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The Case of Jennie Brice (serial, Everybody's)/Part 1

E HAVE just had another flood, bad enough, but only a foot or two of water on the first floor. Yesterday we got the mud shoveled out of the cellar and found Peter, the spaniel that Mr. Ladley left when he “went away.” The flood, and the fact that it was Mr. Ladley's dog whose body was found half buried in the basement fruit closet, brought back to me the strange events of that other flood five years ago, when the water reached more than half-way to the second story, and brought with it, to some, mystery and sudden death, and to me the worst case of “shingles” I have ever seen.

My name is Pitman—in this narrative. It is not really Pitman, but that does well enough. I belong to an old Pittsburgh family. I was born on Penn Avenue, when that was the best part of town, and I lived, until I was fifteen, very close to what is now the Pittsburgh Club. It was a dwelling then: I have forgotten who lived there.

I was a girl in 'seventy-seven, during the railroad riots, and I recall driving in the carriage over to one of the Allegheny hills, and seeing the yards burning, and a great noise of shooting from across the river. It was the next year that I ran away from school to marry Mr. Pitman, and I have not known my family since. We were never reconciled, although I came back to Pittsburgh after twenty years of wandering. Mr. Pitman was dead: the old city called me, and I came. I had a hundred dollars or so, and I took a house in lower Allegheny, where, because the place is partly inundated every spring, rents are cheap, and I kept boarders. My house was always orderly and clean, and although the neighborhood had a bad name, a good many theatrical people stopped with me. Five minutes across the bridge, and they were in the theatre district. Allegheny at that time, I believe, was still an independent city. But since then it has allied itself with Pittsburgh: it is now the North Side.

I was glad to get back. I worked hard, but I made my rent and my living, and a little over. Now and then on summer evenings I went to one of the parks, and, sitting on a bench, watched the children playing around, and looked at my sister's house, closed for the summer. It is a very large house: her butler once had his wife boarding with me—a nice little woman.

It is curious to recall that, at that time, four years ago, I had never seen my niece, Lida Harvey, and then to think that, only a day or so ago, she came in her automobile, as far as she dared, and then sat there, waving to me, while the police patrol brought across in a skiff the basket of provisions she had sent me.

I wonder what she would have thought, had she known that the elderly woman in a calico wrapper with an old overcoat over it, and a pair of rubber boots, was her full aunt!

The flood and the sight of Lida both brought back the case of Jennie Brice. For even then, Lida and Mr. Howell were interested in each other.

This is April. The flood of 1907 was earlier, in March. It had been a long, hard winter, with ice gorges in all the upper valleys. Then, in early March, there came a thaw. The gorges broke up and began to come down, filling the rivers with crushing, grinding ice.

There are three rivers at Pittsburgh, the Allegheny and the Monongahela uniting there at the Point to form the Ohio. And all three were covered with broken ice, logs, and all sorts of d6bris from the upper valleys.

A warning was sent out from the Weather Bureau, and I got my carpets ready to lift that morning. That was on the fourth of March, a Sunday. Mr. Ladley and his wife, Jennie Brice, had the parlor bedroom, and the room behind it. Mrs. Ladley, or Miss Brice, as she preferred to be known, had a small part at a local theatre which kept a permanent company. Her husband was in that business too, but he had nothing to do. It was the wife who paid the bills, and a lot of quarreling they did about it.

I knocked at the door at ten o'clock, and Mr. Ladley opened it. He was a short man, rather stout and getting bald, and he always had a cigarette. Even yet, the parlor carpet smells of them.

“What do you want?” he asked sharply, holding the door open about an inch.

“The water's coming up very fast, Mr. Ladley,” I said. “It's up to the swing-shelf in the cellar now. I'd like to take up the carpet and move the piano.”

“Come back in an hour or so,” he snapped, and tried to close the door. But I had got my toe in the crack.

“I'll have to have the piano moved, Mr. Ladley,” I said. “You'd better put off what you are doing.”

I thought he was probably writing. He spent most of the day writing, using the wash-stand as a desk, and it kept me busy with oxalic acid taking ink spots out of the splasher and the towels. He was writing a play, and talked a lot about the Shuberts having promised to star him in it when it was finished.

“Hell!” he said, and, turning, spoke to somebody in the room.

“We can go into the back room,” I heard him say, and he closed the door. When he opened it again, the parlor was empty. I called in Terry, the Irishman who does odd jobs for me now and then, and we both got to work at the tacks in the carpet, Terry working by the window, and I by the door into the back parlor, which the Ladleys used as a bedroom.

That was how I happened to hear what I afterward told the police.

Some one—a man, but not Mr. Ladley— was talking. Mrs. Ladley broke in; “I won't do it!” she said flatly. “Why should I help him? He doesn't help me. He loafs here all day, smoking and sleeping, and sits up all night drinking and keeping me awake.”

The voice went on again, as if in reply to this, and I heard a rattle of glasses, as though they were pouring drinks. They always had whisky, even when they were behind with their board.

“That's all very well,” Mrs. Ladley said. I could always hear her, she having a theatrical sort of voice—one that carries. “But what about the prying she-devil that runs the house?”

“Hush, for God's sake!” broke in Mr. Ladley, and after that they spoke in whispers. Even with my ear against the panel, I could not catch a word.

The men came just then to move the piano, and by the time we had taken it and the furniture up-stairs, the water was over the kitchen floor, and creeping forward into the hall. I'd never seen the river come up so fast. By noon the yard was full of floating ice, and at three that afternoon the police skiff was on the front street, and I was wading around in rubber boots, taking the pictures off the walls.

I was too busy to see who the Ladleys' visitor was, and he had gone when I remembered him again. The Ladleys moved up to the second-story front, which was empty, and Mr. Reynolds, who was in the silk department in a store across the river, had the room just behind.

I put up a coal-stove in a back room next the bathroom, and managed to cook the dinner there. I was washing up the dishes when Mr. Reynolds came in. As it was Sunday, he was in his slippers and had a newspaper in his hand.

“What's the matter with the Ladleys?” he asked. “I can't read for their quarreling.”

“Booze, probably,” I said. “When you've lived in the flood district as long as I have, Mr. Reynolds, you'll know that the rising of the river is a signal for every man in the vicinity to stop work and get full. The fuller the river, the fuller the male population.”

“Then this flood will probably make them drink themselves to death!” he said. “It's a lulu.”

“It's the neighborhood's annual debauch. The women are busy keeping the babies from getting drowned in the cellars, or they'd get full too. I hope, since it's come this far, it will come farther, so the landlord will have to paper the parlor.”

That was at three o'clock. At four Mr. Ladley went down the stairs, and I heard him getting into a skiff in the lower hall. There were boats going back and forth all the time, carrying crowds of curious people, and taking the flood sufferers to the comer grocery, where they were lowering groceries in a basket on a rope from an upper window.

I had been making tea when I heard Mr. Ladley go out. I fixed a tray with a cup of it and some crackers, and took it to their door. I had never liked Mrs. Ladley, but it was chilly in the house with the gas shut off, and the lower floor full of ice-water. And it is hard enough to keep boarders in the flood district.

She did not answer to my knock, so I opened the door and went in. She was at the window, looking after him, and the brown valise, that figured in the case later, was open on the floor. Over the foot of the bed was the black and white dress, with the red collar.

When I spoke to her, she turned around quickly. She was a tall woman, about twenty-eight, with very white teeth, and yellow hair which she parted a little to one side and drew down over her ears. She had a sullen face and large, well-shaped hands, with her nails long and very pointed.

“The 'she-devil' has brought you some tea,” I said. “Where shall she put it?”

“'She-devil'!” she repeated, raising her eyebrows. “It's a very thoughtful she-devil. Who called you that?”

But, with the sight of the valise and the fear that they might be leaving, I thought it best not to quarrel. She had left the window and, going to the bureau, had picked up her nail-file.

“Never mind,” I said. “I hope you are not going away. These floods don't last, and they're a benefit. Plenty of the people around here rely on 'em every year to wash out their cellars.”

“No, I'm not going away,” she replied lazily. “I'm taking that dress to Miss Hope at the theatre. She is going to wear it in 'Charlie's Aunt' next week. She hasn't half enough of a wardrobe to play leads in stock. Look at this thumb-nail, broken to the quick!”

If I had only looked to see which thumb it was! But I was putting the tea-tray on the wash-stand, and moving Mr. Ladley's papers to find room for it. Peter, the spaniel, sat up and begged for a lump of sugar, and I gave it to him.

“Where is Mr. Ladley?” I asked.

“Gone out to see the river.”

“I hope he'll be careful. There's a drowning or two every year in these floods.”

“Then I hope he won't,” she said calmly. “Do you know what I was doing when you came in? I was looking after his boat, and hoping it had a hole in it.”

“You won't feel that way to-morrow, Mrs. Ladley,” I protested, shocked. “You're just nervous and put out. Most men have their ugly times. Many a time I wished Mr. Pitman was gone—until he went. Then I'd have given a good bit to have him back again.”

She was standing in front of the dresser, fixing her hair over her ears. She turned and looked at me over her shoulder.

“Probably Mr. Pitman was a man,” she said. “My husband is a fiend, a devil.”

Well, a good many women have said that to me at different times. But just let me say such a thing to them, or repeat their own words to them the next day, and they would fly at me in a fury. So I said nothing, and put the cream into her tea.

I never saw her again.

There is not much sleeping done in the flood district during a spring flood. The gas was shut off, and I gave Mr. Reynolds and the Ladleys each a lamp. I sat in the back room that I had made into a temporary kitchen, with a candle, and with a bedquilt around my shoulders. The water rose fast in the lower hall, but by midnight, at the seventh step, it stopped rising and stood still. I always have a skiff during the flood season, and as the water rose, I tied it to one spindle of the staircase after another.

I made myself a cup of tea, and at one o'clock I stretched out on a sofa for a few hours' sleep. I think I had been sleeping only an hour or so, when some one touched me on the shoulder and I started up. It was Mr. Reynolds, partly dressed.

“Some one has been in the house, Mrs. Pitman,” he said. “They went away just now in the boat.”

“Perhaps it was Peter,” I suggested. “That dog is always wandering around at night.”

“Not unless Peter can row a boat,” said Mr. Reynolds dryly.

I got up, being already fully dressed, and, taking the candle, we went to the staircase. I noticed that it was a minute or so after two o'clock, as we left the room. The boat was gone, not untied, but cut loose. The end of the rope was still fastened to the stair-rail. I sat down on the stairs and looked at Mr. Reynolds.

“It's gone!” I said. “If the house catches fire, we'll have to drown.”

“It's rather curious, when you consider it.” We both spoke softly, not to disturb the Ladleys. “I've been awake, and I heard no boat come in. And yet, if no one came in a boat, and came from the street, they would have had to swim in.”

I felt queer and creepy. The street door was open, of course, and the lights going beyond. It gave me a strange feeling to sit there in the darkness on the stairs, with the arch of the front door like the entrance to a cavern, and see the lights on the water, and now and then a chunk of ice slide into view, turn around in the eddy, and pass on. It was bitter cold, too, and the wind was rising.

“I'll go through the house,” said Mr. Reynolds. “There's likely nothing worse the matter than some drunken mill-hand on a vacation while the mills are under water. But I'd better look.”

He left me, and I sat there alone in the darkness. I had a presentiment of something wrong, but I tried to think it was only discomfort and the cold. The water, driven in by the wind, swirled at my feet. And something dark floated in and lodged on the step below. I reached down and touched it. It was a dead kitten. I had never known a dead cat to bring me anything but bad luck, and here was one washed in at my very feet.

Mr. Reynolds came back soon, and reported the house quiet and in order.

“But I found Peter shut up in one of the third-floor rooms,” he said. “Did you put him there?”

I had not, and said so; but as the dog went everywhere, and the door might have blown shut, we did not attach much importance to that at the time.

Well, the skiff was gone, and there was no use worrying about it until morning. I went back to the sofa to keep warm, but I left my candle lighted and my door open. I did not sleep: the dead cat was on my mind, and, as if it were not bad enough to have it washed in at my feet, about four in the morning Peter, prowling uneasily, discovered it and brought it in and put it on my couch, wet and stiff, poor little thing.

I looked at the clock. It was a quarter after four, and except for the occasional crunch of one ice-cake hitting another in the yard, everything was quiet. And then I heard the stealthy sound of oars in the lower hall.

I am not a brave woman. I lay there, hoping Mr. Reynolds would hear and open his door. But he was sleeping soundly. Peter snarled and ran out into the hall, and the next moment I heard Mr. Ladley speaking. “Down, Peter,” he said. “Down. Go and lie down.”

I took my candle and went out into the hall. Mr. Ladley was stooping over the boat, trying to tie it to the staircase. The rope was short, having been cut, and he was having trouble. He looked up quickly when he heard me. Perhaps it was the candle-light, but he looked ghost-white and haggard.

“I borrowed your boat, Mrs. Pitman,” he said, civilly enough. “Mrs. Ladley was not well, and I—I went to the drug-store.”

“You've been more than two hours going to the drug-store, then,” I said coldly.

He muttered something about not finding any open at first, and went into his room. He closed and locked the door behind him, and although Peter whined and scratched, he did not let him in.

He looked so agitated that I thought I had been harsh, and that perhaps she was really ill. I knocked at the door, and asked if I could do anything. But he only called “No” curtly through the door and asked me to take that infernal dog away.

I went back to bed and tried to sleep, for the water had dropped an inch or so on the stairs, and I knew the danger was over. Peter came, shivering, at dawn, and got onto the sofa with me. I put an end of the quilt over him, and he stopped shivering after a time and went to sleep.

The dog was company. I lay there, wide awake, thinking about Mr. Pitman's death, and how I had come, by degrees, to be keeping a cheap boarding-house in the flood district, and to having to take impudence from everybody who chose to rent a room from me, and to being called a she-devil. From that I got to thinking again about the Ladleys, and how she had said he was a fiend, and to doubting about his having gone out for medicine for her. I dozed off again at daylight, and, being worn out, I slept heavily.

At seven o'clock Mr. Reynolds came to the door, dressed for the store. He was a tall man of about fifty, neat and orderly in his habits, and he always remembered that I had seen better days, and treated me as a lady.

“Never mind about breakfast for me this morning, Mrs. Pitman,” he said. “I'll get a cup of coffee at the other end of the bridge. 1 see the boat is back, safe enough. I'll take it and send it back with Terry.”

He turned, and went along the hall and down to the boat. I heard him push off from the stairs with an oar and row out into the street. Peter followed him to the stairs.

At a quarter after seven Mr. Ladley came out and called to me. “Just bring in a cup of coffee and some toast,” he said. “Enough for one.”

He went back and slammed his door, and I made his coffee. I steeped a cup of tea for Mrs. Ladley at the same time. He opened the door just wide enough for the tray, and took it without so much as a “thank you.” He had a cigarette in his mouth as usual, and I could see a fire in the grate and smell something like scorching cloth.

“I hope Mrs. Ladley is better,” I said, getting my foot in the crack of the door, so he could not quite close it. It smelled to me as if he had accidentally set fire to something with his cigarette, and I tried to see into the room.

“What about Mrs. Ladley?” he snapped.

“You said she was ill last night.”

“Oh, yes! Well, she wasn't very sick. She's better.”

“Shall I bring her some tea?”

“Take your foot away!” he ordered. “No. She doesn't want tea. She's not here.”

“Not here!”

“Good heavens!” he snarled. “Is her going away anything to make such a fuss about? The Lord knows I'd be glad to get out of this, infernal pig-wallow' myself.”

“If you mean my house—” I began. But he had pulled himself together and was more polite when he answered. “I mean the neighborhood. Your house is all that could be desired for the money. If we do not have linen sheets and double cream, we are paying muslin and milk prices.”

Either my nose was growing accustomed to the odor, or it was dying away: I took my foot away from the door. “When did Mrs. Ladley leave?” I asked.

“This morning, very early. I rowed her to Federal Street.”

“You couldn't have had much sleep,” I said dryly. For he looked horrible. There were lines around his eyes, which were red, and his lips looked dry and cracked.

“She's not in the piece this week at the theatre,” he said, licking his lips and looking past me, not at me. “She'll be back by Saturday.”

I did not believe him. I do not think he imagined that I did. He shut the door in my face, and it caught poor Peter by the nose. The dog ran off howling, but although Mr. Ladley had been as fond of the animal as it was in his nature to be fond of anything, he paid no attention. As I started down the hall after him, I saw what Peter had been carrying—a slipper of Mrs. Ladley's. It was soaked with water; evidently Peter had found it floating at the foot of the stairs.

Although the idea of murder had not entered my head at that time, the slipper gave me a turn. I picked it up and looked at it—a black one with a beaded toe, short in the vamp and high-heeled, the sort most actresses wear. Then I went back and knocked at the door of the front room again.

“What the devil do you want now?” he called from beyond the door.

“Here's a slipper of Mrs. Ladley's,” I said. “Peter found it floating in the lower hall.”

He opened the door wide, and let me in. The room was in tolerable order, much better than when Mrs. Ladley was about. He looked at the slipper, but he did not touch it. “I don't think that is hers,” he said.

“I've seen her wear it a hundred times.”

“Well, she'll never wear it again.” And then, seeing me stare, he added: “It's ruined with the water. Throw it out. And, by the way, I'm sorry, but I set fire to one of the pillow-slips—dropped asleep and my cigarette did the rest. Just put it on the bill.”

He pointed to the bed. One of the pillows had no slip, and the ticking cover had a scorch or two on it. I went over and looked at it.

“The pillow' will have to be paid for too, Mr. Ladley,” I said. “And there's a sign nailed on the door that forbids smoking in bed. If you are going to set fire to things, I shall have to charge extra.”

“Really!” he jeered, looking at me with his cold, fishy eyes. “Is there any sign on the door saying that boarders are charged extra for seven feet of filthy river in the bedrooms?”

I was never a match for him, and I make it a principle never to bandy words with my boarders. I took the pillow and the slipper and went out. The telephone was ringing on the stair landing. It was the theatre, asking for Miss Brice.

“She has gone away,” I said.

“What do you mean? Moved away?”

“Gone for a few days' vacation,” I replied. “She isn't playing this week, is she?”

“Wait a moment,” said the voice. There was a hum of conversation from the other end, and then another man came to the telephone.

“Can you find out where Miss Brice has gone?”

“I'll see.”

I went to Ladleys' door and knocked. Mr. Ladley answered from just beyond.

“The theatre is asking where Mrs. Ladley is.”

“Tell them I don't know,” he snarled, and shut the door. I took his message to the telephone.

Whoever it was swore and hung up the receiver.

All the morning I was uneasy—I hardly knew why, Peter felt it as I did. There was no sound from the Ladleys' room, and the house was quiet, except for the lapping water on the stairs and the police patrol going back and forth.

At eleven o'clock a boy in the neighborhood, paddling on a raft, fell into the water and was drowned. I watched the police boat go past, carrying his little cold body, and after that I was good for nothing. I went and sat with Peter on the stairs. The dog's conduct had been strange all morning. He had sat just above the water, looking at it and whimpering. Perhaps he was expecting another kitten—or perhaps

It is hard to say how ideas first enter one's mind. But the notion that Mr. Ladley had killed his wife and thrown her body into the water came to me as I sat there. All at once I seemed to see it all: the quarreling the day before, the night trip in the boat, the water-soaked slipper, his haggard face that morning—even the way the spaniel sat and stared at the flood.

Terry brought the boat back at half-past eleven, towing it behind another.

“Well,” I said, from the stairs, “I hope you've had a pleasant morning.”

“What doing?” he asked, not looking at me.

“Rowing about the streets. You've had that boat for four hours.”

He tied it up without a word to me, but he spoke to the dog. “Good morning, Peter,” he said. “It's nice weather—for fishes, ain't it?”

He picked out a bit of floating wood from the water and, showing it to the dog, flung it into the parlor. Peter went after it with a splash. He was pretty fat, and when he came back I heard him wheezing. But what he brought back was not the stick of wood. It was the knife I use for cutting bread. It had been on a shelf in the room where I had slept the night before, and now Peter brought it out of the flood where its wooden handle had kept it afloat. The blade was broken off short.

It is not unusual to find one's household goods floating around during flood-time. More than once I've lost a chair or two, and seen it after the water had gone down, new-scrubbed and painted, in Molly Maguire's kitchen next door. And perhaps now and then a bit of luck would come to me—a dog kennel or a chicken-house, or a kitchen table, or even, as happened once, a month-old baby in a wooden cradle, that lodged against my back fence, and had come forty miles, as it turned out, with no worse mishap than a cold in its head.

But the knife was different. I had put it on the mantel over the stove I was using upstairs the night before, and hadn't touched it since. As I sat staring at it, Terry took it from Peter and handed it to me.

“Better give me a penny, Mrs. Pitman,” he said, in his impudent Irish way. “I hate to give you a knife. It may cut our friendship.”

I reached over to hit him a clout on the head, but I did not. The sunlight was coming in through the window at the top of the stairs, and shining on the rope that was tied to the banister. The end of the rope was covered with stains, brown, with a glint of red in them.

I got up shivering. “You can get the meat at the butcher's, Terry,” I said, “and come back for me in a half-hour.” Then I turned and went up-stairs, weak in the knees, to put on my hat and coat. I had made up my mind that there had been murder done.

I looked at my clock as I went downstairs. It was just twelve-thirty. I thought of telephoning for Mr. Reynolds to meet me, but it was his lunch-hour, and besides, I was afraid to telephone from the house while Mr. Ladley was in it.

Peter had been whining again. When I came down the stairs he had stopped whimpering and was wagging his tail. A strange boat had put into the hallway and was coming back. Mr. Ladley, with his hat in his hand, reached the landing just behind me, but, on seeing the boat, turned and went back to his room.

“Now', old boy!” somebody was saying from the boat. “Steady, old chap! I've got something for you.”

A little man, elderly and alert, was standing up in the boat, poling it along with an oar. Peter gave vent to joyful yelps. The elderly gentleman brought his boat to a stop at the foot of the stairs and, reaching down into a tub at his feet, held up a large piece of raw liver. Peter almost went crazy, and I remembered suddenly that I had forgotten to feed the poor beast for more than a day.

“Would you like it?” asked the gentleman. Peter sat up, as he had been taught to do, and barked. The gentleman reached down again, got a wooden platter from a stack of them at his feet and, placing the liver on it, put it on the step. The whole thing was so neat and businesslike that I could only gaze.

“That's a well-trained dog, madam,” said the elderly gentleman, beaming at Peter over his glasses. “You should not have neglected it.”

“The flood put him out of my mind,” I explained, humbly enough, for I was ashamed.

“Exactly. Do you know how many starving dogs and cats I have found this morning?” He took a note-book out of his pocket and glanced at it. “Forty-eight. Forty-eight, madam! And ninety-three cats! I have found them marooned in trees, clinging to fences, floating on barrels, and I have found them in comfortable houses where there was no excuse for their neglect. Well, I must be moving on. I have the report of a cat with a new litter in the loft of a stable near here.”

He wiped his hands carefully on a fresh paper napkin, of which also a heap rested on one of the seats of the boat, and picked up an oar, smiling benevolently at Peter. Then, suddenly, he bent over and looked at the stained rope-end tied to the stair-rail.

“What's that?” he said.

“That's what I'm going to find out,” I replied. I glanced up at the Ladleys' door, but it was closed.

The little man dropped his oar and, fumbling in his pockets, pulled out a small magnifying-glass. He bent over, holding to the rail, and inspected the stains with the glass. I had taken a fancy to him at once, and in spite of my excitement I had to smile a little.

“Humph!” he said, and looked up at me. “That's blood. Why did you cut the boat loose?”

“I didn't,” I said. “If that is blood, I want to know how it got there. That was a new rope last night.” I glanced at the Ladleys' door again, and he followed my eyes.

“I wonder,” he said, raising his voice a little, “if I come into your kitchen, if you will allow me to fry a little of that liver. There's a wretched Maltese in a tree at the corner of Fourth Street that won't touch it, raw.”

I saw that he wanted to talk to me, so I turned around and led the way to the temporary kitchen I had made.

“Now,” he said briskly, when he had closed the door, “there's something wrong here. Perhaps if you tell me, I can help. If I can't, it will do you good to talk about it. My name's Holcombe, retired merchant. Apply to First National Bank for references.”

“I'm not sure there is anything wrong,” I began. “I guess I'm only nervous, and thinking little things are big ones. There's nothing to tell.”

“Nonsense. I come down the street in my boat. A white-faced gentleman with a cigarette looks out from a window when I stop at the door, and ducks back when I glance up. I come in and find a pet dog, obviously overfed at ordinary times, whining with hunger on the stairs. As I prepare to feed him, a pale woman comes down, trying to put a right-hand glove on her left hand, and with her jacket wrong side out. What am I to think?”

I started and looked at my coat. He was right. And when, as I tried to take it off, he helped me, and even patted me on the shoulder—what with his kindness, and the long morning alone, worrying, and the sleepless night, I began to cry. He had a clean handkerchief in my hand before I had time to think of one.

“That's it,” he said. “It will do you good, only don't make a noise about it. If it's a husband on the annual flood spree, don't worry, madam. They always come around in time to whitewash the cellars.”

“It isn't a husband,” I sniffled.

“Tell me about it,” he said. There was something so kindly in his face, and it was so long since I had had a bit of human sympathy, that I almost broke down again.

I sat there, with a crowd of children paddling on a raft outside the window, and Molly Maguire, next door, hauling the morning's milk up in a pail fastened to a rope, her doorway being too narrow to admit the milkman's boat, and I told him the whole story.

“Humph!” he said, when I had finished. “It's curious, but—you can't prove a murder unless you can produce a body.”

“When the river goes down, we'll find the body,” I asserted, shivering. “It's in the parlor.”

“Then why doesn't he try to get away?”

“I think he is ready to go now. He only went back when your boat came in.”

Mr. Holcombe ran to the door and, flinging it open, peered into the lower hall. He was too late. His boat was gone, tub of liver, pile of wooden platters and all!

We hurried to the room the Ladleys had occupied. It was empty. From the window, as we looked out, we could see the boat, almost a square away. It had stopped where, the street being higher, a door-step rose above the flood. On the step was sitting a forlorn yellow puppy. As we stared, Mr. Ladley stopped the boat, looked back at us, bent over, placed a piece of liver on a platter, and reached it over to the dog. Then, rising in the boat, he bowed, with his hat over his heart, in our direction, sat down calmly, and rowed around the corner out of sight.

Mr. Holcombe was in a frenzy of rage. He jumped up and down, shaking his fist out the window after the retreating boat He ran down the staircase, only to come back and look out the window again. The police boat was not in sight, but the Maguire children had worked their raft around to the street and were under the window. He leaned out and called to them.

“A quarter each, boys,” he said, “if you'll take me on that raft to the nearest pavement.”

“Money first,” said the oldest boy, holding his cap.

But Mr. Holcombe did not wait. He swung out over the window-sill, holding by his hands, and lit fairly in the center of the raft.

“Don't touch anything in that room until I come back,” he called to me, and, jerking the pole from one of the boys, propelled the raft with amazing speed down the street.

The liver on the stove was burning. There was a smell of scorching through the rooms and a sort of bluish haze of smoke. I hurried back and took it off. By the time I had cleaned the pan, Mr. Holcombe was back again, in his own boat. He had found it at the end of the next street, where the flood ceased, but no sign of Ladley anywhere. He had not seen the police boat.

“Perhaps that is just as well,” he said philosophically. “We can't go to the police with a wet slipper and a blood-stained rope and accuse a man of murder. We have to have a body.”

“He killed her,” I said, obstinately. “She told me yesterday he was a fiend. He killed her and threw the body in the water.”

“Very likely. But he didn't throw it here.”

But in spite of that, he went over the parlor and all the lower hall with his boat, feeling every foot of the floor with an oar, and finally, at the back end, he looked up at me as I stood on the stairs.

“There's something here,” he said.

I went cold all over, and had to clutch the railing. But when Terry had come, and the two of them brought the thing to the surface, it was only the dining-room rug, which I had rolled up and forgotten to carry up-stairs!

At half-past one o'clock Mr. Holcombe wrote a note, and sent it off with Terry, and, borrowing my boots, which had been Mr. Pitman's, investigated the dining-room and kitchen from a floating plank; the doors were too narrow to admit the boat. But he found nothing more important than a rolling-pin. He was not at all depressed by his failure. He came back, drenched to the skin, about three, and asked my permission to go through the Ladleys' bedroom.

“I have a friend coming pretty soon, Mrs. Pitman,” he said, “a young newspaper man, named Howell. He's a nice boy, and if there is anything to this, I'd like him to have it for his paper. He and I have been having some arguments about circumstantial evidence, too, and I know he'd like to work on this.”

I gave him a pair of Mr. Pitman's socks, for his own were saturated, the boots having leaked, and while he was changing them the telephone rang. It was the theatre again, asking for Jennie Brice.

“You are certain she is out of the city?” some one asked, the same voice as in the morning.

“Her husband says so.”

“Ask him to come to the 'phone.”

“He is not here.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“I'm not sure he is coming back.”

“Look here,” said the voice angrily, “can't you give me any satisfaction? Or don't you care to?”

“I've told you all I know.”

“You don't know where she is?”

“No, sir.”

“She didn't say she was coming back to rehearse for next week's piece?”

“Her husband said she went away for a few days' rest. He went away about noon and hasn't come back. That's all I know, except that they owe me three weeks' rent that I'd like to get hold of.”

The owner of the voice hung up the receiver with a snap, and left me pondering. It seemed to me that Mr. Ladley had been very reckless. Did he expect any one to believe that Jennie Brice had gone for a vacation without notifying the theatre? Especially when she was to rehearse that week?

I went back and told Mr. Holcombe, who put it down in his note-book, and together we went to the Ladleys' room.

The room was in better order than usual, as I have said. The bed was made—which was out of the ordinary, for Jennie Brice never made a bed—but made the way a man makes one, with the blankets wrinkled and crooked beneath, and the white counterpane pulled smoothly over the top, showing every hump beneath. I showed Mr. Holcombe the splasher, dotted with ink as usual.

“I'll take it off and soak it in milk,” I said. “It's his fountain pen; when the ink doesn't run, he shakes it, and”

“Where's the clock?” said Mr. Holcombe, stopping in front of the mantel with his note-book in his hand.

“The clock?”

I turned and looked. My onyx clock was gone from the mantel-shelf.


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A report on the activity of the Central Bureau of the Russian Trade Unions was presented by Tomsky. He pointed out that after its appointment in February, 1919, the Central Bureau had to face the extraordinarily difficult problems of re-organising the Trade Union movement in the Ukraine which had been crushed by Denikin. He then traced the further work of the Bureau dealing particularly with the efforts made by the Bureau to rouse the Trade Unions of other countries to action in defence of the Russian revolution, and the attempts made to get in touch with the various sections of the European Trade Union movement.

After Tomsky's report the Congress voted the following resolution: "Having heard the report presented by Comrade Tomsky on the activities of the Central Bureau in the course of the year the Congress declares:—

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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6 toms for six voyages. At that very moment a peace was pending between England and Spain. The Spanish Armada had been utterly destroyed; Cadiz had been taken by Effingham and Essex; but still the English Government was anxious not to imperil the peace, by giving countenance to an expedition, which might be supposed to threaten the Indian possessions of Portugal. In vain the Merchant Adventurers petitioned for an immediate warrant. The Privy Council maintained that a peace with Spain would prove more beneficial to England than even the Indian trade. But the ardour of the Merchant Adventurers could not brook delay. They presented another Memorial in which they enumerated first all the Indian settlements belonging to Spain and Portugal; and secondly, all the kingdoms and islands which were wholly out of their dominions; and they concluded by challenging the Spanish Commissioners to show any just and lawful reasons why Her Majesty, and all other Christian princes and states, should be barred from the Indian seas, and from the dominions of so many free potentates in which neither Spain nor Portugal possessed the shadow of authority. The memorial was referred to the celebrated Sir Foulkes Greville, who returned another long and curious report on the limits of the Portuguese jurisdiction in the East Indies. The royal consent to the project of the Adventurers was then freely granted. The Association entrusted the management of the business to twenty-four Directors; and on the 23rd September 1600, the


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more important to a student of South African history than information upon either the Bushmen or the Hottentots is a knowledge of the people termed by us the Bantu, because the former are nearly extinct, while the latter to-day outnumber by more than threefold all the other inhabitants of the country put together, and are still increasing at a marvellous rate. The Bantu tribes of Africa south of the Zambesi vary so greatly in appearance, in speech, in customs, and in intellect, that it is evident they do not form one homogeneous race, still the manner of construction of the various dialects in use by them being the same, and one ruling tenet in the religion of them all being identical, they can be classed as a family group by themselves. Of late years a flood of light has been thrown upon the condition of their kindred in Central Africa, and by applying the knowledge thus gained to occurrences which have taken place since the settlement of Europeans in the southern part of the continent, the history of the Bantu family can be traced backward in general terms, though not in a detailed form.

There is only one way of accounting for the existence of the tribes as they are seen to-day all over Africa south of the equator and even some distance north of it. At some time not exceedingly remote a band of people speaking the parent language of the various dialects now in use, and having ancestor worship as their religion, must have entered North-Eastern Africa, as so many bands had done before. The hamitic family had long possessed the land from the valley of the Nile to the Atlantic ocean, and from the Mediterranean sea to the Sahara, negroes had entered the continent, perhaps not very long before, and


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Ante 1640.] first Court of Directors of the East India Associ- ation was held at "Founder's Hall."

The geographical information furnished by the Merchant Adventurers and Sir Foulkes Greville, is very interesting. It was derived from various authors, —Portuguese, Spanish, Italians, Dutch, and English,—whose names are now only known to the antiquarian; and it contains a flood of information which shows how rapidly geographical science had progressed in that age of enterprise. Of course most of the marvellous stories of Sir John Mandeville were popularly believed; but still a large amount of faithful description had reached Europe, and every day the torch of truth was carried further and further into the regions of fable. As regards India, much geographical information respecting the coast of Malabar had already been published; and the maids of honour in the Court of Elizabeth, had long been giggling over the stories of a country where the ladies had as many husbands as they pleased; or else were denouncing the cruel law which compelled a beloved wife to burn herself with the body of her deceased husband. Even the Coast of Coromandel was known. The Portuguese had already penetrated to Bengal; whilst a century before the country had been a terra incognita, and the country now called Orissa was believed by many intelligent Englishmen to be peopled by men who had horses heads and fed on human flesh.

We are not reviewing the history of the late Company, and therefore shall content ourselves


text: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical/Song (1)

title: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical/Song (1)


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8 with saying, that in 1601 the first fleet set sail, not for the Indian continent, but, like the Dutch, for the Indian Archipelago. At that time the English and Dutch nations were on the best of terms, for Elizabeth had nobly supported the Dutch against Spain. Again the English did not want to come into collision with the Portuguese. Above all, the cloves, nutmegs, and mace of the Molucca and Banda isles, the pepper and camphor of Sumatra, and the endless productions of Java, would furnish as valuable a cargo as any which could be carried to Europe. One little incident may be mentioned as strikingly illustrative of the character of the Adventurers that went on the voyage. The Lord Treasurer requested the Directors to employ Sir Edward Michelbourne on the expedition. But it seems that the business qualifications of gentlemen of the court are rarely appreciated by the commercial community; and the dashing gallants of the Elizabethan era, adventurous and brave as they doubtless were, appear to have enjoyed but little favour in the eyes of the trading citizens of London. Accordingly the Directors resolved on consultation, "not to employ any gentleman in any place of charge;" and they requested that they might be allowed to sort their business with men of their own qualitye, lest the suspicion of the employment of gentlemen being taken hold uppon by the generalitie, do dryve a greate number of the Adventurers to withdraw their contributions."

We need scarcely say that the early voyages of the East India Company were very successful,


text: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical/Song (2)

title: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical/Song (2)


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Ante 1640.] realising from a hundred to two hundred per cent. on the capital expended. For the first few years, the English merchants and factors apparently lived on friendly terms with the Dutch; and this continued so long as the English were satisfied with the goods they could obtain in Sumatra and Java, and refrained from trading at the small Spice Islands, now known as the Moluccas and Bandas. These Islands, as we shall presently see, were regarded by the Dutch as their peculiar property; and they alone produced the finer spices, such as nutmegs, for which fabulous prices could be obtained in the markets at home.

Thus the English established two principal factories; one at Acheen in the Island of Sumatra, and the other at Bantam in the Island of Java. The goods they brought out consisted partly of British staples, such as cloth, lead, and tin; partly of British manufactures, such as cutlery and glass; and partly of foreign merchandize, such as quick- silver and Russian hides. In return they obtained cargoes of raw silk, indigo, pepper, cloves, and mace; articles which, together with even the more precious nutmegs, are now to be found in every cottager's cupboard in Great Britain, but which in the days of the Stuarts and early Georges, fetched prices which would strike terror into the hearts of modern housekeepers. But a great event was at hand, no less than the establishment of an English Factory on the Indian continent. As early as 1608, the Factors in Java reported home that there was a great demand in the Islands for the cloths and Rh


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On the Divide

ON THE DIVIDE

EAR Rattlesnake Creek, on the side of a little draw stood Canute's shanty. North, east, south, stretched the level Nebraska plain of long rust-red grass that undulated constantly in the wind. To the west the ground was broken and rough, and a narrow strip of timber wound along the turbid, muddy little stream that had scarcely ambition enough to crawl over its black bottom. If it had not been for the few stunted cottonwoods and elms that grew along its banks, Canute would have shot himself years ago. The Norwegians are a timber-loving people, and if there is even a turtle pond with a few plum bushes around it they seem irresistibly drawn toward it.

As to the shanty itself, Canute had built it without aid of any kind, for when he first squatted along the banks of Rattlesnake Creek there was not a human being within twenty miles. It was built of logs split in halves, the chinks stopped with mud and plaster. The roof was covered with earth and was supported by one gigantic beam curved in the shape of a round arch. It was almost impossible that any tree had ever grown in that shape. The Norwegians used to say that Canute had taken the log across his knee and bent it into the shape he wished. There were two rooms, or rather there was one room with a partition made of ash saplings interwoven and bound together like big straw basket work. In one corner there was a cook stove, rusted and broken. In the other a bed made of unplaned planks and poles. It was fully eight feet long, and upon it was a heap of dark bed clothing. There was a chair and a bench of colossal proportions. There was an ordinary kitchen cupboard with a few cracked dirty dishes in it, and beside it on a tall box a tin wash-basin. Under the bed was a pile of pint flasks, some broken, some whole, all empty. On the wood box lay a pair of shoes of almost incredible dimensions. On the wall hung a saddle, a gun, and some ragged clothing, conspicuous among which was a suit of dark cloth, apparently new, with a paper collar carefully wrapped in a red silk handkerchief and pinned to the sleeve. Over the door hung a wolf and a badger skin, and on the door itself a brace of thirty or forty snake skins whose noisy tails rattled ominously every time it opened. The strangest things in the shanty were the wide window-sills. At first glance they looked as though they had been ruthlessly hacked and mutilated with a hatchet, but on closer inspection all the notches and holes in the wood took form and shape. There seemed to be a series of pictures. They were, in a rough way, artistic, but the figures were heavy and labored, as though they had been cut very slowly and with very awkward instruments. There were men plowing with little horned imps sitting on their shoulders and on their horses' heads. There were men praying with a skull hanging over their heads and little demons behind them mocking their attitudes. There were men fighting with big serpents, and skeletons dancing together. All about these pictures were blooming vines and foliage such as never grew in this world, and coiled among the branches of the vines there was always the scaly body of a serpent, and behind every flower there was a serpent's head. It was a veritable Dance of Death by one who had felt its sting. In the wood box lay some boards, and every inch of them was cut up in the same manner. Sometimes the work was very rude and careless, and looked as though the hand of the workman had trembled. It would sometimes have been hard to distinguish the men from their evil geniuses but for one fact, the men were always grave and were either toiling or praying, while the devils were always smiling and dancing. Several of these boards had been split for kindling and it was evident that the artist did not value his work highly.

It was the first day of winter on the Divide. Canute stumbled into his shanty carrying a basket of cobs, and after filling the stove, sat down on a stool and crouched his seven foot frame over the fire, staring drearily out of the window at the wide gray sky. He knew by heart every individual clump of bunch grass in the miles of red shaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of its early summer, in all the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all the plagues of Egypt. He had. seen it parched by drought, and sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the grasshopper years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones that the vultures have left. After the great fires he had seen it stretch for miles and miles, black and smoking as the floor of hell.

He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet heavily as though they were burdens to him. He looked out of the window into the hog corral and saw the pigs burying themselves in the straw before the shed. The leaden gray clouds were beginning to spill themselves, and the snow-flakes were settling down over the white leprous patches of frozen earth where the hogs had gnawed even the sod away. He shuddered and began to walk, tramping heavily with his ungainly feet. He was the wreck of ten winters on the Divide and he knew what they meant. Men fear the winters of the Divide as a child fears night or as men in the North Seas fear the still dark cold of the polar twilight.

His eyes fell upon his gun, and he took it down from the wall and looked it over. He sat down on the edge of his bed and held the barrel towards his face, letting his forehead rest upon it, and laid his finger on the trigger. He was perfectly calm, there was neither passion nor despair in his face, but the thoughtful look of a man who is considering. Presently he laid down the gun, and reaching into the cupboard, drew out a pint bottle of raw white alcohol. Lifting it to his lips, he drank greedily. He washed his face in the tin basin and combed his rough hair and shaggy blond beard. Then he stood in uncertainty before the suit of dark clothes that hung on the wall. For the fiftieth time he took them in his hands and tried to summon courage to put them on. He took the paper collar that was pinned to the sleeve of the coat and cautiously slipped it under his rough beard, looking with timid expectancy into the cracked, splashed glass that hung over the bench. With a short laugh he threw it down on the bed, and pulling on his old black hat, he went out, striking off across the level.

It was a physical necessity for him to get away from his cabin once in a while. He had been there for ten years, digging and plowing and sowing, and reaping what little the hail and the hot winds and the frosts left him to reap. Insanity and suicide are very common things on the Divide. They come on like an epidemic in the hot wind season. Those scorching dusty winds that blow up over the bluffs from Kansas seem to dry up the blood in men's veins as they do the sap in the corn leaves. Whenever the yellow scorch creeps down over the tender inside leaves about the ear, then the coroners prepare for active duty; for the oil of the country is burned out and it does not take long for the flame to eat up the wick. It causes no great sensation there when a Dane is found swinging to his own windmill tower, and most of the Poles after they have become too careless and discouraged to shave themselves keep their razors to cut their throats with.

It may be that the next generation on the Divide will be very happy, but the present one came too late in life. It is useless for men that have cut hemlocks among the mountains of Sweden for forty years to try to be happy in a country as flat and gray and as naked as the sea. It is not easy for men that have spent their youths fishing in the Northern seas to be content with following a plow, and men that have served in the Austrian army hate hard work and coarse clothing and the loneliness of the plains, and long for marches and excitement and tavern company and pretty barmaids. After a man has passed his fortieth birthday it is not easy for him to change the habits and conditions of his life. Most men bring with them to the Divide only the dregs of the lives that they have squandered in other lands and among other peoples.

Canute Canuteson was as mad as any of them, but his madness did not take the form of suicide or religion but of alcohol. He had always taken liquor when he wanted it, as all Norwegians do, but after his first year of solitary life he settled down to it steadily. He exhausted whisky after a while, and went to alcohol, because its effects were speedier and surer. He was a big man with a terrible amount of resistant force, and it took a great deal of alcohol even to move him. After nine years of drinking, the quantities he could take would seem fabulous to an ordinary drinking man. He never let it interfere with his work, he generally drank at night and on Sundays. Every night, as soon as his chores were done, he began to drink. While he was able to sit up he would play on his mouth harp or hack away at his window sills with his jack knife. When the liquor went to his head he would lie down on his bed and stare out of the window until he went to sleep. He drank alone and in solitude not for pleasure or good cheer, but to forget the awful loneliness and level of the Divide. Milton made a sad blunder when he put mountains in hell. Mountains postulate faith and aspiration. All mountain peoples are religious. It was the cities of the plains that, because of their utter lack of spirituality and the mad caprice of their vice, were cursed of God.

Alcohol is perfectly consistent in its effects upon man. Drunkenness is merely an exaggeration. A foolish man drunk becomes maudlin; a bloody man, vicious; a coarse man, vulgar. Canute was none of these, but he was morose and gloomy, and liquor took him through all the hells of Dante. As he lay on his giant's bed all the horrors of this world and every other were laid bare to his chilled senses. He was a man who knew no joy, a man who toiled in silence and bitterness. The skull and the serpent were always before him, the symbols of eternal futileness and of eternal hate.

When the first Norwegians near enough to be called neighbors came, Canute rejoiced, and planned to escape from his bosom vice. But he was not a social man by nature and had not the power of drawing out the social side of other people. His new neighbors rather feared him because of his great strength and size, his silence and his lowering brows. Perhaps, too, they knew that he was mad, mad from the eternal treachery of the plains, which every spring stretch green and rustle with the promises of Eden, showing long grassy lagoons full of clear water and cattle whose hoofs are stained with wild roses. Before autumn the lagoons are dried up, and the ground is burnt dry and hard until it blisters and cracks open.

So instead of becoming a friend and neighbor to the men that settled about him, Canute became a mystery and a terror. They told awful stories of his size and strength and of the alcohol he drank. They said that one night, when he went out to see to his horses just before he went to bed, his steps were unsteady and the rotten planks of the floor gave way and threw him behind the feet of a fiery young stallion. His foot was caught fast in the floor, and the nervous horse began kicking frantically. When Canute felt the blood trickling down in his eyes from a scalp wound in his head, he roused himself from his kingly indifference, and with the quiet stoical courage of a drunken man leaned forward and wound his arms about the horse's hind legs and held them against his breast with crushing embrace. All through the darkness and cold of the night he lay there, matching strength against strength. When little Jim Peterson went over the next morning at four o'clock to go with him to the Blue to cut wood, he found him so, and the horse was on its fore knees, trembling and whinnying with fear. This is the story the Norwegians tell of him, and if it is true it is no wonder that they feared and hated this Holder of the Heels of Horses.

One spring there moved to the next "eighty” a family that made a great change in Canute's life. Ole Yensen was too drunk most of the time to be afraid of any one, and his wife Mary was too garrulous to be afraid of any one who listened to her talk, and Lena, their pretty daughter, was not afraid of man nor devil. So it came about that Canute went over to take his alcohol with Ole oftener than he took it alone. After a while the report spread that he was going to marry Yensen's daughter, and the Norwegian girls began to tease Lena about the great bear she was going to keep house for. No one could quite see how the affair had come about, for Canute's tactics of courtship were somewhat peculiar. He apparently never spoke to her at all: he would sit for hours with Mary chattering on one side of him and Ole drinking on the other and watch Lena at her work. She teased him, and threw flour in his face and put vinegar in his coffee, but he took her rough jokes with silent wonder, never even smiling. He took her to church occasionally, but the most watchful and curious people never saw him speak to her. He would sit staring at her while she giggled and flirted with the other men.

Next spring Mary Lee went to town to work in a steam laundry. She came home every Sunday, and always ran across to Yensens to startle Lena with stories of ten cent theaters, firemen's dances, and all the other esthetic delights of metropolitan life. In a few weeks Lena's head was completely turned, and she gave her father no rest until he let her go to town to seek her fortune at the ironing board. From the time she came home on her first visit she began to treat Canute with contempt. She had bought a plush cloak and kid gloves, had her clothes made by the dress-maker, and assumed airs and graces that made the other women of the neighborhood cordially detest her. She generally brought with her a young man from town who waxed his mustache and wore a red necktie, and she did not even introduce him to Canute.

The neighbors teased Canute a good deal until he knocked one of them down. He gave no sign of suffering from her neglect except that he drank more and avoided the other Norwegians more carefully than ever. He lay around in his den and no one knew what he felt or thought, but little Jim Peterson, who had seen him glowering at Lena in church one Sunday when she was there with the town man, said that he would not give an acre of his wheat for Lena's life or the town chap's either; and Jim's wheat was so wondrously worthless that the statement was an exceedingly strong one.

Canute had bought a new suit of clothes that looked as nearly like the town man's as possible. They had cost him half a millet crop; for tailors are not accustomed to fitting giants and they charge for it. He had hung those clothes in his shanty two months ago and had never put them on, partly from fear of ridicule, partly from discouragement, and partly because there was something in his own soul that revolted at the littleness of the device.

Lena was at home just at this time. Work was slack in the laundry and Mary had not been well, so Lena stayed at home, glad enough to get an opportunity to torment Canute once more.

She was washing in the side kitchen, singing loudly as she worked. Mary was on her knees, blacking the stove and scolding violently about the young man who was coming out from town that night. The young man had committed the fatal error of laughing at Mary's ceaseless babble and had never been forgiven.

“He is no good, and you will come to a bad end by running with him! I do not see why a daughter of mine should act so. I do not see why the Lord should visit such a punishment upon me as to give me such a daughter. There are plenty of good men you can marry.”

Lena tossed her head and answered curtly, “I don't happen to want to marry any man right away, and so long as Dick dresses nice and has plenty of money to spend, there is no harm in my going with him.”

“Money to spend? Yes, and that is all he does with it I 'll be bound. You think it very fine now, but you will change your tune when you have been married five years and see your children running naked and your cupboard empty. Did Anne Hermanson come to any good end by marrying a town man?”

“I don't know anything about Anne Hermanson, but I know any of the laundry girls would have Dick quick enough if they could get him.”

“Yes, and a nice lot of store clothes huzzies you are too. Now there is Canuteson who has an "eighty” proved up and fifty head of cattle and”

“And hair that ain't been cut since he was a baby, and a big dirty beard, and he wears overalls on Sundays, and drinks like a pig. Besides he will keep. I can have all the fun I want, and when I am old and ugly like you he can have me and take care of me. The Lord knows there ain't nobody else going to marry him.”

Canute drew his hand back from the latch as though it were red hot. He was not the kind of a man to make a good eavesdropper, and he wished he had knocked sooner. He pulled himself together and struck the door like a battering ram. Mary jumped and opened it with a screech.

“God! Canute, how you scared us! I thought it was crazy Lou,—he has been tearing around the neighborhood trying to convert folks. I am afraid as death of him. He ought to be sent off, I think. He is just as liable as not to kill us all, or burn the barn, or poison the dogs. He has been worrying even the poor minister to death, and he laid up with the rheumatism, too! Did you notice that he was too sick to preach last Sunday? But don't stand there in the cold,—come in. Yensen is n't here, but he just went over to Sorenson's for the mail; he won't be gone long. Walk right in the other room and sit down.”

Canute followed her, looking steadily in front of him and not noticing Lena as he passed her. But Lena's vanity would not allow him to pass unmolested. She took the wet sheet she was wringing out and cracked him across the face with it, and ran giggling to the other side of the room. The blow stung his cheeks and the soapy water flew in his eyes, and he involuntarily began rubbing them with his hands. Lena giggled with delight at his discomfiture, and the wrath in Canute's face grew blacker than ever. A big man humiliated is vastly more undignified than a little one. He forgot the sting of his face in the bitter consciousness that he had made a fool of himself. He stumbled blindly into the living room, knocking his head against the door jamb because he forgot to stoop. He dropped into a chair behind the stove, thrusting his big feet back helplessly on either side of him.

Ole was a long time in coming, and Canute sat there, still and silent, with his hands clenched on his knees, and the skin of his face seemed to have shriveled up into little wrinkles that trembled when he lowered his brows. His life had been one long lethargy of solitude and alcohol, but now he was awakening, and it was as when the dumb stagnant heat of summer breaks out into thunder.

When Ole came staggering in, heavy with liquor, Canute rose at once.

“Yensen,” he said quietly, “I have come to see if you will let me marry your daughter today.”

“Today!” gasped Ole.

“Yes, I will not wait until tomorrow. I am tired of living alone.”

Ole braced his staggering knees against the bedstead, and stammered eloquently: “Do you think I will marry my daughter to a drunkard? a man who drinks raw alcohol? a man who sleeps with rattle snakes? Get out of my house or I will kick you out for your impudence.” And Ole began looking anxiously for his feet.

Canute answered not a word, but he put on his hat and went out into the kitchen. He went up to Lena and said without looking at her, “Get your things on and come with me!”

The tones of his voice startled her, and she said angrily, dropping the soap, “Are you drunk?”

“If you do not come with me, I will take you,—you had better come,” said Canute quietly.

She lifted a sheet to strike him, but he caught her arm roughly and wrenched the sheet from her. He turned to the wall and took down a hood and shawl that hung there, and began wrapping her up. Lena scratched and fought like a wild thing. Ole stood in the door, cursing, and Mary howled and screeched at the top of her voice. As for Canute, he lifted the girl in his arms and went out of the house. She kicked and struggled, but the helpless wailing of Mary and Ole soon died away in the distance, and her face was held down tightly on Canute's shoulder so that she could not see whither he was taking her. She was conscious only of the north wind whistling in her ears, and of rapid steady motion and of a great breast that heaved beneath her in quick, irregular breaths. The harder she struggled the tighter those iron arms that had held the heels of horses crushed about her, until she felt as if they would crush the breath from her, and lay still with fear. Canute was striding across the level fields at a pace at which man never went before, drawing the stinging north wind into his lungs in great gulps. He walked with his eyes half closed and looking straight in front of him, only lowering them when he bent his head to blow away the snow flakes that settled on her hair. So it was that Canute took her to his home, even as his bearded barbarian ancestors took the fair frivolous women of the South in their hairy arms and bore them down to their war ships. For ever and anon the soul becomes weary of the conventions that are not of it, and with a single stroke shatters the civilized lies with which it is unable to cope, and the strong arm reaches out and takes by force what it cannot win by cunning.

When Canute reached his shanty he placed the girl upon a chair, where she sat sobbing. He stayed only a few minutes. He filled the stove with wood and lit the lamp, drank a huge swallow of alcohol and put the bottle in his pocket. He paused a moment, staring heavily at the weeping girl, then he went off and locked the door and disappeared in the gathering gloom of the night.

Wrapped in flannels and soaked with turpentine, the little Norwegian preacher sat reading his Bible, when he heard a thundering knock at his door, and Canute entered, covered with snow and with his beard frozen fast to his coat.

“Come in, Canute, you must be frozen,” said the little man, shoving a chair towards his visitor.

Canute remained standing with his hat on and said quietly, “I want you to come over to my house tonight to marry me to Lena Yensen.”

“Have you got a license, Canute?”

“No, I don't want a license. I want to be married.”

“But I can't marry you without a license, man. It would not be legal.”

A dangerous light came in the big Norwegian's eye. “I want you to come over to my house to marry me to Lena Yensen.”

“No, I can't, it would kill an ox to go out in a storm like this, and my rheumatism is bad tonight.'”

“Then if you will not go I must take you,” said Canute with a sigh.

He took down the preacher's bearskin coat and bade him put it on while he hitched up his buggy. He went out and closed the door softly after him. Presently he returned and found the frightened minister crouching before the fire with his coat lying beside him. Canute helped him put it on and gently wrapped his head in his big muffler. Then he picked him up and carried him out and placed him in his buggy. As he tucked the buffalo robes around him he said: “Your horse is old, he might flounder or lose his way in this storm. I will lead him.”

The minister took the reins feebly in his hands and sat shivering with the cold. Sometimes when there was a lull in the wind, he could see the horse struggling through the snow with the man plodding steadily beside him. Again the blowing snow would hide them from him altogether. He had no idea where they were or what direction they were going. He felt as though he were being whirled away in the heart of the storm, and he said all the prayers he knew. But at last the long four miles were over, and Canute set him down in the snow while he unlocked the door. He saw the bride sitting by the fire with her eyes red and swollen as though she had been weeping. Canute placed a huge chair for him, and said roughly,—

“Warm yourself.”

Lena began to cry and moan afresh, begging the minister to take her home. He looked helplessly at Canute. Canute said simply,—

“If you are warm now, you can marry us.”

“My daughter, do you take this step of your own free will?” asked the minister in a trembling voice.

“No sir, I don't, and it is disgraceful he should force me into it! I won't marry him.”

“Then, Canute, I cannot marry you,” said the minister, standing as straight as his rheumatic limbs would let him.

“Are you ready to marry us now, sir?” said Canute, laying one iron hand on his stooped shoulder. The little preacher was a good man, but like most men of weak body he was a coward and had a horror of physical suffering, although he had known so much of it. So with many qualms of conscience he began to repeat the marriage service. Lena sat sullenly in her chair, staring at the fire. Canute stood beside her, listening with his head bent reverently and his hands folded on his breast. When the little man had prayed and said amen, Canute began bundling him up again.

“I will take you home, now,” he said as he carried him out and placed him in his buggy, and started off with him through the fury of the storm, floundering among the snow drifts that brought even the giant himself to his knees.

After she was left alone, Lena soon ceased weeping. She was not of a particularly sensitive temperament, and had little pride beyond that of vanity. After the first bitter anger wore itself out, she felt nothing more than a healthy sense of humiliation and defeat. She had no inclination to run away, for she was married now, and in her eyes that was final and all rebellion was useless. She knew nothing about a license, but she knew that a preacher married folks. She consoled herself by thinking that she had always intended to marry Canute some day, any way.

She grew tired of crying and looking into the fire, so she got up and began to look about her. She had heard queer tales about the inside of Canute's shanty, and her curiosity soon got the better of her rage. One of the first things she noticed was the new black suit of clothes hanging on the wall. She was dull, but it did not take a vain woman long to interpret anything so decidedly flattering, and she was pleased in spite of herself. As she looked through the cupboard, the general air of neglect and discomfort made her pity the man who lived there.

“Poor fellow, no wonder he wants to get married to get somebody to wash up his dishes. Batchin's pretty hard on a man.”

It is easy to pity when once one's vanity has been tickled. She looked at the window sill and gave a little shudder and wondered if the man were crazy. Then she sat down again and sat a long time wondering what her Dick and Ole would do.

“It is queer Dick did n't come right over after me. He surely came, for he would have left town before the storm began and he might just as well come right on as go back. If he'd hurried he would have gotten here before the preacher came. I suppose he was afraid to come, for he knew Canuteson could pound him to jelly, the coward!” Her eyes flashed angrily.

The weary hours wore on and Lena began to grow horribly lonesome. It was an uncanny night and this was an uncanny place to be in. She could hear the coyotes howling hungrily a little way from the cabin, and more terrible still were all the unknown noises of the storm. She remembered the tales they told of the big log overhead and she was afraid of those snaky things on the window sills. She remembered the man who had been killed in the draw, and she wondered what she would do if she saw crazy Lou's white face glaring into the window. The rattling of the door became unbearable, she thought the latch must be loose and took the lamp to look at it. Then for the first time she saw the ugly brown snake skins whose death rattle sounded every time the wind jarred the door.

“Canute, Canute!” she screamed in terror.

Outside the door she heard a heavy sound as of a big dog getting up and shaking himself. The door opened and Canute stood before her, white as a snow drift.

“What is it?” he asked kindly.

“I am cold,” she faltered.

He went out and got an armful of wood and a basket of cobs and filled the stove. Then he went out and lay in the snow before the door. Presently he heard her calling again.

“What is it?” he said, sitting up.

“I 'm so lonesome, I 'm afraid to stay in here all alone.”

“I will go over and get your mother.” And he got up.

“She won't come.'

“I 'll bring her,” said Canute grimly.

“No, no. I don't want her, she will scold all the time.”

“Well, I will bring your father.”

She spoke again and it seemed as though her mouth was close up to the key-hole. She spoke lower than he had ever heard her speak before, so low that he had to put his ear up to the lock to hear her.

“I don't want him either, Canute,—I 'd rather have you.”

For a moment she heard no noise at all, then something like a groan. With a cry of fear she opened the door, and saw Canute stretched in the snow at her feet, his face in his hands, sobbing on the door step.

W. Cather.

title: On the Divide


text: Talk:On the Divide

title: Talk:On the Divide


text: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical/Song (3)

title: Poems, Chiefly Lyrical/Song (3)