crinkly face, and crinkly reddish hair and beard, and neat folds
slanting down his checks to the corners of his mouth, and his guttural
and one-toned voice; for leather is a sardonic substance, and stiff
and slow of purpose. And that was the character of his face, save that
his eyes, which were gray-blue, had in them the simple gravity of one
secretly possessed by the Ideal. His elder brother was so very like
him—though watery, paler in every way, with a great industry—that
sometimes in early days I was not quite sure of him until the interview
was over. Then I knew that it was he, if the words, “I will ask my
brudder,” had not been spoken; and that, if they had, it was his elder
brother.
When one grew old and wild and ran up bills, one somehow never ran
them up with Gessler Brothers. It would not have seemed becoming to
go in there and stretch out one’s foot to that blue iron-spectacled
glance, owing him for more than—say—two pairs, just the comfortable
reassurance that one was still his client.
For it was not possible to go to him very often—his boots lasted
terribly, having something beyond the temporary—some, as it were,
essence of boot stitched into them.
One went in, not as into most shops, in the mood of: “Please serve me,
and let me go!” but restfully, as one enters a church; and, sitting on
the single wooden chair, waited—for there was never anybody there.
Soon, over the top edge of that sort of well—rather dark, and smelling
soothingly of leather—which formed the shop, there would be seen his
face, or that of his elder brother, peering down. A guttural sound, and
the tip-tap of bast slippers beating the narrow wooden stairs, and he
would stand before one without coat, a little bent, in leather apron,
with sleeves turned back, blinking—as if awakened from some dream
of boots, or like an owl surprised in daylight and annoyed at this
interruption.
And I would say: “How do you do, Mr. Gessler? Could you make me a pair
of Russia leather boots?”
Without a word he would leave me, retiring whence he came, or into the
other portion of the shop, and I would continue to rest in the wooden
chair, inhaling the incense of his trade. Soon he would come back,
holding in his thin, veined hand a piece of gold-brown leather. With
eyes fixed on it, he would remark: “What a beaudiful biece!” When I,
too, had admired it, he would speak again. “When do you wand dem?” And
I would answer: “Oh! As soon as you conveniently can.” And he would
say: “To-morrow fordnighd?” Or if he were his elder brother: “I will
ask my brudder!”
Then I would murmur: “Thank you! Good-morning, Mr. Gessler.”
“Goot-morning!” he would reply, still looking at the leather in his
hand. And as I moved to the door, I would hear the tip-tap of his bast
slippers restoring him, up the stairs, to his dream of boots. But if
it were some new kind of foot-gear that he had not yet made me, then
indeed he would observe ceremony—divesting me of my boot and holding
it long in his hand, looking at it with eyes at once critical and
loving, as if recalling the glow with which he had created it, and
rebuking the way in which one had disorganized this masterpiece. Then,
placing my foot on a piece of paper, he would two or three times tickle
the outer edges with a pencil and pass his nervous fingers over my
toes, feeling himself into the heart of my requirements.
I cannot forget that day on which I had occasion to say to him: “Mr.
Gessler, that last pair of town walking-boots creaked, you know.”
He looked at me for a time without replying, as if expecting me to
withdraw or qualify the statement, then said:
“Id shouldn’d ’a’ve greaked.”
“It did, I’m afraid.”
“You goddem wed before dey found demselves?”
“I don’t think so.”
At that he lowered his eyes, as if hunting for memory of those boots,
and I felt sorry I had mentioned this grave thing.
“Zend dem back!” he said; “I will look at dem.”
A feeling of compassion for my creaking boots surged up in me, so well
could I imagine the sorrowful long curiosity of regard which he would
bend on them.
“Zome boods,” he said slowly, “are bad from birdt. If I can do noding
wid dem, I dake dem off your bill.”
Once (once only) I went absent-mindedly into his shop in a pair of
boots bought in an emergency at some large firm’s. He took my order
without showing me any leather, and I could feel his eyes penetrating
the inferior integument of my foot. At last he said:
“Dose are nod my boods.”
The tone was not one of anger, nor of sorrow, not even of contempt, but
there was in it something quiet that froze the blood. He put his hand
down and pressed a finger on the place where the left boot, endeavoring
to be fashionable, was not quite comfortable.
“Id ’urds you dere,” he said. “Dose big virms ’a’ve no self-respect.
Drash!” And then, as if something had given way within him, he spoke
long and bitterly. It was the only time I ever heard him discuss the
conditions and hardships of his trade.
“Dey get id all,” he said, “dey get id by adverdisement, nod by
work. Dey dake it away from us, who lofe our boods. Id gomes to
this—bresently I haf no work. Every year id gets less—you will see.”
And looking at his lined face I saw things I had never noticed before,
bitter things and bitter struggle—and what a lot of gray hairs there
seemed suddenly in his red beard!
As best I could, I explained the circumstances of the purchase of those
ill-omened boots. But his face and voice made so deep impression that
during the next few minutes I ordered many pairs. Nemesis fell! They
lasted more terribly than ever. And I was not able conscientiously to
go to him for nearly two years.
When at last I went I was surprised to find that outside one of the
two little windows of his shop another name was painted, also that of
a bootmaker—making, of course, for the Royal Family. The old familiar
boots, no longer in dignified isolation, were huddled in the single
window. Inside, the now contracted well of the one little shop was more
scented and darker than ever. And it was longer than usual, too, before
a face peered down, and the tip-tap of the bast slippers began. At last
he stood before me, and, gazing through those rusty iron spectacles,
said:
“Mr.——, isn’d it?”
“Ah! Mr. Gessler,” I stammered, “but your boots are really _too_ good,
you know! See, these are quite decent still!” And I stretched out to
him my foot. He looked at it.
“Yes,” he said, “beople do nod wand good boods, id seems.”
To get away from his reproachful eyes and voice I hastily remarked:
“What have you done to your shop?”
He answered quietly: “Id was too exbensif. Do you wand some boods?”
I ordered three pairs, though I had only wanted two, and quickly left.
I had, I do not know quite what feeling of being part, in his mind, of
a conspiracy against him; or not perhaps so much against him as against
his idea of boot. One does not, I suppose, care to feel like that; for
it was again many months before my next visit to his shop, paid, I
remember, with the feeling: “Oh! well, I can’t leave the old boy—so
here goes! Perhaps it’ll be his elder brother!”
For his elder brother, I knew, had not character enough to reproach me,
even dumbly.
And, to my relief, in the shop there did appear to be his elder
brother, handling a piece of leather.
“Well, Mr. Gessler,” I said, “how are you?”
He came close, and peered at me.
“I am breddy well,” he said slowly; “but my elder brudder is dead.”
And I saw that it was indeed himself—but how aged and wan! And never
before had I heard him mention his brother. Much shocked, I murmured:
“Oh! I am sorry!”
“Yes,” he answered, “he was a good man, he made a good bood; but he is
dead.” And he touched the top of his head, where the hair had suddenly
gone as thin as it had been on that of his poor brother, to indicate,
I suppose, the cause of death. “He could nod ged over losing de oder
shop. Do you wand any boods?” And he held up the leather in his hand:
“Id’s a beaudiful biece.”
I ordered several pairs. It was very long before they came—but they
were better than ever. One simply could not wear them out. And soon
after that I went abroad.
It was over a year before I was again in London. And the first shop I
went to was my old friend’s. I had left a man of sixty, I came back to
one of seventy-five, pinched and worn and tremulous, who genuinely,
this time, did not at first know me.
“Oh! Mr. Gessler,” I said, sick at heart; “how splendid your boots are!
See, I’ve been wearing this pair nearly all the time I’ve been abroad;
and they’re not half worn out, are they?”
He looked long at my boots—a pair of Russia leather, and his face
seemed to regain steadiness. Putting his hand on my instep, he said:
“Do dey vid you here? I ’a’d drouble wid dat bair, I remember.”
I assured him that they had fitted beautifully.
“Do you wand any boods?” he said. “I can make dem quickly; id is a
slack dime.”
I answered: “Please, please! I want boots all round—every kind!”
“I will make a vresh model. Your food must be bigger.” And with utter
slowness, he traced round my foot, and felt my toes, only once looking
up to say:
“Did I dell you my brudder was dead?”
To watch him was painful, so feeble had he grown; I was glad to get
away.
I had given those boots up, when one evening they came. Opening the
parcel, I set the four pairs out in a row. Then one by one I tried
them on. There was no doubt about it. In shape and fit, in finish and
quality of leather, they were the best he had ever made me. And in the
mouth of one of the town walking-boots I found his bill. The amount was
the same as usual, but it gave me quite a shock. He had never before
sent it in till quarter day. I flew downstairs, and wrote a check, and
posted it at once with my own hand.
A week later, passing the little street, I thought I would go in and
tell him how splendidly the new boots fitted. But when I came to where
his shop had been, his name was gone. Still there, in the window, were
the slim pumps, the patent leathers with cloth tops, the sooty riding
boots.
I went in, very much disturbed. In the two little shops—again made
into one—was a young man with an English face.
“Mr. Gessler in?” I said.
He gave me a strange, ingratiating look.
“No, sir,” he said, “no. But we can attend to anything with pleasure.
We’ve taken the shop over. You’ve seen our name, no doubt, next door.
We make for some very good people.”
“Yes, yes,” I said; “but Mr. Gessler?”
“Oh!” he answered; “dead.”
Dead! But I only received these boots from him last Wednesday week.”
“Ah!” he said; “a shockin’ go. Poor old man starved ‘imself.”
“Good God!”
“Slow starvation, the doctor called it! You see he went to work in such
a way! Would keep the shop on; wouldn’t have a soul touch his boots
except himself. When he got an order, it took him such a time. People
won’t wait. He lost everybody. And there he’d sit, goin’ on and on—I
will say that for him—not a man in London made a better boot! But look
at the competition! He never advertised! Would ’a’ve the best leather,
too, and do it all ‘imself. Well, there it is. What could you expect
with his ideas?”
“But starvation——!”
“That may be a bit flowery, as the sayin’ is—but I know myself he was
sittin’ over his boots day and night, to the very last. You see I used
to watch him. Never gave ‘imself time to eat; never had a penny in the
house. All went in rent and leather. How he lived so long I don’t know.
He regular let his fire go out. He was a character. But he made good
boots.”
“Yes,” I said, “he made good boots.”
And I turned and went out quickly, for I did not want that youth to
know that I could hardly see.
THE TRIUMPH OF NIGHT
BY
EDITH WHARTON
This is a mystery plot in which the supernatural furnishes the
interest. In dealing with the supernatural Mrs. Wharton does not
allow it to become horrible or grotesque. She secures plausibility
by having for its leading characters practical business men—not a
woman, hysterical or otherwise, really appears—and by placing them in
a perfectly conventional setting. The apparition is not accompanied
by blood stains, shroud, or uncanny noises. Sometimes the writer of
the supernatural feels that he must explain his mystery by material
agencies. The effect is to disappoint the reader who has yielded
himself to the conditions imposed by the author, and is willing, for
the time at least, to believe in ghosts. Mrs. Wharton makes no such
mistake. She does not spoil the effect by commonplace explanation.
In characterization Mrs. Wharton reveals the power not only to analyze
subtly temperaments and motives, but also to describe vividly with a
few words. This phrasal power is illustrated when she says of Faxon
that he “had a healthy face, but dying hands,” and of Lavington that
“his pinched smile was screwed to his blank face like a gas-light to a
white-washed wall.”
THE TRIUMPH OF NIGHT[23]
I
It was clear that the sleigh from Weymore had not come; and the
shivering young traveller from Boston, who had so confidently counted
on jumping into it when he left the train at Northridge Junction,
found himself standing alone on the open platform, exposed to the full
assault of night-fall and winter.
The blast that swept him came off New Hampshire snow-fields and
ice-hung forests. It seemed to have traversed interminable leagues of
frozen silence, filling them with the same cold roar and sharpening
its edge against the same bitter black-and-white landscape. Dark,
searching, and sword-like, it alternately muffled and harried its
victim, like a bull-fighter now whirling his cloak and now planting
his darts. This analogy brought home to the young man the fact that he
himself had no cloak, and that the overcoat in which he had faced the
relatively temperate airs of Boston seemed no thicker than a sheet of
paper on the bleak heights of Northridge. George Faxon said to himself
that the place was uncommonly well-named. It clung to an exposed ledge
over the valley from which the train had lifted him, and the wind
combed it with teeth of steel that he seemed actually to hear scraping
against the wooden sides of the station. Other building there was none:
the village lay far down the road, and thither—since the Weymore
sleigh had not come—Faxon saw himself under the immediate necessity
of plodding through several feet of snow.
He understood well enough what had happened at Weymore: his hostess had
forgotten that he was coming. Young as Faxon was, this sad lucidity of
soul had been acquired as the result of long experience, and he knew
that the visitors who can least afford to hire a carriage are almost
always those whom their hosts forget to send for. Yet to say Mrs. Culme
had forgotten him was perhaps too crude a way of putting it. Similar
incidents led him to think that she had probably told her maid to tell
the butler to telephone the coachman to tell one of the grooms (if
no one else needed him) to drive over to Northridge to fetch the new
secretary; but on a night like this what groom who respected his rights
would fail to forget the order?
Faxon’s obvious course was to struggle through the drifts to the
village, and there rout out a sleigh to convey him to Weymore; but
what if, on his arrival at Mrs. Culme’s, no one remembered to ask
him what this devotion to duty had cost? That, again, was one of the
contingencies he had expensively learned to look out for, and the
perspicacity so acquired told him it would be cheaper to spend the
night at the Northridge inn, and advise Mrs. Culme of his presence
there by telephone. He had reached this decision, and was about to
entrust his luggage to a vague man with a lantern who seemed to have
some loose connection with the railway company, when his hopes were
raised by the sound of sleigh-bells.
Two vehicles were just dashing up to the station, and from the foremost
there sprang a young man swathed in furs.
“Weymore?—No, these are not the Weymore sleighs.”
The voice was that of the youth who had jumped to the platform—a
voice so agreeable that, in spite of the words, it fell reassuringly
on Faxon’s ears. At the same moment the wandering station-lantern,
casting a transient light on the speaker, showed his features to be
in the pleasantest harmony with his voice. He was very fair and very
young—hardly in the twenties, Faxon thought—but his face, though full
of a morning freshness, was a trifle too thin and fine-drawn, as though
a vivid spirit contended in him with a strain of physical weakness.
Faxon was perhaps the quicker to notice such delicacies of balance
because his own temperament hung on lightly vibrating nerves, which
yet, as he believed, would never quite swing him beyond the arc of a
normal sensibility.
“You expected a sleigh from Weymore?” the youth continued, standing
beside Faxon like a slender column of fur.
Mrs. Culme’s secretary explained his difficulty, and the new-comer
brushed it aside with a contemptuous “Oh, _Mrs. Culme_!” that carried
both speakers a long way toward reciprocal understanding.
“But then you must be——” The youth broke off with a smile of
interrogation.
“The new secretary? Yes. But apparently there are no notes to be
answered this evening.” Faxon’s laugh deepened the sense of solidarity
which had so promptly established itself between the two.
The new-comer laughed also. “Mrs. Culme,” he explained, “was lunching
at my uncle’s to-day, and she said you were due this evening. But seven
hours is a long time for Mrs. Culme to remember anything.”
“Well,” said Faxon philosophically, “I suppose that’s one of the
reasons why she needs a secretary. And I’ve always the inn at
Northridge,” he concluded.
The youth laughed again. He was at the age when predicaments are food
for gaiety.
“Oh, but you haven’t, though! It burned down last week.”
“The deuce it did!” said Faxon; but the humor of the situation struck
him also before its inconvenience. His life, for years past, had been
mainly a succession of resigned adaptations, and he had learned, before
dealing practically with his embarrassments, to extract from most of
them a small tribute of amusement.
“Oh, well, there’s sure to be somebody in the place who can put me up.”
“No one _you_ could put up with. Besides, Northridge is three miles
off, and our place—in the opposite direction—is a little nearer.”
Through the darkness, Faxon saw his friend sketch a gesture of
self-introduction. “My name’s Frank Rainer, and I’m staying with my
uncle at Overdale. I’ve driven over to meet two friends of his, who are
due in a few minutes from New York. If you don’t mind waiting till they
arrive I’m sure Overdale can do you better than Northridge. We’re only
down from town for a few days, but the house is always ready for a lot
of people.”
“But your uncle——?” Faxon could only object, with the odd sense,
through his embarrassment, that it would be magically dispelled by his
invisible friend’s next words.
“Oh, my uncle—you’ll see! I answer for _him_! I dare say you’ve heard
of him—John Lavington?”
John Lavington! There was a certain irony in asking if one had heard
of John Lavington! Even from a post of observation as obscure as that
of Mrs. Culme’s secretary, the rumor of John Lavington’s money, of
his pictures, his politics, his charities and his hospitality, was as
difficult to escape as the roar of a cataract in a mountain solitude.
It might almost have been said that the one place in which one would
not have expected to come upon him was in just such a solitude as
now surrounded the speakers—at least in this deepest hour of its
desertedness. But it was just like Lavington’s brilliant ubiquity to
put one in the wrong even there.
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of your uncle.”
“Then you _will_ come, won’t you? We’ve only five minutes to wait,”
young Rainer urged, in the tone that dispels scruples by ignoring them;
and Faxon found himself accepting the invitation as simply as it was
offered.
A delay in the arrival of the New York train lengthened their five
minutes to fifteen; and as they paced the icy platform Faxon began to
see why it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to accede
to his new acquaintance’s suggestion. It was because Frank Rainer was
one of the privileged beings who simplify human intercourse by the
atmosphere of confidence and good humor they diffuse. He produced this
effect, Faxon noted, by the exercise of no gift save his youth, of no
art save his sincerity; but these qualities were revealed in a smile of
such appealing sweetness that Faxon felt, as never before, what Nature
can achieve when she deigns to match the face with the mind.
He learned that the young man was the ward, and only nephew, of John
Lavington, with whom he had made his home since the death of his
mother, the great man’s sister. Mr. Lavington, Rainer said, had been
“a regular brick” to him—“But then he is to every one. you know”—and
the young fellow’s situation seemed, in fact to be perfectly in keeping
with his person. Apparently the only shade that had ever rested on him
was cast by the physical weakness which Faxon had already detected.
Young Rainer had been threatened with a disease of the lungs which,
according to the highest authorities, made banishment to Arizona or New
Mexico inevitable. “But luckily my uncle didn’t pack me off, as most
people would have done, without getting another opinion. Whose? Oh, an
awfully clever chap, a young doctor with a lot of new ideas, who simply
laughed at my being sent away, and said I’d do perfectly well in New
York if I didn’t dine out too much, and if I dashed off occasionally to
Northridge for a little fresh air. So it’s really my uncle’s doing that
I’m not in exile—and I feel no end better since the new chap told me I
needn’t bother.” Young Rainer went on to confess that he was extremely
fond of dining out, dancing, and other urban distractions; and Faxon,
listening to him, concluded that the physician who had refused to
cut him off altogether from these pleasures was probably a better
psychologist than his seniors.
“All the same you ought to be careful, you know.” The sense of
elder-brotherly concern that forced the words from Faxon made him, as
he spoke, slip his arm impulsively through Frank Rainer’s.
The latter met the movement with a responsive pressure. “Oh, I _am_:
awfully, awfully. And then my uncle has such an eye on me!”
“But if your uncle has such an eye on you, what does he say to your
swallowing knives out here in this Siberian wild?”
Rainer raised his fur collar with a careless gesture. “It’s not that
that does it—the cold’s good for me.”
“And it’s not the dinners and dances? What is it, then?” Faxon
good-humoredly insisted; to which his companion answered with a laugh:
“Well, my uncle says it’s being bored; and I rather think he’s right!”
His laugh ended in a spasm of coughing and a struggle for breath that
made Faxon, still holding his arm, guide him hastily into the shelter
of the fireless waiting-room.
Young Rainer had dropped down on the bench against the wall and pulled
off one of his fur gloves to grope for a handkerchief. He tossed aside
his cap and drew the handkerchief across his forehead, which was
intensely white, and beaded with moisture, though his face retained a
healthy glow. But Faxon’s gaze remained fastened to the hand he had
uncovered: it was so long, so colorless, so wasted, so much older than
the brow he passed it over.
“It’s queer—a healthy face but dying hands,” the secretary mused; he
somehow wished young Rainer had kept on his glove.
The whistle of the express drew the young men to their feet, and the
next moment two heavily-furred gentlemen had descended to the platform
and were breasting the rigor of the night. Frank Rainer introduced
them as Mr. Grisben and Mr. Balch, and Faxon, while their luggage was
being lifted into the second sleigh, discerned them, by the roving
lantern-gleam, to be an elderly gray-headed pair, apparently of the
average prosperous business cut.
They saluted their host’s nephew with friendly familiarity, and Mr.
Grisben, who seemed the spokesman of the two, ended his greeting with
a genial—“and many many more of them, dear boy!” which suggested to
Faxon that their arrival coincided with an anniversary. But he could
not press the inquiry, for the seat allotted him was at the coachman’s
side, while Frank Rainer joined his uncle’s guests inside the sleigh.