TOWERS OF FAME By ELIZABETH IRONS FOLSOM From McClure’s

HE raised his voice to bar interruption.

“You cannot tell anything about any one. Romance survives where you least expect it. Would you look for it in Eric Hall, for instance? Would you suspect him of Romance?”

“Well, hardly,” said one of the listeners. “Not that calculating, cold man—all indifference. Just to make your point, don’t try to prove that he has known sentiment.”

“More than most men,” replied Kent. “I have a notion to tell you about him. I will tell you. Come closer, Janet—all of you—to hear the unbelievable.”

“About Judge Eric Hall who knows only power—fame!” They laughed.

“Yes, about him.”

“How do you happen to know?”

“He told me.”

“Did he expect you to tell?”

“Heaven knows what a man expects when he babbles.”

Dinner was over; coffee was being served in the big, candlelit drawing room. The guests had made little intimate groups; some one at the piano at the far end of the room touched half strains between talk and laughter. The group in the deep window drew closer to Kent, and made themselves comfortable.

“‘Babbles’ is what I said,” went on the speaker, rolling a cigarette with deliberation, “but that is the wrong word. We were old friends: in fact, I was responsible for the whole thing, for I had talked about the queer town in one of the Middle Western states. Eric is the kind who always wants to know, so when he happened to be in that part of the state, he hired a car and drove out to see for himself.”

“I’ve heard of that town,” declared Janet eagerly. “There is no other like it, is there?”

Kent passed over the question.

“I’ll tell it exactly as he told me. I’m sure I can. I could not forget it. He had driven ten miles through dust and wind with a thunderstorm rolling up ahead of him—purple storm with green fringe on it—the kind they have out there. He was whacking along when he caught sight of a sign by the roadside. He stopped and backed his car to read it. It said—I remember it exactly—it said:

SMOKING, DRINKING, PROFANITY, FORBIDDEN AS YOU PASS THROUGH THIS TOWN.

YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO POLLUTE THE AIR.

MOST PEOPLE ARE BAD. MOST PEOPLE LIE, STEAL, AND DRINK.”

“Oh! Truly!” gasped Janet.

“It was what Eric was looking for—the entrance to the town of fanatics. There was a blank-looking group of houses marked at intervals by tall, white board signs—black letters on a white ground. He drove slowly. It was Sunday and the stillness was absolute. There was a building that might be a hotel—on the veranda were vacant chairs tilted against the rail; a few shops, gray with closed doors; houses gray, too, all with doors shut tight, curtains made to screen. The main street, three or four blocks long, was deserted. At a far corner a man appeared, took a look at the coming car, and stepped out of sight. A woman who came out on her porch, slipped back, and shut the door sharply. She was gray, too—clothes and hair; the distant man had seemed gray—a brown-gray, like the dust that whirled.

“He stopped the car again to read another sign, this one as large as a house front, full of preachments, repeating the words that he had first read:

MOST PEOPLE ARE BAD. THEY LIE, STEAL, AND DRINK.

NO OUTSIDE PEOPLE OR INSTITUTIONS WANTED HERE.

THE DANCE IS OF THE DEVIL, THE THEATRES ARE DEVIL-BEGOTTEN.

“And again:

MOST PEOPLE ARE BAD. THEY LIE, STEAL, AND DRINK.

“As he stood reading, he was conscious that men had appeared in the streets ahead and behind him. They fitted the houses—brown-gray, closed, shut tight. They walked slowly, eyes on the ground, but, as they passed him, he had a look from each. The looks were alike: ominous—hate snapped out at him from under briefly raised lids. Each face had a set mouth, with slashes down from its corners. Each head that turned slightly had—menace—hostile promises.

“The storm was breaking: a flash of lightning swept down the street; thunder crashed; for a moment the wind ceased—it hung aloof and the calm was thick with the brown-gray of the town—with deep silence. A desert plain, a skiff alone on the ocean, would have been more friendly, he said.”

“Where is the Romance?” some one asked, as Kent stopped.

“It’s at hand. It crossed the street in front of his car just as the wind came tearing like a railroad train. He saw her face for an instant before it caught her. Well, folks—I can’t tell you how Eric spoke of her face. He forgot that he had ever seen a court room or a law office, or had known indifference or ambition. He said to me—I can see him as he rapped the table and forgot he was speaking—‘The face of that girl, Kent!’ And—can you believe it of Eric?—he went on: ‘Do you remember Raphael’s peasant girl? The one with parted lips and queer, asking eyes? She was exactly like her. The wind took her sunbonnet away. She had two long braids of hair. She stopped and stared at me, her long, brown-gray skirt twisting about her little flat shoes. Then she ran on, clutching her braids, and a near door slammed after her.’

“The wind was on then; the few trees bent before it.

“The rain was close. There was no protection and, acting on impulse, he drove the car back of the huge sign. It was a shield from the wind and a slight protection against the slanting rain.

“Eric said it had been years since he had seen a Western storm, where it lets loose and whoops ’er up. He was half blinded with the lightning; he could hear the smash of small buildings; the rattling scurry of débris blown by the wind. His own shelter shivered, creaked. It was braced strongly from the back, but he thought it more than likely that it would go. Across the street he heard one go down with a splitting thud.

“But as he waited, he was conscious, he said, only of the girl who was somewhere in that strange town. I’d like to have had you—you people who think you know Eric—watch him as he told me this. There was not a drop of blood in his body, to judge from the colour of his face; his fingers twitched. He talked because he had to talk to some one, I guess. He was not self-sufficient just then.”

“Hm-m,” said some one. “I don’t get him in that rôle, and still I do, too, in a way: the force in him could be applied as well to an—er—infatuation as to anything else. I suppose it was an infatuation, eh, Kent? They are strange things, but they wear off.”

“Go on,” said Janet.

“He said that he sat there in the car while the wind bent his board protection and the rain came in sheets. He was wet through from the spray where it struck the outer edge of the car. He sat and watched pictures of that girl’s face: they came through the rain; came into the lightning; came everywhere. He was half conscious, he said, absorbed in the new thing.

“Out of that state of mind—he told a lot about that; it seemed to puzzle him as it does us now—he was startled by a new gale of wind, a close splitting of boards, the shriek of wood parting from wood at his elbow; and then the whole great shield tottered, swayed, resisted, swayed again, and came down over him. He ducked his head. A moment later he discovered that, in falling, the sign had gone into some trees standing close and was held there, in half-tent fashion, so that it protected him from the rain. Then he saw, too, some one clinging to the slanting edge of the shield. He leaped from the car and caught her as she fell.

“Her clothes were dripping with water; there was a trickle of blood down one cheek. But she was not unconscious and she struggled in his arms. He made her sit down on the running board of the car. Then he asked if she was hurt and she shook her head. He asked her how she happened to be there back of the sign and she shook her head again. He sat down beside her and watched her. He spoke to me about ‘filling his eyes with her for the rest of his life’—and other things that Eric would not have said normally—or if he had not been—er—infatuated. That was the word, wasn’t it?

“They sat there a long time without speaking, and she kept her eyes closed. The wind died away, but the rain persisted—a steady downpour; the green-gray of the storm daylight changed into the black-gray of steady rain. He waited.

“When she opened her eyes, he asked again how she happened to be there. After much urging she answered him.

“‘They turned me out of the house,’ she said.

“‘Turned you out!’ he repeated, incredulously. ‘In this storm! From your home! Why? What had you done?’

“‘I had stopped and looked at you,’ she answered simply.

“‘What?’ Eric put force into the word when he spoke it.

“‘I had looked at you. Stopped and looked. It was a sin. After that, I could not be allowed to live with those who were not sinners,’ she explained.

“‘I never heard of such a thing!’ he told her. ‘Are they crazy?’

“‘The signs tell you. It is their belief. It was a sin to have looked at you—and remembered.’

“Eric’s blood was racing; she had remembered! Looked at him, and remembered.

“‘Don’t worry. Just tell me,’ he urged.

“She told him. He did not tell me just what she said, but I could guess as I watched the light back in his eyes. Her father had opened the door and put her out in the rain as a wanton. He was very strict—father. As soon as the rain was over she would go to the other end of town where she had a friend who would take her in. No, she did not believe as her father and the people of the town believed; her mother had taken her away and she had been brought up differently, but when the mother had died, he had brought her back.

“‘My mother could not bear it here,’ she said. ‘I am not so brave as she, or I would go.’”

“Go on,” said Janet again.

“It’s a good story, isn’t it? Especially since we have our own opinions concerning him. No king of lovers, no Romeo, no schoolboy, could have told such a tale of first love as Eric told me. Spilled it out. Words tumbling over each other.

“In one look, in one half hour, it seemed, he had turned over all the principles upon which we live here in New York. The primal had taken him—and her, too. She was not afraid; not frightened at what she must have seen in him.

“‘And why, when he turned you out, did you come in here?’ he asked finally.

“He had never before listened for an answer as he listened for that one.

“‘I came because you were here,’ she said.

“Well, people—I began to see then what he was up against in the way of intoxication. He had not touched her; it had been all very aloof, but when she told him why she had come, he said he would have been wooden if he had not gathered her close and held her tight.

“Then, through the slackening rainfall, he heard footsteps outside their shelter, heard them on the soft ground close by, saw a stooped figure straighten under their tipped roof. It was one of the all-alike, brown-gray men with jammed-shut mouth and slashes down from it; with hate-filled eyes.

“This man levelled his finger at Eric. ‘Now ye kin have her,’ he said harshly. ‘Ye kin take her along o’ ye. There’s no door open in this town for such as her. They’re shut against her for ever. This is no place for her ever again. We’re done. All o’ us.’

“She sprang forward. ‘Father!’ she cried.

“He struck her with his open hand straight across the mouth.

“‘Harlot! Plaything o’ strange men!’ he accused, scornfully.

“Eric said that he reached for the man, but that she spread her arms between them.

“‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘He believes it! He cannot help it. No, no!’

“The man did not speak again. He stooped under the slanting boards and went away.

“And now comes what Eric says was the strangest part of it—the way he took it. Back of the glamour of the girl’s lovely face; back of the pull of her, standing there in the slackening rain holding her wet skirts about her, her neck bare; back of the wonder of her, there rose a bank of his sane self—that self indifferent to all else. There towered a steeple of his future as he had planned it; of his ambitions; of his wealth and fame which were just beginning and for which he had worked hard. They grew—these steeples—and pushed closer. The girl watched him.

“She had not spoken to him since her father had gone away; she had stood aside while Eric got the car out upon the road; she had followed him to it and stood there clasping her bare elbows—lips parted like the Raphael girl-child, he said. She was oblivious to watchers behind drawn curtains.

“‘Now what shall you do?’ he asked her. ‘Does he mean it?”

“‘Yes, he means it. I shall walk to the next town. There will be something for me to do there.’

“‘I’m sorry——’ he began, all the steeples crowding around him.

“‘Don’t be. I’m glad. It gives me a chance to be brave as she was.’

“She put up one hand to her mouth and pressed her lips tight with it.

“‘It’s odd, isn’t it?’ she asked.

“He says he did not need to ask what was odd. He knew. It was the sudden new thing which was his—and hers. But the steeples were nearer. And a free life was what he had planned; it alone could bring him what he wanted. But he asked:

“‘Will you come with me, as he said?’

“She shook her head.

“‘Oh, no. I am not your kind.’

“‘But I love you,’ he told her then. You should have heard him speak those three words, the day he told me the story. Another man surely—not the Eric we know. He said it twice: ‘I love you.’

“‘And I you,’ the girl replied.

“‘Then come with me,’ he pleaded.

“‘No. It will pass. It cannot be the real thing. It was too quick for that.’

“She smiled, and he tried to laugh and say, without too much earnestness:

“‘Shall I come back some day?’

“She shook her head again.

“‘Please don’t.’

“He climbed slowly into the car, legs weighted, he said. He looked back as he gathered speed on the hard road. She was walking too slowly it seemed to him—her head too low——

“But everywhere were the steeples of fame and fortune to come if he were unhampered; if he could be always indifferent. The west had red streaks—— He drove away.”

“Oh, I hate the man!” cried Janet, indignantly. “It’s just like him! What became of her?”

“There she is now, at the end of the room,” said Kent, smiling at the evident astonishment of the group around him.

Eric Hall’s wife was lifting her coffee cup and laughing. Her filmy sleeves fell away from perfect arms; a jewel flashed from a tiny silver band in her hair. She was clearly the loveliest, the most distinguished woman there.

They stared at her.

“But you just said that he drove away!” some one exclaimed in amazement. “That was the drama of your story!”

“He drove back and got her,” finished Kent sententiously.