“Right here,” said the Kids, thrusting into their vest pockets.
At eleven o’clock a curious thing was learned. When Pop and Freddie, the Kids, and all, came to the little side street, it was thick with people. It seems that the news of this great race had spread like the wind among the Americans, and they had come to witness the event. In the darkness the crowd moved, gesticulating and mumbling in argument.
The principals, the Kids, and those with them surveyed this scene with some dismay. “Say, here’s a go.” Even then a policeman might be seen approaching, the light from his little lantern flickering on his white cap, gloves, brass buttons, and on the butt of the old-fashioned Colt’s revolver which hung at his belt. He addressed Freddie in swift Mexican. Freddie listened, nodding from time to time. Finally Freddie turned to the others to translate: “He says he’ll get into trouble if he allows this race when all this crowd is here.”
There was a murmur of discontent. The policeman looked at them with an expression of anxiety on his broad brown face.
“Oh, come on. We’ll go hold it on some other fellow’s beat,” said one of the Kids.
The group moved slowly away, debating.
Suddenly the other Kid cried: “I know! The Paseo!”
“By jiminy!” said Freddie, “just the thing. We’ll get a cab, and go out to the Paseo. S-s-sh! Keep it quiet. We don’t want all this mob.”
Later they tumbled into a cab—Pop, Freddie, the Kids, old Colonel Hammigan, and Benson. They whispered to the men who had wagered: “The Paseo.” The cab whirled away up the back street. There were occasional grunts and groans—cries of “Oh, get off me feet!” and of “Quit! You’re killing me!” Six people do not have fun in one cab. The principals spoke to each other with the respect and friendliness which comes to good men at such times.
Once a Kid put his head out of the window and looked backward. He pulled it in again, and cried: “Great Scott! Look at that, would you!”
The others struggled to do as they were bid, and afterward shouted: “Holy smoke!” “Well, I’ll be blowed!” “Thunder and turf!”
Galloping after them came innumerable other cabs, their lights twinkling, streaming in a great procession through the night. “The street is full of them,” ejaculated the old colonel.
The Paseo de la Reforma is the famous drive of the City of Mexico, leading to the castle of Chapultepec, which last ought to be well known in the United States.
It is a broad, fine avenue of macadam, with a much greater quality of dignity than anything of the kind we possess in our own land. It seems of the Old World, where to the beauty of the thing itself is added the solemnity of tradition and history, the knowledge that feet in buskins trod the same stones, that cavalcades of steel thundered there before the coming of carriages.
When the Americans tumbled out of their cabs, the giant bronzes of Aztec and Spaniard loomed dimly above them like towers. The four rows of poplar trees rustled weirdly off there in the darkness. Pop took out his watch, and struck a match. “Well, hurry up this thing. It’s almost midnight.”
The other cabs came swarming, the drivers lashing their horses; for these Americans, who did all manner of strange things, nevertheless always paid well for it. There was a mighty hubbub then in the darkness. Five or six men began to pace off the distance and quarrel. Others knotted their handkerchiefs together to make a tape. Men were swearing over bets, fussing and fuming about the odds. Benson came to the Kids, swaggering. “You’re a pair of asses.” The cabs waited in a solid block down the avenue. Above the crowd, the tall statues hid their visages in the night.
At last a voice floated through the darkness: “Are you ready, there?” Everybody yelled excitedly. The men at the tape pulled it out straight. “Hold it higher, Jim, you fool!” A silence fell then upon the throng. Men bent down, trying to pierce the darkness with their eyes. From out at the starting point came muffled voices. The crowd swayed and jostled.
The racers did not come. The crowd began to fret, its nerves burning. “Oh, hurry up!” shrilled some one.
The voice called again: “Ready, there?”
Everybody replied: “Yes; all ready! Hurry up!”
There was more muffled discussion at the starting point. In the crowd a man began to make a proposition: “I’ll bet twenty——” But the throng interrupted with a howl: “Here they come!” The thickly packed body of men swung as if the ground had moved. The men at the tape shouldered madly at their fellows, bawling: “Keep back! Keep back!”
From the profound gloom came the noise of feet pattering furiously. Vague forms flashed into view for an instant. A hoarse roar broke from the crowd. Men bent and swayed and fought. The Kids, back near the tape, exchanged another stolid look. A white form shone forth. It grew like a specter. Always could be heard the wild patter. A barbaric scream broke from the crowd: “By Gawd, it’s Pop! Pop! Pop’s ahead!”
The old man spun toward the tape like a madman, his chin thrown back, his gray hair flying. His legs moved like maniac machinery. And as he shot forward a howl as from forty cages of wild animals went toward the imperturbable chieftains in bronze. The crowd flung themselves forward. “Oh, you old Indian! You savage! You cuss, you! Durn my buttons, did you ever see such running?”
“Ain’t he a peach? Well!”
“Say, this beats anything!”
“Where’s the Kids? H-e-y, Kids!”
“Look at ’im, would you? Did you ever think?”
These cries flew in the air, blended in a vast shout of astonishment and laughter.
For an instant the whole great tragedy was in view. Freddie, desperate, his teeth shining, his face contorted, whirling along in deadly effort, was twenty feet behind the tall form of old Pop, who, dressed only in his—only in his underclothes—gained with each stride. One grand, insane moment, and then Pop had hurled himself against the tape—victor!
Freddie, falling into the arms of some men, struggled with his breath, and at last managed to stammer: “Say—can’t—can’t that old—old man run!”
Pop, puffing and heaving, could only gasp: “Where’s my shoes? Who’s got my shoes?”
Later Freddie scrambled, panting, through the crowd, and held out his hand. “Good man, Pop!” And then he looked up and down the tall, stout form. “Hell! Who would think you could run like that?”
The Kids were surrounded by a crowd, laughing tempestuously.
“How did you know he could run?”
“Why didn’t you give me a line on him?”
“Say—great snakes!—you fellows had a nerve to bet on Pop.”
“Why, I was cocksure he couldn’t win.”
“Oh, you fellows must have seen him run before!”
“Who would ever think it!”
Benson came by, filling the midnight air with curses. They turned to jeer him. “What’s the matter, Benson?”
“Somebody pinched my handkerchief. I tied it up in that string. Damn it!”
The Kids laughed blithely. “Why, hullo, Benson!” they said.
There was a great rush for cabs. Shouting, laughing, wondering, the crowd hustled into their conveyances, and the drivers flogged their horses toward the city again.
“Won’t Freddie be crazy! Say, he’ll be guyed about this for years.”
“But who would ever think that old tank could run so?”
One cab had to wait while Pop and Freddie resumed various parts of their clothing.
As they drove home, Freddie said: “Well, Pop, you beat me!”
Pop said: “That’s all right, old man.”
The Kids, grinning, said: “How much did you lose, Benson?”
Benson said defiantly: “Oh, not so much. How much did you win?”
“Oh, not so much!”
Old Colonel Hammigan, squeezed down in a corner, had apparently been reviewing the event in his mind, for he suddenly remarked: “Well, I’m damned!”
They were late in reaching the Café Colorado; but when they did,
the bottles were on the bar as thick as pickets on a fence.
April 18, 1898
[The Open Boat and Other Stories.
London: William Heinemann, pp. 87–105.]
THE MONSTER
I
Little Jim was, for the time, engine Number 36, and he was making the run between Syracuse and Rochester. He was fourteen minutes behind time, and the throttle was wide open. In consequence, when he swung around the curve at the flower bed, a wheel of his cart destroyed a peony. Number 36 slowed down at once and looked guiltily at his father, who was mowing the lawn. The doctor had his back to this accident, and he continued to pace slowly to and fro, pushing the mower.
Jim dropped the tongue of the cart. He looked at his father and at the broken flower. Finally he went to the peony and tried to stand it on its pins, resuscitated, but the spine of it was hurt, and it would only hang limply from his hand. Jim could do no reparation. He looked again toward his father.
He went on to the lawn, very slowly, and kicking wretchedly at the turf. Presently his father came along with the whirring machine, while the sweet, new grass blades spun from the knives. In a low voice, Jim said, “Pa!”
The doctor was shaving this lawn as if it were a priest’s chin. All during the season he had worked at it in the coolness and peace of the evenings after supper. Even in the shadow of the cherry trees the grass was strong and healthy. Jim raised his voice a trifle. “Pa!”
The doctor paused, and with the howl of the machine no longer occupying the sense, one could hear the robins in the cherry trees arranging their affairs. Jim’s hands were behind his back, and sometimes his fingers clasped and unclasped. Again he said, “Pa!” The child’s fresh and rosy lip was lowered.
The doctor stared down at his son, thrusting his head forward and frowning attentively. “What is it, Jimmie?”
“Pa!” repeated the child at length. Then he raised his finger and pointed at the flower bed. “There!”
“What?” said the doctor, frowning more. “What is it, Jim?”
After a period of silence, during which the child may have undergone a severe mental tumult, he raised his finger and repeated his former word—“There!” The father had respected this silence with perfect courtesy. Afterward his glance carefully followed the direction indicated by the child’s finger, but he could see nothing which explained to him. “I don’t understand what you mean, Jimmie,” he said.
It seemed that the importance of the whole thing had taken away the boy’s vocabulary. He could only reiterate, “There!”
The doctor mused upon the situation, but he could make nothing of it. At last he said, “Come, show me.”
Together they crossed the lawn toward the flower bed. At some yards from the broken peony Jimmie began to lag. “There!” The word came almost breathlessly.
“Where?” said the doctor.
Jimmie kicked at the grass. “There!” he replied.
The doctor was obliged to go forward alone. After some trouble he found the subject of the incident, the broken flower. Turning then, he saw the child lurking at the rear and scanning his countenance.
The father reflected. After a time he said, “Jimmie, come here.” With an infinite modesty of demeanor the child came forward. “Jimmie, how did this happen?”
The child answered, “Now—I was playin’ train—and—now—I runned over it.”
“You were doing what?”
“I was playin’ train.”
The father reflected again. “Well, Jimmie,” he said, slowly, “I guess you had better not play train any more today. Do you think you had better?”
“No, sir,” said Jimmie.
During the delivery of the judgment the child had not faced his father, and afterwards he went away, with his head lowered, shuffling his feet.
II
It was apparent from Jimmie’s manner that he felt some kind of desire to efface himself. He went down to the stable. Henry Johnson, the negro who cared for the doctor’s horses, was sponging the buggy. He grinned fraternally when he saw Jimmie coming. These two were pals. In regard to almost everything in life they seemed to have minds precisely alike. Of course there were points of emphatic divergence. For instance, it was plain from Henry’s talk that he was a very handsome negro, and he was known to be a light, a weight, and an eminence in the suburb of the town, where lived the larger number of the negroes, and obviously this glory was over Jimmie’s horizon; but he vaguely appreciated it and paid deference to Henry for it mainly because Henry appreciated it and deferred to himself. However, on all points of conduct as related to the doctor, who was the moon, they were in complete but unexpressed understanding. Whenever Jimmie became the vicitim of an eclipse he went to the stable to solace himself with Henry’s crimes. Henry, with the elasticity of his race, could usually provide a sin to place himself on a footing with the disgraced one. Perhaps he would remember that he had forgotten to put the hitching strap in the back of the buggy on some recent occasion, and had been reprimanded by the doctor. Then these two would commune subtly and without words concerning their moon, holding themselves sympathetically as people who had committed similar treasons. On the other hand, Henry would sometimes choose to absolutely repudiate this idea, and when Jimmie appeared in his shame would bully him most virtuously, preaching with assurance the precepts of the doctor’s creed, and pointing out to Jimmie all his abominations. Jimmie did not discover that this was odious in his comrade. He accepted it and lived in its shadow with humility, merely trying to conciliate the saintly Henry with acts of deference. Won by this attitude, Henry would sometimes allow the child to enjoy the felicity of squeezing the sponge over a buggy wheel, even when Jimmie was still gory from unspeakable deeds.
Whenever Henry dwelt for a time in sackcloth, Jimmie did not patronize him at all. This was a justice of his age, his condition. He did not know. Besides, Henry could drive a horse, and Jimmie had a full sense of this sublimity. Henry personally conducted the moon during the splendid journeys through the country roads, where farms spread on all sides, with sheep, cows, and other marvels abounding.
“Hello, Jim!” said Henry, poising his sponge. Water was dripping from the buggy. Sometimes the horses in the stalls stamped thunderingly on the pine floor. There was an atmosphere of hay and of harness.
For a minute Jimmie refused to take an interest in anything. He was very downcast. He could not even feel the wonders of wagon-washing. Henry, while at work, narrowly observed him.
“Your pop done wallop yer, didn’t he?” he said at last.
“No,” said Jimmie, defensively; “he didn’t.”
After this casual remark Henry continued his labor, with a scowl of occupation. Presently he said: “I done tol’ yer many’s th’ time not to go a-foolin’ an’ a-projjeckin’ with them flowers. Yer pop don’ like it nohow.” As a matter of fact, Henry had never mentioned flowers to the boy.
Jimmie preserved a gloomy silence, so Henry began to use seductive wiles in this affair of washing a wagon. It was not until he began to spin a wheel on the tree, and the sprinkling water flew everywhere, that the boy was visibly moved. He had been seated on the sill of the carriage-house door, but at the beginning of this ceremony he arose and circled toward the buggy, with an interest that slowly consumed the remembrance of a late disgrace.
Johnson could then display all the dignity of a man whose duty it was to protect Jimmie from a splashing. “Look out, boy! look out! You done gwi’ spile yer pants. I raikon your mommer don’t ’low this foolishness, she know it. I ain’t gwi’ have you round yere spilin’ yer pants, an’ have Mis’ Trescott light on me pressen’ly. ’Deed I ain’t.”
He spoke with an air of great irritation, but he was not annoyed at all. This tone was merely a part of his importance. In reality he was always delighted to have the child there to witness the business of the stable. For one thing, Jimmie was invariably overcome with reverence when he was told how beautifully a harness was polished or a horse groomed. He
nry explained each detail of this kind with unction, procuring great joy from the child’s admiration.
III
After Johnson had taken his supper in the kitchen, he went to his loft in the carriage-house and dressed himself with much care. No belle of a court circle could bestow more mind on a toilet than did Johnson. On second thought, he was more like a priest arraying himself for some parade of the church. As he emerged from his room and sauntered down the carriage-drive, no one would have suspected him of ever having washed a buggy.
It was not altogether a matter of the lavender trousers, nor yet the straw hat with its bright silk band. The change was somewhere far in the interior of Henry. But there was no Cakewalk hyperbole in it. He was simply a quiet, well-bred gentleman of position, wealth, and other necessary achievements out for an evening stroll, and he had never washed a wagon in his life.
In the morning, when in his working clothes, he had met a friend—“Hello, Pete!” “Hello, Henry!” Now, in his effulgence, he encountered this same friend. His bow was not at all haughty. If it expressed anything, it expressed consummate generosity—“Good-evenin’, Misteh Washington.” Pete, who was very dirty, being at work in a potato-patch, responded in a mixture of abasement and appreciation—“Good-evenin’, Misteh Johnsing.”
The shimmering blue of the electric arc lamps was strong in the main street of the town. At numerous points it was conquered by the orange glare of the outnumbering gaslights in the windows of shops. Through this radiant lane moved a crowd, which culminated in a throng before the post office, awaiting the distribution of the evening mails. Occasionally there came into it a shrill electric streetcar, the motor singing like a cageful of grasshoppers, and possessing a great gong that clanged forth both warnings and simple noise. At the little theater, which was a varnish and red-plush miniature of one of the famous New York theaters, a company of strollers was to play East Lynne. The young men of the town were mainly gathered at the corners, in distinctive groups which expressed various shades and lines of chumship, and had little to do with any social gradations. There they discussed everything with critical insight, passing the whole town in review as it swarmed in the street. When the gongs of the electric cars ceased for a moment to harry the ears, there could be heard the sound of the feet of the leisurely crowd on the bluestone pavement, and it was like the peaceful evening lashing at the shore of a lake. At the foot of the hill, where two lines of maples sentineled the way, an electric lamp glowed high among the embowering branches and made most wonderful shadow-etchings on the road below it.
The Complete Short Stories and Sketches of Stephen Crane Page 59
