CHAPTER I

THE WEAVER HOUSE AGAIN

There is a dramatist hidden in every one of us. We like to cast ourselves as heroes, as heroines, as villains of the piece. Make-believe is one of the fundamental instincts. It is human nature to construct a drama about our lives; it is also very human to seize dramatic situations.

There was a good deal of the dramatic in Wint. When he left his home that night, Muldoon at his heels, he was acutely conscious that his life was broken. He had lost everything. He had lost father, and mother; and he had lost Joan. They were irrevocably gone. Furthermore, he was beaten in his fight. There could be no question of this. Hardiston would overwhelm him. There was left for him in this world--nothing.

Wint was enough of a boy to take a keen delight in the tragedy of this; he was enough of a boy--or enough of a dramatist, for the two things are in many ways the same--to emphasize his situation, bring out the high lights, vest it in the trappings of drama. He did not think of himself as a hero, for having sacrificed everything for Hetty; he did not think of that phase of the situation at all. He had done that because it was the inevitable consequence of events. It was the only thing he could do. He took no credit to himself for the doing. But he did picture himself as broken or destroyed; and as he walked, more or less aimlessly, it was natural that his thoughts should cast back through the months to those other days when he had fallen low. Thus he remembered the Weaver House, and Mrs. Moody.

There seemed to him something appropriate and fitting in the idea of returning to the Weaver House this night. He had risen out of it; he would return to it. It was in such surroundings, now, that he belonged.

He turned that way.

It was no more than nine o’clock in the evening, or perhaps a little later, when Wint left his home. The day had been fine; the night was clear, and there was a moon. It was pleasant to be abroad on such a night. Wint took a leisurely course that brought him through the last fringes of houses above the railroad yards; and he followed the tag end of a street down the hill to the flats covered with slack and cinders. In the light of day, this was a hideous place, black and begrimed. But the moon could glorify even this. It painted blue shadows everywhere; it laid streaks of silver light along the rails; it touched a pool of water, a puddle here and there, and under the touch the water became quicksilver, alive and beautiful. A switching engine moved down the yard, and when the fire-man twitched open the door to replenish the fires, the glare shone in a pale glow upon his figure and back upon the tender. The long strings of cars, box cars with open doors, or coal cars loaded high, took on a beauty of their own in the night; and the winking switch lamps were like jewels, like rubies and emeralds shining in the moon.

He had to climb between two freight cars, on his way across the yard; and Muldoon scurried underneath them. Wint grimed his hands on the cars, and rubbed them together, cleansing them as well as he could, while he went on. He picked his way across the tracks, past the roundhouse where a locomotive slumbered hissingly, and on into the fringes of the locality where the Weaver House awaited him.

It is the custom in Hardiston that when the moon is full, be it cloudy or clear, the street lamps are not lighted. Thus the street along which Wint took his way was illuminated only by the moon. On either side, the dingy, squalid houses stood, with a flicker of light from one and another where those who dwelt within were still awake. A little later, he passed a store or two, and turned a corner, and so came to the hotel.

Something prompted him to stop outside and look in through the dirty window glass. It was so light outside, and the lamp inside furnished such a meager illumination, that Mrs. Moody saw him at the window; and she took him for some wandering ne’er-do-well, and came scolding to the door. “Be off,” she cried, before she saw who it was. “Get away from there.”

Muldoon snarled at her; and Wint said: “Quiet, boy,” and to the woman: “It’s me. Wint Chase.”

She came out and peered up at him; and he saw her horribly even teeth shine like silver between her cracked old lips. “You, is it?” she exclaimed aggressively. “Well, and you don’t need to come a-snooping around here. We’re lawful folks, here. And you know it. So you can just go along.”

He said: “I came for lodging;” and she backed away.

“Eh?” she asked.

“For lodging,” he repeated. “Can you give me a room?”

“What’s the matter with you, anyhow?” she demanded. “You had a fight with your paw again?” She was still aggressively and suspiciously on guard. He laughed, and said whimsically:

“Come; you wouldn’t turn an old friend out. Let me have a room.”

So she thawed, became her old, meanly ingratiating self.

“Why, deary,” she protested, “you know old Mother Moody never turned a man away. You come right in now. Come right in where it’s warm. Did you say you’d had a scrap with your paw?”

Wint went before her into the office of the squalid hotel. Muldoon kept close to his heels; and Jim, Mrs. Moody’s dog, growled from beneath the table. Mrs. Moody squalled at him:

“You, Jim, be still.”

Wint looked around him; it was curious to find the place so little changed. A train clanked past on the track that flanked the hotel. He could almost hear the gurgle of the muddy waters of the creek behind. The office itself was lighted, as it had always been, by a single oil lamp. It did not seem to Wint that this lamp had been cleaned since he was here before. It stood on the square old table in the corner, where the wall benches ran along two sides. The dog slept under this table; and the boy--the same boy--was leaning his elbows on the table by the lamp and poring with mumbling lips over a tattered, paper-backed tale. This boy’s clothes were still too small; his wrists stuck out from his sleeves, his neck reared itself bare and gaunt above the collar of the coat. There was a strange and pitiful atmosphere of age and experience about him.

There was one change in the room, as Wint saw when he had persuaded Mrs. Moody to leave him to his own devices, and she had gone to her chair behind the high counter that had been a bar. This change lay in the fact that one of the two old checker players was no longer here. The other sat on the wall bench in the corner behind the table; the disused checkerboard lay before him. He was asleep, with sagging head, his occupation gone. His white beard was stained an ugly brown below his mouth. Wint wondered if the other old man were dead. Perhaps.

He did not wish to be alone, just then; he wanted companionship, friendly and impersonal. So he sat down beside the boy, and filled his pipe, and lighted it, and asked amiably:

“What are you reading, son?”

The boy was too absorbed to answer. He brushed at his ear with his hand as though a fly buzzed there, and turned a dogeared page. But the sound of Wint’s voice so near him woke the old man; he stirred, opened his eyes, looked all about. And he reached across and laid a hand like a claw on Wint’s arm.

“Play checkers?” he asked hoarsely. “Play checkers, do you?”

“A little,” Wint said.

“I’ll play you,” the old man challenged. “I’m a good player. I always was. Played all my life. Played every night, right here at this table, with the best player in the county, for seven years.” His skinny old hands were feverishly arranging the pieces, while Wint took his place by the board. “I beat him, too,” the old man boasted. “Beat him lots of times. He’d say so himself. He would, but he had to go and die.” There was resentment in his voice, as at a personal wrong. He said curtly: “Your move,” and spoke no more.

Wint moved, the old man countered. On Wint’s fifth move--he was an indifferent player--the old man cackled gleefully. “That beats you,” he cried. “Heh, heh, heh! That beats you, now.”

It did; and Wint lost the next game, and the next, as easily. His success put the old man in the best of humor. He laughed much between games, studying the board with fixed intensity while the play was in progress. Wint watched the old man as much as he watched the board; he studied the old fellow, with a curiously wistful eye. This old wreck of manhood had been a boy once; a baby once, in a mother’s arms. No doubt she had dreamed dreams for him. Dreamed he might be President, some day. Might be anything.... This is one of the things that makes babies fascinating; their potentialities. There is no greater gamble than to bring a baby into the world. Wint, considering this, thought of Hetty’s baby. The baby that had died. As well, perhaps. Otherwise, it might have come, some day, to playing checkers in the Weaver House. He put the thought aside abruptly. At least, it would have lived. Even this old man had lived. No doubt life had been reasonably sweet to him till his antagonist died. “Had to go and die....”

The old man accused him. “You ain’t trying to play, young fellow. Now don’t you go easy on me. I’ll show you some things.” And Wint gave more of his attention to the game.

He was playing when the door opened and Jack Routt came in; he did not look around till Jack exclaimed behind him: “Wint! By God, I thought you’d be here!”

He looked up then, and said: “Hello, Jack,” in a calm voice, and went on with his play. Routt dropped on the seat beside him and caught his arm.

“Here, Wint,” he protested, “I want to talk to you. Where’d you pick up that old duck? Listen. I want to.... Let’s go outside.”

Wint said: “Wait till we finish the game.” The old man seemed unconscious of Routt’s presence; and when Routt spoke again, Wint bade him be quiet, and wait. Only when the game was done did he rise. To the old man he said: “Thanks. We’ll have another game. I’ll beat you yet.”

The other protested jealously at his going; but Wint said he must. Then, to Routt: “Come upstairs.”

“Have you got a room?” Routt asked, amazed; and Wint said:

“Yes.” And he went toward the stair. Routt followed him.

Mrs. Moody had given Wint that same dingy room in which he had spent the night of his election. They went there, and Wint bade Routt sit down. Routt sat on the bed; Wint stood indolently by the door. Routt exclaimed at once:

“Wint, I want you to know this wasn’t my doing. You could have knocked me flat. I’m sorry as hell.”

“Of course,” Wint agreed.

“I want to know if there isn’t some way we can fix it up,” Routt urged. “There must be something we can do. Some damned thing.”

“There’s nothing to fix,” Wint told him.

“Nothing to fix? Good God!” Routt shifted his position, reached into his pocket. “My Lord, but I’m knocked out. Shaky. I’ve got to have a drink. Mind?”

“Go ahead.”

Routt produced a flask. He held it toward Wint. “Have a slug?” Wint shook his head. Routt drank, again asked: “Sure you won’t?” Wint said:

“No.”

“If I were in your shoes,” said Routt, with the flask still open in his hand, “I’d want to soak myself in it. A good, stiff drunk. There are times when nothing else is any good.”

“I used to think so,” Wint agreed.

Routt took a second drink, wiped his mouth, screwed the cap on the flask and put it in his pocket. “If you want any, say the word,” he suggested. “Now, Wint, what are we going to do?”

Wint, leaning quietly against the wall, stirred a little. “I’m going to tell you something, Routt,” he said.

“Tell me? What?”

“This,” Wint went on gently, eyes a little wistful. “This. That I--know you now. At last.”

Routt sat for an instant very still; then he got to his feet. “Wint, what do you mean?”

“I thought you were my--friend,” said Wint. “Stuck to that thought. People warned me. Amos, and father; and--Joan. Said you were not--my friend. But I believed you were.”

“Damn it, I am your friend.”

“I’m not sorry I held to you as long as I could,” Wint went on impassively. “It’s a good thing to have faith, even in--false friends. But--I know you now, Routt. You’ve made me drunk, played on the worst in me, slandered me, tricked me, played your part in this black thing to-night.” He hesitated, and Routt started to speak, but Wint cut in.

“Are you--responsible for Hetty, Jack?” he asked.

“Am I?” Routt demanded. “Why, damn you, you said yourself....”

“If I thought you were,” Wint told him evenly. “If I thought you had done that to her.... She was a nice girl. Clean. I think I’d take you by the throat, Routt, and kill you here.”

Routt cried angrily: “You’re crazy. What the hell! You said yourself that you....”

“In fact,” Wint told him, “unless you go away, I am going to hurt you--even now. Without being sure. Hurt you as badly as I can.”

Routt started to speak; then Wint’s eyes caught his and silenced him. He stood for a moment, staring at the other.

And his eyes fell. He looked around gropingly for his hat, and he put it on. He went past Wint at the door; and he went past quickly, as though afraid of what Wint might do.

He went along the hall and down the stairs without speaking again.

Wint, left alone, stood still where he was for a time; then he stirred himself and began to prepare for bed. He moved slowly, indolently. Stripped off coat and collar, sat down to unlace his shoes. After a while, he crossed and opened the window. He felt, somehow, infinitely cleaner, healthier, since he had put Jack Routt out of his life. He felt as though he had washed smears of grime from his hands.

Yet there was a certain loneliness upon him, too; for he had lost one whom he had counted a friend.

After a while, he went to bed and slept peacefully enough till dawn.