"A sleepy land, where under the same wheel,
The same old rut would deepen year by year."
"A life of nothings--nothing worth
From that first nothing ere his birth
To that last nothing under earth."
The Jamestown people, in making a pariah of Myron Holder, were not
urged to the step by any imperative feeling of hurt honor or pained
surprise.
Such faults as hers were not uncommon there; but never before had the
odium rested upon one only. Besides, there had always been some
"goings on" and some "talk" indicative of the affair. In Myron
Holder's case, the Jamestown people had been caught napping. In such
cases a marriage and reinstatement into public favor was the usual
sequel, arrived at after much exhilarating and spicy gossip, much
enjoyable speculation, much mediation upon the part of the matrons, and
much congratulation that all had ended so well.
For another thing, Myron Holder was an outsider, and there was no
danger that a word spoken against her would provoke any one else to
anger. The Jamestown people were all the descendants of some
half-dozen families, the original settlers of the country. They had
stagnated year after year, generation after generation marrying and
intermarrying. The Jamestown people of Myron Holder's day bore a
strange resemblance to one another. The descendants of the same
families, subjected to the same mental influences, the same conditions
of life, the same climate, the same religion--it was not to be wondered
at that every prominent or individualized feature of mind and body had
been obliterated and averaged down to a commonplace uniformity.
Distinct physical types were rare here, very dark or very fair people
being seldom seen. The features were coarse and ill-defined, the
nostrils merging into the cheeks, the chins into the necks, the pale
lips into the dull-colored faces, with no clear line of demarcation, no
pure curve to define form.
Certain peculiarities appertained to certain families, however. When
one of the few--very few--Jamestown men who had gone forth to the
outside world returned, he had not much difficulty in approximating at
least the parentage of the children he encountered in the streets; for
one had the Deans nose, a pinched-in, miserly, censorious feature,
given to the smelling out of scandal; another had the Warner walk, a
gait that in a horse would be termed racking; a third might have the
Wilson scowl, a peculiar expression that seemed to emanate from
sulkiness; a fourth was evidently a scion of the Disney stock, for he
gazed out of the Disney eyes, always rheumy and without lashes.
There appeared in Jamestown families every now and then an imbecile,
presenting, as in a terrible composite picture, the mental and moral
weaknesses of his related ancestors.
Nearly every family counted, in some of its branches, one or more of
these unfortunates.
Jamestown's attitude towards these maimed souls was characteristically
utilitarian; they were fed and clothed until they arrived at an age
when, if they were harmless, they became useful, or if they were
violent, their mania became dangerous. In the former case they were
given a full quota of work, and kept out of sight so far as possible,
toiling early and late, horrible brownies, working unseen, unpaid,
unthanked, unpitied. If they were violent, they were sent as paupers
to the governmental institutions and forgotten.
Jamestown was stirred by no noble ambition, thrilled by no eager hope,
excited by no generous impulse, moved by no patriotic enthusiasm,
undisturbed by visions, unmoved by wars,--craved neither glory nor
fame--
"Though fame is smoke,
Its fumes are frankincense to human thought."
And how poor a potsherd the human temple is, when savored with no
incense of endeavor! Better the bitter breath of failure than the dank
vapor of stagnating faculties. The haloes of defeated effort are
sweeter than the lotus of inaction.
Jamestown's religion? If the God of whom preachers prate so familiarly
really exists, with what awful scorn must _He_ behold such worship! As
monkeys, mowing and moping, might mock a pageant, so did these people
simulate religion. Old Eliza--Mrs. Wilson's mad cousin--worshipped
better when she dabbled her hands in the wayside horse-trough,
rejoicing in its coolness; when she smoothed with tender fingers the
torn fur of a half-shot rabbit; when she replaced the unfledged birds
in the nest from which they had fallen--nay, even when she sped across
the sunlit fields, her sodden face irradiate with an inarticulate
feeling of the warmth and freedom of the air.
Nature spread about and before these people all her beauties, unfolded
to their gaze all the enchantment of her seasons, but in vain; their
eyes were darkened, their hearts hardened; the magical mystery of
Spring left them ineloquent; Summer came and lingered, and went
reluctantly; Autumn browned, and Winter fulfilled its bitterness, and
they were unmoved save by the effect upon the crops.
The site of Jamestown and the country surrounding it was historic
ground. Here men had fought and bled and died. The fathers and
mothers of the present generation told how, when children, they had
been hurried off to the woods, to hide there whilst the soldiers
ransacked the deserted houses, eating and appropriating all they
fancied, and spitefully spilling milk, wantonly cutting holes in the
cheeses, and throwing the frying-pans and flatirons down the wells for
mischief. These leisurely warriors were not, however, the ones whose
blood had darkened the soil in so many adjacent spots. The Jamestown
people had no personal reminiscences or knowledge of these sterner
fighters, but evidences of their existence and warfare were plentiful.
Year by year, the neighboring farmers, in tilling their land, found
bullets, broken bayonets, portions of old-fashioned guns, military
buttons, and Indian arrow heads of flint. These latter relics were
often defaced, pointless, and chipped, but sometimes they had preserved
in perfection their venomous pointed form, sharp to sting to the death
when hurled through the air from a hostile bow. Year after year, these
tokens of conflict were found in the fresh furrows; the supply seemed
inexhaustible. It was as though the earth was determined to cast forth
from her bosom those deadly fragments whose mission had been to maim
and slay her children. Yet Mother Earth is but a cruel stepdame to
some of us, less kindly than the bullet, more cruel than the flint
arrowhead.
The people in Jamestown thought little enough of these relics, though
in springtime they were to be found in the pockets of every ploughman;
but little Bing White had a collection of some hundreds of them. They
had a strange fascination for the little elfish boy. People said he
had just escaped being an idiot: that was far from the truth.
A keen and acute intelligence shone from his eyes, but perverted by
morbid and horrible cravings. He was of a Newtonian and speculative
turn of mind also, and was perpetually pondering upon problems of
weighty import, suggested to him by the simplest manifestations of
every-day life: Why dogs barked at bakers? Why blacksmith-shops were
never new? Why buttered bread falls butter-side down? were questions
that he strove with. The wonder of the arrowheads appearing year after
year in the furrows was to him a source of never-ceasing thought. How
was it they came to the surface? What strange grinding went on below
the grain and the grass, to produce that flinty grist each springtime?
He brooded much over the matter, turning his many specimens over and
over with lingering, affectionate touches.
Bing kept his treasures in the space between the lath and plaster of
the second story and the roof of his father's house. There was no room
for garrets there--but there was a space in which Bing's diminutive
figure could stand erect. The ingress to this long, low, dark chamber
was through a tiny trap-door, in the ceiling of one of the back rooms.
Through this, he would wriggle swiftly, replace the trap-door (in
reality only a broad board), speed like a cat from joist to joist
across the whole length of the house to where, through the round panes
of the little gable window, the light fell full upon his collection,
laid out in rows upon boards placed across the joists.
Each arrowhead of the lot had an individuality for this boy; every
misshapen fragment a story. Indeed he dwelt longer over the pointless
and defaced specimens than over the others, for more fascinating than
any perfection of curve or point was the speculation as to where the
fragments of the broken ones rested. Could it be possible that the
long tapering point of the arrowhead he held in his hand had pierced
some red-clad bosom, some dusky naked breast brought low, some helmeted
head, some feather-decked crown, and won a costly coffin for itself to
be buried in? Those notches on the side of the heavy white flint one,
were they the scars of a conflict between the arrow and armor?
Bing White was not an imbecile, but he had strange fancies in that
dusky treasure chamber of his, gloating over his arrowheads, whispering
to himself of bloody deeds wrought and cruel blows dealt by these
flints he held in his palms.
There was one long, narrow arrowhead, sharp and keen-edged, that he had
a great affection for. He used to take it up lovingly and, baring his
forearm, draw it lightly--lightly--close to the skin, his eyes
dilating, his nostrils quivering; now and then, his hand faltering, he
let it touch the flesh, and the keen edge swiftly brought blood.
At the pain he would drop the flint, but at the crimson drops which
showed its bite he would gaze hungrily, delightedly, tracing them out
in tiny red lines upon the white flesh of his meagre arm until the last
vestige had disappeared; and then he would start and tremble, his
fingers twitching strangely, his eyes peering here and there through
the dusky perspective of his refuge, as if hoping to see some blur of
the crimson fluid he loved. Then he would kiss the vicious arrowhead,
and fondle it, until, hearing his mother's call, he would lay it down
gently and flee across the joists, surefooted and nimble, to the
trap-door.
By the time he descended his face would have lost the wild irradiation
of his hidden joy; but his eyes followed any small creature, the cats,
the chickens, the self-satisfied ducks. He whispered to himself in his
dreams of a day when he would not deny his desire for blood.
A strange impish development of character was his: dangerous by reason
of the stubbornness of his race, and strangely blended and nurtured
with and by a love of vivid and bright color. This latter
characteristic was instilled into the White blood, when one of the
far-back Whites, who had been to the war, returned, bringing with him a
gypsy camp-follower as his wife, making her the great-grandmother of
this boy, who cherished the flint arrowheads for the pain they could
inflict, and who dreamt long dreams, the atmosphere of which was
crimsoned with blood and vocal with cries of pain.
This unhealthy mental state found for itself plenty of sustenance, as
all vile plants and animals do, sucking the virus of its unhealthy
existence from every phase of nature, every homely incident in village
life. He let no chance escape him to enjoy his ghoulish pleasure; the
killing of the poultry twice a week for market was a festival he never
missed.
At the village shambles he was a frequent guest; at a pig-sticking he
was always on hand, interested, helpful; no scientist in a clinic ever
watched with greater enthusiasm the performance of a new experiment
than did Bing White the bleeding of a horse--of all these events he had
accurate information. If all these failed him, he sped far down the
margin of the lake, to where the gillnets were, and appeased his
craving by watching the slow, turgid drops that fell when they prepared
the fish.
In autumn, when the paths through the ample woods were overhung with
crimson canopies of leaves, which the winds brought down like blots of
blood to be trodden under foot; when the brambles clung red about the
fences or trailed scarlet along the ground; when the bitter-sweet hung
in vermilion clusters from its bare stems, and the Virginian creeper
clothed the cedars in a fiery mantle--at this time Bing White's eyes
were ever gleaming with unholy happiness, only no one ever noticed it.
It is from such material as this boy that those morbid murderers are
evolved who do murder for murder's sake. Just where in his ante-natal
history the love of color flamed into a love of blood, who shall say?
But it burned within him, a consuming fire; if quenched, to be quenched
only by the annihilation of the being that embodied it. If left to
burn? ...
He had much knowledge of and liking for animals, but it was the liking
of the instinctive vivisector. Inexplicable cases of maimed and killed
animals attested his devotion to the gratification of his curiosity.
The sudden elongation and apparent telescoping of a cat's paw was a
subject that for hours had kept him sleepless.
He had solved the riddle first by putting it down to some trick of his
eyesight, but the keenness of his vision was proverbial in Jamestown,
and that did not long content him. Then he took a tape-line and
measured a paw, and waited for the stretching process. It came. The
huge Maltese stretched out his forepaws in languorous indolence. Bing
promptly caught one and began to measure; the cat instantly contracted
its muscles. Bing strove to hold the paw out by force, with the result
that the cat (which was of the giant order, and no degenerate
descendant of its wild progenitors) fixed its teeth through the fleshy
part of his thumb, from which it was with difficulty disengaged. The
wound inflamed and festered, but the symptoms disappeared in a week or
two. Shortly after the cat died in a fit.
The dilation and contraction of the eyes of animals was a source of
continual speculation to Bing; a matter he strove in horrid ways to
elucidate. There was something hideously repulsive in this boy's
secret cruelties, horrible to relate, sickening to contemplate. But
the creatures he tormented, maimed, killed, knew neither anticipation
nor remembrance; the "corporeal pang" was all.
There was a strange and horrible parallel between his nature and the
nature of the women who tortured so ceaselessly the woman whom fate had
made their victim; a little difference in method, a little divergence
of application, a slight change from the physical to the mental
world--that was all save a dreadful difference in the victim; but the
instinct of cruelty was the same.
There is an organized society in one of our great cities for putting
dumb animals out of pain--out of existence. It had been well for Myron
Holder had she been one of those creatures to which a merciful death is
vouchsafed. The lilied purity of her womanhood might be gone, but we
do not rend the petals of even spent flowers. It is hard to tread upon
even a crushed blossom, and painful to see a broken lily flung to
smother in a sewer.