Part 5

Boston Alley seemed in his way an agreeable man. He was tall and slender limbed, with a long, thin black mustache, sinewy neck and hollow chest, and spoke gently with a sweet, resonant voice, saying, “Glad to see you, Elder.”

These two wore better clothes than Toboso, but he seemed to dominate them with his red health and windy voice, his stomach and feet, and solidity of standing on the earth.

Father Wiliston stood the while gazing vaguely through his spectacles. The sense of happy freedom and congenial companionship that had been with him during the starlit walk had given way gradually to a stream of confused memories, and now these memories stood ranged about, looking at him with sad, faded eyes, asking him to explain the scene. The language of the Newark Kid had gone by him like a white hot blast. The past and present seemed to have about the same proportions of vision and reality. He could not explain them to each other. He looked up to Toboso, pathetically, trusting in his help.

“It was my house.”

Toboso stared surprised. “I ain't on to you, Elder.”

“I was born here.”

Indeed Toboso was a tower of strength even against the ghosts of other days, reproachful for their long durance in oblivion.

“Oh! Well, by Jinny! I reckon you'll give us lodging, Elder,” he puffed cheerfully. He took the coincidence so pleasantly and naturally that Father Wiliston was comforted, and thought that after all it was pleasant and natural enough.

The only furniture in the room was a high-backed settle and an overturned kitchen table, with one leg gone, and the other three helplessly in the air--so it had lain possibly many years. Boston Alley drew forward the settle and threw more broken clapboards on the fire, which blazed up and filled the room with flickering cheer. Soon the three outcasts were smoking their pipes and the conversation became animated.

“When I was a boy,” said Father Wiliston--“I remember so distinctly--there were remarkable early bough apples growing in the orchard.”

“The pot's yours, Elder,” thundered To-boso. They went out groping under the old apple trees, and returned laden with plump pale green fruit. Boston Alley and the Newark Kid stretched themselves on the floor on heaps of pulled grass. Toboso and Father Wiliston sat on the settle. The juice of the bough apples ran with a sweet tang. The palate rejoiced and the soul responded. The Newark Kid did swift, cunning card tricks that filled Father Wiliston with wonder and pleasure.

“My dear young man, I don't see how you do it!”

The Kid was lately out of prison from a two years' sentence, “only for getting into a house by the window instead of the door,” as Boston Alley delicately explained, and the “flies,” meaning officers of the law, “are after him again for reasons he ain't quite sure of.” The pallor of slum birth and breeding, and the additional prison pallor, made his skin look curious where the grime had not darkened it. He had a short-jawed, smooth-shaven face, a flat mouth and light hair, and was short and stocky, but lithe and noiseless in movement, and inclined to say little. Boston Alley was a man of some slight education, who now sometimes sung in winter variety shows, such songs as he picked up here and there in summer wanderings, for in warm weather he liked footing the road better, partly because the green country sights were pleasant to him, and partly because he was irresolute and keeping engagements was a distress. He seemed agreeable and sympathetic.

“He ain't got no more real feelings 'n a fish,” said Toboso, gazing candidly at Boston, but speaking to Father Wiliston, “and yet he looks like he had 'em, and a man's glad to see him. Ain't seen you since fall, Boston, but I see the Kid last week at a hang-out in Albany. Well, gents, this ain't a bad lay.”

Toboso himself had been many years on the road. He was in a way a man of much force and decision, and probably it was another element in him, craving sloth and easy feeding, which kept him in this submerged society; although here, too, there seemed room for the exercise of his dominance. He leaned back in the settle, and had his hand on Father Wiliston's shoulder. His face gleamed redly over his bison beard.

“It's a good lay. And we're gay, Elder. Ain't we gay? Hey, Jinny!”

“Yes, yes, Toboso. But this young man--I'm sure he must have great talents, great talents, quite remarkable. Ah--yes, Jinny!”

“Hey, Jinny,” they sang together, “Ho, Jinny! Listen, love, to me. I'll sing to you, and play to you, a dulcet melode-e-e”--while Boston danced a shuffle and the Kid snapped the cards in time. Then, at Toboso's invitation and command, Boston sang a song, called “The Cheerful Man,” resembling a ballad, to a somewhat monotonous tune, and perhaps known in the music halls of the time--all with a sweet, resonant voice and a certain pathos of intonation:--

“I knew a man across this land

Came waving of a cheerful hand,

Who drew a gun and gave some one

A violent contus-i-on,

This cheerful man.

“They sent him up, he fled from 'quad'

By a window and the grace of God,

Picked up a wife and children six,

And wandered into politics,

This cheerful man.

“'In politics he was, I hear,

A secret, subtle financier--

So the jury says, 'But we agree

He quits this sad community,

This cheerful man.'

“His wife and six went on the town,

And he went off; without a frown

Reproaching Providence, went he

And got another wife and three,

This cheerful man.

“He runs a cross-town car to-day

From Bleecker Street to Avenue A.

He swipes the fares with skilful ease,

Keeps up his hope, and tries to please,

This cheerful man.

“Our life is mingled woe and bliss,

Man that is born of woman is

Short-lived and goes to his long home.

Take heart, and learn a lesson from

This cheerful man.”

“But,” said Father Wiliston, “don't you think really, Mr. Alley, that the moral is a little confused? I don't mean intentionally,” he added, with anxious precaution, “but don't you think he should have reflected”--

“You're right, Elder,” said Toboso, with decision. “It's like that. It ain't moral. When a thing ain't moral that settles it.” And Boston nodded and looked sympathetic with every one.

“I was sure you would agree with me,” said Father Wiliston. He felt himself growing weary now and heavy-eyed. Presently somehow he was leaning on Toboso with his head on his shoulder. Toboso's arm was around him, and Toboso began to hum in a kind of wheezing lullaby, “Hey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny!”

“I am very grateful, my dear friends,” murmured Father Wiliston. “I have lived a long time. I fear I have not always been careful in my course, and am often forgetful. I think”--drowsily--“I think that happiness must in itself be pleasing to God. I was often happy before in this room. I remember--my dear mother sat here--who is now dead. We have been quite, really quite cheerful to-night. My mother--was very judicious--an excellent wise woman--she died long ago.” So he was asleep before any one was aware, while Toboso crooned huskily, “Hey, Jinny!” and Boston Alley and the Newark Kid sat upright and stared curiously.

“Holy Jims!” said the Kid.

Toboso motioned them to bring the pulled grass. They piled it on the settle, let Father Wiliston down softly, brought the broken table, and placed it so that he could not roll off.

“Well,” said Toboso, after a moment's silence, “I guess we'd better pick him and be off. He's got sixty in his pocket.”

“Oh,” said Boston, “that's it, is it?”

“It's my find, but seeing you's here I takes half and give you fifteen apiece.”

“Well, that's right.”

“And I guess the Kid can take it out.”

The Kid found the pocketbook with sensitive gliding fingers, and pulled it out. Toboso counted and divided the bills.

“Well,” whispered Toboso thoughtfully, “if the Elder now was forty years younger, I wouldn't want a better pardner.” They tiptoed out into the night. “But,” he continued, “looking at it that way, o' course he ain't got no great use for his wad and won't remember it till next week. Heeled all right, anyhow. Only, I says now, I says, there ain't no vice in him.”

“Mammy tuck me up, no licks to-night,” said the Kid, plodding in front. “I ain't got nothing against him.”

Boston Alley only fingered the bills in his pocket.

It grew quite dark in the room they had left as the fire sunk to a few flames, then to dull embers and an occasional darting spark. The only sound was Father Wiliston's light breathing.

When he awoke the morning was dim in the windows. He lay a moment confused in mind, then sat up and looked around.

“Dear me! Well, well, I dare say Toboso thought I was too old. I dare say”--getting on his feet--“I dare say they thought it would be unkind to tell me so.”

He wandered through the dusky old rooms and up and down the creaking stairs, picking up bits of recollection, some vivid, some more dim than the dawn, some full of laughter, some that were leaden and sad; then out into the orchard to find a bough apple in the dewy grasses; and, kneeling under the gnarled old tree to make his morning prayer, which included in petition the three overnight revellers, he went in fluent phrase and broken tones among eldest memories.

He pushed cheerfully into the grassy road now, munching his apple and humming, “Hey, Jinny! Ho, Jinny!” He examined the tree at the highway with fresh interest. “How singular! It means an empty house. Very intelligent man, Toboso.”

Bits of grass were stuck on his back and a bramble dragged from his coat tail. He plodded along in the dust and wabbled absent-mindedly from one side of the road to the other. The dawn towered behind him in purple and crimson, lifted its robe and canopy, and flung some kind of glittering gauze far beyond him. He did not notice it till he reached the top of the hill above Ironville with Timothy's house in sight. Then he stopped, turned, and was startled a moment; then smiled companionably on the state and glory of the morning, much as on Toboso and the card tricks of the Newark Kid.

“Really,” he murmured, “I have had a very good time.”

He met Timothy in the hall.

“Been out to walk early, father? Wait--there's grass and sticks on your coat.”

It suddenly seemed difficult to explain the entire circumstances to Timothy, a settled man and girt with precedent.

“Did you enjoy it?--Letter you dropped? No, I haven't seen it. Breakfast is ready.”

Neither Bettina nor Mrs. Timothy had seen the letter.

“No matter, my dear, no matter. I--really, I've had a very good time.”

Afterward he came out on the porch with his Bible and Concordance, sat down and heard Bettina brushing his hat and ejaculating, “Fater!” Presently he began to nod drowsily and his head dropped low over the Concordance. The chickens clucked drowsily in the road.

ON EDOM HILL

I.

CHARLIE SEBASTIAN was a turfman, meaning that he had something to do with race-horses, and knew property as rolls of bank bills, of which one now and then suddenly has none at all; or as pacers and trotters that are given to breaking and unaccountably to falling off in their nervous systems; or as “Association Shares” and partnership investments in a training stable; all capable of melting and going down in one vortex. So it happened at the October races. And from this it arose that in going between two heated cities and low by the sea he stopped among the high hills that were cold.

He was a tall man with a pointed beard, strong of shoulder and foot, and without fear in his eyes. After two hours' riding he woke from a doze and argued once more that he was a “phenomenally busted man.” It made no difference, after all, which city he was in. Looking out at the white hills that showed faintly in the storm, it occurred to him that this was not the railway line one usually travelled to the end in view. It was singular, the little difference between choices. You back the wrong horse; then you drink beer instead of fizz, and the results of either are tolerable. Let a man live lustily and there's little to regret. He had found ruin digestible before, and never yet gone to the dogs that wait to devour human remnants, but had gotten up and fallen again, and on the whole rejoiced. Stomach and lungs of iron, a torrent of red blood in vein and artery maintain their consolations; hopes rise again, blunders and evil doings seem to be practically outlived. So without theory ran Sebastian's experience. The theory used to be that his sin would find a man out. There were enough of Sebastian's that had gone out, and never returned to look for him. So too with mistakes and failures. A little while, a year or more, and you are busy with other matters. It is a stirring world, and offers no occupation for ghosts. The dragging sense of depression that he felt seemed natural enough; not to be argued down, but thrown aside in due time. Yet it was a feeling of pallid and cold futility, like the spectral hills and wavering snow.

“I might as well go back!”

He tossed a coin to see whether it was fated he should drop off at the next station, and it was.

“Ramoth!” cried the brakeman.

Sebastian held in his surprise as a matter of habit.

But on the platform in the drift and float of the snow-storm he stared around at the white January valley, at the disappearing train, at the sign above the station door, “Ramoth.”

“That's the place,” he remarked. “There wasn't any railroad then.”

There were hidden virtues in a flipped coin. Sebastian had his superstitions.

The road to Ramoth village from the station curves about to the south of the great bare dome that is called Edom Hill, but Sebastian, without inquiry, took the fork to the left which climbed up the hill without compromise, and seemed to be little used.

Yet in past times Edom Hill was noted in a small way as a hill that upheld the house of a stern abolitionist, and in a more secret way as a station in the “underground railroad,” or system by which runaway slaves were passed on to Canada. But when Charlie Sebastian remembered his father and Edom Hill, the days of those activities were passed. The abolitionist had nothing to exercise resistance and aggression on but his wind-blown farm and a boy, who was aggressive to seek out mainly the joys of this world, and had faculties of resistance. There were bitter clashes; young Sebastian fled, and came upon a stable on a stud farm, and from there in due time went far and wide, and found tolerance in time and wrote, offering to “trade grudges and come to see how he was.”

The answer, in a small, faint, cramped, unskilful hand, stated the abolitionist's death. “Won't you come back, Mr. Sebastian. It is lonely. Harriet Sebastian.” And therefore Sebastian remarked:

“You bet it is! Who's she? The old man must have married again.”

In his new-found worldly tolerance he had admired such aggressive enterprise, but seeing no interest in the subject, had gone his way and forgotten it.

Beating up Edom Hill through the snow was no easier than twenty years before. David Sebastian had built his house in a high place, and looking widely over the top of the land, saw that it was evil.

The drifts were unbroken and lay in long barrows and windy ridges over the roadway. The half-buried fences went parallel up the white breast and barren heave of the hill, and disappeared in the storm. Sebastian passed a house with closed blinds, then at a long interval a barn and a stiff red chimney with a snow-covered heap of ruins at its foot. The station was now some miles behind and the dusk was coming on. The broad top of the hill was smooth and rounded gradually. Brambles, bushes, reeds, and the tops of fences broke the surface of the snow, and beside these only a house by the road, looking dingy and gray, with a blackish bam attached, four old maples in front, an orchard behind. Far down the hill to the right lay the road to Ramoth, too far for its line of naked trees to be seen in the storm. The house on Edom Hill had its white throne to itself, and whatever dignity there might be in solitude.

He did not pause to examine the house, only noticed the faint smoke in one chimney, opened the gate, and pushed through untrodden snow to the side door and knocked. The woman who came and stood in the door surprised him even more than “Ramoth!” called by the brakeman. Without great reason for seeming remarkable, it seemed remarkable. He stepped back and stared, and the two, looking at each other, said nothing. Sebastian recovered.

“My feet are cold,” he said slowly. “I shouldn't like to freeze them.”

She drew back and let him in, left him to find a chair and put his feet against the stove. She sat down near the window and went on knitting. The knitting needles glittered and clicked. Her face was outlined against the gray window, the flakes too glittered and clicked. It looked silent, secret, repressed, as seen against the gray window; like something chilled and snowed under, cold and sweet, smooth pale hair and forehead, deep bosom and slender waist. She looked young enough to be called in the early June of her years.

“There's good proportion and feature, but not enough nerves for a thoroughbred. But,” he thought, “she looks as if she needed, as you might say, revelry,” and he spoke aloud.

“Once I was in this section and there was a man named Sebastian lived here, or maybe it was farther on.”

She said, “It was here” in a low voice.

“David Sebastian now, that was it, or something that way. Stiff, sort of grim old--oh, but you might be a relative, you see. Likely enough. So you might.”

“I might be.”

“Just so. You might be.”

He rubbed his hands and leaned back, staring at the window. The wind was rising outside and blew the snow in whirls and sheets.

“Going to be a bad night I came up from the station. If a man's going anywhere tonight, he'll be apt not to get there.”

“You ought to have taken the right hand at the fork.”

“Well, I don't know.”

She rose and took a cloak from the table. Sebastian watched her.

“I must feed the pony and shut up the chickens.”

She hesitated. A refusal seemed to have been hinted to the hinted request for hospitality. But Sebastian saw another point.

“Now, that's what I'm going to do for you.”

She looked on silently, as he passed her with assured step, not hesitating at doors, but through the kitchen to the woodshed, and there in the darkness of a pitch-black corner took down a jingling lantern and lit it. She followed him silently into the yard, that was full of drifts and wild storm, to the barn, where she listened to him shake down hay and bedding, measure oats, slap the pony's flank and chirp cheerfully. Then he plunged through a low door and she heard the bolt in the chicken shed rattle. It had grown dark outside. He came out and held the barn door, waiting for her to step out, and they stood side by side on the edge of the storm.

“How did you know the lantern was there?”

“Lantern! Oh, farmhouses always keep the lantern in the nearest corner of the woodshed, if it isn't behind the kitchen door.”

But she did not move to let him close the bam. He looked down at her a moment and then out at the white raging night.

“Can't see forty feet, can you? But, of course, if you don't want to give me a roof I'll have to take my chances. Look poor, don't they? Going to let me shut this door?”

“I am quite alone here.”

“So am I. That's the trouble.”

“I don't think you understand,” she said quietly, speaking in a manner low, cool, and self-contained.

“I've got more understanding now than I'll have in an hour, maybe.”

“I will lend you the lantern.”

“Oh, you mightn't get it back.” He drew the barn door to, which forced her to step forward. A gust of wind about the corner of the bam staggered and threw her back. He caught her about her shoulders and held her steadily, and shot the bolt with the hand that held the lantern.

“That's all right. A man has to take his chances. I dare say a woman had better not.”

If Sebastian exaggerated the dangers of the night, if there were any for him, looked at from her standpoint they might seem large and full of dread. The wind howled with wild hunting sound, and shrieked against the eaves of the house. The snow drove thick and blinding. The chimneys were invisible. A woman easily transfers her own feelings to a man and interprets them there. In the interest of that interpretation it might no longer seem possible that man's ingratitude, or his failings and passions, could be as unkind as winter wind and bitter sky.

She caught her breath in a moment.

“You will stay to supper,” she said, and stepped aside.

“No. As I'm going, I'd better go.”

She went before him across the yard, opened the woodshed door and stood in it. He held out the lantern, but she did not take it. He lifted it to look at her face, and she smiled faintly.

“Please come in.”

“Better go on, if I'm going. Am I?”

“I'm very cold. Please come in.”

They went in and closed the doors against the storm. The house was wrapped round, and shut away from the sight of Edom Hill, and Edom Hill was wrapped round and shut away from the rest of the world.

II.

Revelry has need of a certain co-operation. Sebastian drew heavily on his memory for entertainment, told of the combination that had “cleaned him out,” and how he might get in again in the Spring, only he felt a bit tired in mind now, and things seemed dead. He explained the mysteries of “short prices, selling allowances, past choices, hurdles and handicaps,” and told of the great October races, where Decatur won from Clifford and Lady Mary, and Lady Mary ran through the fence and destroyed the features of the jockey. But the quiet, smooth-haired woman maintained her calm, and offered neither question nor comment, only smiled and flushed faintly now and then. She seemed as little stirred by new tumultuous things as the white curtains at the windows, that moved slightly when the storm, which danced and shouted on Edom Hill, managed to force a whistling breath through a chink.

Sebastian decided she was frozen up with loneliness and the like. “She's got no conversation, let alone revelry.” He thought he knew what her life was like. “She's sort of empty. Nothing doing any time. It's the off season all the year. No troubles. Sort of like a fish, as being chilly and calm, that lives in cold water till you have to put pepper on to taste it. I know how it goes on this old hill.”

She left him soon. He heard her moving about in the kitchen, and sometimes the clink of a dish. He sat by the stove and mused and muttered. She came and told him his room was on the left of the stair; it had a stove; would he not carry up wood and have his fire there? She seemed to imply a preference that he should. But the burden and oppression of his musings kept him from wondering when she had compromised her scruples and fears, or why she kept any of them. He mounted the stair with his wood. She followed with a lamp and left him. He stared at the closed door and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then went to work with his fire. The house became silent, except for the outer tumult. She did not mount the stair again; it followed that she slept below.

Sebastian took a daguerreotype from the mantel and stared at it. It was the likeness of a shaven, grim-faced man in early middle life. He examined it long with a quizzical frown; finally went to the washstand, opened the drawer and took out a razor with a handle of yellow bone, carried the washstand to the stove, balanced the mirror against the pitcher, stropped the razor on his hand, heated water in a cup, slowly dismantled his face of beard and mustache, cast them in the stove, put the daguerreotype beside the mirror, and compared critically. Except that the face in the daguerreotype had a straight, set mouth, and the face in the mirror was one full-lipped and humorous and differently lined, they were nearly the same.

“I wouldn't have believed it”