by Willa Cather
“But you must do it, my son; it won’t do to disappoint Mrs. Governor. Margie was over this morning to see about it. She has grown into a very pretty girl.” When his mother spoke in that tone Douglass acquiesced, just as naturally as he helped himself to her violet water, the same kind, he noticed, that he used to covertly sprinkle on his handkerchief when he was primping for Sunday school after she had gone to church.
“Mrs. Governor still leads the pack, then? What a civilizing influence she has been in this community. Taught most of us all the manners we ever knew. Little Margie has grown up pretty, you say? Well, I should never have thought it. How many boys have I slugged for yelling ‘Reddy, go dye your hair green’ at her. She was not an indifferent slugger herself and never exactly stood in need of masculine protection. What a wild Indian she was! Game, clear through, though! I never found such a mind in a girl. But is she a girl? I somehow always fancied she would grow up a man—and a ripping fine one. Oh, I see you are looking at me hard! No, mother, the girls don’t trouble me much.” His eyes met hers laughingly in the glass as he parted his hair. “You spoiled me so outrageously that women tell me frankly I’m a selfish cad and they will have none of me.”
His mother handed him his coat with a troubled glance. “I was afraid, my son, that some of those actresses—”
The young man laughed outright. “Oh, never worry about them, mother. Wait till you’ve seen them at rehearsals in soiled shirtwaists wearing out their antiques and doing what they call ‘resting’ their hair. Poor things! They have to work too hard to bother about being attractive.”
He went out into the dining room where the table was set for him just as it had always been when he came home on that same eight o’clock train from college. There were all his favorite viands and the old family silver spread on the white cloth with the maidenhair fern pattern, under the soft lamplight. It had been years since he had eaten by the mild light of a kerosene lamp. By his plate stood his own glass that his grandmother had given him with “For a Good Boy” ground on the surface which was dewy from the ice within. The other glasses were unclouded and held only fresh water from the pump, for his mother was very economical about ice and held the most exaggerated views as to the pernicious effects of ice water on the human stomach. Douglass only got it because he was the first dramatist of the country and a great man. When he decided that he would like a cocktail and asked for whiskey, his mother dealt him out a niggardly tablespoonful, saying, “That’s as much as you ought to have at your age, Douglass.” When he went out into the kitchen to greet the old servant and get some ice for his drink, his mother hurried after him crying with solicitude,—
“I’ll get the ice for you, Douglass. Don’t you go into the refrigerator; you always leave the ice uncovered and it wastes.”
Douglass threw up his hands, “Mother, whatever I may do in the world I shall never be clever enough to be trusted with that refrigerator. ‘Into all the chambers of the palace mayest thou go, save into this thou shalt not go.’” And now he knew he was at home, indeed, for his father stood chuckling in the doorway, washing his hands from the milking, and the old servant threw her apron over her head to stifle her laughter at this strange reception of a celebrity. The memory of his luxurious rooms in New York, where he lived when he was an artist, faded dim; he was but a boy again in his father’s house and must not keep supper waiting.
The next evening Douglass with resignation accompanied his father and mother to the reception given in his honor. The town had advanced somewhat since his day; and he was amused to see his father appear in an apology for a frock coat and a black tie, such as Kentucky politicians wear. Although people wore frock coats nowadays they still walked to receptions, and as Douglass climbed the hill the whole situation struck him as farcical. He dropped his mother’s arm and ran up to the porch with his hat in his hand, laughing. “Margie!” he called, intending to dash through the house until he found her. But in the vestibule he bumped up against something large and splendid, then stopped and caught his breath. A woman stood in the dark by the hall lamp with a lighted match in her hand. She was in white and very tall. The match burned but a moment; a moment the light played on her hair, red as Etruscan gold and piled high above the curve of the neck and head; a moment upon the oval chin, the lips curving upward and red as a crimson cactus flower; the deep, gray, fearless eyes; the white shoulders framed about with darkness. Then the match went out, leaving Douglass to wonder whether, like Anchises, he had seen the vision that should forever blind him to the beauty of mortal women.
“I beg your pardon,” he stammered, backing toward the door, “I was looking for Miss Van Dyck. Is she—” Perhaps it was a mere breath of stifled laughter, perhaps it was a recognition by some sense more trustworthy than sight and subtler than mind; but there seemed a certain familiarity in the darkness about him, a certain sense of the security and peace which one experiences among dear and intimate things, and with widening eyes he said softly,—
“Tell me, is this Margie?”
There was just a murmur of laughter from the tall, white figure. “I was going to be presented to you in the most proper form, and now you’ve spoiled it all. How are you, Douglass, and did you get a whipping this time? You’ve played hooky longer than usual. Ten years, isn’t it?” She put out her hand in the dark and he took it and drew it through his arm.
“No, I didn’t get a whipping, but I may get worse. I wish I’d come back five years ago. I would if I had known,” he said promptly.
The reading was just as stupid as he had said it would be, but his audience enjoyed it and he enjoyed his audience. There was the old deacon who had once caught him in his watermelon patch and set the dog on him; the president of the W.C.T.U., with her memorable black lace shawl and cane, who still continued to send him temperance tracts, mindful of the hundredth sheep in the parable; his old Sunday school teacher, a good man of limited information who never read anything but his Bible and Teachers’ Quarterly, and who had once hung a cheap edition of “Camille” on the church Christmas tree for Douglass, with an inscription on the inside to the effect that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom. There was the village criminal lawyer, one of those brilliant wrecks sometimes found in small towns, who, when he was so drunk he could not walk, used to lie back in his office chair and read Shakespeare by the hour to a little barefoot boy. Next him sat the rich banker who used to offer the boys a quarter to hitch up his horse for him, and then drive off, forgetting all about the quarter. Then there were fathers and mothers of Douglass’s old clansmen and vassals who were scattered all over the world now. After the reading Douglass spent half an hour chatting with nice tiresome old ladies who reminded him of how much he used to like their tea-cakes and cookies, and answering labored compliments with genuine feeling. Then he went with a clear conscience and light heart whither his eyes had been wandering ever since he had entered the house.
“Margie, I needn’t apologize for not recognizing you, since it was such an involuntary compliment. However did you manage to grow up like this? Was it boarding school that did it? I might have recognized you with your hair down, and oh, I’d know you anywhere when you smile! The teeth are just the same. Do you still crack nuts with them?”
“I haven’t tried it for a long time. How remarkably little the years change you, Douglass. I haven’t seen you since the night you brought out ‘The Clover Leaf,’ and I heard your curtain speech. Oh, I was very proud of our Pirate Chief!”
Douglass sat down on the piano stool and looked searchingly into her eyes, which met his with laughing frankness.
“What! you were in New York then and didn’t let me know? There was a day when you wouldn’t have treated me so badly. Didn’t you want to see me just a little bit—out of curiosity?”
“Oh, I was visiting some school friends who said it would be atrocious to bother you, and the newspapers were full of interest
ing details about your being so busy that you ate and got shaved at the theatre. Then one’s time isn’t one’s own when one is visiting, you know.” She saw the hurt expression on his face and repented, adding gayly, “But I may as well confess that I kept a sharp lookout for you on the street, and when I did meet you you didn’t know me.”
“And you didn’t stop me? That’s worse yet. How in Heaven’s name was I to know you? Accost a goddess and say, ‘Oh yes, you used to be a Pirate Chief and wear a butcher knife in your belt.’ But I hadn’t grown into an Apollo, save the mark! And you knew me well enough. I couldn’t have passed you like that in a strange land.”
“No, you do your duty by your countrymen, Douglass. You haven’t grown haughty. One by one our old townspeople go out to see the world and bring us back tales of your glory. What unpromising specimens have you not dined and wined in New York! Why even old Skin Jackson, when he went to New York to have his eyes treated, you took to the Waldorf and to the Players’ Club, where he drank with the Immortals. How do you have the courage to do it? Did he wear those dreadful gold nugget shirt studs that he dug up in Colorado when we were young?”
“Even the same, Margie, and he scored a hit with them. But you are dodging the point. When and where did you see me in New York?”
“Oh, it was one evening when you were crossing Madison Square. You were probably going to the theatre for Flashingham and Miss Grew were with you and you seemed in a hurry.” Margie wished now that she had not mentioned the incident. “I remember that was the time I so deeply offended your mother on my return by telling her that Miss Grew had announced her engagement to you. How did it come out? She certainly did announce it.”
“Doubtless, but it was entirely a misunderstanding on the lady’s part. We never were anything of the sort,” said Douglass impatiently. “That is a disgusting habit of Edith’s; she announces a new engagement every fortnight as mechanically as the butler announces dinner. About once a month she calls the dear Twelfth Night girls together to a solemn high tea and gently breaks the news of a new engagement, and they kiss and cry over her and say the things they have said a dozen times before and go away tittering. Why she has been engaged to every society chap in New York and to the whole Milton family, with the possible exception of Sir Henry, and her papa has cabled his blessing all over the known world to her. But it is a waste of time to talk about such nonsense; don’t let’s,” he urged.
“I think it is very interesting; I don’t indulge in weekly engagements myself. But there is one thing I do want to know, Douglass; I want to know how you did it.”
“Did what?”
Margie threw out her hands with an impetuous gesture. “Oh, all of it, all the wonderful things you have done. You remember that night when we lay on the sand bar—”
“The Uttermost Desert,” interrupted Douglass softly.
“Yes, the Uttermost Desert, and in the light of the driftwood fire we planned the conquest of the world? Well, other people plan, too, and fight and suffer and fail the world over, and a very few succeed at the bitter end when they are old and it is no longer worth while. But you have done it as they used to do it in the fairy tales, without soiling your golden armor, and I can’t find one line in your face to tell me that you have suffered or found life bitter to your tongue. How have you cheated fate?”
Douglass looked about him and saw that the guests had thronged about the punchbowl, and his mother, beaming in her new black satin, was relating touching incidents of his infancy to a group of old ladies. He leaned forward, clasped his hands between his knees, and launched into an animated description of how his first play, written at college, had taken the fancy of an old school friend of his father’s who had turned manager. The second, a political farce, had put him fairly on his feet. Then followed his historical drama, “Lord Fairfax,” in which he had at first failed completely. He told her of those desperate days in New York when he would draw his blinds and work by lamplight until he was utterly exhausted, of how he fell ill and lost the thread of his play and used to wander about the streets trying to beat it out of the paving stones when the very policemen who jostled him on the crossings knew more about “Lord Fairfax” than he.
As he talked he felt the old sense of power, lost for many years; the power of conveying himself wholly to her in speech, of awakening in her mind every tint and shadow and vague association that was in his at the moment. He quite forgot the beauty of the woman beside him in the exultant realization of comradeship, the egoistic satisfaction of being wholly understood. Suddenly he stopped short.
“Come, Margie, you’re not playing fair, you’re telling me nothing about yourself. What plays have you been playing? Pirate or enchanted princess or sleeping beauty or Helen of Troy, to the disaster of men?”
Margie sighed as she awoke out of the fairyland. Doug’s tales were as wonderful as ever.
“Oh, I stopped playing long ago. I have grown up and you have not. Some one has said that is wherein geniuses are different; they go on playing and never grow up. So you see you’re only a case of arrested development, after all.”
“I don’t believe it, you play still, I can see it in your eyes. And don’t say genius to me. People say that to me only when they want to be disagreeable or tell me how they would have written my plays. The word is my bogie. But tell me, are the cat-tails ripe in the Salt Marshes, and will your mother let you wade if the sun is warm, and do the winds still smell sharp with salt when they blow through the mists at night?”
“Why, Douglass, did the wind always smell salty to you there too? It does to me yet, and you know there isn’t a particle of salt there. Why did we ever name them the Salt Marshes?”
“Because, they were the Salt Marshes and couldn’t have had any other name any more than the Far Island could. I went down to those pestiferous Maremme marshes in Italy to see whether they would be as real as our marshes, but they were not real at all; only miles and miles of bog. And do the nightingales still sing in the grove?”
“Yes. Other people call them ring doves—but they still sing there.”
“And you still call them nightingales to yourself and laugh at the density of big people?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
Later in the evening Douglass found another opportunity, and this time he was fortunate enough to encounter Margie alone as she was crossing the veranda.
“Do you know why I have come home in June, instead of July as I had intended, Margie? Well, sit down and let me tell you. They don’t need you in there just now. About a month ago I changed my apartment in New York, and as I was sorting over my traps I came across a box of childish souvenirs. Among them was a faded bit of paper on which a map was drawn with elaborate care. It was the map of an island with curly blue lines all around it to represent water, such as we used always to draw around the continents in our geography class. On the west coast of the island a red sword was sticking upright in the earth. Beneath this scientific drawing was an inscription to the effect that ‘whoso should dig twelve paces west of the huge fallen tree, in direct line with the path made by the setting sun on the water on the tenth day of June, should find the great treasure and his heart’s desire!’”
Margie laughed and applauded gently with her hands. “And so you have come to dig for it; come two thousand miles almost. There’s a dramatic situation for you. I have my map still, and I’ve often contemplated going down to Far Island and digging, but it wouldn’t have been fair, for the treasure was really yours, after all.”
“Well, you are going now, and on the tenth day of June, that’s next Friday, for that’s what I came home for, and I had to spoil the plans and temper of a manager and all his company to do it.”
“Nonsense, there are too many mosquitoes on Far Island and I mind them more than I used to. Besides there are no good boats like the Jolly Roger nowadays.”
“We�
��ll go if I have to build another Jolly Roger. You can’t make me believe you are afraid of mosquitoes. I know too well the mettle of your pasture. Please do, Margie, please.” He used his old insidious coaxing tone.
“Douglass, you have made me do dreadful things enough by using that tone of voice to me. I believe you used to hypnotize me. Will you never, never grow up?”
“Never so long as there are pirate’s treasures to dig for and you will play with me, Margie. Oh, I wish I had some of the cake that Alice ate in Wonderland and could make you a little girl again.”
That night, after the household was asleep, Douglass went out for a walk about the old town, treading the ways he had trod when he was a founder of cities and a leader of hosts. But he saw few of the old landmarks, for the blaze of Etruscan gold was in his eyes, and he felt as a man might feel who in some sleepy humdrum Italian village had unearthed a new marble goddess, as beautiful as she of Milo; and he felt as a boy might feel who had lost all his favorite marbles and his best pea shooter and the dog that slept with him, and had found them all again. He tried to follow, step by step, the wonderful friendship of his childhood.
A child’s normal attitude toward the world is that of the artist, pure and simple. The rest of us have to do with the solids of this world, whereas only their form and color exist for the painter. So, in every wood and street and building there are things, not seen of older people at all, which make up their whole desirableness or objectionableness to children. There are maps and pictures formed by cracks in the walls of bare and unsightly sleeping chambers which make them beautiful; smooth places on the lawn where the grass is greener than anywhere else and which are good to sit upon; trees which are valuable by reason of the peculiar way in which the branches grow, and certain spots under the scrub willows along the creek which are in a manner sacred, like the sacrificial groves of the Druids, so that a boy is almost afraid to walk there. Then there are certain carpets which are more beautiful than others, because with a very little help from the imagination they become the rose garden of the Thousand and One Nights; and certain couches which are peculiarly adapted for playing Sindbad in his days of ease, after the toilsome voyages were over. A child’s standard of value is so entirely his own, and his peculiar part and possessions in the material objects around him are so different from those of his elders, that it may be said his rights are granted by a different lease. To these two children the entire external world, like the people who dwelt in it, had been valued solely for what they suggested to the imagination, and people and places alike were merely stage properties, contributing more or less to the intensity of their inner life.
