evidently not new to her. "Yes, ma'am, she could. But 'Niram says he
ain't the kind of man to let his wife go out working." Even while she
dropped under the killing verdict of his pride she was loyal to his
standards and uttered no complaint. She went on, "'Niram wants Aunt
Em'line to have things the way she wants 'em, as near as he can give
'em to her--and it's right she should."
"Aunt Emeline?" I repeated, surprised at her absence of mind. "You mean
Mrs. Purdon, don't you?"
Ev'leen Ann looked vexed at her slip, but she scorned to attempt any
concealment. She explained dryly, with the shy, stiff embarrassment our
country people have in speaking of private affairs: "Well, she _is_ my
Aunt Em'line, Mrs. Purdon is, though I don't hardly ever call her that.
You see, Aunt Emma brought me up, and she and Aunt Em'line don't have
anything to do with each other. They were twins, and when they were
girls they got edgeways over 'Niram's father, when 'Niram was a baby and
his father was a young widower and come courting. Then Aunt Em'line
married him, and Aunt Emma never spoke to her afterward."
Occasionally, in walking unsuspectingly along one of our leafy lanes,
some such fiery geyser of ancient heat uprears itself in a boiling
column. I never get used to it, and started back now.
"Why, I never heard of that before, and I've known your Aunt Emma and
Mrs. Purdon for years!"
"Well, they're pretty old now," said Ev'leen Ann listlessly, with the
natural indifference of self-centered youth to the bygone tragedies of
the preceding generation. "It happened quite some time ago. And both of
them were so touchy, if anybody seemed to speak about it, that folks got
in the way of letting it alone. First Aunt Emma wouldn't speak to her
sister because she'd married the man she'd wanted, and then when Aunt
Emma made out so well farmin' and got so well off, why, then Mrs. Purdon
wouldn't try to make up because she was so poor. That was after Mr.
Purdon had had his stroke of paralysis and they'd lost their farm and
she'd taken to goin' out sewin'--not but what she was always perfectly
satisfied with her bargain. She always acted as though she'd rather have
her husband's old shirt stuffed with straw than any other man's whole
body. He was a real nice man, I guess, Mr. Purdon was."
There I had it--the curt, unexpanded chronicle of two passionate lives.
And there I had also the key to Mrs. Purdon's fury of independence. It
was the only way in which she could defend her husband against the
charge, so damning to her world, of not having provided for his wife. It
was the only monument she could rear to her husband's memory. And her
husband had been all there was in life for her!
I stood looking at her young kinswoman's face, noting the granite under
the velvet softness of its youth, and divining the flame underlying the
granite. I longed to break through her wall and to put my arms about
her, and on the impulse of the moment I cast aside the pretense of
casualness in our talk.
"Oh, my dear!" I said. "Are you and 'Niram always to go on like this?
Can't anybody help you?"
Ev'leen Ann looked at me, her face suddenly old and gray. "No, ma'am; we
ain't going to go on this way. We've decided, 'Niram and I have, that it
ain't no use. We've decided that we'd better not go places together any
more or see each other. It's too--If 'Niram thinks we can't"--she flamed
so that I knew she was burning from head to foot--"it's better for us
not----" She ended in a muffled voice, hiding her face in the crook of
her arm.
Ah, yes; now I knew why Ev'leen Ann had shut out the passionate breath
of the spring night!
I stood near her, a lump in my throat, but I divined the anguish of her
shame at her involuntary self-revelation, and respected it. I dared do
no more than to touch her shoulder gently.
The door behind us rattled. Ev'leen Ann sprang up and turned her face
toward the wall. Paul's cousin came in, shuffling a little, blinking his
eyes in the light of the unshaded lamp, and looking very cross and
tired. He glanced at us without comment as he went over to the sink.
"Nobody offered me anything good to drink," he complained, "so I came in
to get some water from the faucet for my nightcap."
When he had drunk with ostentation from the tin dipper he went to the
outside door and flung it open. "Don't you people know how hot and
smelly it is in here?" he said, with his usual unceremonious abruptness.
The night wind burst in, eddying, and puffed out the lamp with a breath.
In an instant the room was filled with coolness and perfumes and the
rushing sound of the river. Out of the darkness came Ev'leen Ann's young
voice. "It seems to me," she said, as though speaking to herself, "that
I never heard the Mill Brook sound so loud as it has this spring."
I woke up that night with the start one has at a sudden call. But there
had been no call. A profound silence spread itself through the sleeping
house. Outdoors the wind had died down. Only the loud brawl of the river
broke the stillness under the stars. But all through this silence and
this vibrant song there rang a soundless menace which brought me out of
bed and to my feet before I was awake. I heard Paul say, "What's the
matter?" in a sleepy voice, and "Nothing," I answered, reaching for my
dressing gown and slippers. I listened for a moment, my head ringing
with all the frightened tales of the morbid vein of violence which runs
through the character of our reticent people. There was still no sound.
I went along the hall and up the stairs to Ev'leen Ann's room, and I
opened the door without knocking. The room was empty.
Then how I ran! Calling loudly for Paul to join me, I ran down the two
flights of stairs, out of the open door, and along the hedged path which
leads down to the little river. The starlight was clear. I could see
everything as plainly as though in early dawn. I saw the river, and I
saw--Ev'leen Ann.
There was a dreadful moment of horror, which I shall never remember
very clearly, and then Ev'leen Ann and I--both very wet--stood on the
bank, shuddering in each other's arms.
Into our hysteria there dropped, like a pungent caustic, the arid voice
of Horace, remarking, "Well, are you two people crazy, or are you
walking in your sleep?"
I could feel Ev'leen Ann stiffen in my arms, and I fairly stepped back
from her in astonished admiration as I heard her snatch at the straw
thus offered, and still shuddering horribly from head to foot, force
herself to say quite connectedly: "Why--yes--of course--I've always
heard about my grandfather Parkman's walking in his sleep. Folks _said_
'twould come out in the family some time."
Paul was close behind Horace--I wondered a little at his not being
first--and with many astonished and inane ejaculations, such as people
always make on startling occasions, we made our way back into the house
to hot blankets and toddies. But I slept no more that night.
Some time after dawn, however, I did fall into a troubled
unconsciousness full of bad dreams, and only woke when the sun was quite
high. I opened my eyes to see Ev'leen Ann about to close the door.
"Oh, did I wake you up?" she said. "I didn't mean to. That little Harris
boy is here with a letter for you."
She spoke with a slightly defiant tone of self-possession. I tried to
play up to her interpretation of her role.
"The little Harris boy?" I said, sitting up in bed. "What in the world
is he bringing me a letter for?"
Ev'leen Ann, with her usual clear perception of the superfluous in
conversation, vouchsafed no opinion on a matter where she had no
information, but went downstairs and brought back the note. It was of
four lines, and--surprisingly enough--from old Mrs. Purdon, who asked me
abruptly if I would have my husband take me to see her. She specified,
and underlined the specification, that I was to come "right off, and in
the automobile." Wondering extremely at this mysterious bidding, I
sought out Paul, who obediently cranked up our small car and carried me
off. There was no sign of Horace about the house, but some distance on
the other side of the village we saw his tall, stooping figure swinging
along the road. He carried a cane and was characteristically occupied in
violently switching off the heads from the wayside weeds as he walked.
He refused our offer to take him in, alleging that he was out for
exercise and to reduce his flesh--an ancient jibe at his bony frame
which made him for an instant show a leathery smile.
There was, of course, no one at Mrs. Purdon's to let us into the tiny,
three-roomed house, since the bedridden invalid spent her days there
alone while 'Niram worked his team on other people's fields. Not knowing
what we might find, Paul stayed outside in the car, while I stepped
inside in answer to Mrs. Purdon's "Come _in_, why don't you!" which
sounded quite as dry as usual. But when I saw her I knew that things
were not as usual.
She lay flat on her back, the little emaciated wisp of humanity, hardly
raising the piecework quilt enough to make the bed seem occupied, and to
account for the thin, worn old face on the pillow. But as I entered the
room her eyes seized on mine, and I was aware of nothing but them and
some fury of determination behind them. With a fierce heat of impatience
at my first natural but quickly repressed exclamation of surprise she
explained briefly that she wanted Paul to lift her into the automobile
and take her into the next township to the Hulett farm. "I'm so shrunk
away to nuthin', I know I can lay on the back seat if I crook myself
up," she said, with a cool accent but a rather shaky voice. Seeming to
realize that even her intense desire to strike the matter-of-fact note
could not take the place of any and all explanation of her extraordinary
request, she added, holding my eyes steady with her own: "Emma Hulett's
my twin sister. I guess it ain't so queer, my wanting to see her."
I thought, of course, we were to be used as the medium for some
strange, sudden family reconciliation, and went out to ask Paul if he
thought he could carry the old invalid to the car. He replied that, so
far as that went, he could carry so thin an old body ten times around
the town, but that he refused absolutely to take such a risk without
authorization from her doctor. I remembered the burning eyes of
resolution I had left inside, and sent him to present his objections to
Mrs. Purdon herself.
In a few moments I saw him emerge from the house with the old woman in
his arms. He had evidently taken her up just as she lay. The piecework
quilt hung down in long folds, flashing its brilliant reds and greens in
the sunshine, which shone so strangely upon the pallid old countenance,
facing the open sky for the first time in years.
We drove in silence through the green and gold lyric of the spring day,
an elderly company sadly out of key with the triumphant note of eternal
youth which rang through all the visible world. Mrs. Purdon looked at
nothing, said nothing, seemed to be aware of nothing but the purpose in
her heart, whatever that might be. Paul and I, taking a leaf from our
neighbors' book, held, with a courage like theirs, to their excellent
habit of saying nothing when there is nothing to say. We arrived at the
fine old Hulett place without the exchange of a single word.
"Now carry me in," said Mrs. Purdon briefly, evidently hoarding her
strength.
"Wouldn't I better go and see if Miss Hulett is at home?" I asked.
Mrs. Purdon shook her head impatiently and turned her compelling eyes on
my husband. I went up the path before them to knock at the door,
wondering what the people in the house would possibly be thinking of us.
There was no answer to my knock. "Open the door and go in," commanded
Mrs. Purdon from out her quilt.
There was no one in the spacious, white-paneled hall, and no sound in
all the big, many-roomed house.
"Emma's out feeding the hens," conjectured Mrs. Purdon, not, I fancied,
without a faint hint of relief in her voice. "Now carry me up-stairs to
the first room on the right."
Half hidden by his burden, Paul rolled wildly inquiring eyes at me; but
he obediently staggered up the broad old staircase, and waiting till I
had opened the first door to the right, stepped into the big bedroom.
"Put me down on the bed, and open them shutters," Mrs. Purdon commanded.
She still marshaled her forces with no lack of decision, but with a
fainting voice which made me run over to her quickly as Paul laid her
down on the four-poster. Her eyes were still indomitable, but her mouth
hung open slackly and her color was startling. "Oh, Paul, quick! quick!
Haven't you your flask with you?"
Mrs. Purdon informed me in a barely audible whisper, "In the corner
cupboard at the head of the stairs," and I flew down the hallway. I
returned with a bottle, evidently of great age. There was only a little
brandy in the bottom, but it whipped up a faint color into the sick
woman's lips.
As I was bending over her and Paul was thrusting open the shutters,
letting in a flood of sunshine and flecky leaf-shadows, a firm, rapid
step came down the hall, and a vigorous woman, with a tanned face and a
clean, faded gingham dress, stopped short in the doorway with an
expression of stupefaction.
Mrs. Purdon put me on one side, and although she was physically
incapable of moving her body by a hair's breadth, she gave the effect of
having risen to meet the newcomer. "Well, Emma, here I am," she said in
a queer voice, with involuntary quavers in it. As she went on she had it
more under control, although in the course of her extraordinarily
succinct speech it broke and failed her occasionally. When it did, she
drew in her breath with an audible, painful effort, struggling forward
steadily in what she had to say. "You see, Emma, it's this way: My
'Niram and your Ev'leen Ann have been keeping company--ever since they
went to school together--you know that 's well as I do, for all we let
on we didn't, only I didn't know till just now how hard they took it.
They can't get married because 'Niram can't keep even, let alone get
ahead any, because I cost so much bein' sick, and the doctor says I may
live for years this way, same's Aunt Hettie did. An' 'Niram is
thirty-one, an' Ev'leen Ann is twenty-eight, an' they've had 'bout's
much waitin' as is good for folks that set such store by each other.
I've thought of every way out of it--and there ain't any. The Lord knows
I don't enjoy livin' any, not so's to notice the enjoyment, and I'd
thought of cutting my throat like Uncle Lish, but that'd make 'Niram and
Ev'leen Ann feel so--to think why I'd done it; they'd never take the
comfort they'd ought in bein' married; so that won't do. There's only
one thing to do. I guess you'll have to take care of me till the Lord
calls me. Maybe I won't last so long as the doctor thinks."
When she finished, I felt my ears ringing in the silence. She had walked
to the sacrificial altar with so steady a step, and laid upon it her
precious all with so gallant a front of quiet resolution, that for an
instant I failed to take in the sublimity of her self-immolation. Mrs.
Purdon asking for charity! And asking the one woman who had most reason
to refuse it to her.
Paul looked at me miserably, the craven desire to escape a scene written
all over him. "Wouldn't we better be going, Mrs. Purdon?" I said
uneasily. I had not ventured to look at the woman in the doorway.
Mrs. Purdon motioned me to remain, with an imperious gesture whose
fierceness showed the tumult underlying her brave front. "No; I want you
should stay. I want you should hear what I say, so's you can tell folks,
if you have to. Now, look here, Emma," she went on to the other, still
obstinately silent; "you must look at it the way 'tis. We're neither of
us any good to anybody, the way we are--and I'm dreadfully in the way
of the only two folks we care a pin about--either of us. You've got
plenty to do with, and nothing to spend it on. I can't get myself out of
their way by dying without going against what's Scripture and proper,
but----" Her steely calm broke. She burst out in a screaming, hysterical
voice: "You've just _got_ to, Emma Hulett! You've just _got_ to! If you
don't I won't never go back to 'Niram's house! I'll lie in the ditch by
the roadside till the poor-master comes to get me--and I'll tell
everybody that it's because my own twin sister, with a house and a farm
and money in the bank, turned me out to starve--" A fearful spasm cut
her short. She lay twisted and limp, the whites of her eyes showing
between the lids.
"Good God, she's gone!" cried Paul, running to the bed.
I was aware that the woman in the doorway had relaxed her frozen
immobility and was between Paul and me as we rubbed the thin, icy hands
and forced brandy between the placid lips. We all three thought her dead
or dying, and labored over her with the frightened thankfulness for one
another's living presence which always marks that dreadful moment. But
even as we fanned and rubbed, and cried out to one another to open the
windows and to bring water, the blue lips moved to a ghostly whisper:
"Em, listen----" The old woman went back to the nickname of their common
youth. "Em--your Ev'leen Ann--tried to drown herself--in the Mill Brook
last night.... That's what decided me--to----" And then we were plunged
into another desperate struggle with Death for the possession of the
battered old habitation of the dauntless soul before us.
"Isn't there any hot water in the house?" cried Paul, and "Yes, yes; a
tea-kettle on the stove!" answered the woman who labored with us. Paul,
divining that she meant the kitchen, fled down-stairs. I stole a look at
Emma Hulett's face as she bent over the sister she had not seen in
thirty years, and I knew that Mrs. Purdon's battle was won. It even
seemed that she had won another skirmish in her never-ending war with
death, for a little warmth began to come back into her hands.
When Paul returned with the tea-kettle, and a hot-water bottle had been
filled, the owner of the house straightened herself, assumed her
rightful position as mistress of the situation, and began to issue
commands. "You git right in the automobile, and go git the doctor," she
told Paul. "That'll be the quickest. She's better now, and your wife and
I can keep her goin' till the doctor gits here."
As Paul left the room she snatched something white from a bureau-drawer,
stripped the worn, patched old cotton nightgown from the skeleton-like
body, and, handling the invalid with a strong, sure touch, slipped on a
soft, woolly outing-flannel wrapper with a curious trimming of zigzag
braid down the front. Mrs. Purdon opened her eyes very slightly, but
shut them again at her sister's quick command, "You lay still, Em'line,
and drink some of this brandy." She obeyed without comment, but after a
pause she opened her eyes again and looked down at the new garment which
clad her. She had that moment turned back from the door of death, but
her first breath was used to set the scene for a return to a decent
decorum.
"You're still a great hand for rick-rack work, Em, I see," she murmured
in a faint whisper. "Do you remember how surprised Aunt Su was when you
made up a pattern?"
"Well, I hadn't thought of it for quite some time," returned Miss
Hulett, in exactly the same tone of everyday remark. As she spoke she
slipped her arm under the other's head and poked the pillow to a more
comfortable shape. "Now you lay perfectly still," she commanded in the
hectoring tone of the born nurse; "I'm goin' to run down and make you up
a good hot cup of sassafras tea."
I followed her down into the kitchen and was met by the same refusal to
be melodramatic which I had encountered in Ev'leen Ann. I was most
anxious to know what version of my extraordinary morning I was to give
out to the world, but hung silent, positively abashed by the cool
casualness of the other woman as she mixed her brew. Finally, "Shall I
tell 'Niram--What shall I say to Ev'leen Ann? If anybody asks me----" I
brought out with clumsy hesitation.
At the realization that her reserve and family pride were wholly at the
mercy of any report I might choose to give, even my iron hostess
faltered. She stopped short in the middle of the floor, looked at me
silently, piteously, and found no word.
I hastened to assure her that I would attempt no hateful picturesqueness
of narration. "Suppose I just say that you were rather lonely here, now
that Ev'leen Ann has left you, and that you thought it would be nice to
have your sister come to stay with you, so that 'Niram and Ev'leen Ann
can be married?"
Emma Hulett breathed again. She walked toward the stairs with the
steaming cup in her hand. Over her shoulder she remarked, "Well, yes,
ma'am; that would be as good a way to put it as any, I guess."
'Niram and Ev'leen Ann were standing up to be married. They looked very
stiff and self-conscious, and Ev'leen Ann was very pale. 'Niram's big
hands, bent in the crook of a man who handles tools, hung down by his
new black trousers. Ev'leen Ann's strong fingers stood out stiffly from
one another. They looked hard at the minister and repeated after him in
low and meaningless tones the solemn and touching words of the marriage
service. Back of them stood the wedding company, in freshly washed and
ironed white dresses, new straw hats, and black suits smelling of
camphor. In the background among the other elders, stood Paul and Horace
and I--my husband and I hand in hand; Horace twiddling the black ribbon
which holds his watch, and looking bored. Through the open windows into
the stuffiness of the best room came an echo of the deep organ note of
midsummer.
"Whom God hath joined together----" said the minister, and the epitome
of humanity which filled the room held its breath--the old with a wonder
upon their life-scarred faces, the young half frightened to feel the
stir of the great wings soaring so near them.
Then it was all over. 'Niram and Ev'leen Ann were married, and the rest
of us were bustling about to serve the hot biscuit and coffee and
chicken salad, and to dish up the ice-cream. Afterward there were no
citified refinements of cramming rice down the necks of the departing
pair or tying placards to the carriage in which they went away. Some of
the men went out to the barn and hitched up for 'Niram, and we all went
down to the gate to see them drive off. They might have been going for
one of their Sunday afternoon "buggy-rides" except for the wet eyes of
the foolish women and girls who stood waving their hands in answer to
the flutter of Ev'leen Ann's handkerchief as the carriage went down the
hill.
We had nothing to say to one another after they left, and began soberly
to disperse to our respective vehicles. But as I was getting into our
car a new thought suddenly struck me.
"Why," I cried, "I never thought of it before! However in the world did
old Mrs. Purdon know about Ev'leen Ann--that night?"
Horace was pulling at the door, which was badly adjusted and shut hard.
He closed it with a vicious slam "_I_ told her," he said crossly.
HOW "FLINT AND FIRE" STARTED AND GREW
BY
DOROTHY CANFIELD
I feel very dubious about the wisdom or usefulness of publishing the
following statement of how one of my stories came into existence. This
is not on account of the obvious danger of seeming to have illusions
about the value of my work, as though I imagined one of my stories was
inherently worth in itself a careful public analysis of its growth; the
chance, remote as it might be, of usefulness to students, would outweigh
this personal consideration. What is more important is the danger that
some student may take the explanation as a recipe or rule for the
construction of other stories, and I totally disbelieve in such rules or
recipes.
As a rule, when a story is finished, and certainly always by the time it
is published, I have no recollection of the various phases of its
development. In the case of "Flint and Fire", an old friend chanced to
ask me, shortly after the tale was completed, to write out for his
English classes, the stages of the construction of a short story. I set
them down, hastily, formlessly, but just as they happened, and this
gives me a record which I could not reproduce for any other story I ever
wrote. These notes are here published on the chance that such a truthful
record of the growth of one short story, may have some general
suggestiveness for students.