Chapter Twenty-seven

All that evening, long after the heifers were in, and the last bolt drawn, and Mathilda’s last cup washed, and the dishpan set gleaming against the drain-board, Henry sat in his room, as if waiting. The sound of his parents moving about their adjoining room at the business of going to bed, died down, and then the drone of their fitful remarks to each other, falling light as rain upon the silence, before they dropped off to sleep.

Every so often, Henry’s pipe, on its way to his mouth, paused, as if to listen. Or suddenly, he slid forward on the old leather Morris chair to cock an ear. The student-lamp had a slow hiss to it that no amount of puttering with the wick would correct. To listen for a creak on the stairway, you had to strain a bit through that soft commotion.

After a while Henry fitted back his copy of The Martyrdom of Man into its familiar place on his bookshelf, lowered the wick until its flame slipped into its slot, and then dragged his heavy Morris chair over toward the open window.

An April night, with the cool, filtered taste to it of spring water, lay over the moonless scene. A dark night, but not black enough to erase silhouettes. A soft, lovely, motionless night, dotted with myriads of small stars, and through it, like an arpeggio scale, the minute, silver, hurrying sounds of a runnel of spring water animated by recent rains.

After a while, the sole light on the landscape, one that burned in the remote window of a shanty-dweller named Joe Batch, passed out into the darkness, and then Henry did what, for him, was an unprecedented thing.[44]

He tiptoed out into the hall, and with his slippers hanging off at the heels, wound up the ladder that led up into Dave’s room.

The candle in that attic of slants and shadows was guttering low in its green bottle; and, fully dressed on his pallet, with his cheek down against the page of an open volume of Henry Esmond, and his eyes wide awake but staring off, lay David.

He sprang up at the appearance of his brother’s head above the ladder, shamefaced for no reason he could have formulated. Teddy leaped, too, from his doze, bellying across the floor in a recognizing frenzy of wagging tail.

“It’s hot up here,” said Henry. “Whew!” and walked over to the undersized window and threw up the sash. The gust of it blew out the candle into a darkness for which they both seemed grateful.

“I guess I’d ’a’ been coming down to you soon, Henry,” said the boy and moved along, so that they both might sit on the side of the cot.

It was only the second or third time Henry had ever been in that room. They sat silently, Henry stooping away from the rough boards of the slant ceiling.

“Down, Teddy!”

“What’s what, Dave?” said Henry, and caught up one knee between his hands and began to rock.

“Why—that’s just what I dunno,” said Dave, and gulped so, that in the smooth, dark silence, it was almost a click.

“Feeling well?”

“Sure.”

“Any more those headaches?”

“Just kinda. Some days.”

“Often?”

“N-no.”

“Bad?”

“N-no.”

“Today?”

“Nope.”

“Eye-doctor.”

“Aw!”

“What Father meant this evening, Dave, only he’s got a rotten way of saying it, is——”

“I know.”

“I figure, Dave, that in your case, you’re just a little slow off the trigger. Am I right?”

“You see, Henry—I can’t say it to Father—but what’s the use a fellow choosing something to do, just because he’s got to be doing something?”

“Something in that.”

“Now, you just take the way the bees work it out in that book you gave me about them by that French fellow.”

“Maeterlinck.”

“And the ants in that other fellow’s book.”

“Wheeler.”

“You don’t catch one single one of those chaps down in the bee-world and the ant-world doing something just to be doing. No, sir. You don’t catch a worker in bee-town putting his bee-shoulder to the wheel, unless he knows that wheel’s going to turn something. A fellow’s got to have his eye on building up something—even if it’s only a honeycomb. Say, Henry, you know what? This month’s Farm Journal’s got a story in about bee-raising—maybe if I was to try my hand at that——”

“Yesterday, it was ovibos-raising, wasn’t it?”

“Yeh! That fellow Stefansson you gave me to read. Northward Course of Empire. That’s what I mean, Henry! Just the name of that book says what I mean. What’s the use sitting in a cage in somebody’s bank, or keeping count of somebody’s Holsteins, or raising a little old patch of alfalfa, when there—when there’s whole empires lying about us, waiting for men; and new worlds that the airship is going to link onto us, so that the North Pole isn’t even North any more. You know what, Henry? That land up there isn’t dead. Hundreds and thousands of miles of it. Fellows have lived off that land up there for years, without having any provisions with them. That means there’s whole new worlds lying around us. Don’t it? Funny everybody don’t get excited about it——”

“Well?”

“Well—well—like it says in one of the biologies, man’s pro-duc-tiv-ity of the soil has got to keep pace with his fertility of the soil. See? Know what I mean? I’ve worked it out. It’s thisaway.”

“This way.”

“Thisaway.”

“This way.”

“This way. Well, take when a country like ours gets too many people in it—well, the northward course of empire means that country up there can be used for growing more meat and more wheat to feed the over-population—see what I mean?—what’s the use fiddling around in a clerk’s cage, when—when there’s empires lying around asleep and waiting to be worked up.”

“Well? Go on.”

“There’s nowhere to go, Henry. That’s the trouble. A fellow just thinks and thinks, and then—he’s so busy thinking where to begin—he don’t begin—at all.”

“Doesn’t——”

“Doesn’t.”

“Henry, why did you give me that book called Spencer’s First Principles?”

“To make you think.”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Not as he exists in Testaments.”

“As he exists in these here First Principles?”

“Does he exist there?”

“Sure he does. Who made the First Principles?”

“I like your looking at it like that.”

“Was Ingersoll a great preacher?”

“A great orator.”

“Who was a great preacher?”

“Demosthenes.”

“But he couldn’t preach. He had to have a stone in his mouth.”

“His wisdom percolated through the stone, and even the stone heads of his public.”

“You know what? A good way to make people listen to what you’ve got to say to them, is to be a preacher.”

“Aha! Now it’s the Church! This is the era of the decline of the Church and the rise of the State. Don’t climb a sinking ship.”

“You can’t ever sink God.”

“Wait and see what happens when human beings attain the perfect mind.”

“Then they’ll be God themselves.”

“Exactly.”

“I believe in God, Henry.”

“Of course you do. Even when you jump the track, your trolley stays on.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Up there, in the gloom of the room that came down on both sides like a book closing, they sat side by side on the edge of the cot, Henry hugging his knee and rocking, Teddy stretched flat on the strip of matting beneath the window, and the cool, washed night-air coming in boldly.

It was a habit of these two to sit in silence, out into which their thoughts could creep, timidly at first, then boldly, like mice at night.

“What’s the matter, boy?”

“Huh? Why?”

“You’re sighing like an exhausted pipe.”

“Roll over, Teddy. It’s him, snoring.”

“Oh!”

“Henry?”

“Yes?”

“Were you ever—kinda licked?”

“I’ve been licked from the start, I guess, Dave. In a way you’ll probably never know anything about.”

“Shelley, the poet, died young. Did you know that? In a boat. Bay of Naples. Sad—and grand—thataway.”

“That way. M-m-m. Not my style. The advantages of dying in bed can’t be overestimated.”

“Have you ever thought, Henry—is life worth living?”

“Depends a good deal, I guess, upon the—liver.”

“Y’know, if it wasn’t for Mother and Father, and you and Bek, of course, ’n’ all—it would be sad for them. Gee! But I don’t know as I’m so crazy about living. I could snuff out just like that!”

“Well, taking it all in all, guess there’s pretty much to be said on both sides.”

“You’re laughing.”

“Forsooth, no!”

“Well, I don’t expect anybody to understand——”

“Who is she?”

“How did you know?”

“I’m like that, sometimes. Intuitive.”

“Has anybody——”

“Nobody.”

“Has Claire?”

“I tell you, nobody.”

“Then how——”

“Oh, after a fellow has lived as long as I have, he comes to know a few things for himself.”

“You see, Henry, I wouldn’t mind it so terribly—yes, maybe I would, but maybe I wouldn’t, if it wasn’t one of those patent-leather lizards like him. That’s what’s eating me. His walking down Tallahassee Street with her every day.”

“Patent-leather lizard like whom?”

“Don’t you know?”

“How the dickens should I——”

“Kenneth Chipman.”

“What’s the matter with Kenneth? Nice enough fellow s’far as I know. Son of as nice a fellow and as good a lawyer as this county boasts.”

“He’s a lizard. Tea-hound. Sits in the St. Charles Hotel any Saturday afternoon around four, and drinks it with girls, with his little finger sticking out off the cup.”

“What in Heaven’s name——”

“I don’t care what he is, so long as he doesn’t hook his arm into hers walking along Tallahassee. Guess I’m what you call a single-track fellow, Henry. Can’t think of anything else but—but his walking down Tallahassee thataway—what’s the use of anything—with his walking down Tallahassee thataway.”

“Sounds like an acute case of the girl. Who is she?”

“You—don’t—know——”

“Half-dozen nice kind of girls hereabouts that you might get smitten with.”

“You—mean—you don’t know—everything?”

“Of course not, except a curl on a neck or a pair of blue eyes could be responsible for er—a—well, for your acute—er—a....”

“You’re laughing at me!”

“No, no, David!”

“You are! I can feel you—shake!”

“Well, if I am, the joke’s on me.”

“What joke?”

“Life.”

“It’s not like I was a moonstruck fellow, with eyes for every girl. She’s not like other girls.”

“I’m sure of that.”

“I—I’m not like other fellows.”

“I’m sure—of that——”

“You are laughing.”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“With me, Henry—oh, I know how fellows get moonstruck. Fellow can’t help hearing. The boys. The way, they talk—around the barns. Girls. Fellows and girls. I’m not thataway. I hate that—talk. Ugh! There’s only one girl I could ever want to—to—to—touch, Henry. I—oughtn’t say it, I guess—but—I do want to touch her beautifulness, Henry. To be the first—the only—is that rotten?”

“It’s the soundest thing in life.”

“Gosh—I—just do! Other fellows get moonstruck. I’m not like them. With me, it’s just Dora. Always!”

“Ah, Dora, old Tark’s daughter! That does complicate things. Our Old Gentleman and he have about as much use for each other as two cocks in a pit.”

“That’s nothing to Dora and me. Nothing’s nothing.”

“I see,” said Henry gravely, fumbling to relight his pipe, the match, in that fitful second, revealing the face of young David smeared with strain and pallor.

“She’s kinda outgrown me now, Hen. That’s the trouble. I don’t belong to the Centralia crowd that she’s gone to school with—and then that dancing-school business. We changed schools and Sunday-schools so long ago. She’s the prettiest little thing. If Kenneth gets Dora, he—I—dunno. I just dunno——”

For an overwhelmingly difficult moment, Dave’s tussle was chiefly with his Adam’s-apple, the puffing of Henry’s pipe helping to make the noise of the gulping seem less colossal.

“A first love-affair, Dave, is like the measles. A good thing to have and have over.”

“That’s what you say. You’re—old. But I know me, all right. She’s—why, she—she’s——”

It was intolerable that a jaw that was about to prick into its first beard should tremble!

“Where does Dora stand on all this, Dave?”

“She—where would she stand? Where could I—come in with her. Beautiful her. With her High School and dancing crowd and patent-leather-hair lizards crawling all around her. Where do I come in? Me? Huh, I don’t come in at all! Why—I haven’t even seen her, face to face, since—since one morning in her barn—I—where do I come in? Not at all.”

“Why?”

“Why do you keep asking me why? She don’t know I’m on earth—any more.”

“Ever asked her?”

“Don’t ask a girl that.”

“Why?”

“If you don’t quit asking me ‘why’——”

“Blamed little fool, why don’t you go get your dander up with her, instead of me?”

“If you—if you don’t quit shaking—if you don’t quit shaking—you’re laughing—” screamed Dave, suddenly in a low, tight kind of agony, and hurling himself against the bulk of his brother, landed sobbing there. Tears that laid him low on the rack of humiliation. Deep, wrenching sobs that he flung himself down into the mattress to muffle, and then, because they shamed him intolerably began to beat and try to tussle with his brother.

“You—what do you know about—about—caring——”

“You’re right, Dave,” said Henry. “I don’t seem to know how to care—enough. That way. That’s what I meant by being licked. If I—somehow—cared—more I wouldn’t be missing everything. Quit pounding me boy!”

“I tell you I can’t live in a world where somebody—else—has her. I can’t think of anything else. No wonder Father says I’m no good. I want to do pretty nearly everything there is to be done, and nothing’s worth doing because—I’m like a fellow that’s bleeding to death, Hen. All the life’s running out of me—and I don’t care who knows it!”

“Have you talked to Dora?”

“Talked to Dora? What’ll I do? Go to her and say ‘Looka here, you’re going with a patent-leather lizard if you ask me, but just the same, a fellow that’s up-and-doing, owns his own flivver and can take care of you and get you somewhere?’”

“Got to admit that about Ken.”

“Well, I’ll say to her, you drop him for me. I’m a farm-boy on my father’s place out on Pessimines Lane. Everything that I want to do, or be, is locked up in my head and can’t get out. But you go and throw over Kenneth and get yourself engaged to me. That will unlock me and I’ll start out to be something. That would make a hit with a girl like Dora, in that gay town-set she’s in, wouldn’t it? A girl that goes to Saturday-afternoon teas at the St. Charles, and holds out her little finger from her teacup, I’d make a hit going to her with these calluses on my hands, and forty cents in my pocket, and saying, ‘Dora, I’m the fellow.’”

“That’s about the only way you’ll ever be the fellow.”

“What do you mean?”

“Go find out. Maybe you are the fellow. If you aren’t, take your licking and shut up about it.”

The first light trembled over them, as they sat in the long after-silence of that. Henry, with his thin legs crossed, sitting on the edge of the cot and sucking at his cold pipe. Dave on his stomach, with his feet against the warm fur of Teddy and his eyes on the glimmer of dawn.

FOOTNOTES: