by Willa Cather
“I have not come to bandy words with you, Helena, nor to sermonize. You have never known what honor means. That is a distinction which cannot be taught. Don’t try to act with me. I will take what I have come for, and leave you to your own felicitous philosophy of life, which I thank God is not mine. Give me the key of your trunk.”
“Really, Your Excellency, this is quite too much. I shall do nothing of the sort. Come back tomorrow and I will do anything within reason. At present you are simply insane with anger, after the charming manner of your house.”
“Then in just three minutes Mr. Buchanan will call an officer.”
She started visibly, “You would not dare, pride—if nothing else—”
“I have no pride but the honor of my house. Quick, there is a law which can touch even you. Law was made for such as you.”
The man of pale reflection was no more. This was the man of the iron cross who had led the charge on the field of Gravelotte.
Slowly, sullenly, she reached for her purse, and biting her lips handed him the key.
“Now, Mr. Buchanan, if you will assist me.” He went quickly and deftly to the bottom of the trunk, almost without disturbing the clothing, and drew out the box, wrapped in numberless undergarments. After opening it and assuring himself as to the contents, he closed the trunk and Buchanan strapped it up.
Mademoiselle, who had returned to her seat and was making a pretense of writing, dropped her pen with a fierce exclamation.
“What is this honor you are always ranting about? Is it to leave your daughter to pick up her living as she may, to whine about beasts of managers, and go begging for fourth-rate engagements, when you might have supported her by the sale of a few scandalous letters? A fine sort of code to make all this racket about! Fine words will not conceal ugly facts.”
The Count straightened himself as under a blow, “Stop! Since you will drag out this whole ugly matter; you know that if you would have lived as I have had to live there would have been enough. As long as there was a picture, a vase, a jewel left, you know where they went. You took until there was no more to take. I simply have nothing but the pension. Even now my home is open to you, but I cannot keep you in yours. Will you never understand, I simply have no money! You know why I came here and why I must die here. When there was money what use did you make of it? Why is it that neither of us will ever dare to show our faces on the Continent again, that we tremble at the name of a continental newspaper? You remember that heading in Figaro? It will stare me in my grave! ‘Adventuress!’ Great God, it was true!”
His voice broke, and his white head sank on his breast in an attitude of abject shame and anguish. Buchanan put his hand before his eyes to shut out the sight of it. But again that rasping pitiless woman’s voice broke on his ear.
“And who began it all, by selling my inheritance over my head? Was it yours to sell?”
The Count spoke quietly now and his voice was steady.
“For the moment you brought back the old shame, and I almost pitied you and myself again. Generally I simply forget it; you have exhausted my power to suffer. I never feel. Helena, there is nothing I can say to you, for we have no language in common. Words do not mean the same to us. Good night.”
She sprang from her seat and stood with clenched hands. “Those papers do not belong to you. They are ancient history, and they belong to the world!”
“They are the follies of men, and they belong to God,” said the Count as he closed the door. As they reached the cab he spoke heavily, “It was ungenerous of me to drag you into this, but I did not feel equal to it alone.”
“I think that good friends need not explain why they need each other, even if they know themselves,” said Buchanan gently.
When they were in the cab he felt as though he ought to speak of something. He was afraid that perhaps the Count had not noticed it. “Miss De Koch’s trunks were packed. Is she going away?”
The Count sighed wearily and leaned back in his seat, speaking so low that Buchanan had to lean forward to catch his words above the rumble of the cab.
“Yes, I saw. It is probably an elopement—the tenor. But I am helpless. I have no money. What she said was true enough; I am no more successful as a father than I was as a nobleman. And I have been mad enough to wish that I had sons! It is a terrible thing, this degeneration of great families. You are very happy to see nothing of it here. The rot begins inside and is hidden for a time, but it demonstrates itself even physically at last. My ancestors had the frames of giants, field marshals and generals, all of them. We were all dwarfs, exhausted physically from the first, frayed ends of the strands of a great skein. Even my father was a slight man, always ill. My brothers were men of no principle, but they at least preserved the traditions. Nicholas was killed at the races, like a common jockey. In me it showed itself in my marriage. Before that the men of our house had at least chosen gentlewomen as their wives; they acknowledged the obligation. But this, even I never thought it would come to this. My mother would have starved with my father, begged in the streets, even lived at Crow’s Nest, but she would never have thought of this. The possibility would never have occurred to her. I am the last of them. Helena will hardly choose a domestic career. Our little comedy is over, it is time the lights were out; the fifth act has dragged out too long. I am in haste to give back to the earth this blood I carry and free the world from it. In it is inherent failure, germinal weakness, madness, and chaos. When all sense of honor dies utterly out of an old stock, there is nothing left but annihilation. It should be buried deep, deep as they bury victims of a plague, blotted out like the forgotten dynasties of history.”
WEE WINKIE’S WANDERINGS.
Wee Winkie sat looking sadly about her that July afternoon. She was tired of playing and nothing would go right. The acorn cups would not stand up properly on the little moss bank around which her dolls were seated, and the pies made of pinning sassafras leaves together over ripe cherries did not taste as good as usual. Winkie explained to her corncob doll that the pies did not “rise.” She was not absolutely sure that this was right, but she had a vague idea that everything that was baked should rise. Then her dolls were glum and would not talk; they were all pouting, Winkie said, because she would not let them play in the mint bed along the creek and soil their white frocks. Winkie considered it a great misfortune to have children with sullen dispositions. As she was meditating upon these things she heard the sharp click of the mower in the meadow.
Now she had it! She would bundle every one of those sullen dolls into bed, it would be good enough for them, and she would break the unsatisfactory acorn cups and give the sassafras pies that had not risen to her pet pink pig, and she herself would put on her wide white sun hat with the blue ribbons and go down and ride on the mower with her father. That would be something like it.
So Wee Winkie caught up six dolls at once and rushed into the house. “Mamma, I am going down into the meadow to ride the mower. Please get my hat.”
Winkie’s mamma looked up with some surprise from the book she was reading.
“No, I think you had better not go today, little daughter. You remember how the yellow jackets flew up and stung you the last time. I think you are tired now and need a nap more than anything else.”
When Winkie wanted anything she wanted it very much, as mamma knew. Her bright face clouded over and she dropped her dolls.
“I think it’s real mean you won’t let me go. O please, do! I won’t cry if the yellow jackets do sting.”
“No, Winkie, not this afternoon. I think you had better go upstairs and lie down, or I shall have to make you hem some towels.”
Winkie began to pout.
“No, I don’t want to hem towels. I don’t like anything about this place and I just think I’ll run away to the mountains, so I do.”
Now this was not the first time Wink
ie had threatened to run away, and her mamma thought this was as good a time as any to cure her of the notion.
“Now don’t say that Winkie, you know you won’t.”
“Some day I will,” said Winkie, tossing her head.
Her mamma got up and said in a voice that was strange to Winkie and hurt her feelings more than ever.
“Very well then, get your hat and go. Just run away now and have done with it.”
“But I must take some cookies and my dolls and things,” objected Winkie, rather startled, “people always do when they run away.”
“Lay what you want on the table and I will tie it up for you. You will have to start very soon now if you are going to get to the mountains tonight.”
Winkie did not understand this sort of treatment at all, she had expected her mother to ask how she could ever get along without her little girl. She did not feel quite so happy about running away now. She laid her small possessions out on the table, and mamma tied them up in one of papa’s big handkerchiefs and put on Winkie’s hat. Then she said, “Hurry up, little daughter, you will have to go fast if you get to the mountains,” and shut the door without even kissing Winkie good-bye.
Some way it seemed to Winkie that the sun did not shine so brightly as it had, and the mountain seemed further away than it ever had before. She walked slowly down the dusty road carrying her little bundle over her shoulder, as she had seen the gipsy women do. Now that no one cared for her any more and she had no place to live she would be a gipsy too. That seemed to be a good idea. She walked down the old Hollow road a little way to where she could see the gipsies’ covered wagons through the trees. But she did not feel very much like going up to them and asking to join them. The women were tanned so dark and the men were so rough that she was rather afraid of them, so she decided she would go off and start a gipsy camp of her own.
Slowly Wee Winkie turned her steps back toward the mountain that seemed so big and dark and steep. As she crossed the little foot bridge of the creek she wondered what would happen if she should fall in with no one there to fish her out. She would drown probably, but her mother wouldn’t care much if she did. Winkie cried a little when she thought about it. She stopped to pick a spray of golden rod, but a big noisy bee, all splashed with pollen, flew out at her so fiercely that she ran away in fright. Then she met their old cow Pinkey grazing by the roadside, and was a little cheered by the sight of that familiar cow. But nothing went right with Winkie that day, and even Pinkey, the gentlest old animal about the place, lowered her head and ran away with a loud “Moo!” and her bell clattering wildly. This was entirely too much, Winkie felt like an outcast indeed. She resolved that she would not speak to anything else, not to a single living creature. She climbed over the rail fence and climbed slowly up the big hill in front of the house; that was the nearest way to the mountain. But when she got on top someway she could not go over the brow of the hill and lose sight of the house. She sat down despondently on a stump and watched the sun going down, without the heart to even eat her cookies. Mamma, from the window where she watched, saw that disconsolate little figure sitting upon the hill top in the sunset, and she laughed and cried a little too. She watched a long time, but Winkie sat very still. At last mamma saw her get up and come slowly down the hill toward the house. Then mamma went about her work, and presently she heard the door open softly and poor tired little Wee Winkie with her head hanging low and her bundle in her hand came slipping in. Her dress was wet with the dew of the long grass, and her shoes were scratched by the briars, and her ears were full of dust. But mamma washed her and gave her supper, and tucked her into her little bed and never said a word about her running away, and neither did Winkie.
THE BURGLAR’S CHRISTMAS
Two very shabby looking young men stood at the corner of Prairie avenue and Eightieth street, looking despondently at the carriages that whirled by. It was Christmas Eve, and the streets were full of vehicles; florists’ wagons, grocers’ carts and carriages. The streets were in that half-liquid, half-congealed condition peculiar to the streets of Chicago at that season of the year. The swift wheels that spun by sometimes threw the slush of mud and snow over the two young men who were talking on the corner.
“Well,” remarked the elder of the two, “I guess we are at our rope’s end, sure enough. How do you feel?”
“Pretty shaky. The wind’s sharp tonight. If I had had anything to eat I mightn’t mind it so much. There is simply no show. I’m sick of the whole business. Looks like there’s nothing for it but the lake.”
“O, nonsense, I thought you had more grit. Got anything left you can hoc?”
“Nothing but my beard, and I am afraid they wouldn’t find it worth a pawn ticket,” said the younger man ruefully, rubbing the week’s growth of stubble on his face.
“Got any folks anywhere? Now’s your time to strike ’em if you have.”
“Never mind if I have, they’re out of the question.”
“Well, you’ll be out of it before many hours if you don’t make a move of some sort. A man’s got to eat. See here, I am going down to Longtin’s saloon. I used to play the banjo in there with a couple of coons, and I’ll bone him for some of his free lunch stuff. You’d better come along, perhaps they’ll fill an order for two.”
“How far down is it?”
“Well, it’s clear down town, of course, way down on Michigan avenue.”
“Thanks, I guess I’ll loaf around here. I don’t feel equal to the walk, and the cars—well, the cars are crowded.” His features drew themselves into what might have been a smile under happier circumstances.
“No, you never did like street cars, you’re too aristocratic. See here, Crawford, I don’t like leaving you here. You ain’t good company for yourself tonight.”
“Crawford? O, yes, that’s the last one. There have been so many I forget them.”
“Have you got a real name, anyway?”
“O, yes, but it’s one of the ones I’ve forgotten. Don’t you worry about me. You go along and get your free lunch. I think I had a row in Longtin’s place once. I’d better not show myself there again.” As he spoke the young man nodded and turned slowly up the avenue.
He was miserable enough to want to be quite alone. Even the crowd that jostled by him annoyed him. He wanted to think about himself. He had avoided this final reckoning with himself for a year now. He had laughed it off and drunk it off. But now, when all those artificial devices which are employed to turn our thoughts into other channels and shield us from ourselves had failed him, it must come. Hunger is a powerful incentive to introspection.
It is a tragic hour, that hour when we are finally driven to reckon with ourselves, when every avenue of mental distraction has been cut off and our own life and all its ineffaceable failures closes about us like the walls of that old torture chamber of the Inquisition. Tonight, as this man stood stranded in the streets of the city, his hour came. It was not the first time he had been hungry and desperate and alone. But always before there had been some outlook, some chance ahead, some pleasure yet untasted that seemed worth the effort, some face that he fancied was, or would be, dear. But it was not so tonight. The unyielding conviction was upon him that he had failed in everything, had outlived everything. It had been near him for a long time, that Pale Spectre. He had caught its shadow at the bottom of his glass many a time, at the head of his bed when he was sleepless at night, in the twilight shadows when some great sunset broke upon him. It had made life hateful to him when he awoke in the morning before now. But now it settled slowly over him, like night, the endless Northern nights that bid the sun a long farewell. It rose up before him like granite. From this brilliant city with its glad bustle of Yuletide he was shut off as completely as though he were a creature of another species. His days seemed numbered and done, sealed over like the little coral cells at the bottom of the sea. Involuntarily he d
rew that cold air through his lungs slowly, as though he were tasting it for the last time.
Yet he was but four and twenty, this man—he looked even younger—and he had a father some place down East who had been very proud of him once. Well, he had taken his life into his own hands, and this was what he had made of it. That was all there was to be said. He could remember the hopeful things they used to say about him at college in the old days, before he had cut away and begun to live by his wits, and he found courage to smile at them now. They had read him wrongly. He knew now that he never had the essentials of success, only the superficial agility that is often mistaken for it. He was tow without the tinder, and he had burnt himself out at other people’s fires. He had helped other people to make it win, but he himself—he had never touched an enterprise that had not failed eventually. Or, if it survived his connection with it, it left him behind.
His last venture had been with some ten-cent specialty company, a little lower than all the others, that had gone to pieces in Buffalo, and he had worked his way to Chicago by boat. When the boat made up its crew for the outward voyage, he was dispensed with as usual. He was used to that. The reason for it? O, there are so many reasons for failure! His was a very common one.
As he stood there in the wet under the street light he drew up his reckoning with the world and decided that it had treated him as well as he deserved. He had overdrawn his account once too often. There had been a day when he thought otherwise; when he had said he was unjustly handled, that his failure was merely the lack of proper adjustment between himself and other men, that some day he would be recognized and it would all come right. But he knew better than that now, and he was still man enough to bear no grudge against any one—man or woman.
