XXXVFANNY HEARS THE DRUM
PIDGE MUSSER had moved around in an indescribable “deadness” for several days following Rufe’s departure, before it landed on her, theme and all, that she could do a book. Almost four years had elapsed since she wrote theLance. One Sunday morning after the new work was begun, Pidge took out the old story from the drawer under the wavy glass, and glanced over the pages, a puckered smile on her lips. Then she took the manuscript down to the kitchen range, and there was a hot fire for a while.
The new writing was not so simple and flowing. In the first place, there were only Sundays and an hour or two in the evening; but more than that was the fact that she had learned so well what stories long and short are not! She was now in the toil of technic, which is a long passage. First the freedom of ignorance—“A man’s a fool before he learns technic,” John Higgins had said. “He’s a cripple while he’s learning it. When he’s learned it, and forgotten he’s learned it—he begins to be a workman. That’s the freedom of knowledge.”
The old editor didn’t know he had “said it all” for Pidge Musser that day as he looked up from Rufe Melton’s story. She wouldn’t forget. Edit and rewrite—someevenings with nothing but a torturing inhibition to go to bed with. There was no other way. She was tough and broad shouldered. She could toil. She had an instinctive awareness also, that the deadliest danger in the whole scheme of things for her, at least, was to brood inactively. Piled up energy to Pidge meant inevitable disruption.
The Public Squarewas staying alive under the energy amassed by the family of trowel makers, but John Higgins wasn’t standing the punishment of the days. Pidge saw him falling into the fear of small things. Among other institutions he hated was the U. S. Department of Justice, but this department was hot after him and he was bluffed at last. The climax had come upon the arrest of a famous pacifist, when John Higgins was cornered with the necessity of silence. Since there was no outlet in protest, his venom turned in on himself. His periods of “illness” were frequent, and Pidge had a great deal to do. His old reaction against her marriage was apparently forgotten, though his temper was unreliable. He was using her now as never before. Once in a while, he would look at her long and queerly, and often he said, “I wish Dicky were here.”
In April, 1918, about the same time, a book and a boy were born in 54 Harrow Street. Pidge was present at both deliveries. The enactment of the boy’s coming required a full night; and during the next day, her activities atThe Public Squarewere remote toPidge, who had shrunk so deeply into herself from nausea and a new kind of fright, that the meaning of outer events was distorted and ungrippable. John Higgins didn’t miss the fact. In the drag of the afternoon, she was called to the telephone—Miss Claes on the wire:
“You’d better come, Pidge!”
An hour later, between five and six in the afternoon, she was in the Harrow Street house, looking down into Fanny’s face which squirmed from side to side. The eyes moved around the room and finally fixed on Pidge.
“That you, Redhead?”
“Yes——”
“You was a hell of a long time comin’.”
“I know——”
“That dirty animal hurt me——” Evidently this referred to the doctor.
“I’m sorry. He didn’t mean to——”
“Know all about it, don’t yer? Know all about everythin’, don’t yer?”
Pidge didn’t answer.
Fanny lay a moment in pallid anger. Then her eyes slowly opened wider, stretched, filled with astonishment, part rapture, part fear.
“Why, Musser,” Fanny said in an awed tone, as one listening to a far sound, “Holy Christ, I’m dying!”
She was the last one in the room to know it—except the baby.
A queer little dud with his black hair that stayedcombed. No telling what he knew any of the time. He didn’t open his eyes so that anybody could catch him at it for several days, but the nurse never would have done raving over his black lashes. Finally Pidge heard the news—that the eyes weren’t black after all, as the hair and lashes would indicate, but a dense blue.
“He’s going to be a soldier—such a soldier!” the nurse exclaimed. “I know I’ll die when I have to leave him.”
Pidge’s lips worked without sound, and then a funny little twisted smile stayed there—that made Miss Claes love her as never before.