AN INDIANA VILLAGE
While we were sitting on the veranda—Franklin’s father and myself—Speed
came by on his way down town, and Mr. Booth, having gathered a sense of
approval, perhaps, for the pornographic document from my attitude, drew
it out and showed it to him.
“Gee!” exclaimed Speed, after reading it. “I must get some of those.”
Soon after, Franklin came out and, seeing the document and reading it,
seemed troubled over the fact that his father should be interested in
such a thing. I think he felt that it threw an unsatisfactory light on
his sire, or that I, not understanding, might think so; but, after I
made it clear that it was more or less of a Cervantesque bit of humor to
me, he became more cheerful.
A little while thereafter we went downtown, Franklin and I, to inspect
the village, and to see some of those peculiar natives of whom he had
been talking. I think he must have a much better eye for rural and
countryside types and their idiosyncrasies than I have, for I failed to
gather any of those gay nuances which somehow he had made me feel were
there. Little things in rural life which probably attract and hold his
attention entirely escape me, as, for instance, the gaunt and spectacled
old gentleman looking over his glasses into the troublesome works of his
very small Ford. My own powers of observation in that direction, and my
delight in them, are limited to a considerable extent by my sense of
drama. Is a thing dramatic? Or at least potentially so? If not, it is
apt to lose interest for me. As for Franklin, he was never weary of
pointing out little things, and I enjoyed almost more of what was to be
seen here and elsewhere because of his powers of indication than from my
own observation.
Thus, on the way west, he had been telling me of one man who was almost
always more or less sick, or thought he was, because, through one of the
eccentricities of hypochondria, he discovered that one got more
attention, if not sympathy, being sick than well. And when we came to
the postoffice door here he was before it, complaining of a pain in his
chest! It seemed to me, in looking at him, that by a process of
thinking, if that were really true, he had made himself ill. He looked
“very poorly,” as he expressed it, and as though he might readily sink
into a destructive illness. Yet Franklin assured me that there had
really been nothing the matter with him to begin with, but that jealousy
of sympathy bestowed upon a cripple, the one who was to run our car for
us south from here, had caused him to resort to this method of getting
some for himself!
Also, there was another young man who had been described to me as a
village wag—one of three or four who were certain to amuse me; but when
he now came forward to greet me, and I was told that this was the
person, I was not very much interested. He was of the type that has
learned to consider himself humorous, necessarily so, with a reputation
for humor to sustain. “I must be witty,” says such a one to himself, and
so the eye is always cocked, the tongue or body set for a comic remark
or movement. The stranger feels obliged by the very atmosphere which
goes with such a person to smile anticipatorially, as who should say,
something deliciously funny is soon to be said. I did not hear anything
very humorous said, however.
Incidentally, I also met Bert, the crippled boy, who was to be our
chauffeur south from this point. He was a youth in whose career Franklin
seemed greatly interested, largely, I think, because other people of the
village were inclined to be indifferent to or make sport of him. The boy
was very bright and of a decidedly determined and characterful nature.
Although both legs, below the hips, but not below the ankles, were
practically useless, due to a schooltime wrestling bout and fall, he
managed with the aid of a pair of crutches to get about with
considerable ease and speed. There was no least trace of weakness or
complaint or need of sympathy in his manner. Indeed, he seemed more
self-reliant and upstanding than most of the other people I met here.
How, so crippled, he would manage to run the car puzzled me. Franklin’s
father had already expressed himself to me as opposed to the idea.
“I can’t understand what he sees in that fellow,” he said to me early
this morning. “He’s a reckless little devil, and I don’t think he really
knows anything about machinery. Frank will stick to him, though. If it
were my machine, I wouldn’t have him near it.”
Now that I looked at Bert, though, I felt that he had so much courage
and hope and optimism—such an intriguing look in his eyes—that I quite
envied him. He was assistant mail clerk or something at the post office,
and when I came up and had been introduced through the window, he
promptly handed me out several letters. When I told Franklin what his
father had said, he merely smiled. “The old man is always talking like
that,” he said. “Bert’s all right. He’s better than Speed.”
It takes a certain slow-moving type of intellect to enjoy or endure life
in a small country town. To be a doctor in a place like this! or a
lawyer! or a merchant! or a clerk!
In the main, in spite of many preliminary descriptions, Carmel did not
interest me as much as I thought it would, or might. It was
interesting—as one says with the wave of a hand or a shrug of the
shoulders. Of more import to me was the Booth household, and the
peculiar girl who would not come out to greet me at first, and
Franklin’s father and mother and sister. This day passed rather dully,
reading proofs which had been sent me and listening to passing expresses
which tore through here northward and southward, to and from
Indianapolis, only fifteen miles away—never even hesitating, as the
negro said—and listening to the phonograph, on which I put all the
records I could find. Three recitations by James Whitcomb Riley, “Little
Orphant Annie,” “The Raggedy Man” and “My Grandfather Squeers,” captured
my fancy so strongly that I spent several hours just listening to them
over and over, they were so delightful. Then I would vary my diet with
Tchaikowsky, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Bert Williams.
During the afternoon Franklin and I went for a walk in a nearby woods—a
beech and oak grove—the beeches occupying one section and the oaks
another. Truly, grey and lowery described this day. It was raining, but
in addition the clouds hung so low and thick and dark that they were
almost smothery in their sense of closeness. And it was warm and damp,
quite like a Turkish bath. I had arrayed myself in great thigh-length
rubber boots borrowed from Franklin’s father, and my raincoat and a
worthless old cap, so that I was independent of the long, dripping wet
grass and the frequent pools of water.
“I know what I’ll do,” I exclaimed suddenly. “I’ll go in swimming. It’s
just the day. Fine!”
When we reached the stream in the depth of the woods I was even more
enchanted with the idea, the leafy depth of the hollow was so dark and
wet, the water so seething and yellow, a veritable whirlpool, made so by
the heavy rains everywhere about. Franklin would not come in with me.
Instead, he stood on the shore and told me local tales of growths and
deaths and mishaps and joys to many.
My problem was how to undress without getting my clothes wet and my feet
so muddy when I came out that I could not put on my boots. By thought I
solved it. I took off my raincoat, spread it down on the shore as a
floor, then took off my boots and stood on it, dry and clean. Under one
corner of it I tucked all my clothes to protect them from the rain;
then, naked, I plunged into the swirling, boiling flood. It nearly swept
me away, so terrific was the onslaught of the waters. I caught a branch
hanging low, and, with my feet braced against a few rocks below, lay
flat and let the water rush over me. It was wonderful to lie in this
warm, yellow water, a bright gold color, really, and feel it go foaming
over my breast and arms and legs. It tugged at me so, quite like a
wrestling man, that I had to fight it to keep up. My arms ached after a
time, but I hung on, loving the feel of it. Sticks and leaves went
racing past. I would kick up a stone and instantly it would be swept
onward toward some better lodging place farther down. I figured an angle
finally by which I could make shore, letting go and paddling sidewise,
and so I did, coming up bumped and scratched, but happy. Then I dipped
my feet in the water, stood on my raincoat, drying myself with my
handkerchief, and finally, dressed and refreshed, strode up shore.
Then we went off flower gathering, and made a big bouquet of iron weed.
He told me how for years he had been coming to this place, how he loved
the great oaks and the silvery beeches, huddled in a friendly company to
the north, and how he had always wanted to paint them and some day
would. The mania people have for cutting their names on beech trunks
came up, for here were so many covered with lover’s hearts—their names
inside—and so many inscriptions, all but obliterated by time that I
could not help thinking how lives flow by quite like the water in the
stream below.
Then we went back, to a fine chicken dinner and a banana pie made
especially for me, and the phonograph and the rushing trains, the
whistles of which I was never tired hearing—they sounded so sad.
Another black, rainy night, and then the next morning the sun came up on
one of the most perfect days imaginable. It was dewy and glistening and
fragrant and colorful—a wonder world. What with the new wet trees and
grass as cool and delightful as any day could be, it was like paradise.
There was a warm south wind. I went out on the lawn and played ball with
Franklin, missing three fourths of all throws and nearly breaking my
thumb. I sat on the porch and looked over the morning paper, watching
the outing automobiles of many natives go spinning by and feeling my
share in that thrill and tingle which comes over the world on a warm
Sunday morning in summer. It was so lovely. You could just feel that
everybody everywhere was preparing to have a good time and that nothing
mattered much. All the best Sunday suits, all the new straw hats, all
the dainty frocks, all the everything were being brought forth and put
on. Franklin disappeared for an hour and came back looking so spick and
span and altogether Sunday—summery—and like Ormonde and Miami Beach,
that I felt quite out of it. I had a linen suit and white shoes and a
sport hat, but somehow I felt that they were a little uncalled for here,
and my next best wasn’t as good as his. Curses! He even had on perfect,
glistening, glorious patent leather shoes, and a new blue suit.
It was while I was sitting here inwardly groaning over my fate that a
young girl came swinging up, one of the most engaging I had seen
anywhere on this trip—a lithe, dancing figure, with bright blue eyes,
chestnut hair and an infectious smile. I had observed her approaching
some seventy feet away, and beside her Speed, and I was wondering
whether she was merely a town girl of his acquaintance or by any chance
that half sister of whom I had heard Franklin and Speed speaking on the
way west, saying that she was very talented and was hoping to come to
New York to study music. Before I had time to do more than compliment
her in my mind, she was here before me, having tripped across the grass
in a fascinating way, and was holding out a hand and laughing into my
eyes.
“We’ve been hearing about your coming for several days now. Speed wrote
us nearly a week ago that you might come.”
It flattered me to be so much thought of.
“I’ve been hearing nice things of you, too,” I said, studying her pretty
nose and chin and the curls about her forehead. In any _apologia pro
vita sua_ which I may ever compose, I will confess frankly and heartily
to a weakness for beauty in the opposite sex.
She seemed inclined to talk, but was a little bashful. From her general
appearance I gathered that she was not only of a gay, lightsome
disposition, but a free soul, spiritually as yet not depressed by the
local morality of the day—the confining chains of outward appearances
and inward, bonehead fears. I had the feeling that she was beginning to
be slightly sex conscious without having solved any of its intricacies
as yet—just a humming bird, newly on the wing. She hung about, answering
and asking questions of no import. Presently Speed had to leave and she
went along, with a brisk, swinging step. As she neared the corner of the
lawn she turned just for a second and smiled.
Apropos of this situation and these two girls who curiously and almost
in spite of myself were uppermost in my mind—the second one most
particularly, I should like to say—that of all things in life which seem
to me to be dull and false, it is the tendency of weak souls in letters
and in life to gloze over this natural chemical action and reaction
between the sexes, to which we are all subject, and to make a pretence
that our thoughts are something which they are not—sweet, lovely, noble,
pure. It has become a duty among males and females, quite too much so, I
think, to conceal from each other and from themselves, even, the fact
that physical beauty in the opposite sex stirs them physically and
mentally, naturally leading to thoughts of union.
What has come over life that it has become so super-fine in its moods?
Why should we make such a puritanic row over the natural instincts of
man? I will admit that in part nature herself is the cause of this, the
instinct to restrain being possibly as great as the instinct to
liberate, and that she demands that you make a pretence and live a lie,
only it seems to me it would be a little better for the mental health of
the race if it were more definitely aware of this. Certainly it ought
not be connected with religious illusion. It may not be possible,
because of the varying temperaments of people, for anyone to express
what he feels or thinks at any precise moment—its reception is too
uncertain—but surely it is permissible in print, which is not unakin in
its character to the Catholic confessional, to say what one knows to be
so.
All normal men crave women—and particularly beautiful women. All married
men and priests are supposed, by the mere sacrament of matrimony or holy
orders, thereafter to feel no interest in any but one (or in the case of
the priest none) of the other sex—or if they do, to rigidly suppress
such desires. But men are men! And the women—many married and unmarried
ones—don’t want them to be otherwise. Life is a dizzy, glittering game
of trapping and fishing and evading, and slaying and pursuing, despite
all the religious and socalled moral details by which we surround it.
Nature itself has an intense love of the chase. It loves snares,
pitfalls, gins, traps, masks and mummeries, and even murder and
death—yes, very much murder and death. It loves nothing so much as to
build up a papier-mâché wall of convention, and then slip round or crash
through it. It has erected a phantasmagoria of laws which no one can
understand, and no one can strictly adhere to without disaster, and to
which few do strictly adhere. Justice, truth, mercy, right are all
abstractions and not to be come at by any series of weights or measures.
We pocket our unfair losses or unearned gains and smile at our luck.
Curiously, in finance and commercial affairs men understand this and
accept it as a not altogether bad game. It has the element in it which
they recognize as sport. When it comes to sex, the feeling becomes
somewhat more serious. A man who will smile at the loss of a hundred, a
thousand, or even a million dollars, will pull a grim countenance over
the loss of a wife or a daughter. Death is the price in the judgment of
some temperaments. In others it is despair. Why? And yet nature plans
these traps and pitfalls. It is the all mother who schemes the Circe and
Hellenic temperaments—the fox, the wolf, the lion. A raging, destroying
bull, which insists on gormandizing all the females of a herd, is the
product of nature, not of man. Man did not make the bull or the
stallion, nor did they make themselves. Is nature to be controlled, made
over, by man, according to some theory which man, a product of nature,
has discovered?
Gentlemen, here is food for a dozen schools of philosophy! Personally, I
do not see that any theory or any code or any religion that has yet been
devised solves anything. All that one can intelligently say is that they
satisfy certain temperaments. Like those theorems and formulæ in algebra
and chemistry, which aid the student without solving anything in
themselves, they make the living of life a little easier—for some. They
are not a solution. They do not make over temperaments which are not
adapted to their purposes. They do not assist the preternaturally weak,
or restrain the super-strong. They merely, like a certain weave of mesh
in fishing, hold some and let others get away—the very big and the very
little.
What sort of moralic scheme is that, anyhow, which governs thus? And why
is poor, dull man such a universal victim of it?