team. Only their position, strung across the road, prevented a runaway.
I could not see the footman, but the coachman, one hand still clutching
the reins, was sprawled backward with his foot caught against the
dashboard and his head hanging down over the wheel.
The door on the far side was swung open. I thought for a moment the
passengers had managed to escape. However as the unmounted highwayman
advanced, waving his pistol, the other door opened and a man and two
women descended into the roadway. Slowly edging forward I could now
plainly hear the gang’s obscene whistles at sight of the women.
“Well boys, here’s something to warm up a cold night. Hang on to them
while I see what the mister has in his pockets.”
The gentleman stepped in front, and with a slight accent said, “Take
the girl by all means. She is but a peasant, a servant, and may afford
you amusement. But the lady is my wife; I will pay you a good ransom
for her and myself. I am Don Jaime Escobar y Gallegos, attached to the
Spanish legation.”
One of the men on horseback said, “Well now, that’s real kind of you,
Don High-me. We might have taken you up on that, was you an American.
But we can’t afford no company of Spanish Marines coming looking for
us, so I guess we’ll have to pass up the ransom and settle for whatever
youve got handy. And Missus Don and the hired girl. Don’t worry about
her being a peasant; we’ll treat her and the madam exactly the same.”
“Madre de Dios,” screamed the lady. “Mercy!”
“It will be a good ransom,” said the Spaniard, “and I give you my word
my government will not bother you.”
“Sorry, chum,” returned the gangster. “You foreigners have a nasty
habit of interfering with our domestic institutions and hanging men who
make a living this way. Just can’t trust you.”
The man on foot took a step forward. The nearest rider swung the maid
up before him and another horseman reached for her mistress. Again she
screamed; her husband brushed the hand aside and put his wife behind
him. At that the gangster raised his pistol and shot twice. The man and
woman dropped to the ground. The maid shrieked till her captor covered
her mouth.
“Now what did you want to do that for? Cutting our woman supply in half
that way?”
“Sorry. Mighty damn sorry. These things always happen to me.”
Meanwhile another of the gang slid off his horse and the two went
through the dead, stripping them of jewelry and whatever articles of
clothing caught their fancy before searching the luggage and the coach
itself for valuables. By the time they had finished it was fully dark
and I had crept to within a few feet of them, crouching reasonably
secure and practically invisible while they debated what to do with the
horses. One faction was in favor of taking them along for spare mounts;
the other, arguing that they were too easily identifiable, for cutting
them out and turning them loose. The second group prevailing, they at
last galloped away.
A sudden thrashing in the cornstalks just beyond the fence startled
me into rigidity. Something which might be human stumbled and crawled
toward the carriage, snuffling and moaning, to throw itself down by the
prostrate bodies, its anguished noises growing more high-pitched and
chilling.
I was certain this must be a passenger who had jumped from the off-side
of the carriage at the start of the holdup, but whether man or woman it
was impossible to tell. I moved forward gingerly, but somehow I must
have betrayed my presence, for the creature, with a terrified groan,
slumped inertly.
My hands told me it was a woman I raised from the ground and the smell
of her was the smell of a young girl. “Don’t be afraid, Miss,” I tried
to reassure her; “I’m a friend.”
I could hardly leave the girl lying in the road, nor did I feel equal
to carrying her to Haggershaven which I reckoned must be about six
miles further. I tried shaking her, rubbing her hands, murmuring
encouragement, all the while wishing the moon would come up, feeling
somehow it would be easier to revive her in the moonlight.
“Miss,” I urged, “get up. You can’t stay here—they may come back.”
Had I reached her? She stirred, whimpering with strange, muffled
sounds. I dragged her to her knees and managed to get her arm over my
shoulder. “Get up,” I repeated. “Get on your feet.”
She moaned. I pulled her upright and adjusted my hold. Supporting her
around the waist and impeded by my valise, I began an ungraceful,
shuffling march. I could only guess at how much time had been taken
up by the holdup and how slow our progress would be. It didnt seem
likely we could get to Haggershaven before midnight, an awkward hour to
explain the company of a strange girl. The possibility of leaving her
at a hospitable farmhouse was remote; no isolated rural family in times
like these would open their door with anything but deep suspicion or a
shotgun blast.
We had made perhaps a mile, a slow and arduous one, when the moon
rose at last. It was full and bright, and showed my companion to be
even younger than I had thought. The light fell on masses of curling
hair, wildly disarrayed about a face unnaturally pale and lifeless yet
extraordinarily beautiful. Her eyes were closed in a sort of troubled
sleep, and she continued to moan, though at less frequent intervals.
I had just decided to stop for a moment’s rest when we came upon one of
the horses. The clumsily cut traces trailing behind him had caught on
the stump of a broken sapling. Though still trembling he was over the
worst of his fright; after patting and soothing him I got us onto his
back and we proceeded in more comfortable if still not too dignified
fashion.
It wasnt hard to find Haggershaven; the sideroad to it was well kept
and far smoother than the highway. We passed between what looked to be
freshly plowed fields and came to a fair sized group of buildings, in
some of which I was pleased to see lighted windows. The girl had still
not spoken; her eyes remained closed and she moaned occasionally.
Dogs warned of our approach. From a dark doorway a figure came forward
with a rifle under his arm. “Who is it?”
“Hodge Backmaker. Ive got a girl here who was in a holdup. She’s had a
bad shock.”
“All right,” he said, “let me hitch the horse. Then I’ll help you with
the girl. My name’s Dorn. Asa Dorn.”
I slid off and lifted the girl down. “I couldnt leave her in the road,”
I offered in inane apology.
“I’ll water and feed the horse after. Let’s go into the main kitchen;
it’s warm there. Here,” he addressed the girl, “take my arm.”
She made no response and I half carried her, with Dorn trying
helpfully to share her weight. The building through which we led her
was obviously an old farmhouse, enlarged and remodelled a number of
times. Gaslights of a strange pattern, brighter than any I’d ever seen,
revealed Asa Dorn as perhaps thirty with very broad shoulders and very
long arms, and a dark, rather melancholy face. “There’s a gang been
operating around here,” he informed me; “tried to shake the haven down
for a contribution. That’s why I was on guard with the gun. Must be the
same bunch.”
We bustled our charge into a chair before a big fieldstone fireplace
which gave the large room its look of welcome, though the even heat
came from sets of steampipes under the windows. “Should we give her
some soup? Or tea? Or shall I get Barbara or one of the other women?”
His fluttering brushed the outside of my mind. Here in the light I
instinctively expected to see some faint color in the girl’s cheeks
or hands, but there was none. She looked no more than sixteen,
perhaps because she was severely dressed in some school uniform. Her
hair, which had merely been a disordered frame for her face in the
moonlight, now showed itself as deeply black, hanging in thick, soft
curls around her shoulders. Her features, which seemed made to reflect
emotions—full, mobile lips, faintly slanted eyes, high nostrils—were
instead impassive, devoid of vitality, and this unnatural quiescence
was heightened by the dark eyes, now wide open and expressionless. Her
mouth moved slowly, as though to form words, but nothing came forth
except the faintest of guttural sounds.
“She’s trying to say something.” I leaned forward as though by
sympathetic magic to help the muscles which seemed to respond with such
difficulty.
“Why,” exclaimed Dorn, “she’s ... dumb!”
She looked agonizedly toward him. I patted her arm helplessly.
“I’ll go get—” he began.
A door opened and Barbara Haggerwells blinked at us. “I thought I heard
someone ride up, Ace. Do you suppose....” Then she caught sight of the
girl. Her face set in those lines of strange anger I had seen in the
bookstore.
“Miss Haggerwells—”
“Barbara—”
Dorn and I spoke together. Either she did not hear us or we made no
impression. She faced me in offended outrage. “Really, Mr Backmaker, I
thought I’d explained there were no facilities here for this sort of
thing.”
“You misunderstand,” I said, “I happened—”
Dorn broke in. “Barbara, she’s been in a holdup. She’s dumb....”
Fury made her ugly. “Is that an additional attraction?”
“Miss Haggerwells,” I tried again, “you don’t understand—”
“I think I understand very well. Dumb or not, get the slut out of here!
Get her out right now, I say!”
“Barbara, youre not listening—”
She continued to face me, her back to him. “I should have remembered
you were a ladies’ man, Mr Self-taught Backmaker. No doubt you imagined
Haggershaven to be some obscene liberty hall. Well, it isnt! You’d be
wasting any further time you spent here. Get out!”
_11._ _OF HAGGERSHAVEN_
I suppose—recalling the inexplicable scene with Little Aggie—I was
less astonished by her frenzy than I might have been. Besides, her
rage and misunderstanding were anticlimactic after the succession of
excitements I had been through that day. Instead of amazement I felt
only uneasiness and tired annoyance.
Dorn steered Barbara out of the room with a combination of persuasion
and gentle force disguised as solicitous soothing, leaving the girl and
me alone. “Well,” I said, “well....”
The large eyes regarded me helplessly.
“Well, youve certainly caused me a lot of trouble....”
Dorn returned with two women, one middleaged, the other slightly
younger, who flowed around the girl like soapy water, effectually
sealing her away from all further masculine blunders, uttering little
bubbly clucks and sudsy comfortings.
“Overwork, Backmaker,” Dorn mumbled. “Barbara’s been overworking
terribly. You mustnt think—”
“I don’t,” I said. “I’m just sorry she couldnt be made to realize what
actually happened.”
“Hypersensitive; things that wouldnt ordinarily ... it’s overwork.
Youve no idea. She wears herself out. Practically no nerves left.”
His face, pleading for understanding, looked even more melancholy than
before. I felt sorry for him and slightly superior; at the moment at
least I didnt have to apologize for any female unpredictability. “OK,
OK; there doesnt seem to be any great harm done. And the girl appears
to be in good hands now.”
“Oh she is,” he answered with evident relief at dropping the subject of
Barbara’s behavior. “I don’t think there’s anything more we can do for
her now; in fact I’d say we’re only in the way. How about meeting Mr
Haggerwells now?”
“Why not?” The last episode had doubtless finished me for good so far
as Barbara was concerned; whatever neutral report she might have given
her father originally could now be counted on for a damning revision. I
might as well put a nonchalant face on matters before returning to the
world outside Haggershaven.
Thomas Haggerwells, large-boned like his daughter, with the ginger hair
faded, and a florid, handsome complexion, made me welcome. “Historian
ay, Backmaker? Delighted. Combination of art and science; Clio, most
enigmatic of the muses. The ever-changing past, ay?”
“I’m afraid I’m no historian yet, Mr Haggerwells. I’d like to be one.
If Haggershaven will let me be part of it.”
He patted me on the shoulder. “The fellows will do what they can,
Backmaker; you can trust them.”
“That’s right,” said Dorn cheerfully; “you look strong as an ox and
historians can be kept happy with books and a few old papers.”
“Ace is our cynic,” explained Mr Haggerwells; “very useful antidote to
some of our soaring spirits.” He looked absently around and then said
abruptly, “Ace, Barbara is quite upset.”
I thought this extreme understatement, but Dorn merely nodded.
“Misunderstanding, Mr H.”
“So I gathered.” He gave a short, selfconscious laugh. “In fact that’s
all I did gather. She said something about a woman....”
“Girl, Mr H, just a girl.” He gave a quick outline of what had
happened, glossing over Barbara’s hysterical welcome.
“I see. Quite an adventure in the best tradition, ay Backmaker? And
the victims killed in cold blood; makes you wonder about civilization.
Savagery all around us.” He began pacing the flowered carpet.
“Naturally we must help the poor creature. Shocking, quite shocking.
But how can I explain to Barbara? She ... she came to me,” he said
half proudly, half apprehensively. “I wouldnt want to fail her; I
hardly know....” He pulled himself together. “Excuse me, Backmaker. My
daughter is high-strung. I fear I’m allowing concern to interfere with
our conversation.”
“Not at all, sir,” I said. “I’m very tired; if you’ll excuse me....”
“Of course, of course,” he answered gratefully. “Ace will show you
your room. Sleep well—we’ll talk more tomorrow. And Ace—come back here
afterward, will you?”
Barbara Haggerwells had both Dorn and her father well cowed, I thought
as I lay awake. Clearly she could brook not even the suspicion of
rivalry, even when it was entirely imaginary. It would be rather
frightening to be her father, or—as I suspected Ace might be—her lover,
and subject to her tyrannical dominance.
But it was neither Barbara nor overstimulation from the full day which
caused my insomnia. A torment, successfully suppressed for hours,
invaded me. Connecting the trip of the Escobars—“attached to the
Spanish legation”—with the counterfeit pesetas was pure fantasy. But
what is logic? I could not argue myself into reasonableness. I could
not quench my feeling of responsibility with ridicule nor convincingly
charge myself with perverse conceit in magnifying my trivial errands
into accountability for all that flowed from the Grand Army—for much
which might have flowed from the Grand Army. Guilty men cannot sleep
because they feel guilty. It is the feeling, not the abstract guilt
which keeps them awake.
Nor could I pride myself on my chivalry in rescuing distressed
maidens. I had only done what was unavoidable, grudgingly, without
warmth or charity. There was no point in being aggrieved by Barbara’s
misinterpretation with its disastrous consequences to my ambitions. I
had not freely chosen to help; I had no right to resent a catastrophe
which should properly have followed a righteous choice.
At last I slept, only to dream Barbara Haggerwells was a great fish
pursuing me over endless roads on which my feet bogged in clinging,
tenacious mud. Opening my mouth to shout for help was useless; nothing
came forth but a croak which sounded faintly like my mother’s favorite
“Gumption!”
In the clear autumn morning my notions of the night dwindled, even
if they failed to disappear entirely. By the time I was dressed Ace
Dorn showed up; we went to the kitchen where Ace introduced me to a
middleaged man, Hiro Agati, whose close-cut stiff black hair stood
perfectly and symmetrically erect all over his head.
“Dr Agati’s a chemist,” remarked Ace, “condemned to be head chef for a
while on account of being too good a cook.”
“Believe that,” said Agati, “and you’ll believe anything. Truth is
they always pick on chemists for hard work. Physicists like Ace never
soil their hands. Well, so long as you can’t eat with the common folk,
what’ll you have, eggs or eggs?”
Agati was the first Oriental I’d ever seen. The great anti-Chinese
massacres of the 1890’s, which generously included Japanese and indeed
all with any sign of the epicanthic eyefold, had left few Asians to
have descendants in the United States. I’m afraid I stared at him more
than was polite, but he was evidently used to such rudeness for he paid
no attention.
“They finally got the girl to sleep,” Ace informed me. “Had to give her
opium. No report yet this morning.”
“Oh,” I said lamely, conscious I should have asked after her without
waiting for him to volunteer the news. “Oh. Do you suppose we’ll find
out who she is?”
“Mr H telegraphed the sheriff first thing. It’ll all depend how
interested he is, and that’s not likely to be very. What’s to drink,
Hiro?”
“Imitation tea, made from dried weeds; imitation coffee made from burnt
barley. Which’ll you have?”
I didnt see why he stressed the imitation; genuine tea and coffee were
drunk only by the very rich. Most people preferred “tea” because it was
less obnoxious than the counterfeit coffee. Perversely, I said, “Coffee
please.”
He set a large cup of brown liquid before me which had a tantalizing
fragrance quite different from that given off by the beverage I was
used to. I added milk and tasted, aware he was watching my reaction.
“Why,” I exclaimed, “this is different. I never had anything like it in
my life. It’s wonderful.”
“C eight H ten O two,” said Agati with an elaborate air of
indifference. “Synthetic. Specialty of the house.”
“So chemists are good for something after all,” remarked Ace.
“Give us a chance,” said Agati; “we could make beef out of wood and
silk out of sand.”
“Youre a physicist like B—like Miss Haggerwells?” I asked Ace.
“I’m a physicist, but not like Barbara. No one is. She’s a genius. A
great creative genius.”
“Chemists create,” said Agati sourly; “physicists sit and think about
the universe.”
“Like Archimedes,” said Ace.
* * * * *
How shall I write of Haggershaven as my eyes first saw it twenty-two
years ago? Of the rolling acres of rich plowed land, interrupted here
and there by stone outcroppings worn smooth and round by time, and
trees in woodlots or standing alone strong and unperturbed? Of the main
building, grown by fits and starts from the original farmhouse into a
great, rambling eccentricity stopping short of monstrosity only by its
complete innocence of pretense? Shall I describe the two dormitories,
severely functional, escaping harshness because they had not been built
by carpenters and though sturdy enough, betrayed the amateur touch in
every line? Or the cottages and apartments, two, four, at most six
rooms, for the married fellows and their families? These were scattered
all over, some so avid for privacy that one could pass unknowing within
feet of the concealing trees or shrubbery, others bold in the sunshine
on knolls or in hollows.
I could tell of the small shops, the miniature laboratories, the
inadequate observatory, the heterogeneous assortment of books which
was both less and more than a library, the dozens of outbuildings. But
these things were not the haven. They were merely the least of its
possessions. For Haggershaven was not a material place at all, but a
spiritual freedom. Its limits were only the limits of what its fellows
could do or think or inquire. It was circumscribed only by the outside
world, not by internal rules and taboos, competition or curriculum.
Most of this I could see for myself, much of it was explained by Ace.
“But how can you afford the time to take me all around this way?” I
asked; “I must be interfering with your own work.”
He grinned. “This is my period to be guide, counselor and friend to
those whove strayed in here, wittingly or un. Don’t worry, after youre
a fellow youll get told off for all the jobs, from shoveling manure to
gilding weathercocks.”
I sighed. “The chances of my getting to be a fellow are minus nothing.
Especially after last night.”
He didnt pretend to misunderstand. “Barbara’ll come out of it. She’s
not always that way. As her father says, she’s high-strung, and she’s
been working madly. And to tell the truth,” he went on in a burst of
frankness, “she really doesnt get on too well with other women. She has
a masculine mind.”
I have often noticed that men not strikingly brilliant themselves
attribute masculine minds to intelligent women on the consoling
assumption that feminine minds are normally inferior. Ace however was
manifestly innocent of any attempt to patronize.
“Anyway,” he concluded, “she has only one vote.”
I didnt know whether to take this as a pledge of support or mere
politeness. “Isnt it wasteful, assigning a chemist like Dr Agati to
kitchen work? Or isnt he a good chemist?”
“Just about the best there is. His artificial tea and coffee would
bring a fortune to the haven if there were a profitable market; even as
it is it’ll bring a good piece of change. Wasteful? What would you have
us do, hire cooks and servants?”
“Theyre cheap enough.”
“Or frightfully expensive. Specialization, the division of labor, is
certainly not cheap in anything but dollars and cents, and not always
then. And it’s unquestionably wasteful in terms of equality. And I
don’t think there’s anyone at the haven who isn’t an egalitarian.”
“But you do specialize and divide labor. Don’t tell me you swap your
physics for Agati’s chemistry.”
“In a way we do. Of course I don’t set up as an experimenter, any more
than he does as a speculator. But there have been plenty of times Ive
worked under his direction when he needed an assistant who didnt know
anything but had a strong back.”
“All right,” I said; “but I still don’t see why you can’t hire a cook
and some dishwashers.”
“Where would our equality be then? What would happen to our fellowship?”
Haggershaven’s history, which I got little by little, was more than
a link with the past; it was a possible hint of what might have been
if the War of Southron Independence had not interrupted the American
pattern. Barbara’s great-great-grandfather, Herbert Haggerwells,
had been a Confederate major from North Carolina who, as conquerors
sometimes do, had fallen in love with the then fat Pennsylvania
countryside. After the war he had put everything—not much by Southron
standards, but a fortune in depreciated, soon to be repudiated, United
States greenbacks—into the farm which later formed the nucleus of
Haggershaven. Then he married a local girl and transformed himself into
a Northerner.
Until I became too accustomed to notice it anymore I used to stare at
his portrait in the library, picturing in idle fancy a possible meeting
on the battlefield between this aristocratic gentleman with his curling
mustache and daggerlike imperial and my own plebian Granpa Hodgins. But
the chance of their ever having come face to face was much more than
doubtful; I, who had studied both their likenesses, was the only link
between them.
“Hard looking character, ay?” commented Ace. “This was painted when
he was mellow; imagine him twenty years earlier. Pistols cocked and
Juvenal or Horace or Seneca in the saddlebags.”
“He was a cavalry officer, then?”
“I don’t know. Don’t think so as a matter of fact. Saddlebags was just
my artistic touch. They say he was a holy terror; discipline and all
that—it sort of goes with a man on horseback. And the old Roman boys
are pure deduction; he was that type. Patronized several writers and
artists; you know: ‘Drop down to my estate and stay a while’ and they
stayed five or ten years.”
But it was Major Haggerwells’ son who, seeing the deterioration of
Northern colleges, had invited a few restive scholars to make their
home with him. They were free to pursue their studies under an elastic
arrangement which permitted them to be selfsupporting through work on
the farm.