Dan England and the Noonday Devil

by Myles Connolly

  “Ma, the crib is beautiful.”

  Then he would get down on his knees beside it. There would be a little red sanctuary lamp on the floor before it, with the white wick floating in oil. At twelve o’clock the lamp would be lighted. If you should happen into the room—the parlor they called it—in the early hours when the candles would be out, you would see only this, the red lamp with its tiny light flickering. It would cast a spell over you, this unsteady small light showing red on the floor beneath you. You would stand there and look at it, unstirring, unthinking, for minutes.

  So, the Boy would get down on his knees beside the crib. It would be the same little crib they had last Christmas, and the Christmas before that. There would be the little imitation thatch shed, open in front. Outside, would be three shepherds with two sheep, kneeling. Inside, would be St. Joseph with his brown cloak and white beard and our Mother with her blue dress. In back would be the ox and the ass, the ox with his head low. And in the center, on a few wisps of hay—real hay that the peddler fed his horse—would be the tiny figure of Him who was all the world.

  He would kneel there, before the shed that was not a foot high, and move the figures about a bit. He always liked to have the ox and ass close to the crib. Then, he would study the presents, laid out before the crib as tenderly as the Wise Men must have laid out their gifts. They would still be in their boxes. He would not touch them, not until daybreak. Then, they would all stop for a swift minute on their way out to Mass.

  Afterward, after Mass and Communion, they, with their glass of water drunk but not yet with breakfast, would strew the floor with red strings and wrapping paper and boxes. How much colorful rubbish a few little things could make! For there were but a few things before the crib: a fountain pen, a tie, two books, a box of handkerchiefs…. He could recognize everything from their boxes, thin square boxes for handkerchiefs, long boxes for gloves and ties…. But he knew, anyway. He and his mother had conspired together for the family. He had his gifts, too. But they would not be put out until he was safely in bed….

  Then, she would call from the kitchen. He had better hurry. It was getting close on midnight. So he would have his cup of tea, and a slice of brown-crusted white bread that had come from the oven that afternoon. And maybe a piece of the fruit cake, the rich, dark fruit cake heavy with spice and raisins that was always in the house on Christmas Eve. She would have her cup of tea with the cream—for they would use the cream tonight—showing brown gold on top. But she would have only tea for it was the vigil of Christmas.

  That would be beautiful. Everybody in bed, the Mass at Dawn being only a few hours away, the candles making the night like no other night, the clean smell of the kitchen, the frost forming intricately on the small panes of the windows, the old stove, polished and sturdy, with the red coals showing….

  That would be beautiful. He would tell her all that had happened at work. How old Nelson was worried because his little girl was ill, and it Christmas Eve. How the yardmaster who cursed constantly was quiet today, and swore only when he was mad. How Big Mike had gone down to St. Mary’s to confession with him, and how the church was crowded. Everything, everything….

  And then he would empty his pockets of all his money, including the gold piece the firm had given him for Christmas. That would be his supreme moment—to give over every dollar, every cent. He had been doing that so long now but it never, for some strange reason, failed to make him gulp with happiness. Hadn’t they bought the piano together, his mother and he, the upright piano with the green covering that came with it? Hadn’t they bought the new heavy rug for the parlor, the two of them, conspiring this way? Weren’t they saving now to buy the house?—the house out of town a little distance, the house with a garden, quiet, but near the church.

  How happily she would look at him. How proudly. And he would drain his teacup so that he could hold the cup high and hide his eyes, his moist eyes….

  That would be beautiful, beautiful.

  “Pray for those poor souls who have no home on Christmas Eve,” she would say, as always she had said.

  And the Boy would pray.

  The Pullman porter gave a quick turn to the Young Man’s chair. The Young Man who had been dozing sat up abruptly.

  “Grand Central, suh.”

  The porter was holding his overcoat.

  The Young Man was dazed.

  Wasn’t there tea brewing, and a red fire showing where the stove cover had been tilted? And across from him….

  Across from him was a row of Pullman chairs. Empty, of course. Who else but a harried reporter would be traveling thus into New York at eleven o’clock on Christmas Eve?

  The porter took his tip and was gone. The Young Man made his way hazily out into the station.

  And there were candles, one or two that spotted the room with yellow flames and threw long shadows….

  “Reservation?” asked the room clerk in the hotel.

  The Young Man nodded and wrote his name. A tall bald-headed man in a dinner jacket staggered across the heavily ornate hotel lobby. Two gaudy young women tittered.

  Candles, a few candles….

  “Front!”

  A thin, small, ageless bellboy, in blue uniform and silver braid, appeared mechanically. He took his bags and led the way to the elevator.

  And she was there, rising from the crib on the floor. How white her hair showed where it caught the light of the candles….

  “The heat on, sir?” The bellboy was turning the valve on the radiator. The steam began to pound through the pipes.

  The Young Man moved to the window. Twenty stories below him the city was stirring out of its newly laid cover of snow. Even in the dark, the roofs were white, the cornices and window ledges were white. Far, far down, the streets were white, white spotted with black, streaked with black.

  “Looks like a white Christmas.”

  The bellboy spoke impatiently. The Young Man gave him his tip. He banged the door as he left.

  The Young Man turned back to the window.

  It was the same little crib with its imitation thatch, and the few wisps of hay—real hay that the peddler fed his horse….

  The Young Man looked down. Everywhere were lights, ragged lights, pointed lights, clustered lights, solitary lights, white, red, yellow lights. But the Young Man did not see. He drew the shade and turned from the window.

  And there was St. Joseph in his brown cloak and our Lady in her blue dress and the tiny figure of Him who was all the world….

  The Young Man still had on his overcoat. Under the mirror of the dresser was a collar button of a former guest which the maid, in her cleaning, had missed. He fixed his eyes on it but he did not see. He was without heart and his mind whirred. Where, he was asking himself dazedly, where in this world’s maze of people and places, where in this wilderness of stars and philosophies, where is Home? Hadn’t they bought the piano together, and the rug…. The Young Man threw himself on the bed. “Dear Jesus! Dear Mother of God!”

  His sobbing filled his cell in the mountain of earth and steel, glass and stone. “Dear Mother of God!”

  And she would say, “Pray for those poor souls who have no home on Christmas Eve….”

  “Dear Jesus!” he sobbed.

  The while midnight came, and with it Christmas.

  Chapter 15

  That night at the fireplace as I listened to Dan tell of his boyhood, I realized for the first time that he had put far more reality behind him in his youth than I had suspected. I began to see he was not a gay visionary blown like a bubble out of a healthy, happy, and undisciplined life. He was much more the skilled idealist and was such by choice and long training. I could perceive now that it was his truly profound maturity that permitted him the simplicity of a child. No escapist, Dan. He looked life and himself squarely in the face, weighed them, measured them carefully, even, one might say, scientifically and, for all their richness and goodness, found them wanting. What mattered to him was not serenity or success but
what he so often called “the plain but nonetheless terrible necessity” of saving his soul. The final destiny of his immortal spirit, that was his consuming concern.

  This, I think, is a good place to give that poem of Dan’s I mentioned before, the poem called “Morning Prayer.” It is, as I have said, not much of a poem but, like his little prose piece on the two Christmas Eves, it does give an insight into his character and his conflict. There is no date on it but I have an idea it was written about this time.

  My dear, good Lord, my heart is too much glad;

  Too eagerly she knows how life is fair;

  How rich with honest love and laughter,

  And how Your beauty lies upon it everywhere.

  O much too glad, this morning heart of mine;

  I cannot keep her mute of song, or still;

  She must be surging forth and singing

  That life is good and man may love it if he will.

  (Last night, my heart, I saw upon a hill,

  With two lone arms outstretched, a gaunt black tree;

  The sky was red a sullen moment,—

  And lo, it was a Cross, and on that Cross hung He.)

  This soft, white morning, I say you are too glad,

  Too readily you gifts of Pleasure gain;

  He loves you less for all your singing,

  Love more, glad heart, love more—and win His gift of Pain.

  Dan wanted to win what he described as His “gift of Pain.” I think there is no doubt about that. He felt the winning of it was the great necessity for him. But it seemed that life, no matter how deficient he found it, and his love of life no matter how he deplored it, were forever getting in the way. What he would have accomplished eventually, if anything, had not Archer done what he did, is difficult to say.

  I came upon Archer’s iniquity by accident.

  Three or four days after this last night at Dan’s I was walking along Washington Street, returning to the office from the barber shop, when I noticed the new issues of a national magazine stacked on a shelf in the newsstand near the Old South Church. On the cover of the top magazine I saw an announcement of a novel, Evening Star, which large type explained was complete in that issue. Somebody has used Dan’s title, I said to myself. Then I saw in smaller type the name of the author—Justus Archer. I stood there for minutes in the chill morning staring at the magazine cover. I had always suspected Archer, but I had never suspected him of such baseness as this. It was hard for me to realize it. Archer had not only stolen Dan’s story, he had abused Dan’s generosity and hospitality and sinned against his innocence.

  This was more than theft. It was treachery.

  I stood there by the newsstand, motionless with my dread. Like Briggs, I had grown to love Dan. I was aware of the power of his character, the resources of his heart and mind, but nonetheless I knew how sensitive he was and how deeply he could be hurt. And I did not want to see him hurt. With all my heart, I did not want to see him hurt.

  The ancient, gnomish news vendor had been watching me with grinning eyes. “Seein’ snakes?” he asked.

  “One,” I said.

  On the way back to the office, I glanced through the story in the magazine. It was exactly as I knew Dan had told it. I had heard Evening Star from Briggs but Dan’s talk and wisdom were in Briggs’s version, and they were here again in Archer’s version, as if Dan had written it himself. Much of the story I gave earlier in this account is, in fact, taken from Archer’s magazine version. I summarized a great deal of it and deleted such inanities as Archer interpolated but the last of it is, I feel, as Dan would have written it. I did not call Dan. I did not have the courage to talk to him. I waited for Briggs to telephone, or Doris. But no one telephoned. I had a bad day, deeply anxious to know about Dan, to know if he had seen the story and, if so, what his emotions were, and yet, for all my anxiety, afraid to inquire lest the answer be the answer I was sure I would receive.

  Late that afternoon, I walked up to Park Street and went down into the subway and took the car out to Dan’s house. It reads very easy as I write it but this going down into the subway and this taking of that car were two of the most difficult things I had ever done in my life. In Newton, I walked to the house from the streetcar line and rang the doorbell. Tim answered it. He opened the door in silence. I saw he was searching my eyes to see if I knew. Dan was not at home, and now it was dusk and his absence so late was, so far as I knew, unprecedented. Archer was not at the house but I did not expect him to be. Briggs, Doris, Tim, Henry, all were there but no one mentioned Dan or Archer. All seemed to be observing a rule of silence about the treachery.

  Doris kept herself determinedly busy with housework as if afraid to stop even for a moment. Briggs walked vacantly up and down stairs, and not even the presence of Doris comforted him. Tim sat in the living room, smaller, it seemed, and grayer, and stared into the fire. Henry devoted himself to Escoffier with the most profound diligence and with eyes that did not read. Barney, who alone did not know what had occurred, was in the cellar chopping kindling for the winter fires. What I wanted to know, wanted fiercely to know and was still afraid to ask, was—did Dan know? But I did not ask. I observed the rule of silence. I tried as best I could to act as if everything were as it should have been.

  The house without Dan was dramatically empty. The fire was lit. The usual books and pictures and music were there. A wine bottle with glasses was at the usual place on the table. The usual people sat or moved about the rooms. But the house was without life. I had never been there when Dan was not there. The house seemed cavernously hollow, like a great shell, with dim echoes of Dan making its lifelessness more poignant.

  Dinnertime came and still no Dan.

  Now, I noticed that no table was set for dinner and there was no cooking in the kitchen. And now, for the first time, I began to realize that no one in the house expected Dan to come. I searched each face, and I soon saw that it was not trepidation that was there but the sureness of despair.

  I was sure then that Dan knew.

  I went in to Tim who sat in limp dejection before the fire. “Dan knows,” I said.

  Tim nodded slowly. He waved toward the window seat and I saw the magazine lay open there. Dan had read the magazine and, after reading it, had gone out not saying a word to anybody. No one had heard from him since.

  Did he think Dan would come back, I asked him.

  The little man looked up at me with patient eyes. Didn’t I remember the Ambrose story, he asked, the story about the gentle professor who was disillusioned and heart broken, and never returned?

  That was all Tim said and all he had need to say. I knew then what was in their thoughts. They all believed that Dan, his gift of innocence taken from him, would like Ambrose never come back, would never let us see his broken faith and would never let himself see us as the commonplace, petty people we were. Tim and the others had talked it over before I came and were convinced the Ambrose story was a parable and a prophecy.

  Now I began to believe what they believed. I began to believe the worst. I felt that Dan, early aware of Archer’s perfidy, might well have invented the Ambrose story, and that the basis of it might well be largely autobiographical. My long suspicion that Dan’s stories had more purpose to them than was immediately apparent might now, I thought, be soon corroborated.

  The link between Dan and Ambrose was gossamer; for the Ambrose story, fiction or fact, was the most delicate, the most unreal, even, of dramas, and that it should be paralleled in Dan’s or anybody’s life was, I admit, almost incredible. Yet, standing there by Tim as he told me his fear, I realized the drama in Dan’s life was also delicate and sometimes apparently unreal, and I was fully aware that, with his great love of loyalty and his almost sublime faith in friendship, treachery, however small and unimportant it might seem to others, could bring tragedy to him as it had to Ambrose.

  Presently, I was one with the others in the house in the sureness of their despair.

  What, I asked myself, w
ould Dan, in his disillusionment and heartbreak, do? Where would he go? With Evening Star lost, it would be long, if ever, before he returned to his idea of writing a book. I knew his changing pattern well enough to know that. What, then, would the alternative be?

  While standing there seeking the answer, I remembered another evening when Dan in that same place before the fire had first revealed his troubled soul. It was the night after the young soldier had left on his way home to his enslaved country to die. I remembered Dan’s envy of the youth and how he craved the courage to go with him and report the battle from the front. I remembered his sorrow at his own worthlessness, and his despair of the salvation he so passionately desired. I remembered how he had put his only hope in martyrdom.

  I remembered all these things and, remembering them, I thought I knew what the alternative would be. He would seek out, as he had wanted to that night, the dark, walled-in world where he believed the battle between Christ and the anti-christ was being fought. Perhaps he, too, would make that devious and perilous trip across the Baltic. He would go there, he would tell himself, to report this last and critical battle from the front. But he would know in his heart that his journey would be a mad journey, a sublimely foolish journey.

  There, I said to myself, he would in the end write his book. But it was a book that would never be written in words. It would be written in blood, I felt sure, and its title would be “Martyrdom.”

  This is what I thought or, perhaps I should say, what I felt, as I stood before the fire.

  I looked down at the lost, gray, little man beside me. “Yes, Dan has followed his friend Ambrose,” I said.

  Briggs and Henry came quietly into the room, joined us before the fire. Then Doris came in. No one spoke. In the shadowy room, the silence was complete, profound. Below, in the cellar, Barney’s ax could be heard hacking steadily away.

  Now, suddenly, we heard the outside door being unlocked. All had heard the click of the lock and all waited tensely, searching the empty hall, hopeful, yet fearful of what we expected to see.