EX MACHINA
After she had become accustomed to the smell of rancid oil and
dyestuffs and the interminable racket of machinery she did not find
her work at the knitting mill disagreeable. It was like any work, she
imagined, an uninteresting task which had to be done.
The majority of the girls and young men of the village worked there in
various capacities; wages were fair, salaries better, union
regulations prevailed. There was nothing to complain of.
And nothing to expect except possible increase in wages, holidays, and
a disquieting chance of getting caught in the machinery, which
familiarity soon discounted.
As for the social status of the mill workers, the mill _was_ Gayfield;
and Gayfield was a village where the simpler traditions of the
Republic still survived; where there existed no invidious distinction
in vocations; a typical old-time community harbouring the remains of a
Grand Army Post and too many churches of too many denominations; where
the chance metropolitan stranger was systematically "done"; where
distrust of all cities and desire to live in them was equalled only by
a passion for moving pictures and automobiles; where the school
trustees used double negatives and traced their ancestry to Colonial
considerables--who, however, had signed their names in "lower case" or
with a Maltese cross--the world in miniature, with its due proportion
of petty graft, petty squabbles, envy, kindness, jealousy, generosity,
laziness, ambition, stupidity, intelligence, honesty, hypocrisy,
hatred, affection, badness and goodness, as standardised by the code
established according to folk-ways on earth--in brief, a perfectly
human community composed of the usual ingredients, worthy and
unworthy--that was Gayfield, Mohawk County, New York.
Before spring came--before the first robin appeared, and while icy
roads still lay icy under sunlit pools of snow-water--a whole winter
indoors, and a sedentary one, had changed the smoothly tanned and
slightly freckled cheeks of Rue Carew to a thinner and paler oval.
Under her transparent skin a tea-rose pink came and went; under her
grey eyes lay bluish shadows. Also, floating particles of dust, fleecy
and microscopic motes of cotton and wool filling the air in the room
where Ruhannah worked, had begun to irritate her throat and bronchial
tubes; and the girl developed an intermittent cough.
When the first bluebird arrived in Gayfield the cough was no longer
intermittent; and her mother sent her to the village doctor. So Rue
Carew was transferred to the box factory adjoining, in which the mill
made its own paper boxes, where young women sat all day at intelligent
machines and fed them with squares of pasteboard and strips of gilt
paper; and the intelligent and grateful machines responded by turning
out hundreds and hundreds of complete boxes, all neatly gilded,
pasted, and labelled. And after a little while Ruhannah was able to
nourish one of these obliging and responsive machines. And by July her
cough had left her, and two delicate freckles adorned the bridge of
her nose.
The half-mile walk from and to Brookhollow twice a day was keeping her
from rapid physical degeneration. Yet, like all northern American
summers, the weather became fearfully hot in July and August, and the
half-mile even in early morning and at six in the evening left her
listless, nervously dreading the great concrete-lined room, the reek
of glue and oil, the sweaty propinquity of her neighbours, and the
monotonous appetite of the sprawling machine which she fed all day
long with pasteboard squares.
She went to her work in early morning, bareheaded, in a limp pink
dress very much open at the throat, which happened to be the merciful
mode of the moment--a slender, sweet-lipped thing, beginning to move
with grace now--and her chestnut hair burned gold-pale by the sun.
* * * * *
There came that movable holiday in August, when the annual shutdown
for repairs closed the mill and box factory during forty-eight
hours--a matter of prescribing oil and new bearings for the overfed
machines so that their digestions should remain unimpaired and their
dispositions amiable.
It was a hot August morning, intensely blue and still, with that slow,
subtle concentration of suspended power in the sky, ominous of thunder
brooding somewhere beyond the western edges of the world.
Ruhannah aided her mother with the housework, picked peas and a squash
and a saucer full of yellow pansies in the weedy little garden, and,
at noon, dined on the trophies of her husbandry, physically and
æsthetically.
After dinner, dishes washed and room tidied, she sat down on the
narrow, woodbine-infested verandah with pencil and paper, and
attempted to draw the stone bridge and the little river where it
spread in deeps and shallows above the broken dam.
Perspective was unknown to her; of classic composition she was also
serenely ignorant, so the absence of these in her picture did not
annoy her. On the contrary, there was something hideously modern and
recessional in her vigorous endeavour to include in her drawing
everything her grey eyes chanced to rest on. She even arose and gently
urged a cow into the already overcrowded composition, and, having
accomplished its portrait with Cezanne-like fidelity, was beginning to
look about for Adoniram to include him also, when her mother called to
her, holding out a pair of old gloves.
"Dear, we are going to save a little money this year. Do you think you
could catch a few fish for supper?"
The girl nodded, took the gloves, laid aside her pencil and paper,
picked up the long bamboo pole from the verandah floor, and walked
slowly out into the garden.
A trowel was sticking in the dry earth near the flower bed, where
poppies, and pansies, and petunias, and phlox bordered the walk.
Under a lilac the ground seemed moister and more promising for
vermicular investigation; she drew on her gloves, dug a few holes with
the trowel, extracted an angleworm, frowned slightly, holding it
between gloved fingers, regarding its contortions with pity and
aversion.
To bait a hook was not agreeable to the girl; she managed to do it,
however, then shouldering her pole she walked across the road and down
to the left, through rank grasses and patches of milkweed, bergamot,
and queen's lace, scattering a cloud of brown and silver-spotted
butterflies.
Alder, elder, and Indian willow barred her way; rank thickets of
jewelweed hung vivid blossoming drops across her path; woodbine and
clematis trailed dainty snares to catch her in their fairy nets; a
rabbit scurried out from behind the ruined paper mill as she came to
the swift, shallow water below the dam.
Into this she presently plumped her line, and the next instant jerked
it out again with a wriggling, silvery minnow flashing on the hook.
Carrying her pole with its tiny, glittering victim dangling aloft, Rue
hastily retraced her steps to the road, crossed the bridge to the
further end, seated herself on the limestone parapet, and, swinging
her pole with both hands, cast line and hook and minnow far out into
the pond. It was a business she did not care for--this extinguishing
of the life-spark in anything. But, like her mill work, it appeared to
be a necessary business, and, so regarding it, she went about it.
The pond above the half-ruined dam lay very still; her captive minnow
swam about with apparently no discomfort, trailing on the surface of
the pond above him the cork which buoyed the hook.
Rue, her pole clasped in both hands between her knees, gazed with
preoccupied eyes out across the water. On the sandy shore, a pair of
speckled tip-ups ran busily about, dipping and bobbing, or spread
their white, striped wings to sheer the still surface of the pond,
swing shoreward with bowed wings again, and resume their formal,
quaint, and busy manners.
From the interstices of the limestone parapet grew a white
bluebell--the only one Rue had ever seen. As long as she could
remember it had come up there every year and bloomed, snow-white amid
a world of its blue comrades in the grass below. She looked for it
now, saw it in bud--three sturdy stalks sprouting at right angles
from the wall and curving up parallel to it. Somehow or other she had
come to associate this white freak of nature with herself--she
scarcely knew why. It comforted her, oddly, to see it again, still
surviving, still delicately vigorous, though where among those stone
slabs it found its nourishment she never could imagine.
The intense blue of the sky had altered since noon; the west became
gradually duller and the air stiller; and now, over the Gayfield
hills, a tall cloud thrust up silvery-edged convolutions toward a
zenith still royally and magnificently blue.
* * * * *
She had been sitting there watching her swimming cork for over an hour
when the first light western breeze arrived, spreading a dainty ripple
across the pond. Her cork danced, drifted; beneath it she caught the
momentary glimmer of the minnow; then the cork was jerked under; she
clasped the pole with all her strength, struck upward; and a heavy
pickerel, all gold and green, sprang furiously from the water and fell
back with a sharp splash.
Under the sudden strain of the fish she nearly lost her balance,
scrambled hastily down from the parapet, propping the pole desperately
against her body, and stood so, unbending, unyielding, her eyes fixed
on the water where the taut line cut it at forty-five degrees.
At the same time two men in a red runabout speeding westward caught
sight of the sharp turn by the bridge which the ruins of the paper
mill had hidden. The man driving the car might have made it even then
had he not seen Ruhannah in the centre of the bridge. It was instantly
all off; so were both mud-guards and one wheel. So were driver and
passenger, floundering on their backs among the rank grass and wild
flowers. Ruhannah, petrified, still fast to her fish, gazed at the
catastrophe over her right shoulder.
A broad, short, squarely built man of forty emerged from the weeds,
went hastily to the car and did something to it. Noise ceased; clouds
of steam continued to ascend from the crumpled hood.
The other man, even shorter, but slimmer, sauntered out of a bed of
milkweed whither he had been catapulted. He dusted with his elbow a
grey felt hat as he stood looking at the wrecked runabout; his
comrade, still clutching a cigar between his teeth, continued to
examine the car.
"Hell!" remarked the short, thickset man.
"It's going to rain like it, too," added the other. The thunder boomed
again beyond Gayfield hills.
"What do you know about this!" growled the thickset man, in utter
disgust. "Do we hunt for a garage, or what?"
"It's up to you, Eddie. And say! What was the matter with you? Don't
you know a bridge when you see one?"
"That damn girl----" He turned and looked at Ruhannah, who was
dragging the big flapping pickerel over the parapet by main strength.
The men scowled at her in silence, then the one addressed as Eddie
rolled his cigar grimly into the left corner of his jaw.
"Damn little skirt," he observed briefly. "It seems to worry her a lot
what she's done to us."
"I wonder does she know she wrecked us," suggested the other. He was a
stunted, wiry little man of thirty-five. His head seemed slightly too
large; he had a pasty face with the sloe-black eyes, button nose, and
the widely chiselled mouth of a circus clown.
The eyes of the short, thickset man were narrow and greyish green in a
round, smoothly shaven face. They narrowed still more as the thunder
broke louder from the west.
Ruhannah, dragging her fish over the grass, was coming toward them;
and the man called Eddie stepped forward to bar her progress.
"Say, girlie," he began, the cigar still tightly screwed into his
cheek, "is there a juice mill anywhere near us, d'y'know?"
"What?" said Rue.
"A garage."
"Yes; there is one at Gayfield."
"How far, girlie?"
Rue flushed, but answered:
"It is half a mile to Gayfield."
The other man, noticing the colour in Ruhannah's face, took off his
pearl-grey hat. His language was less grammatical than his friend's,
but his instincts were better.
"Thank you," he said--his companion staring all the while at the girl
without the slightest expression. "Is there a telephone in any of them
houses, miss?"--glancing around behind him at the three edifices which
composed the crossroads called Brookhollow.
"No," said Rue.
It thundered again; the world around had become very dusky and silent
and the flash veined a rapidly blackening west.
"It's going to rain buckets," said the man called Eddie. "If you live
around here, can you let us come into your house till it's over,
gir--er--miss?"
"Yes."
"I'm Mr. Brandes--Ed Brandes of New York----" speaking through
cigar-clutching teeth. "This is Mr. Ben Stull, of the same.... It's
raining already. Is that your house?"
"I live _there_," said Rue, nodding across the bridge. "You may go
in."
She walked ahead, dragging the fish; Stull went to the car, took two
suitcases from the boot; Brandes threw both overcoats over his arm,
and followed in the wake of Ruhannah and her fish.
"No Saratoga and no races today, Eddie," remarked Stull. But Brandes'
narrow, grey-green eyes were following Ruhannah.
"It's a pity," continued Stull, "somebody didn't learn you to drive a
car before you ask your friends joy-riding."
"Aw--shut up," returned Brandes slowly, between his teeth.
They climbed the flight of steps to the verandah, through a rapidly
thickening gloom which was ripped wide open at intervals by
lightning.
So Brandes and his shadow, Bennie Stull, came into the home of
Ruhannah Carew.
Her mother, who had observed their approach from the window, opened
the door.
"Mother," said Ruhannah, "here is the fish I caught--and two
gentlemen."
With which dubious but innocent explanation she continued on toward
the kitchen, carrying her fish.
Stull offered a brief explanation to account for their plight and
presence; Brandes, listening and watching the mother out of greenish,
sleepy eyes, made up his mind concerning her.
While the spare room was being prepared by mother and daughter, he and
Stull, seated in the sitting-room, their hats upon their knees,
exchanged solemn commonplaces with the Reverend Mr. Carew.
Brandes, always the gambler, always wary and reticent by nature, did
all the listening before he came to conclusions that relaxed the
stiffness of his attitude and the immobility of his large, round
face.
Then, at ease under circumstances and conditions which he began to
comprehend and have an amiable contempt for, he became urbane and
conversational, and a little amused to find navigation so simple, even
when out of his proper element.
From the book on the invalid's knees, Brandes took his cue; and the
conversation developed into a monologue on the present condition of
foreign missions--skilfully inspired by the respectful attention and
the brief and ingenious questions of Brandes.
"Doubtless," concluded the Reverend Mr. Carew, "you are familiar with
the life of the Reverend Adoniram Judson, Mr. Brandes."
It turned out to be Brandes' favourite book.
"You will recollect, then, the amazing conditions in India which
confronted Dr. Judson and his wife."
Brandes recollected perfectly--with a slow glance at Stull.
"All that is changed," said the invalid. "--God be thanked. And
conditions in Armenia are changing for the better, I hope."
"Let us hope so," returned Brandes solemnly.
"To doubt it is to doubt the goodness of the Almighty," said the
Reverend Mr. Carew. His dreamy eyes became fixed on the rain-splashed
window, burned a little with sombre inward light.
"In Trebizond," he began, "in my time----"
His wife came into the room, saying that the spare bedchamber was
ready and that the gentlemen might wish to wash before supper, which
would be ready in a little while.
* * * * *
On their way upstairs they encountered Ruhannah coming down. Stull
passed with a polite grunt; Brandes ranged himself for the girl to
pass him.
"Ever so much obliged to you, Miss Carew," he said. "We have put you
to a great deal of trouble, I am sure."
Rue looked up surprised, shy, not quite understanding how to reconcile
his polite words and pleasant voice with the voice and manner in which
he had addressed her on the bridge.
"It is no trouble," she said, flushing slightly. "I hope you will be
comfortable."
And she continued to descend the stairs a trifle more hastily, not
quite sure she cared very much to talk to that kind of man.
* * * * *
In the spare bedroom, whither Stull and Brandes had been conducted,
the latter was seated on the big and rather shaky maple bed, buttoning
a fresh shirt and collar, while Stull took his turn at the basin. Rain
beat heavily on the windows.
"Say, Ben," remarked Brandes, "you want to be careful when we go
downstairs that the old guy don't spot us for sporting men. He's a
minister, or something."
Stull lifted his dripping face of a circus clown from the basin.
"What's that?"
"I say we don't want to give the old people a shock. You know what
they'd think of us."
"What do I care what they think?"
"Can't you be polite?"
"I can be better than that; I can be honest," said Stull, drying his
sour visage with a flimsy towel.
After Brandes had tied his polka-dotted tie carefully before the
blurred mirror:
"What do you mean by that?" he asked stolidly.
"Ah--I know what I mean, Eddie. So do you. You're a smooth talker, all
right. You can listen and look wise, too, when there's anything in it
for you. Just see the way you got Stein to put up good money for you!
And all you done was to listen to him and keep your mouth shut."
Brandes rose with an air almost jocular and smote Stull upon the
back.
"Stein thinks he's the greatest manager on earth. Let him tell you so
if you want anything out of him," he said, walking to the window.
The volleys of rain splashing on the panes obscured the outlook;
Brandes flattened his nose against the glass and stood as though lost
in thought.
Behind him Stull dried his features, rummaged in the suitcase,
produced a bathrobe and slippers, put them on, and stretched himself
out on the bed.
"Aren't you coming down to buzz the preacher?" demanded Brandes,
turning from the drenched window.
"So you can talk phony to the little kid? No."
"Ah, get it out of your head that I mean phony."
"Well, what do you mean?"
"Nothing."
Stull gave him a contemptuous glance and turned over on the pillow.
"Are you coming down?"
"No."
So Brandes took another survey of himself in the glass, used his comb
and brushes again, added a studied twist to his tie, shot his cuffs,
and walked out of the room with the solid deliberation which
characterised his carriage at all times.