Chapter II: Book I (2)

Mrs. Brackett raised his head, pillow and all, very gently, and gave him his medicine.

“How’s Jack?” said Aladdin.

“He comes twice every day to ask about you,” said Mrs. Brackett. “He’s livin’ with my brother-in-law.”

“That’s good,” said Aladdin. He lay back and dozed. After a while he opened his eyes.

“Mrs. Brackett-”

“What is it, deary?” The good woman had been herself on the point of dozing, but was instantly alert.

“Am I going to die?”

“You goin’ to die!” She tried to make her voice indignant, but it broke.

“I want to know.”

“He wants to know, good land!” exclaimed Mrs. Brackett.

“If a man’s going to die,” said Aladdin, aeat-sixteen, “he wants to know, because he has things that have to be done.”

“Doctor said you wasn’t to talk much,” said Mrs. Brackett.

“If I’ve got to die,” said Aladdin, abruptly, “I’ve got to see Margaret.”

A woman in a blue wrapper, muddy slippers, her gray hair disheveled, hatless, her eyes bright and wild, burst suddenly upon Hannibal St. John where he sat in his library reading in the book called “Hesperides.”

“Senator St. John,” she began rapidly, “Aladdin O’Brien’s sick in my house, and the last thing he said was, ‘I’ve got to see Margaret’; and he’s dyin’ wantin’ to see her, and I’ve come for her, and she’s got to come.”

It was a tribute to St. John’s genius that in spite of her incoherent utterance he understood precisely what the woman was driving at.

“You say he’s dying?” he said.

“Doctor’s given up hope. He’s had a relapse since this mornin’, and she’s got to come right now if she’s to see him at all.”

The senator hesitated for once.

“It’s got nothin’ to do with the proprieties,” said Mrs. Brackett, sternly, “nor what he was to her, nor her to him; it’s a plain case of humanity and--”

“What is the nature of the sickness?” asked the senator.

“It’s fever--”

“Is it contagious?” asked the senator.

“No, it ain’t!” almost shrieked the old lady. “And what if it was?”

“Of course if it were contagious she couldn’t go,” said the senator.

“It ain’t contagious, and, what’s more, he once laid down his life for her on the log, that time.”

“If you assure me the fever is not contagious--”

“You’ll let her come--”

“It seems nonsense,” said the senator. “They are only children, and I don’t want her to get silly ideas.”

“Only children!” exclaimed Mrs. Brackett. “Senator, give me the troubles of the grown-ups, childbirth, and losing the first-born with none to follow, the losing of husband and mother, and the approach of old age,--give me them and I’ll bear them, but spare me the sorrows and trials of little children which we grown-ups ain’t strong enough to bear. You can say I said so,” she finished defiantly.

The senator bowed in agreement.

“I believe you are right,” he said. “I will take you home in my carriage, Mrs.--”

“Brackett,” said she, with pride.

The senator stepped into the hall and raised his voice the least trifle.

“Daughter!”

She answered from several rooms away, and came running. Her hands were inky, and she held a letter. She was no longer the timid little girl of the island, for somehow that escapade had emancipated her. She had waited for a few days in expectation of damnation, but, that failing to materialize, had turned over a leaf in her character, and became such a bully at home that the family and servants loved her more and more from day to day. She was fourteen at this time; altogether exquisite and charming and wayward.

“Aladdin O’Brien is very sick, daughter,” said the senator, “and we are going to see him.”

“And don’t tell him that you didn’t come to ask after him yesterday,” said Mrs. Brackett, defiantly, “because I said you did. I had my reasons,” she went on, “and you can say I said so.”

Margaret ran up-stairs to get her hat. She was almost wild with excitement and foreboding of she knew not what.

The letter which she had been writing fell from her hand. She picked it up, looked hastily at the superscription, “Mr. Peter Manners, Jr.,” and tore it into pieces.

IX

There is no doubt that Aladdin’s recovery dated from Margaret’s visit. The poor boy was too sick to say what he had planned, but Margaret sat by his bed for a while and held his hand, and said little abrupt conventional things that meant much more to them both, and that was enough. Besides, and under the guns of her father’s eyes, just before she went away she stooped and kissed him on the forehead, and that was more than enough to make anybody get over anything, Aladdin thought. So he slept a long cool sleep after Margaret had gone, and woke free of fever. As he lay gathering strength to sit up in bed, which treat had been promised him in ten days, Aladdin’s mind worked hard over the future, and what he could machinate in order one day to be almost worthy to kiss the dust under Margaret’s feet. She sent him flowers twice, but was not allowed to come and see him again.

Aladdin had awful struggles with the boredom of convalescence. He felt perfectly well, and they wouldn’t let him get up and out; everything forbidden he wanted to eat. And his one solace was the Brackett library. This was an extraordinary collection of books. They were seven, and how they got there nobody knows. The most important in the collection was, in Mrs. Brackett’s estimation, an odd volume of an encyclopedia, bound in tree-calf and labeled, “Safety-lamps to Stranglers.” Next were four fat tomes in the German language on scientific subjects; these, provided that anybody had ever wanted to read them, had never succeeded in getting themselves read, but they had cuts and cuts which were fascinating to surmise about. The sixth book was the second volume of a romance called “The Headsman,” by “the author of ‘The Spy,’” and the seventh was a back-split edition of Poe’s poems.

The second volume of “The Headsman” went like cakes and syrup on a cold morning, for it was narrative, and then it was laid aside, because it was dull. The four German books had their cuts almost examined out of them, and the encyclopedia book, from “Safety-lamps to Stranglers,” practically had its contents torn out and devoured. In after life Aladdin could always speak with extraordinary fluency, feeling, and understanding on anything that began with S, such as Simeon Stylites and Senegambia. But the poems of Poe were what made his sickness worth while and put the call upon all his after life. We learn of the critics and professors of English that there are greater lyric poets than Poe. They will base this on technicalities and theories of what poetry has been and what poetry ought to be, and will not take into account the fact that of all of them--Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth when he is a poet at all, Heine, and the lyric body of Goethe and the rest--not one in proportion to the mass of his production so often leaves the ground and spreads wings as Poe,--

If I might dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than his might swell
From my lyre within the sky,--

and that where they have, they have perhaps risen a little higher, but never have sung more hauntingly and clear. The wonderful sounds and the unearthly purity--the purity of a little child that has died--took Aladdin by the throat and shook up the imagination and music that had lain dormant within him; his father’s bent for invention clarified into a passion for creation. The first thing he read was three stanzas on the left-hand page where the book opened to his uneager hands, and his eyes, expectant of disappointment,--for up to that time, never having read any, he hated poetry,--fell on one of the five or six perfect poems in the world:

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore
That gently o’er a perfumed sea
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche! From the regions which
Are holy land.

And he knew that he had read the most exquisite, the most insouciant, and the most universal account of every man’s heart’s desire--Margaret as she would be when she grew tall. He knew little of the glory that was Greece or the grandeur that was Rome, but whatever they were, Margaret had all of them, and the hyacinth hair, very thick and clustery and beautiful, and the naiad airs. Ah, Psyche!

And he read forward and back in the book, and after a little he knew that he had a soul, and that the only beautiful thing in the world is beauty, and the only sad thing, and that beauty is truth.

Open at the lines to Helen he laid the book face down upon his heart, with his hands clasped over it, and shut his eyes.

“Now I know what I’ve got to do,” he said. “Now I know what I’ve got to do.”

He dreamed away hours until suddenly the need of deeds set him bolt upright in bed, and he called to Mrs. Brackett to bring him pencil and paper. From that time on he was seldom without them, and, by turns reading and writing, entered with hope and fortitude into the challenging field of literature. And from the first, however ignorant and unkempt the effort, he wrote a kind of literature, for he buckled to no work that he knew, and was forever striving after an ideal (nebulous, indescribable, and far) of his own, and that is literature. Go to those who have wrought for--forever (without, of course, knowing it) and those who have wrought earnestly for the day, and these things you will find made the god in their machine: Raphael’s sonnets and Dante’s picture! Aladdin had no message, that he knew of, for the world, but the call of one of the arts was upon him; and he knew that willy-nilly he must answer that call as long as eyes could see, or hands hold pen, or tongue call for pencil and paper, money buy them, or theft procure them. He set himself stubbornly and courageously to the bitter-sweet task of learning to write.

“It must be like learning anything else,” he said, his eyes on a sheet of seemingly uncorrectable misbalances, “and just because I’m rotten at it now doesn’t prove that if I practise and practise, and try and try, and hope and hope, I won’t be some good sometime.”

He saw very clearly the squat dark tower itself in the midst of the chin-upon-hand hills, and the world and his friends sitting about to see him fail. He saw them, and he knew them all, and yet, with Childe Roland,

Dauntless the slughorn to his lips he set,
And blew.

And incidentally, when he got well and returned to school, he entered on a period of learning his lessons, for he thought that these might one day be of use to him in his chosen line.

X

Senator St. John, for he was at heart democratic, and heard little of Aladdin that was not to Aladdin’s credit, derigorized the taboo which he had once placed on Aladdin’s and Margaret’s friendship, and allowed the young man to come occasionally to the house, and occasionally loaned him books. Margaret was really at the bottom of this, but she stayed comfortably at the bottom, and teased her father to do the needful, and he, wrapped up in the great issues which were threatening to divide the country, complied. In those days the senator’s interests extended far beyond his family, Margaret and the three powerful sons who were building a reputation for the firm of John St. John & Brothers, lawyers in Portland. He gave Aladdin leave to come and go, even smiled grimly as he did so, and, except at those moments when he met him face to face, forgot that Aladdin existed. Margaret enjoyed Aladdin hugely, and unconsciously sat for the heroine of every novel he began, and the inspiration of every verse that he wrote. When Aladdin reached his eighteenth year and Margaret her sixteenth there was such a delightful and strong friendship between them that the other young people of the town talked. Margaret in her heart of hearts was fonder of Aladdin than of anybody else--when she was with him, or under the immediate influence of having been with him, for nobody else had such extraordinary ideas, or such a fund of amusing vitality, or such fascinating moods. Like every one with a touch of the Celt in him, Aladdin was by turns gloomiest and most unfortunate of all mortals upon whom the sun positively would not shine, or the gayest of the gay. From his droll manner of singing a song, to the seriousness with which he sometimes bore all the sufferings of all the world, he seemed to her a most complex and unusual individual. But his spells were of the instant, and her thoughts were very often on that beautiful young man, Manners, who, having completed his course at the law school, was coming to spend a month before he should begin to practise. Since his first visit years ago, Manners, now a grown man of twenty, had spent much of many of his vacations with the St. Johns. The senator was obliged, as well as his limitations would allow, to take the place of a mother to Margaret, and though it was barely guessable from his words or actions, he loved Peter Manners like a son, and had resolved, almost since the beginning, to end by having him for one. And the last time that Manners had visited them in Washington, St. John had seen to it that he shook hands with all the great men who were making history. Once the senator and Margaret had visited the Manners in New York. That had been a bitter time for Aladdin, for while all the others of his age were sniffing timidly at love and life, he had found his grand passion early and stuck to it, and was now blissful with hope and now acrid with jealousy. Peter Manners he hated with a green and jealous hatred. And if Peter Manners had any of the baser passions, he divined this, and hated Aladdin back, but rather contemptuously. They met occasionally, and the meetings, always in the presence of Margaret, were never very happy. She was woman enough to rejoice at being a bone of contention, and angel enough to hate seeing good times spoiled.

But it was hard on Aladdin. He could go to her house almost when he liked, and be welcomed by her, but to her father and the rest of the household he was not especially welcome. They were always polite to him, and always considerate, and he felt--quite rightly--that he was merely tolerated, as a more or less presentable acquaintance of Margaret’s. Manners, on the other hand, and it took less intuition to know it, was not only greatly welcome to Margaret, but to all the others--from the gardener up to the senator. Manners’ distinction of manner, his wellbred, easy ways, his charmingly enunciative and gracious voice, together with his naive and simple nature, went far with people’s hearts. Aladdin bitterly conceded every advantage to his rival except that of mind. To this, for he knew even in his humble moments that he himself had it, he clung tenaciously. Mrs. Brackett, with a sneaking admiration for Peter Manners, whom she had once seen on the street, had Aladdin’s interests well in heart, and the lay of the matter well in hand. She put it like this to a friendly gossip:

“I guess’ Laddin O’Brien’s ‘bout smaht enough to go a long ways further than fine clothes and money and a genealogical past will carry a body. He writes sometimes six and eight big sides of paper up in a day, and if he ain’t content with that he just tears it up and goes at it again. There won’t be anybody’ll go further in this world than ‘Laddin O’Brien, and you can say I said so--”

Here under oath of secrecy Mrs. Brackett lowered her voice and divulged a secret:

“He got a letter this mornin’ sayin’ that the Portland’spy’ is goin’ to print three poems he sent ‘em, and enclosin’ three dollars to pay for ‘em. I guess beginnin’ right now he could go along at that rate and make mebbe five or six hundred dollars a year. Poetry’s nothin’ to him; he can write it faster than you and I can baste.”

At the very moment of this adoring act of divulgence Aladdin was in the parlor, giving his first taste of success a musical soul, and waiting--waiting--waiting until it should be late enough in the day for him to climb the hill to the St. Johns’ and hand over the Big News to Margaret. And as he sat before the piano, demipatient and wholly joyful, his fingers twinkled the yellowed and black keys into fits of merriment, or, after an abrupt pause, built heap upon heap of bass chords. Then the mood would change and, to a whanging accompaniment, he would chant, recitative fashion, the three poems which alone he had made.

The day waned, and it was time to go and tell Margaret. His way lay past the railway-station, under the “Look out for the locomotive” sign, across the track, and up the hill. In the air was the exhilarating evening cool of June, and the fragrance of flowers, which in the north country, to make up for the shorter tale of their days, bloom bigger and smell sweeter than any other flowers in the world. Even in the dirty paved square fronting the station was a smell of summer and flowers. You could see people’s faces lighten and sniff it, as they got out of the hot, cindery coaches of the five-forty, which had just rolled in.

The St. Johns’ fine pair of bays and their open carriage were drawn up beside the station. The horses were entering a spirited, ground-pawing protest against the vicinity of that alway inexplicable and snorting monster on wheels. On the platform, evidently waiting for some one to get off the train, stood St. John and Margaret. She looked much fresher and sweeter than a rose, and Aladdin noted that she was wearing her hair up for the first time. Her dress was a floaty white affair with a blue ribbon round it, and her beautiful, gay young face flushed with excitement and anticipation till it sparkled. There was a large crowd getting off the train, at that aggravating rate of progression with which people habitually leave a crowded public conveyance or a theater, and Margaret and her father were looking through the windows of the cars to see if they could catch a glimpse of whom they sought. Suddenly the senator broke into a smile and waved his cane. The action was so unusual for him that it looked grotesque. Margaret stood on tiptoe and waved her hand, and a presentiment came to Aladdin and took away all his joy.

Peter Manners, looking fresh and clean in spite of his long, dusty ride, got off the train and made a hilarious rush for his friends. He shook hands with Margaret, then with the senator, and turned again to Margaret. She was altogether too pretty, and much too glad to see him. In the excitement of the moment it couldn’t be borne, and he kissed her. Then they both laughed, and the senator laughed, for he was glad. He put his great hand on Manners’ shoulder, and laughing and talking, the three went to the carriage. Then the senator remembered that the checks had been forgotten, and against a voluble protest he secured them from Manners, and went after an expressman. Having found the expressman--one of his constituents and a power in the town,--he handed him the checks, a fifty-cent piece, and a ponderous joke as old as Xerxes, at which the expressman roared. Manners stood by the carriage and looked at Margaret. “Lord God,” he thought, “it has come at last!” and they grinned at each other.

“Mmm!” said Margaret, who stood for the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. She had not expected to be so glad to see him.

Meanwhile Aladdin had turned and was going home.

Margaret caught sight of his back, and the pitiful little droop in the usually erect shoulders, and she divined like a flash, and called after him. He pretended not to hear and went on. In his pocket was the editor’s letter which he had designed to show her. It had lain down and died.

“Why does that man hate me so?” said Manners.

A little of the joy of meeting had gone. A cloud passed over the sun, and the earth was darkened. Many drops of rain began to fall, each making a distinct splash as it struck. One began to smell the disturbed dust. But the flowers continued to send up their incense to heaven, and Manners put his light overcoat about Margaret.

XI

Aladdin had a large acquaintance in the town among all sorts of men, and, as he went home sorrowfully in the rain, he met a youth, older than himself, who had an evil notoriety; for being born with brains, of respectable people, and propitiously launched on the world, he had begun in his early teens, and in the face of the most heartrending solicitude, to drink himself to death. The miserable part of it was that everybody loved him when he was sober, and out of consideration to his family still asked him to the best that the town could do in the way of parties and entertainments. He was a good-looking young man with a big frame and a pale face. His real name was William Addison Larch, but he was better known as “Beau Larch.” He had a nervous, engaging smile, of which he made frequent use.

“My word, Aladdin,” he said, “you look sick as a dog. Come with me and take a snifter for it.”

Aladdin hesitated a moment. And as soon as he had thoroughly made up his mind that it was wrong to say so, he said:

“I believe I will.” The Celt in him was feeling suicidal. They went into the ground-floor room of a house where liquor was sold.

“For me, whisky,” said Beau Larch.

“The same for me,” said Aladdin, with something suspiciously like a gulp. The first drink which a man takes against his better judgment is a grisly epoch in his life. Aladdin realized this, and was at once miserable and willing that it should be so.

“To those that love us!” said Beau Larch.

Aladdin put down his liquor without grimace or gasp.

Beau Larch paid.

In Aladdin’s pocket were three dollars, the first mile-post on the steep road to his ideal. He felt, to be sure that they were there.

“Now you ‘ll have one with me,” he said.

When the sudden rain-storm had rained and thundered and lightened itself out, they went to another saloon, and from there to the Boat Club, of which Beau Larch was a member and whither he asked Aladdin to supper. Fishes and lobsters and clams were the staple articles of Boat Club suppers, and over savory messes of these, helped down with much whisky and water, Aladdin and Beau Larch made the evening spin. Aladdin, talking eagerly and with the naivete of a child, wondered why he had never liked this man so much before. And Larch told the somewhat abject story of his life three times with an introduction of much racy anecdote.

Aladdin’s head held surprisingly well. Every now and then he would hand himself an inward congratulation on the alertness and clearness of his mind, and think what a fine constitution he must have. They got to singing after a while, and reciting poems, of which each knew a quantity by heart. And, oddly enough, Aladdin, though he had been brought up to speak sound American, developed in his cups, and afterward clung to, in moments of exhilaration or excitement, an indescribably faint but perfectly distinct Hibernian accent. It was the heritage to which he was heir, and made his eager and earnest rendering of “Annabel Lee” so pathetic that Beau Larch wept, and knocked a glass off the table....

Men came and sat with them, and Aladdin discovered in himself what he had hitherto never suspected--the power of becoming heart-to-heart friends with strangers in two seconds.

Aladdin was never able to remember just how or when or with whom they left the Boat Club. He only remembered walking and walking and talking and talking, and finally arguing a knotty question, on which all defended the same side, and then sitting down on the steps of a house in a low quarter of the town, and pouring the ramifications of all his troubles into the thoroughly sympathetic if somewhat noncomprehending ears of Beau Larch. He talked long and became drunker as he talked, while Larch became soberer. Then Aladdin remembered that the door at the top of the steps had opened, and a frowzy head had been stuck out, and that a brassy voice, with something at once pathetic and wheedling in it, had said:

“Aren’t you coming in, boys?”

Then Aladdin remembered that Beau Larch and he had had angry words, and that Beau Larch had told him not to make an ass of himself, and for heaven’s sake to go home. To which Aladdin had retorted that he was old enough to know what was good for him, and hated the world and didn’t give a damn who knew it, and wouldn’t go home. Aladdin could swear that after that he only closed his eyes for a second to shut out something or other, and that when he opened them, the reverberation of a door closing was in his ears. But for all that Beau Larch had gone, and was to be seen neither up the street nor down. Although his own was past mending, Beau Larch, drunk as he was, had done a good deed that night, for he had guarded a precious innocence against the assaults of a drunken little Irish boy who was feeling down about something--a girl named something or other, Beau Larch thought, and another boy named something or other. The next day Beau had forgotten even that much.

Aladdin thought that Larch was hiding in jest. He arose unsteadily and wandered off in search of him. After a time he found himself before the door of his own house. There were lights in the parlor, and Aladdin became almost sober. He realized with a thrill of stricken conscience that Mrs. Brackett was sitting up for him, and he was afraid. He tried the front door and found it unlocked. He went in. On the right, the door leading into the parlor stood open. On the table burned a lamp. Beside the table in the crushed plush rocker sat Mrs. Brackett. Her spectacles were pushed high up on her forehead. Her eyes were closed, and her mouth was slightly open. From the corners of her eyes red marks ran down her cheeks. Her thin gray hair was in disarray. In her lap, open, lay her huge family Bible; a spray of pressed maidenhair fern marked the place.

Aladdin, somewhat sobered by now, and already stung with the anguish of remorse, tiptoed into the parlor and softly blew out the light; but the instant before he did so he glanced down at the Bible in the good lady’s lap and saw that she had been reading about the prodigal son. Great tears ran out of Aladdin’s eyes. He went up-stairs, weeping and on tiptoe, and as he passed the door of his brother’s room he heard a stir within.

“Is that you, ‘Laddin?”

“Sssh, darlint,” said Aladdin; “you’ll wake Mother Brackett.”

In his own room there was a lamp burning low, and on his bureau was a note for him from Margaret:

DEAR ALADDIN: Papa wants you to come up and have supper with us. Peter Manners is here, and I think it will be fun. Please do come, and remember a lot of foolish songs to sing. Why wouldn’t you speak to me? It hurts so when you act like that....

Aladdin, kissing the note, went down on his knees and twice began to pray, “O God--O God!” He could say no more, but all the penitence and heartburnings of his soul were in his prayer. Later he lay on his bed staring into a darkness which moved in wheels, and he kept saying to the darkness:

“Neither the angels in Heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.”

Late in the still morning he awoke, grieving and hurt, for he did not see how he should ever face Mrs. Brackett, or his brother, or Margaret, or himself, or anybody ever again.

XII

There was in town at this time what passed for a comic-opera troupe, and Margaret and her father, by way of doing honor to their guest, invited all the young people to go to the performance and attend a supper afterward. The party occupied the three foremost rows in the music-hall, and Aladdin sat next to Margaret, and Manners sat upon the other side.

The hero of the piece was a jovial big rascal with a spirited voice, and much byplay which kept his good-natured audience in titters--from the young gentlemen and little shrieks--from the young ladies. Mr. Blythoe, the hero, when the curtain had fallen upon what the management was pleased to call the second act, consented, in response to continued applause, due to a double back somersault and two appropriate remarks fired off in midair (this was his great psychic moment), to make a little speech and sing a song. His speech, though syntactically erratic, was delivered in a loud, frank way that won everybody’s heart, and in closing he said:

“Three nights ago I met with a young feller in this tow--city [applause], and when we had taken one together for luck [titters from the young gentlemen, who wanted one another to know that they knew what he meant], he made me the loan of the song I’m a-going to sing. He made up the words and the tune of this song hisself, and he’s right here in this audience.” This gave an opportunity for some buffoonery among the young gentlemen. Mr. Blythoe looked for one instant straight at Aladdin, and Aladdin went into a cold sweat, for he began to recollect that somewhere on a certain awful night he had taken drinks with Mr. Blythoe and had sung him songs. Mr. Blythoe went on:

“This young gentleman said I specially wasn’t to mention his name, and I won’t, but I want all you ladies and gentlemen to know that this here beautiful ballad was composed right here in this tow--city [applause] by a citizen of this city. And here goes.”

Then Mr. Blythoe did a wonderful thing. Much was owing to the words and air, but a little something to the way in which Mr. Blythoe sang. He took his audience with the first bar, and had some of them crying when he was through. And the song should have been silly. It was about a gay, gay young dog of a crow, that left the flock and went to a sunny land and lived a mad, mad life; and finally, penitent and old, came home to the north country and saw his old playmates in the distance circling about the old pine-tree, but was too weak to reach them, or to call loud enough for them to hear, and so lay down and died, died, died. The tune was the sweetest little plaintive wail, and at the end of each stanza it died, died, till you had to cry.

Mr. Blythoe received tremendous applause, but refused to encore. He winked to Aladdin and bowed himself off. Then Aladdin executed an unparalleled blush. He could feel it start in the small of his back and spread all over him--up under the roots of his hair to the top of his head. He should have felt proud, instead of which he was suffused with shame. Margaret caught sight of his face.

“What is it, Aladdin?” she said in a whisper.

“Nothing.”

“Won’t you tell me?”

“It’s nothing.” He got redder and redder.

“Please.”

With downcast eyes he shook his head. She looked at him dubiously and a little pathetically for a moment. Then she said, “Silly goose,” and turned to Manners.

“Poor old crow!” said Manners. “I had one, Margaret, when I was little; he had his wings clipped and used to follow me like a dog, and one day he saw some of his old friends out on the salt-marsh, and he hopped out to talk it over with them, and they set upon him and killed him. And I couldn’t get there quick enough to help him--I beg your pardon.” He picked up a fan and handed it to the girl on his left, and she, having dropped it on purpose, blushed, thanked him, and giggled. Manners turned to Margaret again. “Ever since then,” he said, “when I have a gun in my hand and see a crow, I want to kill him for the sake of the crows that killed mine, and to let him go for the sake of mine, who was such a nice old fellow. So it’s an awful problem.”

Aladdin sat and looked straight before him. “Is real fame as awful as this?” he thought.

Somebody clapped him on the shoulder, and a hearty voice, something the worse for wear, said loudly in his ear, “Bully, Aladdin, bully!”

Aladdin looked up and recognized that bad companion, Beau Larch.

“That’s all right,” Aladdin tried to say, but Mr. Larch would not be downed.

“Wasn’t it bully, Margaret?” he said.

“Oh--hallo--hallo, Beau!” said she, starting and turning round and collecting her wits. “What? Wasn’t what bully?”

Aladdin frowned at Larch with all the forbiddingness that he could muster, but Larch was imperturbable.

“Why, Aladdin’s song!” he said. “You know, the one about the old crow--the one the man just sang.”

Here a young lady, over whom Beau Larch was leaning, confided to her escort in an audible, nervous voice that she knew Beau Larch had been drinking, but she wouldn’t say why she knew--anybody could see he had; and then she sniffed with her nose by way of indicating that seeing was not the only or best method of telling.

“You don’t mean to say--” said Margaret to Aladdin, and looked him in the eyes. “Why, Aladdin!” she said. And then: “Peter--Peter--‘Laddin wrote it, he did. Isn’t it gr-reat!”

And Peter, rising to the occasion, said, “Bully,” and “I thought it was great,” with such absolute frankness and sincerity that Aladdin’s heart almost warmed toward him. It was presently known all over the house that Aladdin had written the song. And some of the more clownish of the young people called for Author, Author. Aladdin hung his head.

At supper at the St. Johns’ later was a crisp, brisk gentleman with grayish hair, who talked in a pleasant, dry way. Aladdin learned that it was Mr. Blankinship, editor and proprietor of the Portland “Spy.” Almost immediately on learning this important item, he saw Mr. Blankinship exchange a word with Margaret and come toward him.

“Mr. O’Brien?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The same that sent us three poems a while ago?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you wrote that song we heard to-night?”

“Yes, sir.” Aladdin was now fiery red.

“What do you do for a living?”

“I’ve just finished school,” said Aladdin. “And I don’t know what to do.”

“Newspaper work appeal to you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Timid as a coot,” thought Mr. Blankinship.

“Write easily?” he said. “Fast--short words?”

Aladdin thought a moment. “Yes, sir,” he said coolly.

“Less timid than a coot,” thought Mr. Blankinship.

“Willing to live in Portland?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll give you five dollars a week and give you a trial.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Can you get moved and start work Monday?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mr. Blankinship smiled cheerfully.

“Pretty entertainment, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, O’Brien, see you Monday; hope we get on.” Mr. Blankinship nodded pleasantly and passed up the room to the punch, muttering as he went, “Writes better than talks--dash of genius--more or less timid than a coot.”

Aladdin went quickly to find Margaret. He traced her to the pantry, where she was hurrying the servant who had charge of the ice-cream. Aladdin waited until the servant had gone out with a heaping tray.

“Margaret,” he said, “I’m going away to live.”

He spoke in the flat, colorless voice with which a little child announces that it has hurt itself.

“What do you mean, Aladdin?” She changed color slightly.

“Only that I’ve got to make a living, Margaret, and it’s on a paper, so I ought to be glad.”

“Aren’t you glad, Aladdin?”

“A little.”

“Aladdin--”

“Margaret--O Margaret--”

She read in his eyes what was coming.

“Not now, Aladdin,” she said.

“Not now--dear Aladdin.”

“Then you know?”

“I’ve always known, Aladdin, and been grateful and that proud.”

“Will there never be any chance for me, Margaret?”

“Aladdin, I think I like you better than anybody else in the world--”

“Darling--” he had never supposed that it could be said so easily; he leaned toward her.

“No,” she said suddenly; “I’ve got to go and see after all those foolish people.”

“Just for the sake of old times, and now, and new times--”

She hesitated, reddened a little, and then, as sweetly and innocently as a child, put up her lips for him to kiss.

XIII

Hannibal St. John’s campaign for reelection to the senatorship was, owing to a grievous error in tact, of doubtful issue. A hue and cry arose against him among his constituents, and things in general fell out so unhappily that it looked toward the close of the contest as if he would be obliged to sit idle and dangle his heels, while the two halves of the country, pushing against each other, were rising in the middle like the hinge of a toggle-joint into the most momentous crisis in the nation’s history. It looked as if the strong man, with his almost blasphemous intolerance of disunion, his columnlike power of supporting, and his incomparable intellect, was to stand in the background and watch the nightmare play from afar. He fought for his place in the forefront of the battle with a great fervor of bitterness, and the possibility of defeat weighed upon his glowering soul like a premature day of judgment. He knew himself to be the one man for the opportunity, and could his true feelings have found utterance, they would have said, “Damn us everlastingly in hell, but don’t shelve us now!”

Opposed to St. John was a Mr. Bispham, of about quarter his height intellectually and integrally--a politician, simple, who went to war for loot. But he was blessed with a tremendous voice and an inexhaustible store of elemental, fundamental humor, upon the waves of which the ship bearing his banner floated high. It seemed that because of one glaring exhibition of tactlessness, and a lack of humor, a really important, valuable, and honest man was to lose the chance of serving his country to a designing whipper-snapper, who was without even the saving grace of violent and virulent prejudices. And so the world goes. It seemed at one time that St. John’s chance was a ghost of a chance, and his friends, sons, and relatives, toiling headstrong by night and day, were brought up at the verge of despair. To make the situation even more difficult, St. John himself was prostrated with the gout, so that his telling oratory and commanding personality could not be brought to bear. Margaret was never far from her father’s side, and she worked like a dog for him, writing to dictation till her hands became almost useless, and when the spasms of pain were great, leaving her work to kiss his old brow.

It was at this time that people all over the State began to take up a song with an inimitably catching tune. The words of this song held up Mr. Bispham in so shrewdly true and farcically humorous a light that even his own star began to titter and threatened to slip from its high place in the heavens. The song fell so absolutely on the head of the nail that Mr. Bispham, when he heard it for the first time, was convulsed with anger and talked of horse-whips. The second time he heard it, he drew himself up with dignity and pretended not to notice, and the third time he broke into a cold sweat, for he began to be afraid of those words and that tune. At a mass-meeting, while in the midst of a voluble harangue, somebody in the back of the hall punctuated--an absurd statement, which otherwise might have passed unnoticed, by whistling the first bar of the song. Mr. Bispham faced the tittering like a man, and endeavored to rehabilitate himself. But his hands had slipped on the handle of the audience, and the forensic rosin of Demosthenes would not have enabled him to regain his grip. He was cruelly assured of the fact by the hostile and ready-witted whistler. Again Mr. Bispham absurded. This time the tune broke out in all parts of the hall and was itself punctuated by catcalls and sotto-voce insults delivered with terrific shouts. Mr. Bispham’s speech was hurriedly finished, and the peroration came down as flat as a skater who tries a grape-vine for the first time. He left the hall hurriedly, pale and nervous. The tune followed him down the street and haunted him to his room. The alarming takingness of it had gotten in at his ear, and as he was savagely undressing he caught himself in the traitorous act of humming it to himself.

Among others to leave the hall was a tall, slim young man with freckles across the bridge of his nose and very bright blue eyes. A party of young men accompanied him, and all were a little noisy, and, as they made the street, broke lustily into the campaign song. People said, “That’s him,” “That’s O’Brien,” “That’s Aladdin O’Brien,” “That’s the man wrote it,” and the like. The young men disappeared down the street singing at the tops of their voices, with interlardations of turbulent, mocking laughter.

Aladdin’s song went all over the North, and his name became known in the land.

Hannibal St. John was not musical. There were only four tunes, and three of them were variations of “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia,” that he recognized when he heard them. As he lay on his bed of pain, he heard the shrill whistle of his gardener piping in the garden below. Unconsciously the senator’s well hand marked the time. All day, as he came and went about his business, the gardener kept whistling that tune, and the senator heard and reheard ever with increasing pleasure. And this was an extraordinary thing, for it was as difficult or nearly so to move Hannibal St. John with music as it must have been for Orpheus to get himself approached by rocks and stones and trees, and far more difficult than it ever was for the Pied Piper to achieve a following of brats and rats.

Margaret had been for a drive with a girl friend. She came home and to her father’s side in great spirits.

“Oh, papa,” she cried, “will you do me a favor?”

She read consent.

“Claire has got the wonderfulest song, and I want you to let her come in and sing it for you.”

“A song?” said the senator, doubtfully.

“Papa de-e-ear, please.”

He smiled grimly.

“If Claire will not be shocked by my appearance,” he said against hope.

“Rubbish,” cried Margaret, and flew out of the room.

There were a few preliminary gasps and giggles in the hall, and the two maidens, as sedate and demure as mice, entered. Claire was a little party, with vivacious manners and a comical little upturned face.

“How do you do, senator?” she said. “I’m so sorry you’re laid up. Isn’t it lovely out?” She advanced and shook his well hand.

“Won’t you take a chair?” said the senator.

“I just ran in for a moment. Margaret and I thought maybe you’d like to hear the new campaign song that everybody’s singing. My brother brought it up from Portland--” she paused, out of breath.

“It would afford me great pleasure,” said the senator.

And forthwith Claire sang in a rollicking voice. The tune was the same as that which the gardener had been whistling. St. John recognized it in spite of the difference in the mediums and smiled. Then he smiled because of the words, and presently he laughed. It was the first real pleasure he had had in many a day.

“Everybody is wild about it,” said Claire, when she had finished.

The senator was shaking with laughter.

“That’s good,” he said, “that’s good.”

“Papa,” said Margaret, when Claire had gone, “who do you think wrote that song?”

“I don’t know,” said the senator. “But it’s good.”

“Aladdin wrote it,” said Margaret.

“Upon my word!” said the senator.

Margaret knelt and threw her arms about her father’s neck and blushed a lovely blush.

“Isn’t it splendid?”

There was a ring at the front door, and a telegram was brought in.

“Read it, Peggy,” said the senator. He used that name only when moved about something. The despatch was from the senator’s youngest son, Hannibal, and read:

Do not worry; we are singing Bispham up a tree.

“And Aladdin wrote the song!” cried Margaret. “Aladdin wrote it!”

The senator’s face clouded for a moment. He forced the cloud to pass.

“We must thank him,” he said. “We must thank him.”

Senator St. John was reelected by a small majority. Everybody admitted that it was due to Aladdin O’Brien’s song. It was impossible to disguise the engaging childishness of the vote.

XIV

As he went to his desk in the back room of the Portland “Spy” offices the morning after the election, Aladdin had an evil headache, and a subconscious hope that nobody would speak to him suddenly. He felt that his arms and legs might drop off if anybody did, and he could have sworn that he saw a gray sparrow with blue eyes run into a dark corner, and turn into a mouse. But he was quite free from penitence, as the occasion of this last offense had been joy and triumph, whereas that of his first had been sorrow. He lighted a bad cigar, put off his editorial till later, and covered a whole sheet of paper with pictures like these:

(Transcriber’s note: These are simple sketches of birds and animals.)

He looked back with a certain smug satisfaction upon a hilarious evening beginning with a dinner at the club, which some of the older adherents of St. John had given him in gratitude for the part he had taken in the campaign. He remembered that he had not given a bad exhibition, and that noble prophecies had been made of his future by gentlemen in their cups, and that he himself, when just far enough gone to be courageous without being silly, had made a snappy little speech of thanks which had been received with great applause, and that later he had sung his campaign song and others, and that finally, in company with an ex-judge, whose hat was also decorated with a wreath of smilax, he had rolled amiably about the town in a hack, going from one place where drinks could be gotten to another, and singing with great fervor and patriotism:

Zhohn Brownzh bozhy liezh a mole-ring in zhe grave.

Aladdin thought over these things with pleasure, for he had fallen under the dangerous flattery of older men, and with less pleasure of the editorial which it was his immediate business to write. His brisk, crisp chief, Mr. Blankinship, came in for a moment, walking testily and looking like the deuce.

“So you’ve showed up, Aladdin, have you?” he said. “That’s young blood. If any question of politics--I mean policy--arises, I leave it absolutely to you. I’m going back to bed. Can’t you stop smoking that rotten cigar?”

Aladdin laughed aloud, and Mr. Blankinship endeavored to smile.

“Somewhere,” he said, “in this transcendentally beautiful continent, Aladdin, there may be some one that feels worse than I do, but I doubt it.” He turned to go.

“Won’t Mr. Orde be here either?” said Aladdin.

“No; he’s home in bed. You’re editor-in-chief and everything else for the day, see? And I wish I was dead.” Mr. Blankinship nodded, very slightly, for it hurt, and went out.

The misery of others is a great cure: with the first sight of Mr. Blankinship, Aladdin’s headache had gone, and he now pounced upon fresh paper, got a notion out of the God-knows-where, wrote his editorial at full speed, and finished it without once removing the cigar from his mouth.

He had just done when the shrewd, inky little boy, who did everything about the “Spy” offices which nobody else would do, entered and said that a gentleman wanted to speak with Mr. O’Brien. Aladdin had the gentleman shown up, and recognized the oldest of Hannibal St. John’s sons; he knew them well by sight, but it so happened that he had never met them. They were the three biggest and most clean-cut young men in Maine, measuring between six feet three and four; erect, massive, utterly composed, and, if anything, a little stronger than so many dray-horses. They were notable shots, great fishermen, and the whole State was beginning to speculate with excitement about their respective futures and the present almost glittering success of the law firm which they composed. The oldest was the tallest and the strongest. He had been known to break horseshoes and to tear a silver dollar in two. Iron was as sealing-wax in his huge hands. His habits were Spartan. The second son was almost a replica of the first--a little darker and a little less vivid. The third was like the others; but his face was handsomer, and not so strong. He was of a more gentle and winning disposition, for his life was not ignorant of the frailties. The girl to whom he had been engaged had died, and that had left a kind of sweetness, almost beseechingness, in his manner, very engaging in so tall and strong a man.

“Mr. O’Brien?” said John St. John.

Aladdin arose and held out his long, slender hand.

Aladdin had a way of moving which was very individual to himself, a slight, ever so slight, exaggeration of stride and gesture, a kind of captivating awkwardness and diffidence that was on the borderland of grace and assurance. Like all slender people who work much with their heads, he had a strong grip, but he felt that his hand was as inconsistent as an eel when St. John’s closed over it.

“I came in for a moment,” said St. John, “to say that we are all exceedingly grateful to you. Your song was a great factor in my father’s reelection to the Senate. But we do not hold so much by the song as by the good will which you showed us in writing it. I want you to understand and believe that if I can ever be of the slightest service to you, I will go very far to render it.”

“I’m as obliged as I can be,” said Aladdin. “It’s mighty good of you to come and talk to me like this, and except for the good will I have toward all your family, I don’t deserve it a bit.”

When John St. John had gone, the inky boy came to announce that another gentleman wished to speak with Mr. O’Brien.

The second gentleman proved to be the second brother, Hamilton St. John.

“Mr. O’Brien?” said he.

Aladdin shook hands with him.

“I came in for a moment,” said Hamilton St. John, “for the pleasure of telling you how tremendously grateful we all are to you for your song, which was such a big factor in my father’s redirection to the Senate. But I want to say, too, that we’re more grateful for your good will than for the song, and if I can ever do you a service, I want you to feel perfectly free to come and ask it of me, whatever it is.”

Aladdin could have laughed for joy. Margaret did not seem so far away as sometimes.