Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories

by Beach, Rex Ellingwood

  Nor, as he had said, did he need prompting, for the lines were not the written speeches of another which had been impressed upon his brain by the mechanical process of repetition; they were his own thoughts expressed in the simplest terms he knew, and they came forth unbidden, hot, eager. Once he began to voice them he was seized by that same mighty current which had drawn them from him in the first place and left them strewn upon paper like driftwood after a flood. He had acted every part of his play; he had spoken every line many times in solitude; but this was the first time he had faced the real Diane. He found himself mastered by a fierce exultation; he forgot that he was acting or that the woman opposite him was playing a rôle of his creation; he began to live his true life for the first time since he had met the wife of Irving Francis. Clothed in the make-believe, the real Henry Phillips spoke freely, feelingly. His very voice changed in timbre, in quality; it became rich, alive; his eyes caressed the woman and stirred her to a new response.

  As for Irving Francis, he watched the transformation with astonishment. Grudgingly, resentfully, he acknowledged that this was indeed fine acting. He realized, too, that his blind egotism had served merely to prove the truth of the author's criticism and to emphasize his own shortcomings. The idea enraged him, but the spectacle held him enthralled.

  Norma Berwynd was not slow to appreciate the truth. Accustomed thoroughly to every phase of the make-believe world in which she dwelt, she recognized unerringly in the new John Danton's words and actions something entirely unreal and apart from the theatrical. The conviction that Henry Phillips was not acting came to her with a blinding suddenness, and it threw her into momentary confusion, hence her responses were mechanical. But soon, without effort on her part, this embarrassment fell away and she in turn began to blaze. The flame grew as Phillips breathed upon it. She realized wildly that her heart had always hungered for words like these, and that, coming from his lips, they carried an altogether new and wondrous meaning; that they filled some long-felt, aching want of which she had been ignorant until this moment. The certainty that it was Phillips himself who spoke, and not a mere character of his creation, filled her with an exultant recklessness. She forgot her surroundings, her husband's presence, even the fact that the lines she spoke were not of her own making.

  Never had the scene been played like this. It grew vital, it took on a tremendous significance. No one could have observed it and remained unresponsive. Francis let fall the manuscript and stared at the actors wonderingly. Since he was an actor, nothing was so real to him, nothing so thrilling, as the make-believe. He realized that this was indeed a magnificent exhibition of the artificial. With parted lips and pulse athrob he followed the wooing of that imaginary John Danton, in whom he could see no one but himself.

  After a time he became conscious of a presence at his side, and heard some one breathing heavily. Turning with a start, he found Léontine Phillips at his shoulder. She, too, was aroused, but in her sneering visage was that which brought the actor abruptly out of his spell. She had emerged from the shadows noiselessly, and was leaning forward, her strong hands gripping the edge of the table littered with its many properties.

  Mrs. Phillips had played emotional scenes herself, but never with such melodramatic intensity as she now unconsciously displayed. Her whole body shook as with an ague, her dark face was alive with a jealous fury which told Irving Francis the story he had been too dull to suspect. The truth, when it came home, smote him like a blow; his hatred for the author, which had been momentarily forgotten—momentarily lost in his admiration of the artist—rose up anew, and he recognized this occult spell which had held him breathless as the thrall of a vital reality, not, after all, the result of inspired acting. Instantly he saw past the make-believe, into the real, and what he saw caused him to utter a smothered cry.

  Léontine turned her face to him. "You fool!" she whispered through livid lips.

  Francis was a huge, leonine man; he rose now to his full height, as a cat rises. But the drama drew his gaze in spite of himself; he could not keep his eyes from his wife's face. Léontine plucked at his sleeve and whispered again:

  "You fool!"

  Something contorted the actor's frame bitterly, and he gasped like a man throttled. Léontine could feel his muscles stiffen.

  But the two players were in Elysium. They had reached the climax of the scene; Danton had told his love as only a great, starved love can tell itself, and with swimming eyes and fluttering lids, with heart pounding beneath her folded hands, Diane swayed toward him and his arms enfolded her. Her body met his, yielded; her face was upturned; her fragrant, half-opened lips were crushed to his in a fierce, impassioned kiss of genuine ecstasy.

  Up to this moment the intensity of Francis's rage had held him paralyzed, despite the voice which was whispering so constantly at his ear; but now, when he saw his wife swooning upon the breast of the man who had played his part, he awoke.

  "She knows he loves her," Léontine was saying. "You let him tell her in front of your face. He has taken her away from you!"

  Mrs. Phillips's eyes fell upon the working fingers of the man as they rested beside her own. They were opening and closing hungrily. She also saw the naked knife which lay upon the table, and she moved it forward cautiously until the eager fingers twined about it. Then she breathed, "Go!" and shoved him forward fiercely.

  It was Irving Francis's cry of rage as he rushed upon them which aroused Norma Berwynd from her dream, from her intoxication. She saw him towering at Phillips's back, and with a scream she tried to save the latter.

  The husband's blow fell, however; it was delivered with all the savage fury that lay in Irving Francis's body, and his victim was fairly driven to his knees beneath it. The latter rose, then staggered, and, half sliding through the woman's sheltering embrace, crumpled limply into a massive upholstered chair. He, too, was dazed by the sudden transition from his real world to his make-believe.

  When his eyes cleared he saw Norma Berwynd struggling with her husband, interposing her own slender body in his path. Francis was cursing her foully for her unfaithfulness; his voice was thick and brutal.

  "Yes! It's true!" she cried, with hysterical defiance. "I never knew till now; but it's true! It's true!"

  "You've killed him!" Léontine chattered, shrilly, and emerged from the shadows, her dark features ashen, her eyes ringed with white. Mrs. Francis turned from her husband and flung her arms about the recumbent man, calling wildly to him.

  The dénouement had come with such swiftness that it left all four of them appalled at their actions. Seeing what his brief insanity had led him into, Francis felt his strength evaporate; his face went white, his legs buckled beneath him. He scanned the place wildly in search of means of escape.

  "My God! My God!" Léontine was repeating. "Why doesn't somebody come?"

  Now that his brain had cleared, and he knew what hand had smitten him, and why, Phillips was by far the calmest of the four. He saw the knife at his feet and smiled, for no steel could rob him of that gladness which was pulsing through his veins. He was still smiling when he stooped and picked up the weapon. He arose, lifting Norma to her feet; then his hand slid down and sought hers.

  "You needn't worry," he said to Francis. "You see—this is the new dagger I got for the end of the act."

  He held it out in his open palm for all of them to see, and they noted that it was strangely shortened—that the point of the sliding blade was barely exposed beneath the hilt.

  Francis wiped his wet face, then shuddered and cursed weakly with relief, meanwhile groping at the prompter's table for support. "Sold! A prop knife!" he cried.

  "You—you're not really—" Norma swayed forward with eyes closed.

  Léontine laughed.

  "By God! I meant it," the star exclaimed, uncertainly. "You can't deny—" He gasped and tugged at his collar.

  "I believe there is nothing to deny," the author said, quietly. He looked first at his wife, then at his enemy, and then down at
the quivering, white face upturned to his. "There is nothing to deny, is there?" he inquired of Norma.

  "Nothing!" she said. "I—I'm glad to know the truth, that's all."

  Francis glared first at one, then at the other, and as he did so he began to realize the full cost of his action. When it came home to him in terms of dollars and cents, he showed his true character by stammering:

  "I—I made a frightful mistake. I'm—not myself; really, I'm not. It was your wife's fault." In a panic he ran on, unmindful of Léontine's scorn. "She did it, Mr. Phillips. She gave me the knife. She whispered things—she made me—I—I'm very sorry—Mr. Phillips, and I'll play the part the way you want it. I will, indeed."

  Léontine met her husband's look defiantly; hence it was as much to her as to the cringing actor that the playwright said:

  "Your salary will go on as usual, under your contract, Mr. Francis—that is, until the management supplies you with a new play; but I'm the real John Danton, and I shall play him tonight and henceforth."

  "Then, I'm—discharged? Norma—d'you hear that? We're canceled.

  Fired!"

  "No, Miss Berwynd's name will go up in lights as the star, if she cares to stay," said Phillips. "Do you wish to remain?" He looked down at the woman, and she nodded.

  "Yes, oh yes!" she said. "I must stay. I daren't go back." That hunted look leaped into her eyes again, and Phillips recognized it now as fear, the abject physical terror of the weaker animal. "I want to go—forward—not backward, if there is any way."

  "I'll show you the way," he told her, gently. "We'll find it together."

  He smiled reassuringly, and with a little gasping sigh she placed her hand in his.

  RUNNING ELK

  Up from the valley below came the throb of war drums, the faint rattle of shots, and the distant cries of painted horsemen charging. From my vantage-point on the ridge I had an unobstructed view of the encampment, a great circle of tepees and tents three miles in circumference, cradled in a sag of the timberless hills. The sounds came softly through the still Dakota air, and my eye took in every sharp-drawn detail of the scene—ponies grazing along the creek bottom, children playing beneath the blue smoke of camp-fires, the dense crowd ringed about a medicine pole in their center, intent on a war-dance.

  Five thousand Sioux were here in all their martial splendor. They were painted and decked and trapped for war, living again their days of plenty, telling anew their tales of might, and repeating on a mimic scale their greatest battles. Five days the feasting had continued; five mornings had I been awakened at dawn to see a thousand ochered, feathered horsemen come thundering down upon the camp, their horses running flat, their rifles popping, while the valley rocked to their battle-cries and to the answering clamor of the army which rode forth to meet them. Five sultry days had I spent wandering unnoticed, ungreeted, and disdained, an alien in a hostile land, tolerated but unwelcome. Five evenings had I witnessed the tents begin to glow and the campfires kindle until the valley became hooped about as if by a million giant fireflies. Five nights had I strayed, like a lost soul, through an unreal wilderness, harkening to the drone of stories told in an unfamiliar tongue, to the minor-keyed dirges of an unknown race, to the thumping of countless moccasined feet in the measures of queer dances. The odors of a savage people had begun to pall on me, and the sound of a strange language to annoy; I longed for another white man, for a word in my own tongue.

  It was the annual "Give-away" celebration, when all the tribe assembles to make presents, to race, to tell stories, and to recount the legends of their prowess. They had come from all quarters of the reservation, bringing their trunks, their children, and their dogs. Of the last named more had come, by far, than would go back, for this was a week of feasting, and every day the air was heavy with the smell of singeing hair, and the curs that had been spared gnawed at an ever-increasing pile of bones.

  I had seen old hags strangle dogs by pulling on opposite ends of a slip-noose, or choke them by laying a tent-pole on their throats and standing on the ends; I had seen others knock them down with billets of wood, drag them kicking to the fires, and then knock them down again when they crawled out of the flames. All in all, I had acquired much information regarding the carnival appetites of the noble red man, learning that he is poetic only in the abstract.

  It was drawing on toward sunset, so I slipped into my camera strap and descended the slope. I paused, however, while still some distance away from my tent, for next to it another had been erected during my absence. It was a tiny affair with a rug in front of it, and upon the rug stood a steamer-chair.

  "Hello, inside!" I shouted, then ran forward, straddling papooses and shouldering squaws out of my way.

  "Hello!" came an answer, and out through the flap was thrust the head of my friend, the Government doctor.

  "Gee! I'm glad to see you!" I said as I shook his hand. "I'm as lonesome as a deaf mute at a song recital."

  "I figured you would be," said the doctor, "so I came out to see the finish of the feast and to visit with you. I brought some bread from the Agency."

  "Hoorah! White bread and white conversation! I'm hungry for both."

  "What's the matter? Won't the Indians talk to you?"

  "I guess they would if they could, but they can't. I haven't found one among the whole five thousand who can understand a word I say. Your Government schools have gone back in the betting with me, Doc. You must keep your graduates under lock and key."

  "They can all speak English if they want to—that is, the younger ones. Some few of the old people are too proud to try, but the others can talk as well as we can, until they forget."

  "Do you mean to say these people have been fooling me? I don't believe it," said I. "There's one that can't talk English, and I'll make a bet on it." I indicated a passing brave with an eagle-feather head-dress which reached far down his naked legs. He was a magnificent animal; he was young and lithe, and as tall and straight as a sapling. "I've tried him twice, and he simply doesn't understand."

  My friend called to the warrior: "Hey, Tom! Come here a minute." The Indian came, and the doctor continued, "When do you hold the horse-races, Thomas?"

  "To-morrow, at four o'clock, unless it rains," said the fellow. He spoke in an odd, halting dialect, but his words were perfectly understandable.

  "Are you going to ride?"

  "No; my race-horse is sick."

  As the ocher-daubed figure vanished into the dusk the old man turned to me, saying, "College man."

  "What?"

  "Yes. B.A. He's a graduate."

  "Impossible!" I declared. "Why, he talks like a foreigner, or as if he were just learning our language."

  "Exactly. In another three years he'll be an Indian again, through and through. Oh, the reservation is full of fellows like Tom." The doctor heaved a sigh of genuine discouragement. "It's a melancholy acknowledgment to make, but our work seems to count for almost nothing. It's their blood."

  "Perhaps they forget the higher education," said I; "but how about the Agency school, where you teach them to farm and to sew and to cook, as well as to read and to write? Surely they don't forget that?"

  "I've heard a graduating class read theses, sing cantatas, and deliver sounding orations; then I've seen those same young fellows, three months later, squatting in tepees and eating with their fingers. It's a common thing for our 'sweet girl graduates' to lay off their white commencement-day dress, their high-heeled shoes and their pretty hats, for the shawl and the moccasin. We teach them to make sponge-cake and to eat with a fork, but they prefer dog-soup and a horn spoon. Of course there are exceptions, but most of them forget much faster than they learn."

  "Our Eastern ideas of Mr. Lo are somewhat out of line with the facts," I acknowledged. "He's sort of a hero with us. I remember several successful plays with romantic Indians in the lead."

  "I know!" My friend laughed shortly. "I saw some of them. If you like, however, I'll tell you how it really happens. I know a stor
y."

  When we had finished supper the doctor told me the story of Running Elk. The night was heavy with unusual odors and burdened by weird music; the whisper of a lively multitude came to us, punctuated at intervals by distant shouts or shots or laughter. On either hand the campfires stretched away like twinkling stars, converging steadily until the horns joined each other away out yonder in the darkness. It was a suitable setting for an epic tale of the Sioux.

  "I've grown gray in this service," the old man began, "and the longer I live the less time I waste in trying to understand the difference between the Indian race and ours. I've about reached the conclusion that it's due to some subtle chemical ingredient in the blood. One race is lively and progressive, the other is sluggish and atavistic. The white man is ever developing, he's always advancing, always expanding; the red man is marking time or walking backward. It is only a matter of time until he will vanish utterly. He's different from the negro. The negro enlarges, up to a certain limit, then he stops. Some people claim, I believe, that his skull is sutured in such a manner as to check his brain development when his bones finally harden and set. The idea sounds reasonable; if true, there will never be a serious conflict between the blacks and the whites. But the red man differs from both. To begin with, his is not a subject race by birth. Physically he is as perfect as either; Nature has endowed him with an intellect quite as keen as the white man's, and with an open articulation of the skull which permits the growth of his brain. Somewhere, nevertheless, she has cunningly concealed a flaw, a flaw which I have labored thirty years to find.