FULFILMENT
An hour had passed. As the afternoon sun sank lower the shadow blot
beneath the big maple had lengthened and deepened. In consequence the
annoying light-rift was no more. Overhead the leaves were vibrating,
barely vibrating, with the first breath of breeze of evening born.
Otherwise there was no change; just the big red roadster and the man and
the girl idling beside.
"Poverty, work, subservience," conversation had drifted where it would,
at last had temporarily halted, with the calendar rolled back twenty
years; "poverty, work, subservience," the man had paused there to laugh,
the odd, repressed laugh that added an emphasis no mere words could
express. "Yes; they're old friends of mine, very old friends, very. I'm
not likely to forget the contrast they've made, ever, no matter what the
future holds."
"You've not forgotten, then, what's past,--overlooked it? Isn't it
better to forget, sometimes,--some things?"
"Forget?" The man was looking straight up into space. "I wish I could
forget, wish it from the bottom of my soul. It makes me--hard at times,
and I don't want to be hard. But I can't ever. Memory is branded in too
deeply."
The girl was picking a blade of grass to pieces, bit by bit.
"I'm disappointed. I fancied you could do anything you wished," she said
low. "That's what has made me afraid of you sometimes."
The man did not stir.
"Are you afraid of me sometimes, really?" he asked.
"Yes, horribly--as much afraid as when we were coming out here to-day."
"I'm sorry, Elice, sorry for several reasons. Most of all because I love
you."
It was the first word of the kind that had ever passed between them. Yet
neither showed surprise, nor did either change position. It was as though
he had said that gravitation makes the apple fall, or that the earth was
round, a thing they had both known for long, had become instinctively
adjusted to.
"I knew that," said the girl gently, "and know too that you're sorry I am
afraid. You can't help it. If it weren't true, though, you wouldn't be
you."
The man looked at her gravely.
"You think it will always be that way?" he asked. "You'll always be
afraid at times, I mean?"
"Yes. You're bigger than I am. I can't understand you, I never can
wholly. I've given up hope. We're all afraid of things we can't
completely understand."
Silently the man passed his hand across his face, unconsciously; his arm
fell lax at his side. As the girl had known, he did not follow the lead,
would not follow it unless she directed the way.
"You said you fancied I could forget what's past," he said at last. "Did
you honestly believe that?"
"Yes, or ignore it."
"Ignore it--or forget!" The fingers of the great hands twitched. "Some
things one can't ignore or forget, girl. To do so would be superhuman.
You don't understand."
"No; you've never told me. You've suggested at times, merely suggested;
nothing more."
"You'd like to know why--the reason? It would help you to understand?"
"Yes; I think it would help."
"It might even lead to making you--unafraid?"
A halt this time, then, "Yes, it might possibly do even that."
Again the man looked at her for long in silence, and again very gravely.
"I'll tell you, then," he said. "It isn't pleasant for me to tell nor for
you to hear; but I'd like you to know why--if you can. They're all back,
back, the things I'd like to forget and can't, a very long way. They date
from the time I first knew anything."
The girl settled deeper into the soft coat, her eyes half closed.
"You told me once you couldn't remember your mother even," she
suggested.
"No, nor my father, nor any other relatives, if I ever had any. I was
simply stranded in Kansas City when it was new. I wasn't born there,
though, but out West on a prairie ranch somewhere. The tradition is that
my parents were hand-to-mouth theatrical people, who'd got the free home
craze and tried to live out on the west Kansas desert, who were dried out
and starved out until they went back on the road; and who then, of
course, didn't want me. I don't know. Anyway, when my brain awoke I was
there in Kansas City. As a youngster I had a dozen homes--and none. I was
any one's property--and no one's. I did anything, accepted whatever
Providence offered, to eat. Animals must live and I was no exception. The
hand seemingly of every man and woman in the world was against me, and I
conformed to the inevitable. Any one weaker than I was my prey, any one
stronger my enemy. I learned to fight for my own, to run when it was
wisest, to take hard knocks when I couldn't avoid them--and say nothing.
It was all in the game. I know this isn't pleasant to hear," he
digressed.
"I'm listening. Go on, please."
"That was the first stage. Then, together with a hundred other similar
little beasts, a charitable organization got hold of me and transplanted
me out into the country, as they do old footsore hack horses when they
get to cluttering the pavement. Chance ordained that I should draw an old
Norwegian farmer, the first generation over, and that he should draw me.
I fancy we were equally pleased. His contract was to feed me and clothe
me and,--I was twelve at the time, by the way,--to get out of me in
return what work he could. There was no written contract, of course; but
nevertheless it was understood just the same.
"He fulfilled his obligation--in his way. He was the first generation
over, I repeat, and had no more sense of humor than a turtle. He saw that
I had all I could eat--after I'd done precisely so much work, his own
arbitrary stint, and not a minute before. If I was one iota short I went
hungry as an object-lesson. He gave me clothes to wear, after every other
member of the family had discarded them, in supreme disregard for
suitability or fit. He sent me to school--during the months of January
and February, when there was absolutely nothing else to do, and when I
should have been in the way at home. At times of controversy he was
mighty with the rod. He was, particularly at the beginning of our
intimacy, several sizes larger than I. It was all a very pleasant
arrangement, and lasted four years. It ended abruptly one Thanksgiving
Day.
"I remember that day distinctly, as much so as yesterday. Notwithstanding
it was a holiday, I'd been husking corn all day steady, from dark until
dark. There was snow on the ground, and I came in wet through,
chattering cold, hungry, and dog-tired--to find the entire family had
left to celebrate the evening with a neighbor. They did that often of a
holiday, but usually they left word. This time they'd forgotten, or
didn't care. Anyway, it didn't matter, for that day had been the last
straw. So far as I was concerned the clock had struck twelve and a new
circuit had begun.
"I looked about the kitchen for supper, but there was none, so I
proceeded to prepare one suitable to the occasion. Among other things,
the farmer raised turkeys for the market and, although the season was
late, there were a few birds left for seed. I went out to the barn with a
lantern and picked the plumpest gobbler I could find off the roost, and
an hour later had him in the oven. This was at eight o'clock in the
evening. While he was baking I canvassed the old farmer's wardrobe. I'd
grown like a mushroom those last years and, though I was only sixteen, a
suit of his ready-made clothes was a fair fit. I got into it grimly. I
also found a dog-skin fur coat and, while it smelled a good deal like its
original owner, it would be warm, and I laid it aside carefully for
future reference.
"Then came supper. I didn't hurry in the least, but I had a campaign in
mind, so I went to work. When that bird was done I ate it, and everything
else I could find. I had the appetite of an ostrich, and when I was
through there wasn't enough left for a hungry cat. I even considered
taking the family cat in to the feast,--they had one, of course, and it
always looked hungry, too; but I had a sort of pride in my achievement
and I wanted to leave the remains as evidence.
"It was ten o'clock by this time and no one had shown up. I was
positively sorry. I'd hoped the old farmer would return and find me. I
had a few last words to say to him, some that had been lying heavy on my
mind for a long time. But he didn't come, and I couldn't wait any longer;
so I wrote them instead. I put on the dog-skin coat and started away on
foot into the night. If I'd had money I would have left the value of the
clothes; but he'd never given me a dollar in all those four years, so I
took them on account. It was two miles to town and I made it in time to
catch the ten-forty-five freight out.
"I forgot one thing, though. I went back after I'd got started a quarter
of a mile to say good-bye to the horses. I always liked horses, and old
Bill and Jerry and I had been good friends. I rode the pilot of that
engine and got into Kansas City the next morning. That was the second
stage.... Still interested, are you, Elice?"
"Yes."
"Next, I landed in the hardwood region of Missouri, the north edge of the
Ozarks. It was the old story of one having to live, and I'd seen an ad in
the papers for 'loggers wanted.' I had answered it, and the man in charge
dropped on me like a hawk and gave me transportation by the first train.
Evidently men for the job were not in excess, and when I'd been there a
day I knew why. It was the most God-forsaken country I'd ever known, away
back in the mountains, where civilization had ceased advancing fifty
years before. The job was a contract to deliver so many thousand feet of
lumber in the log daily at the mill on the nearest railway. There was a
five-mile haul, and we worked under a boss in crews of four. Each crew
had to deliver eight big logs a day, seven days in the week, three
hundred and sixty-five days in the year. How it was done, when they were
cut, when hauled, was not the boss's affair--just so the logs came. When
we of the crews ate or slept was no one's affair--just so we kept on the
job. No single man could handle one of those big cuts, no single mule
team haul it in places over those cursed mountain roads. That's why we
worked in crews. On the average we worked eighteen hours a day. In summer
this was long, in winter it seemed perpetual; but I was in it and I was
going to stick--or thought I was. The other three in my gang were
middle-aged men,--hard drinkers, good swearers, tough as oak themselves.
The boss was a little tobacco-eating, bow-legged Irishman. I never,
before or since, knew a man who could swear as he could, or drink so when
he struck town. It seems to go with the logging business; but he was a
master.
"I struck this place in the winter. It was in the winter following, again
by chance on a holiday, but Christmas this time, that I quit. They don't
have much cold down in that country and usually but little snow; but this
year there had been a lot,--soft, wet snow, half rain, that melted on the
ground and made the roads almost impassable. For that reason we'd been
getting behind in our contract. We simply could not make two trips a day;
and Murphy, the boss, grew black and blacker. He swore that if we
couldn't make but one trip a day on that one haul we'd have to carry two
logs each instead of one. The thing was barely possible on good roads,
wholly impossible with the ground softened; but he was the boss, his word
law, and before daylight on this Christmas morning we were loaded and on
the road.
"I was on the head wagon with Murphy behind me, the other three
following. The first half-mile was down grade and we got along all right.
Then came the inevitable up grade following and the team began to
flounder. They were mules, of course,--horses could never have stood for
a day the grief of that mountain hauling,--great big-framed, willing
fellows that in condition would pull anything any team could pull; but
now they were weak and tired, and so thin that their bones almost stuck
through their hides from the endless grind. They did their best, though,
and struggled along for a few rods. The wheels struck a rock in the road
and they stopped. I urged them on and they tried again, but the load
wouldn't budge. There was but one thing to do,--to double with the team
behind, and I slid off to make the coupling.
"Murphy had been watching it all in silence,--a bad sign with him. When
he saw what I was going to do he held up his hand to the rear team, which
meant:'Stay where you are.' 'Give over the lines,' he said to me.
"I knew what that meant. I'd seen him cripple animals before; but that
was when I first came. Since then I'd had another year to grow and to get
hard and tough. I was going on eighteen and as big as I am now almost;
and I wasn't afraid of him then or of any human being alive.
"'It's no use,' I answered. 'We may as well double and save time.'
"He said something then, no matter what; I was used to being sworn at.
"'No,' I said.
"He jumped off the load at that. I thought it was between us, so I jerked
off my big mittens to be ready; but the mules' turn was to come first, it
seems. He didn't wait for anything, just simply went at them, like a
maniac, like a demon. I won't tell you about it--it was too horribly
brutal--or about what followed. I simply saw red. For the first time and
the last time in my life, I hope, I fought a man--fought like a beast,
tooth and nail. When it was over he was lying there in the mud we'd
made, unconscious; and I was looking down at him and gasping for breath.
I was bleeding in a dozen places, for he had a knife; but I never
noticed. I suppose I stood there so for a minute looking at him, the
other three men who had come up looking at me, and not one of us saying a
word. I reached over and felt of him from head to foot. There were no
bones broken and he was breathing steadily. So I did what I suppose was a
cruel thing, but one I've never regretted to this day, though I've never
seen him since. I simply rolled him over and over in the mud and slush
out of the road--and left him to come to. After that we pulled off the
second log from each of the four wagons and left them there beside the
track. Then we drove on to town, leaving him there; sitting up by that
time, still dazed, by the side of the road. There was just one logging
train a day on that stub, and when we pulled into town it was waiting.
Without a word of understanding, or our pay for the month, the four of us
took that train and went our four separate ways. That's the third
stage.... Begin to understand a little, do you, Elice?"
"Yes; I begin, just begin, to understand--many things."
Roberts shifted position silently, his arms crossed under his head for a
pillow. But he was still looking straight up, through the gently rocking
leaves at the infinite beyond.
"The next stage found me in a southern Iowa soft-coal mine. The
explanation is simple. I had saved a few dollars; while they lasted I
drifted, and to the north. When they were gone I had to work or starve. I
had no education whatever, no special training even. I was merely a big,
healthy animal, fit only for hard, physical work. I happened to be in a
farming and mining community. It was Winter and there was nothing to do
on a farm, so by the law of necessity I went to work heaving coal.
"I stayed there a little over seven months and during that time I
scarcely saw the sun. I'd go into the tunnel at seven in the morning,
take my lunch with me, and never come out until quitting time. I worked
seven days in the week here too. There wasn't any union and, anyway, no
one seemed to think of doing differently. At first it used to worry me,
that being always in the dark. My imagination kept working, picturing
sunlight and green things; after a bit that stage passed and I used to
dread to come out of the tunnel. The glare hurt my eyes and made me blink
like an owl in the daytime. I felt chilly, too, and shivered so my teeth
chattered. But I stuck to it, and after a few months the thing seemed
natural and almost as though I'd been there always. I began to cease to
think and to work unconsciously, like a piece of machinery. I even quit
counting the days. They were all the same, so what was the use? I just
worked, worked, and the coal dust ground into me and sweated into me
until I looked more like a negro than a white man.
"Time drifted on this way, from Winter until Spring, from Spring until
Summer; at last the something unusual that always comes about sooner or
later happened, and I awoke. It was just after dinner one day and I'd
gone back to the job. I had a lot of loose coal knocked down in the drift
and was shovelling steadily into a car when, away down the main tunnel, I
saw a bunch of lights bobbing in the darkness. It wasn't the time of day
for an inspection, and anyway there were several people approaching, so I
waited to see what it meant.
"They came on slowly, stopping to look at everything by the way. At last
they got near enough so I could make them out; there were three men and a
woman. I recognized one of the men by this time,--our foreman, Sharp. He
was guiding the others and I knew then they were visitors, owners
probably, because no stranger had ever come before while I was there. The
woman, I saw that she was a girl now, called one of the men 'father'; and
from the way she spoke I guessed why she was along too. She'd come
anyway, whether they approved or not. The drift I was working in was a
new one, just opened; and when they got there the whole group stopped a
little way off, and Sharp began explaining, talking fast and giving
figures. If any of the men saw me they didn't pay any attention; they
just listened, and now and then one of them asked a question. But the
girl wasn't interested or listening. She was all eyes, looking about here
and there, taking in everything; and after a bit she noticed the light in
my cap and came peering over to see what it meant. I just stood there
watching her and she came quite close, all curiosity, until finally she
could see my face. She stopped.
"'Oh,' she said, 'I thought it was just a light. It's a man.'
"'Yes, it's a man,' I said.
"She was looking at me steadily by this time, wholly curious.
"'A--a white man?' she asked.
"I thought a moment, then I understood.
"'Yes, a white man,' I answered.
"She came up to the car at that and looked in. She glanced back at me.
Evidently she wasn't entirely satisfied.
"'How old are you?' she asked. 'You look awfully old.'
"I leaned over on the car too; I'd begun to think. I remembered that to
me she seemed so very, very young; and all at once it flashed over me
that probably I wasn't a day older.
"'Eighteen,' I said.
"'Eighteen!' She stared. 'Why, I'm eighteen. And you--have you been here
long?'
"I suppose I smiled. Anyway I know I scared her. She drew back.
"'I don't know,' I said. 'I've forgotten. If you'll tell me the date
maybe I can answer. I don't know.'
"'You don't know! You can't mean that.'
"'Yes, I've forgotten.'
"She didn't say a word after that, just looked at me--as a youngster
looks when it goes to the circus for the first time. I fancy we stood
there half a minute so; then at last, interrupting, the man she'd called
'father' looked over and saw us. He frowned, I could see that, and said
something to the foreman. He spoke her name."
Just for a moment Roberts shifted his head, looking at his silent
listener steadily. "What do you fancy was that name he called, Elice?"
Elice Gleason started involuntarily, and settled back in her place.
"I haven't the slightest idea, of course."
"It wasn't an ordinary name. At that time I'd never heard it before."
"I'm not good at guessing."
Roberts shifted back to his old position.
"It was 'Elice.' 'Elice, come,' he said.
"The daughter hesitated. I imagine she wanted to ask me several things
yet,--whether I had cloven feet, for instance, and lived on spiders; but
she didn't. She went back to the other three and they moved on. That was
the last I saw of them.
"I worked the rest of that day, did about three men's work, I remember.
That night I drew my pay and went to bed; but I didn't go to sleep. I
did a lot of thinking and made up my mind to something. I decided I'd
been the under dog long enough. I haven't changed the opinion since. Next
day I saw the sun when it was straight overhead and soaked the coal dust
out of my skin--as much as possible.... That's all of the fourth
stage.... Hadn't I better stop?"
The girl shook her head, but still without looking at him.
"No; I want to learn what you did after that, after you woke up."
"I went West. I hadn't seen the sun or the sky for so long that I was
hungry for it. In Omaha I fell in with a bunch of cattlemen and, as I
always liked to handle stock, that settled it. I accepted an offer as
herder; they didn't call it that, but it amounted to the same. I had a
half-dozen ponies, rations for six months, and something under a thousand
head of stock to look after. By comparison it wasn't work at all; only I
was all alone and it took all the time, day and night. I didn't sleep
under a roof half a dozen nights from July to October. When the cattle
bunched at night I simply rolled up in a blanket where they were and
watched the stars until I forgot them; the next thing I knew it was
morning. I had hours to read in though, hours and hours; and that was
another thing I was after. For I could read, I wasn't quite illiterate,
and I was dead in earnest at last. When the Fall round-up came I quit and
went to Denver, and portered in a big hotel and went to night school.
"There isn't much to tell after this. I drifted all over the West and the
Southwest during the next few years. I got the mining fever and
prospected in Colorado and California and Arizona; but I never struck
anything. I learned something though; and that was that it isn't the
fellow who makes a find who wins, but the chap who buys the prospect,
almost invariably. That was useful. Every Winter I landed in a big city
and went to school,--night school or mining school or commercial school.
Finally it dawned upon me that I was taking the long road to an end, that
the short cut was to be really ready to do a thing before making the
attempt. I decided to go to a university. That would take years, and
meantime I had to live. I could make a living in a little city easier
than a big one, so I came here.... You know the rest."
Elice Gleason sat up, her fingers locked over her knees.
"Yes, I know the rest; but--" She was silent.
"But you don't wholly understand," completed the other. "You don't, even
yet, do you, Elice?"
"No, not entirely, even yet."
"Why I can't forget when I wish or help being hard?"
"Yes, when you have such infinite possibilities now."
"Now," supplemented the man evenly, "when society at large couldn't pound
me down any longer or prevent my getting out of their power."
The girl did not answer.
Deliberately Roberts sat up; no longer listless or tolerantly
self-analytic, but very wide awake, very direct.
"I'll have to tell you a few more reasons, then; read between the lines a
bit. I never did this before to any one; never will again--to any one.
But I must make you understand what made me as I am. I must; you know
why. Tell me to stop when you wish, I'll obey gladly; but don't tell me
you don't understand.
"To begin again at the beginning. My parents abandoned me. Why? They were
starved to it, forced to it. Self-preservation is the first law. I don't
clear them, but I understand. They were starving and irresponsible. I
merely paid the price of relief, the price society at large demanded.
"At the first home I had afterward the man drank,--drank to forget that
he, too, was an under dog. Some one again must pay the price, and I paid
it. Now and then I'd succeed in selling a few papers, or do an errand,
and earn a few pennies. After the manner of all lesser animals I'd try to
hide with them; but he'd find me every time. He seemed to have a genius
for it. He'd whip me with whatever was handy; at first for trying to
hide, later, when I wouldn't cry, because I was stubborn. Finally, after
he'd got tired or satisfied, he'd steal my coppers and head for the
nearest bar. Once in January I remember a lady I met on the street took
me into a store and bought me a new pair of shoes. I hid them
successfully for a week. One day he caught me with them on--and pawned
them.
"The old farmer the charity folks traded me to was a Lutheran. Every
morning after breakfast he read prayers. He never missed a day. Then
he'd send me out with one of his sons,--a grown-up man of
twenty-two,--and if I didn't do exactly as much work as the son I went
hungry until I got it done if it took half the night. He also had a
willow sapling he relied upon when hunger didn't prove effective. He'd
pray before he used that too,--pray with one hand gripping my neckband so
I couldn't get away. I earned a dollar a day--one single solitary
dollar--when I was logging oak in the Ozarks. Day after day when we were
on the haul I used to strap myself fast to the load to keep from going to
sleep and rolling off under the wheels. I got so dead tired that I fell
asleep walking, when I did that to keep awake. You won't believe it, but
it's true. I've done it more than once.
"I was sick one day in the coal mine, deathly sick. The air at times was
awful. I laid down just outside the car track. I thought I was going to
die and felt distinctly pleased at the prospect. Some one reported me to
the superintendent. He evidently knew the symptoms, for he came with a
pail of water and soaked me where I lay, marked time, and went away. I
laid there for three hours in a puddle of water and soft coal grime;
then I went back to work. I know it was three hours because my time check
was docked exactly that much.
"When I was going to night school in Denver the day clerk, who'd got me
the place, took half my tips, the only pay I received, to permit me to
hold the place. It was the rule, I discovered, the under-dog penalty.
"I said I never struck anything prospecting. I did. I struck a silver
lead down in Arizona. While I was proving it a couple of other
prospectors came along, dead broke--and out of provisions. I divided food
with them, of course--it's the unwritten law--and they camped for the
night. We had supper together. That was the last I knew. When I came to
it was thirty-six hours later and I was a hundred miles away in a cheap
hotel--without even my bill paid in advance. The record showed that claim
was filed on the day I disappeared. The mine is paying a hundred dollars
a day now. I never saw those two prospectors again. The present owner
bought of them square. I don't hold it up against him.
"I went to night school all one winter in San Francisco with a fellow
named Stuart, another under dog like myself. We roomed together in a
hall-bedroom to save expense and ate fifteen-cent dinners together at the
same soup-house. He clerked in a little tobacco store daytimes. I was
running an express elevator. We both saved a little money above what it
cost to live. Things went on in this way for four months, until the end
of the winter term. One morning when I woke up I found he'd gone. I also
found that the little money I'd saved was gone. They went together. I
never saw either again.
"I had another friend once, I thought. It was after I'd decided to come
here to the university. I was harvesting on a wheat ranch in Nebraska,
making money to pay for my matriculation. He was a student too, he said,
from New York State, and working for the same purpose. We worked there
together all through harvest, boiled side by side in the same sun. One
day he announced a telegram from home. His mother was dying. He was crazy
almost because he hadn't nearly enough money to take him back at once.
And there his mother was in New York State dying! I lent him all I had
saved,--seventy odd dollars; and he gave me his note, insisted on doing
so--though he hoped the Lord would strike him dead if he failed to return
the loan within four days. I have that note yet. Perhaps the Lord did
strike him dead. I don't know.
"It was nearly September by this time and harvest was over, my job with
it, of course; so I started on east afoot, tramping it. I wasn't a
particularly handsome specimen, but still I was clean, and I never asked
for a meal without offering to work for it. Yet in the three hundred
miles I covered before school opened I had four farmers' wives call the
dog,--I recorded the number; and I only slept under a roof two nights.
"Even after I came here, after--Elice, don't! I'm a brute to have done
this! From the bottom of my soul I beg your pardon."
The girl was weeping repressedly, her face buried in her hands, her whole
body tense.
"Elice, please don't! I'm ashamed. I only wanted you to understand; and
now--I'm simply ashamed."
"You needn't be at all." As suddenly as it had come the storm abated,
under compulsion. "I wanted to know several things very much; and now I
think I do know them. At least I don't wonder any more--why." She stood
up decisively, disdaining to dry her eyes.
"But we mustn't stop to chatter any more now," she digressed
preventingly. "You made me forget all about time, and cooks should never
forget that. It's nearly sundown and father--he'll have been hungry for
two hours."
Roberts got to his feet slowly. If in the new light of understanding
there was more he had intended saying that day, or if at the sudden
barring of opportunity he felt disappointment, his face gave no
indication of the fact. He merely smiled in tolerant appreciation of the
suggestion last made.
"Doesn't your father know the remedy for hunger yet, at his age?" he
queried whimsically.
"Knows it, yes," with an odd laugh; "but it would never occur to him
unless some one else suggested it."
A pause, then she looked her companion full in the face, significantly
so. "He's dependent and irresponsible as a child or--as Steve Armstrong.
They're helpless both, absolutely, left to themselves; and speaking of
that, they're both by themselves now." She started for the motor hastily,
again significantly so.
"Come, please," she requested.