text:
The Red Book Magazine/Volume 5/Number 2/Uncle Mark's Match-Making

Selwyn found to his surprise that he was not alone on the beach when he reappeared in his bathing-suit. A tall, broad-shouldered elderly man was pacing back and forth on the sand, his hands clasped behind him, his eyes bent on the ground. Every few minutes he interrupted his own meditations to gaze expectantly at the row of bath-houses under the bluff. After a while he discovered Selwyn's presence. His keen glance in the latter's direction revealed such an interesting face that Selwyn's eyes opened wide, all his artistic instinct aroused.

The stranger was about sixty, but splendidly preserved. He was of the old-time oratorical type, full-featured and figured, an effect accented by his frock-coat and Panama hat. He would, perhaps, have been too flamboyant a personage with his smooth-shaven cheeks, curling iron-grey hair and the subdued floridity of his coloring, if the ascetic line of his profile and the softening shadows that enlarged his full deep eyes had not made the difference between cheapness and picturesqueness. His expression was, moreover, distinctly benevolent.

Selwyn stared at him with the enthusiastic candor of his twenty-five years and of the painter who has discovered something “paintable.” Evidently the stranger noticed this, for, presently, he came over to his side to ask the usual commonplaces about the tides and the light-houses.

“It's a beautiful day,” he announced, finally. His voice was vibrant and full of round benignant tones, in perfect accord, as Selwyn noted delightedly, with his appearance.

“Oh, glorious,” Selwyn agreed, “stunning painting weather!”

His companion did not answer. He was looking fixedly again in the direction of the bath-houses. The door of one of them had opened and a girl stood in the opening, staring under a slender, shading hand over the stretches of sallow sand beyond the chrysoprase rumpled sea to the luminous reaches of turquoise sky. She was, apparently, a little past twenty—a tall, slender muscular creature with an irregular face, darkly handsome in coloring, humorous and clever in expression. The sunlight turned the virile sweep of her heavy hair from black to purple; it made wells of liquid light of her large brown eyes.

“By Jove! that's Garda Hallowell,” Selwyn exclaimed surprisedly—and then could have bitten his tongue off. Simultaneously it had flashed across him that the elderly stranger could be no other than her guardian-uncle, Mark Hallowell. The situation was, to say the least, embarrassing.

“You know—” his interlocutor was beginning.

“Oh no, no,” Selwyn interrupted quickly, “I've never happened to meet your niece—although the number of times I've nearly done so is ridiculously large. I think I ought to tell you at once, Mr. Hallowell, that my name is Robert Selwyn—Elton Selwyn's son,” he added explainingly, as there was no response in his companion's face.

“Oh, Elton Selwyn,” the latter said understandingly. His expression changed.

“I have never quite understood what your quarrel, with dad was about, originally, Mr. Hallowell,” Selwyn broke in desperately when the pause became monotonous, “and I hope you will not visit the sins of the father unto the second generation—that is to say,” he floundered, “I have no wish to appear disloyal—far from it, but I know that it is father's particular desire that the younger set ignore the difficulty as much as possible.”

The older man smiled courteously. “Then by all means let us ignore it,” he suggested affably, “I have no hesitancy in confessing to Elton Selwyn's son that the whole affair has been a matter of great regret to me, and if I could have seen my way clear at any time, I would—” He broke off with an expansive movement of his white plump hands. “Where is your father at present, Mr. Selwyn?” he asked, after a significant pause.

“In Wenett, I believe.” Selwyn's manner was a little abrupt. “Is Miss Hallowell going in bathing?” he wriggled away from the subject.

“I believe so,” his companion responded absently. His thoughts, evidently the result of their conversation, were miles away. He interrupted himself to leap to his feet. The girl was having some difficulty with the bath-house door. She was pushing violently against it from the inside. Under an appearance of nonchalance Selwyn watched his new acquaintance closely as he hurried over and pulled it open.

He observed the old-fashioned gallantry of the sweeping bow he accorded the lady upon her reappearance and the interested colloquy that followed. The man examined the lock and carefully readjusted it. Then he filled her pail at the water's edge. After that something came up in their conversation that occasioned considerable light talk and laughter. Suddenly Miss Hallowell turned back into her bath-house. She emerged in another second with her pocket-book in her hand. Some sort of money transaction went on between them from which Selwyn politely averted his gaze. When he returned to his observations Miss Hallowell had disappeared into the bath-house again and his new friend was coming towards him.

“We're wondering,” the latter began, “if you will be so good as to break a bill for us, Mr. Selwyn. Neither my niece nor I happen to have any small change. Apparently they can't wrestle with anything bigger than a fifty-cent piece in the village. It's bothered us enormously and I've got to make some purchases on the way back.”

Selwyn hastily retreated to his dressing-room for his pocket-book. Fortunately the fifty dollars in it that, since he had just quarreled with his father, must, in the next month, stand between him and starvation, happened to be in small bills. He rapidly counted out the twenty that his companion needed. The latter accepted it with the courtly inclination that Selwyn had discovered was charmingly frequent with him.

“I hope you will give me the pleasure of allowing me to present you to my niece when she comes out,” he offered sonorously.

“I should be delighted,” Selwyn responded equably. His voice was steady, but his lips twitched so violently into the smiles of his delighted anticipation that he turned his gaze seaward. There the coal-barges, strung out on the gray horizon-line, seemed to perform a grotesque clog-dance before his dazzled eyes. “All things do come to the duffer who waits,” he meditated exultantly. And yet it did not seem possible that the event for which he had been longing for years could occur in this out-of-the-way place and season. He prayed ardently that nothing would happen to prevent a meeting. And nothing did happen.

Presently the bath-house door reopened and Miss Hallowell emerged, tall and trim in her black and white bathing-suit. With a heart thumping so madly against a restraining thorax that he was sure it was visible through his bathing-suit, Selwyn accompanied his companion to her side.

“Oh, by the way,” that gentleman said, modifying the speed of his dignified amble and the long-distance resonance of his remarkable voice, “perhaps it will simplify things if you do not address me by my name—my niece does not understand that I—” He broke off abruptly. There was an irresistible twinkle in his full, deep eyes.

“I understand, Mr. Hallowell,” Selwyn protested, fervently.

His companion murmured something that was lost in the surging in Selwyn's ears and the next thing that he was conscious of was, “I want you two young people to know each other. Allow me to present Mr. Selwyn—Miss Hallowell; Mr. Selwyn.” The beneficent organ-like tones stopped. Selwyn bowed. Some words broke from his dry lips; and suddenly they were all sitting on the sand, chatting as if they had known each other for years.

“How long are you going to be in Scarsett, Miss Hallowell?” Selwyn asked.

“I'm just passing through, really. I've just come from Wenett and I'm on my way to Mexum.”

“Wenett!” Selwyn repeated. He wondered if she had by any chance met his father. That was unlikely, he decided. Their friends in the place all knew of the family feud. “I'm going on to Mexum myself,” he volunteered, “that is—later.” He stopped in embarrassment. He could hardly tell her, in the circumstances, that his going entirely depended on the sale of a batch of paintings that he had just sent to New York. “When do you leave Scarsett?”

“To-night at six.”

Selwyn frowned. Paintings or no paintings, he must get to Mexum. He would have to work hard in the next month. Could fifty dollars last a month? It would have to be resolved swiftly.

The portly third to their brief tête-à-tête had been listening to it with an air of impatience politely suppressed. “Well, now I think I shall have to ask you two young people to excuse me,” he said in the first pause. “I have some telephoning that must be done before I take the 'two' train. The carriage is coming for you, I suppose,” he turned to Miss Hallowell.

“Yes, I'm driving directly to the station. I shall dine in town.”

The two men shook hands with a brief good-bye. “Don't stay in the water too long,” the older man commanded them in his most benign accents as he accorded them a profuse farewell bow.

“Inspired old angel!” was Selwyn's inward comment as he walked down the beach with Miss Hallowell. Turning at the water's edge, he saw that his celestial coadjutor had caught up with a wagon going in the direction of the station. As he looked he pulled his heavy body athletically over the tail-board. There was a brief word to the driver and then the latter whipped up his horses to a gallop.

“By Jove!” Selwyn thought, “I hope his philanthropy has not made him lose his train.”

He spent four golden hours on the sand alone with Garda Hallowell. After a while the talk grew sufficiently confidential for them to count the times when and the places where they had just escaped meeting each other. She even confessed to the disappointment this long series of failures had occasioned her. Later, when, with much outward bravado and more inward trepidation, he begged her to pose for him in the ensuing August at Mexum, she consented with immediate and charming simplicity. The moments of the long June afternoon were, of course, winged ones and he could hardly believe the evidence of his watch when the carriage, that was to bear her to the six train, appeared. He accompanied her to it with a face comically lugubrious. Perhaps it was her sympathy with his incipient loneliness that caused her to bend out from the carriage-seat and to exclaim impulsively, “Oh, Mr. Selwyn, I was so delighted to meet your father.” Then she blushed and bit her lips.

Selwyn flushed uncomfortably. Dad had been in Wenett, then, and she had met him. He wondered if their quarrel were common property, and, more pertinently, if his fair companion had heard of it. His comment was a brief, “Indeed,” and then he changed the subject to the conventional last exhortatory words. It seemed to him that he had never felt so lonely in his life as in the interval after she had disappeared from his horizon. He went rapidly into the house and got out his painting-things. Oh, if some of that last batch would only sell!

They did not sell, as it happened, but a subsequent lot, painted under the stimulus of his desire for another sight of Garda Hallowell, were snapped up immediately. August found him in Mexum, glued apparently to Miss Hallowell's side. September found him as unescapably established at the same place. In the middle of October their engagement was announced. Selwyn wrote of the event to his father. Elton Selwyn did not deign to take notice of his son's letter, but he wrote several charming notes to Garda. Later, through other friends, Selwyn heard, to his great surprise and delight, that the breach between his father and Mark Hallowell had been entirely healed, and that, in fact, they were frequently seen together. He did not mention the matter to Garda, as she had never made any allusion to the quarrel and he preferred to have her open the subject. October faded opulently away and still there was no word from the elder Selwyn. The matter did not worry his son. His plans were all made.

He was to spend the winter in New York, where Garda would be for most of the season; his studio was already engaged. If everything went flourishingly they were to be married in the spring.

A month later, in Garda's New York home, they were making out a list of guests for a studio-tea.

“First and foremost,” Selwyn pronounced emphatically, pounding on the sofa-cushion that he was adjusting for his knees, “we must have your Uncle Mark.”

“Oh, yes,” Garda agreed, “we must surely have Uncle Mark, but considering the circumstances, I think your father ought to be the guest of honor.”

“That's nonsense, you know,” Selwyn commented, a little impatiently. “Dad has held no communication with me for months, whereas your Uncle Mark—”

“Oh, Uncle Mark's a perfect dear about writing and all that. But I have a sentiment about the matter. I shall never forget that it was your duck of a father who introduced us.”

“Well, I like that,” Selwyn declared, disgustedly. “Don't ever tell me again that women remember birthdays and anniversaries and all kinds of fool dates. But if there is one thing that I should expect a girl to be up on, it's the time she meets her future husband—especially when it's a regular Romeo and Juliet business—healing the family feud and all that sort of thing.”

Garda's big eyes began to blaze ominously. “I don't know what you're talking about, Robert,” she said, her voice deepening indignantly. “I can certainly describe as minutely as you every circumstance connected with our first meeting. It was on Scarsett beach—”

“Good guess!”

“Your father came over while I was struggling with the bath-house door—”

“My father—your grandmother!” Selwyn interrupted, disrespectfully. “You mean your uncle.”

“What are you talking about, Robert Selwyn?” She stared for a silent instant of perplexed wrath. Then her face changed. “Wasn't that elderly gentleman who wore the Panama hat and the anachronistic frock-coat your father?”

Selwyn gasped. “Wasn't he your uncle?”

“Of course he wasn't. Why, he told me he was your father.”

“If you will permit me—I think I do know my own father when I see him. I never saw him before.”

“Well, he was an escaped lunatic then. I never saw him before either.”

Selwyn sat up. “Good Lord! I wrote to dad that your uncle had been extremely courteous to me. I didn't mention exactly how, I remember now, but I said that your uncle was very sorry that there had been such a quarrel and was more than willing to meet him half-way.”

“I wrote Uncle Mark that your father had been awfully good to me and he wrote me that he immediately made overtures to him. He said that he was really very glad the foolish misunderstanding was over, that of course it wasn't his place to open relations, but as long as your father”

“Merciful Heavens!” Selwyn groaned. “They're reconciled on the strength of events that never happened. But then, of course, it's the nicest thing”

“But what was the man's idea?” Garda went on thoughtfully. “'I am Elton Selwyn'—those were his exact words. Then he asked if he might introduce you to me, and I said that I would be delighted. He asked me not to call him by his name, as his son felt that he was intruding in view of the circumstances. It all seemed natural enough to me. I trusted him absolutely and then I was so rattled at the thought of meeting you.”

Selwyn rubbed his head and frowned. “Well, of all things! What on earth was the old duffer up to?” Suddenly his jaw dropped. “By Jove!” he exclaimed, electrically, “that's it, as sure as you live. I'd forgotten all about it.”

“What's it?”

“Why, he was a blamed scoundrel! He asked me to change a twenty for him. Of course, I was crazy to do anything for your uncle. When I came to pass the bill I found that it was counterfeit. Again, as he was your uncle, I didn't say anything about it. Maybe I didn't economize up to the nines in those six weeks in which I had to live on thirty dollars. It's lucky he didn't ask for any more.”

He stopped and looked at his companion. She was struggling with some inundating emotion; striving, it gradually developed, to keep back a laugh. A picture suddenly flashed into his mind of Garda diving into the bath-house and returning with her pocket-book in her hand.

“Did you change any money for that hoary-headed old villain?” he demanded sternly.

Garda collapsed hysterically. “Ten dollars,” she admitted.


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text:
The Red Book Magazine/Volume 43/Number 1/Uriah's Son

ERTAIN stories have a way of repeating themselves: the transfer of Naboth's vineyard turns up in the real-estate columns; the steel-and-concrete walls of a modern Jericho crumble at the blast of the strong man's trumpet; a businesslike Jacob in a battered derby tricks a hungry Esau into signing away his rightful inheritance on the dotted line. Life may have more possible permutations than a hand of cards, but certain combinations recur—only sometimes the sleight of circumstance provides a new and unexpected ending to an ancient gambit. It was so with David Davenant and Frances Jerome.

David, king over Israel, was a strong, cunning, diverse man. So was David Davenant—and a little king in the New York of his day, as well. As for Frances—no, the sumptuous beauty of Bathsheba, pale and burning, was hardly hers, though she was beautiful. She was kind, forgiving and gentle, with cool hands and a delicate gayety when she was pleased—the kind of woman life seems to delight in forcing into traps that would break the strong.

Everybody expected her to marry badly—for she had what people considered a terrible weakness for taking care of crippled things. So everybody was disappointed—most favorably, of course—when she married Dicky Jerome.

Dicky was your fortunate youth, par excellence—you know the school legend—the life of the party, the man who can arrive as late as he pleases, anywhere, and always be more than for given. He was handsome in his youth, without a trace of slickness—the pleasantest of company—dogs adored him—success came rubbing against his legs like an affectionate cat. Life had no corners for him, as it had for David Davenant. Why he ever picked out Frances—but he did, to the temporary discomfiture of the prophets, who had to fall back upon the comment that poor Frances sometimes seemed a little dazed with her own good fortune. They had been married three years, and had a son who looked absurdly like Dicky from the first—that Dicky's first child should be a son was as much to be expected as that it should be spoken of as Dicky's son—and everybody knew how well Dicky was doing with D. Davenant and Co.—when David Davenant came to the Jeromes' for dinner one night.

His coming was not quite as much of an individual triumph for Dicky's luck, as it sounds. After all—David Davenant had known Frances' father—and David was famous for keeping rather uncanny track of the private affairs of his brilliant young men. But for all that, Frances must have been rather excited about that evening. As for Dicky, who never was nervous—the evening must have made him believe more firmly than ever in his peculiar star.

You can see Frances, shy and anxious—a gentle kitten being modestly polite to a king, whenever opportunity offered, which was seldom, for Dicky carried the brunt of the conversation with his usual aplomb. And David—looking at Frances—and looking again!

What could it have been in Frances that stirred such intense and ruthless purpose in the heart of a dour, self-sufficient man some twenty years older than herself? A gaunt lion, staring enchanted at a spray of spring cherry-blossoms—a cold king, stung to the soul by beauty demure as a child's, unconscious as a child's. But it happened—and Frances, I think, did not even know it was happening, in spite of what people said later. The king came to dinner oftener the other brilliant young men began to watch Dicky with wary eyes. One wonders if David of Israel ever went to dinner at the Uriahs'—and if the captains of his host were envious and said that Uriah had all the luck.

Modern kings manage these affairs a little less crudely, perhaps, than their forebears did. The blue envelope has supplanted the executioner's sword. So David did not set Dicky in the forefront of the battle and bid his companions retire from him that he might die. Instead he raised Dicky's salary and sent him on a trip of investigation to Cholopan. White women with young children do not go to Cholopan if they want to live—or did not, then; and even the strictest-living of white men used to come back shaken. As for the other white men, they did not last long. Dicky did not last long.

A year and a half after his death, Frances married David Davenant. Then the whispers began. The kindest said that he must have terrified her into it, and told tales of the implacable, bearish strength that had always got him the thing he desired. Or else, that of course it was for the child, poor thing, and they pitied her. Indeed, Dicky's death had left her in actual poverty; it is really astonishing how much it costs for even the most fortunate of pleasant young men to maintain a home in a properly agreeable way. As for what the more malicious agreed about the whole affair—but why bother with them? The one point on which all were agreed was that Frances certainly had no right to seem at all happy in her second marriage. And she did seem—not unhappy at least—at first.

David must have reckoned that a king could crush such gossip like a snapping little animal under his heel, by mere strength. But gossip is fog that comes seeping in through the tiny cracks of existence—seeping in and in, no matter how firmly one tries to stuff the cracks.

As it was, he broke one twenty-year friendship in the first months of his marriage—when Rufus Malone, who feared neither God nor David, greeted him one day with: 'Well, David—and how is the fair Bathsheba today?” David turned on his heel and never spoke to the man again. The incident made more gossip—and after that, David may have thought, with some wisdom, that the best thing to do was to wait and let the gossip wear out with time. But Frances wore out first.

She died four years after her second marriage—taking leave of life as gently and civilly as she had always taken leave of her friends. And the friends who had thought her first apparent happiness unseemly were satisfied, for when she died, she had certainly not been what the world calls happy for a long time The gossip had reached her and touched her—and some natures cannot endure a lifelong warfare with fog. Toward the last, I think, she lived wholly for her boy—but she must have trusted David, or she could not have borne it to leave the boy alone with him. He was seven or so when she died—a handsome, charming child, a little delicate, with his father's graces of manner.

So Frances' story ended—and the prophets of her world were satisfied—for their prophecies had been fulfilled at last.

As for David, who had grimly adored her and loaded her docile fragility with gifts so properly kingly they weighed her down like golden armor—no one knew if or what he suffered, or with what private agony of iron tears he tried to buy off Death. Kings have no time for long grief, and he went on—only something seemed to shut up in his mind with a click of steel. If he had been grim before, he was grimmer now—the rare, odd, awkward tenderness he had sometimes shown with Frances, the strange occasional attempts at light-heartedness, as at the playing of an unaccustomed game—these disappeared. His hair whitened; he grew leaner—but his mind retained the relentless precision of a strong machine—and D. Davenant and Co. prospered till few competitors dared stand in its shadow.

After a while men began to say jokingly that he would never die—unless, they added, half-believing it, the Devil flew away with him. For even after Frances' death, he displayed no slightest sign of repentance for what he had done—though, by now, his story, and Frances', and Dicky Jerome's, had well nigh taken on the proportions of a legend—and people called him “King David,” under their breath.

Then, as the boy grew up, there began to be talk about “King David” and “Uriah's son.”

RANK JEROME'S first real memory of his stepfather was one of fear. A gaunt figure stalking about the tiny apartment where Frances had gone to live after Dicky's death—a figure so tall and strange and with such a frightening air of power about it that Frank always felt that he and his mother and the apartment lived only on sufferance in its presence—that, if it wished, it could stamp with its foot like a lanky master-magician and crumple the neat little rooms to pieces like a house of cards. A gaunt face coming close to him, the eyes staring at him unblinkingly, seeming to count and judge every childish mistake without mercy or comprehension—knotty, powerful hands, bestowing mysterious parcels of toys that were wonderful enough in themselves, but took a long time to get used to, because they too had an air of power and condescension from which he shrank.

Then the house on Riverside Drive—vast and gloomy, dark curtains, soft funereal carpets—and the first terrors of finding the gaunt figure unexpectedly there, at meals, following his mother about like a tall, overpowering shadow, asking penetrating questions for which there were no right answers, horrifically seated, smoking a gaunt cigar in rooms that had begun to seem a little familiar—everywhere!

The child can really have seen very little of David those first years—but the presence of him obsessed his days. And when he was told about God, he made Him in David's image—a gaunt figure in white robes, spiky-crowned, appallingly just and omnipresent, striding the floors of heaven with a pitiless eye alert.

Then the memories grew brighter and clearer—his mother's death, the numb, uncomprehending shock, the gaunt figure with its face set and rig*1, saying, “Frances! Frances!” in a harsh, dull voice—his mother, smiling tinily: “Take care of your father, Frank!' But David wasn't his father—and as for taking care of him—Frank would as soon have thought of trying to take care of God.

A strange life, after that, for the two of them in the huge, melancholy house. Nurses and governesses—the servants—days and weeks when David hardly seemed to see the little boy who played in the corner. Did David hate him, or was it merely with bleak indifference that the deep eyes regarded him and his games? He didn't know. But he began to think that David hated him, after the incident of the closet under the stairs.

Frank hated the stairs and the black and cavernous hall. Sinister shadows lurked there in the long, gray winter afternoons—dark, faceless shapes of shadow, ready to catch at a little boy's feet. And the closet under the stairs was their most secret fastness.

Perhaps David noticed this aversion of Frank's, with those bleak eyes that seemed to see nothing and everything. At any rate, one afternoon, when they were alone. he spoke: “Frank.”

“Yes sir.”

“I left a box of cigars in the closet under the stairs. Go and get it for me, please.”

The request left Frank aghast. Why, even the lights in the hall were not on yet—not that they helped much! The hall was packed with shadows.

“Well, Frank? What's the matter?”

“N-nothing.”

“What's the matter?”

“C-can't I ask Miss Tyler? I—”

“Frank, are you afraid? Afraid of the dark?” The gaunt face stiffened—the last words were a delicate lash of scorn.

“Y-yes!”—defiantly.

The set visage relaxed a trifle. “Why? There's nothing to be afraid of. Nothing will hurt you.”

But he didn't know. How could he know? Even the shadows would be afraid of Aim.

“Frank, go and get that box.”

Slowly, rebelliously, Frank turned to face the shadows. There were even more of them than he had feared. But he could feel David's eyes on his back, burning. He caught his breath and walked straight into the heart of the darkness.

“On the second shelf, Frank.”

He wanted to grab with icy hands and run back, but he could not. If he did, he would be ashamed in the sight of those hateful eyes. He found the box, and turned, trembling, to face the terrible shadows again. Why—they were only shadows! Just ordinary shadows! He gasped with astonishment—and walked back slowly—even dallying a little, in fearful defiance.

After that, he could not afford to be afraid of the closet, for he never knew when David might send him there again. But at times he felt quite sure that David had hated him, and had been disappointed that he had not failed in the cruel adventure. That, more than anything else, helped him to conquer his fear. And then he felt more certain than ever that David hated him, for a month or so after the incident, David suddenly informed him that he was to be sent away to school.

He didn't want to go to school—it meant discomfort, change, a whole host of possible terrors. But being his father's son, when he got to school, he prospered—he had that indefinable engagingness that, in man or woman, makes the run of mankind follow the proverb and give to him that hath. He had his father's facility—his father's ease. And his school and college life could easily have been like his father's, a pleasant, triumphal passage through an admiring throng. But it was not—because of David.

AVID did not fit in at all with the admiring throng. Indeed, he seemed often to grudge what success his stepson had, and certainly never praised him. Coming back to David, on vacations, was like stepping from a warm room under the freezing needles of a shower-bath. After a while Frank learned to brace and inure himself against that shock. The fact that David certainly disliked him, very possibly hated him, became merely a fact—a weight to carry, but not a crushing weight, for, oddly enough, Frank could never find the flicker of meanness or spite in those deep and hostile eyes. He knew what some of his friends thought of David's attitude, but he could not agree with them. The hate that was set against him was a superb hate. It had an iron quality. He strove against it as against a bar of iron—and grew strong.

David gave him a ridiculously tiny allowance, considering, but he lived within it rigidly, contracting none of the pleasant debts of some of his classmates. He would not give David the opportunity for easy scorn such debts might afford. He played football for four years on the scrub team, knowing perfectly well that he had no chance for a letter—but he would not give up the game and hear David's voice, “So you've given up football, Frank?” and see the thought in his mind: “I thought you couldn't stick it out.”

It must not be understood that his youth was either doleful or priggishly self-centered—it was not. He enjoyed himself greatly and was well liked; but under the surface of his days lay a certain backbone of purpose, rare among his fellows. When he was graduated, he received no votes for “most popular man,” but he had, without knowing it, the respect of his entire class.

The war came when he was twenty-one, in his last year of college. David wrote a characteristic letter. 'So you intend to enlist in the Marines. Considering your training, and the scarcity of officer-material, you would probably be rather more useful if you tried for an officers' training-camp—but I realize that the job for which a man is best suited is seldom the one that appeals to him. Besides, as a private, you would have much less responsibility—which is always pleasanter.” The unit' Frank had intended to join went overseas without him. He went to camp and spent his war-service training recruits in Texas. But the recruits were well trained—even David would have admitted that.

FTER the war he came back to the house on Riverside Drive, and David frigidly offered him a chance with D. Davenant and Co. “You realize that, though the other men may not think so at first, you will be treated exactly like any other employee. Your success, should you make it, you will have to make yourself. I have never played favorites.”

Frank smiled. “Of course, sir.” At last they were coming to grips.

“In fact,” said David, doubtfully, “—don't grin at me, Frank!—it will probably be a little harder for you than the ordinary man. Your superiors will be informed that you need expect no private favors from me—”

“Very well, sir.”

“Very well. You will report at the office in the morning. I shall, naturally, discontinue your allowance, but you may live here if you prefer it.”

“I'll pay you rent.”

“Don't be nonsensical,” said David contemptuously.

“Then I'll live somewhere else.”

A gleam lighted David's eyes.

“As you please. However, in that case,—if you wish to stay here,—you may pay me the average rent my clerks pay.” He named figures.

“Very well.”

Frank had been working six months, when he made the discovery. Gossip sleeps—but it does not die. He overheard the office whispers behind his back—the whispers that called him Uriah's son. So he came to know, at last.

When he was quite sure, and the first bitterness was still upon him, he went to David. It was after a dinner as silent as most of their meals together. The interview took place in the vast, funereal room whence David had sent him out that time to look for the cigar-box in the closet under the stairs. David had just lighted one of that same brand of cigars.

“I want to talk to you, sir.”

“Well, Frank? Getting tired of the grind?”

“No. I want to ask you some things about my father.”

The knotty fingers of David's hand clenched suddenly about his cigar. Then, gradually, they unclosed. “I've spoiled my cigar,” he said in a musing voice. He took another cigar from the box, clipped, lighted it. Then he turned to Frank.

“So? Well?”

Frank told him what he had heard. As David failed to reply, sitting stiff in his chair, the accusing voice grew more passionate. There was nothing young about that voice any longer—the heat in it was the heat of a deep, steady flame, too white-hot to sputter or roar.

When Frank was quite done, the composed figure stirred a little.

“Well? Is that all?”

“You don't deny it?”

“No,” said the quiet image, “I don't deny it.”

Frank passed his hand over his forehead with an odd, mechanical gesture. He had expected raging denial—mountainous anger—lies that stuck in the throat—anything but this quietude. He could hardly believe his own accusation, even now. There had been hate between them before—strong hate—but nothing like this, nothing crawling. He looked at David as a child might look at a monster. A sudden horror seized him—a horror that, if he looked long enough, he might see blood upon David's hands—and he shook.

“You don't deny it?” he repeated stupidly.

“No,” came the quiet answer again. “I don't deny it. Your father was worthless and useless—”

“You liar! Oh, I've heard! He was—”

“Worthless and useless. He crossed me—I put him out of my way. What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to kill you, I think,” said Frank; and he believed it—then.

“Well,” said the figure, with a certain horrible mockery, “as you will. I've lived a long time.”

The hands that were almost at David's throat dropped away.

“No,” said Frank in a cracking voice, “that wouldn't be enough. I'd rather have everybody know what you are—and they will. I'll put you in jail for my father's murder, if it takes me—”

“It would be like your father's son,” said David, “to dirty your mother's memory—if he could.”

“You devil!” said Frank, half sobbing. He pressed his hands against his eyes.

David carefully extinguished his cigar.

“If you are quite through—” he said.

“No,” said Frank, and this time the eyes that looked into David's eyes were calm as his own. “I can't kill you—I can't disgrace you—but I cam break you. You don't care about God or death or disgrace—but you care about D. Davenant and Company! And I'll break D. Davenant and Company! I think that would hurt you more than anything else.”

“Try it,” said David Davenant, and rose 'o his feet. He laughed. “If you were my son—perhaps. But not the son of your father. He was worthless and useless—and you are too much like him. It would take a strong man to break me, Frank—not you.”

“You lie,” said Frank, steadily. “You were afraid of my father. You murdered him because you were afraid. You could because he trusted you. But I know you—and you sha'n't murder me—and I'll break you.”

“Try it,' said David Davenant again, and walked out of the room.

Hot resolutions cool between night and morning, as a rule. The next morning Frank's resolution had not cooled, but he began to realize the enormous difficulty of his task.

He realized it even more in the next few months. But when a man is willing to work twenty-four hours a day for a purpose, and subordinate everything else in life to that purpose, he either breaks himself or accomplishes his task.

The first step took him two hard and discouraging years. But the time had long been ripe in the trade for an organized fight of the independents against D. Davenant and Company, and Frank found himself at last a small but growingly important figure in the forces preparing for that fight.

Luck helped him somewhat, but not more than it generally helps the man who bullies rather than beseeches it. And the fires of his purpose never had time to grow cold, for whenever they sank down a little, his path and David's would cross. After a time he began to suspect that David, in his kingly way, was keeping very close track of him, and the suspicion tightened his grip on his weapons. David was watching for a slip—he must make no slips.

There was the incident of Mrs. Dixon, for instance. Mrs. Dixon was, to the eye, merely a comely, rather flirtatious young widow with a certain quite pleasant foolishness about her. Frank liked her. They told stories about her, of course—and some not very nice ones; but they told stories about everyone. She had never been actually touched by scandal; and if she lived rather expensively and maintained a discreet silence about the presumably defunct Mr. Dixon—that was her own affair.

Frank's friendship with her was progressing very pleasantly, when, one evening as they were dining together in a restaurant whose reputation leaned toward the indiscreet, David came in, alone, and sat down at the table opposite them.

T spoiled an agreeable dinner-party; Mrs. Dixon's sallies began to seem vapid, or a little too eager. Frank kept looking at David, who did not seem to observe him. But Frank knew he did. He could hear David's voice—“like your father—worthless—useless—” Frank and David exchanged no words, but the dinner ended in unacknowledged discord. Nor did Frank accept Mrs. Dixon's carefully casual invitation to stop in at her apartment for a last cigarette before he went home. After that, their friendship lapsed, in spite of Mrs. Dixon's letters. When the Harcourt scandal broke next year, Frank was just as glad that he had not answered those letters. If David had not come that evening—David might have triumphed. So David's wariness had done him a bad turn, for once. But that wariness kept on.

There were other incidents like that of Mrs. Dixon—other unexpected meetings with David in the flesh, a dour figure watching with terrible persistence for Frank to stumble and fall. And David in the spirit was always watching. “Just like your father,” the phantom said—and Frank buckled to and disproved him—or rather proved him wrong in a different way—for it came to seem to him as if every mistake he made counted doubly, against himself, and against his father in his grave. So the pitfalls that lie in wait for the fool and the rogue were evaded—and every day they were evaded brought Frank nearer to his goal.

Sometimes he had the fear that David might die before he was able to break him—but David seemed as unchanging and perdurable as his hate. And then, in the beginning of the fourth year of his purpose, Frank fell in love with Shirley Free.

He was lucky—Shirleys are infrequent. She was everything he had wanted rather dumbly and never had. They were very happy. But he did not tell her the whole of his purpose, for he knew her to be forgiving. Perhaps it was as well; for, abruptly, the invisible persecution tighenened its net, and David appeared anew.

A glimpse of David, passing them in an automobile as Shirley and he were walking a country road; on another occasion looking out of the window and seeing a gaunt, observant figure on the other side of the street—an ominous coincidence, too often repeated to be accidental.

The wedding was to be in October. The plans of the independents were coming to a head—and only the certainty of Shirley and Shirley's devotion kept Frank up through the straining summer months. As it was, he grew nervous and edgy—and David walked through his dreams.

When Frank discovered, a month before the date of the wedding, that David had actually seen and talked with Shirley—it was the last straw.

“But Frank,” said Shirley, puzzled, “after all— I'll admit I was a little scared at first, he zs rather scary. But he didn't say anything that—”

“H'm,” said Frank, “did he try to—bully—”

“Why—no, dear. I don't see quite why he came—except—”

“Yes?”

“Well—I had a vague sort of feeling that he was—well—looking me over—like a judge—only I don't know what he thought. He said he was coming again—”

“Well, he wont [sic],” said Frank briefly. “This has to stop. I can stand his spying on me, but he sha'n't touch you. I'll stop it, I tell you—I'll stop it—” His voice rose harshly. “Oh, I know him, Shirley—God knows what he's up to now; but he's a devil, I tell you—a devil—”

Shirley managed to quiet him for a time. But when he left her, he went straight to David's house.» He walked there—it was a long way—but he felt no fatigue. The consuming rage that burned in him was too intense. It made his body feel light as pith and very strong—he was quite calm, but he felt as if, this time, he could take David and break him in his hands like a crust.

He noticed with strange detachment, as he sat there, waiting for David, that the gloomy living-room had not changed since the last time he had seen it, years before. There was David's cigar-box on the table, and the picture of Frances above the fireplace. The room was terribly full of David's presence. For an instant Frank was a haunted small boy again, looking round the room with scared eyes, listening for the majestic footfalls of a great, gaunt figure that stalked over gloomy carpets with the terrifying pride of a damned archangel. Then his courage and rage returned—for David came in.

AVID had not altered in the years. The deep eyes still burned; the grim, imperious face kept its lean and haughty repose. His walk was not quite so certain—that was all.

He carried a bundle of papers in his hand. “Well, Frank,” he said without surprise, “sit down.”

He sat down himself and began to look through the papers, now and then making a little correction with a fountain pen. The sudden assurance of triumph flared up in Frank's mind. The papers were a shield—and an ineffective shield. David was afraid of him, at last.

Frank began to speak, and his voice had the intense composure of a man who has finally mastered his bitterest enemy. David heard him out, toward the end his pen moving slowly over a fresh sheet of paper as he listened. His attitude seemed to acknowledge defeat.

“I told you I'd break you,” Frank ended, “and I'm going to. You'll be broken within six months, no matter what happens. This is the end.”

“Broken—by you?” said David rather quietly.

Frank smiled. “Not entirely—but you couldn't have been broken without me—yet. You need some sort of a string to tie the loose sticks together into a club. I've been the string. It's taken four years, but I've tied the sticks together—in spite of your spying and watching—in spite of all you could do—”

“So you noticed my—spying,” said David, and smiled.

“But now—” said Frank, unheeding, “the spying must stop. Stop—do you understand? You can spy on me all you like—but you'll leave Shirley alone! I don't know what your idea was in spying on her—but this is the end of it! Do you hear?”

“Yes,” said David, going on with his writing. “This is the end of it. I sha'n't bother her any more.”

“Very well,” said Frank. “Then—” And suddenly, in spite of the conclusiveness of his victory, he was irritated by the other's calm. “What are you writing?” he ended, illogically.

“A letter.” David smiled. He came to the end of a paragraph, hesitated and carefully signed his name. “Here,” he said, and passed the papers over to Frank.

“What on—” said Frank, amazed.

“Read it,” said David, and sank back in his chair.

Frank took the pages gingerly. He glanced at the heading of the letter. It began “My dear son.” He looked at David, astounded, but David gave no sign. Frank settled himself to read.

Y DEAR SON:

“I had at one time hoped to make this explanation of certain matters to you in a different manner—but I am a sick old man, now, and talk tires me. Besides, there are other reasons. So you will receive this letter in the approved manner—either after my death, or when I am so near it that there need be no hesitancy on your part in believing what I say. The doctor gives me a little while now—if I live piddlingly—which I do not intend to do.

“You may, perhaps, have wondered at many things in my attitude toward you, before you discovered what seemed to you the logical explanation of that attitude. The real explanation goes back into the past, to the days when I first knew your mother and your father

“There is no need of telling you what your mother was. She was an incomparable creature—a saint without pretense—the kindest and gentlest of women. Your mother gave me what happiness I have had, except the brief happiness that comes from crushing an obstacle; and if I have been able to live through these last years, it has been by remembering her. I do not demand that you believe this—but it is true.

“Your father was one of the most charming men that I have ever known—and one of the worst. He was one of those rare people whom life rots with too much sun—with too great good-fortune—and who spoil the lives closest to them with the careless cruelty of a pampered child. With every facility, with every opportunity, he was profligate, cowardly, eaten with mean little sins. I do not ask you to accept this statement on hearsay; I offer letters of his own—of your mother's—of his friends—other testimony.

“He was breaking your mother's heart when he died—and she did not know the worst—he had great skill in concealment. And now the worst is long dead and will not rise—I have seen to that. Here is the evidence, my son.”

RANK, white to the lips, examined the attached sheaf of papers. He did not have to read them to the end—the damnation of a soul was written too plainly across the mildest of them. They could not have been forged; every line had the accent of truth; he knew three of the handwritings at least; he knew his mother's way of putting a thing. He sucked in a sobbing breath through tight lips, and went on reading:

“You will destroy these papers of course.

“You must remember that I had known your mother from a child—slightly enough, but enough to know what she was. I know the men who work for me—I knew your father, too. And knowing that—I knew what the end would be, unless Chance intervened. Your mother was fatally loyal.

“Well, I took upon myself the prerogative of Chance—the prerogative of God. I was a younger man then, and I knew my strength. I made a resolve—if Chance did not intervene within a certain space of time, I would.

“Yes, I was in love with your mother. But I gave him his chance—I stuck to my bargain. I had him in and talked to him, with some frankness. I had the right, considering his position in the company. He was as sneering as he dared—what business was it of mine? What he did in private—his private life was his own affair. He as much as boasted of your mother's forgiveness of him—he seemed to think it a little absurd. That was hard for me to bear—but I gave him his chance.

“If he had been anything but appetites and grace, the place where I sent him might have made a man of him. But he was not—I had thought he would not be. He died there as I had thought he would die. I killed him—if you like. Deliberately! Those who assume God's prerogative of mortal justice have their own punishment. Your mother married me—and we were happy, for a time. Yes, she was happy. Then the people began to whisper—and she died. I had not calculated upon the strength of whispers. She died. That was my punishment. But in spite of everything, I cannot regret what I did—for if it were to do over again, I would do the same.

“At least, your mother trusted me till the end. If she had not, she would not have left you in my charge.

“You may never have seen your father's picture as a child. Your physical likeness to him was startling—and it went to more than externals. You have some of his tricks of manner, even now. And, when you were a boy, you were almost entirely his.

“You could have been spoiled and petted as he was spoiled. You could have been trained in his precise likeness, body and mind—a child is impressionable, and you were very like him from the start. Sometimes it frightened me to see how like him you were. But I had a charge from your mother. I could not see you grow and become like him while I had my strength.

“You may often have thought your training a rigorous one. It was. I made it so. You may have thought me unfriendly, scornful, hateful. I was. I chose to be your enemy rather than your friend, because it is by wrestling with an enemy almost too much for one that one gets courage and endurance and fortitude. I chose to make life hard and difficult for you, where it might have been smooth and easy, so that you would not drown in stale honey, as your father drowned. I do not repent.

“I do not repent, for with test after test, you got hardier, and surer, and less afraid of anything, even of me. I made you my worthy enemy. I bound the difficult habit of years upon you like an honorable chain—and hardened, hardened it, till at last your father lay dead in you, and you had an armor not even success could pierce.

“Then, when you were a man, I let you find out, as you thought. You took it as I hoped you would take it—and the night you said you would break me, I looked at you and knew that between us we had made a man. But you were very young, and I was not quite certain.

“I made it my business to be entirely certain, though my time was growing short. But I could not face your mother and not be certain. So once again I took upon myself a certain prerogative, and where you went, I spied upon you like a ghost. In all ways I left you free to make your own decisions—and if you had fallen in the mire deliberately, I would not have raised you—or I might have raised you scornfully, and given you the petty damnation of easy riches, and died. But you did not fall. A strong man does not lie down before his enemy. You prospered instead, till now you are ready to break me, and I can go.

“I can go, for your marriage was my last concern, and I have seen you with the girl you are to marry, and seen her alone and heard her talk of you. You do not lie to women, as your father did, and you have chosen as I hoped you would choose. Your mother would like her, my son.

“Well, it has been a long task, and it is finished. I could have been kinder to you easily, though you may doubt that. I have had no son of my body. You have been my son. Sometimes, indeed more frequently than you might suppose, it was somewhat difficult not to be too kind.

“Do not think, by the way, that your present success is in any way due to me. I fought your business combinations with all my skill. But you have been too strong and adroit for me there. That is all.

“As for my material fortune, such as it is, it will go not to you but to charity, except for a certain portion, justly yours. You do not need the rest now. You would only have needed it if you had failed. There are certain things of your mother's you will probably wish to keep. I have made arrangements for that. Of course” (a line of erasure) “you are welcome to any of my personal effects, should you desire them.

“I wish you good-fortune, my son, with a free mind, now. Perhaps it is nothing to you that when I die, I shall be able to rest, now, but it is something to me. Perhaps you have a—” (the line was unfinished)

“Very sincerely, “Your father, “David Davenant.”

RANK stared up from the last page. Strange, difficult tears stung at his eyes.

“Father,” he said gently.

There was no answer.

He sprang up. “Father—Father—” he called over and over; but the figure in the other chair did not stir.


text:
Thicker Than Water (Benét)

EVORE did not know how he knew that they were going to try blood transfusion as a last resort. He knew, somewhat detachedly—for his mind seemed to have floated a little away from his body—that he was ill and very weak, and that he had been thus for some time; so ill and weak that to turn in bed was a great weariness, and that separate nights and days blurred into one long night and day. It was annoying, being ill, for a masterful man.

Would he die? He wondered. The possibility irritated him faintly but it did not make him afraid. He was not accustomed to fear—a fearful man could never have lived his life. He had liked life and enjoyed it, few more subtly. And life, rousing out of nothingness to talk and act for a childish moment, inconsequent as brief, was all. He had never been able to trick himself into a belief that, after the annihilation of the body, something continued. Hell—Heaven—Elysium—bubbles—old wives' tales. Death meant blackness, the end of enjoyment where so much still remained to be enjoyed. Nothing more. Even so—he had lived, in his span. Lived as none of his forebears had dared to live. He almost smiled.

If he died, the stiff family portraits would think he had got his just “come-uppance” at last—the vengeance of a Puritan God, overdue. Poor family portraits! The ants had gathered so painfully for the grasshopper to waste. Odd, to be the last of a New England line and to find in oneself no slightest trace of that doleful thing, a New England conscience. But fate was sportive and grew weary of virtuous men.

Blood transfusion—hm-m. What poor devil would they get for—the party of the second part? He vaguely attempted to remember newspaper stories concerned with such matters. Husband Gives Own Blood to Save Wife—and so forth. <A family matter—blood is thicker than water—a family matter, kept in the family. But he had no family, thank Heaven, no devoted family, not even a wife to snuffle about the sickbed and sacrifice and inherit. He stood alone. It would have to be a stranger. A quaint distaste arose in him—he wondered if it wouldn't be better to die like a gentleman than to buy life back again with another- man's blood. Actual blood—red, living. Another man's blood in your veins. A stranger, a veiled figure, a nameless passer-by, bringing a singular gift in silence, departing without speech, not to be seen again, and yet—the uncanny bond between the two of you after the thing was done. Would there be such a bond? Of course not—he must be getting delirious. And yet blood-brothers. He smiled at the grim play on words.

There were now, he remembered, men who made an avocation of such barter. Sellers of life. He had read of them—did not hospitals keep a list of possible donors? Queer! Subjects—healthy subjects; he seemed to recollect one case, a man who had been such a subject some dozen times. Some of them gave without price but most were paid—fifty dollars or so an occasion, he thought. It was fortunate he had money—he grinned wryly; certainly no one of his acquaintance would ever do such a thing for him for love. No. But money could buy almost anything—even length of days, now doctors were so skilled. Well, it would be a new experience, at any rate. He closed his eyes and began to drift toward a troubled sleep, © still wondering about the stranger, the man from nowhere who for some unfathomable reason would presently come and lie in the next bed and give him new life and new strength from his unknown veins.

He was very weak when the actual transfusion was made, but still curious under his weakness. But his eyes blurred annoyingly when he taxed them, so he could not see all he wished. The doctor was saying something —had the stranger come, then? Yes—there he was. Devore looked at him eagerly.

He was a big blond fellow—thirty, perhaps—a chest like a barrel—rough, strong hands. His eyes were candid and simple, their gaze frank and cheerful, without subtlety or unusual intelligence. He seemed entirely at ease and so admirable a mortal contrivance of health and strength that one could not imagine his body ever accepting the indignity of disease or pain. Devore hated him for that a little, then the mood passed. His eyes searched the stranger's face again but found nothing to interest a connoisseur of emotions.

“A dumb brute,” he thought, “'a splendid, stupid beast, undoubtedly possessed of every uninteresting virtue, industrious, righteous, God-fearing. One of the fortunate animals who lac the intelligence to know when they should be bored. On the whole, I am just as glad our acquaintance is to be so brief. I wonder what his name is—it should be Smith.”

Then the stranger bared his arm.

If Devore had beeen [sic] capable of gasping, he would have gasped. There is something about the occasional complete perfection of the human body, or a part of it, even in sculpture, suddenly seen, that dazzles the vision for a moment. And the stranger's arm was more perfect than sculpture, for it lived. The skin was fair as a woman's and the supple, serpentine muscles knotted and uncoiled beneath it in delicate response to the slightest gesture. It was huge, as the man was huge, but it did not seem so, for it was as exquisitely proportioned as it was powerful—a superbly accomplished mechanism. Devore saw the stranger's hand half clench for an instant, and saw the muscles obey. He looked at one of his own arms disgustedly. It had always seemed capably muscular enough before; now it seemed like a piece of botch-work, crudely contrived by an apprentice. Then his eyes turned and he stared again at the stranger's arm.

Ah, they were getting ready—what a strange apparatus— rubber tubes—a thing like a little pump—the doctor said something informative about Unger's instrument—a needle for Devore's arm—a needle for the stranger's—so.

When Devore was getting well, two memories stayed with him—the delicious sensation of new vitality that had invaded his whole being like delicate liquor after the operation had been completed—and the sight of the stranger's arm. Which was odd, he thought, for he remembered little else about the man except his size. Indeed, he felt sure he might not have recognized him on the street—unless he had bared his arm.

His first question as soon as he was allowed to talk had been, “Who was he?”

At first the nurse did not understand. “Who was who, Mr. Devore?”

“Who was he? The—the man that”

“Oh! Why, I think his name was Jones, Mr. Devore. I'll ask the doctor about him as soon as you're a little better. But you mustn't talk much yet, you know.”

“I know. Jones—eh? I thought it was Smith. But since it wasn't, of course it would be Jones.”” He smiled.

The nurse, who was literal-minded, promptly took his temperature.

Devore let the matter rest till he was quite recovered. But the day before he left the hospital he obtained what information he could.

Henry Jones was recorded as white, thirty-one and single. Blood-count—and so on; but Devore did not bother with that except to note that Jones's blood was of the very highest quality in its particular class, and that he had been a “donor”' on three Previous occasions, the first gratuitously for Jones, Sally—a_ niece. His occupation was given as_ truck-driver; he lived in Brooklyn; street and number were noted. Devore was mildly amused at the willingness of the hospital authorities to assist him. They so obviously thought him grateful—a rich man anxious to do something pleasant for the poor man who had saved his life. Also, those who had known him were evidently fond of Jones.

Devore smiled; extraordinary how even semi-intelligent people liked to believe in sentimental fairy stories where honest virtue is rewarded. Why should he be grateful to Jones? As well be grateful to the salesman who sold you a necktie; the transactions differed only in degree, not in kind. As well be grateful to the doctor and pay his bill with a thankful sob. He was not in the least grateful to Jones; he was merely curious about him.

Nevertheless, as soon as he had his life in some sort of order again, he drove over to Brooklyn one day and, after some difficulty, arrived at Jones's address.

At what had been Jones's address, for Jones had moved. Where? The slatternly, incurious landlady could not tell him. She thought it might have been to Hoboken but she wasn't sure. No, Mr. Jones hadn't left a forwarding address; he didn't get much mail. Maybe the trucking company would know. Devore's interest was piqued and he went to the trucking company, who had no more news of Jones than the landlady. Jones had left, they thought, for a better job; he had always been a steady, respectable man. They knew nothing of any relatives he might have. That was all.

Devore called up the hospital. No, Jones had not reappeared there. They were rather anxious to get hold of him at the moment, in fact—there was a case that Devore listened politely, asked them to notify him if Jones should turn up, and rang off. The successive defeats annoyed him; he was unused to defeat. His desire to solve the puzzle of Jones increased. He would find Jones. What he would do with him when he found him was of minor importance; he neither knew nor cared; but Jones must be found.

He consulted his lawyers and inserted a “personal” in the newspapers. “If Henry Jones, etc., will call, etc., he will hear of something to his advantage.” Some seventy Henry Joneses replied, in person or by letter, but not one of them was Jones. Devore swore.

He was a busy man; he then put the matter in the hands of a detective firm. They collected large fees and produced innumerable Joneses, but never the right one. Devore did not grudge the fees; he began to realize that finding a man named Jones, white, single, thirty-one, blond, presumably American citizen, might not be such an easy affair. There had been nothing unusual about Jones but his singular avocation—and even that gave no clue, for Jones's affair with Devore had been, apparently, his last appearance in the rôle of a “donor.” A less tenacious man would have given up the search in a month, but Devore did not. Jones had become a whim of his, and he had never been anything but willing to pay for his whims.

Months passed. Jones sank to the bottom of Devore's mind. But he was always there.

Meanwhile Devore carried on his life precisely as he had before his illness, thus disproving the old adage that when the Devil was sick the Devil a monk would be, and its sequel. Having suffered no sudden fever of terrified repentance, even at the worst of his physical weakness, he remained consistent, and when he was well did not celebrate the fact with the customary orgy of the sinner returned to his fleshpots after an enforced bout of temperance. A careful sensualist, he permitted his senses to delight again in all that had ever delighted them, but never to that excess that takes the keen edge off pleasure. He was as entirely ruthless in such matters as he was fearless of heavenly reprisals, but selfishness dictated certain bounds of caution, and within those bounds he flourished like a green bay tree and observed his more careless fellow revelers plunge to destruction unblinkingly.

He was that deadly anomaly, a cautious libertine—it is often so when Puritan stock turns moldy; and while a number of women and several men had every good reason for wishing to root him out of the soil of life in which he fattened like a mandrake, he was always a little too supple for their intentions. Moreover, as has been said, he did not mind paying for his whims, and he had never been quite afraid.

The incident of the Cavendish girl and its unfortunate sequel occupied his time for some months near the close of the year and demonstrated again to him who needed no such demonstration the curative power of money cleverly applied. A visit to Europe followed; a return; Devore's forty-third birthday—a birthday he celebrated with appropriate festivities, for he was pleased to find that now, nearly two years after his illness, that illness seemed to have left no mark upon him at all. Indeed, even doctors pronounced him astonishingly young for his age. “Shows what regular living will do for a man,” said the doctor. Devore smiled, and thought of Jones.

Coincidentally enough, some days later he received a telephone call from his detective firm. They had found Jones.

An hour later Devore was again in a hospital, but this time as a visitor. He smelled the eternal odor of hospital corridors with a pleasant feeling of health, tasting the contrast between this visit and the former one. Then they took him into the accident ward. Jones was there.

“I don't know whether he'll recognize you,” said the nurse doubtfully.

“It doesn't matter very much,” said Devore. “I shall recognize him.”

He did, but it was with an effort. Jones was there—but how altered! Of course there were bandages, but that was the least.

The very lie of the body told of strength suddenly made useless by a blind hammer stroke, the face was drawn with pain, the eyes large with pain. Out of the drawn and bandaged mask of the face the eyes looked at him unrecognizingly, the candid eyes of a brave animal who has been hurt, who does not know why, who suffers without outcry. Devore wondered how he had looked when he lay in that other bed and Jones stood beside him, strong, young and casual, a creature unimaginably removed from weakness and anguish. Time brought its revenges shrewdly, with irony. There was Jones now—and here was he. He drew in a long breath; he could feel the blood run in his body, strong, rich, alive. And Jones?

Jones, turning a little where he lay, flung up his left arm—the unbandaged one—in a gesture Devore remembered. The sleeve slipped back, disclosing the fair skin, the adroit, miraculous grace of the muscles. Devore shivered. Yes, that was the arm. He bent down to see if the needle prick had left a mark. No. His own arm tingled as he looked. The other arm was clumsy with bandages—it lay stiff at Jones's side.

“Too bad,” said the nurse later. “Too bad. Such a splendid fellow. And so patient.”

“What was it?” queried Devore.

“An accident—an explosion. He was working at”—but that did not interest Devore.

“He'll live?”

“Oh, yes—but of course, even so—the whole right side—doctor thinks he'll be able to save the foot—but even so”

“He'll be permanently disabled?”

The nurse nodded. “I'm afraid so. At least—he'll be able to do light work—he'll be able to walk—but his right arm will be practically useless—and his face—there'll be scars, of course. Are you—a near relative?”

“Not exactly.” Devore smiled. “And yet, in a way”

He made arrangements to have Jones transferred to a private room. It gave him a sense of retaliation, of power, to be able to treat this broken strength like a careless-acquired new plant. As Jones mended, Devore went often to see him. The hospital thought him an uncommonly grateful philanthropist; he had let the story of his first meeting with Jones be known. And they let Jones know who he was, and the reason he was there.

Jones was, as Devore had expected him to be, dumbly grateful. It gave Devore intense entertainment to watch his uncouth, serious attempts to express his gratitude.

“But, Mr. Devore, I—I”

“Now, Jones.”

Jones became convalescent, the bandages were gradually unwound. Devore visited him regularly; he became quite a privileged character in the hospital. Finally there came a day when the last of the bandages were off.

Devore found Jones sitting docilely in his chair.

“Well, Jones, got rid of the last of your swaddlings, I see. That's fine.”

“Yes,” said Jones with his characteristic heavy meekness, “that's fine.”

“Come, come, Jones!” said Devore, enjoying himself. “Mustn't complain. You might be dead, you know. You might be dead.”

Jones looked at him steadily. “I'd better have died,” he said.

“Why, J—”

“Look at that,” said Jones suddenly, and lifted his right arm with his left hand. Devore flinched. Yes, it was worse than he had imagined. Yes. “There's no strength in it, Mr. Devore,” said Jones deeply. “Not strength to pick up a match from the floor.”

“Oh, come, Jones

“Oh, I'll get used to it, I guess,” said Jones in a colorless voice. “But I used to be a strong man, Mr. Devore. And now—what's a man without his strength? That's what I want to know,” he repeated, with an abrupt, surprising passion. “What's a man without his strength?”

“Well, well,” said Devore. “We'll see.”

The nurse paralleled Jones's query that same day.

“Yes—he'll be well enough to leave in a week, Mr. Devore. As well as he's likely to be. But”—her voice was troubled—“but—what is he going to do? We've been trying to think of some- thing for him, but—”

“I thought—if he would care to take service with me said Devore, with obvious diffidence.

“Oh, Mr. Devore!”

Devore put the question himself the following day.

“The medicos say you're well enough to leave almost any time now, Jones. Have you any plans?”

He watched, excitedly, for a twinge of despair or pain to cross Jones's face, but nothing of the sort came, only a heavy, stupefied expression.

“No, sir.”

“No plans at all?”

“No, sir.”

“Well—would you like to take service with me? I think I could make a place for you—in my house—something you'd be able to do”

Devore braced himself for a flood of exclamatory gratitude. But Jones merely said, “I'd like to, sir—if you think I'd be up to the work.”

“Very well,” said Devore, rather disappointedly, “that's settled.” He paused. “That all, Jones?”

A gleam appeared momentarily in the eyes of Jones. “I guess you can count on me for anything you want me for, any time, Mr. Devore,” he said, and again Devore shivered. It had not been the words exactly, or the look of Jones's eyes, but there had been something—for an instant he had felt as if he had put his hand on the naked nerves of a heart. He disliked such emotions.

“Oh, your duties won't be so onerous, Jones,” he said lightly. “I think I shall call my new servant Caliban,” he said to his teeth.

Caliban he became to Devore, and Caliban he remained. Devore passed the nickname about among his friends, who were amused. To himself the idea grew more savory as the days passed. Jones was so faithful.

Devore took an artistic delight in the whole situation. It pleased him like a fine bit of draftsmanship; Hogarth might have drawn it in a few rough, cruel, powerful lines—the cold, relentless dandy and his big, twisted servant, at his heels like a dog.

At first his place in Devore's household brought Jones the confusion that Devore had anticipated. The other servants seemed to puzzle if not awe him; he moved among them as among a collection of elegant bric-à-brac, with uneasy awkwardness, and it was obvious that they thought him rather a savage. But soon his vast patience began to fit him into the life of the house. He became a sort of general factotum, as far as he was able; the other servants began to treat him with the condescending fellowship one bestows on a big rough dog; whenever some household detail was unpleasant, or a little tedious, it fell to Jones. They discovered he could do astonishingly heavy work, considering. He developed a clever knack of making the best of his crippled side; though practically one-handed, he could polish silver, for instance, after a few lessons, with a thoroughness and success one would not have believed possible in a crippled giant. Devore sometimes found him thus, his good hand occupied in cleaning some small. silver object with meticulous precision, the large fingers so careful. It gave Devore the odd feeling of spying upon something that should not be seen.

Jones was nearly always busy at something and what spare time he had he spent in his room, no one knew how. He went out very little of his own volition; he did not read, he received no visitors. Perhaps he occupied his few odd moments with slow recollections of the time when he had been whole.

Devore had not thought that accident could age a man so in such short space. Jones was ten years younger than he, but he looked the older of the two. That too tickled Devore's sense of contrast—to overhear the other servants talk about “poor old Jones.”

But it was not in the house alone that Jones proved valuable. He accompanied Devore on dubious expeditions and ran strange errands for him; Devore had counted on that. As time went by the expeditions and the errands became more strange; it was not without entertainment that Devore had noted the simplicity and steadfastness in Jones's eyes. He wondered if there were not some means of paining, of shocking that simplicity, that candor. There did not seem to be; Jones among evil company—and it was evil— remained Jones; his simplicity undisturbed. That he did not relish some of the occupations which Devore devised for him was obvious, but he always obeyed orders with slow precision; and always in his attitude was the unspoken admission of an unshakable debt.

It would have amused Devore even more, in all probability, had Jones taken pattern of life from his new master. Sometimes he even hated that simplicity no example or contact could tarnish. The temptation and fall of Jones—what a spectacle for the gods! But since it was not to be so—even better. “One never tastes the full flavor of misdemeanor   unless one knows that a person of rigid  propriety knows all about it,” Devore remarked to his intimates. “Sin needs a background of virtue or it hardly shows. Jones is my background; for a man of my tastes there is no more priceless possession than an utterly  honest and stupid familiar—eh, Jones?”

And yet, if Devore felt any emotion toward Jones, it was that of hate. He felt more and more sure of that as spring succeeded winter.

Hate led him to set traps for Jones, to expose Jones's clumsiness in public; hate of the gadfly that buzzes around a crippled bull;  hate that increased the more Jones seemed un conscious of it; hate that kept tapping, tapping at Jones with tiny strokes of a needle, searching for some hidden wound. If he could just once humiliate Jones in the eyes of his own simplicity—but the moment never came.

There was the business of the new secretary, for instance. Devore had discovered that if there was one thing that did embarrass Jones, it was feminine youth. So naturally when he engaged his new secretary, he made sure of Jones's being present.

There were some twenty girls to be interviewed and Devore gave Jones the task of ushering them in and out. Jones's cumbrous, tongue-tied politeness to the gum-chewing little fools was really delicious, thought Devore. After they had gone, he summoned Jones in.

“Well, Jones, which one do you advise?”

“What, Mr. Devore?”

“Which one of the departed bevy of beauteous morons shall we select for the not very difficult position of private secretary?”

“Well, sir,” said Jones, “if you really want to know what I think me

“Jones, your thoughts are pearls. Go on.”

“I'd take that Miss Winslow, sir. She had the best references.”

“Winslow—Winslow—oh, the thin little frump with the pince-nez! I am hiring a secretary, Jones—not a secretary-bird. Have you no sense of the appropriate?”

“Well, Mr. Devore,” said Jones seriously, “that other one—Miss Hale, I think it was—she looks like a steady worker.”

“She does,” said Devore, with a sigh, “and she has a face like a muffin. No, Jones, really—your advice is doubtless sincere but it is singularly lacking in humor. No”—he mused reflectively—“I think we will have Miss Leigh.” He consulted a sheet of paper. “Miss—Moira Leigh.”

An odd expression crossed Jones's face. “Miss Leigh?”

“Yes, Jones,” said Devore impatiently, “Miss Moira Leigh. The little brunette with the Irish eyes.”” He contemplated his pencil. “I think Miss Leigh will do very well indeed.”

“But Mr. Devore,” said Jones, with curious insistence, 'Miss Leigh—oh, I guess she's capable enough—but—why—she said herself she'd hardly had any experience at all—and Miss Winslow”

Devore looked puzzled. Jones sounded so earnest. The fact decided him. Jones was presuming—for Jones.

“My dear Jones, it's very good of you to take such an interest in the relative efficiency of my prospective secretaries. But I think we will take Miss Leigh. After all, experience is valuable enough, in its way, but a man of taste must pay some attention to— personality. Yes, I think Miss Leigh will do very well.”

Devore congratulated himself on his decision later. If Miss Leigh was not experienced—and this seemed to be her first position of any importance—she was very painstaking—quaintly like Jones in that. And besides

Moira Leigh at twenty had blue eyes and black hair and the serious grace of a quaint,  delightful sculpture. Her mouth was small as a child's, and melancholy had touched it—the reasonless, beautiful melancholy that is the sound of the Irish harp; but a child's quick delight in all small pleasantnesses made it gay. Her hands were thin and surprisingly well shaped; her clothes, Devore thought appraisingly, very bad, but she knew how to wearthem. She was spirited, candid and humorous; that pleased Devore well enough but it really interested him to note how unconsciously and with what eager appreciation she reacted to beauty and pleasantness in any form—the furnishings of Devore's house, the flowers on his desk, even so common a thing as a sunny day. He was amused and piqued—she was so obviously youthful, so obviously poor, so obviously ardent for all delight. Pretty soon he began to be interested more and more.

It amused him, too, to watch Miss Leigh and Jones together. She had won Jones—hulking Jones with his muscle-bound shyness—before Jones even realized that he was being won. Perhaps it was because she always treated him as an equal, not as a curiosity, but Devore never thought of that. She would ask his advice, quite solemnly, about little matters. Once she even made him laugh. That startled Devore. Once he came upon Jones helping to fix her typewriter, too—an amusing spectacle. The worshiping sort of look on Jones's face!

Gradually, delicately, with practised ease, Devore, stung by his insatiable curiosity, began to investigate. Miss Leigh was easy to investigate—she told the truth with distressing frankness. And gradually, slowly, he felt himself drawn toward a certain course of action.

He could not believe in her inexperience, her simplicity, at first; he had long ago given up believing in innocence. But gradually he was convinced. And when he was convinced, he trembled a little. The gods of ill repute he had served all his life so faithfully stood ready now to requite him even beyond expectation. The flesh tired of its accustomed toys, but this toy was unique—would furnish unique diversion for as much as a year, even longer, maybe. And Devore had come to an age when a new diversion is beyond all price.

Moira saw nothing at first; she merely thought her employer a very agreeable old gentleman for his age.

Devore could be patient. He was patient now. The bitter, enchanted thread that he spun about the girl was cautiously devised, each filament frail as cobweb, the whole gradually weaving into the shape of a net. Miss Leigh's work began to necessitate more confidential conversations with her employer, work after hours, little dinners, all the rest. Important letters must be typed at Mr. Devore's house, and so forth. Miss Leigh noted that Jones seemed positively gruff, now and then, as these last occasions grew more frequent. But by that time she was already beginning to be entangled in the spinning thread.

The climax of Devore's preparations came as he had planned it, one summer evening in his home. The pretense of work, at first; then Devore dropped the pretense.

He took a box from his pocket.

“What do you think of these, Miss Leigh?”

They were earrings, pearls, pale and lustrous as frost—beautiful, matchless things.

“They're—oh, they're beautiful!”

“Then they belong to you.”

“But Mr. Devore—I”

Devore braced himself. “Moira—you're lovely, Moira—I love you—Moira”

The gods were true to their tried servant. She was in his arms.

After a little while: “So I'm going to take you away, Moira—we're going away—to the country—my place in the country—tonight”

She looked at him, dazed, dazed, a part of him thought detachedly. Good heavens—had she never even been kissed before?

“But—but”

“Oh, yes,” he smiled—tenderly, he hoped. His heart pounded. 'Your things—we'll get them—but we'll buy you other things, Moira— all the things you must have—all the things you've never had—as soon as we go away.”

She looked at him. “And—and—we're going to be married in the country?”

“Oh, yes—married—of course—after a while.” He spoke as one speaks to a child. The old trick—the old musty, shopworn trick. But his luck would hold—he knew it. The trick would serve. Afterwards

“Are you coming, Moira?”

“T—I—my things”

He had a sudden idea. Jones.

“We'll send Jones for them, Moira.”

Jones. Jones, who had always looked at Moira as—as a more honest Caliban might have looked at Miranda. Jones, who so obviously, so dully thought Moira the embodiment of all the virtues. Jones should see— perhaps here at last was the shock to break his simplicity to pieces like a broken mirror. Oh, Jones must be here at his triumph! It was the crowning touch.

“Yes—we'll get Caliban,” he said dreamily, and rang.

Jones entered. He must have been disturbed at some household occupation, for he was in his shirt-sleeves. He seemed clumsier than ever tonight, thought Devore, drunkenly. He would hardly look at Moira; his face was drawn.

“Jones.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I am going to the lodge tonight. Have my bag packed. Tell Vincent I want the car in half an hour. Telephone the lodge that we are coming.”

“We, Mr. Devore?” said Jones heavily.

“Yes,” said Devore with brutal directness, “we. And Jones—Miss Leigh will give you a note—you will go to her boarding-house, have her things packed and bring them here in a taxi at once. All right—that's all.”

He waited for Jones to go, but Jones did not stir.

“Jones!”

Jones turned to Moira. His face was expressionless. “You want me to go and get your things, Miss Leigh?”

“I told you that, Jones,' Devore broke in impatiently, but Jones ignored him.

“You're going out to the lodge with Mr. Devore?” he persisted.

Moira's voice replied to him, like a voice in sleep. “Why—yes, Jones. We're going to be married, you know.” Then, a trifle timidly: “Aren't you going to congratulate us, Jones?”

“You ain't going to be married,” said Jones in the same flat voice; then, as she did not seem to comprehend: “He ain't going to marry you, Miss Leigh.”

“Jones!” said Devore furiously, then, anxiously, to Moira: “I don't know what the fool thinks, dear, but” He stopped.

“Oh!” said Moira sharply, and her hand went to her breast. Then she turned on Jones defiantly. “And suppose he isn't?” she said, in a high, queer voice. “I don't care—I've got to have a good time sometime—I've got to have a good time sometime—haven't I—Jones?”

The last words were almost a wail. Devore sighed with relief. This simplified matters so.

“Well, Jones—are you satisfied?”

But Jones was staring at the girl incredulously, with a gray face.

“Don't you see I've got to have a good time sometime, Jones? Don't you see I'll never have it any other way?—and oh, I'm so tired of mending and scrimping. Here, Jones”—she scrabbled in her bag—“here—I'll give you the note. I'm going”

Jones's face set. “No. You ain't,” he said through tight lips. Moira looked at him and covered her face with-her hands.

“This has lasted long enough,” said Devore impotently. “Jones—you're discharged—get out!”

“Not unless she comes with me,” said Jones.

Enormous rage overcame Devore. “Get out, Jones!” he said, breathing hard. Fisticuffs were ridiculous, but this would not even be fisticuffs. It would be a well man, strong enough, who had kept his youth, against a cripple. There could be no doubt of the con clusion.

His fists clenched, he stepped toward Jones.

“You stupid hulk, what right have you to interfere in my affairs?” he said.

Jones watched him come without making a movement to protect himself, his eyes blank and hard.

Then, just as Devore was tightening for the blow, Jones raised his left arm.

“I got this!” he said, in a high, harsh voice.

Devore's right hand dropped to his side as if it had been struck with an ax. He stared. Jones's sleeve fell back, revealing the white skin, the powerful bulge of the crawling muscles, the spot where the needle had lain. An abrupt, blind terror palsied Devore. He saw—not the Jones who stood before him, haggard and crippled, but the other Jones, the strong man exulting in his strength, the stranger who could have broken him like an egg, the man who had given him his blood. He shrank back and back as if before some monstrous prodigy of nature. His nerves jangled like broken wires.

“I got this,” said Jones again, “and I want my pay for it!” He came closer as Devore shrank. “I give you my blood, huh, Mr. Devore? I give you the blood you couldn't 'a' lived without”

“For a price,” said Devore, trembling.

“Yeah,” said Jones. “And unless I get the price, Mr. Devore—unless you let Miss Leigh go—I want my blood, I tell you!” His voice shook like a madman's. “I want my blood, and I'm going to take it back!”

His hand had gone to his pocket. Now it came out again, and the cowering Devore saw that it held a knife.

“You're crazy—you said you'd do anything for me” Devore half moaned. “Oh, you fool—you fool—keep off”

“No—I ain't crazy. And I guess I know what I owe you—but it's paid, Mr. Devore—it's paid by the things I've done.” His voice was very bitter. “But my blood ain't paid for”

“I'll give you any money,” babbled Devore, “any money”

“I don't want money. I got my own price. If you don't let Miss Leigh go now, I want”

But Moira had laid a hand on his arm. She was sobbing. “Oh, Jones—Jones—it's all right—I'll go”

“And you won't never see Mr. Devore again?” said Jones, the fury still in his eyes.

She looked at the cringing man against the wall and shuddered. “Oh, no, no, no, Jones! I'll never see him again.”

“All right,” said Jones with a sigh, “then we'll be going, I guess.”

The madness flared up a moment in him. He looked at Devore.

“And if you ever try and find her”

But he had no need to conclude. Devore had never been wholly afraid before, as has been said. But he was now, and his whole body shook with the ague of it.

“All right,” said Jones again. “Come along, Miss Leigh.”

Devore watched them take their departure without word or sign. She was leaning on Jones's arm. Devore heard her say something about fools and God and rescue. The net had been torn in two—Devore knew that as he looked at her; it was not to be woven again.

He saw Jones's arm steady her as she walked, and his breath shuddered deep in his throat. Then they were gone and he was left alone with his terror. He would never sleep again, he thought—there would always be dreams. Dreams of an Arm, a Hand.

Down somewhere in the house there was the sound of a door closing. Miranda and Caliban had escaped from the house of the spider.

title: Thicker Than Water (Benét)


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Page:History of the Literature of the Scandinavian North.djvu/68

50 The chronological foundation having thus been laid, so that the materials at hand might be arranged in a systematic manner, the latter began to be put in writing on a more extensive scale. The Icelandic sagas proper, that is to say, the narratives which have the description of Icelandic affairs for their object, extend from the time of the first settlement of the island to about the year 1030, a period which, on account of struggles arising from the further colonization of Iceland and from the introduction and establishment of the new faith, necessarily awakened the greatest interest and furnished the richest materials for tradition. What happened after that period receives but slight attention in the sagas. Only the tells the most memorable events from the first settlement to the downfall of the republic, wherefore it is usually called the "." The rest of the Icelandic sagas find their materials in other lands, and confine themselves, so far as Iceland is concerned, to meagre chronicles or annals.

To the most striking and interesting productions that are to be found in literature belong the Icelandic. A saga of this kind is generally the story of the life of a single Icelandic gentleman, but it invariably sketches him in relation to his kin, going back to the first settler from whom he sprang, and especially giving a full account of all his relatives who have lived during the epoch embraced in the saga. The term family saga is therefore eminently appropriate. These sagas also contain many valuable contributions to the history of Iceland and of other countries with which the Icelanders had a more or less lively intercourse, and, as a matter of course, to that of Norway; but their chief value lies in their high literary form and in the materials they furnish for a history of the culture of their time. In an earnest, clear, dramatic, straightforward manner they give us a multitude of richly colored pictures of mediæval life and customs, and of striking and grandly endowed natures, which are frequently described with a surprisingly


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Rh profound psychological insight and with an unerring appreciation of the distinctive traits of a person's character and of the most important facts in every scene and event. It is difficult to draw the line between fact and fiction; for, though there can be no doubt that all these descriptions are based on actual occurrences (and this must be said of them not only as a whole and in general, but also of a great majority of the details); still it is evident that some fiction has been blended with the facts. This appears not so much from the aptly interwoven verses or epistles as from the masterly and artistic manner in which the materials are arranged, while the creative talent of the artist is present either consciously or unconsciously, especially in the reproduction of the dialogues, which in many instances are worthy of a dramatic poet. This arbitrary element, which lends a peculiar charm to the descriptions akin to that which we find in the works of great poets, is not equally prominent in all the sagas. Those in which this poetic charm is most easily discovered are in all respects the best ones. Not of a single one of them do we know with certainty in what manner or by whom it received its present form; not a single one appears as the work of this or that "author," and this is in one sense as it should be, since a large part of the work must unquestionably be ascribed to tradition which preceded the writing. Frequent efforts have been made to trace the most important sagas to well-known Icelanders like Are and Sæmund, but wholly without reason, since the form in which we now have them cannot be ascribed to distinct individuals.

Generally speaking, no chronological disposition can be made of the Icelandic saga. The evidences of age that may be gathered from the style, the language, etc., are so uncertain that it is not possible to draw conclusions from them in regard to the different kinds of writing. In the enumeration which we are now about to make of the most important ones we have nothing else to guide us as to the


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 What are men in reality? After all their arguments? Worms. Just worms. Well then, let's have the decency to behave as such and stick to business, and do our best in that state of life unto which it has pleased God to call us. That's what I say," said Mr. Dad.

He jerked his head back, coughed shortly, adjusted his tie, and nodded to Mr. Farr in a resolute manner.

"A simple, straightforward, commercial and technical education," he added by way of an explanatory colophon. "That's what we're after."

Mr. Huss stared absently at Mr. Dad for some moments, and then resumed:

"Let us look squarely at this world about us. What is the true lot of life? Is there the slightest justification for assuming that our conceptions of right and happiness are reflected anywhere in the outward universe? Is there, for instance, much animal happiness? Do health and well-being constitute the normal state of animals?"

He paused. Mr. Dad got up, and stood looking out of the window with his back to Mr. Huss. "Pulling nature to pieces," he said over his shoulder. He turned and urged further, with a snarl of bitterness in his voice: "Suppose things are so, what is the good of our calling attention to it? Where's the benefit?"

But the attitude of Sir Eliphaz conveyed a readiness to listen.


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Page:1892 North Dakota Special Session Session Laws.pdf/10

 cation to the Governor and Secretary of State; and the same shall be a final and conclusive bar to the claim of the petitioner against such respondent as fully and completely as if such claim had been heard and determined on its merits, and the Governor shall issue his certificate as provided in the preceding section.

§ 10. ] The costs of all proceedings under this act shall be taxed under the direction of the court, and if more than one case is heard together, the costs Shall be apportioned under the same direction, and in every case in which the petitioner shall not finally prevail, the costs shall be paid by him, and in every case in which the petitioner shall finally prevail, the costs shall be borne by the State, and the same shall be paid out of the treasury of the State. The court shall certify the costs tothe State Auditor, who shall issue his warrant upon the State treasury in payment of the same.

§ 11. .] The final hearing and determination under this act shall be by a majority of the judges of the court, but any single judge may exercise any other of the powers given to the court by this act.

§ 12. ] All periods of time mentioned in this act Shall be reckoned exclusive of the day from which they begin to run and inclusive of their last day, and Sundays and holidays shall be included.

§ 13. ] The judges shall be entitled to receive for their travel and attendance the sum of six (6) dollars each per day, with Such mileage as is allowed to members of the Legislative Assembly, to be paid from the State treasury upon the warrant of the State Auditor.

§ 14. {{sc|Repeal.] All acts or parts of acts in conflict with the provisions of this act are hereby repealed.

Approved June 3, 1892.


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Rh § 2. That Section two (2) of Chapter 123 of the Laws of 1890 be and the same is hereby amended to read as follows:

Sec. 2. ] Each platform shall be not less than twelve feet wide and thirty-two feet long, extending four feet and six inches, or such height as shall be determined by the Board of Railroad Commissioners, above the rails of the track, with suitable approaches to and from said platforms to admit the driving of loaded teams thereon.

Approved June 3, 1892.


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52 order in which we give them than external circumstances. We give them in groups, according to the locality they describe, passing from one district to the other along the Icelandic coast.

Beginning in the of Iceland or on the south coast we at once meet with the foremost and most interesting of all, the, which abounds in characters drawn with masterly skill, and in entertaining descriptions of life and customs. Among these we will mention: the shrewd Njal skilled in law and his magnanimous wife Bergthora; their sons, of whom Skarphedin especially is a most original character, excellently drawn; Njal's friend, the noble Gunnar, of Lithend; and the latter's cold, hard-hearted wife Hallgerd. This saga contains interesting descriptions of feuds, lawsuits, revenge for bloodshed, etc., and is very important to any one studying the history of civilization, on account of the key which it gives to Icelandic law. The events described by Njal's Saga took place between 960 and 1016. This saga is told in beautiful and noble language, and what is true of so many other sagas can be said with peculiar emphasis of this one, that the admirable style bears evidence of an artistic and skilful hand. To Sæmund has been attributed the original authorship, but there is little probability in this supposition.

In the of Iceland we find, which tells of the above-mentioned skald Egil Skallagrimsson. It covers the period from 860 to 1000, and is like the Njala one of the foremost of the family sagas. It is clear and vivid in style, and is especially interesting on account of its description of the conflict between Egil's family and Harald Fairhair, which led to the emigration to Iceland, and of Egil's restless life as viking and skald. It contains many of Egil's songs, some of which are among the best produced in the skaldic age. In certain respects the saga of the skald (Serpent-tongue) is a continuation of Egil's Saga. It is a short but very charming love story. Gunlaug and another skald, by name Hrafn, are rival lovers of Helga