"You see," said Mr. Driscoll, when, after three days of independent
wonder-gazing in the thirty square miles of the Lower Geyser Basin, his
seven fares came together for departure, "as I told yeh, this trip is
just gettin' good."
"I have seen," said the Poet, "a spring from the bottom of which fires
leap in lambent flames, to be quenched by the air when they reach the
surface. Let me die, now!"
"I have seen," said the Artist, "the Mammoth Paint Pots from which we
may dip our colors in that day 'when earth's last picture is painted,
and the tubes are twisted and dried.'"
"I have seen," said the Bride, "a lake perched upon a marble platform,
the slopes of which it drapes with a lace of runnels--like the web that
was woven by the Lady of Shalott while she looked in her magic mirror."
"In that day when we perfect our mythology," said the Poet, "we shall
know of the nymph of this lake, who uses it as a mirror, and will die if
she looks away from the image to gaze on the real knight as he passes."
"I question that, really," said the Professor. "In an age of pure
science--"
"Scat!" said the Colonel. "I have seen a pool that goes mad when any
passing idiot throws gross material into its pure idealism--and I
sympathize with it."
"I have seen," went on Professor Boggs, "a natural object--I refer to
the Fountain Geyser--which gives us a valuable lesson in steady
performance, with no eccentricities. Every four hours it plays for
fifteen minutes, shooting its water to a height of sixty feet. Note the
mathematical correspondence--the feet correspond to the minutes in the
hour--the hours are four--four into sixty goes fifteen times, the number
of minutes the geyser plays--I shall work this out in an essay--it seems
very significant."
"I have seen," said the Groom, "in the Great Fountain Geyser, a natural
power installation. It throws its huge volume of water to a height of
one hundred feet. It is on a pedestal like an emplacement for a
monument, and its crater looks like the hole in which to set the shaft.
That makes the matter of utilizing the power a cinch. I figure--"
"Billy!" said the Bride. "Aren't you ashamed?"
"The Professor and myself," answered the Groom, "represent the spirit of
the age. We only are sane."
"You, Billy Helmerston," said the Bride, "are a fraud!"
* * * * *
Nine miles to the Upper Geyser Basin--passing the Midway Basin
half-way--and the tourists found their tents already pitched by Aconite
who had preceded them with the impedimenta, and returned light for the
drive. They took a whole day for the journey, and even so felt as if
they were committing an atrocity in negligence. The Jewell Geyser, the
Sapphire Pool and the Mystic Falls seemed small by comparison with the
gigantic phenomena of the Lower Basin, and smaller still next day
compared with the stupendous marvels of the Upper Basin. At the Mystic
Falls, the Bride insisted on taking luncheon.
"It's like the really normal loveliness of earth," said she. "It goes
better with humanity, and luncheon, and flowers and fairies and gentle
things. I want to eat a meal in neither Paradise nor the Inferno--and we
seem to be in one or the other most of the time."
At luncheon, Professor Boggs came forward with an original and practical
idea with relation to the Yellowstone Nights' Entertainment, as they had
come to call their camp-fire stories.
"I hold," said he, "that one is entitled to time for putting his
thoughts in order before presuming to deliver an address, even of the
narrative sort. I find myself apprehensive of being called upon next,
and this interferes with my powers of observation. I suggest that we
cast lots for the next tale now, and thus free the minds of all but the
narrator, who may retire if he choose, and collate his data."
"It's a good thought," said the Groom. "Poet, perform your office!"
The Poet passed the hat to the Bride, who closed her eyes and felt about
discriminatingly, saying she was trying to find Billy in the hat. The
Poet read the ballot and handed it to the Artist.
"Groom!" read the Artist, handing the slip of paper to Billy. "You're
nominated."
"Stung!" ejaculated Billy.
THE HEART OF GOLIATH
THE STORY TOLD BY THE GROOM
"I often think," said the Groom, in beginning his tale that night, "when
this adventure recurs to me, what a different world it would be if we
could see into one another's minds, and telepathically search one
another's hearts. I don't know whether it would be better or not; but
that it would be different, this story proves. It is a tale that came to
me when I was traveling about in the Missouri Valley, earning the money
for my Tech course, and long before my time with the Mid-Continent
Electric Company. It shows how a soul that is pitchy darkness to its
nearest and dearest, may be illumined by the electric light of
self-revelation to the eye of the chance-met stranger."
* * * * *
I first saw him on the platform just before my train pulled out from
Sioux City to Aberdeen. He was a perfect mountain--an Alp, a
Himalaya--of man. He must have been well toward seven feet tall; and so
vast were his proportions that as he stooped to the window to buy his
ticket he reminded me of a mastiff peering into a mouse's hole. From a
distance--one could scarcely take in the details at close range--I
studied him as a remarkable specimen of the brawny western farmer, whose
score in any exhibition would be lowered by one fact only: lofty as his
height was, he was getting too heavy for it.
I had to go into the smoking-car to find a vacant seat, and there I
could see but one. I had but just slipped into it when in came the
Gargantuan farmer and sat down all over me, in a seemingly ruthless
exercise of his undoubted right to half the seat, and his unquestionable
ability to appropriate as much more as his dimensions required. Falstaff
with his page reminded himself of a sow that had overwhelmed all her
litter save one: I felt like the last of the litter in process of
smothering. And he was as ignorant of my existence, apparently, as could
possibly be required by the comparison.
He wore with bucolic negligence clothes of excellent quality. His hat
was broad as a prairie. I have no idea where such hats are bought. I am
sure I never saw one of such amplitude of brim on sale anywhere. It was
of the finest felt, and had a band of heavy leather pressed into a
design in bas-relief. A few dried alfalfa leaves had lodged in the
angle between the crown and the brim, and clung there, even when he took
the hat off to wipe his brow, thus giving me a view of the plateau of
felt, which I should never have obtained otherwise.
His face was enormous but not puffy; and the red veinlets on the cheek
and nose had acquired their varicosity by weathering rather than by
indulgence. His hair was clipped short, as though he had had a complete
job done as a measure of economizing time. He had a high beak of a nose,
with rugged promontories of bone at the bridge, like the shoulders of a
hill; and his mouth was a huge but well-shaped feature, hard and
inflexible like the mouth of a cave.
His shirt was of blue flannel, clean and fine, and its soft roll collar
fell away from his great muscular neck unconfined and undecorated by any
sort of cravat. His tun of a torso bulged roundly out in front of me
like the sponson of a battleship. Stretched across the immense waistcoat
was a round, spirally-fluted horsehair watchguard as big as a rope, with
massive golden fastenings; and suspended from it was a golden steer made
by some artificer who had followed Cellini afar off, if at all, and
which gave the area (one must use geographical terms in describing the
man), an auriferous and opulent appearance.
His trousers were spotted with the stains of stables; and his huge
boots, like barges, had similar discolorations overlaying a brilliant
shine. He carried one of those heavy white sticks with which the drovers
and dealers at the Sioux City stockyards poke the live stock and take
the liberties accorded to prospective purchasers with pigs and bullocks.
On the crook of this he rested his great hands, one piled upon the
other, and stared, as if fascinated by them, at four soldiers returning
from service in the Philippines, who had two seats turned together, and
were making a gleeful function of their midday meal, startling the South
Dakota atmosphere with the loud use of strange-sounding expressions in
Tagalog and Spanish, and, with military brutality, laughing at the dying
struggles of a fellow-man being slowly pressed to death under that human
landslide. I resented their making light of such a subject.
My oppressor stared at them with a grim and unwavering gaze that finally
seemed to put them out and set them ill at ease; for they became so
quiet that we could hear noises other than theirs. Once in a while,
however, they winked at me to show their appreciation of my agonies,
and made remarks about the water-cure and the like, meant for my ears.
My incubus seemed not to hear a word of this badinage. I wondered if he
were not deaf, or a little wrong in his intellect. The train stopped at
a little station just as I had become quite desperate, and two men
sitting in front of us got off. With the superhuman strength of the last
gasp I surged under my tormentor--and he noticed me. I verily believe
that until that instant he had not known of my presence; he gave such a
deliberate sort of start.
"Excuse me!" said he. "Forgot they was any one here--let me fix you!"
He had already almost done so; but he meant well. He rose to take the
vacated seat; but with a glance at the soldiers he threw the back over,
turned his back to them and his face to me, and sat down. His ponderous
feet like valises rested on each side of mine, his body filled the seat
from arm to arm. For a while, even after discovering me, he stared past
me as if I had been quite invisible. I saw a beady perspiration on his
brow as if he were under some great stress of feeling. It was getting
uncanny. I understood now how the soldiers, now breaking forth into riot
again, had been suppressed by that stony regard. When he spoke,
however, it was in commonplaces.
"They're lots of 'em comin' back," said he.
A slow thrust of the bulky thumb over his shoulder indicated that he
meant soldiers. I nodded assent. A great many were returning just then.
"Jack's come back," said he; "quite a while."
His voice was in harmony with his physique--deep, heavy, rough. Raised
in rage it might have matched the intonations of Stentor, and terrified
a thousand foes; for it was a phenomenal voice. The rumble of the train
was a piping treble compared with it.
"You don't know Jack, do yeh?" he asked.
"I think not," said I.
"Course not," he replied. "Fool question! An' yit, he used to know most
of you fellers."
I wondered just what he might mean by "you fellows," but he was silent
again.
"You don't live near here," he stated at last.
"No," said I. "I am just passing through."
"If you lived in these parts," said he, "you'd know him."
"I dare say," I replied. "Who is Jack?"
I was a little piqued at his rudeness; for he returned no reply. Then I
saw that he was gazing into vacancy again so absently that I should have
pronounced his case one of mental trouble if his appearance had not been
so purely physical. He took from a cigar-case a big, dark, massive
cigar, clubhouse shape like himself, gave it to me and lighted the twin
of it. I thought myself entitled to reparation for his maltreatment of
me, and, seeing that it was a good cigar, I took it. As for any further
converse, I had given that up, when there rumbled forth from him a
soliloquy rather than a story. He appeared to have very little
perception of me as an auditor. I think now that he must have been in
great need of some one to whom he might talk, and that his relations to
those about him forbade any outpouring of expression. He seemed all the
time in the attitude of repelling attack. He did not move, save as he
applied the cigar to his lips or took it away; and his great voice
rolled forth in subdued thunder.
"I've got four sections of ground," said he, "right by the track....
Show you the place when we go through. Of course I've got a lot of other
truck scattered around.... Land at the right figger you've got to
buy--got to.... But when I hadn't but the four sections--one section
overruns so they's a little over twenty-six hundred acres--I thought
'twas about the checker f'r a man with three boys.... One f'r each o'
them, you understand, an' the home place f'r mother if anything
happened.... Mother done jest as much to help git the start as I did....
Plumb as much--if not more.
"Tom an' Wallace is good boys--none better. I'd about as quick trust
either of 'em to run the place as to trust myself."
There was a candid self-esteem in the word "about" and his emphasis on
it.
"I sent Wallace," he resumed, "into a yard of feeders in Montana to pick
out a trainload o' tops with a brush and paint-pot, an' I couldn't 'a'
got a hundred dollars better deal if I'd spotted 'em myself.... That's
goin' some f'r a kid not twenty-five. Wallace knows critters ... f'r a
boy ... mighty well.... An' Tom's got a way of handlin' land to get the
last ten bushel of corn to the acre that beats me with all my
experience.... These colleges where they study them things do some good,
I s'pose; but it's gumption, an' not schoolin', that makes boys like Tom
an' Wallace.... They're all right.... They'd 'a' made good anyhow."
I could feel an invidious comparison between Tom and Wallace, of whom he
spoke with such laudatory emphasis, and some one else whom I suspected
to be the Jack who had come back from the Philippines; and his next
utterance proved this instinctive estimate of the situation to be
correct. He went on, slower than before, with long pauses in which he
seemed lost in thought, and in some of which I gave up, without much
regret, I confess, the idea of ever hearing more of Jack or his
brothers.
"Jack was always mother's boy," said he. "Mother's boy ... you know how
it is.... Make beds, an' dust, an' play the pianah, an' look after the
flowers!... Wasn't bigger'n nothin', either.... Girl, I always thought,
by good rights. I remember ... mother wanted him to be a girl.... She
was on the square with the children ... but if any boy got a shade the
best of it anywhere along the line, it was Jack.... I don't guess Tom
an' Wallace ever noticed; but maybe Jack got a leetle the soft side o'
things from mother.... Still, she's al'ays been dumbed square....
"I seen as soon as he got old enough to take holt, an' didn't, that he
wasn't wuth a cuss.... Never told mother, an' never let on to the boys;
but I could see he was no good, Jack wasn't.... Some never owns up when
it's their own folks ... but what's the use lyin'?... Hed to hev a
swaller-tail coat, an' joined a 'country club' down to town--an' him
a-livin' in the middle of a strip o' country a mile wide an' four long,
wuth a hundred dollars an acre ... all ourn ... goin' out in short pants
to knock them little balls around that cost six bits apiece. I didn't
let myself care much about it; but 'country club!'--Hell!"
He had visualized for me the young fellow unfitted to his surroundings,
designed on a scale smaller than the sons of Anak about him, deft in
little things, finical in dress, fond of the leisure and culture of the
club, oppressed with the roughnesses and vastnesses about his father's
farms, too tender for the wild winds and burning suns, with nerves
attuned to music and art rather than to the crushing of obstacles and
the defeat of tasks: and all the while the image of "mother" brooded
over him. All this was vividly in the picture--very vividly, considering
the unskilful brush with which it had been limned--but just as it began
to appeal to me, Anak fell quiescent.
"I never thought he was anything wuss than wuthless," he went on, at
last, "till he come to me to git some money he'd lost at this here
club.... Thirty-seven dollars an' fifty cents.... Gamblin'.... I told
him not by a damned sight; an' he cried--cried like a baby.... I'd 'a'
seen him jugged 'fore I'd 'a' give him thirty-seven fifty of my good
money lost that way.... Not me.
"... Wallace give him the money f'r his shotgun.... An' mother--she
al'ays knowed when Jack had one o' his girl-cryin' fits--she used to go
up after Jack come in them nights, an' when he got asleep so he wouldn't
know it she'd go in and kiss him.... Watched and ketched her at it, but
never let on.... She run down bad--gittin' up before daylight an' broke
of her rest like that.... I started in oncet to tell her he was no good,
but I jest couldn't.... Turned it off on a hoss by the name o' Jack we
had, an' sold him to make good f'r twenty-five dollars less'n he was
wuth, ruther'n tell her what I started to.... She loved that wuthless
boy, neighbor--there ain't no use denyin' it, she did love him."
He paused a long while, either to ponder on the strange infatuation of
"mother" for "Jack" or to allow me to digest his statement. A dog--one
of the shaggy brown enthusiasts that chase trains--ran along by the cars
until distanced, and then went back wagging his tail as if he had
expelled from the neighborhood some noxious trespasser--as he may have
conceived himself to have done. Goliath watched him with great apparent
interest.
"Collie," said he, at last. "Know anything about collies? Funny dogs!
Lick one of 'em oncet an' he's never no good any more.... All kind o'
shruvle up by lickin', they're that tender-hearted.... Five year ago
this fall Tom spiled a fifty-dollar pedigreed collie by jest slappin'
his ears an' jawin' him.... Some critters is like that ... Jack ...
was!"
He faltered here, and then flamed out into pugnacity, squaring his huge
jaw as if I had accused him--as I did in my heart, I suspect.
"But the dog," he rumbled, "was wuth somethin'--Jack never was....
Cryin' around f'r thirty-seven fifty!... Talkin' o' debts o' honor!...
That showed me plain enough he wasn't wuth botherin' with.... Got his
mother to come an' ask f'r an allowance o' money--so much a month....
Ever hear of such a thing? An' him not turnin' his hand to a lick of
work except around the house helpin' mother.... Tom an' Wallace bed
quite a little start in live stock by this time, an' money in bank....
Jack hed the same lay, but he fooled his away--fooled it away.... Broke
flat all the time, an' wantin' an allowance.... Mother said the young
sprouts at the club had allowances ... an' he read in books that laid
around the house about fellers in England an' them places havin'
allowances an' debts of honor.... Mother seemed to think one while that
we was well enough off so we could let Jack live like the fellers in the
books.... He lived more in them books than he did in South Dakoty, an'
talked book lingo all the time.... Mother soon seen she was wrong.
"She was some hurt b'cause I talked to the neighbors about Jack bein'
plumb no good.... I don't know who told her.... I didn't want the
neighbors to think I was fooled by him.... I never said nothing to
mother, though.... She couldn't f'rgit thet he was her boy, an' she kep'
on lovin' him.... Nobody orto blame her much f'r that, no matter what
he done.... You know how it is with women.
"One time purty soon after the thirty-seven fifty deal a bad check f'r
two hundred come into my bundle o' canceled vouchers at the bank, an' I
knowed in a minute who'd done it.... Jack had been walkin' the floor
nights f'r quite a spell, an' his eyes looked like a heifer's that's
lost her calf.... He hed a sweetheart in town.... Gal from the East ...
big an' dark an' strong enough to take Jack up an' spank him.... It was
her brother Jack had lost the money to. Jack jest wrote my name on a
check--never tried to imitate my fist much--an' the bank paid it....
When I come home a-lookin' the way a man does that's been done that way
by a boy o' his'n, mother told me Jack was gone, an' handed me a letter
he left f'r me.... I never read it.... Went out to the barn so mother
wouldn't see me, an' tore it up.... I'd 'a' been damned before I'd 'a'
read it!"
He gloomed out over my head in an expressionless way that aroused all
the curiosity I am capable of feeling as to the actual workings of
another's mind. He seemed to be under the impression that he had said a
great many things in the pause that ensued; or he regarded my
understanding as of small importance; for he recommenced at a point far
advanced in his narrative.
"--'N' finely," said he very calmly, "we thought she was goin' to die. I
asked the doctor what we could do, an' he told me what.... Knowed all
the boys since he helped 'em into the world, you know--a friend more'n a
doctor--an' he allowed it was Jack she was pinin' f'r. So I goes to her,
a-layin' in bed as white as a sheet, an' I says, 'Mother, if they's
anything you want, you can hev it, if it's on earth, no matter how
no-account I think it is!' ... A feller makes a dumb fool of himself
such times, neighbor; but mother was good goods when we was poor an'
young--any one of the neighbors can swear to that.... She looks up at
me ... an' whispers low ... 'Go an' find him!' ... An' I went.
"I knowed purty nigh where to look. I went to Chicago. He'd dropped
clean down to the bottom, neighbor.... Playin' a pianah ... f'r his
board an' lodgin' an' beer ... in ... in a beer hall."
I was quite sure, he paused so long, that he had told all he had to
narrate of this history of the boy who could not stand punishment, and
was so much like a collie; and I knew from the manner in which he had
lapsed into silence, more than from what he had said, what a dark
passage it was.
"Well," he resumed finally, "I hed my hands spread to strangle him right
there.... I could 'a' done it all right--he was that peaked an'
little.... He wouldn't 'a' weighed more'n a hundred an' fifty--an' _my_
son!... I could 'a' squushed the life out of him with my hands--an' it
was all right if I hed.... You bet it was!... Not that I cared f'r the
two hundred dollars. I could spare that all right. I'll lose that much
on a fair proposition any time.... But to take that thing back to
mother ... from where I picked it up from!
"I reckon I was ruther more gentle with Jack goin' home than I ever was
before.... I hed to be. They was no way out of it except to be easy with
him--'r lam the life out of him an' take him home on a cot ... an'
mother needed him in runnin' order. So I got him clothes, an' had him
bathed, an' he got shaved as he used to be--he had growed a beard--an' I
rode in one car and him in another.... When mother seed him, her an'
him cried together f'r I suppose it might have been two hours 'r two and
a quarter, off an' on, an' whispered together, an' then she went to
sleep holdin' his hand, an' begun to pick up, an' Jack went back to his
own ways, an' the rest of us to ourn, an' it was wuss than ever.... An'
when he sold a team o' mine and skipped ag'in, I was glad, I tell you,
to be shet of him.... An' they could do the mile to the pole in twenty,
slick as mice.
"Next time mother and Wallace went an' got him.... Mother found out some
way that he was dyin' in a horsepittle in Minneapolis.... He claimed
he'd been workin f'r a real estate firm; but I had the thing looked
up ... an' I couldn't find where any of our name had done nothing.... An'
it seemed as ef we'd never git shet of him.... That sounds hard; but he
was a kind of a disease by this time--a chronic, awful painful, worryin'
disease, like consumption.... An' we couldn't git cured of him, an' we
couldn't die.... It was kind o' tough. He moped around, an' mother had
some kind o' promise out of him that he wouldn't leave her no more, an'
he was pleadin' with her to let him go, an' Tom an' Wallace an' me
never sayin' a word to him, when this here Philippine War broke out ...
you know what it's about--I never did ... an' Jack wanted to enlist.
"'I can't let him go!' says mother.
"'Let him go,' says I. 'If he'll go, let him!'
"Mother looks at me whiter'n I ever expect to see her again but once,
maybe; an' the next morning she an' Jack goes to the county seat an' he
enlists. I went down when the rig'ment was all got together. Mother an'
me has always had a place where we kep' all the money they was in the
house, as much hern as mine, an' she took five twenty-dollar gold pieces
out of the pile, an' sewed 'em in a chamois-skin bag all wet with her
cryin' ... an' never sayin' a word ... an' she hangs it round his neck,
an' hung to him an' kissed him till it sorter bothered the boss of the
rig'ment--some kind of colonel--because he wanted the men to march, you
know, an' didn't seem to like to make mother fall back.... She seemed to
see how it was, finely, an' fell back, an' this colonel made the motion
to her with his sword they do to their superiors, an' they marched....
Jack stood straighter than any one in the line, an' he had a new sort of
look to him. He everidged up purty good, too, in hithe ... I don't see
much to this soldier business.... Maybe that's why he looked the part so
well.... I give the captain a hundred f'r him.... Jack sent it back from
a place called Sanfrisco, without a word. 'So much saved!' says I. He
was wuthless as ever."
The immense voice labored, broke, stopped--the man seemed weary and
overcome. To afford him an escape from the story that seemed to have
mastered him, like the Ancient Mariner's, I called his attention to what
the four soldiers were doing. They had dressed as if for inspection, and
were evidently going out upon the platform. The noticeable thing in
their appearance was the change in their expressions from the hilarity
and riotousness of a few moments ago, to a certain solemnity. One of
them carried a little box carefully wrapped up, as a devotee might carry
an offering to a shrine. The huge farmer glanced casually at them as if
with full knowledge of what they were doing, and, ignoring my
interruption, seemed to resume his monologue--as might the habitué of a
temple pass by the question of a stranger concerning a matter related to
the mysteries--something not to be discussed, difficult to be explained,
or not worth mention. He pointed out of the window.
"Our land," said he; "both sides ... tiptop good ground.... Didn't look
much like this when mother an' me homesteaded the first
quarter-section.... See that bunch of box-elders? Me an' her camped
there as we druv in.... Never cut 'em down.... Spoil an acre of good
corn land, too; to say nothin' o' the time wasted cultivatin' 'round
'em.... Well, a man's a fool about some things!"
It was a picture of fulsome plenty and riotous fertility. Straight as
the stretched cord by which they had been dropped ran the soldierly rows
of corn, a mile along, their dark blades outstretched in the unwavering
prairie wind, as if pointing us on to something noteworthy or mysterious
beyond. Back and forth along the rows plodded the heavy teams of the
cultivators, stirring the brown earth to a deeper brownness. High fences
of woven wire divided the spacious fields. On a hundred-acre meadow, as
square and level as a billiard table, were piled the dark cocks of a
second crop of alfalfa. One, two, three farmsteads we passed, each with
its white house hidden in trees, its big red barns, its low hog-houses,
its feed yards, with their racks polished by the soft necks of feasting
steers. And everywhere was the corn--the golden corn of last year in
huge cribs like barracks; the emerald hosts of the new crop in its ranks
like green-suited lines-of-battle arrested in full career and held as by
some spell, leaning onward in act of marching, every quivering sword
pointing mysteriously forward. My heart of a farmer swelled within me at
the scene, which had something in it akin to its owner, it was so huge,
so opulent, so illimitable. Somehow, it seemed to interpret him to me.
"Purty good little places," said he; "but the home place skins 'em all.
We'll be to it in a minute. Train slows up f'r a piece o' new track
work. We'll git a good view of it."
Heaving himself up, he went before me down the aisle of the slowing
train. There stood the soldiers on the steps and the platform. We took
our places back of them. I was absorbed in the study of the splendid
farm, redeemed from the lost wilderness by this man who had all at once
become worth while to me. Back at the rear of the near-by fields was a
row of lofty cottonwoods, waving their high crests in the steady wind.
All about the central grove were pastures, meadows, gardens and
orchards. A dense coppice of red cedars enclosed on three sides a big
feed-yard, in which, stuffing themselves on corn and alfalfa, or lying
in the dusty straw, were grouped a hundred bovine aristocrats in stately
unconcern of the rotund Poland-Chinas about them. In the pastures were
colts as huge as dray-horses, shaking the earth in their clumsy play.
There were barns and barns and barns--capacious red structures, with
hay-forks rigged under their projecting gables; and, in the midst of all
this foison, stood the house--square, roomy, of red brick, with a broad
porch on two sides covered with climbing roses and vines.
On this veranda was a thing that looked like a Morris chair holding a
figure clad in khaki. A stooped, slender, white-haired woman hovered
about the chair; and down by the track, as if to view the passing train,
stood a young woman who was tall and swarthy and of ample proportions.
Her dress was artistically adapted to country wear; she looked
well-groomed and finished. She was smiling as the train drew slowly
past, but I was sure that her eyes were full of tears. I wondered why
she looked with such intentness at the platform--until I saw what the
soldiers were doing. They stood at attention, their hands to their
service-hats, stiff, erect, military. The girl returned the salute, and
pointed to the chair on the veranda, put her handkerchief to her eyes,
and shook her head as if in apology for the man in khaki. And while she
stood thus the man in khaki leaned forward in the Morris chair, laid
hold of the column of the veranda, pulled himself to his feet, staggered
forward a step, balanced himself as if with difficulty, and--saluted.
The soldiers on the platform swung their hats and cheered, and I joined
in the cheer. One of the good fellows wiped his eyes. The big farmer
stood partly inside the door, effectually blocking it, and quite out of
the girl's sight, looking on, as impassive as a cliff. The pretty young
woman picked up a parcel--the offering--which one of the soldiers tossed
to her feet, looked after us smiling and waving her handkerchief, and
ran back toward the house. The train picked up speed and whisked us out
of sight just as the khaki man sank back into the chair, eased down by
the woman with the white hair. I seemed to have seen a death.
"That was mother," said the man of the broad farms, as we resumed our
seats--"mother and Jack ... jest as it always hes been.... Al'ays
mother's boy.... The soldiers comin' from the war al'ays stand on the
platform as they go by--if they's room enough--with their fingers to
their hats in that fool way.... All seem to know where Jack is someway,
no matter what rig'ment they belong to.... Humph!
"It's something he done in the Philippines ... in the islands.... I
don't know where they are.... Off Spain way, I guess.... They's a kind
of yellow nigger there, an' Jack seemed to do well fightin' 'em....
They're little fellers something like his size, you know.... Some high
officer ordered him to take a nigger king on an island once; an' as I
understand it, the niggers was too many f'r his gang o' soldiers. So
Jack went alone an' took him right out of his own camp.... I reckon any
one could 'a' done the same thing with Uncle Sam backin' him; but the
president, 'r congress, 'r the secretary of war thought it was quite a
trick.... I s'pose Jack's shootin' a nigger officer right under the
king's nose made it a better grand-stand play.... Anyhow, Jack went out
a private, an' come back a captain; an' every soldier that rides these
cars salutes as he passes the house, whuther Jack's in sight 'r not....
Funny!... All kinds o' folks to make a world!"
"Then," said I, for I knew the story, of course, when he mentioned the
circumstances, "your son Jack is Captain John Hawes?"
He nodded slowly, without looking at me.
"And that beautiful, strong girl?" I inquired.
"Jack's wife," said he. "All right to look at, ain't she? Lived in New
York ... 'r Boston, I f'rgit which.... Folks well fixed.... Met Jack in
Sanfrisco and married him when he couldn't lift his hand to his head....
She'd make a good farm woman.... Good stuff in her.... What ails him?
Some kind o' poison that was in the knife the nigger soaked him with
when he took that there king ... stabbed Jack jest before Jack shot....
Foolish to let him git in so clost; but Jack never hed no decision....
Al'ays whifflin' around.... If he pulls through, though, that girl'll
make a man of him if anything kin.... She thinks he's all right now ...
proud of him as Chloe of a yaller dress.... Went to Sanfrisco when he
was broke an' dyin', they thought, an' all that, an' begged him as an
honor to let her bear his name an' nuss him.... And she knew how
wuthless he was before the war, an' throwed him over.... Sensible
girl ... then ... I--"
He was gazing at nothing again, and I thought the story ended, when he
began on an entirely new subject, as it seemed to me, until the relation
appeared.
"Religion," said he, "is something I don't take no stock in, an' never
did.... Religious folks don't seem any better than the rest.... But
mother al'ays set a heap by religion.... I al'ays paid my dues in the
church and called it square.... May be something in it f'r some, but not
f'r me. I got to hev something I can git a-holt of.... Al'ays looked a
good deal like graft to me ... but I pay as much as any one in the
congregation, an' maybe a leetle more--it pleases mother.... An' so does
Jack's gittin' religion.... Got it, all right.... Pleases mother,
too.... Immense!... But I don't take no stock in it.
"The doc says he's bad off."
I had not asked the question; but he seemed to feel a necessary inquiry
in the tableau I had seen.
"He used to come down to the track when he first got back an' perform
that fool trick with his hand to his hat when the soldiers went by an'
they let him know.... Too weak, now; ... failin'.... Girl's al'ays
there, though, when she knows.... Kind o' hope he'll--he'll--he'll ...
You know, neighbor, from what she's done f'r him, how mother must love
him!"
We had come to the end of his journey, now--a little country
station--and he left the train without a word to me or a backward look,
his huge hat drawn down over his eyes. I felt that I had seen a curious,
dark, dramatic, badly-drawn, wildly-conceived and Dantesque painting. He
climbed into a carriage which stood by the platform, and to which was
harnessed a pair of magnificent coach-bred horses which plunged and
reared fearfully as the train swept into the station, and were held,
easily and by main strength, like dogs or sheep, by a giant in the
conveyance who must have been Tom or Wallace. From time to time, the
steeds gathered their feet together, trampled the earth in terror, and
then surged on the bits. The giant never deigned even to look at them.
He held the lines, stiff as iron straps, in one hand, took his father's
bag in the other, threw the big horses to the right by a cruel wrench of
the lines to make room for his father to climb in, which he did without
a word. As the springs went down under the weight the horses dashed away
like the wind, the young man guiding them by that iron right hand with
facile horsemanship, and looking, not at the road, but at his father. As
they passed out of sight the father of Captain Hawes turned, looked at
me, and waved his hand. I thought I had seen him for the last time, and
went back to get the story from the soldiers.
"It wasn't so much the way he brought the datto into camp," said one of
them, "or the way he always worked his way to the last bally front peak
of the fighting line. It takes a guy with guts to do them things; but
that goes with the game--understand? But he knew more'n anybody in the
regiment about keepin' well. He made the boys take care of themselves.
When a man is layin' awake scheming to keep the men busy and healthy,
there's always a job for him.... And he had a way of making the boys
keep their promises.... And he's come home to die, and leave that girl
of his--and all the chances he's had in a business way if he wants to
leave the army. It don't seem right! The boys say the president has
invited him to lunch; and he's got sugar-plantation and minin' jobs open
to him till you can't rest.... And to be done by a cussed poison Moro
kris! But he got Mr. Moro--played even; an' that's as good as a man can
ask, I guess. Hell, how slow this train goes!"
As I have said, I never expected to see my big farmer again; but I did.
I completed my business; returned the way I came, passed the great farm
after dusk, and the next morning was in the city where I first saw him.
Looking ahead as I passed along the street I noticed, towering above
every form, and moving in the press like a three-horse van among baby
carriages, the vast bulk of the captain's father. He turned aside into a
marble-cutter's yard, and stood, looking at the memorial monuments which
quite filled it until it looked like a cemetery vastly overplanted. I
felt disposed to renew our acquaintance, and spoke to him. He offered me
his hand, and when I accepted it he stood clinging to mine, standing a
little stooped, the eyes bloodshot, the iron mouth pitifully drooped at
the corners, the whole man reminding me of a towering cliff shaken by an
earthquake, but mighty and imposing still. He held a paper in his free
hand, which he examined closely while retaining the handclasp, and in a
way I had come to expect of him, he commenced in the midst of his
thought and without verbal salutation.
"We've buried Jack!" said he.
"I'm deeply sorry!" said I.
"Well," said he, "maybe it's just as well.... He was ... you know!...
But mother takes it hard--hard!... I'm contractin' f'r a tombstun.... He
wanted to see me ... at the last.... 'Dad,' says he, jest as he used to
when he was ... was a little feller, ... 'I want you to forgive me
before I die.... It's a big country where I'm going, ... an' ... you and
I may never run into each other--so forgive me! Mother'll find
me--wherever I go ... but you, Dad, ... for fear it's our last chance,
let's square up now!' ... I ... I ..."
He went out among the stones and seemed to be looking the stock over.
Presently, he returned and showed me the paper. It was what a printer
would call "copy" for an inscription--the name, the dates, the age of
Captain John Hawes--severe, laconic. At the bottom were two or three
lines scrawled in a heavy, ponderous hand, with the half-inch lead of a
lumber pencil. Only one fist could produce that Polyphemus chirography.
"_He went out a private_," it read, "_and came back a captain._" And
then, as if by afterthought, and in huge capitals, came the line: "_And
died a Christian._"
"Is that all right?" he asked. "Is the spellin' all right?... I
don't care much about this soldier business ... an' the
Christian game ... don't interest me ... a little bit, ... but,
neighbor, you don't know how that'll please mother! 'Died a
Christian!' ... Someway ... mother ... always loved Jack!"
At the turning of the street I looked and saw the last scene of the
drama--one that will play itself before me from time to time in
retrospect for ever. The great, unhewn, mountainous block was still
there, standing among his more shapely and polished brother stones, a
human monolith, the poor, pitiful paper in his trembling hand.