbed his stubbly cheekAgainst their lips. Neither of them would speak,But the dumb passion of their love and griefIn so much show at parting found relief.
"Captain Gilroy built the big house, and heStill lives there with his aging family.He built the sloop, and when he used to comeBack from the Banks he made her more his home,With his two boys, than the big house. The twoCounted with him a good half of her crew,Until it happened, on the Banks, one dayThe oldest boy got in a steamer's way,And went down in his dory. In the fallThe others came without him. That was allThat showed in either one of them exceptThat now the father and the brother sleptAshore, and not on board. When the spring cameThey sailed for the old fishing-ground the sameAs ever. Yet, not quite the same. The brother,If you believed what folks say, kissed his motherGood-by in going; and by general rumor,The father, so far yielding as to humorHis daughters' weakness, rubbed his stubbly cheekAgainst their lips. Neither of them would speak,But the dumb passion of their love and griefIn so much show at parting found relief.
"The weeks passed and the months. Sometimes they heardAt home, by letter, from the sloop, or wordOf hearsay from the fleet. But by and byAlong about the middle of July,A time in which they had no news began,And holding unbrokenly through August, ranInto September. Then, one afternoon,While the world hung between the sun and moon,And while the mother and her girls were sittingTogether with their sewing and their knitting,—Before the early-coming evening's gloomHad gathered round them in the living-room,Helplessly wondering to each other whenThey should hear something from their absent men,—They saw, all three, against the window-pane,A face that came and went, and came again,Three times, as though for each of them, aboutAs high up from the porch's floor withoutAs a man's head would be that stooped to stareInto the room on their own level there.Its eyes dwelt on them wistfully as ifLonging to speak with the dumb lips some griefThey could not speak. The women did not startOr scream, though each one of them, in her heart,Knew she was looking on no living face,But stared, as dumb as it did, in her place."
"The weeks passed and the months. Sometimes they heardAt home, by letter, from the sloop, or wordOf hearsay from the fleet. But by and byAlong about the middle of July,A time in which they had no news began,And holding unbrokenly through August, ranInto September. Then, one afternoon,While the world hung between the sun and moon,And while the mother and her girls were sittingTogether with their sewing and their knitting,—Before the early-coming evening's gloomHad gathered round them in the living-room,Helplessly wondering to each other whenThey should hear something from their absent men,—They saw, all three, against the window-pane,A face that came and went, and came again,Three times, as though for each of them, aboutAs high up from the porch's floor withoutAs a man's head would be that stooped to stareInto the room on their own level there.Its eyes dwelt on them wistfully as ifLonging to speak with the dumb lips some griefThey could not speak. The women did not startOr scream, though each one of them, in her heart,Knew she was looking on no living face,But stared, as dumb as it did, in her place."
Here our host paused, and one sigh broke from allOur circle whom his tale had held in thrall.But he who had required it of him spokeIn what we others felt an ill-timed joke:"Well, this is something like!" A girl said, "Don't!"As if it hurt, and he said, "Well, I won't.Go on!" And in a sort of muse our hostSaid: "I suppose we all expect a ghostWill sometimes come to us. But I doubt if weAre moved by its coming as we thought to be.At any rate, the women were not scared,But, as I said, they simply sat and staredTill the face vanished. Then the mother said,'It was your father, girls, and he is dead.'But both had known him; and now all went onMuch as before till three weeks more were gone,When, one night sitting as they sat before,Together with their mother, at the doorThey heard a fumbling hand, and on the walkUp from the pier, the tramp and muffled talkOf different wind-blown voices that they knewFor the hoarse voices of their father's crew.Then the door opened, and their father stoodBefore them, palpably in flesh and blood.The mother spoke for all, her own misgiving:'Father, is this your ghost? Or are you living?''I am alive!' 'But in this very placeWe saw your face look, like a spirit's face,There through that window, just three weeks ago,And now you are alive!' 'I did not knowThat I had come; all I know is that thenI wanted to tell you folks here that our BenWas dying of typhoid fever. He raved of youSo that I could not think what else to do.He's there in Bay Shaloor!'
Here our host paused, and one sigh broke from allOur circle whom his tale had held in thrall.But he who had required it of him spokeIn what we others felt an ill-timed joke:"Well, this is something like!" A girl said, "Don't!"As if it hurt, and he said, "Well, I won't.Go on!" And in a sort of muse our hostSaid: "I suppose we all expect a ghostWill sometimes come to us. But I doubt if weAre moved by its coming as we thought to be.At any rate, the women were not scared,But, as I said, they simply sat and staredTill the face vanished. Then the mother said,'It was your father, girls, and he is dead.'But both had known him; and now all went onMuch as before till three weeks more were gone,When, one night sitting as they sat before,Together with their mother, at the doorThey heard a fumbling hand, and on the walkUp from the pier, the tramp and muffled talkOf different wind-blown voices that they knewFor the hoarse voices of their father's crew.Then the door opened, and their father stoodBefore them, palpably in flesh and blood.The mother spoke for all, her own misgiving:'Father, is this your ghost? Or are you living?''I am alive!' 'But in this very placeWe saw your face look, like a spirit's face,There through that window, just three weeks ago,And now you are alive!' 'I did not knowThat I had come; all I know is that thenI wanted to tell you folks here that our BenWas dying of typhoid fever. He raved of youSo that I could not think what else to do.He's there in Bay Shaloor!'
"Well, that's the end."And rising up to mend the fire our friendSeemed trying to shun comment; but in vain:The exacting guest came at him once again;"You must be going to fall down, I thought,There at the climax, when your story broughtThe skipper home alive and well. But no,You saved yourself with honor." The girl said, "Oh,"Who spoke before, "it's wonderful! But you,How could you think of anything so true,So delicate, as the father's wistful faceComing there at the window in the placeOf the dead son's! And then, that quaintest touch,Of half-apology—that he felt so much,Hehadto come! How perfectly New England! Well,I hope nobody will undertake to tellA common or garden ghost-story to-night."
"Well, that's the end."And rising up to mend the fire our friendSeemed trying to shun comment; but in vain:The exacting guest came at him once again;"You must be going to fall down, I thought,There at the climax, when your story broughtThe skipper home alive and well. But no,You saved yourself with honor." The girl said, "Oh,"Who spoke before, "it's wonderful! But you,How could you think of anything so true,So delicate, as the father's wistful faceComing there at the window in the placeOf the dead son's! And then, that quaintest touch,Of half-apology—that he felt so much,Hehadto come! How perfectly New England! Well,I hope nobody will undertake to tellA common or garden ghost-story to-night."
Our host had turned again, and at her lightAnd playful sympathy he said, "My dear,I hope that no one will imagine hereI have been inventing in the tale that's done.My little story's charm if it has oneIs from no skill of mine. One does not changeThe course of fable from its wonted rangeTo such effect as I have seemed to do:Only the fact could make my story true."
Our host had turned again, and at her lightAnd playful sympathy he said, "My dear,I hope that no one will imagine hereI have been inventing in the tale that's done.My little story's charm if it has oneIs from no skill of mine. One does not changeThe course of fable from its wonted rangeTo such effect as I have seemed to do:Only the fact could make my story true."
For a long time after the event my mind dealt with the poor man in helpless conjecture, and it has now begun to do so again for no reason that I can assign. All that I ever heard about him was that he was some kind of insurance man. Whether life, fire, or marine insurance I never found out, and I am not sure that I tried to find out.
There was something in the event which discharged him of all obligation to define himself of this or that relation to life. He must have had some relation to it such as we all bear, and since the question of him has come up with me again I have tried him in several of those relations—father, son, brother, husband—without identifying him very satisfyingly in either.
As I say, he seemed by what happened to be liberated from the debt we owe in that kind to one another's curiosity, sympathy, or whatever. I cannot say what errand it was that broughthim to the place, a strange, large, indeterminate open room, where several of us sat occupied with different sorts of business, but, as it seems to me now, by only a provisional right to the place. Certainly the corner allotted to my own editorial business was of temporary assignment; I was there until we could find a more permanent office. The man had nothing to do with me or with the publishers; he had no manuscript, or plan for an article which he wished to propose and to talk himself into writing, so that he might bring it with a claim to acceptance, as though he had been asked to write it. In fact, he did not even look of the writing sort; and his affair with some other occupant of that anomalous place could have been in no wise literary. Probably it was some kind of insurance business, and I have been left with the impression of fussiness in his conduct of it; he had to my involuntary attention an effect of conscious unwelcome with it.
After subjectively dealing with this impression, I ceased to notice him, without being able to give myself to my own work. The day was choking hot, of a damp that clung about one, and forbade one so much effort as was needed to relieve one of one's discomfort; to pull at one's wilted collar and loosen the linen about one's reeking neck meant exertion which one willingly forbore; itwas less suffering to suffer passively than to suffer actively. The day was of the sort which begins with a brisk heat, and then, with a falling breeze, decays into mere swelter. To come indoors out of the sun was no escape from the heat; my window opened upon a shaded alley where the air was damper without being cooler than the air within.
At last I lost myself in my work with a kind of humid interest in the psychological inquiry of a contributor who was dealing with a matter rather beyond his power. I did not think that he was fortunate in having cast his inquiry in the form of a story; I did not think that his contrast of love and death as the supreme facts of life was what a subtler or stronger hand could have made it, or that the situation gained in effectiveness from having the hero die in the very moment of his acceptance. In his supposition that the reader would care more for his hero simply because he had undergone that tremendous catastrophe, the writer had omitted to make him interesting otherwise; perhaps he could not.
My mind began to wander from the story and not very relevantly to employ itself with the question of how far our experiences really affect our characters. I remembered having once classed certain temperaments as the stuff of tragedy, andothers as the stuff of comedy, and of having found a greater cruelty in the sorrows which light natures undergo, as unfit and disproportionate for them. Disaster, I tacitly decided, was the fit lot of serious natures; when it befell the frivolous it was more than they ought to have been made to bear; it was not of their quality. Then by the mental zigzagging which all thinking is I thought of myself and whether I was of this make or that. If it was more creditable to be of serious stuff than frivolous, though I had no agency in choosing, I asked myself how I should be affected by the sight of certain things, like the common calamities reported every day in the papers which I had hitherto escaped seeing. By another zigzag I thought that I had never known a day so close and stifling and humid. I then reflected upon the comparative poverty of the French language, which I was told had only that one word for the condition we could call by half a dozen different names, as humid, moist, damp, sticky, reeking, sweltering, and so on. I supposed that a book of synonyms would give even more English adjectives; I thought of looking, but my book of synonyms was at the back of my table, and I would have to rise for it. Then I questioned whether the French language was so destitute of adjectives, after all; I preferred to doubt it rather than rise.
With no more logic than those other vagaries had, I realized that the person who had started me in them was no longer in the room. He must have gone outdoors, and I visualized him in the street pushing about, crowded hither and thither, and striking against other people as he went and came. I was glad I was not in his place; I believed I should have fallen in a faint from the heat, as I had once almost done in New York on a day like that. From this my mind jumped to the thought of sudden death in general. Was it such a happy thing as people pretended? For the person himself, yes, perhaps; but not for those whom he had left at home, say, in the morning, and who were expecting him at home in the evening. I granted that it was generally accepted as the happiest death, but no one that had tried it had said so. To be sure, one was spared a long sickness, with suffering from pain and from the fear of death. But one had no time for making one's peace with God, as it used to be said, and after all there might be something in death-bed repentance, although cultivated people no longer believed in it. Then I reverted to the family unprepared for the sudden death: the mother, the wife, the children. I struggled to get away from the question, but the vagaries which had lightly dispersed themselves before clung persistently tothe theme now. I felt that it was like a bad dream. That was a promising diversion. Had one any sort of volition in the quick changes of dreams? One was aware of finding a certain nightmare insupportable, and of breaking from it as by main force, and then falling into a deep, sweet sleep. Was death something like waking from a dream such as that, which this life largely was, and then sinking into a long, restful slumber, and possibly never waking again?
Suddenly I perceived that the man had come back. He might have been there some time with his effect of fussing and his pathetic sense of unwelcome. I had not noticed; I only knew that he stood at the half-open door with the knob of it in his hand looking into the room blankly.
As he stood there he lifted his hand and rubbed it across his forehead as if in a sort of daze from the heat. I recognized the gesture as one very characteristic of myself; I had often rubbed my hand across my forehead on a close, hot day like that. Then the man suddenly vanished as if he had sunk through the floor.
People who had not noticed that he was there noticed now that he was not there. Some made a crooked rush toward the place where he had been, and one of those helpful fellow-men who are first in all needs lifted his head and mainlycarried him into the wide space which the street stairs mounted to, and laid him on the floor. It was darker, if not cooler there, and we stood back to give him the air which he drew in with long, deep sighs. One of us ran down the stairs to the street for a doctor, wherever he might be found, and ran against a doctor at the last step.
The doctor came and knelt over the prostrate figure and felt its pulse, and put his ear down to its heart. It, which has already in my telling ceased to be he, drew its breath in those long suspirations which seemed to search each more profoundly than the last the lurking life, drawing it from the vital recesses and expelling it in those vast sighs.
They went on and on, and established in our consciousness the expectation of indefinite continuance. We knew that the figure there was without such consciousness as ours, unless it was something so remotely withdrawn that it could not manifest itself in any signal to our senses. There was nothing tragical in the affair, but it had a surpassing dignity. It was as if the figure was saying something to the life in each of us which none of us would have words to interpret, speaking some last message from the hither side of that bourne from which there is no returning.
There was a clutch upon my heart which tightenedwith the slower and slower succession of those awful breaths. Then one was drawn and expelled and then another was not drawn. I waited for the breathing to begin again, and it did not begin. The doctor rose from kneeling over the figure that had been a man, and uttered, with a kind of soundlessness, "Gone," and mechanically dusted his fingers with the thumbs of each hand from their contact with what had now become all dust forever.
That helpfulest one among us laid a cloth over the face, and the rest of us went away. It was finished. The man was done with the sorrow which, in our sad human order, must now begin for those he loved and who loved him. I tried vaguely to imagine their grief for not having been uselessly with him at the last, and I could not. The incident remained with me like an experience, something I had known rather than seen. I could not alienate it by my pity and make it another's. They whom it must bereave seemed for the time immeasurably removed from the fact.
The boarder who had eloped was a student at the theological seminary, and he had really gone to visit his family, so that he had a fairly good conscience in giving this color to the fact that he was leaving the place permanently because he could not bear it any longer. It was a shade of deceit to connive with his room-mate for the custody of his carpet-bag and the few socks and collars and the one shirt and summer coat which did not visibly affect its lankness when gathered into it from his share of the bureau-drawers; but he did not know what else to do, and he trusted to a final forgiveness when all the facts were considered by a merciful providence. His board was fully paid, and he had suffered long. He argued with his room-mate that he could do no good by remaining, and that he would have stayed if he could have believed there was any use. Besides, the food was undermining his health, and the room with that broken windowhad given him a cold already. He had a right to go, and it was his duty to himself and the friends who were helping him through the seminary not to get sick.
He did not feel that he had convinced his room-mate, who took charge of his carpet-bag and now sat with it between his feet waiting the signal of the fugitive's surreptitious return for it. He was a vague-looking young man, presently in charge of the "Local and Literary" column of the one daily paper of the place, and he had just explained to the two other boarders who were watching with him for the event that he was not certain whether it was the supper, or the anxiety of the situation, or just what it was that was now affecting his digestion.
The fellow-boarders, who sat on the edge of the bed, in default of the one unbroken chair which their host kept for himself, as easier than a mattress to get up from suddenly, did not take sides for or against him in his theories of his discomfort. One of them glanced at the broken window.
"How do you glaze that in the daytime? You can't use the bolster then?"
"I'm not in, much, in the daytime."
It was a medical student who had spoken, but he was now silent, and the other said, after theyhad listened to the twitter of a piano in the parlor under the room, "That girl's playing will be the death of me."
"Not if her mother's cooking isn't," the medical student, whose name was Wallace, observed with a professional effect.
"Why don't you prescribe something for it?" the law student suggested.
"Which?" Wallace returned.
"I don't believe anything could cure the playing. I must have meant the cooking."
"You're a promising young jurist, Blakeley. What makes you think I could cure the cooking?"
"Oh, I just wondered. The sick one gets paler every day. I wonder what ails her."
"She's not my patient."
"Oh! Hippocratic oath. Rather fine of you, Wallace. But if she's not your patient—"
"Listen!" their host interrupted, sharply. After a joint silence he added: "No. It must have been the sleet."
"Well, Briggs," the law student said, "if it must have been the sleet, what mustn't it have been?"
"Oh!" Briggs explained, "I thought it was Phillips. He was to throw a handful of gravel at the window."
"And then you were to run down with his bagand help him to make his escape from a friendless widow. Well, I don't know that I blame him. If I didn't owe two weeks' board, I'd leave myself—though I hope I shouldn't sneak away. And if Mrs. Betterson didn't owe Wallace, here, two weeks' board, we'd walk off together arm-in-arm at high noon. I can't understand how he ever came to advance her the money."
Wallace rose from the bed, and kicked each leg out to dislodge the tight trousers of the middle eighteen-fifties which had caught on the tops of his high boots. "You're a tonguey fellow, Blakeley. But you'll find, as you live long, that there are several things you can't explain."
"I'll tell you what," Blakeley said. "We'll get Mrs. Betterson to take your loan for my debt, and we'll go at once."
"You can propose something like that before the justice of the peace in your first pettifogging case."
"I believe Wallace likes to stay. And yet he must know from his anatomical studies, better than the animals themselves, what cuts of meat the old lady gives us. I shouldn't be so fastidious about the cuts, if she didn't treat them all with pork gravy. Well, I mustn't be too hard on a lone widow that I owe board to. I don't suppose his diet had anything to do with the deep damnationof the late Betterson's taking off. Does that stove of yours smoke, Briggs?"
"Not when there isn't a fire in it."
"I just asked. Wallace's stove smokes, fire or no fire. It takes advantage of the old lady's indebtedness to him. There seem," he added, philosophically, "to be just two occupations open to widows who have to support themselves: millinery business for young ones, boarding-housing for old ones. Itisrather restricted. What do you suppose she puts into the mince-pies? Mince-pies are rather a mystery at the best."
Wallace was walking up and down the room still in some difficulty with his trousers-legs, and kicking out from time to time to dislodge them. "How long should you say Blakeley had been going on?" he asked Briggs.
"You never can tell," Briggs responded. "I think he doesn't know himself."
"Well said, youthful scribe! With such listeners as you two, I could go on forever. Consider yourselves clapped jovially on the back, my gentle Briggs; I can't get up to do it from the hollow of your bed here. As you were saying, the wonder about these elderly widows who keep boarding-houses is the domestic dilapidation they fall into. If they've ever known how to cook a meal orsweep a room or make a bed, these arts desert them in the presence of their boarders. Their only aim in life seems to be preventing the escape of their victims, and they either let them get into debt for their board or borrow money from them. But why do they always have daughters, and just two of them: one beautiful, fashionable, and devoted to the piano; the other willing to work, but pale, pathetic, and incapable of the smallest achievement with the gridiron or the wash-board? It's a thing to make a person want to pay up and leave, even if he's reading law. If Wallace, here, had the spirit of a man, he would collect the money owing him, and—"
"Oh, stop it, Blakeley!" Wallace stormed. "I should think you'd get tired of your talk yourself."
"Well, as you insist—"
Blakeley began again, but Briggs jumped to his feet and caught up Phillips's carpet-bag, and looked wildly around. "It's gravel, this time."
"Well, take your hat, Briggs. It may be a prolonged struggle. But remember that Phillips's cause is just. He's paid his board, and he has a perfect right to leave. She has no right to prevent him. Think of that when the fray is at its worst. But try to get him off quietly, if you can. Deal gently with the erring, while you stand firm for boarders' rights. Remember that Phillips issneaking off in order to spare her feelings and has come pretty near prevarication in the effort. Have you got your shoes off? No; it's your rubbers on. That's better."
Briggs faltered with the carpet-bag in his hand. "Boys, I don't like this. It feels—clandestine."
"Itlooksthat way, too," Blakeley admitted. "It has an air of conspiracy."
"I've got half a mind to let Phillips come in and get his bag himself."
"It would serve him right, though I don't know why, exactly. He has a right to spare his own feelings if he's sparing hers at the same time. Of course he's afraid she'll plead with him to stay, and he'll have to be inexorable with her; and if I understand the yielding nature of Phillips he doesn't like to be inexorable."
There came another sharp rattle of small pebbles at the window.
"Oh, confound him!" Briggs cried under his breath, and he shuffled out of the room and crept noiselessly down the stairs to the front door. The door creaked a little in opening, and he left it ajar. The current of cold air that swept up to the companions he had left behind at his room door brought them the noise of his rush down the gravel walk to the gate and a noise there as of fugitive steps on the pavement outside.
A weak female tread made itself heard in the hallway, followed by a sharp voice from a door in the rear. "Was it the cat, Jenny?"
"No; the door just seems to have blown open. The catch is broken."
Swift, strong steps advanced with an effect of angry suspicion. "I don't believe it blew open. More likely the cat clawed it open."
The steps which the voice preceded seemed to halt at the open door, as if falling back from it, and Wallace and Blakeley, looking down, saw by the dim flare of the hall lamp the face of Briggs confronting the face of Mrs. Betterson from the outer darkness. They saw the sick girl, whose pallor they could not see, supporting herself by the stairs-post with one hand and pressing the other to her side.
"Oh! It'syou, Mr. Briggs," the landlady said, with a note of inculpation. "What made you leave the door open?"
The spectators could not see the swift change in Briggs's face from terror to savage desperation, but they noted it in his voice. "Yes—yes! It's me. I just—I was just— No I won't, either! You'd better know the truth. I was taking Phillips's bag out to him. He was afraid to come in for it, because he didn't want to see you, the confounded coward! He's left."
"Left? And he said he would stay till spring! Didn't he, Jenny?"
"I don't remember—" the girl weakly gasped, but her mother did not heed her in her mounting wrath.
"A great preacherhe'llmake. What'd he say he left for?"
"He didn't say. Will you let me up-stairs?"
"No, I won't, till you tell me. You know well enough, between you."
"Yes, I do know," Briggs answered, savagely. "He left because he was tired of eating sole-leather for steak, and fire-salt pork, and tar for molasses, and butter strong enough to make your nose curl, and drinking burnt-rye slops for coffee and tea-grounds for tea. And so am I, and so are all of us, and—and— Will you let me go up-stairs now, Mrs. Betterson?"
His voice had risen, not so high but that another voice from the parlor could prevail over it: a false, silly, girl voice, with the twitter of piano-keys as from hands swept over the whole board to help drown the noise of the quarrel in the hall. "Oh yes, I'll sing it again, Mr. Saunders, if you sa-a-a-y."
Then this voice lifted itself in a silly song, and a silence followed the voices in the hall, except for the landlady's saying, brokenly: "Well, all right,Mr. Briggs. You can go up to your room for all me. I've tried to be a mother to you boys, but ifthisis what I get for it!"
The two at the threshold of Briggs's room retreated within, as he bounded furiously upon them and slammed the door after him. It started open again, from the chronic defect of the catch, but he did not care.
"Well, Briggs, I hope you feel better now," Blakeley began. "You certainly told her the truth, the whole truth, and nothingbutthe truth. But I wonder you had the heart to do it before that sick girl."
"Ididn'thave the heart," Briggs shouted. "But I had the courage, and if you say one word more, Blakeley, I'll throw you out of the room. I'm going to leave!Myboard's paid if yours isn't."
He went wildly about, catching things down here and there from nails and out of drawers. The tears stood in his eyes. But suddenly he stopped and listened to the sounds from below—the sound of the silly singing in the parlor, and the sound of sobbing in the dining-room, and the sound of vain entreating between the sobs.
"Oh, I don't suppose I'm fit to keep a boarding-house. I never was a good manager; and everybody imposes on me, and everything is so dear,and I don't know what's good from what's bad. Your poor father used to look after all that."
"Well, don't you cry, now, mother! It'll all come right, you'll see. I'm getting so I can go and do the marketing now; and if Minervy would only help a little—"
"No, no!" the mother's voice came anxiously up. "We can get along without her; we always have. I know he likes her, and I want to give her every chance.Wecan get along. If she was on'y married, once, we could all live—" A note of self-comforting gradually stole into the mother's voice, and the sound of a nose violently blown seemed to note a period in her suffering.
"Oh, mother, I wish I was well!" The girl's voice came with a burst of wild lamenting.
"'Sh, 'sh, deary!" her mother entreated. "He'llhearyou, and then—"
"'Hazel Dell'?" the silly voice came from the parlor, with a sound of fright in it. "I can sing it without the music." The piano keys twittered the prelude and the voice sang: