CONLON, the strong, lay sick unto death with fever. The Water Commissioners sent champagne to express their sympathy. It was an unforced impulse of feeling.
But Conlon knew nothing of it. His lips were white, his cheeks sunken; his eyes glared and wandered; he muttered, and clutched with his big fingers at nothing visible.
The doctor worked all day to force a perspiration. At six o'clock he said: “I'm done. Send for the priest.”
When Kelly and Simon Harding came, Father Ryan and the doctor were going down the steps.
“'Tis a solemn duty ye have, Kelly,” said the priest, “to watch the last moments of a dying man, now made ready for his end.”
“Ah, not Conlon! He'll not give up, not him,” cried Kelly, “the shtrong man wid the will in him!”
“An' what's the sthrength of man in the hands of his Creathor?” said the priest, turning to Harding, oratorically.
“I don' know,” said Harding, calmly. “Do you?”
“'Tis naught!”
Kelly murmured submissively.
“Kind of monarchical institution, ain't it, what Conlon's run up against?” Harding remarked. “Give him a fair show in a caucus, an' he'd win, sure.”
“He'll die if he don't sweat,” said the doctor, wiping his forehead. “It's hot enough.” Conlon lay muttering and glaring at the ceiling. The big knuckles of his hands stood out like rope-knots. His wife nodded to Kelly and Harding, and went out. She was a good-looking woman, large, massive, muscular. Kelly looked after her, rubbing his short nose and blinking his watery eyes. He was small, with stooping shoulders, affectionate eyes, wavering knees. He had followed Conlon, the strong, and served him many years. Admiration of Conlon was a strenuous business in which to be engaged.
“Ah!” he said, “his wife ten year, an' me his inchimate friend.”
It was ten by the clock. The subsiding noise of the city came up over housetops and vacant lots. The windows of the sickroom looked off the verge of a bluff; one saw the lights of the little city below, the lights of the stars above, and the hot black night between.
Kelly and Harding sat down by a window, facing each other. The lamplight was dim. A screen shaded it from the bed, where Conlon muttered and cried out faintly, intermittently, as though in conversation with some one who was present only to himself. His voice was like the ghost or shadow of a voice, not a whisper, but strained of all resonance. One might fancy him standing on the bank of the deadly river and talking across to some one beyond the fog, and fancy that the voices would so creep through the fog stealthily, not leaping distances like earthly sounds, but struggling slowly through nameless obstruction.
Kelly rubbed his hands before the fire.
“I was his inchimate friend.”
Harding said: “Are you going to talk like a blanked idiot all night, or leave off maybe about twelve?”
“I know ye for a hard man, too, Simmy,” said Kelly, pathetically; “an' 'tis the nathur of men, for an Irishman is betther for blow-in' off his shteam, be it the wrath or the sorrow of him, an' the Yankee is betther for bottlin' it up.”
“Uses it for driving his engine mostly.”
“So. But Conlon—”
“Conlon,” said Harding slowly, “that's so. He had steam to drive with, and steam to blow with, and plenty left over to toot his whistle and scald his fingers and ache in his belly. Expanding that there figure, he carried suction after him like the 1:40 express, he did.”
“'Tis thrue.” Kelly leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I mind me when I first saw him I hadn't seen him before, unless so be when he was puttin' the wather-main through the sand-hills up the river an' bossin' a gang o' men with a fog-horn voice till they didn't own their souls, an' they didn't have any, what's more, the dirty Polocks. But he come into me shop one day, an' did I want the job o' plumbin' the court-house?
“'Have ye the court-house in your pocket?' says I, jokin'.
“'I have,' says he, onexpected, 'an' any plumbin' that's done for the court-house is done in the prisint risidence of the same.'
“An' I looks up, an' 'O me God!' I says to meself, ''tis a man!' wid the black eyebrows of him, an' the shoulders an' the legs of him. An' he took me into the shwale of his wake from that day to this. But I niver thought to see him die.”
“That's so. You been his heeler straight through. I don't know but I like your saying so. But I don't see the how. Why, look here; when I bid for the old water contract he comes and offers to sell it to me, sort of personal asset. I don't know how. By the unbroke faces of the other Water Commissioners he didn't use his pile-driving fist to persuade 'em, and what I paid him was no more'n comfortable for himself. How'd he fetch it? How'd he do those things? Why, look here, Kelly, ain't he bullied you? Ain't you done dirty jobs for him, and small thanks?”
“I have that.”
Kelly's hands trembled. He was bowed down and thoughtful, but not angry. “Suppose I ask you what for?”
“Suppose ye do. Suppose I don' know. Maybe he was born to be king over me. Maybe he wasn't. But I know he was a mastherful man, an' he's dyin' here, an' me blood's sour an' me bones sad wid thinkin' of it. Don' throuble me, Simmy.”
Harding leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, where the lamp made a nebulous circle of light.
“Why, that's so,” he said at last, in conclusion of some unmentioned train of thought. “Why, I got a pup at home, and his affection ain't measured by the bones he's had, nor the licks he's had, not either of 'em.”
Kelly was deep in a reverie.
“Nor it ain't measured by my virtues. Look here, now; I don' see what his measure is.”
“Hey?” Kelly roused himself.
“Oh, I was just thinking.”
Harding thought he had known other men who had had in some degree a magnetic power that seemed to consist in mere stormy energy of initiative. They were like strong drink to weaker men. It was more physical than mental. Conlon was to Kelly a stimulant, then an appetite. And Conlon was a bad lot. Fellows that had heeled for him were mostly either wrecked or dead now. Why, there was a chap named Patterson that used to be decent till he struck Conlon, when he went pretty low; and Nora Reimer drowned herself on account of Patterson, when he got himself shot in a row at some shanty up the railroad. The last had seemed a good enough riddance. But Nora went off her head and jumped in the new reservoir. Harding remembered it the more from being one of the Water Company. They had had to empty the reservoir, which was expensive. And there were others. A black, blustering sort of beast, Conlon. He had more steam than was natural. Harding wondered vaguely at Kelly, who was spelling out the doctor's directions from a piece of paper.
“A powdher an' five dhrops from the short bottle. 'Tis no tin-course dinner wid the champagne an' entries he's givin' Conlon the night. Hey? A powdher an' five dhrops from the short bottle.”
Harding's mind wandered on among memories of the little city below, an intricate, irregular history, full of incidents, stories that were never finished or dribbled off anywhere, black spots that he knew of in white lives, white spots in dark lives. He did not happen to know any white spots on Conlon.
“Course if a man ain't in politics for his health he ain't in it for the health of the community, either, and that's all right. And if he opens the morning by clumping Mrs. Conlon on the head, why, she clumps him back more or less, and that's all right.” Then, if he went down-town and lied here and there ingeniously in the way of business, and came home at night pretty drunk, but no more than was popular with his constituency, why, Conlon's life was some cluttered, but never dull. Still, Harding's own ways being quieter and less cluttered, he felt that if Conlon were going off naturally now, it was not, on the whole, a bad idea. It would conduce to quietness. It would perhaps be a pity if anything interfered.
The clock in a distant steeple struck twelve, a dull, unechoing sound.
“Simmy,” said Kelly, pointing with his thumb, “what do he be sayin', talkin'—talkin' like one end of a tiliphone?”
They both turned toward the bed and listened.
“Telephone! Likely there's a party at the other end, then. Where's the other end?”
“I don' know,” whispered Kelly. “But I have this in me head, for ye know, when the priest has done his last, 'tis sure he's dhropped his man at the front door of wherever he's goin', wid a letther of inthroduction in his hatband. An' while the man was waitin' for the same to be read an' him certified a thrue corpse, if he had a kettleful of boilin' impatience in himself like Tom Conlon, wouldn't he be passin' the time o' day through the keyhole wid his friends be-yant?”
“'Tain't a telephone, then? It's a keyhole, hey?”
“Tiliphone or keyhole, he'd be talkin' through it, Conlon would, do ye mind?”
Harding looked with some interest. Conlon muttered, and stopped, and muttered again. Harding rose and walked to the bed. Kelly followed tremulously.
“Listen, will ye?” said Kelly, suddenly leaning down.
“I don' know,” said Harding, with an instinct of hesitation. “I don' know as it's a square game. Maybe he's talkin' of things that ain't healthy to mention. Maybe he's plugged somebody some time, or broke a bank—ain't any more'n likely. What of it?”
“Listen, will ye?”
“Don' squat on a man when he's down, Kelly.”
“'Sh!”
“Hold Tom's hand. Wait for Tom,” babbled the ghostly voice, a thin, distant sound.
“What'd he say? What'd he say?” Kelly was white and trembling.
Harding stood up and rubbed his chin reflectively. He did not seem to himself to make it out. He brought a chair, sat down, and leaned close to Conlon to study the matter.
“What's the heart-scald, mother?” babbled Conlon. “Where'd ye get it from? Me! Wirra!”
“'Tis spheakin' to ghosteses he is, Simmy, ye take me worrd.”
“Come off! He's harking back when he was a kid.”
Kelly shook his head solemnly.
“He's spheakin' to ghosteses.”
“What's that, mother? Arra! I'm sick, mother. What for? I don' see. Where'm I goin'?'
“You got me,” muttered Harding. “I don' know.”
“Tom'll be good. It's main dark. Hold Tom's hand.”
Kelly was on his knees, saying prayers at terrific speed.
“Hear to him!” he stopped to whisper. “Ghosteses! Ora pro nobis—”
“Tom ain't afraid. Naw, he ain't afraid.”
Harding went back to his window. The air was heavy and motionless, the stars a little dim. He could see the dark line of the river with an occasional glint upon it, and the outline of the hills beyond.
The little city had drawn a robe of innocent obscurity over it. Only a malicious sparkle gleamed here and there. He thought he knew that city inside and out, from end to end. He had lived in it, dealt with it, loved it, cheated it, helped to build it, shared its fortunes. Who knew it better than he? But every now and then it surprised with some hidden detail or some impulse of civic emotion. And Kelly and Conlon, surely he knew them, as men may know men. But he never had thought to see Conlon as to-night. It was odd. But there was some fact in the social constitution, in human nature, at the basis of all the outward oddities of each.
“Maybe when a man's gettin' down to his reckonin' it's needful to show up what he's got at the bottom. Then he begins to peel off layers of himself like an onion, and 'less there ain't anything to him but layers, by and by he comes to something that resembles a sort of aboriginal boy, which is mostly askin' questions and bein' surprised.”
Maybe there was more boyishness in Conlon than in most men. Come to think of it, there was. Conlon's leadership was ever of the maybe-you-think-I-can't-lick-you order; and men followed him, admitting that he could, in admiration and simplicity. You might see the same thing in the public-school yard. Maybe that was the reason. The sins of Conlon were not sophisticated.
The low, irregular murmur from the bed, the heavy heat of the night, made Harding drowsy. Kelly repeating the formula of his prayers, a kind of incantation against ghosts, Conlon with his gaunt face in the shadow and his big hands on the sheet clutching at nothing visible, both faded away, and Harding fell asleep.
He woke with a start. Kelly was dancing about the bed idiotically.
“He's shweatin'!” he gabbled. “He's shweatin'! He'll be well—Conlon.”
It made Harding think of the “pup,” and how he would dance about him, when he went home, in the crude expression of joy. Conlon's face was damp. He muttered no more. They piled the blankets on him till the perspiration stood out in drops. Conlon breathed softly and slept. Kelly babbled gently, “Conlon! Conlon!”
Harding went back to the window and rubbed his eyes sleepily.
“Kind of too bad, after all that trouble to get him peeled.”
The morning was breaking, solemn, noiseless, with lifted banners and wide pageantries, over river and city.
Harding yawned.
“It's one on Father Ryan, anyway. That's a good thing. Blamed old windbag!”
Kelly murmured ecstatically, “Conlon will get well—Conlon!”
ST. CATHERINE'S was the life work of an old priest, who is remembered now and presently will be forgotten. There are gargoyles over the entrance aside, with their mouths open to express astonishment. They spout rain water at times, but you need not get under them; and there are towers, and buttresses, a great clock, a gilded cross, and roofs that go dimly heavenward.
St. Catherine's is new. The neighborhood squats around it in different pathetic attitudes. Opposite is the saloon of the wooden-legged man; then the three groceries whose cabbages all look unpleasant; the parochial school with the green lattice; and all those little wooden houses—where lives, for instance, the dressmaker who funnily calls herself “Modiste.” Beyond the street the land drops down to the freight yards.
But Father Connell died about the time they finished the east oriel, and Father Harra reigned over the house of the old man's dreams—a red-faced man, a high feeder, who looked as new as the church and said the virtues of Father Connell were reducing his flesh. That would seem to be no harm; but Father Harra meant it humorously. Father Connell had stumped about too much among the workmen in the cold and wet, else there had been no need of his dying at eighty-eight. His tall black hat became a relic that hung in the tiring room, and he cackled no more in his thin voice the noble Latin of the service. Peace to his soul! The last order he wrote related to the position of the Christ figure and the inscription, “Come unto me, weary and heavy-laden: I will give you rest.” But the figure was not in place till the mid-December following.
And it was the day before Christmas that Father Harra had a fine service, with his boy choir and all; and Chubby Locke sang a solo, “Angels ever bright and fair,” that was all dripping with tears, so to speak. Chubby Locke was an imp too. All around the altar the candles were lighted, and there hung a cluster of gas jets over the head of the Christ figure on the edge of the south transept. So fine it was that Father Harra came out of his room into the aisle (when the people were gone, saying how fine it was, and the sexton was putting out the gas here and there), to walk up and down and think about it, especially how he should keep up with the virtues of Father Connell. Duskier and duskier it grew, as the candles went out cluster by cluster till only those in the south transept were left; and Dennis, coming there, stopped and grunted.
“What!” said Father Harra.
“It's asleep he is,” said the sexton. “It's a b'y, yer riverence.”
“Why, so it is! He went to sleep during the service. H'm—well—they often do that, Dennis.”
“Anyways he don't belong here,” said Dennis.
“Think so? I don't know about that. Wait a bit. I don't know about that Dennis.”
The boy lay curled up on the seat—a newsboy, by the papers that had slipped from his arms. But he did not look businesslike, and he did not suggest the advantages of being poor in America. One does not become a capitalist or president by going to church and to sleep in the best of business hours, from four to six, when the streets are stirring with men on their way to dinners, cigars and evening papers. The steps of St. Catherine's are not a bad place to sell papers after Vespers, and one might as well go in, to be sure, and be warm while the service lasts; only, as I said, if one falls asleep, one does not become a capitalist or president immediately. Father Harra considered, and Dennis waited respectfully.
“It's making plans I am against your natural rest, Dennis. I'm that inconsiderate of your feelings to think of keeping St. Catherine's open this night. And why? Look ye, Dennis. St. Catherine's is getting itself consecrated these days, being new, and of course—But I tell ye, Dennis, it's a straight church doctrine that the blessings of the poor are a good assistance to the holy wather.”
“An' me wid children of me own to be missin' their father this Christmas Eve!” began Dennis indignantly.
“Who wouldn't mind, the little villains, if their father had another dollar of Christmas morning to buy 'em presents.”
“Ah, well,” said the sexton, “yer riverence is that persuadin'.”
“It's plain enough for ye to see yourself, Dennis, though thick-headed somewhat. There you are: 'Come unto me, weary and heavy-laden;' and here he is. Plain enough. And who are the weary and heavy-laden in this city?”
“Yer riverence will be meanin' everybody,” chuckled Dennis.
“Think so? Rich and poor and all? Stuff! I don't believe it. Not to-night. It'll be the outcasts, I'm thinking, Dennis. Come on.”
“An' the b'y, yer riverence?”
“The what? Oh, why, yes, yes. He's all right. I don't see anything the matter with him. He's come.”
It was better weather to go with the wind than against it, for the snow drove in gritty particles, and the sidewalks made themselves disagreeable and apt to slip out from under a person. Little spurts of snow danced up St. Catherine's roofs and went off the ridgepoles in puffs. It ought to snow on Christmas Eve; but it rightly should snow with better manners and not be so cold. The groceries closed early. Freiburger, the saloon man, looked over the curtains of his window.
“I don't know vat for Fater Harra tack up dings dis time by his kirch door, 'Come—come in here.' Himmel! der Irishman!”
Father Harra turned in to his supper, and thought how he would trouble Father Conner's reputation for enterprise and what a fine bit of constructive ability himself was possessed of.
The great central door of St. Catherine's stood open, so that the drift blew in and piled in windrows on the cold floor of the vestibule. The tall front of the church went up into the darkness, pointing to no visible stars; but over the doors two gas jets flickered across the big sign they use for fairs at the parochial school. “Come in here.” The vestibule was dark, barring another gas jet over a side door, with another sign, “Come in here,” and within the great church was dark as well, except for a cluster over the Christ figure. That was all; but Father Harra thought it a neat symbol, looking toward those who go from meagre light to light through the darkness.
Little noises were in the church all night far up in the pitch darkness of rafter and buttress, as if people were whispering and crying softly to one another. Now and again, too, the swing door would open and remain so for a moment, suspicious, hesitating. But what they did, or who they were that opened it, could hardly be told in the dusk and distance. Dennis went to sleep in a chair by the chancel rail, and did not care what they did or who they were, granted they kept away from the chancel.
How the wind blew!—and the snow tapped impatiently at stained windows with a multitude of little fingers. But if the noises among the rafters were not merely echoes of the crying and calling wind without, if any presences moved and whispered there, and looked down on flat floor and straight lines of pews, they must have seen the Christ figure, with welcoming hands, dominant by reason of the light about it; and, just on the edge of the circle of light, shapeless things stretched on cushions of pews, and motionless or stirring uneasily. Something now came dimly up the aisle from the swing door, stopped at a pew, and hesitated.
“Git out!” growled a hoarse voice. “Dis my bunk.”
The intruder gave a nervous giggle. “Begawd!” muttered the hoarse voice. “It's a lady!”
Another voice said something angrily. “Well,” said the first, “it ain't behavin' nice to come into me boodwer.”
The owner of the giggle had slipped away and disappeared in a distant pew. In another pew to the right of the aisle a smaller shadow whispered to another:
“Jimmy, that's a statoo up there.”
“Who?”
“That. I bet 'e's a king.”
“Aw, no 'e ain't. Kings has crowns an' wallups folks.”
“Gorry! What for?”
“I don' know.”
The other sighed plaintively. “I thought 'e might be a king.”
The rest were mainly silent. Some one had a bad cough. Once a sleeper rolled from the seat and fell heavily to the floor. There was an oath or two, a smothered laugh, and the distant owner of the giggle used it nervously. The last was an uncanny sound. The wakened sleeper objected to it. He said he would “like to get hold of her,” and then lay down cautiously on his cushion.
Architects have found that their art is cunning to play tricks with them; whence come whispering galleries, comers of echoes, roofs that crush the voice of the speaker, and roofs that enlarge it. Father Connell gave no orders to shape the roofs of St. Catherine's, that on stormy nights so many odd noises might congregate there, whispering, calling, murmuring, now over the chancel, now the organ, now far up in the secret high places of the roof, now seeming to gather in confidence above the Christ figure and the circle of sleepers; or, if one vaguely imagined some inquisitively errant beings moving overhead, it would seem that newcomers constantly entered, to whom it had all to be explained.
But against that eager motion in the darkness above the Christ figure below was bright in his long garment, and quiet and secure. The cluster of gas jets over his head made light but a little distance around, then softened the dusk for another distance, and beyond seemed not to touch the darkness at all. The dusk was a debatable space. The sleepers all lay in the debatable space. They may have sought it by instinct; but the more one looked at them the more they seemed like dull, half-animate things, over whom the light and the darkness made their own compromises and the people up in the roof their own comments.
The clock in the steeple struck the hours; in the church the tremble was felt more than the sound was heard. The chimes each hour started their message, “Good will and peace;” but the wind went after it and howled it down, and the snow did not cease its petulance at the windows.
The clock in the steeple struck five. The man with the hoarse voice sat up, leaned over the back of the seat and touched his neighbor, who rose noiselessly, a huge fat man and unkempt.
“Time to slope,” whispered the first, motioning toward the chancel.
The other followed his motion.
“What's up there?”
“You're ignorance, you are. That's where they gives the show. There's pickin's there.”
The two slipped out and stole up the aisle with a peculiar noiseless tread. Even Fat Bill's step could not be heard a rod away. The aisle entered the circle of light before the Christ figure; but the two thieves glided through without haste and without looking up. The smaller, in front, drew up at the end of the aisle, and Fat Bill ran into him. Dennis sat in his chair against the chancel rail, asleep.
“Get onto his whiskers, Bill. Mebbe you'll have to stuff them whiskers down his throat.”
There was a nervous giggle behind them. Fat Bill shot into a pew, dragging his comrade after him, and crouched down. “It ain't no use,” he whispered, shaking the other angrily. “Church business is bad luck. I alius said so. What's for them blemed noises all night? How'd come they stick that thing up there with the gas over it? What for'd they leave the doors open, an' tell ye to come in, an' keep their damn devils gigglin' around? 'Taint straight I won't stand it.”
“It's only a woman, Bill,” said the other patiently.
He rose on his knees and looked over the back of the seat. “'Tain't straight. I won't stand it.”
“We won't fight, Bill. We'll get out, if you say so.”
The owner of the giggle was sitting up, as they glided back, Fat Bill leading.
“I'll smash yer face,” the smaller man said to her.
Bill turned and grabbed his collar.
“You come along.”
The woman stared stupidly after, till the swing door closed behind them. Then she put on her hat, decorated with too many disorderly flowers. Most of the sleepers were wakened. The wind outside had died in the night, and the church was quite still. A man in a dress suit and overcoat sat up in a pew beneath a window, and stared about him. His silk hat lay on the floor. He leaned over the back of the seat and spoke to his neighbor, a tramp in checked trousers.
“How'd I g-get here?” he asked thickly.
“Don' know, pardner,” said the tramp cheerfully. “Floated in, same as me?” He caught sight of the white tie and shirt front. “Maybe you'd give a cove a shiner to steady ye out They don't give breakfasts with lodgin's here.”
The woman with the giggle and the broken-down flowers on her hat went out next; then a tall, thin man with a beard and a cough; the newsboy with his papers shuffled after, his shoes being too large; then a lame man—something seemed the matter with his hip; and a decent-looking woman, who wore a faded shawl over her head and kept it drawn across her face—she seemed ashamed to be there, as if it did not appear to her a respectable place; last, two boys, one of them small, but rather stunted than very young. He said:
“'E ain't a king, is 'e, Jimmy? You don' know who 'e is, do you, Jimmy?”
“Naw.”
“Say, Jimmy, it was warm, warn't it?”
Dennis came down the aisle, put out the gas, and began to brush the cushions. The clock struck a quarter of six, and Father Harra came in.
“Christmas, Dennis, Christmas! H'm—anybody been here? What did they think of it?”
Dennis rubbed his nose sheepishly.
“They wint to shleep, sor, an'—an' thin they wint out.”
Father Harra looked up at the Christ figure and stroked his red chin.
“I fancied they might see the point,” he said slowly. “Well, well, I hope they were warm.”
The colored lights from the east oriel fell over the Christ figure and gave it a cheerful look; and from other windows blue and yellow and magical deep-sea tints floated in the air, as if those who had whispered unseen in the darkness were now wandering about, silent but curiously visible.
“Yer riverince,” said Dennis, “will not be forgettin' me dollar.”
THE graveyard on the brow of the hill was white with snow. The marbles were white, the evergreens black. One tall spiral stone stood painfully near the centre. The little brown church outside the gates turned its face in the more comfortable direction of the village.
Only three were out among the graves: “Ambrose Chillingworth, ætat 30, 1675;”
“Margaret Vane, ætat 19, 1839;” and “Thy Little One, O God, ætat 2,” from the Mercer Lot. It is called the “Mercer Lot,” but the Mercers are all dead or gone from the village.
The Little One trotted around busily, putting his tiny finger in the letterings and patting the faces of the cherubs. The other two sat on the base of the spiral, which twisted in the moonlight over them.
“I wonder why it is?” Margaret said. “Most of them never come out at all. We and the Little One come out so often. You were wise and learned. I knew so little. Will you tell me?”
“Learning is not wisdom,” Ambrose answered. “But of this matter it was said that our containment in the grave depended on the spirit in which we departed. I made certain researches. It appeared by common report that only those came out whom desperate sin tormented, or labors incomplete and great desire at the point of death made restless. I had doubts the matter were more subtle, the reasons of it reaching out distantly.” He sighed faintly, following with his eyes, tomb by tomb, the broad white path that dropped down the hillside to the church. “I desired greatly to live.”
“I, too. Is it because we desired it so much, then? But the Little One”—-
“I do not know,” he said.
The Little One trotted gravely here and there, seeming to know very well what he was about, and presently came to the spiral stone. The lettering on it was new, and there was no cherub. He dropped down suddenly on the snow, with a faint whimper. His small feet came out from under his gown, as he sat upright, gazing at the letters with round troubled eyes, and up to the top of the monument for the solution of some unstated problem.
“The stone is but newly placed,” said Ambrose, “and the newcomer would seem to be of those who rest in peace.”
They went and sat down on either side of him, on the snow. The peculiar cutting of the stone, with spirally ascending lines, together with the moon's illusion, gave it a semblance of motion. Something twisted and climbed continually, and vanished continually from the point. But the base was broad, square, and heavily lettered: “John Mareschelli Vane.”
“Vane? That was thy name,” said Ambrose.
1890. Ætat 72.
An Eminent Citizen, a Public Benefactor, and Widely Esteemed.
For the Love of his Native Place returned to lay his Dust therein.
The Just Made Perfect.
“It would seem he did well, and rounded his labors to a goodly end, lying down among his kindred as a sheaf that is garnered in the autumn. He was fortunate.”
And Margaret spoke, in the thin, emotionless voice which those who are long in the graveyard use: “He was my brother.”
“Thy brother?” said Ambrose.
The Little One looked up and down the spiral with wide eyes. The other two looked past it into the deep white valley, where the river, covered with ice and snow, was marked only by the lines of skeleton willows and poplars. A night wind, listless but continual, stirred the evergreens. The moon swung low over the opposite hills, and for a moment slipped behind a cloud.
“Says it not so, 'For the Love of his Native Place'?” murmured Ambrose.
And as the moon came out, there leaned against the pedestal, pointing with a finger at the epitaph, one that seemed an old man, with bowed shoulders and keen, restless face, but in his manner cowed and weary.
“It is a lie,” he said slowly. “I hated it, Margaret. I came because Ellen Mercer called me.”
“Ellen isn't buried here.”
“Not here!”
“Not here.”
“Was it you, then, Margaret? Why?”
“I didn't call you.”
“Who then?” he shrieked. “Who called me?”
The night wind moved on monotonously, and the moonlight was undisturbed, like glassy water.
“When I came away,” she said, “I thought you would marry her. You didn't, then? But why should she call you?”
“I left the village suddenly!” he cried. “I grew to dread, and then to hate it. I buried myself from the knowledge of it, and the memory of it was my enemy. I wished for a distant death, and these fifty years have heard the summons to come and lay my bones in this graveyard. I thought it was Ellen. You, sir, wear an antique dress; you have been long in this strange existence. Can you tell who called me? If not Ellen, where is Ellen?” He wrung his hands, and rocked to and fro.
“The mystery is with the dead as with the living,” said Ambrose. “The shadows of the future and the past come among us. We look in their eyes, and understand them not. Now and again there is a call even here, and the grave is henceforth untenanted of its spirit. Here, too, we know a necessity which binds us, which speaks not with audible voice and will not be questioned.”
“But tell me,” moaned the other, “does the weight of sin depend upon its consequences? Then what weight do I bear? I do not know whether it was ruin or death, or a thing gone by and forgotten. Is there no answer here to this?”
“Death is but a step in the process of life,” answered Ambrose. “I know not if any are ruined or anything forgotten. Look up, to the order of the stars, an handwriting on the wall of the firmament. But who hath read it? Mark this night wind, a still small voice. But what speaketh it? The earth is clothed in white garments as a bride. What mean the ceremonials of the seasons? The will from without is only known as it is manifested. Nor does it manifest where the consequences of the deed end or its causes began. Have they any end or a beginning? I cannot answer you.”
“Who called me, Margaret?”
And she said again monotonously, “I didn't call you.”
The Little One sat between Ambrose and Margaret, chuckling to himself and gazing up at the newcomer, who suddenly bent forward and looked into his eyes, with a gasp.
“What is this?” he whispered. “'Thy Little One, O God, ætat 2,' from the Mercer Lot,” returned Ambrose gently. “He is very quiet. Art not neglecting thy business, Little One? The lower walks are unvisited to-night.”
“They are Ellen's eyes!” cried the other, moaning and rocking. “Did you call me? Were you mine?”
“It is, written, 'Thy Little One, O God,'” murmured Ambrose.
But the Little One only curled his feet up under his gown, and now chuckled contentedly.
THE clock in some invisible steeple struck one. The great snowflakes fell thickly, wavering and shrinking, delicate, barren seeds, conscious of their unfruitfulness. The sputter of the arc lights seemed explosive to the muffled silence of the street. With a bright corner at either end, the block was a canon, a passage in a nether world of lurking ghosts, where a frightened gaslight trembled, hesitated midway. And Noel Endicott conceived suddenly, between curb and curb, a sonnet, to be entitled “Dante in Tenth Street,” the appearance of it occupying, in black letter, a half page in theMonthly Illustrated, a gloomy pencilling above, and below it “Noel Endicott.” The noiselessness of his steps enlarged his imagination.
I walked in 19th Street, not the Florentine,
With ghosts more sad, and one like Beatrice
Laid on my lips the sanction of her kiss.
'Twas——
It should be in a purgatorial key, in effect something cold, white and spiritual, portraying “her” with Dantesque symbolism, a definite being, a vision with a name. “'Twas—” In fact, who was she?
He stopped. Tenth Street was worth more than a sonnet's confined austerity. It should be a story. Noel was one who beat tragic conceptions into manuscript, suffering rejection for improbability. Great actions thrilled him, great desires and despairs. The massive villainies of Borgia had fallen in days when art was strenuous. Of old, men threw a world away for a passion, an ambition. Intense and abundant life—one was compelled now to spin their symbols out of thin air, be rejected for improbability, and in the midst of a bold conception, in a snowstorm on canoned Tenth Street, be hungry and smitten with doubts of one's landlady.
Mrs. Tibbett had been sharp that morning relative to a bill, and he had remonstrated but too rashly: “Why discuss it, Mrs. Tibbett? It's a negative, an unfruitful subject.” And she had, in effect, raved, and without doubt now had locked the outer door. Her temper, roused at one o'clock, would be hasty in action, final in result.
He stood still and looked about him. Counting two half blocks as one, it was now one block to Mrs. Tibbett and that ambushed tragedy.
In his last novel, “The Sunless Treasure” (to his own mind his greatest), young Humphrey stands but a moment hesitating before the oaken door, believing his enemies to be behind it with ready daggers. He hesitates but a moment. The die is cast. He enters. His enemies are not there. But Mrs. Tibbett seemed different. For instance, she would be there.
The house frontage of this, like the house frontage of the fatal next block, was various, of brick, brownstone or dingy white surface, with doorways at the top of high steps, doorways on the ground level, doorways flush with the front, or sunken in pits. Not a light in any window, not a battlement that on its restless front bore a star, but each house stood grim as Child Roland's squat tower. The incessant snowflakes fell past, no motion or method of any Byzantine palace intrigue so silken, so noiseless, so mysterious in beginnings and results. All these locked caskets wedged together contained problems and solutions, to which Bassanio's was a simple chance of three with a pointed hint. Noel decided that Tenth Street was too large for a story. It was a literature. One must select.
Meanwhile the snow fell and lay thickly, and there was no doubt that by persistent standing in the snow one's feet became wet. He stepped into the nearest doorway, which was on the level of the street, one of three doorways alike, all low, arched and deep.
They would be less noticeable in the daytime than in the night, when their cavernous gaping and exact repetition seemed either ominous or grotesque, according to the observer. The outer door was open. He felt his way in beyond the drift to the hard footing of the vestibule, kicked his shoes free of snow and brushed his beard.
The heroes of novels were sometimes hungry and houseless, but it seemed to Noel that they seldom or never faced a problem such as Mrs. Tibbett presented. Desperate fortunes should be carried on the point of one's sword, but with Mrs. Tibbett the point was not to provoke her. She was incongruous. She must be thrust aside, put out of the plot. He made a gesture dismissing Mrs. Tibbett. His hand in the darkness struck the jamb of the inner door, which swung back with a click of the half-caught latch. His heart thumped, and he peered into the darkness, where a thin yellow pencil of light stretched level from a keyhole at the farther end of a long hall.
Dismissing Mrs. Tibbett, it was a position of dramatic advantage to stand in so dark and deep an arched entrance, between the silence and incessant motion of the snow on the one hand, and the yellow pencil of light, pointing significantly to something unknown, some crisis of fortune. He felt himself in a tale that had both force and form, responsible for its progress.
He stepped in, closed the half door behind him softly, and crept through the hall. The thin line of light barred the way, and seemed to say, “Here is the place. Be bold, ready-minded, full of subtlety and resource.” There was no sound within that he could hear, and no sound without, except his own oppressed breathing and pulses throbbing in his ears.
Faint heart never won anything, and as for luck, it belonged to those who adventured with various chances, and of the blind paths that led away from their feet into the future, chose one, and another, and so kept on good terms with possibility. If one but cried saucily, “Open this odd little box, you three gray women!” And this, and this the gray Fates smiled indulgently, showing a latent motherliness. How many destinies had been decided by the opening and shutting of a door, which to better or worse, never opened again for retreat? A touch on this door and Mrs. Tibbett might vanish from the story forever, to the benefit of the story.
He lifted his hand, having in mind to tap lightly, with tact and insinuation, but struck the door, in fact, nervously, with a bang that echoed in the hall. Some one spoke within. He opened and made entry in a prepared manner, which gave way to merely blinking wonder.
It was a large dining-room, brightly lit by a chandelier, warm from a glowing grate, sumptuous with pictures and hangings, on the table a glitter of glass and silver, with meat, cakes and wine.
On the farther side of the table stood a woman in a black evening dress, with jewels on her hair and bosom. She seemed to have just risen, and grasped the back of her chair with one hand, while the other held open a book on the table. The length of her white arm was in relief against her black dress.
Noel's artistic slouch hat, now taken off with uncertain hand, showed wavy brown hair over eyes not at all threatening, a beard pointed, somewhat profuse, a face interestingly featured and astonished. No mental preparation to meet whatever came, of Arabic or mediaeval incident, availed him. He felt dumb, futile, blinking. The lady's surprise, the startled fear on her face, was hardly seen before it changed to relief, as if the apparition of Noel, compared with some foreboding of her own, were a mild event. She half smiled when he began:—
“I am an intruder, madam,” and stopped with that embarrassed platitude. “I passed your first door by accident, and your second by impulse.”
“That doesn't explain why you stay.”
“May I stay to explain?”
When two have exchanged remarks that touch the borders of wit, they have passed a mental introduction. To each the mind of the other is a possible shade and bubbling spring by the dusty road of conversation. Noel felt the occasion. He bowed with a side sweep of his hat.
“Madam, I am a writer of poems, essays, stories. If you ask, What do I write in poems, essays, stories, I answer, My perception of things. If you ask, In what form would I cast my present perceptions of things, I say, Without doubt a poem.”
“You are able to carry both sides of a conversation. I have not asked any of these.”
“You have asked why I stay. I am explaining.”
The lady's attitude relaxed its stiffness by a shade, her half smile became a degree more balmy.
“I think you must be a successful writer.”
“You touch the point,” he said slowly. “I am not. I am hungry and probably houseless. And worse than that, I find hunger and houselessness are sordid, tame. The taste of them in the mouth is flat, like stale beer. It is not like the bitter tang of a new experience, but like something the world shows its weariness of in me.”
The amused smile vanished in large-eyed surprise, and something more than surprise, as if his words gave her some intimate, personal information.
“You say strange things in a very strange way. And you came in by an accident?”
“And an impulse?”
“I don't understand. But you must sit down, and I can find you more to eat, if this isn't enough.”
Noel could not have explained the strangeness of his language, if it was strange, further than that he felt the need of saying something in order to find an opportunity of saying something to the point, and so digplayed whatever came to his mind as likely to arrest attention. It was a critical lesson in vagabondage, as familiar there as hunger and houselessness. He attacked the cold meat, cakes and fruit with fervor, and the claret in the decanter. But what should be the next step in the pursuit of fortune? At this point should there not come some revelation?
The lady did not seem to think so, but sat looking now at Noel and now at her own white hands in her lap. That she should have youth and beauty seemed to Noel as native to the issue as her jewels, the heavy curtains, the silver and glass. As for youth, she might be twenty, twenty-one, two. All such ages, he observed to himself with a mental flourish, were one in beauty. It was not a rosy loveliness like the claret in the decanter, nor plump like the fruit in the silver basket, but dark-eyed, white and slender, with black hair drawn across the temples; of a fragile delicacy like the snowflakes, the frost flower of the century's culture, the symbol of its ultimate luxury. The rich room was her setting. She was the center and reason for it, and the yellow point of a diamond over her heart, glittering, but with a certain mellowness, was still more central, intimate, interpretative, symbolic of all desirable things. He began to see the story in it, to glow with the idea.
“Madam,” he said, “I am a writer of whose importance I have not as yet been able to persuade the public. The way I should naturally have gone to-night seemed to me something to avoid. I took another, which brought me here. The charm of existence—” She seemed curiously attentive. “The charm of existence is the unforeseen, and of all things our moods are the most unforeseen. One's plans are not always and altogether futile. If you propose to have salad for lunch, and see your way to it, it is not so improbable that you will have salad for lunch. But if you prefigure how it will all seem to you at lunch, you are never quite right. Man proposes and God disposes. I add that there is a third and final disposal, namely, what man is to think of the disposition after it is made. I hope, since you proposed or prefigured to-night, perhaps as I did, something different from this—this disposition”—he lifted his glass of claret between him and the light—“that your disposition what to think of it is, perhaps, something like mine.”
The lady was leaning forward with parted lips, listening intently, absorbed in his words. For the life of him Noel could not see why she should be absorbed in his words, but the fact filled him with happy pride.
“Tell me,” she said quickly. “You speak so well—”
Noel filled in her pause of hesitation.
“That means that my wisdom may be all in my mouth.”
“No, indeed! I mean you must have experience. Will you tell me, is it so dreadful not to have money? People say different things.”
“They do.” He felt elevated, borne along on a wave of ornamental expression. “It is their salvation. Their common proverbs contradict each other. A man looks after his pence and trusts one proverb that the pounds will look after themselves, till presently he is called penny wise and pound foolish, and brought up by another. And consider how less noticeable life would be without its jostle of opinion, its conflicting lines of wisdom, its following of one truth to meet with another going a different way. Give me for finest companionship some half truth, some ironic veracity.”
She shook her head. It came to him with a shock that it was not his ornamental expression which interested her, but only as it might bear on something in her own mind more simple, direct and serious, something not yet disclosed. “In fact,” he thought, “she is right. One must get on with the plot” It was a grievous literary fault to break continuity, to be led away from the issue by niceties of expression. The proper issue of a plot was simple, direct, serious, drawn from the motive which began it. Why did she sit here with her jewels, her white arms and black dress these weird, still hours of the night? Propriety hinted his withdrawal, but one must resist the commonplace.
“The answer to the question does not satisfy you. But do you not see that I only enlarged on your own answer? People say different things because they are different. The answer depends on temperaments, more narrowly on moods; on tenses, too, whether it is present poverty and houselessness or past or future. And so it has to be answered particularly, and you haven't made me able to answer it particularly to you. And then one wouldn't imagine it could be a question particular to you.”
“You are very clever,” she murmured, half smiling again. “Are you not too clever for the purpose? You say so many things.”
“That is true,” said Noel plaintively. “The story has come to a standstill. It has all run out into diction.”
At that moment there was a loud noise in the hall.
The smile, which began hopefully, grew old while he watched it, and withered away. The noise that echoed in the hall was of a banging door, then of laden, dragging steps. The hall door was thrown open, and two snowy hackmen entered, holding up between them a man wearing a tall hat.
“He's some loaded, ma'am,” said one of them cheerfully. “I ain't seen him so chucked in six months.”
They dropped him in a chair, from which, after looking about him with half-open, glassy eyes, and closing them again, he slid limply to the floor. The hackman regarded that choice of position with sympathy.
“Wants to rest his load, he does,” and backed out of the door with his companion.
“It goes on the bill. Ain't seen him so chucked in six months.”
The lady had not moved from her chair, but had sat white and still, looking down into her lap. She gave a hard little laugh.
“Isn't it nice he's so 'chucked'? He would have acted dreadfully.” She was leaning on the table now, her dark eyes reading him intently. The man on the floor snorted and gurgled in his sleep.
“I couldn't kill anybody,” she said. “Could you?”
Noel shook his head.
“It's so funny,” she went on in a soft, speculative way, “one can't do it. I'm afraid to go away and be alone and poor. I wish he would die.”
“It wouldn't work out that way,” said Noel, struggling with his wits. “He's too healthy.”
It seemed to him immediately that the comment was not the right one. It was not even an impersonal fact to himself, an advantage merely to the plot, that the sleeper was unable to object to him and discard him from it, as he had resolved to discard Mrs. Tibbett, but with such brutal energy as the sleeper's face indicated. For it repelled not so much by its present relaxed degradation as by its power, its solidity of flesh, its intolerant self-assertion, the physical vigor of the short bull neck, bulky shoulders, heavy mustache, heavy cheeks and jaw, bluish with the shaving of a thick growth. He was dressed, barring his damp dishevelment, like a well-groomed clubman.
But the lady was looking Noel in the eyes, and her own seemed strangely large, but as if covering a spiritual rather than a physical space, settled in melancholy, full of clouds, moving lights and dusky distances.
“I was waiting for him because he ordered me. I'm so afraid of him,” she said, shrinking with the words. “He likes me to be here and afraid of him.”
“Tell me what I am to do?” he said eagerly.
“I suppose you are not to do anything.”
Noel caught the thread of his fluency. He drew a ten-cent piece from his pocket, tossed it on the table, gestured toward it with one hand and swung the other over the back of his chair with an air of polished recklessness.
“But your case seems desperate to you. Is it more than mine? You have followed this thing about to 'the end of the passage,' and there is my last coin. My luck might change to-morrow. Who knows? Perhaps tonight. I would take it without question and full of hope. Will you experiment with fortune and—and me?”
The dark eyes neither consented nor refused. They looked at him gravely.
“It is a black, cold night. The snow is thick in the air and deep on the street Put it so at the worst, but fortune and wit will go far.”
“Your wit goes farther than your fortune, doesn't it?” she said, smiling.
“I don't conceal.”
“You don't conceal either of them, do you? You spread them both out,” and she laughed a pleasant little ripple of sound.
Noel rose with distinction and bent toward her across the table.
“My fortune is this ten-cent piece. As you see, on the front of it is stamped a throned woman.”
“Oh, how clever.” She laughed, and Noel flushed with the applause.
“Shall we trust fortune and spin the coin? Heads, the throned woman, I shall presently worship you, an earthly divinity. Tails, a barren wreath and the denomination of a money value, meaning I take my fortunes away, and you,” pointing in turn to the sleeper and the jewels, “put up with yours as you can.”
She seemed to shiver as he pointed. “No,” she said, “I couldn't do that. A woman never likes to spin a coin seriously.”
“Will you go, then?”
The sleeper grunted and turned over. She turned pale, put her hand to her throat, said hurriedly, “Wait here,” and left the room, lifting and drawing her skirt aside as she passed the sleeper.
She opened the door at last and came again, wrapped in a fur mantle, carrying a travelling case, and stood looking down at the sleeper as if with some struggle of the soul, some reluctant surrender.
They went out, shutting the door behind them.
The snow was falling still on Tenth Street, out of the crowding night. He held her hand on his arm close to him. She glided beside him noiselessly.
The express office was at the corner, a little dingy, gas-lit room.
“Carriage? Get it in a minute,” said the sleepy clerk. “It's just round the corner.”
They stood together by a window, half opaque with dust. Her face was turned away, and he watched the slant of her white cheek.
“You will have so much to tell me,” he whispered at last.
“I am really very grateful. You helped me to resolve.”
“Your carriage, sir.”
The electric light sputtered over them standing on the curb.
“But,” she said, smiling up at him, “I have nothing to tell you. There is nothing more. It ends here. Forgive me. It is my plot and it wouldn't work out your way. There are too many conflicting lines of wisdom in your way. My life lately has been what you would call, perhaps, a study in realism, and you want me to be, perhaps, a symbolic romance. I am sure you would express it very cleverly. But I think one lives by taking resolutions rather than by spinning coins, which promise either a throned woman, or a wreath and the denomination of a money value. One turns up so much that is none of these things. Men don't treat women that way. I married to be rich, and was very wretched, and perhaps your fame, when it comes, will be as sad to you. Perhaps the trouble lies in what you called 'the third disposal.' But I did not like being a study in realism. I should not mind being something symbolic, if I might prove my gratitude”—she took her hand from his arm, put one foot on the step and laughed, a pleasant little ripple of sound—“by becoming literary material.” The door shut to, and the carriage moved away into the storm with a muffled roll of wheels.
Noel stared after it blankly, and then looked around him. It was half a block now to Mrs. Tibbett. He walked on mechanically, and mounted the steps by habit. The outer door was not locked. A touch of compunction had visited Mrs. Tibbett.
He crept into his bed, and lay noting the growing warmth and sense of sleep, and wondering whether that arched doorway was the third of the three or the second. Strictly speaking he seemed to have gone in at the middle one and come out at the third, or was it not the first rather than the middle entrance that he had sheltered in? The three arched entrances capered and contorted before him in the dark, piled themselves into the portal of a Moorish palace, twisted themselves in a kind of mystical trinity and seal of Solomon, floated apart and became thin, filmy, crescent moons over a frozen sea. He sat up in bed and smote the coverlet.
“I don't know her name! She never told me!” He clutched his hair, and then released it cautiously. “It's Musidora! I forgot that sonnet!”
'Twas Musidora, whom the mystic nine
Gave to my soul to be forever mine,
And, as through shadows manifold of Dis,
Showed in her eyes, through dusky distances
And clouds, the moving lights about their shrine;
Now ever on my soul her touch shall be
As on the cheek are touches of the snow,
Incessant, cool, and gone; so guiding me
From sorrow's house and triple portico.
And prone recumbrance of brute tyranny,
In a strict path shall teach my feet to go.
The clock in the invisible steeple struck three.