REINSTATEMENT OF A SCHOeNE SEELE
The sunlight of a golden October afternoon poured down on a little brick
terrace running along one side of the farmhouse in the Berkshires Harry
had bought and reformed into a summer house. It was not the principal
open-air extension of the place; the official verandah was on the other
side, commanding a wide view to the east and south. This was just a
little private terrace, designed especially for use on afternoons like
the present, when for the moment autumn went back on all its promises
and in a moment of carelessness poured over a dying landscape the breath
of May. The only view to be had from it was up a grassy slope to the
west, on the summit of which, according to all standards except those of
the New England farmer of one hundred years ago, the house ought to have
been built. Not that either Madge or Harry cared particularly. They were
fond of pointing out that Tom Ball, or West Stockbridge Mountain, or
whatever it was, shut out the view to the west anyway, and that they
were lucky enough to find a farmhouse with any view from it at all.
On the terrace sat James and Beatrice, who were spending a week-end with
their relatives. Madge was with them. Presumably there was current in
her mind a polite fiction that she was entertaining her guests, but she
did not take her duties of hostess-ship too seriously. It was not even
necessary to keep up a conversation; they all got along far too well
together for that. They simply sat and enjoyed the fleeting sunshine,
making pleasant and unnecessary remarks whenever they felt moved to do
so. Probably they also thought, from time to time. Of the general
extraordinariness of things, and so forth. If they all spent a little
time in admiring the adroitness with which the hands of fate had
shuffled them, with the absent member of the pack, into their present
satisfactory positions, we should not be at all surprised. But of course
none of them made any allusion to it.
Harry suddenly burst through the glass door leading from the house and
flopped into a chair. His appearance was informal. The others turned
toward him with curious nostrils.
"I know, I know," he sighed. "The only thing is for us all to smoke. You
too, Beatrice. Because if you don't you'll smell me, and if you smell me
I'll have to go up and wash, and if I go up and wash now I shall miss
this last hour of sunshine and that will make you all very, very
unhappy."
"I am smoking," said Beatrice calmly, "because I want to, and for no
other reason."
"And I," observed Madge, "because Harry doesn't want me to."
"If you want to know what I've been doing since lunch," said Harry,
disregarding the insult, "I don't mind telling you that I've mended a
wire fence, covered the asparagus bed, conducted several successful
bonfires and filled all the grease-cups on the Ford. I have also
turned--"
"Yes," said James, "we've guessed that."
"And now only a few trifles such as feeding fowls and swine--or as Madge
prefers to put it, chickabiddies and piggywigs--stand between me and a
well-deserved repose. Heavens! I don't see how farmers can keep such
late hours. Harker, I believe, frequently stays up till nearly nine. I
feel as if it ought to be midnight now; nothing but the thought of the
piggywigs keeps me out of bed."
"Can't Harker feed the piggywigs?" inquired Beatrice.
"Oh, yes," said Madge, "just as he can do all the other things Harry
does a great deal better than he. But it keeps him busy and happy, so we
let him go on."
"Just as if you didn't cry every night to feed your old pigs!" retorted
her husband.
Madge laughed. "Yes, I am rather a fool about the poor things, even if
they aren't so attractive as they were in June. You should have seen
them, so pink and tiny and sweet, standing up on their hind legs and
wiggling their noses at you! No one could help wanting to feed them,
they were so helpless and confident of receiving a shower of manna from
above. I know just how the Almighty felt when he fed the Israelites."
"Better manna than manners," murmured Harry, and for a while there was a
profound silence.
"What about a stroll before tea?" presently suggested the happy farmer.
"I should like to," said James. "We'll have to make it short, though."
"Very well. What about the others--the fair swine-herd?"
"I think not," answered the person referred to, smiling up at him. "I
took quite a long walk before lunch, you know."
"Oh, yes," said Harry, blushing for no apparent reason. "Beatrice?"
Beatrice preferred to stay with Madge.
"You see," said Harry when the two had gone a little way; "you see, the
fact is, Madge--hm. Madge--"
"You mean," said James, smiling, "there is hope of a new generation of
our illustrious house?"
"Yes! I only learned this morning. If it's a boy we're going to call it
James, and if it's a girl we're going to call it Jaqueline."
"I wonder," mused James, "how many times you have named it since you
first heard."
"There have been several suggestions," admitted Harry, laughing. "I
really think it will end by that, though."
"Jaqueline--quite a pretty name. Much prettier than James--I rather hope
it will be a girl."
"Yes, I do too," said Harry. And both knew that they would not have
troubled to express that wish if they had not really hoped the direct
opposite....
They walked slowly up the hill and presently turned and stopped to
admire the view that the foolish prudence of a dead farmer had prevented
them from enjoying from the house. It was a very lovely view, with its
tumbled stretches of hills and fields and occasional sheets of blue
water bathed in the mellow light of the sun that hung low over the dark
mountain wall to the west. Possibly it was its sheer beauty, or the
impression it gave of distance from human strife and sordidness, or
perhaps the subject last mentioned imparted to their thoughts and
impulse away from the trivial and familiar; at any rate when Harry next
spoke his words fell neither on James' ears nor his own with the sound
of fatuity that they might have held at another time.
"James," he said, "we're getting on, aren't we? I don't mean in years,
though that's a most extraordinary feeling in itself, but in--in life,
in the business of living. If you ask me what I mean by that
high-sounding phrase I can only say it's something like coming out of
every experience a little better qualified to meet whatever new
experience lies in store for you. Of course we've heard about life being
a game and all that facile rot ever since we were old enough to speak,
but it's quite different when you come to _feel_ it. It's a sensation
all by itself, isn't it?"
James drew a deep breath. "Yes, it is quite by itself," he agreed. "And
I'm glad to be able to say that at last I have some idea of what the
actual feeling is like. It was atrophied long enough in me, Heaven
knows! It's still very slight, very timid and tentative; just a sort of
glimmering at times--"
"That's all it ever is," said Harry. "Just an occasional glimmering. The
true feeling, that is. If it's anything more, it isn't really that at
all, but just a sort of stuckupness, an idea that I am equal to the
worst life can do to Me! I know people that seem to have that
attitude--insufferable! Only life is pretty apt to punish them by giving
them a great deal more than they bargained for."
James was silent a moment, as with a sort of confessional silence. But
he knew Harry would not understand its confessional quality, so he said
quietly: "That's exactly what happened to me, of course."
"Oh, rot! Did you think I meant you?"
"No, but it's true, for all that. Thank Heaven I have been permitted to
live through it!... The truth is, I suppose, I was too successful early
in life. In school, in college and afterward it was always the same--I
found myself able to do certain things with an ease that surprised and
delighted people--no one more than myself. For they weren't things that
mattered especially, you see; they were showy, spectacular things that
appealed to the public eye, like playing football. I was a good physical
specimen, not through any effort or merit of my own, but simply through
a natural gift, and a very poor and hollow gift it is, as I've found
out. I don't think people quite realize the problem that a man of the
athletic type has to face if he's going to make anything out of himself
but an athlete. From early boyhood he's conscious of physical
superiority; he knows perfectly well that in the last resort he can
knock the other fellow down and stamp on him, and that gives him a
certain feeling of repose and self-sufficiency that's very pernicious.
It usually passes for strength of character, but it's nothing in the
world but faith in bone and muscle. And people do worship physical
strength so! It's small wonder a man gets his head turned.... Good Lord,
the ideas I used to have about myself! Why, in college, if any one had
made me say what, in the bottom of my heart, I thought was the greatest
possible thing for a man of my years to be, I should have said being a
great football player in a great university. That is, I wouldn't have
said it, because that would have been like bragging, and it isn't done
to brag: but that would have been my secret thought.
"And then, if the man has any brains or any capacity for feeling, he
runs up against some of the big forces of life, and he finds his
physical strength no more use to him than a broken reed. It's quite a
shock! I've been more severely tried than most people are, I imagine,
but Heaven knows I needed it! Everything had gone my way before that; I
literally never knew what it was to have to put up a fight against
something I recognized as stronger than I and likely to beat me in the
end. Well, I'm grateful enough for it now. Thank Heaven for it! Thank
Heaven for letting me fight and find out my weakness and come through it
somehow, instead of remaining a mere mountain of beef all my days!"
Both stood silent for a moment after James had ended this confession,
less because they felt embarrassment in the presence of the feeling that
lay behind it than because for a short time the past lay on them too
heavily for words. After a few seconds they moved as though by a common
impulse and walked slowly along the grassy crest of the ridge, and Harry
began again.
"What you say sounds very well coming from you, James, but I have reason
to believe that very little, if any of it, is true. It was my privilege
to know you during the years you speak of, and I seem to remember you as
something more than a mountain of beef. Don't be absurd, James!"
He paused a moment and then went on more seriously: "No, James; if there
was ever any danger of any of us suffering from cock-sureness it's I, at
this moment. Do you realize how ridiculously happy I've been for the
last year or so? This success of mine--oh, I've worked, but it's been
absurdly easy, for all that--and Madge, and everything--it seems
sometimes as if there was something strange and sinister about it. It
simply can't be good for any one to be so happy! It worries me."
"Well, as long as it does, you needn't," said James.
"Oh, I see! That makes it quite simple, of course!"
"What I mean," elucidated James, "is that, if you feel that way about
it, it's probable that you really deserve what happiness you have. After
all, you know, you have paid for some. You have had your times; I don't
mind admitting that there have been moments when you weren't quite the
archangel which of course you are at present!"
Harry laughed. "The prophet Jeremiah once said something about its being
good for a man that he should bear the yoke in his youth. If that is
equivalent to saying that the earlier a man has his bad times the
better, it may be that I got off more easily by having them in college
than if they'd held off till later. One does learn certain things easier
if one learns them early. But that doesn't mean that your youth has
passed without your feeling the yoke, or that your youth has passed yet.
You're still in the Jeremiah class! One would hardly say that at
thirty--you're not much over thirty, are you?"
"A few weeks under, I believe."
"I'm sorry!--Well, at thirty there are surely years of youth ahead of
you, which you, having borne your yoke, may look forward to without fear
and with every prospect of enjoying to the fullest extent. Whereas
I--well, there's even more time for me to bear yokes in, if necessary. I
don't much believe that Jeremiah has done with me yet, somehow!"
"You're not afraid of the future, though, are you?" asked James after a
pause.
"Oh, no--that would never do. I feel about it as.... One can't say these
things without sounding cocksure and insufferable!"
"You mean you'll do your best under the circumstances?"
"Yes, or make a good try at it! And then.... Of course I can't be as
happy as I am without having a good deal at stake; I've given hostages
to fortune--that's Francis Bacon, not me. And if fortune should look
upon those hostages with a covetous eye--if anything, for instance,
should happen to Madge in what's coming, why, there are still plenty of
things that the worst fortune can't spoil!... Well, you know."
"Yes," said James; "I know."
"In fact, there are certain things in the past so dear to me that
perhaps, if it came to the point, it would be almost a joy to pay
heavily for them. But that's only the way I feel about it now, of
course. It's easy enough to be brave when there's no danger."
"Yes," said James, "but I think you're right in the main. After all, the
past is one's own--inalienably, forever! While the future is any
man's....
"Of course you know," he went on after a pause, "that my past would have
been nothing at all to me without you. It sounds funny, but it's true."
"Funny is the word," said Harry.
"But perfectly true. I should never have come through--all this business
if it hadn't been for you."
"Look here, James, you're not going to thank me for saving your soul,
are you? That would be a little forced!"
"My dear man, I'm not thanking you, I'm telling you! You were the one
good thing I held on to; I was false and wicked in about every way I
could be, but I did always try, in a sort of blind and blundering way,
to be true to you. You've been--unconsciously if you will have it
so--the best influence of my life, and I thought it might be well to
tell you, that's all."
"Well, I won't pretend I'm not glad to hear it," said Harry soberly. "It
is rather remarkable when you come to think of it," he went on after a
moment, "how our lives have been bound up together. It's rather unusual
with brothers, I imagine. Generally they see a good deal too much of
each other during their early years and when they grow up they settle
down into an acquaintanceship of a more or less cordial nature. But with
us it's been different. Being apart during those early years, I suppose,
made it necessary for us to rediscover each other when we grew up...."
"Yes," said James, "and the process of rediscovering had some rather
lively passages in it, if I remember right."
"It did! But it was a good thing; it gave us a new interest in each
other. One reason why people are commonly so much more enthusiastic
about their friends than about their relations is because their
relations are an accident, but their friends are a credit to them. It
just shows what a selfish thing human nature is, I suppose."
"I see; a new way of being a credit to ourselves. Well, most of it's on
my side, I imagine."
Harry turned gravely toward his brother. "It seems to me, James, you
suffer under a tendency to overestimate my virtues. You mustn't, you
know; it's extremely bad for me. I should say, if questioned closely,
that that was your one fault--if one expects a kindred tendency to
shield me from things I ought not to be shielded from."
"Oh, rot, man!"
"You needn't talk--you do. I've felt it, all along, though you've done
your job so well that for the most part I never knew what you'd saved me
from."
"Well.... I might go so far as to say that when I've put you before
myself I generally find I'm all right, and when I put myself first I
generally find I'm all wrong. But as I've been all wrong most of the
time, it doesn't signify much!"
"Hm. You put it so that I can't insist very hard. It's there, though,
for all that. Funny thing. I don't believe it's a bit usual between
friends, really, especially between brothers. Whatever started you on
it? It must have been more or less conscious."
For a moment James thought of telling him. They had lived so long since
then; it would be amusing for them to trace together the effects of that
one little guiding idea. But he thought of the years ahead, and they
seemed to call out to him with warning voices, voices full of a tale of
tasks unfinished and the need of a vigilance sharper than before. So he
only laughed a little and said:
"Oh, it's you that are exaggerating now! You mustn't get ideas about it;
it's no more than you'd do for me, or any one for any one else he cares
about. But little as it is, don't grudge it to me, for though it may not
have done you much good, it's been the saving of me...."
* * * * *
So they walked and talked as the sun sank low and the night fell gently
from a cloudless sky. To Madge and Beatrice, seeing them silhouetted
against that final blaze of glory in the west, they seemed almost as one
figure.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Whirligig of Time, by Wayland Wells Williams