'Why do we go on perpetuating an uncomfortable breed?'
The man who was shaving at the mirror-paneled door of the Pullman
smoking compartment looked at his questioner on the leather seat
opposite.
'Give it up,' he answered. 'Why is a hen?'
The first man rapped his pipe empty on the edge of a cuspidor.
'You answer the question,' he said, 'in the only possible way--by asking
another.'
'Right,' answered the shaver; and began to run the hot water.
A closely built man, in a suit so heavily striped as to seem stripes
before it was a suit, lurched into the compartment and settled himself
to his paper and cigar.
'That monkey-on-a-stick,' he presently broke out, 'is still taking good
money away from the asses who go to hear him rant about God and Hell and
all the rest, up in Boston. I am so _damn_ tired of him, and of that
rich rough-neck Freeze. It's the limit.'
'Pretty much,' said the man with the pipe. 'I was reading about the
Belgians just before you came in, and when I jumped away from them I lit
on some things about Poland. Then I wondered aloud to this gentleman why
we go on multiplying--increasing such an uncomfortable breed. Modoc gods
and degenerate millionaires make one wonder more.'
'What is your line, may I ask?' inquired the stripe-suited man.
'Religion.'
'The hell--I beg your pardon. If you mean that you're a preacher or
something like that, all I've got to say is, you're a funny one. It's
your job, isn't it, to be dead sure that everything's all right, or
somehow going to be all right--no matter about all the mussed-upness?
Yes, that's certainly your job. Yet here you are, asking why we go on
stocking the world with kids. _I_ might ask that,--I'm in rubber
tires,--but not you. Yes, I might--only I don't.'
The man who had been shaving had resumed his tie, collar, and coat, and
now lighted a cigarette.
'I lay my money,' he said, 'on one thing: that, if men let themselves
go, they wind up shortly with God--or with what would be God if there
were any. You've come to it early--through the _Ledger_. You'd have got
to it sooner or later, though, if you'd been talking about
hunting-dogs--provided you'd have let yourselves go.'
'Well, now,' asked the closely built man, 'what is _your_ line?'
'Education.'
'High-brow company! Seems to me the pair of you ought to be silencers
for a plain business man like me. Rubber is my line--not how the world
is run. My opinion on that is small change, sure. Yet I think it ought
to be run,--the world, I mean,--even if it's mussed-up to the limit, and
I think it's up to us to keep it running. The parson here--if he is a
parson--asks why we should; that is, if I get him. And then I think
there's a manager of it all in the central office--a manager,
understand, though he never seems to show up around the works, and
certainly does seem to have some of the darnedest ways. The professor
here--if he is a professor--doesn't sense any manager; that is, if I get
him straight, with his "if there were any." That was what you said,
wasn't it? I'm a picked chicken on religion and education, but, honest,
both those ideas would mean soft tires for me--yes, sir, soft tires.'
'Broad Street, gentlemen,' said the porter at the door.
* * * * *
The Reverend Allan Dare walked away from the train and down the street.
He was Episcopally faced and Episcopally trim, and he was having
considerable difficulty in holding his universe together. This is not
pleasant at forty-two, when you want your universe held together and
things settled and calm. He had an uncomfortable sense that this
difficulty had jolted into plain sight on the car.
'Ass!' he addressed himself briefly. 'To let your sag and unsettlement
loose in that way! To say such a thing as you said, and in such a place!
To parade your momentary distrust of life! Ass--oh, ass!'
He said--or thought--a Prayer-Book collect, one which seemed rather
suited to asses, and continued,--
'I suppose I'm three-tenths sag--no more; and "He knoweth whereof we are
made," and what a devil of a world it is to be in just now. But that
rubber man on the car--he isn't sag at all. Heavens, his crudeness! His
beastly clothes, and the bare shaved welt around the back of his neck,
and that awful seal ring! But he's fastened. Life is worth pushing at
and cheering for--and there's a manager, if he _has_ "the darnedest
ways." I'd give something for an every-minute mood like that--a carrying
night-and-day sureness like that. He's not illuminated--lucky dog!'
Professor William Emory Browne had changed cars and was continuing his
journey. In his lap lay a volume of essays just put forth by a member of
his craft, a college professor. He opened it,--it chanced at page
27,--and his eye was caught by the name of his own specialty. He read:--
'Philosophy is the science which proves that we can know nothing of the
soul. Medicine is the science which tells that we know nothing of the
body. Political Economy is that which teaches that we know nothing of
the laws of wealth; and Theology the critical history of those errors
from which we deduce our ignorance of God.'
'Confound it!' ejaculated Professor Browne, and closed the book.
'Room for one more?' inquired a voice, and the rubber-tire man slid into
the seat.
'I just pulled off a little thing out here,' he said, 'that ought to put
a small star in my crown. A down-and-out--a tough looker--says to me,
"_Please_, mister, give me a dime. I'm hungry." And I says to him, "Get
out! What you want is a good drink--go get it," and slips him a quarter.
Talk about gratitude! To think there are men--you know it and I know it
and he was afraid of it--who'd have steered him to a quick-lunch and put
him against soft-boiled eggs!'
'"Man's inhumanity to man"'--
'Sure! Nothing but that ever makes me any trouble about things. Tear
ninety, George,'--this to the conductor,--'and burn this panetella some
time. You said you were in education,' he went on. 'I've just blown
myself to a Universal History--five big volumes, with lots of maps and
pictures and flags of all nations and hanging gardens of Babylon and
such things. Gave down thirty-five for it, and my name is printed--Peter
B. Squem--on the first page of every book. Now,'--Mr. Squem grew quite
earnest,--'you'd say, wouldn't you, that if a man could take those books
down,--chew them up, you understand, and take them down,--he'd have an
education? Not the same, of course, as normal school or college, and yet
an education.'
'I think, if you know what's good for you, you will steer clear of what
you call an education. I think I should stick to rubber tires, and a few
comfortable certainties--and peace.'
Mr. Squem stared. 'How's that?' he inquired. 'Education is your line,
you were saying, and yet you queer your stuff. I'd get quick word from
the house, if I handled Mercury tires that way.'
'But you wouldn't,' rejoined Professor Browne, 'you wouldn't, because
tires mean something. Tires are your life-preserver--they are shaped
like life-preservers, aren't they?'
'You've got me going,' said Mr. Squem, 'and no mistake. I don't mind
telling you I'd hoped to get some hunch from you--on education. You see,
my clothes are right, I always have a room with bath, and I get two
hundred a month and fifty on the side. I read the papers--and the
magazine section on Sunday--and I got through four books last year. And
yet there's something not there--by Keefer, not there! I'd give
something to _get_ it there--to slide it under, somehow, and bring the
rest of me up to regular manicuring and ice-cream forks and the way my
clothes fit!'
Mr. Squem was interrupted in the expression of this craving. There was a
tremendous jar; the car tore and bumped with an immense pounding over
the ties, then careened and sprawled down a short bank and settled on
its side. People who have been through such an experience will require
no description. To others none can be given. In the bedlam chaos and
jumble, and chorus of shrieks and smashing glass, Professor Browne,
struggling up through the bodies which had been hurled upon him, was
conscious of a pain almost intolerably sharp in his leg, and then of a
sort of striped whirlwind which seemed to be everywhere at once,
extricating, calming, ordering, comforting--and swearing. It was like a
machine-gun:--
'_Keep_ your clothes on, nothing's going to bite you--just a little
shake-up--Yes, chick, we'll find your ma--No, you _don't_ climb over
those people; sit down or I'll help you--To hell with your valise, pick
up that child!--There go the axes; everybody quiet now, just where he
is--You with the side-whiskers get back, _back_, hear me!--Now, children
first, hand 'em along--women next, so--men last--Why didn't you _say_
you was a doctor? Get out there quick; some of those people have got
broke and need you!'
Professor Browne was one of these last. Lifted by Peter Squem and a very
scared brakeman, he lay on two Pullman mattresses at the side of the
track, waiting for the rabbit-faced country doctor to reach him. He was
suffering very much,--it seemed to him that he had never really known
pain before,--but his attention went to a white-haired lady near by--a
slight, slender woman, with breeding written all over her. She had made
her way from the drawing-room of the Pullman, and leaned heavily upon
her maid, in a state approaching collapse. Professor Browne was
impressed by her air of distinction even in the midst of his pain. Then
he saw a striped arm supportingly encircle her, and a hand dominated by
an enormous seal ring press to her lips an open bottle of Scotch.
'Let it trickle down, auntie--right down. It's just what you need,' said
Peter B. Squem.
* * * * *
'What did you think of when the car stopped rolling?'
Professor Browne, lying in his bed, asked this question of Mr. Squem,
sitting at its side. The latter had got the professor home to his house
and his housekeeper after the accident the day before, had found the
best surgeon in town and stood by while he worked, had in a dozen ways
helped a bad business to go as well as possible, and now, having
remained over night, was awaiting the hour of his train.
'Think of? Nothing. No time. I was that cross-eyed boy you've heard
about--the one at the three-ringed circus. _Did_ you see that newly-wed
rooster,--I'll bet he was that,--the one with the celluloid collar?
"Good-bye, Maude!" he yells, and then tries to butt himself through the
roof. He wouldn't have left one sound rib in the car if I hadn't pinned
him. No, I hadn't any time to think.'
He produced and consulted a watch--one that struck the professor as
being almost too loud an ornament for a Christmas tree. An infant's face
showed within as the case opened.
'Your baby?' inquired Professor Browne.
'Never. Not good enough. This kid I found--where do you suppose? On a
picture-postal at a news-stand. The picture was no good--except the kid;
and I cut him out, you see. Say, do you know the picture was painted by
a man out in Montana? Yes, sir, Montana. They had the cards made over in
Europe somewhere,--Dagoes, likely,--and when they put his name on it,
they didn't do a thing to that word Montana. Some spelling!'
'Why, what you have there,' said the professor, taking the watch with
interest, 'is the Holy Child of Andrea Mantegna's Circumcision,--it's in
the Uffizi at Florence. Singularly good it is, too. I'm very much
wrapped up in the question, raised in a late book, of Mantegna's
influence upon Giovanni Bellini. There's a rather fine point made in
connection with another child in this same picture--a larger one,
pressing against his mother's knees.'
Mr. Squem was perfectly uncomprehending. 'Come again,' he remarked. 'No,
you needn't, either, for I don't know anything about the rest of the
picture. I told you it was no good. There was an old party in a funny
bathrobe and with heavy Belshazzars, I remember--but the picture was
_this_.'
He rose and began to get into his overcoat.
'There's one thing about this kid,' he said, in a casual tone which
somehow let earnestness through. 'I know a man,--he travels out of
Phillie, and he's some booze-artist and other things that go
along,--who's got one of those little "Josephs." You know, those little
dolls that Catholics tote around? Separate him from it? Not on your
life. Why, he missed it one night on a sleeper, and he cussed and reared
around, and made the coon rout everybody out till he found it. It's
luck, you see. Now this kid'--Mr. Squem was pulling on his
gloves--'isn't luck, but he works like luck. He talks to me, understand,
and'--here a pause--'he puts all sorts of cussedness on the blink. You
can't look at him and be an Indian. I was making the wrong sort of date
in Trenton one day, and I saw him just in time--sent the girl word I'd
been called out of town. I was figuring on the right time to pinch a man
in the door,--he'd done me dirty,--and I saw _him_ again. Good-night!
I'm never so punk that he doesn't ginger me--doesn't look good to me.
The management is mixed up with him--and I hook up to him. Here's the
taxi. So long, professor.--Rats! I haven't done one little thing. Good
luck to your game leg!'
* * * * *
It was Sunday morning, and service was under way in the Church of the
Holy Faith. For the thousandth time the Reverend Allan Dare had
dearly-beloved his people, assembled to the number of four hundred
before him, exhorting them in such forthright English as cannot be
written nowadays, not to dissemble nor cloak their sins before God, and
to accompany him unto the throne of the heavenly grace. He had had a
sick feeling, as he read this exhortation, so full of pound, rhythm,
heart-search, and splendid good sense, to the courteous abstractedness
in the pews.
'Heavens!' he had thought, 'once this burnt in!' He had wanted to
shriek,--or fire a pistol in the air,--and then crush the meaning into
his people; crush God into them, yes, and into himself.
He was four-tenths sag that morning--the Rev. Allan Dare. In the
_Jubilate_, a small choir-boy--a phenomenon who was paid a thousand a
year, and was responsible for the presence of not a few of the four
hundred--had sung 'Be sure ye that the Lord he is God,' to the
ravishment of the congregation--not of the rector, who stood looking
dead ahead. The First Lesson had been all about Jonadab, the son of
Rechab, and drinking no wine--frightful ineptness! What could it mean to
any one? how help any one? Here was Life, with all its cruel tangles,
tighter and more choking every day. Here was Arnold's darkling plain,
and the confused alarms and the ignorant armies clashing by night.
There came back to Dare the creed he had heard in the smoking
compartment: 'I think it ought to be run,--the world,--even if it's
mussed-up to the limit, and I think it's up to us to keep it running. I
think there's a manager of it all in the central office--a manager,
understand, though he never seems to show up around the works, and
certainly does seem to have some of the darnedest ways.'
'O God!' breathed Allan Dare, 'there are so many things--so many
things!'
* * * * *
It was the same Sunday. Professor William Emory Browne was for the first
time on crutches, and stood supported by them at his window.
'Back again,' he ruminated. 'I can probably drive to my classes in
another week. Then the same old grind, showing ingenuous youth--who
fortunately will not see it--how "the search hath taught me that the
search is vain." Ho, hum! How very kind, that Mr. Squem,--he did so much
for me,--and how very funny! I should like to produce him at the
seminar--with his just-right clothes, his dream of culture via his
Universal History, his approach to reality through a picture
postal-card!'