Close akin my warriors are;
From the humming bird that swings
All a-quiver, like a star
In a radiance of quick wings—
—To the tiger mountains, stricken
Into stillness by a breaking
Curse. Behold, they stir and quicken,
Gods shall tremble at their waking....
Lo, my warriors, close akin,
An impregnable alliance.
_Drop thy sword and thy defiance,_
_Bow thy head and let them in._
To emerge from this mild life was like falling into the sea from a safe
deck. Edward found himself suddenly in his dark viewless room at the
hotel. He could not find anyone who could tell him where Emily was. He
could hardly walk. The ground seemed strangely near when he walked. He
managed to go to Rhoda’s studio. It was empty. The janitor could only say
with some pride, “Mrs. Bird has gotten herself jailed....”
Nothing seemed left to Edward but San Francisco itself. Nothing was
left that he could grasp; his personal hold on the happy city had
disappeared. He felt as if he held a cold hard diamond in his hand. A
diamond on the palm of the hand has no value, no value until another hand
touches it or eyes desire it, or until it is set in a crown.
All his days Edward sat alone with an aching head either in his room
or in the lobby of the hotel. In the lobby he sat in the midst of
overdressed painted women waiting for their beaux. They were all hostile
to him and to one another. In revenge he dwelt on the fact that their
hair, waved and padded under light nets, looked like wigs and that,
though they looked angrily at one another, they all tried to look
alike. Sometimes one of them would have an “adventure”; a strange stray
beau would find a pretext to get into conversation and they would talk
impertinently and with heavy facetiousness for a time.
Edward sat morbidly rejoicing that he was as much different from them as
it was possible to be. He even valued the pain in his head because it set
him apart from them.
One day a familiar face among the waiting women occurred like one of
the dreams that he could not believe in. It was Mrs. Melsie Ponting
but Edward ran to her like a lover. She quite obviously regretted his
appearance; obviously she did not wish him to know whom she intended to
meet there. She enjoyed the excitement of concealing something. She had a
rendezvous with the medical student, Pike, whose face Edward had neither
liked nor committed to memory. The danger of discovery by Edward,
therefore, was very slight, but Mrs. Ponting fortunately did not know
this. She loved petty danger connected with petty love. The excitement
made her eyes look almost as large as they were painted.
Edward leaned towards her eagerly and asked her for news of all his
friends except Emily.
“My dear, isn’t it exciting about Rhoda!” chattered Melsie. “I’m
perfectly sure she’ll get the maximum sentence. She’s so high and mighty
she doesn’t have any of the artifices that you and me would probably
get away with. She won’t even come out of jail on bail. Avery Bird is
mad. Everybody wants to find Avery to ask him for news, but he’s like a
spook—you never find him unless you’re not looking for him, and then you
see him speeding in a taxi down Van Ness towards the Hall of Justice. My
dear, I must tell you a joke on Banner Hope—you know he is located in
Oakland, but he doesn’t like to have us know it—who would? Banner vamped
a flapper at Jove Pinelli’s and took her—where d’you think?—to Rhoda’s
empty studio. This is how he squared the janitor——”
“Melsie, tell me, where is Emily?”
Melsie was affronted. She was glad that she had something to say that
would hurt Edward.
“Emily? Oh, Emily’s gone to China.”
Edward was at once very angry. He was so angry that there was a swollen
feeling below his ears. It was outrageous that mention of the innocent
and lovely name of Emily should produce nothing but this shocking parrot
cry—“Emily? Oh, Emily’s gone to China....” Why was this conspiracy
directed against him? Emily would not wish it. Emily would wish gentle
and exciting things to be said of her.... “Emily is here—on her way to
see you....” “Emily is gathering poppies for you in the fields behind
Alameda....” “Emily would never go far from you, Edward....”
“No, she is shameless. That is the message she meant to leave for me.
‘Emily? Oh, Emily’s gone to China.’”
“Yes, sirree—bob, she’s gone to China,” repeated Melsie. “Furthermore,
Edward, she’s taken my kiddie with her. It was a bully chance for me,
since you were such a piker. They’re all touring the Orient together—she
and my honey and Mr. and Mrs. McTab.”
Mrs. Ponting lived entirely from her own point of view. This was her
life, to charm those whom she needed, to wound those who rebuffed her,
to ignore those with whom she was not acquainted. Her imagination was
completely blind and deaf; wounds or joys outside of herself were
inconceivable to her. She was glad of her present advantage over Edward,
the advantage of the wounder over the wounded. There was nothing
deliberate in her gladness; simply she did not know pain unless she felt
it.
Edward had very little money. His operation and the hospital had absorbed
almost all that he had. He owed the rest—and more—to his hotel. He had no
shame about accepting money. He lacked manly pride. If Melsie Ponting had
offered him money he would have taken it gladly. He would have pretended
to himself that it was a great struggle and a great humiliation to accept
money but really he would have been delighted. He had never had any
understanding of money, no apprehension of poverty, no skill in keeping
money, no anticipation of increasing it. The etiquette and decencies of
money made no appeal to him. It is hardly necessary to add that Mrs.
Ponting did not offer him money, even when she had asked him, “Well,
for goodness’ sake, Edward, why don’t you go to the Orient too as you
planned?” and Edward had replied, “I haven’t any money.”
One thing Edward was not too proud but too shy to do. He could not
actually ask for money. San Francisco is full of generous people; almost
any of the guests at his party would have helped him. But he did not know
how he would introduce the subject. There was no equality of friendship
where Edward was concerned.
Rhoda Romero had offered to pay him to go to China. “Did she know Emily
was going? No, she wanted to get rid of me. I am a weariness to Rhoda.
She was trying to mislay me kindly. And now I have mislaid Emily.”
Every day for a week after that Edward walked about on Van Ness Avenue in
the hope of seeing Avery Bird speeding past in a taxi. Edward thought he
would throw himself in front of the taxi. For the first time Avery Bird,
now in trouble himself, would look gently on Edward. Van Ness Avenue is
the Bond Street of motor cars. I have no doubt that little homely Fords,
bragging in the public garages at night, talk about the latest fashions
in windshields on Van Ness. Van Ness also leads to the Hall of Justice.
Edward moved from window to window examining the shining new automobiles
and constantly turning sharply, expecting to see Rhoda, restored to
freedom, coming to meet him.
Once he went to the Hall of Justice to ask if he might speak to Rhoda.
His appearance seemed to irritate the public servants whom he addressed.
They offered him no assistance. He wrote a long and introspective letter
to Rhoda, care of the City Jail, but he received no answer.
He was a little stronger in health and felt capable of filling almost
any position except those which were advertised in the papers. Finally
he was obliged to apply for a job as salesman for a patent egg-beater.
But he was told that he lacked punch. He became desperate and attempted
to become a grocer’s assistant in a poor part of the city. The boss, a
bustling Greek, said he didn’t want no white-collar guys. Then Edward
called at the office of a company that seemed inexplicably anxious that
young America should become acquainted with the works of Milton. To this
end they had printed a _Milton for Our Boys_. It was not, of course, “in
poetry.” Poetry is unhealthy for children, unmanly for Our Boys. On the
contrary, this was Milton’s genius made clear for immature minds, as
the Jewish, violet-powdered young lady in the office cleverly recited
by heart to Edward. The advertisement had demanded the services of
highminded young men and women of college education interested in public
service, so Edward rightly felt that his tendency to white-collarism
would be no disadvantage here. A college education, it appeared, was, in
most cases, necessary to enable the public-spirited young men and women
to persuade the hardfisted mothers of Our Boys not only to pay one dollar
down and procure a five dollar _Paradise Lost_ in their homes, but in
addition, to sign a form ordering four more works of Milton—_Paradise
Regained for Our Boys_, _Collected Works of Milton for Our Boys One_,
_Collected Works of Milton for Our Boys Two_ and _Milton and America_ by
Spilwell G. Mundt. Any enlightened mother who should commit herself to
the purchase of the whole series would be presented, absolutely free,
with a beautiful picture of George Washington standing under the Stars
and Stripes looking flushed and repressed as though he were suffering
from indigestion. It was probably felt by the firm that this gift would
gloss over the fact that, unfortunately, the immortal writer to be
introduced to Our Boys was not, strictly speaking, a hundred per cent
American.
The fact that Edward was English appealed to the Jewish young lady in
charge as rather piquant. It seemed to her that his speech—though, of
course, ridiculously foreign—was somehow “cultured.” She therefore
waived the fact that he could not claim a college education. She gave
him a little pamphlet showing him what to say to the mothers of North
Berkeley. The pamphlet opened with advice about persistence—never get
discouraged—go right on ringing till somebody comes—if possible step
inside the door as soon as it is opened—be cheery and sympathetic—never
take the first No for an answer, nor the second either; many firstrate
deals have been put through after two or three refusals—remember it’s
mother’s job to grip the pocketbook tight, but—well, she’s only a woman
after all, and doesn’t she want to see that little scamp of hers grow up
into a big, wise, cultured woman? The opening sentence of the attack was,
“Say, Mother, what are you doing for your boy?” But a few comments on the
weather or the view—any cheery topic that presented itself—to be inserted
before that opening sentence, were in order. Edward would receive ten
per cent commission—fifty cents for each work of Milton sold. “Some of
our men make five to seven dollars a day,” said the young lady in an
inspiring voice. “And North Berkeley’s a clean field....”
On asking what a clean field meant, Edward was told that—so far as the
Company knew—no other highminded young men or women had tried to induce
the mothers of North Berkeley to buy Milton. Edward was glad of this. He
could imagine that a busy mother called repeatedly to the door to show
reason why she should not buy Milton for her boy would in time become
difficult to deal with.
Five dollars a day was thirty dollars a week. He could live on two
dollars a day and save half his earnings. On a hundred and fifty dollars
he thought he could get to China. He could save a hundred and fifty
dollars in ten weeks.
He was not often so full of hope.
First he went out with another public-spirited young man by whose skill
he was supposed to learn and benefit. This young man had facetious and
astonished eyes, a fat, ingrowing nose, and tight high-waisted clothes
which proved him to have had the Western equivalent of a college
education.
Edward was much impressed by his methods. The first house they invaded
was a lonely eccentric house crouching behind a thin mask of young
eucalyptus trees. In the garden a Japanese was working, and from him
Edward’s instructor ascertained that the mistress of the house was not
at home and that even if she had been at home she would have been found
to be childless. Undaunted by this, the instructor, followed by the
surprised Edward, ran towards the house holding out eager hands towards
a female “help” who was shaking a mat out of the garden door.
“Has she gone? Have I missed her?” wailed the instructor in a poignant
voice.
“Do you mean Mrs. Watson?” asked the credulous help sympathetically.
“Yes.... Why, isn’t that just too bad! She went out on a errand. She’ll
be right back, I guess. Don’t you want to come in and wait?”
“I’ll say I do,” said the instructor, rubbing his hands together and
hissing inwards through his teeth in the manner of a real family friend.
He went into the living room. “Gee, it’s good to be here again.”
The reply of the admiring help was an offer of drinks for him and Edward.
With a glass of light beer in his hand the instructor walked about
looking at the books on the shelves. “Kipling ... Lawrence ...
Hergesheimer ... Hardy ... aw shucks! Say, ma’am, you interested in
classical litera_ture_?”
Edward, who hated beer, was not happy. The situation seemed to him only
evanescently comfortable. Besides, the opening—Say mother, what are you
doing for your boy?—was plainly ruled out here.
“I’ll say I am,” replied the help. “That is to say—I’m not one of these
highbrows, but I get a lot of kick out of a good tale.”
“You’ve read all the British classics of course,” continued the
instructor. “Say listen, you know it’s a fact that although these
Britishers neglect their teeth and don’t know the first thing about
sanitation or democracy, their classic authors do surely deliver the
goods. Some guys is so darn narrowminded they could pretty near meet
their ears at the back of their heads, but I say hand over credit where
credit is due. You know any of the dope by this guy they call John
Milton?”
“Does he write for the movies?”
“May have done, for all me,” replied the instructor cautiously. “Anyway,
he’s dead now. But his tales certainly are red-meat tales. I’ll ask
you to give these books the once over—John Milton put into good peppy
American prose and il_lust_rated by one of the swellest artists in Kansas
city.”
The help at last became suspicious. “What you carrying those books around
for?” she asked. “You one of these fresh agent nuts? I thought you said
you was a friend of Mrs. Watson.”
“I’m a friend of everyone that’s got a taste for classical litera_ture_,”
replied the instructor courageously. “I’m a public benefactor. I tell you
I’m ready to put into your hands this minute this illustrated Milton Dee
Lux for one dollar down. It’s a unique opportunity——”
“Now you can just quit right away,” shouted the help, snatching up her
O-Cedar mop with a threatening gesture. “You got no business to of came.
Ef Mrs. Winton S. Watson was to come into this room and find a coupla
two-cent drummers drinking her beer—well, good-night. No, I won’t hear
another word, you can just get busy moving, the quicker the better.”
Edward led the retreat. The instructor made a heroic stand and Edward,
trembling in the garden, heard a sort of duet proceeding from the living
room for a few seconds. Then the instructor, humming brazenly, joined him.
“That dame certainly was a goatgetter,” he admitted. “These folks is
fifty fifty. Sometimes they fall for dope like that most before you begin
putting it over. Sometimes they don’t, that’s all there is to it. It’s
fifty fifty.”
Mathematically speaking he was wrong. The percentage of weak housewives
willing to invest money in the Classics was nothing like fifty per cent.
Yet the general result of the day was not discouraging to Edward. He
looked back with a certain excitement to a day spent climbing up steep
geranium-bordered steps to inexplicably friendly interviews. He looked
forward still to making five dollars a day and refused to analyse, even
to himself, the differences of manner between himself and his instructor.
Next day he was allowed to go by himself.
He studied North Berkeley on the map like a lover studying the portrait
of his mistress. He decided to begin work at a street the name of which
reminded him, without reason, of Emily. He made the stopping of the
street-car a secret test of the coming day’s chance of success. If it
should stop at his corner for passengers other than himself it would mean
success—five dollars—perhaps a record—ten dollars.... A group of women
stopped the car at his corner and he was very glad until, on calling at
the first two houses, he found that the group had consisted of potential
clients of Milton, departing for their marketing. At the third house the
housewife was in. Edward did not begin with, “Say, mother, what are you
doing for your boy?” He lost his head.
He began lamentably, “I say, I’ve got a book here to sell.”
The mistress of the house shook her head sadly at him. “I dare say you
have, but I haven’t the money to spend.”
“Oh, sorry ...” said Edward and turned towards the street again.
“Wait a moment. I believe you’re English. I am English too—a remittance
woman. How rash of you to take up salesman’s work in a country of
salesmen. Would you like to come in?”
“I have my methods and the instructor had his,” thought Edward
complacently as he followed her in. “The results seem to be the same.”
He looked with cool hope at the “remittance woman.” She had rather a flat
crumpled face and very soft looking matt skin. Her pince-nez were the
only firm thing in her face; they obviously pinched very strongly.
“I must introduce you to my only friend,” she said waving her hands
towards an apparently empty corner of the living-room. Then Edward saw
that a canary was suspiciously eyeing him from the dresser.
Edward chuckled doubtfully. “Have you really no other friends?” he said,
telling himself that the woman was rather morbid.
“None,” replied the Englishwoman placidly. “The people I know in England
pay me to make my home on another continent. I am unfortunate in being
hateful to everyone I meet.”
“Haven’t you any relations?” asked Edward lamely.
“I am not married and my sisters in England hate me. I once was
determined to get married and even got so far as to wait in a white dress
at a church in North London. But the man changed his mind and never came.
Indeed he did not change his mind, he hated me all along. Everybody does.”
Edward was overwhelmed. The woman seemed to him offensive. Did she
suppose she was the only person in the world who had Known Grief?
However, he felt a little proud because she was telling him these things.
He thought he must have a sympathetic face—“the face of one who had been
down into the depths.” He drew the corners of his mouth down to make his
face more sympathetic.
“When I say everybody,” added the woman, “of course I am excepting
Edward.”
Edward dropped his sympathetic expression just as it was properly
adjusted. “Excepting who?”
She waved her hand again towards the canary, which flew across on to her
shoulder. “Edward,” she explained. “He loves me. He loves my hair and
my lips. He pecks and pulls at my hair in the mornings when I let him
out of his cage. I lie in bed late—I have nothing to get up for— And
Edward holds my chin between his nervous little claws and pushes his beak
between my lips....”
Edward Williams looked with dislike at her hair and her lips. Her hair
was grey and had a middle-aged, tangled curl in it. Her lips were dry and
rather grey too.
“My name is Edward too,” he said.
“Well,” said the remittance woman, pleased. “Isn’t that a nice stroke of
chance? Tell me about yourself. Why are you attempting an unlikely job
like this?”
Edward at once felt pity in the air. He groped for pity instinctively. He
told her in a plaintive voice about his loneliness, the fact that he had
no mother and that Jimmy was killed at Loos, he told her of his efforts
to support himself, of his love for Emily....
When he had finished he felt only slightly guilty and looked down at
the book he wished her to buy. She did not want it but surely she could
afford to buy something she did not want from a kindred soul. He would
refuse at first her offer to buy his book, he thought.
“We are rather alike,” she said. “We neither of us get on with the world.”
Her voice was almost jealous. She so rarely met competition in her line.
“Yes,” said Edward. “But you are more fortunate than I, if you are hated.
I am ignored, which is much worse.”
She assented doubtfully. “Certainly everybody hates me,” she insisted. It
was her one vanity and her support.
There was a pause and they looked at each other with dislike.
“I don’t need your book,” she said. “But I have five dollars to spare. I
suppose you are insulted now. You can put the five dollars in your pocket
and spare me the trouble of breaking the back of my bookshelf with such a
straw as _Milton for Boys_. Take it and hate me for it if you like. I am
used to that.”
Edward held the flaccid money in his hand. He thought, “It pays to be
pathetic.” He despised himself at the same time and thought, “Even Banner
Hope would be shocked at this. Why haven’t I automatically evolved a
proud personality like everyone else?”
She opened the door by way of dismissing him. “You will curse me whenever
you think of this,” she said. “It will be a satisfaction to you. People
always curse those who pity them.”
“I shan’t,” said Edward, putting the five dollar bill in his pocket. “I
don’t believe anyone hates you or curses you. You deceive yourself.”
When he looked back from the street her affronted face was still turned
towards him. With relief and irritation he decided never to think of her
again.
He sold no books either that day or the next. He did not dare to use the
provided formula—Say mother—. He had nothing definite to use instead. To
one or two mothers who were too courteous to slam the door he murmured
broken suggestions about the superiority of Milton to the movies. It was
a false step. The movies, to the American middle class, are a substitute
for religion. For uplift the home depends on the movies. Edward found
himself guilty of blasphemy. Milton appeared in the light of a criminal
heresy.
After two days Edward went, like Noah’s homing dove, to the office,
Milton still in his beak.
“There’s something wrong with the district,” he complained to the young
lady there. “The word book seems to mean nothing to them. All the
artistic words have changed their meaning in California. _Book_ means
magazine, _Music_ means jazz, _Act_ means behaving, _Picture_ means a
snapshot. They haven’t even a place to keep books. They have nothing but
old _Ladies’ Home Journals_ on their dressers.”
Edward thought of _Milton for Our Boys_ now as a valuable but wronged
book.
The young woman naturally did not pay much attention to what he was
saying. But she came from Calistoga and was excited to meet so rare a
specimen as an educated foreigner. She was, in mind, face and fashion, a
typical young woman of the Wild West. She had no interest or recreation
whatever, apart from flirtation. Englishmen were all nearly lords in her
democratic imagination. They were therefore laughable but worth charming.
She had just mislaid her last steady beau so she was at the moment a
little susceptible. She had, temporarily, no special man in mind when
powdering her nose to an amethyst color or corrugating her dark, dull,
padded hair.
“Why, isn’t that just too bad?” she said arching her false looking
eyebrows caressingly at Edward. “Well, say, listen, don’t you want to
try out Napa County and Sonoma County? One of our men is crazy to have
us send someone there; he says there’s a lot doing out that ways. My own
home-city, Calistoga, is some cultured burg, let me tell you. My brother
made fifteen dollars once in his vacation, boosting the _Saturday Evening
Post_. Say, I go home sometimes over the week end. If you fix up to work
that locality, don’t you want to call in at our place? I’d love to have
you meet my Mom.”
She was planning to say to her Mom, “Say Mom, I’ve got a new steady, an
English lord.”
“Are there azaleas in those parts? And does the company pay one’s fare?”
asked Edward.
The young lady looked uncomfortable and paused. “Say Steve, I guess I
would better put you wise on something. This firm doesn’t do much of the
faith, hope and charity turn to folks in their country lines. They only
come across with your trolley fare on commission—same as in Berkeley. No
sales—no cash. I don’t say I get much kick out of the way they act, but
there they are. But see here, my Pop’s coming down to Berkeley to gimme a
ride home next Saturday in our old Dodge. Don’t you want to come along?
And when we get to our place, brother’ll loan you his wheel, seeing
you’re a friend of mine. I’ve got a hunch, Steve, that you’re not one
of these way-up born-to-the-manner drummers. Don’t you find it hard to
impress strangers? I thought so. Us up-and-coming Californians, you know,
you can’t get in with us without you’ve got a lot of punch. Europeans
don’t have any punch, the way I figure it. Well, we can’t all be born
where we want, can we?”
Edward was pleased to have excited sympathy in one more breast. “Our hero
has that indefinable _something_ that only women’s subtler sensibilities
can appreciate....”
He persisted in his fruitless missionary efforts among the mothers of
North Berkeley until the following Saturday. At a given time he proceeded
to a given rendezvous in Oakland to meet his patroness—whose name was
Mame Weber—and her Pop and her brother Cliff.
Cheek by jowl with Miss Weber he bounced upon the back seat of Pop’s
Dodge car. “Better if you’d put your arm where it oughter be,” advised
Miss Weber, indicating her own ribs. “Only mind and don’t get fresh.
Pop’s awful strict. Say, got any candies?”
Edward looked at her blankly.
“Not even a sticka gum? Why, I’ll say you’re a nice beau. I’d a feller
name of Al who couldn’t never hardly hug me right away—his pockets was so
fulla candies. Say, Ed, you got a lot to learn.”
Edward accepted his rôle with surprise and pleasure. Miss Weber was of
the shrinking and protective type when motoring and, whenever the car,
driven by rash brother Cliff, seemed unlikely to avoid disaster, Edward
enjoyed feeling against his arm the stiffening and trembling of her
thinly clothed body.
“Emily doesn’t know me yet,” he thought. “She has never let me show her
my fine or strong side.” Miss Weber took an insignificant but pleasing
part in the ranks of his sensations.
Napa Valley, like an inverted rainbow, lay before him. The strange,
creased, silken bodies of the hills lay behind the glassy white veil of
the air. The shadows striped and varied them, and the night-green patches
of oaks, beaten almost as flat as the shadows, were crammed into the
canyons. On every side, at a lower and more human level, a conventional
pattern of vineyards and steepled masses of bleak eucalyptus trees was
printed on the valley. The orchards were alight with the bright golden
green that follows the blossom season and in their shade the grass was
passionately green.
The sweet skeletons
Of orchards fire delight.
They fire into my sight
Quick rays of green and bronze.
I am pierced—I cannot bear
Their wounding—I surrender...
The almond blossom’s tender
Pale smoke is on the air....
As the car passed quickly the ends of the aisles between the rows of
delicate and jointed fruit-trees, successive rays of violent green
flashed along the perspectives into Edward’s eyes. Blinking at this, he
hardly knew when first the mountain, Saint Helena, parted the little near
hills and inserted between them its thickly blue peak.
“Hands praying ... or steeples ... or the peaks of mountains,” thought
Edward. “They are all praising God always, whether there is a God or not.”
The father of Miss Weber was a retail merchant in Calistoga. He called
his house not a house but a “home.” “My Pop has one elegant home right in
the classy part of the city of Calistoga,” said Miss Weber.
The American of the Weber type chooses many of his words for their
potential catch in the throat, as it were. _Motherhood_, _manhood_,
_lovelight_, _grip-o’-the-hand_, the movies have made words of this
kind music in the American ear. But words with home in them are the
most popular—_homestead_, _homeland_, _home-site_, _home-town_,
_home-builder_.... We who can live in houses and can see the word Mother
in print with dry eyes or hear the glugging of someone else’s baby over
its food in a cafeteria without vicarious domestic ecstasy, must seem
very coarse to Americans. However, the missionary movies are with us now.
We shall all no doubt eventually suffer a change of heart.
The Weber Home was made of wood, painted mustard yellow picked out in sky
blue. It had a fancy roof and a jocose little castellated turret over one
window, like a drunkard’s hat on one side.
Mrs. Weber was not so classy as her son, her daughter and her Home. She
spent much of her time in the kitchen and was at first realised by Edward
only as a shrill voice calling, “Walk right in, Son, make yessell at
home,” in reply to her daughter’s announcement, “Oh, mom, meet my new
beau, Ed Williams.”
Mrs. Weber, when seen as well as heard, proved to be extremely fat,
though sprightly. She was powdered just as lavishly as was her daughter,
but in a softer shade of mauve. She had fine dark myopic eyes; her thick
black brows met and dipped under the bridge of her pince-nez. Her bosom
was too enormous to seem even motherly. She had a screaming laugh which
was probably one of the charms that had won her Mr. Weber and an elegant
home, for she laughed most assiduously during and between jokes.
“Cheery ole dame is Mom, isn’t that right, Ed?” said Miss Weber, throwing
one of her pretty arms half way round the vast shoulders of her Mom.
It was a simple home. Pop might well be proud of it. He shewed, however,
no signs of pride—no signs, in fact, of anything. He did not speak
more than once or twice a day. Even at meals he sat half turned from
the table with musing eyes fixed on one square of the carpet. He had a
wrinkled thin neck like a tortoise’s. His face was wrinkled and full of
grievances. He explored the inside of his cheeks almost constantly with
his tongue and sometimes with his finger. Often he assisted his tongue
and finger by picking his teeth with any implement that came handy. His
one conversation with Edward ran thus:
“Well, young feller, how much better d’you like this country than yer
own?”
“No better,” replied Edward nervously. He hastened to add apologetically,
“You see, I have an affection for England because it’s my home—I mean my
homeland, as it were. Just the same as you’d like America best even if
you came to England——”
Mr. Weber laughed and set his toothpick to work on rather an
inaccessible tooth. “Reckon I shouldn’t think anything of England,” he
said in a final voice.
“Well, that’s what I mean,” said Edward, growing rather red. “That’s
rather what I feel about America, when you compare it with England.”
Pop leaned forward and leveled his toothpick at Edward’s face. “Now, see
here, son,” he said, showing only two of his left hand teeth.
Miss Weber shrieked, “Aw cut it out, Pop, and you forget it too, Ed.
Pop’s a reg’lar whizz at politics.”
Young brother Cliff was a child of nature, a child, as it were, of urban
nature. He had no reticences, it seemed to Edward, who was much afraid
of him. There was no telling what young brother Cliff would say next.
“’S’matter with Ed’s chin—’s’all pimples?” he would say after a long rude
silence. Or, “Say Mom, Ed sweats at night same as Will useter.” Edward
slept in Cliff’s room during the two nights of his visit. Young Cliff
wore “Jazz clothes”; they were very tight under the arms. It seemed as
if his clothes were made to be worn with the elbows always up, on a desk
or on a lunch counter. They were very urban clothes. But Cliff was much
pleased with them. He had no country clothes or country pursuits. He was
frankly amused at Edward’s English clothes. “Ed’s clothes fit him like
the shell of a peanut.” Cliff’s one Calistoga amusement was to stand in
front of the drug-store while the Calistoga young women turned this way
and that as they preened themselves on the sidewalk before him.
On Sunday morning Edward accompanied Cliff on this exercise. After
looking with rude intensity at the figures and legs of all the young
women in sight, Cliff selected two—the two with the barest necks and
the largest imitation pearls—and offered to buy them sodas. Edward and
Cliff and the two young women sat in a row on tall hinged stools at the
drug-store counter. Cliff hardly spoke one word to the girls, though
several times he jovially kicked the shin of the nearest. Apart from
this he exchanged apparently amusing but incomprehensible badinage with
the soda-mixer behind the counter. The girls powdered their noses and
talked in indifferent low voices to each other. They did not seem to mind
being excluded from manly conversation. But twice Cliff turned to them
and said—of the ice cream soda—“Slips down easy, don’t it, kid?” and
then Edward was shocked at the instant change of their expression to an
obsequiously bright admiring look.
“I thought there were more men than women in California,” said Edward
afterwards. “Why do these girls cringe so, anyway before they’re married?”
Cliff did not give Edward much attention. “Never too many beaux for these
skirts,” he said. “Say, Edward, did you see the way they was tickled to
death by your British pants?”
Miss Weber was naturally more attentive to Edward than were the others,
but she was disappointed in him. For three hours on a perfect Sunday
afternoon she sat on the couch close to Edward in the stuffy living room,
but Edward did not seem to know what was expected of him. When Miss Weber
said, “Say, listen, Ed, tell me about the way English girls act with
their beaux.” Edward actually began to do so. Usually so sensitive about
the impression he was making, he was quite complacent now.
“This girl is really pathetically taken with me,” he thought. He laid
before her a description of a day in Epping Forest, he produced an
excerpt from his childhood, he told her of a tree with enlarged and
tangled roots in which his lead soldiers used to climb. Also he mentioned
a young bat which he and Jimmy had found. They made a hole for it in the
tree. It stayed two days.
“Jimmy was killed at Loos,” he said.
“Well, isn’t that too bad....” said Miss Weber. She paused for a decent
moment before saying, “You’re a nice beau, aren’t you?”
“I don’t suppose you really think so,” said Edward, smiling placidly.
“You must have had many more amusing beaux than me.”
“Oh, my no,” replied Miss Weber acidly. She threw her head back on the
cushions so that her round neck and line figure were seen to advantage.
Edward redeemed himself a little by taking her hand and feeling upward
along her arm as if in curiosity.
“Rather a shame,” thought Edward happily, “to raise her hopes like this.”
“You know, I have a true love already,” he said aloud.
“I’ll tell the world you have,” replied Miss Weber. “Haf-a-dozen, more
like. In England I guess.”
“In China.”
“Is that right? Well, China’s a long ways off,” she said and placed her
head a little doubtfully on his shoulder.
“That’s nice,” said Edward, trying secretly to pretend that the head was
Emily’s. It was blasphemy, for Miss Weber’s crimped hair looked sticky
under its dusty net. “Poor soul, poor defenceless little woman....” he
thought a little wearily. He had never before had such advances from
a virtuous young woman, but he was already thinking of himself as a
heartbreaker. He was proud but he ached for Emily.
“One’s life with such people is hideous,” he thought suddenly. “People
like me have to pretend all the time with them. Pretend to be amused ...
to be grateful ... to be sprightly ... to be in love. If one stopped
pretending one would shout, ‘Oh, how hideous my life is when I am with
you.’ Emily is easy.”
“I guess you haven’t gotten on to my first name,” murmured Miss Weber.
“Yes I have. It’s Mame,” he replied with distaste.
Only once during his visit was Edward’s dramatic sense aroused, and that
was when he seemed to hear Mom say to a silent and ghostlike neighbor who
had dropped in, “Merry, merry, merry were they, and danced with their
hair in a tremble.” After studying the picture thus presented to his
mental retina, Edward realised that part of what she had really said was,
“It’s worry, worry, worry all day about dancing ...”
That evening, when the energies of a cheap Victrola had been directed
to the delivery of a song which one could tell was a comic song about
Prohibition because it was sung out of tune and with a great deal of
hiccoughing, Miss Weber asked her brother for the loan of his bicycle.
“What’d I loan Ed my wheel for?” asked the frank youth. “He’s not _my_
beau, is he?”
“Why, Cliff, you know you haven’t used it yourself in months. You’re not
going to act mean, are you?”
The discussion lasted for about seventy minutes. It ended thus: “Why,
what’d I wanter loan Ed my wheel for? He’s not _my_ beau. Mom, here’s
Sis’ beau after my wheel. He’d skip with it, as likely as not. It’s my
wheel anyway.”
“Well, then, you won’t get any more music off my Victrola. I’ll lock it
up, you mean thing. Mom, isn’t brother the mean thing?”
“Lock it up all you want. I can live without music, I guess. I’m not one
of your British highbrow lords.”
Unperturbed, Mom read _Mother’s Magazine_, her square florid face resting
on its many chins like a shut door at the top of steps. Mr. Weber picked
his teeth with clicking noises and looked at the floor as though he could
see through it.
When Edward awoke on Monday morning, Cliff was gone. Miss Weber was
knocking on the door. “Brother says you can have his wheel,” she said
through the door. “I gotter catch my train in a minute. Come down till I
show you where the wheel is.”
Edward felt for a moment sorry that his eyes looked so ugly immediately
after he awoke. “It’ll disillusion her, poor soul,” he thought, putting
on his overcoat. “Perhaps it’s as well....”
“I’d better not borrow your brother’s bike, thanks awfully. He didn’t
seem really keen for me to have it.”
“Shucks,” said Miss Weber guiltily. “He’s crazy for you to have it.
Nothing’ll happen. You can’t eat it, can you? Come ahead.”
The last words he ever heard from Miss Weber were spoken in the garage.
“My, look at your legs! Do all Britishers wear jazz suits in bed? I’ll
say old Cliff got a good laugh over that suit. My, a quarter of seven
... I must hustle. By-bye, Ed, gimme a hug. Call in at the office any
time.”
When Edward said good-bye to his host and hostess, Mr. Weber spat in
a pointed and rude way on to a spot near Edward’s left foot. It hurt
Edward’s feelings rather.
“Somehow I don’t get on with coarse people, especially in America. Few
people appreciated a man of our Hero’s exquisite fibre,” he thought,
without much conviction.
Edward had two dollars and fifty cents. He was not a very good manager
but he lived on that money for three days. He did not sell a single book.
“If I were the hero of a book,” he thought once, “nobody would ever
believe that I had made so complete a failure of such a simple job. Never
one sale. Other people in books have ups and downs in their businesses,
but I have only downs—and such deep downs. I can’t think what is the
matter with me. It is really that Emily is a part of me that hasn’t
fitted on yet—the successful and splendid part. Emily and I could be a
man and a woman. Without her I am not even a man.”
“Never mind. I have only to wait. People never go on in such an agony of
wanting without at last getting what they want.”
The further away Emily went the more did Edward forget the hopelessness
of his suit. He only remembered the softer aspects of Emily’s face.
The roads he chose during those three days lay often through forests. He
avoided the open, wide, concrete roads. “If I can get in with the little
ranches, that’ll be a cleaner field. Ranch people have boys, I suppose.”
The boys did not seem to want culture in the little ranches. Some of the
women could hardly speak English. Their replies were given in an accent
so exotic that the sense did not penetrate to Edward’s faulty hearing.
When he looked at their faces, however, he was generally glad he could
not understand. He was not wise in his choice of “clean fields.”
Bungalows infest the slopes of the Russian River, yet almost every
bungalow at which Edward knocked was apparently uninhabited, except at
week-ends. There was no business there—still, there was the Russian
River. A rigorous red road sawed up the dark high mountains on the south
bank of the river. There were trees everywhere. Young redwoods against
the sky were strangely bare and lancelike. The sun made nothing of the
inconsiderable branches of the trees—it made clear only their proud
back-bones. There were madrones. One would expect to bend a madrone like
rubber; its stem has the apparent texture of red rubber. And bent it
is, but only by great winds. Its stem and branches are red and rose-red
or gold and green-gold; it glows like a pillar of jewels and precious
metals. Once a year madrone opens hundreds of little windows in its
scarlet and crimson tower, little green square windows are cut in the
bark, through which joy in the heart of the madrone looks out at spring.
At those times it is as if there was, pouring from the innumerable
windows, a most gay green and gold light into the forest—light where
sunlight cannot enter—a low, gay light in the forest shadows. But now
madrone’s windows were closed, madrone was sealed up in its smooth
shadeless red towers. The glazed grape-colored stems of manzanita haunted
the shadows below the madrones. There were columbines with their flowers
strangely balanced in the air like stage fairies. And most of the world
in sight was pricked by pines and firs in all shades of green, ranging
from a hot, live green to a green that had almost the sheen of a Blue
Persian cat.
The Russian River, far down, ran among mauvish tapering islands of sand.
It crouched low down beneath the feet of the hills and the trees. The
sun-dazzle upon the river dodged behind the shoulders of the hills.
Edward tried to “work” the self-conscious summer villages and the
concealed and suspicious mountain hamlets. _Milton for Our Boys_ seemed
to be a drug in the forest market. Talk of uplift withered in the smell
of the sea that came up the Russian River.
Edward slept one night simply and uncomfortably beside the prostrate
bicycle under a twisted madrone tree, on soil thick with intimate small
weeds—soil that for the first two hours was soft and seemed a vantage
point from which to sing to the stars, but for the rest of the night was
hard and infested with ants. Stars are stark comfort at three in the
morning.
All next day he was in sunlight on the naked low hills that follow the
line of the sea. The hills were burnt; it seemed that they had even
caught something of the colour of flame. They were burnt tawny gold and
crimson. These were the naked hills; they were done with the draperies of
spring.
Edward bicycled briskly. He felt rather ashamed of having to move
his feet in such a brisk prancing way; he thought that he shewed the
ridiculous jauntiness of a toy dog.
He was approaching _The World’s Egg Center_. The hills broke out into an
eruption of white hens. Edward thought that, just as every provincial
mother looks to London, so it must be every hen’s ambition to have an egg
making its début at the _World’s Egg Center_. Twelve miles out of the egg
metropolis suburbs of hens were already thick on the ground.
Apart from hens, the only flowers of that bare country seemed to be
boulders, great proud purple boulders rooted in their own clear shadows.
Sometimes little wind-bent trees, like jockeys, rode the boulders.
Edward called upon many chicken ranchers in the hope of introducing
Milton to their boys. He was becoming desperate. He had thirty-five
cents left in the world. Chickens must be an absorbing pursuit; no
rancher had any time or attention for Milton.
Edward spent twenty-five cents on a very bad meal.
After sunset he crouched under a leaning rock on the slope of a hill. He
slept well and in the morning found his waking eyes on fire in the glare
of a solitary gold poppy, gloriously open within three inches of his
face. The poppy was thickly and incredibly golden; its petals had a sheen
like a little wind on sunny water and, deep within its cup, dusted with
gold, was its treasure, a tiny unkempt chrysanthemum of gold with a crisp
core of black.
At the next ranch visited by Edward the disorder of his clothes, after
two nights under the dishevelling stars, had its effect. A man in blue
jeans, carrying a bucket of grain, met Edward at the gate and said, “We
found and lifted the latch of the polar star.”
Edward was no fool. After a second’s surprise he realised that his ears
were betraying him again.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t quite catch what you said.”
“What’s that?”
“I didn’t hear what you said.”
“You don’t need to hear anything except Keep Out,” said the man waving at
a terse sign rooted in a whirlpool of chickens: KEEP OUT THIS MEANS YOU.
“We don’t want no hoboes here.”
“My name is Edward Williams,” said Edward urgently. “I want you to look
at——”
“If you said you was William Randolph Hearst I wouldn’t give a whoop. No,
sir-ree, not in them togs. ’S’plain enough, ain’t it?”
Edward bicycled briskly away. He looked himself over when he was out
of sight of the ranch. His clothes were creased like the cheek of a
nonagenarian. _Milton for Our Boys_ was an anomaly as a bait at the end
of that crumpled sleeve. He would try no more. “Our Hero was never one to
fly in the face of fate.” He bicycled into the Chicken-City and he was so
much irritated by hunger that he hoped he would run over someone and die
in the attempt. All the faces on the sidewalks made him uncontrollably
angry. He went into a saloon and ordered a brandy. He was so angry that
his voice trembled. He would never see Emily again. He would die in the
suburbs of a chicken center. He would find another gold poppy and it
would pour gold into his eyes until his eyes closed. Poppies are better
than pennies on dead eyes.
“Only a matter of a few days more,” said the saloon keeper in a friendly
voice.
“Being deaf is as bad as being haunted,” thought Edward, wondering what
the man had really said. “A matter of one day more,” he grunted.
“No, _sir_. June thirtieth’s the last day and you don’t wanta forget
it. I’ll say the boys’ll be around that night. What gets me’s how the
government put it over, but—well, I should worry I guess.”
“He’s talking of Prohibition,” Edward realised. “Well, by the end of this
week I shall be prohibited anyway.”
Just as the saloon keeper began another remark, Edward turned his back
irritably and sat down at a table. The brandy combined rather badly with
his hunger.
There was a newspaper on the table. Rhoda Romero’s name was on it in tall
headlines.
Acquitted.
There was a snapshot of Rhoda, with a defensive hand to her chin, walking
with one foot up. “.... Collapsed on hearing verdict.... Miss Romero, who
is in private life Mrs. Avery Bird ... yesterday, facing a possibility of
a fourteen years’ sentence, not a muscle of her face (of a Grecian type)
twitches ... today, declared free ... attack of hysterics in court ...
hides her face among hubby’s vest buttons ... refuses to disclose her
plans ... will perhaps visit relatives in the East ... complete nervous
collapse....”
Edward felt absolutely no joy on Rhoda’s account. “It’s no use
pretending,” he thought. “There’s no room in me now for anything but me
and Emily.”
He was very much excited. He read the account three or four times. He
recognised the dress that Rhoda was wearing in the snapshot. He spoke to
the saloon keeper again.
“This is my greatest friend in California,” he said in a trembling voice,
hoping that the saloon keeper would be very much interested.
“Well, what do you know about that?” said the host, taking the paper
patiently. “She’s a looker too, I’ll say. Well, it’s good hearing for you
that she ain’t ona these Reds. We had a Red once blaaing around in this
city—wanted a hired man’s strike....”
“Yes, isn’t it funny, I even know that dress. Those little buttons are
green.” Edward was quite unlike himself. He was so hungry.
“Is that right? You bin going with her, I guess,” said the saloon keeper,
looking at him sharply. “Well, who’s to blame you, she surely looks a
classy dame.”
“I want to go back to see her,” said Edward. “I didn’t think I should
ever see her again. Now she’s free and anyone can see her.”
He was much pleased that his host thought he was in love with Rhoda. He
felt that the thing gave him a halo of interest and pathos. He thought
that the saloon keeper would describe the incident to other customers
later in the day. “Had a guy in here ... picks up the _Examiner_ ...
intellectual looking guy too....”
“I want to go back to her,” said Edward, “but I haven’t a cent. That is
to say, of course, I have ten—enough, I hope, to pay for the brandy.”
“The brandy’s two bits,” amended his host doubtfully. “That’s too bad.
How come?”
“I bicycled here.”
There was a considerable pause.
“You don’t want to buy a book called _Milton for Boys_? I’m a salesman.
I’ve struck hard times.”
“Why, no,” said the saloon keeper, whose manner was now rather colder.
“We don’t have no use for books, not in my lina business.”
Edward clung to the counter. He would never leave it without money, he
thought hysterically. The saloon keeper went and served another customer,
whistling doubtfully as he did so. Then he produced an account book and
began writing down figures. Edward held the counter tightly. He began to
feel faint with hunger and excitement. A noise like mowing machines on
summer lawns at home was in his ears. The saloon keeper finally looked at
him.
“Want something to eat, brother?” he asked. “I’d be willing.”
“No,” said Edward. He felt vaguely that to accept food would lessen the
force of his appeal. There was a hopeless silence again. Edward’s head
drooped over the counter. He seemed to be looking closely at the grain of
the wood.
“The man must be touched by this,” he thought dimly. “I must look
awfully white by now.” There was a freezing feeling on the skin of his
face.
“Now, see here, young feller,” said the saloon keeper. “I hate to see you
in bad. I’ve got a soft heart, so the boys tell me. I’d kinda hate to
have a foreigner quit this city feeling mean like you feel right now. I
kin size up a man that’s on the level as well as anyone. Now this is what
I’ll do. You let me see this wheel of yours and I don’t say but what I
kin loan you a few bucks on it.”
Edward leaned on the counter for a minute more. “I might be able to
redeem it,” he thought. “Anyway Cliff said I’d probably skip with it, so
he won’t be surprised. It’s a little thing to do—for Emily.”
He wheeled the bicycle into the bar.
“Gee, she’s had some knocks,” said the saloon keeper. He came round the
counter and rang the bell of the bicycle. “Next time you come around this
ways, mebbe ... well, brother, I’ll trust you. You kin have a hot dog on
me and a cup-a coffee. I’ll loan you a coupla bucks on it. That’ll take
you as far as Frisco.”
“Obstacles are nothing to Our Hero,” thought Edward and then, “Cliff
won’t be surprised. Nor will Pop. Pop will say that’s what comes of
picking up with a Britisher.’ He’ll spit and pretend he’s spitting on
England.”
San Francisco seemed to Edward to be set in pearls. Pearl clouds bowled
about the hills; the bay and the Golden Gate had the opaque glow of
pearls.
The little tram lifted him up the steep streets towards Rhoda—no, towards
Emily. From the top of the straight hill he saw the city lying in curious
leaning perspectives. Houses on other hills seemed built upon each other
like the stones of great pyramids. The air was full of white sun and all
the shadows were trim.
Misgivings met him halfway up the wooden outside stairway that led to
Rhoda’s door.
No-one answered the bell. He could not believe the silence. He rang again
and again. No-one answered.
He stood on the stairs with an empty mind. Then he began to remember
running down those stairs, pursuing Emily after his first meeting with
her. It seemed to him now that he had not loved her at all while she had
been here, within reach. He could not remember his past feelings. He
could remember nothing but looking at her. The Edward of those days was a
blank to him now. He had lived then outside himself, living austerely on
the intermittent sight of her. Now he could not even remember what it was
that he had seen in her face, he could not remember what it was that gave
her eyes that starred look. Was it because they were set so deep under
her strong black brows?
The janitress stood at the foot of the stairs. “Mrs. Bird ain’t to home.
Gawn south somewheres in Louisiana. Didn’t you-all see it in the paper?
She done had a collapse.”
Edward did not answer. He looked down at the janitress. He could not see
her feet; he was so steeply above her. He could see, however, that some
of her hair was false and did not match the rest. After a minute she was
gone.
Avery Bird had come half-way up the wooden stairs before Edward really
believed that he was there.
They looked at each other in unfriendly silence.
Avery looked frantic; his face was a yellowish white; his thick lips were
fixed in a straight line; his cheeks were as hollow as though he were
sucking them in. Even his curly black hair looked crushed.
After he had looked at Edward for a minute he pushed by him and unlocked
the door.
“Can’t you leave us alone?” he said.
Edward seemed to himself to dwindle. He could hardly believe that anyone
had spoken so. “Our Hero—what? Are heroes so addressed? _Can’t you leave
us alone?_ It is intolerable. I am an absolute and appalling failure.”
With a limp hand he reached for the door as Avery shut it against him.
He touched the door in a yielding way as a cat would touch it. The touch
was like magic. Avery opened the door again. “Come in, come in. Oh, come
in, come in,” he said furiously. As he preceded Edward into the studio
he went on saying, “Come in, come in, oh come in....” Poor Edward was
coming in as quickly as he could. Dirty cups and plates were all over
the studio. The shades were down over all the windows but one.
“I detest the sight of you,” said Avery. “You are like a beastly disease
in my house. You worried Rhoda till she cried at night. Now she is gone,
to cry in another bed.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Avery did not know altogether what he meant. There was to him something
hideous and detestable about Edward. Edward had been too much in his
sight. Avery was full of Jewish vigour himself; the poorness and the
pimples, the thinness and the hesitancy of Edward were revolting to him.
“You don’t know what I mean? Didn’t you know that Rhoda would have _paid_
to get you out of this country, out of her sight, out of the sight of all
decent people.”
Edward did not speak of the suggested commission to take Rhoda’s pictures
to China. He knew very well that Avery was right. Rhoda would have paid
to get him out of her sight. That was all she had meant. Her pictures,
bad, mad, careful pictures, were still on the wall.
“Now she has gone,” said Avery. “She has forgotten me—she has worse than
forgotten you.”
“Gone ... forgotten?” Edward thought. He could not connect violent words
with the serene and reasonable Rhoda. He could not imagine her sturdy
neat face distorted by fury or hysteria.
Avery said, “What do you want? Are you begging for her money again?”
“Yes,” said Edward. He sank down into a mire of disgust. He was feeling
sick.
Avery snatched at a wallet on the table. He threw all the papers from it
to the floor and there was a roll of money clinging to the brim of the
wallet. “Take it, take it, take it, take it!” he shouted, slamming down
one fifty dollar bill after another among the reeling cups on the table.
“Oh, take it, take it, take it!...”
Edward was taking it as quickly as he could.
“And for Christ’s sake get off this side of the world,” added Avery. “You
... gopher.”
Edward backed a few paces towards the door. Avery laughed. His face was
twitching; his eyes were burning red. He looked very ugly and almost
childish and Edward, as he realised this, felt braver. He stood with his
back to the door. He knew very well that when he had disappeared, Avery
would put his head down among the unwashed cups. Why, the man was already
crying.
“You have been exceedingly rude to me,” said Edward. He thought, “Our
Hero threw one contemptuous glance back into the room as he left.”
Edward went out. As he closed the door he could hear the cups clash.