Complete Works of Stephen Crane

by Stephen Crane

  “I think it very stupid of you to hunt for a meaning when I believe I made everything so perfectly clear,” she said wrathfully.

  “Well, you yourself might not be aware of what you really meant,” he answered sagely. “Women often do that sort of thing, you know. Women often speak from motives which, if brought face to face with them, they wouldn’t be able to distinguish from any other thing which they had never before seen.”

  “Hollie, if there is a disgusting person in the world it is he who pretends to know so much concerning a woman’s mind.”

  “Well, that’s because they who know, or pretend to know, so much about a woman’s mind are invariably satirical, you understand,” said Hollanden cheerfully.

  A dog ran frantically across the lawn, his nose high in the air and his countenance expressing vast perturbation and alarm. “Why, Billie forgot to whistle for his dog when he started for home,” said Hollanden. “Come here, old man! Well, ‘e was a nice dog!” The girl also gave invitation, but the setter would not heed them. He spun wildly about the lawn until he seemed to strike his master’s trail, and then, with his nose near to the ground, went down the road at an eager gallop. They stood and watched him.

  “Stanley’s a nice dog,” said Hollanden.

  “Indeed he is!” replied the girl fervently.

  Presently Hollanden remarked: “Well, don’t let’s fight any more, particularly since we can’t decide what we’re fighting about. I can’t discover the reason, and you don’t know it, so — —”

  “I do know it. I told you very plainly.”

  “Well, all right. Now, this is the way to work that slam: You give the ball a sort of a lift — see! — underhanded and with your arm crooked and stiff. Here, you smash this other ball into the net. Hi! Look out! If you hit it that way you’ll knock it over the hotel. Let the ball drop nearer to the ground. Oh, heavens, not on the ground! Well, it’s hard to do it from the serve, anyhow. I’ll go over to the other court and bat you some easy ones.”

  Afterward, when they were going toward the inn, the girl suddenly began to laugh.

  “What are you giggling at?” said Hollanden.

  “I was thinking how furious he would be if he heard you call him a country swain,” she rejoined.

  “Who?” asked Hollanden.

  CHAPTER XVII.

  Oglethorpe contended that the men who made the most money from books were the best authors. Hollanden contended that they were the worst. Oglethorpe said that such a question should be left to the people. Hollanden said that the people habitually made wrong decisions on questions that were left to them. “That is the most odiously aristocratic belief,” said Oglethorpe.

  “No,” said Hollanden, “I like the people. But, considered generally, they are a collection of ingenious blockheads.”

  “But they read your books,” said Oglethorpe, grinning.

  “That is through a mistake,” replied Hollanden.

  As the discussion grew in size it incited the close attention of the Worcester girls, but Miss Fanhall did not seem to hear it. Hawker, too, was staring into the darkness with a gloomy and preoccupied air.

  “Are you sorry that this is your last evening at Hemlock Inn?” said the painter at last, in a low tone.

  “Why, yes — certainly,” said the girl.

  Under the sloping porch of the inn the vague orange light from the parlours drifted to the black wall of the night.

  “I shall miss you,” said the painter.

  “Oh, I dare say,” said the girl.

  Hollanden was lecturing at length and wonderfully. In the mystic spaces of the night the pines could be heard in their weird monotone, as they softly smote branch and branch, as if moving in some solemn and sorrowful dance.

  “This has been quite the most delightful summer of my experience,” said the painter.

  “I have found it very pleasant,” said the girl.

  From time to time Hawker glanced furtively at Oglethorpe, Hollanden, and the Worcester girl. This glance expressed no desire for their well-being.

  “I shall miss you,” he said to the girl again. His manner was rather desperate. She made no reply, and, after leaning toward her, he subsided with an air of defeat.

  Eventually he remarked: “It will be very lonely here again. I dare say I shall return to New York myself in a few weeks.”

  “I hope you will call,” she said.

  “I shall be delighted,” he answered stiffly, and with a dissatisfied look at her.

  “Oh, Mr. Hawker,” cried the younger Worcester girl, suddenly emerging from the cloud of argument which Hollanden and Oglethorpe kept in the air, “won’t it be sad to lose Grace? Indeed, I don’t know what we shall do. Sha’n’t we miss her dreadfully?”

  “Yes,” said Hawker, “we shall of course miss her dreadfully.”

  “Yes, won’t it be frightful?” said the elder Worcester girl. “I can’t imagine what we will do without her. And Hollie is only going to spend ten more days. Oh, dear! mamma, I believe, will insist on staying the entire summer. It was papa’s orders, you know, and I really think she is going to obey them. He said he wanted her to have one period of rest at any rate. She is such a busy woman in town, you know.”

  “Here,” said Hollanden, wheeling to them suddenly, “you all look as if you were badgering Hawker, and he looks badgered. What are you saying to him?”

  “Why,” answered the younger Worcester girl, “we were only saying to him how lonely it would be without Grace.”

  “Oh!” said Hollanden.

  As the evening grew old, the mother of the Worcester girls joined the group. This was a sign that the girls were not to long delay the vanishing time. She sat almost upon the edge of her chair, as if she expected to be called upon at any moment to arise and bow “Good-night,” and she repaid Hollanden’s eloquent attention with the placid and absent-minded smiles of the chaperon who waits.

  Once the younger Worcester girl shrugged her shoulders and turned to say, “Mamma, you make me nervous!” Her mother merely smiled in a still more placid and absent-minded manner.

  Oglethorpe arose to drag his chair nearer to the railing, and when he stood the Worcester mother moved and looked around expectantly, but Oglethorpe took seat again. Hawker kept an anxious eye upon her.

  Presently Miss Fanhall arose.

  “Why, you are not going in already, are you?” said Hawker and Hollanden and Oglethorpe. The Worcester mother moved toward the door followed by her daughters, who were protesting in muffled tones. Hollanden pitched violently upon Oglethorpe. “Well, at any rate — —” he said. He picked the thread of a past argument with great agility.

  Hawker said to the girl, “I — I — I shall miss you dreadfully.”

  She turned to look at him and smiled. “Shall you?” she said in a low voice.

  “Yes,” he said. Thereafter he stood before her awkwardly and in silence. She scrutinized the boards of the floor. Suddenly she drew a violet from a cluster of them upon her gown and thrust it out to him as she turned toward the approaching Oglethorpe.

  “Good-night, Mr. Hawker,” said the latter. “I am very glad to have met you, I’m sure. Hope to see you in town. Good-night.”

  He stood near when the girl said to Hawker: “Good-bye. You have given us such a charming summer. We shall be delighted to see you in town. You must come some time when the children can see you, too. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” replied Hawker, eagerly and feverishly, trying to interpret the inscrutable feminine face before him. “I shall come at my first opportunity.”

  “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  Down at the farmhouse, in the black quiet of the night, a dog lay curled on the door-mat. Of a sudden the tail of this dog began to thump, thump, on the boards. It began as a lazy movement, but it passed into a state of gentle enthusiasm, and then into one of curiously loud and joyful celebration. At last the gate clicked. The dog uncurled, and went to the edge of the steps to greet his ma
ster. He gave adoring, tremulous welcome with his clear eyes shining in the darkness. “Well, Stan, old boy,” said Hawker, stooping to stroke the dog’s head. After his master had entered the house the dog went forward and sniffed at something that lay on the top step. Apparently it did not interest him greatly, for he returned in a moment to the door-mat.

  But he was again obliged to uncurl himself, for his master came out of the house with a lighted lamp and made search of the door-mat, the steps, and the walk, swearing meanwhile in an undertone. The dog wagged his tail and sleepily watched this ceremony. When his master had again entered the house the dog went forward and sniffed at the top step, but the thing that had lain there was gone.

  CHAPTER XVIII.

  It was evident at breakfast that Hawker’s sisters had achieved information. “What’s the matter with you this morning?” asked one. “You look as if you hadn’t slep’ well.”

  “There is nothing the matter with me,” he rejoined, looking glumly at his plate.

  “Well, you look kind of broke up.”

  “How I look is of no consequence. I tell you there is nothing the matter with me.”

  “Oh!” said his sister. She exchanged meaning glances with the other feminine members of the family. Presently the other sister observed, “I heard she was going home to-day.”

  “Who?” said Hawker, with a challenge in his tone.

  “Why, that New York girl — Miss What’s-her-name,” replied the sister, with an undaunted smile.

  “Did you, indeed? Well, perhaps she is.”

  “Oh, you don’t know for sure, I s’pose.”

  Hawker arose from the table, and, taking his hat, went away.

  “Mary!” said the mother, in the sepulchral tone of belated but conscientious reproof.

  “Well, I don’t care. He needn’t be so grand. I didn’t go to tease him. I don’t care.”

  “Well, you ought to care,” said the old man suddenly. “There’s no sense in you wimen folks pestering the boy all the time. Let him alone with his own business, can’t you?”

  “Well, ain’t we leaving him alone?”

  “No, you ain’t—’cept when he ain’t here. I don’t wonder the boy grabs his hat and skips out when you git to going.”

  “Well, what did we say to him now? Tell us what we said to him that was so dreadful.”

  “Aw, thunder an’ lightnin’!” cried the old man with a sudden great snarl. They seemed to know by this ejaculation that he had emerged in an instant from that place where man endures, and they ended the discussion. The old man continued his breakfast.

  During his walk that morning Hawker visited a certain cascade, a certain lake, and some roads, paths, groves, nooks. Later in the day he made a sketch, choosing an hour when the atmosphere was of a dark blue, like powder smoke in the shade of trees, and the western sky was burning in strips of red. He painted with a wild face, like a man who is killing.

  After supper he and his father strolled under the apple boughs in the orchard and smoked. Once he gestured wearily. “Oh, I guess I’ll go back to New York in a few days.”

  “Um,” replied his father calmly. “All right, William.”

  Several days later Hawker accosted his father in the barnyard. “I suppose you think sometimes I don’t care so much about you and the folks and the old place any more; but I do.”

  “Um,” said the old man. “When you goin’?”

  “Where?” asked Hawker, flushing.

  “Back to New York.”

  “Why — I hadn’t thought much about —— Oh, next week, I guess.”

  “Well, do as you like, William. You know how glad me an’ mother and the girls are to have you come home with us whenever you can come. You know that. But you must do as you think best, and if you ought to go back to New York now, William, why — do as you think best.”

  “Well, my work — —” said Hawker.

  From time to time the mother made wondering speech to the sisters. “How much nicer William is now! He’s just as good as he can be. There for a while he was so cross and out of sorts. I don’t see what could have come over him. But now he’s just as good as he can be.”

  Hollanden told him, “Come up to the inn more, you fool.”

  “I was up there yesterday.”

  “Yesterday! What of that? I’ve seen the time when the farm couldn’t hold you for two hours during the day.”

  “Go to blazes!”

  “Millicent got a letter from Grace Fanhall the other day.”

  “That so?”

  “Yes, she did. Grace wrote —— Say, does that shadow look pure purple to you?”

  “Certainly it does, or I wouldn’t paint it so, duffer. What did she write?”

  “Well, if that shadow is pure purple my eyes are liars. It looks a kind of slate colour to me. Lord! if what you fellows say in your pictures is true, the whole earth must be blazing and burning and glowing and — —”

  Hawker went into a rage. “Oh, you don’t know anything about colour, Hollie. For heaven’s sake, shut up, or I’ll smash you with the easel.”

  “Well, I was going to tell you what Grace wrote in her letter. She said — —”

  “Go on.”

  “Gimme time, can’t you? She said that town was stupid, and that she wished she was back at Hemlock Inn.”

  “Oh! Is that all?”

  “Is that all? I wonder what you expected? Well, and she asked to be recalled to you.”

  “Yes? Thanks.”

  “And that’s all. ‘Gad, for such a devoted man as you were, your enthusiasm and interest is stupendous.”

  The father said to the mother, “Well, William’s going back to New York next week.”

  “Is he? Why, he ain’t said nothing to me about it.”

  “Well, he is, anyhow.”

  “I declare! What do you s’pose he’s going back before September for, John?”

  “How do I know?”

  “Well, it’s funny, John. I bet — I bet he’s going back so’s he can see that girl.”

  “He says it’s his work.”

  CHAPTER XIX.

  Wrinkles had been peering into the little dry-goods box that acted as a cupboard. “There are only two eggs and half a loaf of bread left,” he announced brutally.

  “Heavens!” said Warwickson from where he lay smoking on the bed. He spoke in a dismal voice. This tone, it is said, had earned him his popular name of Great Grief.

  From different points of the compass Wrinkles looked at the little cupboard with a tremendous scowl, as if he intended thus to frighten the eggs into becoming more than two, and the bread into becoming a loaf. “Plague take it!” he exclaimed.

  “Oh, shut up, Wrinkles!” said Grief from the bed.

  Wrinkles sat down with an air austere and virtuous. “Well, what are we going to do?” he demanded of the others.

  Grief, after swearing, said: “There, that’s right! Now you’re happy. The holy office of the inquisition! Blast your buttons, Wrinkles, you always try to keep us from starving peacefully! It is two hours before dinner, anyhow, and — —”

  “Well, but what are you going to do?” persisted Wrinkles.

  Pennoyer, with his head afar down, had been busily scratching at a pen-and-ink drawing. He looked up from his board to utter a plaintive optimism. “The Monthly Amazement will pay me to-morrow. They ought to. I’ve waited over three months now. I’m going down there to-morrow, and perhaps I’ll get it.”

  His friends listened with airs of tolerance. “Oh, no doubt, Penny, old man.” But at last Wrinkles giggled pityingly. Over on the bed Grief croaked deep down in his throat. Nothing was said for a long time thereafter.

  The crash of the New York streets came faintly to this room.

  Occasionally one could hear the tramp of feet in the intricate corridors of the begrimed building which squatted, slumbering, and old, between two exalted commercial structures which would have had to bend afar down to perceive it. The northward march of the
city’s progress had happened not to overturn this aged structure, and it huddled there, lost and forgotten, while the cloud-veering towers strode on.

  Meanwhile the first shadows of dusk came in at the blurred windows of the room. Pennoyer threw down his pen and tossed his drawing over on the wonderful heap of stuff that hid the table. “It’s too dark to work.” He lit a pipe and walked about, stretching his shoulders like a man whose labour was valuable.

  When the dusk came fully the youths grew apparently sad. The solemnity of the gloom seemed to make them ponder. “Light the gas, Wrinkles,” said Grief fretfully.

  The flood of orange light showed clearly the dull walls lined with sketches, the tousled bed in one corner, the masses of boxes and trunks in another, a little dead stove, and the wonderful table. Moreover, there were wine-coloured draperies flung in some places, and on a shelf, high up, there were plaster casts, with dust in the creases. A long stove-pipe wandered off in the wrong direction and then turned impulsively toward a hole in the wall. There were some elaborate cobwebs on the ceiling.

  “Well, let’s eat,” said Grief.

  “Eat,” said Wrinkles, with a jeer; “I told you there was only two eggs and a little bread left. How are we going to eat?”

  Again brought face to face with this problem, and at the hour for dinner, Pennoyer and Grief thought profoundly. “Thunder and turf!” Grief finally announced as the result of his deliberations.

  “Well, if Billie Hawker was only home — —” began Pennoyer.

  “But he isn’t,” objected Wrinkles, “and that settles that.”

  Grief and Pennoyer thought more. Ultimately Grief said, “Oh, well, let’s eat what we’ve got.” The others at once agreed to this suggestion, as if it had been in their minds.

  Later there came a quick step in the passage and a confident little thunder upon the door. Wrinkles arranging the tin pail on the gas stove, Pennoyer engaged in slicing the bread, and Great Grief affixing the rubber tube to the gas stove, yelled, “Come in!”

  The door opened, and Miss Florinda O’Connor, the model, dashed into the room like a gale of obstreperous autumn leaves.