and was surprised in the act, shooting and wounding Enfandin so
seriously he was unable to speak for the weeks before he was finally
returned to Haiti to recuperate or die. He could not have gotten in
touch with me and I was not permitted to see him; the police guard
was doubly zealous to keep him from all contact since he was both an
accredited diplomat and a black man.
I did not know who shot him. It was most unlikely to be anyone
connected with the Grand Army, but I did not know. I could not know.
He _might_ have been shot by Sprovis or George Pondible. Since the
ultimate chain could have led back to me, it did lead back to me. If
this were the Manichaeism of which Enfandin had spoken, I could not
help it
The loss of my chance to escape from the bookstore was the least of my
despair. It seemed to me I was caught by the inexorable, choiceless
circumstance in which Tyss so firmly believed and Enfandin denied. I
could escape neither my guilt nor the surroundings conducive to further
guilt. I could not change destiny.
Was all this merely the self-torture of any introverted young man?
Possibly. I only know that for a long time, long as one in his early
twenties measures time, I lost all interest in life, even dallying with
thoughts of suicide. I put books aside distastefully or, which was
worse, indifferently.
I must have done my work around the store; certainly I recall no
comments from Tyss about it. Neither can I remember anything to
distinguish the succession of days. Obviously I ate and slept; there
were undoubtedly long hours free from utter hopelessness. The details
of those months have simply vanished.
Nor can I say precisely when it was my despair began to lift. I know
that one day—it was cold and the snow was deep on the ground, deep
enough to keep the minibiles off the streets and cause the horse-cars
trouble—I saw a girl walking briskly, red-cheeked, breathing in quick
visible puffs, and my glance was not apathetic. When I returned to the
bookstore I picked up Field Marshal Liddell-Hart’s _Life of General
Pickett_ and opened it to the place where I had abandoned it. In a
moment I was fully absorbed.
Paradoxically, once I was myself again I was no longer the same Hodge
Backmaker. For the first time I was determined to do what I wanted
instead of waiting and hoping events would somehow turn out right for
me. Somehow I was going to free myself from the bookstore and all its
frustrations and evils.
This resolution was reinforced by the discovery that I was exhausting
the volumes around me. The books I sought now were rare and ever more
difficult to find. Innocent of knowledge about academic life I imagined
them ready to hand in any college library.
Nor was I any longer satisfied with the printed word alone. My
friendship with Enfandin had shown me how fruitful a personal,
face-to-face relationship between teacher and student could be, and
it seemed to me such ties could develop into ones between fellow
scholars, a mutual, uncompetitive pursuit of knowledge.
Additionally I wanted to search the real, the original sources:
unpublished manuscripts of participants or onlookers, old diaries and
letters, wills or accountbooks, which might shade a meaning or subtly
change the interpretation of old, forgotten actions.
My problems could be solved ideally by an instructorship at some
college, but how was this to be achieved without the patronage of
a Tolliburr or an Enfandin? I had no credentials worth a second’s
consideration. Though the immigration bars kept out graduates of
foreign universities, no college in the United States would accept a
self-taught young man who had not only little Latin and less Greek,
but no mathematics, languages, or sciences at all. For a long time I
considered possible ways and means, both drab and dramatic; at last,
more in a spirit of whimsical absurdity than sober hope, I wrote out
a letter of application, setting forth the qualifications I imagined
myself to possess, assaying the extent of my learning with a generosity
only ingenuousness could palliate, and outlining the work I projected
for my future. With much care and many revisions I set this composition
in type. It was undoubtedly a foolish gesture, but not having access to
so costly a machine as a typewriter, and not wanting to reveal this by
penning the letters by hand, I resorted to this transparent device.
Tyss picked up one of the copies I struck off and glanced over it. His
expression was critical. “Is it too bad?” I asked despondently.
“You should have used more leading. And lined it up and justified
the lines and eliminated hyphens. Setting type can never be done
mechanically or half-heartedly—that’s why no one yet has been able to
invent a practical typesetting machine. I’m afraid you’ll never make a
passable printer, Hodgins.”
He was concerned only with typesetting, uninterested in the outcome. Or
satisfied, since it was predetermined, that comment was superfluous.
Government mails, never efficient and always expensive, being one of
the favorite victims of holdup men, and pneumatic post limited to local
areas, I dispatched the letters by Wells, Fargo to a comprehensive list
of colleges. I can’t say I then waited for the replies to flow in, for
though I knew the company’s system of heavily armed guards would insure
delivery of my applications, I had little anticipation of any answers.
As a matter of fact I put it pretty well out of my mind, dredging it up
at rarer intervals, always a trifle more embarrassed by my presumption.
It was several months later, toward the end of September, that the
telegram came signed Thomas K Haggerwells. It read, ACCEPT NO OFFER
TILL OUR REPRESENTATIVE EXPLAINS HAGGERSHAVEN.
I hadnt sent a copy of my letter to York, Pennsylvania, where the
telegram had originated, or anywhere near it. I knew of no colleges in
that vicinity. And I had never heard of Mr (or Doctor or Professor)
Haggerwells. I might have thought the message a mean joke, except that
Tyss’s nature didnt run to such humor and no one else knew of the
letters except those to whom they were addressed.
I found no reference to Haggershaven in any of the directories I
consulted, which wasnt too surprising considering the slovenly way
these were put together. I decided that if such a place existed I could
only wait patiently until the “representative,” if there really was
one, arrived.
Tyss having left for the day, I swept a little, dusted some,
straightened a few of the books—any serious attempt to arrange the
stock would have been futile—and took up a recent emendation of
Creasy’s _Fifteen Decisive Battles_ by one Captain Eisenhower.
I was so deep in the good captain’s analysis (he might have made a
respectable strategist himself, given an opportunity) that I heard no
customer enter, sensed no impatient presence. I was only recalled from
my book by a rather sharp, “Is the proprietor in?”
“No maam,” I answered, reluctantly abandoning the page. “He’s out for
the moment. Can I help you?”
My eyes, accustomed to the store’s poor light, had the advantage over
hers, still adjusting from the sunlit street. Secure in my audacity, I
measured her vital femininity, a quality which seemed, if such a thing
is possible, impersonal. There was nothing overtly bold or provocative
about her, though I’m sure my mother would have thinned her lips at the
black silk trousers and the jacket which emphasized the contour of her
breasts. At a time when women used every device to call attention to
their helplessness and consequently their desirability and the implied
need for men to protect them, she carried an air which seemed to say,
Why yes, I am a woman: not furtively or brazenly or incidentally but
primarily; what are you going to do about it?
I recognized a sturdy sensuality as I recognized the fact that she was
bareheaded, almost as tall as I, and rather large-boned; certainly
there was nothing related to me about it. Nor was it connected with
surface attributes; she was not beautiful and still further from being
pretty, though she might have been called handsome in a way. Her hair,
ginger-colored and clubbed low on her neck, waved crisply; her eyes
appeared slate gray. (Later I learned they could vary from pale gray to
blue-green.) The fleshly greediness was betrayed, if at all, only by
the width and set of her lips, and that insolent expression.
She smiled, and I decided I had been quite wrong in thinking her
tone peremptory. “I’m Barbara Haggerwells. I’m looking for a Mr
Backmaker”—she glanced at a slip of paper—“a Hodgins M Backmaker who
evidently uses this as an accommodation address.”
“I’m Hodge Backmaker,” I muttered in despair. “I—I work here.” I was
conscious of not having shaved that morning, that my pants and jacket
did not match, that my shirt was not clean.
I suppose I expected her to say nastily, So I see! or the usual, It
must be fascinating! Instead she said, “I wonder if youve run across
_The Properties of X_ by Whitehead? Ive been trying to get a copy for a
long time.”
“Uh—I.... Is it a mystery story?”
“I’m afraid not. It’s a book on mathematics by a mathematician very
much out of favor. It’s hard to find, I suppose because the author is
bolder than he is tactful.”
So naturally and easily she led me away from my embarrassment and into
talking of books, relieving me of self-consciousness and some of the
mortification in being exposed at my humble job by the “representative”
of the telegram. I admitted deficient knowledge of mathematics and
ignorance of Mr Whitehead though I maintained, accurately, that the
book was not in stock, while she assured me that only a specialist
would have heard of so obscure a theoretician. This made me ask, with
the awe one feels for an expert in an alien field, if she were a
mathematician, to which she replied, “Heavens, no. I’m a physicist. But
mathematics is my tool.”
I looked at her with respect. Anyone, I thought, can read a few books
and set himself up as an historian; to be a physicist means genuine
learning. And I doubted she was much older than I.
She said abruptly, “My father is interested in knowing something about
you.”
I acknowledged this with something between a nod and a bow. She had
been examining and gauging me for the past half hour. “Your father is
Thomas Haggerwells?”
“Haggerwells of Haggershaven,” she confirmed, as though explaining
everything. There was pride in her voice and a hint of superciliousness.
“I’m dreadfully sorry, Miss Haggerwells, but I’m afraid I’m as ignorant
of Haggershaven as of mathematics.”
“I thought you said you’d been reading history. Odd youve come upon no
reference to the Haven in the records of the past seventy-five years.”
I shook my head helplessly. “I suppose my reading has been scattered.”
Her look indicated agreement but not absolution. “Haggershaven is a
college?”
“No. Haggershaven is ... Haggershaven.” She resumed her equanimity,
her air of smiling tolerance. “It’s hardly a college since it has no
student body nor faculty. Rather, both are one at the haven. Anyone
admitted is a scholar or potential scholar anxious to devote himself to
learning. I mean for its own sake. Not many are acceptable.”
She need hardly have added this; it seemed obvious I could not be
one of the elect, even if I hadnt offended her by never having heard
of Haggershaven. I knew I couldnt pass the most lenient of entrance
examinations to ordinary colleges, much less to the dedicated place she
represented.
“There arent any formal requirements for fellowship,” she went on,
“beyond the undertaking to work to full capacity, to pool all knowledge
and hold back none from scholars anywhere, to contribute economically
to the Haven in accordance with decisions of the majority of fellows,
and to vote on questions without consideration of personal gain. There!
That certainly sounds like the stuffiest manifesto delivered this year.”
“It sounds too good to be true.”
“Oh, it’s true enough.” She moved close and I caught the scent of her
hair and skin. “But there’s another side. The haven is neither wealthy
nor endowed. We have to earn our living. The fellows draw no stipend;
they have food, clothes, shelter, whatever books and materials they
need—no unessentials. We often have to leave our own individual work to
do manual labor to bring in food or money for all.”
“Ive read of such communities,” I said enthusiastically. “I thought
they’d all disappeared fifty or sixty years ago.”
“Have you and did you?” she asked contemptuously. “Youll be surprised
to learn that Haggershaven is neither Owenite nor Fourierist. We are
not fanatics nor saviors. We don’t live in phalansteries, practice
group marriage or vegetarianism. Our organization is expedient, subject
to revision, not doctrinaire. Contribution to the common stock is
voluntary and we are not concerned with each other’s private lives.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Haggerwells. I didnt mean to annoy you.”
“It’s all right. Perhaps I’m touchy; all my life Ive seen the squinty
suspiciousness of the farmers all around, sure we were up to something
immoral, or at least illegal. Youve no idea what a prickly armor you
build around yourself when you know that every yokel is cackling,
‘There goes one of them; I bet they ...’ whatever unconventional
practice their imaginations can conceive at the moment. And the
parallel distrust of the respectable schools. Detachedly, the haven may
indeed be a refuge for misfits, but is it necessarily wrong not to fit
into the civilization around us?”
“I’m prejudiced. I certainly havent fitted in myself.”
She didnt answer and I felt I had gone too far in daring an impulsive
identification. Awkwardness made me blurt out further, “Do you ... do
you think there’s any chance Haggershaven would accept me?” Whatever
reserve I’d tried to maintain deserted me; my voice expressed only
childish longing.
“I couldnt say,” she answered primly. “Acceptance or rejection depends
entirely on the vote of the whole fellowship. All I’m here to offer is
train fare. Neither you nor the haven is bound.”
“I’m perfectly willing to be bound,” I said fervently.
“You may not be so rash after a few weeks.”
I was about to reply when Little Aggie—so called to distinguish her
from Fat Aggie who was in much the same trade, but more successful—came
in. Little Aggie supplemented her nocturnal earnings around Astor Place
by begging in the same neighborhood during the day.
“Sorry, Aggie,” I said; “Mr Tyss didnt leave anything for you.”
“Maybe the lady would help a poor working girl down on her luck,” she
suggested, coming close. “My, that’s a pretty outfit you have. Looks
like real silk, too.”
Barbara Haggerwells drew away with anger and loathing on her face.
“No,” she refused sharply. “No, nothing!” She turned to me. “I must be
going. I’ll leave you to entertain your friend.”
“Oh, I’ll go,” said Little Aggie cheerfully, “no need to get in an
uproar. Bye-bye.”
I was frankly puzzled; the puritanical reaction didnt seem consistent.
I would have expected condescending amusement, disdainful tolerance
or even haughty annoyance, but not this furious aversion. “I’m sorry
Little Aggie bothered you. She’s really not a wicked character and she
does have a hard time getting along.”
“I’m sure you must enjoy her company immensely. I’m sorry we can’t
offer similar attractions at the haven.”
Apparently she thought my relations with Aggie were professional.
Even so her attitude was odd. I could hardly flatter myself she
was interested in me as a man, yet her flare-up seemed to indicate
jealousy, a strange kind of jealousy, perhaps like the sensuality I
attributed to her, as though the mere presence of another woman was an
affront.
“Please don’t go yet. For one thing—” I cast around for something
to hold her till I could restore a more favorable impression. “—for
one thing you havent told me how Haggershaven happened to get my
application.”
She gave me a cold, angry look. “Even though we’re supposed to be
cranks, orthodox educators often turn such letters over to us. After
all, they may want to apply themselves someday.”
The picture this suddenly presented, of a serene academic life which
was not so serene and secure after all, but prepared for a way to
escape if necessary, was startling to me. I had taken it for granted
that our colleges, even though they were far inferior to those of other
countries, were stable and sheltered.
When I expressed something of this, she laughed. “Hardly. The
colleges have not only decayed, they have decayed faster than other
institutions. They are mere hollow shells, ruined ornaments of the
past. Instructors spy on each other to curry favor with the trustees
and assure themselves of reappointment when the faculty is out
periodically. Loyalty is the touchstone, but no one knows any more what
the object of loyalty is supposed to be. Certainly it is no longer
toward learning, for that is the least of their concerns.”
She slowly allowed herself to be coaxed back into her previous mood,
and again we talked of books. And now I thought there was a new warmth
in her voice and glance, as though she had won some kind of victory,
but how or over whom there was no indication.
When she left I hoped she was not too prejudiced against me. For myself
I readily admitted it would be easy enough to want her—if one were not
afraid of the humiliations it was in her nature to inflict.
_10._ _THE HOLDUP_
This time I didnt offer Tyss two weeks’ notice. “Well Hodgins, I made
all the appropriate valedictory remarks on a previous occasion, so
I’ll not repeat them, except to say the precision of the script is
extraordinary.”
It seemed to me he was saying in a roundabout way that everything was
for the best. For the first time I saw Tyss as slightly pathetic rather
than sinister; extreme pessimism and vulgar optimism evidently met,
like his circular time. I smiled indulgently and thanked him sincerely
for all his kindness.
In 1944 almost a hundred years had passed since New York and eastern
Pennsylvania were first linked in a railroad network, yet I don’t
suppose my journey differed much in speed or comfort from one which
might have been taken by Granpa Hodgins’ father. The steam ferry
carried me across the Hudson to Jersey. I had heard there were only
financial, not technical obstacles to a bridge or tunnel. If the
English and French could burrow under the Channel, as they had early
in the century, and the Japanese complete their great tube beneath the
Korea Strait, it was hard to see why a lesser work here was dismissed
as the impractical suggestion of dreamers who believed the cost would
be saved in a few years by running trains directly to Manhattan.
Nor was the ferry the only antique survival on the trip. The cars were
all ancient, obvious discards from Confederate or British American
lines. Flat wheels were common; the wornout locomotives dragged them
protestingly over the wobbly rails and uneven roadbed. First class
passengers sat on napless plush or grease-glazed straw seats; second
class passengers stood in the aisles or on the platforms; third class
rode the roofs—safe enough at the low speed except for sudden jerks or
jolts.
There were so many different lines, each jealous of exclusive rights
of way, that the traveler hardly got used to his particular car before
he had to snatch up his baggage and hustle for the connecting train,
which might be on the same track or at the same sooty depot, but was
more likely to be a mile away. Even the adjective “connecting” was
often ironical for it was not unusual to find time-tables arranged so a
departure preceded an arrival by minutes, necessitating a stopover of
anywhere from one hour to twelve.
If anything could have quieted my excitement on the trip it was the
view through the dirt-sprayed windows. “Fruitless” and “unfulfilled”
were the words coming oftenest to my mind. I had forgotten during the
past six years just how desolate villages and towns could look when
their jerrybuilt structures were sunk in apathetic age without even
the false rejuvenation of newer jerrybuilding. I had forgotten the
mildewed appearance of tenant farmhouses, the unconvincing attempt to
appear businesslike of false-fronted stores with clutters of hopeless
merchandise in their dim windows, or the inadequate bluff of factories
too small for any satisfactory production.
Once away from New York it was clear how atypical the city was in its
air of activity and usefulness. The countryside through which the
tracks ran, between fields and pastures or down the center of main
streets, should have been the industrial heart of a country bustling
and vigorous. Instead one saw potentialities denied, projects withered,
poverty and dilapidation.
We crossed the Susquehanna on an old, old stone bridge that made
one think of Meade’s valiant men, bloodily bandaged many of them,
somnambulistically marching northward, helpless and hopeless after the
Confederate triumph at Gettysburg, their only thought to escape Jeb
Stuart’s pursuing cavalry. Indeed, every square mile now carried on
its surface an almost visible weight of historical memories.
York seemed old, gray and crabbed in the afternoon, but when I got off
the train there I was too agitated with the prospect of being soon at
Haggershaven to take any strong impression of the town. I inquired the
way, and the surly response confirmed Barbara Haggerwells’ statement
of local animosity. The distance, if my informant was accurate, was a
matter of some ten miles.
I started off down the highway, building and demolishing daydreams,
thinking of Tyss and Tirzah, Enfandin and Miss Haggerwells, trying to
picture her father and the fellows of the haven and for the thousandth
time marshaling arguments for my acceptance in the face of scornful
scrutiny. The early October sun was setting on the rich red and yellow
leaves of the maples and oaks; I knew the air would become chilly
before long, but exertion kept me warm. I counted on arriving at the
haven in plenty of time to introduce myself before bedtime.
Less than a mile out of town the highway assumed the familiar aspect of
the roads around Wappinger Falls and Poughkeepsie: rutted, wavering,
with deep, unexpected holes. The stone or rail fences on either side
enclosed harvested cornfields, the broken stalks a dull brass with
copper-colored pumpkins scattered through them. But the fences were in
poor repair and the oft-mended wooden covered bridges over the creeks
all had signs, DANGEROUS, Travel At Your Own Risk.
There were few to share the highway with me: a farmer with an empty
wagon, urging his team on and giving me a churlish glance instead of
an invitation to ride; a horseman on an elegant chestnut picking his
course carefully among the chuckholes, and a few tramps, each bent on
his solitary way, at once defensive and aggressive. The condition of
the bridges accounted for the absence of minibiles. However, just about
twilight a closed carriage, complete with coachman and footman on the
box, rolled haughtily by, stood for a moment outlined atop the slope up
which I was trudging and then disappeared down the other side.
I paid little attention except—remembering my boyhood and my father’s
smithy—to visualize automatically the coachman pulling back on the
reins and the footman thrusting forward with the brake as they eased
the horses downward. So when I heard first a shout and then feminine
screams my instant conclusion was that the carriage had overturned
on the treacherous downgrade, broken an axle, or otherwise suffered
calamity.
My responsive burst of speed had almost carried me to the top when
I heard the shots. First one, like the barking of an uncertain dog,
followed by a volley, as though the pack were unleashed.
I ran to the side of the road, close to the field, where I could see
with less chance of being seen. Already the dusk was playing tricks,
distorting the shape of some objects and momentarily hiding others. It
could not however falsify the scene in the gully below. Four men on
horseback covered the carriage with drawn revolvers; a fifth, pistol
also in hand, had dismounted. His horse, reins hanging down, was
peacefully investigating the roadside weeds.