Page images
PDF
EPUB

missed! There may be an ordinance tho', that all saloon-keepers be killed when found without muzzles.

... I"stand in" with the best men of the town, and am rapidly growing in public. favor-I'll be out in book form yet. I wish you were here at the nobbiest little boardinghouse in the world everything is perfect even to the old girl, "the hostess." She wears a crutch, but I don't know how many of her legs are off. She capers under the jocund patronymic of "Aunt Jane"-Everybody calls her that, so if she isn't Aunt Jane who is she? I think of you often, and of the rare old times we had, and I still nurse a hope that we may have a grand rehearsal of them again. Say to A haunts me. I saw her in a dream the other night and she had wings. seven feet long, and I was just going to ask her to fly some when the breakfast bell rang and

"She vanished as slick

As a sleight-o'hand trick."

... Yours truly,

JIM. Among the experiences of this

a vein that indicates he found the oldfashioned Sunday at home by no means as inspiriting as roving:

Your letters always come to me when I need them most. Sunday-of all days-is the most unsatisfactory in all respects-and mark-should I ever clip my jugular, or puncture my heart with a pistol-ball, it will be on that holy unbearable day when even the chickens cackle and crow in their most

[graphic]
[blocks in formation]

trip were those which awoke young Riley to his poetical ambitions. His recitations caught the fancy not only of the crowd about the wagon, but, as suggested in the above letter, were heard by some people of discrimination in their homes, where thoughtful encouragement was given him. With the son of the old doctor, young Townsend, Riley had long talks through the night, dreaming of the future. To be and to do something worth while in life impelled these youthful dreamers to give themselves over to many a heart-to-heart talk, in which they resolved big things. Upon Riley's return to Greenfield, he wrote to the girl mentioned in the previous letter in

melancholy tones, and the skies look haggard and faded for all the paint and powder of sunshine and snowy clouds, and that emblem of peace and tranquillity, the dove, will drive me to it.

And the brown owl calls to his mate in the wood

That a man lies dead in the road. This, however, shall upon some Sabbath your letter has come to me, for that protects me from all harm and shields my heart like an amulet. ...

not Occur

You should be at Sunday School with us again—it is so jolly stupid there! and so monotonous it seems to me a nightmare self-inflicted and

stoically indulged in from mere force of habit.

I am glad to see by the general tone of your letter that your life is a pleasanter one now than your surroundings made it for you a while back. That's right, for after all we make or mar our own happiness ourselvesdon't you think so? and the world's a show we pay to see and we're fools if we don't take front seats and enjoy the performance!... So live, and love, and be happy while you may! and

"For fear ye die tomorrow "Let today pass flower-crowned and singing."

. . . Think of me kindly, and as often as you can without interfering with higher duties, and believe me, I am yours most affectionately,

JIM.

Riley was back in his father's lawoffice now, writing verses more industriously than ever. He was glad when his father was away, for there was one manuscript concealed in the old table. drawer that insistently called him. "The poem wrote itself," said Riley. And so, with "An Old Sweetheart of Mine" written, but all unconscious of its universal worth, the young man groped toward an appointed goal. In one of the many moments of deep discouragement at this time, he wrote that "all the world was dead to him."

From Captain Lee O. Harris, his old schoolmaster, Riley had literary companionship and encouragement in those trying days. The editor of the New Castle Mercury, Benj. S. Parker, a dear friend of Riley to the very last, gave him heart by sympathetic and appreciative letters. But the way was dark for him. Between poems he took up his brush. In a letter to Parker he wrote:

I am very busy-sign painting-I wonder am I destined to succeed T. Buchanan Reid in that title "The Painter Poet?" Ha! Ha! Ha!

But the laugh was often simulated at this time when the future was most uncertain. At length Riley gathered together the poems, "In the Dark," "The Iron Horse," "The Dreamer," "If I Knew What Poets Know," and perhaps

66

'An Old Sweetheart of Mine," and sent them to Longfellow. The result, which he awaited as anxiously as though a verdict in some high court, is recorded in a letter to Parker:

GREENFIELD, Ind., Nov. 4, '76.

DEAR PARKER: I'm in a perfect hurricane of delight, and must erupt to you, "O gentlest of my friends." I sent you a postal recently stating my intention of addressing Longfellowwell-his response to my letter lies open before me, and as it is brief, I will quote it verbatim:

"MY DEAR Sir:

CAMBRIDGE, Nov. 3d, 1876.

Not being in the habit of criticising the

productions of others, I cannot enter into any minute discussion of the merits of the poems you send me.

"I can only say in general terms, that I have read them with great pleasure, and think they show the true poetic faculty and insight.

"The only criticism I shall make is on your use of the word prone in the thirteenth line of 'Destiny.' Prone means face downward. You mean to say supine as the context shows.

"I return the printed pieces as you may want them for future use, and am, My Dear Sir, With all good wishes, Yours very truly

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW."

To Riley, in his hunger for sympathetic appreciation, the letter from Longfellow, though simple and reserved, was a turning-point in his life. After the master had seen in his verse indications of "the true poetic faculty and insight," Riley felt that faith in his ability had some reason for being and that there was an eventual pathway to success. He was finding himself. Through a great variety of experiences he had groped his way-through the works of Dickens, Longfellow, and the poets, through the humdrum experiences of country life, through making the most of such pitifully poor opportunities as amateur theatricals in the town hall, and through the intimate contact with life that was possible to the half-hopeful, half-despairing signpainter. Always, with an inquisitive eye and open heart, he was learning, from books one thing, from a never-failing interest in the people back home another. Through all these years, however confused the design of hopes and discouragements and tangled purposes, a thread of gold runs. No matter what Riley tried, there was only one satisfaction, one dream unfolding despite discouragement, poverty, and lack of opportunity. At length it shone out as an indomitable purpose.

[The letters to be published in the subsequent articles of this series are addressed to such friends and acquaintances of Riley's later years as Longfellow, Trowbridge, Robert J. Burdette, Charles A. Dana, Walt Whitman, Matthew Arnold, John Hay, Joel Chandler Harris, Mark Twain, Josh Billings, Bill Nye, Richard Watson Gilder, and Edmund Clarence Stedman. They show the widening recognition of the poet's genius and the steady development of the man and his art.-THE EDITORS]

Huntington's Credit

BY MARY HEATON VORSE

HAVE never been able to decide whether Huntington was a brave man or a coward, a quitter or a man who had the courage to fulfil himself.

We In either case, neither his cowardice nor his courage would be of the obvious sort; his courage would be in doing what he felt like, in terminating a situation which had got the better of him, and which he knew had sapped his manhood.

That he acted as he did was certainly Mrs. Huntington's fault. There are some things which must not be said out loud, some facts that one must never face openly, if one wishes life to proceed on its old terms. The putting into words of a thought is a strange and dynamic thing; it is like the lighting of powder. That she did to him what she did was bad enough; she shouldn't have underscored it.

I fancy there are a great many men who would, if they could, have acted as Huntington did with the coming of the war. It is the older men, I notice, who look most wistfully toward war's intensity. It would be for many a man in his forties such a magnificent adventure, such a fine way of getting out of it all.

You know when you're forty-odd pretty much what you're going to be, and in which of those dreadful little tables of success or failure you belong those tables which tell you that if you hold your own you're doing well, that most people fail, and that to be "dependent" along toward fifty-five is pretty much the normal thing.

Then there's something about most growing families we keep up the polite fiction about parents and children. We love our children-but there are plenty of us who don't like them. Huntington didn't like his. How could he have been expected to! That pretty girl with her smart clothes and her ". poor father"

manner, and that rag-playing lubber of a boy of his dapper was the name for him. How could he like children like that-wistful, poetic type of man that he was?

There are people enough like him and to spare who find themselves with middle-age at their heels and several uncongenial adults for whom they are responsible, but that have to be paid for, and paid for again.

Maybe some day there will come along a psychologist of the derelicts-a man who will analyze for us how many people there are whose mediocrity has been embittered by the fetish of success. Our families don't let us be unsuccessful in peace. They didn't Huntington.

Now, wistful and poetic may seem odd terms to apply to a country storekeeper, but that was what he was; rare, if you like, a person of unusual sweetness. He was though it is rather an absurd term to apply to a grown man-lovely. People had enthusiasms about him; you couldn't mention his name without smiles of kindliness coming on people's faces, or without some one having a story to tell about him that matched my first encounter with him.

He did some vague real-estate business along with his store, and I went there to inquire about summer cottages.

He was sitting reading before his desk, and as he read an expression swept over his face that was like the sun traveling over the sea on a dark day, for he was dark rather a shy, veiled person but for the flash of his smile and the intelligence of his eyes; though his hair was thinning a little, he had a young, interested air.

He put the book down, and I saw it was Lord Jim-odd reading for the keeper of a country store.

When I told him that I wanted a cottage he looked me over. I had a feeling as though a sort of spiritual measure was being taken of me.

[graphic]
[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

"Not everybody would care for that view," he said, reflectively. There was flattery of the most poignant sort in those words, and all the more that he did not mean it as flattery.

When I saw the view I knew exactly what he meant. It hit me as he had known it would.

From the little house one looked down over a wide moorland, which fought with the encroaching sand-dunes; one could see them beyond in their shining desolation. Below us lay the tops of gray houses with the odd perspective of a Japanese print, and the painted bay with ships upon it; that was the obvious view the view for everybody to like; but I knew it was for this desolate and remote aspect of the back country that he had brought me. It was not a reassuring view, for not far off and tucked away between what had been two dunes was an abandoned cemetery whose grayslate stones scarcely differentiated themselves from the encroaching clumps of bayberry. Here and there a grayishwhite stone of a later epoch flagged one's attention, and there was a procession of distracted cypress-trees which on the stillest day waved their branches as though to some hidden wind.

"Queer view, ain't it?" he said, gently. "This house is hard to rent on account of it-that and its inconveniences."

Far off, apparently above the horizon, was a line of silver-the outer shore, and along it, as though sailing in the sky, was a distant fleet of fishing-vessels bound to South Channel. It was beautiful and desolate. It had the charm of a strange woman.

"Are you going to take it?" he asked

me. "I got lots of other houses more comfortable-"

"Yes, I'll take it," I told him. The view had got me; I was lost. It seemed sacrilegious to weigh plumbing in the balance with the desolate charm.

And even as I looked the face of the landscape changed. High clouds threw off shadows on the moorlands and softened the cruel glittering dunes with a veil of lavender. It had been as swift as that change of expression over Huntington's face. He smiled at me.

"One sits and watches for it," he said. I went back to the store with Huntington, a victim of his dim charm, and in some way The Store-I had time then to notice its quality-expressed his personality. It was at once ship-chandler's and grocery, real estate and hardware. There were odds and ends of secondhand furniture, too, as though to be obliging he had got in a small line of anything he had ever been asked for. A pathetic sign hung in the middle of the room. It read, "Please Loaf in the Back Room." In that one had the key to Huntington's nature. He couldn't have put up a sign, "No Loafing." He liked loafers and the people who sit all day on wharfs.

Just as I was savoring this store with its smell of fruit and marlin a woman came in. She was small and vivid. She seemed rather like an angry robin with her tempestuous, suffused face.

"I've got to have some money!" she announced.

I could see Huntington shrink into himself. There was a softness in his glance as it met hers that played some witchery with her-she loved him.

دو

She repeated, in a softer tone: "I've got to have some money. .. You must be able," she went on, "to collect some." She was oblivious of me and of his mood, rendered obtuse by her intensity. "You must collect those old bills!"

"I don't see as how there's anything I could collect this afternoon," he gave back.

"When you sell so much and you run a business like this, it's mean to the family to keep us so short. Why should we be so short-all of us-all the timejust so people can loaf! I don't call it

fair-I don't!" She had included me in her look, as though expecting my approval. Now she cried out, including everybody, "You know how he does it -credit-credit to everybody, and I have to beg to get something new! I'm short all the time!"

With her lack of reticence and her anger she should have been intolerable, but she was so honest with it all that if Huntington had been a shade different she would have had one's sympathy.

Again their eyes crossed, and again it came to me that they cared for each other.

"One would think," he said, smiling at her, "that you went hungry. Didn't I hear you say you wouldn't change your house for any in town?"

One could fairly see her resisting the charm he had for her. "There's got to be money!" she insisted. "I've got to get the children fitted for school, and you know I've got to. It would serve you right if I made debts and sent you the bill!" One knew she never would do that. "I bet you anything that Morris owes you a big bill."

He looked away; he didn't answer her directly. When her indignation had spent itself, "Folks pay when they can,' he said, pacifically.

[ocr errors]

"Folks pay when they're made to," she gave back. She shut her mouth like a trap. The moment when she appeared sympathetic had passed; she seemed like the dark shadow of this luminous man.

It came across me that he paid heavily for all his kindness.

To turn the subject, "I just rented a cottage this afternoon," he said.

"What cottage did you rent?"

"I rented it to Mr. Grey-the one on Tom Nevers's hill."

She looked at me with the swift look of an angry little bird. She turned from me to Huntington.

"You didn't!" she cried. "Why on earth didn't you rent him one of the good cottages?" She sized me up in a moment. I might have paid so much more. "Why, he's the one with a car! How'll he ever stand it there?"

"How'll you ever stand it up there?" she cried to me.

"I like the view," I explained.

VOL. CXXXVI.-No. 813.-42

"The view! The view!" she cried. "A view that would give you the creeps! I bet you never took him to Bay End at all that's a view for you! Sweeps both ends of the harbor-that view-and a rose-arbor! Why, there aren't any improvements! What 'll his wife say?"

He looked at her curiously, a little expression of wonder in his face. He had a gesture which included me I had been included enough already, Heaven knew-which asked mutely what ailed her and indicated that one must be patient with women.

I went away certain of two things— that somehow she would get her money, and that he would never in the world collect one of those bills whose existence infuriated her so.

That was how I first saw him, when he was still intact, but I realized later that he was intact only because she permitted him so to be; because she still loved him the most, though she loved him ardently, passionately, to the end. How could she have helped it? Even when she despised him for a fool she loved him, though she wasn't intelligent enough to see that he couldn't have had his perfection and not be what she considered a fool at the same time.

I got the habit of dropping in often at The Store. There were plenty of other stores in town, but The Store meant Huntington's. It had a peculiar atmosphere-a cross between a club and a private house and something else which made it The Store, a sort of institution, with its pleasant disorder, its curious mixture of things that smelled of the sea, its trickle of children after their perpetual candy, the youngsters loafing in the back room and the old fellows sitting around swapping yarns with Huntington.

It was when I, too, was loafing around The Store one day that I stumbled on the answer as to what had been the matter with Mrs. Huntington, and what it was that had inflamed her habitual impatience with her husband to fury.

Maida, Huntington's thirteen-yearold girl, was sitting gravely at his desk, when she burst out with, "Why haven't we got a motor?"

« EelmineJätka »