Deep in the Well where blushing hides the shrinking
and Naked Truth,
I have dived, and dared to fetch ensnared this Fragment
of tested Sooth;
And one of the purblind Race of Men peered with a curious Eye
Over the Curb as I fetched it forth, and besought me
to drop that Lie:
But all ye who long for Certitude, and who yearn for the
Ultimate Fact,
Who know the Truth and in spite of Ruth tear piecemeal
the Inexact,
Come list to my Lay that I sing to-day, and choose betwixt
him and me,
And choosing show that ye always know the Lie from the Veritee!
--_The Rime of the Sheeted Spoorn_.
"Baggs," said Mr. Amidon, "take things entirely into your own hands.
I'm off."
"All right," said Baggs. "It's only a day's run to Canada; but in case
I should prove honest, and need to hear from you, you'll leave your
address?"
Mr. Amidon[1] frowned and made a gesture expressive of nervousness.
"No," said he, in a high-pitched and querulous tone. "No! I want to
see if this business owns me, or if I own it. Why should you need to
communicate with me? Whenever I'm off a day you always sign
everything; and I shall be gone but a day on any given date this time;
so it's only the usual thing, after all. I shall not leave any
address; and don't look for me until I step in at that door! Good-by."
And he walked out of the bank, went home, and began looking over for
the last time his cameras, films, tripods and the other paraphernalia
of his fad.
"This habit of running off alone, Florian," said Mrs. Baggs, his
sister, housekeeper, general manager, and the wife of Baggs--his
confidential clerk and silent partner--"gives me an uneasy feeling. If
you had only done as I wanted you to do, you'd have had some one----"
"Now, Jennie," said he, "we have settled that question a dozen times,
and we can't go over it again if I am to catch the 4:48 train. Keep
your eye on the men, and keep Baggs up in the collar, and see that
Wilkes and Ranger get their just dues. I must have rest, Jennie; and
as for the wife, why, there'll be more some day for this purely
speculative family of yours if we---- By the way, there's the whistle
at Anderson's crossing. Good-by, my dear!"
On the 4:48 train, at least until it had aged into the 7:30 or 8:00,
Mr. Florian Amidon, banker, and most attractive unmarried man of
Hazelhurst, was not permitted to forget that his going away was an
important event. The fact that he was rich, from the viewpoint of the
little mid-western town, unmarried and attractive, easily made his
doings important, had nothing remarkable followed. But he had
exceptional points as a person of consequence, aside from these. His
father had been a scholar, and his mother so much of a _grande dame_ as
to have old worm-eaten silks and laces with histories. The Daughters
of the American Revolution always went to the Amidons for ancient
toggery for their eighteenth-century costumes--and checks for their
deficits. The family even had a printed genealogy. Moreover, Florian
had been at the head of his class in the high school, had gone through
the family _alma mater_ in New England, and been finished in Germany.
Hazelhurst, therefore, looked on him as a possession, and thought it
knew him.
We, however, may confide to the world that Hazelhurst knew only his
outer husk, and that Mr. Amidon was inwardly proud of his psychological
hinterland whereof his townsmen knew nothing. To Hazelhurst his
celibacy was the banker's caution, waiting for something of value in
the matrimonial market: to him it was a bashful and palpitant--almost
maidenly--expectancy of the approach of some radiant companion of his
soul, like those which spoke to him from the pages of his favorite
poets.
This was silly in a mere business man! If found out it would have
justified a run on the bank.
To Hazelhurst he was a fixed and integral part of their society: to
himself he was a galley-slave chained to the sweep of percentages,
interest-tables, cash-balances, and lines of credit, to whom there came
daily the vision of a native Arcadia of art, letters and travel. It
was good business to allow Hazelhurst to harbor its illusions; it was
excellent pastime and good spiritual nourishment for Amidon to harbor
his; and one can see how it may have been with some quixotic sense of
seeking adventure that he boarded the train.
What followed was so extraordinary that everything he said or did was
remembered, and the record is tolerably complete. He talked with
Simeon Woolaver, one of his tenants, about the delinquent rent, and
gave Simeon a note to Baggs relative to taking some steers in
settlement. This was before 5:17, at which time Mr. Woolaver got off
at Duxbury.
"He was entirely normal," said Simeon during the course of his
examination--"more normal than I ever seen him; an' figgered the shrink
on them steers most correct from his standp'int, on a business card
with a indelible pencil. He done me out of about eight dollars an' a
half. He was exceedin'ly normal--up to 5:17!"
Mr. Amidon also encountered Mrs. Hunter and Miss Hunter in the
parlor-car, immediately after leaving Duxbury. Miss Hunter was on her
way to the Maine summer resorts with the Senator Fowlers, to whom Mrs.
Hunter was taking her. Mrs. Hunter noticed nothing peculiar in his
behavior, except the pointed manner in which he passed the chair by
Minnie's side, and took the one by herself. This seemed abnormal to
Mrs. Hunter, whose egotism had its center in her daughter; but those
who remembered the respectful terror with which he regarded women
between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five failed to see exceptional
conduct in this. His lawyer, Judge Blodgett, with whom he went into
the buffet at about seven, found him in conversation with these two
ladies.
"He seemed embarrassed," said the judge, "and was blushing. Mrs.
Hunter was explaining the new style in ladies' figures, and asking him
if he didn't think Minnie was getting much plumper. As soon as he saw
me he yelled: 'Hello, Blodgett! Come into the buffet! I want to see
you about some legal matters.' He excused himself to the ladies, and
we went into the buffet."
"What legal matters did he place before you?" said his interlocutor.
"Two bottles of beer," said the judge, "and a box of cigars. Then he
talked Browning to me until 9:03, when he got off at Elm Springs
Junction, to take the Limited north. He was wrong on Browning, but
otherwise all right."
It was, therefore, at 9:03, or 9:05 (for the engineer's report showed
the train two minutes late out of Elm Springs Junction), that Florian
Amidon became the sole occupant of this remote country railway
platform. He sat on a trunkful of photographer's supplies, with a
suit-case and a leather bag at his back. It was the evening of June
twenty-seventh, 1896. All about the lonely station the trees crowded
down to the right of way, and rustled in a gentle evening breeze.
Somewhere off in the wood, his ear discerned the faint hoot of an owl.
Across the track in a pool under the shadow of the semaphore, he heard
the full orchestra of the frogs, and saw reflected in the water the
last exquisite glories of expiring day lamped by one bright star.
Leaning back, he partly closed his eyelids, and wondered why so many
rays came from the star--with the vague wonder of drowsiness, which
comes because it has been in the habit of coming from one's earliest
childhood. The star divided into two, and all its beams swam about
while his gaze remained fixed, and nothing seemed quite in the focus of
his vision.
Putting out his hand, presently, he touched a window, damp with vapor
and very cold. On the other side he felt a coarse curtain, and where
the semaphore stood, appeared a perpendicular bar of dim light. A
vibratory sound somewhere near made him think that the owls and frogs
had begun snoring. He heard horrible hissings and the distant clangor
of a bell; and then all the platform heaved and quaked under him as if
it were being dragged off into the woods. He sprang upward, received a
blow upon his head, rolled off to the floor, and----
Stood in the middle of a sleeping-car, clad only in pajamas; and a
scholarly-looking negro porter looked down in his face, laying gentle
hands upon him, and addressing him in soothing tones.
"Huht yo' haid, Mr. Brassfield? Kind o' dreamin', wasn't yo', suh?"
said the porter. "Bettah tuhn in again, suh. I'll wake yo' fo'
N'Yohk. Yo' kin sleep late on account of the snow holdin' us back.
Jes' lay down, Mr. Brassfield; it's only 3:35."
A lady's eye peeped forth from the curtain of a near-by berth, and
vanished instantly. Mr. Amidon, seeing it, plunged back into the
shelter from which he had tumbled, and lay there trembling--trembling,
forsooth, because, instead of summer, it seemed winter; for Elm Springs
Junction, it appeared to be a moving train on some unknown road, going
God knew where; and for Florian Amidon, in his outing suit, it had the
appearance of a somnambulistic wretch in his night-clothes, who was
addressed by the unfamiliar porter as Mr. Brassfield!
[1] Editorial Note: As reflecting light on the personal characteristics
of Mr. Florian Amidon, whose remarkable history is the turning-point of
this narrative, we append a brief note by his college classmate and
lifelong acquaintance, the well-known Doctor J. Galen Urquhart, of
Hazelhurst, Wisconsin. The note follows:
"At the time when the following story opens, Mr. Florian Amidon was
about thirty years of age. Height, five feet ten and three-quarters
inches; weight, one hundred and seventy-eight pounds. For general
constitutional and pathological facts, see Sheets 2 to 7, inclusive,
attached hereto. Subject well educated, having achieved distinction in
linguistic, philological and literary studies in his university. (See
Sheet 1, attached.) Neurologically considered, family history of
subject (see Sheets 8 and 10) shows nothing abnormal, except that his
father, a chemist, wrote an essay opposing the atomic theory, and a
cousin is an epileptic. I regard these facts as significant.
Volitional and inhibitory faculties largely developed; may be said to
be a man of strong will-power end self-control. The following facts
may be noted as possibly symptomatic of neurasthenia; fondness for the
poetry of Whitman and Browning (see Nordau); tendency to dabble in
irregular systems of medical practice; pronounced nervous and emotional
irritability during adolescence; aversion to young women in society;
stubborn clinging to celibacy. In posture, gait and general movements,
the following may be noted: vivacious in conversation; possessed of
great mobility of facial expression; anteroposterior sway marked and
occasionally anterosinistral, and greatly augmented so as to approach
Romberg symptom on closure of eyes, but no ataxic evidences in
locomotion. Taking the external malleolus as the datum, the vertical
and lateral pedal oscillation----"
The editor regrets to say that space forbids any further incorporation
of Doctor Urquhart's very illuminating note at this place. It may
appear at some time as a separate essay or volume.