The Dark Star

by Robert W. Chambers

  CHAPTER V

  EX MACHINA

  After she had become accustomed to the smell of rancid oil anddyestuffs and the interminable racket of machinery she did not findher work at the knitting mill disagreeable. It was like any work, sheimagined, an uninteresting task which had to be done.

  The majority of the girls and young men of the village worked there invarious capacities; wages were fair, salaries better, unionregulations prevailed. There was nothing to complain of.

  And nothing to expect except possible increase in wages, holidays, anda disquieting chance of getting caught in the machinery, whichfamiliarity soon discounted.

  As for the social status of the mill workers, the mill _was_ Gayfield;and Gayfield was a village where the simpler traditions of theRepublic still survived; where there existed no invidious distinctionin vocations; a typical old-time community harbouring the remains of aGrand Army Post and too many churches of too many denominations; wherethe chance metropolitan stranger was systematically "done"; wheredistrust of all cities and desire to live in them was equalled only bya passion for moving pictures and automobiles; where the schooltrustees used double negatives and traced their ancestry to Colonialconsiderables--who, however, had signed their names in "lower case" orwith a Maltese cross--the world in miniature, with its due proportionof petty graft, petty squabbles, envy, kindness, jealousy, generosity,laziness, ambition, stupidity, intelligence, honesty, hypocrisy,hatred, affection, badness and goodness, as standardised by the codeestablished according to folk-ways on earth--in brief, a perfectlyhuman community composed of the usual ingredients, worthy andunworthy--that was Gayfield, Mohawk County, New York.

  Before spring came--before the first robin appeared, and while icyroads still lay icy under sunlit pools of snow-water--a whole winterindoors, and a sedentary one, had changed the smoothly tanned andslightly freckled cheeks of Rue Carew to a thinner and paler oval.Under her transparent skin a tea-rose pink came and went; under hergrey eyes lay bluish shadows. Also, floating particles of dust, fleecyand microscopic motes of cotton and wool filling the air in the roomwhere Ruhannah worked, had begun to irritate her throat and bronchialtubes; and the girl developed an intermittent cough.

  When the first bluebird arrived in Gayfield the cough was no longerintermittent; and her mother sent her to the village doctor. So RueCarew was transferred to the box factory adjoining, in which the millmade its own paper boxes, where young women sat all day at intelligentmachines and fed them with squares of pasteboard and strips of giltpaper; and the intelligent and grateful machines responded by turningout hundreds and hundreds of complete boxes, all neatly gilded,pasted, and labelled. And after a little while Ruhannah was able tonourish one of these obliging and responsive machines. And by July hercough had left her, and two delicate freckles adorned the bridge ofher nose.

  The half-mile walk from and to Brookhollow twice a day was keeping herfrom rapid physical degeneration. Yet, like all northern Americansummers, the weather became fearfully hot in July and August, and thehalf-mile even in early morning and at six in the evening left herlistless, nervously dreading the great concrete-lined room, the reekof glue and oil, the sweaty propinquity of her neighbours, and themonotonous appetite of the sprawling machine which she fed all daylong with pasteboard squares.

  She went to her work in early morning, bareheaded, in a limp pinkdress very much open at the throat, which happened to be the mercifulmode of the moment--a slender, sweet-lipped thing, beginning to movewith grace now--and her chestnut hair burned gold-pale by the sun.

  * * * * *

  There came that movable holiday in August, when the annual shutdownfor repairs closed the mill and box factory during forty-eighthours--a matter of prescribing oil and new bearings for the overfedmachines so that their digestions should remain unimpaired and theirdispositions amiable.

  It was a hot August morning, intensely blue and still, with that slow,subtle concentration of suspended power in the sky, ominous of thunderbrooding somewhere beyond the western edges of the world.

  Ruhannah aided her mother with the housework, picked peas and a squashand a saucer full of yellow pansies in the weedy little garden, and,at noon, dined on the trophies of her husbandry, physically andaesthetically.

  After dinner, dishes washed and room tidied, she sat down on thenarrow, woodbine-infested verandah with pencil and paper, andattempted to draw the stone bridge and the little river where itspread in deeps and shallows above the broken dam.

  Perspective was unknown to her; of classic composition she was alsoserenely ignorant, so the absence of these in her picture did notannoy her. On the contrary, there was something hideously modern andrecessional in her vigorous endeavour to include in her drawingeverything her grey eyes chanced to rest on. She even arose and gentlyurged a cow into the already overcrowded composition, and, havingaccomplished its portrait with Cezanne-like fidelity, was beginning tolook about for Adoniram to include him also, when her mother called toher, holding out a pair of old gloves.

  "Dear, we are going to save a little money this year. Do you think youcould catch a few fish for supper?"

  The girl nodded, took the gloves, laid aside her pencil and paper,picked up the long bamboo pole from the verandah floor, and walkedslowly out into the garden.

  A trowel was sticking in the dry earth near the flower bed, wherepoppies, and pansies, and petunias, and phlox bordered the walk.

  Under a lilac the ground seemed moister and more promising forvermicular investigation; she drew on her gloves, dug a few holes withthe trowel, extracted an angleworm, frowned slightly, holding itbetween gloved fingers, regarding its contortions with pity andaversion.

  To bait a hook was not agreeable to the girl; she managed to do it,however, then shouldering her pole she walked across the road and downto the left, through rank grasses and patches of milkweed, bergamot,and queen's lace, scattering a cloud of brown and silver-spottedbutterflies.

  Alder, elder, and Indian willow barred her way; rank thickets ofjewelweed hung vivid blossoming drops across her path; woodbine andclematis trailed dainty snares to catch her in their fairy nets; arabbit scurried out from behind the ruined paper mill as she came tothe swift, shallow water below the dam.

  Into this she presently plumped her line, and the next instant jerkedit out again with a wriggling, silvery minnow flashing on the hook.

  Carrying her pole with its tiny, glittering victim dangling aloft, Ruehastily retraced her steps to the road, crossed the bridge to thefurther end, seated herself on the limestone parapet, and, swingingher pole with both hands, cast line and hook and minnow far out intothe pond. It was a business she did not care for--this extinguishingof the life-spark in anything. But, like her mill work, it appeared tobe a necessary business, and, so regarding it, she went about it.

  The pond above the half-ruined dam lay very still; her captive minnowswam about with apparently no discomfort, trailing on the surface ofthe pond above him the cork which buoyed the hook.

  Rue, her pole clasped in both hands between her knees, gazed withpreoccupied eyes out across the water. On the sandy shore, a pair ofspeckled tip-ups ran busily about, dipping and bobbing, or spreadtheir white, striped wings to sheer the still surface of the pond,swing shoreward with bowed wings again, and resume their formal,quaint, and busy manners.

  From the interstices of the limestone parapet grew a whitebluebell--the only one Rue had ever seen. As long as she couldremember it had come up there every year and bloomed, snow-white amida world of its blue comrades in the grass below. She looked for itnow, saw it in bud--three sturdy stalks sprouting at right anglesfrom the wall and curving up parallel to it. Somehow or other she hadcome to associate this white freak of nature with herself--shescarcely knew why. It comforted her, oddly, to see it again, stillsurviving, still delicately vigorous, though where among those stoneslabs it found its nourishment she never could imagine.

  The intense blue of the sky had altered since noon; the
west becamegradually duller and the air stiller; and now, over the Gayfieldhills, a tall cloud thrust up silvery-edged convolutions toward azenith still royally and magnificently blue.

  * * * * *

  She had been sitting there watching her swimming cork for over an hourwhen the first light western breeze arrived, spreading a dainty rippleacross the pond. Her cork danced, drifted; beneath it she caught themomentary glimmer of the minnow; then the cork was jerked under; sheclasped the pole with all her strength, struck upward; and a heavypickerel, all gold and green, sprang furiously from the water and fellback with a sharp splash.

  Under the sudden strain of the fish she nearly lost her balance,scrambled hastily down from the parapet, propping the pole desperatelyagainst her body, and stood so, unbending, unyielding, her eyes fixedon the water where the taut line cut it at forty-five degrees.

  At the same time two men in a red runabout speeding westward caughtsight of the sharp turn by the bridge which the ruins of the papermill had hidden. The man driving the car might have made it even thenhad he not seen Ruhannah in the centre of the bridge. It was instantlyall off; so were both mud-guards and one wheel. So were driver andpassenger, floundering on their backs among the rank grass and wildflowers. Ruhannah, petrified, still fast to her fish, gazed at thecatastrophe over her right shoulder.

  A broad, short, squarely built man of forty emerged from the weeds,went hastily to the car and did something to it. Noise ceased; cloudsof steam continued to ascend from the crumpled hood.

  The other man, even shorter, but slimmer, sauntered out of a bed ofmilkweed whither he had been catapulted. He dusted with his elbow agrey felt hat as he stood looking at the wrecked runabout; hiscomrade, still clutching a cigar between his teeth, continued toexamine the car.

  "Hell!" remarked the short, thickset man.

  "It's going to rain like it, too," added the other. The thunder boomedagain beyond Gayfield hills.

  "What do you know about this!" growled the thickset man, in utterdisgust. "Do we hunt for a garage, or what?"

  "It's up to you, Eddie. And say! What was the matter with you? Don'tyou know a bridge when you see one?"

  "That damn girl----" He turned and looked at Ruhannah, who wasdragging the big flapping pickerel over the parapet by main strength.

  The men scowled at her in silence, then the one addressed as Eddierolled his cigar grimly into the left corner of his jaw.

  "Damn little skirt," he observed briefly. "It seems to worry her a lotwhat she's done to us."

  "I wonder does she know she wrecked us," suggested the other. He was astunted, wiry little man of thirty-five. His head seemed slightly toolarge; he had a pasty face with the sloe-black eyes, button nose, andthe widely chiselled mouth of a circus clown.

  The eyes of the short, thickset man were narrow and greyish green in around, smoothly shaven face. They narrowed still more as the thunderbroke louder from the west.

  Ruhannah, dragging her fish over the grass, was coming toward them;and the man called Eddie stepped forward to bar her progress.

  "Say, girlie," he began, the cigar still tightly screwed into hischeek, "is there a juice mill anywhere near us, d'y'know?"

  "What?" said Rue.

  "A garage."

  "Yes; there is one at Gayfield."

  "How far, girlie?"

  Rue flushed, but answered:

  "It is half a mile to Gayfield."

  The other man, noticing the colour in Ruhannah's face, took off hispearl-grey hat. His language was less grammatical than his friend's,but his instincts were better.

  "Thank you," he said--his companion staring all the while at the girlwithout the slightest expression. "Is there a telephone in any of themhouses, miss?"--glancing around behind him at the three edifices whichcomposed the crossroads called Brookhollow.

  "No," said Rue.

  It thundered again; the world around had become very dusky and silentand the flash veined a rapidly blackening west.

  "It's going to rain buckets," said the man called Eddie. "If you livearound here, can you let us come into your house till it's over,gir--er--miss?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm Mr. Brandes--Ed Brandes of New York----" speaking throughcigar-clutching teeth. "This is Mr. Ben Stull, of the same.... It'sraining already. Is that your house?"

  "I live _there_," said Rue, nodding across the bridge. "You may goin."

  She walked ahead, dragging the fish; Stull went to the car, took twosuitcases from the boot; Brandes threw both overcoats over his arm,and followed in the wake of Ruhannah and her fish.

  "No Saratoga and no races today, Eddie," remarked Stull. But Brandes'narrow, grey-green eyes were following Ruhannah.

  "It's a pity," continued Stull, "somebody didn't learn you to drive acar before you ask your friends joy-riding."

  "Aw--shut up," returned Brandes slowly, between his teeth.

  They climbed the flight of steps to the verandah, through a rapidlythickening gloom which was ripped wide open at intervals bylightning.

  So Brandes and his shadow, Bennie Stull, came into the home ofRuhannah Carew.

  Her mother, who had observed their approach from the window, openedthe door.

  "Mother," said Ruhannah, "here is the fish I caught--and twogentlemen."

  With which dubious but innocent explanation she continued on towardthe kitchen, carrying her fish.

  Stull offered a brief explanation to account for their plight andpresence; Brandes, listening and watching the mother out of greenish,sleepy eyes, made up his mind concerning her.

  While the spare room was being prepared by mother and daughter, he andStull, seated in the sitting-room, their hats upon their knees,exchanged solemn commonplaces with the Reverend Mr. Carew.

  Brandes, always the gambler, always wary and reticent by nature, didall the listening before he came to conclusions that relaxed thestiffness of his attitude and the immobility of his large, roundface.

  Then, at ease under circumstances and conditions which he began tocomprehend and have an amiable contempt for, he became urbane andconversational, and a little amused to find navigation so simple, evenwhen out of his proper element.

  From the book on the invalid's knees, Brandes took his cue; and theconversation developed into a monologue on the present condition offoreign missions--skilfully inspired by the respectful attention andthe brief and ingenious questions of Brandes.

  "Doubtless," concluded the Reverend Mr. Carew, "you are familiar withthe life of the Reverend Adoniram Judson, Mr. Brandes."

  It turned out to be Brandes' favourite book.

  "You will recollect, then, the amazing conditions in India whichconfronted Dr. Judson and his wife."

  Brandes recollected perfectly--with a slow glance at Stull.

  "All that is changed," said the invalid. "--God be thanked. Andconditions in Armenia are changing for the better, I hope."

  "Let us hope so," returned Brandes solemnly.

  "To doubt it is to doubt the goodness of the Almighty," said theReverend Mr. Carew. His dreamy eyes became fixed on the rain-splashedwindow, burned a little with sombre inward light.

  "In Trebizond," he began, "in my time----"

  His wife came into the room, saying that the spare bedchamber wasready and that the gentlemen might wish to wash before supper, whichwould be ready in a little while.

  * * * * *

  On their way upstairs they encountered Ruhannah coming down. Stullpassed with a polite grunt; Brandes ranged himself for the girl topass him.

  "Ever so much obliged to you, Miss Carew," he said. "We have put youto a great deal of trouble, I am sure."

  Rue looked up surprised, shy, not quite understanding how to reconcilehis polite words and pleasant voice with the voice and manner in whichhe had addressed her on the bridge.

  "It is no trouble," she said, flushing slightly. "I hope you will becomfortable."

  And she continued to descend the
stairs a trifle more hastily, notquite sure she cared very much to talk to that kind of man.

  * * * * *

  In the spare bedroom, whither Stull and Brandes had been conducted,the latter was seated on the big and rather shaky maple bed, buttoninga fresh shirt and collar, while Stull took his turn at the basin. Rainbeat heavily on the windows.

  "Say, Ben," remarked Brandes, "you want to be careful when we godownstairs that the old guy don't spot us for sporting men. He's aminister, or something."

  Stull lifted his dripping face of a circus clown from the basin.

  "What's that?"

  "I say we don't want to give the old people a shock. You know whatthey'd think of us."

  "What do I care what they think?"

  "Can't you be polite?"

  "I can be better than that; I can be honest," said Stull, drying hissour visage with a flimsy towel.

  After Brandes had tied his polka-dotted tie carefully before theblurred mirror:

  "What do you mean by that?" he asked stolidly.

  "Ah--I know what I mean, Eddie. So do you. You're a smooth talker, allright. You can listen and look wise, too, when there's anything in itfor you. Just see the way you got Stein to put up good money for you!And all you done was to listen to him and keep your mouth shut."

  Brandes rose with an air almost jocular and smote Stull upon theback.

  "Stein thinks he's the greatest manager on earth. Let him tell you soif you want anything out of him," he said, walking to the window.

  The volleys of rain splashing on the panes obscured the outlook;Brandes flattened his nose against the glass and stood as though lostin thought.

  Behind him Stull dried his features, rummaged in the suitcase,produced a bathrobe and slippers, put them on, and stretched himselfout on the bed.

  "Aren't you coming down to buzz the preacher?" demanded Brandes,turning from the drenched window.

  "So you can talk phony to the little kid? No."

  "Ah, get it out of your head that I mean phony."

  "Well, what do you mean?"

  "Nothing."

  Stull gave him a contemptuous glance and turned over on the pillow.

  "Are you coming down?"

  "No."

  So Brandes took another survey of himself in the glass, used his comband brushes again, added a studied twist to his tie, shot his cuffs,and walked out of the room with the solid deliberation whichcharacterised his carriage at all times.