THE GREAT MAN MOVES
Several weeks later, at the close of a June afternoon, Cyrus Treadwell
sat alone on the back porch of his house in Bolingbroke Street. He was
smoking, and, between the measured whiffs of his pipe, he leaned over
the railing and spat into a bed of miniature sunflowers which grew along
the stone ledge of the area. For thirty years these flowers had sprung
up valiantly every spring in that bleak strip of earth, and for thirty
years Cyrus had spat among them while he smoked alone on the back porch
on June afternoons.
While he sat there a great peace enfolded and possessed him. The street
beyond the sagging wooden gate was still; the house behind him was
still; the kitchen, in which showed the ebony silhouette of a massive
cook kneading dough, was still with the uncompromising stillness of the
Sabbath. In the midst of this stillness, his thoughts, which were
usually as angular as lean birds on a bough, lost their sharpness of
outline and melted into a vague and feathery mass. At the moment it was
impossible to know of what he was thinking, but he was happy with the
happiness which visits men of small parts and of sterile imagination. By
virtue of these limitations and this sterility he had risen out of
obscurity--for the spiritual law which decrees that to gain the world
one must give up one's soul, was exemplified in him as in all his
class. Success, the shibboleth of his kind, had controlled his thoughts
and even his impulses so completely for years that he had come at last
to resemble an animal less than he resembled a machine; and Nature (who
has a certain large and careless manner of dispensing justice) had
punished him in the end by depriving him of the ordinary animal capacity
for pleasure. The present state of vacuous contentment was, perhaps, as
near the condition of enjoyment as he would ever approach.
Half an hour before he had had an encounter with Susan on the subject of
her going to college, but even his victory, which had been sharp and
swift, was robbed of all poignant satisfaction by his native inability
to imagine what his refusal must have meant to her. The girl had stood
straight and tall, with her commanding air, midway between the railing
and the weather-stained door of the house.
"Father, I want to go to college," she had said quite simply, for she
was one who used words very much as Cyrus used money, with a
temperamental avoidance of all extravagance.
Her demand was a direct challenge to the male in Cyrus, and, though this
creature could not be said to be either primitive or predatory, he was
still active enough to defend himself from the unprovoked assault of an
offspring.
"Tut-tut," he responded. "If you want something to occupy you, you'd
better start about helping your mother with her preserving."
"I put up seventy-five jars of strawberries."
"Well, the blackberries are coming along. I was always partial to
blackberries."
He sat there, bald, shrunken, yellow, as soulless as a steam engine, and
yet to Susan he represented a pitiless manifestation of destiny--of
those deaf, implacable forces by which the lives of men and women are
wrecked. He had the power to ruin her life, and yet he would never see
it because he had been born blind. That in his very blindness had lain
his strength, was a fact which, naturally enough, escaped her for the
moment. The one thought of which she was conscious was a fierce
resentment against life because such men possessed such power over
others.
"If you will lend me the money, I will pay it back to you as soon as I
can take a position," she said, almost passionately.
Something that was like the ghost of a twinkle appeared in his eyes, and
he let fall presently one of his rare pieces of humour.
"If you'd like a chance to repay me for your education," he said,
"there's your schooling at Miss Priscilla's still owing, and I'll take
it out in help about the housekeeping."
Then Susan went, because going in silence was the only way that she
could save the shreds of dignity which remained to her, and bending
forward, with a contented chuckle, Cyrus spat benevolently down upon the
miniature sunflowers.
In the half hour that followed he did not think of his daughter. From
long discipline his mind had fallen out of the habit of thinking of
people except in their relation to the single vital interest of his
life, and this interest was not fatherhood. Susan was an incident--a
less annoying incident, it is true, than Belinda--but still an incident.
An inherent contempt for women, due partly to qualities of temperament
and partly to the accident of a disillusioning marriage, made him
address them always as if he were speaking from a platform. And, as is
often the case with men of cold-blooded sensuality, women, from Belinda
downward, had taken their revenge upon him.
The front door-bell jangled suddenly, and a little later he heard a
springy step passing along the hall. Then the green lattice door of the
porch opened, and the face of Mrs. Peachey, wearing the look of
unnatural pleasantness which becomes fixed on the features of persons
who spend their lives making the best of things, appeared in the spot
where Susan had been half an hour before. She had trained her lips to
smile so persistently and so unreasonably, that when, as now, she would
have preferred to present a serious countenance to an observer, she
found it impossible to relax the muscles of her mouth from their
expression of perpetual cheerfulness. Cyrus, who had once remarked of
her that he didn't believe she could keep a straight face at her own
funeral, wondered, while he rose and offered her a chair, whether the
periodical sprees of honest Tom were the cause or the result of the look
of set felicity she wore. For an instant he was tempted to show his
annoyance at the intrusion. Then, because she was a pretty woman and did
not belong to him, he grew almost playful, with the playfulness of an
uncertain tempered ram that is offered salt.
"It is not often that I am honoured by a visit from you," he said.
"The honour is mine. Mr. Treadwell," she replied, and she really felt
it. "I was on my way upstairs to see Belinda, and it just crossed my
mind as I saw you sitting out here, that I'd better stop and speak to
you about your nephew. I wonder Belinda doesn't plant a few rose-bushes
along that back wall," she added.
"I'd pay you fifty dollars, ma'am, if you'd get Belinda to plant
anything"--which was not delicately put, perhaps, but was, after all,
spoken in the only language that Cyrus knew.
"I thought she was so fond of flowers. She used to be as a girl."
"Humph!" was Cyrus's rejoinder, and then: "Well, what about my nephew,
madam?" Clasping his bony hands over his knee, he leaned forward and
waited, not without curiosity, for her answer. He did not admire
Oliver--he even despised him--but when all was said, the boy had
succeeded in riveting his attention. However poorly he might think of
him, the fact remained that think of him he did. The young man was in
the air as inescapably as if he were the measles.
"I'm worrying about him, Mr. Treadwell; I can't help myself. You know he
boards with me."
"Yes'm, I know," replied Cyrus--for he had heard the fact from Miss
Priscilla on his way home from church one Sunday.
"And he's not well. There's something the matter with him. He's so
nervous and irritable that he's almost crazy. He doesn't eat a morsel,
and I can hear him pacing up and down his room until daybreak. Once I
got up and went upstairs to ask him if he was sick, but he said that he
was perfectly well and was walking about for exercise. I am sure I don't
know what it can be, but if it keeps up, he'll land in an asylum before
the summer is over."
The look of satisfaction which her first words had brought to Cyrus's
face deepened gradually as her story unfolded. "He's wanting money, I
reckon," he commented, his imagination seizing upon the only medium in
which it could work. As a philosopher may discern in all life different
manifestations of the Deity, so he saw in all affliction only the
wanting of money under varied aspects. Sorrows in which the lack of
money did not bear a part always seemed to him to be unnecessary and
generally self-inflicted by the sufferers. Of such people he would say
impatiently that they took a morbid view of their troubles and were
"nursing grief."
"I don't think it's that," said Mrs. Peachey. "He always pays his bills
promptly on the first day of the month, and I know that he gets checks
from New York for the writing he does. I'm sometimes tempted to believe
that he has fallen in love."
"Love? Pshaw!" said Cyrus, and dismissed the passion.
"But it goes hard with some people, and he's one of that kind," rejoined
the little lady, with spirit, for in spite of her wholesome awe of
Cyrus, she could not bear to hear the sentiment derided. "We aren't all
as sensible as you are, Mr. Treadwell."
"Well, if he is in love, as you say, whom is he in love with?" demanded
Cyrus.
"It's all guesswork," answered Mrs. Peachey. "He isn't paying attention
to any girl that I know of--but, I suppose, if it's anybody, it must be
Virginia Pendleton. All the young men are crazy about her."
She had been prepared for opposition--she had been prepared, being a
lady, for anything, as she told Tom afterwards, short of an oath--but to
her amazement the unexpected, which so rarely happened in the case of
Cyrus, happened at that minute. Human nature, which she had treated
almost as a science, proved suddenly that it was not even an art. One of
those glaring inconsistencies which confute every theory and overturn
all psychology was manifested before her.
"That's the daughter of old Gabriel, aint it?" asked Cyrus, and
unconsciously to himself, his voice softened.
"Yes, she's Gabriel's daughter, and one of the sweetest girls that ever
lived."
"Gabriel's a good man," said Cyrus. "I always liked Gabriel. We fought
through the war together."
"A better man never lived, nor a better woman than Lucy. If she's got a
fault on earth, it's that she's too unselfish."
"Well, if this girl takes after them, the young fool has shown more
sense than I gave him credit for."
"I don't think he's a fool," returned Mrs. Peachey, reflecting how
wonderfully she had "managed" the great man, "but, of course, he's
queer--all writers are queer, aren't they?"
"He's kept it up longer than I thought, but I reckon he's about ready to
give in," pursued Cyrus, ignoring her question as he did all excursions
into the region of abstract wonder. "If he'll start in to earn his
living now, I'll let him have a job on the railroad out in Matoaca City.
I meant to teach him a lesson, but I shouldn't like Henry's son to
starve. I've nothing against Henry except that he was too soft. He was
a good brother as brothers go, and I haven't forgotten it."
"Perhaps, if you'd talk to Oliver," suggested Mrs. Peachey. "I'm afraid
I couldn't induce him to come to you, but----"
"Oh, I ain't proud--I don't need to be," interrupted Cyrus with a
chuckle. "Only fools and the poor have any use for pride. I'll look in
upon him sometime along after supper, and see if he's come to his wits
since I last talked to him."
"Then, I'm glad I came to you. Tom would be horrified almost to death if
he knew of it--but I've always said that when an idea crosses my mind
just like that," she snapped her thumb and forefinger, "there's
something in it."
As she rose from her seat, she looked up at him with the coquetry which
was so inalienable an attribute of her soul that, had the Deity assumed
masculine shape before her, she would instinctively have used this
weapon to soften the severity of His judgment. "It was so kind of you
not to send me away, Mr. Treadwell," she said in honeyed accents.
"It is a pleasure to meet such a sensible woman," replied Cyrus, with
awkward gallantry. Her flattery had warmed him pleasantly, and in the
midst of the dried husks of his nature, he was conscious suddenly that a
single blade of living green still survived. He had ceased to feel
old--he felt almost young again--and this rejuvenation had set in merely
because a middle-aged woman, whom he had known since childhood, had
shown an innocent pleasure in his society. Mrs. Peachey's traditional
belief in the power of sex had proved its own justification.
When she had left him, Cyrus sat down again, and took up his pipe from
the railing where he had placed it. "I'll go round and have some words
with the young scamp," he thought. "There's no use waiting until after
supper. I'll go round now while it is light."
Then, as if the softening impulse were a part of the Sabbath stillness,
he leaned over the bed of sunflowers, and fixed his eyes on the pinkish
tower of Saint James' Church, which he could see palely enkindled
against the afterglow. A single white cloud floated like a dove in the
west, and beneath it a rain of light fell on the shadowy roofs of the
town. The air was so languorous that it was as if the day were being
slowly smothered in honeysuckle, the heavy scent of which drifted to him
from the next garden. A vast melancholy--so vast that it seemed less the
effect of a Southern summer than of a universal force residing in
nature--was liberated, with the first cooling breath of the evening,
from man and beast, from tree and shrub, from stock and stone. The very
bricks, sun-baked and scarred, spoke of the weariness of heat, of the
parching thirst of the interminable summers.
But to Cyrus the languor and the intense sweetness of the air suggested
only that the end of a hot day had come. "It's likely to be a drought,"
he was thinking while his upward gaze rested on the illuminated tower of
the church. "A drought will go hard with the tobacco."
Having emptied his pipe, he was about to take down his straw hat from a
nail on the wall, when the sound of the opening gate arrested him, and
he waited with his eyes fixed on the winding brick walk, where the negro
washerwoman appeared presently with a basket of clean clothes on her
head. Beneath her burden he saw that there were some primitive attempts
at Sunday adornment. She wore a green muslin dress, a little discoloured
by perspiration, but with many compensating flounces; a bit of yellow
ribbon floated from her throat, and in her hand she carried the festive
hat which would decorate her head after the removal of the basket. Her
figure, which had once been graceful, had grown heavy; and her face, of
a light gingerbread colour, with broad, not unpleasant features, wore a
humble, inquiring look--the look of some trustful wild animal that man
has tamed and only partly domesticated. Approaching the steps, she
brought down the basket from her head, and came on, holding it with a
deprecating swinging movement in front of her.
"Howdy, Marster," she said, as if uncertain whether to stop or to pass
on into the doorway.
"Howdy, Mandy," responded Cyrus. "There's a hot spell coming, I reckon."
Lowering the basket to the floor of the porch, the woman drew a red
bandanna handkerchief from her bosom and began slowly to wipe the drops
of sweat from her face and neck. The acrid odour of her flesh reached
Cyrus, but he made no movement to draw away from her.
"I'se been laid up wid er stitch in my side, Marster, so I'se jes got
dese yer close done dis mawnin'. Dar wan' noner de chillen at home ter
tote um down yer, so I low I 'uz gwine ter drap by wid um on my way ter
church."
As he did not reply, she hesitated an instant and over her features,
which looked as if they had been flattened by a blow, there came an
expression which was half scornful, half inviting, yet so little
personal that it might have been worn by one of her treetop ancestors
while he looked down from his sheltering boughs on a superior species of
the jungle. The chance effect of light and shadow on a grey rock was
hardly less human or more primitive.
"I'se gittin' moughty well along, Marster," she said; "I reckon I'se
gittin' on toward a hunnard."
"Nonsense, Mandy, you ain't a day over thirty-five. There's a plenty of
life left in you yet."
"Go way f'om yer, Marster; you knows I'se a heap older 'n dat. How long
ago was hit I done fust come yer ter you all?"
He thought a moment. A question of calculation always interested him,
and he prided himself on his fine memory for dates.
"You came the year our son Henry died, didn't you? That was in
'66--eighteen years ago. Why, you couldn't have been over fifteen that
summer."
For the first time a look of cunning--of the pathetic cunning of a child
pitted against a man--awoke in her face.
"En Miss Lindy sent me off befo' de year was up, Marster. My boy Jubal
was born de mont' atter she done tu'n me out." She hesitated a minute,
and then added, with a kind of savage coquetry, "I 'uz a moughty likely
gal, Marster. You ain't done furgit dat, is you?"
Her words touched Cyrus like the flick of a whip on a sore, and he drew
back quickly while his thin lips grew tight.
"You'd better take that basket into the house," he said sharply.
In the negress's face an expression of surprise wavered for a second and
then disappeared. Her features resumed their usual passive and humble
look--a look which said, if Cyrus could have read human nature as easily
as he read finance, "I don't understand, but I submit without
understanding. Am I not what you have made me? Have I not been what you
wanted? And yet you despise me for being the thing you made."
"I didn't mean nuttin', Marster. I didn't mean nuttin'," she protested
aloud.
"Then get into the house," retorted Cyrus harshly, "and don't stand
gaping there. Any more of your insolence and I'll never let you set foot
in this yard again."
"'Fo' de Lawd, I didn't mean nuttin'! Gawd a' moughty, I didn't mean
nuttin'! I jes lowed as you mought be willin' ter gun me fo' dollars a
mont' fur de washin'. My boy Jubal----"
"I'll not give you a red cent more. If you don't want it, you can leave
it. Get out of here!"
All the primitive antagonism of race--that instinct older than
civilization--was in the voice with which he ordered her out of his
sight. "It was downright blackmail. The fool was trying to blackmail
me," he thought. "If I'd yielded an inch I'd have been at her mercy.
It's a pretty pass things have come to when men have to protect
themselves from negro women." The more he reflected on her impudence,
the stronger grew his conviction that he had acted remarkably well.
"Nipped it in the root. If I hadn't----" he thought.
And behind him in the doorway the washerwoman continued to regard him,
over the lowered clothes basket, with her humble and deprecating look,
which said, like the look of a beaten animal: "I don't understand, but
I submit without understanding because you are stronger than I."
Taking down his hat, Cyrus turned away from her, and descended the
steps. "I'll look up Henry's son before supper," he was thinking. "Even
if the boy's a fool, I'm not one to let those of my own blood come to
want."