Frank O’Connor is the pen name of Michael O’Donovan (1903-1966), who was born in Cork,
Ireland, of a family too poor to give him a university education. During Ireland’s struggle for
independence he was briefly a member of the Irish Republican Army. Then he worked
as a librarian in Cork and Dublin and for a time was director of the Abbey Theartre
before he was established as a writer of short stories. From 1931 on he published
regularly in American magazines taught for some years at Harvard and Northwestern
Universities. His declared objective was to find the natural rhythms and stresses
of the storyteller’s voice in shaping his material. He rewrote many of his stories
–-often after first publication –-ten, twenty, or thirty times. The subsequent publication of
these revisions makes it hard to pin down the exact scale of his life’s work since
some of his books contain pieces that appeared in different form in previous volumes.
He was in any event a prolific historian of Irish manners and the Irish character.
His titles include Guests of the Nation (1931), Grab Apple Jelly (1944), The Stories
of Frank O’Connor (1956), and A Set of Variations (1971).
My Oedipus Complex
Father was in the army all through the war – the first war, I mean – so, up to the age of five, I
never saw much of him, and what I saw did not worry me. Sometimes I woke and there was a big
figure in khaki peering down at me in the candlelight. Sometimes in the early morning I heard the
slamming of the front door and the clatter of nailed boots down the cobbles of the lane. These
were Father’s entrances and exits. Like Santa Claus he came and went mysteriously.
In fact, I rather liked his visits, though it was an uncomfortable squeeze between Mother and him
when I got into the big bed in the early morning. He smoked, which gave him a pleasant musty
smell, and shaved, an operation of astounding interest. Each time he left a trail of souvenirs –
model tanks and Gurkha knives with handles made of bullet cases, and German helmets and cap
badges and button sticks, and all sorts of military equipment – carefully stowed away in a long
box on top of the wardrobe, in case they ever came in handy. There was a bit of the magpie about
Father; he expected everything to come in handy. When his back was turned, Mother let me get a
chair and rummage through his treasures. She didn’t seem to think so highly of them as he did.
The war was the most peaceful period of my life. The window of my attic faced southeast. My
mother had curtained it, but that had small effect. I always woke with the first light and, with all
the responsibilities of the previous day melted, feeling myself rather like the sun, ready to illumine
and rejoice. Life never seemed so simple and clear and full of possibilities as then. I put my feet
out from under the clothes – I called them Mrs. Left and Mrs. Right – and invented dramatic
situations for them in which they discussed the problems of the day. At least Mrs. Right did; she
was very demonstrative, but I hadn’t the same control of Mrs. Left, so she mostly contented
herself with nodding agreement.
They discussed what Mother and I should do during the day, what Santa Claus should give a
fellow for Christmas, and what steps should be taken to brighten the home. There was that little
matter of the baby, for instance. Mother and I could never agree about that. Ours was the only
house in the terrace without a new baby, and Mother said we couldn’t afford one till Father came
back from the war because they cost seventeen and six.
That showed how simple she was. The Geneys up the road had a baby, and everyone knew they
couldn’t afford seventeen and six. It was probably a cheap baby, and Mother wanted something
really good, but I felt she was too exclusive. The Geneys’ baby would have done us fine.
Having settled my plans for the day, I got up, put a chair under the attic window, and lifted the
frame high enough to stick out my head. The window overlooked the front gardens of the terrace
behind ours, and beyond these it looked over a deep valley to the tall, red brick houses terraced up
the opposite hillside, which were all still in shadow, while those at our side of the valley were all
lit up, though with long strange shadows that made them seem unfamiliar; rigid and painted.
After that I went into Mother’s room and climbed into the big bed. She woke and I began to tell
her of my schemes. By this time, though I never seemed to have noticed it, I was petrified in my
nightshirt, and I thawed as I talked until, the last frost melted, I fell asleep beside her and woke
again only when I heard her below in the kitchen, making the breakfast.
After breakfast we went into town; heard Mass at St. Augustine’s and said a prayer for Father, and
did the shopping. If the afternoon was fine we either went for a walk in the country or a visit to
Mother’s great friend in the convent, Mother Saint Dominic. Mother had them all praying for
Father, and every night, going to bed, I asked God to send him back safe from the war to us. Little,
indeed, did I know what I was praying for!
One morning, I got into the big bed, and there, sure enough, was Father in his usual Santa Claus
manner, but later, instead of uniform, he put on his best blue suit, and Mother was as pleased as
anything. I saw nothing to be pleased about, because, out of uniform, Father was altogether less
interesting, but she only beamed, and explained that our prayers had been answered, and off we
went to Mass to thank God for having brought Father safely home.
The irony of it! That very day when he came in to dinner he took off his boots and put on his
slippers, donned the dirty old cap he wore about the house to save him from colds, crossed his legs,
and began to talk gravely to Mother, who looked anxious. Naturally, I disliked her looking
anxious, because it destroyed her good looks, so I interrupted him.
“Just a moment, Larry!” she said gently. This was only what she said when we had boring visitors,
so I attached no importance to it and went on talking.
“Do be quiet, Larry!” she said impatiently. “Don’t you hear me talking to Daddy?”
This was the first time I had heard those ominous words, “talking to Daddy,” and I couldn’t help
feeling that if this was how God answered prayers, he couldn’t listen to them very attentively.
“Why are you talking to Daddy?” I asked with as great a show of indifference as I could muster.
“Because Daddy and I have business to discuss. Now, don’t interrupt again!”
In the afternoon, at Mother’s request, Father took me for a walk. This time we went into town
instead of out in the country, and I thought at first, in my usual optimistic way, that it might be an
improvement. It was nothing of the sort. Father and I had quite different notions of a walk in town.
He had no proper interest in trams, ships, and horses, and the only thing that seemed to divert him
was talking to fellows as old as himself. When I wanted to stop he simply went on, dragging me
behind him by the hand; when he wanted to stop I had no alternative but to do the same. I noticed
that it seemed to be a sign that he wanted to stop for a long time whenever he leaned against a wall.
The second time I saw him do it I got wild. He seemed to be settling himself forever. I pulled him
by the coat and trousers, but, unlike Mother who, if you were too persistent, got into a wax and
said: “Larry, if you don’t behave yourself, I’ll give you a good slap,” Father had an extraordinary
capacity for amiable inattention. I sized him up and wondered would I cry, but he seemed to be
too remote to be annoyed even by that. Really, it was like going for a walk with a mountain! He
either ignored the wrenching and pummeling entirely, or else glanced down with a grin of
amusement from his peak. I had never met anyone so absorbed in himself as he seemed.
At teatime, “talking to Daddy” began again, complicated this time by the fact that he had an
evening paper, and every few minutes he put it down and told Mother something new out of it. I
felt this was foul play. Man for man, I was prepared to compete with him any time for Mother’s
attention, but when he had it all made up for him by other people it left me no chance. Several
times I tried to change the subject without success.
“You must be quiet while Daddy is reading, Larry,” Mother said impatiently.
It was clear that she either genuinely liked talking to Father better than talking to me, or else that
he had some terrible hold on her which made her afraid to admit the truth.
“Mummy,” I said that night when she was tucking me up, “do you think if I prayed hard God
would send Daddy back to the war?”
She seemed to think about that for a moment.
“No, dear,” she said with a smile. “I don’t think He would.”
“Why wouldn’t He, Mummy?”
“Because there isn’t a war any longer, dear.”
“But, Mummy, couldn’t God make another war, if He liked?”
“He wouldn’t like to, dear. It’s not God who makes wars, but bad people.”
“Oh!” I said. I was disappointed about that. I began to think that God wasn’t quite what He was
cracked up to be.
Next morning I woke at my usual hour, feeling like a bottle of champagne. I put out my feet and
invented a long conversation in which Mrs. Right talked of the trouble she had with her own
father till she put him in the Home. I didn’t quite know what the Home was but it sounded the
right place for Father. Then I got my chair and stuck my head out of the attic window. Dawn was
just breaking, with a guilty air that made me feel I had caught it in the act. My head bursting with
stories and schemes, I stumbled in next door, and in the half-darkness scrambled into the big bed.
There was no room at Mother’s side so I had to get between her and Father. For the time being I
had forgotten about him, and for several minutes I sat bolt upright, racking my brains to know
what I could do with him. He was taking up more than his fair share of the bed, and I couldn’t get
comfortable, so I gave him several kicks that made him grunt and stretch. He made room all right,
though. Mother waked and felt for me. I settled back comfortably in the warmth of the bed with
my thumb in my mouth.
“Mummy!” I hummed, loudly and contentedly.
“Sssh! dear,” she whispered. “Don’t wake Daddy!”
This was a new development, which threatened to be even more serious than “talking to Daddy.”
Life without my early-morning conferences was unthinkable.
“Why?” I asked severely.
“Because poor Daddy is tired.” This seemed to me a quite inadequate reason, and I was sickened
by the sentimentality of her “poor Daddy.” I never liked that sort of gush; it always struck me as
insincere.
“Oh!” I said lightly. Then in my most winning tone: “Do you know where I want to go with you
today, Mummy?”
“No, dear,” she sighed.
“I want to go down the Glen and fish for thornybacks with my new net, and then I want to go out
to the Fox and Hounds, and –”
“Don’t-wake-Daddy!” she hissed angrily, clapping her hand across my mouth.
But it was too late. He was awake, or nearly so. He grunted and reached for the matches. Then he
stared incredulously at his watch.
“Like a cup of tea, dear?” asked Mother in a meek, hushed voice I had never heard her use before.
It sounded almost as though she were afraid.
“Tea?” he exclaimed indignantly. “Do you know what the time is?”
“And after that I want to go up the Rathcooney Road,” I said loudly, afraid I’d forget something in
all those interruptions.
“Go to sleep at once, Larry!” she said sharply.
I began to snivel. I couldn’t concentrate, the way that pair went on, and smothering my
early-morning schemes was like burying a family from the cradle. Father said nothing, but lit his
pipe and sucked it, looking out into the shadows without minding Mother or me. I knew he was
mad. Every time I made a remark Mother hushed me irritably. I was mortified. I felt it wasn’t fair;
there was even something sinister in it. Every time I had pointed out to her the waste of making
two beds when we could both sleep in one, she had told me it was healthier like that, and now here
was this man, this stranger, sleeping with her without the least regard for her health! He got up
early and made tea, but though he brought Mother a cup he brought none for me.
“Mummy,” I shouted, “I want a cup of tea, too.”
“Yes, dear,” she said patiently. “You can drink from Mummy’s saucer.”
That settled it. Either Father or I would have to leave the house. I didn’t want to drink from
Mother’s saucer; I wanted to be treated as an equal in my own home, so, just to spite her, I drank
it all and left none for her. She took that quietly, too. But that night when she was putting me to
bed she said gently:
“Larry, I want you to promise me something.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Not to come in and disturb poor Daddy in the morning. Promise?”
“Poor Daddy” again! I was becoming suspicious of everything involving that quite impossible
man.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because poor Daddy is worried and tired and he doesn’t sleep well.”
“Why doesn’t he, Mummy?”
“Well, you know, don’t you, that while he was at the war Mummy got the pennies from the post
office?”
“From Miss MacCarthy?”
“That’s right. But now, you see, Miss MacCarthy hasn’t any more pennies, so Daddy must go out
and find us some. You know what would happen if he couldn’t?”
“No,” I said, “tell us.”
“Well, I think we might have to go out and beg for them like the poor old woman on Fridays. We
wouldn’t like that, would we?”
“No,” I agreed. “We wouldn’t.”
“So you’ll promise not to come in and wake him?”
“Promise.”
Mind you, I meant that. I knew pennies were a serious matter, and I was all against having to go
out and beg like the old woman on Fridays. Mother laid out all my toys in a complete ring round
the bed so that, whatever way I got out, I was bound to fall over one of them. When I woke I
remembered my promise all right. I got up and sat on the floor and played – for hours, it seemed
to me. Then I got my chair and looked out the attic window for more hours. I wished it was time
for Father to wake; I wished someone would make me a cup of tea. I didn’t feel in the least like
the sun; instead, I was bored and so very, very cold! I simply longed for the warmth and depth of
the big feather bed. At last I could stand it no longer. I went into the next room. As there was still
no room at Mother’s side I climbed over her and she woke with a start. “Larry,” she whispered,
gripping my arm very tightly, “what did you promise?”
“But I did, Mummy,” I wailed, caught in the very act. “I was quiet for ever so long.”
“Oh, dear, and you’re perished!” she said sadly, feeling me all over. “Now, if I let you stay will
you promise not to talk?”
“But I want to talk, Mummy,” I wailed.
“That has nothing to do with it,” she said with a firmness that was new to me. “Daddy wants to
sleep. Now, do you understand that?”
I understood it only too well. I wanted to talk, he wanted to sleep – whose house was it, anyway?
“Mummy,” I said with equal firmness, “I think it would be healthier for Daddy to sleep in his own
bed.”
That seemed to stagger her, because she said nothing for a while.
“Now, once for all,” she went on, “you’re to be perfectly quiet or go back to your own bed. Which
is it to be?”
The injustice of it got me down. I had convicted her out of her own mouth of inconsistency and
unreasonableness, and she hadn’t even attempted to reply. Full of spite, I gave Father a kick,
which she didn’t notice but which made him grunt and open his eyes in alarm.
“What time is it?” he asked in a panic-stricken voice, not looking at Mother but at the door, as if
he saw someone there.
“It’s early yet,” she replied soothingly. “It’s only the child. Go to sleep again.... Now, Larry,” she
added, getting out of bed, “you’ve wakened Daddy and you must go back.”
This time, for all her quiet air, I knew she meant it, and knew that my principal rights and
privileges were as good as lost unless I asserted them at once. As she lifted me, I gave a screech,
enough to wake the dead, not to mind Father.
He groaned. “That damn child! Doesn’t he ever sleep?”
“It’s only a habit, dear,” she said quietly, though I could see she was vexed.
“Well, it’s time he got out of it,” shouted Father, beginning to heave in the bed. He suddenly
gathered all the bedclothes about him, turned to the wall, and then looked back over his shoulder
with nothing showing only two small, spiteful, dark eyes. The man looked very wicked. To open
the bedroom door, Mother had to let me down, and I broke free and dashed for the farthest corner,
screeching.
Father sat bolt upright in bed. “Shut up, you little puppy,” he said in a choking voice.
I was so astonished that I stopped screeching. Never, never had anyone spoken to me in that tone
before. I looked at him incredulously and saw his face convulsed with rage. It was only then that I
fully realized how God had codded me, listening to my prayers for the safe return of this monster.
“Shut up, you!” I bawled, beside myself.
“What’s that you said?” shouted Father, making a wild leap out of the bed.
“Mick, Mick!” cried Mother. “Don’t you see the child isn’t used to you?”
“I see he’s better fed than taught,” snarled Father, waving his arms wildly. “He wants his bottom
smacked.”
All his previous shouting was as nothing to these obscene words referring to my person. They
really made my blood boil.
“Smack your own!” I screamed hysterically. “Smack your own! Shut up! Shut up!”
At this he lost his patience and let fly at me. He did it with the lack of conviction you’d expect of a
man under Mother’s horrified eyes, and it ended up as a mere tap, but the sheer indignity of being
struck at all by a stranger, a total stranger who had cajoled his way back from the war into our big
bed as a result of my innocent intercession, made me completely dotty. I shrieked and shrieked,
and danced in my bare feet, and Father, looking awkward and hairy in nothing but a short gray
army shirt, glared down at me like a mountain out for murder. I think it must have been then that I
realized he was jealous too. And there stood Mother in her nightdress, looking as if her heart was
broken between us. I hoped she felt as she looked. It seemed to me that she deserved it all.
From that morning out my life was a hell. Father and I were enemies, open and avowed. We
conducted a series of skirmishes against one another, he trying to steal my time with Mother and I
his. When she was sitting on my bed, telling me a story, he took to looking for some pair of old
boots which he alleged he had left behind him at the beginning of the war. While he talked to
Mother I played loudly with my toys to show my total lack of concern.
He created a terrible scene one evening when he came in from work and found me at his box,
playing with his regimental badges, Gurkha knives and button sticks. Mother got up and took the
box from me.
“You mustn’t play with Daddy’s toys unless he lets you, Larry,” she said severely. “Daddy
doesn’t play with yours.”
For some reason Father looked at her as if she had struck him and then turned away with a scowl.
“Those are not toys,” he growled, taking down the box again to see had I lifted anything. “Some
of those curios are very rare and valuable.”
But as time went on I saw more and more how he managed to alienate Mother and me. What
made it worse was that I couldn’t grasp his method or see what attraction he had for Mother. In
every possible way he was less winning than I. He had a common accent and made noises at his
tea. I thought for a while that it might be the newspapers she was interested in, so I made up bits
of news of my own to read to her. Then I thought it might be the smoking, which I personally
thought attractive, and took his pipes and went round the house dribbling into them till he caught
me. I even made noises at my tea, but Mother only told me I was disgusting. It all seemed to hinge
round that unhealthy habit of sleeping together, so I made a point of dropping into their bedroom
and nosing round, talking to myself, so that they wouldn’t know I was watching them, but they
were never up to anything that I could see. In the end it beat me. It seemed to depend on being
grown-up and giving people rings, and I realized I’d have to wait. But at the same time I wanted
him to see that I was only waiting, not giving up the fight.
One evening when he was being particularly obnoxious, chattering away well above my head, I let
him have it.
“Mummy,” I said, “do you know what I’m going to do when I grow up?”
“No, dear,” she replied. “What?”
“I’m going to marry you,” I said quietly.
Father gave a great guffaw out of him, but he didn’t take me in. I knew it must only be pretence.
And Mother, in spite of everything, was pleased. I felt she was probably relieved to know that one
day Father’s hold on her would be broken.
“Won’t that be nice?” she said with a smile.
“It’ll be very nice,” I said confidently. “Because we’re going to have lots and lots of babies.”
“That’s right, dear,” she said placidly. “I think we’ll have one soon, and then you’ll have plenty of
company.”
I was no end pleased about that because it showed that in spite of the way she gave in to Father
she still considered my wishes. Besides, it would put the Geneys in their place. It didn’t turn out
like that, though. To begin with, she was very preoccupied – I supposed about where she would
get the seventeen and six – and though Father took to staying out late in the evenings it did me no
particular good. She stopped taking me for walks, became as touchy as blazes, and smacked me
for nothing at all. Sometimes I wished I’d never mentioned the confounded baby – I seemed to
have a genius for bringing calamity on myself.
And calamity it was! Sonny arrived in the most appalling hulla-baloo – even that much he
couldn’t do without a fuss – and from the first moment I disliked him. He was a difficult child – so
far as I was concerned he was always difficult – and demanded far too much attention. Mother
was simply silly about him, and couldn’t see when he was only showing off. As company he was
worse than useless. He slept all day, and I had to go round the house on tiptoe to avoid waking
him. It wasn’t any longer a question of not waking Father. The slogan now was
“Don’t-wake-Sonny!” I couldn’t understand why the child wouldn’t sleep at the proper time, so
whenever Mother’s back was turned I woke him. Sometimes to keep him awake I pinched him as
well. Mother caught me at it one day and gave me a most unmerciful flaking.
One evening, when Father was coming in from work, I was playing trains in the front garden. I let
on not to notice him; instead, I pretended to be talking to myself, and said in a loud voice: “If
another bloody baby comes into this house, I’m going out.”
Father stopped dead and looked at me over his shoulder. “What’s that you said?” he asked sternly.
““I was only talking to myself,” I replied, trying to conceal my panic. “It’s private.”
He turned and went in without a word.
Mind you, I intended it as a solemn warning, but its effect was quite different. Father started being
quite nice to me. I could understand that, of course. Mother was quite sickening about Sonny.
Even at mealtimes she’d get up and gawk at him in the cradle with an idiotic smile, and tell Father
to do the same. He was always polite about it, but he looked so puzzled you could see he didn’t
know what she was talking about. He complained of the way Sonny cried at night, but she only
got cross and said that Sonny never cried except when there was something up with him – which
was a flaming lie, because Sonny never had anything up with him, and only cried for attention. It
was really painful to see how simpleminded she was.
Father wasn’t attractive, but he had a fine intelligence. He saw through Sonny, and now he knew
that I saw through him as well. One night I woke with a start. There was someone beside me in the
bed. For one wild moment I felt sure it must be Mother, having come to her senses and left Father
for good, but then I heard Sonny in convulsions in the next room, and Mother saying: “There!
There! There!” and I knew it wasn’t she. It was Father. He was lying beside me, wide-awake,
breathing hard and apparently as mad as hell. After a while it came to me what he was mad about.
It was his turn now. After turning me out of the big bed, he had been turned out himself. Mother
had no consideration now for anyone but that poisonous pup, Sonny.
I couldn’t help feeling sorry for Father. I had been through it all myself, and even at that age I was
magnanimous. I began to stroke him down and say: “There! There!”
He wasn’t exactly responsive. “Aren’t you asleep either?” he snarled.
“Ah, come on and put your arm around us, can’t you?” I said, and he did, in a sort of way.
Gingerly, I suppose, is how you’d describe it. He was very bony but better than nothing.
At Christmas he went out of his way to buy me a really nice model railway.
William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) was born in Greensboro, North Carolina. His father,
Algernon Sidney Porter, was a physician. When William was three, his mother died, and he was
raised by his paternal grandmother and aunt. William was an avid reader, but at the age of fifteen
he left school, and then worked in a drug store and on a Texas ranch. He moved to Houston,
where he had a number of jobs, including that of bank clerk. After moving to Austin, Texas, in
1882, he married. In 1884 he started a humorous weekly The Rolling Stone. When the weekly
failed, he joined the Houston Post as a reporter and columnist. In 1897 he was convicted of
embezzling money, although there has been much debate over his actual guilt. In 1898 he entered
a penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio. While in prison O. Henry started to write short stories to earn
money to support his daughter Margaret. His first work, “Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking”
(1899), appeared in McClure’s Magazine. After doing three years of the five years sentence,
Porter emerged from the prison in 1901 and changed his name to O. Henry.
O. Henry moved to New York City in 1902 and from December 1903 to January 1906 he wrote a
story a week for the New York World, also publishing in other magazines. Henry’s first collection,
Cabbages and Kings appeared in 1904. The second, The Four Million, was published two years
later and included his well-known stories “The Gift of the Magi” and “The Furnished Room”.
The Trimmed Lamp (1907) included “The Last Leaf”. Henry’s best known work is perhaps the
much anthologized “The Ransom of Red Chief”, included in the collection Whirligigs (1910).
The Heart of the West (1907) presented tales of the Texas range. O. Henry published 10
collections and over 600 short stories during his lifetime.
O. Henry’s last years were shadowed by alcoholism, ill health, and financial problems. He
married Sara Lindsay Coleman in 1907, but the marriage was not happy, and they separated a
year later. O. Henry died of cirrhosis of the liver on June 5, 1910, in New York. Three more
collections, Sixes and Sevens (1911), Rolling Stones (1912) and Waifs and Strays (1917),
appeared posthumously.
The Last Leaf
In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves
into small strips called “places.” These “places” make strange angles and curves. One street
crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose
a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet
himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!
So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north
windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some
pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth avenue, and became a “colony.”
At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. “Johnsy” was familiar
for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the _table d’hote_ of
an Eighth street “Delmonico’s,” and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so
congenial that the joint studio resulted.
That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia,
stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side
this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze
of the narrow and moss-grown “places.”
Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman
with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed
old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead,
looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.
One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, gray eyebrow.
“She has one chance in – let us say, ten,” he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical
thermometer. “And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-up on the
side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her
mind that she’s not going to get well. Has she
anything on her mind?”
“She – she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day,” said Sue.
“Paint? – bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about twice – a man, for instance?”
“A man?” said Sue, with a jew’s-harp twang in her voice. “Is a man worth – but, no, doctor; there
is nothing of the kind.”
“Well, it is the weakness, then,” said the doctor. “I will do all that science, so far as it may filter
through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her
funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent. from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her
to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five
chance for her, instead of one in ten.”
After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp.
Then she swaggered into Johnsy’s room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime.
Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue
stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.
She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young
artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors
write to pave their way to Literature.
As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle on the figure of
the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the
bedside.
Johnsy’s eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting – counting
backward.
“Twelve,” she said, and a little later “eleven;” and then “ten,” and “nine;” and then “eight” and
“seven,” almost together.
Sue looked solicitously out the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary
yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine,
gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn
had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the
crumbling bricks.
“What is it, dear?” asked Sue.
“Six,” said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. “They’re falling faster now. Three days ago there were
almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it’s easy. There goes another one.
There are only five left now.”
“Five what, dear. Tell your Sudie.”
“Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I’ve known that for three days.
Didn’t the doctor tell you?”
“Oh, I never heard of such nonsense,” complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. “What have old
ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don’t
be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon
were – let’s see exactly what he said –he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that’s almost as
good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new
building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the
editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self.”
“You needn’t get any more wine,” said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. “There
goes another. No, I don’t want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall
before it gets dark. Then I’ll go, too.”
“Johnsy, dear,” said Sue, bending over her, “will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and
not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I
need the light, or I would draw the shade down.”
“Couldn’t you draw in the other room?” asked Johnsy, coldly.
“I’d rather be here by you,” said Sue. “Besides I don’t want you to keep looking at those silly ivy
leaves.”
“Tell me as soon as you have finished,” said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as
a fallen statue, “because I want to see the last one fall. I’m tired of waiting. I’m tired of thinking. I
went to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor,
tired leaves.”
“Try to sleep,” said Sue. “I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I’ll not
be gone a minute. Don’t try to move ‘till I come back.”
Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and
had a Michael Angelo’s Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along the body of an
imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near
enough to touch the hem of his Mistress’s robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece,
but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub
in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young
artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still
talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly
at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two
young artists in the studio above.
Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one
corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive
the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy’s fancy, and how she feared she would,
indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away when her slight hold upon the world grew
weaker.
Old Behrman, with his red eyes, plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such
idiotic imaginings.
“Vass!” he cried. “Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off
from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your
fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der prain of her? Ach, dot
poor lettle Miss Johnsy.”
“She is very ill and weak,” said Sue, “and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange
fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn’t. But I think you
are a horrid old –old flibbertigibbet.”
“You are just like a woman!” yelled Behrman. “Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you.
For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which
one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go
away. Gott! yes.”
Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and
motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy
vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was
falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit-miner on an
upturned kettle for a rock.
When Sue awoke from an hour’s sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open
eyes staring at the drawn green shade.
“Pull it up; I want to see,” she ordered, in a whisper.
Wearily Sue obeyed.
But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night,
there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine. Still dark green
near its stem, but with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung
bravely from a branch some twenty feet above the ground.
“It is the last one,” said Johnsy. “I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind.
It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time.”
“Dear, dear!” said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, “think of me, if you won’t think
of yourself. What would I do?”
But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready
to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one
the ties
that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed.
The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its
stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed,
while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.
When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.
The ivy leaf was still there.
Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken
broth over the gas stove.
“I’ve been a bad girl, Sudie,” said Johnsy. “Something has made that last leaf stay there to show
me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring me a little broth now, and some
milk with a little port in it, and –no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows
about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook.”
An hour later she said.
“Sudie, someday I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.”
The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.
“Even chances,” said the doctor, taking Sue’s thin, shaking hand in his. “With good nursing you’ll
win. And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is – some kind of an
artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope
for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day
to be made more comfortable.”
The next day the doctor said to Sue: “She’s out of danger. You’ve won. Nutrition and care now –
that’s all.”
And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and
very useless woolen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all.
“I have something to tell you, white mouse,” she said. “Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in
the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him on the morning of the first day in
his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold.
They couldn’t imagine where he had been
on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been
dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors
mixed on it, and –look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn’t you wonder
why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it’s Behrman’s masterpiece –he
painted it there the night that the last leaf fell.
Further Reading
The Furnished Room
Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick
district of the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished
room to furnished room, transients forever – transients in abode, transients in heart and mind.
They sing “Home, Sweet Home” in ragtime； they carry their lares et penates in a bandbox； their
vine is entwined about a picture hat； a rubber plant is their fig tree.
Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to
tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt； but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two
in the wake of all these vagrant guests.
One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their
bells. At the twelfth he rested his lean hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his
hatband and forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote, hollow depths.
To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him
think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought
to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers.
He asked if there was a room to let.
“Come in,” said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat； her throat seemed lined with
fur. “I have the third floor back, vacant since a week back. Should you wish to look at it？”
The young man followed her up the stairs. A faint light from no particular source mitigated the
shadows of the halls. They trod noiselessly upon a stair carpet that its own loom would have
forsworn. It seemed to have become vegetable； to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air to
lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in patches to the staircase and was viscid under the foot
like organic matter. At each turn of the stairs were vacant niches in the wall. Perhaps plants had
once been set within them. If so they had died in that foul and tainted air. It may be that statues of
the saints had stood there, but it was not difficult to conceive that imps and devils had dragged
them forth in the darkness and down to the unholy depths of some furnished pit below.
“This is the room,” said the housekeeper, from her furry throat. “It’s a nice room. It ain’t often
vacant. I had some most elegant people in it last summer – no trouble at all, and paid in advance to
the minute. The water’s at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mooney kept it three months. They
done a vaudeville sketch. Miss B’retta Sprowls – you may have heard of her – Oh, that was just
the stage names – right there over the dresser is where the marriage certificate hung, framed.
The gas is here, and you see there is plenty of closet room. It’s a room everybody likes. It never
stays idle long.”
“Do you have many theatrical people rooming here？” asked the young man.
“They comes and goes. A good proportion of my lodgers is connected with the theatres. Yes, sir,
this is the theatrical district. Actor people never stays long anywhere. I get my share. Yes, they
comes and they goes.”
He engaged the room, paying for a week in advance. He was tired, he said, and would take
possession at once. He counted out the money. The room had been made ready, she said, even to
towels and water. As the housekeeper moved away he put, for the thousandth time, the question
that he carried at the end of his tongue.
“A young girl – Miss Vashner – Miss Eloise Vashner – do you remember such a one among your
lodgers？ She would be singing on the stage, most likely. A fair girl, of medium height and
slender, with reddish, gold hair and a dark mole near her left eyebrow.”
“No, I don’t remember the name. Them stage people has names they change as often as their
rooms. They comes and they goes. No, I don’t call that one to mind.”
No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative. So much time
spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools and choruses； by night among the
audiences of theatres from all-star casts down to music halls so low that he dreaded to find what
he most hoped for. He who had loved her best had tried to find her. He was sure that since her
disappearance from home this great, water-girt city held her somewhere, but it was like a
monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of
to-day buried to-morrow in ooze and slime.
The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudo-hospitality, a hectic,
haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep. The sophistical comfort came
in reflected gleams from the decayed furniture, the raggcd brocade upholstery of a couch and two
chairs, a footwide cheap pier glass between the two windows, from one or two gilt picture frames
and a brass bedstead in a corner.
The guest reclined, inert, upon a chair, while the room, confused in speech as though it were an
apartment in Babel, tried to discourse to him of its divers tenantry.
A polychromatic rug like some brilliant-flowered rectangular, tropical islet lay surrounded by a
billowy sea of soiled matting. Upon the gay-papered wall were those pictures that pursue the
homeless one from house to house – The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding
Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel’s chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled
behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it
was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room’s marooned when a lucky sail had borne them
to a fresh port – a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray cards
out of a deck.
One by one, as the characters of a cryptograph become explicit, the little signs left by the
furnished room’s procession of guests developed a significance. The threadbare space in the rug in
front of the dresser told that lovely woman had marched in the throng. Tiny finger prints on the
wall spoke of little prisoners trying to feel their way to sun and air. A splattered stain, raying like
the shadow of a bursting bomb, witnessed where a hurled glass or bottle had splintered with its
contents against the wall. Across the pier glass had been scrawled with a diamond in staggering
letters the name “Marie.” It seemed that the succession of dwellers in the furnished room had
turned in fury – perhaps tempted beyond forbearance by its garish coldness – and wreaked upon it
their passions. The furniture was chipped and bruised； the couch, distorted by bursting springs,
seemed a horrible monster that had been slain during the stress of some grotesque convulsion.
Some more potent upheaval had cloven a great slice from the marble mantel. Each plank in the
floor owned its particular cant and shriek as from a separate and individual agony. It seemed
incredible that all this malice and injury had been wrought upon the room by those who had called
it for a time their home； and yet it may have been the cheated home instinct surviving blindly, the
resentful rage at false household gods that had kindled their wrath. A hut that is our own we can
sweep and adorn and cherish.
The young tenant in the chair allowed these thoughts to file, soft- shod, through his mind, while
there drifted into the room furnished sounds and furnished scents. He heard in one room a tittering
and incontinent, slack laughter； in others the monologue of a scold, the rattling of dice, a lullaby,
and one crying dully； above him a banjo tinkled with spirit. Doors banged somewhere； the
elevated trains roared intermittently； a cat yowled miserably upon a back fence. And he breathed
the breath of the house – a dank savour rather than a smell – a cold, musty effluvium as from
underground vaults mingled with the reeking exhalations of linoleum and mildewed and rotten
woodwork.
Then, suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong, sweet odour of mignonette.
It came as upon a single buffet of wind with such sureness and fragrance and emphasis that it
almost seemed a living visitant. And the man cried aloud： “What, dear？” as if he had been
called, and sprang up and faced about. The rich odour clung to him and wrapped him around. He
reached out his arms for it, all his senses for the time confused and commingled. How could one
be peremptorily called by an odour？ Surely it must have been a sound. But, was it not the sound
that had touched, that had caressed him？
“She has been in this room,” he cried, and he sprang to wrest from it a token, for he knew he
would recognize the smallest thing that had belonged to her or that she had touched. This
enveloping scent of mignonette, the odour that she had loved and made her own – whence came
it？
The room had been but carelessly set in order. Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf were half a
dozen hairpins – those discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender,
infinite of mood and uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of their triumphant
lack of identity. Ransacking the drawers of the dresser he came upon a discarded, tiny, ragged
handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It was racy and insolent with heliotrope； he hurled it to
the floor. In another drawer he found odd buttons, a theatre programme, a pawnbroker’s card, two
lost marshmallows, a book on the divination of dreams. In the last was a woman’s black satin hair
bow, which halted him, poised between ice and fire. But the black satin hairbow also is
femininity’s demure, impersonal, common ornament, and tells no tales.
And then he traversed the room like a hound on the scent, skimming the walls, considering the
corners of the bulging matting on his hands and knees, rummaging mantel and tables, the curtains
and hangngs, the drunken cabinet in the corner, for a visible sign, unable to perceive that she was
there beside, around, against, within, above him, clinging to him, wooing him, calling him so
poignantly through the finer senses that even his grosser ones became cognisant of the call. Once
again he answered loudly： “Yes, dear！” and turned, wild-eyed, to gaze on vacancy, for he could
not yet discern form and colour and love and outstretched arms in the odour of mnignonette. Oh,
God！ whence that odour, and since when have odours had a voice to call？ Thus he groped.
He burrowed in crevices and corners, and found corks and cigarettes. These he passed in passive
contempt. But once he found in a fold of the matting a half-smoked cigar, and this he ground
beneath his heel with a green and trenchant oath. He sifted the room from end to end. He found
dreary and ignoble small records of many a peripatetic tenant； but of her whom he sought, and
who may have lodged there, and whose spirit seemed to hover there, he found no trace.
And then he thought of the housekeeper.
He ran from the haunted room downstairs and to a door that showed a crack of light. She came out
to his knock. He smothered his excitement as best he could.
“Will you tell me, madam,” he besought her, “who occupied the room I have before I came？”
“Yes, sir. I can tell you again. ‘Twas Sprowls and Mooney, as I said. Miss B’retta Sprowls it was
in the theatres, but Missis Mooney she was. My house is well known for respectability. The
marriage certificate hung, framed, on a nail over – ”
“What kind of a lady was Miss Sprowls – in looks, I mean？”
Why, black-haired, sir, short, and stout, with a comical face. They left a week ago Tuesday.”
“And before they occupied it？”
“Why, there was a single gentleman connected with the draying business. He left owing me a
week. Before him was Missis Crowder and her two children, that stayed four months； and back
of them was old Mr. Doyle, whose sons paid for him. He kept the room six months. That goes
back a year, sir, and further I do not remember.”
He thanked her and crept back to his room. The room was dead. The essence that had vivified it
was gone. The perfume of mignonette had departed. In its place was the old, stale odour of
mouldy house furniture, of atmosphere in storage.
The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. He sat staring at the yellow, singing gaslight. Soon he
walked to the bed and began to tear the sheets into strips. With the blade of his knife he drove
them tightly into every crevice around windows and door. When all was snug and taut he turned
out the light, turned the gas full on again and laid himself gratefully upon the bed.
It was Mrs. McCool’s night to go with the can for beer. So she fetched it and sat with Mrs. Purdy
in one of those subterranean retreats where house-keepers foregather and the worm dieth seldom.
“I rented out my third floor, back, this evening,” said Mrs. Purdy, across a fine circle of foam. “A
young man took it. He went up to bed two hours ago.”
“Now, did ye, Mrs. Purdy, ma’am？” said Mrs. McCool, with intense admiration. “You do be a
wonder for rentin’ rooms of that kind. And did ye tell him, then？” she concluded in a husky
whisper, laden with mystery.
“Rooms,” said Mrs. Purdy, in her furriest tones, “are furnished for to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs.
McCool.”
“‘Tis right ye are, ma’am； ‘tis by renting rooms we kape alive. Ye have the rale sense for
business, ma’am. There be many people will rayjict the rentin’ of a room if they be tould a suicide
has been after dyin’ in the bed of it.”
“As you say, we has our living to be making,” remarked Mrs. Purdy.
“Yis, ma’am； ‘tis true. ‘Tis just one wake ago this day I helped ye lay out the third floor, back. A
pretty slip of a colleen she was to be killin’ herself wid the gas – a swate little face she had, Mrs.
Purdy, ma’am.”
“She’d a-been called handsome, as you say,” said Mrs. Purdy, assenting but critical, “but for that
mole she had a-growin’ by her left eyebrow. Do fill up your glass again, Mrs. McCool.”
The Ransom of Red Chief
It looked like a good thing. But wait till I tell you. We were down south, in Alabama – Bill
Driscoll and myself – when this kidnapping idea struck us. There was a town down there, as flat
as a pancake, and called Summit. Bill and I had about six hundred dollars. We needed just two
thousand dollars more for an illegal land deal in Illinois.
We chose for our victim – the only child of an influential citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. He
was a boy of ten, with red hair. Bill and I thought that Ebenezer would pay a ransom of two
thousand dollars to get his boy back. But wait till I tell you.
About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with cedar trees. There was an
opening on the back of the mountain. We stored our supplies in that cave.
One night, we drove a horse and carriage past old Dorset’s house. The boy was in the street,
throwing rocks at a cat on the opposite fence.
“Hey little boy!” says Bill, “would you like to have a bag of candy and a nice ride?”
The boy hits Bill directly in the eye with a piece of rock.
That boy put up a fight like a wild animal. But, at last, we got him down in the bottom of the
carriage and drove away.
We took him up to the cave. The boy had two large bird feathers stuck in his hair. He points a
stick at me and says:
“Ha! Paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains?”
“He’s all right now,” says Bill, rolling up his pants and examining wounds on his legs. “We’re
playing Indian. I’m Old Hank, the trapper, Red Chief’s captive. I’m going to be scalped at
daybreak. By Geronimo! That kid can kick hard.”
“Red Chief,” says I to the boy, “would you like to go home?”
“Aw, what for?” says he. “I don’t have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out.
You won’t take me back home again, will you?”
“Not right away,” says I. “We’ll stay here in the cave a while.”
“All right!” says he. “That’ll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life.”
(MUSIC)
We went to bed about eleven o’clock. Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of terrible
screams from Bill. Red Chief was sitting on Bill’s chest, with one hand holding his hair. In the
other, he had a sharp knife. He was attempting to cut off the top of Bill’s head, based on what he
had declared the night before.
I got the knife away from the boy. But, after that event, Bill’s spirit was broken. He lay down, but
he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us.
“Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home?” Bill asked.
“Sure,” I said. “A boy like that is just the kind that parents love. Now, you and the Chief get up
and make something to eat, while I go up on the top of this mountain and look around.”
I climbed to the top of the mountain. Over toward Summit, I expected to see the men of the village
searching the countryside. But all was peaceful.
“Perhaps,” says I to myself, “it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have taken the lamb
from the fold.” I went back down the mountain.
When I got to the cave, I found Bill backed up against the side of it. He was breathing hard, with
the boy threatening to strike him with a rock.
“He put a red-hot potato down my back,” explained Bill, “and then crushed it with his foot. I hit
his ears. Have you got a gun with you, Sam?”
I took the rock away from the boy and ended the argument.
“I’ll fix you,” says the boy to Bill. “No man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for
it. You better be careful!”
After eating, the boy takes a leather object with strings tied around it from his clothes and goes
outside the cave unwinding it. Then we heard a kind of shout. It was Red Chief holding a sling in
one hand. He moved it faster and faster around his head.
Just then I heard a heavy sound and a deep breath from Bill. A rock the size of an egg had hit him
just behind his left ear. Bill fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes.
I pulled him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour.
Then I went out and caught that boy and shook him.
“If your behavior doesn’t improve,” says I, “I’ll take you straight home. Now, are you going to be
good, or not?”
“I was only funning,” says he. “I didn’t mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I’ll
behave if you don’t send me home.”
I thought it best to send a letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and telling how
it should be paid. The letter said:
“We have your boy hidden in a place far from Summit. We demand fifteen hundred dollars for his
return; the money to be left at midnight tonight at the same place and in the same box as your
answer.
If you agree to these terms, send the answer in writing by a messenger tonight at half past eight
o’clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees. At the
bottom of the fence, opposite the third tree, will be a small box. The messenger will place the
answer in this box and return immediately to Summit. If you fail to agree to our demand, you will
never see your boy again. If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and
well within three hours.”
I took the letter and walked over to Poplar Cove. I then sat around the post office and store. An
old man there says he hears Summit is all worried because of Ebenezer Dorset’s boy having been
lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I mailed my letter and left. The postmaster said the
mail carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to Summit.
(MUSIC)
At half past eight, I was up in the third tree, waiting for the messenger to arrive. Exactly on time, a
half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle. He finds the box at the foot of the fence. He puts a
folded piece of paper into it and leaves, turning back toward Summit.
I slid down the tree, got the note and was back at the cave in a half hour. I opened the note and
read it to Bill. This is what it said:
“Gentlemen: I received your letter about the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you
are a little high in your demands. I hereby make you a counter-proposal, which I believe you will
accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars, and I agree to take him
off your hands. You had better come at night because the neighbors believe he is lost. And, I could
not be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back. Very
respectfully, Ebenezer Dorset.”
“Great pirates of Penzance!” says I, “of all the nerve...” But I looked at Bill and stopped. He had
the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or talking animal.
“Sam,” says he, “what’s two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We’ve got the money. One more
night of this boy will drive me crazy. I think Mister Dorset is making us a good offer. You aren’t
going to let the chance go, are you?”
“Tell you the truth, Bill,” says I, “this little lamb has got on my nerves, too. We’ll take him home,
pay the ransom and make our get-away.”
We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought him a
gun and we were going to hunt bears the next day.
It was twelve o’clock when we knocked on Ebenezer’s front door. Bill counted out two hundred
and fifty dollars into Dorset’s hand.
When the boy learned we were planning to leave him at home, he started to cry loudly and held
himself as tight as he could to Bill’s leg. His father pulled him away slowly.
“How long can you hold him?” asks Bill.
“I’m not as strong as I used to be,” says old Dorset, “but I think I can promise you ten minutes.”
“Enough,” says Bill. “In ten minutes, I shall cross the Central, Southern and Middle Western
states, and be running for the Canadian border.”
And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile
and a half out of Summit before I could catch up with him.
The Cop and the Anthem
On his bench in Madison Square Soapy moved uneasily, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his
bench in the park, you may know that winter is near.
A dead leaf fell in Soapy’s lap. That was Jack Frost’s card. Jack is kind to the regular residents of
Madison Square, and gives them warning of his annual call.
Soapy realized the fact that the time had come for him to provide against the coming winter. And
therefore he moved uneasily on his bench.
The winter ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them there were no dreams of
Mediterranean voyages, of blue Southern skies or the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island
was what his soul desired. Three months of assured board and bed and good company, safe from
north winds and policemen, seemed to Soapy the most desirable thing.
For years the hospitable Blackwell prison had been his winter refuge. Just as the more fortunate
New Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera each winter, so Soapy had
made his arrangements for his annual journey to the island. And now the time had come. On the
night before three Sunday newspapers, put under his coat, about his feet and over his lap, had not
helped him against the cold as he slept on his bench near the fountain in the old square. There
were many institutions of charity in New York where he might receive lodging and food, but to
Soapy’s proud spirit the gifts of charity were undesirable. You must pay in humiliation of spirit
for everything received at the hands of philanthropy. So it was better to be a guest of the law.
Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once set about accomplishing his desire. There were
many easy ways of doing this. The pleasantest was to dine at some good restaurant; and then, after
declaring bankruptcy, be handed over to a policeman. A magistrate would do the rest.
Soapy left his bench and went out of the square and up Broadway. He stopped at the door of a
glittering cafe. He was shaven and his coat was decent. If he could reach a table in the restaurant,
the portion of him that would show above the table would raise no doubt in the waiter’s mind. A
roasted duck, thought Soapy, with a bottle of wine, and then some cheese, a cup of coffee and a
cigar would be enough. Such a dinner would make him happy, for the journey to his winter
refuge.
But as Soapy entered the restaurant door, the head waiter’s eye fell upon his shabby trousers and
old shoes. Strong hands turned him about and pushed him in silence and haste out into the street.
Soapy turned off Broadway. Some other way of entering the desirable refuge must be found.
At a corner of Sixth Avenue Soapy took a stone and sent it through the glass of a glittering shop
window. People came running around the corner, a policeman at the head of them. Soapy stood
still, with his hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of the policeman.
“Where is the man that has done that?” asked the policeman.
“Don’t you think that I have had something to do with it?” said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but
friendly.
The policeman paid no attention to Soapy. Men who break windows do not remain to speak with
policemen. They run away. He saw a man running to catch a car and rushed after him with his
stick in his hand. Soapy, with disgust in his heart, walked along, twice unsuccessful.
On the opposite side of the street was a little restaurant for people with large appetites and modest
purses. Soapy entered this place without difficulty. He sat at a table and ate beefsteak and pie. And
then he told the waiter that he had no money.
“Now go and call a cop,” said Soapy. “And don’t keep a gentleman waiting.”
“No cop for you,” said the waiter. “Hey!”
In a moment Soapy found himself lying upon his left ear on the pavement. He arose with
difficulty, and beat the dust from his clothes. Arrest seemed a rosy dream. The Island seemed very
far away. A policeman who stood before a drug store two doors away laughed and walked down
the street. Soapy seemed to liberty.
After another unsuccessful attempt to be arrested for persecution a young woman, Soapy went
further toward the district of theatres.
When he came upon a policeman standing in front of a glittering theatre, he caught at the straw of
“disorderly conduct.”
On the sidewalk Soapy began to sing drunken songs at the top of his voice. He danced, howled,
and otherwise disturbed the peace.
The policeman turned his back to Soapy, and said to a citizen:
“It is one of the Yale lads celebrating their football victory over the Hartford college. Noisy, but
no harm. We have instructions not to arrest them.”
Sadly, Soapy stopped his useless singing and dancing. A sudden fear seized him. Was he immune
to arrest? Would never a policeman lay hands on him? The Island seemed an unattainable Arcadia.
He buttoned his thin coat against the north wind.
In a cigar store he saw a well-dressed man lighting a cigar. He had set his silk umbrella by the
door, Soapy entered the store, took the umbrella, and went out with it slowly. The man with the
cigar followed hastily.
“My umbrella,” he said.
“Oh, is it?” said Soapy. “Well, why don’t you call a policeman? I took it. Your umbrella! Why
don’t you call a cop? There stands one on the corner.”
The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise. The policeman looked at them
curiously.
“Of course,” said the umbrella man, “that is - well, you know how these mistakes occur - I - if it’s
your umbrella I hope you’ll excuse me - I picked it up this morning in a restaurant - if it is yours,
why - I hope you’ll -”
“Of course it’s mine,” said Soapy.
The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to help a well-dressed woman across the
street.
Soapy walked eastward. He threw the umbrella angrily into a pit. He was angry with the men who
wear helmets and carry clubs. Because he wanted to be arrested, they seemed to regard him as a
king who could do no wrong.
At last Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where it was not so noisy. He went towards
Madison Square, for the home instinct remains even when the home is a park bench.
But on a quiet corner Soapy stopped before an old church. Through one window a soft light
glowed, where, no doubt, the organist played a Sunday anthem. For there came to Soapy’s ears
sweet music that caught and held him at the iron fence.
The moon was shining; cars and pedestrians were few; birds twittered sleepily under the roof. And
the anthem that the organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in
the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends.
The influence of the music and the old church produced a sudden and wonderful change in
Soapy’s soul. He saw with horror the pit into which he had fallen. He thought of his degraded
days, dead hopes and wrecked faculties.
And also in a moment a strong impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would pull
himself out of this pit; he would make a man of himself again. There was time; he was young yet.
Those sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in him. Tomorrow he would be somebody in the
world. He would Soapy felt a hand on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a policeman.
“What are you doing here?” asked the policeman.
“Nothing,” said Soapy.
“Then come along,” said the policeman.
“Three months on the Island,” said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.
Stephen Crane (1871 – 1900) was an American author. Prolific throughout his short life, he
wrote notable works in the Realist tradition as well as early examples of American Naturalism
and Impressionism. He is recognized by modern critics as one of the most innovative writers of his
generation. The eighth surviving child of Methodist Protestant parents, Crane began writing at
the age of four and had published several articles by the age of 16. Having little interest in
university studies, he left school in 1891 to work as a reporter and writer. Crane’s first novel was
the 1893 Bowery tale Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, generally considered by critics to be the first
work of American literary Naturalism. He won international acclaim in 1895 for his Civil War
novel The Red Badge of Courage, which he wrote without any battle experience. In 1896, Crane
accepted an offer to travel to Cuba as a war correspondent. En route to Cuba, Crane’s ship sank
off the coast of Florida, leaving him and others adrift for several days in a dinghy. Crane
described the ordeal in “The Open Boat”. Plagued by financial difficulties and ill health, Crane
died of tuberculosis in a Black Forest sanatorium at the age of 28.
The Open Boat
Chapter 1
NONE of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the
waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save for the tops, which
were of foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and
widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust
up in points like rocks.
Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea. These
waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall, and each froth-top was a problem in
small boat navigation.
The cook squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six inches of gunwale which
separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of
his unbuttoned vest dangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said: “Gawd! That was a
narrow clip.” As he remarked it he invariably gazed eastward over the broken sea.
The oiler, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes raised himself suddenly to keep
clear of water that swirled in over the stern. It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready to
snap.
The correspondent, pulling at the other oar, watched the waves and wondered why he was there.
The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound dejection and
indifference which comes, temporarily at least, to even the bravest and most enduring when, willy
nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down. The mind of the master of a vessel is
rooted deep in the timbers of her, though he command for a day or a decade, and this captain had
on him the stern impression of a scene in the grays of dawn of seven turned faces, and later a
stump of a top-mast with a white ball on it that slashed to and fro at the waves, went low and
lower, and down. Thereafter there was something strange in his voice. Although steady, it was
deep with mourning, and of a quality beyond oration or tears.
“Keep’er a little more south, Billie,” said he.
“‘A little more south,’ sir,” said the oiler in the stern.
A seat in this boat was not unlike a seat upon a bucking broncho, and, by the same token, a
broncho is not much smaller. The craft pranced and reared, and plunged like an animal. As each
wave came, and she rose for it, she seemed like a horse making at a fence outrageously high. The
manner of her scramble over these walls of water is a mystic thing, and, moreover, at the top of
them were ordinarily these problems in white water, the foam racing down from the summit of
each wave, requiring a new leap, and a leap from the air. Then, after scornfully bumping a crest,
she would slide, and race, and splash down a long incline and arrive bobbing and nodding in front
of the next menace.
A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave
you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do
something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dingey one can get an idea of the
resources of the sea in the line of waves that is not probable to the average experience, which is
never at sea in a dingey. As each slaty wall of water approached, it shut all else from the view of
the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine that this particular wave was the final
outburst of the ocean, the last effort of the grim water. There was a terrible grace in the move of
the waves, and they came in silence, save for the snarling of the crests.
In the wan light, the faces of the men must have been gray. Their eyes must have glinted in
strange ways as they gazed steadily astern. Viewed from a balcony, the whole thing would
doubtlessly have been weirdly picturesque. But the men in the boat had no time to see it, and if
they had had leisure there were other things to occupy their minds. The sun swung steadily up the
sky, and they knew it was broad day because the color of the sea changed from slate to
emerald-green, streaked with amber lights, and the foam was like tumbling snow. The process of
the breaking day was unknown to them. They were aware only of this effect upon the color of the
waves that rolled toward them.
In disjointed sentences the cook and the correspondent argued as to the difference between a
life-saving station and a house of refuge. The cook had said: “There’s a house of refuge just north
of the Mosquito Inlet Light, and as soon as they see us, they’ll come off in their boat and pick us
up.”
“As soon as who see us?” said the correspondent.
“The crew,” said the cook.
“Houses of refuge don’t have crews,” said the correspondent. “As I understand them, they are only
places where clothes and grub are stored for the benefit of shipwrecked people. They don’t carry
crews.”
“Oh, yes, they do,” said the cook.
“No, they don’t,” said the correspondent.
“Well, we’re not there yet, anyhow,” said the oiler, in the stern.
“Well,” said the cook, “perhaps it’s not a house of refuge that I’m thinking of as being near
Mosquito Inlet Light. Perhaps it’s a life-saving station.”
“We’re not there yet,” said the oiler, in the stern.
Chapter 2
As the boat bounced from the top of each wave, the wind tore through the hair of the hatless men,
and as the craft plopped her stern down again the spray slashed past them. The crest of each of
these waves was a hill, from the top of which the men surveyed, for a moment, a broad tumultuous
expanse; shining and wind-riven. It was probably splendid. It was probably glorious, this play of
the free sea, wild with lights of emerald and white and amber.
“Bully good thing it’s an on-shore wind,” said the cook. “If not, where would we be? Wouldn’t
have a show.”
“That’s right,” said the correspondent.
The busy oiler nodded his assent.
Then the captain, in the bow, chuckled in a way that expressed humor, contempt, tragedy, all in
one. “Do you think we’ve got much of a show, now, boys?” said he.
Whereupon the three were silent, save for a trifle of hemming and hawing. To express any
particular optimism at this time they felt to be childish and stupid, but they all doubtless possessed
this sense of the situation in their mind. A young man thinks doggedly at such times. On the other
hand, the ethics of their condition was decidedly against any open suggestion of hopelessness. So
they were silent.
“Oh, well,” said the captain, soothing his children, “we’ll get ashore all right.”
But there was that in his tone which made them think, so the oiler quoth: “Yes! If this wind
holds!”
The cook was bailing: “Yes! If we don’t catch hell in the surf.”
Canton flannel gulls flew near and far. Sometimes they sat down on the sea, near patches of brown
sea-weed that rolled over the waves with a movement like carpets on line in a gale. The birds sat
comfortably in groups, and they were envied by some in the dingey, for the wrath of the sea was
no more to them than it was to a covey of prairie chickens a thousand miles inland. Often they
came very close and stared at the men with black bead-like eyes. At these times they were
uncanny and sinister in their unblinking scrutiny, and the men hooted angrily at them, telling them
to be gone. One came, and evidently decided to alight on the top of the captain’s head. The bird
flew parallel to the boat and did not circle, but made short sidelong jumps in the air in
chicken-fashion. His black eyes were wistfully fixed upon the captain’s head. “Ugly brute,” said
the oiler to the bird. “You look as if you were made with a jack-knife.” The cook and the
correspondent swore darkly at the creature. The captain naturally wished to knock it away with the
end of the heavy painter, but he did not dare do it, because anything resembling an emphatic
gesture would have capsized this freighted boat, and so with his open hand, the captain gently and
carefully waved the gull away. After it had been discouraged from the pursuit the captain breathed
easier on account of his hair, and others breathed easier because the bird struck their minds at this
time as being somehow grewsome and ominous.
In the meantime the oiler and the correspondent rowed. And also they rowed.
They sat together in the same seat, and each rowed an oar. Then the oiler took both oars; then the
correspondent took both oars; then the oiler; then the correspondent. They rowed and they rowed.
The very ticklish part of the business was when the time came for the reclining one in the stern to
take his turn at the oars. By the very last star of truth, it is easier to steal eggs from under a hen
than it was to change seats in the dingey. First the man in the stern slid his hand along the thwart
and moved with care, as if he were of Sevres. Then the man in the rowing seat slid his hand along
the other thwart. It was all done with the most extraordinary care. As the two sidled past each
other, the whole party kept watchful eyes on the coming wave, and the captain cried: “Look out
now! Steady there!”
The brown mats of sea-weed that appeared from time to time were like islands, bits of earth. They
were travelling, apparently, neither one way nor the other. They were, to all intents stationary.
They informed the men in the boat that it was making progress slowly toward the land.
The captain, rearing cautiously in the bow, after the dingey soared on a great swell, said that he
had seen the lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet. Presently the cook remarked that he had seen it. The
correspondent was at the oars, then, and for some reason he too wished to look at the lighthouse,
but his back was toward the far shore and the waves were important, and for some time he could
not seize an opportunity to turn his head. But at last there came a wave more gentle than the others,
and when at the crest of it he swiftly scoured the western horizon.
“See it?” said the captain.
“No,” said the correspondent, slowly, “I didn’t see anything.”
“Look again,” said the captain. He pointed. “It’s exactly in that direction.”
At the top of another wave, the correspondent did as he was bid, and this time his eyes chanced on
a small still thing on the edge of the swaying horizon. It was precisely like the point of a pin. It
took an anxious eye to find a lighthouse so tiny.
“Think we’ll make it, captain?”
“If this wind holds and the boat don’t swamp, we can’t do much else,” said the captain.
The little boat, lifted by each towering sea, and splashed viciously by the crests, made progress
that in the absence of sea-weed was not apparent to those in her. She seemed just a wee thing
wallowing, miraculously, top-up, at the mercy of five oceans. Occasionally, a great spread of
water, like white flames, swarmed into her.
“Bail her, cook,” said the captain, serenely.
“All right, captain,” said the cheerful cook.
Chapter 3
IT would be difficult to describe the subtle brotherhood of men that was here established on the
seas. No one said that it was so. No one mentioned it. But it dwelt in the boat, and each man felt it
warm him. They were a captain, an oiler, a cook, and a correspondent, and they were friends,
friends in a more curiously iron-bound degree than may be common. The hurt captain, lying
against the water-jar in the bow, spoke always in a low voice and calmly, but he could never
command a more ready and swiftly obedient crew than the motley three of the dingey. It was more
than a mere recognition of what was best for the common safety. There was surely in it a quality
that was personal and heartfelt. And after this devotion to the commander of the boat there was
this comradeship that the correspondent, for instance, who had been taught to be cynical of men,
knew even at the time was the best experience of his life. But no one said that it was so. No one
mentioned it.
“I wish we had a sail,” remarked the captain. “We might try my overcoat on the end of an oar and
give you two boys a chance to rest.” So the cook and the correspondent held the mast and spread
wide the overcoat. The oiler steered, and the little boat made good way with her new rig.
Sometimes the oiler had to scull sharply to keep a sea from breaking into the boat, but otherwise
sailing was a success.
Meanwhile the light-house had been growing slowly larger. It had now almost assumed color, and
appeared like a little gray shadow on the sky. The man at the oars could not be prevented from
turning his head rather often to try for a glimpse of this little gray shadow.
At last, from the top of each wave the men in the tossing boat could see land. Even as the
light-house was an upright shadow on the sky, this land seemed but a long black shadow on the
sea. It certainly was thinner than paper. “We must be about opposite New Smyrna,” said the cook,
who had coasted this shore often in schooners. “Captain, by the way, I believe they abandoned
that life-saving station there about a year ago.”
“Did they?” said the captain.
The wind slowly died away. The cook and the correspondent were not now obliged to slave in
order to hold high the oar. But the waves continued their old impetuous swooping at the dingey,
and the little craft, no longer under way, struggled woundily over them. The oiler or the
correspondent took the oars again.
Shipwrecks are apropos of nothing. If men could only train for them and have them occur when
the men had reached pink condition, there would be less drowning at sea. Of the four in the dingey
none had slept any time worth mentioning for two days and two nights previous to embarking in
the dingey, and in the excitement of clambering about the deck of a foundering ship they had also
forgotten to eat heartily.
For these reasons, and for others, neither the oiler nor the correspondent was fond of rowing at this
time. The correspondent wondered ingenuously how in the name of all that was sane could there
be people who thought it amusing to row a boat. It was not an amusement; it was a diabolical
punishment, and even a genius of mental aberrations could never conclude that it was anything but
a horror to the muscles and a crime against the back. He mentioned to the boat in general how the
amusement of rowing struck him, and the weary-faced oiler smiled in full sympathy. Previously to
the foundering, by the way, the oiler had worked double-watch in the engine-room of the ship.
“Take her easy, now, boys,” said the captain. “Don’t spend yourselves. If we have to run a surf
you’ll need all your strength, because we’ll sure have to swim for it. Take your time.”
Slowly the land arose from the sea. From a black line it became a line of black and a line of white,
trees, and sand. Finally, the captain said that he could make out a house on the shore. “That’s the
house of refuge, sure,” said the cook. “They’ll see us before long, and come out after us.”
The distant light-house reared high. “The keeper ought to be able to make us out now, if he’s
looking through a glass,” said the captain. “He’ll notify the life-saving people.”
“None of those other boats could have got ashore to give word of the wreck,” said the oiler, in a
low voice. “Else the life-boat would be out hunting us.”
Slowly and beautifully the land loomed out of the sea. The wind came again. It had veered from
the northeast to the southeast. Finally, a new sound struck the ears of the men in the boat. It was
the low thunder of the surf on the shore. “We’ll never be able to make the light-house now,” said
the captain. “Swing her head a little more north, Billie,” said the captain.
“‘A little more north,’ sir,” said the oiler.
Whereupon the little boat turned her nose once more down the wind, and all but the oarsman
watched the shore grow. Under the influence of this expansion doubt and direful apprehension
was leaving the minds of the men. The management of the boat was still most absorbing, but it
could not prevent a quiet cheerfulness. In an hour, perhaps, they would be ashore.
Their back-bones had become thoroughly used to balancing in the boat and they now rode this
wild colt of a dingey like circus men. The correspondent thought that he had been drenched to the
skin, but happening to feel in the top pocket of his coat, he found therein eight cigars. Four of
them were soaked with sea-water; four were perfectly scatheless. After a search, somebody
produced three dry matches, and thereupon the four waifs rode in their little boat, and with an
assurance of an impending rescue shining in their eyes, puffed at the big cigars and judged well
and ill of all men. Everybody took a drink of water.
Chapter 4
“COOK,” remarked the captain, “there don’t seem to be any signs of life about your house of
refuge.”
“No,” replied the cook. “Funny they don’t see us!”
A broad stretch of lowly coast lay before the eyes of the men. It was of low dunes topped with
dark vegetation. The roar of the surf was plain, and sometimes they could see the white lip of a
wave as it spun up the beach. A tiny house was blocked out black upon the sky. Southward, the
slim light-house lifted its little gray length.
Tide, wind, and waves were swinging the dingey northward. “Funny they don’t see us,” said the
men.
The surf’s roar was here dulled, but its tone was, nevertheless, thunderous and mighty. As the boat
swam over the great rollers, the men sat listening to this roar. “We’ll swamp sure,” said
everybody.
It is fair to say here that there was not a life-saving station within twenty miles in either direction,
but the men did not know this fact and in consequence they made dark and opprobrious remarks
concerning the eyesight of the nation’s life-savers. Four scowling men sat in the dingey and
surpassed records in the invention of epithets.
“Funny they don’t see us.”
The light-heartedness of a former time had completely faded. To their sharpened minds it was
easy to conjure pictures of all kinds of incompetency and blindness and indeed, cowardice. There
was the shore of the populous land, and it was bitter and bitter to them that from it came no sign.
“Well,” said the captain, ultimately, “I suppose we’ll have to make a try for ourselves. If we stay
out here too long, we’ll none of us have strength left to swim after the boat swamps.”
And so the oiler, who was at the oars, turned the boat straight for the shore. There was a sudden
tightening of muscles. There was some thinking.
“If we don’t all get ashore –” said the captain. “If we don’t all get ashore, I suppose you fellows
know where to send news of my finish?”
They then briefly exchanged some addresses and admonitions. As for the reflections of the men,
there was a great deal of rage in them. Perchance they might be formulated thus: “If I am going to
be drowned –if I am going to be drowned –if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the
seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees?
Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred
cheese of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, she
should be deprived of the management of men’s fortunes. She is an old hen who knows not her
intention. If she has decided to drown me, why did she not do it in the beginning and save me all
this trouble. The whole affair is absurd.... But, no, she cannot mean to drown me. She dare not
drown me. She cannot drown me. Not after all this work.” Afterward the man might have had an
impulse to shake his fist at the clouds: “Just you drown me, now, and then hear what I call you!”
The billows that came at this time were more formidable. They seemed always just about to break
and roll over the little boat in a turmoil of foam. There was a preparatory and long growl in the
speech of them. No mind unused to the sea would have concluded that the dingey could ascend
these sheer heights in time. The shore was still afar. The oiler was a wily surfman. “Boys,” he said,
swiftly, “she won’t live three minutes more and we’re too far out to swim. Shall I take her to sea
again, captain?”
“Yes! Go ahead!” said the captain.
This oiler, by a series of quick miracles, and fast and steady oarsmanship, turned the boat in the
middle of the surf and took her safely to sea again.
There was a considerable silence as the boat bumped over the furrowed sea to deeper water. Then
somebody in gloom spoke. “Well, anyhow, they must have seen us from the shore by now.”
The gulls went in slanting flight up the wind toward the gray desolate east. A squall, marked by
dingy clouds, and clouds brick-red, like smoke from a burning building, appeared from the
southeast.
“What do you think of those life-saving people? Ain’t they peaches?”
“Funny they haven’t seen us.”
“Maybe they think we’re out here for sport! Maybe they think we’re fishin’. Maybe they think
we’re damned fools.”
It was a long afternoon. A changed tide tried to force them southward, but wind and wave said
northward. Far ahead, where coast-line, sea, and sky formed their mighty angle, there were little
dots which seemed to indicate a city on the shore.
“St. Augustine?”
The captain shook his head. “Too near Mosquito Inlet.”
And the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed. Then the oiler rowed. It was a weary
business. The human back can become the seat of more aches and pains than are registered in
books for the composite anatomy of a regiment. It is a limited area, but it can become the theatre
of innumerable muscular conflicts, tangles, wrenches, knots, and other comforts.
“Did you ever like to row, Billie?” asked the correspondent.
“No,” said the oiler. “Hang it.”
When one exchanged the rowing-seat for a place in the bottom of the boat, he suffered a bodily
depression that caused him to be careless of everything save an obligation to wiggle one finger.
There was cold sea-water swashing to and fro in the boat, and he lay in it. His head, pillowed on a
thwart, was within an inch of the swirl of a wave crest, and sometimes a particularly obstreperous
sea came in-board and drenched him once more. But these matters did not annoy him. It is almost
certain that if the boat had capsized he would have tumbled comfortably out upon the ocean as if
he felt sure it was a great soft mattress.
“Look! There’s a man on the shore!”
“Where?”
“There! See ‘im? See ‘im?”
“Yes, sure! He’s walking along.”
“Now he’s stopped. Look! He’s facing us!”
“He’s waving at us!”
“So he is! By thunder!”
“Ah, now, we’re all right! Now we’re all right! There’ll be a boat out here for us in half an hour.”
“He’s going on. He’s running. He’s going up to that house there.”
The remote beach seemed lower than the sea, and it required a searching glance to discern the
little black figure. The captain saw a floating stick and they rowed to it. A bath-towel was by some
weird chance in the boat, and, tying this on the stick, the captain waved it. The oarsman did not
dare turn his head, so he was obliged to ask questions.
“What’s he doing now?”
“He’s standing still again. He’s looking, I think.... There he goes again. Toward the house.... Now
he’s stopped again.”
“Is he waving at us?”
“No, not now! he was, though.”
“Look! There comes another man!”
“He’s running.”
“Look at him go, would you.”
“Why, he’s on a bicycle. Now he’s met the other man. They’re both waving at us. Look!”
“There comes something up the beach.”
“What the devil is that thing?”
“Why, it looks like a boat.”
“Why, certainly it’s a boat.”
“No, it’s on wheels.”
“Yes, so it is. Well, that must be the life-boat. They drag them along shore on a wagon.”
“That’s the life-boat, sure.”
“No, by – – , it’s –it’s an omnibus.”
“I tell you it’s a life-boat.”
“It is not! It’s an omnibus. I can see it plain. See? One of these big hotel omnibuses.”
“By thunder, you’re right. It’s an omnibus, sure as fate. What do you suppose they are doing with
an omnibus? Maybe they are going around collecting the life-crew, hey?”
“That’s it, likely. Look! There’s a fellow waving a little black flag. He’s standing on the steps of
the omnibus.
There come those other two fellows. Now they’re all talking together. Look at the fellow with the
flag. Maybe he ain’t waving it.”
“That ain’t a flag, is it? That’s his coat. Why, certainly, that’s his coat.”
“So it is. It’s his coat. He’s taken it off and is waving it around his head. But would you look at
him swing it.”
“Oh, say, there isn’t any life-saving station there. That’s just a winter resort hotel omnibus that has
brought over some of the boarders to see us drown.”
“What’s that idiot with the coat mean? What’s he signaling, anyhow?”
“It looks as if he were trying to tell us to go north. There must be a life-saving station up there.”
“No! He thinks we’re fishing. Just giving us a merry hand. See? Ah, there, Willie.”
“Well, I wish I could make something out of those signals. What do you suppose he means?”
“He don’t mean anything. He’s just playing.”
“Well, if he’d just signal us to try the surf again, or to go to sea and wait, or go north, or go south,
or go to hell –there would be some reason in it. But look at him. He just stands there and keeps his
coat revolving like a wheel. The ass!”
“There come more people.”
“Now there’s quite a mob. Look! Isn’t that a boat?”
“Where? Oh, I see where you mean. No, that’s no boat.”
“That fellow is still waving his coat.”
“He must think we like to see him do that. Why don’t he quit it. It don’t mean anything.”
“I don’t know. I think he is trying to make us go north. It must be that there’s a life-saving station
there somewhere.”
“Say, he ain’t tired yet. Look at ‘im wave.”
“Wonder how long he can keep that up. He’s been revolving his coat ever since he caught sight of
us. He’s an idiot. Why aren’t they getting men to bring a boat out. A fishing boat –one of those big
yawls –could come out here all right. Why don’t he do something?”
“Oh, it’s all right, now.”
“They’ll have a boat out here for us in less than no time, now that they’ve seen us.”
A faint yellow tone came into the sky over the low land. The shadows on the sea slowly deepened.
The wind bore coldness with it, and the men began to shiver.
“Holy smoke!” said one, allowing his voice to express his impious mood, “if we keep on
monkeying out here! If we’ve got to flounder out here all night!”
“Oh, we’ll never have to stay here all night! Don’t you worry. They’ve seen us now, and it won’t
be long before they’ll come chasing out after us.”
The shore grew dusky. The man waving a coat blended gradually into this gloom, and it
swallowed in the same manner the omnibus and the group of people. The spray, when it dashed
uproariously over the side, made the voyagers shrink and swear like men who were being branded.
“I’d like to catch the chump who waved the coat. I feel like soaking him one, just for luck.”
“Why? What did he do?”
“Oh, nothing, but then he seemed so damned cheerful.”
In the meantime the oiler rowed, and then the correspondent rowed, and then the oiler rowed.
Gray-faced and bowed forward, they mechanically, turn by turn, plied the leaden oars. The form
of the light-house had vanished from the southern horizon, but finally a pale star appeared, just
lifting from the sea. The streaked saffron in the west passed before the all-merging darkness, and
the sea to the east was black. The land had vanished, and was expressed only by the low and drear
thunder of the surf.
“If I am going to be drowned –if I am going to be drowned –if I am going to be drowned, why, in
the name of the seven mad gods, who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate
sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble
the sacred cheese of life?”
The patient captain, drooped over the water-jar, was sometimes obliged to speak to the oarsman.
“Keep her head up! Keep her head up!”
“‘Keep her head up,’ sir.” The voices were weary and low.
This was surely a quiet evening. All save the oarsman lay heavily and listlessly in the boat’s
bottom. As for him, his eyes were just capable of noting the tall black waves that swept forward in
a most sinister silence, save for an occasional subdued growl of a crest.
The cook’s head was on a thwart, and he looked without interest at the water under his nose. He
was deep in other scenes. Finally he spoke. “Billie,” he murmured, dreamfully, “what kind of pie
do you like best?”
Chapter 5
“PIE,” said the oiler and the correspondent, agitatedly. “Don’t talk about those things, blast you!”
“Well,” said the cook, “I was just thinking about ham sandwiches, and –”
A night on the sea in an open boat is a long night. As darkness settled finally, the shine of the light,
lifting from the sea in the south, changed to full gold. On the northern horizon a new light
appeared, a small bluish gleam on the edge of the waters. These two lights were the furniture of
the world. Otherwise there was nothing but waves.
Two men huddled in the stern, and distances were so magnificent in the dingey that the rower was
enabled to keep his feet partly warmed by thrusting them under his companions. Their legs indeed
extended far under the rowing-seat until they touched the feet of the captain forward. Sometimes,
despite the efforts of the tired oarsman, a wave came piling into the boat, an icy wave of the night,
and the chilling water soaked them anew. They would twist their bodies for a moment and groan,
and sleep the dead sleep once more, while the water in the boat gurgled about them as the craft
rocked.
The plan of the oiler and the correspondent was for one to row until he lost the ability, and then
arouse the other from his sea-water couch in the bottom of the boat.
The oiler plied the oars until his head drooped forward, and the overpowering sleep blinded him.
And he rowed yet afterward. Then he touched a man in the bottom of the boat, and called his
name. “Will you spell me for a little while?” he said, meekly.
“Sure, Billie,” said the correspondent, awakening and dragging himself to a sitting position. They
exchanged places carefully, and the oiler, cuddling down to the sea-water at the cook’s side,
seemed to go to sleep instantly.
The particular violence of the sea had ceased. The waves came without snarling. The obligation of
the man at the oars was to keep the boat headed so that the tilt of the rollers would not capsize her,
and to preserve her from filling when the crests rushed past. The black waves were silent and hard
to be seen in the darkness. Often one was almost upon the boat before the oarsman was aware.
In a low voice the correspondent addressed the captain. He was not sure that the captain was
awake, although this iron man seemed to be always awake. “Captain, shall I keep her making for
that light north, sir?”
The same steady voice answered him. “Yes. Keep it about two points off the port bow.”
The cook had tied a life-belt around himself in order to get even the warmth which this clumsy
cork contrivance could donate, and he seemed almost stove-like when a rower, whose teeth
invariably chattered wildly as soon as he ceased his labor, dropped down to sleep.
The correspondent, as he rowed, looked down at the two men sleeping under foot. The cook’s arm
was around the oiler’s shoulders, and, with their fragmentary clothing and haggard faces, they
were the babes of the sea, a grotesque rendering of the old babes in the wood.
Later he must have grown stupid at his work, for suddenly there was a growling of water, and a
crest came with a roar and a swash into the boat, and it was a wonder that it did not set the cook
afloat in his life-belt. The cook continued to sleep, but the oiler sat up, blinking his eyes and
shaking with the new cold.
“Oh, I’m awful sorry, Billie,” said the correspondent, contritely.
“That’s all right, old boy,” said the oiler, and lay down again and was asleep.
Presently it seemed that even the captain dozed, and the correspondent thought that he was the one
man afloat on all the oceans. The wind had a voice as it came over the waves, and it was sadder
than the end.
There was a long, loud swishing astern of the boat, and a gleaming trail of phosphorescence, like
blue flame, was furrowed on the black waters. It might have been made by a monstrous knife.
Then there came a stillness, while the correspondent breathed with the open mouth and looked at
the sea.
Suddenly there was another swish and another long flash of bluish light, and this time it was
alongside the boat, and might almost have been reached with an oar. The correspondent saw an
enormous fin speed like a shadow through the water, hurling the crystalline spray and leaving the
long glowing trail.
The correspondent looked over his shoulder at the captain. His face was hidden, and he seemed to
be asleep. He looked at the babes of the sea. They certainly were asleep. So, being bereft of
sympathy, he leaned a little way to one side and swore softly into the sea.
But the thing did not then leave the vicinity of the boat. Ahead or astern, on one side or the other,
at intervals long or short, fled the long sparkling streak, and there was to be heard the whirroo of
the dark fin. The speed and power of the thing was greatly to be admired. It cut the water like a
gigantic and keen projectile.
The presence of this biding thing did not affect the man with the same horror that it would if he
had been a picnicker. He simply looked at the sea dully and swore in an undertone.
Nevertheless, it is true that he did not wish to be alone with the thing. He wished one of his
companions to awaken by chance and keep him company with it. But the captain hung motionless
over the water-jar and the oiler and the cook in the bottom of the boat were plunged in slumber.
Chapter 6
“IF I am going to be drowned –if I am going to be drowned –if I am going to be drowned, why, in
the name of the seven mad gods, who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate
sand and trees?”
During this dismal night, it may be remarked that a man would conclude that it was really the
intention of the seven mad gods to drown him, despite the abominable injustice of it. For it was
certainly an abominable injustice to drown a man who had worked so hard, so hard. The man felt
it would be a crime most unnatural. Other people had drowned at sea since galleys swarmed with
painted sails, but still –
When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would
not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he
hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples. Any visible expression of nature
would surely be pelleted with his jeers.
Then, if there be no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a
personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: “Yes,
but I love myself.”
A high cold star on a winter’s night is the word he feels that she says to him. Thereafter he knows
the pathos of his situation.
The men in the dingey had not discussed these matters, but each had, no doubt, reflected upon
them in silence and according to his mind. There was seldom any expression upon their faces save
the general one of complete weariness. Speech was devoted to the business of the boat.
To chime the notes of his emotion, a verse mysteriously entered the correspondent’s head. He had
even forgotten that he had forgotten this verse, but it suddenly was in his mind.
A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers;
There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth of woman’s tears;
But a comrade stood beside him, and he took that comrade’s hand
And he said: “I shall never see my own, my native land.”
In his childhood, the correspondent had been made acquainted with the fact that a soldier of the
Legion lay dying in Algiers, but he had never regarded the fact as important. Myriads of his
school-fellows had informed him of the soldier’s plight, but the dinning had naturally ended by
making him perfectly indifferent. He had never considered it his affair that a soldier of the Legion
lay dying in Algiers, nor had it appeared to him as a matter for sorrow. It was less to him than
breaking of a pencil’s point.
Now, however, it quaintly came to him as a human, living thing. It was no longer merely a picture
of a few throes in the breast of a poet, meanwhile drinking tea and warming his feet at the grate; it
was an actuality –stern, mournful, and fine.
The correspondent plainly saw the soldier. He lay on the sand with his feet out straight and still.
While his pale left hand was upon his chest in an attempt to thwart the going of his life, the blood
came between his fingers. In the far Algerian distance, a city of low square forms was set against a
sky that was faint with the last sunset hues. The correspondent, plying the oars and dreaming of
the slow and slower movements of the lips of the soldier, was moved by a profound and perfectly
impersonal comprehension. He was sorry for the soldier of the Legion who lay dying in Algiers.
The thing which had followed the boat and waited had evidently grown bored at the delay. There
was no longer to be heard the slash of the cut-water, and there was no longer the flame of the long
trail. The light in the north still glimmered, but it was apparently no nearer to the boat. Sometimes
the boom of the surf rang in the correspondent’s ears, and he turned the craft seaward then and
rowed harder. Southward, someone had evidently built a watch-fire on the beach. It was too low
and too far to be seen, but it made a shimmering, roseate reflection upon the bluff back of it, and
this could be discerned from the boat. The wind came stronger, and sometimes a wave suddenly
raged out like a mountain-cat and there was to be seen the sheen and sparkle of a broken crest.
The captain, in the bow, moved on his water-jar and sat erect. “Pretty long night,” he observed to
the correspondent. He looked at the shore. “Those life-saving people take their time.”
“Did you see that shark playing around?”
“Yes, I saw him. He was a big fellow, all right.”
“Wish I had known you were awake.”
Later the correspondent spoke into the bottom of the boat.
“Billie!” There was a slow and gradual disentanglement. “Billie, will you spell me?”
“Sure,” said the oiler.
As soon as the correspondent touched the cold comfortable sea-water in the bottom of the boat,
and had huddled close to the cook’s life-belt he was deep in sleep, despite the fact that his teeth
played all the popular airs. This sleep was so good to him that it was but a moment before he
heard a voice call his name in a tone that demonstrated the last stages of exhaustion. “Will you
spell me?”
“Sure, Billie.”
The light in the north had mysteriously vanished, but the correspondent took his course from the
wide-awake captain.
Later in the night they took the boat farther out to sea, and the captain directed the cook to take
one oar at the stern and keep the boat facing the seas. He was to call out if he should hear the
thunder of the surf. This plan enabled the oiler and the correspondent to get respite together.
“We’ll give those boys a chance to get into shape again,” said the captain. They curled down and,
after a few preliminary chatterings and trembles, slept once more the dead sleep. Neither knew
they had bequeathed to the cook the company of another shark, or perhaps the same shark.
As the boat caroused on the waves, spray occasionally bumped over the side and gave them a
fresh soaking, but this had no power to break their repose. The ominous slash of the wind and the
water affected them as it would have affected mummies.
“Boys,” said the cook, with the notes of every reluctance in his voice, “she’s drifted in pretty close.
I guess one of you had better take her to sea again.” The correspondent, aroused, heard the crash
of the toppled crests.
As he was rowing, the captain gave him some whiskey and water, and this steadied the chills out
of him. “If I ever get ashore and anybody shows me even a photograph of an oar –”
At last there was a short conversation.
“Billie.... Billie, will you spell me?”
“Sure,” said the oiler.
Chapter 7
WHEN the correspondent again opened his eyes, the sea and the sky were each of the gray hue of
the dawning. Later, carmine and gold was painted upon the waters. The morning appeared finally,
in its splendor with a sky of pure blue, and the sunlight flamed on the tips of the waves.
On the distant dunes were set many little black cottages, and a tall white wind-mill reared above
them. No man, nor dog, nor bicycle appeared on the beach. The cottages might have formed a
deserted village.
The voyagers scanned the shore. A conference was held in the boat. “Well,” said the captain, “if
no help is coming, we might better try a run through the surf right away. If we stay out here much
longer we will be too weak to do anything for ourselves at all.” The others silently acquiesced in
this reasoning. The boat was headed for the beach. The correspondent wondered if none ever
ascended the tall wind-tower, and if then they never looked seaward. This tower was a giant,
standing with its back to the plight of the ants. It represented in a degree, to the correspondent, the
serenity of nature amid the struggles of the individual –nature in the wind, and nature in the vision
of men. She did not seem cruel to him, nor beneficent, nor treacherous, nor wise. But she was
indifferent, flatly indifferent. It is, perhaps, plausible that a man in this situation, impressed with
the unconcern of the universe, should see the innumerable flaws of his life and have them taste
wickedly in his mind and wish for another chance. A distinction between right and wrong seems
absurdly clear to him, then, in this new ignorance of the grave-edge, and he understands that if he
were given another opportunity he would mend his conduct and his words, and be better and
brighter during an introduction, or at a tea.
“Now, boys,” said the captain, “she is going to swamp sure. All we can do is to work her in as far
as possible, and then when she swamps, pile out and scramble for the beach. Keep cool now and
don’t jump until she swamps sure.”
The oiler took the oars. Over his shoulders he scanned the surf. “Captain,” he said, “I think I’d
better bring her about, and keep her head-on to the seas and back her in.”
“All right, Billie,” said the captain. “Back her in.” The oiler swung the boat then and, seated in the
stern, the cook and the correspondent were obliged to look over their shoulders to contemplate the
lonely and indifferent shore.
The monstrous inshore rollers heaved the boat high until the men were again enabled to see the
white sheets of water scudding up the slanted beach. “We won’t get in very close,” said the
captain. Each time a man could wrest his attention from the rollers, he turned his glance toward
the shore, and in the expression of the eyes during this contemplation there was a singular quality.
The correspondent, observing the others, knew that they were not afraid, but the full meaning of
their glances was shrouded.
As for himself, he was too tired to grapple fundamentally with the fact. He tried to coerce his mind
into thinking of it, but the mind was dominated at this time by the muscles, and the muscles said
they did not care. It merely occurred to him that if he should drown it would be a shame.
There were no hurried words, no pallor, no plain agitation. The men simply looked at the shore.
“Now, remember to get well clear of the boat when you jump,” said the captain.
Seaward the crest of a roller suddenly fell with a thunderous crash, and the long white comber
came roaring down upon the boat.
“Steady now,” said the captain. The men were silent. They turned their eyes from the shore to the
comber and waited. The boat slid up the incline, leaped at the furious top, bounced over it, and
swung down the long back of the waves. Some water had been shipped and the cook bailed it out.
But the next crest crashed also. The tumbling boiling flood of white water caught the boat and
whirled it almost perpendicular. Water swarmed in from all sides. The correspondent had his
hands on the gunwale at this time, and when the water entered at that place he swiftly withdrew
his fingers, as if he objected to wetting them.
The little boat, drunken with this weight of water, reeled and snuggled deeper into the sea.
“Bail her out, cook! Bail her out,” said the captain.
“All right, captain,” said the cook.
“Now, boys, the next one will do for us, sure,” said the oiler. “Mind to jump clear of the boat.”
The third wave moved forward, huge, furious, implacable. It fairly swallowed the dingey, and
almost simultaneously the men tumbled into the sea. A piece of life-belt had lain in the bottom of
the boat, and as the correspondent went overboard he held this to his chest with his left hand.
The January water was icy, and he reflected immediately that it was colder than he had expected
to find it off the coast of Florida. This appeared to his dazed mind as a fact important enough to be
noted at the time. The coldness of the water was sad; it was tragic. This fact was somehow mixed
and confused with his opinion of his own situation that it seemed almost a proper reason for tears.
The water was cold.
When he came to the surface he was conscious of little but the noisy water. Afterward he saw his
companions in the sea. The oiler was ahead in the race. He was swimming strongly and rapidly.
Off to the correspondent’s left, the cook’s great white and corked back bulged out of the water,
and in the rear the captain was hanging with his one good hand to the keel of the overturned
dingey.
There is a certain immovable quality to a shore, and the correspondent wondered at it amid the
confusion of the sea.
It seemed also very attractive, but the correspondent knew that it was a long journey, and he
paddled leisurely. The piece of life-preserver lay under him, and sometimes he whirled down the
incline of a wave as if he were on a hand-sled.
But finally he arrived at a place in the sea where travel was beset with difficulty. He did not pause
swimming to inquire what manner of current had caught him, but there his progress ceased. The
shore was set before him like a bit of scenery on a stage, and he looked at it and understood with
his eyes each detail of it.
As the cook passed, much farther to the left, the captain was calling to him, “Turn over on your
back, cook! Turn over on your back and use the oar.”
“All right, sir!” The cook turned on his back, and, paddling with an oar, went ahead as if he were a
canoe.
Presently the boat also passed to the left of the correspondent with the captain clinging with one
hand to the keel. He would have appeared like a man raising himself to look over a board fence, if
it were not for the extraordinary gymnastics of the boat. The correspondent marvelled that the
captain could still hold to it.
They passed on, nearer to shore –the oiler, the cook, the captain –and following them went the
water-jar, bouncing gayly over the seas.
The correspondent remained in the grip of this strange new enemy –a current. The shore, with its
white slope of sand and its green bluff, topped with little silent cottages, was spread like a picture
before him. It was very near to him then, but he was impressed as one who in a gallery looks at a
scene from Brittany or Algiers.
He thought: “I am going to drown? Can it be possible? Can it be possible? Can it be possible?”
Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.
But later a wave perhaps whirled him out of this small deadly current, for he found suddenly that
he could again make progress toward the shore. Later still, he was aware that the captain, clinging
with one hand to the keel of the dingey, had his face turned away from the shore and toward him,
and was calling his name. “Come to the boat! Come to the boat!”
In his struggle to reach the captain and the boat, he reflected that when one gets properly wearied,
drowning must really be a comfortable arrangement, a cessation of hostilities accompanied by a
large degree of relief, and he was glad of it, for the main thing in his mind for some moments had
been horror of the temporary agony. He did not wish to be hurt.
Presently he saw a man running along the shore. He was undressing with most remarkable speed.
Coat, trousers, shirt, everything flew magically off him.
“Come to the boat,” called the captain.
“All right, captain.” As the correspondent paddled, he saw the captain let himself down to bottom
and leave the boat. Then the correspondent performed his one little marvel of the voyage. A large
wave caught him and flung him with ease and supreme speed completely over the boat and far
beyond it. It struck him even then as an event in gymnastics, and a true miracle of the sea. An
overturned boat in the surf is not a plaything to a swimming man.
The correspondent arrived in water that reached only to his waist, but his condition did not enable
him to stand for more than a moment. Each wave knocked him into a heap, and the under-tow
pulled at him.
Then he saw the man who had been running and undressing, and undressing and running, come
bounding into the water. He dragged ashore the cook, and then waded toward the captain, but the
captain waved him away, and sent him to the correspondent. He was naked, naked as a tree in
winter, but a halo was about his head, and he shone like a saint. He gave a strong pull, and a long
drag, and a bully heave at the correspondent’s hand. The correspondent, schooled in the minor
formulae, said: “Thanks, old man.” But suddenly the man cried: “What’s that?” He pointed a swift
finger. The correspondent said: “Go.”
In the shallows, face downward, lay the oiler. His forehead touched sand that was periodically,
between each wave, clear of the sea.
The correspondent did not know all that transpired afterward. When he achieved safe ground he
fell, striking the sand with each particular part of his body. It was as if he had dropped from a roof,
but the thud was grateful to him.
It seems that instantly the beach was populated with men with blankets, clothes, and flasks, and
women with coffee-pots and all the remedies sacred to their minds. The welcome of the land to the
men from the sea was warm and generous, but a still and dripping shape was carried slowly up the
beach, and the land’s welcome for it could only be the different and sinister hospitality of the
grave.
When it came night, the white waves paced to and fro in the moonlight, and the wind brought the
sound of the great sea’s voice to the men on shore, and they felt that they could then be
interpreters.
Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941), was born in Camden, Ohio, the son of a roving, likable,
improvident, and talkative man, who often appears under one name or another in Anderson’s
works. After some intermittent schooling, Anderson enlisted in the Army for service in Cuba
during the Spanish-American War. A few years later –- in the spirit of rebellion against industrial
and commercial civilization which was to color his writing thereafter –- he walked out of his job
as manager of an Ohio paint factory. Going to Chicago, then in the ferment of a literary
renaissance, he made friends with writers and began to publish his own poetry and fiction. With
the appearance in 1919 of Winesburg, Ohio he became famous. As in the collections that followed,
the stories of this book show life and desire frustrated by the provincialism of the Midwest.
Characteristic of his work is a tone of melancholy reminiscence in which he projects remembered
realities on the screen of a philosophic imagination. His autobiography, A Story-Teller’s Story
(1924), is partly fictional, as most of his fiction is autobiographical. His novels include Windy
McPherson’s Son (1916), Poor White (1920), Many Marriages (1923), and Dark Laughter (1925).
His later collections of stories are The Triumph of the Egg (1921), Horses and Men (1923), and
Death in the Woods and Other Stories. (1933).
Death in the Woods
I
She was an old woman and lived on a farm near the town in which I lived. All country and
small-town people have seen such old women, but no one knows much about them. Such an old
woman comes into town driving an old worn-out horse or she comes afoot carrying a basket. She
may own a few hens and have eggs to sell. She brings them in a basket and takes them to a grocer.
There she trades them in. She gets some salt pork and some beans. Then she gets a pound or two
of sugar and some flour.
Afterwards she goes to the butcher’s and asks for some dog-meat. She may spend ten or fifteen
cents, but when she does she asks for something. Formerly the butchers gave liver to anyone who
wanted to carry it away. In our family we were always having it. Once one of my brothers got a
whole cow’s liver at the slaughter-house near the fairgrounds in our town. We had it until we were
sick of it. It never cost a cent. I have hated the thought of it ever since.
The old farm woman got some liver and a soup-bone. She never visited with any one, and as soon
as she got what she wanted she lit out for home. It made quite a load for such an old body. No one
gave her a lift. People drive right down a road and never notice an old woman like that.
There was such an old woman who used to come into town past our house one summer and fall
when I was a young boy and was sick with what was called inflammatory rheumatism. She went
home later carrying a heavy pack on her back. Two or three large gaunt-looking dogs followed at
her heels.
The old woman was nothing special. She was one of the nameless ones that hardly anyone knows,
but she got into my thoughts. I have just suddenly now, after all these years, remembered her and
what happened. It is a story. Her name was Grimes, and she lived with her husband and son in a
small unpainted house on the bank of a small creek four miles from town.
The husband and son were a tough lot. Although the son was but twenty-one, he had already
served a term in jail. It was whispered about that the woman’s husband stole horses and ran them
off to some other county. Now and then, when a horse turned up missing, the man had also
disappeared. No one ever caught him. Once, when I was loafing at Tom Whitehead’s livery-barn,
the man came there and sat on the bench in front. Two or three other men were there, but no one
spoke to him. He sat for a few minutes and then got up and went away. When he was leaving he
turned around and stared at the men. There was a look of defiance in his eyes. “Well, I have tried
to be friendly. You don’t want to talk to me. It has been so wherever I have gone in this town. If,
someday, one of your fine horses turns up missing, well, then what?” He did not say anything
actually. “I’d like to bust one of you on the jaw,” was about what his eyes said. I remember how
the look in his eyes made me shiver.
The old man belonged to a family that had had money once. His name was Jake Grimes. It all
comes back clearly now. His father, John Grimes, had owned a sawmill when the country was
new, and had made money. Then he got to drinking and running after women. When he died there
wasn’t much left.
Jake blew in the rest. Pretty soon there wasn’t any more lumber to cut and his land was nearly all
gone.
He got his wife off a German farmer, for whom he went to work one June day in the wheat harvest.
She was a young thing then and scared to death. You see, the farmer was up to something with the
girl--she was, I think, a bound girl and his wife had her suspicions. She took it out on the girl
when the man wasn’t around. Then, when the wife had to go off to town for supplies, the farmer
got after her. She told young Jake that nothing really ever happened, but he didn’t know whether
to believe it or not.
He got her pretty easy himself, the first time he was out with her. He wouldn’t have married her if
the German farmer hadn’t tried to tell him where to get off. He got her to go riding with him in his
buggy one night when he was threshing on the place, and then he came for her the next Sunday
night.
She managed to get out of the house without her employer’s seeing, but when she was getting into
the buggy he showed up. It was almost dark, and he just popped up suddenly at the horse’s head.
He grabbed the horse by the bridle and Jake got out his buggy-whip.
They had it out all right! The German was a tough one. Maybe he didn’t care whether his wife
knew or not. Jake hit him over the face and shoulders with the buggy-whip, but the horse got to
acting up and he had to get out.
Then the two men went for it. The girl didn’t see it. The horse started to run away and went nearly
a mile down the road before the girl got him stopped. Then she managed to tie him to a tree beside
the road. (I wonder how I know all this. It must have stuck in my mind from small-town tales
when I was a boy.) Jake found her there after he got through with the German. She was huddled
up in the buggy seat, crying, scared to death. She told Jake a lot of stuff, how the German had tried
to get her, how he chased her once into the barn, how another time, when they happened to be
alone in the house together, he tore her dress open clear down the front. The German, she said,
might have got her that time if he hadn’t heard his old woman drive in at the gate. She had been
off to town for supplies. Well, she would be putting the horse in the barn. The German managed to
sneak off to the fields without his wife seeing. He told the girl he would kill her if she told. What
could she do? She told a lie about ripping her dress in the barn when she was feeding the stock. I
remember now that she was a bound girl and did not know where her father and mother were.
Maybe she did not have any father. You know what I mean.
Such bound children were often enough cruelly treated. They were children who had no parents,
slaves really. There were very few orphan homes then. They were legally bound into some home.
It was a matter of pure luck how it came out.
II
She married Jake and had a son and daughter, but the daughter died.
Then she settled down to feed stock. That was her job. At the German’s place she had cooked the
food for the German and his wife. The wife was a strong woman with big hips and worked most of
the time in the fields with her husband. She fed them and fed the cows in the barn, fed the pigs, the
horses and the chickens. Every moment of every day, as a young girl, was spent feeding
something.
Then she married Jake Grimes and he had to be fed. She was a slight thing, and when she had
been married for three or four years, and after the two children were born, her slender shoulders
became stooped.
Jake always had a lot of big dogs around the house, that stood near the unused sawmill near the
creek. He was always trading horses when he wasn’t stealing something and had a lot of poor
bony ones about. Also he kept three or four pigs and a cow. They were all pastured in the few
acres left of the Grimes place and Jake did little enough work.
He went into debt for a threshing outfit and ran it for several years, but it did not pay. People did
not trust him. They were afraid he would steal the grain at night. He had to go a long way off to
get work and it cost too much to get there. In the winter he hunted and cut a little firewood, to be
sold in some nearby town. When the son grew up he was just like the father. They got drunk
together. If there wasn’t anything to eat in the house when they came home the old man gave his
old woman a cut over the head. She had a few chickens of her own and had to kill one of them in a
hurry. When they were all killed she wouldn’t have any eggs to sell when she went to town, and
then what would she do?
She had to scheme all her life about getting things fed, getting the pigs fed so they would grow fat
and could be butchered in the Fall. When they were butchered her husband took most of the meat
off to town and sold it. If he did not do it first the boy did. They fought sometimes and when they
fought the old woman stood aside trembling.
She had got the habit of silence anyway--that was fixed. Sometimes, when she began to look
old--she wasn’t forty yet--and when the husband and son were both off, trading horses or drinking
or hunting or stealing, she went around the house and the barnyard muttering to herself.
How was she going to get everything fed?--that was her problem. The dogs had to be fed. There
wasn’t enough hay in the barn for the horses and the cow. If she didn’t feed the chickens how
could they lay eggs? Without eggs to sell how could she get things in town, things she had to have
to keep the life of the farm going? Thank heaven, she did not have to feed her husband--in a
certain way. That hadn’t lasted long after their marriage and after the babies came. Where he went
on his long trips she did not know. Sometimes he was gone from home for weeks, and after the
boy grew up they went off together.
They left everything at home for her to manage and she had no money. She knew no one. No one
ever talked to her in town. When it was winter she had to gather sticks of wood for her fire, had to
try to keep the stock fed with very little grain.
The stock in the barn cried to her hungrily, the dogs followed her about. In the winter the hens laid
few enough eggs. They huddled in the corners of the barn and she kept watching them. If a hen
lays an egg in the barn in the winter and you do not find it, it freezes and breaks.
One day in winter the old woman went off to town with a few eggs and the dogs followed her. She
did not get started until nearly three o’clock and the snow was heavy. She hadn’t been feeling very
well for several days and so she went muttering along, scantily clad, her shoulders stooped. She
had an old grain bag in which she carried her eggs, tucked away down in the bottom. There
weren’t many of them, but in winter the price of eggs is up. She would get a little meat in
exchange for the eggs, some salt pork, a little sugar, and some coffee perhaps. It might be the
butcher would give her a piece of liver.
When she had got to town and was trading in her eggs the dogs lay by the door outside. She did
pretty well, got the things she needed, more than she had hoped. Then she went to the butcher and
he gave her some liver and some dog-meat.
It was the first time anyone had spoken to her in a friendly way for a long time. The butcher was
alone in his shop when she came in and was annoyed by the thought of such a sick-looking old
woman out on such a day. It was bitter cold and the snow, that had let up during the afternoon,
was falling again. The butcher said something about her husband and her son, swore at them, and
the old woman stared at him, a look of mild surprise in her eyes as he talked. He said that if either
the husband or the son were going to get any of the liver or the heavy bones with scraps of meat
hanging to them that he had put into the grain bag, he’d see him starve first.
Starve, eh? Well, things had to be fed. Men had to be fed, and the horses that weren’t any good but
maybe could be traded off, and the poor thin cow that hadn’t given any milk for three months.
Horses, cows, pigs, dogs, men.
III
The old woman had to get back before darkness came if she could. The dogs followed at her heels,
sniffing at the heavy grain bag she had fastened on her back. When she got to the edge of town she
stopped by a fence and tied the bag on her back with a piece of rope she had carried in her
dress-pocket for just that purpose. That was an easier way to carry it. Her arms ached. It was hard
when she had to crawl over fences and once she fell over and landed in the snow. The dogs went
frisking about. She had to struggle to get to her feet again, but she made it. The point of climbing
over the fences was that there was a short cut over a hill and through a wood. She might have gone
around by the road, but it was a mile farther that way. She was afraid she couldn’t make it. And
then, besides, the stock had to be fed. There was a little hay left and a little corn. Perhaps her
husband and son would bring some home when they came. They had driven off in the only buggy
the Grimes family had, a rickety thing, a rickety horse hitched to the buggy, two other rickety
horses led by halters. They were going to trade horses, get a little money if they could. They might
come home drunk. It would be well to have something in the house when they came back.
The son had an affair on with a woman at the county seat, fifteen miles away. She was a rough
enough woman, a tough one. Once, in the summer, the son had brought her to the house. Both she
and the son had been drinking. Jake Grimes was away and the son and his woman ordered the old
woman about like a servant. She didn’t mind much; she was used to it. Whatever happened she
never said anything. That was her way of getting along. She had managed that way when she was
a young girl at the German’s and ever since she had married Jake. That time her son brought his
woman to the house they stayed all night, sleeping together just as though they were married. It
hadn’t shocked the old woman, not much. She had got past being shocked early in life.
With the pack on her back she went painfully along across an open field, wading in the deep snow,
and got into the woods.
There was a path, but it was hard to follow. Just beyond the top of the hill, where the woods was
thickest, there was a small clearing. Had someone once thought of building a house there? The
clearing was as large as a building lot in town, large enough for a house and a garden. The path
ran along the side of the clearing, and when she got there the old woman sat down to rest at the
foot of a tree.
It was a foolish thing to do. When she got herself placed, the pack against the tree’s trunk, it was
nice, but what about getting up again? She worried about that for a moment and then quietly
closed her eyes.
She must have slept for a time. When you are about so cold you can’t get any colder. The
afternoon grew a little warmer and the snow came thicker than ever. Then after a time the weather
cleared. The moon even came out.
There were four Grimes dogs that had followed Mrs. Grimes into town, all tall gaunt fellows.
Such men as Jake Grimes and his son always keep just such dogs. They kick and abuse them, but
they stay. The Grimes dogs, in order to keep from starving, had to do a lot of foraging for
themselves, and they had been at it while the old woman slept with her back to the tree at the side
of the clearing. They had been chasing rabbits in the woods and in adjoining fields and in their
ranging had picked up three other farm dogs.
After a time all the dogs came back to the clearing. They were excited about something. Such
nights, cold and clear and with a moon, do things to dogs. It may be that some old instinct, come
down from the time when they were wolves and ranged the woods in packs on winter nights,
comes back into them.
The dogs in the clearing, before the old woman, had caught two or three rabbits and their
immediate hunger had been satisfied. They began to play, running in circles in the clearing. Round
and round they ran, each dog’s nose at the tail of the next dog. In the clearing, under the
snow-laden trees and under the wintry moon they made a strange picture, running thus silently, in
a circle their running had beaten in the soft snow. The dogs made no sound. They ran around and
around in the circle.
It may have been that the old woman saw them doing that before she died. She may have
awakened once or twice and looked at the strange sight with dim old eyes.
She wouldn’t be very cold now, just drowsy. Life hangs on a long time. Perhaps the old woman
was out of her head. She may have dreamed of her girlhood, at the German’s, and before that,
when she was a child and before her mother lit out and left her.
Her dreams couldn’t have been very pleasant. Not many pleasant things had happened to her. Now
and then one of the Grimes dogs left the running circle and came to stand before her. The dog
thrust his face close to her face. His red tongue was hanging out.
The running of the dogs may have been a kind of death ceremony. It may have been that the
primitive instinct of the wolf, having been aroused in the dogs by the night and the running, made
them somehow afraid.
“Now we are no longer wolves. We are dogs, the servants of men. Keep alive, man! When man
dies we becomes wolves again.”
When one of the dogs came to where the old woman sat with her back against the tree and thrust
his nose close to her face he seemed satisfied and went back to run with the pack. All the Grimes
dogs did it at some time during the evening, before she died. I knew all about it afterward, when I
grew to be a man, because once in a woods in Illinois, on another Winter night, I saw a pack of
dogs act just like that. The dogs were waiting for me to die as they had waited for the old woman
that night when I was a child, but when it happened to me I was a young man and had no intention
whatever of dying.
The old woman died softly and quietly. When she was dead and when one of the Grimes dogs had
come to her and had found her dead all the dogs stopped running.
They gathered about her.
Well, she was dead now. She had fed the Grimes dogs when she was alive, what about now?
There was the pack on her back, the grain bag containing the piece of salt pork, the liver the
butcher had given her, the dog-meat, the soup bones. The butcher in town, having been suddenly
overcome with a feeling of pity, had loaded her grain bag heavily. It had been a big haul for the
old woman.
It was a big haul for the dogs now.
IV
One of the Grimes dogs sprang suddenly out from among the others and began worrying the pack
on the old woman’s back. Had the dogs really been wolves that one would have been the leader of
the pack. What he did, all the others did.
All of them sank their teeth into the grain bag the old woman had fastened with ropes to her back.
They dragged the old woman’s body out into the open clearing. The worn-out dress was quickly
torn from her shoulders. When she was found, a day or two later, the dress had been torn from her
body clear to the hips, but the dogs had not touched her body. They had got the meat out of the
grain bag, that was all. Her body was frozen stiff when it was found, and the shoulders were so
narrow and the body so slight that in death it looked like the body of some charming young girl.
Such things happened in towns of the Middle West, on farms near town, when I was a boy. A
hunter out after rabbits found the old woman’s body and did not touch it. Something, the beaten
round path in the little snow-covered clearing, the silence of the place, the place where the dogs
had worried the body trying to pull the grain bag away or tear it open--something startled the man
and he hurried off to town.
I was in Main street with one of my brothers who was town newsboy and who was taking the
afternoon papers to the stores. It was almost night.
The hunter came into a grocery and told his story. Then he went to a hardware-shop and into a
drugstore. Men began to gather on the sidewalks. Then they started out along the road to the place
in the woods.
My brother should have gone on about his business of distributing papers but he didn’t. Every one
was going to the woods. The undertaker went and the town marshal. Several men got on a dray
and rode out to where the path left the road and went into the woods, but the horses weren’t very
sharply shod and slid about on the slippery roads. They made no better time than those of us who
walked.
The town marshal was a large man whose leg had been injured in the Civil War. He carried a
heavy cane and limped rapidly along the road. My brother and I followed at his heels, and as we
went other men and boys joined the crowd.
It had grown dark by the time we got to where the old woman had left the road but the moon had
come out. The marshal was thinking there might have been a murder. He kept asking the hunter
questions. The hunter went along with his gun across his shoulders, a dog following at his heels. It
isn’t often a rabbit hunter has a chance to be so conspicuous. He was taking full advantage of it,
leading the procession with the town marshal. “I didn’t see any wounds. She was a beautiful
young girl. Her face was buried in the snow. No, I didn’t know her.” As a matter of fact, the
hunter had not looked closely at the body. He had been frightened. She might have been murdered
and some one might spring out from behind a tree and murder him. In a woods, in the late
afternoon, when the trees are all bare and there is white snow on the ground, when all is silent,
something creepy steals over the mind and body. If something strange or uncanny has happened in
the neighborhood all you think about is getting away from there as fast as you can.
The crowd of men and boys had got to where the old woman had crossed the field and went,
following the marshal and the hunter, up the slight incline and into the woods.
My brother and I were silent. He had his bundle of papers in a bag slung across his shoulder.
When he got back to town he would have to go on distributing his papers before he went home to
supper. If I went along, as he had no doubt already determined I should, we would both be late.
Either mother or our older sister would have to warm our supper.
Well, we would have something to tell. A boy did not get such a chance very often. It was lucky
we just happened to go into the grocery when the hunter came in. The hunter was a country fellow.
Neither of us had ever seen him before.
Now the crowd of men and boys had got to the clearing. Darkness comes quickly on such winter
nights, but the full moon made everything clear. My brother and I stood near the tree, beneath
which the old woman had died.
She did not look old, lying there in that light, frozen and still. One of the men turned her over in
the snow and I saw everything. My body trembled with some strange mystical feeling and so did
my brother’s. It might have been the cold.
Neither of us had ever seen a woman’s body before. It may have been the snow, clinging to the
frozen flesh, that made it look so white and lovely, so like marble. No woman had come with the
party from town; but one of the men, he was the town blacksmith, took off his overcoat and spread
it over her. Then he gathered her into his arms and started off to town, all the others following
silently. At that time no one knew who she was.
V
I had seen everything, had seen the oval in the snow, like a miniature race-track, where the dogs
had run, had seen how the men were mystified, had seen the white bare young-looking shoulders,
had heard the whispered comments of the men.
The men were simply mystified. They took the body to the undertaker’s, and when the blacksmith,
the hunter, the marshal and several others had got inside they closed the door. If father had been
there perhaps he could have got in, but we boys couldn’t.
I went with my brother to distribute the rest of his papers and when we got home it was my
brother who told the story.
I kept silent and went to bed early. It may have been I was not satisfied with the way he told it.
Later, in the town, I must have heard other fragments of the old woman’s story. She was
recognized the next day and there was an investigation.
The husband and son were found somewhere and brought to town and there was an attempt to
connect them with the woman’s death, but it did not work. They had perfect enough alibis.
However, the town was against them. They had to get out. Where they went I never heard.
I remember only the picture there in the forest, the men standing about, the naked girlish-looking
figure, face down in the snow, the tracks made by the running dogs and the clear cold Winter sky
above. White fragments of clouds were drifting across the sky. They went racing across the little
open space among the trees.
The scene in the forest had become for me, without my knowing it, the foundation for the real
story I am now trying to tell. The fragments, you see, had to be picked up slowly, long afterwards.
Things happened. When I was a young man I worked on the farm of a German. The hired-girl was
afraid of her employer. The farmer’s wife hated her.
I saw things at that place. Once later, I had a half-uncanny, mystical adventure with dogs in an
Illinois forest on a clear, moon-lit winter night. When I was a schoolboy, and on a Summer day, I
went with a boy friend out along a creek some miles from town and came to the house where the
old woman had lived. No one had lived in the house since her death. The doors were broken from
the hinges; the window lights were all broken. As the boy and I stood in the road outside, two
dogs, just roving farm dogs no doubt, came running around the corner of the house. The dogs were
tall, gaunt fellows and came down to the fence and glared through at us, standing in the road.
The whole thing, the story of the old woman’s death, was to me as I grew older like music heard
from far off. The notes had to be picked up slowly one at a time. Something had to be understood.
The woman who died was one destined to feed animal life. Anyway, that is all she ever did. She
was feeding animal life before she was born, as a child, as a young woman working on the farm of
the German, after she married, when she grew old and when she died. She fed animal life in cows,
in chickens, in pigs, in horses, in dogs, in men. Her daughter had died in childhood and with her
one son she had no articulate relations. On the night when she died she was hurrying homeward,
bearing on her body food for animal life.
She died in the clearing in the woods and even after her death continued feeding animal life.
You see it is likely that, when my brother told the story, that night when we got home and my
mother and sister sat listening, I did not think he got the point. He was too young and so was I. A
thing so complete has its own beauty.
I shall not try to emphasize the point. I am only explaining why I was dissatisfied then and have
been ever since. I speak of that only that you may understand why I have been impelled to try to
tell the simple story over again.
Further Reading
The Egg
My father was, I am sure, intended by nature to be a cheerful, kindly man. Until he was thirty-four
years old he worked as a farm-hand for a man named Thomas Butterworth whose place lay near
the town of Bidwell, Ohio. He had then a horse of his own and on Saturday evenings drove into
town to spend a few hours in social intercourse with other farm- hands. In town he drank several
glasses of beer and stood about in Ben Head’s saloon –crowded on Saturday evenings with
visiting farm-hands. Songs were sung and glasses thumped on the bar. At ten o’clock father drove
home along a lonely country road, made his horse comfortable for the night and himself went to
bed, quite happy in his position in life. He had at that time no notion of trying to rise in the world.
It was in the spring of his thirty-fifth year that father married my mother, then a country
school-teacher, and in the following spring I came wriggling and crying into the world. Something
happened to the two people. They became ambitious. The American passion for getting up in the
world took possession of them.
It may have been that mother was responsible. Being a school-teacher she had no doubt read
books and magazines. She had, I presume, read of how Garfield, Lincoln, and other Americans
rose from poverty to fame and greatness and as I lay beside her –in the days of her lying-in –she
may have dreamed that I would some day rule men and cities. At any rate she induced father to
give up his place as a farm-hand, sell his horse and embark on an independent enterprise of his
own. She was a tall silent woman with a long nose and troubled grey eyes. For herself she wanted
nothing. For father and myself she was incurably ambitious.
The first venture into which the two people went turned out badly. They rented ten acres of poor
stony land on Griggs’s Road, eight miles from Bidwell, and launched into chicken raising. I grew
into boyhood on the place and got my first impressions of life there. From the beginning they were
impressions of disaster and if, in my turn, I am a gloomy man inclined to see the darker side of life,
I attribute it to the fact that what should have been for me the happy joyous days of childhood
were spent on a chicken farm.
One unversed in such matters can have no notion of the many and tragic things that can happen to
a chicken. It is born out of an egg, lives for a few weeks as a tiny fluffy thing such as you will see
pictured on Easter cards, then becomes hideously naked, eats quantities of corn and meal bought
by the sweat of your father’s brow, gets diseases called pip, cholera, and other names, stands
looking with stupid eyes at the sun, becomes sick and dies. A few hens, and now and then a
rooster, intended to serve God’s mysterious ends, struggle through to maturity. The hens lay eggs
out of which come other chickens and the dreadful cycle is thus made complete. It is all
unbelievably complex. Most philosophers must have been raised on chicken farms. One hopes for
so much from a chicken and is so dreadfully disillusioned. Small chickens, just setting out on the
journey of life, look so bright and alert and they are in fact so dreadfully stupid. They are so much
like people they mix one up in one’s judgments of life. If disease does not kill them they wait until
your expectations are thoroughly aroused and then walk under the wheels of a wagon –to go
squashed and dead back to their maker. Vermin infest their youth, and fortunes must be spent for
curative powders. In later life I have seen how a literature has been built up on the subject of
fortunes to be made out of the raising of chickens. It is intended to be read by the gods who have
just eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is a hopeful literature and declares that
much may be done by simple ambitious people who own a few hens. Do not be led astray by it. It
was not written for you. Go hunt for gold on the frozen hills of Alaska, put your faith in the
honesty of a politician, believe if you will that the world is daily growing better and that good will
triumph over evil, but do not read and believe the literature that is written concerning the hen. It
was not written for you.
I, however, digress. My tale does not primarily concern itself with the hen. If correctly told it will
centre on the egg. For ten years my father and mother struggled to make our chicken farm pay and
then they gave up that struggle and began another. They moved into the town of Bidwell, Ohio
and embarked in the restaurant business. After ten years of worry with incubators that did not
hatch, and with tiny –and in their own way lovely –balls of fluff that passed on into semi-naked
pullethood and from that into dead hen-hood, we threw all aside and packing our belongings on a
wagon drove down Griggs’s Road toward Bidwell, a tiny caravan of hope looking for a new place
from which to start on our upward journey through life.
We must have been a sad looking lot, not, I fancy, unlike refugees fleeing from a battlefield.
Mother and I walked in the road. The wagon that contained our goods had been borrowed for the
day from Mr. Albert Griggs, a neighbor. Out of its sides stuck the legs of cheap chairs and at the
back of the pile of beds, tables, and boxes filled with kitchen utensils was a crate of live chickens,
and on top of that the baby carriage in which I had been wheeled about in my infancy. Why we
stuck to the baby carriage I don’t know. It was unlikely other children would be born and the
wheels were broken. People who have few possessions cling tightly to those they have. That is one
of the facts that make life so discouraging.
Father rode on top of the wagon. He was then a bald-headed man of forty-five, a little fat and from
long association with mother and the chickens he had become habitually silent and discouraged.
All during our ten years on the chicken farm he had worked as a laborer on neighboring farms and
most of the money he had earned had been spent for remedies to cure chicken diseases, on
Wilmer’s White Wonder Cholera Cure or Professor Bidlow’s Egg Producer or some other
preparations that mother found advertised in the poultry papers. There were two little patches of
hair on father’s head just above his ears. I remember that as a child I used to sit looking at him
when he had gone to sleep in a chair before the stove on Sunday afternoons in the winter. I had at
that time already begun to read books and have notions of my own and the bald path that led over
the top of his head was, I fancied, something like a broad road, such a road as Caesar might have
made on which to lead his legions out of Rome and into the wonders of an unknown world. The
tufts of hair that grew above father’s ears were, I thought, like forests. I fell into a half-sleeping,
half-waking state and dreamed I was a tiny thing going along the road into a far beautiful place
where there were no chicken farms and where life was a happy eggless affair.
One might write a book concerning our flight from the chicken farm into town. Mother and I
walked the entire eight miles –she to be sure that nothing fell from the wagon and I to see the
wonders of the world. On the seat of the wagon beside father was his greatest treasure. I will tell
you of that.
On a chicken farm where hundreds and even thousands of chickens come out of eggs surprising
things sometimes happen. Grotesques are born out of eggs as out of people. The accident does not
often occur –perhaps once in a thousand births. A chicken is, you see, born that has four legs, two
pairs of wings, two heads or what not. The things do not live. They go quickly back to the hand of
their maker that has for a moment trembled. The fact that the poor little things could not live was
one of the tragedies of life to father. He had some sort of notion that if he could but bring into
henhood or roosterhood a five-legged hen or a two-headed rooster his fortune would be made. He
dreamed of taking the wonder about to county fairs and of growing rich by exhibiting it to other
farm-hands.
At any rate he saved all the little monstrous things that had been born on our chicken farm. They
were preserved in alcohol and put each in its own glass bottle. These he had carefully put into a
box and on our journey into town it was carried on the wagon seat beside him. He drove the horses
with one hand and with the other clung to the box. When we got to our destination the box was
taken down at once and the bottles removed. All during our days as keepers of a restaurant in the
town of Bidwell, Ohio, the grotesques in their little glass bottles sat on a shelf back of the counter.
Mother sometimes protested but father was a rock on the subject of his treasure. The grotesques
were, he declared, valuable. People, he said, liked to look at strange and wonderful things.
Did I say that we embarked in the restaurant business in the town of Bidwell, Ohio? I exaggerated
a little. The town itself lay at the foot of a low hill and on the shore of a small river. The railroad
did not run through the town and the station was a mile away to the north at a place called
Pickleville. There had been a cider mill and pickle factory at the station, but before the time of our
coming they had both gone out of business. In the morning and in the evening busses came down
to the station along a road called Turner’s Pike from the hotel on the main street of Bidwell. Our
going to the out of the way place to embark in the restaurant business was mother’s idea. She
talked of it for a year and then one day went off and rented an empty store building opposite the
railroad station. It was her idea that the restaurant would be profitable. Travelling men, she said,
would be always waiting around to take trains out of town and town people would come to the
station to await incoming trains. They would come to the restaurant to buy pieces of pie and drink
coffee. Now that I am older I know that she had another motive in going. She was ambitious for
me. She wanted me to rise in the world, to get into a town school and become a man of the towns.
At Pickleville father and mother worked hard as they always had done. At first there was the
necessity of putting our place into shape to be a restaurant. That took a month. Father built a shelf
on which he put tins of vegetables. He painted a sign on which he put his name in large red letters.
Below his name was the sharp command —”EAT HERE” – that was so seldom obeyed. A show
case was bought and filled with cigars and tobacco. Mother scrubbed the floor and the walls of the
room. I went to school in the town and was glad to be away from the farm and from the presence
of the discouraged, sad-looking chickens. Still I was not very joyous. In the evening I walked
home from school along Turner’s Pike and remembered the children I had seen playing in the
town school yard. A troop of little girls had gone hopping about and singing. I tried that. Down
along the frozen road I went hopping solemnly on one leg. “Hippity Hop To The Barber Shop,” I
sang shrilly. Then I stopped and looked doubtfully about. I was afraid of being seen in my gay
mood. It must have seemed to me that I was doing a thing that should not be done by one who,
like myself, had been raised on a chicken farm where death was a daily visitor.
Mother decided that our restaurant should remain open at night. At ten in the evening a passenger
train went north past our door followed by a local freight. The freight crew had switching to do in
Pickleville and when the work was done they came to our restaurant for hot coffee and food.
Sometimes one of them ordered a fried egg. In the morning at four they returned north-bound and
again visited us. A little trade began to grow up. Mother slept at night and during the day tended
the restaurant and fed our boarders while father slept. He slept in the same bed mother had
occupied during the night and I went off to the town of Bidwell and to school. During the long
nights, while mother and I slept, father cooked meats that were to go into sandwiches for the lunch
baskets of our boarders. Then an idea in regard to getting up in the world came into his head. The
American spirit took hold of him. He also became ambitious.
In the long nights when there was little to do father had time to think. That was his undoing. He
decided that he had in the past been an unsuccessful man because he had not been cheerful enough
and that in the future he would adopt a cheerful outlook on life. In the early morning he came
upstairs and got into bed with mother. She woke and the two talked. From my bed in the corner I
listened.
It was father’s idea that both he and mother should try to entertain the people who came to eat at
our restaurant. I cannot now remember his words, but he gave the impression of one about to
become in some obscure way a kind of public entertainer. When people, particularly young people
from the town of Bidwell, came into our place, as on very rare occasions they did, bright
entertaining conversation was to be made. From father’s words I gathered that something of the
jolly inn- keeper effect was to be sought. Mother must have been doubtful from the first, but she
said nothing discouraging. It was father’s notion that a passion for the company of himself and
mother would spring up in the breasts of the younger people of the town of Bidwell. In the
evening bright happy groups would come singing down Turner’s Pike. They would troop shouting
with joy and laughter into our place. There would be song and festivity. I do not mean to give the
impression that father spoke so elaborately of the matter. He was as I have said an
uncommunicative man. “They want some place to go. I tell you they want some place to go,” he
said over and over. That was as far as he got. My own imagination has filled in the blanks.
For two or three weeks this notion of father’s invaded our house. We did not talk much, but in our
daily lives tried earnestly to make smiles take the place of glum looks. Mother smiled at the
boarders and I, catching the infection, smiled at our cat. Father became a little feverish in his
anxiety to please. There was no doubt, lurking somewhere in him, a touch of the spirit of the
showman. He did not waste much of his ammunition on the railroad men he served at night but
seemed to be waiting for a young man or woman from Bidwell to come in to show what he could
do. On the counter in the restaurant there was a wire basket kept always filled with eggs, and it
must have been before his eyes when the idea of being entertaining was born in his brain. There
was something pre-natal about the way eggs kept themselves connected with the development of
his idea. At any rate an egg ruined his new impulse in life. Late one night I was awakened by a
roar of anger coming from father’s throat. Both mother and I sat upright in our beds. With
trembling hands she lighted a lamp that stood on a table by her head. Downstairs the front door of
our restaurant went shut with a bang and in a few minutes father tramped up the stairs. He held an
egg in his hand and his hand trembled as though he were having a chill. There was a half insane
light in his eyes. As he stood glaring at us I was sure he intended throwing the egg at either mother
or me. Then he laid it gently on the table beside the lamp and dropped on his knees beside
mother’s bed. He began to cry like a boy and I, carried away by his grief, cried with him. The two
of us filled the little upstairs room with our wailing voices. It is ridiculous, but of the picture we
made I can remember only the fact that mother’s hand continually stroked the bald path that ran
across the top of his head. I have forgotten what mother said to him and how she induced him to
tell her of what had happened downstairs. His explanation also has gone out of my mind. I
remember only my own grief and fright and the shiny path over father’s head glowing in the lamp
light as he knelt by the bed.
As to what happened downstairs, for some unexplainable reason I know the story as well as
though I had been a witness to my father’s discomfiture. One in time gets to know many
unexplainable things. On that evening young Joe Kane, son of a merchant of Bidwell, came to
Pickleville to meet his father, who was expected on the ten o’clock evening train from the South.
The train was three hours late and Joe came into our place to loaf about and to wait for its arrival.
The local freight train came in and the freight crew were fed. Joe was left alone in the restaurant
with father.
From the moment he came into our place the Bidwell young man must have been puzzled by my
father’s actions. It was his notion that father was angry at him for hanging around. He noticed that
the restaurant keeper was apparently disturbed by his presence and he thought of going out.
However, it began to rain and he did not fancy the long walk to town and back. He bought a
five-cent cigar and ordered a cup of coffee. He had a newspaper in his pocket and took it out and
began to read. “I’m waiting for the evening train. It’s late,” he said apologetically.
For a long time father, whom Joe Kane had never seen before, remained silently gazing at his
visitor. He was no doubt suffering from an attack of stage fright. As so often happens in life he
had thought so much and so often of the situation that now confronted him that he was somewhat
nervous in its presence.
For one thing, he did not know what to do with his hands. He thrust one of them nervously over
the counter and shook hands with Joe Kane. “How- de-do,” he said. Joe Kane put his newspaper
down and stared at him. Father’s eye lighted on the basket of eggs that sat on the counter and he
began to talk. “Well,” he began hesitatingly, “well, you have heard of Christopher Columbus, eh?”
He seemed to be angry. “That Christopher Columbus was a cheat,” he declared emphatically. “He
talked of making an egg stand on its end. He talked, he did, and then he went and broke the end of
the egg.”
My father seemed to his visitor to be beside himself at the duplicity of Christopher Columbus. He
muttered and swore. He declared it was wrong to teach children that Christopher Columbus was a
great man when, after all, he cheated at the critical moment. He had declared he would make an
egg stand on end and then when his bluff had been called he had done a trick. Still grumbling at
Columbus, father took an egg from the basket on the counter and began to walk up and down. He
rolled the egg between the palms of his hands. He smiled genially. He began to mumble words
regarding the effect to be produced on an egg by the electricity that comes out of the human body.
He declared that without breaking its shell and by virtue of rolling it back and forth in his hands he
could stand the egg on its end. He explained that the warmth of his hands and the gentle rolling
movement he gave the egg created a new centre of gravity, and Joe Kane was mildly interested. “I
have handled thousands of eggs,” father said. “No one knows more about eggs than I do.”
He stood the egg on the counter and it fell on its side. He tried the trick again and again, each time
rolling the egg between the palms of his hands and saying the words regarding the wonders of
electricity and the laws of gravity. When after a half hour’s effort he did succeed in making the
egg stand for a moment he looked up to find that his visitor was no longer watching. By the time
he had succeeded in calling Joe Kane’s attention to the success of his effort the egg had again
rolled over and lay on its side.
Afire with the showman’s passion and at the same time a good deal disconcerted by the failure of
his first effort, father now took the bottles containing the poultry monstrosities down from their
place on the shelf and began to show them to his visitor. “How would you like to have seven legs
and two heads like this fellow?” he asked, exhibiting the most remarkable of his treasures. A
cheerful smile played over his face. He reached over the counter and tried to slap Joe Kane on the
shoulder as he had seen men do in Ben Head’s saloon when he was a young farm-hand and drove
to town on Saturday evenings. His visitor was made a little ill by the sight of the body of the
terribly deformed bird floating in the alcohol in the bottle and got up to go. Coming from behind
the counter father took hold of the young man’s arm and led him back to his seat. He grew a little
angry and for a moment had to turn his face away and force himself to smile. Then he put the
bottles back on the shelf. In an outburst of generosity he fairly compelled Joe Kane to have a fresh
cup of coffee and another cigar at his expense. Then he took a pan and filling it with vinegar,
taken from a jug that sat beneath the counter, he declared himself about to do a new trick. “I will
heat this egg in this pan of vinegar,” he said. “Then I will put it through the neck of a bottle
without breaking the shell. When the egg is inside the bottle it will resume its normal shape and
the shell will become hard again. Then I will give the bottle with the egg in it to you. You can take
it about with you wherever you go. People will want to know how you got the egg in the bottle.
Don’t tell them. Keep them guessing. That is the way to have fun with this trick.”
Father grinned and winked at his visitor. Joe Kane decided that the man who confronted him was
mildly insane but harmless. He drank the cup of coffee that had been given him and began to read
his paper again. When the egg had been heated in vinegar father carried it on a spoon to the
counter and going into a back room got an empty bottle. He was angry because his visitor did not
watch him as he began to do his trick, but nevertheless went cheerfully to work. For a long time he
struggled, trying to get the egg to go through the neck of the bottle. He put the pan of vinegar back
on the stove, intending to reheat the egg, then picked it up and burned his fingers. After a second
bath in the hot vinegar the shell of the egg had been softened a little but not enough for his
purpose. He worked and worked and a spirit of desperate determination took possession of him.
When he thought that at last the trick was about to be consummated the delayed train came in at
the station and Joe Kane started to go nonchalantly out at the door. Father made a last desperate
effort to conquer the egg and make it do the thing that would establish his reputation as one who
knew how to entertain guests who came into his restaurant. He worried the egg. He attempted to
be somewhat rough with it. He swore and the sweat stood out on his forehead. The egg broke
under his hand. When the contents spurted over his clothes, Joe Kane, who had stopped at the door,
turned and laughed.
A roar of anger rose from my father’s throat. He danced and shouted a string of inarticulate words.
Grabbing another egg from the basket on the counter, he threw it, just missing the head of the
young man as he dodged through the door and escaped.
Father came upstairs to mother and me with an egg in his hand. I do not know what he intended to
do. I imagine he had some idea of destroying it, of destroying all eggs, and that he intended to let
mother and me see him begin. When, however, he got into the presence of mother something
happened to him. He laid the egg gently on the table and dropped on his knees by the bed as I have
already explained. He later decided to close the restaurant for the night and to come upstairs and
get into bed. When he did so he blew out the light and after much muttered conversation both he
and mother went to sleep. I suppose I went to sleep also, but my sleep was troubled.
I awoke at dawn and for a long time looked at the egg that lay on the table. I wondered why eggs
had to be and why from the egg came the hen who again laid the egg. The question got into my
blood. It has stayed there, I imagine, because I am the son of my father. At any rate, the problem
remains unsolved in my mind. And that, I conclude, is but another evidence of the complete and
final triumph of the egg –at least as far as my family is concerned.
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist.
His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life
of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his
work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.
He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Three novels,
four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many
of these are considered classics of American literature.
A Clean, Well-lighted Place
It was late and every one had left the café except an old man who sat in the shadow the leaves of
the tree made against the electric light. In the day time the street was dusty; but at night the dew
settled the dust and the old man liked to sit late because he was deaf and now at night it was quiet
and he felt the difference. The two waiters inside the café knew that the old man was a little drunk,
and while he was a good client they knew that if he became too drunk he would leave without
paying, so they kept watch on him.
“Last week he tried to commit suicide,” one waiter said.
“Why?”
“He was in despair.”
“What about?”
“Nothing.”
How do you know it was nothing?”
“He has plenty of money.”
They sat together at a table that was close against the wall near the door of the café and looked at
the terrace where the tables were all empty except where the old man sat in the shadow of the
leaves of the tree that moved slightly in the wind. A girl and a soldier went by in the street. The
street light shone on the brass number on his collar. The girl wore no head covering and hurried
beside him.
“The guard will pick him up,” one waiter said.
“What does it matter if he gets what he’s after?”
“He had better get off the street now. The guard will get him. They went by five minutes ago.”
The old man sitting in the shadow rapped on his saucer with his glass. The younger waiter went
over to him.
“What do you want?”
The old man looked at him. “Another brandy,” he said.
“You’ll be drunk,” the waiter said. The old man looked at him. The waiter went away.
“He’ll stay all night,” he said to his colleague. “I’m sleepy now. I never get into bed before three
o’clock. He should have killed himself last week.”
The waiter took the brandy bottle and another saucer from the counter inside the café and marched
out to the old man’s table. He put down the saucer and poured the glass full of brandy.
“You should have killed yourself last week,” he said to the deaf man. The old man motioned with
his finger. “A little more,” he said. The waiter poured on into the glass so that the brandy slopped
over and ran down the stem into the top saucer of the pile. “Thank you,” the old man said. The
waiter took the bottle back inside the café. He sat down at the table with his colleague again.
“He’s drunk now,” he said.
“He’s drunk every night.”
“What did he want to kill himself for?”
“How should I know.”
“How did he do it?”
“He hung himself with a rope.”
“Who cut him down?”
“His niece.”
“Why did he do it?”
“For his soul.”
“How much money has he got?”
“He’s got plenty.”
“He must be eighty years old.”
“Anyway I should say he was eighty.”
“I wish he would go home. I never get to bed before three o’clock. What kind of hour is that to go
to bed?”
“He stays up because he likes it.”
“He’s lonely. I’m not lonely. I have a wife waiting in bed for me.”
“He had a wife once too.”
“A wife would be no good to him now.”
“You can’t tell. He might be better with a wife.”
“His niece looks after him.”
“I know. You said she cut him down.”
“I wouldn’t want to be that old. An old man is a nasty thing.”
“Not always. This old man is clean. He drinks without spilling. Even now, drunk. Look at him.”
“I don’t want to look at him. I wish he would go home. He has no regard for those who must
work.”
The old man looked from his glass across the square, then over at the waiters.
“Another brandy,” he said, pointing to his glass. The waiter who was in a hurry came over.
“Finished,” he said, speaking with that omission of syntax stupid people employ when talking to
drunken people or foreigners. “No more tonight. Close now.”
“Another,” said the old man.
“No. Finished.” The waiter wiped the edge of the table with a towel and shook his head.
The old man stood up, slowly counted the saucers, took a leather coin purse from his pocket and
paid for the drinks, leaving half a peseta tip.
The waiter watched him go down the street, a very old man walking unsteadily but with dignity,.
“Why didn’t you let him stay and drink?” the unhurried waiter asked. They were putting up the
shutters. “It is not half-past two.”
“I want to go home to bed.”
“What is an hour?”
“More to me than to him.”
“An hour is the same.”
“You talk like an old man yourself. He can buy a bottle and drink at home.”
“It’s not the same.”
“No, it is not,” agreed the waiter with a wife. He did not wish to be unjust. He was only in a hurry.
“And you? You have no fear of going home before your usual hour?”
“Are you trying to insult me?”
“No, hombre, only to make a joke.”
“No,” the waiter who was in a hurry said, rising from putting on the metal shutters. “I have
confidence. I am all confidence.”
“You have youth, confidence, and a job,” the older waiter said. “You have everything.”
“And what do you lack?”
“Everything but work.”
“You have everything I have.”
“No. I have never had confidence and l am not young.”
“Come on. Stop talking nonsense and lock up.”
“I am of those who like to stay late at the café,” the older waiter said. “With all those who do not
want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.”
“I want to go home and into bed.”
“We are of two different kinds,” the older waiter said. He was now dressed to go home. “It is not
only a question of youth and confidence although those things are very beautiful. Each night I am
reluctant to close up because there may be some one who needs the café.”
“Hombre, there are bodegas open all night long.”
“You do not understand. This is a clean and pleasant café. It is well lighted. The light is very good
and also, now, there are shadows of the leaves.”
“Good night,” said the younger waiter.
“Good night,” the other said. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with
himself. It is the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and light. You do not
want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity
although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It
was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only
that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it
but he knew it was already nada y pues nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy
name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada
and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada;
pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar
with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.
“What’s yours?” asked the barman.
“Nada.”
“Otro loco mas,” said the barman and turned away.
“A little cup,” said the waiter.
The barman poured it for him.
“The light is very bright and pleasant but the bar is unpolished,” the waiter said.
The barman looked at him but did not answer. It was too late at night for conversation.
“You want another copita?” the barman asked.
“No, thank you,” said the waiter and went out. He disliked bars and bodegas. A clean, well-lighted
café was a very different thing. Now, without thinking further, he would go home to his room. He
would lie in the bed and finally, with daylight, he would go to sleep. After all, he said to himself,
it is probably only insomnia. Many must have it.
William Faulkner (1897-1962) was born in New Albany, Mississippi. His family had
included wealthy and powerful people ruined by the Civil War. His great-grandfather
was a popular novelist, and this ancestor serves, like other family members, as a
model from whom Faulkner drew traits used in composing the characters in his fiction.
He attended the University of Mississippi in Oxford before and after his service
in the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War I. Thereafter he lived in Oxford most
of his life, though he spent much time in Hollywood as a screenwriter and it was
in New Orleans that his literary career began. There he met Sherwood Anderson, who
encouraged him to turn from poetry to fiction and helped him get his first novel
published. The work which won Faulkner a Nobel Prize in 1950 is often a depiction
of life in his fictional Yoknapatawpha County, an imaginative reconstruction of the
area adjacent to Oxford. Faulkner was a passionately devoted hunter and his love
of the disappearing wilderness is expressed in many of his tales. He sought out the
honor and courage of people balked by circumstance and the sum of his writing
testifies to his faith that these virtues will prevail through the corruptions of
modern life. His major novels were mostly the product of a prodigious decade of
creative effort. They include The Sound and Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930),
Sanctuary (1931), Light in August (1932), Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Wild Palms
(1939), and The Hamlet (1940). His books of short stories include These Thirteen
(1931), Go Down, Moses (1942), and the Collected Stories of William Faulkner (1950).
A Rose for Emily
I
WHEN Miss Emily Grierson died, our whole town went to her funeral: the men through a sort of
respectful affection for a fallen monument, the women mostly out of curiosity to see the inside of
her house, which no one save an old man-servant –a combined gardener and cook –had seen in at
least ten years.
It was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spires and
scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies, set on what had once been our
most select street. But garages and cotton gins had encroached and obliterated even the august
names of that neighborhood; only Miss Emily’s house was left, lifting its stubborn and coquettish
decay above the cotton wagons and the gasoline pumps-an eyesore among eyesores. And now
Miss Emily had gone to join the representatives of those august names where they lay in the
cedar-bemused cemetery among the ranked and anonymous graves of Union and Confederate
soldiers who fell at the battle of Jefferson.
Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the
town, dating from that day in 1894 when Colonel Sartoris, the mayor –he who fathered the edict
that no Negro woman should appear on the streets without an apron-remitted her taxes, the
dispensation dating from the death of her father on into perpetuity. Not that Miss Emily would
have accepted charity. Colonel Sartoris invented an involved tale to the effect that Miss Emily’s
father had loaned money to the town, which the town, as a matter of business, preferred this way
of repaying. Only a man of Colonel Sartoris’ generation and thought could have invented it, and
only a woman could have believed it.
When the next generation, with its more modern ideas, became mayors and aldermen, this
arrangement created some little dissatisfaction. On the first of the year they mailed her a tax notice.
February came, and there was no reply. They wrote her a formal letter, asking her to call at the
sheriff’s office at her convenience. A week later the mayor wrote her himself, offering to call or to
send his car for her, and received in reply a note on paper of an archaic shape, in a thin, flowing
calligraphy in faded ink, to the effect that she no longer went out at all. The tax notice was also
enclosed, without comment.
They called a special meeting of the Board of Aldermen. A deputation waited upon her, knocked
at the door through which no visitor had passed since she ceased giving china-painting lessons
eight or ten years earlier. They were admitted by the old Negro into a dim hall from which a
stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse –a close, dank smell. The
Negro led them into the parlor. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. When the
Negro opened the blinds of one window, they could see that the leather was cracked; and when
they sat down, a faint dust rose sluggishly about their thighs, spinning with slow motes in the
single sun-ray. On a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of Miss
Emily’s father.
They rose when she entered –a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her
waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her
skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in
another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water,
and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of
coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated
their errand.
She did not ask them to sit. She just stood in the door and listened quietly until the spokesman
came to a stumbling halt. Then they could hear the invisible watch ticking at the end of the gold
chain.
Her voice was dry and cold. “I have no taxes in Jefferson. Colonel Sartoris explained it to me.
Perhaps one of you can gain access to the city records and satisfy yourselves.”
“But we have. We are the city authorities, Miss Emily. Didn’t you get a notice from the sheriff,
signed by him?”
“I received a paper, yes,” Miss Emily said. “Perhaps he considers himself the sheriff . . . I have no
taxes in Jefferson.”
“But there is nothing on the books to show that, you see We must go by the –”
“See Colonel Sartoris. I have no taxes in Jefferson.”
“But, Miss Emily –”
“See Colonel Sartoris.” (Colonel Sartoris had been dead almost ten years.) “I have no taxes in
Jefferson. Tobe!” The Negro appeared. “Show these gentlemen out.”
II
So SHE vanquished them, horse and foot, just as she had vanquished their fathers thirty years
before about the smell.
That was two years after her father’s death and a short time after her sweetheart –the one we
believed would marry her –had deserted her. After her father’s death she went out very little;
after her sweetheart went away, people hardly saw her at all. A few of the ladies had the temerity
to call, but were not received, and the only sign of life about the place was the Negro man –a
young man then –going in and out with a market basket.
“Just as if a man –any man –could keep a kitchen properly, “the ladies said; so they were not
surprised when the smell developed. It was another link between the gross, teeming world and the
high and mighty Griersons.
A neighbor, a woman, complained to the mayor, Judge Stevens, eighty years old.
“But what will you have me do about it, madam?” he said.
“Why, send her word to stop it,” the woman said. “Isn’t there a law? “
“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Judge Stevens said. “It’s probably just a snake or a rat that
nigger of hers killed in the yard. I’ll speak to him about it.”
The next day he received two more complaints, one from a man who came in diffident deprecation.
“We really must do something about it, Judge. I’d be the last one in the world to bother Miss
Emily, but we’ve got to do something.” That night the Board of Aldermen met –three graybeards
and one younger man, a member of the rising generation.
“It’s simple enough,” he said. “Send her word to have her place cleaned up. Give her a certain
time to do it in, and if she don’t. ..”
“Dammit, sir,” Judge Stevens said, “will you accuse a lady to her face of smelling bad?”
So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily’s lawn and slunk about the house
like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork and at the cellar openings while one of them
performed a regular sowing motion with his hand out of a sack slung from his shoulder. They
broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there, and in all the outbuildings. As they recrossed
the lawn, a window that had been dark was lighted and Miss Emily sat in it, the light behind her,
and her upright torso motionless as that of an idol. They crept quietly across the lawn and into the
shadow of the locusts that lined the street. After a week or two the smell went away.
That was when people had begun to feel really sorry for her. People in our town, remembering
how old lady Wyatt, her great-aunt, had gone completely crazy at last, believed that the Griersons
held themselves a little too high for what they really were. None of the young men were quite
good enough for Miss Emily and such. We had long thought of them as a tableau, Miss Emily a
slender figure in white in the background, her father a spraddled silhouette in the foreground, his
back to her and clutching a horsewhip, the two of them framed by the back-flung front door. So
when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even
with insanity in the family she wouldn’t have turned down all of her chances if they had really
materialized.
When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people
were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become
humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.
The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid, as
is our custom Miss Emily met them at the door, dressed as usual and with no trace of grief on her
face. She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers
calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. Just as they
were about to resort to law and force, she broke down, and they buried her father quickly.
We did not say she was crazy then. We believed she had to do that. We remembered all the young
men her father had driven away, and we knew that with nothing left, she would have to cling to
that which had robbed her, as people will.
III
SHE WAS SICK for a long time. When we saw her again, her hair was cut short, making her look
like a girl, with a vague resemblance to those angels in colored church windows –sort of tragic and
serene.
The town had just let the contracts for paving the sidewalks, and in the summer after her father’s
death they began the work. The construction company came with niggers and mules and
machinery, and a foreman named Homer Barron, a Yankee – a big, dark, ready man, with a big
voice and eyes lighter than his face. The little boys would follow in groups to hear him cuss the
riggers, and the riggers singing in time to the rise and fall of picks. Pretty soon he knew everybody
in town. Whenever you heard a lot of laughing anywhere about the square, Homer Barron would
be in the center of the group. Presently we began to see him and Miss Emily on Sunday afternoons
driving in the yellow-wheeled buggy and the matched team of bays from the livery stable.
At first we were glad that Miss Emily would have an interest, because the ladies all said, “Of
course a Grierson would not think seriously of a Northerner, a day laborer.” But there were still
others, older people, who said that even grief could not cause a real lady to forget noblesse oblige-without calling it noblesse oblige. They just said, “Poor Emily. Her kinsfolk should come to her.”
She had some kin in Alabama; but years ago her father had fallen out with them over the estate of
old lady Wyatt, the crazy woman, and there was no communication between the two families.
They had not even been represented at the funeral.
And as soon as the old people said, “Poor Emily,” the whispering began. “Do you suppose it’s
really so?” they said to one another. “Of course it is. What else could . . .” This behind their hands;
rustling of craned silk and satin behind jalousies closed upon the sun of Sunday afternoon as the
thin, swift clop-clop-clop of the matched team passed: “Poor Emily.”
She carried her head high enough –even when we believed that she was fallen. It was as if she
demanded more than ever the recognition of her dignity as the last Grierson; as if it had wanted
that touch of earthiness to reaffirm her imperviousness. Like when she bought the rat poison, the
arsenic. That was over a year after they had begun to say “Poor Emily,” and while the two female
cousins were visiting her.
“I want some poison,” she said to the druggist. She was over thirty then, still a slight woman,
though thinner than usual, with cold, haughty black eyes in a face the flesh of which was strained
across the temples and about the eyesockets as you imagine a lighthouse-keeper’s face ought to
look. “I want some poison,” she said.
“Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I’d recom –”
“I want the best you have. I don’t care what kind.”
The druggist named several. “They’ll kill anything up to an elephant. But what you want is –”
“Arsenic,” Miss Emily said. “Is that a good one?”
“Is . . . arsenic? Yes, ma’am. But what you want –”
“I want arsenic.”
The druggist looked down at her. She looked back at him, erect, her face like a strained flag.
“Why, of course,” the druggist said. “If that’s what you want. But the law requires you to tell what
you are going to use it for.”
Miss Emily just stared at him, her head tilted back in order to look him eye for eye, until he looked
away and went and got the arsenic and wrapped it up. The Negro delivery boy brought her the
package; the druggist didn’t come back. When she opened the package at home there was written
on the box, under the skull and bones: “For rats.”
IV
So THE NEXT day we all said, “She will kill herself”; and we said it would be the best thing.
When she had first begun to be seen with Homer Barron, we had said, “She will marry him.” Then
we said, “She will persuade him yet,” because Homer himself had remarked –he liked men, and it
was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club –that he was not a marrying man.
Later we said, “Poor Emily” behind the jalousies as they passed on Sunday afternoon in the
glittering buggy, Miss Emily with her head high and Homer Barron with his hat cocked and a
cigar in his teeth, reins and whip in a yellow glove.
Then some of the ladies began to say that it was a disgrace to the town and a bad example to the
young people. The men did not want to interfere, but at last the ladies forced the Baptist minister
–Miss Emily’s people were Episcopal – to call upon her. He would never divulge what happened
during that interview, but he refused to go back again. The next Sunday they again drove about the
streets, and the following day the minister’s wife wrote to Miss Emily’s relations in Alabama.
So she had blood-kin under her roof again and we sat back to watch developments. At first
nothing happened. Then we were sure that they were to be married. We learned that Miss Emily
had been to the jeweler’s and ordered a man’s toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each
piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men’s clothing,
including a nightshirt, and we said, “They are married.” We were really glad. We were glad
because the two female cousins were even more Grierson than Miss Emily had ever been.
So we were not surprised when Homer Barron –the streets had been finished some time since
–was gone. We were a little disappointed that there was not a public blowing-off, but we believed
that he had gone on to prepare for Miss Emily’s coming, or to give her a chance to get rid of the
cousins. (By that time it was a cabal, and we were all Miss Emily’s allies to help circumvent the
cousins.) Sure enough, after another week they departed. And, as we had expected all along,
within three days Homer Barron was back in town. A neighbor saw the Negro man admit him at
the kitchen door at dusk one evening.
And that was the last we saw of Homer Barron. And of Miss Emily for some time. The Negro man
went in and out with the market basket, but the front door remained closed. Now and then we
would see her at a window for a moment, as the men did that night when they sprinkled the lime,
but for almost six months she did not appear on the streets. Then we knew that this was to be
expected too; as if that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman’s life so many times
had been too virulent and too furious to die.
When we next saw Miss Emily, she had grown fat and her hair was turning gray. During the next
few years it grew grayer and grayer until it attained an even pepper-and-salt iron-gray, when it
ceased turning. Up to the day of her death at seventy-four it was still that vigorous iron-gray, like
the hair of an active man.
From that time on her front door remained closed, save for a period of six or seven years, when
she was about forty, during which she gave lessons in china-painting. She fitted up a studio in one
of the downstairs rooms, where the daughters and granddaughters of Colonel Sartoris’
contemporaries were sent to her with the same regularity and in the same spirit that they were sent
to church on Sundays with a twenty-five-cent piece for the collection plate. Meanwhile her taxes
had been remitted.
Then the newer generation became the backbone and the spirit of the town, and the painting pupils
grew up and fell away and did not send their children to her with boxes of color and tedious
brushes and pictures cut from the ladies’ magazines. The front door closed upon the last one and
remained closed for good. When the town got free postal delivery, Miss Emily alone refused to let
them fasten the metal numbers above her door and attach a mailbox to it. She would not listen to
them.
Daily, monthly, yearly we watched the Negro grow grayer and more stooped, going in and out
with the market basket. Each December we sent her a tax notice, which would be returned by the
post office a week later, unclaimed. Now and then we would see her in one of the downstairs
windows –she had evidently shut up the top floor of the house –like the carven torso of an idol in a
niche, looking or not looking at us, we could never tell which. Thus she passed from generation to
generation –dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.
And so she died. Fell ill in the house filled with dust and shadows, with only a doddering Negro
man to wait on her. We did not even know she was sick; we had long since given up trying to get
any information from the Negro
He talked to no one, probably not even to her, for his voice had grown harsh and rusty, as if from
disuse.
She died in one of the downstairs rooms, in a heavy walnut bed with a curtain, her gray head
propped on a pillow yellow and moldy with age and lack of sunlight.
V
THE NEGRO met the first of the ladies at the front door and let them in, with their hushed,
sibilant voices and their quick, curious glances, and then he disappeared. He walked right through
the house and out the back and was not seen again.
The two female cousins came at once. They held the funeral on the second day, with the town
coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers, with the crayon face of her father
musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men
–some in their brushed Confederate uniforms –on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily
as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted
her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past
is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided
from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.
Already we knew that there was one room in that region above stairs which no one had seen in
forty years, and which would have to be forced. They waited until Miss Emily was decently in the
ground before they opened it.
The violence of breaking down the door seemed to fill this room with pervading dust. A thin, acrid
pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room decked and furnished as for a bridal:
upon the valance curtains of faded rose color, upon the rose-shaded lights, upon the dressing table,
upon the delicate array of crystal and the man’s toilet things backed with tarnished silver, silver so
tarnished that the monogram was obscured. Among them lay a collar and tie, as if they had just
been removed, which, lifted, left upon the surface a pale crescent in the dust. Upon a chair hung
the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and the discarded socks.
The man himself lay in the bed.
For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body
had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love,
that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him. What was left of him, rotted beneath
what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay; and upon
him and upon the pillow beside him lay that even coating of the patient and biding dust.
Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted
something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils,
we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish
writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's
most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, his only
novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), his plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment and
early death.
The Happy Prince
HIGH above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all
over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby
glowed on his sword-hilt.
He was very much admired indeed. “He is as beautiful as a weathercock,” remarked one of the
Town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; “only not quite so
useful,” he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really was not.
“Why can’t you be like the Happy Prince?” asked a sensible mother of her little boy who was
crying for the moon. “The Happy Prince never dreams of crying for anything.”
“I am glad there is some one in the world who is quite happy,” muttered a disappointed man as he
gazed at the wonderful statue.
“He looks just like an angel,” said the Charity Children as they came out of the cathedral in their
bright scarlet cloaks, and their clean white pinafores.
“How do you know?” said the Mathematical Master, “you have never seen one.”
“Ah! but we have, in our dreams,” answered the children; and the Mathematical Master frowned
and looked very severe, for he did not approve of children dreaming.
One night there flew over the city a little Swallow. His friends had gone away to Egypt six weeks
before, but he had stayed behind, for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed. He had met her
early in the spring as he was flying down the river after a big yellow moth, and had been so
attracted by her slender waist that he had stopped to talk to her.
“Shall I love you?” said the Swallow, who liked to come to the point at once, and the Reed made
him a low bow. So he flew round and round her, touching the water with his wings, and making
silver ripples. This was his courtship, and it lasted all through the summer.
“It is a ridiculous attachment,” twittered the other Swallows, “she has no money, and far too many
relations;” and indeed the river was quite full of Reeds. Then, when the autumn came, they all
flew away.
After they had gone he felt lonely, and began to tire of his lady-love. “She has no conversation,”
he said, “and I am afraid that she is a coquette, for she is always flirting with the wind.” And
certainly, whenever the wind blew, the Reed made the most graceful curtsies. “I admit that she is
domestic,” he continued, “but I love travelling, and my wife, consequently, should love travelling
also.”
“Will you come away with me?” he said finally to her; but the Reed shook her head, she was so
attached to her home.
“You have been trifling with me,” he cried, “I am off to the Pyramids. Good-bye!” and he flew
away.
All day long he flew, and at night-time he arrived at the city. “Where shall I put up?” he said; “I
hope the town has made preparations.”
Then he saw the statue on the tall column. “I will put up there,” he cried; “it is a fine position with
plenty of fresh air.” So he alighted just between the feet of the Happy Prince.
“I have a golden bedroom,” he said softly to himself as he looked round, and he prepared to go to
sleep; but just as he was putting his head under his wing a large drop of water fell on him. “What a
curious thing!” he cried, “there is not a single cloud in the sky, the stars are quite clear and bright,
and yet it is raining. The climate in the north of Europe is really dreadful. The Reed used to like
the rain, but that was merely her selfishness.”
Then another drop fell.
“What is the use of a statue if it cannot keep the rain off?” he said; “I must look for a good
chimney-pot,” and he determined to fly away.
But before he had opened his wings, a third drop fell, and he looked up, and saw - Ah! what did he
see?
The eyes of the Happy Prince were filled with tears, and tears were running down his golden
cheeks. His face was so beautiful in the moonlight that the little Swallow was filled with pity.
“Who are you?” he said.
“I am the Happy Prince.”
“Why are you weeping then?” asked the Swallow; “you have quite drenched me.”
“When I was alive and had a human heart,” answered the statue, “I did not know what tears were,
for I lived in the palace of Sans-Souci, where sorrow is not allowed to enter. In the daytime I
played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led the dance in the Great Hall.
Round the garden ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything
about me was so beautiful. My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if
pleasure be happiness. So I lived, and so I died. And now that I am dead they have set me up here
so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made
of lead yet I cannot choose but weep.”
“What, is he not solid gold?” said the Swallow to himself. He was too polite to make any personal
remarks out loud.
“Far away,” continued the statue in a low musical voice, “far away in a little street there is a poor
house. One of the windows is open, and through it I can see a woman seated at a table. Her face is
thin and worn, and she has coarse, red hands, all pricked by the needle, for she is a seamstress. She
is embroidering passion-flowers on a satin gown for the loveliest of the Queen’s maids-of-honour
to wear at the next Court-ball. In a bed in the corner of the room her little boy is lying ill. He has a
fever, and is asking for oranges. His mother has nothing to give him but river water, so he is
crying. Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, will you not bring her the ruby out of my sword-hilt?
My feet are fastened to this pedestal and I cannot move.”
“I am waited for in Egypt,” said the Swallow. “My friends are flying up and down the Nile, and
talking to the large lotus-flowers. Soon they will go to sleep in the tomb of the great King. The
King is there himself in his painted coffin. He is wrapped in yellow linen, and embalmed with
spices. Round his neck is a chain of pale green jade, and his hands are like withered leaves.”
“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “will you not stay with me for one night, and
be my messenger? The boy is so thirsty, and the mother so sad.”
“I don’t think I like boys,” answered the Swallow. “Last summer, when I was staying on the river,
there were two rude boys, the miller’s sons, who were always throwing stones at me. They never
hit me, of course; we swallows fly far too well for that, and besides, I come of a family famous for
its agility; but still, it was a mark of disrespect.”
But the Happy Prince looked so sad that the little Swallow was sorry. “It is very cold here,” he
said; “but I will stay with you for one night, and be your messenger.”
“Thank you, little Swallow,” said the Prince.
So the Swallow picked out the great ruby from the Prince’s sword, and flew away with it in his
beak over the roofs of the town.
He passed by the cathedral tower, where the white marble angels were sculptured. He passed by
the palace and heard the sound of dancing. A beautiful girl came out on the balcony with her lover.
“How wonderful the stars are,” he said to her, and how wonderful is the power of love!”
“I hope my dress will be ready in time for the State-ball,” she answered; “I have ordered
passion-flowers to be embroidered on it; but the seamstresses are so lazy.”
He passed over the river, and saw the lanterns hanging to the masts of the ships. He passed over
the Ghetto, and saw the old jews bargaining with each other, and weighing out money in copper
scales. At last he came to the poor house and looked in. The boy was tossing feverishly on his bed,
and the mother had fallen asleep, she was so tired. In he hopped, and laid the great ruby on the
table beside the woman’s thimble. Then he flew gently round the bed, fanning the boy”s forehead
with his wings. “How cool I feel,” said the boy, “I must be getting better;” and he sank into a
delicious slumber.
Then the Swallow flew back to the Happy Prince, and told him what he had done. “It is curious,”
he remarked, “but I feel quite warm now, although it is so cold.”
“That is because you have done a good action,” said the Prince. And the little Swallow began to
think, and then he fell asleep. Thinking always made him sleepy.
When day broke he flew down to the river and had a bath. “What a remarkable phenomenon,” said
the Professor of Ornithology as he was passing over the bridge. “A swallow in winter!” And he
wrote a long letter about it to the local newspaper. Every one quoted it, it was full of so many
words that they could not understand.
“To-night I go to Egypt,” said the Swallow, and he was in high spirits at the prospect. He visited
all the public monuments, and sat a long time on top of the church steeple. Wherever he went the
Sparrows chirruped, and said to each other, “What a distinguished stranger!” so he enjoyed
himself very much.
When the moon rose he flew back to the Happy Prince. “Have you any commissions for Egypt?”
he cried; “I am just starting.”
“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “will you not stay with me one night
longer?”
“I am waited for in Egypt,” answered the Swallow. “To-morrow my friends will fly up to the
Second Cataract. The river-horse couches there among the bulrushes, and on a great granite throne
sits the God Memnon. All night long he watches the stars, and when the morning star shines he
utters one cry of joy, and then he is silent. At noon the yellow lions come down to the water’s
edge to drink. They have eyes like green beryls, and their roar is louder than the roar of the
cataract.”
“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the prince, “far away across the city I see a young man
in a garret. He is leaning over a desk covered with papers, and in a tumbler by his side there is a
bunch of withered violets. His hair is brown and crisp, and his lips are red as a pomegranate, and
he has large and dreamy eyes. He is trying to finish a play for the Director of the Theatre, but he is
too cold to write any more. There is no fire in the grate, and hunger has made him faint.”
“I will wait with you one night longer,” said the Swallow, who really had a good heart. “Shall I
take him another ruby?”
“Alas! I have no ruby now,” said the Prince; “my eyes are all that I have left. They are made of
rare sapphires, which were brought out of India a thousand years ago. Pluck out one of them and
take it to him. He will sell it to the jeweller, and buy food and firewood, and finish his play.”
“Dear Prince,” said the Swallow, “I cannot do that;” and he began to weep.
“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “do as I command you.”
So the Swallow plucked out the Prince’s eye, and flew away to the student’s garret. It was easy
enough to get in, as there was a hole in the roof. Through this he darted, and came into the room.
The young man had his head buried in his hands, so he did not hear the flutter of the bird’s wings,
and when he looked up he found the beautiful sapphire lying on the withered violets.
“I am beginning to be appreciated,” he cried; “this is from some great admirer. Now I can finish
my play,” and he looked quite happy.
The next day the Swallow flew down to the harbour. He sat on the mast of a large vessel and
watched the sailors hauling big chests out of the hold with ropes. “Heave a-hoy!” they shouted as
each chest came up. “I am going to Egypt!” cried the Swallow, but nobody minded, and when the
moon rose he flew back to the Happy Prince.
“I am come to bid you good-bye,” he cried.
“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “will you not stay with me one night
longer?”
“It is winter,” answered the Swallow, “and the chill snow will soon be here. In Egypt the sun is
warm on the green palm-trees, and the crocodiles lie in the mud and look lazily about them. My
companions are building a nest in the Temple of Baalbec, and the pink and white doves are
watching them, and cooing to each other. Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget
you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given
away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.”
“In the square below,” said the Happy Prince, “there stands a little match-girl. She has let her
matches fall in the gutter, and they are all spoiled. Her father will beat her if she does not bring
home some money, and she is crying. She has no shoes or stockings, and her little head is bare.
Pluck out my other eye, and give it to her, and her father will not beat her.”
“I will stay with you one night longer,” said the Swallow, “but I cannot pluck out your eye. You
would be quite blind then.”
“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “do as I command you.”
So he plucked out the Prince’s other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped past the match-girl,
and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. “What a lovely bit of glass,” cried the little girl;
and she ran home, laughing.
Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. “You are blind now,” he said, “so I will stay with you
always.”
“No, little Swallow,” said the poor Prince, “you must go away to Egypt.”
“I will stay with you always,” said the Swallow, and he slept at the Prince’s feet.
All the next day he sat on the Prince’s shoulder, and told him stories of what he had seen in
strange lands. He told him of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the Nile, and
catch gold fish in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself and lives in the desert,
and knows everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry
amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony,
and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty
priests to feed it with honey-cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves,
and are always at war with the butterflies.
“Dear little Swallow,” said the Prince, “you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous
than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. Fly
over my city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there.”
So the Swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses,
while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of
starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets. Under the archway of a bridge two little
boys were lying in one another’s arms to try and keep themselves warm. “How hungry we are!”
they said. “You must not lie here,” shouted the Watchman, and they wandered out into the rain.
Then he flew back and told the Prince what he had seen.
“I am covered with fine gold,” said the Prince, “you must take it off, leaf by leaf, and give it to my
poor; the living always think that gold can make them happy.”
Leaf after leaf of the fine gold the Swallow picked off, till the Happy Prince looked quite dull and
grey. Leaf after leaf of the fine gold he brought to the poor, and the children’s faces grew rosier,
and they laughed and played games in the street. “We have bread now!” they cried.
Then the snow came, and after the snow came the frost. The streets looked as if they were made of
silver, they were so bright and glistening; long icicles like crystal daggers hung down from the
eaves of the houses, everybody went about in furs, and the little boys wore scarlet caps and skated
on the ice.
The poor little Swallow grew colder and colder, but he would not leave the Prince, he loved him
too well. He picked up crumbs outside the baker’s door where the baker was not looking, and tried
to keep himself warm by flapping his wings.
But at last he knew that he was going to die. He had just strength to fly up to the Prince’s shoulder
once more. “Good-bye, dear Prince!” he murmured, “will you let me kiss your hand?”
“I am glad that you are going to Egypt at last, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “you have stayed
too long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you.”
“It is not to Egypt that I am going,” said the Swallow. “I am going to the House of Death. Death is
the brother of Sleep, is he not?”
And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet.
At that moment a curious crack sounded inside the statue, as if something had broken. The fact is
that the leaden heart had snapped right in two. It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost. Early the
next morning the Mayor was walking in the square below in company with the Town Councillors.
As they passed the column he looked up at the statue: “Dear me! how shabby the Happy Prince
looks!” he said.
“How shabby indeed!” cried the Town Councillors, who always agreed with the Mayor, and they
went up to look at it.
“The ruby has fallen out of his sword, his eyes are gone, and he is golden no longer,” said the
Mayor; “in fact, he is little better than a beggar!”
“Little better than a beggar” said the Town councillors.
“And here is actually a dead bird at his feet!” continued the Mayor. “We must really issue a
proclamation that birds are not to be allowed to die here.” And the Town Clerk made a note of the
suggestion.
So they pulled down the statue of the Happy Prince. “As he is no longer beautiful he is no longer
useful,” said the Art Professor at the University.
Then they melted the statue in a furnace, and the Mayor held a meeting of the Corporation to
decide what was to be done with the metal. “We must have another statue, of course,” he said,
“and it shall be a statue of myself.”
“Of myself,” said each of the Town Councillors, and they quarrelled. When I last heard of them
they were quarrelling still.
“What a strange thing!” said the overseer of the workmen at the foundry. “This broken lead heart
will not melt in the furnace. We must throw it away.” So they threw it on a dust-heap where the
dead Swallow was also lying.
“Bring me the two most precious things in the city,” said God to one of His Angels; and the Angel
brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.
“You have rightly chosen,” said God, “for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for
evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.”
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a Scottish physician and
writer who is most noted for his fictional stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are
generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction. He is also known for writing the
fictional adventures of a second character he invented, Professor Challenger, and for
popularising the mystery of the Mary Celeste. He was a prolific writer whose other works include
fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels
The Adventure of the Speckled Band
On glancing over my notes of the seventy odd cases in which I have during the last eight years
studied the methods of my friend Sherlock Holmes, I find many tragic, some comic, a large
number merely strange, but none commonplace; for, working as he did rather for the love of his
art than for the acquirement of wealth, he refused to associate himself with any investigation
which did not tend towards the unusual, and even the fantastic. Of all these varied cases, however,
I cannot recall any which presented more singular features than that which was associated with the
well-known Surrey family of the Roylotts of Stoke Moran. The events in question occurred in the
early days of my association with Holmes, when we were sharing rooms as bachelors in Baker
Street. It is possible that I might have placed them upon record before, but a promise of secrecy
was made at the time, from which I have only been freed during the last month by the untimely
death of the lady to whom the pledge was given. It is perhaps as well that the facts should now
come to light, for I have reasons to know that there are widespread rumours as to the death of Dr.
Grimesby Roylott which tend to make the matter even more terrible than the truth.
It was early in April in the year ‘83 that I woke one morning to find Sherlock Holmes standing,
fully dressed, by the side of my bed. He was a late riser, as a rule, and as the clock on the
mantelpiece showed me that it was only a quarter-past seven, I blinked up at him in some surprise,
and perhaps just a little resentment, for I was myself regular in my habits.
“Very sorry to knock you up, Watson,” said he, “but it’s the common lot this morning. Mrs.
Hudson has been knocked up, she retorted upon me, and I on you.”
“What is it, then –a fire?”
“No; a client. It seems that a young lady has arrived in a considerable state of excitement, who
insists upon seeing me. She is waiting now in the sitting-room. Now, when young ladies wander
about the metropolis at this hour of the morning, and knock sleepy people up out of their beds, I
presume that it is something very pressing which they have to communicate. Should it prove to be
an interesting case, you would, I am sure, wish to follow it from the outset. I thought, at any rate,
that I should call you and give you the chance.”
“My dear fellow, I would not miss it for anything.”
I had no keener pleasure than in following Holmes in his professional investigations, and in
admiring the rapid deductions, as swift as intuitions, and yet always founded on a logical basis
with which he unravelled the problems which were submitted to him. I rapidly threw on my
clothes and was ready in a few minutes to accompany my friend down to the sitting-room. A lady
dressed in black and heavily veiled, who had been sitting in the window, rose as we entered.
“Good-morning, madam,” said Holmes cheerily. “My name is Sherlock Holmes. This is my
intimate friend and associate, Dr. Watson, before whom you can speak as freely as before myself.
Ha! I am glad to see that Mrs. Hudson has had the good sense to light the fire. Pray draw up to it,
and I shall order you a cup of hot coffee, for I observe that you are shivering.”
“lt is not cold which makes me shiver,” said the woman in a low voice, changing her seat as
requested.
“What, then?”
“It is fear, Mr. Holmes. It is terror.” She raised her veil as she spoke, and we could see that she
was indeed in a pitiable state of agitation, her face all drawn and grey, with restless frightened
eyes, like those of some hunted animal. Her features and figure were those of a woman of thirty,
but her hair was shot with premature grey, and her expression was weary and haggard. Sherlock
Holmes ran her over with one of his quick, all-comprehensive glances.
“You must not fear,” said he soothingly, bending forward and patting her forearm. “We shall soon
set matters right, I have no doubt. You have come in by train this morning, I see.”
“You know me, then?”
“No, but I observe the second half of a return ticket in the palm of your left glove. You must have
started early, and yet you had a good drive in a dog-cart, along heavy roads, before you reached
the station.”
The lady gave a violent start and stared in bewilderment at my companion.
“There is no mystery, my dear madam,” said he, smiling. “The left arm of your jacket is spattered
with mud in no less than seven places. The marks are perfectly fresh. There is no vehicle save a
dog-cart which throws up mud in that way, and then only when you sit on the left-hand side of the
driver.”
“Whatever your reasons may be, you are perfectly correct,” said she. “I started from home before
six, reached Leatherhead at twenty past, and came in by the first train to Waterloo. Sir, I can stand
this strain no longer; I shall go mad if it continues. I have no one to turn to –none, save only one,
who cares for me, and he, poor fellow, can be of little aid. I have heard of you, Mr. Holmes; I have
heard of you from Mrs. Farintosh, whom you helped in the hour of her sore need. It was from her
that I had your address. Oh, sir, do you not think that you could help me, too, and at least throw a
little light through the dense darkness which surrounds me? At present it is out of my power to
reward you for your services, but in a month or six weeks I shall be married, with the control of
my own income, and then at least you shall not find me ungrateful.”
Holmes turned to his desk and, unlocking it, drew out a small case-book, which he consulted.
“Farintosh,” said he. “Ah yes, I recall the case; it was concerned with an opal tiara. I think it was
before your time, Watson. I can only say, madam, that I shall be happy to devote the same care to
your case as I did to that of your friend. As to reward, my profession is its own reward; but you
are at liberty to defray whatever expenses I may be put to, at the time which suits you best. And
now I beg that you will lay before us everything that may help us in forming an opinion upon the
matter.”
“Alas!” replied our visitor, “the very horror of my situation lies in the fact that my fears are so
vague, and my suspicions depend so entirely upon small points, which might seem trivial to
another, that even he to whom of all others I have a right to look for help and advice looks upon
all that I tell him about it as the fancies of a nervous woman. He does not say so, but I can read it
from his soothing answers and averted eyes. But I have heard, Mr. Holmes, that you can see
deeply into the manifold wickedness of the human heart. You may advise me how to walk amid
the dangers which encompass me.”
“I am all attention, madam.”
“My name is Helena Stoner, and I am living with my stepfather, who is the last survivor of one of
the oldest Saxon families in England, the Roylotts of Stoke Moran, on the western border of
Surrey.”
Holmes nodded his head. “The name is familiar to me,” said he.
“The family was at one time among the richest in England, and the estates extended over the
borders into Berkshire in the north, and Hampshire in the west. In the last century, however, four
successive heirs were of a dissolute and wasteful disposition, and the family ruin was eventually
completed by a gambler in the days of the Regency. Nothing was left save a few acres of ground,
and the two-hundred-year-old house, which is itself crushed under a heavy mortgage. The last
squire dragged out his existence there, living the horrible life of an aristocratic pauper; but his
only son, my stepfather, seeing that he must adapt himself to the new conditions, obtained an
advance from a relative, which enabled him to take a medical degree and went out to Calcutta,
where, by his professional skill and his force of character, he established a large practice. In a fit
of anger, however, caused by some robberies which had been perpetrated in the house, he beat his
native butler to death and narrowly escaped a capital sentence. As it was, he suffered a long term
of imprisonment and afterwards returned to England a morose and disappointed man.
“When Dr. Roylott was in India he married my mother, Mrs. Stoner, the young widow of
Major-General Stoner, of the Bengal Artillery. My sister Julia and I were twins, and we were only
two years old at the time of my mother’s re-marriage. She had a considerable sum of money –not
less than 1000 pounds a year –and this she bequeathed to Dr. Roylott entirely while we resided
with him, with a provision that a certain annual sum should be allowed to each of us in the event
of our marriage. Shortly after our return to England my mother died –she was killed eight years
ago in a railway accident near Crewe. Dr. Roylott then abandoned his attempts to establish himself
in practice in London and took us to live with him in the old ancestral house at Stoke Moran. The
money which my mother had left was enough for all our wants, and there seemed to be no
obstacle to our happiness.
“But a terrible change came over our stepfather about this time. Instead of making friends and
exchanging visits with our neighbours, who had at first been overjoyed to see a Roylott of Stoke
Moran back in the old family seat, he shut himself up in his house and seldom came out save to
indulge in ferocious quarrels with whoever might cross his path. Violence of temper approaching
to mania has been hereditary in the men of the family, and in my stepfather’s case it had, I believe,
been intensified by his long residence in the tropics. A series of disgraceful brawls took place, two
of which ended in the police-court, until at last he became the terror of the village, and the folks
would fly at his approach, for he is a man of immense strength, and absolutely uncontrollable in
his anger.
“Last week he hurled the local blacksmith over a parapet into a stream, and it was only by paying
over all the money which I could gather together that I was able to avert another public exposure.
He had no friends at all save the wandering gypsies, and he would give these vagabonds leave to
encamp upon the few acres of bramble-covered land which represent the family estate, and would
accept in return the hospitality of their tents, wandering away with them sometimes for weeks on
end. He has a passion also for Indian animals, which are sent over to him by a correspondent, and
he has at this moment a cheetah and a baboon, which wander freely over his grounds and are
feared by the villagers almost as much as their master.
“You can imagine from what I say that my poor sister Julia and I had no great pleasure in our lives.
No servant would stay with us, and for a long time we did all the work of the house. She was but
thirty at the time of her death, and yet her hair had already begun to whiten, even as mine has.”
“Your sister is dead, then?”
“She died just two years ago, and it is of her death that I wish to speak to you. You can understand
that, living the life which I have described, we were little likely to see anyone of our own age and
position. We had, however, an aunt, my mother’s maiden sister, Miss Honoria Westphail, who
lives near Harrow, and we were occasionally allowed to pay short visits at this lady’s house. Julia
went there at Christmas two years ago, and met there a half-pay major of marines, to whom she
became engaged. My stepfather learned of the engagement when my sister returned and offered no
objection to the marriage; but within a fortnight of the day which had been fixed for the wedding,
the terrible event occurred which has deprived me of my only companion.”
Sherlock Holmes had been leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed and his head sunk in a
cushion, but he half opened his lids now and glanced across at his visitor.
“Pray be precise as to details,” said he.
“It is easy for me to be so, for every event of that dreadful time is seared into my memory. The
manor-house is, as I have already said, very old, and only one wing is now inhabited. The
bedrooms in this wing are on the ground floor, the sitting-rooms being in the central block of the
buildings. Of these bedrooms the first is Dr. Roylott’s, the second my sister’s, and the third my
own. There is no communication between them, but they all open out into the same corridor. Do I
make myself plain?”
“Perfectly so.”
“The windows of the three rooms open out upon the lawn. That fatal night Dr. Roylott had gone to
his room early, though we knew that he had not retired to rest, for my sister was troubled by the
smell of the strong Indian cigars which it was his custom to smoke. She left her room, therefore,
and came into mine, where she sat for some time, chatting about her approaching wedding. At
eleven o’clock she rose to leave me, but she paused at the door and looked back.
“‘Tell me, Helena,’ said she, ‘have you ever heard anyone whistle in the dead of the night?’
“‘Never,’ said I.
“‘I suppose that you could not possibly whistle, yourself, in your sleep?’
“‘Certainly not. But why?’
“‘Because during the last few nights I have always, about three in the morning, heard a low, clear
whistle. I am a light sleeper, and it has awakened me. I cannot tell where it came from perhaps
from the next room, perhaps from the lawn. I thought that I would just ask you whether you had
heard it.’
“‘No, I have not. It must be those wretched gypsies in the plantation.’
“‘Very likely. And yet if it were on the lawn, I wonder that you did not hear it also.’
“‘Ah, but I sleep more heavily than you.’
“‘Well, it is of no great consequence, at any rate.’ She smiled back at me, closed my door, and a
few moments later I heard her key turn in the lock.”
“Indeed,” said Holmes. “Was it your custom always to lock yourselves in at night?”
“Always.”
“And why?”
“I think that I mentioned to you that the doctor kept a cheetah and a baboon. We had no feeling of
security unless our doors were locked.”
“Quite so. Pray proceed with your statement.”
“I could not sleep that night. A vague feeling of impending misfortune impressed me. My sister
and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls
which are so closely allied. It was a wild night. The wind was howling outside, and the rain was
beating and splashing against the windows. Suddenly, amid all the hubbub of the gale, there burst
forth the wild scream of a terrified woman. I knew that it was my sister’s voice. I sprang from my
bed, wrapped a shawl round me, and rushed into the corridor. As I opened my door I seemed to
hear a low whistle, such as my sister described, and a few moments later a clanging sound, as if a
mass of metal had fallen. As I ran down the passage, my sister’s door was unlocked, and revolved
slowly upon its hinges. I stared at it horror-stricken, not knowing what was about to issue from it.
By the light of the corridor-lamp I saw my sister appear at the opening, her face blanched with
terror, her hands groping for help, her whole figure swaying to and fro like that of a drunkard. I
ran to her and threw my arms round her, but at that moment her knees seemed to give way and she
fell to the ground. She writhed as one who is in terrible pain, and her limbs were dreadfully
convulsed. At first I thought that she had not recognised me, but as I bent over her she suddenly
shrieked out in a voice which I shall never forget, ‘Oh, my God! Helena! It was the band! The
speckled band!’ There was something else which she would fain have said, and she stabbed with
her finger into the air in the direction of the doctor’s room, but a fresh convulsion seized her and
choked her words. I rushed out, calling loudly for my stepfather, and I met him hastening from his
room in his dressing-gown. When he reached my sister’s side she was unconscious, and though he
poured brandy down her throat and sent for medical aid from the village, all efforts were in vain,
for she slowly sank and died without having recovered her consciousness. Such was the dreadful
end of my beloved sister.”
“One moment,” said Holmes, “are you sure about this whistle and metallic sound? Could you
swear to it?”
“That was what the county coroner asked me at the inquiry. It is my strong impression that I heard
it, and yet, among the crash of the gale and the creaking of an old house, I may possibly have been
deceived.”
“Was your sister dressed?”
“No, she was in her night-dress. In her right hand was found the charred stump of a match, and in
her left a match-box.”
“Showing that she had struck a light and looked about her when the alarm took place. That is
important. And what conclusions did the coroner come to?”
“He investigated the case with great care, for Dr. Roylott’s conduct had long been notorious in the
county, but he was unable to find any satisfactory cause of death. My evidence showed that the
door had been fastened upon the inner side, and the windows were blocked by old-fashioned
shutters with broad iron bars, which were secured every night. The walls were carefully sounded,
and were shown to be quite solid all round, and the flooring was also thoroughly examined, with
the same result. The chimney is wide, but is barred up by four large staples. It is certain, therefore,
that my sister was quite alone when she met her end. Besides, there were no marks of any violence
upon her.”
“How about poison?”
“The doctors examined her for it, but without success.”
“What do you think that this unfortunate lady died of, then?”
“It is my belief that she died of pure fear and nervous shock, though what it was that frightened
her I cannot imagine.”
“Were there gypsies in the plantation at the time?”
“Yes, there are nearly always some there.”
“Ah, and what did you gather from this allusion to a band –a speckled band?”
“Sometimes I have thought that it was merely the wild talk of delirium, sometimes that it may
have referred to some band of people, perhaps to these very gypsies in the plantation. I do not
know whether the spotted handkerchiefs which so many of them wear over their heads might have
suggested the strange adjective which she used.”
Holmes shook his head like a man who is far from being satisfied.
“These are very deep waters,” said he; “pray go on with your narrative.”
“Two years have passed since then, and my life has been until lately lonelier than ever. A month
ago, however, a dear friend, whom I have known for many years, has done me the honour to ask
my hand in marriage. His name is Armitage –Percy Armitage –the second son of Mr. Armitage, of
Crane Water, near Reading. My stepfather has offered no opposition to the match, and we are to
be married in the course of the spring. Two days ago some repairs were started in the west wing of
the building, and my bedroom wall has been pierced, so that I have had to move into the chamber
in which my sister died, and to sleep in the very bed in which she slept. Imagine, then, my thrill of
terror when last night, as I lay awake, thinking over her terrible fate, I suddenly heard in the
silence of the night the low whistle which had been the herald of her own death. I sprang up and lit
the lamp, but nothing was to be seen in the room. I was too shaken to go to bed again, however, so
I dressed, and as soon as it was daylight I slipped down, got a dog-cart at the Crown Inn, which is
opposite, and drove to Leatherhead, from whence I have come on this morning with the one object
of seeing you and asking your advice.”
“You have done wisely,” said my friend. “But have you told me all?”
“Yes, all.”
“Miss Roylott, you have not. You are screening your stepfather.”
“Why, what do you mean?”
For answer Holmes pushed back the frill of black lace which fringed the hand that lay upon our
visitor’s knee. Five little livid spots, the marks of four fingers and a thumb, were printed upon the
white wrist.
“You have been cruelly used,” said Holmes.
The lady coloured deeply and covered over her injured wrist. “He is a hard man,” she said, “and
perhaps he hardly knows his own strength.”
There was a long silence, during which Holmes leaned his chin upon his hands and stared into the
crackling fire.
“This is a very deep business,” he said at last. “There are a thousand details which I should desire
to know before I decide upon our course of action. Yet we have not a moment to lose. If we were
to come to Stoke Moran to-day, would it be possible for us to see over these rooms without the
knowledge of your stepfather?”
“As it happens, he spoke of coming into town to-day upon some most important business. It is
probable that he will be away all day, and that there would be nothing to disturb you. We have a
housekeeper now, but she is old and foolish, and I could easily get her out of the way.”
“Excellent. You are not averse to this trip, Watson?”
“By no means.”
“Then we shall both come. What are you going to do yourself?”
“I have one or two things which I would wish to do now that I am in town. But I shall return by
the twelve o’clock train, so as to be there in time for your coming.”
“And you may expect us early in the afternoon. I have myself some small business matters to
attend to. Will you not wait and breakfast?”
“No, I must go. My heart is lightened already since I have confided my trouble to you. I shall look
forward to seeing you again this afternoon.” She dropped her thick black veil over her face and
glided from the room.
“And what do you think of it all, Watson?” asked Sherlock Holmes, leaning back in his chair.
“It seems to me to be a most dark and sinister business.”
“Dark enough and sinister enough.”
“Yet if the lady is correct in saying that the flooring and walls are sound, and that the door,
window, and chimney are impassable, then her sister must have been undoubtedly alone when she
met her mysterious end.”
“What becomes, then, of these nocturnal whistles, and what of the very peculiar words of the
dying woman?”
“I cannot think.”
“When you combine the ideas of whistles at night, the presence of a band of gypsies who are on
intimate terms with this old doctor, the fact that we have every reason to believe that the doctor
has an interest in preventing his stepdaughter’s marriage, the dying allusion to a band, and, finally,
the fact that Miss Helena Stoner heard a metallic clang, which might have been caused by one of
those metal bars that secured the shutters falling back into its place, I think that there is good
ground to think that the mystery may be cleared along those lines.”
“But what, then, did the gypsies do?”
“I cannot imagine.”
“I see many objections to any such theory.”
“And so do I. It is precisely for that reason that we are going to Stoke Moran this day. I want to
see whether the objections are fatal, or if they may be explained away. But what in the name of the
devil!”
The ejaculation had been drawn from my companion by the fact that our door had been suddenly
dashed open, and that a huge man had framed himself in the aperture. His costume was a peculiar
mixture of the professional and of the agricultural, having a black top-hat, a long frock-coat, and a
pair of high gaiters, with a hunting-crop swinging in his hand. So tall was he that his hat actually
brushed the cross bar of the doorway, and his breadth seemed to span it across from side to side. A
large face, seared with a thousand wrinkles, burned yellow with the sun, and marked with every
evil passion, was turned from one to the other of us, while his deep-set, bile-shot eyes, and his
high, thin, fleshless nose, gave him somewhat the resemblance to a fierce old bird of prey.
“Which of you is Holmes?” asked this apparition.
“My name, sir; but you have the advantage of me,” said my companion quietly.
“I am Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of Stoke Moran.”
“Indeed, Doctor,” said Holmes blandly. “Pray take a seat.”
“I will do nothing of the kind. My stepdaughter has been here. I have traced her. What has she
been saying to you?”
“It is a little cold for the time of the year,” said Holmes.
“What has she been saying to you?” screamed the old man furiously.
“But I have heard that the crocuses promise well,” continued my companion imperturbably.
“Ha! You put me off, do you?” said our new visitor, taking a step forward and shaking his
hunting-crop. “I know you, you scoundrel! I have heard of you before. You are Holmes, the
meddler.”
My friend smiled.
“Holmes, the busybody!”
His smile broadened.
“Holmes, the Scotland Yard Jack-in-office!”
Holmes chuckled heartily. “Your conversation is most entertaining,” said he. “When you go out
close the door, for there is a decided draught.”
“I will go when I have said my say. Don’t you dare to meddle with my affairs. I know that Miss
Stoner has been here. I traced her! I am a dangerous man to fall foul of! See here.” He stepped
swiftly forward, seized the poker, and bent it into a curve with his huge brown hands.
“See that you keep yourself out of my grip,” he snarled, and hurling the twisted poker into the
fireplace he strode out of the room.
“He seems a very amiable person,” said Holmes, laughing. “I am not quite so bulky, but if he had
remained I might have shown him that my grip was not much more feeble than his own.” As he
spoke he picked up the steel poker and, with a sudden effort, straightened it out again.
“Fancy his having the insolence to confound me with the official detective force! This incident
gives zest to our investigation, however, and I only trust that our little friend will not suffer from
her imprudence in allowing this brute to trace her. And now, Watson, we shall order breakfast, and
afterwards I shall walk down to Doctors’ Commons, where I hope to get some data which may
help us in this matter.”
It was nearly one o’clock when Sherlock Holmes returned from his excursion. He held in his hand
a sheet of blue paper, scrawled over with notes and figures.
“I have seen the will of the deceased wife,” said he. “To determine its exact meaning I have been
obliged to work out the present prices of the investments with which it is concerned. The total
income, which at the time of the wife’s death was little short of 1100 pounds, is now, through the
fall in agricultural prices, not more than 750 pounds. Each daughter can claim an income of 250
pounds, in case of marriage. It is evident, therefore, that if both girls had married, this beauty
would have had a mere pittance, while even one of them would cripple him to a very serious
extent. My morning’s work has not been wasted, since it has proved that he has the very strongest
motives for standing in the way of anything of the sort. And now, Watson, this is too serious for
dawdling, especially as the old man is aware that we are interesting ourselves in his affairs; so if
you are ready, we shall call a cab and drive to Waterloo. I should be very much obliged if you
would slip your revolver into your pocket. An Eley’s No. 2 is an excellent argument with
gentlemen who can twist steel pokers into knots. That and a tooth-brush are, I think, all that we
need.”
At Waterloo we were fortunate in catching a train for Leatherhead, where we hired a trap at the
station inn and drove for four or five miles through the lovely Surrey laries. It was a perfect day,
with a bright sun and a few fleecy clouds in the heavens. The trees and wayside hedges were just
throwing out their first green shoots, and the air was full of the pleasant smell of the moist earth.
To me at least there was a strange contrast between the sweet promise of the spring and this
sinister quest upon which we were engaged. My companion sat in the front of the trap, his arms
folded, his hat pulled down over his eyes, and his chin sunk upon his breast, buried in the deepest
thought. Suddenly, however, he started, tapped me on the shoulder, and pointed over the meadows
“Look there!” said he.
A heavily timbered park stretched up in a gentle slope, thickening into a grove at the highest point.
From amid the branches there jutted out the grey gables and high roof-tree of a very old mansion.
“Stoke Moran?” said he.
“Yes, sir, that be the house of Dr. Grimesby Roylott,” remarked the driver.
“There is some building going on there,” said Holmes; “that is where we are going.”
“There’s the village,” said the driver, pointing to a cluster of roofs some distance to the left; “but if
you want to get to the house, you’ll find it shorter to get over this stile, and so by the foot-path
over the fields. There it is, where the lady is walking.”
“And the lady, I fancy, is Miss Stoner,” observed Holmes, shading his eyes. “Yes, I think we had
better do as you suggest.”
We got off, paid our fare, and the trap rattled back on its way to Leatherhead.
“I thought it as well,” said Holmes as we climbed the stile, “that this fellow should think we had
come here as architects, or on some definite business. It may stop his gossip. Good-afternoon,
Miss Stoner. You see that we have been as good as our word.”
Our client of the morning had hurried forward to meet us with a face which spoke her joy. “I have
been waiting so eagerly for you,” she cried, shaking hands with us warmly. “All has turned out
splendidly. Dr. Roylott has gone to town, and it is unlikely that he will be back before evening.”
“We have had the pleasure of making the doctor’s acquaintance,” said Holmes, and in a few words
he sketched out what had occurred. Miss Stoner turned white to the lips as she listened.
“Good heavens!” she cried, “he has followed me, then.”
“So it appears.”
“He is so cunning that I never know when I am safe from him. What will he say when he returns?”
“He must guard himself, for he may find that there is someone more cunning than himself upon
his track. You must lock yourself up from him to-night. If he is violent, we shall take you away to
your aunt’s at Harrow. Now, we must make the best use of our time, so kindly take us at once to
the rooms which we are to examine.”
The building was of grey, lichen-blotched stone, with a high central portion and two curving
wings, like the claws of a crab, thrown out on each side. In one of these wings the windows were
broken and blocked with wooden boards, while the roof was partly caved in, a picture of ruin. The
central portion was in little better repair, but the right-hand block was comparatively modern, and
the blinds in the windows, with the blue smoke curling up from the chimneys, showed that this
was where the family resided. Some scaffolding had been erected against the end wall, and the
stone-work had been broken into, but there were no signs of any workmen at the moment of our
visit. Holmes walked slowly up and down the ill-trimmed lawn and examined with deep attention
the outsides of the windows.
“This, I take it, belongs to the room in which you used to sleep, the centre one to your sister’s, and
the one next to the main building to Dr. Roylott’s chamber?”
“Exactly so. But I am now sleeping in the middle one.”
“Pending the alterations, as I understand. By the way, there does not seem to be any very pressing
need for repairs at that end wall.”
“There were none. I believe that it was an excuse to move me from my room.”
“Ah! that is suggestive. Now, on the other side of this narrow wing runs the corridor from which
these three rooms open. There are windows in it, of course?”
“Yes, but very small ones. Too narrow for anyone to pass through.”
“As you both locked your doors at night, your rooms were unapproachable from that side. Now,
would you have the kindness to go into your room and bar your shutters?”
Miss Stoner did so, and Holmes, after a careful examination through the open window,
endeavoured in every way to force the shutter open, but without success. There was no slit through
which a knife could be passed to raise the bar. Then with his lens he tested the hinges, but they
were of solid iron, built firmly into the massive masonry. “Hum!” said he, scratching his chin in
some perplexity, “my theory certainly presents some difficulties. No one could pass these shutters
if they were bolted. Well, we shall see if the inside throws any light upon the matter.”
A small side door led into the whitewashed corridor from which the three bedrooms opened.
Holmes refused to examine the third chamber, so we passed at once to the second, that in which
Miss Stoner was now sleeping, and in which her sister had met with her fate. It was a homely little
room, with a low ceiling and a gaping fireplace, after the fashion of old country-houses. A brown
chest of drawers stood in one corner, a narrow white-counterpaned bed in another, and a
dressing-table on the left-hand side of the window. These articles, with two small wicker-work
chairs, made up all the furniture in the room save for a square of Wilton carpet in the centre. The
boards round and the panelling of the walls were of brown, worm-eaten oak, so old and
discoloured that it may have dated from the original building of the house. Holmes drew one of
the chairs into a corner and sat silent, while his eyes travelled round and round and up and down,
taking in every detail of the apartment.
“Where does that bell communicate with?” he asked at last pointing to a thick belt-rope which
hung down beside the bed, the tassel actually lying upon the pillow.
“It goes to the housekeeper’s room.”
“It looks newer than the other things?”
“Yes, it was only put there a couple of years ago.”
“Your sister asked for it, I suppose?”
“No, I never heard of her using it. We used always to get what we wanted for ourselves.”
“Indeed, it seemed unnecessary to put so nice a bell-pull there. You will excuse me for a few
minutes while I satisfy myself as to this floor.” He threw himself down upon his face with his lens
in his hand and crawled swiftly backward and forward, examining minutely the cracks between
the boards. Then he did the same with the wood-work with which the chamber was panelled.
Finally he walked over to the bed and spent some time in staring at it and in running his eye up
and down the wall. Finally he took the bell-rope in his hand and gave it a brisk tug.
“Why, it’s a dummy,” said he.
“Won’t it ring?”
“No, it is not even attached to a wire. This is very interesting. You can see now that it is fastened
to a hook just above where the little opening for the ventilator is.”
“How very absurd! I never noticed that before.”
“Very strange!” muttered Holmes, pulling at the rope. “There are one or two very singular points
about this room. For example, what a fool a builder must be to open a ventilator into another room,
when, with the same trouble, he might have communicated with the outside air!”
“That is also quite modern,” said the lady.
“Done about the same time as the bell-rope?” remarked Holmes.
“Yes, there were several little changes carried out about that time.”
“They seem to have been of a most interesting character –dummy bell-ropes, and ventilators
which do not ventilate. With your permission, Miss Stoner, we shall now carry our researches into
the inner apartment.”
Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s chamber was larger than that of his step-daughter, but was as plainly
furnished. A camp-bed, a small wooden shelf full of books, mostly of a technical character an
armchair beside the bed, a plain wooden chair against the wall, a round table, and a large iron safe
were the principal things which met the eye. Holmes walked slowly round and examined each and
all of them with the keenest interest.
“What’s in here?” he asked, tapping the safe.
“My stepfather’s business papers.”
“Oh! you have seen inside, then?”
“Only once, some years ago. I remember that it was full of papers.”
“There isn’t a cat in it, for example?”
“No. What a strange idea!”
“Well, look at this!” He took up a small saucer of milk which stood on the top of it.
“No; we don’t keep a cat. But there is a cheetah and a baboon.”
“Ah, yes, of course! Well, a cheetah is just a big cat, and yet a saucer of milk does not go very far
in satisfying its wants, I daresay. There is one point which I should wish to determine.” He
squatted down in front of the wooden chair and examined the seat of it with the greatest attention.
“Thank you. That is quite settled,” said he, rising and putting his lens in his pocket. “Hello! Here
is something interesting!”
The object which had caught his eye was a small dog lash hung on one corner of the bed. The lash,
however, was curled upon itself and tied so as to make a loop of whipcord.
“What do you make of that, Watson?”
“It’s a common enough lash. But I don’t know why if should be tied.”
“That is not quite so common, is it? Ah, me! it’s a wicked world, and when a clever man turns his
brains to crime it is the worst of all. I think that I have seen enough now, Miss Stoner, and with
your permission we shall walk out upon the lawn.”
I had never seen my friend’s face so grim or his brow so dark as it was when we turned from the
scene of this investigation. We had walked several times up and down the lawn, neither Miss
Stoner nor myself liking to break in upon his thoughts before he roused himself from his reverie.
“It is very essential, Miss Stoner,” said he, “that you should absolutely follow my advice in every
respect.”
“I shall most certainly do so.”
“The matter is too serious for any hesitation. Your life may depend upon your compliance.”
“I assure you that I am in your hands.”
“In the first place, both my friend and I must spend the night in your room.”
Both Miss Stoner and I gazed at him in astonishment.
“Yes, it must be so. Let me explain. I believe that that is the village inn over there?”
“Yes, that is the Crown.”
“Very good. Your windows would be visible from there?”
“Certainly.”
“You must confine yourself to your room, on pretence of a headache, when your stepfather comes
back. Then when you hear him retire for the night, you must open the shutters of your window,
undo the hasp, put your lamp there as a signal to us, and then withdraw quietly with everything
which you are likely to want into the room which you used to occupy. I have no doubt that, in
spite of the repairs, you could manage there for one night.”
“Oh, yes, easily.”
“The rest you will leave in our hands.”
“But what will you do?”
“We shall spend the night in your room, and we shall investigate the cause of this noise which has
disturbed you.”
“I believe, Mr. Holmes, that you have already made up your mind,” said Miss Stoner, laying her
hand upon my companion’s sleeve.
“Perhaps I have.”
“Then, for pity’s sake, tell me what was the cause of my sister’s death.”
“I should prefer to have clearer proofs before I speak.”
“You can at least tell me whether my own thought is correct, and if she died from some sudden
fright.”
“No, I do not think so. I think that there was probably some more tangible cause. And now, Miss
Stoner, we must leave you for if Dr. Roylott returned and saw us our journey would be in vain.
Good-bye, and be brave, for if you will do what I have told you you may rest assured that we shall
soon drive away the dangers that threaten you.”
Sherlock Holmes and I had no difficulty in engaging a bedroom and sitting-room at the Crown Inn.
They were on the upper floor, and from our window we could command a view of the avenue gate,
and of the inhabited wing of Stoke Moran Manor House. At dusk we saw Dr. Grimesby Roylott
drive past, his huge form looming up beside the little figure of the lad who drove him. The boy
had some slight difficulty in undoing the heavy iron gates, and we heard the hoarse roar of the
doctor’s voice and saw the fury with which he shook his clinched fists at him. The trap drove on,
and a few minutes later we saw a sudden light spring up among the trees as the lamp was lit in one
of the sitting-rooms.
“Do you know, Watson,” said Holmes as we sat together in the gathering darkness, “I have really
some scruples as to taking you to-night. There is a distinct element of danger.”
“Can I be of assistance?”
“Your presence might be invaluable.”
“Then I shall certainly come.”
“It is very kind of you.”
“You speak of danger. You have evidently seen more in these rooms than was visible to me.”
“No, but I fancy that I may have deduced a little more. I imagine that you saw all that I did.”
“I saw nothing remarkable save the bell-rope, and what purpose that could answer I confess is
more than I can imagine.”
“You saw the ventilator, too?”
“Yes, but I do not think that it is such a very unusual thing to have a small opening between two
rooms. It was so small that a rat could hardly pass through.”
“I knew that we should find a ventilator before ever we came to Stoke Moran.”
“My dear Holmes!”
“Oh, yes, I did. You remember in her statement she said that her sister could smell Dr. Roylott’s
cigar. Now, of course that suggested at once that there must be a communication between the two
rooms. It could only be a small one, or it would have been remarked upon at the coroner’s inquiry.
I deduced a ventilator.”
“But what harm can there be in that?”
“Well, there is at least a curious coincidence of dates. A ventilator is made, a cord is hung, and a
lady who sleeps in the bed dies. Does not that strike you?”
“I cannot as yet see any connection.”
“Did you observe anything very peculiar about that bed?”
“No.”
“It was clamped to the floor. Did you ever see a bed fastened like that before?”
“I cannot say that I have.”
“The lady could not move her bed. It must always be in the same relative position to the ventilator
and to the rope –or so we may call it, since it was clearly never meant for a bell-pull.”
“Holmes,” I cried, “I seem to see dimly what you are hinting at. We are only just in time to
prevent some subtle and horrible crime.”
“Subtle enough and horrible enough. When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. He
has nerve and he has knowledge. Palmer and Pritchard were among the heads of their profession.
This man strikes even deeper, but I think, Watson, that we shall be able to strike deeper still. But
we shall have horrors enough before the night is over; for goodness’ sake let us have a quiet pipe
and turn our minds for a few hours to something more cheerful.”
About nine o’clock the light among the trees was extinguished, and all was dark in the direction of
the Manor House. Two hours passed slowly away, and then, suddenly, just at the stroke of eleven,
a single bright light shone out right in front of us.
“That is our signal,” said Holmes, springing to his feet; “it comes from the middle window.”
As we passed out he exchanged a few words with the landlord, explaining that we were going on a
late visit to an acquaintance, and that it was possible that we might spend the night there. A
moment later we were out on the dark road, a chill wind blowing in our faces, and one yellow
light twinkling in front of us through the gloom to guide us on our sombre errand.
There was little difficulty in entering the grounds, for unrepaired breaches gaped in the old park
wall. Making our way among the trees, we reached the lawn, crossed it, and were about to enter
through the window when out from a clump of laurel bushes there darted what seemed to be a
hideous and distorted child, who threw itself upon the grass with writhing limbs and then ran
swiftly across the lawn into the darkness.
“My God!” I whispered; “did you see it?”
Holmes was for the moment as startled as I. His hand closed like a vise upon my wrist in his
agitation. Then he broke into a low laugh and put his lips to my ear.
“It is a nice household,” he murmured. “That is the baboon.”
I had forgotten the strange pets which the doctor affected. There was a cheetah, too; perhaps we
might find it upon our shoulders at any moment. I confess that I felt easier in my mind when, after
following Holmes’s example and slipping off my shoes, I found myself inside the bedroom. My
companion noiselessly closed the shutters, moved the lamp onto the table, and cast his eyes round
the room. All was as we had seen it in the daytime. Then creeping up to me and making a trumpet
of his hand, he whispered into my ear again so gently that it was all that I could do to distinguish
the words:
“The least sound would be fatal to our plans.”
I nodded to show that I had heard.
“We must sit without light. He would see it through the ventilator.”
I nodded again.
“Do not go asleep; your very life may depend upon it. Have your pistol ready in case we should
need it. I will sit on the side of the bed, and you in that chair.”
I took out my revolver and laid it on the corner of the table.
Holmes had brought up a long thin cane, and this he placed upon the bed beside him. By it he laid
the box of matches and the stump of a candle. Then he turned down the lamp, and we were left in
darkness.
How shall I ever forget that dreadful vigil? I could not hear a sound, not even the drawing of a
breath, and yet I knew that my companion sat open-eyed, within a few feet of me, in the same
state of nervous tension in which I was myself. The shutters cut off the least ray of light, and we
waited in absolute darkness.
From outside came the occasional cry of a night-bird, and once at our very window a long drawn
catlike whine, which told us that the cheetah was indeed at liberty. Far away we could hear the
deep tones of the parish clock, which boomed out every quarter of an hour. How long they seemed,
those quarters! Twelve struck, and one and two and three, and still we sat waiting silently for
whatever might befall.
Suddenly there was the momentary gleam of a light up in the direction of the ventilator, which
vanished immediately, but was succeeded by a strong smell of burning oil and heated metal.
Someone in the next room had lit a dark-lantern. I heard a gentle sound of movement, and then all
was silent once more, though the smell grew stronger. For half an hour I sat with straining ears.
Then suddenly another sound became audible –a very gentle, soothing sound, like that of a small
jet of steam escaping continually from a kettle. The instant that we heard it, Holmes sprang from
the bed, struck a match, and lashed furiously with his cane at the bell-pull.
“You see it, Watson?” he yelled. “You see it?”
But I saw nothing. At the moment when Holmes struck the light I heard a low, clear whistle, but
the sudden glare flashing into my weary eyes made it impossible for me to tell what it was at
which my friend lashed so savagely. I could, however, see that his face was deadly pale and filled
with horror and loathing. He had ceased to strike and was gazing up at the ventilator when
suddenly there broke from the silence of the night the most horrible cry to which I have ever
listened. It swelled up louder and louder, a hoarse yell of pain and fear and anger all mingled in
the one dreadful shriek. They say that away down in the village, and even in the distant parsonage,
that cry raised the sleepers from their beds. It struck cold to our hearts, and I stood gazing at
Holmes, and he at me, until the last echoes of it had died away into the silence from which it rose.
“What can it mean?” I gasped.
“It means that it is all over,” Holmes answered. “And perhaps, after all, it is for the best. Take
your pistol, and we will enter Dr. Roylott’s room.”
With a grave face he lit the lamp and led the way down the corridor. Twice he struck at the
chamber door without any reply from within. Then he turned the handle and entered, I at his heels,
with the cocked pistol in my hand.
It was a singular sight which met our eyes. On the table stood a dark-lantern with the shutter half
open, throwing a brilliant beam of light upon the iron safe, the door of which was ajar. Beside this
table, on the wooden chair, sat Dr. Grimesby Roylott clad in a long grey dressing-gown, his bare
ankles protruding beneath, and his feet thrust into red heel-less Turkish slippers. Across his lap lay
the short stock with the long lash which we had noticed during the day. His chin was cocked
upward and his eyes were fixed in a dreadful, rigid stare at the corner of the ceiling. Round his
brow he had a peculiar yellow band, with brownish speckles, which seemed to be bound tightly
round his head. As we entered he made neither sound nor motion.
“The band! the speckled band!” whispered Holmes.
I took a step forward. In an instant his strange headgear began to move, and there reared itself
from among his hair the squat diamond-shaped head and puffed neck of a loathsome serpent.
“It is a swamp adder!” cried Holmes; “the deadliest snake in India. He has died within ten seconds
of being bitten. Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit
which he digs for another. Let us thrust this creature back into its den, and we can then remove
Miss Stoner to some place of shelter and let the county police know what has happened.”
As he spoke he drew the dog-whip swiftly from the dead man’s lap, and throwing the noose round
the reptile’s neck he drew it from its horrid perch and, carrying it at arm’s length, threw it into the
iron safe, which he closed upon it.
Such are the true facts of the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of Stoke Moran. It is not necessary
that I should prolong a narrative which has already run to too great a length by telling how we
broke the sad news to the terrified girl, how we conveyed her by the morning train to the care of
her good aunt at Harrow, of how the slow process of official inquiry came to the conclusion that
the doctor met his fate while indiscreetly playing with a dangerous pet. The little which I had yet
to learn of the case was told me by Sherlock Holmes as we travelled back next day.
“I had,” said he, “come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how
dangerous it always is to reason from insufficient data. The presence of the gypsies, and the use of
the word ‘band,’ which was used by the poor girl, no doubt to explain the appearance which she
had caught a hurried glimpse of by the light of her match, were sufficient to put me upon an
entirely wrong scent. I can only claim the merit that I instantly reconsidered my position when,
however, it became clear to me that whatever danger threatened an occupant of the room could not
come either from the window or the door. My attention was speedily drawn, as I have already
remarked to you, to this ventilator, and to the bell-rope which hung down to the bed. The
discovery that this was a dummy, and that the bed was clamped to the floor, instantly gave rise to
the suspicion that the rope was there as a bridge for something passing through the hole and
coming to the bed. The idea of a snake instantly occurred to me, and when I coupled it with my
knowledge that the doctor was furnished with a supply of creatures from India, I felt that I was
probably on the right track. The idea of using a form of poison which could not possibly be
discovered by any chemical test was just such a one as would occur to a clever and ruthless man
who had had an Eastern training. The rapidity with which such a poison would take effect would
also, from his point of view, be an advantage. It would be a sharp-eyed coroner, indeed, who could
distinguish the two little dark punctures which would show where the poison fangs had done their
work. Then I thought of the whistle. Of course he must recall the snake before the morning light
revealed it to the victim. He had trained it, probably by the use of the milk which we saw, to return
to him when summoned. He would put it through this ventilator at the hour that he thought best,
with the certainty that it would crawl down the rope and land on the bed. It might or might not bite
the occupant, perhaps she might escape every night for a week, but sooner or later she must fall a
victim.
“I had come to these conclusions before ever I had entered his room. An inspection of his chair
showed me that he had been in the habit of standing on it, which of course would be necessary in
order that he should reach the ventilator. The sight of the safe, the saucer of milk, and the loop of
whipcord were enough to finally dispel any doubts which may have remained. The metallic clang
heard by Miss Stoner was obviously caused by her stepfather hastily closing the door of his safe
upon its terrible occupant. Having once made up my mind, you know the steps which I took in
order to put the matter to the proof. I heard the creature hiss as I have no doubt that you did also,
and I instantly lit the light and attacked it.”
“With the result of driving it through the ventilator.”
“And also with the result of causing it to turn upon its master at the other side. Some of the blows
of my cane came home and roused its snakish temper, so that it flew upon the first person it saw.
In this way I am no doubt indirectly responsible for Dr. Grimesby Roylott’s death, and I cannot
say that it is likely to weigh very heavily upon my conscience.
Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923) was born in Wellington, New Zealand. Though her
intention in going to England at the end of her teens was to study music, there she
made the acquaintance of literary people –- among them D. H. Lawrence, who was for a
while a close friend, and John Middleton Murry, whom she later married. Under their influence
she began to write, first as a journalist and then as an innovative artist in the short story. The
impressionism of many of her stories has led to some comparisons with Chekhov, who was, in any
case, an example on whom she meant to model her working life. Her persisting ill health and the
death of a beloved brother in World War I were among the circumstances that darkened her
personal life more than they influenced the temper of her fiction, which remained eager and
venturesome. Her keen satire was often directed at the self-righteousness of the upper classes and
the intelligentsia, at the complacencies insulating them from the realities of existence as
experienced by ordinary people. Her best-known collections of stories are Bliss and Other
Stories (1920), The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922), and The Dove’s Nest and
Other Stories (1923).
The Garden Party
And after all the weather was ideal. They could not have had a more perfect day for a
garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. Only the blue was
veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer. The gardener had been up
since dawn, mowing the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat rosettes where
the daisy plants had been seemed to shine. As for the roses, you could not help feeling they
understood that roses are the only flowers that impress people at garden-parties; the only flowers
that everybody is certain of knowing. Hundreds, yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single
night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels.
Breakfast was not yet over before the men came to put up the marquee.
“Where do you want the marquee put, mother?”
“My dear child, it’s no use asking me. I’m determined to leave everything to you children
this year. Forget I am your mother. Treat me as an honoured guest.”
But Meg could not possibly go and supervise the men. She had washed her hair before
breakfast, and she sat drinking her coffee in a green turban, with a dark wet curl stamped on each
cheek. Jose, the butterfly, always came down in a silk petticoat and a kimono jacket.
“You’ll have to go, Laura; you’re the artistic one.”
Away Laura flew, still holding her piece of bread-and-butter. It’s so delicious to have an
excuse for eating out of doors, and besides, she loved having to arrange things; she always felt she
could do it so much better than anybody else.
Four men in their shirt-sleeves stood grouped together on the garden path. They carried
staves covered with rolls of canvas, and they had big tool-bags slung on their backs. They looked
impressive. Laura wished now that she had not got the bread-and-butter, but there was nowhere to
put it, and she couldn’t possibly throw it away. She blushed and tried to look severe and even a
little bit short-sighted as she came up to them.
“Good morning,” she said, copying her mother’s voice. But that sounded so fearfully
affected that she was ashamed, and stammered like a little girl, “Oh - er - have you come - is it
about the marquee?”
“That’s right, miss,” said the tallest of the men, a lanky, freckled fellow, and he shifted his
tool-bag, knocked back his straw hat and smiled down at her. “That’s about it.”
His smile was so easy, so friendly that Laura recovered. What nice eyes he had, small, but
such a dark blue! And now she looked at the others, they were smiling too. “Cheer up, we won’t
bite,” their smile seemed to say. How very nice workmen were! And what a beautiful morning!
She mustn’t mention the morning; she must be business-like. The marquee.
“Well, what about the lily-lawn? Would that do?”
And she pointed to the lily-lawn with the hand that didn’t hold the bread-and-butter. They
turned, they stared in the direction. A little fat chap thrust out his under-lip, and the tall fellow
frowned.
“I don’t fancy it,” said he. “Not conspicuous enough. You see, with a thing like a marquee,”
and he turned to Laura in his easy way, “you want to put it somewhere where it’ll give you a bang
slap in the eye, if you follow me.”
Laura’s upbringing made her wonder for a moment whether it was quite respectful of a
workman to talk to her of bangs slap in the eye. But she did quite follow him.
“A corner of the tennis-court,” she suggested. “But the band’s going to be in one corner.”
“H’m, going to have a band, are you?” said another of the workmen. He was pale. He had a
haggard look as his dark eyes scanned the tennis-court. What was he thinking?
“Only a very small band,” said Laura gently. Perhaps he wouldn’t mind so much if the band
was quite small. But the tall fellow interrupted.
“Look here, miss, that’s the place. Against those trees. Over there. That’ll do fine.”
Against the karakas. Then the karaka-trees would be hidden. And they were so lovely, with
their broad, gleaming leaves, and their clusters of yellow fruit. They were like trees you imagined
growing on a desert island, proud, solitary, lifting their leaves and fruits to the sun in a kind of
silent splendour. Must they be hidden by a marquee?
They must. Already the men had shouldered their staves and were making for the place.
Only the tall fellow was left. He bent down, pinched a sprig of lavender, put his thumb and
forefinger to his nose and snuffed up the smell. When Laura saw that gesture she forgot all about
the karakas in her wonder at him caring for things like that - caring for the smell of lavender. How
many men that she knew would have done such a thing? Oh, how extraordinarily nice workmen
were, she thought. Why couldn’t she have workmen for her friends rather than the silly boys she
danced with and who came to Sunday night supper? She would get on much better with men like
these.
It’s all the fault, she decided, as the tall fellow drew something on the back of an envelope,
something that was to be looped up or left to hang, of these absurd class distinctions. Well, for her
part, she didn’t feel them. Not a bit, not an atom ... And now there came the chock-chock of
wooden hammers. Some one whistled, some one sang out, “Are you right there, matey?” “Matey!”
The friendliness of it, the - the - Just to prove how happy she was, just to show the tall fellow how
at home she felt, and how she despised stupid conventions, Laura took a big bite of her
bread-and-butter as she stared at the little drawing. She felt just like a work-girl.
“Laura, Laura, where are you? Telephone, Laura!” a voice cried from the house.
“Coming!” Away she skimmed, over the lawn, up the path, up the steps, across the veranda,
and into the porch. In the hall her father and Laurie were brushing their hats ready to go to the
office.
“I say, Laura,” said Laurie very fast, “you might just give a squiz at my coat before this
afternoon. See if it wants pressing.”
“I will,” said she. Suddenly she couldn’t stop herself. She ran at Laurie and gave him a
small, quick squeeze. “Oh, I do love parties, don’t you?” gasped Laura.
“Ra-ther,” said Laurie’s warm, boyish voice, and he squeezed his sister too, and gave her a
gentle push. “Dash off to the telephone, old girl.”
The telephone. “Yes, yes; oh yes. Kitty? Good morning, dear. Come to lunch? Do, dear.
Delighted of course. It will only be a very scratch meal - just the sandwich crusts and broken
meringue-shells and what’s left over. Yes, isn’t it a perfect morning? Your white? Oh, I certainly
should. One moment - hold the line. Mother’s calling.” And Laura sat back. “What, mother? Can’t
hear.”
Mrs. Sheridan’s voice floated down the stairs. “Tell her to wear that sweet hat she had on
last Sunday.”
“Mother says you’re to wear that sweet hat you had on last Sunday. Good. One o’clock.
Bye-bye.”
Laura put back the receiver, flung her arms over her head, took a deep breath, stretched and
let them fall. “Huh,” she sighed, and the moment after the sigh she sat up quickly. She was still,
listening. All the doors in the house seemed to be open. The house was alive with soft, quick steps
and running voices. The green baize door that led to the kitchen regions swung open and shut with
a muffled thud. And now there came a long, chuckling absurd sound. It was the heavy piano being
moved on its stiff castors. But the air! If you stopped to notice, was the air always like this? Little
faint winds were playing chase, in at the tops of the windows, out at the doors. And there were two
tiny spots of sun, one on the inkpot, one on a silver photograph frame, playing too. Darling little
spots. Especially the one on the inkpot lid. It was quite warm. A warm little silver star. She could
have kissed it.
The front door bell pealed, and there sounded the rustle of Sadie’s print skirt on the stairs. A
man’s voice murmured; Sadie answered, careless, “I’m sure I don’t know. Wait. I’ll ask Mrs
Sheridan.”
“What is it, Sadie?” Laura came into the hall.
“It’s the florist, Miss Laura.”
It was, indeed. There, just inside the door, stood a wide, shallow tray full of pots of pink
lilies. No other kind. Nothing but lilies - canna lilies, big pink flowers, wide open, radiant, almost
frighteningly alive on bright crimson stems.
“O-oh, Sadie!” said Laura, and the sound was like a little moan. She crouched down as if to
warm herself at that blaze of lilies; she felt they were in her fingers, on her lips, growing in her
breast.
“It’s some mistake,” she said faintly. “Nobody ever ordered so many. Sadie, go and find
mother.”
But at that moment Mrs. Sheridan joined them.
“It’s quite right,” she said calmly. “Yes, I ordered them. Aren’t they lovely?” She pressed
Laura’s arm. “I was passing the shop yesterday, and I saw them in the window. And I suddenly
thought for once in my life I shall have enough canna lilies. The garden-party will be a good
excuse.”
“But I thought you said you didn’t mean to interfere,” said Laura. Sadie had gone. The
florist’s man was still outside at his van. She put her arm round her mother’s neck and gently, very
gently, she bit her mother’s ear.
“My darling child, you wouldn’t like a logical mother, would you? Don’t do that. Here’s the
man.”
He carried more lilies still, another whole tray.
“Bank them up, just inside the door, on both sides of the porch, please,” said Mrs. Sheridan.
“Don’t you agree, Laura?”
“Oh, I do, mother.”
In the drawing-room Meg, Jose and good little Hans had at last succeeded in moving the
piano.
“Now, if we put this chesterfield against the wall and move everything out of the room
except the chairs, don’t you think?”
“Quite.”
“Hans, move these tables into the smoking-room, and bring a sweeper to take these marks
off the carpet and - one moment, Hans - “ Jose loved giving orders to the servants, and they loved
obeying her. She always made them feel they were taking part in some drama. “Tell mother and
Miss Laura to come here at once.
“Very good, Miss Jose.”
She turned to Meg. “I want to hear what the piano sounds like, just in case I’m asked to sing
this afternoon. Let’s try over ‘This life is Weary.’”
Pom! Ta-ta-ta Tee-ta! The piano burst out so passionately that Jose’s face changed. She
clasped her hands. She looked mournfully and enigmatically at her mother and Laura as they came
in.
This Life is Wee-ary,
A Tear - a Sigh.
A Love that Chan-ges,
This Life is Wee-ary,
A Tear - a Sigh.
A Love that Chan-ges,
And then ... Good-bye!
But at the word “Good-bye,” and although the piano sounded more desperate than ever,
her face broke into a brilliant, dreadfully unsympathetic smile.
“Aren’t I in good voice, mummy?” she beamed.
This Life is Wee-ary,
Hope comes to Die.
A Dream - a Wa-kening.”
But now Sadie interrupted them. “What is it, Sadie?”
“If you please, m’m, cook says have you got the flags for the sandwiches?”
“The flags for the sandwiches, Sadie?” echoed Mrs. Sheridan dreamily. And the children
knew by her face that she hadn’t got them. “Let me see.” And she said to Sadie firmly, “Tell cook
I’ll let her have them in ten minutes.
Sadie went.
“Now, Laura,” said her mother quickly, “come with me into the smoking-room. I’ve got the
names somewhere on the back of an envelope. You’ll have to write them out for me. Meg, go
upstairs this minute and take that wet thing off your head. Jose, run and finish dressing this instant.
Do you hear me, children, or shall I have to tell your father when he comes home to-night? And and, Jose, pacify cook if you do go into the kitchen, will you? I’m terrified of her this morning.”
The envelope was found at last behind the dining-room clock, though how it had got there
Mrs. Sheridan could not imagine.
“One of you children must have stolen it out of my bag, because I remember vividly - cream
cheese and lemon-curd. Have you done that?”
“Yes.”
“Egg and –” Mrs. Sheridan held the envelope away from her. “It looks like mice. It can’t be
mice, can it?”
“Olive, pet,” said Laura, looking over her shoulder.
“Yes, of course, olive. What a horrible combination it sounds. Egg and olive.”
They were finished at last, and Laura took them off to the kitchen. She found Jose there
pacifying the cook, who did not look at all terrifying.
“I have never seen such exquisite sandwiches,” said Jose’s rapturous voice. “How many
kinds did you say there were, cook? Fifteen?”
“Fifteen, Miss Jose.”
“Well, cook, I congratulate you.”
Cook swept up crusts with the long sandwich knife, and smiled broadly.
“Godber’s has come,” announced Sadie, issuing out of the pantry. She had seen the man
pass the window.
That meant the cream puffs had come. Godber’s were famous for their cream puffs. Nobody
ever thought of making them at home.
“Bring them in and put them on the table, my girl,” ordered cook.
Sadie brought them in and went back to the door. Of course Laura and Jose were far too
grown-up to really care about such things. All the same, they couldn’t help agreeing that the puffs
looked very attractive. Very. Cook began arranging them, shaking off the extra icing sugar.
“Don’t they carry one back to all one’s parties?” said Laura.
“I suppose they do,” said practical Jose, who never liked to be carried back. “They look
beautifully light and feathery, I must say.”
“Have one each, my dears,” said cook in her comfortable voice. “Yer ma won’t know.”
Oh, impossible. Fancy cream puffs so soon after breakfast. The very idea made one shudder.
All the same, two minutes later Jose and Laura were licking their fingers with that absorbed
inward look that only comes from whipped cream.
“Let’s go into the garden, out by the back way,” suggested Laura. “I want to see how the
men are getting on with the marquee. They’re such awfully nice men.”
But the back door was blocked by cook, Sadie, Godber’s man and Hans.
Something had happened.
“Tuk-tuk-tuk,” clucked cook like an agitated hen. Sadie had her hand clapped to her cheek
as though she had toothache. Hans’s face was screwed up in the effort to understand. Only
Godber’s man seemed to be enjoying himself; it was his story.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened?”
“There’s been a horrible accident,” said Cook. “A man killed.”
“A man killed! Where? How? When?”
But Godber’s man wasn’t going to have his story snatched from under his very nose.
“Know those little cottages just below here, miss?” Know them? Of course, she knew them.
“Well, there’s a young chap living there, name of Scott, a carter. His horse shied at a
traction-engine, corner of Hawke Street this morning, and he was thrown out on the back of his
head. Killed.”
“Dead!” Laura stared at Godber’s man.
“Dead when they picked him up,” said Godber’s man with relish. “They were taking the
body home as I come up here.” And he said to the cook, “He’s left a wife and five little ones.”
“Jose, come here.” Laura caught hold of her sister’s sleeve and dragged her through the
kitchen to the other side of the green baize door. There she paused and leaned against it. “Jose!”
she said, horrified, “however are we going to stop everything?”
“Stop everything, Laura!” cried Jose in astonishment. “What do you mean?”
“Stop the garden-party, of course.” Why did Jose pretend?
But Jose was still more amazed. “Stop the garden-party? My dear Laura, don’t be so absurd.
Of course we can’t do anything of the kind. Nobody expects us to. Don’t be so extravagant.”
“But we can’t possibly have a garden-party with a man dead just outside the front gate.”
That really was extravagant, for the little cottages were in a lane to themselves at the very
bottom of a steep rise that led up to the house. A broad road ran between. True, they were far too
near. They were the greatest possible eyesore, and they had no right to be in that neighbourhood at
all. They were little mean dwellings painted a chocolate brown. In the garden patches there was
nothing but cabbage stalks, sick hens and tomato cans. The very smoke coming out of their
chimneys was poverty-stricken. Little rags and shreds of smoke, so unlike the great silvery plumes
that uncurled from the Sheridans’ chimneys. Washerwomen lived in the lane and sweeps and a
cobbler, and a man whose house-front was studded all over with minute bird-cages. Children
swarmed. When the Sheridans were little they were forbidden to set foot there because of the
revolting language and of what they might catch. But since they were grown up, Laura and Laurie
on their prowls sometimes walked through. It was disgusting and sordid. They came out with a
shudder. But still one must go everywhere; one must see everything. So through they went.
“And just think of what the band would sound like to that poor woman,” said Laura.
“Oh, Laura!” Jose began to be seriously annoyed. “If you’re going to stop a band playing
every time some one has an accident, you’ll lead a very strenuous life. I’m every bit as sorry about
it as you. I feel just as sympathetic.” Her eyes hardened. She looked at her sister just as she used to
when they were little and fighting together. “You won’t bring a drunken workman back to life by
being sentimental,” she said softly.
“Drunk! Who said he was drunk?” Laura turned furiously on Jose. She said, just as they had
used to say on those occasions, “I’m going straight up to tell mother.”
“Do, dear,” cooed Jose.
“Mother, can I come into your room?” Laura turned the big glass door-knob.
“Of course, child. Why, what’s the matter? What’s given you such a colour?” And Mrs.
Sheridan turned round from her dressing-table. She was trying on a new hat.
“Mother, a man’s been killed,” began Laura.
“Not in the garden?” interrupted her mother.
“No, no!”
“Oh, what a fright you gave me!” Mrs. Sheridan sighed with relief, and took off the big hat
and held it on her knees.
“But listen, mother,” said Laura. Breathless, half-choking, she told the dreadful story. “Of
course, we can’t have our party, can we?” she pleaded. “The band and everybody arriving. They’d
hear us, mother; they’re nearly neighbours!”
To Laura’s astonishment her mother behaved just like Jose; it was harder to bear because
she seemed amused. She refused to take Laura seriously.
“But, my dear child, use your common sense. It’s only by accident we’ve heard of it. If
some one had died there normally - and I can’t understand how they keep alive in those poky little
holes - we should still be having our party, shouldn’t we?”
Laura had to say “yes” to that, but she felt it was all wrong. She sat down on her mother’s
sofa and pinched the cushion frill.
“Mother, isn’t it terribly heartless of us?” she asked.
“Darling!” Mrs. Sheridan got up and came over to her, carrying the hat. Before Laura could
stop her she had popped it on. “My child!” said her mother, “the hat is yours. It’s made for you.
It’s much too young for me. I have never seen you look such a picture. Look at yourself!” And she
held up her hand-mirror.
“But, mother,” Laura began again. She couldn’t look at herself; she turned aside.
This time Mrs. Sheridan lost patience just as Jose had done.
“You are being very absurd, Laura,” she said coldly. “People like that don’t expect
sacrifices from us. And it’s not very sympathetic to spoil everybody’s enjoyment as you’re doing
now.”
“I don’t understand,” said Laura, and she walked quickly out of the room into her own
bedroom. There, quite by chance, the first thing she saw was this charming girl in the mirror, in
her black hat trimmed with gold daisies, and a long black velvet ribbon. Never had she imagined
she could look like that. Is mother right? she thought. And now she hoped her mother was right.
Am I being extravagant? Perhaps it was extravagant. Just for a moment she had another glimpse
of that poor woman and those little children, and the body being carried into the house. But it all
seemed blurred, unreal, like a picture in the newspaper. I’ll remember it again after the party’s
over, she decided. And somehow that seemed quite the best plan ...
Lunch was over by half-past one. By half-past two they were all ready for the fray. The
green-coated band had arrived and was established in a corner of the tennis-court.
“My dear!” trilled Kitty Maitland, “aren’t they too like frogs for words? You ought to have
arranged them round the pond with the conductor in the middle on a leaf.”
Laurie arrived and hailed them on his way to dress. At the sight of him Laura remembered
the accident again. She wanted to tell him. If Laurie agreed with the others, then it was bound to
be all right. And she followed him into the hall.
“Laurie!”
“Hallo!” He was half-way upstairs, but when he turned round and saw Laura he suddenly
puffed out his cheeks and goggled his eyes at her. “My word, Laura! You do look stunning,” said
Laurie. “What an absolutely topping hat!”
Laura said faintly “Is it?” and smiled up at Laurie, and didn’t tell him after all.
Soon after that people began coming in streams. The band struck up; the hired waiters ran
from the house to the marquee. Wherever you looked there were couples strolling, bending to the
flowers, greeting, moving on over the lawn. They were like bright birds that had alighted in the
Sheridans’ garden for this one afternoon, on their way to - where? Ah, what happiness it is to be
with people who all are happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.
“Darling Laura, how well you look!”
“What a becoming hat, child!”
“Laura, you look quite Spanish. I’ve never seen you look so striking.”
And Laura, glowing, answered softly, “Have you had tea? Won’t you have an ice? The
passion-fruit ices really are rather special.” She ran to her father and begged him. “Daddy darling,
can’t the band have something to drink?”
And the perfect afternoon slowly ripened, slowly faded, slowly its petals closed.
“Never a more delightful garden-party ... “ “The greatest success ... “ “Quite the most ... “
Laura helped her mother with the good-byes. They stood side by side in the porch till it was
all over.
“All over, all over, thank heaven,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “Round up the others, Laura. Let’s
go and have some fresh coffee. I’m exhausted. Yes, it’s been very successful. But oh, these parties,
these parties! Why will you children insist on giving parties!” And they all of them sat down in the
deserted marquee.
“Have a sandwich, daddy dear. I wrote the flag.”
“Thanks.” Mr. Sheridan took a bite and the sandwich was gone. He took another. “I suppose
you didn’t hear of a beastly accident that happened to-day?” he said.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Sheridan, holding up her hand, “we did. It nearly ruined the party.
Laura insisted we should put it off.”
“Oh, mother!” Laura didn’t want to be teased about it.
“It was a horrible affair all the same,” said Mr. Sheridan. “The chap was married too. Lived
just below in the lane, and leaves a wife and half a dozen kiddies, so they say.”
An awkward little silence fell. Mrs. Sheridan fidgeted with her cup. Really, it was very
tactless of father ...
Suddenly she looked up. There on the table were all those sandwiches, cakes, puffs, all
uneaten, all going to be wasted. She had one of her brilliant ideas.
“I know,” she said. “Let’s make up a basket. Let’s send that poor creature some of this
perfectly good food. At any rate, it will be the greatest treat for the children. Don’t you agree?
And she’s sure to have neighbours calling in and so on. What a point to have it all ready prepared.
Laura!” She jumped up. “Get me the big basket out of the stairs cupboard.”
“But, mother, do you really think it’s a good idea?” said Laura.
Again, how curious, she seemed to be different from them all. To take scraps from their
party. Would the poor woman really like that?
“Of course! What’s the matter with you to-day? An hour or two ago you were insisting on
us being sympathetic, and now –”
Oh well! Laura ran for the basket. It was filled, it was heaped by her mother.
“Take it yourself, darling,” said she. “Run down just as you are. No, wait, take the arum
lilies too. People of that class are so impressed by arum lilies.”
“The stems will ruin her lace frock,” said practical Jose.
So they would. Just in time. “Only the basket, then. And, Laura!” - her mother followed her
out of the marquee - “don’t on any account –”
“What mother?”
No, better not put such ideas into the child’s head! “Nothing! Run along.”
It was just growing dusky as Laura shut their garden gates. A big dog ran by like a shadow.
The road gleamed white, and down below in the hollow the little cottages were in deep shade.
How quiet it seemed after the afternoon. Here she was going down the hill to somewhere where a
man lay dead, and she couldn’t realize it. Why couldn’t she? She stopped a minute. And it seemed
to her that kisses, voices, tinkling spoons, laughter, the smell of crushed grass were somehow
inside her. She had no room for anything else. How strange! She looked up at the pale sky, and all
she thought was, “Yes, it was the most successful party.”
Now the broad road was crossed. The lane began, smoky and dark. Women in shawls and
men’s tweed caps hurried by. Men hung over the palings; the children played in the doorways. A
low hum came from the mean little cottages. In some of them there was a flicker of light, and a
shadow, crab-like, moved across the window. Laura bent her head and hurried on. She wished
now she had put on a coat. How her frock shone! And the big hat with the velvet streamer - if only
it was another hat! Were the people looking at her? They must be. It was a mistake to have come;
she knew all along it was a mistake. Should she go back even now?
No, too late. This was the house. It must be. A dark knot of people stood outside. Beside the
gate an old, old woman with a crutch sat in a chair, watching. She had her feet on a newspaper.
The voices stopped as Laura drew near. The group parted. It was as though she was expected, as
though they had known she was coming here.
Laura was terribly nervous. Tossing the velvet ribbon over her shoulder, she said to a
woman standing by, “Is this Mrs. Scott’s house?” and the woman, smiling queerly, said, “It is, my
lass.”
Oh, to be away from this! She actually said, “Help me, God,” as she walked up the tiny path
and knocked. To be away from those staring eyes, or to be covered up in anything, one of those
women’s shawls even. I’ll just leave the basket and go, she decided. I shan’t even wait for it to be
emptied.
Then the door opened. A little woman in black showed in the gloom.
Laura said, “Are you Mrs. Scott?” But to her horror the woman answered, “Walk in please,
miss,” and she was shut in the passage.
“No,” said Laura, “I don’t want to come in. I only want to leave this basket. Mother sent –”
The little woman in the gloomy passage seemed not to have heard her. “Step this way,
please, miss,” she said in an oily voice, and Laura followed her.
She found herself in a wretched little low kitchen, lighted by a smoky lamp. There was a
woman sitting before the fire.
“Em,” said the little creature who had let her in. “Em! It’s a young lady.” She turned to
Laura. She said meaningly, “I’m ‘er sister, miss. You’ll excuse ‘er, won’t you?”
“Oh, but of course!” said Laura. “Please, please don’t disturb her. I - I only want to leave –”
But at that moment the woman at the fire turned round. Her face, puffed up, red, with
swollen eyes and swollen lips, looked terrible. She seemed as though she couldn’t understand why
Laura was there. What did it mean? Why was this stranger standing in the kitchen with a basket?
What was it all about? And the poor face puckered up again.
“All right, my dear,” said the other. “I’ll thenk the young lady.”
And again she began, “You’ll excuse her, miss, I’m sure,” and her face, swollen too, tried
an oily smile.
Laura only wanted to get out, to get away. She was back in the passage. The door opened.
She walked straight through into the bedroom, where the dead man was lying.
“You’d like a look at ‘im, wouldn’t you?” said Em’s sister, and she brushed past Laura over
to the bed. “Don’t be afraid, my lass,” - and now her voice sounded fond and sly, and fondly she
drew down the sheet –”‘e looks a picture. There’s nothing to show. Come along, my dear.”
Laura came.
There lay a young man, fast asleep - sleeping so soundly, so deeply, that he was far, far
away from them both. Oh, so remote, so peaceful. He was dreaming. Never wake him up again.
His head was sunk in the pillow, his eyes were closed; they were blind under the closed eyelids.
He was given up to his dream. What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him?
He was far from all those things. He was wonderful, beautiful. While they were laughing and
while the band was playing, this marvel had come to the lane. Happy ... happy ... All is well, said
that sleeping face. This is just as it should be. I am content.
But all the same you had to cry, and she couldn’t go out of the room without saying
something to him. Laura gave a loud childish sob.
“Forgive my hat,” she said.
And this time she didn’t wait for Em’s sister. She found her way out of the door, down the
path, past all those dark people. At the corner of the lane she met Laurie.
He stepped out of the shadow. “Is that you, Laura?”
“Yes.”
“Mother was getting anxious. Was it all right?”
“Yes, quite. Oh, Laurie!” She took his arm, she pressed up against him.
“I say, you’re not crying, are you?” asked her brother.
Laura shook her head. She was.
Laurie put his arm round her shoulder. “Don’t cry,” he said in his warm, loving voice. “Was
it awful?”
“No,” sobbed Laura. “It was simply marvellous. But Laurie –” She stopped, she looked at
her brother. “Isn’t life,” she stammered, “isn’t life –” But what life was she couldn’t explain. No
matter. He quite understood.
“Isn’t it, darling?” said Laurie.
Doris Lessing (1919- ) was born in Kermanshah, Persia (now Iran0, the daughter
of a bank manager, and was taken by her family to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1924.
Fleeing the loneliness of an unhappy childhood, she went to the capital of Salisbury
(Harare) at eighteen and there involved herself in politics and the intellectual
life. She became a Communist and retained her party affiliation until she had moved
to London, where disillusion led her to break with the Party. She was twice married
and twice divorced before her departure from Africa. She published a well-made,
conventional novel, The Grass Is Singing in 1950 and soon thereafter began to
experiment more freely with work that combines autobiography and fiction in an
unorthodox attempt to come at the dilemmas of the modern woman struggling for
emancipation. Following this vein she published five novels between 1952 and 1969
under the general title Children of Violence. The Golden Notebook (1962) has the
form of several overlapping notebooks prepared by a writer simultaneously preparing
and postponing the composition of a novel. In her despair of rational solutions to
political and sexual disorders of our times Lessing has entertained the
possibilities for reorientation that lie in extrasensory perception and in the
visions of the insane. Among her novels are Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971),
The Summer before the Dark (1973), the tetralogy Canopus in Argos: Archives (1981),
two novels collected under the title The Diaries of Jane Somers (1984), The Good
Terrorist (1985), and The Fifth Child (1988). Many of her stories are collected in
African Stories (19640 and Stories (1978).
A Woman on a Roof
It was during the week of hot Sun, that June.
Three men were at work on the roof, where the leads got so hot they had the idea or throwing
water on to cool them. But the water steamed, then sizzled; and they made jokes about getting an
egg from some woman in the flats under them, to poach it for their dinner. By two it was not
possible to touch the guttering they were replacing, and they speculated about what workmen did
in regularly hot countries. Perhaps they should borrow kitchen gloves with the egg? They were all
a bit dizzy, not used to the heat; and they shed their coats and stood side by side squeezing
themselves into a foot-wide patch of shade against a chimney, careful to keep their feet in the
thick socks and boots out of the sun. There was a fine view across several acres of roofs. Not far
off a man sat in a deck chair reading the newspaper. Then they saw her, between chimneys, about
fifty yards away. She lay face down on a brown blanket. They could see the top part of her: black
hair, a flushed solid back, arms spread out.
“She’s stark naked,” said Stanley, sounding annoyed.
Harry, the oldest, a man of about forty-five, said: “Looks like it.”
Young Tom, seventeen, said nothing, but he was excited and grinning.
Stanley said: “Someone’ll report her if she doesn’t watch out.”
“She thinks no one can see,” said Tom, craning his head all ways to see more.
At this point the woman, still lying prone, brought her two hands up behind her shoulders with the
ends of her scarf in them, tied it behind her back, and sat up. She wore a red scarf tied around her
breasts and brief red bikini pants. This being the first day of the sun she was white, flushing red.
She sat smoking, and did not look up when Stanley let out a wolf whistle. Harry said: “Small
things amuse small minds,” leading the way back to their part of the roof, but it was scorching.
Harry said: “Wait, I’m going to rig up some shade,” and disappeared down the skylight into the
building. Now that he’d gone, Stanley and Tom went to the farthest point they could to peer at the
woman. She had moved, and all they could see were two pink legs stretched on the blanket. They
whistled and shouted but the legs did not move. Harry came back with a blanket and shouted:
“Come on, then.” He sounded irritated with them. They clambered back to him and he said to
Stanley: “What about your missus?” Stanley was newly married, about three months. Stanley said,
jeering: “What about my missus?”—preserving his independence. Tom said nothing, but his mind
was full of the nearly naked woman. Harry slung the blanket, which he had borrowed from a
friendly woman downstairs, from the stem of a television aerial to a row of chimney-pots. This
shade fell across the piece of gutter they had to replace. But the shade kept moving, they had to
adjust the blanket, and not much progress was made. At last some of the heat left the roof, and
they worked fast, making up for lost time. First Stanley, then Tom, made a trip to the end of the
roof to see the woman. “She’s on her back,” Stanley said, adding a jest which made Tom snicker,
and the older man smiled tolerantly. Tom’s report was that she hadn’t moved, but it was a lie. He
wanted to keep what he had seen to himself: he had caught her in the act of rolling down the little
red pants over her hips, till they were no more than a small triangle. She was on her back, fully
visible, glistening with oil.
Next morning, as soon as they came up, they went to look. She was already there, face down, arms
spread out, naked except for the little red pants. She had turned brown in the night. Yesterday she
was a scarlet-and-white woman, today she was a brown woman. Stanley let out a whistle. She
lifted her head, startled, as if she’d been asleep, and looked straight over at them. The sun was in
her eyes, she blinked and stared, then she dropped her head again. At this gesture of indifference,
they all three, Stanley, Tom and old Harry, let out whistles and yells. Harry was doing it in parody
of the younger men, making fun of them, but he was also angry. They were all angry because of
her utter indifference to the three men watching her.
“Bitch,” said Stanley.
“She should ask us over,” said Tom, snickering.
Harry recovered himself and reminded Stanley: “If she’s married, her old man wouldn’t like that.”
“Christ,” said Stanley virtuously, “if my wife lay about like that, for everyone to see, I’d soon stop
her.”
Harry said, smiling: “How do you know, perhaps she’s sunning herself at this very moment?”
“Not a chance, not on our roof,” The safety of his wife put Stanley into a good humor, and they
went to work. But today it was hotter than yesterday; and several times one or the other suggested
they should tell Matthew, the foreman, and ask to leave the roof until the heat wave was over. But
they didn’t. There was work to be done in the basement of the big block of flats, but up here they
felt free, on a different level from ordinary humanity shut in the streets or the buildings. A lot
more people came out on to the roof that day, for an hour at midday. Some married couples sat
side by side in deck chairs, the women’s legs stockingless and scarlet, the men in vests with
reddening shoulders. The woman stayed on her blanket, turning herself over and over. She ignored
them, no matter what they did. When Harry went off to fetch more screws, Stanley said: “Come
on.” Her roof belonged to a different system of roofs, separated from theirs at one point by about
twenty feet. It meant a scrambling climb from one level to another, edging along parapets,
clinging to chimneys, while their big boots slipped and slithered, but at last they stood on a small
square projecting roof looking straight down at her, close. She sat smoking, reading a book. Tom
thought she looked like a poster, or a magazine cover, with the blue sky behind her and her legs
stretched out. Behind her a great crane at work on a new building in Oxford Street swung its black
arm across roofs in a great arc. Tom imagined himself at work on the crane, adjusting the arm to
swing over and pick her up and swing her back across the sky to drop her near him.
They whistled. She looked up at them, cool and remote, then went on reading. Again, they were
furious. Or, rather, Stanley was. His sun-heated face was screwed into a rage as he whistled again
and again, trying to make her look up. Young Tom stopped whistling. He stood beside Stanley,
excited, grinning; but he felt as if he were saying to the woman: Don’t associate me with him, for
his grin was apologetic. Last night he had thought of the unknown woman before he slept, and she
had been tender with him. This tenderness he was remembering as he shifted his feet by the
jeering, whistling Stanley, and watched the indifferent, healthy brown woman a few feet off, with
the gap that plunged to the street between them. Tom thought it was romantic, it was like being
high on two hilltops. But there was a shout from Harry, and they clambered back. Stanley’s face
was hard, really angry. The boy kept looking at him and wondered why he hated the woman so
much, for by now he loved her.
They played their little games with the blanket, trying to trap shade to work under; but again it
was not until nearly four that they could work seriously, and they were exhausted, all three of
them. They were grumbling about the weather by now. Stanley was in a thoroughly bad humor.
When they made their routine trip to see the woman before they packed up for the day, she was
apparently asleep, face down, her back all naked save for the scarlet triangle on her buttocks. “I’ve
got a good mind to report her to the police,” said Stanley, and Harry said: “What’s eating you?
What harm’s she doing?”
“I tell you, if she was my wife!”
“But she isn’t is she?” Tom knew that Harry, like himself, was uneasy at Stanley’s reaction. He
was normally a sharp young man, quick at his work, making a lot of jokes, good company.
“Perhaps it will be cooler tomorrow,” said Harry.
But it wasn’t; it was hotter, if anything, and the weather forecast said the good weather would last.
As soon as they were on the roof, Harry went over to see if the woman was there, and Tom knew
it was to prevent Stanley going, to put off his bad humor. Harry had grownup children, a boy the
same age as Tom, and the youth trusted and looked up to him.
Harry came back and said: “She’s not there.”
“I bet her old man put his foot down,” said Stanley, and Harry and Tom caught each other’s eyes
and smiled behind the young married man’s back. Harry suggested they should get permission to
work in the basement, and they did, that day. But before packing up Stanley said: “Let’s have a
breath of fresh air.” Again Harry and Tom smiled at each other as they followed Stanley up to the
roof, Tom in the devout conviction that he was there to protect the woman from Stanley. It was
about five-thirty, and a calm, full sunlight lay over the roofs. The great crane still swung its black
arm from Oxford Street to above their heads. She was not there. Then there was a flutter of white
from behind a parapet, and she stood up, in a belted, white dressing-gown. She had been there all
day, probably, but on a different patch of roof, to hide from them. Stanley did not whistle; he said
nothing, but watched the woman bend to collect papers, books, cigarettes, then fold the blanket
over her arm. Tom was thinking: If they weren’t here, I’d go over and say . . . what? But he knew
from his nightly dreams of her that she was kind and friendly.
Perhaps she would ask him down to her flat? Perhaps . . . He stood watching her disappear down
the skylight. As she went, Stanley let out a shrill derisive yell; she started, and it seemed as if she
nearly fell. She clutched to save herself, they could hear things falling. She looked straight at them,
angry. Harry said, facetiously: “Better be careful on those slippery ladders, love.” Tom knew he
said it to save her from Stanley, but she could not know it. She vanished, frowning. Tom was full
of a secret delight, because he knew her anger was for the others, not for him.
“Roll on some rain,” said Stanley, bitter, looking at the blue evening sky.
Next day was cloudless, and they decided to finish the work in the basement. They felt excluded,
shut in the grey cement basement fitting pipes, from the holiday atmosphere of London in a heat
wave. At lunchtime they came up for some air, but while the married couples, and the men in
shirt-sleeves or vests, were there, she was not there, either on her usual patch of roof or where she
had been yesterday. They all, even Harry, clambered about, between chimney-pots, over parapets,
the hot leads stinging their fingers. There was not a sign of her. They took off their shirts and vests
and exposed their chests, feeling their feet sweaty and hot. They did not mention the woman. But
Tom felt alone again. Last night she had him into her flat: it was big and had fitted white carpets
and a bed with a padded white leather head-board. She wore a black filmy negligee and her
kindness to Tom thickened his throat as he remembered it. He felt she had betrayed him by not
being there.
And again after work they climbed up, but still there was nothing to be seen of her.
Stanley kept repeating that if it was as hot as this tomorrow he wasn’t going to work and that’s all
there was to it. But they were all there next day. By ten the temperature was in the middle
seventies, and it was eighty long before noon. Harry went to the foreman to say it was impossible
to work on the leads in that heat; but the foreman said there was nothing else he could put them on,
and they’d have to. At midday they stood, silent, watching the skylight on her roof open, and then
she slowly emerged in her white gown, holding a bundle of blanket. She looked at them, gravely,
then went to the part of the roof where she was hidden from them. Tom was pleased. He felt she
was more his when the other men couldn’t see her. They had taken off their shirts and vests, but
now they put them back again, for they felt the sun bruising their flesh. “She must have the hide of
a rhino,” said Stanley, tugging at guttering and swearing. They stopped work, and sat in the shade,
moving around behind chimney stacks. A woman came to water a yellow window box opposite
them. She was middle-aged, wearing a flowered summer dress. Stanley said to her: “We need a
drink more than them.” She smiled and said: “Better drop down to the pub quick, it’ll be closing in
a minute.” They exchanged pleasantries, and she left them with a smile and a wave.
“Not like Lady Godiva,” said Stanley. “She can give us a bit of a chat and a smile.”
“You didn’t whistle at her,” said Tom, reproving.
“Listen to him,” said Stanley, “you didn’t whistle, then?”
But the boy felt as if he hadn’t whistled, as if only Harry and Stanley had. He was making plans,
when it was time to knock off work, to get left behind and somehow make his way over to the
woman. The weather report said the hot spell was due to break, so he had to move quickly. But
there was no chance of being left. The other two decided to knock off work at four, because they
were exhausted. As they went down, Tom quickly climbed a parapet and hoisted himself higher
by pulling his weight up a chimney. He caught a glimpse of her lying on her back, her knees up,
eyes closed, a brown woman lolling in the sun. He slipped and clattered down, as Stanley looked
for information:
“She’s gone down,” he said. He felt as if he had protected her from Stanley, and that she must be
grateful to him. He could feel the bond between the woman and himself.
Next day, they stood around on the landing below the roof, reluctant to climb up into the heat. The
woman who had lent Harry the blanket came out and offered them a cup of tea. They accepted
gratefully, and sat around Mrs. Pritchett’s kitchen an hour or so, chatting. She was married to an
airline pilot. A smart blonde, of about thirty, she had an eye for the handsome sharp-faced Stanley;
and the two teased each other while Harry sat
in a corner, watching, indulgent, though his expression reminded Stanley that he was married. And
young Tom felt envious of Stanley’s ease in badinage; felt, too, that Stanley’s getting off with Mrs.
Pritchett left his romance with the woman on the roof safe and intact.
“I thought they said the heat wave’d break,” said Stanley, sullen, as the time approached when
they really would have to climb up into the sunlight.
“You don’t like it, then?” asked Mrs. Pritchett.
“All right for some,” said Stanley. “Nothing to do but lie about as if it was a beach up there. Do
you ever go up?”
“Went up once,” said Mrs. Pritchett. “But it’s a dirty place up there, and it’s too hot.”
“Quite right too,” said Stanley.
Then they went up, leaving the cool neat little flat and the friendly Mrs. Pritchett. As soon as they
were up they saw her. The three men looked at her, resentful at her ease in this punishing sun.
Then Harry said, because of the expression on Stanley’s face: “Come on, we’ve got to pretend to
work, at least.” They had to wrench another length of guttering that ran beside a parapet out of its
bed, so that they could replace it. Stanley took it in his two hands, tugged, swore, stood up. “Fuck
it,” he said, and sat down under a chimney. He lit a cigarette. “Fuck them,” he said. “What do they
think we are, lizards? I’ve got blisters all over my hands.” Then he jumped up and climbed over
the roofs and stood with his back to them. He put his fingers either side of his mouth and let out a
shrill whistle. Tom and Harry squatted, not looking at each other, watching him. They could just
see the woman’s head, the beginnings of her brown shoulders. Stanley whistled again. Then he
began stamping with his feet, and whistled and yelled and screamed at the woman, his face getting
scarlet. He seemed quite mad, as he stamped and whistled, while the woman did not move, she did
not move a muscle.
“Barmy,” said Tom.
“Yes,” said Harry, disapproving.
Suddenly the older man came to a decision. It was, Tom knew, to save some sort of scandal or real
trouble over the woman. Harry stood up and began packing tools into a length of oily cloth.
“Stanley,” he said, commanding. At first Stanley took no notice, but
Harry said: “Stanley, we’re packing it in, I’ll tell Matthew.”
Stanley came back, cheeks mottled, eyes glaring.
“Can’t go on like this,” said Harry. “It’ll break in a day or so. I’m going to tell Matthew we’ve got
sunstroke, and if he doesn’t like, it’s too bad.” Even Harry sounded aggrieved, Tom noted. The
small, competent man, the family man with his grey hair, who was never at a loss, sounded really
off balance. “Come on,” he said, angry. He fitted himself into the open square in the roof, and
went down, watching his feet on the ladder.
Then Stanley went, with not a glance at the woman. Then Tom, who, his throat beating with
excitement, silently promised her on a backward glance: Wait for me, wait, I’m coming.
On the pavement Stanley said: “I’m going home.” He looked white now, so perhaps he really did
have sunstroke. Harry went off to find the foreman, who was at work on the plumbing of some
flats down the street. Tom slipped back, not into the building they had been working on, but the
building on whose roof the woman lay. He went straight up, no one stopping him. The skylight
stood open, with an iron ladder leading up. He emerged on to the roof a couple of yards from her.
She sat up, pushing back her black hair with both hands. The scarf across her breasts bound them
tight, and brown flesh bulged around it. Her legs were brown and smooth. She stared at him in
silence. The boy stood grinning, foolish, claiming the tenderness he expected from her.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I . . . I came to . . . make your acquaintance,” he stammered, grinning, pleading with her.
They looked at each other, the slight, scarlet-faced excited boy, and the serious, nearly naked
woman. Then, without a word, she lay down on her brown blanket, ignoring him.
“You like the sun, do you?” he enquired of her glistening back.
Not a word. He felt panic, thinking of how she had held him in her arms, stroked his hair, brought
him where he sat, lordly, in her bed, a glass of some exhilarating liquor he had never tasted in life.
He felt that if he knelt down, stroked her shoulders, her hair, she would turn and clasp him in her
arms.
He said: “The sun’s all right for you, isn’t it?”
She raised her head, set her chin on two small fists. “Go away,” she said. He did not move.
“Listen,” she said, in a slow reasonable voice, where anger was kept in check, though with
difficulty; looking at him, her face weary with anger, “if you get a kick out of seeing women in
bikinis, why don’t you take an sixpenny bus ride to the Lido? You’d see dozens of them, without
all this mountaineering.”
She hadn’t understood him. He felt her unfairness pale him. He stammered: “But I like you, I’ve
been watching you and . . .”
“Thanks,” she said, and dropped her face again, turned away from him.
She lay there. He stood there. She said nothing. She had simply shut him out. He stood, saying
nothing at all, for some minutes. He thought: She’ll have to say something if I stay. But the
minutes went past, with no sign of them in her, except in the tension or her back, her thighs, her
arms—the tension of waiting for him to go.
He looked up at the sky, where the sun seemed to spin in heat; and over the roofs where he and his
mates had been earlier. He could see the heat quivering where they had worked. And they expect
us to work in these conditions! he thought, filled with righteous indignation. The woman hadn’t
moved. A bit of hot wind blew her black hair softly; it shone, and was iridescent. He remembered
how he had stroked it last night.
Resentment of her at last moved him off and away down the ladder, through the building, into the
street. He got drunk then, in hatred of her.
Next day when he woke the sky was grey. He looked at the wet grey and thought, vicious: Well,
that’s fixed you, hasn’t it now? That’s fixed you good and proper.
The three men were at work early on the cool leads, surrounded by damp drizzling roofs where no
one came to sun themselves, black roofs, slimy with rain. Because it was cool now, they would
finish the job that day, if they hurried.
Kate Chopin, born Katherine O'Flaherty (February 8, 1850 — August 22, 1904), was an
American author of short stories and novels. She is now considered by some to have been a
forerunner of feminist authors of the 20th century.From 1892 to 1895, she wrote short stories for
both children and adults which were published in such magazines as Atlantic Monthly, Vogue, The
Century Magazine, and The Youth's Companion. Her major works were two short story
collections, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897). Her important short stories
included “Desiree’s Baby,” a tale of miscegenation in antebellum Louisiana (published in 1893),
“The Story of an Hour” (1894), and “The Storm”(1898). “The Storm” is a sequel to
“The ’Cadian Ball,” which appeared in her first collection of short stories, Bayou Folk. Chopin
also wrote two novels: At Fault (1890) and The Awakening (1899), which are set in New Orleans
and Grand Isle, respectively. The people in her stories are usually inhabitants of Louisiana. Many
of her works are set in Natchitoches in north central Louisiana. Within a decade of her death,
Chopin was widely recognized as one of the leading writers of her time.
The Story of an Hour
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her
as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half
concealing. Her husband’s friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the
newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s
name leading the list of “killed.” He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a
second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the
sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to
accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms.
When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one
follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed
down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the
new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was
crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and
countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled
one above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a
sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob
in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength.
But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those
patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of
intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not
know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching
toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was
approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will –as powerless as her
two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word
escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under the breath: “free, free, free!” The
vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and
bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted
perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again
when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love
upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of
years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to
them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There
would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women
believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a
cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of
illumination.
And yet she had loved him –sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love,
the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly
recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
“Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for
admission. “Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door –you will make yourself ill. What are you
doing, Louise? For heaven’s sake open the door.”
“Go away. I am not making myself ill.” No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that
open window.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all
sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was
only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister’s importunities. There was a feverish triumph
in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister’s
waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little
travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of
the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing
cry; at Richards’ quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease –of the joy that kills.
Alice Malsenior Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American author, poet, self-claimed
womanist, and activist. She wrote the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple (1982) for
which she won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Everyday Use
I will wait for her in the yard that Maggie and I made so clean and wavy yesterday afternoon.
A yard like this is more comfortable than most people know. It is not just a yard. It is like an
extended living room. When the hard clay is swept clean as a floor and the fine sand around the
edges lined with tiny, irregular grooves, anyone can come and sit and look up into the elm tree and
wait for the breezes that never come inside the house.
Maggie will be nervous until after her sister goes: she will stand hopelessly in corners,
homely and ashamed of the burn scars down her arms and legs, eying her sister with a mixture of
envy and awe. She thinks her sister has held life always in the palm of one hand, that “no” is a
word the world never learned to say to her.
You’ve no doubt seen those TV shows where the child who has “made it” is confronted, as a
surprise, by her own mother and father, tottering in weakly from backstage. (A pleasant surprise,
of course: What would they do if parent and child came on the show only to curse out and insult
each other?) On TV mother and child embrace and smile into each other’s faces. Sometimes the
mother and father weep, the child wraps them in her arms and leans across the table to tell how
she would not have made it without their help. I have seen these programs.
Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee and I are suddenly brought together on a TV
program of this sort. Out of a dark and soft-seated limousine I am ushered into a bright room filled
with many people. There I meet a smiling, gray, sporty man like Johnny Carson who shakes my
hand and tells me what a fine girl I have. Then we are on the stage and Dee is embracing me with
tears in her eyes. She pins on my dress a large orchid, even though she has told me once that she
thinks orchids are tacky flowers.
In real life I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands. In the winter I
wear flannel nightgowns to bed and overalls during the day. I can kill and clean a hog as
mercilessly as a man. My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking
ice to get water for washing; I can eat pork liver cooked over the open fire minutes after it comes
steaming from the hog. One winter I knocked a bull calf straight in the brain between the eyes
with a sledge hammer and had the meat hung up to chill before nightfall. But of course all this
does not show on television. I am the way my daughter would want me to be: a hundred pounds
lighter, my skin like an uncooked barley pancake. My hair glistens in the hot bright lights. Johnny
Carson has much to do to keep up with my quick and witty tongue.
But that is a mistake. I know even before I wake up. Who ever knew a Johnson with a quick
tongue? Who can even imagine me looking a strange white man in the eye? It seems to me I have
talked to them always with one foot raised in flight, with my head fumed in whichever way is
farthest from them. Dee, though. She would always look anyone in the eye. Hesitation was no part
of her nature.
“How do I look, Mama?” Maggie says, showing just enough of her thin body enveloped in
pink skirt and red blouse for me to know she’s there, almost hidden by the door.
“Come out into the yard,” I say.
Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich
enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the
way my Maggie walks. She has been like this, chin on chest, eyes on ground, feet in shuffle, ever
since the fire that burned the other house to the ground.
Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure. She’s a woman now, though
sometimes I forget. How long ago was it that the other house burned? Ten, twelve years?
Sometimes I can still hear the flames and feel Maggie’s arms sticking to me, her hair smoking and
her dress falling off her in little black papery flakes. Her eyes seemed stretched open, blazed open
by the flames reflected in them. And Dee. I see her standing off under the sweet gum tree she used
to dig gum out of; a look of concentration on her face as she watched the last dingy gray board of
the house fall in toward the red-hot brick chimney. Why don’t you do a dance around the ashes?
I’d wanted to ask her. She had hated the house that much.
I used to think she hated Maggie, too. But that was before we raised money, the church and
me, to send her to Augusta to school. She used to read to us without pity; forcing words, lies, other
folks’ habits, whole lives upon us two, sitting trapped and ignorant underneath her voice. She
washed us in a river of make-believe, burned us with a lot of knowledge we didn’t necessarily
need to know. Pressed us to her with the serf’ oust way she read, to shove us away at just the
moment, like dimwits, we seemed about to understand.
Dee wanted nice things. A yellow organdy dress to wear to her graduation from high school;
black pumps to match a green suit she’d made from an old suit somebody gave me. She was
determined to stare down any disaster in her efforts. Her eyelids would not flicker for minutes at a
time. Often I fought off the temptation to shake her. At sixteen she had a style of her own: and
knew what style was.
I never had an education myself. After second grade the school was closed down. Don’t ask
my why: in 1927 colored asked fewer questions than they do now. Sometimes Maggie reads to me.
She stumbles along good-naturedly but can’t see well. She knows she is not bright. Like good
looks and money, quickness passes her by. She will marry John Thomas (who has mossy teeth in
an earnest face) and then I’ll be free to sit here and I guess just sing church songs to myself.
Although I never was a good singer. Never could carry a tune. I was always better at a man’s job.
I used to love to milk till I was hooked in the side in ‘49. Cows are soothing and slow and don’t
bother you, unless you try to milk them the wrong way.
I have deliberately turned my back on the house. It is three rooms, just like the one that
burned, except the roof is tin; they don’t make shingle roofs any more. There are no real windows,
just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship, but not round and not square, with
rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside. This house is in a pasture, too, like the other one.
No doubt when Dee sees it she will want to tear it down. She wrote me once that no matter where
we “choose” to live, she will manage to come see us. But she will never bring her friends. Maggie
and I thought about this and Maggie asked me, “Mama, when did Dee ever have any friends?”
She had a few. Furtive boys in pink shirts hanging about on washday after school. Nervous
girls who never laughed. Impressed with her they worshiped the well-turned phrase, the cute shape,
the scalding humor that erupted like bubbles in lye. She read to them.
When she was courting Jimmy T she didn’t have much time to pay to us, but turned all her
faultfinding power on him. He flew to marry a cheap city girl from a family of ignorant flashy
people. She hardly had time to recompose herself.
When she comes I will meet—but there they are!
Maggie attempts to make a dash for the house, in her shuffling way, but I stay her with my
hand. “Come back here,” I say. And she stops and tries to dig a well in the sand with her toe.
It is hard to see them clearly through the strong sun. But even the first glimpse of leg out of
the car tells me it is Dee. Her feet were always neat-looking, as if God himself had shaped them
with a certain style. From the other side of the car comes a short, stocky man. Hair is all over his
head a foot long and hanging from his chin like a kinky mule tail. I hear Maggie suck in her breath.
“Uhnnnh, “ is what it sounds like. Like when you see the wriggling end of a snake just in front of
your foot on the road. “Uhnnnh.”
Dee next. A dress down to the ground, in this hot weather. A dress so loud it hurts my eyes.
There are yellows and oranges enough to throw back the light of the sun. I feel my whole face
warming from the heat waves it throws out. Earrings gold, too, and hanging down to her shoulders.
Bracelets dangling and making noises when she moves her arm up to shake the folds of the dress
out of her armpits. The dress is loose and flows, and as she walks closer, I like it. I hear Maggie go
“Uhnnnh” again. It is her sister’s hair. It stands straight up like the wool on a sheep. It is black as
night and around the edges are two long pigtails that rope about like small lizards disappearing
behind her ears.
“Wasuzo-Teano!” she says, coming on in that gliding way the dress makes her move. The
short stocky fellow with the hair to his navel is all grinning and he follows up with “Asalamalakim,
my mother and sister!” He moves to hug Maggie but she falls back, right up against the back of
my chair. I feel her trembling there and when I look up I see the perspiration falling off her chin.
“Don’t get up,” says Dee. Since I am stout it takes something of a push. You can see me
trying to move a second or two before I make it. She turns, showing white heels through her
sandals, and goes back to the car. Out she peeks next with a Polaroid. She stoops down quickly
and lines up picture after picture of me sitting there in front of the house with Maggie cowering
behind me. She never takes a shot without making sure the house is included. When a cow comes
nibbling around the edge of the yard she snaps it and me and Maggie and the house. Then she puts
the Polaroid in the back seat of the car, and comes up and kisses me on the forehead.
Meanwhile Asalamalakim is going through motions with Maggie’s hand. Maggie’s hand is as
limp as a fish, and probably as cold, despite the sweat, and she keeps trying to pull it back. It looks
like Asalamalakim wants to shake hands but wants to do it fancy. Or maybe he don’t know how
people shake hands. Anyhow, he soon gives up on Maggie.
“Well,” I say. “Dee.”
“No, Mama,” she says. “Not ‘Dee,’ Wangero Leewanika Kemanjo!”
“What happened to ‘Dee’?” I wanted to know.
“She’s dead,” Wangero said. “I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who
oppress me.”
“You know as well as me you was named after your aunt Dicie,” I said. Dicie is my sister.
She named Dee. We called her “Big Dee” after Dee was born.
“But who was she named after?” asked Wangero.
“I guess after Grandma Dee,” I said.
“And who was she named after?” asked Wangero.
“Her mother,” I said, and saw Wangero was getting tired. “That’s about as far back as I can
trace it,” I said. Though, in fact, I probably could have carried it back beyond the Civil War
through the branches.
“Well,” said Asalamalakim, “there you are.”
“Uhnnnh,” I heard Maggie say.
“There I was not,” I said, “before ‘Dicie’ cropped up in our family, so why should I try to
trace it that far back?”
He just stood there grinning, looking down on me like somebody inspecting a Model A car.
Every once in a while he and Wangero sent eye signals over my head.
“How do you pronounce this name?” I asked.
“You don’t have to call me by it if you don’t want to,” said Wangero.
“Why shouldn’t 1?” I asked. “If that’s what you want us to call you, we’ll call you.”
“I know it might sound awkward at first,” said Wangero.
“I’ll get used to it,” I said. “Ream it out again.”
Well, soon we got the name out of the way. Asalamalakim had a name twice as long and
three times as hard. After I tripped over it two or three times he told me to just call him
Hakim-a-barber. I wanted to ask him was he a barber, but I didn’t really think he was, so I didn’t
ask.
“You must belong to those beef-cattle peoples down the road,” I said. They said
“Asalamalakim” when they met you, too, but they didn’t shake hands. Always too busy: feeding
the cattle, fixing the fences, putting up salt-lick shelters, throwing down hay. When the white folks
poisoned some of the herd the men stayed up all night with rifles in their hands. I walked a mile
and a half just to see the sight.
Hakim-a-barber said, “I accept some of their doctrines, but farming and raising cattle is not
my style.” (They didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask, whether Wangero (Dee) had really gone and
married him.)
We sat down to eat and right away he said he didn’t eat collards and pork was unclean.
Wangero, though, went on through the chitlins and com bread, the greens and everything else. She
talked a blue streak over the sweet potatoes. Everything delighted her. Even the fact that we still
used the benches her daddy made for the table when we couldn’t effort to buy chairs.
“Oh, Mama!” she cried. Then turned to Hakim-a-barber. “I never knew how lovely these
benches are. You can feel the rump prints,” she said, running her hands underneath her and along
the bench. Then she gave a sigh and her hand closed over Grandma Dee’s butter dish. “That’s it!”
she said. “I knew there was something I wanted to ask you if I could have.” She jumped up from
the table and went over in the corner where the churn stood, the milk in it crabber by now. She
looked at the churn and looked at it.
“This churn top is what I need,” she said. “Didn’t Uncle Buddy whittle it out of a tree you all
used to have?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Un huh,” she said happily. “And I want the dasher, too.”
“Uncle Buddy whittle that, too?” asked the barber.
Dee (Wangero) looked up at me.
“Aunt Dee’s first husband whittled the dash,” said Maggie so low you almost couldn’t hear
her. “His name was Henry, but they called him Stash.”
“Maggie’s brain is like an elephant’s,” Wangero said, laughing. “I can use the chute top as a
centerpiece for the alcove table,” she said, sliding a plate over the chute, “and I’ll think of
something artistic to do with the dasher.”
When she finished wrapping the dasher the handle stuck out. I took it for a moment in my
hands. You didn’t even have to look close to see where hands pushing the dasher up and down to
make butter had left a kind of sink in the wood. In fact, there were a lot of small sinks; you could
see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the wood. It was beautiful light yellow wood, from a
tree that grew in the yard where Big Dee and Stash had lived.
After dinner Dee (Wangero) went to the trunk at the foot of my bed and started rifling
through it. Maggie hung back in the kitchen over the dishpan. Out came Wangero with two quilts.
They had been pieced by Grandma Dee and then Big Dee and me had hung them on the quilt
frames on the front porch and quilted them. One was in the Lone Star pattern. The other was Walk
Around the Mountain. In both of them were scraps of dresses Grandma Dee had won fifty and
more years ago. Bits and pieces of Grandpa Jattell’s Paisley shirts. And one teeny faded blue piece,
about the size of a penny matchbox, that was from Great Grandpa Ezra’s uniform that he wore in
the Civil War.
“Mama,” Wanegro said sweet as a bird. “Can I have these old quilts?”
I heard something fall in the kitchen, and a minute later the kitchen door slammed.
“Why don’t you take one or two of the others?” I asked. “These old things was just done by
me and Big Dee from some tops your grandma pieced before she died.”
“No,” said Wangero. “I don’t want those. They are stitched around the borders by machine.”
“That’ll make them last better,” I said.
“That’s not the point,” said Wangero. “These are all pieces of dresses Grandma used to wear.
She did all this stitching by hand. Imag’ ine!” She held the quilts securely in her arms, stroking
them.
“Some of the pieces, like those lavender ones, come from old clothes her mother handed
down to her,” I said, moving up to touch the quilts. Dee (Wangero) moved back just enough so
that I couldn’t reach the quilts. They already belonged to her.
“Imagine!” she breathed again, clutching them closely to her bosom.
“The truth is,” I said, “I promised to give them quilts to Maggie, for when she marries John
Thomas.”
She gasped like a bee had stung her.
“Maggie can’t appreciate these quilts!” she said. “She’d probably be backward enough to put
them to everyday use.”
“I reckon she would,” I said. “God knows I been saving ‘em for long enough with nobody
using ‘em. I hope she will!” I didn’t want to bring up how I had offered Dee (Wangero) a quilt
when she went away to college. Then she had told they were old~fashioned, out of style.
“But they’re priceless!” she was saying now, furiously; for she has a temper. “Maggie would
put them on the bed and in five years they’d be in rags. Less than that!”
“She can always make some more,” I said. “Maggie knows how to quilt.”
Dee (Wangero) looked at me with hatred. “You just will not understand. The point is these
quilts, these quilts!”
“Well,” I said, stumped. “What would you do with them?”
“Hang them,” she said. As if that was the only thing you could do with quilts.
Maggie by now was standing in the door. I could almost hear the sound her feet made as they
scraped over each other.
“She can have them, Mama,” she said, like somebody used to never winning anything, or
having anything reserved for her. “I can ‘member Grandma Dee without the quilts.”
I looked at her hard. She had filled her bottom lip with checkerberry snuff and gave her face
a kind of dopey, hangdog look. It was Grandma Dee and Big Dee who taught her how to quilt
herself. She stood there with her scarred hands hidden in the folds of her skirt. She looked at her
sister with something like fear but she wasn’t mad at her. This was Maggie’s portion. This was the
way she knew God to work.
When I looked at her like that something hit me in the top of my head and ran down to the
soles of my feet. Just like when I’m in church and the spirit of God touches me and I get happy
and shout. I did something I never done before: hugged Maggie to me, then dragged her on into
the room, snatched the quilts out of Miss Wangero’s hands and dumped them into Maggie’s lap.
Maggie just sat there on my bed with her mouth open.
“Take one or two of the others,” I said to Dee.
But she turned without a word and went out to Hakim~a~barber.
“You just don’t understand,” she said, as Maggie and I came out to the car.
“What don’t I understand?” I wanted to know.
“Your heritage,” she said, and then she turned to Maggie, kissed her, and said, “You ought to
try to make something of yourself, too, Maggie. It’s really a new day for us. But from the way you
and Mama still live you’d never know it.”
She put on some sunglasses that hid everything above the tip of her nose and chin.
Maggie smiled; maybe at the sunglasses. But a real smile, not scared. After we watched the
car dust settle I asked Maggie to bring me a dip of snuff. And then the two of us sat there just
enjoying, until it was time to go in the house and go to bed.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (born Nathaniel Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American
novelist and short story writer.He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts to Nathaniel
Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, the
only judge involved in the Salem witch trials who never repented of his actions. Nathaniel later
added a "w" to make his name "Hawthorne" in order to hide this relation. He entered Bowdoin
College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, and graduated in 1825. Hawthorne
published his first work, a novel titled Fanshawe, in 1828; he later tried to suppress it, feeling it
was not equal to the standard of his later work. He published several short stories in various
periodicals which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. The next year, he became engaged to
Sophia Peabody. He worked at a Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist
community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord,
Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The
Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political
appointment took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to The Wayside in 1860.
Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, and was survived by his wife and their three children.
Young Goodman Brown
Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem Village; but put his
head back after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith,
as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with
the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown.
“Dearest heart,” whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear,
“prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is
troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she’s afeard of herself sometimes. Pray tarry
with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year.”
“My love and my Faith,” replied young Goodman Brown, “of all nights in the year, this one
night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs
be done ‘twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, cost thou doubt me already, and we
but three months married?”
“Then God bless you!” said Faith, with the pink ribbons; “and may you find all well when
you come back.”
“Amen!” cried Goodman Brown. “Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no
harm will come to thee.”
So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn the corner by
the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a
melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.
“Poor little Faith!” thought he, for his heart smote him. “What a wretch am I to leave her on
such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought, as she spoke, there was trouble in her face,
as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done to-night. But no, no; ‘t would kill her to
think it. Well, she’s a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I’ll cling to her skirts and
follow her to heaven.”
With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making
more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest
trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed
immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude,
that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks and the thick
boughs overhead; so that with lonely footsteps he may yet be passing through an unseen
multitude.
“There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,” said Goodman Brown to himself; and
he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, “What if the devil himself should be at my very
elbow!”
His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking forward again,
beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at
Goodman Brown’s approach and walked onward side by side with him. “You are late, Goodman
Brown,” said he. “The clock of the Old South was striking as I came through Boston, and that is
full fifteen minutes agone.”
“Faith kept me back a while,” replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by
the sudden appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected.
It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were
journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old,
apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable resemblance to
him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still they might have been taken for father
and son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger, and as simple in
manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the world, and who would not have felt
abashed at the governor’s dinner table or in King William’s court, were it possible that his affairs
should call him thither. But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as remarkable was
his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost
be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular
deception, assisted by the uncertain light.
“Come, Goodman Brown,” cried his fellow-traveller, “this is a dull pace for the beginning
of a journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon weary.”
“Friend,” said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop, “having kept covenant by
meeting thee here, It IS my purpose now to return whence I came. I have scruples, touching the
matter thou wot’st of.”
“Sayest thou so?” replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. “Let us walk on, nevertheless,
reasoning as we go; and if I convince thee not thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the
forest yet.”
“Too far! too far!” exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk. “My father
never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of
honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the first of the name
of Brown that ever took this path and kept ---”
“Such company, thou wouldst say,” observed the elder person, interpreting his pause. “Well
said, Goodman Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one among
the Puritans; and that’s no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed
the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a
pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village, in King Philip’s war.
They were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have we had along this path, and
returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with you for their sake.”
“If it be as thou sayest,” replied Goodman Brown, “I marvel they never spoke of these
matters; or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least rumour of the sort would have driven them
from New England. We are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such
wickedness.”
“Wickedness or not,” said the traveller with the twisted staff, “I have a very general
acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of many a church have drunk the communion
wine with me; the selectmen of divers towns make me their chairman; and a majority of the Great
and General Court are firm supporters of my interest. The governor and I, too - But these are state
secrets.”
“Can this be so?” cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his undisturbed
companion. “Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor and council; they have their own
ways, and are no rule for a simple husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with thee, how
should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem Village? Oh, his voice would
make me tremble both Sabbath day and lecture day.”
Thus far the elder traveller had listened with due gravity; but now burst into a fit of
irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so violently that his snakelike staff actually seemed to wriggle
in sympathy.
“Ha! ha! ha!” shouted he again and again; then composing himself, “Well, go on, Goodman
Brown, go on; but, prithee, don’t kill me with laughing.”
“Well, then, to end the matter at once,” said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled, “there
is my wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I’d rather break my own.”
“Nay, if that be the case,” answered the other, “then go thy ways, Goodman Brown. I would
not for twenty old women like the one hobbling before us that Faith should come to any harm.”
As he spoke he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown
recognised a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth, and was
still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin. “A marvel, truly,
that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness at nightfall,” said he. “But with your leave,
friend, I shall take a cut through the woods until we have left this Christian woman behind. Being
a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with and whither I was going.”
“Be it so,” said his fellow-traveller. “Betake you the woods’ and let me keep the path.”
Accordingly the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his companion, who
advanced softly along the road until he had come within a staff’s length of the old dame. She,
meanwhile, was making the best of her way, with singular speed for so aged a woman, and
mumbling some indistinct words - a prayer, doubtless - as she went. The traveller put forth his
staff and touched her withered neck with what seemed the serpent’s tail.
“The devil!” screamed the pious old lady.
“Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?” observed the traveller, confronting her and
leaning on his writhing stick.
“Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship indeed?” cried the good dame.
“Yea, truly is it, and in the very image of my old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather
of the silly fellow that now is. But - would your worship believe it? - my broomstick hath
strangely disappeared, stolen, as I suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too,
when I was all anointed with the juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and wolf’s bane – ’’
“Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe,” said the shape of old Goodman
Brown.
“Ah, your worship knows the recipe,” cried the old lady, cackling aloud. “So, as I was
saying, being all ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for
they tell me there is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But now your good
worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there in a twinkling.”
“That can hardly be,” answered her friend. “I may not spare you my arm, Goody Cloyse;
but here is my staff, if you will.”
So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed life, being one of the
rods which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman
Brown could not take cognisance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and, looking down
again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but this fellow-traveller alone, who
waited for him as calmly as if nothing had happened.
“That old woman taught me my catechism,” said the young man; and there was a world of
meaning in this simple comment.
They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his companion to make
good speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly that his arguments seemed rather to
spring up in the bosom of his auditor than to be suggested by himself. As they went, he plucked: a
branch of maple to serve for a walking stick, and began to strip it of the twigs and little boughs,
which were wet with evening dew. The moment his fingers touched them they became strangely
withered and dried up as with a week’s sunshine. Thus the pair proceeded, at a good free pace,
until suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman Brown sat himself down on the stump
of a tree and refused to go any farther.
“Friend,” said he, stubbornly, “my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge on this
errand. What if a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil when I thought she was going
to heaven: is that any reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after her?”
“You will think better of this by and by,” said his acquaintance, composedly. “Sit here and
rest yourself a while; and when you feel like moving again, there is my staff to help you along.”
Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as speedily out of
sight as if he had vanished into the deepening gloom. The young man sat a few moments by the
roadside, applauding himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he should meet the
minister in his morning walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old Deacon Gookin. And what calm
sleep would be his that very night, which was to have been spent so wickedly, but so purely and
sweetly now, in the arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and praiseworthy meditations, Goodman
Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and deemed it advisable to conceal himself
within the verge of the forest, conscious of the guilty purpose that had brought him thither, though
now so happily turned from it.
On came the hoof tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old voices, conversing
soberly as they drew near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass along the road, within a few
yards of the young man’s hiding-place; but, owing doubtless to the depth of the gloom at that
particular spot, neither the travellers nor their steeds were visible. Though their figures brushed the
small boughs by the wayside, it could not be seen that they intercepted, even for a moment, the
faint gleam from the strip of bright sky athwart which they must have passed. Goodman Brown
alternately crouched and stood on tiptoe, pulling aside the branches and thrusting forth his head as
far as he durst without discerning so much as a shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could
have sworn, were such a thing possible, that he recognised the voices of the minister and Deacon
Gookin, jogging along quietly, as they were wont to do, when bound to some ordination or
ecclesiastical council. While yet within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a switch.
“Of the two, reverend sir,” said the voice like the deacon’s, “I had rather miss an ordination
dinner than to-night’s meeting. They tell me that some of our community are to be here from
Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut and Rhode Island, besides several of the
Indian powwows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us.
Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into communion.”
“Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!” replied the solemn old tones of the minister. “Spur up, or
we shall be late. Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on the ground.”
The hoofs clattered again; and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air, passed on
through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered or solitary Christian prayed. Whither,
then, could these holy men be journeying so deep into the heathen wilderness? Young Goodman
Brown caught hold of a tree for support, being ready to sink down on the ground, faint and
overburdened with the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up to the sky, doubting whether
there really was a heaven above him. Yet there was the blue arch, and the stars brightening in it.
“With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!” cried
Goodman Brown.
While he still gazed upward into the deep arch of the firmament and had lifted his hands to
pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith and hid the brightening stars.
The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was
sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a confused
and doubtful sound of voices. Once the listener fancied that he could distinguish the accents of
towns-people of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of whom he had met at
the communion table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The next moment, so indistinct
were the sounds, he doubted whether he had heard aught but the murmur of the old forest,
whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger swell of those familiar tones, heard daily in the
sunshine at Salem Village, but never until now from a cloud of night. There was one voice, of a
young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favour,
which, perhaps, it would grieve her to obtain; and all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners,
seemed to encourage her onward.
“Faith!” shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation; and the echoes of
the forest mocked him, crying, “Faith! Faith!” as if bewildered wretches were seeking her all
through the wilderness.
The cry of grief, rage, and terror was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy husband held
his breath for a response. There was a scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur of voices,
fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent sky above
Goodman Brown. But something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch
of a tree. The young man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon.
“My Faith is gone!” cried he, after one stupefied moment. “There is no good on earth; and
sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given.”
And, maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman Brown grasp
his staff and set forth again, at such a rate that he seemed to fly along the forest path rather than to
walk or run. The road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly traced, and vanished at length,
leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing onward with the instinct that guides
mortal man to evil. The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds - the creaking of the trees,
the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant
church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveller, as if all Nature were laughing
him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other
horrors.
“Ha! ha! ha!” roared Goodman Brown when the wind laughed at him “Let us hear which
will laugh loudest. Think not to frighten me with your deviltry. Come witch, come wizard, come
Indian powwow, come devil himself, and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear him
as he fear you.”
In truth, all through the haunted forest there could be nothing more frightful than the figure
of Goodman Brown. On he flew among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied
gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such
laughter as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his own
shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac on his
course, until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as when the felled trunks
and branches of a clearing have been set on fire, and throw up their lurid blaze against the sky, at
the hour of midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest that had driven him onward, and heard
the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly from a distance with the weight of many
voices. He knew the tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the village meetinghouse. The verse
died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices, but of all the sounds of
the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony together. Goodman Brown cried out, and his
cry was lost to his own ear by its unison with the cry of the desert.
In the interval of silence he stole forward until the light glared full upon his eyes. At one
extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing some
rude, natural resemblance either to an altar or a pulpit, and surrounded by four blazing pines, their
tops aflame, their stems untouched, like candles at an evening meeting. The mass of foliage that
had overgrown the summit of the rock was all on fire, blazing high into the night and fitfully
illuminating the whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy festoon was in a blaze. As the red light
arose and fell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth, then disappeared in shadow, and
again grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the heart of the solitary woods at once.
“A grave and dark-clad company,” quoth Goodman Brown.
In truth they were such. Among them, quivering to and fro between gloom and splendour,
appeared faces that would be seen next day at the council board of the province, and others which,
Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over the crowded pews,
from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm that the lady of the governor was there. At least
there were high dames well known to her, and wives of honoured husbands, and widows, a great
multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent repute, and fair young girls, who trembled lest
their mothers should espy them. Either the sudden gleams of light flashing over the obscure field
bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he recognised a score of the church members of Salem Village
famous for their especial sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts
of that venerable saint, his revered pastor. But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable,
and pious people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men
of dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice, and
suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see that the good shrank not from the wicked,
nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered also among their pale-faced enemies were the
Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their native forest with more hideous
incantations than any known to English witchcraft.
“But where is Faith?” thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his heart, he
trembled.
Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious love, but
joined to words which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far
more. Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung, and still the
chorus of the desert swelled between like the deepest tone of a mighty organ; and with the final
peal of that dreadful anthem there came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the rushing streams, the
howling beasts, and every other voice of the unconcerted wilderness were mingling and according
with the voice of guilty man in homage to the prince of all. The four blazing pines threw up a
loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages of horror on the smoke wreaths above
the impious assembly. At the same moment the fire on the rock shot redly forth and formed a
glowing arch above its base, where now appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken, the figure
bore no slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to some grave divine of the New England
churches.
“Bring forth the converts!” cried a voice that echoed through the field and rolled into the
forest.
At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees and approached
the congregation, with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was
wicked in his heart. He could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his own dead father
beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a smoke wreath, while a woman, with dim
features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him back. Was it his mother? But he had no power
to retreat one step, nor to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old Deacon Gookin
seized his arms and led him to the blazing rock. Thither came also the slender form of a veiled
female, led between Goody Cloyse, that pious teacher of the catechism, and Martha Carrier, who
had received the devil’s promise to be queen of hell. A rampant hag was she. And there stood the
proselytes beneath the canopy of fire.
“Welcome, my children,” said the dark figure, “to the communion of your race. Ye have
found thus young your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind you!”
They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the fiend worshippers were
seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on every visage.
“There,” resumed the sable form, “are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed
them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of
righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping
assembly. This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds: how hoary-bearded elders
of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a
woman, eager for widows’ weeds, has given her husband a drink at bedtime and let him sleep his
last sleep in her bosom how beardless youths have made haste to inherit their fathers’ wealth; and
how fair damsels - blush not, sweet ones - have dug little graves in the carder, and bidden me, the
sole guest, to an infant’s funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out
all the places - whether in church, bed-chamber, street, field, or forest - where crime has been
committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot. Far
more than this. It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain
of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power - than
my power at its utmost - can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children, look upon each
other.”
They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith,
and the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
“Lo, there ye stand, my children,” said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad
with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race.
“Depending upon one another’s hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now
are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome
again, my children, to the communion of your race.”
“Welcome,” repeated the fiend worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.
And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of
wickedness in this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain water,
reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did the shape of
evil dip his hand and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be
partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and
thought, than they could now be of their own. The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and
Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each other, shuddering
alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!
“Faith! Faith!” cried the husband, “look up to heaven, and resist the wicked one.”
Whether Faith obeyed he knew not. Hardly had he spoken when he found himself amid
calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind which died heavily away through the forest.
He staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp; while a hanging twig, that had been all
on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.
The next morning young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem Village,
staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old minister was taking a walk along the
graveyard to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a blessing, as he
passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint as if to avoid an anathema. Old
Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and the holy words of his prayer were heard through the
open window. “What God cloth the wizard pray to?” quoth Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that
excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine at her own lattice, catechising a little girl who
had brought her a pint of morning’s milk. Goodman Brown snatched away the child as from the
grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the corner by the meetinghouse, he spied the head of Faith,
with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him that she
skipped along the street and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But Goodman
Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting.
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a
witch-meeting?
Be it so if you will; but, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A
stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man did he become from the night
of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath day, when the congregation were singing a holy psalm, he
could not listen because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear and drowned all the blessed
strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his
hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant
deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest
the roof should thunder down upon the grey blasphemer and his hearers. Often, awaking suddenly
at midnight, he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt
down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned
away. And when he had lived long, and was borne to his grave a hoary corpse, followed by Faith,
an aged woman, and children and grandchildren, a goodly procession, besides neighbours not a
few, they carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and
poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early
20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark work in which the episodes of
Homer’s Odyssey are paralleled in an array of contrasting literary styles, perhaps most prominent
among these the stream of consciousness technique he perfected. Other major works are the
short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His complete oeuvre also includes three books of poetry, a
play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.
Joyce was born into a middle class family in Dublin, where he excelled as a student at the Jesuit
schools Clongowes and Belvedere, then at University College Dublin. In his early twenties he
emigrated permanently to continental Europe, living in Trieste, Paris and Zurich. Though most of
his adult life was spent abroad, Joyce's fictional universe does not extend far beyond Dublin, and
is populated largely by characters who closely resemble family members, enemies and friends
from his time there; Ulysses in particular is set with precision in the streets and alleyways of the
city. Shortly after the publication of Ulysses he elucidated this preoccupation somewhat, saying,
“For myself, I always write about Dublin, because if I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to
the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal.”
Araby
North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the hour when the Christian
Brothers’ School set the boys free. An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end,
detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street, conscious of
decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.
The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back drawing-room. Air, musty from
having been long enclosed, hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was
littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the pages of
which were curled and damp: The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant, and The
Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind
the house contained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes, under one of which I found
the late tenant’s rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very charitable priest; in his will he had left all
his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.
When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well eaten our dinners. When we met
in the street the houses had grown sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of
ever-changing violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The cold air
stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of
our play brought us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran the gauntlet of
the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping gardens where odours
arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed the
horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we returned to the street, light from the
kitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner, we hid in the
shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan’s sister came out on the doorstep to
call her brother in to his tea, we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We
waited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow and
walked up to Mangan’s steps resignedly. She was waiting for us, her figure defined by the light
from the half-opened door. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed, and I stood by the
railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body, and the soft rope of her hair
tossed from side to side.
Every morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her door. The blind was pulled
down to within an inch of the sash so that I could not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep
my heart leaped. I ran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown figure
always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our ways diverged, I quickened my
pace and passed her. This happened morning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a
few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.
Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On Saturday evenings
when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the
flaring streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the
shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs’ cheeks, the nasal chanting
of street-singers, who sang a come-all-you about O’Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles
in our native land. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I
bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at moments in
strange prayers and praises which I myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I
could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I
thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to
her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words
and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had died. It was a dark rainy
evening and there was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken panes I heard the rain
impinge upon the earth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds. Some
distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful that I could see so little. All my
senses seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I
pressed the palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: ‘O love! O love!’ many
times.
At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was so confused that I did not
know what to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot whether I answered yes or no.
It would be a splendid bazaar; she said she would love to go.
‘And why can’t you?’ I asked.
While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist. She could not go, she said,
because there would be a retreat that week in her convent. Her brother and two other boys were
fighting for their caps, and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes, bowing her head
towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up
her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her
dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.
‘It’s well for you,’ she said.
‘If I go,’ I said, ‘I will bring you something.’
What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished
to annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed against the work of school. At night in my
bedroom and by day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove to read.
The syllables of the word Araby were called to me through the silence in which my soul luxuriated
and cast an Eastern enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night.
My aunt was surprised, and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered few questions in
class. I watched my master’s face pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning
to idle. I could not call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the serious
work of life which, now that it stood between me and my desire, seemed to me child’s play, ugly
monotonous child’s play.
On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the bazaar in the evening. He
was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the hat-brush, and answered me curtly:
‘Yes, boy, I know.’
As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at the window. I felt the house in
bad humour and walked slowly towards the school. The air was pitilessly raw and already my
heart misgave me.
When I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it was early. I sat staring at the
clock for some time and, when its ticking began to irritate me, I left the room. I mounted the
staircase and gained the upper part of the house. The high, cold, empty, gloomy rooms liberated
me and I went from room to room singing. From the front window I saw my companions playing
below in the street. Their cries reached me weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead
against the cool glass, I looked over at the dark house where she lived. I may have stood there for
an hour, seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched discreetly by
the lamplight at the curved neck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border below the dress.
When I came downstairs again I found Mrs Mercer sitting at the fire. She was an old, garrulous
woman, a pawnbroker’s widow, who collected used stamps for some pious purpose. I had to
endure the gossip of the tea-table. The meal was prolonged beyond an hour and still my uncle did
not come. Mrs Mercer stood up to go: she was sorry she couldn’t wait any longer, but it was after
eight o’clock and she did not like to be out late, as the night air was bad for her. When she had
gone I began to walk up and down the room, clenching my fists. My aunt said:
‘I’m afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.’
At nine o’clock I heard my uncle’s latchkey in the hall door. I heard him talking to himself and
heard the hallstand rocking when it had received the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret these
signs. When he was midway through his dinner I asked him to give me the money to go to the
bazaar. He had forgotten.
‘The people are in bed and after their first sleep now,’ he said.
I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:
‘Can’t you give him the money and let him go? You’ve kept him late enough as it is.’
My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed in the old saying: ‘All work
and no play makes Jack a dull boy.’ He asked me where I was going and, when I told him a
second time, he asked me did I know The Arab’s Farewell to his Steed. When I left the kitchen he
was about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my aunt.
I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buckingham Street towards the station. The
sight of the streets thronged with buyers and glaring with gas recalled to me the purpose of my
journey. I took my seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train. After an intolerable delay the
train moved out of the station slowly. It crept onward among ruinous houses and over the
twinkling river. At Westland Row Station a crowd of people pressed to the carriage doors; but the
porters moved them back, saying that it was a special train for the bazaar. I remained alone in the
bare carriage. In a few minutes the train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I passed
out on to the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes to ten. In front of
me was a large building which displayed the magical name.
I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar would be closed, I passed in
quickly through a turnstile, handing a shilling to a weary-looking man. I found myself in a big hall
girded at half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the
hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence like that which pervades a church after a service. I
walked into the centre of the bazaar timidly. A few people were gathered about the stalls which
were still open. Before a curtain, over which the words Café Chantant were written in coloured
lamps, two men were counting money on a salver. I listened to the fall of the coins.
Remembering with difficulty why I had come, I went over to one of the stalls and examined
porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door of the stall a young lady was talking and
laughing with two young gentlemen. I remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to their
conversation.
‘O, I never said such a thing!’
‘O, but you did!’
‘O, but I didn’t!’
‘Didn’t she say that?’
‘Yes. I heard her.’
‘O, there’s a... fib!’
Observing me, the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy anything. The tone of
her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked
humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to the stall
and murmured:
‘No, thank you.’
The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back to the two young men.
They began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice the young lady glanced at me over her
shoulder.
I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make my interest in her wares
seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I
allowed the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one
end of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall was now completely dark.
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes
burned with anguish and anger.