getting into a house by the window instead of the door,” as Boston Alley
delicately explained, and the “flies,” meaning officers of the law, “are
after him again for reasons he ain't quite sure of.” The pallor of slum
birth and breeding, and the additional prison pallor, made his skin
look curious where the grime had not darkened it. He had a short-jawed,
smooth-shaven face, a flat mouth and light hair, and was short and
stocky, but lithe and noiseless in movement, and inclined to say little.
Boston Alley was a man of some slight education, who now sometimes sung
in winter variety shows, such songs as he picked up here and there in
summer wanderings, for in warm weather he liked footing the road better,
partly because the green country sights were pleasant to him, and partly
because he was irresolute and keeping engagements was a distress. He
seemed agreeable and sympathetic.
“He ain't got no more real feelings 'n a fish,” said Toboso, gazing
candidly at Boston, but speaking to Father Wiliston, “and yet he looks
like he had 'em, and a man's glad to see him. Ain't seen you since
fall, Boston, but I see the Kid last week at a hang-out in Albany. Well,
gents, this ain't a bad lay.”
Toboso himself had been many years on the road. He was in a way a man
of much force and decision, and probably it was another element in
him, craving sloth and easy feeding, which kept him in this submerged
society; although here, too, there seemed room for the exercise of his
dominance. He leaned back in the settle, and had his hand on Father
Wiliston's shoulder. His face gleamed redly over his bison beard.
“It's a good lay. And we're gay, Elder. Ain't we gay? Hey, Jinny!”
“Yes, yes, Toboso. But this young man--I'm sure he must have great
talents, great talents, quite remarkable. Ah--yes, Jinny!”
“Hey, Jinny,” they sang together, “Ho, Jinny! Listen, love, to me. I'll
sing to you, and play to you, a dulcet melode-e-e”--while Boston danced
a shuffle and the Kid snapped the cards in time. Then, at Toboso's
invitation and command, Boston sang a song, called “The Cheerful Man,”
resembling a ballad, to a somewhat monotonous tune, and perhaps known
in the music halls of the time--all with a sweet, resonant voice and a
certain pathos of intonation:--
“I knew a man across this land
Came waving of a cheerful hand,
Who drew a gun and gave some one
A violent contus-i-on,
This cheerful man.
“They sent him up, he fled from 'quad'
By a window and the grace of God,
Picked up a wife and children six,
And wandered into politics,
This cheerful man.
“'In politics he was, I hear,
A secret, subtle financier--
So the jury says, 'But we agree
He quits this sad community,
This cheerful man.'
“His wife and six went on the town,
And he went off; without a frown
Reproaching Providence, went he
And got another wife and three,
This cheerful man.
“He runs a cross-town car to-day
From Bleecker Street to Avenue A.
He swipes the fares with skilful ease,
Keeps up his hope, and tries to please,
This cheerful man.
“Our life is mingled woe and bliss,
Man that is born of woman is
Short-lived and goes to his long home.
Take heart, and learn a lesson from
This cheerful man.”
“But,” said Father Wiliston, “don't you think really, Mr. Alley, that
the moral is a little confused? I don't mean intentionally,” he
added, with anxious precaution, “but don't you think he should have
reflected”--
“You're right, Elder,” said Toboso, with decision. “It's like that.
It ain't moral. When a thing ain't moral that settles it.” And Boston
nodded and looked sympathetic with every one.
“I was sure you would agree with me,” said Father Wiliston. He felt
himself growing weary now and heavy-eyed. Presently somehow he was
leaning on Toboso with his head on his shoulder. Toboso's arm was around
him, and Toboso began to hum in a kind of wheezing lullaby, “Hey, Jinny!
Ho, Jinny!”
“I am very grateful, my dear friends,” murmured Father Wiliston. “I have
lived a long time. I fear I have not always been careful in my course,
and am often forgetful. I think”--drowsily--“I think that happiness must
in itself be pleasing to God. I was often happy before in this room. I
remember--my dear mother sat here--who is now dead. We have been quite,
really quite cheerful to-night. My mother--was very judicious--an
excellent wise woman--she died long ago.” So he was asleep before any
one was aware, while Toboso crooned huskily, “Hey, Jinny!” and Boston
Alley and the Newark Kid sat upright and stared curiously.
“Holy Jims!” said the Kid.
Toboso motioned them to bring the pulled grass. They piled it on the
settle, let Father Wiliston down softly, brought the broken table, and
placed it so that he could not roll off.
“Well,” said Toboso, after a moment's silence, “I guess we'd better pick
him and be off. He's got sixty in his pocket.”
“Oh,” said Boston, “that's it, is it?”
“It's my find, but seeing you's here I takes half and give you fifteen
apiece.”
“Well, that's right.”
“And I guess the Kid can take it out.”
The Kid found the pocketbook with sensitive gliding fingers, and pulled
it out. Toboso counted and divided the bills.
“Well,” whispered Toboso thoughtfully, “if the Elder now was forty years
younger, I wouldn't want a better pardner.” They tiptoed out into the
night. “But,” he continued, “looking at it that way, o' course he ain't
got no great use for his wad and won't remember it till next week.
Heeled all right, anyhow. Only, I says now, I says, there ain't no vice
in him.”
“Mammy tuck me up, no licks to-night,” said the Kid, plodding in front.
“I ain't got nothing against him.”
Boston Alley only fingered the bills in his pocket.
It grew quite dark in the room they had left as the fire sunk to a few
flames, then to dull embers and an occasional darting spark. The only
sound was Father Wiliston's light breathing.
When he awoke the morning was dim in the windows. He lay a moment
confused in mind, then sat up and looked around.
“Dear me! Well, well, I dare say Toboso thought I was too old. I dare
say”--getting on his feet--“I dare say they thought it would be unkind
to tell me so.”
He wandered through the dusky old rooms and up and down the creaking
stairs, picking up bits of recollection, some vivid, some more dim than
the dawn, some full of laughter, some that were leaden and sad; then
out into the orchard to find a bough apple in the dewy grasses; and,
kneeling under the gnarled old tree to make his morning prayer, which
included in petition the three overnight revellers, he went in fluent
phrase and broken tones among eldest memories.
He pushed cheerfully into the grassy road now, munching his apple and
humming, “Hey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny!” He examined the tree at the highway
with fresh interest. “How singular! It means an empty house. Very
intelligent man, Toboso.”
Bits of grass were stuck on his back and a bramble dragged from his coat
tail. He plodded along in the dust and wabbled absent-mindedly from one
side of the road to the other. The dawn towered behind him in purple and
crimson, lifted its robe and canopy, and flung some kind of glittering
gauze far beyond him. He did not notice it till he reached the top
of the hill above Ironville with Timothy's house in sight. Then he
stopped, turned, and was startled a moment; then smiled companionably
on the state and glory of the morning, much as on Toboso and the card
tricks of the Newark Kid.
“Really,” he murmured, “I have had a very good time.”
He met Timothy in the hall.
“Been out to walk early, father? Wait--there's grass and sticks on your
coat.”
It suddenly seemed difficult to explain the entire circumstances to
Timothy, a settled man and girt with precedent.
“Did you enjoy it?--Letter you dropped? No, I haven't seen it. Breakfast
is ready.”
Neither Bettina nor Mrs. Timothy had seen the letter.
“No matter, my dear, no matter. I--really, I've had a very good time.”
Afterward he came out on the porch with his Bible and Concordance,
sat down and heard Bettina brushing his hat and ejaculating, “Fater!”
Presently he began to nod drowsily and his head dropped low over the
Concordance. The chickens clucked drowsily in the road.
ON EDOM HILL
I.
CHARLIE SEBASTIAN was a turfman, meaning that he had something to do
with race-horses, and knew property as rolls of bank bills, of which one
now and then suddenly has none at all; or as pacers and trotters that
are given to breaking and unaccountably to falling off in their nervous
systems; or as “Association Shares” and partnership investments in a
training stable; all capable of melting and going down in one vortex. So
it happened at the October races. And from this it arose that in going
between two heated cities and low by the sea he stopped among the high
hills that were cold.
He was a tall man with a pointed beard, strong of shoulder and foot, and
without fear in his eyes. After two hours' riding he woke from a doze
and argued once more that he was a “phenomenally busted man.” It made
no difference, after all, which city he was in. Looking out at the white
hills that showed faintly in the storm, it occurred to him that this was
not the railway line one usually travelled to the end in view. It was
singular, the little difference between choices. You back the wrong
horse; then you drink beer instead of fizz, and the results of either
are tolerable. Let a man live lustily and there's little to regret. He
had found ruin digestible before, and never yet gone to the dogs that
wait to devour human remnants, but had gotten up and fallen again, and
on the whole rejoiced. Stomach and lungs of iron, a torrent of red
blood in vein and artery maintain their consolations; hopes rise again,
blunders and evil doings seem to be practically outlived. So without
theory ran Sebastian's experience. The theory used to be that his sin
would find a man out. There were enough of Sebastian's that had gone
out, and never returned to look for him. So too with mistakes and
failures. A little while, a year or more, and you are busy with other
matters. It is a stirring world, and offers no occupation for ghosts.
The dragging sense of depression that he felt seemed natural enough; not
to be argued down, but thrown aside in due time. Yet it was a feeling of
pallid and cold futility, like the spectral hills and wavering snow.
“I might as well go back!”
He tossed a coin to see whether it was fated he should drop off at the
next station, and it was.
“Ramoth!” cried the brakeman.
Sebastian held in his surprise as a matter of habit.
But on the platform in the drift and float of the snow-storm he stared
around at the white January valley, at the disappearing train, at the
sign above the station door, “Ramoth.”
“That's the place,” he remarked. “There wasn't any railroad then.”
There were hidden virtues in a flipped coin. Sebastian had his
superstitions.
The road to Ramoth village from the station curves about to the south
of the great bare dome that is called Edom Hill, but Sebastian, without
inquiry, took the fork to the left which climbed up the hill without
compromise, and seemed to be little used.
Yet in past times Edom Hill was noted in a small way as a hill that
upheld the house of a stern abolitionist, and in a more secret way as a
station in the “underground railroad,” or system by which runaway slaves
were passed on to Canada. But when Charlie Sebastian remembered his
father and Edom Hill, the days of those activities were passed. The
abolitionist had nothing to exercise resistance and aggression on but
his wind-blown farm and a boy, who was aggressive to seek out mainly the
joys of this world, and had faculties of resistance. There were bitter
clashes; young Sebastian fled, and came upon a stable on a stud farm,
and from there in due time went far and wide, and found tolerance in
time and wrote, offering to “trade grudges and come to see how he was.”
The answer, in a small, faint, cramped, unskilful hand, stated the
abolitionist's death. “Won't you come back, Mr. Sebastian. It is lonely.
Harriet Sebastian.” And therefore Sebastian remarked:
“You bet it is! Who's she? The old man must have married again.”
In his new-found worldly tolerance he had admired such aggressive
enterprise, but seeing no interest in the subject, had gone his way and
forgotten it.
Beating up Edom Hill through the snow was no easier than twenty years
before. David Sebastian had built his house in a high place, and looking
widely over the top of the land, saw that it was evil.
The drifts were unbroken and lay in long barrows and windy ridges over
the roadway. The half-buried fences went parallel up the white breast
and barren heave of the hill, and disappeared in the storm. Sebastian
passed a house with closed blinds, then at a long interval a barn and
a stiff red chimney with a snow-covered heap of ruins at its foot. The
station was now some miles behind and the dusk was coming on. The broad
top of the hill was smooth and rounded gradually. Brambles, bushes,
reeds, and the tops of fences broke the surface of the snow, and beside
these only a house by the road, looking dingy and gray, with a blackish
bam attached, four old maples in front, an orchard behind. Far down the
hill to the right lay the road to Ramoth, too far for its line of naked
trees to be seen in the storm. The house on Edom Hill had its white
throne to itself, and whatever dignity there might be in solitude.
He did not pause to examine the house, only noticed the faint smoke in
one chimney, opened the gate, and pushed through untrodden snow to
the side door and knocked. The woman who came and stood in the door
surprised him even more than “Ramoth!” called by the brakeman. Without
great reason for seeming remarkable, it seemed remarkable. He stepped
back and stared, and the two, looking at each other, said nothing.
Sebastian recovered.
“My feet are cold,” he said slowly. “I shouldn't like to freeze them.”
She drew back and let him in, left him to find a chair and put his feet
against the stove. She sat down near the window and went on knitting.
The knitting needles glittered and clicked. Her face was outlined
against the gray window, the flakes too glittered and clicked. It
looked silent, secret, repressed, as seen against the gray window; like
something chilled and snowed under, cold and sweet, smooth pale hair and
forehead, deep bosom and slender waist. She looked young enough to be
called in the early June of her years.
“There's good proportion and feature, but not enough nerves for a
thoroughbred. But,” he thought, “she looks as if she needed, as you
might say, revelry,” and he spoke aloud.
“Once I was in this section and there was a man named Sebastian lived
here, or maybe it was farther on.”
She said, “It was here” in a low voice.
“David Sebastian now, that was it, or something that way. Stiff, sort
of grim old--oh, but you might be a relative, you see. Likely enough. So
you might.”
“I might be.”
“Just so. You might be.”
He rubbed his hands and leaned back, staring at the window. The wind was
rising outside and blew the snow in whirls and sheets.
“Going to be a bad night I came up from the station. If a man's going
anywhere tonight, he'll be apt not to get there.”
“You ought to have taken the right hand at the fork.”
“Well, I don't know.”
She rose and took a cloak from the table. Sebastian watched her.
“I must feed the pony and shut up the chickens.”
She hesitated. A refusal seemed to have been hinted to the hinted
request for hospitality. But Sebastian saw another point.
“Now, that's what I'm going to do for you.”
She looked on silently, as he passed her with assured step, not
hesitating at doors, but through the kitchen to the woodshed, and there
in the darkness of a pitch-black corner took down a jingling lantern and
lit it. She followed him silently into the yard, that was full of drifts
and wild storm, to the barn, where she listened to him shake down hay
and bedding, measure oats, slap the pony's flank and chirp cheerfully.
Then he plunged through a low door and she heard the bolt in the chicken
shed rattle. It had grown dark outside. He came out and held the barn
door, waiting for her to step out, and they stood side by side on the
edge of the storm.
“How did you know the lantern was there?”
“Lantern! Oh, farmhouses always keep the lantern in the nearest corner
of the woodshed, if it isn't behind the kitchen door.”
But she did not move to let him close the bam. He looked down at her a
moment and then out at the white raging night.
“Can't see forty feet, can you? But, of course, if you don't want to
give me a roof I'll have to take my chances. Look poor, don't they?
Going to let me shut this door?”
“I am quite alone here.”
“So am I. That's the trouble.”
“I don't think you understand,” she said quietly, speaking in a manner
low, cool, and self-contained.
“I've got more understanding now than I'll have in an hour, maybe.”
“I will lend you the lantern.”
“Oh, you mightn't get it back.” He drew the barn door to, which
forced her to step forward. A gust of wind about the corner of the bam
staggered and threw her back. He caught her about her shoulders and held
her steadily, and shot the bolt with the hand that held the lantern.
“That's all right. A man has to take his chances. I dare say a woman had
better not.”
If Sebastian exaggerated the dangers of the night, if there were any
for him, looked at from her standpoint they might seem large and full of
dread. The wind howled with wild hunting sound, and shrieked against the
eaves of the house. The snow drove thick and blinding. The chimneys
were invisible. A woman easily transfers her own feelings to a man and
interprets them there. In the interest of that interpretation it might
no longer seem possible that man's ingratitude, or his failings and
passions, could be as unkind as winter wind and bitter sky.
She caught her breath in a moment.
“You will stay to supper,” she said, and stepped aside.
“No. As I'm going, I'd better go.”
She went before him across the yard, opened the woodshed door and stood
in it. He held out the lantern, but she did not take it. He lifted it to
look at her face, and she smiled faintly.
“Please come in.”
“Better go on, if I'm going. Am I?”
“I'm very cold. Please come in.”
They went in and closed the doors against the storm. The house was
wrapped round, and shut away from the sight of Edom Hill, and Edom Hill
was wrapped round and shut away from the rest of the world.
II.
Revelry has need of a certain co-operation. Sebastian drew heavily on
his memory for entertainment, told of the combination that had “cleaned
him out,” and how he might get in again in the Spring, only he felt
a bit tired in mind now, and things seemed dead. He explained the
mysteries of “short prices, selling allowances, past choices, hurdles
and handicaps,” and told of the great October races, where Decatur won
from Clifford and Lady Mary, and Lady Mary ran through the fence and
destroyed the features of the jockey. But the quiet, smooth-haired woman
maintained her calm, and offered neither question nor comment, only
smiled and flushed faintly now and then. She seemed as little stirred by
new tumultuous things as the white curtains at the windows, that moved
slightly when the storm, which danced and shouted on Edom Hill, managed
to force a whistling breath through a chink.
Sebastian decided she was frozen up with loneliness and the like. “She's
got no conversation, let alone revelry.” He thought he knew what her
life was like. “She's sort of empty. Nothing doing any time. It's the
off season all the year. No troubles. Sort of like a fish, as being
chilly and calm, that lives in cold water till you have to put pepper on
to taste it. I know how it goes on this old hill.”
She left him soon. He heard her moving about in the kitchen, and
sometimes the clink of a dish. He sat by the stove and mused and
muttered. She came and told him his room was on the left of the stair;
it had a stove; would he not carry up wood and have his fire there?
She seemed to imply a preference that he should. But the burden
and oppression of his musings kept him from wondering when she had
compromised her scruples and fears, or why she kept any of them. He
mounted the stair with his wood. She followed with a lamp and left him.
He stared at the closed door and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then went
to work with his fire. The house became silent, except for the outer
tumult. She did not mount the stair again; it followed that she slept
below.
Sebastian took a daguerreotype from the mantel and stared at it. It
was the likeness of a shaven, grim-faced man in early middle life. He
examined it long with a quizzical frown; finally went to the washstand,
opened the drawer and took out a razor with a handle of yellow bone,
carried the washstand to the stove, balanced the mirror against the
pitcher, stropped the razor on his hand, heated water in a cup, slowly
dismantled his face of beard and mustache, cast them in the stove, put
the daguerreotype beside the mirror, and compared critically. Except
that the face in the daguerreotype had a straight, set mouth, and the
face in the mirror was one full-lipped and humorous and differently
lined, they were nearly the same.
“I wouldn't have believed it”
He put it aside and looked around, whistling in meditation. Then he went
back again to wondering who the pale-haired woman was. Probably the
farm had changed hands. A man whose father had been dead going on
twenty years couldn't have that kind of widowed stepmother. He was
disqualified.
A cold, unchanging place, Edom Hill, lifted out of the warm, sapping
currents of life. It might be a woman could keep indefinitely there,
looking much the same. If her pulse beat once to an ordinary twice, she
ought to last twice as long. The house seemed unchanged. The old things
were in their old familiar places, David Sebastian's books on their
shelves in the room below, on the side table there his great Bible, in
which he used to write all family records, with those of his reforming
activity. Sebastian wondered what record stood of his own flight.
He sat a few moments longer, then took his lamp and crept softly out of
the room and down the stairs. The sitting-room was icily cold now; the
white curtains stirred noiselessly. He sat down before the little side
table and opened the great book.
There were some thirty leaves between the Old and New Testaments, most
of them stitched in. A few at the end were blank. Some of the records
were obscure.
“March 5th, 1840. Saw light on this subject.”
Others ran:
“Sept. 1 st, 1843. Rec. Peter Cavendish, fugitive.”
“Dec. 3d, ditto. Rec. Robert Henry.”
“April 15th, ditto. Rec. one, Æsop,” and so on.
“Dec. 14th, 1848. Have had consolation from prayer for public evil.”
“April 20th, 1858. My son, Charles Sebastian, born.”
“April 7th, 1862. My wife, Jane Sebastian, died.”
“July 5th, 1862. Rec. Keziah Andrews to keep my house.”
The dates of the entries from that point grew further apart, random and
obscure; here and there a fact.
“Nov. 4th, 1876. Charles Sebastian departed.”
“June 9th, 1877. Rec. Harriet.”
“Jan. 19th, 1880. Have wrestled in prayer without consolation for
Charles Sebastian.”
This was the last entry. A faint line ran down across the page
connecting the end of “Harriet” with the beginning of “Charles.”
Between the two blank leaves at the end was a photograph of himself
at seventeen. He remembered suddenly how it was taken by a travelling
photographer, who had stirred his soul with curiosity and given him the
picture; and David Sebastian had taken it and silently put it away among
blank leaves of the Bible.
Sebastian shivered. The written leaves, the look of himself of twenty
years before, the cold, the wail of the wind, the clicking flakes on the
window panes, these seemed now to be the dominant facts of life. Narrow
was it, poor and meagre, to live and labor with a barren farm? The old
abolitionist had cut deeper into existence than he had. If to deal with
the fate of races, and wrestle alone with God on Edom Hill, were not
knowledge and experience, what was knowledge or experience, or what
should a man call worth the trial of his brain and nerve?
“He passed me. He won hands down,” he muttered, bending over the page
again. “'Rec. Harriet.' That's too much for me.” And he heard a quick
noise behind him and turned.
She stood in the door, wide-eyed, smooth, pale hair falling over one
shoulder, long cloak half slipped from the other, holding a shotgun,
threatening and stem.
“What are you doing here?”
“Out gunning for me?” asked Sebastian gravely.
She stared wildly, put the gun down, cried:
“You're Charlie Sebastian!” and fell on her knees beside the stove,
choking, sobbing and shaking, crouching against the cold sheet iron in a
kind of blind memory of its warmth and protection.
“You still have the drop on me,” said Sebastian.
She shivered and crouched still and whispered:
“I'm cold.”
“How long have you been here freezing?”
Sebastian thrust anything inflammable at hand into the stove, lit it and
piled in the wood.
“Not long. Only--only a few moments.”