Once to Every Man

“As I was sayin’.” He cleared his throat. “As I was sayin’ when this unnecessary interruption occurred, I realized right from the moment when I opened the door and saw him standing there in front of me, grinning, and his chin cut wide open, that there was something wrong. I am a discerning man–and I knew! And it didn’t take me long to convince him–not very long!–that there were other communities which would find him more welcome than this one. Maybe I was harsh–maybe I was–but harsh cases require harsh remedies. And because he didn’t have the money, I offered to let him have enough to carry him out of town, and something to keep him about as long as he’ll last now, I’m thinking, although that place of his isn’t worth as much as the paper to write the mortgage on.

“I knew it had come at last–but, at that, I didn’t get anything that I wanted to call real proof until after we’d drawn up the papers and signed ’em, and were about ready to start back. Then, when we were coming down the steps of the clerk’s office, I got all the proof I wanted, and a little more than that. He–he stumbled just about then, and would have gone down on his face if I hadn’t held him up. And he was laughing out loud to himself, chuckling, with one fist full of money fit to draw a crowd. And he pulled away from me just when I was trying to force him into the buggy–pulled away and sort of leered up at me, waving that handful of bills right under my nose.

“‘Oh, come now, Judge,’ he sort of hiccoughed, ‘this ain’t the way for two old friends to part. This ain’t the way for me to treat an old friend who’s given me this. I want to buy you something–I want to buy you at least one drink–before I go. Come on, now, Judge. What’ll you have?’ says he.”

They had all forgotten Old Jerry’s interruption; they had forgotten everything else but the Judge’s recital, that was climbing to its climax. That room was very quiet when the speaker paused and waited for his words to sink in–very quiet until a half-smothered giggle broke the stillness.

There was an unholy glee in that mirth–a mocking, lilting note of actual joy which rang almost profane at such a moment. Man for man it brought that circle erect in the chairs; man for man they sat and stared at the grotesque figure which was rocking now in a paroxysm of laughter too real for simulation. In a breathless hush they turned from the offender back to the judge, waiting, appalled, for the storm to break.

Judge Maynard’s round moon-face went purple. Twice he tried to speak before he sat silent, annihilation in his eyes, until Jerry’s outbreak had subsided. Then he lifted one forefinger and pointed, with all the majesty such a gesture could ever convey, to the empty chair–the chair which Old Jerry should have been occupying in becoming silence at that moment.

“Have you gone crazy?” he thundered. “Have you–or are you just naturally witless? Or was there something you wanted to say? If there isn’t–if you’ve no questions to ask–you get over to that chair and sit down where you belong!”

It was then that the rest of the circle realized that something had gone wrong–most mightily wrong! According to all precedent, the little, white-haired man should have shrunk back and cowered beneath that verbal lash, and obeyed without a glance. They all realized that there was imminent a climax unforeseen by all–all but the Judge; and he was too blind with rage to see.

Very meekly Old Jerry bore his thundered rebuke–too meekly. But after the judge had finished he failed to move; he merely stood there, facing the town’s great man. And in his attitude there was something of infantile, derisive, sparrowlike impudence as he peered back into the Judge’s face–something that was very like the attitude of an outraged, ruffled old reprobate of a parrot rearing himself erect.

Old Jerry made no haste. It was a thing which required a nice deliberation. And so he waited–waited and prolonged the moment to its last, sweetest second. Once more he chuckled, to himself this time–just once, before he began to speak. That old Tavern office had never been so deathly still before.

“A question?” he echoed at last, thoughtfully. “A question? Well, Jedge, there was one thing I was a-goin’ to ask you. Jest one triflin’ thing I was kinda curious to know. Why, I was a-goin’ to ask you, back a spell–What did you hev? It kinda interested me, wonderin’ about it. But now–now that I’ve heard your story in full, I reckon I’ll hev to change that question a mite. I reckon they ain’t nothin’ left but to ask you–How many did you hev? How many, Jedge? For, Jedge, you’re talkin’ most mighty wild tonight!”

And that silence endured–endured even after the huge man had half-risen, purple features gone white, and then dropped heavily back into his chair before that rigid figure in its sodden garments which had turned from him toward the rest of the circle of regulars.

Old Jerry made his formal exit that night–he knew that he was resigning his chair–but the thing was very cheap at the price.

“An’ I reckon, too,” he went on deliberately, and there was a wicked fleer of sarcasm tinging the words, “I reckon I’ll hev to kinda apologize to you gentlemen for interruptin’ your evenin’s entertainment, as you might say. I’m sorry I ain’t able to remain, for it’s interestin’. I don’t know’s I’ve ever heard anything that was jest as excitin’ an’ thrillin’, but I’ve got something more important needin’ my attention this evenin’–meanin’ that I ain’t got nothin’ in particular that’s a-callin’ me! But it’s no more’n my plain duty for me to tell you this: You’d ought to follow the papers a mite closer from now on. It’s illuminatin’–it’s broadenin’! What you need, gentlemen, is a trifle wider readin’–jest a trifle–jest a trifle! For you ain’t bein’ well posted on facts!”

Nobody moved. Nobody was capable of stirring even. Old Jerry bowed to them from the doorway–he bowed till the water trickled in a stream from the brim of his battered hat.

And this time, as he passed out, he closed the door very gently behind him.

CHAPTER XI

It would have been hard for her to have explained just why it was so, but Dryad Anderson had been sitting there in the unlighted front room of the little once-white cottage before Judge Maynard’s boxlike place on the hill, watching hour after hour for that light to blink out at her from the dark window of Denny Bolton’s house on the opposite slope. Ever since it had grown dark enough for that signal to be seen, which had called across to her so many nights, she had been waiting before the table in front of the window–waiting even while she told herself that it could not appear. It was not Saturday night; there was no real reason why she should be watching, unless–unless it was hope that held her there.

Only in the last few hours since twilight had she admitted to herself the possibility that such a hope lurked behind her vigil. Before then, when the thought had first come to her that Denny might cry out to her through the night, with that half-shuttered light, she had stifled it with a savageness that left her shaking, panting and dizzy from its bewildering intensity.

Time after time she told herself that it would go unheeded by her, no matter how long or how insistently it beckoned, if by the hundredth chance it should flare up beyond the shadows, but as minutes dragged interminably by into equally interminable hours, the strained fierceness of that whispered promise grew less and less knifelike in its hardness–less and less assured.

Somehow, ever since the first light of that gray day had discovered her sitting there in almost the same position in which she now sat, eyes straining out across the valley, pointed chin cupped in her palms, that fearful, almost insane passion which had held each nerve and fiber of her taut as tight-stretched wire through the entire sleepless night, had begun to give way to something even less easy to endure.

All the terror which had checked her that evening when she swung the door open and stood poised on the threshold, a low laugh of sheerest delight in the costume she had worn across for him to see ready to burst from parted lips–all the horror that had held her incapable of motion until Denny had swung around and found her there, and lifted his arms and attempted to speak, had given way, in the first hours that followed, to a flaming scorn, a searing contempt for him and for his weakness that had lost him his fight.

All through that night which followed her panic flight from the huge, heavy-footed figure that had groped out for her, called to her, and dropped asprawl her own small cloak in the doorway, Denny Bolton’s blood-soiled face and drunkenly reckless laugh had been with her, feeding that rage which scorched her eyes beneath their lids–that burned her throat and choked her.

Little drops of blood oozed out upon her lips–strangely brilliant crimson drops against that colorless background–where her teeth sank deep in the agony of disillusionment that made each pulse-beat a sledge-hammer blow within her brain. Her small palms were etched blue under the clenched fingers where the nails bit the flesh. And yet–and yet, for all the agony of it which made her lift her blanched face from time to time throughout the night–a face so terribly strained that it was almost distorted–and set her gasping chokingly that she hated him, hated him for a man who couldn’t fight and keep on fighting, even when the odds were great–when the light of that new, dreary day had come streaking in across her half-bowed head, something else began to take the place of all that bitterness and scorn.

And throughout the day she had still been struggling against it, struggling with all the tense fierceness of which her spirit was capable–her spirit that was far too big for the slim body that housed it. Yet that thought could not be shaken off. She couldn’t forget it, couldn’t wipe out the recollection of that great, gaping wound that had dripped blood from his chin. She tried to close her eyes and shut it out as she went from task to task that day, and it would not fade.

Somehow it wasn’t that man at all whom she remembered as the afternoon dragged by to its close; it wasn’t the big-shouldered body nervelessly asprawl upon the floor that filled her memory. Instead a picture of an awkward, half-grown boy flashed up before her–a big, ungainly, terribly embarrassed boy who turned from watching the mad flight of a rabbit through the brush to smile at her reassuringly, even though his face was torn raw from her own nails.

That was the point at which the tide of her chaotic thoughts began to waver and turn. Long before she realized what she was doing she had fallen to wondering, with a solicitude that made moist and misty once more her tip-tilted eyes and softened the thin line of her lips, whether or not that bruise had been washed out, cleansed and cleanly bandaged.

When she did realize what that thought meant, it had been too long with her to be routed. She was too tired to combat it, anyway, too tired with the reaction of that long, throbbing night to do more than wonder at herself. Twilight came and the gray mist that had been over the hills for hours dissolved into rain. With the first hint of darkness that the storm brought with it she began to watch–to peer out of the window whenever her busy footsteps carried her past it, at the bleak place across the hollow. Before it was fairly night she began to understand that she was not merely watching for the light, but hoping, praying wordlessly that it might shine. And when her work was finished she had taken her place there, her slim body in its scant black skirt and little white blouse hunched boyishly forward as always across the table.

Even that girl who, after the hours which had been almost cataclysmic for her, could scarcely have been expected to be able to comprehend it clearly yet–even she read the meaning of the slackened cords of her body, of her loosened lips and wet eyes. As long as she could she had fed the flame within her soul–fed it with every bitter thought and harsh judgment which her brain could evolve–and yet that flame had slackened and smouldered and finally died out entirely. Self-shame, self-scorn even, could not rekindle it.

Her lips were no longer white and straight and feverish with contempt; they were damp and full again, and curved and half-open with compassion. The ache was still there in her breast–a great gnawing pain which it seemed at that moment time could never remove, but it was no longer the wild hatred which made her pant with a desire to make him suffer, too, just as she had suffered that night through. The pain was just as great, but it was pity now–only pity and an unaccountable yearning to draw that bruised face down against her and croon over it.

In spite of the numbness, in spite of the lassitude which that burnt-out passion had left behind in brain and body, she knew what it meant. She understood. She had hated his weakness; she still hated his lack of manhood which had made him fail her. That hatred would be a long time dying now–if it ever did perish. But she couldn’t hate him! She looked that fact in the face, dumb at first at the awakening. She couldn’t hate him–not the man he was! There was a distinction–a difference very clear to her woman-brain. She could despise his cowardice; she could despise herself for caring still–but the caring still went on. Half-vaguely she realized it, but she knew the change had come. The girlishness was gone from it forever. She had to care now as a woman always cares–not for the thing he was, but in spite of it.

“I ought to hate him,” she told herself once, aloud. “I know I ought to hate him, and yet–and yet I don’t believe I can. Why, I–I can’t even hate myself, as I did a little while back, because I still care!”

It was a habit that had grown out of her long loneliness–those half-whispered conversations with herself. And now only one conviction remained. Again and again she told herself that she could not go to meet him that night–could not go, even if he should call to her. And that, too, she put into whispered words.

“Even if he lights the window, I can’t–I couldn’t! Oh, not tonight! He won’t–he won’t think of it. But I couldn’t let him touch me–until–until I’ve had a little time to forget!”

But she was watching still–watching with small, gold-crowned head nodding heavily, eyes half-veiled with sinking lids–when that half-shaded window in the dark house glowed suddenly yellow with the light behind it. She was still hoping, praying dumbly that it might be, when Young Denny lifted the black-chimneyed lamp from its bracket on the kitchen wall that night, after he had stood and listened with a smile on his lips to Old Jerry’s hurried departure, and carried it into the front room which he scarcely ever entered except upon that errand.

At first she did not believe. She thought it was only a trick of her brain, so tired now that it was as little capable of connected thought as her worn-out body was of motion. Hardly breathing she stared until she saw the great blot of his body silhouetted against the pane for a moment as he crowded between the lamp, staring across at her, she knew.

She rose then, rose slowly and very cautiously as though she feared her slightest move might make it vanish. Young Denny’s bobbing lantern, swinging in one hand as he crossed before the house and plunged into the thicket that lay between them, was all that convinced her–made her believe that she had seen aright.

“I can’t go–I can’t!” she breathed. And then, lifting her head, vehemently, as if he could hear:

“I want to–oh, you know I want to! But I can’t come to you tonight–not until I’ve had a little longer–to think.”

Almost before she had finished speaking another voice answered, a soft, dreamy voice that came so abruptly in the quiet house that it made her wheel like a startled wild thing. She had forgotten him for the time–that little, stooped figure at its bench in the back room workshop. For hours she had not given him a thought, and he had made not so much as a motion to make her remember his presence. She could not even remember when his sing-song, unending monologue had ceased, but she realized then that he had been more silent that night than ever before.

Earlier in the evening when she had lighted his lamp for him and set out his lump of moist clay, and helped him to his place on the high stool, she had thought to notice some difference in him.

Usually John Anderson was possessed of one or two unvarying moods. Either he plunged contentedly into his task of reproducing the multitude of small white figures around the walls, or else he merely sat and stared up at her hopelessly, vacantly, until she put the clay herself into his hands. Tonight it had been different, for when she had placed the damp mass between his limp fingers he had laid it aside again, raised astonishingly clear eyes to hers and shaken his head.

“After a little–after a little while,” he had said. “I–I want to think a little first.”

It had amazed her for a moment. At any other time it would have frightened her, but tonight as she stroked his bowed head, she told herself that it was nothing more than a new vagary of his anchorless mind.

But that same strangely clear, almost sane glow which had puzzled her then was still there when she turned. It was even brighter than before, and the slow words which had startled her, for all their dreamy softness, seemed very sane as well.

“You have to go,” John Anderson answered her faltering, half-audible whisper. “You have to go–but you’ll be back soon. Oh, so soon! And I’ll be safe till you come!”

Dryad flashed forward a step, both hands half-raised to her throat as he spoke, almost believing that the miracle for which she had ceased even to hope had come that night. And then she understood–she knew that the bent figure which had already turned back to its bench had only repeated her words, parrotlike; she knew that he had only pieced together a recollection of the absence which her vigil before the window had meant on a former occasion and repeated her own words of that other night.

And yet her brain clamored that there was more behind it all than mere witless repetition. John Anderson was smiling at her, too, smiling like a benevolent wraith. She saw that his pile of clay was still untouched, but there was no hint of petulant perplexity in his face, nothing of the terrified impotence which the inactivity of his fingers had always heralded before. He was just smiling–vaguely to be sure and a little uncertainly–but smiling in utter contentment and satisfaction, for all that.

Very slowly–wonderingly, she crossed to him and put both arms about his white head and drew it against her.

“I think you knew,” she said to him, unsteadily. “I think you are able to understand better than I can myself. And I know, too, now. I do have to go–I must go to him. But he need not even know, until I tell him some day–that I was with him tonight.”