Vol. LXXXVIII No. 1
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THE YALE LITERARY MAGAZINE
Contents
OCTOBER, 1922
Leader MAXWELL E. FOSTER 1
Truth MAXWELL E. FOSTER 6
Poem RUSSELL W. DAVENPORT 8
About It and About K. A. CAMPBELL, JR. 11
The Meditations of a Non-Thinker L. HYDE 12
Selima MYLES WHITING 16
Portfolio:
Beauty HERBERT W. HARTMAN, JR. 23
Fear of God ROBERT CRUISE MCMANUS 23
Ballade LAIRD GOLDSBOROUGH 27
Notabilia 30
Book Reviews 32
Editor’s Table 38
The Yale Literary Magazine
VOL. LXXXVIII OCTOBER, 1922 NO. 1
_EDITORS_
MAXWELL EVARTS FOSTER
RUSSELL WHEELER DAVENPORT
ROBERT CHAPMAN BATES
WINFIELD SHIRAS
FRANCIS OTTO MATTHIESSEN
_BUSINESS MANAGERS_
CHARLES EVANDER SCHLEY
HORACE JEREMIAH VOORHIS
_Leader_
Every generation is a foible. It is born of whim, and educated
on fantasy. In adulthood it is naturally a freak. This younger
generation in this year of our Lord 1922 is no exception. We were
born of respectability, educated on pedantry. In adulthood we are
revolutionaries. Could anything be more natural, more un-Victorian?
We were born secretly. God knows how such things happened in that age.
Perhaps the Stork brought us, nicely done up in—well—baby-clothes. We
were brought up on platitudes. Most of them were dressed up as Christian.
We hid our meanings in pretty words, and our sense in a blush. The word
sex was unheard of. We didn’t talk much about anything dirty. We never
swore. We said our prayers. With goodness we were replete; it made our
lives hideous. Ultimately it was our virtue that drove us to sin. We
were too good for this world. Forced to live in it by the tyranny of our
parents—we adjusted ourselves, and became bad.
As soon as lies become platitudes they are doomed. The next passer-by
will see through their disguise and expose them. You can fool yourself
with your own lie; but if your neighbors catch the habit from you, and
begin fooling themselves with the same lie, in no time that lie becomes a
platitude. The Victorians fooled themselves into thinking that anything
you could forget didn’t exist any more. So were we born into a Virgin
world. Our beloved ancestry had forgotten there was any sin; for us then
there would not be any. We were their realized dream.
But unfortunately these little cherubim, these little seraphim grew up
into adolescence, learnt things about sex by groping in dark corners,
learnt shocking social problems by looking up words in Dictionaries;
learnt in so doing to disbelieve every word the Victorians uttered. They
had put their faith in that sort of royalty once too often. Genuinely
they became skeptics. Because they had been taught by liars they could
not afford to believe anything—without testing its verity. They are
generous in their estimate of the society into which they are born.
Instead of saying, “We are born into a world of liars,” they restrain
themselves, consider the question rationally and say, “No, only into a
world of fools.” And out of these Fools’ Paradise the younger generation
has toddled. To them it was a hell.
Their first independent action was to set up Truth as their God. They had
had enough of lies. Truth was their panacea. Ignorance was the abiding
sin of mortality. Their battle was for the Tree of Knowledge of Good
and Evil, not for the beautiful garden of Eden—where nakedness did not
prevail upon innocence and blushing was unknown.
Part of this knowledge surely was scientific. The health of the body
was all important: Biology, Hygiene, sex education. For these they
cried out. They talked eagerly of germ-plasm and genetics; defiantly of
birth-control, the double-standard.
An equality between man and woman had suddenly been decreed politically;
philanthropists were already talking about it morally; the younger
generation carrying the movement one step further is experimenting with
it intellectually. What they think, they say. Does it matter who is
there? Bah! Victorian prudery. There are no secrets now between the sexes.
But part of this knowledge of good and evil was common sense—when once
the Puritan and Victorian nonsense had been destroyed. It is only to
a sex-maniac that the shortening of skirts can possibly do any harm.
What, cries the younger generation, is the difference between showing
one’s legs, and one’s arms; bobbing one’s hair is the same, or smoking,
or drinking, or swearing. If they aren’t good for the physique—well
and good, they are bad; but if they are only bad because our Puritan or
Victorian ancestry say so—or because Moses fell down the mountain with
some tombstones under his arm—what the hell?—they aren’t bad at all.
So the gentlemen and ladies of the past lift their monocles and their
lorgnettes to watch these semi-nude girls, these godless men. “Dear,
dear,” they say. “Gracious me. That’s not a nice young man.”
What really has happened, say the younger generation, is that America for
some time has been living up to ideals which they have never expressed,
and have expressed, in lieu of these, ideals which they have never lived
down to. Silly little superficial rules, and some hideous inhibitions
grew up out of these expressed ideals. Otherwise they have been like
corpses rotting before the very eyes of those who created them. They were
never alive at all, say the younger generation. So it considers itself
a generation of building, not of destroying. With frankness a dominant
characteristic it must express the futility of the old expressed, as well
as the strength of the old unexpressed ideals. But it lays the emphasis
on the old unexpressed. For instance, it is not proud that it has torn
down the absurd anthropomorphic God of the literature of the Past, but
it is proud, that, having gotten rid of that miasma, it has proceeded to
the conclusion that God is but the vision of the potentiality of mankind
realized. That with Thomas Hardy it can go forward
“with dependence placed
On the human heart’s resource alone,
In brotherhood bonded close, and graced
With loving kindness fully blown,
And visioned help unsought, unknown.”
It is not proud of having torn the veil off the carefully draped
Victorian womanhood, but having done so it is proud of the constructive
results, that no longer having ignorance, it can see the beauty and
purity in the nakedness of the sex. It has torn down the ugly lies that
covered the world with a respectable and morne garland of fig-leaves, but
out of the ruins of this demolition it is creating a naked sanity, of
which it is reasonably proud.
Thirty years ago “Jude the Obscure” was called “Jude the Obscene”. To-day
Jude is considered a masterpiece, dealing in an intensely honest way with
God and the divine right of the marriage service. Marriage has become
a less eternal and a more kindly institution. Divorcees are considered
less heinous people than before. For better or for worse is no longer
a very powerful condemnation. In the Victorian era the sexual became
an obsession because it was over-emphasized by being left unmentioned.
In reaction, for a moment, under the Freudian influence it became an
obsession from the exactly opposite reason. With the younger generation
it is taking its place like hunger and thirst in the category of normal
desires. The relations between girl and boy are more open, more real than
in the past. There is no longer the hideous restraint before marriage,
causing unhappy lives. It is an easier matter to know whom one is to
marry among the younger generation. More and more they are being honest
with one another. More and more they are coming to consider themselves
rational, kind-hearted people.
I am not justified in defending or attacking the younger generation. I
am doing my duty only in attempting to express the ideals we live by,
the ideals they teach me. Too long has the ridiculous idea been current
that they have no ideals. I have set myself to define them. Because they
are different from the past, they are not non-existent. We are not, as a
generation, more dishonest, more dishonorable than our predecessors. Yet
we have no ideals? That is out of the mouths of fools only.
No, the Victorians thought that not knowing, or pretending not to
know, about things unpleasant was the way to destroy them—by a slow
process of forgetting. The younger generation thinks that knowing, and
everyone knowing thoroughly about things unpleasant, will eventually
arouse the race to do something about them; to clean energetically the
Augean stables. You can see there is a fundamental difference in each
generation’s idea of Humanity. The Victorians thought that knowledge of
sin tainted the virtuous flower of innocence by rousing thoughts and
passions for evil, which could only be killed by long disusage. Mankind
fundamentally, said the Victorians to themselves, has a bad streak. We
must carefully avoid mentioning things that would start that streak
going. If man is not naturally bad, he naturally has some bad in him. We
must starve the devil out of him. The younger generation denies this.
Man is naturally good; anyway, fundamentally so. Evil is an outgrowth of
our own civilization, and social scheme. Most, if not all, criminals are
insane. Society is to blame for insanity. We must study the causes of the
insanities; must publish them broadcast. People must know. If they know,
they will improve. We must educate ourselves up to knowing what is good,
what is bad. We must know the worst to do the best.
Consciously, the Victorians were living by the theories of church dogma,
believing in original sin; unconsciously, the younger generation is
living by the theories of the romantic spirit, believing in natural
good. They are idealists beyond the common run of mankind; and they are
ruthless in the following of their ideals.
MAXWELL E. FOSTER.
_Truth_
The Truth that lingers in the heart’s secret places,
The Truth that gleams of a sudden on Grail-faces,
The Truth that has run so many torch-lit races,
Shone suddenly on me,
And henceforth was to be
Bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, soul of my soul, unto that
last far dawn which is eternity.
Our souls were worn like a gaunt dungeon-keep
Washed by the sea; we sowed not, nor did reap;
Our Gods were on a journey or asleep;—
When like a surging fire
A spirit from earth’s ages did suspire,
And each soul’s tower put forth leaves and blossomed,
Like a young tree, and in our souls again there was desire.
The Spring lay luxuriantly the earth over,
White roses broke like foam, and the hot clover
Seemed heavy with spent passion like a lover
Languorous, till the night
And the swift breezes white
Came like a cooling bell and rain, and our eyes grew brighter
With the new gleam of that celestial light.
Suddenly there was Romance laughing again,
And poetry in the strange ancient ways of men,
We were as ones on peaks in Darien,
And Love with a new glory
Opened in song and story,
Like a flower in a wan waste by the sea,
And we with our wide eyes looked forward from our star-touched
promontory.
The hands that moulded dust out of the dust,
Scorching the sky with the iron that turns to rust,
Fashioning brazen Gods to feed their lust,
These with their feet of clay,
In the slow alchemy of a timeless day,
Caught like the hunter of the east new beauty
And were like figures of the dawn and spray.
Time has not memory enough for these.
De Gustibus through shadowy autumn trees,
Drinking life fully to its twisted lees,
Nor Time, nor drear regret
Holds enough memory ever to forget,
These that are metaphors of immortality,
Enduring beyond the finality of any long and last sunset.
The Truth that lingers in the heart’s secret places,
For this is there an hour glass that effaces,
Or waves to wash away to sunless spaces
Truth that is more than Time,
More than the mere infernal and sublime,
Truth that is strong as Death, and light as Life,
And passionate as the last great poet’s last rhyme?
MAXWELL E. FOSTER.
_Poem_
“_The sane man is nowhere at all when he enters into rivalry with the
madman._”
Goddess, the rocks are crumbling into sand;
The moonlight trembles hesitant, as though
Winter with all his winds and hoary snow
Were gathering. Goddess, thy hand,
Which has created shore and rock and ocean
Within my heart, seems cold;
I fear lest thou art growing old
With me—the shattered wreck of my devotion.
Goddess, there is no love in heaven or earth
Without thee, and the stars grow dim with age
When thine eyes are averted, and the rage
Of winter winds turns luxury to dearth.
What will it profit if we love no more
(For I know thou hast loved in thine own way)?
What will it profit, if for yesterday
We substitute to-morrow, with its store
Of sorrow?
What is a dream for goddess?—not to be
Immortal once is to be dead forever!
And shall our eyes go blind and our lips never
Meet? What is eternity,
If not that moment of a wild embrace,
When two souls recognize
Their first bewildered contact, and two eyes
Drink the white radiance of a lover’s face?
Oh, ere the evening lights go gathering like fire
Across the western portals—ere the sun
Proclaims that life and life’s short tasks are done—
Be thou the mistress of my pure desire,
Be thou the goddess of my heart!
A man cannot forget a woman’s eyes,
If he has kissed them (as I have thine own
In dreams). Love is an art
Which men do not forget, when they have known
The way a woman takes toward paradise.
What weary fools we are! Dust is the same,
Whether alive, or whether dead and rotten;
And love is love, remembered or forgotten;
And life is life, although it be a name.
Let sorrow come, with many tears; or shame
Alight upon my brow; or age deny
What fiery youth would fain assert or die;
Let even death wash all my dreams away
Like sand—still I am I,
To-morrow and to-day, and yesterday.
Therefore I am immortal; and thy face
Which I have called mine own, must live, must be
Immortal with the very heart of me.
On whatsoever shore, or in what place,
Whether among the gods, or on the earth,
Wherever man finds truth, or woman grace,
Or Sorrow tears, or Laughter tears of mirth;
Wherever love is, goddess, I shall be;
Wherever I am, thou—the heart of me!
Ah, we are weary fools—
We men who talk of love and sorrow,
And build philosophy upon old schools,
And yearn for paradise to-morrow.
We are insane! Creation dimly flows
About us, yet like children do we play
With our uncomprehended toys;
And no one knows
Wherefore in love these weary fools rejoice,
And grasp at stars in their uncertain way.
Yet I would rather be a fool, and love,
Than drink of wisdom, and forget the stars;
I’d rather tear life from Time’s calendars
Than lose thy face, which I am dreaming of.
Thus have I given all to be thy slave,
And now I ask that thou remember this:
’Tis better to be mortal in a kiss,
Than to be called immortal in a grave.
RUSSELL W. DAVENPORT.
_About It and About_
What made you speak so, Youth, just now before
These elders, men much nearer to the thing
You touch on?
Ah, but no. They claim it so
Yet I deny, for Graybeards grudge to have
Youth whisper, “Death” ... because they feel it close?
And Youth’s poor boldness makes it still more close?
Youth always speaks on death by proper right;
He has but left it when he enters life
While Graybeard’s years have dulled the sense that knew
Prenatal death, and now its imminence
Stifles his speech.... While Youth, Youth only dares!
So I ... hearing such bootless thoughts on death,
Oblivion, rest, eternal pain, reward....
Somehow they think death lasts, and seek to lie
Disposed at ease through aeons, or perhaps
Send on their proper sandal-size ahead
To heaven’s commissary. Thus Graybeards.
And yet, Youth also misconstrues its sort,
Makes it a vale deep-shadowed, where within
Ghosts glide ’neath cloistering cypress trees and sup
Of honey cakes in tombs wisteria-hung:
Cloaked lovers stroll through hazel groves and come
To Lethe’s bank ... or in another mood,
Visioning death as ugly, conjures up
A creatured sprite bent on a tarnished scythe.
But death, and such my death will be, is naught
To stop a soul’s drive nor to even check
Its impetus. Death is transition, well,
Transition’s but a word ... or say it thus,
It simply lies, a gap between two rails
The drive wheel rushes over unaware.
K. A. CAMPBELL, JR.
_The Meditations of a Non-Thinker_
Look at your nose. It is smooth and round, and red and shiny. Possibly
’tis flat, obtuse, snub, Roman, or Jew. Or in case you happen to think
of some other qualification, it is that. So with your eyes—if only you
will apply suitable adjectives. And also with your chin, mouth, hair,
ears, jowls, or whatever. The reason I suggest this, is in order to add
the insinuation that, if you regard any of these members in a mirror for
some length of time, their aspect changes. For instance—you, my kind
sir of the snub nose, affirm that your nose did not appear beautiful
at first? But you will as well admit that its grossness lessened in
accordance with the time spent in contemplating it. You got to know it
just a little better than you knew it before. Or you who wear the slight
scraggly beard—no, not you, madam—, will you kindly step forward to the
glass and observe how your impression of that fringe changeth from the
disgust of a reformed highwayman to the pride of a father? If we but had
the time, we should spend a delightful afternoon, dear reader, watching
such profitable changes in expression. Human nature is fascinating, is it
not? But verily all of this—for I shall leave aside even the proposition
of how such an outward change affects the spiritual grace—is merely to
remark that by taking thought on any part of your person, no matter how
small, you become acquainted correspondingly with such a part.
This is indeed great. For the action pleases the gazer supremely with
his personality. Yet I hasten to assure you, my dear reader, that such a
phenomenon is quite natural—because after all, we are all of us pretty
much fools, and generally when a fool becomes better acquainted with
himself, he becomes more endeared to himself. As to the question of the
right or wrong of this human attribute, I make no advances, for it is
aside from my position as recorder. But from what I have heard wise men
say, I should judge it to be a lamentable weakness, especially lamentable
since the whole evil appears to issue from a person’s having thought too
much. As a child I was taught to respect thought. And actually I once
believed this to be a worthy hypothesis. But now, as I linger on the
verge of a dreary grave, my old head is fearsomely shaken with doubt. Ah
yes, to think that—but I had better not think!
When we think, we do not observe the golden mean. We rush in where
angels fear to tread. We are not humble, as Christians. We are exalted,
as fools—and as such we love ourselves. So when we are in the act of
thinking, we will not leave off with any sane or wholesome solution. We
believe such a conclusion not good enough for us. We call it barren.
We must needs explore further. After finding a cliff at the edge of
a rational plane of thought, we urge on and grope into the outer
darkness. For the little time that faith supports we continue safely—and
blindly—enough, and then—fall down on the rocks, where we proceed lame
and disorderly—or like Peter, sink absolutely into an offended sea—and
are not saved.
You must allow that when you work yourself into such a state, the effect
on your feelings is far from pleasant, far from elegant even. I should
imagine that one in the grip of mental excesses is not unlike the
habitual user of drugs—the morphinomaniac, opium-eater, or alcoholic. The
mood is surely delirious, grotesquely fanciful, spirit-ridden. Possibly
you believe it is pitiful to see a strong and normal man slowly gathered
in by some subtle influence to become a slave grovelling bestially before
a false and gilded—but an all-compelling—idol. Aye! this is pitiful.
But the pity of it is not the greatest part. Here are you, possessed of
abilities, ambitions, loving friends, philanthropy of the highest kind,
delighted with this world, and enchanted with the prospect of the next.
You hope everything and you fear nothing. By some insidious trick of
fate—a fate that preys upon an insignificant weakness of yours—you feel
yourself subdued slightly by the nod of some dim gigantic animal. But
you are not afraid. For your interests are so worthily turned elsewhere
that you know the Thing to have little power compared to your own—and
you do not care. Oh, therein lives the fearful irony! You may indulge
in your morphine, your opium, or your thinking largely to aid your
powers and your works. The undermining influence is not felt—until too
late. Yes, too late.... The degraded wretch moaning and whimpering, and
shivering all over spasmodically as he tries to get up on his feet,
and his rotted nerves will not respond—can you imagine the inner state
of such a fellow? Do you not conceive that one day he may have been as
fine—or a far finer—person than you? Imagine, then, the turbulence in
his heart! He dreams back to old days, perceiving the former integrity
of his character, the power of his mind and body—and compares all with
the present. Maybe he fashions images of what to-day he might have
been—beautiful glowing things, full of the light of heaven and of
loveliness! He starts from his vile gutter, repelled by horror, and is
about to rise magnificently—when a fit of the passion seizes him, and you
watch him grovel in the nauseous mire. Happy beast he is—now. But the
torture of his mind will return.
* * * * *
The agony which thinking induces by such means as I have outlined above
leads me to consider for a trice its alternative, because it is joyous
and fruitful. Can you imagine a green and yellow countryside, with a
little white farmhouse amidst a cluster of dark oaks? Willows are near a
cove in the stream below, which ripples its way coolly through the hot
day. Do you hear the dry voice of a locust, or a cricket? Perhaps the
bird in that isolated pine tree will be singing soon. Breathe deeply, for
the sun is low over the hill and a colder, fairer wind blows from the
dark woodland. You sense its fragrance, feel a thrill, and are deeply
delighted with the whole atmosphere. But stay, I hear a slow cowbell and
the barking of a collie.... The colors of the sunset are delicate and
marvelously blended.—And winding down the path comes a small boy, with
pails to fill at the brook for his mother. So it goes on. However clumsy
the little picture, I have tried to indicate slightly the pleasure met
with when you _feel_. These emotions of yours are sacred because they are
unfathomable. And they are more beautiful than anything else you will
ever know. As for the fruitfulness of imagination, I must let you judge
more for yourself: I will only say that, when people are wearied out, the
beauty of nature has ever been found more of a balm to their spirits than
the futility of overheated thought. Thought and emotion are living in
eternal conflict within you. As one fills your life you have less room
for the other. Any choosing....
The psychologist, that enigmatic rabbit born recently amid a litter of
new ideas, maintains thought to be the only respect in which we differ
from animals. Now in the light of this last word I had better not have
used the term “rabbit”; but, however.... I should like to suggest (though
I am not sure whether you will call me a squirrel or a guinea-pig) that
we differ still more from animals in our power of imagination. You
certainly have seen cartoons entitled “Wonder what a lobster _thinks_
about,” but it is always you who do the wondering and not the lobster
(no inference that you are one, sir). And you never see “_Think_ what a
jellyfish _wonders_ about”! Furthermore, if the psychologist is entirely
right, you who have followed so assiduously this essay—which is largely
devoid of thought—are at least for the time being largely an animal. Are
you?
L. HYDE.
_Selima_
There was a mystery about Captain Knox’s wife. Of course, everyone in
Gull Harbor knew there had been a Mrs. Knox, but according to the best
accounts no one had ever seen her. There were a few facts, however, upon
which one could rely. Some thirty or forty years before, the captain,
returning after a long voyage to the East, had announced himself a
widower of recent bereavement. The existence of the captain’s spouse in
Gull Harbor had begun, therefore, simultaneously with the knowledge of
her decease.
A short time after the captain’s return, a neat gravestone was erected
on the Knox farm, in the old burial lot, in which had already been laid
to rest the bodies of the captain’s parents, two brothers, and an uncle.
Upon the stone, by the captain’s order, was carved in plain lettering,
“In memory of Selima, my beloved wife.”
The captain himself would often refer to her. “She was a pretty cretur,
she was.” Beyond this, however, discussion of her was not tolerated in
his presence.
By the time I came to know Gull Harbor, the captain’s seafaring career
was over. The people of the village had long since recovered from the
first excitement caused by the mystery of the captain and his wife, and
conversation had drifted back into familiar channels of interest as to
why Mel Hibbard’s sister had given up her flock of Plymouth Rocks, or
speculations as to the color Mrs. Lovell, wife of the minister of the
Adventist Church, would choose for her new front room carpet.
I had always felt a prejudice for the Maine coast and from the moment
the Portland boat rounded the big rocky cove, I knew I should like
Gull Harbor. There was a restful peace about the place peculiar to the
seaboard of New England. The smell of low tide and drying codfish hung
about the wharf. Almost immediately one felt at home.
I had not been two weeks in the town before I knew all that Gull Harbor
had to tell about their distinguished captain. Didn’t I know Captain
’Thiel Knox, the man who commanded the first seven-masted schooner to
sail the sea? Why, he had been to “Chiny” half a dozen times, and the
Lord knows how many he has crossed the ocean. As a further mark of
distinction he was the proud possessor of two long-haired cats which he
had brought with him from Persia.
One day I happened to ask my landlady, Mrs. Simmons, an old resident and
a noted gossip, if the captain was a widower, and then I learned of the
mystery. “For it’s my opinion,” she added, after telling me the story,
“that she was a Chiny woman, or mebbe a princess from Persy, though
nobody’ll ever know. The captain he would never say a word; quiet’s a
mouse on the subject. You oughter see him, Mr. Fitch. He’s real nice,
and a great hand for company; all kinds, it don’t matter to him,” she
finished in a tone which meant to include even the summer people.
A “fortnit” later (one can see how easily I slipped into the vernacular
of the place), I was out sailing in a borrowed dory. It was a clear
August morning; the sky, a healthy blue and cloudless; the tall spruce
trees, interspersed here and there by a monumental pine, guarded the
water’s edge.
By the time I had rounded the long point that lay between the harbor and
the back bay beyond, a stiff breeze had sprung up. The churning blue
stretched oceanward for miles, blotched by myriads of foamy white caps.
The little dory rocked and twisted in the choppy waves. The sail, which
was home-made, proved an easy victim of the wind, and I soon found to my
dismay that I was drifting helplessly down the bay toward a stretch of
shore that I had not yet visited. The boat moved rapidly. The trees along
the shore were soon followed by a broad green field, which stretched
up from a tiny harbor almost surrounded by a protecting arm of the sea
toward which I was being driven. Gradually the water became shallower,
and the wind reluctantly let me slip from its grasp. I was able to look
about me. It was a very beautiful harbor.
Suddenly I was conscious of an old man in a dory, rowing towards me. He
might have been Father Neptune risen from the depths of the ocean for
all I knew. Without a word he pulled my dilapidated boat ashore. Safely
landed, I thanked him. He was an old man with a long white beard. He had
on a tarpaulin and looked like a sailor.
“Ay-es,” he said pleasantly, when he had moored the two boats to the
wharf (he gave me no opportunity to assist him). “I thought you was
a landlubber, the moment I set eyes on you. Ye can’t tack without a
center-board,” he added with a smile, the first he had given me. I
blushed feebly at my hopeless mistake.
“I thought,” I began weakly, but he didn’t wait for me to finish.
“Won’t you come into the house for a bit?” he asked kindly. “You’re
wet through, ain’t ye?” And he led the way to the little low shingled
structure, fronted by a long porch upon which sat a large Persian cat,
the handsomest I had ever seen.
“Thar, thar, Daisy bird, you’ve had enough pettin’ for one day,” as he
brushed her gently aside, adding, as he noticed my admiration, “Got
another, better lookin’ of the two, in the kitching. Won’t ye come in?”
“You’re not Captain Knox, are you?” I asked.
“Right you be! Salathiel Knox, captain, retired you call it, don’t ye?”
and he smiled again.
While my clothes were drying, we sat around the fire and talked, the
captain still in his tarpaulin, while I languished in a richly figured
rug which he had produced from a locked cupboard in the kitchen. “Bought
it in Singapore twenty-four years ago,” he added by way of dismissal of
my compunction at wearing so valuable a possession. The captain smoked
mildly while I told him who I was, making few comments, but when I tried
to lead the conversation around to his own life he proved a poor subject
for questioning. As Mrs. Simmons said to me afterwards, “The captain can
talk when he’s a mind to, but land sakes, when he ain’t, it’s no use.”
The captain did remark, as I was leaving, that although he lived alone
he wasn’t a bachelor; his wife, he said, was dead. “She was a pretty
creatur, she was,” he added, half regretfully, as he laid down his pipe.
On my way home, my path led not far from the burial lot. I found the
stone without difficulty and read the inscription.
* * * * *
The following summer, soon after we arrived, I paid my second visit to
the Knox farm. I found the captain sitting on his porch, smoking. He
didn’t remember me at first; but suddenly he burst out with, “Wall, I
swan! You’re the young man that was tryin’ to tack in a dory without
a center-board. I remember you, o’ course. Pretty good stuff, eh,” he
added, “to tackle such a wind when you knew next to nothin’ o’ the sea.
You’d make a good one, I’ll warrant.”
After that I often went to see him. He became quite loquacious at times
and recounted some of his adventures. Always I expected he would run up
against the mystery, but he never did. Few women were to be found in his
stories.
One day I was surprised to see the captain at my door, seated in a new
motor car. He had come to take me for a drive. I looked the machine over
carefully.
“How does she go?” I asked.
“She sets all right,” he replied, cheerfully, “but she’s a bit wide in
the stern.”
As we drove off together, he seemed in the best of spirits, although he
admitted he was a “little nervous navigatin’ the new craft.”
On the way back, the captain became confidential. His story this time was
concerned chiefly with a long sickness he had had in the Far East, and
his romantic experience with a Malay girl. “She was a ripper, she was,”
he added by way of comment.
“What was her name?” I inquired, with suppressed excitement, but he was
intent upon turning a corner and did not answer. The next moment we were
at the door of my house. He waved me good-bye as he disappeared around a
bend in the road.
“Another opportunity lost,” I thought, as I walked up the path.
* * * * *
“It’s the Malay girl, Selima, I’ll be bound. That’s the mystery, Mr.
Fitch. Didn’t he tell you she was a great beauty, all done up in rings
and jewels?”
“Yes,” I answered absently.
This conversation took place about a week after my drive with the
captain, while Mrs. Simmons was removing the breakfast dishes. I was
reading the paper in the next room and did not like to be interrupted.
“I never heard him tell that story,” she continued, raising her voice
above the clatter of the dishes. “He has taken you into his confidence,
Mr. Fitch.”
“Then I fear I have more woefully betrayed it,” I replied without looking
up.
Later I took a walk to the post office. The thought of the mystery,
although I would have hesitated to acknowledge it even to myself, was
making me positively uncomfortable.
“Was she really the Malay girl, after all?” I pictured the captain, young
and handsome, walking up to the altar of a Buddhist temple with a Malay
princess, dazzling with rings and jewels, leaning on his arm, her pale
skin—no, the Malays were brown. I cursed my superior knowledge. Perhaps
their princesses were not so dark. But my vision had faded; I was gazing
at the floor of the Gull Harbor post office.
I took the road back which led by the captain’s. There was no sign of
anyone as I passed. I wandered up by the burial lot. I wondered if Malay
princesses were ever named Selima. On the way home I passed the captain.
He waved to me pleasantly, as he rattled by.
“I will go to see him to-night,” I said to myself. It was after nine when
I reached his house. The captain was still up. He was sitting in front
of the kitchen fire, a long-haired cat on either side. He seemed glad to
see me. We sat and smoked. The logs crackled cheerfully. They reminded me
somehow of my host. An hour flew by; conversation was gradually relaxing
into silent contemplation. Suddenly I burst forth:
“Captain,” I said, desperately, “you remember the Malay woman you told me
of the other day. Was her name Selima?”
For a moment I was afraid I had offended him. All of a sudden he began to
laugh. Little by little his merriment increased, until his whole powerful
frame was shaking. He trembled so that his glasses bobbed up and down on
his nose like a cork. His chair creaked. Even his beard looked merry.
“Selima! Selima!” and he went off into another gale. Then, seeing my
doubtful expression, he tried to pull himself together. “Selima! Selima!
She was a pretty creetur’, she was,” and he laughed again. I was forced
to join with him; his humor was catching.
“I know what’s a-worrying you,” he said. “It’s the mystery. There
never was a boarder within twelve miles of this town whom they haven’t
filled up with the story of my mysterious weddin’. They’re half curious
themselves, though the Lord knows they’d oughter have more sense.
Selima!” He laughed, the tears filling his eyes as he began again.
“Selima! There never was any sech person! To think I have fooled this
town for fifty years! It’s too much. I laugh about it nights.” Again
catching my strained face, “Still curious?” he inquired with a twinkle.
“I’ll tell ye, but you mustn’t spoil my joke. D’ye understand? I guess I
can trust ye,” he added confidentially, and settling himself in his chair
he began.
“It’s not a long story,” he said, glancing at his watch. “About forty
years ago, or mebbe more, when I was perhaps half as old as I am now, I
lived here alone, when I warn’t on the water, which warn’t very much.
It was close on to September, only a day or two or mebbe three before I
was to sail from ‘Porchmouth’. She was a five-master, a beauty ef there
ever was a handsome vessel.” The captain paused as if to recall her more
vividly. “Gullnair was her name, brand new that year. Wall, it was a day
or two before I was to sail, as I was tellin’ ye. I was out here in the
pasture right over yonder by the old spring”—he pointed with a sailor’s
thumb—“I had been gatherin’ berries and after a bit I lay down under a
tree. I had been lobsterin’ all mornin’ and was tired. When I woke up I
heard two women talkin’. They’re both dead now, but in their day they wuz
the gol-durndest busybodies that ever I heard tell on. They was berryin’
and talkin’—about me, would you believe it? Speculatin’ as to why a nice
lookin’ man (I hadn’t sech a bad complexion in those days,” added the
captain reflectively as he rubbed his hand over his rough face)—“they was
a wonderin’ why I didn’t get married. Was it because I had a hidden life?
Did the girls object to my swearin’? Was I—the Lord preserve us, what
didn’t they say? They came to the conclusion that I didn’t marry because
no one would have me. I could have strangled them both at that. I was hot
headed in those days.” All the fun had faded from the captain’s face.
“After they went away,” he continued, “I began to think it over. At first
I cal’lated I had better get married right away. There were a dozen of
’em hereabouts that very minute who would have taken me with a whoop. I
had always tried to steer clear of the women heretofore. Second thoughts,
thinks I, why not let the matter go driftin’ for awhile, anyway? So I
did. But all the time that I was at sea it bothered me. On the home’ard
voyage we struck a bad storm and the Gullnair went to the bottom after
a brave fight, sir, after a brave fight! Most of the crew was drownded.
I was saved by a miracle. Never mind about that now! Wall, sir, after I
was picked up—she was a freighter bound for New York, as luck would have
it—there come to me a big idea.
“When I got home I let them know I was a widower, married while I was
away. Of course they understood she had been drownded on the ship. I
wore a black band on my arm for a time. Seein’ as there as warn’t no
suspicions in the wind, ‘I’ll make a full job of it,’ I says to myself.
‘I’ll set up a stone in the burial lot to her memory’. And that’s what I
did. Wall, they come to write the inscription; I told them the words, but
when they asked me for the name, I said kind o’ flustered like, ‘Selima’.
It was the first one that popped into my head. That’s all.” The captain
smiled, turning his gaze into the fire.
“Then you weren’t ever in love?” I said, with the faintest inflection in
my voice.
The captain blew out a great puff of smoke, looked at me over the top of
his glasses, and smiled.
MYLES WHITING.
_Portfolio_
_Beauty_
I.
Beauty! thy name were counted less than dust
That warriors’ tombs with sullen grace enfold,
Save that thou strip man’s arrant love of lust
And cloak his tarnished soul with sudden gold.
II.
Beauty! thy price has been a nation’s spoil,—
A wizard’s epitaph, a child’s grim plea;
And yet a peasant bought thee with his toil,
A poet lived with thee in penury.
HERBERT W. HARTMAN, JR.
_Fear of God_
“I’ve never told anyone how I happened to become a priest because,
for the first few years after ordination I didn’t like to recall the
circumstances surrounding it, and afterwards, when they had lost most
of their sting, the whole thing was so deeply buried in the past that I
never resurrected it. But now, since I’m reaching that point where the
events of my life appear to me more as interesting stories than anything
else, I may as well tell it to you from that point of view.
“To begin with, I had, at twenty, a pretty definite philosophy. I thought
of life and all its functions, as created by the divine hand of God, to
be essentially perfect. Man was created, according to the teaching of
the Church, in God’s image and likeness. The very highest good, to me,
was to live in an accord as close as possible to the universal laws of
nature. Man’s natural state is good, and when he violates this state he
undergoes a physical reaction, called shame, over which he has no control
whatsoever. I had this underlying belief, which was clarified more or
less by reading Walt Whitman and Carlyle, though I added some ideas of my
own which I found in neither of these. But I can’t swear that they aren’t
there. I drew no such sharp lines as are generally drawn between physical
and spiritual love, but visualized, or rather, believed in, an ideal
love in which both are combined, and which, by this combination raise
each other to far higher levels, both collectively and individually. I
rejected a purely abstract affection of the spirit as weakness, since
it does accept and is out of tune with nature. That was Carlyle. And
there was the only point of the whole matter that I have since come to
question, though I have not actually put it aside. I wonder if I could
still hold to it had I married. But if I reject this, the whole thing
breaks down, so I must cling to it, though it does waver. I had always
been a Catholic, and as far as I could see there was no conflict between
my doctrine and that of the Church. In addition, though I realized that
this was a personal viewpoint and couldn’t be brought to bear too closely
on the other, beauty was to me rarely seductive. My moments of desire
were, for the most part, connected with the most intense ugliness.
“At this time I was in love with a girl who was exactly the ideal of
it all. She too was a Catholic and had been educated in a convent for
the greater part of her life. She had not the clarity of feature that
generally characterizes beauty, but possessed something infinitely more
subtle than this. If you’ve ever seen one of those glorious green Irish
hills that look as if they’ve been drawn up fresh from the depths of the
earth by the hand of God, you’ll understand what I mean. She had the same
original force of beauty in the rough mold of her face, which was at the
same time miraculously soft, and free from cold line. Her whole head
was clothed in a sort of cloudiness, like Venus, the mother of Aeneas,
appearing to her son. Her body, and mind, and voice were so harmonious an
expression of good that goodness was with her almost a physical quality.
She had almost never come in contact with wrong, but I know she would
have been the same under any circumstances. It’s easy to understand how I
could hold to my beliefs here; I loved her as much for her body as for
her spirit. She had the same sweet curves and moved with the same music
as a green, young tree bent in the wind.”
He was silent for a moment, and gazed into the thick purple sky,
underneath which the sea beat tirelessly at the rocks which fringed the
bottom of the cliff.
* * * * *
“Unfortunately, she didn’t love me, but had the same sort of affection a
girl has for a very good friend of the opposite sex. However, as we were
both quite young (she eighteen) I had plenty of hope that as soon as I
was in a position to ask her to marry me, she would accept.
“Then, in the summer after her graduation from the convent, I learned
that she was determined to return there in the fall as a nun! For two
or three days after this discovery I was in a state of almost continual
mental anguish, that she, a creature so beautifully alive, should
keep the precious gift of herself from the world, and especially from
me,—though curiously enough I looked at it from the general rather than
the individual point of view. I was completely stunned.
“I had never definitely settled in my mind the question of priests and
nuns remaining unmarried. This was through nothing more nor less than
overlooking it, which I cannot understand, since it should have been so
vital to me. But now I came out dead against it. To me it seemed that,
since those who served God and were supposed to be leading the highest
life possible to man were not permitted to marry, the Church put a mark
of disapproval on the married state and the begetting of children. It
was not the actual celibacy of the priests and nuns that concerned me
most, but the disapprobation of what I considered the most spiritual act
of life. I suppose I should have gone to a priest to learn the defense
for it, but I became so prejudiced myself that I imagined that his point
of view or any explanation he might make could be nothing else but
prejudiced.”
He paused again, this time to light his pipe, which he pulled on for many
long seconds before resuming the story, while I held my tongue and gazed
into the vast plain of darkness.
“After a while the pain ceased, and I lapsed into a state almost of
indifference, though the day she was to leave for the convent was pretty
nearly always on my mind. Strangely enough I can’t for the life of me
think what it was now, though I shall never forget what happened on the
day itself.
“I went to her home, which was quite a large estate, to bid her good-bye.
I still had the indifferent feeling, though my mind had that queer,
detached sensation one gets in a fever, and felt, somehow, as if it were
outside of the rest of me. Her brothers and sisters and I sat about
talking constrainedly until the time came for her departure. She was
to go off in the carriage to the station with no one accompanying her
save the coachman. It rolled up to the door and they all crowded out to
see her off. They were a rather grim lot, standing there, though no one
was weeping. As for her, her face had the strangest mixture of joy and
sorrow, which was exactly mirrored in her mother’s. The rest were all
frankly and achingly unhappy. I was relapsing more and more and more into
a dazed condition.
“When she said good-bye to me, I took her hand, quite unconsciously, and
kissed it. It was trembling, which pierced my heart and made me gasp
violently. I have no recollection at all of her actual departure, but
when she was gone I must have been overcome by it, for I heard some one
say, ‘He’s going to faint,’ and then one of her brothers took me inside
and gave me a drink. I had several more, which increased my state of
mental detachment, but did not affect my mental processes in the least.
After a while I went outside the house and wandered about the lawn, until
finally I sat down on a bench bordering a wide patch of grass on which
there were no trees or shrubbery of any kind. I don’t think I noticed it,
but night had practically fallen, and darkness was gradually enveloping
the place. The thought of her trembling hand kept coming back to me,
making the blood in my head throb violently, when suddenly, with a wrench
that shook my whole body, my head cleared absolutely. I realized then,
for the first time, that she was irretrievably gone, and the realization
flung me into a rage. I cursed God in unutterable vileness for taking
her from me, for making of life such a deceiving, rotten thing, and
for setting me down in the midst of it! I am neither a savage, nor a
superstitious idiot, but as I stand here, I wonder I wasn’t struck down
by His almighty hand for the filth and blasphemy I put upon my tongue
that night!
“Then, out on the very center of the lawn before me, appeared a column
of cottony-white smoke which, by indescribable foldings, formed itself
into a woman of the most unearthly and terrible beauty. She was naked,
and each particle of her white skin seemed to be shouting the fact of her
nakedness aloud. The steely outline of her bare flesh cut the stuff of
night away, and flashed out its blinding brilliance.