Chapter III (1)

The draft began to roar and the dampers to glow. She crept in front of the glow. He drew a chair and sat down close behind her.

“Why didn't you come before?”

The question was startling, for Sebastian was only conscious of a lack of reason for coming. If David Sebastian had left him the farm he would have heard from it, and being prosperous, he had not cared. But the question seemed to imply some strong assumption and further knowledge.

“You'd better tell me about it.”

“About what? At the beginning?”

“Aren't you anything except 'Received, Harriet'?”

“Oh, I hadn't any father or mother when Mr. Sebastian brought me here. Is that what you mean? But he taught me to say 'Harriet Sebastian,' and a great many things he taught me. Didn't you know? And about his life and what he wanted you to do? Because, of course, we talked about you nearly always in the time just before he died. He said you would be sure to come, but he died, don't you see? only a few years after, and that disappointed him. He gave me the picture and said, 'He'll come, and you'll know him by this,' and he said, 'He will come poor and miserable. My only son, so I leave him to you; and so, as I did, you will pray for him twice each day.' It was just like that, 'Tell Charles there is no happiness but in duty. Tell him I found it so.' It was a night like this when he died, and Kezzy was asleep in her chair out here, and I sat by the bed. Then he told me I would pay him all in that way by doing what he meant to do for you. I was so little, but I seemed to understand that I was to live for it, as he had lived to help free the slaves. Don't you see? Then he began calling, 'Charles! Charles!' as if you were somewhere near, and I fell asleep, and woke and lay still and listened to the wind; and when I tried to get up I couldn't, because he held my hair, and he was dead. But why didn't you come?”

“It looks odd enough now,” Sebastian admitted, and wondered at the change from still impassiveness, pale and cool silence, to eager speech, swift question, lifted and flushed face.

“Then you remember the letters? But you didn't come then. But I began to fancy how it would be when you came, and then somehow it seemed as if you were here. Out in the orchard sometimes, don't you see? And more often when Kezzy was cross. And when she went to sleep by the fire at night--she was so old--we were quite alone and talked. Don't you remember?--I mean--But Kezzy didn't like to hear me talking to myself. 'Mutter, mutter!' like that. 'Never was such a child!' And then she died, too, seven--seven years ago, and it was quite different. I--I grew older. You seemed to be here quite and quite close to me always. There was no one else, except--But, I don't know why, I had an aching from having to wait, and it has been a long time, hasn't it?”

“Rather long. Go on. There was no one else?”

“No. We lived here--I mean--it grew that way, and you changed from the picture, too, and became like Mr. Sebastian, only younger, and just as you are now, only--not quite.”

She looked at him with sudden fear, then dropped her eyes, drew her long hair around under her cloak and leaned closer to the fire.

“But there is so much to tell you it comes out all mixed.”

Sebastian sat silently looking down at her, and felt the burden of his thinking grow heavier; the pondering how David Sebastian had left him an inheritance of advice, declaring his own life full and brimming, and to Harriet the inheritance of a curious duty that had grown to people her nights and days with intense sheltered dreams, and made her life, too, seem to her full and brimming, multitudinous with events and interchanges, himself so close and cherished an actor in it that his own parallel unconsciousness of it had almost dropped out of conception. And the burden grew heavier still with the weight of memories, and the record between the Old and New Testaments; with the sense of the isolation and covert of the midnight, and the storm; with the sight of Harriet crouching by the fire, her story, how David Sebastian left this world and went out into the wild night crying, “Charles! Charles!” It was something not logical, but compelling. It forced him to remark that his own cup appeared partially empty from this point of view. Harriet seemed to feel that her hour had come and he was given to her hands.. Success even in methods of living is a convincing thing over unsuccess. Ah, well! too late to remodel to David Sebastian's notion. It was singular, though, a woman silent, restrained, scrupulous, moving probably to the dictates of village opinion--suddenly the key was turned, and she threw back the gates of her prison; threw open doors, windows, intimate curtains; asked him to look in and explore everywhere and know all the history and the forecasts; became simple, primitive, unrestrained, willing to sit there at his feet and as innocent as her white linen gown. How smooth and pale her hair was and gentle cheek, and there were little sleepy smiles in the corners of the lips. He thought he would like most of all to put out his hand and touch her cheek and sleepy smiles, and draw her hair, long and soft and pale, from under the cloak. On the whole, it seemed probable that he might.

“Harriet,” he said slowly, “I'm going to play this hand.”

“Why, I don't know what you mean.”

“Take it, I'm not over and above a choice selection. I don't mention details, but take it as a general fact. Would you want to marry that kind of a selection, meaning me?”

“Oh, yes! Didn't you come for that? I thought you would.”

“And I thought you needed revelry! You must have had a lot of it.”

“I don't know what you mean. Listen! It keeps knocking at the door!”

“Oh, that's all right. Let it knock. Do you expect any more vagrants?”

“Vagrants?”

“Like me.”

“Like you? You only came home. Listen! It was like this when he died. But he wouldn't come to-night and stand outside and knock, would he? Not to-night, when you've come at last. But he used to. Of course, I fancied things. It's the storm. There's no one else now.”

A thousand spectres go whirling across Edom Hill such winter nights and come with importunate messages, but if the door is close and the fire courageous, it matters little. They are but wind and drift and out in the dark, and if one is in the light, it is a great point to keep the door fast against them and all forebodings, and let the coming days be what they will.

Men are not born in a night, or a year.

But if David Sebastian were a spectre there at the door, and thought differently on any question, or had more to say, he was not articulate. There is no occupation for ghosts in a stirring world, nor efficiency in their repentance.

Has any one more than a measure of hope, and a door against the storm? There was that much, at least, on Edom Hill.

SONS OF R. RAND

SOME years ago, of a summer afternoon, a perspiring organ-grinder and a leathery ape plodded along the road that goes between thin-soiled hillsides and the lake which is known as Elbow Lake and lies to the northeast of the village of Salem. In those days it was a well-travelled highway, as could be seen from its breadth and' dustiness. At about half the length of its bordering on the lake there was a spring set in the hillside, and a little pool continually rippled by its inflow. Some settler or later owner of the thin-soiled hillsides had left a clump of trees about it, making as sightly and refreshing an Institute of Charity as could be found. Another philanthropist had added half a cocoanut-shell to the foundation.

The organ-grinder turned in under the trees with a smile, in which his front teeth played a large part, and suddenly drew back with a guttural exclamation; the leathery ape bumped against his legs, and both assumed attitudes expressing respectively, in an Italian and tropical manner, great surprise and abandonment of ideas. A tall man lay stretched on his back beside the spring, with a felt hat over his face. Pietro, the grinder, hesitated. The American, if disturbed and irascible, takes by the collar and kicks with the foot: it has sometimes so happened. The tall man pushed back his hat and sat up, showing a large-boned and sun-browned face, shaven except for a black mustache, clipped close. He looked not irascible, though grave perhaps, at least unsmiling. He said: “It's free quarters, Dago. Come in. Entrez. Have a drink.”

Pietro bowed and gesticulated with amiable violence. “Dry!” he said. “Oh, hot!”

“Just so. That a friend of yours?”--pointing to the ape. “He ain't got a withering sorrow, has he? Take a seat.”

Elbow Lake is shaped as its name implies. If one were to imagine the arm to which the elbow belonged, it would be the arm of a muscular person in the act of smiting a peaceable-looking farmhouse a quarter of a mile to the east. Considering the bouldered front of the hill behind the house, the imaginary blow would be bad for the imaginary knuckles. It is a large house, with brown, unlikely looking hillsides around it, huckleberry knobs and ice-grooved boulders here and there. The land between it and the lake is low, and was swampy forty years ago, before the Rand boys began to drain it, about the time when R. Rand entered the third quarter century of his unpleasant existence.

R. Rand was, I suppose, a miser, if the term does not imply too definite a type. The New England miser is seldom grotesque. He seems more like congealed than distorted humanity. He does not pinch a penny so hard as some of other races are said to do, but he pinches a dollar harder, and is quite as unlovely as any. R. Rand's methods of obtaining dollars to pinch were not altogether known, or not, at least, recorded--which accounts perhaps for the tradition that they were of doubtful uprightness. He held various mortgages about the county, and his farm represented little to him except a means of keeping his two sons inexpensively employed in rooting out stones.

At the respective ages of sixteen and seventeen the two sons, Bob and Tom Rand, discovered the rooting out of stones to be unproductive labor, if nothing grew, or was expected to grow, in their place, except more stones; and the nature of the counsels they took may be accurately imagined. In the autumn of '56 they began ditching the swamp in the direction of the lake, and in the summer of '57 raised a crop of tobacco in the northeast corner, R. Rand, the father, making no comment the while. At the proper time he sold the tobacco to Packard & Co., cigar makers, of the city of Hamilton, still making no comment, probably enjoying some mental titillation. Tom Rand then flung a rock of the size of his fist through one of the front windows, and ran away, also making no comment further than that. The broken window remained broken twenty-five years, Tom returning neither to mend it nor to break another. Bob Rand, by some bargain with his father, continued the ditching and planting of the swamp with some profit to himself.

He evidently classed at least a portion of his father's manner of life among the things that are to be avoided. He acquired a family, and was in the way to bring it up in a reputable way. He further cultivated and bulwarked his reputation. Society, manifesting itself politically, made him sheriff; society, manifesting itself ecclesiastically, made him deacon. Society seldom fails to smile on systematic courtship.

The old man continued to go his way here and there, giving account of himself to no one, contented enough no doubt to have one reputable son who looked after his own children and paid steady rent for, or bought piece by piece, the land he used; and another floating between the Rockies and the Mississippi, whose doings were of no importance in the village of Salem. But I doubt, on the whole, whether he was softened in heart by the deacon's manner or the ordering of the deacon's life to reflect unfilially on his own. Without claiming any great knowledge of the proprieties, he may have thought the conduct of his younger son the more filial of the two. Such was the history of the farmhouse between the years '56 and '82.

One wet April day, the sixth of the month, in the year '82, R. Rand went grimly elsewhere--where, his neighbors had little doubt. With true New England caution we will say that he went to the cemetery, the little grass-grown cemetery of Salem, with its meagre memorials and absurd, pathetic epitaphs. The minister preached a funeral sermon, out of deference to his deacon, in which he said nothing whatever about R. Rand, deceased; and R. Rand, sheriff and deacon, reigned in his stead.

Follow certain documents and one statement of fact:

_Document 1._

_Codicil to the Will of R. Rand._

The Will shall stand as above, to wit, my son, Robert Rand, sole legatee, failing the following condition: namely, I bequeath all my property as above mentioned, with the exception of this house and farm, to my son, Thomas Rand, provided, that within three months of the present date he returns and mends with his own hands the front window, third from the north, previously broken by him.

(Signed) R. Rand.

_Statement of fact._ On the morning of the day following the funeral the “condition” appeared in singularly problematical shape, the broken window, third from the north, having been in fact promptly replaced _by the hands of Deacon Rand himself_. The new pane stared defiantly across the lake, westward.

_Document 2_.

Leadville, Cal., May 15.

Dear Bob: I hear the old man is gone. Saw it in a paper. I reckon maybe I didn't treat him any squarer than he did me. I'll go halves on a bang-up good monument, anyhow. Can we settle affairs without my coming East? How are you, Bob?

Tom.

_Document 3._

Salem, May 29.

Dear Brother: The conditions of our father's will are such, I am compelled to inform you, as to result in leaving the property wholly to me. My duty to a large and growing family gives me no choice but to accept it as it stands, and I trust and have no doubt that you will regard that result with fortitude. I remain yours,

Robert Rand.

_Document 4._

Leadville, June 9.

A. L. Moore.

Dear Sir: I have your name as a lawyer in Wimberton. Think likely there isn't any other. If you did not draw up the will of R. Rand, Salem, can you forward this letter to the man who did? If you did, will you tell me what in thunder it was?

Yours, Thomas Rand.

_Document 5._

Wimberton, June 18.

Thomas Rand.

Dear Sir: I did draw your father's will and enclose copy of the same, with its codicil, which may truly be called remarkable. I think it right to add, that the window in question has been mended by your brother, with evident purpose. Your letter comes opportunely, my efforts to find you having been heretofore unsuccessful. I will add further, that I think the case actionable, to say the least. In case you should see fit to contest, your immediate return is of course necessary. Very truly yours,

A. L. Moore,

Attorney-at-Law.

_Document 6. Despatch._

New York, July 5.

To Robert Rand, Salem.

Will be at Valley Station to-morrow. Meet me or not.

T. Rand.

The deacon was a tall meagre man with a goatee that seemed to accentuate him, to hint by its mere straightness at sharp decision, an unwavering line of rectitude.

He drove westward in his buckboard that hot summer afternoon, the 6th of July. The yellow road was empty before him all the length of the lake, except for the butterflies bobbing around in the sunshine. His lips looked even more secretive than usual: a discouraging man to see, if one were to come to him in a companionable mood desiring comments.

Opposite the spring he drew up, hearing the sound of a hand-organ under the trees. The tall man with a clipped mustache sat up deliberately and looked at him. The leathery ape ceased his funereal capers and also looked at him; then retreated behind the spring. Pietro gazed back and forth between the deacon and the ape, dismissed his professional smile, and followed the ape. The tall man pulled his legs under him and got up.

“I reckon it's Bob,” he said. “It's free quarters, Bob. Entrez. Come in. Have a drink.”

The deacon's embarrassment, if he had any, only showed itself in an extra stiffening of the back.

“The train--I did not suppose--I was going to meet you.”

“Just so. I came by way of Wimberton.”

The younger brother stretched himself again beside the spring and drew his hat over his eyes. The elder stood up straight and not altogether unimpressive in front of it. Pietro in the rear of the spring reflected at this point that he and the ape could conduct a livelier conversation if it were left to them. Pietro could not imagine a conversation in which it was not desirable to be lively. The silence was long and, Pietro thought, not pleasant.

“Bob,” said the apparent sleeper at last, “ever hear of the prodigal son?”

The deacon frowned sharply, but said nothing. The other lifted the edge of his hat brim.

“Never heard of him? Oh--have I Then I won't tell about him. Too long. That elder brother, now, he had good points;--no doubt of it, eh?”

“I confess I don't see your object--”

“Don't? Well, I was just saying he had good points. I suppose he and the prodigal had an average good time together, knockin' around, stubbin' their toes, fishin' maybe, gettin' licked at inconvenient times, hookin' apples most anytime. That sort of thing. Just so. He had something of an argument. Now, the prodigal had no end of fun, and the elder brother stayed at home and chopped wood; understood himself to be cultivating the old man. I take it he didn't have a very soft job of it?”--lifting his hat brim once more.

The deacon said nothing, but observed the hat brim.

“Now I think of it, maybe strenuous sobriety wasn't a thing he naturally liked any more than the prodigal did. I've a notion there was more family likeness between 'em than other folks thought. What might be your idea?”

The deacon still stood rigidly with his hands clasped behind him.

“I would rather,” he said, “you would explain yourself without parable. You received my letter. It referred to our father's will. I have received a telegram which I take to be threatening.”

The other sat up and pulled a large satchel around from behind him.

“You're a man of business, Bob,” he said cheerfully. “I like you, Bob. That's so. That will--I've got it in my pocket. Now, Bob, I take it you've got some cards, else you're putting up a creditable bluff. I play this here Will, Codicil attached. You play,--window already mended; time expired at twelve o'clock to-night. Good cards, Bob--first-rate. I play here”--opening the satchel--“two panes of glass--allowin' for accidents--putty, et cetera, proposing to bust that window again. Good cards, Bob. How are you coming on?”

The deacon's sallow cheeks flushed and his eyes glittered. Something came into his face which suggested the family likeness. He drew a paper from his inner coat pocket, bent forward stiffly and laid it on the grass.

“Sheriff's warrant,” he said, “for--hem--covering possible trespassing on my premises; good for twenty-four hours' detention--hem.”

“Good,” said his brother briskly. “I admire you, Bob. I'll be blessed if I don't. I play again.” He drew a revolver and placed it on top of the glass. “Six-shooter. Good for two hours' stand-off.”

“Hem,” said the deacon. “Warrant will be enlarged to cover the carrying of concealed weapons. Being myself the sheriff of this town, it is--hem--permissible for me.” He placed a revolver on top of the warrant.

“Bob,” said his brother, in huge delight, “I'm proud of you. But--I judge you ain't on to the practical drop. _Stand back there!_” The deacon looked into the muzzle of the steady revolver covering him, and retreated a step, breathing hard. Tom Rand sprang to his feet, and the two faced each other, the deacon looking as dangerous a man as the Westerner.

Suddenly, the wheezy hand-organ beyond the spring began, seemingly trying to play two tunes at once, with Pietro turning the crank as desperately as if the muzzle of the revolver were pointed at him.

“Hi, you monk! Dance!” cried Pietro; and the leathery ape footed it solemnly. The perspiration poured down Pietro's face. Over the faces of the two stern men fronting each other a smile came and broadened slowly, first over the younger's, then over the deacon's.

The deacon's smile died out first. He sat down on a rock, hid his face and groaned.

“I'm an evil-minded man,” he said; “I'm beaten.”

The other cocked his head on one side and listened. “Know what that tune is, Bob? I don't.”

He sat down in the old place again, took up the panes of glass and the copy of the will, hesitated, and put them down.

“I don't reckon you're beaten, Bob. You ain't got to the end of your hand yet. Got any children, Bob? Yes; said you had.”

“Five.”

“Call it a draw, Bob; I'll go you halves, counting in the monument.”

But the deacon only muttered to himself: “I'm an evil-minded man.”

Tom Rand meditatively wrapped the two documents around the revolvers.

“Here, Dago, you drop 'em in the spring!” which Pietro did, perspiring freely. “Shake all that. Come along.”

The two walked slowly toward the yellow road. Pietro raised his voice despairingly. “No cent! Not a nicka!”

“That's so,” said Tom, pausing. “Five, by thunder! Come along, Dago. It's free quarters. Entrez. Take a seat.”

The breeze was blowing up over Elbow Lake, and the butterflies bobbed about in the sunshine, as they drove along the yellow road. Pietro sat at the back of the buck-board, the leathery ape on his knee and a smile on his face, broad, non-professional, and consisting largely of front teeth.

CONLON

CONLON, the strong, lay sick unto death with fever. The Water Commissioners sent champagne to express their sympathy. It was an unforced impulse of feeling.

But Conlon knew nothing of it. His lips were white, his cheeks sunken; his eyes glared and wandered; he muttered, and clutched with his big fingers at nothing visible.

The doctor worked all day to force a perspiration. At six o'clock he said: “I'm done. Send for the priest.”

When Kelly and Simon Harding came, Father Ryan and the doctor were going down the steps.

“'Tis a solemn duty ye have, Kelly,” said the priest, “to watch the last moments of a dying man, now made ready for his end.”

“Ah, not Conlon! He'll not give up, not him,” cried Kelly, “the shtrong man wid the will in him!”

“An' what's the sthrength of man in the hands of his Creathor?” said the priest, turning to Harding, oratorically.

“I don' know,” said Harding, calmly. “Do you?”

“'Tis naught!”

Kelly murmured submissively.

“Kind of monarchical institution, ain't it, what Conlon's run up against?” Harding remarked. “Give him a fair show in a caucus, an' he'd win, sure.”

“He'll die if he don't sweat,” said the doctor, wiping his forehead. “It's hot enough.” Conlon lay muttering and glaring at the ceiling. The big knuckles of his hands stood out like rope-knots. His wife nodded to Kelly and Harding, and went out. She was a good-looking woman, large, massive, muscular. Kelly looked after her, rubbing his short nose and blinking his watery eyes. He was small, with stooping shoulders, affectionate eyes, wavering knees. He had followed Conlon, the strong, and served him many years. Admiration of Conlon was a strenuous business in which to be engaged.

“Ah!” he said, “his wife ten year, an' me his inchimate friend.”

It was ten by the clock. The subsiding noise of the city came up over housetops and vacant lots. The windows of the sickroom looked off the verge of a bluff; one saw the lights of the little city below, the lights of the stars above, and the hot black night between.

Kelly and Harding sat down by a window, facing each other. The lamplight was dim. A screen shaded it from the bed, where Conlon muttered and cried out faintly, intermittently, as though in conversation with some one who was present only to himself. His voice was like the ghost or shadow of a voice, not a whisper, but strained of all resonance. One might fancy him standing on the bank of the deadly river and talking across to some one beyond the fog, and fancy that the voices would so creep through the fog stealthily, not leaping distances like earthly sounds, but struggling slowly through nameless obstruction.

Kelly rubbed his hands before the fire.

“I was his inchimate friend.”

Harding said: “Are you going to talk like a blanked idiot all night, or leave off maybe about twelve?”

“I know ye for a hard man, too, Simmy,” said Kelly, pathetically; “an' 'tis the nathur of men, for an Irishman is betther for blow-in' off his shteam, be it the wrath or the sorrow of him, an' the Yankee is betther for bottlin' it up.”

“Uses it for driving his engine mostly.”

“So. But Conlon--”

“Conlon,” said Harding slowly, “that's so. He had steam to drive with, and steam to blow with, and plenty left over to toot his whistle and scald his fingers and ache in his belly. Expanding that there figure, he carried suction after him like the 1:40 express, he did.”

“'Tis thrue.” Kelly leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I mind me when I first saw him I hadn't seen him before, unless so be when he was puttin' the wather-main through the sand-hills up the river an' bossin' a gang o' men with a fog-horn voice till they didn't own their souls, an' they didn't have any, what's more, the dirty Polocks. But he come into me shop one day, an' did I want the job o' plumbin' the court-house?

“'Have ye the court-house in your pocket?' says I, jokin'.

“'I have,' says he, onexpected, 'an' any plumbin' that's done for the court-house is done in the prisint risidence of the same.'

“An' I looks up, an' 'O me God!' I says to meself, ''tis a man!' wid the black eyebrows of him, an' the shoulders an' the legs of him. An' he took me into the shwale of his wake from that day to this. But I niver thought to see him die.”

“That's so. You been his heeler straight through. I don't know but I like your saying so. But I don't see the how. Why, look here; when I bid for the old water contract he comes and offers to sell it to me, sort of personal asset. I don't know how. By the unbroke faces of the other Water Commissioners he didn't use his pile-driving fist to persuade 'em, and what I paid him was no more'n comfortable for himself. How'd he fetch it? How'd he do those things? Why, look here, Kelly, ain't he bullied you? Ain't you done dirty jobs for him, and small thanks?”

“I have that.”

Kelly's hands trembled. He was bowed down and thoughtful, but not angry. “Suppose I ask you what for?”

“Suppose ye do. Suppose I don' know. Maybe he was born to be king over me. Maybe he wasn't. But I know he was a mastherful man, an' he's dyin' here, an' me blood's sour an' me bones sad wid thinkin' of it. Don' throuble me, Simmy.”

Harding leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, where the lamp made a nebulous circle of light.

“Why, that's so,” he said at last, in conclusion of some unmentioned train of thought. “Why, I got a pup at home, and his affection ain't measured by the bones he's had, nor the licks he's had, not either of 'em.”

Kelly was deep in a reverie.

“Nor it ain't measured by my virtues. Look here, now; I don' see what his measure is.”

“Hey?” Kelly roused himself.

“Oh, I was just thinking.”

Harding thought he had known other men who had had in some degree a magnetic power that seemed to consist in mere stormy energy of initiative. They were like strong drink to weaker men. It was more physical than mental. Conlon was to Kelly a stimulant, then an appetite. And Conlon was a bad lot. Fellows that had heeled for him were mostly either wrecked or dead now. Why, there was a chap named Patterson that used to be decent till he struck Conlon, when he went pretty low; and Nora Reimer drowned herself on account of Patterson, when he got himself shot in a row at some shanty up the railroad. The last had seemed a good enough riddance. But Nora went off her head and jumped in the new reservoir. Harding remembered it the more from being one of the Water Company. They had had to empty the reservoir, which was expensive. And there were others. A black, blustering sort of beast, Conlon. He had more steam than was natural. Harding wondered vaguely at Kelly, who was spelling out the doctor's directions from a piece of paper.

“A powdher an' five dhrops from the short bottle. 'Tis no tin-course dinner wid the champagne an' entries he's givin' Conlon the night. Hey? A powdher an' five dhrops from the short bottle.”

Harding's mind wandered on among memories of the little city below, an intricate, irregular history, full of incidents, stories that were never finished or dribbled off anywhere, black spots that he knew of in white lives, white spots in dark lives. He did not happen to know any white spots on Conlon.

“Course if a man ain't in politics for his health he ain't in it for the health of the community, either, and that's all right. And if he opens the morning by clumping Mrs. Conlon on the head, why, she clumps him back more or less, and that's all right.” Then, if he went down-town and lied here and there ingeniously in the way of business, and came home at night pretty drunk, but no more than was popular with his constituency, why, Conlon's life was some cluttered, but never dull. Still, Harding's own ways being quieter and less cluttered, he felt that if Conlon were going off naturally now, it was not, on the whole, a bad idea. It would conduce to quietness. It would perhaps be a pity if anything interfered.

The clock in a distant steeple struck twelve, a dull, unechoing sound.

“Simmy,” said Kelly, pointing with his thumb, “what do he be sayin', talkin'--talkin' like one end of a tiliphone?”

They both turned toward the bed and listened.

“Telephone! Likely there's a party at the other end, then. Where's the other end?”

“I don' know,” whispered Kelly. “But I have this in me head, for ye know, when the priest has done his last, 'tis sure he's dhropped his man at the front door of wherever he's goin', wid a letther of inthroduction in his hatband. An' while the man was waitin' for the same to be read an' him certified a thrue corpse, if he had a kettleful of boilin' impatience in himself like Tom Conlon, wouldn't he be passin' the time o' day through the keyhole wid his friends be-yant?”

“'Tain't a telephone, then? It's a keyhole, hey?”

“Tiliphone or keyhole, he'd be talkin' through it, Conlon would, do ye mind?”

Harding looked with some interest. Conlon muttered, and stopped, and muttered again. Harding rose and walked to the bed. Kelly followed tremulously.

“Listen, will ye?” said Kelly, suddenly leaning down.

“I don' know,” said Harding, with an instinct of hesitation. “I don' know as it's a square game. Maybe he's talkin' of things that ain't healthy to mention. Maybe he's plugged somebody some time, or broke a bank--ain't any more'n likely. What of it?”

“Listen, will ye?”

“Don' squat on a man when he's down, Kelly.”

“'Sh!”

“_Hold Tom's hand. Wait for Tom_,” babbled the ghostly voice, a thin, distant sound.

“What'd he say? What'd he say?” Kelly was white and trembling.

Harding stood up and rubbed his chin reflectively. He did not seem to himself to make it out. He brought a chair, sat down, and leaned close to Conlon to study the matter.

“_What's the heart-scald, mother?_” babbled Conlon. “_Where'd ye get it from? Me! Wirra!_”

“'Tis spheakin' to ghosteses he is, Simmy, ye take me worrd.”

“Come off! He's harking back when he was a kid.”

Kelly shook his head solemnly.

“He's spheakin' to ghosteses.”

“_What's that, mother? Arra! I'm sick, mother. What for? I don' see. Where'm I goin'?_'

“You got me,” muttered Harding. “I don' know.”

“_Tom'll be good. It's main dark. Hold Tom's hand_.”

Kelly was on his knees, saying prayers at terrific speed.

“Hear to him!” he stopped to whisper. “Ghosteses! Ora pro nobis--”

“_Tom ain't afraid. Naw, he ain't afraid._”

Harding went back to his window. The air was heavy and motionless, the stars a little dim. He could see the dark line of the river with an occasional glint upon it, and the outline of the hills beyond.

The little city had drawn a robe of innocent obscurity over it. Only a malicious sparkle gleamed here and there. He thought he knew that city inside and out, from end to end. He had lived in it, dealt with it, loved it, cheated it, helped to build it, shared its fortunes. Who knew it better than he? But every now and then it surprised with some hidden detail or some impulse of civic emotion. And Kelly and Conlon, surely he knew them, as men may know men. But he never had thought to see Conlon as to-night. It was odd. But there was some fact in the social constitution, in human nature, at the basis of all the outward oddities of each.

“Maybe when a man's gettin' down to his reckonin' it's needful to show up what he's got at the bottom. Then he begins to peel off layers of himself like an onion, and 'less there ain't anything to him but layers, by and by he comes to something that resembles a sort of aboriginal boy, which is mostly askin' questions and bein' surprised.”

Maybe there was more boyishness in Conlon than in most men. Come to think of it, there was. Conlon's leadership was ever of the maybe-you-think-I-can't-lick-you order; and men followed him, admitting that he could, in admiration and simplicity. You might see the same thing in the public-school yard. Maybe that was the reason. The sins of Conlon were not sophisticated.

The low, irregular murmur from the bed, the heavy heat of the night, made Harding drowsy. Kelly repeating the formula of his prayers, a kind of incantation against ghosts, Conlon with his gaunt face in the shadow and his big hands on the sheet clutching at nothing visible, both faded away, and Harding fell asleep.

He woke with a start. Kelly was dancing about the bed idiotically.

“He's shweatin'!” he gabbled. “He's shweatin'! He'll be well--Conlon.”

It made Harding think of the “pup,” and how he would dance about him, when he went home, in the crude expression of joy. Conlon's face was damp. He muttered no more. They piled the blankets on him till the perspiration stood out in drops. Conlon breathed softly and slept. Kelly babbled gently, “Conlon! Conlon!”

Harding went back to the window and rubbed his eyes sleepily.

“Kind of too bad, after all that trouble to get him peeled.”

The morning was breaking, solemn, noiseless, with lifted banners and wide pageantries, over river and city.

Harding yawned.

“It's one on Father Ryan, anyway. That's a good thing. Blamed old windbag!”

Kelly murmured ecstatically, “Conlon will get well--Conlon!”

ST CATHERINE'S

ST. CATHERINE'S was the life work of an old priest, who is remembered now and presently will be forgotten. There are gargoyles over the entrance aside, with their mouths open to express astonishment. They spout rain water at times, but you need not get under them; and there are towers, and buttresses, a great clock, a gilded cross, and roofs that go dimly heavenward.

St. Catherine's is new. The neighborhood squats around it in different pathetic attitudes. Opposite is the saloon of the wooden-legged man; then the three groceries whose cabbages all look unpleasant; the parochial school with the green lattice; and all those little wooden houses--where lives, for instance, the dressmaker who funnily calls herself “Modiste.” Beyond the street the land drops down to the freight yards.

But Father Connell died about the time they finished the east oriel, and Father Harra reigned over the house of the old man's dreams--a red-faced man, a high feeder, who looked as new as the church and said the virtues of Father Connell were reducing his flesh. That would seem to be no harm; but Father Harra meant it humorously. Father Connell had stumped about too much among the workmen in the cold and wet, else there had been no need of his dying at eighty-eight. His tall black hat became a relic that hung in the tiring room, and he cackled no more in his thin voice the noble Latin of the service. Peace to his soul! The last order he wrote related to the position of the Christ figure and the inscription, “Come unto me, weary and heavy-laden: I will give you rest.” But the figure was not in place till the mid-December following.

And it was the day before Christmas that Father Harra had a fine service, with his boy choir and all; and Chubby Locke sang a solo, “Angels ever bright and fair,” that was all dripping with tears, so to speak. Chubby Locke was an imp too. All around the altar the candles were lighted, and there hung a cluster of gas jets over the head of the Christ figure on the edge of the south transept. So fine it was that Father Harra came out of his room into the aisle (when the people were gone, saying how fine it was, and the sexton was putting out the gas here and there), to walk up and down and think about it, especially how he should keep up with the virtues of Father Connell. Duskier and duskier it grew, as the candles went out cluster by cluster till only those in the south transept were left; and Dennis, coming there, stopped and grunted.

“What!” said Father Harra.

“It's asleep he is,” said the sexton. “It's a b'y, yer riverence.”

“Why, so it is! He went to sleep during the service. H'm--well--they often do that, Dennis.”

“Anyways he don't belong here,” said Dennis.

“Think so? I don't know about that. Wait a bit. I don't know about that Dennis.”

The boy lay curled up on the seat--a newsboy, by the papers that had slipped from his arms. But he did not look businesslike, and he did not suggest the advantages of being poor in America. One does not become a capitalist or president by going to church and to sleep in the best of business hours, from four to six, when the streets are stirring with men on their way to dinners, cigars and evening papers. The steps of St. Catherine's are not a bad place to sell papers after Vespers, and one might as well go in, to be sure, and be warm while the service lasts; only, as I said, if one falls asleep, one does not become a capitalist or president immediately. Father Harra considered, and Dennis waited respectfully.

“It's making plans I am against your natural rest, Dennis. I'm that inconsiderate of your feelings to think of keeping St. Catherine's open this night. And why? Look ye, Dennis. St. Catherine's is getting itself consecrated these days, being new, and of course--But I tell ye, Dennis, it's a straight church doctrine that the blessings of the poor are a good assistance to the holy wather.”

“An' me wid children of me own to be missin' their father this Christmas Eve!” began Dennis indignantly.

“Who wouldn't mind, the little villains, if their father had another dollar of Christmas morning to buy 'em presents.”

“Ah, well,” said the sexton, “yer riverence is that persuadin'.”

“It's plain enough for ye to see yourself, Dennis, though thick-headed somewhat. There you are: 'Come unto me, weary and heavy-laden;' and here he is. Plain enough. And who are the weary and heavy-laden in this city?”

“Yer riverence will be meanin' everybody,” chuckled Dennis.

“Think so? Rich and poor and all? Stuff! I don't believe it. Not to-night. It'll be the outcasts, I'm thinking, Dennis. Come on.”

“An' the b'y, yer riverence?”

“The what? Oh, why, yes, yes. He's all right. I don't see anything the matter with him. He's come.”

It was better weather to go with the wind than against it, for the snow drove in gritty particles, and the sidewalks made themselves disagreeable and apt to slip out from under a person. Little spurts of snow danced up St. Catherine's roofs and went off the ridgepoles in puffs. It ought to snow on Christmas Eve; but it rightly should snow with better manners and not be so cold. The groceries closed early. Freiburger, the saloon man, looked over the curtains of his window.

“I don't know vat for Fater Harra tack up dings dis time by his kirch door, 'Come--come in here.' Himmel! der Irishman!”

Father Harra turned in to his supper, and thought how he would trouble Father Conner's reputation for enterprise and what a fine bit of constructive ability himself was possessed of.

The great central door of St. Catherine's stood open, so that the drift blew in and piled in windrows on the cold floor of the vestibule. The tall front of the church went up into the darkness, pointing to no visible stars; but over the doors two gas jets flickered across the big sign they use for fairs at the parochial school. “Come in here.” The vestibule was dark, barring another gas jet over a side door, with another sign, “Come in here,” and within the great church was dark as well, except for a cluster over the Christ figure. That was all; but Father Harra thought it a neat symbol, looking toward those who go from meagre light to light through the darkness.

Little noises were in the church all night far up in the pitch darkness of rafter and buttress, as if people were whispering and crying softly to one another. Now and again, too, the swing door would open and remain so for a moment, suspicious, hesitating. But what they did, or who they were that opened it, could hardly be told in the dusk and distance. Dennis went to sleep in a chair by the chancel rail, and did not care what they did or who they were, granted they kept away from the chancel.

How the wind blew!--and the snow tapped impatiently at stained windows with a multitude of little fingers. But if the noises among the rafters were not merely echoes of the crying and calling wind without, if any presences moved and whispered there, and looked down on flat floor and straight lines of pews, they must have seen the Christ figure, with welcoming hands, dominant by reason of the light about it; and, just on the edge of the circle of light, shapeless things stretched on cushions of pews, and motionless or stirring uneasily. Something now came dimly up the aisle from the swing door, stopped at a pew, and hesitated.

“Git out!” growled a hoarse voice. “Dis my bunk.”

The intruder gave a nervous giggle. “Begawd!” muttered the hoarse voice. “It's a lady!”

Another voice said something angrily. “Well,” said the first, “it ain't behavin' nice to come into me boodwer.”

The owner of the giggle had slipped away and disappeared in a distant pew. In another pew to the right of the aisle a smaller shadow whispered to another:

“Jimmy, that's a statoo up there.”

“Who?”

“That. I bet 'e's a king.”

“Aw, no 'e ain't. Kings has crowns an' wallups folks.”

“Gorry! What for?”

“I don' know.”

The other sighed plaintively. “I thought 'e might be a king.”

The rest were mainly silent. Some one had a bad cough. Once a sleeper rolled from the seat and fell heavily to the floor. There was an oath or two, a smothered laugh, and the distant owner of the giggle used it nervously. The last was an uncanny sound. The wakened sleeper objected to it. He said he would “like to get hold of her,” and then lay down cautiously on his cushion.

Architects have found that their art is cunning to play tricks with them; whence come whispering galleries, comers of echoes, roofs that crush the voice of the speaker, and roofs that enlarge it. Father Connell gave no orders to shape the roofs of St. Catherine's, that on stormy nights so many odd noises might congregate there, whispering, calling, murmuring, now over the chancel, now the organ, now far up in the secret high places of the roof, now seeming to gather in confidence above the Christ figure and the circle of sleepers; or, if one vaguely imagined some inquisitively errant beings moving overhead, it would seem that newcomers constantly entered, to whom it had all to be explained.

But against that eager motion in the darkness above the Christ figure below was bright in his long garment, and quiet and secure. The cluster of gas jets over his head made light but a little distance around, then softened the dusk for another distance, and beyond seemed not to touch the darkness at all. The dusk was a debatable space. The sleepers all lay in the debatable space. They may have sought it by instinct; but the more one looked at them the more they seemed like dull, half-animate things, over whom the light and the darkness made their own compromises and the people up in the roof their own comments.

The clock in the steeple struck the hours; in the church the tremble was felt more than the sound was heard. The chimes each hour started their message, “Good will and peace;” but the wind went after it and howled it down, and the snow did not cease its petulance at the windows.

*****

The clock in the steeple struck five. The man with the hoarse voice sat up, leaned over the back of the seat and touched his neighbor, who rose noiselessly, a huge fat man and unkempt.

“Time to slope,” whispered the first, motioning toward the chancel.

The other followed his motion.

“What's up there?”

“You're ignorance, you are. That's where they gives the show. There's pickin's there.”

The two slipped out and stole up the aisle with a peculiar noiseless tread. Even Fat Bill's step could not be heard a rod away. The aisle entered the circle of light before the Christ figure; but the two thieves glided through without haste and without looking up. The smaller, in front, drew up at the end of the aisle, and Fat Bill ran into him. Dennis sat in his chair against the chancel rail, asleep.

“Get onto his whiskers, Bill. Mebbe you'll have to stuff them whiskers down his throat.”

There was a nervous giggle behind them. Fat Bill shot into a pew, dragging his comrade after him, and crouched down. “It ain't no use,” he whispered, shaking the other angrily. “Church business is bad luck. I alius said so. What's for them blemed noises all night? How'd come they stick that thing up there with the gas over it? What for'd they leave the doors open, an' tell ye to come in, an' keep their damn devils gigglin' around? 'Taint straight I won't stand it.”

“It's only a woman, Bill,” said the other patiently.

He rose on his knees and looked over the back of the seat. “'Tain't straight. I won't stand it.”

“We won't fight, Bill. We'll get out, if you say so.”

The owner of the giggle was sitting up, as they glided back, Fat Bill leading.

“I'll smash yer face,” the smaller man said to her.

Bill turned and grabbed his collar.

“You come along.”

The woman stared stupidly after, till the swing door closed behind them. Then she put on her hat, decorated with too many disorderly flowers. Most of the sleepers were wakened. The wind outside had died in the night, and the church was quite still. A man in a dress suit and overcoat sat up in a pew beneath a window, and stared about him. His silk hat lay on the floor. He leaned over the back of the seat and spoke to his neighbor, a tramp in checked trousers.

“How'd I g-get here?” he asked thickly.

“Don' know, pardner,” said the tramp cheerfully. “Floated in, same as me?” He caught sight of the white tie and shirt front. “Maybe you'd give a cove a shiner to steady ye out They don't give breakfasts with lodgin's here.”

The woman with the giggle and the broken-down flowers on her hat went out next; then a tall, thin man with a beard and a cough; the newsboy with his papers shuffled after, his shoes being too large; then a lame man--something seemed the matter with his hip; and a decent-looking woman, who wore a faded shawl over her head and kept it drawn across her face--she seemed ashamed to be there, as if it did not appear to her a respectable place; last, two boys, one of them small, but rather stunted than very young. He said:

“'E ain't a king, is 'e, Jimmy? You don' know who 'e is, do you, Jimmy?”

“Naw.”

“Say, Jimmy, it was warm, warn't it?”

*****

Dennis came down the aisle, put out the gas, and began to brush the cushions. The clock struck a quarter of six, and Father Harra came in.

“Christmas, Dennis, Christmas! H'm--anybody been here? What did they think of it?”

Dennis rubbed his nose sheepishly.

“They wint to shleep, sor, an'--an' thin they wint out.”

Father Harra looked up at the Christ figure and stroked his red chin.

“I fancied they might see the point,” he said slowly. “Well, well, I hope they were warm.”

The colored lights from the east oriel fell over the Christ figure and gave it a cheerful look; and from other windows blue and yellow and magical deep-sea tints floated in the air, as if those who had whispered unseen in the darkness were now wandering about, silent but curiously visible.

“Yer riverince,” said Dennis, “will not be forgettin' me dollar.”

THE SPIRAL STONE

THE graveyard on the brow of the hill was white with snow. The marbles were white, the evergreens black. One tall spiral stone stood painfully near the centre. The little brown church outside the gates turned its face in the more comfortable direction of the village.

Only three were out among the graves: “Ambrose Chillingworth, ætat 30, 1675;”

“Margaret Vane, ætat 19, 1839;” and “Thy Little One, O God, ætat 2,” from the Mercer Lot. It is called the “Mercer Lot,” but the Mercers are all dead or gone from the village.

The Little One trotted around busily, putting his tiny finger in the letterings and patting the faces of the cherubs. The other two sat on the base of the spiral, which twisted in the moonlight over them.

“I wonder why it is?” Margaret said. “Most of them never come out at all. We and the Little One come out so often. You were wise and learned. I knew so little. Will you tell me?”

“Learning is not wisdom,” Ambrose answered. “But of this matter it was said that our containment in the grave depended on the spirit in which we departed. I made certain researches. It appeared by common report that only those came out whom desperate sin tormented, or labors incomplete and great desire at the point of death made restless. I had doubts the matter were more subtle, the reasons of it reaching out distantly.” He sighed faintly, following with his eyes, tomb by tomb, the broad white path that dropped down the hillside to the church. “I desired greatly to live.”

“I, too. Is it because we desired it so much, then? But the Little One”---

“I do not know,” he said.