and even Ed Green, on Henry's porch. They were all having ice-cream and
cake together.
"Well, what?" said he, roughly.
"Won't you shake hands with me?"
"No," said Adam.
"Won't you come in?"
"Never."
Still Henry persisted.
"Some one might do you harm, Adam."
"Let them!" said Adam.
Then Adam walked on alone. Adam walked alone for forty years.
Not only on Memorial Day did he don his gray uniform and make the
rounds of the village. When the Fosterville Grand Army Post met on
Friday evenings in the post room, Adam managed to meet most of the
members either going or returning. He and his gray suit became gradually
so familiar to the village that no one turned his head or glanced up
from book or paper to see him go by. He had from time to time a new
suit, and he ordered from somewhere in the South a succession of gray,
broad-brimmed military hats. The farther the war sank into the past,
the straighter grew old Adam's back, the prouder his head. Sometimes,
early in the forty years, the acquaintances of his childhood, especially
the women, remonstrated with him.
"The war's over, Adam," they would say. "Can't you forget it?"
"Those G.A.R. fellows don't forget it," Adam would answer. "They haven't
changed their principles. Why should I change mine?"
"But you might make up with Henry."
"That's nobody's business but my own."
"But when you were children you were never separated. Make up, Adam."
"When Henry needs me, I'll help him," said Adam.
"Henry will never need you. Look at all he's got!"
"Well, then, I don't need him," declared Adam, as he walked away. He
went back to his saddler shop, where he sat all day stitching. He had
ample time to think of Henry and the past.
"Brought up like twins!" he would say. "Sharing like brothers! Now
he has a fine business and a fine house and fine children, and I have
nothing. But I have my principles. I ain't never truckled to him. Some
day he'll need me, you'll see!"
As Adam grew older, it became more and more certain that Henry would
never need him for anything. Henry tried again and again to make
friends, but Adam would have none of him. He talked more and more to
himself as he sat at his work.
"Used to help him over the brook and bait his hook for him. Even built
corn-cob houses for him to knock down, that much littler he was than me.
Stepped out of the race when I found he wanted Annie. He might ask me
for _something_!" Adam seemed often to be growing childish.
By the year 1875 fifteen of Fosterville's thirty-five veterans had died.
The men who survived the war were, for the most part, not strong men,
and weaknesses established in prisons and on long marches asserted
themselves. Fifteen times the Fosterville Post paraded to the cemetery
and read its committal service and fired its salute. For these parades
Adam did not put on his gray uniform.
During the next twenty years deaths were fewer. Fosterville prospered
as never before; it built factories and an electric car line. Of all
its enterprises Henry Foust was at the head. He enlarged his house and
bought farms and grew handsomer as he grew older. Everybody loved him;
all Fosterville, except Adam, sought his company. It seemed sometimes
as though Adam would almost die from loneliness and jealousy.
"Henry Foust sittin' with Ed Green!" said Adam to himself, as though he
could never accustom his eyes to this phenomenon. "Henry consortin' with
Newt Towne!"
The Grand Army post also grew in importance. It paraded each year with
more ceremony; it imported fine music and great speakers for Memorial
Day.
Presently the sad procession to the cemetery began once more. There
was a long, cold winter, with many cases of pneumonia, and three
veterans succumbed; there was an intensely hot summer, and twice in
one month the post read its committal service and fired its salute.
A few years more, and the post numbered but three. Past them still
on post evenings walked Adam, head in air, hands clasped behind his
back. There was Edward Green, round, fat, who puffed and panted; there
was Newton Towne, who walked, in spite of palsy, as though he had won
the battle of Gettysburg; there was, last of all, Henry Foust, who at
seventy-five was hale and strong. Usually a tall son walked beside him,
or a grandchild clung to his hand. He was almost never alone; it was
as though every one who knew him tried to have as much as possible of
his company. Past him with a grave nod walked Adam. Adam was two years
older than Henry; it required more and more stretching of arms behind
his back to keep his shoulders straight.
In April Newton Towne was taken ill and died. Edward Green was
terrified, though he considered himself, in spite of his shortness
of breath, a strong man.
"Don't let anything happen to you, Henry," he would say. "Don't let
anything get you, Henry. I can't march alone."
"I'll be there," Henry would reassure him. Only one look at Henry, and
the most alarmed would have been comforted.
"It would kill me to march alone," said Edward Green.
As if Fosterville realized that it could not continue long to show
its devotion to its veterans, it made this year special preparations
for Memorial Day. The Fosterville Band practiced elaborate music, the
children were drilled in marching. The children were to precede the
veterans to the cemetery and were to scatter flowers over the graves.
Houses were gayly decorated, flags and banners floated in the pleasant
spring breeze. Early in the morning carriages and wagons began to bring
in the country folk.
Adam Foust realized as well as Fosterville that the parades of veterans
were drawing to their close.
"This may be the last time I can show my principles," said he, with grim
setting of his lips. "I will put on my gray coat early in the morning."
Though the two veterans were to march to the cemetery, carriages were
provided to bring them home. Fosterville meant to be as careful as
possible of its treasures.
"I don't need any carriage to ride in, like Ed Green," said Adam
proudly. "I could march out and back. Perhaps Ed Green will have to ride
out as well as back."
But Edward Green neither rode nor walked. The day turned suddenly warm,
the heat and excitement accelerated his already rapid breathing, and the
doctor forbade his setting foot to the ground.
"But I will!" cried Edward, in whom the spirit of war still lived.
"No," said the doctor.
"Then I will ride."
"You will stay in bed," said the doctor.
So without Edward Green the parade was formed. Before the court-house
waited the band, and the long line of school-children, and the burgess,
and the fire company, and the distinguished stranger who was to make
the address, until Henry Foust appeared, in his blue suit, with his flag
on his breast and his bouquet in his hand. On each side of him walked
a tall, middle-aged son, who seemed to hand him over reluctantly to the
marshal, who was to escort him to his place. Smilingly he spoke to the
marshal, but he was the only one who smiled or spoke. For an instant men
and women broke off in the middle of their sentences, a husky something
in their throats; children looked up at him with awe. Even his own
grand-children did not dare to wave or call from their places in the
ranks. Then the storm of cheers broke.
Round the next corner Adam Foust waited. He was clad in his gray
uniform--those who looked at him closely saw with astonishment that it
was a new uniform; his brows met in a frown, his gray moustache seemed
to bristle.
"How he hates them!" said one citizen of Fosterville to another. "Just
look at poor Adam!"
"Used to bait his hook for him," Adam was saying. "Used to carry him
pick-a-back! Used to go halves with him on everything. Now he walks
with Ed Green!"
Adam pressed forward to the curb. The band was playing "Marching Through
Georgia," which he hated; everybody was cheering. The volume of sound
was deafening.
"Cheering Ed Green!" said Adam. "Fat! Lazy! Didn't have a wound. Dare
say he hid behind a tree! Dare say--"
The band was in sight now, the back of the drum-major appeared, then
all the musicians swung round the corner. After them came the little
children with their flowers and their shining faces.
"Him and Ed Green next," said old Adam.
But Henry walked alone. Adam's whole body jerked in his astonishment.
He heard some one say that Edward Green was sick, that the doctor had
forbidden him to march, or even to ride. As he pressed nearer the curb
he heard the admiring comments of the crowd.
"Isn't he magnificent!"
"See his beautiful flowers! His grandchildren always send him his
flowers."
"He's our first citizen."
"He's mine!" Adam wanted to cry out. "He's mine!"
Never had Adam felt so miserable, so jealous, so heartsick. His eyes
were filled with the great figure. Henry was, in truth, magnificent,
not only in himself, but in what he represented. He seemed symbolic
of a great era of the past, and at the same time of a new age which
was advancing. Old Adam understood all his glory.
"He's mine!" said old Adam again, foolishly.
Then Adam leaned forward with startled, staring eyes. Henry had bowed
and smiled in answer to the cheers. Across the street his own house
was a mass of color--red, white, and blue over windows and doors, gay
dresses on the porch. On each side the pavement was crowded with a
shouting multitude. Surely no hero had ever had a more glorious passage
through the streets of his birthplace!
But old Adam saw that Henry's face blanched, that there appeared
suddenly upon it an expression of intolerable pain. For an instant
Henry's step faltered and grew uncertain.
Then old Adam began to behave like a wild man. He pushed himself
through the crowd, he flung himself upon the rope as though to tear
it down, he called out, "Wait! wait!" Frightened women, fearful of some
sinister purpose, tried to grasp and hold him. No man was immediately
at hand, or Adam would have been seized and taken away. As for the
feeble women--Adam shook them off and laughed at them.
"Let me go, you geese!" said he.
A mounted marshal saw him and rode down upon him; men started from under
the ropes to pursue him. But Adam eluded them or outdistanced them. He
strode across an open space with a surety which gave no hint of the
terrible beating of his heart, until he reached the side of Henry. Him
he greeted, breathlessly and with terrible eagerness.
"Henry," said he, gasping, "Henry, do you want me to walk along?"
Henry saw the alarmed crowds, he saw the marshal's hand stretched
to seize Adam, he saw most clearly of all the tearful eyes under the
beetling brows. Henry's voice shook, but he made himself clear.
"It's all right," said he to the marshal. "Let him be."
"I saw you were alone," said Adam. "I said, 'Henry needs me.' I know
what it is to be alone. I--"
But Adam did not finish his sentence. He found a hand on his, a blue
arm linked tightly in his gray arm, he felt himself moved along amid
thunderous roars of sound.
"Of course I need you!" said Henry. "I've needed you all along."
Then, old but young, their lives almost ended, but themselves immortal,
united, to be divided no more, amid an ever-thickening sound of cheers,
the two marched down the street.
THE YELLOW CAT[19]
BY WILBUR DANIEL STEELE
From _Harper's Magazine_
[19] Copyright 1915, by Harper and Brothers. Copyright, 1916, by Wilbur
Daniel Steele.
At least once in my life I have had the good fortune to board a deserted
vessel at sea. I say "good fortune" because it has left me the memory
of a singular impression. I have felt a ghost of the same thing two or
three times since then, when peeping through the doorway of an abandoned
house.
Now that vessel was not dead. She was a good vessel, a sound vessel,
even a handsome vessel, in her blunt-bowed, coastwise way. She sailed
under four lowers across as blue and glittering a sea as I have ever
known, and there was not a point in her sailing that one could lay a
finger upon as wrong. And yet, passing that schooner at two miles, one
knew, somehow, that no hand was on her wheel. Sometimes I can imagine
a vessel, stricken like that, moving over the empty spaces of the sea,
carrying it off quite well were it not for that indefinable suggestion
of a stagger; and I can think of all those ocean gods, in whom no
landsman will ever believe, looking at one another and tapping their
foreheads with just the shadow of a smile.
I wonder if they all scream--these ships that have lost their souls?
Mine screamed. We heard her voice, like nothing I have ever heard
before, when we rowed under her counter to read her name--the
_Marionnette_ it was, of Halifax. I remember how it made me shiver,
there in the full blaze of the sun, to hear her going on so, railing
and screaming in that stark fashion. And I remember, too, how our
footsteps, pattering through the vacant internals in search of that
haggard utterance, made me think of the footsteps of hurrying warders
roused in the night.
And we found a parrot in a cage; that was all. It wanted water. We
gave it water and went away to look things over, keeping pretty close
together, all of us. In the quarters the table was set for four. Two
men had begun to eat, by the evidence of the plates. Nowhere in the
vessel was there any sign of disorder, except one sea-chest broken out,
evidently in haste. Her papers were gone and the stern davits were
empty. That is how the case stood that day, and that is how it has
stood to this. I saw this same _Marionnette_ a week later, tied up
to a Hoboken dock, where she awaited news from her owners; but even
there, in the midst of all the water-front bustle, I could not get rid
of the feeling that she was still very far away--in a sort of shippish
other-world.
The thing happens now and then. Sometimes half a dozen years will go by
without a solitary wanderer of this sort crossing the ocean paths, and
then in a single season perhaps several of them will turn up: vacant
waifs, impassive and mysterious--a quarter-column of tidings tucked away
on the second page of the evening paper.
That is where I read the story about the _Abbie Rose_. I recollect how
painfully awkward and out-of-place it looked there, cramped between
ruled black edges and smelling of landsman's ink--this thing that had
to do essentially with air and vast colored spaces. I forget the exact
words of the heading--something like "Abandoned Craft Picked Up At
Sea"--but I still have the clipping itself, couched in the formal patter
of the marine-news writer:
"The first hint of another mystery of the sea came in to-day when
the schooner _Abbie Rose_ dropped anchor in the upper river, manned
only by a crew of one. It appears that the out-bound freighter _Mercury_
sighted the _Abbie Rose_ off Block Island on Thursday last, acting
in a suspicious manner. A boat-party sent aboard found the schooner
in perfect order and condition, sailing under four lower sails, the
topsails being pursed up to the mastheads but not stowed. With the
exception of a yellow cat, the vessel was found to be utterly deserted,
though her small boat still hung in the davits. No evidences of disorder
were visible in any part of the craft. The dishes were washed up, the
stove in the galley was still slightly warm to the touch, everything in
its proper place with the exception of the vessel's papers, which were
not to be found.
"All indications being for fair weather, Captain Rohmer of the _Mercury_
detailed two of his company to bring the find back to this port, a
distance of one hundred and fifteen miles. The only man available with
a knowledge of the fore-and-aft rig was Stewart McCord, the second
engineer. A seaman by the name of Björnsen was sent with him. McCord
arrived this noon, after a very heavy voyage of five days, reporting
that Björnsen had fallen overboard while shaking out the foretopsail.
McCord himself showed evidences of the hardships he has passed through,
being almost a nervous wreck."
Stewart McCord! Yes, Stewart McCord would have a knowledge of the
fore-and-aft rig, or of almost anything else connected with the
affairs of the sea. It happened that I used to know this fellow. I
had even been quite chummy with him in the old days--that is, to
the extent of drinking too many beers with him in certain hot-country
ports. I remembered him as a stolid and deliberate sort of a person,
with an amazing hodge-podge of learning, a stamp collection, and a
theory about the effects of tropical sunshine on the Caucasian race,
to which I have listened half of more than one night, stretched out
naked on a freighter's deck. He had not impressed me as a fellow who
would be bothered by his nerves.
And there was another thing about the story which struck me as rather
queer. Perhaps it is a relic of my seafaring days, but I have always
been a conscientious reader of the weather reports; and I could remember
no weather in the past week sufficient to shake a man out of a top,
especially a man by the name of Björnsen--a thorough-going seafaring
name.
I was destined to hear more of this in the evening from the ancient
boatman who rowed me out on the upper river. He had been to sea in his
day. He knew enough to wonder about this thing, even to indulge in a
little superstitious awe about it.
"No sir-ee. Something _happened_ to them four chaps. And another
thing--"
I fancied I heard a sea-bird whining in the darkness overhead. A shape
moved out of the gloom ahead, passed to the left, lofty and silent, and
merged once more with the gloom behind--a barge at anchor, with the
sea-grass clinging around her water-line.
"Funny about that other chap," the old fellow speculated. "Björnsen--I
b'lieve he called 'im. Now that story sounds to me kind of--" He
feathered his oars with a suspicious jerk and peered at me. "This McCord
a friend of yourn?" he inquired.
"In a way," I said.
"Hm-m--well--" He turned on his thwart to squint ahead. "There she is,"
he announced, with something of relief, I thought.
It was hard at that time of night to make anything but a black blotch
out of the _Abbie Rose_. Of course I could see that she was pot-bellied,
like the rest of the coastwise sisterhood. And that McCord had not
stowed his topsails. I could make them out, pursed at the mastheads
and hanging down as far as the cross-trees, like huge, over-ripe pears.
Then I recollected that he had found them so--probably had not touched
them since; a queer way to leave tops, it seemed to me. I could see also
the glowing tip of a cigar floating restlessly along the farther rail. I
called: "McCord! Oh, McCord!"
The spark came swimming across the deck. "Hello! Hello there--ah--"
There was a note of querulous uneasiness there that somehow jarred with
my remembrance of this man.
"Ridgeway," I explained.
He echoed the name uncertainly, still with that suggestion of
peevishness, hanging over the rail and peering down at us. "Oh! By
gracious!" he exclaimed, abruptly. "I'm glad to see you, Ridgeway. I
had a boatman coming out before this, but I guess--well, I guess he'll
be along. By gracious! I'm glad--"
"I'll not keep you," I told the gnome, putting the money in his palm
and reaching for the rail. McCord lent me a hand on my wrist. Then
when I stood squarely on the deck beside him he appeared to forget my
presence, leaned forward heavily on the rail, and squinted after my
waning boatman.
"Ahoy--boat!" he called out, sharply, shielding his lips with his
hands. His violence seemed to bring him out of the blank, for he fell
immediately to puffing strongly at his cigar and explaining in rather
a shame-voiced way that he was beginning to think his own boatman had
"passed him up."
"Come in and have a nip," he urged with an abrupt heartiness, clapping
me on the shoulder.
"So you've--" I did not say what I had intended. I was thinking that
in the old days McCord had made rather a fetish of touching nothing
stronger than beer. Neither had he been of the shoulder-clapping sort.
"So you've got something aboard?" I shifted.
"Dead men's liquor," he chuckled. It gave me a queer feeling in the
pit of my stomach to hear him. I began to wish I had not come, but
there was nothing for it now but to follow him into the afterhouse.
The cabin itself might have been nine feet square, with three bunks
occupying the port side. To the right opened the master's stateroom,
and a door in the forward bulkhead led to the galley.
I took in these features at a casual glance. Then, hardly knowing why
I did it, I began to examine them with greater care.
"Have you a match?" I asked. My voice sounded very small, as though
something unheard of had happened to all the air.
"Smoke?" he asked. "I'll get you a cigar."
"No." I took the proffered match, scratched it on the side of the galley
door, and passed out. There seemed to be a thousand pans there, throwing
my match back at me from every wall of the box-like compartment. Even
McCord's eyes, in the doorway, were large and round and shining. He
probably thought me crazy. Perhaps I was, a little. I ran the match
along close to the ceiling and came upon a rusty hook a little aport
of the center.
"There," I said. "Was there anything hanging from this--er--say a
parrot--or something, McCord?" The match burned my fingers and went
out.
"What do you mean?" McCord demanded from the doorway. I got myself back
into the comfortable yellow glow of the cabin before I answered, and
then it was a question.
"Do you happen to know anything about this craft's personal history?"
"No. What are you talking about! Why?"
"Well, I do," I offered. "For one thing, she's changed her name.
And it happens this isn't the first time she's--well, damn it all,
fourteen years ago I helped pick up this whatever-she-is off the
Virginia Capes--in the same sort of condition. There you are!" I was
yapping like a nerve-strung puppy.
McCord leaned forward with his hands on the table, bringing his face
beneath the fan of the hanging-lamp. For the first time I could mark
how shockingly it had changed. It was almost colorless. The jaw had
somehow lost its old-time security and the eyes seemed to be loose
in their sockets. I had expected him to start at my announcement; he
only blinked at the light.
"I am not surprised," he remarked at length. "After what I've seen and
heard--". He lifted his fist and brought it down with a sudden crash on
the table. "Man--let's have a nip!"
He was off before I could say a word, fumbling out of sight in the
narrow state-room. Presently he reappeared, holding a glass in either
hand and a dark bottle hugged between his elbows. Putting the glasses
down, he held up the bottle between his eyes and the lamp, and its
shadow, falling across his face, green and luminous at the core, gave
him a ghastly look--like a mutilation or an unspeakable birth-mark. He
shook the bottle gently and chuckled his "Dead men's liquor" again.
Then he poured two half-glasses of the clear gin, swallowed his portion,
and sat down.
"A parrot," he mused, a little of the liquor's color creeping into his
cheeks. "No, this time it was a cat, Ridgeway. A yellow cat. She was--"
"_Was?_" I caught him up. "What's happened--what's become of her?"
"Vanished. Evaporated. I haven't seen her since night before last, when
I caught her trying to lower the boat--"
"_Stop it!_" It was I who banged the table now, without any of the
reserve of decency. "McCord, you're drunk--_drunk_, I tell you. A _cat_!
Let a _cat_ throw you off your head like this! She's probably hiding out
below this minute, on affairs of her own."
"Hiding?" He regarded me for a moment with the queer superiority of
the damned. "I guess you don't realize how many times I've been over
this hulk, from decks to keelson, with a mallet and a foot-rule."
"Or fallen overboard," I shifted, with less assurance. "Like this fellow
Björnsen. By the way, McCord--". I stopped there on account of the look
in his eyes.
He reached out, poured himself a shot, swallowed it, and got up to
shuffle about the confined quarters. I watched their restless
circuit--my friend and his jumping shadow. He stopped and bent forward
to examine a Sunday-supplement chromo tacked on the wall, and the two
heads drew together, as though there were something to whisper. Of a
sudden I seemed to hear the old gnome croaking, "Now that story sounds
to me kind of--"
McCord straightened up and turned to face me.
"What do you know about Björnsen?" he demanded.