was a regular fellow and a good old bird and treated his mother
swell and everything, and I guess if we was wise to everything he'd
done we'd be proud to be here and we'd 'a' brung a lotta flowers and
things. He most likely was at the battle of the Marne and the Soam
and Verdun, and maybe he was at Château-Teery. Anyway, he was a
grand fighter, and done his bit all the time and kep' the Huns from
passin'."
'And I wanta tell you that we gotta hand it to these French, because
they may be little guys, but they carry the longest bayonets I ever
see in any man's army.'
"'Amen,' sez all the doughboys and the gobs, except one that yells,
'Alleluia!' He musta been from the South or somewheres.
"'And so,' I sez, 'we're proud to give this frawg a good send-off,
and even if we ain't got a real chaplain and the guns to fire a
salute with, we're doin' the poor widow a lotta good, and that's
somethin'--I'll say it is.'
"'Amen,' sez the audience.
"Then I sez, 'Glory be,' and cross myself and signal the doughboys
to lower away on the coffin, and I flung a handfula dirt in on top
like I see 'em do always.
"Well, the poor old widow near collapsed and Rathbone and the marine
had to hold hard to keep her on her pins. But Reilly created a
diversion by startin' up the motor-bike, and it back-fired like a
buncha rookies tryin' to fire a volley. If we'd hadda bugle we
coulda sounded taps, and the musical accompaniment woulda been
complete.
"Napoleon One come up and shake hands with me like I'd won the
Medeye Militaire, and, before I could side-step, the widow had her
arms round my neck and was kissin' me on both cheeks. Napoleon sez
it was a '_Beau geste_' which I thought meant a fine joke, and I was
afraid the bird was wise, but Rathbone sez no, that it meant a swell
action; and the widow sez, over and over again, '_Ces braves
Americains--ces braves Americains_!' The cordial entente was pretty
cordial on the whole! I'll say it was."
At this point Steve Dempsey paused and glanced about as who should
say, "Are there any comments or questions?" For a while there was
none forthcoming, but finally Lieutenant Erskine ventured a remark.
"This occurred last Sunday?" he inquired, mildly.
"Yes, sir," said Steve--"last Sunday."
"Um," said Erskine, and without further remarks left the office.
On his return he bore a copy of _Le Matin_ in his hand. He sat down
and leisurely and silently unfolded the sheet. Steve had resumed his
work, but I noticed that he kept an eye on Erskine.
"I wonder," said Erskine, smoothing out the newspaper on his knees--
"I wonder, Steve, if you happened to see this very interesting
article."
"No, sir," said Steve. "I don't read French like I speak it."
"Well," said Erskine, "I'll translate. This paper is dated last
Monday, and on page two occurs the following announcement:"
"_American soldiers, sailors, and marines attend funeral of
notorious apache. Jean the Rat, convicted murderer and suicide
and denied the offices of the Catholic Church, is buried by
stalwart Americans.
Department of Foreign Affairs reluctant to file protest at
present time.
Strange demonstration believed to be unofficial and without U.S.
government sanction, although U. S. Navy chaplain delivers
eloquent peroration in English_."
Erskine put aside the paper in silence, and we all turned to watch
Steve. He was very red, even to his ears.
"Gawd!" he spluttered. "Does it really say that, sir? Honest?"
Erskine nodded. "Yes," he said. "We'll be lucky if we avoid
international complications."
"An apache murderer," Steve groaned--"and me thinkin' it was a frawg
hero. Will I get a court martial for it, sir?"
"I doubt it," said Erskine, "but I don't think you'll get the
Congressional Medal or the Legion of Honour, either. Maybe, though,
the President, in recognition of your services toward cementing the
entente, will appoint you the next ambassador to France."
"Well, anyway," said Steve, still violently red about the face and
ears--"well, anyway, I don't care. Even if it weren't a first-class
corpse, it was a first-class funeral."
FOOTFALLS
BY WILBUR DANIEL STEELE
From _The Pictorial Review_
This is not an easy story; not a road for tender or for casual feet.
Better the meadows. Let me warn you, it is as hard as that old man's
soul and as sunless as his eyes. It has its inception in catastrophe,
and its end in an act of almost incredible violence; between them it
tells barely how one long blind can become also deaf and dumb.
He lived in one of those old Puritan sea towns where the strain has
come down austere and moribund, so that his act would not be quite
unbelievable. Except that the town is no longer Puritan and Yankee.
It has been betrayed; it has become an outpost of the Portuguese
islands.
This man, this blind cobbler himself, was a Portuguese from St.
Michael, in the Western Islands, and his name was Boaz Negro.
He was happy. An unquenchable exuberance lived in him. When he arose
in the morning he made vast, as it were uncontrollable, gestures
with his stout arms. He came into his shop singing. His voice,
strong and deep as the chest from which it emanated, rolled out
through the doorway and along the street, and the fishermen, done
with their morning work and lounging and smoking along the wharfs,
said, "Boaz is to work already." Then they came up to sit in the shop.
In that town a cobbler's shop is a club. One sees the interior
always dimly thronged. They sit on the benches watching the artizan
at his work for hours, and they talk about everything in the world.
A cobbler is known by the company he keeps.
Boaz Negro kept young company. He would have nothing to do with the
old. On his own head the gray hairs set thickly.
He had a grown son. But the benches in his shop were for the lusty
and valiant young, men who could spend the night drinking, and then
at three o'clock in the morning turn out in the rain and dark to
pull at the weirs, sing songs, buffet one another among the slippery
fish in the boat's bottom, and make loud jokes about the fundamental
things, love and birth and death. Harkening to their boasts and
strong prophecies his breast heaved and his heart beat faster. He
was a large, full-blooded fellow, fashioned for exploits; the flame
in his darkness burned higher even to hear of them.
It is scarcely conceivable how Boaz Negro could have come through
this much of his life still possessed of that unquenchable and
priceless exuberance; how he would sing in the dawn; how, simply
listening to the recital of deeds in gale or brawl, he could easily
forget himself a blind man, tied to a shop and a last; easily make
of himself a lusty young fellow breasting the sunlit and adventurous
tide of life.
He had had a wife, whom he had loved. Fate, which had scourged him
with the initial scourge of blindness, had seen fit to take his
Angelina away. He had had four sons. Three, one after another, had
been removed, leaving only Manuel, the youngest. Recovering slowly,
with agony, from each of these recurrent blows, his unquenchable
exuberance had lived. And there was another thing quite as
extraordinary. He had never done anything but work, and that sort of
thing may kill the flame where an abrupt catastrophe fails. Work in
the dark. Work, work, work! And accompanied by privation; an almost
miserly scale of personal economy. Yes, indeed, he had "skinned his
fingers," especially in the earlier years. When it tells most.
How he had worked! Not alone in the daytime, but also sometimes,
when orders were heavy, far into the night. It was strange for one,
passing along that deserted street at midnight, to hear issuing from
the black shop of Boaz Negro the rhythmical tap-tap-tap of hammer on
wooden peg.
Nor was that sound all: no man in town could get far past that shop
in his nocturnal wandering unobserved. No more than a dozen footfalls,
and from the darkness Boaz's voice rolled forth, fraternal,
stentorian, "Good night, Antone!" "Good night to you, Caleb Snow!"
To Boaz Negro it was still broad day.
Now, because of this, he was what might be called a substantial man.
He owned his place, his shop, opening on the sidewalk, and behind it
the dwelling-house with trellised galleries upstairs and down.
And there was always something for his son, a "piece for the pocket,"
a dollar-, five-, even a ten-dollar bill if he had "got to have it."
Manuel was "a good boy." Boaz not only said this, he felt that he
was assured of it in his understanding, to the infinite peace of his
heart.
It was curious that he should be ignorant only of the one nearest to
him. Not because he was physically blind. Be certain he knew more of
other men and of other men's sons than they or their neighbours did.
More, that is to say, of their hearts, their understandings, their
idiosyncrasies, and their ultimate weight in the balance-pan of
eternity.
His simple explanation of Manuel was that Manuel "wasn't too stout."
To others he said this, and to himself. Manuel was not indeed too
robust. How should he be vigorous when he never did anything to make
him so? He never worked. Why should he work, when existence was
provided for, and when there was always that "piece for the pocket"?
Even a ten-dollar bill on a Saturday night! No, Manuel "wasn't too
stout."
In the shop they let it go at that. The missteps and frailties of
every one else in the world were canvassed there with the most
shameless publicity. But Boaz Negro was a blind man, and in a sense
their host. Those reckless, strong young fellows respected and loved
him. It was allowed to stand at that. Manuel was "a good boy." Which
did not prevent them, by the way, from joining later in the general
condemnation of that father's laxity--"the ruination of the boy!"
"He should have put him to work, that's what."
"He should have said to Manuel, 'Look here, if you want a dollar, go
earn it first.'"
As a matter of fact, only one man ever gave Boaz the advice direct.
That was Campbell Wood. And Wood never sat in that shop.
In every small town there is one young man who is spoken of as
"rising." As often as not he is not a native, but "from away."
In this town Campbell Wood was that man. He had come from another
part of the state to take a place in the bank. He lived in the upper
story of Boaz Negro's house, the ground floor now doing for Boaz and
the meagre remnant of his family. The old woman who came in to tidy
up for the cobbler looked after Wood's rooms as well.
Dealing with Wood, one had first of all the sense of his
incorruptibility. A little ruthless perhaps, as if one could imagine
him, in defence of his integrity, cutting off his friend, cutting
off his own hand, cutting off the very stream flowing out from the
wellsprings of human kindness. An exaggeration, perhaps.
He was by long odds the most eligible young man in town; good
looking in a spare, ruddy, sandy-haired Scottish fashion; important,
incorruptible, "rising." But he took good care of his heart.
Precisely that; like a sharp-eyed duenna to his own heart. One felt
that here was the man, if ever was the man, who held his destiny in
his own hand. Failing, of course, some quite gratuitous and
unforeseeable catastrophe.
Not that he was not human, or even incapable of laughter or passion.
He was, in a way, immensely accessible. He never clapped one on the
shoulder; on the other hand, he never failed to speak. Not even to
Boaz.
Returning from the bank in the afternoon, he had always a word for
the cobbler. Passing out again to supper at his boarding-place, he
had another, about the weather, the prospects of rain. And if Boaz
were at work in the dark when he returned from an evening at the
Board of Trade, there was a "Good night, Mr. Negro!"
On Boaz's part, his attitude toward his lodger was curious and
paradoxical. He did not pretend to anything less than reverence for
the young man's position; precisely on account of that position he
was conscious toward Wood of a vague distrust. This was because he
was an uneducated fellow.
To the uneducated the idea of large finance is as uncomfortable as
the idea of the law. It must be said for Boaz that, responsive to
Wood's unfailing civility, he fought against this sensation of dim
and somehow shameful distrust.
Nevertheless his whole parental soul was in arms that evening, when,
returning from the bank and finding the shop empty of loungers, Wood
paused a moment to propose the bit of advice already referred to.
"Haven't you ever thought of having Manuel learn the trade?"
A suspicion, a kind of premonition, lighted the fires of defence.
"Shoemaking," said Boaz, "is good enough for a blind man."
"Oh, I don't know. At least it's better than doing nothing at all."
Boaz's hammer was still. He sat silent, monumental. Outwardly. For
once his unfailing response had failed him, "Manuel ain't too stout,
you know." Perhaps it had become suddenly inadequate.
He hated Wood; he despised Wood; more than ever before, a
hundredfold more, quite abruptly, he distrusted Wood.
How could a man say such things as Wood had said? And where Manuel
himself might hear!
Where Manuel _had_ heard! Boaz's other emotions--hatred and contempt
and distrust--were overshadowed. Sitting in darkness, no sound had
come to his ears, no footfall, no infinitesimal creaking of a
floor-plank. Yet by some sixth uncanny sense of the blind he was
aware that Manuel was standing in the dusk of the entry joining the
shop to the house.
Boaz made a Herculean effort. The voice came out of his throat, harsh,
bitter, and loud enough to have carried ten times the distance to
his son's ears.
"Manuel is a good boy!"
"Yes--h'm--yes--I suppose so."
Wood shifted his weight. He seemed uncomfortable.
"Well. I'll be running along, I----ugh! Heavens!"
Something was happening. Boaz heard exclamations, breathings, the
rustle of sleeve-cloth in large, frantic, and futile graspings--all
without understanding. Immediately there was an impact on the floor,
and with it the unmistakable clink of metal. Boaz even heard that
the metal was minted, and that the coins were gold. He understood. A
coin-sack, gripped not quite carefully enough for a moment under the
other's overcoat, had shifted, slipped, escaped, and fallen.
And Manuel had heard!
It was a dreadful moment for Boaz, dreadful in its native sense, as
full of dread. Why? It was a moment of horrid revelation, ruthless
clarification. His son, his link with the departed Angelina, that
"good boy"--Manuel, standing in the shadow of the entry, visible
alone to the blind, had heard the clink of falling gold, and--
_and Boaz wished that he had not_!
There, amazing, disconcerting, destroying, stood the sudden fact.
Sitting as impassive and monumental as ever, his strong, bleached
hands at rest on his work, round drops of sweat came out on Boaz's
forehead. He scarcely took the sense of what Wood was saying. Only
fragments.
"Government money, understand--for the breakwater
workings--huge--too many people know here, everywhere--don't trust
the safe--tin safe--'Noah's Ark'--give you my word--Heavens, no!"
It boiled down to this--the money, more money than was good for that
antiquated "Noah's Ark" at the bank--and whose contemplated sojourn
there overnight was public to too many minds--in short, Wood was not
only incorruptible, he was canny. To what one of those minds, now,
would it occur that he should take away that money bodily, under
casual cover of his coat, to his own lodgings behind the
cobbler-shop of Boaz Negro? For this one, this important night!
He was sorry the coin-sack had slipped, because he did not like to
have the responsibility of secret sharer cast upon any one, even
upon Boaz, even by accident. On the other hand, how tremendously
fortunate that it had been Boaz and not another. So far as that went,
Wood had no more anxiety now than before. One incorruptible knows
another.
"I'd trust you, Mr. Negro" (that was one of the fragments which came
and stuck in the cobbler's brain), "as far as I would myself. As
long as it's only you. I'm just going up here and throw it under the
bed. Oh, yes, certainly."
Boaz ate no supper. For the first time in his life food was dry in
his gullet. Even under those other successive crushing blows of Fate
the full and generous habit of his functionings had carried on
unabated; he had always eaten what was set before him. To-night,
over his untouched plate, he watched Manuel with his sightless eyes,
keeping track of his every mouthful, word, intonation, breath. What
profit he expected to extract from this catlike surveillance it is
impossible to say.
When they arose from the supper-table Boaz made another Herculean
effort. "Manuel, you're a good boy!"
The formula had a quality of appeal, of despair, and of command.
"Manuel, you should be short of money, maybe. Look, what's this? A
tenner? Well, there's a piece for the pocket; go and enjoy yourself."
He would have been frightened had Manuel, upsetting tradition,
declined the offering. With the morbid contrariness of the human
imagination, the boy's avid grasping gave him no comfort.
He went out into the shop, where it was already dark, drew to him
his last, his tools, mallets, cutters, pegs, leather. And having
prepared to work, he remained idle. He found himself listening.
It has been observed that the large phenomena of sunlight and
darkness were nothing to Boaz Negro. A busy night was broad day. Yet
there was a difference; he knew it with the blind man's eyes, the
ears.
Day was a vast confusion, or rather a wide fabric, of sounds; great
and little sounds all woven together, voices, footfalls, wheels,
far-off whistles and foghorns, flies buzzing in the sun. Night was
another thing. Still there were voices and footfalls, but rarer,
emerging from the large, pure body of silence as definite, surprising,
and yet familiar entities.
To-night there was an easterly wind, coming off the water and
carrying the sound of waves. So far as other fugitive sounds were
concerned it was the same as silence. The wind made little
difference to the ears. It nullified, from one direction at least,
the other two visual processes of the blind, the sense of touch and
the sense of smell. It blew away from the shop, toward the
living-house.
As has been said, Boaz found himself listening, scrutinizing with an
extraordinary attention, this immense background of sound. He heard
footfalls. The story of that night was written, for him, in footfalls.
He heard them moving about the house, the lower floor, prowling here,
there, halting for long spaces, advancing, retreating softly on the
planks. About this aimless, interminable perambulation there was
something to twist the nerves, something led and at the same time
driven like a succession of frail and indecisive charges.
Boaz lifted himself from his chair. All his impulse called him to
make a stir, join battle, cast in the breach the re-enforcement of
his presence, authority, good will. He sank back again; his hands
fell down. The curious impotence of the spectator held him.
He heard footfalls, too, on the upper floor, a little fainter, borne
to the inner rather than the outer ear, along the solid causeway of
partitions and floor, the legs of his chair, the bony framework of
his body. Very faint indeed. Sinking back easily into the background
of the wind. They, too, came and went, this room, that, to the
passage, the stair-head, and away. About them too there was the same
quality of being led and at the same time of being driven.
Time went by. In his darkness it seemed to Boaz that hours must have
passed. He heard voices. Together with the footfalls, that abrupt,
brief, and (in view of Wood's position) astounding interchange of
sentences made up his history of the night. Wood must have opened the
door at the head of the stair; by the sound of his voice he would be
standing there, peering below perhaps; perhaps listening.
"What's wrong down there?" he called. "Why don't you go to bed?"
After a moment, came Manual's voice, "Ain't sleepy."
"Neither am I. Look here, do you like to play cards?"
"What kind? Euchre! I like euchre all right. Or pitch."
"Well, what would you say to coming up and having a game of euchre
then, Manuel? If you can't sleep?"
"That'd be all right."
The lower footfalls ascended to join the footfalls on the upper floor.
There was the sound of a door closing.
Boaz sat still. In the gloom he might have been taken for a piece of
furniture, of machinery, an extraordinary lay figure, perhaps, for
the trying on of the boots he made. He seemed scarcely to breathe,
only the sweat starting from his brow giving him an aspect of life.
He ought to have run, and leaped up that inner stair and pounded
with his fists on that door. He seemed unable to move. At rare
intervals feet passed on the sidewalk outside, just at his elbow, so
to say, and yet somehow, to-night, immeasurably far away. Beyond the
orbit of the moon. He heard Rugg, the policeman, noting the silence
of the shop, muttering, "Boaz is to bed to-night," as he passed.
The wind increased. It poured against the shop with its deep,
continuous sound of a river. Submerged in its body, Boaz caught the
note of the town bell striking midnight.
Once more, after a long time, he heard footfalls. He heard them
coming around the corner of the shop from the house, footfalls half
swallowed by the wind, passing discreetly, without haste, retreating,
merging step by step with the huge, incessant background of the wind.
Boaz's muscles tightened all over him. He had the impulse to start up,
to fling open the door, shout into the night, "What are you doing?
Stop there! Say! What are you doing and where are you going?"
And as before, the curious impotence of the spectator held him
motionless. He had not stirred in his chair. And those footfalls,
upon which hinged, as it were, that momentous decade of his life,
were gone.
There was nothing to listen for now. Yet he continued to listen.
Once or twice, half arousing himself, he drew toward him his
unfinished work. And then relapsed into immobility.
As has been said, the wind, making little difference to the ears,
made all the difference in the world with the sense of feeling and
the sense of smell. From the one important direction of the house.
That is how it could come about that Boaz Negro could sit, waiting
and listening to nothing in the shop and remain ignorant of disaster
until the alarm had gone away and come back again, pounding, shouting,
clanging.
"_Fire_!" he heard them bawling in the street. "_Fire! Fire_!"
Only slowly did he understand that the fire was in his own house.
There is nothing stiller in the world than the skeleton of a house
in the dawn after a fire. It is as if everything living, positive,
violent, had been completely drained in the one flaming act of
violence, leaving nothing but negation till the end of time. It is
worse than a tomb. A monstrous stillness! Even the footfalls of the
searchers can not disturb it, for they are separate and superficial.
In its presence they are almost frivolous.
Half an hour after dawn the searchers found the body, if what was
left from that consuming ordeal might be called a body. The
discovery came as a shock. It seemed incredible that the occupant of
that house, no cripple or invalid but an able man in the prime of
youth, should not have awakened and made good his escape. It was the
upper floor which had caught; the stairs had stood to the last. It
was beyond calculation. Even if he had been asleep!
And he had not been asleep. This second and infinitely more
appalling discovery began to be known. Slowly. By a hint, a breath
of rumour here; there an allusion, half taken back. The man, whose
incinerated body still lay curled in its bed of cinders, had been
dressed at the moment of disaster; even to the watch, the
cuff-buttons, the studs, the very scarf-pin. Fully clothed to the
last detail, precisely as those who had dealings at the bank might
have seen Campbell Wood any week-day morning for the past eight
months. A man does not sleep with his clothes on. The skull of the
man had been broken, as if with a blunt instrument of iron. On the
charred lacework of the floor lay the leg of an old andiron with
which Boaz Negro and his Angelina had set up housekeeping in that
new house.