The First Willa Cather Megapack

by Willa Cather

  Hallet paused a moment and smoked thoughtfully. He was a soft man for the iron age, I reflected, and it was easy enough to see why Stanley Merryweather had beaten him in the race. There is a string to every big contract in New York, and Hallet was always tripping over the string.

  “From that time on we were friends. I knew just six words of Italian, but that summer I got so that I could understand his fool dialect pretty well. I used to feel ashamed of the way he’d look at me, like a girl in love. You see, I was the only thing he wasn’t afraid of. On Sundays we used to poke off to a beach somewhere, and he’d lie in the water all day and tell me about the coral divers and the bottom of the Mediterranean. I got very fond of him. It was my first summer in New York and I was lonesome, too. The game down here looked pretty ugly to me. There were plenty of disagreeable things to think about, and it was better fun to see how much soda water Caesarino could drink. He never drank wine. He used to say: ‘At home—oh, yes-a! At New York,’ making that wise little gesture with the forefinger between his eyes, ‘niente. Sav’-a da mon’.’ But even his economy had its weak spots. He was very fond of candy, and he was always buying ‘pop-a corn off-a da push-a cart.’

  “However, he had sent home a good deal of money, and his mother was ailing and he was so frightened about her and so generally homesick that I urged him to go back to Ischia for the winter. There was a poor prospect for steady work, and if he went home he wouldn’t be out much more than if he stayed in New York working on half time. He backed and filled and agonized a good deal, but when I at last got him to the point of engaging his passage he was the happiest dago on Manhattan Island. He told me about it all a hundred times.

  “His mother, from the piccola casa on the cliff, could see all the boats go by to Naples. She always watched for them. Possibly he would be able to see her from the steamer, or at least the casa, or certainly the place where the casa stood.

  “All this time we were making things move in the hole. Old Macfarlane wasn’t around much in those days. He passed on the results, but Stanley had a free hand as to ways and means. He made amazing mistakes, harrowing blunders. His path was strewn with hairbreadth escapes, but they never dampened his courage or took the spurt out of him. After a close shave he’d simply duck his head and smile brightly and say: ‘Well, I got that across, old Persimmons!’ I’m not underestimating the value of dash and intrepidity. He made the wheels go round. One of his maxims was that men are cheaper than machinery. He smashed up a lot of hands, but he always got out under the fellow-servant act. ‘Never been caught yet, huh?’ he used to say with his pleasant, confiding wink. I’d been complaining to him for a long while about the cabling, but he always put me off; sometimes with a surly insinuation that I was nervous about my own head, but oftener with fine good humor. At last something did happen in the hole.

  “It happened one night late in August, after a stretch of heat that broke the thermometers. For a week there hadn’t been a dry human being in New York. Your linen went down three minutes after you put it on. We moved about insulated in moisture, like the fishes in the sea. That night I couldn’t go down into the hole right away. When you once got down there the heat from the boilers and the steam from the diamond drills made a temperature that was beyond anything the human frame was meant to endure. I stood looking down for a long while, I remember. It was a hole nearly three acres square, and on one side the Savoyard rose up twenty stories, a straight blank, brick wall. You know what a mess such a hole is; great boulders of rock and deep pits of sand and gulleys of water, with drills puffing everywhere and little crumpled men crawling about like tumble bugs under the stream from the searchlight. When you got down into the hole, the wall of the Savoyard seemed to go clear up to the sky; that pale blue, enamel sky of a New York midsummer night. Six of my men were moving a diamond drill and settling it into a new place, when one of the big clamshells that swung back and forth over the hole fell with its load of sand—the worn cabling, of course. It was directly over my men when it fell. They couldn’t hear anything for the noise of the drill; didn’t know anything had happened until it struck them. They were bending over, huddled together, and the thing came down on them like a brick dropped on an ant hill. They were all buried, Caesarino among them. When we got them out, two were dead and the others were dying. My boy was the first we reached. The edge of the clamshell had struck him, and he was all broken to pieces. The moment we got his head out he began chattering like a monkey. I put my ear down to his lips—the other drills were still going—and he was talking about what I had forgotten, that his steamer ticket was in his pocket and that he was to sail next Saturday. ‘E necessario, signore, é necessario,’ he kept repeating. He had written his family what boat he was coming on, and his mother would be at the door, watching it when it went by to Naples. ‘E necessario, signore, é necessario.’

  “When the ambulances got there the orderlies lifted two of the men and had them carried up to the street, but when they turned to Caesarino they dismissed him with a shrug, glancing at him with the contemptuous expression that ambulance orderlies come to have when they see that a man is too much shattered to pick up. He saw the look, and a boy who doesn’t know the language learns to read looks. He broke into sobs and began to beat the rock with his hands. ‘Curs-a da hole, curs-a da hole, curs-a da build’!’ he screamed, bruising his fists on the shale. I caught his hands and leaned over him. ‘Buono soldato, buono soldato,’ I said in his ear. His shrieks stopped, and his sobs quivered down. He looked at me—’ Buono soldato,’ he whispered, ‘ma, perche?’ Then the hemorrhage from his mouth shut him off, and he began to choke. In a few minutes it was all over with Little Caesar.

  “About that time Merryweather showed up. Some one had telephoned him, and he had come down in his car. He was a little frightened and pleasurably excited. He has the truly journalistic mind—saving your presence, gentlemen—and he likes anything that bites on the tongue. He looked things over and ducked his head and grinned good-naturedly. ‘Well, I guess you’ve got your new cabling out of me now, huh, Freddy?’ he said to me. I went up to the car with him. His hand shook a little as he shielded a match to light his cigarette. ‘Don’t get shaky, Freddy. That wasn’t so worse,’ he said, as he stepped into his car.

  “For the next few days I was busy seeing that the boy didn’t get buried in a trench with a brass tag around his neck. On Saturday night I got his pay envelope, and he was paid for only half of the night he was killed; the accident happened about eleven o’clock. I didn’t fool with any paymaster. On Monday morning I went straight to Merryweather’s office, stormed his bower of rose and gold, and put that envelope on the mahogany between us. ‘Merryweather,’ said I, ‘this is going to cost you something. I hear the relatives of the other fellows have all signed off for a few hundred, but this little dago hadn’t any relatives here, and he’s going to have the best lawyers in New York to prosecute his claim for him.’

  “Stanley flew into one of his quick tempers. ‘What business is it of yours, and what are you out to do us for?’

  “‘I’m out to get every cent that’s coming to this boy’s family.’

  “‘How in hell is that any concern of yours?’

  “‘Never mind that. But we’ve got one awfully good case, Stanley. I happen to be the man who reported to you on that cabling again and again. I have a copy of the letter I wrote you about it when you were at Mount Desert, and I have your reply.’

  “Stanley whirled around in his swivel chair and reached for his checkbook. ‘How much are you gouging for?’ he asked with his baronical pout.

  “‘Just all the courts will give me. I want it settled there,’ I said, and I got up to go.

  “‘Well, you’ve chosen your class, sir,’ he broke out, ruffling up red. ‘You can stay in a hole with the guineas till the end of time for all of me. That’s where you’ve put yourself.’

  “I got my money out o
f that concern and sent it off to the old woman in Ischia, and that’s the end of the story. You all know Merryweather. He’s the first man in my business since his uncle died, but we manage to keep clear of each other. The Mont Blanc was a milestone for me; one road ended there and another began. It was only a little accident, such as happens in New York every day in the year, but that one happened near me. There’s a lot of waste about building a city. Usually the destruction all goes on in the cellar; it’s only when it hits high, as it did last night, that it sets us thinking. Wherever there is the greatest output of energy, wherever the blind human race is exerting itself most furiously, there’s bound to be tumult and disaster. Here we are, six men, with our pitiful few years to live and our one little chance for happiness, throwing everything we have into that conflagration on Manhattan Island, helping, with every nerve in us, with everything our brain cells can generate, with our very creature heat, to swell its glare, its noise, its luxury, and its power. Why do we do it? And why, in heaven’s name, do they do it? Ma, perche? as Caesarino said that night in the hole. Why did he, from that lazy volcanic island, so tiny, so forgotten, where life is simple and pellucid and tranquil, shaping itself to tradition and ancestral manners as water shapes itself to the jar, why did he come so far to cast his little spark into the bonfire? And the thousands like him, from islands even smaller and more remote, why do they come, like iron dust to the magnet, like moths to the flame? There must be something wonderful coming. When the frenzy is over, when the furnace has cooled, what marvel will be left on Manhattan Island?”

  “What has been left often enough before,” said Zablowski dreamily. “What was left in India, only not half so much.”

  Hallet disregarded him. “What it will be is a new idea of some sort. That’s all that ever comes, really. That’s what we are all the slaves of, though we don’t know it. It’s the whip that cracks over us till we drop. Even Merryweather—and that’s where the gods have the laugh on him—every firm he crushes to the wall, every deal he puts through, every cocktail he pours down his throat, he does it in the service of this unborn Idea, that he will never know anything about. Some day it will dawn, serene and clear, and your Moloch on the Singer Tower over there will get down and do it Asian obeisance.”

  * * * *

  We reflected upon this while the launch, returning toward the city, ruffled through the dark furrows of water that kept rolling up into the light. Johnson looked back at the black sea road and said quietly:

  “Well, anyhow, we are the people who are doing it, and whatever it is, it will be ours.”

  Hallet laughed. “Don’t call anything ours, Johnson, while Zablowski is around.”

  “Zablowski,” Johnson said irritably, “why don’t you ever hit back?”

  THE BOHEMIAN GIRL

  The trans-continental express swung along the windings of the Sand River Valley, and in the rear seat of the observation car a young man sat greatly at his ease, not in the least discomfited by the fierce sunlight which beat in upon his brown face and neck and strong back. There was a look of relaxation and of great passivity about his broad shoulders, which seemed almost too heavy until he stood up and squared them. He wore a pale flannel shirt and a blue silk necktie with loose ends. His trousers were wide and belted at the waist, and his short sack-coat hung open. His heavy shoes had seen good service. His reddish-brown hair, like his clothes, had a foreign cut. He had deepset, dark blue eyes under heavy reddish eyebrows. His face was kept clean only by close shaving, and even the sharpest razor left a glint of yellow in the smooth brown of his skin. His teeth and the palms of his hands were very white. His head, which looked hard and stubborn, lay indolently in the green cushion of the wicker chair, and as he looked out at the ripe summer country a teasing, not unkindly smile played over his lips. Once, as he basked thus comfortably, a quick light flashed in his eyes, curiously dilating the pupils, and his mouth became a hard, straight line, gradually relaxing into its former smile of rather kindly mockery. He told himself, apparently, that there was no point in getting excited; and he seemed a master hand at taking his ease when he could. Neither the sharp whistle of the locomotive nor the brakeman’s call disturbed him. It was not until after the train had stopped that he rose, put on a Panama hat, took from the rack a small valise and a flute-case, and stepped deliberately to the station platform. The baggage was already unloaded, and the stranger presented a check for a battered sole-leather steamer-trunk.

  “Can you keep it here for a day or two?” he asked the agent. “I may send for it, and I may not.”

  “Depends on whether you like the country, I suppose?” demanded the agent in a challenging tone.

  “Just so.”

  The agent shrugged his shoulders, looked scornfully at the small trunk, which was marked “N.E.,” and handed out a claim check without further comment. The stranger watched him as he caught one end of the trunk and dragged it into the express room. The agent’s manner seemed to remind him of something amusing. “Doesn’t seem to be a very big place,” he remarked, looking about.

  “It’s big enough for us,” snapped the agent, as he banged the trunk into a corner.

  That remark, apparently, was what Nils Ericson had wanted. He chuckled quietly as he took a leather strap from his pocket and swung his valise around his shoulder. Then he settled his Panama securely on his head, turned up his trousers, tucked the flute-case under his arm, and started off across the fields. He gave the town, as he would have said, a wide berth, and cut through a great fenced pasture, emerging, when he rolled under the barbed wire at the farther corner, upon a white dusty road which ran straight up from the river valley to the high prairies, where the ripe wheat stood yellow and the tin roofs and weathercocks were twinkling in the fierce sunlight. By the time Nils had done three miles, the sun was sinking and the farm-wagons on their way home from town came rattling by, covering him with dust and making him sneeze. When one of the farmers pulled up and offered to give him a lift, he clambered in willingly. The driver was a thin, grizzled old man with a long lean neck and a foolish sort of beard, like a goat’s. “How fur ye goin’?” he asked, as he clucked to his horses and started off.

  “Do you go by the Ericson place?”

  “Which Ericson?” The old man drew in his reins as if he expected to stop again.

  “Preacher Ericson’s.”

  “Oh, the Old Lady Ericson’s!” He turned and looked at Nils. “La, me! If you’re goin’ out there you might ’a’ rid out in the automobile. That’s a pity, now. The Old Lady Ericson was in town with her auto. You might ’a’ heard it snortin’ anywhere about the post-office er the butcher-shop.”

  “Has she a motor?” asked the stranger absently.

  “’Deed an’ she has! She runs into town every night about this time for her mail and meat for supper. Some folks say she’s afraid her auto won’t get exercise enough, but I say that’s jealousy.”

  “Aren’t there any other motors about here?”

  “Oh, yes! We have fourteen in all. But nobody else gets around like the Old Lady Ericson. She’s out, rain er shine, over the whole county, chargin’ into town and out amongst her farms, an’ up to her sons’ places. Sure you ain’t goin’ to the wrong place?” He craned his neck and looked at Nils’ flute case with eager curiosity. “The old woman ain’t got any piany that I knows on. Olaf, he has a grand. His wife’s musical; took lessons in Chicago.”

  “I’m going up there tomorrow,” said Nils imperturbably. He saw that the driver took him for a piano-tuner.

  “Oh, I see!” The old man screwed up his eyes mysteriously. He was a little dashed by the stranger’s non-communicativeness, but he soon broke out again.

  “I’m one o’ Mis’ Ericson’s tenants. Look after one of her places. I did own the place myself oncet, but I lost it a while back, in the bad years just after the World’s Fair. Just as well, too, I say. Let
s you out o’ payin’ taxes. The Ericson do own most of the county now. I remember the old preacher’s fav’rite text used to be, ‘To them that hath shall be given.’ They’ve spread something wonderful—run over this here country like bindweed. But I ain’t one that begretches it to ’em. Folks is entitled to what they kin git; and they’re hustlers. Olaf, he’s in the Legislature now, and a likely man fur Congress. Listen, if that ain’t the old woman comin’ now. Want I should stop her?”

  Nils shook his head. He heard the deep chug-chug of a motor vibrating steadily in the clear twilight behind them. The pale lights of the car swam over the hill, and the old man slapped his reins and turned clear out of the road, ducking his head at the first of three angry snorts from behind. The motor was running at a hot, even speed, and passed without turning an inch from its course. The driver was a stalwart woman who sat at ease in the front seat and drove her car bareheaded. She left a cloud of dust and a trail of gasoline behind her. Her tenant threw back his head and sneezed.

  “Whew! I sometimes say I’d as lief be before Mrs. Ericson as behind her. She does beat all! Nearly seventy, and never lets another soul touch that car. Puts it into commission herself every morning, and keeps it tuned up by the hitch-bar all day. I never stop work for a drink o’ water that I don’t hear her a-churnin’ up the road. I reckon her darter-in-laws never sets down easy nowadays. Never know when she’ll pop in. Mis’ Otto, she says to me: ‘We’re so afraid that thing’ll blow up and do Ma some injury yet, she’s so turrible venturesome.’ Says I: ‘I wouldn’t stew, Mis’ Otto; the old lady’ll drive that car to the funeral of every darter-in-law she’s got.’ That was after the old woman had jumped a turrible bad culvert.”