like a week ago Queenie Sears was taken from her dive down on the river
shore to the municipal infirmary. She had delirium tremens--was raving
crazy. She'd had them before, it appears, but this attack was the last
one she'll ever have. Because it killed her--that and a weak heart and
bad kidneys and a few other complications, so the doctors say. Anyhow,
she's dead. She died about an hour ago.
"Well, early this morning her mind cleared up for a little while.
They told her she was going, which she probably knew for herself, and
advised her to put her worldly affairs--if she had any--in order. It
seems she had considerable worldly affairs to put in order, which was a
surprise. It seems from what she said that she had upwards of a hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, all in gilt-edged securities, all tucked
away in a safe-deposit box, and all of it, every red cent of it, coined
from the blood and the sweat and the degradations of fallen women. No
need for us to go into that now. God knows, enough people will be only
too glad to go into it when the news leaks out!
"As I say, they told her at the hospital that she was dying. So she
asked for a lawyer and they got one--a young fellow named Dean that's
lately opened up an office. And he came and she made her will and it
was signed in the presence of witnesses and will be offered for probate
without delay. Trust some of our friends of the opposition to attend
promptly to that detail. And, Bracken--take it steady, man--Bracken,
she left every last miserable cent of that foul, tainted one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars to you."
"What!" The cry issued from Bracken's throat in a gulping shriek.
"I'm saying she left it all to you. I've just seen the will. So has
Dorgan. I sent for him as soon as the word reached me about half an
hour ago and we went together and read the infernal thing. It says--I
can almost quote it verbatim--that she's leaving it to you because for
thirty-six years you've been her best friend and really her only friend
and her one disinterested adviser. And furthermore because--with almost
her dying breath she said it--because you were solely instrumental in
helping her to save and preserve her earnings.... God, but that's been
hard! Now then, Dorgan, it's your turn to speak."
So Dorgan spoke, but briefly. Five minutes later, from the door on
the point of departure, he was repeating with patience, in almost the
soothing parental tone one might use to an ailing and unreasonable
child, what already he had said at least twice over to that stricken
figure slumped in the swivel chair at the big flat desk.
"Sure," he was saying, "I'll believe you, and Griffin here, he'll
believe you--ain't he just promised you he would?--and there's maybe
five or six others'll believe you--but who else is goin' to take your
word against what it says in black and white on that paper? And her
lookin' into the open grave when she told 'em to set it down? Nope,
Bracken, you're through, and it's only a mercy to you that I'm comin'
here to be the first one to tell you you are. You can explain till
you're black in the face and you can refuse to touch that dough till
the end of time, or you can give it to charity--if you're lucky enough
to find a charity that'll take it--but, Bracken, it's been hung around
your neck like a grindstone and it was a dead woman's hands that hung
it there and it makes you altogether too heavy a load for any political
organization to carry--you see that yourself, don't you? And so,
Bracken, you're through!"
But to Bracken's ears now the words came dimly, meaning little. Where
he was huddled, he foresaw as with an eye for prophecy things coming to
pass much as they truly did come to pass. He saw his wife--how well he
knew that lukewarm lady who was not lukewarm in her animosities nor yet
in her suspicions!--saw her closing a door of enduring contempt forever
between them; he saw the breaking off of his daughter's engagement to
that young Scopes, who was the third bearer of an honored name, and his
daughter despising him as the cause for her humiliation and her wrecked
happiness; he saw himself thrown out of his church, thrown out of his
bank, thrown out of all those pleasant concerns in which he had joyed
and from which he had rendered the sweet savors of achievement and of
creation. He saw himself being cut, being ignored, by those who had
been glad to kowtow before him for his favor, being elbowed aside as
though he were a thing unclean and leprous.
He heard, not Dorgan passing a compassionate but relentless sentence
on him and his dearest of all hopes, but rather he seemed to hear the
scornful laughter of unregenerate elderly libertines, rejoicing at the
downfall of an offending brother exposed at his secret sins; and he
seemed to hear derisive voices speaking--"Walking so straight up he
reared backwards, and all the time--" "Well, well, well, the church
is certainly the place for a hypocrite to hide himself in, ain't it?"
"Acting like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, but now just look at
him!" "His life was an open book till they found out where the dark
pages were stuck together, he, he, he!" Thus and so he heard the
scoffing voices speaking. He heard aright too, and as his head went
down into his hands, he tasted in anticipation a draft too bitter for
human strength to bear.
Griffin was another who did not hear the third repetition of Dorgan's
judgment. He had gone on ahead like a man anxious to quit a noisome
sick-room and to one of the assistant cashiers in the outer office he
was saying: "I advise you to get your chief to go home and lie down
awhile. It might also be a good idea to call up his family doctor
and get him to drop over here right away. From the looks of him, Mr.
Bracken's not a well man. He's had a shock--a profound shock. His
nerves might give way, I'd say, any minute. I'm afraid he's in for a
very, very hard time!"
PEACE ON EARTH
[Decoration]
This Christmas was going to be different. So far as Mr. and Mrs.
Bugbee were concerned the Christmas before had been a total failure,
disillusioning, disappointing, fraught with heart-burnings. But this
coming one--well, just let everybody wait and see. They'd show them.
"It's going to be so dog-goned different you'd be surprised!" said Mr.
Bugbee. He said it after the plan had taken on shape and substance and,
so saying, raised a hand in the manner of a man who plights a solemn
troth.
But first the plan had to be born. It was born on a day in October
when Mr. Bugbee came into the living-room of their light-housekeeping
apartment on West Ninth Street just around the corner from Washington
Square. The living-room was done in Early Byzantine or something--a
connoisseur would know, probably--and Mrs. Bugbee was dressed to
match the furnishings. She was pretty, though. Her friends said she
reminded them of a Pre-Raphaelite Madonna, which either was or was not
a compliment dependent on what privately the speaker thought about
the Pre-Raphaelite school. Still, most of her friends liked it, being
themselves expertly artistic. She had the tea things out--the hammered
Russian set. This was her customary afternoon for receiving and
presently there would be people dropping in. She lifted her nose and
sniffed.
"Whew!" she exclaimed. "Where have you been? You smell like a rancid
peppermint lozenge."
"Been down in the storeroom in the basement getting out my winter
suits," he said. "Messy job. I broke up a party."
"Whose?" she asked.
"Mr. and Mrs. Moth were celebrating their woolen wedding," he
explained. "They furnished the guests and I did the catering. You ought
to see that heavy sweater of mine. It's not heavy any more. I'm going
to write a chapter to be added to that sterling work 'Advice to an
Expectant Moth-er.'"
"Oh dear!" she said. "That's the trouble with living in one of these
old converted houses."
"This one has backslid," he interjected. "Insectivorous, I call it.
There were enough roaches down there to last a reasonable frugal
roach-collector for at least five years. Any entomologist could have
enjoyed himself for a week just classifying species."
"And I fairly saturated your clothes with that spraying stuff before I
packed them away," she lamented. "And as for camphor balls--well, if I
used up one camphor ball I used ten pounds."
"You must have been a poor marksman. So far as I can judge you never
hit a single one of 'em. And so all summer, while we flitted from place
to place, gay butterflies of fashion that we are, they've been down
there intent on family duties, multiplying and replenishing my flannel
underwear, as the Scriptures so aptly put it. Devoted little creatures,
moths! They have their faults but they have their domestic virtues,
too. I wish they didn't have so much of my golf sweater. It looked like
drawn-work."
"What did you do with it?"
"Gave it back to them. All or none--that's my motto. But I piled the
rest of the duds on my bed. By prompt relief work much of it may be
salvaged."
"Then for heaven's sake close the door before I choke."
He closed the door and came and sat down near her and lighted a
cigarette. He wore the conventional flowing Windsor tie to prove how
unconventional he was. But he did not wear the velveteen jacket; he
drew the line there, having a sense of humor. Nor were his trousers
baggy and unpressed. They were unbagged and impressive. Mr. Bugbee
was a writer, also a painter. He was always getting ready to write
something important and then at the last minute deciding to paint
instead, or the other way around. What between being so clever at the
two crafts he rarely prosecuted either.
But then as regards finances this pair did not have to worry. There
was money on both sides, which among our native bohemians is a rare
coincidence. He had inherited some and Mrs. Bugbee had inherited a good
deal. So they could gratify a taste for period furniture and practice
their small philanthropies and generally make a pleasant thing of
living this life without the necessity of stinting.
It was agreed that they had such happy names--names to match their
natures. His was Clement and hers was Felicia. It was as if, infants at
the baptismal font though they were, they had been christened and at
the same time destined for each other. Persons who knew them remarked
this. Persons also made a play on their last name. While these twain
were buzzing about enjoying themselves, their intimates often called
them the Busy Bugbees. But when an idealistic impulse swept them off
their feet, as occasionally it did, the first syllable was the one
that was accented. It was really a trick name and provided some small
entertainment for light-hearted members of the favored circle in which
the couple mainly moved. It doesn't take much to amuse some people.
"Just to think!" mused Mrs. Bugbee. "It seems only a week or two
ago since we were wondering where we'd go to spend the summer. Time
certainly does fly."
"And what a small world it is," amended Mr. Bugbee. "Why, we were
sitting right here in this room when that subject first came up and,
lo and behold, only five short months afterward we meet again on the
very same spot. Where do they get that stuff about a fellow so rarely
running into an old friend in New York?"
"You'd better save that cheap wit of yours for somebody who'll
appreciate it," said Mrs. Bugbee, but she smiled an indulgent wifely
smile as she said it. "Yes, indeed, time does fly! And here winter is
almost upon us." She lifted her voice and trilled a quotation: "'And
what will poor robin do then, poor thing?'" Mrs. Bugbee loved to sing.
She sang rather well, too. About once in so often she thought seriously
of taking up grand opera. Something always happened, though. With the
Bugbees something always did.
"Don't you be worrying your head about him," said Mr. Bugbee. "Being a
wise old bird, the robin will be down in Georgia dragging those long
stretchy worms out of the ground. I wish they'd put as good a grade of
rubber into elastic garters as they do into those Southern worms. It's
what we'll be doing ourselves, poor things, that gives me pause."
"First thing anybody knows Thanksgiving will be here." She went on as
though she had not heard him. "And then right away I'll have to begin
thinking about Christmas. Oh dear!" She finished with a sigh.
"Damn Christmas!" Mr. Bugbee was fervent.
"Why, Clem Bugbee, aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
So he altered it: "Well, then, damn the kind of Christmas they have in
this vast and presumably intellectual city! Giving other people things
they don't want that cost more money than you can afford to spend,
because they are going to give you things you don't want that cost more
than they can afford to spend. Every retail shop turned into a madhouse
with the inmates all running wild. Handing out money on all sides to
people who hate you because it's not more and you hating them right
back because you're being held up this way. Everybody and everything
going stark raving crazy on Christmas Eve. Nervous prostrations. Jams
in the streets. Sordidness, greed, ostentation, foolish extravagance.
Postmen and clerks and expressmen dying on their feet. Truck-drivers
spilling the sort of language that's still regarded as improper
except when spoken on the stage. Then it becomes realism, but the
truck-driver, not being artistic but just a poor overworked slob of a
vulgarian, he's maybe arrested for using obscenity.
"Christmas Day, and you go around with 'Merry Christmas' on your lips
and murder in your heart. And drink egg-nogs made out of amateur
whisky. And eat too much. And go to fool parties where you're bored
stiff. Then the bills piling in. And the worthless junk piling up
around the flat. And everything. Do I seem bitter? I do? Well, I am!"
"It's easy enough to talk--goodness knows every rational human being
deplores the commercialism and the--the mercenaryism--"
"Where did you get that word?"
"Made it up. It's a good word and it's mine and I like it. And don't
interrupt. As I was saying, we all deplore the mercenaryism and the
materialism and the senseless display that's crept into Christmas, and
a lot of people spout about it just as you're doing, but nobody does
anything to try to reform it. At least nobody has since they started
the custom of sending Christmas cards instead of gifts. But that was a
mistake; it's been overdone into an evil. There's a passion to see who
can buy the most expensive cards; and you spend weeks beforehand making
up the lists and addressing the envelops, and the cards cost as much
as the presents used to cost and make ever so much more bother getting
them out. Look at what happened to us last Christmas! Look at what's
sure to happen this Christmas! And all you do is stand there--sit
there, I mean--and spout at me as though I were to blame. Suggest a way
out, why don't you? I'd be only too delighted if you would."
"I will," proclaimed the challenged party. He thought hard. "We'll run
away from it--that's what we'll do."
"Where do we run?"
"That's a mere detail. I'm working out the main project. In advance
we'll circulate the word that we're escaping from the civilized brand
of Christmas; that on December twenty-fifth we're going to be far,
far beyond the reach of long-distance telephones, telegraph lines,
wireless, radio, mental telepathy, rural free delivery routes, janitors
with their paws out for ten-dollar bills and other well-wishers; that
we're not going to send any presents to our well-to-do friends and are
not expecting any from them; that we're not even figuring on mailing
out a single, solitary, dad-busted greetings card. There's plenty of
time ahead of us for putting the campaign through. We'll remember
our immediate relatives and your pet charities and any worth-while
dependents we can think of. And then we'll just dust out and forget to
leave any forwarding address."
"We could try Florida again," suggested Mrs. Bugbee.
"The land of the sap and the sapodilla--we will not! What's Florida now
except New York with a pair of white duck pants on?"
"Well, the climate there is--"
"It is not! It's all cluttered up with real-estate agents, the climate
is. Besides I never could see the advantages of traveling eighteen
hundred miles in mid-winter to get into the same kind of weather that
you travel eighteen hundred miles in midsummer to get out of."
"Well, then, we might run up to Lake Placid or the Berkshires. Of
course it'll be too early at either place for the regular season, but I
suppose there'll be a few people we know--"
"You don't grasp the big theory at all. This is not to be an
excursion, it's an exploring expedition. We're not a couple of tourists
out for winter sports and chilblains on our toes. We're pioneers. We're
going forth to rediscover the old Christmas spirit that's sane and
simple and friendly. If there is a neighborhood left anywhere in this
country where the children still believe in Santa Claus we're going
to find it. And we'll bring the word back when we come home and next
year thousands of others will follow our examples, and generations
yet unborn will rise up and bless us as benefactors of the human
race. I shouldn't be surprised if they put up monuments to us in the
market-place."
"You might as well be serious about it. And not quite so oratorical."
"I am serious about it--I was never more serious in my life. Beneath
this care-free exterior a great and palpitating but practical idea has
sprouted to life."
"Well, since you're so practical, kindly sprout the name of the spot
where we're to spend Christmas. I'm perfectly willing to try anything
once, even against my better judgment, but you can't expect me to get
on a train with you without at least a general notion as to the name of
the station where we get off."
Mr. Bugbee's brow furrowed; then magically it unwrinkled. "I have it!"
he said. "We'll take the Rousseau cottage up at Pleasant Cove. The
Rousseaus are sailing next Tuesday for Europe to be gone until spring.
Only yesterday Rousseau offered me the use of his camp any time I
wanted it and for as long as I pleased. I'll see him tomorrow and ask
him to notify his caretaker that we'll be along about the second week
in December."
"But it's eight miles from the railroad." Her tone was dubious.
"So much the better. I wish it was eighty miles from one."
"And right in the middle of the mountains."
"You bet it is. I want to be right in the heart of the everlasting
peaks. I hope to get snowed in. I crave an old-fashioned white
Christmas. I'm fed up on these spangled green, blue, red, pink, purple
and blind ones. I want to mingle with hardy kindly souls who have
absorbed within them the majesty and the nobility of their own towering
hills. I want to meet a few of the real rugged American types once
more. I'm weary of these foreigners you see in the subway reading
newspapers which seem to be made up exclusively of typographical
errors. I yearn to hear the idioms of my native tongue spoken. You
remember that gorgeous week we spent with the Rousseaus six summers
ago, or was it seven? Anyhow you must remember it--those quaint
ruralists, those straightforward sturdy honest old mountaineer types,
those characters redolent of the soil, those laughing rosy-cheeked
children?"
"I seem to recall that some of them were sallow, not to say
sickly-looking."
"December's winds will remedy that. December's eager winds will--"
"How about servants? We'll need somebody surely. And I doubt whether
Emile and Eva would be willing to go."
"Gladly would I leave behind those two whom you have heard me, in
sportive moments, refer to as our Dull Domestic Finnish. Being aliens,
they wouldn't match the surroundings. No doubt some sturdy country
lass would be glad to serve us." Mr. Bugbee reverted again to the
elocutionary. "We'll throw ourselves into the Yuletide joy of the
community. We'll get up a Christmas tree. We'll hang up our stockings.
We'll finance a holiday festival for the grown folks--it won't cost
much. You can organize a band of singers and teach them carols and
Christmas waits. We'll live and revel, woman, I tell you we'll live."
Before his persuasive eloquence the lingering traces of Mrs. Bugbee's
misgivings melted away. Herself, within the hour, she called up Mrs.
Rousseau to inquire regarding housekeeping details in the bungalow on
the slopes behind Pleasant Cove.
* * * * *
Their train got in at six-ten A. M., which in December is generally
regarded as being very A. M. indeed. But the Bugbees didn't much mind
having to quit their berths at five-thirty. The sunrise repaid them.
There was an eastern heaven that shimmered with alternating, merging,
flowing bands of tender pinks and tenderer greens. Mrs. Bugbee said
right off it reminded her of changeable silk. Mr. Bugbee said it
reminded him of stewed rhubarb. He also said that when he reflected
on the pleasing prospect that by coming up here they would miss the
Baxters' annual costume ball on Christmas night he felt like halting
about once in so often and giving three rousing cheers.
He furthermore said he could do with a little breakfast. He did with a
very little. Mrs. Bugbee had brought along a vacuum bottle of coffee
and four sandwiches but they were rather small--sandwiches of the
pattern usually described in cook-books as dainty; and the stopper of
the vacuum bottle could not have been quite air-tight, for the coffee
had turned lukewarm during the night.
They emerged from the smelly sleeper into a nipping morning. There
was snow on the ground, not a great deal of snow but enough. The two
adventurers rather had counted on a sleigh-ride through the woods but
here they suffered a disappointment. A muffled figure of a man clunked
in rubber boots toward them from the platform of the locked-up station.
This was the only person in sight. The stranger introduced himself with
a broad yawn and a fine outgushing of frosty breath.
"Name's Talbot," he stated when the yawn had run its course. "I look
after the Rousseau camp winters. Boss writ me word to meet you folks.
Huh, got quite a jag of baggage, ain't you? I could go round the world
twice't with less than that. Well, let's be joggin'."
He relieved Mrs. Bugbee of her two hand-bags and led the way to a
bespattered flivver which crouched apprehensively in a maze of frozen
wheel tracks behind the shuttered building, Mr. Bugbee following with
a heavy suitcase in either hand and a blanket-roll swung over his
shoulder by its strap.
"Likely you'll be a mite crowded, but that's your own fault, fetchin'
so much dunnage with you," stated their guide. "You two had better ride
in the back there and hold a couple of them biggest grips on your laps.
I guess I kin wedge the rest of it into the front seat alongside of me.
All set?" he asked. "Let's move then."
The car slewed on its tires, then settled deeply into the frozen ruts,
jouncing and jerking.
"Wouldn't it have been easier traveling with a sleigh?" inquired Mr.
Bugbee, speaking rather brokenly between jolts.
"Don't do much sleddin' in this country any more--not till later,
anyway, when the weather gits set," vouchsafed Mr. Talbot. "A thaw's
liable to come and then where would you be with your sled runners?
Besides, purty near ever'body up here keeps an ottermobile. Set tight!"
he commanded. "We're about to hit a rough place."
But by the time he had uttered his warning they had hit it.
"Yes, indeed," went on Mr. Talbot, "ottermobiles is come into quite
general use. You folks ever been here before? Yes? Then prob'ly you
remember the old Turnbull Tavern that used to stand at the forks over
to the Cove? Well, it's gone. Tore it away to put up a fillin' station.
We got two fillin' stations--that one and one other one--and they's
talk of a third one in the spring."
Above the obstruction of a suitcase which he balanced precariously
upon his knees, Mr. Bugbee peered across a landscape which so far as
the immediate foreground was concerned mainly consisted of vistas
and aisles of stumps, with puddles of ice and spindly evergreens
interspersed and a final garnishing of slashed-off faded limbs.
"My recollection is that the wilderness used to come right down to the
tracks," he said.