[43] Time and time again, I’ve heard my Mother tell the story of
Davey running through the rainbow, that prophetic evening that Father
took the boy to task for his habit of the slow decision. A trait
that ultimately was to become his surest asset, this ability of his
to think slowly and surely toward a conclusion, and then act with
leaping swiftness. I have it from my brother first-hand that although
he signed the Air Lane bill, then known as Schuyler’s Cyclone Act, at
the conclusion of his last term in Congress, actually he had given the
matter six years of detailed premeditation.
[Illustration: Decorative Image]
_Chapter Twenty-seven_
All that evening, long after the heifers were in, and the last bolt
drawn, and Mathilda’s last cup washed, and the dishpan set gleaming
against the drain-board, Henry sat in his room, as if waiting. The
sound of his parents moving about their adjoining room at the business
of going to bed, died down, and then the drone of their fitful remarks
to each other, falling light as rain upon the silence, before they
dropped off to sleep.
Every so often, Henry’s pipe, on its way to his mouth, paused, as if to
listen. Or suddenly, he slid forward on the old leather Morris chair
to cock an ear. The student-lamp had a slow hiss to it that no amount
of puttering with the wick would correct. To listen for a creak on the
stairway, you had to strain a bit through that soft commotion.
After a while Henry fitted back his copy of _The Martyrdom of Man_ into
its familiar place on his bookshelf, lowered the wick until its flame
slipped into its slot, and then dragged his heavy Morris chair over
toward the open window.
An April night, with the cool, filtered taste to it of spring water,
lay over the moonless scene. A dark night, but not black enough to
erase silhouettes. A soft, lovely, motionless night, dotted with
myriads of small stars, and through it, like an arpeggio scale, the
minute, silver, hurrying sounds of a runnel of spring water animated by
recent rains.
After a while, the sole light on the landscape, one that burned in the
remote window of a shanty-dweller named Joe Batch, passed out into
the darkness, and then Henry did what, for him, was an unprecedented
thing.[44]
He tiptoed out into the hall, and with his slippers hanging off at the
heels, wound up the ladder that led up into Dave’s room.
The candle in that attic of slants and shadows was guttering low in its
green bottle; and, fully dressed on his pallet, with his cheek down
against the page of an open volume of _Henry Esmond_, and his eyes wide
awake but staring off, lay David.
He sprang up at the appearance of his brother’s head above the ladder,
shamefaced for no reason he could have formulated. Teddy leaped, too,
from his doze, bellying across the floor in a recognizing frenzy of
wagging tail.
“It’s hot up here,” said Henry. “Whew!” and walked over to the
undersized window and threw up the sash. The gust of it blew out the
candle into a darkness for which they both seemed grateful.
“I guess I’d ’a’ been coming down to you soon, Henry,” said the boy and
moved along, so that they both might sit on the side of the cot.
It was only the second or third time Henry had ever been in that room.
They sat silently, Henry stooping away from the rough boards of the
slant ceiling.
“Down, Teddy!”
“What’s what, Dave?” said Henry, and caught up one knee between his
hands and began to rock.
“Why—that’s just what I dunno,” said Dave, and gulped so, that in the
smooth, dark silence, it was almost a click.
“Feeling well?”
“Sure.”
“Any more those headaches?”
“Just kinda. Some days.”
“Often?”
“N-no.”
“Bad?”
“N-no.”
“Today?”
“Nope.”
“Eye-doctor.”
“Aw!”
“What Father meant this evening, Dave, only he’s got a rotten way of
saying it, is——”
“I know.”
“I figure, Dave, that in your case, you’re just a little slow off the
trigger. Am I right?”
“You see, Henry—I can’t say it to Father—but what’s the use a fellow
choosing something to do, just because he’s got to be doing something?”
“Something in that.”
“Now, you just take the way the bees work it out in that book you gave
me about them by that French fellow.”
“Maeterlinck.”
“And the ants in that other fellow’s book.”
“Wheeler.”
“You don’t catch one single one of those chaps down in the bee-world
and the ant-world doing something just to be doing. No, sir. You don’t
catch a worker in bee-town putting his bee-shoulder to the wheel,
unless he knows that wheel’s going to turn something. A fellow’s got to
have his eye on building up something—even if it’s only a honeycomb.
Say, Henry, you know what? This month’s _Farm Journal’s_ got a story
in about bee-raising—maybe if I was to try my hand at that——”
“Yesterday, it was ovibos-raising, wasn’t it?”
“Yeh! That fellow Stefansson you gave me to read. _Northward Course of
Empire._ That’s what I mean, Henry! Just the name of that book says
what I mean. What’s the use sitting in a cage in somebody’s bank, or
keeping count of somebody’s Holsteins, or raising a little old patch of
alfalfa, when there—when there’s whole empires lying about us, waiting
for men; and new worlds that the airship is going to link onto us, so
that the North Pole isn’t even North any more. You know what, Henry?
That land up there isn’t dead. Hundreds and thousands of miles of it.
Fellows have lived off that land up there for years, without having any
provisions with them. That means there’s whole new worlds lying around
us. Don’t it? Funny everybody don’t get excited about it——”
“Well?”
“Well—well—like it says in one of the biologies, man’s pro-duc-tiv-ity
of the soil has got to keep pace with his fertility of the soil. See?
Know what I mean? I’ve worked it out. It’s thisaway.”
“This way.”
“Thisaway.”
“This way.”
“This way. Well, take when a country like ours gets too many people
in it—well, the northward course of empire means that country up
there can be used for growing more meat and more wheat to feed the
over-population—see what I mean?—what’s the use fiddling around in a
clerk’s cage, when—when there’s empires lying around asleep and waiting
to be worked up.”
“Well? Go on.”
“There’s nowhere to go, Henry. That’s the trouble. A fellow just
thinks and thinks, and then—he’s so busy thinking where to begin—he
don’t begin—at all.”
“Doesn’t——”
“Doesn’t.”
“Henry, why did you give me that book called Spencer’s _First
Principles_?”
“To make you think.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“Not as he exists in Testaments.”
“As he exists in these here _First Principles_?”
“Does he exist there?”
“Sure he does. Who made the First Principles?”
“I like your looking at it like that.”
“Was Ingersoll a great preacher?”
“A great orator.”
“Who was a great preacher?”
“Demosthenes.”
“But he couldn’t preach. He had to have a stone in his mouth.”
“His wisdom percolated through the stone, and even the stone heads of
his public.”
“You know what? A good way to make people listen to what you’ve got to
say to them, is to be a preacher.”
“Aha! _Now_ it’s the Church! This is the era of the decline of the
Church and the rise of the State. Don’t climb a sinking ship.”
“You can’t ever sink God.”
“Wait and see what happens when human beings attain the perfect mind.”
“Then they’ll be God themselves.”
“Exactly.”
“I believe in God, Henry.”
“Of course you do. Even when you jump the track, your trolley stays on.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Up there, in the gloom of the room that came down on both sides like
a book closing, they sat side by side on the edge of the cot, Henry
hugging his knee and rocking, Teddy stretched flat on the strip of
matting beneath the window, and the cool, washed night-air coming in
boldly.
It was a habit of these two to sit in silence, out into which their
thoughts could creep, timidly at first, then boldly, like mice at night.
“What’s the matter, boy?”
“Huh? Why?”
“You’re sighing like an exhausted pipe.”
“Roll over, Teddy. It’s him, snoring.”
“Oh!”
“Henry?”
“Yes?”
“Were you ever—kinda licked?”
“I’ve been licked from the start, I guess, Dave. In a way you’ll
probably never know anything about.”
“Shelley, the poet, died young. Did you know that? In a boat. Bay of
Naples. Sad—and grand—thataway.”
“That way. M-m-m. Not my style. The advantages of dying in bed can’t be
overestimated.”
“Have you ever thought, Henry—is life worth living?”
“Depends a good deal, I guess, upon the—liver.”
“Y’know, if it wasn’t for Mother and Father, and you and Bek, of
course, ’n’ all—it would be sad for them. Gee! But I don’t know as I’m
so crazy about living. I could snuff out just like that!”
“Well, taking it all in all, guess there’s pretty much to be said on
both sides.”
“You’re laughing.”
“Forsooth, no!”
“Well, I don’t expect anybody to understand——”
“Who is she?”
“How did you know?”
“I’m like that, sometimes. Intuitive.”
“Has anybody——”
“Nobody.”
“Has Claire?”
“I tell you, nobody.”
“Then how——”
“Oh, after a fellow has lived as long as I have, he comes to know a few
things for himself.”
“You see, Henry, I wouldn’t mind it so terribly—yes, maybe I would, but
maybe I wouldn’t, if it wasn’t one of those patent-leather lizards like
him. That’s what’s eating me. His walking down Tallahassee Street with
her every day.”
“Patent-leather lizard like whom?”
“Don’t you know?”
“How the dickens should I——”
“Kenneth Chipman.”
“What’s the matter with Kenneth? Nice enough fellow s’far as I know.
Son of as nice a fellow and as good a lawyer as this county boasts.”
“He’s a lizard. Tea-hound. Sits in the St. Charles Hotel any Saturday
afternoon around four, and drinks it with girls, with his little finger
sticking out off the cup.”
“What in Heaven’s name——”
“I don’t care what he is, so long as he doesn’t hook his arm into hers
walking along Tallahassee. Guess I’m what you call a single-track
fellow, Henry. Can’t think of anything else but—but his walking down
Tallahassee thataway—what’s the use of anything—with his walking down
Tallahassee thataway.”
“Sounds like an acute case of the girl. Who is she?”
“You—don’t—know——”
“Half-dozen nice kind of girls hereabouts that you might get smitten
with.”
“You—mean—you don’t know—everything?”
“Of course not, except a curl on a neck or a pair of blue eyes could be
responsible for er—a—well, for your acute—er—a....”
“You’re laughing at me!”
“No, no, David!”
“You are! I can feel you—shake!”
“Well, if I am, the joke’s on me.”
“What joke?”
“Life.”
“It’s not like I was a moonstruck fellow, with eyes for every girl.
She’s not like other girls.”
“I’m sure of that.”
“I—I’m not like other fellows.”
“I’m sure—of that——”
“You _are_ laughing.”
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“With me, Henry—oh, I know how fellows get moonstruck. Fellow can’t
help hearing. The boys. The way, they talk—around the barns. Girls.
Fellows and girls. I’m not thataway. I hate that—talk. Ugh! There’s
only one girl I could ever want to—to—to—touch, Henry. I—oughtn’t say
it, I guess—but—I do want to touch her beautifulness, Henry. To be the
first—the only—is that rotten?”
“It’s the soundest thing in life.”
“Gosh—I—just do! Other fellows get moonstruck. I’m not like them. With
me, it’s just Dora. Always!”
“Ah, Dora, old Tark’s daughter! That does complicate things. Our Old
Gentleman and he have about as much use for each other as two cocks in
a pit.”
“That’s nothing to Dora and me. Nothing’s nothing.”
“I see,” said Henry gravely, fumbling to relight his pipe, the match,
in that fitful second, revealing the face of young David smeared with
strain and pallor.
“She’s kinda outgrown me now, Hen. That’s the trouble. I don’t belong
to the Centralia crowd that she’s gone to school with—and then that
dancing-school business. We changed schools and Sunday-schools so
long ago. She’s the prettiest little thing. If Kenneth gets Dora,
he—I—dunno. I just dunno——”
For an overwhelmingly difficult moment, Dave’s tussle was chiefly with
his Adam’s-apple, the puffing of Henry’s pipe helping to make the noise
of the gulping seem less colossal.
“A first love-affair, Dave, is like the measles. A good thing to have
and have over.”
“That’s what you say. You’re—old. But I know me, all right. She’s—why,
she—she’s——”
It was intolerable that a jaw that was about to prick into its first
beard should tremble!
“Where does Dora stand on all this, Dave?”
“She—where would she stand? Where could I—come in with her. Beautiful
her. With her High School and dancing crowd and patent-leather-hair
lizards crawling all around her. Where do I come in? Me? Huh, I don’t
come in at all! Why—I haven’t even seen her, face to face, since—since
one morning in her barn—I—where do I come in? Not at all.”
“Why?”
“Why do you keep asking me _why_? She don’t know I’m on earth—any more.”
“Ever asked her?”
“Don’t ask a girl that.”
“Why?”
“If you don’t quit asking me ‘why’——”
“Blamed little fool, why don’t you go get your dander up with her,
instead of me?”
“If you—if you don’t quit shaking—if you don’t quit shaking—you’re
laughing—” screamed Dave, suddenly in a low, tight kind of agony, and
hurling himself against the bulk of his brother, landed sobbing there.
Tears that laid him low on the rack of humiliation. Deep, wrenching
sobs that he flung himself down into the mattress to muffle, and then,
because they shamed him intolerably began to beat and try to tussle
with his brother.
“You—what do you know about—about—caring——”
“You’re right, Dave,” said Henry. “I don’t seem to know how to
care—enough. That way. That’s what I meant by being licked. If
I—somehow—cared—more I wouldn’t be missing everything. Quit pounding me
boy!”
“I tell you I can’t live in a world where somebody—else—has her. I
can’t think of anything else. No wonder Father says I’m no good. I want
to do pretty nearly everything there is to be done, and nothing’s worth
doing because—I’m like a fellow that’s bleeding to death, Hen. All the
life’s running out of me—and I don’t care who knows it!”
“Have you talked to Dora?”
“Talked to Dora? What’ll I do? Go to her and say ‘Looka here, you’re
going with a patent-leather lizard if you ask me, but just the same, a
fellow that’s up-and-doing, owns his own flivver and can take care of
you and get you somewhere?’”
“Got to admit that about Ken.”
“Well, I’ll say to her, you drop him for me. I’m a farm-boy on my
father’s place out on Pessimines Lane. Everything that I want to do,
or be, is locked up in my head and can’t get out. But you go and throw
over Kenneth and get yourself engaged to me. That will unlock me and
I’ll start out to be something. That would make a hit with a girl like
Dora, in that gay town-set she’s in, wouldn’t it? A girl that goes to
Saturday-afternoon teas at the St. Charles, and holds out her little
finger from her teacup, I’d make a hit going to her with these calluses
on my hands, and forty cents in my pocket, and saying, ‘Dora, I’m the
fellow.’”
“That’s about the only way you’ll ever be the fellow.”
“What do you mean?”
“Go find out. Maybe you are the fellow. If you aren’t, take your
licking and shut up about it.”
The first light trembled over them, as they sat in the long
after-silence of that. Henry, with his thin legs crossed, sitting on
the edge of the cot and sucking at his cold pipe. Dave on his stomach,
with his feet against the warm fur of Teddy and his eyes on the glimmer
of dawn.