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THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1915
AND THE
YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY
EDITED BY
EDWARD J. O'BRIEN
BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1915, 1916, by The Boston Transcript.
Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons, Harper and Brothers, The
Century Company, The Masses Publishing Company, P.F. Collier & Son,
Incorporated, Margaret C. Anderson, Mitchell Kennerley, The Ridgway
Company, Illustrated Sunday Magazine, John T. Frederick, Every Week
Corporation, Boston Daily Advertiser, The Bellman Company, The Outlook
Company, and The Curtis Publishing Company.
Copyright, 1916, by Maxwell Struthers Burt, Donn Byrne, Will Levington
Comfort, William Addison Dwiggins, James Francis Dwyer, Ben Hecht,
Arthur Johnson, Virgil Jordan, Harris Merton Lyon, Walter J. Muilenburg,
Newbold Noyes, Seumas O'Brien, Katharine Metcalf Roof, Benjamin
Rosenblatt, Elsie Singmaster Lewars, Wilbur Daniel Steele, Mary Synon,
and Fannie Hurst.
Copyright, 1916, by Small, Maynard and Company, Incorporated.
Second Printing, June, 1916
Third Printing, October, 1916
Fourth Printing, December, 1916
Fifth Printing, May, 1917
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
* * * * *
TO BENJAMIN ROSENBLATT
* * * * *
BY WAY OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Grateful acknowledgment for permission to include the stories in
this volume is made to the following authors, editors, publishers,
and copyright holders:
To Charles Scribner's Sons and Mr. Maxwell Struthers Burt for
permission to reprint "The Water-Hole," first published in
_Scribner's Magazine_; to Harper and Brothers and Mr. Donn Byrne for
permission to reprint "The Wake," first published in _Harper's
Magazine_; to The Masses Publishing Company and Mr. Will Levington
Comfort for permission to reprint "Chautonville," first published in
_The Masses_; to Mr. William Addison Dwiggins for permission to
reprint "La Dernière Mobilisation;" to P.F. Collier & Son,
Incorporated, Galbraith Welch, and Mr. James Francis Dwyer for
permission to reprint "The Citizen," first published in _Collier's
Weekly_; to Mitchell Kennerley and Mrs. Frances Gregg Wilkinson for
permission to reprint "Whose Dog--?" first published in _The Forum_;
to Miss Margaret C. Anderson and Mr. Ben Hecht for permission to
reprint "Life," first published in _The Little Review_; to the
Century Company and Mr. Arthur Johnson for permission to reprint
"Mr. Eberdeen's House," first published in _The Century Magazine_;
to the Ridgway Company and Mr. Virgil Jordan for permission to
include "Vengeance is Mine!" first published in _Everybody's
Magazine_; to _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_ and Mr. Harris
Merton Lyon for permission to reprint "The Weaver Who Clad the
Summer," first published in _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_; to
Mr. John T. Frederick and Mr. Walter J. Muilenburg for permission to
reprint "Heart of Youth," first published in _The Midland_; to the
Every Week Corporation and Mr. Newbold Noyes for permission to
reprint "The End of the Path," first published in _Every Week_ and
_The Associated Sunday Magazine_; to _The Illustrated Sunday
Magazine_ and Mr. Seumas O'Brien for permission to reprint "The
Whale and the Grass-Hopper," first published in _The Illustrated
Sunday Magazine_; to _The Boston Daily Advertiser_, _The Boston
Evening Record_, and the Newspaper Enterprise Association for
permission to reprint "In Berlin," by Mary Boyle O'Reilly, first
published in _The Boston Daily Advertiser_; to the Century Company
and Miss Katharine Metcalf Roof for permission to reprint "The
Waiting Years," first published in _The Century Magazine_; to The
Bellman Company and Mr. Benjamin Rosenblatt for permission to
reprint "Zelig," first published in _The Bellman_; to The Outlook
Company and Mrs. Elsie Singmaster Lewars for permission to include
"The Survivors," first published in _The Outlook_; to Harper and
Brothers and Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele for permission to reprint "The
Yellow Cat," first published in _Harper's Magazine_; to Charles
Scribner's Sons and Miss Mary Synon for permission to reprint "The
Bounty Jumper," first published in _Scribner's Magazine_; and to The
Curtis Publishing Company and Miss Fannie Hurst for permission to
reprint "T.B.," first published in _The Saturday Evening Post_.
Acknowledgments are specially due to _The Boston Evening Transcript_
for permission to reprint the large body of material previously
published in the columns of that paper.
I wish to specially express my gratitude to the following who have
materially assisted by their efforts in making this year-book of American
fiction possible and more complete:
Mr. A.A. Boyden, Mr. Bruce Barton, Mr. Henry A. Bellows, Professor
Albert Frederick Wilson, Mr. Barry Benefield, Mr. Douglas Z. Doty,
Mr. Karl Edwin Harriman, Mr. Edward Frank Allen, Mr. Carl Hovey,
Miss Sonya Levien, Mr. William Griffith, Mr. Arthur T. Vance, Mr.
Mitchell Kennerley, Mr. H.M. Greene, Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. J.B.
Carrington, Mr. Hayden Carruth, Mr. Frederic A. Duneka, Mr. Henry J.
Forman, Mr. Gilman Hall, Mr. Charles Hanson Towne, Miss Margaret
Anderson, Mr. Charles Edison, Mr. Guido Bruno, Mr. William Marion
Reedy, Mr. John T. Frederick, Mr. Burton Kline, Miss Dorothea
Lawrance Mann, Miss Katharine Butler, Mr. Thomas H. Uzzell, Mr.
Virgil Jordan, Mrs. Elsie Singmaster Lewars, Mr. Alfred A. Knopf,
Miss Hilda Baker, Mr. William Stanley Braithwaite, and Mr. Francis
J. Hannigan, in charge of the Periodical Department of the Boston
Public Library. To Mr. Hannigan my special gratitude is due. My
ability to find certain back numbers of periodicals which the
publishers were unable to supply is due to his personal helpfulness
and unsparing pains. In fact, his assistance at certain times almost
amounted to collaboration.
I shall be grateful to my readers for corrections and particularly
for suggestions leading to the wider usefulness of this annual volume.
In particular, I shall welcome the receipt from authors and publishers,
of stories published during 1916 which have qualities of distinction,
and yet are not printed in periodicals falling under my regular notice.
For such assistance I shall make due and grateful acknowledgment in
next year's annual.
If I have been guilty of any omissions in these acknowledgments, it is
quite unintentional, and I trust that I shall be absolved for my good
intentions.
E.J.O.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION. By the Editor
THE WATER-HOLE. By Maxwell Struthers Burt
(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
THE WAKE. By Donn Byrne
(From _Harper's Magazine_)
CHAUTONVILLE. By Will Levington Comfort
(From _The Masses_)
LA DERNIÈRE MOBILISATION. By W.A. Dwiggins
(From _The Fabulist_)
THE CITIZEN. By James Francis Dwyer
(From _Collier's Weekly_)
WHOSE DOG--? By Frances Gregg
(From _The Forum_)
LIFE. By Ben Hecht
(From _The Little Review_)
T.B. By Fannie Hurst
(From _The Saturday Evening Post_)
MR. EBERDEEN'S HOUSE. By Arthur Johnson
(From _The Century_)
VENGEANCE IS MINE. By Virgil Jordan
(From _Everybody's Magazine_)
THE WEAVER WHO CLAD THE SUMMER. By Harris Merton Lyon
(From _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_)
HEART OF YOUTH. By Walter J. Muilenburg
(From _The Midland_)
THE END OF THE PATH. By Newbold Noyes
(From _Every Week_)
THE WHALE AND THE GRASSHOPPER. By Seumas O'Brien
(From _The Illustrated Sunday Magazine_)
IN BERLIN. By Mary Boyle O'Reilly
(From _The Boston Daily Advertiser_)
THE WAITING YEARS. By Katharine Metcalf Roof
(From _The Century Magazine_)
ZELIG. By Benjamin Rosenblatt
(From _The Bellman_)
THE SURVIVORS. By Elsie Singmaster
(From _The Outlook_)
THE YELLOW CAT. By Wilbur Daniel Steele
(From _Harper's Magazine_)
THE BOUNTY-JUMPER. By Mary Synon
(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
THE YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY FOR 1914 AND 1915
THE ROLL OF HONOR FOR 1914
THE ROLL OF HONOR FOR 1915
MAGAZINE AVERAGES FOR 1915
INDEX OF SHORT STORIES FOR 1914 AND 1915
INTRODUCTION
In reaffirming the significant position of the American short story as
compared with the English short story, I am more impressed than ever
with the leadership maintained by American artists in this literary
form. Mr. James Stephens has been criticising us for our curiously
negative achievement in novel writing. He has compared the American
novelist with the English novelist and found him wanting. He is
compelled to deny literary distinction to the American novel, and he
makes a sweeping indictment of American fiction in consequence. But
does he know the American short story?
If you turn to the English magazines, you will find a certain form of
_conte_ of narrow range developed to a point of high literary merit in
such a paper as the _Nation_ or the _New Statesman_. But if you look for
short stories in the literary periodicals, you will not find them, and
if you turn to the popular English magazines, you will be amazed at the
cheap and meretricious quality of the English short story.
It would be idle to dispute about the origin of the short story, for
several literatures may claim its birth, but the American short story
has been developed as an art form to the point where it may fairly
claim a sustained superiority, as different in kind as in quality from
the tale or _conte_ of other literatures.
It would be difficult to trace the reasons for its specially healthy
growth in a soil so idly fertilized as our American reading public,
but it is less difficult and far more valuable to trace its development
and changing standards from year to year as the field of its interest
widens and its technique becomes more and more assured and competent.
Accordingly it seems advisable to undertake a study of the American
short story from year to year as it is represented in the American
periodicals which care most to develop its art and its audiences, and
to appraise so far as may be the relative achievement of author and
magazine in the successful fulfilment of this aim.
We have listened to much wailing during the past year about the absence
of all literary qualities in our fiction. We have been judged by
Englishmen and Irishmen who do not know our work and by Americans who
do know it. We have been appraised at our real worth by Mr. Edward
Garnett, who is probably the only English critic competent through
sufficient acquaintance to discuss us. Mr. Owen Wister and Mr. Henry
Sydnor Harrison have discussed us with each other, and bandied names
to and fro rather uncritically. And Mr. Robert Herrick has endeavored
to reassure us kindly and a little wistfully. Mr. Stephens has scolded
us, and Mr. Howells and Mr. Alden have counselled us wisely. And many
others have ventured opinions and offered judgment. The general verdict
against American literature is Guilty! Is this wise? Is this just?
Twelve years ago, if the public had been sufficiently interested,
such a dispute might have arisen about American poetry. If it had
arisen, the jury would probably have shouted "Guilty!" with one voice.
We had no faith in our poetry, and we were afraid of enthusiasm. It was
not good form. One or two poets refused to despair of the situation.
They affirmed their faith in our spiritual and imaginative substance
persistently and in the face of apathy and discouragement. They made
us believe in ourselves, and now American poetry is at the threshold
of a new era. It is more vital than contemporary English poetry.
Has the time not come at last to cease lamenting the pitiful gray
shabbiness of American fiction? We say that we have no faith in it,
and we judge it by the books and stories that we casually read. If
we are writers of fiction ourselves, perhaps we judge it by personal
and temperamental methods and preferences, just as certain groups of
American poets of widely different sympathies judge the poetry of
their contemporaries to-day. Let us affirm our faith anyhow in our
own spiritual substance. Let us believe in our materials and shape
them passionately to a creative purpose. Let us be enthusiastic about
life around us and the work that is being done, and in much less than
twelve years from now a jury of novelists and critics will pronounce
a very different verdict on American fiction from their verdict of
to-day.
During the past year I have read over twenty-two hundred short stories
in a critical spirit, and they have made me lastingly hopeful of our
literary future. A spirit of change is acting on our literature. There
is a fresh living current in the air. The new American spirit in fiction
is typically voiced by such a man as Mr. Lincoln Colcord in a letter
from which I have his permission to quote.
"There are many signs," he writes, "that literature in America stands
at a parting of ways. The technical-commercial method has been fully
exploited, and, I think, found wanting in essential results, although
it is a step toward higher things. The machinery for a great literature
stands ready. The public taste is now being created. Add to this, the
period in our national life: we are coming to our artistic maturity.
Add the profound social transition that was upon us before the war.
And add any factor you may choose for what may come after the war; for
I think that momentous events stand on the threshold of the world.
"The main trouble with the fellows who are writing in America to-day
is that they write too much--or rather, publish too much. A writer
should be very glad to accept a small income for many years; he
should deliberately keep his fortunes within bounds; and take his
time. All this would have been a truism fifty years ago; the machinery
for the other thing didn't exist, and something in the way of a natural
condition kept him in the simple path. But I don't find fault with the
machinery; the wider field and the larger figures are a direct boon to
us. They do, however, impose an added strain upon our sincerity."
I like to believe that the American writer is stiffening himself more
and more to meet this strain. Commercialization has never affected
any literature more than it has affected the American short story
in the past. It is affecting our writing more than ever to-day. But
here and there in quiet places, usually far from great cities, artists
are laboring quietly for a literary ideal, and the leaven of their
achievement is becoming more and more impressive every day. It is
my faith and hope that this annual volume of mine may do something
toward disengaging the honest good from the meretricious mass of
writing with which it is mingled. I find that editors are beginning
to react from the commercialized fiction that prevails to-day. They
are beginning to learn that they are killing the goose which lays the
golden eggs. The commercialized short story writer has less enthusiasm
in writing for editors nowadays. The "movies" have captured him. Why
write stories when scenarios are not only much less exhausting, but
actually more remunerative? The literary tradesman is peddling his wares
in other and wider markets, and the artistic craftsman is welcomed by
the magazines more and more in his place. As Mr. Colcord points out, we
have come at last to the parting of the ways.
I have undertaken to examine the short stories published in American
magazines during 1914 and 1915 and to report upon my findings. As the
most adequate means to this end, I have taken each short story by
itself, and examined it impartially. I have done my best to surrender
myself to the writer's point of view, and granting his choice of
material and interpretation of it in terms of life, have sought to
test it by the double standard of substance and form. Substance is
something achieved by the artist in every act of creation, rather
than something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of
facts in a story only obtain substantial embodiment when the artist's
power of compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a
living truth. I assume that such a living truth is the artist's
essential object. The first test of a short story, therefore, in
any qualitative analysis is to report upon how vitally compelling
the writer makes his selected facts or incidents. This test may be
known as the test of substance.
But a second test is necessary in this qualitative analysis if a
story is to take high rank above other stories. The test of substance
is the most vital test, to be sure, and if a story survives it, it
has imaginative life. The true artist, however, will seek to shape
this living substance into the most beautiful and satisfying form,
by skilful selection and arrangement of his material, and by the
most direct and appealing presentation of it in portrayal and
characterization.
The short stories which I have examined in this study have fallen
naturally into four groups. The first group consists of those stories
which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test of substance
or the test of form. These stories are listed in the year-book without
comment or a qualifying asterisk. The second group consists of those
stories which may fairly claim to survive either the test of substance
or the test of form. Each of these stories may claim to possess either
distinction of technique alone, or more frequently, I am glad to say,
a persuasive sense of life in them to which a reader responds with
some part of his own experience. Stories included in this group are
indicated in the year-book index by a single asterisk prefixed to the
title. The third group, which is composed of stories of still greater
distinction, includes such narratives as may lay convincing claim to a
second reading, because each of them has survived both tests, the test
of substance and the test of form. Stories included in this group are
indicated in the year-book index by two asterisks prefixed to the title.
Finally, I have recorded the names of a small group of stories
which possess, I believe, an even finer distinction--the distinction
of uniting genuine substance and artistic form in a closely woven
pattern with a spiritual sincerity so earnest, and a creative belief
so strong, that each of these stories may fairly claim, in my opinion,
a position of some permanence in our literature as a criticism of life.
Stories of such quality are indicated in the year-book index by three
asterisks prefixed to the title, and are also listed in a special
"Roll of Honor." Ninety-three stories published during 1915 are
included in this list, and in compiling it I must repeat that I have
permitted no personal preference or prejudice to influence my judgment
consciously for or against a story. To the titles of certain stories,
however, in this list, an asterisk is prefixed, and this asterisk, I
must confess, reveals in some measure a personal preference. Stories
indicated by this asterisk seem to me not only distinctive, but so
highly distinguished as to necessitate their ultimate preservation
between book covers. It is from this final short list that the stories
reprinted in this volume have been selected.
It has been a point of honor with me not to republish an English story
or a short story whose immediate publication in book form elsewhere
seems likely. I have also made it a rule not to include more than one
story by an individual author in the volume. The general and particular
results of my study will be found explained and carefully detailed in
the supplementary part of the volume. It only remains now to point out
certain passing characteristics of the year for the sake of
chronological completeness.
I suppose there can be no doubt that "Zelig" is by all odds the
most nobly conceived and finely wrought story of the year. It is
a peculiar satisfaction to find again this year, as in 1914, that
the best story is the work of an unknown author. Mr. Rosenblatt's
story is in my opinion even more satisfying as a report of life
than Mr. Conrad Richter's "Brothers of No Kin," which I felt to
be the best story published during 1914. The American public is
indebted to Professor Albert Frederick Wilson, of the New York
University School of Journalism for the discovery and encouragement
of Mr. Rosenblatt's literary genius. Professor Wilson's service to
American literature in this matter should be adequately acknowledged.
The _Bellman_, in which "Zelig" appeared, is remarkable for the
brilliance and power of its fiction. My averages this year show
clearly that its percentage of distinctive stories is nearly double
that of the American weekly which most nearly approaches it. The
quality of the _Bellman's_ poetry is a matter of national knowledge.
It is fully equalled by the _Bellman's_ fiction, which renders it
one of the three or four American periodicals necessary to every
student of our spiritual history.
One new periodical and one new short story writer claim unique attention
this year for their recent achievement and abundant future promise.
A year ago a slender little monthly magazine entitled the _Midland_
was first issued in Iowa City. It attracted very little attention,
and in the course of the year published but ten short stories. It has
been my pleasure and wonder to find in these ten stories the most vital
interpretation in fiction of our national life that many years have been
able to show. Since the most brilliant days of the New England men of
letters, no such group of writers has defined its position with such
assurance and modesty.
One new short story writer has appeared this year whose five published
stories open a new field to fiction and have a human richness of feeling
and imagination rare in our oversophisticated literature. I refer to the
fables of Seumas O'Brien. At first one is struck with their utter
absence of form, and then one realizes that this is a conscious art that
wanders truant over life and imagination. In Seumas O'Brien I believe
that America has found a new humorist of popular sympathies, a rare
observer and philosopher whose very absurdities have a persuasive
philosophy of their own.
The two established writers whose sustained excellence this year is
most impressive are Katharine Fullerton Gerould and Wilbur Daniel
Steele. Lincoln Colcord's two stories show qualities of artistic
conscience reënforcing an imaginative substance so real that another
year or two should suffice for him to take his place with the leaders
of American fiction. I must affirm once more the genuine literary art
of Fannie Hurst. The absolute fidelity of her dialogue to life and its
revealing spirit, not despite, but rather because of the vulgarities
she accepts, seem to me to assure her permanence in her best work.
A rare literary art, not dissimilar in fundamentals, and quite as
marvellously documented, is revealed by Rupert Hughes in his series of
stories in the _Metropolitan Magazine_ this year. In "Michaeleen!
Michaelawn!" he has succeeded greatly. It is a story which it will be
difficult for Americans to forget.
What must have begun as a doubtful experiment and been continued only
because it was a triumphantly demonstrated success has been the serial
publication for the great average American public of my selection of
the best twenty-one stories published in 1914. The _Illustrated Sunday
Magazine_ has evidently justified its daring, and the bold pioneering
of its editor, Mr. Hiram M. Greene, to judge from the host of letters
I have received from readers who have not read the best magazines in
the past because, as many of them state, they feared that they were
too "high-brow," but who have been convinced, by the introduction to
the best contemporary fiction afforded them weekly in the supplement
to their Sunday newspaper, that such periodicals as _Harper's Magazine_
and _Scribner's Magazine_ have many qualities to commend them to the
untrained reader. All this serves to illustrate my point that the
commercial short story is not preferred by that imaginary norm of
editors known as "the reading public." If adequate means are employed
to allay the average man's suspicions of literature and to introduce
him painlessly to the best that our writers are creating, my experience
shows absolutely that he will respond heartily and make higher standards
possible by his support. We have scarcely begun to build our democracy
of letters.
Because an American publisher has been found who shares my faith in
the democratic future of the American short story as something by no
means ephemeral, this year-book of American fiction is assured of
annual publication for several years. It is my wish annually to dedicate
whatever there may be of faith and hope in each volume to the writer of
short stories whose work during the year has brought to me the most
definite message of idealism. It is accordingly my privilege this year
to associate the present volume with the name of Benjamin Rosenblatt,
who has contributed in "Zelig" a noble addition to American literature.
EDWARD J. O'BRIEN
SOUTH YARMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS
Twelfth Night, 1916
THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1915
THE WATER-HOLE[1]
BY MAXWELL STRUTHERS BURT
From _Scribner's Magazine_
[1] Copyright, 1915, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1916, by
Maxwell Struthers Burt.
Some men are like the twang of a bow-string. Hardy was like that--short,
lithe, sunburned, vivid. Into the lives of Jarrick, Hill, and myself,
old classmates of his, he came and went in the fashion of one of those
queer winds that on a sultry day in summer blow unexpectedly up a city
street out of nowhere. His comings excited us; his goings left us
refreshed and a little vaguely discontented. So many people are gray.
Hardy gave one a shock of color, as do the deserts and the mountains he
inhabited. It was not particularly what he said--he didn't talk much--it
was his appearance, his direct, a trifle fierce, gestures, the sense of
mysterious lands that pervaded him. One never knew when he was coming to
New York and one never knew how long he was going to stay; he just
appeared, was very busy with mining companies for a while, sat about
clubs in the late afternoon, and then, one day, he was gone.
Sometimes he came twice in a year; oftener, not for two or three years
at a stretch. When he did come we gave him a dinner--that is, Jarrick,
Hill, and myself. And it was rather an occasion. We would procure a
table in the gayest restaurant we could find, near, but not too near,
the music--Hill it was who first suggested this as a dramatic bit of
incongruity between Hardy and the frequenters of Broadway--and the
most exotic food obtainable, for a good part of his time Hardy, we
knew, lived upon camp fare. Then we would try to make him tell about
his experiences. Usually he wouldn't. Impersonally, he was entertaining
about South Africa, about the Caucasus, about Alaska, Mexico, anywhere
you care to think; but concretely he might have been an illustrated
lecture for all he mentioned himself. He was passionately fond of
abstract argument. "Y' see," he would explain, "I don't get half as
much of this sort of thing as I want. Of course, one does run across
remarkable people--now, I met a cow-puncher once who knew Keats by
heart--but as a rule I deal only with material things, mines and
prospects and assays and that sort of thing." Poor chap! I wonder
if he thought that we, with our brokering and our writing and our
lawyering, dealt much with ideas! I remember one night when we sat
up until three discussing the philosophy of prohibition over three
bottles of port. I wonder how many other men have done the same thing!
But five years ago--no, it was six--Hardy really told us a real
story about himself. Necessarily the occasion is memorable in our
recollections. We had dined at Lamb's, and the place was practically
empty, for it was long after the theatre hour--only a drowsy waiter
here and there, and away over in one corner a young couple who, I
suppose, imagined themselves in love. Fancy being in love at Lamb's!
We had been discussing, of all things in the world, bravery and
conscience and cowardice and original sin, and that sort of business,
and there was no question about it that Hardy was enjoying himself
hugely. He was leaning upon the table, a coffee-cup between his relaxed
brown hands, listening with an eagerness highly complimentary to the
banal remarks we had to make upon the subject. "This is talk!" he
ejaculated once with a laugh.
Hill, against the combined attack of Jarrick and myself, was maintaining
the argument. "There is no such thing as instinctive bravery," he
affirmed, for the fifth time at least, "amongst intelligent men. Every
one of us is naturally a coward. Of course we are. The more imagination
we've got the more we can realize how pleasant life is, after all, and
how rotten the adjuncts of sudden death. It's reason that does the
trick--reason and tradition. Do you know of any one who is brave when
he is alone--except, that is, when it is a case of self-preservation?
No! Of course not. Did you ever hear of any one choosing to go along
a dangerous road or to ford a dangerous river unless he had to--that
is, any one of our class, any man of education or imagination? It's
the greater fear of being thought afraid that makes us brave. Take a
lawyer in a shipwreck--take myself! Don't you suppose he's frightened?
Naturally he is, horribly frightened. It's his reason, his mind, that
after a while gets the better of his poor pipe-stem legs and makes them
keep pace with the sea-legs about them."
"It's condition," said Jarrick doggedly--"condition entirely. All has to
do with your liver and digestion. I know; I fox-hunt, and when I was
younger--yes, leave my waist alone!--I rode jumping races. When you're
fit there isn't a horse alive that bothers you, or a fence, for that
matter, or a bit of water."
"Ever try standing on a ship's deck, in the dark, knowing you're going
to drown in about twenty minutes?" asked Hill.
Hardy leaned forward to strike a match for his cigarette. "I don't agree
with you," he said.
"Well, but--" began Hill.
"Neither of you."
"Oh, of course, you're outside the argument. You lead an adventurous
life. You keep in condition for danger. It isn't fair."
"No." Hardy lit his cigarette and inhaled a puff thoughtfully. "You
don't understand. All you have to say does have some bearing upon
things, but, when you get down to brass tacks, it's instinct--at the
last gasp, it's instinct. You can't get away from it. Look at the
difference between a thoroughbred and a cold-blooded horse! There you
are! That's true. It's the fashion now to discount instinct, I know;
well--but you can't get away from it. I've thought about the thing--a
lot. Men are brave against their better reason, against their
conscience. It's a mixed-up thing. It's confusing and--and sort of
damnable," he concluded lamely.
"Sort of damnable!" ejaculated Hill wonderingly.
"Yes, damnable."
I experienced inspiration. "You've got a concrete instance back of
that," I ventured.
Hardy removed his gaze from the ceiling. "Er--" he stammered. "Why,
yes--yes. That's true."
"You'd better tell it," suggested Hill; "otherwise your argument is not
very conclusive."
Hardy fumbled with the spoon of his empty coffee-cup. It was a curious
gesture on the part of a man whose franknesses were as clean-cut as his
silences. "Well--" he began. "I don't know. Perhaps. I did know a man,
though, who saved another man's life when he didn't want to, when there
was every excuse for him not to, when he had it all reasoned out that
it was wrong, the very wrongest possible thing to do; and he saved him
because he couldn't help it, saved him at the risk of his own life,
too."
"He did!" murmured Hill incredulously.
"Go on!" I urged. I was aware that we were on the edge of a revelation.
Hardy looked down at the spoon in his hand, then up and into my eyes.
"It's such a queer place to tell it"--he smiled deprecatingly--"here,
in this restaurant. It ought to be about a camp-fire, or something
like that. Here it seems out of place, like the smell of bacon or
sweating mules. Do you know Los Pinos? Well, you wouldn't. It was
just a few shacks and a Mexican gambling-house when I saw it. Maybe
it isn't there any more, at all. You know--those places! People build
them and then go away, and in a year there isn't a thing, just desert
again and shifting sand and maybe the little original old ranch by the
one spring." He swept the table-cloth with his hand, as if sweeping
something into oblivion, and his eyes sought again the spoon. "It's
queer, that business. Men and women go out to lonely places and build
houses, and for a while everything goes on in miniature, just as it does
here--daily bread and hating and laughing--and then something happens,
the gold gives out or the fields won't pay, and in no time nature is
back again. It's a big fight. You lose track of it in crowded places."
He raised his head and settled his arms comfortably on the table.
"I wasn't there for any particular purpose. I was on a holiday. I'd been
on a big job up in Colorado and was rather done up, and, as there were
some prospects in New Mexico I wanted to see, I hit south, drifting
through Santa Fé and Silver City, until I found myself way down on the
southern edge of Arizona. It was still hot down there--hot as blazes--it
was about the first of September--and the rattlesnakes and the scorpions
were still as active as crickets. I knew a chap that had a cattle outfit
near the Mexican border, so I dropped in on him one day and stayed two
weeks. You see, he was lonely. Had a passion for theatres and hadn't
seen a play for five years. My second-hand gossip was rather a godsend.
But finally I got tired of talking about Mary Mannering, and decided to
start north again. He bade me good-by on a little hill near his place.
'See here!' he said suddenly, looking toward the west. 'If you go a
trifle out of your way you'll strike Los Pinos, and I wish you would.
It's a little bit of a dump of the United Copper Company's, no good, I'm
thinking, but the fellow in charge is a friend of mine. He's got his
wife there. They're nice people--or used to be. I haven't seen them for
ten years. They say he drinks a little--well, we all do. Maybe you could
write me how she--I mean, how he is getting on?' And he turned red. I
saw how the land lay, and as a favor to him I said I would.
"It was eighty miles away, and I drifted in there one night on top
of a tired cow-horse just at sundown. You know how purple--violet,
really--those desert evenings are. There was violet stretching away
as far as I could see, from the faint violet at my stirrups to the
deep, almost black violet of the horizon. Way off to the north I
could make out the shadow of some big hills that had been ahead of
me all day. The town, what there was of it, lay in a little gully.
Along its single street there were a few lights shining like small
yellow flowers. I asked my way of a Mexican, and he showed me up to
where the Whitneys--that name will do as well as any--lived, in a
decent enough sort of bungalow, it would seem, above the gully. He
left me there, and I went forward and rapped at the door. Light shone
from between the cracks of a near-by shutter, and I could hear voices
inside--a man's voice mostly, hoarse and high-pitched. Then a Chinaman
opened the door for me and I had a look inside, into a big living-room
beyond. It was civilized all right enough, pleasantly so to a man
stepping out of two days of desert and Mexican adobes. At a glance I
saw the rugs on the polished floor, and the Navajo blankets about,
and a big table in the centre with a shaded lamp and magazines in
rows; but the man in riding-clothes standing before the empty fire-place
wasn't civilized at all, at least not at that moment. I couldn't see the
woman, only the top of her head above the back of a big chair, but as
I came in I heard her say, 'Hush!--Jim!--please!' and I noticed that
what I could see of her hair was of that fine true gold you so seldom
find. The man stopped in the middle of a sentence and swayed on his
feet, then he looked over at me and came toward me with a sort of
bulldog, inquiring look. He was a big, red-faced, blond chap, about
forty, I should say, who might once have been handsome. He wasn't now,
and it didn't add to his beauty that he was quite obviously fairly
drunk. 'Well?' he said, and blocked my way.
"'I'm a friend of Henry Martin's,' I answered. 'I've got a letter for
you.' I was beginning to get pretty angry.
"'Henry Martin?' He laughed unsteadily. 'You'd better give it to my wife
over there. She's his friend. I hardly know him.' I don't know when I'd
seen a man I disliked as much at first sight.
"There was a rustle from the other side of the room, and Mrs. Whitney
came toward us. I avoided her unattractive husband and took her hand,
and I understood at once whatever civilizing influences there were
about the bungalow we were in. Did you ever do that--ever step out
of nowhere, in a wild sort of country, and meet suddenly a man or a
woman who might have come straight from a pleasant, well-bred room
filled with books and flowers and quiet, nice people? It's a sensation
that never loses its freshness. Mrs. Whitney was like that. I wouldn't
have called her beautiful; she was better; you knew she was good and
clean-cut and a thoroughbred the minute you saw her. She was lovely,
too; don't misunderstand me, but you had more important things to think
about when you were talking to her. Just at the moment I was wondering
how any one who so evidently had been crying could all at once greet a
stranger with so cordial a smile. But she was all that--all nerve; I
don't think I ever met a woman quite like her--so fine, you understand."
Hardy paused. "Have any of you chaps got a cigarette?" he asked; and I
noticed that his hand, usually the steadiest hand imaginable, trembled
ever so slightly. "Well," he began again, "there you are! I had tumbled
into about as rotten a little, pitiful a little tragedy as you can
imagine, there in a God-forsaken desert of Arizona, with not a soul
about but a Chinaman, a couple of Scotch stationary engineers, an Irish
foreman, two or three young mining men, and a score of Mexicans. Of
course, my first impulse was to get out the next morning, to cut it--it
was none of my business--although I determined to drop a line to Henry
Martin; but I didn't go. I had a talk with Mrs. Whitney that night,
after her attractive husband had taken himself off to bed, and somehow I
couldn't leave just then. You know how it is, you drop into a place
where nothing in the world seems likely to happen, and all of a sudden
you realize that something _is_ going to happen, and for the life of you
you can't go away. That situation up on top of the hill couldn't last
forever, could it? So I stayed on. I hunted out the big Irish foreman
and shared his cabin. The Whitneys asked me to visit them, but I didn't
exactly feel like doing so. The Irishman was a fine specimen of his
race, ten years out from Dublin, and everywhere else since that time;
generous, irascible, given to great fits of gayety and equally
unexpected fits of gloom. He would sit in the evenings, a short pipe in
his mouth, and stare up at the Whitney bungalow on the hill above.
"'That Jim Whitney's a divvle,' he confided to me once. 'Wan of these
days I'll hit him over th' head with a pick and be hung for murther.
Now, what in hell d'ye suppose a nice girl like that sticks by him for?
If it weren't for her I'd 'a' reported him long ago. The scut!' And I
remember that he spat gloomily.
"But I got to know the answer to that question sooner than I had
expected. You see, I went up to the Whitneys' often, in the afternoon,
or for dinner, or in the evening, and I talked to Mrs. Whitney a great
deal; although sometimes I just sat and smoked and listened to her play
the piano. She played beautifully. It was a treat to a man who hadn't
heard music for two years. There was a little thing of Grieg's--a spring
song, or something of the sort--and you've no idea how quaint and sad
and appealing it was, and incongruous, with all its freshness and
murmuring about water-falls and pine-trees, there, in those hot,
breathless Arizona nights. Mrs. Whitney didn't talk much; she wasn't
what you'd call a particularly communicative woman, but bit by bit I
pieced together something continuous. It seems that she had run away
with Whitney ten years before--Oh, yes! Henry Martin! That had been a
schoolgirl affair. Nothing serious, you understand. But the Whitney
matter had been different. She was greatly in love with him. And the
family had disapproved. Some rich, stuffy Boston people, I gathered. But
she had made up her mind and taken matters in her own hands. That was
her way--a clean-cut sort of person--like a gold-and-white arrow; and
now she was going to stick by her choice no matter what happened; owed
it to Whitney. There was the quirk in her brain; we all have a quirk
somewhere, and that was hers. She felt that she had ruined his career;
he had been a brilliant young engineer, but her family had kicked up the
devil of a row, and, as they were powerful enough, and nasty enough, had
more or less hounded him out of the East. Of course, personally, I never
thought he showed any of the essentials of brilliancy, but that's
neither here nor there; she did, and she was satisfied that she owed him
all she had. I suppose, too, there was some trace of a Puritan
conscience back of it, some inherent feeling about divorce; and there
was pride as well, a desire not to let that disgusting family of hers
know into what ways her idol had fallen. Anyway, she was adamant--oh,
yes, I made no bones about it, I up and asked her one night why she
didn't get rid of the hound. So there she was, that white-and-gold
woman, with her love of music, and her love of books, and her love of
fine things, and her gentleness, and that sort of fiery, suppressed
Northern blood, shut up on top of an Arizona dump with a beast that got
drunk every night and twice a day on Sunday. It was worse even than
that. One night--we were sitting out on the veranda--her scarf slipped,
and I saw a scar on her arm, near her shoulder." Hardy stopped abruptly
and began to roll a little pellet of bread between his thumb and his
forefinger; then his tense expression faded and he sat back in his
chair.
"Let me have another cigarette," he said to Jarrick. "No. Wait a minute!
I'll order some."
He called a waiter and gave his instructions. "You see," he continued,
"when you run across as few nice women as I do that sort of thing is
more than ordinarily disturbing. And then I suppose it was the setting,
and her loneliness, and everything. Anyway, I stayed on, I got to be
a little bit ashamed of myself. I was afraid that Mrs. Whitney would
think me prompted by mere curiosity or a desire to meddle, so after
a while I gave out that I was prospecting that part of Arizona, and
in the mornings I would take a horse and ride out into the desert. I
loved it, too; it was so big and spacious and silent and hot. One day
I met Whitney on the edge of town. He was sober, as he always was when
he had to be; he was a masterful brute, in his way. He stopped me and
asked if I had found anything, and when I laughed he didn't laugh back.
'There's gold here,' he said. 'Lots of gold. Did you ever hear the story
of the Ten Strike Mine? Well, it's over there.' He swept with his arm
the line of distant hills to the north. 'The crazy Dutchman that found
it staggered into Almuda, ten miles down the valley, just before he
died; and his pockets were bulging with samples--pure gold, almost. Yes,
by thunder! And that's the last they ever heard of it. Lots of men have
tried--lots of men. Some day I'll go myself, surer than shooting.' And
he let his hands drop to his sides and stared silently toward the north,
a queer, dreamy anger in his eyes. I've seen lots of mining men, lots of
prospectors, in my time, and it didn't take me long to size up that look
of his. 'Aha, my friend!' I said to myself. 'So you've got another vice,
have you! It isn't only rum that's got a hold on you!' And I turned my
horse into the town.
"But our conversation seemed to have stirred to the surface something
in Whitney's brain that had been at work there a long time, for after
that he would never let me alone about his Ten Strike Mine and the
mountains that hid it. 'Over there!' he would say, and point to the
north. From the porch of his bungalow the sleeping hills were plainly
visible above the shimmering desert. He would chew on the end of a
cigar and consider. 'It isn't very far, you know. Two days--maybe
three. All we need's water. No water there--at least, none found. All
those fellows who've prospected are fools. I'm an expert; so are you.
I tell you, Hardy, let's do it! A couple of little old pack-mules! Eh?
How about it? Next week? I can get off. God, I'd like money!' And he
would subside into a sullen silence. At first I laughed at him; but
I can tell you that sort of thing gets on your nerves sooner or later
and either makes you bolt it or else go. At the end of two weeks I
actually found myself considering the fool thing seriously. Of course,
I didn't want to discover a lost gold-mine, that is, unless I just
happened to stumble over it; I wanted to keep away from such things;
they're bad; they get into a man's blood like drugs; but I've always
had a hankering for a new country, and those hills, shining in the heat,
were compelling--very compelling. Besides, I reflected, a trip like that
might help to straighten Whitney up a little. I hadn't much hope, to be
sure, but drowning men clutch at straws. It's curious what sophistry you
use to convince yourself, isn't it? And then--something happened that
for two weeks occupied all my mind."
Hardy paused, considered for a moment the glowing end of his cigarette,
and finally looked up gravely; there was a slight hesitation, almost
an embarrassment, in his manner. "I don't exactly know how to put it,"
he began. "I don't want you chaps to imagine anything wrong; it was
all very nebulous and indefinite, you understand--Mrs. Whitney was a
wonderful woman. I wouldn't mention the matter at all if it wasn't
necessary for the point of my story; in fact, it is the point of my
story. But there was a man there--one of the young engineers--and
quite suddenly I discovered that he was in love with Mrs. Whitney,
and I think--I never could be quite sure, but I think she was in love
with him. It must have been one of those sudden things, a storm out
of a clear sky, deluging two people before they were aware. I imagine it
was brought to the surface by the chap's illness. He had been out riding
on the desert and had got off to look at something, and a rattlesnake
had struck him--a big, dust-dirty thing--on the wrist, and, very faint,
he had galloped back to the Whitneys'. And what do you suppose she had
done--Mrs. Whitney, that is? Flung herself down on him and sucked the
wound! Yes, without a moment's hesitation, her gold hair all about his
hand and her white dress in the dirt. Of course, it was a foolish thing
to do, and not in the least the right way to treat a wound, but she had
risked her life to do it; a slight cut on her lip--you understand; a
tiny, ragged place. Afterward, she had cut the wound crosswise, so, and
had put on a ligature, and then had got the man into the house some way
and nursed him until he was quite himself again. I dare say he had been
in love with her a long while without knowing it, but that clinched
matters. Those things come overpoweringly and take a man, down in places
like that--semitropical and lonely and lawless, with long, empty days
and moonlit nights. Perhaps he told Mrs. Whitney; he never got very far,
I am sure. She was a wonderful woman--but she loved him, I think. You
can tell those things, you know; a gesture, an unavoidable look, a
silence.