Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

from the corner and left her husband to deal with the intruder. She was not venturesome, she had never knowingly taken a risk in her life; but there had been a quality, something, in that whispered appeal that she could not resist. Twice she tried to speak; then came a strange tone, flat, expressionless. She hardly recognized her own voice:

"I am going down into the kitchen; you may come with me. I am not frightened.' And to prove that she was not afraid, she felt for the baluster and started down the narrow stairway, pushing Mell in front of her; and behind her came clumsy, cautious footsteps and loud, anxious breathing. She decided that this was not a sneak-thief.

"Now, Jessica was n't a housekeeper of the old school. She did n't know her way about the kitchen. She had n't a notion where to find the lights. She groped helplessly for a moment, and then said sternly and almost defiantly:

""Please strike a match!'
"A low voice answered:

"I've a pocket torch. I'll find the switch,' and in an instant the room was flooded with light, and she was facing the intruder across the kitchen table. He stood there quietly, blinking, smiling timidly, clutching his cap-a mere boy, hardly more than two or three and twenty, she thought. He looked so little like a villain that she smiled back at him. "Now, what do you want? Are you hungry?'

"Hungry? No; but you promised your dog a bone.' He stooped and patted Mell, who was sniffing at his legs. Can I sit down? I'm played out.'

"Jessica nodded, and went to the icebox to find a bone. Then she stood listening for a moment in the doorway. Every thing was quiet.

"The young man had seated himself in the cook's rocking-chair by the stove. It had a turkey-red cushion tied in the back of it, and against it his face looked gray. It was a thin, ugly, gentle face, hollowed about the eyes and cheek-bones, and the line from ear to chin was unnaturally

sharp. He had no coat, and his collar was open at the throat; but there was not a suggestion of the tramp about him. He looked like a respectable young mechanic tired after his day's work. Jessica slipped into a chair, and leaned her elbows on the table.

"What were you doing up-stairs? You don't look like a burglar,' she said evenly. "He shook his head.

"I did n't come to steal; I just saw the door open and thought I'd slip in and hide somewheres until I got my bearings. I felt as if the whole town was after me. My wife-she fell off a roof a little while ago. I pushed her off."

"Jessica held her breath. For several minutes there was no sound in the kitchen but the crunch, crunch of the dog gnawing her bone under the table and a distressed, wheezing sputter in the sink-pipe.

"So this was a murderer, a wife-killer. Could criminals look like this, timid, tired, gentle? They were, she had always thought, a class apart, shifty-eyed, leering, low-browed ruffians. Children and dogs ran from them in a panic. Decent people very rightly locked them out; and here she was talking to one in her own kitchen, not a bit afraid of him! More than that, she found herself saying:

"Oh, you poor soul!' And then as he sat motionless, his head against the redcotton cushion, his eyes closed, she went on, 'Oh, what made you do it?'

"Presently he leaned forward in his chair and began to speak. Of course, under ordinary conditions the boy would have been abashed to find himself alone with this woman of another world, would have stood before her awkwardly, stammering, 'Yes, ma'am; I don't know, ma'am.' Now the violent shock of his tragedy had anesthetized him to almost complete unconsciousness of his surroundings. He was over the border-line, beyond constraint and embarrassment. he talked he relived moments of the brief life of his passionate attachment, his disillusion, his bewilderment, his pain. He revealed himself in snatches as vivid, as detached, as fragmentary as the ramblings.

As

of a man under ether. Some of the things he said meant nothing to Jessica, but she understood that he was an electrician and that, working in some small theater, he had met and adored and married a girl named Ruby. It is easy to picture the type of chorus girl who calls herself Ruby, is n't it? But she had evidently completely dazzled him. He kept repeating:

"I don't know-I don't know what it was made her so wonderful,' and then: 'You know how, when you look at an electric bulb and it goes out, you see it plain after it 's dark,-it fixes itself on your eyeballs somehow,-and just before it fades you see the loop of the wire, like a gilt thread on black. Well, she was like that. When she went out of the room or round a corner I'd see her for a full minute after she 'd gone, and when she said good-by I'd hear good-by, good-by, good-by over and over, sort of like an echo getting fainter and fainter-hear it with my ears, mind you, not imagination. What was it, do you suppose, made her like that?'

"Jessica said something feeble about personality, but he did not hear her. He

went on:

"We had a nice little place-three rooms. I fixed it all up before we got married. She loved red, and I bought a lot of red cushions and a Morris chair with a red-plush cover. I read somewheres in the paper that electricity had contributed more to human happiness than anything else in civilization. I told her I'd make electricity do her work for her, so she'd have it easy. I ran wires all over the place, a reading-light by the sofa, and hair-curling tongs and electric irons, and a neat little toaster for the diningroom table, a vacuum-sweeper, too; and at Christmas I fixed up a little tree with colored bulbs on it. I thought she 'd think it was fine, housekeeping like that. She said she 'd rather live in a boardinghouse and have people to talk to; I'm not much of a talker. Well, I could n't afford that. She knew I could n't.

"My! she was the prettiest thing ever created. I could have sat and looked at her all day long without saying a word.

She must have thought I was ugly as sin; she never looked at me.

"When it was hot I'd take a couple of chairs and a cushion up to the roof, and I'd fix some lemonade for her or maybe I'd go out and get a pitcher of beer. She 'd rock and rock faster and faster and make the tin roof crackle and snap. You could see Broadway blazing off to the west, and she 'd stare at the lights. I'd sit back and look up at the sky-lights up there worth watching. When I thought what a job it was to build and keep going enough of a plant to light New York, why I had a lot of respect for the One who managed that great old plant up there. It's a great old plant,' he repeated, his eyes fixed on the drop-light over the kitchen table, as if it, too, were a tiny, an infinitesimal part of the solar system. And after a moment of silence he brought out bitterly, 'There she 'd sit rocking and humming to herself, and whenever I'd ask her a question, she 'd give me a lie.

"She liked to go to the movies in Fourteenth Street. There was an old fellow on the street corner had a telescope. Every time we'd go down I'd slip out and have a look at the stars. Five cents a look he charged; he 'd talk just like a storekeeper, as if the stars were his to sell.

"""Good evening, sir, what will you have to-night? Venus, that lovely luminary, is not with us, but we have Jupiter, as usual. I suppose you would not care to have a look at Mars? He's not so showy through this telescope, but very nice and homelike. No? Well, here is Jupiter; this belted monarch of the skies has four attendant moons." Such a line of talk you never heard.

"Sometimes Ruby 'd go out at night with friends, and I'd walk down there. and listen to the old chap by the hour. He certainly was hipped on Mars. Knew all about life there; said the people were enormous, but that an elephant there would jump as dainty as a gazelle, and, the gravity being so much less, they could dig a canal as easy as a squirrel would dig a hole to hide a nut; and everything being

[graphic]

so slow and light, if a man fell off a roof in Mars, he 'd just sort of flutter down like a bit of paper. Even knew how long it takes water to boil up there. Did you ever?' He seemed lost in wonder at this astonishing atom of information, then he added: 'I myself did n't want to think about the stars like worlds. If I thought of 'em as lights, I got a much clearer idea of the whole system and the One who 's running it.' He stiffened in his chair and looked again at the drop-light as if it were a symbol of some unimaginable force.

"The dog, having finished her bone, came out from under the table, shook herself, and trotted out into the hallway. Somewhere in an adjoining house a bell began to ring. The man got to his feet painfully as if every muscle was cramped, and looked about the kitchen, seeing it for the first time.

"Well, I got to clear out,' he said slowly; 'I don't know where to go, what to do. I suppose I could make an end to myself; perhaps that 's the thing to do. I don't seem to have the heart to find a way, but I suppose right here in this room there are things I could use.' He turned to a shelf in a corner by the stove and read aloud the labels on a row of jars: 'Split peas, beans, rice, lentils, barley, vermicelli.' Jessica wondered fearfully if he would find some deadly poison there on her pantry shelves. She seemed somehow aware of death as a tangible presence in the room, and she felt a sudden chill stronger than the icy breath that had enveloped her when she opened the doors. of the refrigerator to look for a bone for her dog.

"You must n't do that-you must not!' she urged breathlessly, and she ran over to him, put her hand on his arm, tugged at his sleeve, forced him to face her. It is n't necessary, it is n't right! You 're good. You must go away. Nobody saw this thing; they 'll think it was entirely accidental.'

"He shook his head.

""There was the janitor, a sneaky Swede; I did n't like the way he looked at Ruby. I told him I'd wring his

"Very early the next morning she went out and peered through the park railings'" stringy neck for him if he laid eyes on her again. I think he was up there to

night. I-I thought I smelled his filthy pipe. He'd sneak up and skulk about behind chimneys; twice I caught him peeking out at us. I don't know if he saw anything, it was all so quick. We were sitting right by the edge of the roof, and she tilted her chair sideways when I jumped at her. She did n't scream. She threw up her hands and tried to clutch me as she toppled over. I stepped back. I just let her go. That 's murder, is n't it? And you know what was in my head that minute? What that old fellow said about a man falling off a roof in Mars. I had a sort of crazy idea that she 'd flutter down, down as light as paper.' "Never mind the janitor,' pleaded Jessica. 'What can he do? Perhaps he did n't see. Don't think of that. You must get away and begin over again. Think of this as a terrible dream.'

"She remembered that she had sent down some money that evening to pay for a package she expected in the morning, and she began to search frantically, pulling out drawers, opening cupboards, until she found it and thrust the bills into his hands. Then as he still stood before her, silent, bewildered, she went on insistently:

"You must go away at once. You can't stay here any longer. But I'll give you the key of the little park. It 's locked, you know, and it has high railings round it. It's the stillest spot, the loneliest place in the city. You can sit under a tree near the fountain, hidden from the street. You can sit there all night and look at Mars and decide where you 'll go. And you will go on. Promise me, please!'

"She gave him the key. He looked at it curiously, turning it over and over, and then he looked at her and smiled timidly as he had when they first faced each other across the kitchen table.

"Well, she opened the basement door, and out he went, still clutching his cap and the key, to a few quiet hours; and after she shut the iron grille he stood still for a minute in the areaway, with his head thrown back, looking up at the lights.

"THAT's about all. I suppose you 'd like to know what Ruby did that finally drove her young husband to violence. He did n't tell, you see. Jessica said he made her feel that it was something way beyond jealousy that moved him. Perhaps something in her that would not only kill his love, but her own loveliness as well. Who knows? Is it ever possible to put one's fingers on the cause of a tragedy? Those things are cumulative, of course; anger, resentment, revenge, even righteous indignation, all follow the same course, slowly gathering momentum, moving with the inevitability of time itself. You can't retard or evade the final crash, and you can't say it was caused by so and so. You might as well say that a mountain-goat stamped, and brought about a landslide.

"And, anyway, Jessica was doubtful in the end if he had intended what happened. I think he did, myself; still

"Poor Jessica! She crept up to bed that night quaking in the grip of new emotions. Suddenly in an eye's blink she realized that humans are penned from one another by purely imaginary barriers, and she knew what death was; she had a vague idea what love might be, and she was at once timorous and eager to know

more.

"Very early the next morning she went out and peered through the park railings. She had no key to open the gate, but she walked slowly around outside, looking into every corner.

"There was no one there. And as she looked, it seemed impossible that in the night a despairing intruder had invaded. the snug inclosure, disturbing its green quiet, its neat security.

"You know the little park? It's incredibly fresh, incredibly neat. In the middle is a fountain presided over by a decorous white nymph with a little hat on her head and very voluminous mid-Victorian draperies; a sort of sublimated nurse-maid in marble; very suitable.

"Every night Jessica walks there with her husband and the two chows, and her new thoughts."

ΤΗ

By A BRITISH OFFICER

HE major commanding 809th Battery R.F.A. picked his way in the rain along the cabbage-patch, looking for his dugout. It was two A.M. and a blind moon, and all the dugouts looked the same, little tunnels in the ground into which one crept like a rabbit. The cabbage-patch was the major's own idea. Instead of digging along hedge-rows, where the aeroplanes were accustomed by now to look for signs of habitation, he had dug boldly in the cabbage-patch in the middle of the field, and replanted the cabbages on the roofs of the dugouts. In aëroplane photographs of the field the dugouts were virtually invisible, and "what really is a bit of luck," the major used to say, "there are those two shell-holes on the edge of the cabbages to divert attention." In the dark the major peered into one of the dugouts, and switched on his electric torch. A large, white porcelain bath was let in flush with the ground. "Carey 's got that bath, I see," he said to himself. "Good!" The absurdity of a porcelain bath in a hole in a field tickled him. "What a rum thing this war is!" was the way he put it to himself. A moment later he was in his own dugout, had wriggled out of his gumboots, wound his wrist-watch, glanced at his wife's photograph on the roof just above him, and within thirty seconds of pulling the blankets over him had passed into deep, dreamless slumber. God bless the sleep of all soldiers! Be sure they have need of it.

"MESSAGE from brigade headquarters, sir!” suddenly said a voice at the entry of the dugout.

"Well, you'd better read it out," said the major, sitting up.

"Following received from Lieut. Leslie begins: Germans thickly collected each side railway behind second barrier be

tween Y7 and Y8. All their communications are down by side of railway. Can you turn on? 405th Brigade." "

"Tell sergeant-major to carry on on yesterday's register. Do that first. Then call Mr. Drummond, and say I want to see him at once. I shall observe from F2. I will go up there at once and take the trumpeter, and one telephonist will be wanted for Mr. Drummond. Mr. Drummond will probably be in F7. Tell my servant to have some lunch strapped on to my bicycle."

As he came out of his dugout the major looked at his watch. It was four A.M., and that odd sense of change which comes just before the dawn was in the air. It was still raining. A subaltern came up in the dark. "Is that you, Major?" he said.

"Good morning, Drummond," said the other. "I wanted you. Leslie says there's a collection of Boches in Railway Wood. I want you to go up to F7. You'd better tap into Leslie's wire. We may as well go up together on the bicycles as far as the cross-roads."

Field-artillery are not "entitled" to bicycles in the British army; but 809th Battery had large ideas, and the sergeantmajor had a knack of "finding" things that the battery wanted. They now possessed over and above their "establishment" eight bicycles; two limbered wagons, made up from debris in the rubbishheaps of Ypres and painted regulation color so as to escape the notice of inspecting generals; fifteen miles of D3 telephone wire, and two miles of captured German wire,-this was better than the English wire; they wished they had more of it,a motor-cycle, on which the subalterns used to ride enormous distances, and return with bottles of Cointreau or cherry brandy for the mess; two acetylene lamps; a large supply of carbide; and, as already

1 This narrative, while it is a combination and rearrangement of actual facts, is substantially
true, and the documents reproduced are genuine.-The Editor.

« AnkstesnisTęsti »