Chapter IV: Introduction: I (3)

And here was the ice cream parlor, “Gunn’s,” with its inviting display of sweets, and the little room in the back, with tables. After the movies she used to come here with her friends, and they would gorge themselves with the ice cream, ordering the most fancy concoctions, until their mouths would become like acid, from too many sweets.

Then she passed the “dark corner” of Harrigans’s, the hardware man’s. Here was the least light in the neighborhood. And into here, after the movies and the ice cream, her companion would pull her, and here they would stand in the shadow of the two glass cases, holding one another in their arms, and they would seek something which they did not understand, and did not know where to find it, until she, frightened at the lateness of the hour, would tear herself away and run home.

And finally just before her home, she passed the _Borough News_ printing works, above which was housed the Lakewood Business College, which she had entered after her two years in high school. Here was where she had learned stenography, and typing, and the little bookkeeping she knew. Nearly all her friends had entered this school which was their stepping-stone into the business world.

Mother was in the kitchen, and as she took off her coat Gerty wondered when would be the best time to break the news to her. Before dinner or after dinner? It would be better to get it over with before, but then again, dinner would be spoiled; there might even be no dinner at all. Gerty had no appetite, but she reflected that anything, even eating, was better than listening to her mother’s lamenting. So she decided to wait.

She walked into the dining room, took the doily off the table, went to the sideboard, and took out the napkins. Automatically she began to set the table.

Mother appeared, fat, satisfied, white aproned.

“That you, Gertie? Jim was here awhile ago. Said he’s coming after dinner.”

Gerty said nothing. She placed on the table the salt cellar, the knives and forks, the only really good things they had in the house. Came from the family. Solid silver.

“Would you believe it,” continued her mother, “butter’s sixty cents a pound. And eggs a dollar a dozen. I gave Strinelli a piece of my mind. Mrs. Brown told me he’s got no end of eggs in his cellar, and he’s keeping them for higher prices. I said to him: ‘It would be a good thing if they threw you foreigners out. Trying to live on us poor people. A dollar a dozen for eggs. The idea.’”

Gerty kept on setting. Even after she had finished placing on the table everything that apparently was necessary, she continued. She adjusted the position of the cutlery. Brought water, something very rare. Dusted off the top of the sideboard. Anything better than talking. An idea was being born in her mind, and her mother was preventing her from developing it.

Harry Widener would be with another firm, of that she was sure. Why not try to get a job there? She would ask him to recommend her. He couldn’t refuse her. She had been a good stenographer. Never late. No nonsense in the office. No peek-a-boo waists or transparent skirts. She didn’t chew gum or anything. Why shouldn’t she be able to get a job there? And then she would be with him.

Her mother fixed her nearsighted eyes on Gerty, followed her movements, and went on talking.

“Mrs. Denby’s awfully low. They expect her to go any day. The doctor said it was cancer of the stomach. Incurable, he said. Lying in St. Mark’s. Private room. A day nurse. A night nurse. It must be awful for Jim to pay all that. He’s nice to come down to see us, and his mother almost dead.”

Gerty understood her mother’s weak tactics. At other times it amused her to hear the older woman talking, praising Jim. But now it only served to irritate her. It was none of Mother’s business whom she was going to marry. She was free. Earning her own living. She could do as she pleased. She could even go to live by herself if she wanted to. She’d save money anyway. And time. With the subway, she was wasting two hours every day travelling. And if she went out in the evening it was two more hours lost. If this kept up, she’d do it. She wasn’t going to listen to anybody’s talking. She was a free and equal human being, she was.

“I’m hungry,” she announced.

Dinner proceeded more or less quietly. The few attempts of the mother at conversation were promptly squelched by her daughter’s silence. Only toward the end did Mrs. Donovan begin her attacks again.

“Jim told me, while he was here, he’s getting a raise at the end of the month. Three hundred a month, and assistant teller. He might even get to be assistant cashier some day. One hundred dollars a week and a private room. He’s a good boy, Jim is.”

“If you’re going to keep on like this,” said Gerty silently to her mother, “I won’t tell you about the failure.”

“And he’s got a flat at One Hundred and Fortieth Street. Two rooms and a kitchen. The landlord will paper the walls any way you’ll want him to. Yes, and a bath tub, too. In the kitchen.”

A few moments before, Harry Widener had been far away, almost imperceptible. Now he came quite near, and looked at Gerty with his nice black eyes, and said: “You’re going to be an actress on One Hundred and Fortieth Street with two rooms and a kitchen. Bath tub in the kitchen. And you’re going to take dictation on the walls he’ll decorate for you because you don’t chew gum.”

She was going crazy. If she wasn’t, her mother was making her. And she looked at her mother and with her eyes said: “I want Harry Widener, and I don’t care who knows it. You or Jim Denby or anybody else. I don’t give a good God damn who knows it.” Like that.

And aloud she said.

“I am going to my room.”

“Better get ready for Jim,” her mother said. “Put on the mauve waist.”

As she shut the door of her room Gerty reflected that she had not told her mother of the loss of her position. She didn’t care. Let her mother worry later. With those dirty tricks. Trying to talk her into marrying Jim. She wouldn’t have him if he were the last man on earth. Not if he had all of the world’s gold. And all the diamonds. Not with a face like that. He’d have to have it made over again.

She sat down on her bed, adjusted her hair, and said:

“If he’ll begin pestering me, I’ll send him to hell, I will.”

Charity. Trying to give her something. Protecting her from the terrible world. She didn’t want protecting. She wanted to be left alone. People shouldn’t interfere into what she did. It was all their fault anyway. If they wouldn’t have interfered, she....

“Shut up,” she said to herself, and began unbuttoning her waist.

“Mauve waist,” she said. “I’ll give him mauve waist. If he’d be a man, he wouldn’t come around me. He’d stop bothering me. Can’t he see I don’t want him and his protecting.”

She walked toward the closet, opened the door, and took off the hook the mauve waist. Absentmindedly she placed her arms through the sleeves and buttoned it. Then she sat on the chair before the mirror and began to powder herself.

She remembered that once, about two months before, a woman friend of Harry Widener had come into the office toward the end of an afternoon, and had waited for him. A woman of his kind. With hair that received the attention of a frisier, face that was massaged, and hands that were manicured every day. She had worn a dark tailor-made suit and a mauve waist with a lace collar cut so low that the upper parts of her white breasts could be seen in the opening. She was stunning, Gerty had admitted that to herself. This was class. And when Harry Widener had come in, she had held out her hand to him, a black kid gloved hand, in a manner that Gerty knew she could never have imitated. The hand had gone right out, accompanied by a smile, in which the teeth were shown, even teeth, and dazzlingly white. And one Saturday afternoon, walking up Fifth Avenue, Gerty had seen a waist like that: mauve, with a white lace collar, cut very low. She had bought it, although the price had been exorbitant and a large part of her salary had been spent in the purchase. She never dared to wear it in the office, it was cut so low, and she had been afraid that Widener would notice the resemblance. And even in the house she wore it only on rare moments. When she wanted to feel equal to him, to do something that she should want him to see her do, she dressed in the mauve waist.

Noticing that the ribbon of her chemise showed in the cut, she untied it and tucked it into her bosom. Her neck now looked similar to the neck of the woman in the office. A white triangle deep into her bosom, with the curve of a breast showing on each side. Her breasts were just as round as the other’s, and just as white. It would be better to show a little more. She tucked aside the collar, and the curve became more pronounced. She sat at the mirror examining her face, fixing her hair. If he were to see her now, he would not be able to resist her. He would look at her with his black eyes, his brows would contract a little, and his nostrils puff out. And his arms would stretch out toward her, would envelop her, and she would lie in them quiet, unafraid.

She closed her eyes, and through the shimmering darkness of her lids she saw Harry Widener. He was looking at her. And she was looking at him. He was saying to her “You are with me now, and you are quiet.” And she answered to him, “Yes, I am quiet.” And they sat there in the darkness, she feeling his odour, and lulled to sleep by it.

She felt a draught of wind, heard the noise of a door opening, and saw Harry Widener tumble into the light. She opened her eyes. Her mother was standing in the doorway.

Mrs. Donovan was talking, but Gerty did not hear what she said. She could not orientate herself. She did not recognize her surroundings, nor the fat woman before her. This was strange to her. She had no place in the room where she was. She belonged somewhere else. In dazzling, flickering sunlight with Harry Widener. And peace.

“You’re a nice one,” her mother was saying. “It’s got to be a stranger that gives me the news about my own child. Why didn’t you tell me you were out of a job?”

Gerty did not answer. She heard somebody talking, felt she was being reproved, but it did not move her. She had been with him a moment before, and she still felt his presence.

Then she heard her mother say:

“Jim’s in the front room. Better go out to him. And you’d better be nice to him. You won’t find a better man.”

Her mother was talking, but Gerty did not understand her words. But she felt that she was commanded to go, so she stood up and walked toward the front room. Her mother not understanding, placed herself out of her way, and let her pass.

She came into the front room, and looked at the figure sitting on the sofa, a figure that rose when she entered, and came toward her. She answered his hello, sat down on the sofa in the spot he had sat in. Felt him sitting down beside her, noticed her mother had not come in with her, and sat.

She tried to gather her thoughts together. Who was it who was sitting beside her on the sofa? It was Jim Denby.

No, it was Harry Widener. It was Harry Widener with eyes that were not so nice, and with a face that tried to be as expressionless as it could. But no, it could not have been Harry Widener. Harry Widener looked at you personal like, and decent. And Jim Denby didn’t. He looked at you as if he wanted to eat you up. He was in love with you. And Harry wasn’t. Why?

Further her mind refused to travel. A black cloud came into her brain and forbade all thought. And she surrendered to the cloud and sat motionless and thoughtless.

Then she heard Jim or Harry talking. He was asking her what she would do. And she did not know how to answer. Because she knew she had to give two different answers. If this were Jim, she’d have to tell him she would look for another job, and if this were Harry she’d have to say.... She could not decide which it was. So she kept quiet.

Then she heard:

“Gerty, I’ve got something to tell you.”

He was speaking. At last he was speaking. This was the moment she had been waiting for. Now he would look at her with his black eyes, and fold her around. And peace.

“Gerty, what’s the use of you looking for a job. You can’t work all your life. You’re not made for work. You’ve got to stay home and be taken care of.”

He stopped, and she waited. Why was he talking? Why didn’t he do it? She felt he was looking at her, but she did not dare to turn her eyes. He was gazing at her. His eyes travelled over the waist, went into the lace collar, and followed its contour to the breasts. Her heart stopped. Would he recognize it? Would he be angry because she imitated his lady friend?

He began speaking again:

“Gerty, let me take care of you. I can do it. I’ll treat you like a queen. There won’t be nothing too good for you. I’ll love you, and I’ll honor you. I’ll be dirt under your feet. You ain’t made for an office. I’ll be good to you. Swear to God, I will.”

What was he waiting for? What did he want? Why didn’t he take her? She was his. She had always been his. Hadn’t she waited for him all this time. Did she have to teach him how to make love?

He was evidently waiting for an answer, and while waiting, his gaze travelled on her breasts. He was looking at them. And involuntarily she wanted to screen them with her hands, but then remembered who he was, and felt ashamed. He could do with her what he wanted. He could take all she had.

She felt his breath on her face, and closed her unseeing eyes. The moment had come, and she was not surprised when she felt his arms around her, enveloping, and his lips on hers.

And she said: “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

And he kissed her again and again, and she was satisfied.

Then she heard steps, and her mother came in. And she heard him say to her mother that he was going to marry her, and then her mother answered:

“Jim, I’m glad to hear it.”

And she looked with her eyes. And she saw it wasn’t Harry. It was Jim! Jim! Jim! Not Harry!

In one bound she jumped up, and rushed to her room. When she had banged the door shut, she threw herself on the bed, and moaned.

“What did I do? What did I do?”

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Copyright, 1925, by Harcourt, Brace, and Co.
Reprinted by permission of the publishers.

GUARD OF HONOR[4]

By BARRY BENEFIELD

(From _The Pictorial Review_)

Once in Asphodel they had called him Willie when he was a little boy, and then they called him Bill. There came a time when, upon his occasional trips back to his Arkansas home, his old friends ventured a little nervously to call him Will, and the Asphodel _Argus_ printed him as “Mr. William P. Ott, sales-manager and treasurer of the Apollo Clothing Co., of Chicago.”

Somewhere somehow in the flat fields of northern France he lost his richest worldly treasure--that part of his marvelous memory that covered the period between his sixteenth and thirty-second years, that segment of his memory which had known not only all his war experiences up to that moment, but also every garment manufactured by his company down to the last button, every trade route sold by the Apollo travelers, every customer’s rating and idiosyncrasies, every weak and strong point of the goods and the salesmen of his company’s chief competitors.

And so, having come home by way of three or four Government hospitals, he was, after a brief period of lionizing that puzzled the pink-faced, snub-nosed, chubby little man, once again to his friends of Asphodel, and as always to his widowed mother, just Willie.

On that hot June morning Willie left his mother’s house and went down the red hill leading from the higher residential section to the six business streets, completing his habitual morning round by ten o’clock: to the post-office, where he received and read and shook his head over an eagerly solicitous letter from the president of the Apollo Clothing Co.; to Hampton’s Furniture Store and Mortuary Parlor, where he sat awhile in a cane-bottomed chair on the sidewalk, apparently listening to other men of leisure talk, though their words merely buzzed in his ears; to Embree’s Confectionery Store, where he bought a tinfoil package of cigarettes; and finally to his real goal for the morning, Zebedee Smith’s Barber Shop, where he silently submitted to shaving and shoe-shining, and then sat in front of the big plate-glass window, staring, round-eyed, out across the street, through an old brick building that had lost everything in a fire except its side walls, out across the depression in the earth, at the bottom of which Little Sandy River slipped southward on its unquestioning way toward the great gulf that would presently swallow it up.

As he stared and consciously saw nothing in detail, while his mind continued its eternal reaching down for something precious that it could almost but not quite touch, two figures in the street moved across his vision, and he sat up suddenly and studied them. As well as he knew any one he knew Goldie, once the owner of Asphodel’s only candy store and soda-water fountain, and Honey Boy, Asphodel’s best-known individual, the small town’s huge, red-headed, freckle-faced, obscenely dirty, half-witted son.

Goldie’s infinitesimal figure, frail and stooping, was covered with an old and spotted and worn Confederate uniform, the gray coat hanging in a confusion of folds and wrinkles from his narrow shoulders, the trousers turned up at least two inches at the bottom. His black slouch hat made his very thin, old face seem even thinner than it was.

Honey Boy had once owned a donkey, and it was one of the few memories that lived in his cloudy mind. He always carried a stout switch with which he belabored his imaginary mount, while he frequently jumped up and down as if he were being bounced by the donkey that was no more. Now as he pranced along behind Goldie, Honey Boy, between attacks upon his invisible donkey, mimicked as nearly as he could every movement of the little old man who marched along in front of him. Laughter was thrilling to Honey Boy; he was accustomed to that reward for his antics, and he kept opening his wide mouth, filled with yellow stumps of teeth, in a leering grin as he looked from right to left at chance passers-by for applause.

Goldie stopped in front of the red, square, brick county court-house, diagonally across the street from Smith’s Barber Shop. He removed his hat and stood at attention, listening. Southern Arkansas architecture sometimes shows the influence of New Orleans, especially in narrow balconies jutting out under second-story windows. Goldie remained looking up at the empty balcony of the court-house, from which speeches were often delivered. Now and then he clapped his hands, nodding his head approvingly over eloquence that came back across the years only to him.

Everybody called Levi Goldbaum Goldie, almost entirely in affection. For a long time he had kept his candy store open, with occasional closures due to bankruptcies without a taint of fraud. Even in the full flush of his middle-aged manhood he had been a frail, haggard, stooped, feeble-looking, little man, the husband of an abnormally healthy and handsome wife, the father of a brood of unusually vigorous boys and girls, who grew up, married, and moved away from Asphodel, leaving him and his wife alone in their old age.

When Goldie had attended Confederate reunions--and he attended every one he could--or had marched with the diminishing group of old soldiers on great occasions in Asphodel, many people, especially boys and girls wondered if he really could have been a soldier. But there was no doubt in the minds of the comrades who had been with him at Shiloh.

Goldie’s store having closed its doors five years before as the result of two new competitors and inevitably final bankruptcy proceedings, he had sadly retired. He was now over seventy, was considered a trifle queer, and spent most of his time pottering around at home. He owned his house, and his grown children sent him what little money he needed to pay the last penalties of existence.

After standing listening in front of the court-house for some thirty minutes Goldie, drawing himself as straight as he could, proceeded down Walnut Street, turned into Broadway, and marched up that main street, Honey Boy cavorting behind him. And there was that in Goldie’s bearing and in his stride that drew Willie after him, and presently the little soldier with the wounded memory got out in the street and walked along by the side of the little soldier with the wounded mind, keeping step, the dry dust dimming his newly shined shoes and rising in small, lazy clouds around his white-duck trousers.

Goldie’s mind had gone back to other days when Asphodel’s citizens had made much of June 3, Jefferson Davis’s birthday and Confederate Memorial Day, and now he was celebrating it in his town alone, for Asphodel, like many another Southern town, had neglected the day for many years.

To most of those who saw the unmartial figure of Goldie and Willie and Honey Boy marching slowly along the dusty street it did not occur that this was the South’s Memorial Day. Goldie’s wearing of his old uniform was not uncommon enough to be striking; many a time-beaten soldier, reduced in circumstances, at last falls back on his most-treasured suit for every-day wear.

But if those who saw Goldie had looked carefully they might have noticed that, however slowly he moved, he proceeded in a straight line, with regularly spaced steps, and they might have suspected that Goldie was at the corner of a company invisible to all except his fading, sunken, black eyes, marching to music unheard except by him. Most people, indeed, gave their attention to Honey Boy, trailing directly behind and mocking the little gray man who labored with difficulty through the deep white sand.

It was eleven o’clock when Goldie and Willie and Honey Boy passed Pinder’s Marble Yard and its group of waiting white angels with downcast eyes. Pinder’s is just beyond the business section of Asphodel, and after that the ground rises to the north and east. The street leading to Highland Cemetery begins there, a long, tedious hill. The sun was unclouded, the wind was still, and Goldie, his coat carefully buttoned to the throat, was panting hard and reeling as he made Pinder’s Marble Yard.

Wilted by the terrific heat and his violent exertions, and no longer encouraged by laughing spectators, Honey Boy now merely followed on behind the staggering figure marching toward Highland Cemetery, a mile away. And Willie stalked along by his side, seeing nothing, as if he were in a dream deeper even than Goldie’s. Now the Memorial Day Parade was coming to the edge of Asphodel, to the section of straggling houses. Belle Foscue, a negro washerwoman, ran to her paling fence and asked the three chance comrades to come in and rest awhile under the shade of her oak tree.

Goldie halted, bringing his feet together bravely. He was moving his lips, but no words that could be heard a foot away issued from them. Belle came out of the gate to the soldier who could not leave his company. She bent her head close to his lips, listened, and then ran to bring him water.

“Thank you,” he said in a whisper. “You’re a good girl.” He waited patiently until she could bring Honey Boy another dipper filled from the well. But when she offered the freshly filled dipper to Willie he seemed not to see, so she turned it upside down, rolled her eyes at him, and went back into her yard.

After a while Goldie braced himself and marched on up the red hill. At this point the red clay beneath the cemetery road shows through the white sand, and rains keep washed out deep and ever-deepening gullies on both sides of it. About half-way up the hill Goldie, stubbornly holding his position at the corner of the invisible company in spite of the fact that the road had narrowed considerably, found himself on the edge of a gully; and presently he lost his balance, and staggered over into it, and rolled down to the bottom of it. Honey Boy crowed and chortled and gurgled, and began frantically beating his unseen donkey with the switch. Willie stood still, staring ahead, waiting.

The fallen soldier, having made two or three desperate attempts to rise, sank back into a crumpled sitting posture, his head bent in shame. After a while Honey Boy got down on his hands and knees in the bed of the gully. “Ride Honey Boy,” he stuttered. “Ride up-hill. Honey Boy strong.”

And Goldie, trying to sit astride the big boy’s broad back, fell forward and clasped his arms around his steed’s red, sweaty neck. Honey Boy crawled out of the gully and slowly climbed the hill with his burden, occasionally bucking like a horse and throwing the little man off on the road. But then he would stand patiently until the fallen soldier could crawl up on his back again.

At the top of the hill Goldie got to his feet once more, and as the roadbed was now level as well as firm he walked awhile and then rode awhile on Honey Boy, and so, riding and walking, he finally marched, with Willie at his side, through the arched gateway of Highland Cemetery as the whistles were blowing for twelve o’clock. Old man Miller, the sexton in charge there, and his two helpers were in a far corner of the graveyard, so that none saw Asphodel’s Memorial Day parade enter to honor the men Lee had loved and led.

The parade proceeded across the graveyard to a clump of oak trees clustering about and almost hiding the grass-grown plot that is called in Asphodel “The Confederate Cemetery.” The town had been headquarters for a rather large body of Confederate troops during the Civil War, and there are in the palinged enclosure nearly two hundred graves of the men in gray who had come to their end far from their homes.

Opening the rotting gate of the paling fence, Goldie stepped inside, Honey Boy and Willie close behind him. Here again Goldie stood in rapt attention, his brown face shining, his head bared, and his eyes lifted, listening to the famous orators his imagination had brought there for this day from out of the endearing past. Honey Boy sprawled on a rickety old iron bench. Willie stood stiffly by Goldie’s side, looking straight ahead.

Honey Boy moved. “S-sh!” hissed Goldie in a whisper. “Senator Collamore is speaking. Oh, he is good! I have heard him speak twenty times before. He says this custom of setting aside a day especially to do honor to the soldier dead originated, in this country, in the South, though now every little town as well as every big city in the North celebrates its Memorial Day; and he says that as long as memory lives we of the South shall continue to pay this sincere tribute to our men encamped beneath the green grass awaiting the bugles of a better day.” Goldie nodded his head vigorously, softly patting his thin, little hands together in respectful applause--softly so that he should not disturb the speaker. “Yes, that’s good and true,” he whispered, “very true indeed.”

“Did you hear that?” he whispered again enthusiastically after a while, turning first toward Willie and then to Honey Boy. “That is Governor Marcus speaking now. ‘The South is loyal,’ he says, ‘and it never forgets.’ Ah, yes, that is so true, too.”

And so Goldie, as if some part of him sensed the fact that his two comrades were not getting all that he was getting, from time to time picked out and tossed to the tired and hungry boy and to his brother-in-arms whose mind was thousands of miles away some of the crumbs from the feast of oratory that only he could enjoy--gilded words and fancy phrases that the little soldier had hoarded lovingly in his memory for years.

Well, after a while the speeches were all made, but Goldie stayed on. In other times it had been a custom in Asphodel to guard the Confederate Cemetery the night of Memorial Day, and Goldie was certain that he had been ordered to do guard duty that night.

Weak and hungry though he was, Goldie had been heartened by what he had heard, and as he sat on the rusty-red old iron bench enthusiastically talking at Honey Boy and Willie his voice was almost loud.

“Look yonder!” he cried. “Every grave is a bank of flowers. And did you notice how many people were here? Every store and office in town must have closed up. It’s a grand day. I’m a proud man this Memorial Day, I can tell you. If President Davis could only see all this--and Lee! But, there, I must not speak that last name again. If I do I’m bound to cry, and I’m too old for that. Two words can always make me cry--‘mother’ and ‘Lee.’”

The mounds above most of the graves had been leveled by time, and over all of them was a rank growth of weeds and grass. Honey Boy stared hard at Goldie, then he began giggling. Suddenly his small gray eyes filled with tears; he twisted and wrung his hands, and began whimpering, “Honey Boy hungry. Honey Boy must go home right now.”

“Hungry?” said Goldie, in high scorn. “Why, you poor little fool, you don’t know what hunger is. A soldier often goes two or three days on a single meal. But wait; our ladies will presently bring a banquet for the guard of honor--chicken and cake, strawberries and cream, and coffee--oh, I don’t know what all, but it will be splendid. When the South does a thing it does it splendidly.”

But the hot, damp, still afternoon wore away and no feast appeared. The notion that he was to do guard duty that night finally drove Goldie to consider the wisdom of fortifying himself in advance with sleep.

“You know,” he explained to the unheeding ears of Willie and Honey Boy, “it is a serious offense to go to sleep on picket duty. In war-time it means courtmartial. There is no punishment here and now except a man’s conscience, but a conscience can be terrible sometimes. And do you boys know, ever since the war whenever I’ve been assigned to any duty at reunions or on Memorial Days I’ve had a feeling that if I didn’t do it right _he_ would know--General Lee.”

Creeping off to a secluded, shady spot some distance from the Confederate Cemetery, Goldie took off his coat, rolled it into a sort of pillow, and lay down in the deep grass, now wilted by the shimmering, moist heat. “This is how a soldier often has to sleep,” he said proudly, looking from one to the other of his comrades.

Honey Boy, now completely subdued by hunger and thirst and fatigue, but held by fear and perhaps also by some boyish emotion of loyalty from deserting the little brown man in gray, sat staring at him a few moments, and then he too sank back on the grass and closed his eyes. Willie, his immaculate white suit of the morning wrinkled and soiled, dropped his straw hat to the ground at his feet and sat leaning against a stump, studying Goldie’s face intently. Except for picketing the graves that night, Asphodel’s Memorial Day exercises in honor of its soldier dead were over.

In the great sweet-gum tree above the three odd companions a pair of bluejays brought frequent instalments of food to their young and feasted them with much excitement and noisy importance. Out in the well-kept sections of the graveyard six or seven women appeared at various times during the afternoon, pulled a weed or a blade of grass from a grave, put down fresh flowers, pottered lovingly about it for a while, and then went home. But no one came to the Confederate Cemetery, and Goldie was as still as his comrades who slept beneath the tangles of grass and that weed called bitter. Honey Boy, waking up from time to time, looked around hopelessly, then weepingly lay back down. Willie continued staring at Goldie’s face, as calm as death and as sweet as life.

Late in the afternoon slim, dazzlingly white whips of lightning slashed about in the gray clouds that had been assembling above, thunder tumbled and mumbled and boomed, a quick shower of rain came sliding down the wind. It slipped under the waving branches of the tree above the sleepers and drenched them to the skin before they were fully awake. Willie now sat with his head leaning back against the stump, staring at the sky. He paid no attention to the rain or to his comrades.

Honey Boy began crying, his teeth chattering with cold, and he raised up and wrung his hands. “Oh, what is a little shower?” asked Goldie roughly, getting to his feet. “I have marched and slept a week in wet clothes.” Moving closer to the trunk of the sweet-gum tree, where it was almost dry, he laid his body down again and drifted away to sleep as sweetly as a child. Honey Boy beat his hands together and sobbed bitterly, but finally he crept close to Goldie, rolled himself into a ball, and was once more quiet.

And while two of them slept and one of them prowled desperately in the darkness of his mind for a lost thread a search-party that had been started by Mrs. Goldbaum came to the Confederate Cemetery, looked in, called loudly Goldie’s name, and went away.

When night, and it was a heavy, clouded night, came on, Goldie rose, put on his hat and coat, selected a fallen dead limb of a pine tree to serve as a gun, and proceeded to his post. Honey Boy stumbled along close behind him, now and then breaking out in a huge bellow of desperation. “Shut up!” hissed Goldie. “Have you no respect for the dead?”

But the frail, little, old soldier himself, reeling with weakness, often caught hold of the fence to steady his trembling legs. He was so tired that at the corners he sometimes stopped and rested his head against the flat-topped posts. But he had not been relieved of duty, so he kept on marching around the enclosure, often stumbling and falling in the dark, but always getting up and forcing himself along. Honey Boy flung himself into the deep grass near the paling fence and lay there moaning. Willie stood, a dozen yards away, against a tree intently studying Goldie.

Meanwhile searching parties were excitedly combing Asphodel and its environs for the missing men and Honey Boy; and some time after midnight a party made a second trip to the Confederate Cemetery. As the searchers approached, their lanterns and blazing pine-knots burning ragged yellow holes in the night, Goldie tried to shout and almost did shout, “Halt!”

“Is that you, Goldie?” some one called.

“This is Private Levi Goldbaum.”

“What are you doing out here, man? Your wife is crazy; she thinks you’re dead. Where have you been all day? You’re wet to the skin now, I’ll bet. You look like it, anyhow. What in the world are you doing here?”

“I took part in our Memorial Day exercises, of course. Now I am on picket duty, guarding the graves of my comrades. I should have been relieved at midnight, but I reckon something went wrong. Anyway, I couldn’t go until I was relieved, could I? Answer me that, Mr. Smarty. Don’t come any nearer. You can’t get through unless you’ve got the password. It’s a point of honor. I don’t care a rap who you are. Halt, there, you!”

Goldie stood up straight now, his bayonet pointing at the imprudent person who had come too near. The lights flickered over his frail figure, touching with yellow, beneath his slouch hat, the lower half of his cleanly shaven face, revealing the pale, thin, old lips drawn tightly across his false teeth.

The invaders gathered to talk among themselves, and as they whispered Goldie’s gun drooped slightly in his hands, dropped lower, and then the little old man moaned and crumpled stiffly to his knees.

He tried to rise and did, and fell again. He whispered, “Halt! You can’t pass here. It’s a point of honor, you see. If General Lee found out he would be--would be sorry for me.”

But the guard of honor had been relieved.

In his tracks stood another little soldier, this one clothed in white and shining with strength and fire and authority.

“Take him home, boys, but don’t step across the line he set. Don’t, don’t, I tell you! This is no joke. Lift him up gently now. He dropped just like my buddy over there--the picture, with the lights and everything, was just exactly the same. He has reminded me in a thousand ways all day of my buddy. But he’s only cold and hungry; my buddy was warm and dead. Take him home now, and when he comes to tell him not to worry; another soldier who remembers is covering his post. And General Lee will never know.”

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Copyright, 1925, by The Pictorial Review Company.
Copyright, 1926, by Barry Benefield.

THE BEGGAR OF ALCAZAR[5]

By KONRAD BERCOVICI

(From _The Century Magazine_)

Every Spaniard will tell you that Spain has the most beautiful women in the world. Every man from Andalusia, richly colored, sun-tinted, green-mountained Andalusia, will tell you that Andalusian women are the most beautiful of Spain; for have they not the smoothness and the hue of olive fruit and hair like black silk? And the men of Seville, the capital of Andalusia, old Seville with its crooked streets upon which abut blind walls, whitewashed and high-windowed--Seville, towered and domed by a thousand old churches and cathedrals and palaces built of huge stone mellowed and softened by biting time, Seville with its leisurely coursing river, the Guadalquivir, the great river, named so by the Moors in olden times, but which can be waded across at some times of the year; every Sevillan, prouder of the women of his town than of all the other marvels it contains, will tell you that the women of Seville are the most beautiful of the Province of Andalusia.

And Maria del Alcazar was the most beautiful woman of Seville.

She was the daughter of Don Hermanos, the head keeper of the Alcazar, the old palace of the Moors, planned and executed at the time when the Saracens had glided above the peak of virility and had become softened and fattened from tribute paid by vanquished nations, and effeminate from a long period of peace and the affluence come from plunder.

Maria’s father, Don Hermanos, had obtained the post of keeper in lieu of compensation for injuries he had sustained while fighting the wild tribes of the Spanish possessions in Africa. She was only ten years old when the family moved into one of the little whitewashed huts within the inclosure of the palace destined for the keeper. Black-eyed, with lustrous black hair, fine and silky like ebony filaments falling over her ivory-white neck, full-lipped, with a delicate chin, she was the pride of the family. Her mother, who came from Granada, instilled into her daughter that love for beautiful things and soft colors which had come to her with the blood of Moors that flowed in her veins. And with that she had also given to Maria that sinuous, graceful gait which holds both of the tiger and the angel--an imperceptible glide with slightly bent knees, while the arms sway softly like movements of invisible wings.

The Hermanos family had come to live at the Alcazar from one of the houses in the Triana, the crowded, squalid section across the river, where the poor of Seville live. The hut in which they had lived there was one in an immense yard in which fifty more little houses, leaning one on another, formed an open square; a _Casa Vesinante_ of the neighborhood. There was not much difference between the hut they were occupying in the Alcazar and it, and the mother and the father were frequently complaining about the uncomfortable and dilapidated condition of their new home. But not so Maria. She was not complaining, for she had the Alcazar all to herself. Daily, before the arrival of visitors from all over the world who came to see the old Moorish palace, and in the evenings after they had left, the big palace, with its jewel-studded, mosaic-wrought wings, with its stalactite ceilings, like frozen skies of crystal tears, and the ceramic walls, with the lemon alleys in the gardens and the intoxicating flowers and shrubs, with roses bigger than the full moon and redder than the reddest blood, with cypresses in pools of water and rose-veined marble colonnades and alleys, the whole palace belonged to her. It was hers to roam wherever she pleased, sit wherever she wanted, and dream her dreams. The very greatest treasure of the world was hers. For nowhere, nowhere she knew, was any other palace the like of that to be found in the universe. Roaming daily, she discovered for herself new treasures which were unknown to others. The beautiful marble columns that stuck out underneath the overlaid brick near the bathing-pool of the sultana, the paintings on the walls, which had stupidly been smeared over by careless repairers after the Moors had been driven out of Spain, the carved oak beams inlaid with mother-of-pearl mosaic in what was formerly the dressing room of the harem, and which had lain covered with cement. And panels of wood sawed so finely they were transparent when the light shone through them, and others cut so finely they were like spiderwebs, and which had lain there perhaps for centuries unobserved by any one, were hers to look at, hers alone, undefiled by other eyes, hers to bathe in their lacy softness of color and line.

True, she had to come into the hut late in the night and lie down on the bed within the squalid hut. But long before sunrise she would take her blanket and run out into the palace to sleep on the marble couch of the sultana, which faced the fountain of the Room of the Ambassadors; where once the sultan of the Saracens received the representatives of other nations, dressed in glittering silken garments, while black, nude, oiled slaves piled soft cushions under the guests and offered them refreshments in golden trays and from long silver vases.

The family had not been there long before all the keepers and the people in the neighborhood loved Maria. Shortly after their instalment, their daughter became known as “Maria del Alcazar.” Not because people felt that she belonged to the Alcazar, but that the Alcazar belonged to her. She could tell such beautiful stories of the things she saw. She kept them all entranced when she spoke of the palace and its beauties. No one referred to her as the daughter of Hermanos the keeper. She was Maria del Alcazar to the neighbors, Maria del Alcazar to the priest, as well as to the working-men continually busy restoring and fixing what should better be left as it was.

And after a few years the reputation of Maria’s beauty spread far and wide, as spreads a river after it has gone out from its bed. And many were the young men who, dressed in their best velvet, pale blue and dark brown, costumes, with wide-brimmed _flamenco_ hats in their hands, now came to visit the Alcazar after their afternoon siesta, paying their good _pesetas_ for the hope of catching a glimpse of Maria. They loitered and looked interested in the walls and gardens and trees and pools and fountains, but their long-lashed eyes were continually watching for an apparition. And many of them carried their guitars under their coats to begin their courting then and there should occasion present itself. The whole young malehood of Triana, remembering her as a child, would come to bid _buenos dias_ to her father, with the hope of catching a glimpse of his daughter.

But during the day Maria was busy helping her mother. She had no interest in the Alcazar during that time. It belonged to strangers who came from all the corners of the world, to tread with unsympathetic feet the ground she considered holy and defile with their eyes and harsh voices, whispering, and pointing to one another the walls and the gardens she loved so much. It was only after they had gone that the Alcazar belonged to Maria, and after they had gone, all had to go. And so, reluctantly, the young men of Triana turned their backs and slowly shuffled out of the palace after the keeper had called out the evening hour. They would then remain outside the gate, waiting yet, pining for a glimpse before sighing deeply and departing slowly to their homes. And the young women of Triana bitterly clamored that because of Maria they were themselves unsung and unwooed by the young men of the neighborhood.

All this was happening unknown to Maria, for she lived not in this world. And after the late autumn had shaken the leaves of the crooked, brown-trunked olive trees in the garden and made the ceramic walls colder than they had ever been, she was the undisputed owner, the only one to enjoy the marvels of the Alcazar all to herself. While the winter rains were beating down upon the town of Seville, thus keeping away the visitors, Maria was happy. She grew and developed very fast, looking more and more like one of the Moorish sultanas who had for centuries queened over the palace. She imagined herself to be one of them, never thinking of sultans; as if the place had never been peopled by any others but women. For there seemed to be no trace of any male residence there. The delicate tracery of the rooms and the alcoves, every nook and corner, seemed to her to have been erected by delicate and whimsical hands of angels who had first dreamed about all this on some huge canvas which they had embroidered upon.

And yet work was going on continually, repairing here and there, and reconstructing. It seemed to her outrageous that the hands of men should have any right to touch such divinely delicate dreams in wood and stone. More than once she spoke angrily to the architect who was directing the work, telling him again and again the old Moorish legend current to this day all through Andalusia, that the Alcazar was never built, but appeared one day, called thither by the magic wand of some great magician in the employ of the sultan.

II

One afternoon early in the spring, when the buds in the lemon trees had begun to burst and had spread their little sweet-sour blossoms all over the place, Jose, the bullfighter, a lad who had already won his first spurs in the bull-ring of Seville--Jose who had been one of her neighbors while they were living in Triana, stopped on his way to the ring to see Don Hermanos. He had been attracted by tales of the beauty of Maria del Alcazar, and had for a long time tried to see her without succeeding. But dressed in the costume of the matador, with a gold-laced black cap on his head, and a colored, spangled coat over the narrow, red-velvet breeches, tightened at the knees over the white stockings with green tassels, Don Jose felt he could dare make the attempt to see her. He braved bulls; why should he step back from meeting a woman?

While the hundred and one urchins cried, “There goes Don Jose!” he crossed into the vaulted entrance of the Alcazar and was received at the gate by Don Hermanos, who had been attracted by the outside noise.

“What great honor!” bowed Maria’s father, shaking the decoration dangling on his breast.

“The honor indeed is mine,” answered Don Jose, bowing profoundly. “For, if you recall, we have been neighbors in Triana. And my mother has repeatedly spoken of Doña Hermanos, your wife, and of Señorita Maria.”

“May I lead you through the Alcazar, if you want to see it?” Don Hermanos asked, while the other keepers had gathered about him and were looking at the handsome young matador with great admiration.

“I shall follow you with pleasure,” Jose answered.

And throwing a handful of copper and silver to the urchins following him, he walked rhythmically behind Don Hermanos, while the other keepers were complimenting upon his recent exploits.

Jose was just a little over twenty, with the brown young eyes matured from facing danger and death, although only a thin down covered his long upper lip. He was not very tall, but so well proportioned that he looked taller than he really was. He was even then only a short hour from one of the battles in the great bull-ring.

“It is curious,” he said wistfully to Don Hermanos, catching up with him and putting an arm familiarly on his shoulder, much to the envy of the other keepers who followed behind, “but I have never been in the Alcazar, and had thought of coming only after an Englishman with whom I had become acquainted had spoken to me so enthusiastically about its beauties. To live near such beauty and never see it!”

Don Hermanos was now showing him the oak-beamed and mosaic ceiling of the reception hall.

“Beautiful!” exclaimed the bull-fighter, with ecstasy.

From the other end of the hall Maria was coming from the garden. She had been dreaming by herself when she heard the approaching noise of the heavily shod feet of the keepers coming in her direction, and wondered what it could be, since it was not yet the season for tourists. Shy, like a curious young doe, she glided noiselessly into the presence of the group. She was wrapped in an old green shawl, and her bare feet were in white, soft-soled slippers. Her hair, which she had just washed in the sultana’s fountain, was hanging loosely over her ivory-white neck and shoulders. She made as if to retrace her steps when she saw Don Jose, but Jose was much too quick, the very instant of her appearance he had called out:

“There goes Señorita Maria. How beautiful she has grown! There goes Señorita Maria! How wonderful she has grown! Of course she does not remember me any more,” he added petulantly and uncovered his head, bowing elegantly.

“Come over, Maria,” her father called. “It is Jose. You certainly do remember him, although you have never seen him in this garb.”

Maria slowly approached the group and curtsied ceremoniously before the young man.

“What beauty!” exclaimed the bull-fighter, brutally and frankly looking the girl in the face, as only a Spaniard would.

It made Maria tremble from head to foot to be looked at in that way. But she answered promptly:

“Of course I do remember Doña Gloria’s son. And I recollect having been told that he was occasionally fighting bulls in the small _pueblos_.”

“He is fighting in the rings of Seville and Madrid now,” Don Hermanos corrected her. “See his matador costume.”

Maria looked at the young man, and then with a loud laugh she suddenly rushed past him and disappeared, faun-like, before he had had time to turn, for he was looking at Don Hermanos while he was spoken of.