The twilight was so deep now that he shipped his oars in the gloom and
gave himself back to the past.
He was in another twilight, only it was the counter twilight between
star quench and sun blaze.
Two small boys, himself one of them; his sworn chum, Luke Mellows, the
other, meeting in the silent street just as the day tide seeped in from
the east and submerged the stars.
Joel had tied a string to his big toe and hung it from his window. Luke
had done the same. They were not permitted to explode alarm clocks and
ruin the last sweets of sleep in either home. So they had agreed that
the first to wake should rise and dress with stealth, slip down the dark
stairs of his house, into the starlit street and over to the other's
home and pull the toe cord.
On this morning Luke had been the earlier out, and his triumphant yanks
had dragged Joel feet first from sleep, and from the bed and almost
through the window. Joel had howled protests in shrill whispers down
into the gloom, and then, untying his outraged toe, had limped into his
clothes and so to the yard.
The two children, in the huge world disputed still by the night, had
felt an awe of the sky and the mysteries going on there. The envied man
who ran up the streets of evenings lighting the gas street lamps was
abroad again already with his little ladder and his quick insect-like
motions; only, now he was turning out the lights, just as a similar but
invisible being was apparently running around heaven and putting out the
stars.
Joel remembered saying: "I wonder if they're turnin' off the stars up
there to save gas too."
Luke did not like the joke. He said, using the word "funny" solemnly:
"It's funny to see light putting out light. The stars will be there all
day, but we won't be able to see 'em for the sun."
(Wixon thought of this now, and of how Shakespeare's fame had drowned
out so many stars. A man had told him that there were hundreds of great
writers in Shakespeare's time that most people never heard of.)
As the boys paused, the air quivered with a hoarse _moo_! as of a
gigantic cow bellowing for her lost calf. It was really a steamboat
whistling for the bridge to open the draw and let her through to the
south with her raft of logs.
Both of the boys called the boat by name, knowing her voice: "It's the
Bessie May Brown!" They started on a run to the bluff overlooking the
river, their short legs making a full mile of the scant furlong.
Often as Joel had come out upon the edge of that bluff on his
innumerable journeys to the river for fishing, swimming, skating, or
just staring, it always smote him with the thrill Balboa must have felt
coming suddenly upon the Pacific.
On this morning there was an unwonted grandeur: the whole vault of the
sky was curdled with the dawn, a reef of solid black in the west turning
to purple and to amber and finally in the east to scarlet, with a few
late planets caught in the meshes of the sunlight and trembling like dew
on a spider's web.
And the battle in the sky was repeated in the sea-like river with all of
the added magic of the current and the eddies and the wimpling rushes of
the dawn winds.
On the great slopes were houses and farmsteads throwing off the night
and in the river the Bessie May Brown, her red light and her green light
trailing scarfs of color on the river, as she chuffed and clanged her
bell, and smote the water with her stern wheel. In the little steeple of
the pilot house a priest guided her and her unwieldy acre of logs
between the piers of the bridge whose lanterns were still belatedly
aglow on the girders and again in echo in the flood.
Joel filled his little chest with a gulp of morning air and found no
better words for his rhapsody than: "Gee, but ain't it great?"
To his amazement, Luke, who had always been more sensitive than he,
shook his head and turned away.
"Gosh, what do you want for ten cents?" Joel demanded, feeling called
upon to defend the worthiness of the dawn.
Luke began to cry. He dropped down on his own bare legs in the weeds and
twisted his face and his fists in a vain struggle to fight off unmanly
grief.
Joel squatted at his side and insisted on sharing the secret; and
finally Luke forgot the sense of family honor long enough to yield to
the yearning for company in his misery.
"I was up here at midnight last night, and I don't like this place any
more."
"You didn't come all by yourself? Gee!"
"No, Momma was here too."
"What she bring you out here at a time like that for?"
"She didn't know I was here."
"Didn't know--What she doin' out here, then?"
"She and Poppa had a turble quar'l. I couldn't hear what started it, but
finely it woke me up and I listened, and Momma was cryin' and Poppa was
swearin'. And at last Momma said: 'Oh, I might as well go and throw
myself in the river,' and Poppa said: 'Good riddance of bad rubbish!'
and Momma stopped cryin' and she says: 'All right!' in an awful kind of
a voice, and I heard the front door open and shut."
"Gee!"
"Well, I jumped into my shirt and pants and slid down the rain pipe and
ran along the street, and there sure enough was Momma walkin' as fast as
she could.
"I was afraid to go near her. I don't know why, but I was. So I just
sneaked along after her. The street was black as pitch 'cep' for the
street lamps, and as she passed ever' one I could see she was still
cryin' and stumblin' along like she was blind.
"It was so late we didn't meet anybody at tall, and there wasn't a light
in a single house except Joneses, where somebody was sick, I guess. But
they didn't pay any attention, and at last she came to the bluff here.
And I follered. When she got where she could see the river she stopped
and stood there, and held her arms out like she was goin' to jump off or
fly, or somethin'. The moon was up, and the river was so bright you
could hardly look at it, and Momma stood there with her arms 'way out
like she was on the Cross, or something.
"I was so scared and so cold I shook like I had a chill. I was afraid
she could hear my teeth chatterin', so I dropped down in the weeds and
thistles to keep her from seein' me. It was just along about here too.
"By and by Momma kind of broke like somebody had hit her, then she began
to cry again and to walk up and down wringin' her hands. Once or twice
she started to run down the bluff and I started to foller; but she
stopped like somebody held her back, and I sunk down again.
"Then, after a long time, she shook her head like she couldn't, and
turned back. She walked right by me and didn't see me. I heard her
whisperin': 'I can't, I can't. My pore children!'
"Then she went back down the street and me after her wishin' I could go
up and help her. But I was afraid she wouldn't want me to know, and I
just couldn't go near her."
Luke wept helplessly at the memory of his poltroonery, and Joel tried
roughly to comfort him with questions.
"Gee! I don't blame you. I don't guess I could have either. But what was
it all about, d'you s'pose?"
"I don't know. Momma went to the front door, and it was locked, and she
stood a long, long while before she could bring herself to knock. Then
she tapped on it soft like. And by and by Poppa opened the door and
said: 'Oh, you're back, are you?" Then he turned and walked away, and
she went in.
"I could have killed him with a rock, if she hadn't shut the door. But
all I could do was to climb back up the rain pipe. I was so tired and
discouraged I nearly fell and broke my neck. And I wisht I had have. But
there wasn't any more quar'l, only Momma kind of whimpered once or
twice, and Poppa said: 'Oh, for God's sake, shut up and lea' me sleep. I
got to open the store in the mornin', ain't I?' I didn't do much
sleepin', and I guess that's why I woke up first."
That was all of the story that Joel could learn. The two boys were shut
out by the wall of grown-up life. Luke crouched in bitter moodiness,
throwing clods of dirt at early grasshoppers and reconquering his lost
dignity. At last he said: "If you ever let on to anybody what I told
you----"
"Aw, say!" was Joel's protest. His knighthood as a sworn chum was put in
question and he was cruelly hurt.
Luke took assurance from his dismay and said in a burst of fury: "Aw, I
just said that! I know you won't tell. But just you wait till I can earn
a pile of money. I'll take Momma away from that old scoundrel so fast
it'll make his head swim!" Then he slumped again. "But it takes so
doggone long to grow up, and I don't know how to earn anything."
Then the morning of the world caught into its irresistible vivacity the
two boys in the morning of their youth, and before long they had
forgotten the irremediable woes of their elders, as their elders also
forgot the problems of national woes and cosmic despair.
The boys descended the sidelong path at a jog, brushing the dew and
grasshoppers and the birds from the hazel bushes and the papaw shrubs,
and scaring many a dewy rabbit from cover.
At the bottom of the bluff the railroad track was the only road along
the river, and they began the tormenting passage over the uneven ties
with cinders everywhere for their bare feet. They postponed as long as
they could the delight of breakfast, and then, sitting on a pile of
ties, made a feast of such hard-boiled eggs, cookies, cheese, and
crackers as they had been able to wheedle from their kitchens the night
before.
Their talk that morning was earnest, as boys' talk is apt to be. They
debated their futures as boys are apt to do. Being American boys, two
things characterized their plans: one, that the sky itself was the only
limit to their ambitions; the other, that they must not follow their
fathers' businesses.
Joel's father was an editor; Luke's kept a hardware store.
So Joel wanted to go into trade and Luke wanted to be a writer.
The boys wrangled with the shrill intensity of youth. A stranger passing
might have thought them about to come to blows. But they were simply
noisy with earnestness. Their argument was as unlike one of the debates
in Vergil's Eclogues as possible. It was an antistrophe of twang and
drawl:
"Gee, you durned fool, watcha want gointa business for?"
"Durned fool your own self! Watcha wanta be a writer for?"
Then they laughed wildly, struck at each other in mock hostility, and
went on with their all-day walk, returning at night too weary for books
or even a game of authors or checkers.
Both liked to read, and they were just emerging from the stratum of Old
Cap Collier, Nick Carter, the Kid-Glove Miner, and the Steam Man into
"Ivanhoe," "Scottish Chiefs," and "Cudjo's Cave." They had passed out of
the Oliver Optic, Harry Castlemon, James Otis era.
Joel Wixon read for excitement; Luke Mellows for information as to the
machinery of authorship.
Young as they were, they went to the theatre--to the op'ra house, which
never housed opera.
Joel went often and without price, since his father, being an editor,
had the glorious prerogative of "comps." Perhaps that was why Luke
wanted to be a writer.
Mr. Mellows, as hard as his own ware, did not believe in the theatre and
could not be bullied or wept into paying for tickets. But Luke became a
program boy and got in free, a precious privilege he kept secret as long
as possible, and lost as soon as his father noticed his absences from
home on play nights. Then he was whipped for wickedness and ordered to
give up the theatre forever.
Perhaps Luke would never suffer again so fiercely as he suffered from
that denial. It meant a free education and a free revel in the frequent
performances of Shakespeare, and of repertory companies that gave such
triumphs as "East Lynne" and "Camille," not to mention the road
companies that played the uproarious "Peck's Bad Boy," "Over the Garden
Wall," "Skipped by the Light of the Moon," and the Charles Hoyt
screamers.
The theatre had been a cloud-veiled Olympus of mystic exultations, of
divine terrors, and of ambrosial laughter. But it was a bad influence.
Mr. Mellows's theories of right and wrong were as simple and sharp as
his own knives: whatever was delightful and beautiful and laughterful
was manifestly wicked, God having plainly devised the pretty things as
baits for the devil's fishhooks.
Joel used to tell Luke about the plays he saw, and the exile's heart
ached with envy. They took long walks up the river or across the bridge
into the wonderlands that were overflowed in high-water times. And they
talked always of their futures. Boyhood was a torment, a slavery. Heaven
was just over the twenty-first birthday.
Joel got his future, all but the girl he planned to take with him up the
grand stairway of the palace he foresaw. Luke missed his future, and his
girl and all of his dreams.
Between the boys and their manhood stood, as usual, the fathers, strange
monsters, ogres, who seemed to have forgotten, at the top of the
beanstalk, that they had once been boys themselves down below.
After the early and unceasing misunderstandings as to motives and
standards of honor and dignity came the civil war over education.
Wouldn't you just know that each boy would get the wrong dad? Joel's
father was proud of Luke and not of Joel. He had printed some of Luke's
poems in the paper and called him a "precocious" native genius. Joel's
father wished that his boy could have had his neighbor's boy's gift. It
was his sorrow that Joel had none of the artistic leanings that are
called "gifts." He regretfully gave him up as one who would not carry on
the torch his father had set out with. He could not force his child to
be a genius, but he insisted that Joel should have an education. The
editor had found himself handicapped by a lack of the mysterious
enrichment that a tour through college gives the least absorbent mind.
He was determined to provide it for his boy, though Joel felt that every
moment's delay in leaping into the commercial arena was so much delay in
arriving at gladiatorial eminence.
Luke's father had had even less education than Editor Wixon, but he was
proud of it. He had never gone far in the world, but he was one of those
men who are automatically proud of everything they do and derive even
from failure or humiliation a savage conceit.
He made Luke work in his store or out of it as a delivery boy during
vacations from such school terms as the law required. He saw the value
of education enough to make out bills and write dunning letters. "Books"
to him meant the doleful books that bookkeepers keep.
As for any further learning, he thought it a waste of time, a kind of
wantonness.
He felt that Providence had intentionally selected a cross for him in
the son who was wicked and foolish enough to want to read stories and
see plays and go to school for years instead of going right into
business.
The thought of sending his boy through a preparatory academy and college
and wasting his youth on nonsense was outrageous. It maddened him to
have the boy plead for such folly. He tried in vain to whip it out of
him.
Joel's ideas of education were exactly those of Mr. Mellows, but he did
not like Mr. Mellows because of the anguish inflicted on Luke. Joel used
to beg Luke to run away from home. But that was impracticable for two
reasons: Luke was not of the runaway sort, but meek, and shy, and
obedient to a fault.
Besides, while a boy can run away from school, he cannot easily run away
to school. If he did, he would be sent back, and if he were not sent
back, how was he to pay for his "tooition" and his board and books and
clo'es?
It was Luke's influence that sent Joel away to boardin' school. He so
longed to go himself that Joel felt it foolish to deny himself the
godlike opportunity. So Luke went to school vicariously in Joel, as he
got his other experiences vicariously in books.
At school Joel found so much to do outside of his classes that he grew
content to go all the way. There was a glee club to manage, also an
athletic club; a paper to solicit ads and subscriptions for; class
officers to be elected, with all the delights of political
maneuvering--a world in little to run with all the solemnity and
competition of the adult cosmos. So Joel was happy and lucky and
successful in spite of himself.
The day after Joel took train up the river to his academy Luke took the
position his father secured for him and entered the little back room
where the Butterly Bottling Works kept its bookkeepers on high stools.
The Butterly soda pop, ginger ales, and other soft drinks were triumphs
of insipidity, and their birch beer sickened the thirstiest child. But
the making and the marketing and even the drinking of them were matters
of high emprise compared to the keeping of the books.
One of the saddest, sweetest, greatest stories ever written is Ellis'
Pigsispigs Butler's fable of the contented little donkey that went round
and round in the mill and thought he was traveling far. But that donkey
was blind and had no dreams denied.
Luke Mellows was a boy, a boy that still felt his life in every limb, a
boy devoured with fantastic ambitions. He had a genius within that
smothered and struggled till it all but perished unexpressed. It lived
only enough to be an anguish. It hurt him like a hidden, unmentioned
ingrowing toe nail that cuts and bleeds and excruciates the fleet member
it is meant to protect.
When Joel came home for his first vacation, with the rush of a young
colt that has had a good time in the corral but rejoices in the old
pastures, his first cry was for Luke. When he learned where he was, he
hurried to the Bottling Works. He was turned away with the curt remark
that employees could not be seen in business hours. In those days there
were no machines to simplify and verify the bookkeeper's treadmill task,
and business hours were never over.
Joel left word at Luke's home for Luke to call for him the minute he was
free. He did not come that evening, nor the next. Joel was hurt more
than he dared admit.
It was Sunday afternoon before Luke came round, a different Luke, a
lean, wan, worn-out shred of a youth. His welcome was sickly.
"Gee-min-_ent_-ly!" Joel roared. "I thought you was mad at me about
something. You never came near."
"I wanted to come," Luke croaked, "but nights, I'm too tired to walk
anywheres, and besides, I usually have to go back to the offus."
"Gee, that's damn tough," said Joel, who had grown from darn to damn.
Thinking to light Luke up with a congenial theme, Joel heroically
forbore to describe the marvels of academy life, and asked: "What you
been readin' lately? A little bit of everything, I guess, hey?"
"A whole lot of nothin'," Luke sighed. "I got no strength for readin' by
the time I shut my ledgers. I got to save my eyes, you know. The light's
bad in that back room."
"What you been writin', then?"
"Miles of figures and entries about one gross bottles lemon, two gross
sassaprilla, one gross empties returned."
"No more poetry?"
"No more nothin'."
Joel was obstinately cheerful. "Well, you been makin' money, anyways;
that's something."
"Yeh. I buy my own shoes and clo'es now and pay my board and lodgin' at
home. And paw puts the two dollars that's left into the savings bank. I
got nearly thirty dollars there now. I'll soon have enough for a winter
soot and overcoat."
"Gee, can't you go buggy ridin' even with Kit?"
"I could if I had the time and the price, and if her maw wasn't so
poorly that Kitty can't get away. I go over there Sunday afternoons
sometimes, but her maw always hollers for her to come in. She's afraid
to be alone. Kit's had to give up the high school account of her maw."
"How about her goin' away to be a great singer?"
Luke grinned at the insanity of such childish plans. "Oh, that's all
off. Kit can't even practice any more. It makes her mother nervous. And
Kit had to give up the church choir too. You'd hardly know her. She
cries a lot about lookin' so scrawny. O' course I tell her she's pirtier
than ever, but that only makes her mad. She can't go to sociables or
dances or picnics, and if she could she's got no clo'es. We don't have
much fun together; just sit and mope, and then I say: 'Well, guess I
better mosey on home,' and she says: 'All right; see you again next
Sunday, I s'pose. G'by.'"
The nightingale annoyed the owl and was hushed, and the poet rimed sums
in a daybook.
The world waited for them and needed them without knowing it; it would
have rewarded them with thrilled attention and wealth and fame. But
silence was their portion, silence and the dark and an ache that had no
voice.