of marrying Mr. Lind; he was young enough to be her grandson,” said
Jane, severely.
“Yes, ma'am,” said Margaret.
It so happened that Jane went to New York that day week, and at a
jewelry counter in one of the shops she discovered the amethyst comb.
There were on sale a number of bits of antique jewelry, the precious
flotsam and jetsam of old and wealthy families which had drifted, nobody
knew before what currents of adversity, into that harbor of sale for
all the world to see. Jane made no inquiries; the saleswoman volunteered
simply the information that the comb was a real antique, and the stones
were real amethysts and pearls, and the setting was solid gold, and
the price was thirty dollars; and Jane bought it. She carried her old
amethyst comb home, but she did not show it to anybody. She replaced it
in its old compartment in her jewelcase and thought of it with wonder,
with a hint of joy at regaining it, and with much sadness. She was still
fond of Viola Longstreet. Jane did not easily part with her loves. She
did not know where Viola was. Margaret had inquired of Louisa, who did
not know. Poor Viola had probably drifted into some obscure harbor of
life wherein she was hiding until life was over.
And then Jane met Viola one spring day on Fifth Avenue.
“It is a very long time since I have seen you,” said Jane with a
reproachful accent, but her eyes were tenderly inquiring.
“Yes,” agreed Viola. Then she added, “I have seen nobody. Do you know
what a change has come in my life?” she asked.
“Yes, dear,” replied Jane, gently. “My Margaret met Louisa once and she
told her.”
“Oh yes--Louisa,” said Viola. “I had to discharge her. My money is about
gone. I have only just enough to keep the wolf from entering the door
of a hall bedroom in a respectable boarding-house. However, I often
hear him howl, but I do not mind at all. In fact, the howling has become
company for me. I rather like it. It is queer what things one can learn
to like. There are a few left yet, like the awful heat in summer, and
the food, which I do not fancy, but that is simply a matter of time.”
Viola's laugh was like a bird's song--a part of her--and nothing except
death could silence it for long.
“Then,” said Jane, “you stay in New York all summer?”
Viola laughed again. “My dear,” she replied, “of course. It is all very
simple. If I left New York, and paid board anywhere, I would never have
enough money to buy my return fare, and certainly not to keep that wolf
from my hall-bedroom door.”
“Then,” said Jane, “you are going home with me.”
“I cannot consent to accept charity, Jane,” said Viola. “Don't ask me.”
Then, for the first time in her life, Viola Longstreet saw Jane Carew's
eyes blaze with anger. “You dare to call it charity coming from me to
you?” she said, and Viola gave in.
When Jane saw the little room where Viola lived, she marveled, with the
exceedingly great marveling of a woman to whom love of a man has never
come, at a woman who could give so much and with no return.
Little enough to pack had Viola. Jane understood with a shudder of
horror that it was almost destitution, not poverty, to which her old
friend was reduced.
“You shall have that northeast room which you always liked,” she told
Viola when they were on the train.
“The one with the old-fashioned peacock paper, and the pine-tree growing
close to one window?” said Viola, happily.
Jane and Viola settled down to life together, and Viola, despite the
tragedy which she had known, realized a peace and happiness beyond her
imagination. In reality, although she still looked so youthful, she was
old enough to enjoy the pleasures of later life. Enjoy them she did to
the utmost. She and Jane made calls together, entertained friends at
small and stately dinners, and gave little teas. They drove about in the
old Carew carriage. Viola had some new clothes. She played very well on
Jane's old piano. She embroidered, she gardened. She lived the sweet,
placid life of an older lady in a little village, and loved it. She
never mentioned Harold Lind.
Not among the vicious of the earth was poor Harold Lind; rather among
those of such beauty and charm that the earth spoils them, making
them, in their own estimation, free guests at all its tables of bounty.
Moreover, the young man had, deeply rooted in his character, the traits
of a mischievous child, rejoicing in his mischief more from a sense of
humor so keen that it verged on cruelty than from any intention to
harm others. Over that affair of the amethyst comb, for instance, his
irresponsible, selfish, childish soul had fairly reveled in glee. He had
not been fond of Viola, but he liked her fondness for himself. He had
made sport of her, but only for his own entertainment--never for the
entertainment of others. He was a beautiful creature, seeking out paths
of pleasure and folly for himself alone, which ended as do all paths of
earthly pleasure and folly. Harold had admired Viola, but from the same
point of view as Jane Carew's. Viola had, when she looked her youngest
and best, always seemed so old as to be venerable to him. He had at
times compunctions, as if he were making a jest of his grandmother.
Viola never knew the truth about the amethyst comb. He had considered
that one of the best frolics of his life. He had simply purloined it and
presented it to Viola, and merrily left matters to settle themselves.
Viola and Jane had lived together a month before the comb was mentioned.
Then one day Viola was in Jane's room and the jewel-case was out, and
she began examining its contents. When she found the amethyst comb she
gave a little cry. Jane, who had been seated at her desk and had not
seen what was going on, turned around.
Viola stood holding the comb, and her cheeks were burning. She fondled
the trinket as if it had been a baby. Jane watched her. She began to
understand the bare facts of the mystery of the disappearance of her
amethyst comb, but the subtlety of it was forever beyond her. Had the
other woman explained what was in her mind, in her heart--how that
reckless young man whom she had loved had given her the treasure because
he had heard her admire Jane's amethysts, and she, all unconscious
of any wrong-doing, had ever regarded it as the one evidence of his
thoughtful tenderness, it being the one gift she had ever received from
him; how she parted with it, as she had parted with her other jewels,
in order to obtain money to purchase comforts for him while he was in
prison--Jane could not have understood. The fact of an older woman being
fond of a young man, almost a boy, was beyond her mental grasp. She had
no imagination with which to comprehend that innocent, pathetic, almost
terrible love of one who has trodden the earth long for one who has just
set dancing feet upon it. It was noble of Jane Carew that, lacking all
such imagination, she acted as she did: that, although she did not,
could not, formulate it to herself, she would no more have deprived the
other woman and the dead man of that one little unscathed bond of tender
goodness than she would have robbed his grave of flowers.
Viola looked at her. “I cannot tell you all about it; you would laugh at
me,” she whispered; “but this was mine once.”
“It is yours now, dear,” said Jane.
THE UMBRELLA MAN
IT was an insolent day. There are days which, to imaginative minds, at
least, possess strangely human qualities. Their atmospheres predispose
people to crime or virtue, to the calm of good will, to sneaking vice,
or fierce, unprovoked aggression. The day was of the last description.
A beast, or a human being in whose veins coursed undisciplined blood,
might, as involuntarily as the boughs of trees lash before storms,
perform wild and wicked deeds after inhaling that hot air, evil with the
sweat of sinevoked toil, with nitrogen stored from festering sores of
nature and the loathsome emanations of suffering life.
It had not rained for weeks, but the humidity was great. The clouds of
dust which arose beneath the man's feet had a horrible damp stickiness.
His face and hands were grimy, as were his shoes, his cheap, ready-made
suit, and his straw hat. However, the man felt a pride in his clothes,
for they were at least the garb of freedom. He had come out of prison
the day before, and had scorned the suit proffered him by the officials.
He had given it away, and bought a new one with a goodly part of his
small stock of money. This suit was of a small-checked pattern. Nobody
could tell from it that the wearer had just left jail. He had been there
for several years for one of the minor offenses against the law. His
term would probably have been shorter, but the judge had been careless,
and he had no friends. Stebbins had never been the sort to make many
friends, although he had never cherished animosity toward any human
being. Even some injustice in his sentence had not caused him to feel
any rancor.
During his stay in the prison he had not been really unhappy. He had
accepted the inevitable-the yoke of the strong for the weak--with a
patience which brought almost a sense of enjoyment. But, now that he
was free, he had suddenly become alert, watchful of chances for his
betterment. From being a mere kenneled creature he had become as a
hound on the scent, the keenest on earth--that of self-interest. He was
changed, while yet living, from a being outside the world to one with
the world before him. He felt young, although he was a middle-aged,
almost elderly man. He had in his pocket only a few dollars. He might
have had more had he not purchased the checked suit and had he not given
much away. There was another man whose term would be up in a week, and
he had a sickly wife and several children. Stebbins, partly from native
kindness and generosity, partly from a sentiment which almost amounted
to superstition, had given him of his slender store. He had been
deprived of his freedom because of money; he said to himself that his
return to it should be heralded by the music of it scattered abroad for
the good of another.
Now and then as he walked Stebbins removed his new straw hat, wiped his
forehead with a stiff new handkerchief, looked with some concern at the
grime left upon it, then felt anxiously of his short crop of grizzled
hair. He would be glad when it grew only a little, for it was at present
a telltale to observant eyes. Also now and then he took from another
pocket a small mirror which he had just purchased, and scrutinized his
face. Every time he did so he rubbed his cheeks violently, then viewed
with satisfaction the hard glow which replaced the yellow prison pallor.
Every now and then, too, he remembered to throw his shoulders back, hold
his chin high, and swing out his right leg more freely. At such times
he almost swaggered, he became fairly insolent with his new sense of
freedom. He felt himself the equal if not the peer of all creation.
Whenever a carriage or a motor-car passed him on the country road he
assumed, with the skill of an actor, the air of a business man hastening
to an important engagement. However, always his mind was working over a
hard problem. He knew that his store of money was scanty, that it would
not last long even with the strictest economy; he had no friends; a
prison record is sure to leak out when a man seeks a job. He was facing
the problem of bare existence.
Although the day was so hot, it was late summer; soon would come the
frost and the winter. He wished to live to enjoy his freedom, and all he
had for assets was that freedom; which was paradoxical, for it did not
signify the ability to obtain work, which was the power of life.
Outside the stone wall of the prison he was now inclosed by a subtle,
intangible, yet infinitely more unyielding one--the prejudice of his
kind against the released prisoner. He was to all intents and purposes
a prisoner still, for all his spurts of swagger and the youthful leap
of his pulses, and while he did not admit that to himself, yet always,
since he had the hard sense of the land of his birth--New England--he
pondered that problem of existence. He felt instinctively that it
would be a useless proceeding for him to approach any human being for
employment. He knew that even the freedom, which he realized through all
his senses like an essential perfume, could not yet overpower the reek
of the prison. As he walked through the clogging dust he thought of one
after another whom he had known before he had gone out of the world of
free men and had bent his back under the hand of the law. There were, of
course, people in his little native village, people who had been friends
and neighbors, but there were none who had ever loved him sufficiently
for him to conquer his resolve to never ask aid of them. He had no
relatives except cousins more or less removed, and they would have
nothing to do with him.
There had been a woman whom he had meant to marry, and he had been sure
that she would marry him; but after he had been a year in prison the
news had come to him in a roundabout fashion that she had married
another suitor. Even had she remained single he could not have
approached her, least of all for aid. Then, too, through all his term
she had made no sign, there had been no letter, no message; and he had
received at first letters and flowers and messages from sentimental
women. There had been nothing from her. He had accepted nothing, with
the curious patience, carrying an odd pleasure with it, which had come
to him when the prison door first closed upon him. He had not forgotten
her, but he had not consciously mourned her. His loss, his ruin, had
been so tremendous that she had been swallowed up in it. When one's
whole system needs to be steeled to trouble and pain, single pricks lose
importance. He thought of her that day without any sense of sadness.
He imagined her in a pretty, well-ordered home with her husband and
children. Perhaps she had grown stout. She had been a slender woman. He
tried idly to imagine how she would look stout, then by the sequence
of self-preservation the imagination of stoutness in another led to the
problem of keeping the covering of flesh and fatness upon his own bones.
The question now was not of the woman; she had passed out of his
life. The question was of the keeping that life itself, the life which
involved everything else, in a hard world, which would remorselessly as
a steel trap grudge him life and snap upon him, now he was become its
prey.
He walked and walked, and it was high noon, and he was hungry. He had in
his pocket a small loaf of bread and two frankfurters, and he heard the
splashing ripple of a brook. At that juncture the road was bordered
by thick woodland. He followed, pushing his way through the trees and
undergrowth, the sound of the brook, and sat down in a cool, green
solitude with a sigh of relief. He bent over the clear run, made a cup
of his hand, and drank, then he fell to eating. Close beside him grew
some wintergreen, and when he had finished his bread and frankfurters
he began plucking the glossy, aromatic leaves and chewing them
automatically. The savor reached his palate, and his memory awakened
before it as before a pleasant tingling of a spur. As a boy how he
had loved this little green low-growing plant! It had been one of the
luxuries of his youth. Now, as he tasted it, joy and pathos stirred in
his very soul. What a wonder youth had been, what a splendor, what an
immensity to be rejoiced over and regretted! The man lounging beside the
brook, chewing wintergreen leaves, seemed to realize antipodes. He
lived for the moment in the past, and the immutable future, which might
contain the past in the revolution of time. He smiled, and his face fell
into boyish, almost childish, contours. He plucked another glossy leaf
with his hard, veinous old hands. His hands would not change to suit his
mood, but his limbs relaxed like those of a boy. He stared at the brook
gurgling past in brown ripples, shot with dim prismatic lights, showing
here clear green water lines, here inky depths, and he thought of the
possibility of trout. He wished for fishing-tackle.
Then suddenly out of a mass of green looked two girls, with wide,
startled eyes, and rounded mouths of terror which gave vent to screams.
There was a scuttling, then silence. The man wondered why the girls were
so silly, why they ran. He did not dream of the possibility of their
terror of him. He ate another wintergreen leaf, and thought of the woman
he had expected to marry when he was arrested and imprisoned. She did
not go back to his childish memories. He had met her when first youth
had passed, and yet, somehow, the savor of the wintergreen leaves
brought her face before him. It is strange how the excitement of one
sense will sometimes act as stimulant for the awakening of another. Now
the sense of taste brought into full activity that of sight. He saw the
woman just as she had looked when he had last seen her. She had not
been pretty, but she was exceedingly dainty, and possessed of a certain
elegance of carriage which attracted. He saw quite distinctly her small,
irregular face and the satin-smooth coils of dark hair around her head;
he saw her slender, dusky hands with the well-cared-for nails and the
too prominent veins; he saw the gleam of the diamond which he had given
her. She had sent it to him just after his arrest, and he had returned
it. He wondered idly whether she still owned it and wore it, and what
her husband thought of it. He speculated childishly-somehow imprisonment
had encouraged the return of childish speculations--as to whether the
woman's husband had given her a larger and costlier diamond than his,
and he felt a pang of jealousy. He refused to see another diamond than
his own upon that slender, dark hand. He saw her in a black silk gown
which had been her best. There had been some red about it, and a glitter
of jet. He had thought it a magnificent gown, and the woman in it like
a princess. He could see her leaning back, in her long slim grace, in a
corner of a sofa, and the soft dark folds starry with jet sweeping over
her knees and just allowing a glimpse of one little foot. Her feet had
been charming, very small and highly arched. Then he remembered that
that evening they had been to a concert in the town hall, and that
afterward they had partaken of an oyster stew in a little restaurant.
Then back his mind traveled to the problem of his own existence, his
food and shelter and clothes. He dismissed the woman from his thought.
He was concerned now with the primal conditions of life itself. How was
he to eat when his little stock of money was gone? He sat staring at the
brook; he chewed wintergreen leaves no longer. Instead he drew from
his pocket an old pipe and a paper of tobacco. He filled his pipe with
care--tobacco was precious; then he began to smoke, but his face now
looked old and brooding through the rank blue vapor. Winter was coming,
and he had not a shelter. He had not money enough to keep him long from
starvation. He knew not how to obtain employment. He thought vaguely of
wood-piles, of cutting winter fuel for people. His mind traveled in a
trite strain of reasoning. Somehow wood-piles seemed the only available
tasks for men of his sort.
Presently he finished his filled pipe, and arose with an air of
decision. He went at a brisk pace out of the wood and was upon the road
again. He progressed like a man with definite business in view until he
reached a house. It was a large white farm-house with many outbuildings.
It looked most promising. He approached the side door, and a dog sprang
from around a corner and barked, but he spoke, and the dog's tail became
eloquent. He was patting the dog, when the door opened and a man stood
looking at him. Immediately the taint of the prison became evident. He
had not cringed before the dog, but he did cringe before the man who
lived in that fine white house, and who had never known what it was to
be deprived of liberty. He hung his head, he mumbled. The house-owner,
who was older than he, was slightly deaf. He looked him over curtly.
The end of it was he was ordered off the premises, and went; but the dog
trailed, wagging at his heels, and had to be roughly called back. The
thought of the dog comforted Stebbins as he went on his way. He had
always liked animals. It was something, now he was past a hand-shake, to
have the friendly wag of a dog's tail.
The next house was an ornate little cottage with bay-windows, through
which could be seen the flower patterns of lace draperies; the Virginia
creeper which grew over the house walls was turning crimson in places.
Stebbins went around to the back door and knocked, but nobody came. He
waited a long time, for he had spied a great pile of uncut wood. Finally
he slunk around to the front door. As he went he suddenly reflected upon
his state of mind in days gone by; if he could have known that the time
would come when he, Joseph Stebbins, would feel culpable at approaching
any front door! He touched the electric bell and stood close to the
door, so that he might not be discovered from the windows. Presently the
door opened the length of a chain, and a fair girlish head appeared.
She was one of the girls who had been terrified by him in the woods, but
that he did not know. Now again her eyes dilated and her pretty mouth
rounded! She gave a little cry and slammed the door in his face, and he
heard excited voices. Then he saw two pale, pretty faces, the faces of
the two girls who had come upon him in the wood, peering at him around
a corner of the lace in the bay-window, and he understood what it
meant--that he was an object of terror to them. Directly he experienced
such a sense of mortal insult as he had never known, not even when the
law had taken hold of him. He held his head high and went away, his very
soul boiling with a sort of shamed rage. “Those two girls are afraid of
me,” he kept saying to himself. His knees shook with the horror of it.
This terror of him seemed the hardest thing to bear in a hard life.
He returned to his green nook beside the brook and sat down again. He
thought for the moment no more of woodpiles, of his life. He thought
about those two young girls who had been afraid of him. He had never
had an impulse to harm any living thing. A curious hatred toward these
living things who had accused him of such an impulse came over him. He
laughed sardonically. He wished that they would again come and peer
at him through the bushes; he would make a threatening motion for the
pleasure of seeing the silly things scuttle away.
After a while he put it all out of mind, and again returned to his
problem. He lay beside the brook and pondered, and finally fell asleep
in the hot air, which increased in venom, until the rattle of
thunder awoke him. It was very dark--a strange, livid darkness.
“A thunder-storm,” he muttered, and then he thought of his new
clothes--what a misfortune it would be to have them soaked. He arose and
pushed through the thicket around him into a cart path, and it was then
that he saw the thing which proved to be the stepping-stone toward his
humble fortunes. It was only a small silk umbrella with a handle tipped
with pearl. He seized upon it with joy, for it meant the salvation of
his precious clothes. He opened it and held it over his head, although
the rain had not yet begun. One rib of the umbrella was broken, but it
was still serviceable. He hastened along the cart path; he did not know
why, only the need for motion, to reach protection from the storm, was
upon him; and yet what protection could be ahead of him in that woodland
path? Afterward he grew to think of it as a blind instinct which led him
on.