The Signal Tower and Other Mysteries
Date: 1905-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Mystery; Macbre; Romance
Description: , but they are interesting for fans of this writer. The final three selections are non-genre, but might be labeled as “mysteries of the heart.
Publisher: MobileRead.com
Rights: Public domain where copyright is “Life+80” or less, and in the USA.

THE SIGNAL TOWER

AND OTHER MYSTERIES

BY
WADSWORTH CAMP
(1879–1936)

MobileRead Edition
2022

Uncollected during the writer’s lifetime, but some have appeared in various anthologies. My own compilation, obtained from various magazine archives.

In the titular story, The Signal Tower, Tolliver has to teach his colleague and former lodger Joe a lesson when he begins to harass his wife and young son. This story was selected for The Best American Short Stories of 1920 (annual anthology published by Small, Maynard & Company); and is probably Camp’s most frequently anthologized story.

The other works in this small collection perhaps do not quite come up the the level of mystery and the macabre found in The Signal Tower and The Draw-Keeper, but they are interesting for fans of this writer. The final three selections are non-genre, but might be labeled as “mysteries of the heart.

Charles Wadsworth Camp (18 October, 1879 – 30 October, 1936), American author (pen name: Wadsworth Camp), is best remembered for his mysteries and potboilers. Some of his works were adapted into films. He was the father of Madeleine L’Engle.

The contents of this collection, by Charles Wadsworth Camp (1879-1936), were first published 1906 ~ 1921. This ebook is in the public domain where copyright is “Life+80” or less, and in the USA.

CONTENTS:

- The M.K. Curse
- The Draw-Keeper
- The Signal Tower
- The Gate
- The Straight Path
- Real People

THE M.K. CURSE

For ten miles in either direction, signal tower M.K. is the only human sign visible from the railroad. The tower had borne an ugly reputation among dispatchers in that part of Georgia long before the perplexing events which nearly led to its abandonment. While its lonely situation might seem enough to account for this stain, a far better cause was to be found at the curve a hundred yards to the north, where a twisted, charred and suggestive mass of wreckage lurked beneath the rank growth and the waters of a swamp.

The sturdy young man who wanted to be a dispatcher sat on a bench in the outer office at division headquarters. A clerk had taken his name, and within a few minutes he would know his fate. His suspense was somewhat mitigated by the sight of a badly battered individual. who, staring at him moodily, leaned against a nearby railing. This young man’s head was swathed in bandages. He carried his arm in a sling. His free hand, when he raised it to his face. trembled. He wandered over to the applicant on unsteady legs.

“Hunting a job, aren’t you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Dispatcher?”

The applicant nodded.

“It’s a dog’s life,” the other declared.

The applicant looked him over quizzically. “I reckon you’ve found it that way. Been in a wreck?”

“That depends. If so, I guess there’ll be a heap more in the same wreck before they get through with it.”

This was Greek to the applicant, who anyway was far more concerned with his own prospects.

“Say, have I got a chance?” he asked.

“I don’t guess they’re using electric headlights to find new men,” the other said. He added darkly: “But you’re a husky lad, and you don’t look scary. They might put you up against it. wouldn’t it be like them! By gad!”

He stopped short, turning away as though fearful he had said too much.

“Hold on!” the applicant called eagerly.

But the other hurried off among the desks, where he spoke to several men, who looked toward the bench curiously.

Meantime the division superintendent and the chief dispatcher were settling the applicant’s case. The superintendent was irritable and worried. So was the chief dispatcher. The clerk had interrupted a testy council.

“Can’t be bothered with new men this morning,” the superintendent snapped.

“He’s a great big, likely-looking young fellow,” the clerk ventured.

“No matter. We’re wasting diamonds in a coal-bin now,” the superintendent growled.

“That’s the point,” the chief dispatcher said. “we can’t afford to keep Boyd at M.K., and the rest balk at going. It’s a good place to break in a new man. Nothing close ever comes off there.”

The superintendent stared at the chief dispatcher pityingly.

“The most expensive wreck in our history came off at M.K. And we’re not done with it yet — superstitious cattle!”

“That situation wouldn’t bob up again in a thousand years. If he knows anything he can handle that one siding. we could safeguard practically all of his orders from both sides. He’ll probably be anxious to grab any job that offers, and if he’s big enough and nervy enough to take care of a tramp or two and smash this M.K. curse we ought to welcome him with a brass band. Think it over.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

The superintendent turned to the clerk.

“Send him in, Tom. And for heaven’s sake try to keep him away from all this wild talk.”

As the applicant entered the two men approvingly viewed his height, his breadth of shoulder and his closely knit frame.

“You want to be a dispatcher,” the superintendent began.

“Yes, sir.”

“What experience?”

“I’m looking for that.”

“where did you learn to handle a key?”

“At home. I turned against farming a few years after I left school, and I found I had a knack for this. I took a thorough correspondence course. All I want’s a chance.”

“What’s your name?”

“William Maps.”

“How old?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Afraid of ghosts?”

The question popped out as though it were part of a set form. Maps smiled.

“I’ve got to meet one yet. But I’ve never been afraid of anything I could see or get my hands on.”

“Then you’re not.” the superintendent said with what might have passed for a smile. “No such things. But some of our towers are a little lonely. I thought I’d better tell you that. There are tramps around. you know.”

“I don’t mind being lonely, if I have work and a chance to climb.”

“Swing this job and I’ll see you have plenty of chance to climb,” the superintendent answered. “George,” he said to the chief dispatcher. “try him out. If he can receive and send reasonably well, assign him to M.K.”

“Thank you. sir,” Maps said. “I’ll do my best. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed in me.” “We’ll see about that,” the superintendent replied dryly. “Go with Mr. Masters now.”

When Maps left the building after his successful trial he noticed the bandaged youth loafing at the corner. After he had walked some distance down the street , he glanced back. The bandaged youth was following with an air of indecision. Maps stopped and waited for him to come up.

“Going my way?” he asked. “Come along. Maybe you can give me some pointers. My name’s Maps.”

“Mine’s Morton. I heard they’d taken you on. Sending you to M.K., eh?”

Maps nodded.

“I’ve just come from there,” Morton said, significantly touching his bandage.

“Must be a right lively place,” Maps answered with a smile.

“Lively! The cemetery’s a riot compared to it. Ten miles of nothing be~ tween here and there — same the other side. Nobody to talk to; nothing to see except the swamp where that unholy wreck lies. Oh, brethren! Lively! When a passenger streaks by at night, all lighted up and filled with living people, you either rave or sit down and cry for yourself.”

“They told me it was lonely,” Maps said.

“They did! They’re a kind lot. Maybe they told you something else?”

“Only that I was to go down on the afternoon train and send Boyd back.”

“I thought so! Stacking you up against that game without a word of warning. But it’s like ’em. They called me a boob and put me on half pay. And how did they treat Red Simmons the time of the wreck?”

“What wreck?”

“Mean to say you never heard of our smash at M.K.?”

“I haven’t heard of any wreck on this road lately. Seems to me I remember something about one six or seven years ago.”

“That’s it — six years ago. Killed twenty-four people. You’ll remember it a darned sight better before you get through with M.K.”

Maps stopped and faced Morton.

“See here! What are you talking about?”

“About a lot. The point is, will you keep me out of it if I put you wise to what they’ve let you in for?”

“I’m not a squealer, if that’s what you mean.” Maps answered. “Go ahead and tell me what your wreck’s got to do with me and M.K.”

Morton drew him down a side street.

“Maybe you’ve forgotten how that wreck came off,” he said.

“Yes. I was at school.”

“Well, we don’t forget it so easily. It was one of those things that knocks the routine into smithereens and sends everybody a mile in the air. The president happened to be here, and he got word one night that his wife was very sick in Florida. The president, mind you! The whole works could go to blazes for the president. They threw a special together and shot it out on a lightning schedule. The up passenger had just pulled out of Dawson, ten miles below M.K. Bob Trumbull was driving her with a balky engine that had lost time all the way up. When they found they couldn’t catch Bob at Dawson they flashed Red Simmons to flag both trains and get them by each other at M.K. Ordinarily there would have been time and to spare to catch Bob. But his engine began to behave as soon as he left Dawson, and he opened her wide to make up what he could on that stretch. That’s all. He got by M.K., and the two trains crashed at top speed on the curve just this side of the tower. A nice mess to fix the blame for when you couldn’t touch the president, wasn’t it? If Bob had been killed they might have put it on him. because Red swore that while they cut his orders too fine he thought he had his signals set in time if Bob had had his eyes open. But there was nothing to it. They made Red the goat, and he went to jail. And they shifted Bob to the freights. They’re a fair bunch! Look at me — half pay! And look at yourself — sending you to that ghastly hole ignorant as an engine wiper! Serve ’em right if they can’t get anybody to handle their business there.”

“I want to know what all this has got to do with me,” Maps said.

Morton’s laugh was ugly.

“You’re going to live with that wreck, aren’t you?”

“Maybe I see what you’re driving at,” Maps said. “Is that why they asked me if I was afraid of ghosts?”

“They think that’s a joke,” Morton answered, “but don’t let ’em fool you. M.K.’s never been right since that wreck. Ask any of the boys who’ve been there. Most of them managed to get transferred. When they wouldn’t shift Torrey, who was there before me, he quit the road cold. That’s how bad it is. It doesn’t make any difference whether you see things or not. There’s a feel about the place that isn’t right. I couldn’t afford to lose my job, so I stuck it out. But I knew something was bound to happen — and it did — a week ago tonight. I had seen that the windows upstairs were tight and that the door was locked as usual. Then I went to sleep. First thing I knew I was awake all right, but there was something over my eyes. I couldn’t see. There was something heavy on my chest. I couldn’t move. Whatever had me was stronger than ten men.”

“‘Whatever’?” Maps asked.

“That’s what I said,” Morton answered angrily. “Don’t you try to spring that tramp business, too. I don’t say what it was, but it wasn’t tramps. There I was, trussed up with the coil of heavy rope that’s kept under the bed, and I didn’t hear a sound. I didn’t hear anybody leave. And I tell you the windows were shut and the door was locked. That was the way I’d left them and that, was the way I found them when I got loose. It’s a shame they didn’t tell you that. I guess they didn’t want to worry you.”

“That’s certainly queer,” Maps said. “How did you get loose?”

“While I lay there, scared stiff,” Morton answered, “I heard the instrument snapping upstairs. I was to hold thirty-six, the up freight, on the siding for the down freight, which was on time to the minute. If I failed to hold thirty-six there would probably be another head-on between here and M.K. I sweat blood for a while. But it was a big rope, so I managed to get my hands loose. Then I tugged at the knot around my legs, knowing thirty-six was getting nearer by the second. Finally I heard her away to the south, and the rails began to sing. I guess I went wild, but I broke free somehow. I didn’t stop to set any signals. I stumbled out with my lantern and flagged thirty-six just as she was rushing by. We got her on the siding in time, and that’s all there was of that affair. They said tramps up here.”

“What was it? Did you find out?” Maps asked.

“Not a thing, and that isn’t all I’ve got to tell. M.K. was peaceful enough for two nights, although I didn’t get much rest. I don’t mind sleeping with both ears open, but it’s kind of hard to do with both eyes open, too. By Friday night I was so worn out I dropped off tight. But you can bet your chances of being president I had everything locked up. Now you can believe this or not. The next thing I knew it was broad daylight, and the down passenger crew was banging at the door of the tower. I managed to open it, then I went off again. Don’t ask me. I don’t know a thing about it except that they found me locked up in the tower with a busted head and arm. Fortunately they didn’t take any chances after my first trouble, so thirty-six had got full orders at Dawson that night. I left the hospital this morning. And they call me a boob down at the office. I begged them to clean that swamp out, but they laughed at me. Do you think they’d touch that swamp? Not much, because it would cost a lot of money to clean the wreck away. The growth hides it from the right of way, so it’s a darned sight cheaper to lay all this M.K. business to tramps. I’ve told you. You can do what you please about it.”

“I’m much obliged,” Maps said, “but I think I’ll take my chances. This looks like a real chance to me. I’ve never favored ghosts much, although I guess a wreck’s a likely enough place for them to hang out.”

“Don’t blame me if anything happens,” Morton warned.

“No,” Maps laughed. “I’ll blame the revolver I’m going to buy.”

He bought his revolver and, following instructions, presented himself at the union station that afternoon. As the train was a little late the conductor arranged to slow down and drop the new operator without stopping.

Maps settled himself in the last car. His determined, young face frankly confessed his elation. His back was turned on the uncongenial farm. He stood on the threshold of a new career, and, if excitement secreted itself beyond that threshold, his strong arms and his sane mind might mold it to his own uses.

His elation lasted while he was drawn from out the train-shed, through the smoky yards, and past rows of unpainted negro houses which chattered back impudently at the noisy train. Then. as though some subtle influence of the country had resisted human advance. the last outpost shanty was left behind, and nothing remained for the eve but a landscape, flat and desolate. Clumps of tall. straight pines and gloomy cypresses appeared here and there like oases in a strange desert. At times the train dashed along low embankments or rumbled over trestles through swamps from which the same depressing growth rose.

This quick change was not without its effect on the passengers. Some stirred restlessly, turning to newspapers or magazines. Others gazed without smiles from the windows. The brisk conversation of the station and the city gave way to sibilant undertones. A frown drove the elation from Maps’ face. He had lived in Georgia all his life, yet he had never seen a piece of country quite like this.

He rose, walked to the rear door, and stood there, gazing back at the constantly receding wilderness. When the train began to lose its speed the conductor joined him.

“M.K.’s just ahead. Better get ready to swing off.”

Maps picked up his handbag and nodded.

As the thickest swamp it had entered closed about it the train took a sharp curve. One or two passengers whispered. Even after six years some pointed from the windows. Maps knew it was the swamp of the wreck which lay by his tower.

He stepped to the platform, lowered himself from the last step, and glanced ahead. The train was leaving the swamp. The tower was directly ahead of him. He swung free and dropped.

“So long! Good luck!” the conductor called.

Maps stared at the tower. His first impulse was to shout to the conductor to stop the train. He had not boasted in telling Morton that he had never favored ghosts. But there was a feeling of something wrong here — a deserted air, an atmosphere of mystery. With a grim smile he watched the train vanish. Boyd had not appeared.

The tower, scarcely ten feet square, was painted yellow. On either side was a white board with the letters M.K. in sturdy black. Maps knew that the first story would have only one opening. a door in the center of the rear wall. The front and the sides of the top story were of glass windows. These were closed.

“Boyd!” Maps called. His voice sounded pitifully small and thin in that waste. It startled him. He walked slowly around the tower. He hesitated before the shut door.

“Boyd!” he called again.

There was no answer. For some time he stood considering. At last he grasped the knob. The door was locked.

Maps pounded at the panels with his fist.

“Boyd! Boyd!” he called. “Probably got cold feet and lit out,” he told himself.

At any rate someone ought to be at the key within. As he called and pounded the clicking of the receiver reached him faintly. He paused. It was a through message of no importance to M.K., but it warned him that he must make an entrance. and quickly. He glanced about for the means. There was no way to reach the windows without a ladder. Doubtless they were bolted anyway. He searched for a stone, but the track was ballasted with gravel. and there were no stones in that land. He put his shoulder against the door. It did not budge. He kicked viciously at the lock, calling:

“Boyd! Boyd!”

There was no other sound — no echo, no startled cries of birds. The warm, brilliant sunshine chilled and mocked him. It was as depressing as an enveloping midnight in a place of evil memories.

Some time passed before he split the wood about the lock and with a last kick sent the door crashing open. “Boyd!” he called again, as though the opening might make him more audible to the operator wherever he was.

He stumbled in.

Boyd had not deserted. He was stretched on the floor. his head crushed as though by some blunt instrument.

Maps was not a coward, but the mystery of this death by violence in a locked tower held him motionless, uncertain, tempted him to turn and run.

Soon he grew accustomed to the subdued light. The dead operator’s eyes were staring up at him. They seemed to retain the memory of some unspeakable vision.

Maps shuddered. He tried to think. Boyd had been murdered. The door was locked. Therefore the murderer must be in the room upstairs. He turned slowly to the ladder. He took out his revolver. With a jerky motion he moved forward and put his foot on the first rung. Listening intently, he lifted himself little by little toward the open trap-door — a trap, indeed, if the murderer waited above with his deadly weapon.

At last the journey was accomplished. His eyes were on a level with the floor above. There was no one there. He drew himself up and sat with his legs dangling through the open trap. The dispatcher’s table ran along the front of the room. The levers and a pine chair stood before it. There was no other furniture, no place of concealment.

As he sat there it became clear to Maps that the attack on Boyd must have been made a comparatively short time ago, for if M.K. had failed to answer during the early afternoon the train. which had brought him would almost certainly have had instructions to stop while the crew investigated. Consequently, if it was murder, the murderer must still be near. The trees of the swamp caught Maps’ eye.

It was also plain that Boyd. mindful of Morton’s experience, had feared the night. He had tried to snatch his sleep by day, even then seeing that everything was locked. What special intuition had the visitant that he knew always when he would find his victim unconscious and at his mercy?

The receiver clicked out Maps’ call. Before answering it he descended the ladder, lifted the bed and carried it to the shattered door as a barricade. When that was done he ascended again and answered.

Division headquarters wanted to know if he had arrived and if everything was OK. Maps gave the facts. There was a long pause, then:

“Are you all right? Will you stick?”

“I’ll stick.”

He hesitated. He didn’t like to suggest at the very beginning of his career with the road that he wasn’t sufficient unto himself for any situation that might arise. Still there couldn’t be much virtue in letting pride throttle the plainest common sense. So he clicked out:

“I can take care of myself as long as I keep my eyes open. This doesn’t seem a safe place to sleep. If you’ll send another man we can watch turn and turn about and find out what’s wrong.”

Division headquarters promised to send the first man it could spare. The up freight would stop that afternoon, and Maps was advised to take no chances. After that the wire was quiet. Maps studied the schedule or watched the clock on the wall. Time dragged. It was five o’clock when he heard the shriek of a locomotive from the south.

He hurried down, removed his improvised barricade, and walked to the front of the tower. The engine clanked by with grinding brakes. The long line of box-cars passed, going slower and slower, until they jerked to a stop when the caboose was opposite him. The conductor, two trainmen, the company doctor and the coroner jumped down. The engineer and the fireman were running back from the curve through the swamp.

“They told me to stop for Boyd,” the conductor said. “It isn’t true? He isn’t dead?”

Maps pointed at the tower. The five men walked silently around to the door. He could hear them enter. The engineer and the fireman came up, nodded to him, and silently followed the others. After a time the coroner returned alone and asked Maps a number of questions. He volunteered, too, that the conductor who had dropped Maps at the tower had reported it as strange at Dawson that Boyd had not shown himself when his train had gone by.

The coroner was evidently anxious to please the road in all things. Maps smiled when the low-voiced official suggested that the wound in Boyd’s head might have been caused by his falling through the open trap-door. In the light of Morton’s comments and his own experience, it seemed certain that that comforting theory bad originated at division headquarters.

“Well,” the coroner ended, “I guess we needn’t bother you much. I suppose we won’t have any trouble getting you for the inquest unless—”

“No trouble — unless!” Maps answered grimly.

The coroner went back to the tower and in a few minutes the men appeared with Boyd’s body. When they had tenderly placed it in the caboose they crowded about Maps, demanding particulars. He answered them shortly until they knew as much as he. Still they seemed loath to go. Evidently the coroner’s theory wasn’t vastly popular with them.

“It’s queer any way you look at it,” the engineer said, glancing at his watch. “There’s been something almighty out of the way with this place ever since that wreck.”

He nodded toward the curve.

“I’m not ashamed to say I never go by that place at night without a scary feeling. They died awful hard in there.”

“Grub Torrey always swore he saw and heard things after dark,” one of the brakemen said.

The doctor laughed.

“It’s easy to lay things to ghosts, but I never heard of anything being proved on a ghost.”

The engineer looked at his watch again. “We’ve got to pull out, Ben.”

The fireman and the engineer walked forward to the engine. “Going to stay on alone?” the conductor asked Maps.

“I want them to send another man to take turn about with me.”

“You’ll be in luck if they can persuade a man to come to M.K. after Torrey and Morton and this last affair.”

“Then I’ll stay on alone,” Maps answered quietly. “This is my first job. I can’t afford to throw it down.”

“I’m not jealous of you,” the conductor said. “All aboard, boys. So long, son, and good luck.”

Wishing good luck to a man left alone at M.K. seemed to have become a settled habit of the road.

The doctor turned back.

“You don’t look superstitious,” he said to Maps, “but you’ll be alone here, and these men are enough to set anybody’s nerves jumping. Keep a tight hold on yours. Maybe the coroner’s right. If he isn’t, you watch out for flesh and blood.”

“But the door has always been locked,” Maps said.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “If you will have it, spooks:-”

“Come on, Doc,” the conductor called.

He waved his hands at the engineer. The doctor clambered aboard. The train started. Maps watched it swing through the swamp, the group of men on the rear platform staring back at him. Then it was gone. The sun was setting. Soon it would be dark. Maps walked to the switches and lighted the lamps. As he returned to the tower, whose windows flashed red in the afterglow, he felt doubly helpless. He gazed across the flat, dreary landscape. The only trees near enough to present a definite form were those that hid the wreck. Even if the most cursory watch were kept it seemed impossible that anyone could approach the tower unseen. But, of course, the assault, whether by day or by night, had always been made when the victim was asleep.

He entered the tower and replaced his barricade. There was a small oil stove beneath the provision cupboard, but he had no appetite. He carried a little bread and cold meat upstairs and put it on the table in case he should feel hungry later. Then he drew the chair to the edge of the trap. By glancing down he could see the broken and barricaded door. Lighting his pipe, he smoked in a silence broken only by the occasional snapping of the receiver as some through message reminded him that he was actually in touch with the living.

The windows gave him an unobstructed view of the darkening swamp. He couldn’t keep his eyes from it. As the dusk thickened mists curled lazily beneath the trees. They might have been the smoke of a conflagration that still smouldered. They assumed white, fantastic shapes. They appeared to approach the tower, ready to hide strange, unearthly atrocities.

His pipe glowed. He rose, felt in his pocket for matches, stumbled to the table, and lighted the small hand-lamp. His fingers unconsciously touched the key. He snatched them away. When he turned back to the windows the mist and the trees were a far-away blur.

He resumed his seat at the trap. If men were to be feared he had only to keep his eyes open to handle a dozen from this position. But already he knew it would be difficult to stay awake. He had spent the previous night on the train, coming to the city from his home, and he had scarcely closed his eyes. His lids were heavy now. His entire body demanded relaxation and rest. But the swamp and the wreck came back to his mind and lingered. The splintering wood, the escaping steam, the roar of the fire, the groans and the cries must have been clearly audible from where he sat. It was easier to keep awake when he realized that.

Before daybreak two freight trains went through. He had no orders for them, but both stopped, and the engineers called up, asking if he was all right. Each time he shouted back without moving, and listened to them puff off. The voices and the sounds were cheering and helpful.

It rained toward morning, and the dawn came tardy and gray.

Division headquarters called him early and was evidently relieved when he reported OK. The operator for whom he had asked, however, had not been found, but one would be sent down that afternoon if possible.

The sun came out shortly after noon. Its bright warmth affected Maps, adding to his drowsiness. His eyes drooped. But he thought of Boyd. whose worn out body had yielded to the same temptation. He paced the tower floor up and down, up and down. Several trains passed, the engineers calling to him evidently by instruction. The conductors and trainmen waved their hands. Still no word came from division headquarters that an operator had been sent to relieve him from the strain.

After his early supper he went to the key. The fear of making a bad impression, even of losing his job, had lost much of its force.

“Where is that operator?” he demanded bluntly.

Division headquarters was worried. apologetic, angry. Maps might have thought that half the force had been discharged. With one excuse or another, operator after operator had evaded the assignment to M.K.

“Hold on another night and we’ll get a man to you or bust.”

Maps sent his OK wearily and closed the key with a yawn. Somehow he must keep awake another night, for each moment of physical surrender in the tower was apparently conveyed in some occult and immediate manner to the unaccountable visitant.

Maps’ heavy eyes sought the swamp. The sun was just setting. He stifled another yawn, straightened his shoulders and, after some reflection, put his hand on his revolver and descended the ladder. He had long since made up his mind that the Thing, whatever it was. must hide in that swamp. Rather than face the night of uncertainty, with probably fatal sleep slowly conquering him, he would take the aggressive; he would, if possible, enter the swamp and search the ugly ruins it hid.

He followed the track to the curve. From the embankment he could see nothing of the wreckage because of the rank undergrowth. From that side the swamp was so well guarded as to be practically impenetrable. So he left the ties and skirted the green tangle. searching for a path, looking for trampled grass, foot marks, some sign of human passing. He saw none. But on the side toward the tower the underbrush fell away and permitted him a glimpse of distressing foreign details: a corroded car wheel, a confusion of charred timbers, a broken brake handle. A long, narrow band. the color of blood, had appeared in the sky through the trees. A bent truss rod was stretched across it like an attenuated finger raised in grotesque warning.

The shadows of terrible pictures, the echoes of monstrous sounds, troubled Maps as he looked down at this souvenir of man’s ill-considered temerity. And beneath it, he was sure, lay the key to this mystery in which deliberate death aped death by chance.

He took out his revolver. He started to descend. But before he had reached the first outposts of the wreck, the black ooze was sucking at his feet. and the trees were thrusting out their branches as though to hold him back. He struggled on angrily, but it was useless. The short twilight had faded rapidly. It was already night in the swamp. He turned and retreated to the high ground, glancing continually over his shoulder.

The dark tower faced him. What might not have happened there during his absence? Hurrying to the door, he leaned against the outer wall, trying to peer into the black interior. At last he lighted a match, entered, and barricaded the broken door. When he had lighted another match he suffered again the slow suspense of that journey up the ladder.

After he had reached the upper room unmolested and had his light burning, he laughed nervously.

“Guess I’m turning as big a coward as the rest of them,” he muttered. “Only one more night!”

But that one night promised to prove too much for him. The smoke of his pipe seemed allied with the heavy fumes of sleep. The whistle of the down passenger made him jump. Another minute and he would have been off.

He answered the engineer’s call sleepily. Half mechanically he placed his revolver on the floor by his chair. He strained his eyes over the dim schedule on the wall. He repeated such verses as he could remember from his school days. Vaguely he realized that he was being vanquished.

His foot jerked and sent the revolver clattering against the chair leg. The noise awakened him, gave him a respite. Forcing his eyes open, he glanced through the north window.

Abruptly he sprang to his feet. The dim moonlight had shown him that something was moving in the swamp. something which detached itself slowly from the black mass harboring the wreck.

As he staggered back against the table his arm struck the lamp chimney. The glass shattered with a tinkling sound, and the light flickered out. At least the world appeared a little brighter for the darkness of the room. He could see now that the thing which moved was approaching the tower, yet he couldn’t tell what it was. It appeared huge, formless, terrifying in a mist which rose from the swamp behind it and accompanied it.

It turned and, keeping always at a distance, circled toward the rear of the tower. There were no windows in the rear, and soon it passed from Maps’ vision, leaving him crouched against the table, his heavy eyes fixed on the blank wall.

He sank lower. His eyes closed.

With a gasp of incredulity he pulled himself together. It seemed out of the question that the desire for sleep could cling to him now while that unknown visitant crept nearer, with the moment he had anticipated and dreaded at hand’ when in all probability he stood at the crossroads that led to life and death. But the long silence and the night drew his eyelids down.

He had heard and read of hypnotism. It occurred to him that the unconsciousness of its victims might proceed from the thing itself. The thought grew. He raised his hand to his eyes and thrust the lids open. With that idea in his mind he did the worst thing possible. He began to count the ticking of the clock.

His hand fell, striking the telegraph key. The contact forced a suggestion through his sodden brain. He grasped one of the levers and, throwing it over with infinite effort, set the signal that would stop the train from the south.

At the same moment the first sound reached him from below — an intake of breath or a long-drawn sigh, followed by a scarcely audible scraping. The persistence of this scraping followed by sighs lulled him as the clock had done. His brain was no longer capable of any effort at analysis. Whether the sound was made by man or spirit he didn’t know. He scarcely cared. He prayed only that he might fight off this force that would make him sleep until he could give some account of himself.

Without warning the monotonous sound was drowned in a sudden ripping crash. Then everything was still.

Maps reeled drunkenly to the open trap and leaned on the back of the chair, peering downward. The lower floor was black as a pit, but he was aware of a presence down there. whatever the thing might be, it was in the tower with him. It would come up. It would attack him as it had attacked Morton and Boyd. Would it find him as it had found those two — unconscious, helpless? .

The silence was interminable. He breathed chokingly. It would be so easy to give way and let events take their course. No struggle could be worse than this struggle against sleep. If only the thing would come! His suspense became unbearable. He burst out sobbingly:

“Don’t wait! Don’t wait! Damn you! Come up!”

The sigh reached him again, and with it this time a clinking as of a chain or a dragging piece of iron.

Maps knew that the Thing was crossing the floor. He knew when it was at the foot of the ladder, when it began to rise toward him. It had obeyed him, and there was no light. Even the dim moon was lost in the clouds.

He tried to lift the chair to swing it through the trap. He couldn’t raise it. He felt that the Thing as it came nearer was robbing him little by little of his remaining strength. And soon it would be on the level of the floor. Maps knelt and grasped his revolver.

“Light! Light!” he breathed. If only there were a little light!

A pallid gleam stole across the floor and bathed the rear wall. He did not wonder. He was simply grateful. The outlines of the trap became clear, then the top rung of the ladder, the rung next below. And in this pallid light he saw a vague hand on the rung.

The fingers opened, wavered in front of him, _fell, and closed on the top rung.

As the light grew an unearthly face appeared gradually, like lines that seem to come from nothing on a photographic plate. This face, covered with matted hair, and out of which unwinking eyes stared in dumb appeal, floated in the black frame of the trap. It was as though the light had come to show Maps this.

He let his arm with the revolver fall and sank back trembling. He could not fire at that dumb, appealing face. He forced his eyes away from it. Then all at once he realized that the room was flooded with a brilliant, searching glare, and that there were noises — a rushing as of a destroying wind, and voices — wild voices.

The face disappeared. but — almost immediately there was light in the room below, and to Maps’ numbed senses came the sounds of a violent struggle. Suddenly it was ended. A man was crying — horrible sobs of surrender.

Someone spoke in a tone of childish amazement and pity.

“It’s Red — Red Simmons! Boys, I’d rather have found a ghost.”

And Maps knew that the crew of thirty-six held the marauder and that all was well at M.K.

•   •   •

Maps didn’t hear Simmons’ story until the next day, although, remembering what Morton had told him, he could have guessed a good deal of it for himself. Simmons had left jail after six years of brooding over the injustice which had exiled him from his profession. He still had his key to M.K., and his crazed mind was drawn there as by a magnet. His one idea was to settle his score with the road and with Trumbull through the tower. If he could get thirty-six, which Trumbull was driving, past M.K. some night when the down freight was on time there might be a wreck which would cost Trumbull his life or his job, and the road a great deal of money. He had watched his chances with insane cunning, but both of his attempts while Morton was there had failed. He was rational enough to regret Boyd’s death. Starving. he had crept from the swamp to the tower that day for food, and Boyd, awakening, had attacked him.

It wasn’t the fault of thirty-six’s crew that they didn’t tell all this to Maps that night of Simmons’ capture. When they had Simmons bound and helpless they stood about, appalled at the total silence upstairs, afraid to ask — afraid to investigate for themselves. When finally the conductor did find courage enough to climb the ladder, he laughed with relief. There lay Maps, curled on the floor, happily and stubbornly, asleep at last.

“Metropolitan Magazine”, November 1913

THE DRAW-KEEPER

The railroad officials, since it was convenient, placed the blame on old Haley, yet they were more justly culpable themselves, for they should have relieved him long before the wreck. Moreover, he was mentally sound when he told his story to the division superintendent and begged him to explain its violations of human routine. Doubtless the superintendent understood, but he was a responsible servant of the road, and sympathy for the victims of one’s own mistakes is not, unfortunately, an explosive virtue.

•   •   •

Haley had been on the drawbridge at Bull Bluff for more than twenty years. He had brought his wife to the swamp-pressed cabin beside the track. There his son had been born, primitively, for the fifteen miles to the nearest town, the scarcity of trains, and the lack of a wagon road had made it impossible to get a doctor through in time. After that they had continued contentedly even in the crowning loneliness of that place.

To make life bearable there was, of course, their own companionship, the magic of their child’s progress, and, daily, a few trains roaring by, as well as boats and log rafts, whose impatient whistling sent them to bend backs and strain muscles over the turn bar.

Eventually the steamboats were given a sinister meaning for them. When they had opened the draw and stood leaning against the supports, they would watch these busy craft glide through with misgivings. They would answer the greetings from pilot-house or forecastle with prophetic gestures that conveyed an impression of farewell.

This state of mind was forced on them tragically enough one night when the Queen of the River signaled the bridge for the last time. She was the largest boat they saw. She ran only in Winter, crowded each trip with tourists from the north whom she brought to admire and wonder at the desolate, tropical shores of this stream.

At her whistle that evening Haley and his wife ran from their cabin to the turn bar, unlocked the bridge, and began with desperate haste to swing the ponderous draw, for it seemed an honor to clear the channel for the Queen. They never failed to gape. She gave them a feeling of unworthlness, almost of shame, when her great searchlight picked them out and held them exposed to the populous, noisy decks. They experienced, too, a sense of unreality as her brilliant windows flashed by, and they caught glimpses of upholstery, mahogany, mirrors, and well-dressed men and women at unfamiliar pleasuring

That night, Haley remembered, the captain leaned from the pilot-house, waved his gold-braided cap, and shouted:

“A little slow opening, Haley.”

“Have her wide open for you tomorrow night, Cap,” Haley called back.

The giant was through. The water, churned by her wheels, moaned and sobbed past the piers and among the pilings. Laughter from the decks fought against it for awhile, then died away.

Haley had frequently had this fancy of the water, had more than once spoken of it to his wife. He mentioned it tonight.

“Sounds like somebody crying.”

His wife shivered, for the night air was cold.

Following their custom, they stood staring after the boat until she had swung for the bend, had exposed for a moment one radiant flank before gliding, swan-like, behind the trees.

“Sometimes wish I was on her, Tom,” the woman muttered.

Haley laughed a little roughly.

“Not me. If we saw people to talk to we wouldn’t know how to behave.”

“They’re happy though,” she said, “those that ride on her.”

“I wonder,” he mused.

The bridge lights and the tiny gleam from their cabin were depressing after the glory which a moment ago had been beside them, within hand’s reach. Silently they swung the draw into place, locked it, and walked across the trestle.

Later, still wondering about those who sailed on the Queen of the River, Haley saw a pink reflection grow in the sky to the south. It puzzled him because he thought its area too limited for a forest fire. Yet there was no house for many miles in that direction. Consequently he went to bed satisfied that it could be nothing but burning trees and brushwood.

When a freight train came through the next morning he learned the undreamed of, the unbelievable. The majestic Queen of the River lay a blackened hulk on a shoal in one of the stream’s widest stretches, and, what was harder to grasp, upholstery, mahogany, mirrors, and, alas, many, many well-dressed men and women would no longer be seen through her brilliant windows.

Haley took his opportunity between trains, and, leaving the draw to his wife and child, slipped down to the appalling ruin.

To hear of horrors is bad enough. To face them with one’s own eyes is often demoralizing. It was years before Haley could drive the things he saw there from his mind. This healing process was unquestionably retarded by his life in the lonely cabin at the end of the bridge. For a long time that sheltered his memory of the cataclysm. Each object in its single room appeared to have allied itself with some grim, tremendous detail.

At night on the draw it was worse.

“I told him I’d have her wide open when he came back,” he often whispered to his wife. “He won’t come back. She was too big and pretty and — and solid. It can’t be.”

And sometimes when he waited for a log raft to crawl through he would stamp his foot impatiently.

“I wish I’d never thought that about the water, crying, else I wish these tugboats wouldn’t kick up such a fuss.”

Or, through a habit of introspection acquired during his lonely life, he would reach out vaguely with breathless, unanswerable questions.

“She used to whistle up there by the bend just about this time of night — along about half-past ten. Remember? It echoed off the trees. It was fit to wake th — the dead. It got us out, and it frightened the birds. You could hear them moving through the woods. All that noise every night! Where’s it gone now? — It’s so still here — don’t you listen for it? And the way those people used to laugh on deck! Remember that? They laughed louder than ever that time. What’s come of all that laughing? The water cries. Hear it? — cries just the same. But there ain’t any more laughing.”

•   •   •

That was long past, and many other and more personal changes had intervened. Haley’s wife had left the swamp-pressed cabin. This time, too, when it was the saving instead of the bringing of life, it had been impossible to get a doctor through the wilderness in time. Haley’s son was seventeen. While his father had clung to duty, he had stolen rides or walked the fifteen miles to town many times. Now he was ambitious to settle there and work. So it was on Haley that the loss of his wife fell with unconquerable regret. His hair and beard were gray. It was at this time that the trainmen began to call him Old Haley, yet he was scarcely forty years old.

He listened to his son’s plans and watched his growing restlessness apparently without comprehension. When the boy announced his definite departure he acquiesced with indifference.

“The road will have to give me another hand,” was all he said.

This, however, the road refused to do. The bridge was on a branch line. The business did not justify such extravagance. They figured for him the average number of times per month the draw was opened. He would not have believed it so few. The Queen of the River catastrophe, of course, had placed a curse on high-class passenger traffic. During the years since there had been no large boats. In addition that section was well cut out, so that log rafts were scarce now. Yet it seemed to him that his back and arms ached no less than before.

He spoke of the road’s refusal to his son.

“They say I must manage with you. If I bother them again they’ll throw me out and get some poor family who’ll do the work.”

“Don’t ask,” the boy said bluntly. “We’ll say nothing, and I’ll go just the same. Think they’ll kick if they find you’re here most of the time alone? Nobody’ll say a word. Bridge is only a nuisance to them anyway. Haven’t raised your wages in a long time, have they? It would cost them more to put a family here than they’re paying you. Meantime I’ll do my best to make enough to keep you when you do leave the bridge.”

There was no defense against this last argument. Besides, Haley couldn’t forecast a life deprived of his small wage; and a conscious, final exodus from the cabin was inconceivable.

So it was arranged, and so Old Haley was left alone at Bull Bluff.

•   •   •

That evening, when he had swung the draw shut after the passage of a small freighter, he seemed for the first time fully to realize his new state. The filth of the passing boat’s deck had aroused his contempt, and, from habit, with a comment on his lips he had turned to where his wife had always stood. Emptiness! And it rushed in upon him now how empty his life had become, for, since she had gone, the boy had stood in her place, had veiled that emptiness.

He straightened his back slowly and looked about him with the eyes of a newcomer. The sun had just set behind the swamp. The rapidity of its descent suggested a fall. The clouds bulging upward from the trees might have been steam rising from its extinction in the muddy water, the faint colors playing over them, the reflection of its expiring fires. It seemed impossible the day should ever flame again after that immersion.

The river had an appearance of solidity. From bend to bend it was like highly polished steel. The thick swamp pushed to the water’s edge on both shores, save where the railway embankment ran white and smooth from the trestle’s ends. To the east the track stretched straight away, but to the west, beyond his cabin, it curved sharply off into the forest.

His eyes rested curiously on the cabin — the focus of his mature life. Its front was built against the embankment, but, so steep was that, it had been necessary to raise the rear of the little building above the swamp on high pilings. There was a window on each side. Over the door opening on the railroad hung a white sign with worn black letters: “Bull Bluff Drawbridge.”

He walked slowly back, gazing with a sense of sympathy at the huge, gaunt, moss-draped frames of the cypresses — those ultimate symbols of loneliness.

After twenty years he was alone at Bull Bluff, and he faced it with the same surprise and dismay. He asked himself, as he had asked in the beginning, how “bluff” had crept into the name of such a water-logged place. Only yesterday it had seemed familiar — home. Why had it suddenly assumed a strange and repellent air? He knew why. He walked on more slowly, with bowed head until he opened the door of the cabin and entered its shadows.

When he had lighted the lamp he prepared his supper on the dwarfish stove. That task, too, had been spared him by his son. His clumsy efforts reminded him that everything — everything now depended on himself — not only his own necessities, but the necessities of the great outside world which each day trusted its swift messengers for a moment to his care. He must light and set the signal lamps on the draw. He must keep the mechanism well greased. Day or night, unaided, he must swing its great weight at the demands of traffic. This responsibility had been light when the future had cradled it. Now, grown to companionship with the present, its vast bulk for the moment crushed Haley. He began to brood upon it.

Later, after he had climbed into the bed, unnecessarily and pitifully large now, he recalled that there was no one with whom to share the anticipation of the unexpected, for the routine of railroad and river was often broken in upon without warning. So Haley lay awake most of the night, listening for a signal from train or boat, starting up more than once at the sudden, mournful cry of some nocturnal prowler in the swamp. And Haley’s longing was not for his son. The boy’s departure had been an incident in the day, but its train of consequences demanded the return of another figure, who had also gone ahead, but irrevocably. In his simple way he wondered if she, like his son, would try to make a home for him when he should have left the bridge forever.

The habit of insomnia grew. Many mornings he left the cabin, unsteady and half blind from lack of sleep. Yet during the first month his vigilance was rewarded only once. That once, however, Haley was on the draw with time to spare, and he felt satisfied.

At the end of the month his son returned for a few hours. He swung down from the caboose of a freight train one night.

Haley was on the open draw, gazing with a stunned expression at the headlight of the locomotive. He did not see his son at first. Suddenly bending to the turn bar, he began running with bent back and taut muscles in a narrow circle while he closed the bridge.

As the locomotive grumbled by, gathering speed, the engineer glanced at Haley, who clung to the railing of his platform.

“Must have been a fast boat you let through, Haley, else you been dozing with the draw open.”

Haley stiffened with an air of pride.

“Ever know me to do that?”

“Must say I haven’t,” the engineer called back.

Yet Haley had for the first time done something of the sort — he didn’t know just what, but he realized he had made a mistake.

He stepped back to the ties with painful care. He walked unevenly from the draw and down the trestle. His head was bowed, his forehead wrinkled. He tried to retrace his actions during the last cloudy half hour.

“Ha — ay, pop!”

The voice startled him. He passed the back of his hand over his eyes and peered ahead through the darkness.

“That you, son?”

The boy ran out on the trestle, took his arm, and led him back toward the cabin.

“Come on ninety-three, son?”

“Yes. What was the draw open for. I didn’t see any boat. Listen!”

They paused for a moment.

“I don’t hear anything but ninety-three. No boat been through here the last few minutes. Oughtn’t to leave the draw open, pop. Some of the engineers might take it into their heads to make a fuss. Maybe you figured ninety-three would be late.”

Haley didn’t answer immediately. When they had reached the planking in front of the cabin he leaned against the wall and from the shadows looked at his son in the lighted doorway.

“Didn’t you hear a boat whistle as you was coming through the woods?” he asked in a low, hesitant voice.

“Only whistle I heard was us blowing for the draw.” Haley passed the back of his hand across his eyes again. The fingers trembled.

“Seems you ought to’ve heard. I was just dozing off. I heard — woke me up — wasn’t very loud — more like an echo. ’Course I couldn’t take chances. I tumbled out and opened the draw and watched for her to come around the bend.”

Haley’s voice had more life as he repeated:

“’Course I couldn’t take any chances.”

His son, before he spoke, filled and lighted his pipe. The match disclosed Haley’s figure leaning against the cabin wall.

“And our whistle, pop?” the boy asked in a low tone.

“That’s it,” Haley said, his voice dead again. “I didn’t hear ninety-three. Looked up, and there was her headlight blinding me from the other side of the channel. Now wasn’t that curious, son? — Curious, wasn’t it? Mind must have been set on that boat that didn’t show up.”

The boy entered the cabin. Haley followed him with an apprehensive air. He drew back timorously as the boy turned and faced him.

“Look at me, pop.”

Haley fumbled with the collar of his shirt.

“Pop, you ain’t well.”

“Well enough.”

“What’s ailing you?”

“Not sleeping much. That’s all. Kind of hanker after company at night on the draw. Now that’s curious, ain’t it?”

His son watched him closely for a moment.

“Don’t blame you for getting lonely, but, whatever you do, don’t come down sick.”

“No fear — never been sick in my life.”

The boy handed him a cigar.

“Brought you some of these.”

Haley accepted it silently. He arose and crossed to the stove for a match. He walked, as he had come down the trestle, with an unevenness that was almost a lurch. Once his hand went out quickly and grasped the back of a chair. He steadied himself, then, continuing, lighted his cigar. His son studied him, clearly puzzled.

“Pop, you ain’t been drinking?”

The old man swung with a flash of anger.

“On duty! I’ve got a record. No liquor on this bridge.”

But he knew what had prompted the question. He sat down at the table, leaned his head on his hand, let his shoulders droop, and smoked reflectively while his son waited. At last he glanced up and spoke with a perplexed manner.

“Not drink. Going around with the turn bar in circles when I open and shut the draw. Ever make you feel queer, son?”

The boy shook his head.

“Nor me,” Haley went on, “’til just lately. Going around in circles — circles that way — Sometimes when I come back in here this little square room — ain’t much bigger than twice the turn bar — goes round and round in circles, too, ’til I can’t see the corners. Now that’s curious, ain’t it? Clears up by and by.”

He resumed his smoking in silence. The boy said nothing more until the cigar was finished. Then he urged his father to go to bed.

“You sleep tonight without worrying about anything. I’ll tend to the draw. You get it off your mind for once.”

Haley was grateful. For the first time in many nights he removed all his clothing before climbing into the pitifully large bed.

His son lay on his old-time folding cot in the corner.

“Don’t you fret, pop,” he called across the darkness. “I’m not going to miss any tricks.”

But even with this release Old Haley failed to find forgetfulness. Most of the night he lay listening. For what? He couldn’t say, yet he lay awake and listened, and the emptiness at his side seemed listening, too.

His son left early in the morning on the up freight. “I’ve got to jump her, pop,” he said apologetically, “or I’ll lose my job. Can’t afford to do that now. You get more sleep and take some quinine. You’ll be all right. I’ll be back to see before long.”

Haley, still in bed, pressed the boy’s hand. When the rumble of the train had diminished to silence and the peace of the forest and the river was broken only by the breeze whispering in the hanging moss and the leaves, Haley raised his fingers slowly to his tired eyes. This time he found them wet. But, although his son’s departure had brought the tears, it was not for the remoteness of the boy’s return that he wept.

He sprang up impatiently and drew his clothes on. He stepped from the cabin. The sun had not yet vanquished the mist which hung above the water and wreathed among the trees, giving them an appearance of ghastliness. The chill in the air made him shake. He entered the cabin again and closed the door.

The trouble of which he had spoken to his son grew. Frequently after swinging the bridge he had to sit by the turn bar for some minutes before attempting the walk back across the trestle. At times the woods and the river circled about him so rapidly he could not find his cabin in the green, silver-shot confusion; could not tell which way to turn to leave the draw. He was grateful for the few revolutions it was necessary to take in the opposite direction in order to lock the bridge. But they were insufficient. His vertigo increased.

He began to resent the impatient signals from boats which sent him, forewarned, to this circular subversion of his little world. The jovial greetings of pilots and deck-hands became mockery. They angered. Supporting himself against the rail or the turn bar, he would stare morosely back without word or gesture.

Moreover his insomnia persisted, and during the nights he dwelt upon the fancied whistle that had sent him to open the draw uselessly the evening of his son’s return. Always now he listened with a breathless expectancy. He listened until one night he started up at the same vague but imperative sound — the sound he had described to the boy as an echo.

He lay back. He determined he would not be deceived again. Yet the vague sound of that echo lingered in his brain. It seemed to beat against his eardrums, but from within.

Finally he drew on his boots and left the cabin. The usual fog lay upon the water. There was no boat in sight. Still, normally, one whistling for the draw, would not yet have had time to round the bend. Haley hesitated. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other until the impulse to hurry to the bridge and open it became irresistible. He swung the draw, running with extraordinary haste in his little circle about the turn bar.

When the channel was clear Haley leaned dizzily against the rail — watching. The fog thickened. Birds in the swamp made slow, flapping noises, uttered sharp cries as they rose to higher branches.

He watched until he remembered ninety-three was due. He wouldn’t be caught like that a second time. So he closed the bridge. As he clung, waiting for the world to solidify again, he turned sharply. He had received an impression of some presence in the fog at his side. But the fog was very thick. He could see nothing.

He repeated this experience at irregular but shortening intervals — heard the vague, formless whistle, neglected as long as he could its command, at last ran, conquered, to his futile task. Once when he staggered back to the cabin his eyes chanced on the clock above the stove. Its hand pointed to half-past ten. After that he glanced at the clock habitually on his return from these unrewarded labors. The hands invariably made the same angle.

Certain objects in the room unexpectedly recalled old associations which he had fancied forgotten. He re-arranged these objects, even hid the smaller ones, but their appeal did not abate.

He wondered almost indifferently when his son would redeem his promise to see how he was getting on. To be sure, such a visit would be a relief from the only uniform companionship he knew — the birds and the unseen, unknown things that whispered always in the swamp.

His son returned after two weeks on a brilliant Sunday afternoon.

Haley sat on the planking in front of his cabin. His haggard eyes were fixed on the bend of the river. He shook hands with his son affectionately. In reply to the boy’s questions he said he was well enough.

“Except for lack of sleep and things going round,” he added. “Walk in and find you something to eat. I ain’t coming. Good chance to get rid of the circles, sitting here in the sun.”

He resumed his smoking placidly. Again he fixed his steady regard on the bend.

After the boy had obeyed he brought another chair and sat at his father’s side, asking questions whose answers appeared to satisfy him.

With the setting of the sun and the growth of dusk, however, Haley became unquiet. He glanced frequently over his shoulder. Once or twice he started up to sink back again with a sigh.

“Ain’t opening the draw any more by mistake?” his son asked.

Haley looked around for some moments. When he spoke he failed to answer the question.

“Remember the boat?”

“What boat, pop?”

“The boat that didn’t come through that night.”

The boy nodded.

“Wonder what that was?” Haley asked thoughtfully.

The evening deepened. The trees at the bend, to which the old man’s eyes still turned, became a dim, shapeless bulk. Little by little the polish left the steel like water. The water ceased to resemble steel. It assumed the likeness of a black veil strung from the forest, whose sombre masses it still reflected formlessly.

The old man stirred. He turned to his son. He spoke with wistfulness.

“There’s a boat been trying to get around that bend — some time now.”

His son started.

“A boat, pop?”

“Yes — for some time now — trying awful hard to get around that bend and through the draw. It — it can’t quite make it.”

He gulped.

“Ain’t that curious now, son?”

And after a moment:

“I wonder if it will ever get around?”

Haley’s voice fell to a whisper.

“If the draw wasn’t open then!”

By and by he arose and yawned. “I never kept them waiting much, did I, son? I’m sleepy tonight. Maybe if I went to bed knowing you was here, I might drop off tight.”

He stepped inside, but he reappeared almost immediately and faced his son with an air of constraint.

“That’s curious what I said about the boat, but don’t think any more of that. That’s all it is — curious.”

He waited. His attitude was tense. At last he spoke with forced carelessness.

“You’ll look after the bridge tonight?”

“Yes, pop. Don’t you worry.”

“All right,” the old man answered, “only if you hear a whistle from the river, be sure you get the draw open in time. I’d hate for the draw not to be open in time, son.”

He re-entered the cabin and went to bed, but he slept little. The thought that his son might not hear obsessed him.

In the morning the boy was reluctant to go.

“It’s too lonesome here for you, pop; but I can’t stay. Wish I could. Stick it out a little longer, and I’ll fix it so I can get you up to town.”

The old man leaned in the doorway.

“I ain’t so sure, son,” he said slowly, “that I want to go up to town.”

When he was alone he set about his work dreamily. The machinery had not been greased for some days, so he went over it with minute care, for he wanted the bridge in perfect order, ready to swing quietly. Afterward he brought out a chair, and, taking his accustomed seat in front of the cabin, fixed his eyes on the bend.

His view was abruptly shut off in the middle of the afternoon. A shout brought him upright. A heavy freight locomotive was jarring violently by within four feet.

“Some sleeper, Old Haley!” the engineer called back.

Yet Haley knew he had been awake. His mind could not fathom the experience. Still sounding it uselessly, he opened the draw for a tow of logs at sunset.

“Hey!” a man called from the tug. “If you ain’t careful, Haley, you’ll flop into the river one of these days.”

Haley slowly raised his hand in a gesture of anger. He did his best to hold the boat in his field of vision, but he was unsuccessful. It slipped before his eyes in recurrent and widening circles. His failure increased his anger. He shouted back into the green, revolving confusion:

“If you ain’t careful, one of these days I won’t turn the draw for you.”

And from out the confusion the man’s voice came back glibly.

“You’ll be losing your job before you know it, Haley.”

When the tow was gone Haley shook his head at the memory of his outburst. His mind shrank from the man’s prophecy. To lose his job after twenty years! It was longer than usual before he could steady himself for the walk across the trestle.

During his supper and afterward those words clung and troubled. When he was in bed he kept repeating:

“You got to get the draw open in time or you’ll lose your job.”

Unconsciously his mind reiterated the refrain while he listened, while the emptiness at his side listened with him.

It came at last — the vague, formless whistle, like an echo entering his brain. He sprang up. He drew on his boots, chanting consciously now:

“Haley, you got to get the draw open in time.”

His power to combat the signal finally demolished, he ran out to the track. The fog lay white and thick on the water. The lights of the bridge were dim, unreal.

He stumbled along the ties to the trestle. He reached the draw. He placed the bar in its socket. He commenced to turn in his narrow circle with frantic haste. If she should round the bend tonight the channel must be open.

When his task was done he hung, breathless, across the bar, while the world, white this time, and torn with reds and greens from the lamps, stormed about him.

Abruptly the world became still. Without preparation he found himself looking straight through the end of the draw at the fog which rolled between him and the bend. And in the white fog by the bend he thought something whiter grew and loomed, larger, nearer, in the soundless silence of the swamp and the river.

Exultation clutched at Haley’s throat. His hand gripped the iron bar.

“She’s making it,” he whispered. “This trip she’s making it, and the draw’s open in time.”

The scream of a whistle echoed through the forest.

“No need to whistle,” he muttered. “Draw’s wide.”

He sprang to the side rail. He leaned over to watch the white shape grow. The intensity of his desire brought it swiftly, smoothly, gracefully nearer — to the end of the pilings.

He cursed the fog, for it blurred the lights. It veiled the outlines of the boat from beyond the bend.

The chalky prow divided the fog — rolled it far to either side, and the boat, its smallest line unmasked for his memory, slipped majestically into the draw.

There was no need to look for the black letters on the side. His hand tightened its grip on the damp railing. He was sure the letters were there, arresting in shape, forming four companionable yet desolate words — Queen of the River.

Higher, above the decks, he knew the captain leaned from the pilot-house window, waving his gold-braided cap.

“A little slow opening, Haley.”

He did not dare look at the captain. His voice rose. It was like a sob.

“Have her wide open for you after this, cap.”

Indistinctly he saw the captain wave his hand, but he would not look closer.

The white, graceful flank swept by. The cabin windows came opposite, and Haley stared once more through their remembered openings. But the fog had lingered in there. Or was it another vapor? It twisted about the upholstery, the mahogany, and the mirrors; and the well-dressed men and women he recalled at their unfamiliar pleasures were shadowed beyond definition.

He noticed now that the water did not moan and sob past the piers and among the pilings. Nor was there the accustomed laughter that had always fought that sound. But when the stern came abreast and he glanced up at the populous, silent deck, he saw the laughter there, and he shrank away. Yet he had known all along it must be like that.

Haley, following his invariable custom when the Queen went through, turned to his wife with a comment.

“Seems like the water ought to cry tonight, but it don’t.”

“Remember,” she answered, “you never wanted to go on her?”

“Yes. See! She’s clearing now.”

“And remember I always said those were happy — those that rode on her?”

He nodded.

“Well—” she began.

But the Queen had cleared. He raised trembling fingers to his eyes. The lids were closed. He forced them open. The fog rolled again. The white night recommenced its incoherent revolutions. Now that his eyes were open he could no longer see his wife. He reached out for her with helpless, circular gestures. He thought he heard her reassuring voice from the fog.

A vast glare blinded him. The whistle shrieked in an agony of sound. Shouts burst at his ears. The turbulent world closed in and crushed him.

•   •   •

They found Haley on the draw. He had been struck by a piece of flying wreckage. They carried him to his cabin and placed him on the pitifully large bed. They did this, cursing and none too gently, for the locomotive and two freight cars of ninety-three lay in the channel. Fortunately the engineer and the fire man had jumped in time, so that, except for the old draw-keeper, no one had been hurt. It would, however, cost the road a pretty penny to raise the submerged equipment and clear the channel. Therefore, someone must be blamed.

The engineer could testify that Haley had failed to answer his signal. He bolstered this with the assertion that his brakes had failed to hold. There was no reason for the draw to be open. Where was there any boat? So Haley was chosen for the sacrifice.

The division superintendent hurried down on a special engine. When he entered the cabin Haley opened his eyes. He told the superintendent his story, expecting comprehension; confident, one would have thought, of some explanation from so superior a fellow mortal. The superintendent could, doubtless, have satisfied him, but he wasn’t ripe for the sacrifice himself.

“Can’t have nightmares,” he said a little hoarsely, “unless you’re asleep. Asleep on your job, Haley! Might’s well own up.”

But Haley flung his arm over the emptiness at his side, smiled, and said nothing more.

The Grim Thirteen, ed.  Frederick Stuart Greene, (1917)

THE SIGNAL TOWER

I get afraid when you leave me alone this way at night.”

The big man, Tolliver, patted his wife’s head. His coarse laughter was meant to reassure, but, as he glanced about the living-room of his remote and cheerless house, his eyes were uneasy. The little boy, just six years old, crouched by the cook-stove, whimpering over the remains of his supper.

“What are you afraid of?” Tolliver scoffed.

The stagnant loneliness, the perpetual drudgery, had not yet conquered his wife’s beauty, dark and desirable. She motioned towards the boy.

“He’s afraid, too, when the sun goes down.”

For a time Tolliver listened to the wind, which assaulted the frame house with the furious voices of witches demanding admittance.

“It’s that—” he commenced.

She cut him short, almost angrily.

“It isn’t that with me,” she whispered.

He lifted the tin pail that contained a small bottle of coffee and some sandwiches. He started for the door, but she ran after him, dragging at his arm.

“Don’t go! I’m afraid!”

The child was quiet now, staring at them with round, reflective eyes.

“Joe,” Tolliver said gently, “will be sore if I don’t relieve him on time.”

She pressed her head against his coat and clung tighter. He closed his eyes.

“You’re afraid of Joe,” he said wearily.

Without looking up, she nodded. Her voice was muffled.

“He came last night after you relieved him at the tower. He knocked, and I wouldn’t let him in. It made him mad. He swore. He threatened. He said he’d come back. He said he’d show us we couldn’t kick him out of the house just because he couldn’t help liking me. We never ought to have let him board here at all.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I was afraid you’d be fighting each other in the tower; and it didn’t seem so bad until dark came on. Why didn’t you complain to the railroad when — when he tried to kiss me the other night?”

“I thought that was finished,” Tolliver answered slowly, “when I kicked him out, when I told him I’d punish him if he bothered you again. And I — I was a little ashamed to complain to the superintendent about that. Don’t you worry about Joe, Sally, I’ll talk to him now, before I let him out of the tower. He’s due to relieve me again at midnight, and I’ll be home then.”

He put on his great coat. He pulled his cap over his ears. The child spoke in a high, apprehensive voice.

“Don’t go away, papa.”

He stared at the child, considering.

“Put his things on, Sally,” he directed at last.

“What for?”

“I’ll send him back from the tower with something that will make you feel easier.”

Her eyes brightened.

“Isn’t that against the rules?”

“Guess I can afford to break one for a change,” he said. “I’m not likely to need it myself to-night. Come, Sonny.”

The child shrank in the corner, his pudgy hands raised defensively.

“It’s only a little ways, and Sonny can run home fast,” his mother coaxed.

Against his ineffective reluctance she put on his coat and hat. Tolliver took the child by the hand and led him, sobbing unevenly, into the wind-haunted darkness. The father chatted encouragingly, pointing to two or three lights, scattered, barely visible; beacons that marked unprofitable farms.

It was, in fact, only a short distance to the single track railroad and the signal tower, near one end of a long siding. In the heavy, boisterous night the yellow glow from the upper windows, and the red and green of the switch lamps, close to the ground, had a festive appearance. The child’s sobs drifted away. His father swung him in his arms, entered the tower, and climbed the stairs. Above, feet stirred restlessly. A surly voice came down.

“Here at last, eh?”

When Tolliver’s head was above the level of the flooring he could see the switch levers, and the table, gleaming with the telegraph instruments, and dull with untidy clips of yellow paper; but the detail that held him was the gross, expectant face of Joe.

Joe was as large as Tolliver, and younger. From that commanding position, he appeared gigantic.

“Cutting it pretty fine,” he grumbled.

Tolliver came on up, set the child down, and took off his overcoat.

“Fact is,” he drawled, “I got held back a minute — sort of unexpected.”

His eyes fixed the impatient man.

“What you planning to do, Joe, between now and relieving me at midnight?”

Joe shifted his feet.

“Don’t know,” he said uncomfortably. “What you bring the kid for? Want me to drop him at the house?”

Tolliver shook his head. He placed his hands on his hips.

“That’s one thing I want to say to you, Joe. Just you keep away from the house. Thought you understood that when you got fresh with Sally the other night.”

Joe’s face flushed angrily.

“Guess I was a fool to say I was sorry about that. Guess I got to teach you I got a right to go where I please.”

Tolliver shook his head.

“Not to our house, if we don’t want you.”

The other leered.

“You so darned sure Sally don’t want me?”

Impulsively Tolliver stepped forward, closing his fists.

“You drop that sort of talk, or—”

Joe interrupted, laughing.

“One thing’s sure, Tolliver. If it came to a fight between me and you I’d be almost ashamed to hit you.”

Through his passion Tolliver recognized the justice of that appraisal. Physically he was no match for the younger man.

“Things,” he said softly, “are getting so we can’t work here together.”

“Then,” Joe flung back, as he went down the stairs, “you’d better be looking for another job.”

Tolliver signed, turning to the table. The boy played there, fumbling with the yellow forms. Tolliver glanced at the top one. He called out quickly to the departing man.

“What’s this special, Joe?”

The other’s feet stumped on the stairs again.

“Forgot,” he said as his head came through the trap. “Some big-wigs coming through on a special train along about midnight. Division headquarters got nothing definite yet, but figure we’ll have to get her past thirty-three somewheres on this stretch. So keep awake.”

Tolliver with an increasing anxiety continued to examine the yellow slips.

“And thirty-three’s late, and still losing.”

Joe nodded.

“Makes it sort of uncertain.”

“Seems to me,” Tolliver said, “you might have mentioned it.”

“Maybe,” Joe sneered, “you’d like me to stay and do your job.”

He went down the stairs and slammed the lower door.

Tolliver studied the slips, his ears alert for the rattling of the telegraph sounder. After a time he replaced the file on the table and looked up. The boy, quite contented now in the warm, interesting room, stretched his fingers towards the sending key, with the air of a culprit dazzled into attempting an incredible crime.

“Hands off, Sonny!” Tolliver said kindly. “You must run back to mother now.”

He opened a drawer beneath the table and drew out a polished six-shooter — railroad property, designed for the defense of the tower against tramps or bandits. The boy reached his hand eagerly for it. His father shook his head.

“Not to play with, Sonny. That’s for business. If you promise not to touch it ’til you get home and hand it to mama, tomorrow I’ll give you a nickel.”

The child nodded. Tolliver placed the revolver in the side pocket of the little overcoat, and, the boy following him, went down stairs.

“You run home fast as you can,” Tolliver directed. “Don’t you be afraid. I’ll stand right here in the door ’til you get there. Nothing shall hurt you.”

The child glanced back at the festive lights with an anguished hesitation. Tolliver had to thrust him away from the tower.

“A nickel in the morning—” he bribed.

The child commenced to run. Long after he had disappeared the troubled man heard the sound of tiny feet scuffling with panic along the road to home.

When the sound had died away Tolliver slammed the door and climbed the stairs. He studied the yellow slips again, striving to fix in his mind this problem, involving the safety of numerous human beings, that would probably become his. He had a fear of abnormal changes in the schedule. It had been impressed upon every signalman that thirty-three was the road’s most precious responsibility. It was the only solid Pullman train that passed over the division. This time of year it ran crowded and was erratic; more often than not, late. That fact created few difficulties on an ordinary night; but, combined with such uncertainty of schedule, it worried the entire division, undoubtedly, to have running, also on an uncertain schedule, and in the opposite direction on that single track, an eager special carrying important men. The superintendent, of course, would want to get those flashy trains past each other without delay to either. That was why these lonely towers, without receiving definite instructions yet, had been warned to increase watchfulness.

Tolliver’s restlessness grew. He hoped the meeting would take place after Joe had relieved him, or else to the north or south.

It was difficult, moreover, for him to fix his mind to-night on his professional responsibility. His duty towards his family was so much more compelling. While he sat here, listening to every word beaten out by the sounder, he pictured his wife and son, alone in the little house nearly a half a mile away. And he wondered, while he, their only protector, was imprisoned, what Joe was up to.

Joe must have been drunk when he tried to get in the house last night. Had he been drinking tonight?

The sounder jarred rapidly.

“LR. LR. LR.”

That was for the tower to the north. It was hard to tell from Joe’s manner. Perhaps that would account for his not having called attention to the approaching presence of the special on the division.

Pound. Pound. Pound. The hard striking of the metal had the effect of a trip-hammer on his brain.

“Allen reports special left Oldtown at 9.45.”

Joe had certainly been drinking that night last week when he had got fresh with Sally.

“Thirty-three still losing south of Anderson.”

He jotted the words down and sent his OK’s while his head, it seemed to him, recoiled physically from each rapid stroke of the little brass bar.

Sonny, sent by his mother, had come to tell him that night, panting up the stairs, his eyes wide and excited. Tolliver had looked from the window towards his home, his face flushed, his fists clenched, his heart almost choking him. Then he had seen Joe, loafing along the road in the moonlight, and he had relaxed, scarcely aware of the abominable choice he had faced.

“NT. NT. NT.”

His own call. Tolliver shrank from the sharp blows. He forced himself to a minute attention. It was division headquarters.

“Holding twenty-one here until thirty-three and the special have cleared.”

Twenty-one was a freight. It was a relief to have that off the road for the emergency. He lay back when the striking at his head had ceased.

It was unfortunate that Joe and he alone should be employed at the tower. Relieving each other at regular intervals, they had never been at the house together. Either Tolliver had been there alone with his wife and his son — or Joe had been. The two men had seen each other too little, only momentarily in this busy room. They didn’t really know each other.

“LR. LR. LR.”

Tolliver shook his head savagely. It had been a mistake letting Joe board with them at all. Any man would fall in love with Sally. Yet Tolliver had thought after that definite quarrel Joe would have known his place; the danger would have ended.

It was probably this drinking at the country inn where Joe lived now that had made the man brood. The inn was too small and removed to attract the revenue officers, and the liquid manufactured and sold there was designed to make a man daring, irrational, deadly:

Tolliver shrank from the assaults of the sounder.

Where was Joe now? At the inn, drinking; or—

He jotted down the outpourings of the voluble key. More and more it became clear that the special and thirty-three would meet near his tower, but it would almost certainly be after midnight when Joe would have relieved him. He watched the clock, often pressing his fingers against his temples in an attempt to make bearable the hammering at his brain, unequal and persistent.

While the hands crawled towards midnight the wind increased, shrieking around the tower as if the pounding angered it.

Above the shaking of the windows Tolliver caught another sound, gentle and disturbing, as if countless fingers tapped softly, simultaneously against the panes.

He arose and raised one of the sashes. The wind tore triumphantly in, bearing a quantity of snowflakes that fluttered to the floor, expiring. Under his breath Tolliver swore. He leaned out, peering through the storm. The red and green signal lamps were blurred. He shrugged his shoulders. Anyway, Joe would relieve him before the final orders came, before either train was in the section.

Tolliver clenched his hands. If Joe didn’t come!

He shrank from the force of his imagination.

He was glad Sally had the revolver.

He glanced at his watch, half believing that the clock had stopped.

There at last it was, both hands pointing straight up — midnight! And Tolliver heard only the storm and the unbearable strokes of the telegraph sounder. It was fairly definite now. Both trains were roaring through the storm, destined almost certainly to slip by each other at this siding within the next hour.

Where was Joe? And Sally and the boy alone at the house!

Quarter past twelve.

What vast interest could have made Joe forget his relief at the probable loss of his job?

Tolliver glanced from the rear window towards his home, smothered in the night and the storm. If he might only run there quickly to make sure that Sally was all right!

The sounder jarred furiously. Tolliver half raised his hand, as if to destroy it.

It was the division superintendent himself at the key.

“NT. NT. NT. Is it storming bad with you?”

“Pretty thick.”

“Then keep the fuses burning. For God’s sake, don’t let the first in over-run his switch. And clear the line like lightning. Those fellows are driving faster than hell.”

Tolliver’s mouth opened, but no sound came. His face assumed the expression of one who undergoes the application of some destructive barbarity.

“I get afraid when you leave me alone this way at night.”

He visualized his wife, beautiful, dark, and desirable, urging him not to go to the tower.

A gust of wind sprang through the trap door. The yellow slips fluttered. He ran to the trap. He heard the lower door bang shut. Someone was on the stairs, climbing with difficulty, breathing hard. A hat, crusted with snow, appeared. There came slowly into the light Joe’s face, ugly and inflamed; the eyes restless with a grave indecision.

Tolliver’s first elation died in new uncertainty.

“Where you been?” he demanded fiercely.

Joe struggled higher until he sat on the flooring, his legs dangling through the trap. He laughed in an ugly and unnatural note; and Tolliver saw that there was more than drink, more than sleeplessness, recorded in his scarlet face. Hatred was there. It escaped, too, from the streaked eyes that looked at Tolliver as if through a veil. He spoke thickly.

“Don’t you wish you knew?”

Tolliver stooped, grasping the man’s shoulders. In each fist he clenched bunches of wet cloth. In a sort of desperation he commenced to shake the bundled figure.

“You tell me where you been—”

“NT. NT. NT.”

Joe leered.

“Joe! You got to tell me where you been.”

The pounding took Tolliver’s strength. He crouched lower in an effort to avoid it, but each blow struck as hard as before, forcing into his brain word after word that he passionately resented. Places, hours, minutes — the details of this vital passage of two trains in the unfriendly night.

“Switch whichever arrives first, and hold until the other is through.”

It was difficult to understand clearly, because Joe’s laughter persisted, crashing against Tolliver’s brain as brutally as the sounder.

“You got to tell me if you been bothering Sally.”

The hatred and the cunning of the mottled face grew.

“Why don’t you ask Sally?”

Slowly Tolliver let the damp cloth slip from his fingers. He straightened, facing more definitely that abominable choice. He glanced at his cap and overcoat. The lazy clock hands reminded him that he had remained in the tower nearly half an hour beyond his time. Joe was right. It was clear he could satisfy himself only by going home and asking Sally.

“Get up,” he directed. “I guess you got sense enough to know you’re on duty.”’

Joe struggled to his feet and lurched to the table. Tolliver wondered at the indecision in the other’s eyes, which was more apparent. Joe fumbled aimlessly with the yellow slips. Tolliver’s fingers, outstretched toward his coat, hesitated, as if groping for an object that must necessarily elude them.

“Special!” Joe mumbled. “And — Hell! Ain’t thirty-three through yet?”

He swayed, snatching at the edge of the table.

Tolliver lowered his hands. The division superintendent had pounded out something about fuses. What had it been exactly? “Keep fuses burning.”

With angry gestures he took his coat and cap down, and put them on while he repeated all the instructions that had been forced into his brain with the effect of a physical violence. At the table Joe continued to fumble aimlessly.

“Ain’t you listening?” Tolliver blurted out.

“Huh?”

“Why don’t you light a fuse?”

It was quite obvious that Joe had heard nothing.

“Fuse!” Joe repeated.

He stooped to a box beneath the table. He appeared to lose his balance. He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, his head drooping.

“What about fuse?” he murmured.

His eyes closed.

Tolliver pressed the backs of his hands against his face. If only his suspense might force refreshing tears, as Sonny cried away his infant agonies!

Numerous people asleep in that long Pullman train, and the special thundering down! Sally and Sonny a half mile away in the lonely house! And that drink-inspired creature on the floor — what was he capable of in relation to those unknown, helpless travelers? But what was he capable of; what had he, perhaps, been capable of towards those two known ones that Tolliver loved better than all the world?

Tolliver shuddered. As long as Joe was here Sally and Sonny would not be troubled. But where had Joe been just now? How had Sally and Sonny fared while Tolliver had waited for that stumbling step on the stairs? He had to know that, yet how could he? For he couldn’t leave Joe to care for all those lives on the special and thirty-three.

He removed his coat and cap, and replaced them on the hook. He took a fuse from the box and lighted it. He raised the window and threw the fuse to the track beneath. It sputtered and burst into a flame, ruddy, gorgeous, immense. It etched from the night distant fences and trees. It bent the sparkling rails until they seemed to touch at the terminals of crimson vistas. If in the storm the locomotive drivers should miss the switch lamps, set against them, they couldn’t neglect this bland banner of danger, flung across the night.

When Tolliver closed the window he noticed that the ruddy glow filled the room, rendering sickly and powerless the yellow lamp wicks. And Tolliver clutched the table edge, for in this singular and penetrating illumination he saw that Joe imitated the details of sleep; that beneath half-closed lids, lurked a fanatical wakefulness, and final resolution where, on entering the tower, he had exposed only indecision.

While Tolliver stared Joe abandoned his masquerade. Wide-eyed, he got lightly to his feet and started for the trap.

Instinctively, Tolliver’s hand started for the drawer where customarily the revolver was kept. Then he remembered, and was sorry he had sent the revolver to Sally. For it was clear that the poison in Joe’s brain was sending him to the house while Tolliver was chained to the tower. He would have shot, he would have killed, to have kept the man here. He would do what he could with his hands.

“Where you going?” he asked hoarsely.

Joe laughed happily.

“To keep Sally company while you look after the special and thirty-three.”

Tolliver advanced cautiously, watching for a chance. When he spoke his voice had the appealing quality of a child’s.

“It’s my time off. If I do your work you got to stay at least.”

Joe laughed again.

“No. It only needs you to keep all those people from getting killed.”

Tolliver sprang then, but Joe avoided the heavier, clumsier man. He grasped a chair, swinging it over his head.

“I’ll teach you,” he grunted, “to kick me out like dirt. I’ll teach you and Sally.”

With violent strength he brought the chair down. Tolliver got his hands up, but the light chair crashed them aside and splintered on his head. He fell to his knees, reaching out blindly. He swayed lower until he lay stretched on the floor, dimly aware of Joe’s descending steps, of the slamming of the lower door, at last of a vicious pounding at his bruised brain.

“NT. NT. NT.”

He struggled to his knees, his hands at his head.

“No, by God! I won’t listen to you.”

“Thirty-three cleared LR at 12:47.”

One tower north! Thirty-three was coming down on him, but he was only glad that the pounding had ceased. It commenced again.

“NT. NT. NT. Special cleared JV at 12:48.”

Each rushing towards each other with only a minute’s difference in schedule! Thar was close — too close. But what was it he had in his mind?

Suddenly he screamed. He lurched to his feet and leaned against the wall. He knew now. Joe, with those infused and criminal eyes, had gone to Sally and Sonny — to get even. There could be nothing in the world as important as that. He must get after Joe. He must stop him in time.

“NT. NT. NT.”

There was something in his brain about stopping a train in time.

“It only needs you to keep all those people from getting killed.”

Somebody had told him that. What did it mean? What had altered here in the tower all at once?

There was no longer any red.

“NT. NT. NT.”

“I won’t answer.”

Where had he put his cap and coat. He needed them. He could go without. He could kill a beast without. His foot trembled on the first step.

“NT. NT. NT. Why don’t you answer? What’s wrong. No O K. Are you burning fuses? Wake up. Send an OK.”

The sounder crashed frantically. It conquered him.

He lurched to the table, touched the key, and stuttered out:

“OK NT.”

He laughed a little. They were in his block, rushing at each other, and Joe was alone at the house with Sally and the child. OK!

He lighted another fuse, flung it from the window, and started with automatic movements for the trap.

Let them crash. Let them splinter, and burn, and die. What was the lot of them compared with Sally and Sonny?

The red glare from the fuse sprang into the room. Tolliver paused, bathed in blood.

He closed his eyes to shut out the heavy waves of it. He saw women like Sally and children like Sonny asleep in a train. It gave him an impression that Sally and Sonny were, indeed, on the train. To keep them safe it would be necessary to retard the special until thirty-three should be on the siding and he could throw that lever that would close the switch and make the line safe. He wavered, taking short steps between the table and the trap. Where were Sally and Sonny? He had to get that clear in his mind.

A bitter cold sprang up the trap. He heard the sobbing of a child.

“Sonny!”

It was becoming clear enough now.

The child crawled up the steps on his hands and knees. Tolliver took him in his arms, straining at him passionately.

“What is it, Sonny? Where’s mama?”

“Papa, come quick. Come quick.”

He kept gasping it out until Tolliver stopped him.

“Joe! Did Joe come?”

The child nodded. He caught his breath.

“Joe broke down the door,” he said.

“But mama had the gun,” Tolliver said hoarsely.

The boy shook his head.

“Mama wouldn’t let Sonny play with it. She locked it up in the cupboard. Joe grabbed mama, and she screamed, and said to run and make you come.”

In the tower, partially smothered by the storm, vibrated a shrill cry. For a moment Tolliver thought his wife’s martyrdom had been projected to him by some subtle means. Then he knew it was the anxious voice of thirty-three — the pleading of all those unconscious men and women and little ones. He flung up his arms, releasing the child, and ran to the table where he lighted another fuse, and threw it to the track. He peered from the window, aware of the sobbing refrain of his son.

“Come quick! Come quick! Come quick!”

From far to the south drifted a fainter sibilation, like an echo of thirty-three’s whistle. To the north a glow increased. The snowflakes there glistened like descending jewels. It was cutting it too close. It was vicious to crush all that responsibility on the shoulders of one ignorant man, such a man as himself, or Joe. What good would it do him to kill Joe now? What was there left for him to do?

He jotted down thirty-three’s orders.

The glow to the north intensified, swung slightly to the left as thirty-three took the siding. But she had to hurry. The special was whistling closer — too close. Thirty-three’s locomotive grumbled abreast of him. Something tugged at his coat.

“Papa! Won’t you come quick to mama?”

The dark, heavy cars slipped by. The red glow of the fuse was overcome by the white light from the south. The last black Pullman of thirty-three cleared the points. With a gasping breath Tolliver threw the switch lever.

“It’s too late now. Sonny,” he said to the importunate child.

The tower shook. A hot, white eye flashed by, and a blurred streak of cars. Snow pelted in the window, stinging Tolliver’s face. Tolliver closed the window and picked up thirty-three’s orders. If he had kept the revolver here he could have prevented Joe’s leaving the tower. Why had Sally locked it in the cupboard? At least it was there now. Tolliver found himself thinking of the revolver as an exhausted man forecasts sleep.

Someone ran swiftly up the stairs. It was the engineer of thirty-three, surprised and impatient.

“Where are my orders, Tolliver? I don’t want to lie over here all night.”

He paused. His tone became curious.

“What ails you, Tolliver?”

Tolliver handed him the orders, trembling.

“I guess maybe my wife at the house is dead, or — You’ll go see.”

The engineer shook his head.

“You brace up, Tolliver. I’m sorry if anything’s happened to your wife, but we couldn’t hold thirty-three, even for a murder.”

Tolliver’s trembling grew. He mumbled incoherently:

“But I didn’t murder all those people—”

“Report to division headquarters.” the engineer advised. “They’ll send you help tomorrow.”

He hurried down the stairs. After a moment the long train pulled out, filled with warm, comfortable people. The child, his sobbing at an end, watched it curiously. Tolliver tried to stop his shaking.

There was someone else on the stairs now, climbing with an extreme slowness. A bare arm reached through the trap, wavering for a moment uncertainly. Ugly bruises showed on the white flesh. Tolliver managed to reach the trap. He grasped the arm and drew into the light the dark hair and the chalky face of his wife. Her wide eyes stared at him strangely.

“Don’t touch me,” she whispered. “What am I going to do?”

“Joe?”

“Why do you tremble so?” she asked in her colorless voice, without resonance. “Why didn’t you come?”

“Joe?” he repeated hysterically.

She drew away from him.

“You won’t want to touch me again.”

He pointed to the repellant bruises. She shook her head.

“He didn’t hurt me much,” she whispered, “because I — I killed him.”

She drew her other hand from the folds of her wrapper. The revolver dangled from her fingers. It slipped and fell to the floor. The child stared at it with round eyes, as if he longed to pick it up.

She covered her face and shrank against the wall.

“I’ve killed a man—”

Through her fingers she looked at her husband fearfully. After a time she whispered:

“Why don’t you say something?”

His trembling had ceased. His lips were twisted in a grin. He, too, wondered why he didn’t say something. Because there were no words for what was in his heart.

In a corner he arranged his overcoat as a sort of a bed for the boy.

“Won’t you speak to me?” she sobbed. “I didn’t mean to, but I had to. You got to understand. I had to.”

He went to the table and commenced to tap vigorously on the key. She ran across and grasped at his arm.

“What you telling them?” she demanded wildly.

“Why, Sally!” he said. “What’s the matter with you? — To send another man now Joe is gone.”

Truths emerged from his measureless relief, lending themselves to words. He trembled again for a moment.

“If I hadn’t stayed! If I’d let them smash! When all along it only needed Joe to keep all those people from getting killed.”

He sat down, caught her in his arms, drew her to his knee, and held her close.

“You ain’t going to scold?” she asked wonderingly.

He shook his head. He couldn’t say any more just then; but when his tears touched her face she seemed to understand and to be content.

So, while the boy slept, they waited together for someone to take Joe’s place.

“Metropolitan Magazine”, May 1920

THE GATE

Low and surly, the fog was drawn after the heavy clouds in from the sea. Emily stood by the gate, the wind whipping her fail skirts and her dark hair, her eyes fixed on the far point of land, and vaguely troubled that Cleveland, who had sailed beyond it, did not return ahead of the gathering storm. There was no preparation, and to the entire village the shock came as heavily as to her, for there they lived slowly and, if not always peacefully, at least without alarms.

The sheriff brought her the news. He turned the corner, running and tugging into his reefer as he came. A young man, flushed, but apparently at nothing, slouched along the sidewalk and met him at the gate.

“What’s your rush, Sheriff?”

“Better come. I need ye all.”

“You’re the first sheriff this county ever hurried,” the young man drawled. “Are you on the track of a cri-mi-nal? Ain’t it exciting, Emily?”

“This ain’t a laughin’ matter, Jack,” the sheriff answered. “I’m on my way to the courthouse to ring the bell. I need ye all.”

Emily sought cause for her fright, and found it. “What’s gone wrong, Mr. Rawlins?”

“Murder like as not. It’s State’s Prison, anyway.”

“For whom?” Jack asked.

“For your friend, Jim Greene, if I can catch him.”

“Oh, no,” the girl said very calmly. “He can’t have done anything.”

Rawlins took off his hat. “I’m a leetle flustered. It was thoughtless of me, Emily.”

“Then go on and tell me,” she urged. “Is anybody hurt?”

“I guess so. Tom Cleveland’s head is laid open. They’ve taken him to the house. He was conscious long enough to say who done it.”

“I expect you must be wrong, Mr. Rawlins. I saw him sail around the point not two hours ago.”

“I’ve got to go on. They found him adrift in the inner bay.”

“Wait a minute. Who says Jim’s got anything to do with it?” she challenged. .

“Johnson saw him not ten minutes before they found Cleveland, dripping wet and carrying a broken oar.”

“You can’t convince me, sheriff,” Jack said.

“I want you to help hunt. Coming?” “Guess so,” Jack answered, but he turned his back for the moment and faced the girl. Her lips were quivering, and she held tight to the palings.

“They haven’t been fighting over me, Jack?”

“Then you convict him from just what you’ve heard? Well, I do from what I’ve seen and heard. I saw him skulking through the woods, and I heard what Tom said to Johnson. Jim come on him as he was furling sail back of the Grove, and let him have it with his oar. If anybody’d a told me Jim would have fought that way—”

“He wouldn’t have,” she gasped.

“He did. Ain’t no jury won’t say different. Worst of all is I’m a witness. I followed him as soon as I’d seen Johnson, and found him changin’ his clothes. I told him they knew about it, and he’d better light out. ‘Know about what?’ he asked. Of all the nerve! ‘About you’re trying to kill Tom Cleveland.’ He laughed right out, Emily, and there was the broken oar in the corner, but he went when I told him Johnson and I had seen him. I’d have stood by him if he hadn’t lied. Guess I’ll stand by him, anyway, but he ain’t worth it.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said. “He had no cause. Tom was here last night and wanted to know something, surely, because he was going back to the city in a day or two. You know what I told him, Jack.”

“Jim didn’t know about that,” he answered. “I expect all he was thinking about was that Tom had lots of money, and that you had been goin’ on with him.”

“I hadn’t.”

“Nobody did know which was favored, and that makes it blacker than ever. He wouldn’t have run, anyway, if he hadn’t done it.”

“He didn’t do it,” she reiterated. “I am never going to believe it, not even if they catch him and — and hang him!”

“Here, here, Emily,” he said soothingly. “Don’t get worked up; it won’t do a mite of good.”

“I’m not going to believe it. I’m not going to believe it,” she repeated tautly. “Go on and help catch him, but I’m not going to believe it.”

But when she was alone the necessity of her resolve, which she mentally chanted, gave her the lie, or, at least, if she did not believe that he had attempted jealous murder, she was no surer that he hadn’t. She realized that she had led them both on innocently enough — to resolve her own doubts as much as anything else; but now she felt that Jim ought to have known what was all at once so clear to herself — that he had always mastered her heart.

She turned at a loss and walked up the pathway. The rain-soaked bushes drooped. The flowers were colorless. More drops splashed down, and the wind swept sorrowfully across heavy branches. The heavy clang of the court house bell quavered to her. Never before in her memory had it rung to such a purpose. But she knew that the villagers would go after their friend sternly, would run him down — for what chance had he, with the water guarded first of all? She would not have believed, she told herself, if he had stayed to fight it like a man. Then for a time thought ceased, for she knew that she did believe, and believing, fell to something like contempt of him.

Late in the afternoon, when the rain had drowned the twilight, Simpson, the Clevelands’ hired man, came for her, and in his dripping oilskins, stood awkwardly on the side porch. Her mother said she should go, but she shrank from it.

“He’s powerful bad, Miss. I expect he’s goin’, an’ he says it would assist him lots if you’d come.”

“You’ve got to go, Emily,” her mother said.

Silently she put on her coat and overshoes and followed him down the path. He wanted to tell her each detail, but she put her hand on his arm.

“Don’t tell me a word, Simpson,” she begged. “I’ll see enough. I don’t want to hear anything about it.”

But when she met the doctor leaving the house she turned back with him.

“Will he die?”

The doctor shook his head. “It is my opinion that he won’t. Fortunately, it was a blunt blow, and I am not sure that the skull is fractured. If it is not he ought to be as sound as ever in a few weeks — days maybe.”

She felt that he was right, and went in, angry that she shrank from entering the room more than ever because he could not even drag dignity from his disaster. He was, as she had expected, craving pity, with a bandaged head and a white face.

“I mustn’t talk much,” he began.

“No, it’s bad for you,” she agreed. “But I wanted to see you, because I
may not — I’m pretty bad off, they say.”

“You’re all right. They shouldn’t say such things. You must know you are going to get well, no matter what foolish things they say.”

“Do you care whether I do, or not?” he asked faintly.

“That’s a silly question, Tom. Of course, I do — a great deal.”

He offered his hand, but she would not see it. “Emily,” he sighed, “it wouldn’t make much difference to you now, and, oh, it would make so much difference to me.”

“What, Tom?”

“If you would take back what you said last night — if you would promise.”

She turned almost fiercely. “But it is so.” Then her tone softened. “I couldn’t take it back without a lie.”

“Couldn’t you now, when it would help me for a little while? It wouldn’t be long. If you only would we could have the minister in tonight, and all you would have to do would be to take care of me until — the end.”

She struggled against the loathing his request aroused. She had no pity for his plight. Was it because it had altered the world for her through Jim? She did not know, but she answered him quietly. “You are not going to die. And you would not ask me to be your wife without love.”

“You do not love him?”

“The only thing you have a right to ask is do I love you?”

“How could you love him? See what he has done! Is that not enough? And why did he do it, then? I felt as I went down that you had changed your mind, and told him, and that was the reason he did it.”

“If he did it, nobody knows why.”

“If he did it?” he asked. “Can anyone doubt it? Could I make such a mistake?”

A hot question rose to her lips, but she smothered it. He stretched out his hand again pitifully, but she would not heed it.

“You know,” she said, “that this is bad for you. You shouldn’t talk at all. I’ve stayed too long. What will the doctor say?”

“Won’t you stay a little longer?”

“No, not a minute. You’ll be better in the morning.”

“No, I shall never be better — unless it is better to die.”

She tried to speak cheerfully. “You will be better in the morning.”

“Then, you will come in the morning?”

“Perhaps, if you go to sleep now.” A third time she would not see his hand, and left the house quietly, after a word with his mother.

The rain beating against her face refreshed her. She would not have Simpson, for she was resolved not to go home until she had heard. They must have caught him by this time; perhaps already he was in the vile, unused cell beneath the courthouse, at which she had shuddered as a child. She avoided the oil lamps, and hovered around the outskirts of the Square. There were lights in the building, and she could catch the blur of figures on the curtains. She saw Jack leave the building and went to meet him.

“Have they got him?” she asked.

“Is that you, Emily? I don’t know why they haven’t, but they haven’t.”

She didn’t say anything, so he asked, “Then you’re glad?”

“I’m glad,” she said.

“If he had known that yesterday.” Then he mused, “but a fellow who would do such a thing isn’t worth much worry.”

She laughed nervously. “Oh, anybody with a heart would be glad a man was out of jail — and such a night — that is all I meant.”

•   •   •

Cleveland had just left her, and she leaned against the gate, watching him plod up the dusty road. She was very white, and her fit of anger had not died. She, who had never known a stern emotion before the crime, in these last weeks had sounded contempt and hatred, and the tragedy of unhappiness and uncertainty. As for Cleveland, after his pitiful exhibition, she felt he ought to have had the shame to stay away from her, but now that he was out, he came with talk of a miracle that they might be united. How she had answered him, she did not know, but she vaguely remembered that she had been calm and hard, as he had deserved. Where was Jim — the coward Jim, who had run away? She fought the relief that had grown with each day, and the admiration his escape had aroused. He was worthy of no thought, she told herself, but she thought of him.

It made it all the harder that this was Hallowe’en. On that night all the young people in the village dressed in sheets and pillowcases and took their ghostly way through the shadows from house to house. Jim and she had gone together last year. There had been dark places under the trees where she had conquered with laughter. He had asked for a word, but she had never encouraged him, hesitant before something to which her soul must grow. This year she would not go, and they could let it mean what they would. Would they take that to mean encouragement, at last? But it wasn’t. She had no encouragement for a coward — for one who strikes from behind.

They came that night, tall and white, and full of laughter, carrying ridiculous pumpkin lanterns. They came streaking across the lawn, and she slipped into the dark parlor, leaving her father and mother, who grinned a welcome at the ghostly army. But the door was partly open, and she watched the pillow cases slip, and the screams with which familiar faces were hidden again. One more careful than the rest was in the van, and his cowled head turned in a puzzled way from the old man in the chair to his wife behind him. The others paraded around the room, and out, but he slipped in at the parlor door, and guided by her caught breath. came to her and grasped her arms. She knew, and led him through the side door into the garden.

“You’re a fool,” she said. “They’ll put you in jail.”

He laughed quietly. “I expect you’re not going to tell them I’m here.”

“What if I did?”

“They wouldn’t find me.”

“What have you come for?”

“I first asked you a year ago. That was something. Anyway, I couldn’t keep away a minute longer. It’s been nearly a month, Emily. Maybe, too, I wanted to hear you say what fools they all are to believe such a story.”

“They’re not fools.”

“Emily!”

“Why didn’t you see that I cared for you? Or, if you wanted it that way, why didn’t you fight him fair?”

“Then you think I did it?” he asked slowly, stepping back.

“Well, didn’t you?”

“That wouldn’t convince you, if you believe it.”

“If you didn’t, why did you run away?”

“Not for the same reason I’m going now.” He stalked down the path, but before he had reached the gate all of her doubts had distilled into the certainty that whatever he was or had done, he was the best life could give. She caught his arm.

“Jim, I don’t care. Ask me what you asked a year ago.”

He turned slowly. “Not as long as you believe that.”

“You mustn’t ask me that. I am sure of what I didn’t dare tell you last year. I do know that. Isn’t that enough?”

“No, you haven’t faith in me. I couldn’t have any in you.” He opened the gate and went out.

“You won’t let them catch you?” she quavered, straining her eyes after the white figure gliding along the fence.

•   •   •

He found Jack with the others among the flitting lights in the Square. He carefully drew back his head-covering. and the other faced him afraid. He drew him aside, and talked to him for a long time. Whatever it was, Jack would help him, and they set out.

•   •   •

Emily still stood by the gate, her first numbness giving way to hot anger at circumstance. Should he come back, she could tell him nothing more surely than before, save that she wanted him, whatever he had done. Then she saw a tall, white figure coming stealthily along the fence, and her heart grew glad. He came straight to her, and she reached over the gate and took his hand.

“It’s all right, then,” she whispered eagerly. “You’re sensible. Why wouldn’t you see at first it was enough that I loved you?”

“Oh, Emily, Emily,” he said, fumbling with the gate latch. “I knew it must be this way. I’ve always had faith.” He had the gate open and his arms were reaching for her.

She drew back, her mind careening from her mistake through a tough sea of temper to one clear beacon. Her voice answered him silky and alluring:

“No, not now: wait a second. You will wait one second right here by the gate.”

“Why?” he asked impatiently. “I have waited forever. Where are you going?”

She stamped her foot. “Can’t I have my way at such a time? Are you going to be a tyrant so soon? All right,” with playful warning, “we’ll stop here.”

He laughed happily. “What is it, you dear girl? I’ll do anything for you, but waiting is the hardest you could ask.”

He stretched out his hands again, but her heel crunched harshly in the gravel as she stepped back.

“Will you wait?”

“I’ll try,” he sighed in deep enjoyment of the sensation of humoring her.

“You’re simply not to be trusted,” she answered with a quick little laugh. “No, if you touch me now, you shan’t later. You must wait, and you won’t wait, will you, unless you are tied like an animal?”

His laugh was crowded with happiness.

“Here, put your hands on the gate,” she went on.

He grasped the palings quickly. “Are you always going to be so bossy?” he wanted to know.

“If I had an apron I’d tie you with the strings of it.” she said thoughtfully. “but as I have not—” She took the sheet from his shoulders, and twisting it about his hands. wrapped it tightly around the pilings, until she had fastened him as well as she could. Then she stepped back and surveyed her work. “Now, you’re a prisoner,” she said. “I wanted to get something for you from the house. I suppose you could manage to get loose before I come back, but if you try it, you shan’t have what I am going for — no, not that, nor anything else.”

“I promise,” he agreed in fatuous enjoyment of her little comedy. “Only hurry.”

She was gone, and almost immediately he could hear her footsteps coming quickly back along the pathway. She paused before him, her hands held behind her back, and all the playfulness of her face replaced by pain and doubt and harsh determination to solve that doubt.

“Now, Tom Cleveland,” she said, “you have got to tell me the truth. Did Jim strike you?” I

“Why do you ask such questions? What did you bring me?”

“You answer me,” she said, all of her consciousness centered to this idea of drawing the truth from the one man who could tell it.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he declared pettishly and not quite steadily. “He is nothing to us now.” But he was trying to tug his wrists free from the sheet, and she knew that in a moment he would succeed. The chance was slipping by her. She felt that she faced a life of uncertainty. She must know, so she could go to Jim and honestly say that she believed, or did not believe. Quickly she showed him the whip she held.

“Tell me,” she whispered.

But he saw now, and leaning over the palings, tried carefully to release himself. She listened for a moment to the uneven creaking of the gate, then raised her hand, and the whip curled about his shoulders. She struck blindly again and again, until his efforts became futile.

“You tell me,” she said. “You tell me.” And then as he cringed and shivered and gasped under her blows, she knew. “He didn’t do it,” she triumphed, “you ——”

“Stop!” he gasped. “Emily, stop!”

“Say it then,” she laughed.

He hid his stinging face in his hands. “Stop, oh, stop! Let me go!”

“Say it, then.”

“Let me go!”

“Say it, then; say it.”

“Don’t hit me again. I tell you he didn’t.”

“Who did it, then? Say it.”

“Stop! I — can’t — speak.”

The whip dropped to her side, and he at last released his hands and sank down in the gravel. She raised her hand, but he did not attempt to rise.

“I don’t care about you, anyway,” he said sullenly. “The boom swung over as I was furling sail in that first hard squall. It knocked me down, and my head struck the gunwale. I saw him right by the boat, and I thought he had done it. I don’t care whether you believe me or not, but I did. I remembered afterwards, but it didn’t do any good then.”

Then her selfishness fell away from her. She realized that she had accomplished these things, not for Jim’s, but for her own sake, and that he would still be hunted.

“You take a piece of paper and write that,” she said.

“I haven’t any.”

“Write it, or I’ll—”

“I haven’t any paper.”

Her helplessness robbed her of all control, and she raised the whip again.

“You write it.”

“I haven’t any—”

“Take that stick and write it in the gravel.”

He tried to struggle to his feet, but she raised the whip and he fell back to his knees, and picking up the stick, began to scrawl aimlessly in the dirt.

“Say this, say, ‘I swear that Jim Greene did not strike me.’ Have you got that?”

The gate rattled, and she looked up. Two white figures stood beside her. One of them drew her back into the shadow; and held her close and kissed her lips, then held her silently for many minutes.

“Why didn’t you stay at first?” she asked at last.

“Because I couldn’t bear to face the firm belief of my friends that I was guilty. Jack showed me how it would be, but it’s all right now. We heard what he said to you.”

“No, no, Jim, it’s all wrong.”

“Why? When you’ve done this for me?”

“Oh, no, I did it for myself. I am not worthy of you. I had no faith in you.”

“But you fought for it and found it. You won’t fail again.”

They saw Jack leading Cleveland heavily down the pathway, and when the gate had clicked behind them she surrendered to the reaction and sobbed quietly.

“Metropolitan Magazine”, November 1906

THE STRAIGHT PATH

The tinkling of the telephone broke into their daydream. “Aunt Liza’s out; you’ll have to answer it,” she said.

He grumbled his resignation and hurried across the grass and into the living-room of the time-worn New England farmhouse. He paused to wave his hand to the country girl on the bench under the trees, then, still smiling, put the receiver to his ear to meet the crisis wholly unprepared. For he had unlimited youth and enthusiasm and was narrow enough to live with both, to the exclusion of wisdom; so that during his convalescence he had found it easy to forget the foreordained.

When he heard his mother’s voice he took it for granted that she was calling him from New York.

“What’s gone wrong?” he shouted, to be sure the words would carry.

“I can hear you perfectly well, Freddy. You shouldn’t exert yourself so. Nothing’s wrong. Claire and I are at the station.”

“Why have you come?” he snapped.

“To see about you,” she calmly replied.

“About me!” he stumbled. Youth and enthusiasm were carried before the flood of recollection let loose by their presence here. “What can you want to see about me?”

Her voice vibrated to him challengingly. “Is it surprising I should want to know how you are picking up after the fever? It isn’t necessary we should discuss that here, at all events. This phone is in the middle of a grocery store — quite; and most of the population is enjoying the novelty of seeing it used.” There was a pause, then: “Haven’t you a decent carriage to send for us? It isn’t far, is it?”

“Fully two miles,” he replied discouragingly, “and this is September; all the horses are in the fields.”

“What are stables for?” she demanded. “If you weren’t my only son, I’d turn back. Wait a minute.”

He heard a man’s voice echoing over the wire, with an offer to drive the ladies all the way to the Ringer’s place for fifty cents.

“I’ve engaged a carriage,” she resumed. “Good-bye.” and he heard the wire snap dead. He replaced his own receiver reflectively, thrust his hands into his pockets, and, his lips pursed as though he would have whistled his discomfiture, sauntered across the porch and towards the bench. “Should he tell her?” he was asking himself.

She awaited him with a look sounding his delay. It was his custom to shorten as far as possible these moments of separation. She was a slip of a girl, scarcely more than eighteen, with dark hair parted in the middle and waving back to a knot gathered low on her neck. Her almost startlingly innocent eyes made his own for the first time waver, and he decided that, however much she might love him, she could not understand how unthinkingly he had led her and himself into this labyrinth.

“What is it?” she asked, as he returned to his place beside her.

“Nothing of any consequence. I’ll tell you about it later.” he answered to gain time, in a hope, whose deceit he recognized, that he would be able to think a peaceful way out for both of them.

After a few moments’ silence she placed her hand on his. “They’re not calling you back, Freddy? You’re not strong enough yet.”

His glance took in her plain, neat gown, which somehow fitted her charmingly. This unwelcome recall to his old life had not altered the great fact. “My mother is driving from the village — and a friend of hers. It’s a little sudden.” He viciously spoiled a mole’s industry.

She felt his trouble vaguely. “Aren’t you glad?”

“I hope I’m always glad to see my mother, but it’s surprising; haven’t heard from her in three weeks.”

“Are you wondering whether to tell her about me?” Perhaps neither of them had put it into words before, but both had accepted it as a foregone conclusion. Her question brought the situation to him barer and more unpleasant than ever. Had he not come here to convalesce; had this crisis not arisen, it is conceivable that up to his wedding day, he would never have felt himself bound to Claire by his careless yielding to his mother’s insistence. And now she was coming with Claire. Could it have been Bob Frazer, whose talk had brought them? Frazer had been out the week before, and he, of course, had eyes. But he had accepted it all as a matter of course. Claire had hidden in some remote, corner of his brain for weeks.

“If you think it better not,” the girl said, rising. “I know you will do whatever is best. I’ll go into the house now.”

“Yes, I’d rather see them alone for a minute. I’ll bring them in. Good-bye, Kate.”

He watched her until the screen door had closed behind her, then turned his eyes to the bend in the road around which they must come. In a few minutes they drove through the gate, uncomfortable in a dilapidated two-seated carriage, fringed with torn curtains and adorned with the mud of several storms. He helped his mother, gray-haired and dignified, to the ground, then held out his hand to Claire, a pretty, conventional young woman, who looked as though her family had had for several generations enough money to make them all ladies and gentlemen.

“Well, I’ve never seen you looking better,” Mrs. Randall declared.

“I didn’t expect to be so honored,” he answered with a half-hearted laugh. “I never supposed, mother, that your solicitude would carry you so far from the beaten paths. And Claire—”

“Freddy, I didn’t come to see how many pounds you had gained,” his mother said, skirmishing.

“It isn’t very clear in my mind what we did come for,” Claire put in.

“I thought it best for you to come under the circumstances,” she explained.

“Something Bob Frazer said?” he questioned, anxious now to have the battle started.

“Your father always had a way of going to the point. Of course,” she went on with an impetuosity that showed how uncertain she was of her ground, “we all know what an utter idiot Bob Frazer is.”

“I might question his judgment in this case,” he replied, “but I would scarcely call him an idiot.”

“We don’t believe him, naturally — at least, I don’t. I thought it best to wait until we had reached the ground, where the silly story could be disproved, before telling your future wife.”

He turned to Claire, bowing mockingly.

“Yes, I’m it,” she confessed. “Now, what’s it all about?”

“Nothing, I’m sure,” Mrs. Randall hurried on. “Bobby Frazer’s quite crazy.”

“Let’s move into the shade, and then you can tell me where they’ve taken him,” Claire suggested mildly.

“You’d better come right on into the house,” Freddy proposed. “Mrs. Ringer’s gone over to the Stillwells’ for the day; but Kate’s here.”

“And who is Kate?” his mother asked. “The help?”

“Scarcely. She’s Mrs. Ringer’s niece, and — and—”

“And what?”

The fight wasn’t going exactly to his taste. Claire’s presence and her ignorance of the situation strengthened his mother’s position, and she was gathering confidence with each move. He led them onto the veranda, deciding on purely defensive tactics. Mrs. Randall paused, disdainfully surveying the warped clap-boards and the distorted window frames.

“How disreputably picturesque!” she sniffed.

“It’s been here for more than a hundred years,” he asserted, “and it’s never been out of the family.”

“Like the owners,” she declaimed, “worn out and faintly amusing.”

He jerked the screen door open and followed them into the darkened interior. Kate rose from a chair in the chimney corner and advanced uneasily. He glanced from one to the other of the two young women. No sane man, he knew, would hesitate for a moment; but in order to prove his sanity, he would have to violate tradition, fly in the face of his small but powerful world, and — the thought would not leave him — what would she, herself, say?

“Kate, my mother has just been saying that she doesn’t like old things, so I’ve brought her to you.”

The girl moved forward as though to offer her hand, but Mrs. Randall’s formal bow repelled her. He turned to Claire, but his mother was not letting the opportunity slip. She nodded towards Claire.

“And I,” she said, “want to present you to my son’s fiancée.”

Her avaricious grasp at the chance shocked him. “This is Miss Claire Everett,” he amended.

“I didn’t know—” she began, but he interrupted her, catching her comforting interpretation of his mother’s introduction.

“No, I am the one and only son.”

She flushed and after a moment turned pale, but that was all. This time her hand went out and Claire took it.

“I’m awfully glad,” Claire drawled. “Have you been helping Freddy get well?”

“I think I have,” Kate answered cheerfully. “And I’m glad to meet you.”

Her tone disturbed him more than ever. It suggested the shifting of all her values, the slipping away of youth.

“Of course, you will stay to dinner,” Kate went on, “and you’ll want to rest. You must have had an uncomfortable trip; it’s such a hot day.”

Without once glancing at him. she led the way up the stairs. He paced the floor waiting for her return, hoping she would demand an explanation; yet at a loss for a satisfying one. After a time he braved the unwilling piano, playing a hymn — the only thing that occurred to him. Then he took a book, but his eyes sought continually the head of the stairs. Would she never come back? He romantically pictured her suffering, until finally, yielding to his own, he threw discretion to the winds, and, leaning against the newel post, called, at first hesitatingly, then louder, more insistently:

“Kate! Kate!”

But she made no answer and he tried again, and after that until his mother replied:

“Well, what is it, Freddy?”

“Nothing, nothing,” he answered. “It’s time for my milk and egg; that’s all. I suppose I can get it myself.”

“Where are the maids?”

“I didn’t know you had brought them,” he snapped, and went onto the porch, slamming the door behind him. He tried to find comfort in thoughts of a relapse, but, counting the weeks since he had left the hospital, ended by smiling grimly.

Kate did not reappear until dinner time. The men had taken their baskets to the field, and the four had the room to themselves. Kate said never a word during the meal, for Mrs. Randall’s attitude suggested total ignorance of her presence. Claire’s conversation suffered from a severe effort; and Freddy tried to confine his interest to his dinner. Oddly enough, it was Irish stew, and Mrs. Randall had no more appetite than the rest of them. It scarcely once distracted her attention from the weighty sentences of which her son was the subject and his future the predicate. Claire, he guessed before the meal was finished, had measured the situation, and he was curious as to her feelings.

Afterward Kate left them, and his mother with a sigh occupied the sofa.

“What a relief!” she said. “Come here, son, and let’s have a cozy chat. Now that this silly story has been disproved, I apologize for ever having taken any stock in it.”

“I can’t stop, mother.”

“Why not? Where are you going?”

“You ought to know how ill I’ve been. The doctor insists on my taking a brisk walk after meals.”

“Then we’ll have to see about getting you a new doctor.”

“Meantime I shall obey the old.” He avoided further expostulation.

She was not in the kitchen, and he hurried through the barnyard. He saw Mrs. Ringer’s small daughter, bare-footed and swinging a pail, coming in from the fields.

“Have you seen your cousin Kate?” he called.

She nodded in the direction of the woods, and he plowed across the first cornfield. He came upon her suddenly through the trees, so that she had no chance of escape. She was seated dejectedly on a fallen log, where a spring had hollowed a deep basin in the clay. Had she been weeping, as he had half expected, he would have felt surer of himself, but after the first glance she kept her eyes on the ground, while he rustled through last year’s leaves and stood before her.

Her self-possession routed the dramatic utterances he had prepared on the way from the house. “What are you doing here all alone?” was the best he could muster.

“It is cool here,” she answered.

“Now, Kate—” he began.

“Well?”

“This isn’t getting anywhere.” He waited. “Is it what my mother said?”

She raised her eyes then. “Oh, you have made me so ashamed of myself.”

He sat down beside her and started to tear a twig to pieces. “It is I who should be ashamed, and I am; but all this can’t make any difference to us.”

“It makes all the difference,” she answered quietly. “I feel as though I had grown old since they came.”

“I know, Kate, that you think I’m a sad scoundrel.”

“I hope not that. I hope it was just because you were weak. Only — I wish weak people wouldn’t drag other people into their weaknesses.”

Her voice shook a little, but when he made an effort for her hand, she drew it away.

“You must try to believe me.” he said. “I don’t minimize the shock to you. If I hadn’t been careless and weak, as you say, this couldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have had it happen for the world.” He faced her squarely. “But now that it has happened, don’t you think that it is going to change a thing. No, don’t say a word. I’m not trying to comfort you. I’m selfish; it’s myself. If I can’t persuade you what an utter idiot I’ve been, I’m a poor sort. Claire and I have never cared a snap of our fingers for each other.”

“That’s nonsense; then you couldn’t be going to marry each other,” she calmly stated.

“I hate to tell you this sort of thing, but our families were taking care of all those minor details. So it didn’t occur to me to tell you about Claire. I hardly once thought of her. She seemed so foreign to what was between us. I was entering a new world, so perhaps it was purposely that I kept her out. It was so engrossing, so natural, that I took it for granted that everybody would be as pleased as I was.”

“It isn’t clear at all. I don’t see the use of this. You belong to her, anyway.”

“I don’t, and nothing could make me now, no matter what happens. You see, dear, I’ve never known Claire very well. When my mother told me she wanted me to marry her, I laughed. ‘What will Claire say?’ I asked. ‘Claire’s a good, sensible girl,’ she said. Then I got angry, and mother wept until I said ‘yes.’ She assured me that I needn’t bother about it for a long time, and I haven’t bothered about it once since. I told Claire I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it, and that she’d better not either. She answered that insomnia was hereditary in her family, so she wouldn’t have any illusions in any case. Now, Kate, haven’t I a right? Is there any social code that insists on my making three persons utterly miserable for all their lives?”

“If there is, it isn’t a good one,” she answered.

“You understand, don’t you?”

“Not quite, and I can’t see why I should, truly.” There were tears in her eyes now, and, leaning over, he put his arms about her and kissed her.

“There is no reason why you should, since you can’t doubt the important thing. I will take care of the rest. All I want to know is that you will help.”

“I guess I will help,” she said slowly. “I think I’d better.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” she said, “that you walked all the way from the house without your hat?”

“I wasn’t thinking of hats,” he laughed.

“Then I’ll have to make you one. You might have a relapse.”

“I rather hoped for it this morning; and not once to-day have I taken the customary milk and egg.”

She tied a knot in each corner of his handkerchief and, rising, placed it on his head.

“Now,” he said, “let’s go face the music.”

She paused at the barnyard gate. “You had such a glorious future,” she said plaintively.

“And I hadn’t done a thing to deserve it. This is justice!”

“Please be serious. I’m sorry you are going to disappoint your mother.”

“I hope before long that she will see it was the only thing. I’m going to try to show her now.”

He walked boldly in at the front door. Mrs. Randall’s face was red, and Claire as soon as she saw him got to her feet. He felt that he was interrupting combatants, not conspirators. His mother sat up.

“For heaven’s sake, Freddy, where did you get that thing on your head?”

“Kate put it there,” he said simply.

Claire smothered a laugh and went onto the veranda.

“This has gone quite far enough,” his mother said. “I want you to pack your trunk. You are coming hack to the city with me.”

“No, I’m not, mother.”

“You’re quite strong enough; if you’re not, you can go somewheres else.”

“That isn’t it at all. It’s simply the Declaration of Independence.”

“I won’t have it,” she said. “That hopeless creature!”

“You mustn’t say those things about her.”

“Your sense of honor must prevent you.”

“If it did it would be a mistaken sense of honor. Just this problem doesn’t come to every man. If it did he would have one honorable course, and that’s the one I’m taking. Now you may say whatever you please, but I have nothing more to say.”

•   •   •

He found Kate and Claire together on the bench under the trees. The girl had picked up a garden trowel which she had been using that morning, as though glorying in her bondage to the soil; but she was much interested in something Claire was saying. As he came up Claire smiled.

“It’s all right, Freddy” she said. “You believe it, and I guess it’s true. You couldn’t have done anything else. Is the debate all over?”

“Yes,” he answered, “and the parental melodrama has been played out. Not a cent.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ve got something, and I’ll go to work. Maybe that’s better, too.”

A little later the unexpected climax came. They were waiting for the carriage to take the two visitors to the station. Mrs. Randall was nursing her sorrow alone at one end of the veranda, and the others were talking pleasantly by the door, when a big touring car turned in at the gate. Kate with an exclamation of surprise ran across the grass to meet it. Mrs. Randall watched the tall, middle-aged man at the wheel stop the engine, and, jumping to the ground, lean over and kiss the girl; watched it with a sickening feeling of gratitude. She joined the others. “I knew she reminded me of somebody,” she said feebly.

“And now,” Claire asked, “you can bear up under my broken heart?”

But Mrs. Randall turned for the greeting of the newcomer. “I remember now,” she said, “you told me last winter she would finish school this year. But why have you kept her away from us all?”

“Look at her,” he answered. “Don’t you see? I have raised her the best I could without her mother.”

Mrs. Randall went to Claire and wept. “Oh, Kate!” she moaned, “why didn’t you tell us?”

“I thought it was just myself,” Kate said. “I didn’t know it made any difference.”

“And it didn’t,” Freddy answered stoutly; “not the least in the world.”

“Metropolitan Magazine”, September 1906

REAL PEOPLE

Elise glanced indifferently at her brother Ransome’s sullen face.

“Do you know,” he asked, “that Tony Brown is arriving for dinner?”

She nodded.

“Guess why he’s coming?” he persisted.

“Yes, Ransome. Mother must have spoken to you too. I fancy he’s going to ask me to marry him.”

She looked, a trifle puzzled, beyond his shoulders across the formal garden of Broadmeadows. What was the matter with Ransome? She had noticed that sullen glow in his eyes before — scarcely a Carter quality, or hardly to be explained by this prospect of her marriage to a man with whom she had never been on terms even approaching intimacy. For that matter, she had never been on such terms with any male. How could she have been? For the grumbling or malicious comment of the town wasn’t wholly unjustified.

“It’s quite absurd,” you would hear. “They’re actually kowtowed to like royalty. When Old Lady Carter enters a room she might be the Empress of Half the World. No heir to a throne ever had the manner of young Ransome Carter. Elise! Give you my word, in this wide open, high-flying day, she’s more guarded than a princess of the blood; and, hang it all, they behave as if this ridiculous damn foolishness was no more than their right.”

In Elise and her brother, however, the envious were forced to admit, had culminated generations of carefully selected marriage, of formal rearing, of a habit of exceptional wealth, of an increasing custom of repression and retirement; and their mother took pains to see her children lost nothing from the past, for Mr. Carter had long since been conquered by the impertinent democracy of death. What, therefore, could Ransome find out of the way in a marriage arranged with so suitable a house as that of the New England Browns?

He paused, staring at her tall, slender, white- robed figure, too immobile for her youth; at her wistful face, whose fineness was transformed into delicacy by the dissonance of her heavy black hair and her dark eyes. These, indeed, suggested a compelling warmth where, apparently, merely a stubborn frigidity existed; and it may have occurred to him that a strain of coarser blood would have been useful in her veins; that the Carter system of selective marriages had culminated almost too finely in this inanimate girl of twenty.

“Poor little sister,” he mused. She responded to a slight curiosity. Why this extraordinary and unasked sympathy? “Something wrong with Tony?” she asked. “Tell mother.”

He laughed. “Nothing wrong. Quite all right. About as good as the sumptuous Carters.”

She interrupted him; she felt she had to. “Ransome! You’re not ill?”

“Rotten sick,” he growled, swinging on his heels.

Revolt! It sounded like insubordination in the house of Carter, and she became alarmed. Through her coldness stole a tiny warmth. Perhaps it was that stealthy and infrequently experienced invasion of an emotion that made her afraid.

A moment later she had confirmation. There was, in fact, a tentative insubordination at Broad - meadows, for a hack from the village, proletarian in appearance and sound, scurried along the driveway.

“Who could that possibly be?” she asked.

Ransome flushed. “Chap I told to come. Aviator. Taxied me over to Cuba last month. Ran into him in town the other day, and he wanted to show me a model of some invention or other. Make flying as safe as perambulating—”

She yawned. “Don’t they all say that? Why not play the races?”

“You’re like mother,” he grunted.

“And does she know that you’re entering finance?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “No reason she shouldn’t, but she won’t be down before dinner—”

The cab paused at the foot of the terrace, and from its rusty depths emerged a tall, thickset youth clothed in slightly too-noticeable checks. He came forward, carrying a wooden box under his arm.

“Greetings, Mr. Carter!”

Certainly there was no affected softness about his resonant voice; Ransome glanced anxiously aloft.

“Oh! You’ve brought the thingumajig! If you don’t mind, we’ll take it to the library. Be quite untroubled there.”

The big young man paused by Elise’s chair. Out of a good-looking, wind-coarsened face he smiled in friendly fashion down at her. “Is this your sister?”

“Oh, yes—”

Elise glanced up, startled.

“Glad to meet you,” the young man said cordially. “I’ve seen your pictures in the papers often enough to recognize you.”

He stretched out his hand. She failed to notice it. Then, before she had any idea what was happening, she felt her fingers absorbed by a coarse, broad grasp that crushed and hurt.

“My name’s Withers — Walter Withers.”

She managed a change of expression — nearly a smile. She was glad to have her fingers back. She stared at them, their customary whiteness destroyed by patches of red. From the hall, to which the two men had gone, escaped Withers’s deep and unaffected tones: “Some looker, your sister, Carter! They don’t make too many like her—”

She continued to stare at ,her hand. One really knew nothing about such people. It was an experience — a trifle painful — to be instructed.

•   •   •

Elise and her mother came down the great staircase to Ransome and Tony, who waited in the hall.

Neither from Elise nor Tony, during the dinner which persisted interminably, escaped the slightest recognition of courtship. Behind the white indifference of the girl, however, lurked a startled curiosity. How were such things done? She rather shrank from the painful, probably fallacious excitements of the popular novels her maid recommended, and which she didn’t trouble to discuss with her mother. Tony scarcely helped her to an answer. He seemed interested only in Mrs. Carter’s favorite charities, discussing them with high, rapid accents acquired at Oxford and polished during an occasional season in London. An inappreciable mustache mocked his size, for he was all of six feet, and, at thirty, well-proportioned; so that, as a mate, he would be, unquestionably, approved by the world.

After dinner, although it was quite warm, Elise threw a scarf over her shoulders, wondering that she should need it. Mrs. Carter didn’t care to go out. Ransome did, lingering with a curious stubbornness until a servant glided to the terrace bringing a message rather obviously from the throne.

Doubtfully she watched her brother go. She felt herself invaded by a withering cold. She drew the scarf closer about her shoulders. In a moment the mystery would be unfolded. A man was going to ask her hand in marriage. Why didn’t Ransome want him to do it?

Tony finished his coffee, replaced the cup on a table, lighted a cigarette, rose, and glanced down at her. She couldn’t look at him, so she failed to see the warmth of his eyes or the anxious movement of his hand. “Elise! Do you. think you could ever possibly learn to put up with me?”

She felt a sting of anger, like a lash across her face. It ought not to have come like that. She had an envy for the amorous technique of the books, but she was also conscious of the near-by, gaping house windows. She stood up, slowly, gracefully, and strolled into a shrubbery-bordered alley down which the rising moon peered, saffron, enormous, inquisitive.

“I say, what’s up, Elise? I’ve not blundered?”

Tony was at her heels. She turned slowly, facing him, her anger, her coldness, routed by a reluctant, apprehensive warmth. In a moment it would be this man’s right to take her in his arms.

“How could I possibly love you, Tony?” she asked lightly. “We’ve been good friends, I know, but—”

“Quite appreciate all that,” he said quickly, puffing at his cigarette. “Realize how difficult it is, but you’re awfully jolly to me, Elise; and your mother doesn’t mind the idea. If you’d take time to get accustomed — mean, if you’d give a chap a word of hope — terrific honor to ask, and all that — hanged if I know how to express it—”

She laughed nervously. “Thanks, Tony. You’re right about mother, so I suppose one tries.”

With an involuntary motion she shrank back. This new warmth seemed urging her to a defensive attitude. Through the inquisitive moonlight she observed him narrowly; but he, watching her, merely tossed his cigarette aside, lifted one of her hands gently, gave it a fugitive touch with his lips, and spoke measured words of gratitude. “Happiest duty to see you never regret it, dear old Elise,” he finished.

She relaxed, shamefully aware that she would have liked it better if Tony had grasped at her hand with the painful impetuosity of Ransome’s inventor. But, of course, one’s own kind never did such things.

One’s own kind, instead, sat beneath the random scrutiny of the house windows.

That night, moreover, Ransome irritated her as he had never done. He slipped into her sitting room and waved her maid away. “So it’s settled,” he sneered, “and you’re cooked for life — done up Brown, what?”

“Rather obvious,” she remarked, “you’re seeing too much of your financial genius in superb checks.”

“Do you good if you could too,” he muttered.

There was a real appeal in her dark and normally inscrutable eyes. She wanted to ask him: “Brother, oughtn’t Tony to have tried to touch my lips?” What she actually managed was: “Why don’t you want me to marry Tony, Ransome?”

He took her hand and led her to a mirror. For a moment they stared at themselves in the gold-framed glass.

“Well?” she whispered. “Tarred with the same brush. That’s why I’m not crazy about him.”

She summoned her maid and drove Ransome out, but the pretty, full-blooded servant didn’t ease her misgivings. She knew what was in the wind, and couldn’t quite repress her excitement, drifting into scattered reminiscences of her own brief skirmish with love. She affected to brush her eyes.

“He treated me like the dirt beneath his feet, Miss Elise, but, believe me, it was worth it.”

Elise yawned. Too bad Ransome wasn’t by to hear, for evidently the girl was human also in the mold of Withers.

“I’ll never forget the night he asked me, Miss Elise. You just naturally can’t forget that first kiss—”

Elise yawned. “No? I’m tired. Don’t bother about the lights. Good night.”

•   •   •

That wasn’t the first time Elise stared at her glass, and sometimes she had an uncomfortable suspicion her brother was wrong, for after an evening spent with Tony before the admiring eyes of the town, or alone with him in a secluded corner of the Carter town house, she would conceive a jealousy of her pretty maid whom some man had wanted; would experience shame that she couldn’t love or make herself loved; and at such moments she combated an impulse to run to her mother and cry out: “I won’t do it. I don’t want to marry a model of deportment. Why should I marry a man I don’t love?”

Withers walked up to her one day when she sat in her automobile outside a shop: “It’s Miss Carter, isn’t it?”

And again he took her fingers and submitted them to his agonizing good will. “I don’t quite remember—”

But she stopped, knowing she was lying, for she remembered him sharply enough.

“I’m Wally Withers. I saw you at your country place a few weeks ago.”

She smiled. “Of course. You’re revolutionizing flying, or something.”

“And something,” he laughed. “Make it so safe a child could bring a busload back from Bernini without spilling a single souse.”

His good humor defeated her instinct to withdraw to an unapproachable distance. She couldn’t help laughing back.

His face became serious, apologetic. “Sorry. I know I ought to throttle down my tongue when I talk to you.”

“I don’t see why—”

He pretended to glance anxiously around. He indicated the liveried backs of the two men on the front seat.

“My word!” he drawled under his breath with studied affectation. “Hope those jolly old statues didn’t hear me.”

She had an ugly feeling that he mocked Ransome or Tony, but he gave her no opportunity for rebuke. The traffic broke. He sprang in, slammed the door, and sat coolly down beside her. His smile was daring, but she was quite sure he didn’t mean to mock her.

“Can’t let you fly away without asking pardon. You see, I got brought up in an airplane back yard.”

His pleasant expression faded. His face became serious. “But you watch. I’ll make a landing in the goldenrod yet.”

There was a warm and intriguing quality about his open desire to please her; yet she was glad she had chosen the landaulet, for no one was likely to detect his bulky figure in its depths. By the time they had reached Fifty-ninth Street she had absorbed a number of the epic adventures of a veteran aviator.

As he stepped out at Fifty-ninth Street she thrust her hands purposefully into her muff.

“It’s been a treat to see you, I’ll announce from the altitude record,” he said warmly.

With a premonitory shudder, in order to hurry him away, she accepted his persistent hand.

“I used to think,” he enthused, “that people like you couldn’t be quite human.”

“I fancy,” she said, “we’re all more or less that.”

•   •   •

In the hall she ran across Ransome, restless as usual.

“Where you been? Trousseauing?”

“Only partly,” she answered. “Much more partly, becoming acquainted with your genius inventor.”

He stared. “Withers?”

“Why not? You know you said it would be a good thing if I could see more of him. Perhaps you meant hear more. Congratulate me. I’ve done both — I’ll announce from the altitude record.”

He turned on her. “Stop laughing, or laugh at him all you please, but not at what he stands for.”

“Seems to me one stands for him,” she mocked. “Already he’s taught me a lot of things — I’ll announce from the altitude record.”

“He’s a darn shot more of a he-man than Tony or I.”

She nodded. “You’d like me to agree?”

“At least,” he hurried on, “he’s shown me there are people in the world who say what they think, go where they please, and do what they choose. I’m trying to learn to know some of them — surreptitiously. Right people mustn’t hear about it. Wouldn’t approve. Get back to mother. The more I see of real people the more I hate the way I drone along. Own up, Elise, we’re about as real and useful as a pair of jelly molds. We do as we’re jolly well told.”

Her breath came quickly. Unaccustomed color flooded her face. “You mean I’ve no business marrying Tony?”

After a momentary hesitation he accepted her challenge. “You’ve no business marrying Tony or any man unless you love him. Do you love Tony?”

She answered wistfully: “I — I don’t know. How should I?”

“How should you!” he cried. “And you’ve been engaged two months or more. Can you fancy a real man — take Withers, since you choose to laugh at him — can you fancy him letting his fiancee run two months without knowing whether she wanted to kiss or kill him?”

She was aware of a tightening of her throat, but she spoke easily, ironically: “Perhaps you’d rather I married your real man Withers.”

“I’d rather see you married to a complete bust, just so you really loved him.”

“Somebody been suggesting to our darling Ransome—”

He broke in, flushing angrily: “When it comes to me, I’ll marry where I choose, and I’ll marry a girl who’ll love me and who’ll be real enough to make me love her.”

•   •   •

After Mr. Withers’s rough friendliness Tony seemed particularly unreal when he appeared that evening. He met Elise at the foot of the stairs, took her hand, and led her across the hall. “Does one dare say you are looking lovelier than ever to-night, my dear Elise?” he asked in his drawling voice that invariably seemed to her ears without meaning. “You know you are. Word of honor, you’re breath-taking.”

As a matter of fact, she felt it was true. When she dressed, her mirror had disclosed in the depths of her dark eyes a restlessness, perhaps caught from her brother. Within Tony’s hand she moved her fingers slightly, involuntarily, and fancied a faint pressure from his; but they were at the entrance of the drawing room, where guests were gathered, and he let her hand go.

In the rear of a box at the opera; at a dance after, she received her share of Tony’s meaningless chatter, of his chivalrous attention; and once or twice she nearly laughed at a wrong time, wondering how some of Withers’s phrases would sound on his inappreciably mustached lips.

He lingered at the house. They sat in a corner of the dimly lit library, but Elise was on a lounge, and Tony’s chair was not close. With perverse self-abandon she set herself deliberately to provoke him from his courtly attitude. She half closed her inscrutable eyes. She let her hand fall invitingly on a cushion. She turned slowly.

“Appalling, Tony, to picture that, unless something interferes, we’ll be married within three months.”

He did bend forward then, anxiously, and he touched the inviting hand. In anticipation she felt her fingers crushed, but his pressure failed to tighten. Hadn’t he the strength? When he spoke his voice was not quite steady: “Dashed sorry it appalls you, Elise. My fault altogether, of course. Know I’m an awkward donkey; but just what do you mean, dear girl?”

Her eyes closed. “I don’t know you, Tony,” she whispered.

There was movement in the hall. Voices reached them, and they glanced up as Ransome strolled in. “I say! No idea of an invasion. Expected to find downstairs empty.”

Tony arose. Elise yawned.

“No invasion,” she said. “Who’s with you?”

Ransome hesitated, glancing over his shoulder. A laugh, a trifle unrestrained, obviously embarrassed, penetrated the huge and shadowed room.

“Run along in, Withers,” Tony directed. He attempted to make his voice amused. “It’s the genius of the heavens — the man who is going to put a jitney plane in the very humblest homes.”

. Elise stared at Withers, smiling. “Please enter, great benefactor.”

Withers obeyed, smiling back at her, glancing suspiciously at Tony, confessing his effort to appear at ease through a hasty fondling of his tie, a quick pull at his dinner coat. Patently uncomfortable himself, Ransome helped him out.

“Have business to talk with Withers. Financially interested in his show. Bully good show too. Talk somewheres else. Thought we might smother a drink.”

“I’m just off,” Tony said wearily. “Don’t ring.”

Elise arose and went with him to the door. His voice seemed a trifle wistful as he said good night. “You know you’re pretty tired, Elise, and maybe a bit fanciful? You’re off to bed now — instanter!”

“Tony! Please!” she begged. “At least the three months aren’t up yet.”

She shuddered to think that someday they would be. She shrank from being alone. To postpone the evil moment, she glanced in at the library and said good night. Withers sprang to his feet. “You’re not going just because I’ve come. Miss Carter?”

She smiled indulgently. The man really wanted her to stay.

“Business—” Ransome began.

Elise turned her smile on him. “With your permission I’ll attend to great affairs for half an hour, then I’m off.”

But she heard nothing of affairs, great or small, listening instead to well-meant chatter from the benefactor, while Ransome’s restlessness grew. She paid little heed to that, although she could appreciate her brother’s anxiety that she should have caught him bringing Withers to the house. The man’s ambition to impress her, after weeks of Tony’s impersonal courtesy, was vastly amusing; more than that, an anodyne for her crumbling nerves. What was his object? Did he honestly think she was “some looker”? Her weariness diminished. She reassured Ransome, who, when she said good night, followed her to the hall. “I’m not a tattle-tale, dear Ransome.”

He glanced down. “Perhaps I oughtn’t to have brought him. Seemed all right.”

“Is,” she said, and moved impulsively back to the door.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Withers. Come again when you’ve business to talk.”

•   •   •

It hadn’t occurred to her that the benefactor would accept that impulsive invitation which, she told herself, she had designed as a rebuke for her brother.

One day, however, Withers did under vastly disturbing circumstances, but much had intervened — a number of amusing meetings with him, for instance, when she was in the automobile alone. She hadn’t sufficient faith in Providence not to suspect that the big man had considerately assisted, and always she was on the point of forbidding him to try that again, but she shrank from coloring with so much importance anything he might do. Coming, as such encounters naturally would, on the heels of Tony’s aloof daily politenesses, they aroused in her soul a new confidence, a breathless type of happiness; for if the aviator could so frankly desire her, someone of her own kind might someday.

Then one afternoon he ventured to commence his adieu too soon, and with flaming cheeks she tore her fingers free.

“What’s the matter?” he challenged her, and she thought she saw temper in his face. “You can’t blame me. God made you too beautiful for any man to pass by.”

She smiled, a real thrill at her bleak heart. Too beautiful for any man to pass by! Yet Tony, without a flutter, was doing it. “How flattering! Let’s talk about the great invention.”

He looked away, suddenly depressed, and wouldn’t talk about it. He prepared to leave her.

“And really not any more,” she said. “Inventions bring you to this neighborhood too much.”

Sullenly he got out of the car.

•   •   •

Before dinner that evening Mrs. Carter made an unaccustomed invasion of her room. “You’re nearly ready, Elise?”

“Not quite. What is it, mother?”

“Nothing. I thought I’d see. Oh, yes. I really think it would be better for you not to drift downtown alone again.”

Elise turned away. Surely she had taken Ransome’s advice. She was becoming altogether human, for she realized her face was guilty. “Why, mother?”

“Because,” Mrs. Carter said easily, “we’re rather near a wedding. It would be better not. You won’t be long?”

“Not long.”

Yet she was. For some time she stared at her reflection, feeling a little ashamed, the least bit soiled. Yet it was worth it, well worth it to have been told she was too beautiful for any man to pass by. No matter what the source of her information, she commenced to believe it might be true. In her mind a resolution formed, flourished, and became like steel. Through the entire evening she was aware of that growth and hardening, so that when they were at home it was quite simple for her to say to Tony: “Don’t go just yet. Come along and have a chat.”

Her mother nodded approval and went upstairs. Elise led Tony to the scene of their usual impersonal conferences. “Smoke,” she commanded him.

He obeyed with an unfamiliar reluctance, gazing at her curiously; and all at once, in the face of that unemotional scrutiny, she found she didn’t know how to begin. He spoke softly. He seemed to have forgotten his cigarette. It burned, unheeded, in a tray. “Elise! Was it anything out of the ordinary you had to say?”

“What makes you ask that?” she temporized.

He bent over and took her hand: “You’re not quite so appalled?”

She snatched her hand free, sprang to her feet, and stood facing him, her back to the fireplace, her shoulders squared, her chin up. “More, Tony! More! It won’t do. I can’t go through with it.”

For a moment his face expressed shock, but almost immediately it resumed its habitual repression. “Elise!” he said quietly. “What are you talking about?”

She clasped her hands. At last she experienced sufficient warm emotion. “It’s absurd. It — it’s unbearable. I don’t love you, and you don’t love me. So we can’t marry.”

He turned and lifted his cigarette from the tray. He puffed at it once or twice. “Really, you know, you’ve no right to speak for anyone except your self. I mean, it should be left for me to say whether or not I love you.”

“You don’t need to say it,” she whispered. “It’s sufficiently obvious.”

“Who’s been talking to you?” he asked quietly.

Abruptly she turned her back to him.

“It’s another obvious thing,” he said, “that somebody has. Would you mind telling me who?”

“I mind being catechized,” she said irritably. “I’m sorry, Tony, but I’ve made up my mind. Nothing can change it — nothing in the world.”

He arose. “Then, .Elise, I suppose I ought to go. One small catechism more first. Is there some other chap you love?”

Slowly she shook her head. Her voice was barely audible. “I think I’m incapable of loving anyone.”

For a long time she didn’t turn around, thinking he must still be in the room. When at last she realized she was alone she suffered an invasion of panic. Figuratively she drew back to a corner, waiting there, crouched in a defensive attitude, for the attack would come. Her mother would have to know; Tony’s family; a tongue-wagging, jealous world. For it wasn’t to be supposed Tony’s pride hadn’t been cut painfully enough. Undoubtedly he had wanted to marry her for what she was — a peculiarly fitting ornament for the house of Brown. Then to her in her corner strolled her brother.

“What you up so late for, Elise? Tony just torn himself away?”

She looked straight in his eyes. “I’ve taken your advice, Ransome. I’ve sent him away.”

He stared back at her, gaping. “Talk up,” he said at last.

“Steady, Ransome. A few weeks ago you were practically urging me to do just this.”

“And you didn’t,” he reminded her, “but now you have.”

He lighted a cigarette and smoked nervously. He seemed to have difficulty finding the words he wanted. “No secret,” he muttered, “you’ve been making a fool of yourself. Wouldn’t have believed it of you.”

All at once she laughed. “So my attempts to be decent and human haven’t been sufficiently surreptitious?”

“People have been talking,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “Wouldn’t have been so bad, except with a bird like that.”

Her dark eyes twinkled. “What’s the matter with the bird? Brother just finding out that great inventions are expensive luxuries?”

“Nothing to do with it,” he said sullenly. “Wasn’t his fault somebody else took out the same patent about the time Noah tried to make the ark fly.”

“How much,” she smiled, “has it cost our socialistic financier?”

“I can afford it,” was all he would say. “Has nothing to do with his value as a social stimulant — a democratic eye-opener.”

She responded to a perverse desire to annoy him as completely as he had irritated her.

“I quite agree with you. Since you think another man is necessary, why shouldn’t I tell you it’s your admired Withers? He’s sure to land in the goldenrod — has snipped off a few blossoms already, hasn’t he, generous promoter? Besides, I have in my own right rather more than enough for both.”

“That’s it,” Ransome snapped; “don’t you suppose he’s thought of that?”

“I don’t see,” she said, “why, just because he’s decent and human, just because he says what he thinks, goes where he pleases, and does what he chooses, he should be a hopeless scoundrel. You amaze me. What’s become of your precious ideas?”

“They’ve hit rather close home,” he grumbled.

“Directly at the pocketbook,” she said.

“Directly at my sister,” he answered. “The fact just won’t fit the theory — makes it seem all out of shape.”

She started for the door. “Then run and tattle to mother, although I do think it would be better to let Tony break the news.”

He nodded slowly. “Maybe you’re right. See here, Elise, you’re not going to be such a little fool. It’s impossible. It would be laughable if it were anyone but you.”

“All your own fault, Ransome.”

She flushed. She spoke daringly. “You once exclaimed: ‘God help your children. After all, one can do something for oneself — you don’t want another generation posing around the clubs, not daring to break a golf stick over a caddy’s head, or get beastly drunk against the law—”

“Hush! Where did you learn such words? From Withers?”

“Or his great admirer, my renegade brother,” she laughed.

Yet when she reached her room she was sufficiently serious, sufficiently angry at Tony because he had accepted his dismissal, as he had suffered the engagement, with a perfectly schooled tranquility; with Ransome, who had urged her to rebellion, then attacked her because she had put her feet on the path of liberty. Tarred with the same brush! And impossible to get the stain off! Was it, though? Withers’s unpolished vehemence would be sufficiently cleansing. Her money would land him in the goldenrod. She had never really thought of him in that way before; his brusque impulsiveness had merely opened her eyes as her mother wouldn’t, as Ransome couldn’t. Rotten luck it couldn’t have been done by someone more suitable!

But they had made her angry! Where once she had exhaled an icy passivity she now glowed with the fire of new-born, scarcely understood emotion. Was such a thing possible — to escape from the rarefied air of her own kind, to breathe the dusty and delectable atmosphere of exciting reality?

•   •   •

It was during the following afternoon that Withers chose to accept her random invitation. As she stared doubtfully at his card she was swept by a breath of conspiracy.

When she entered, Withers swung on her eagerly, offering his hands with an unrestrained appeal. His voice rose: “I was afraid you wouldn’t come down at all.”

She listened. The house was very quiet. Her mother, Elise remembered, was asleep in her room. Ransome was out. She felt dreadfully alone with the big man. She didn’t dare accept his hands. She affected, indeed, not to see them. She bade him sit down, but he shook his head vehemently: “I’ve got to make a landing, Miss Carter.”

She tried to laugh, but he stepped closer. She moved back until she leaned against a chair.

“I must touch earth,” he hurried on. “Maybe I forgot myself yesterday, but you can’t blame me. It must have been plain enough to you all along that I’ve been crazy about you since the first time I set eyes on you.”

She found she couldn’t laugh, couldn’t even manage a smile. She was afraid of the sharp air of reality. She struggled to catch her breath: “Surely you know I — I’m supposed to be accounted for.”

He nodded jerkily. “You wouldn’t think much of me if I let that make any difference,” he cried. “That kind of man! You’d better think. What is he? A tailor’s dummy!”

He raised his powerful hands. “I could crack the heads of a squadron like him.”

“What are you saying?” she said faintly. “Please don’t talk that way.”

The anger and anxiety of his face persisted, but he tried to make his voice persuasive. “Why are you afraid to let me touch you?”

She tried to hide the trembling of her hands. “You must really go,” she murmured. “That’s why I came down, to tell you not to come again—”

His temper broke. “Have you been figuring all along on making a wreck of me? Haven’t you known we had to get to this show-down?”

With all her soul she was sorry she had come. Why was the great house so quiet? At last she made a sound like laughter, but it was unconvincing in her own ears.

“You’re not asking me to marry you, Mr. Withers—”

His face grew redder. “What is there about that to make you laugh? I believe I’d try to get you if you were a queen on a throne. Don’t laugh like that. I never thought you’d laugh at me.”

She moved toward the door, stammering: “I — I’m trying not to.”

The words seemed to sting his temper too sharply. He sprang after her and roughly grasped her shoulders. “You listen to me!”

She gave a cry. If he should dare — at least one of the house servants would come — Then she knew someone had entered the room, for, while Withers’s grasp didn’t slacken, his eyes stared furiously beyond her face. “Let me go,” she cried hysterically.

“Not a bad idea,” came Tony’s calm voice. “I’m not intruding against your wishes, Elise?”

The huge hands didn’t relax. “I — I’m glad, Tony; only do — do be careful—”

“Better take her advice,” Withers threatened. “I came here to talk to Miss Carter alone. You get that clear?”

“Drop it now, my good chap.” Withers frowned at Tony, who had stepped within Elise’s vision. He did look helplessly like a tailor’s model.

“Rotten uncomfortable here in your house, Elise. Must be done, eh, Withers?”

Withers’s face became passionate. “You get out,” he commanded, raising his fists.

Suddenly Tony reached and caught one of Withers’s great arms. Elise felt herself freed, saw the aviator swing around and commence to move those powerful fists, good for cracking the head of a squadron of tailor’s dummies.

“Look out, Tony!”

Withers lunged viciously. Tony stepped to one side. Withers’s head jerked back — once, twice. Then he bent at the middle. Elise had a vague idea that Tony’s arms had moved, saw a great rent appear in the back of his coat. Then Withers lay on the floor, his eyes looking queer, one temple discolored.

“Tony,” she said, “you’re all right?”

“On the contrary,” he answered. “Silly thing to try with one’s coat on. Apologies, Elise, but tell me what else was there to do?”

He stepped to the door and beckoned. A servant entered, eyebrows raised. Withers had struggled as far as his knees. Tony spoke to him: “Oh, yes. Want some more?”

Withers mumbled. “How far did I fall?”

The servant helped him up, led him toward the door. There he turned. “Mind my asking,” he said, “if you’re the masked wrestler?”

Tony shook his head. “Never wrestled. Always thought it a slow way to take one’s fun.”

Tony waited until the others were gone. Then he glanced at Elise. “Hope you weren’t hurt by the brute.”

She laughed, honestly enough this time. “If he’s a brute, what are you?”

“Some sort of a dashed fool, I expect, since you want to turn me loose. Had a talk with Ransome a while ago. Wouldn’t have believed it, Elise. Mustn’t mind, after what’s just happened, my saying you’re a little of a dashed fool too. What about taking me on for an other round?”

She shook her head.

“Elise! Haven’t you any heart at all?”

She felt his arms around her. He had no more right than that other man; had never had any right.

“Let me go.”

But he held her tighter. She hadn’t dreamed he could hold one so tight, and it was all wrong. Her eyes were closed. She tried desperately to push him away. Her hand struck his cheek too hard, and she opened her eyes and saw a red patch there, and was contrite. But she also detected something in his glance that was reassuring — an unbelievable, a thrilling thing; and she couldn’t face it.

“I’ve tried to be decent,” she heard him say. “I’ve tried to give you time to get used to me, to like me a little. See here, Elise, it’s no use. I’ve been crazy about you since the first time I set eyes on you.”

She dared look at him again. The very words of that violent man.

“I’m only human,” he stumbled on.

“Don’t,” she begged. “I — I guess you’d better not be.”

Then all at once her lips were crushed. What was it her maid had gossiped? The girl was right enough. Unforgettable!

“I’m not at all what you think,” she whispered, “what anyone thinks me, because, for one thing, I’d like you to kiss me again.”

“Now — wait, Tony. I won’t be an ornament. I insist on being a wife. You shall swear at me when I’m dull at bridge. You must swing a golf club at me when I don’t please you. And — oh, yes — you’ll go on shocking parties, won’t you? I mean, I shan’t marry you unless we can be decent, real people.”

“Quite human, you mean.”

She looked down. “I believe we’re going to be happy, really happy, Tony, aren’t we?”

He touched the cheek she had unintentionally bruised. He smiled.

“Collier’s Weekly”, 09 July 1921