From _The Pictorial Review_.
I
“No,” he said, looking down upon a lamp which was being lit, “it is just
that Ambrose Clark wants to be happy. That’s why I got him the chance to
light lamps. I thought it might help to make him happy.”
“Happy!” scoffed one. “He’s drunk--perpetually drunk!”
“Nevertheless,” objected the Doctor, “he is looking for happiness.”
“Why doesn’t Ambrose get it then and stop--” began a young married
woman, the Doctor’s daughter-in-law.
“And stop sun-chasing?” completed the Doctor. “Because so often
happiness is hard to find and still harder to keep.”
Outside a child stumbled along as fast as she could, clinging to her
father’s hand and stubbing now here and now there, in the rough places
of the road, the ragged toe of one little boot. They traveled rapidly
from street lamp to street lamp and left behind them scores of flames
pale in the yellow evening sunlight which streamed over the village.
But when Pearl reached the outskirts of the town she held back, crying
out, “Father, this is most as far as I can go with you, for mother
doesn’t know.”
“Yes, yes,” mumbled the Sun Chaser, “very far, very far.”
“Father, what makes you shake that way now? Father, can’t you stop here
a minute before you chase the sun?”
“I’m eager to get on--to get on--to get on.”
“But the sun’s right up there, Father.”
“Going after it--going after it--sun travels very fash--nobody knows how
fash--fasher than I can get the lamps lighted--a hot race--all day--all
night--forever! Going after it, Pearl--that’s your name, Pearl?”
“Yes, Father.”
The child looked up at him wonderingly: there could be only one
explanation of so many strange phenomena and that was sun-chasing.
“Does your foot pain you very much again?” she asked.
“Bad pain,” he mumbled.
“Then, Father, what _does_ make you go after the sun?”
He shot a suspicious glance at Pearl clinging with both little hands to
one of his. “I--I am hungry,” he stuttered.
Embarrassed, the child flushed. She ground the toe of the right boot
around and around in the dirt. On the right boot the brass tip was gone
but on the left it was still bright and shining,--the one bit of
solidarity in what otherwise was about to go the way of all shoe
leather.
Ambrose pointed to it. “Give it to me, Pearl,” he said.
It shone like a coin, looked like a coin, maybe it could be passed as a
coin.
“No, no, Father,” she replied, “don’t be silly!”
Hunger and pain, hunger and pain and failure, she thought, these were
the lot of her father. Then one hand dropped from her father’s and
slipped to her pocket. Slowly she drew her hand out, in it a coin.
“Father,” she said, holding it up to him, “I guess you won’t be hungry
any more, will you?”
The Sun Chaser snatched the coin greedily. This was what put wings even
to a wooden-shod lame foot and double wings to a leather-shod.
“I must be going--going--going!” he cried.
And was gone.
Pearl watched him fleeing, at times almost
flying,--hippity--hippity--hop after the sun, his long tawny hair blown
out by the wind, his wild laughter echoed and re-echoed from the
mountains towards which he fled. He was calling, calling, calling, and
she watched until she could no longer see the burnished light on her
father’s hair or the distortion of the fleeing back.
Then the child turned towards the pale lighted lamps and went homewards
in the dusk. Somehow she had gathered the impression that sun-chasing
was inseparably part of a man’s work and that it made men suffer, and
the impression was terrible to her.