Books: Love, The Fiddler
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Lloyd Osbourne >> Love, The Fiddler
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He was far from being a bad-looking fellow, however. He had
beautiful blue eyes, more like a girl's than a man's, and there
was something earnest and winning in his face that often got him a
shy glance on the street from passing women. His acquaintance in
this direction went no further. Many times when a college
acquaintance would have included him in some little party, his
mother had peremptorily refused to let him go. Her face would
darken with jealousy and anger, nor was she backward with a string
of reasons for her refusal. It would unsettle him; he had no money
to waste on girls; he would be shamed by his shabby clothes and
ungloved hands; they would laugh at him behind his back; was he
tired, then, of his old mother who had worked so hard to bring him
up decently? And so on and so on, until, without knowing exactly
why, Raymond would feel himself terribly in the wrong, and was
glad enough at last to be forgiven on the understanding that he
would never propose such a reprehensible thing again.
In any other young man, brought up in the ordinary way, with the
ordinary advantages, such submission would have seemed mean-
spirited; but the bond between these two was riveted with memories
of penury and privation; any appeal to those black days brought
Raymond on his knees; it was intolerable to him that he should
ever cause a pang in his dear mother's breast. Thus, at the age
when the heart is hungriest for companionship; when for the first
time a young man seems to discover the existence of a hitherto
unknown and unimportant sex; when an inner voice urges him to take
his place in the ranks and keep step with the mighty army of his
generation, Raymond was doomed to walk alone, a wistful outcast,
regarding his enviable companions from afar.
He was in his second year at college when his studies were broken
off by his mother's illness. He was suddenly called home to find
her delirious in bed, struck down in the full tide of strength by
the disease she had taken from a patient. It was scarlet fever,
and when it had run its course the doctor took him to one side and
told him that his mother's nursing days were over. During her
tedious convalescence, as Raymond would sit beside her bed and
read aloud to her, their eyes were constantly meeting in unspoken
apprehension. They saw the ground, so solid a month before, now
crumbling beneath their feet; their struggles, their makeshifts,
their starved and meagre life had all been in vain. Their little
savings were gone; the breadwinner, tempting fate once too often,
had received what was to her worse than a mortal wound, for the
means of livelihood had been taken from her.
"Could I have but died," she repeated to herself. "Oh, could I
have but died!"
Raymond laid his head against the coverlet and sobbed. He needed
no words to tell him what was in her mind; that her illness had
used up the little money there was to spare; that she, so long the
support of both, was now a helpless burden on his hands. Pity for
her outweighed every other consideration. His own loss seemed but
little in comparison to hers. It was the concluding tragedy of
those five tragic years. The battle, through no fault of theirs,
had gone against them. The dream of a professional career was
over.
His mother grew better. The doctor ceased his visits. She was able
to get on her feet again. She took over their pinched
housekeeping. But her step was heavy; the gaunt, grim straight-
backed woman, with her thin grey hair and set mouth, was no more
than a spectre of her former self. The doctor was right. There was
nothing before her but lifelong invalidism.
Raymond found work; a place in the auditing department of a
railroad, with a salary to begin with of sixty dollars a month; in
ten years he might hope to get a hundred. But he was one of those
whose back bent easily to misfortune. Heaven knew, he had been
schooled long enough to take its blows with fortitude. His mother
and he could manage comfortably on sixty dollars a month; and when
he laid his first earnings in her hand he even smiled with
satisfaction. She took the money in silence, her heart too full to
ask him whence it came. She had hoped against hope until that
moment; and the bills, as she looked at them, seemed to sting her
shrivelled hand.
One day, as she was cleaning her son's room, she opened a box that
stood in the corner, and was surprised to find it contain a
package done up in wrapping paper. She opened it with curiosity
and the tears sprang to her eyes as she saw the second-hand
medical books George had used at college. Here they were, in neat
wrappers, laid by for ever. Too precious to throw away, too
articulate of unfulfilled ambitions to stand exposed on shelves,
they had been laid away in the grave of her son's hopes. She did
them up again with trembling fingers, and that night when George
returned to supper, he found his mother in the dark, crying.
II
In the years from nineteen to forty-two most men have fulfilled
their destiny; those who have had within them the ability to rise
have risen; the weak, the wastrels, the mediocrities have shaken
down into their appointed places. Even the bummer has his own
particular bit of wall in front of the saloon and his own
particular chair within. Those who have something to do are busy
doing it, whatever it may be. In the human comedy everyone in time
finds his role and must play it to the end, happy indeed if he be
cast in a part that at all suits him.
George Raymond at forty-two was still in the auditor's department
of the New York Central. Time had wrinkled his cheek, had turned
his brown hair to a crisp grey, had bowed his shoulders to the
desk he had used for twenty-two years. His eyes alone retained
their boyish brightness, and a sort of appealing look as of one
who his whole life long had been a dependent on other people. As
an automaton, a mere cog in a vast machine, he had won the praise
of his superiors by his complete self-effacement. He was never
ill, never absent, never had trouble with his subordinates, never
talked back, never made complaints, and, in the flattering
language of the superintendent, "he knew what he knew!"
In the office, as in every other aggregation of human beings,
there were coteries, cliques, friendships and hatreds, jealousies,
heart-burnings and vendettas. There was scarcely a man there
without friends or foes. Raymond alone had neither. To the others
he was a strange, silent, unknown creature whose very address was
a matter of conjecture; a man who did not drink, did not smoke,
did not talk; who ate four bananas for his lunch and invariably
carried a book in the pocket of his shabby coat. It was said of
him that once, during a terrible blizzard, he had been the only
clerk to reach the office; that he had worked there stark alone
until one o'clock, when at the stroke of the hour he had taken out
his four bananas and his book! There were other stories about him
of the same kind, not all of them true to fate, but essentially
true of the man's nature and of his rigid adherence to routine. He
had risen, place by place, to a position that gave him a hundred
and fifty dollars a month, and one so responsible that his death
or absence would have dislocated the office for half a day.
"A first-class man and an authority on pro ratas!"
Such might have been the inscription on George Raymond's tomb!
His mother was still alive. She had never entirely regained her
health or her strength, and it took all the little she had of
either to do the necessary housekeeping for herself and her son.
Thin to emaciation, sharp-tongued, a tyrant to her finger-tips,
her indomitable spirit remained as uncowed as ever and she ruled
her son with a rod of iron. To her, Georgie, as she always called
him, was still a child. As far as she was concerned he had never
grown up. She took his month's salary, told him when to buy new
shirts, ordered his clothes herself, doled out warningly the few
dollars for his necessaries, and saved, saved, continually saved.
The old woman dreaded poverty with a horror not to be expressed in
words. It had ruined her own life; it had crushed her son under
its merciless wheels; in the words of the proverb, she was the
coward who died a thousand deaths in the agonies of apprehension.
She was one of those not uncommon misers, who hoard, not for love
of money, but through fear. She had managed, with penurious thrift
and a self-denial almost sublime in its austerity, to set aside
eight thousand dollars. Eight thousand dollars from an income that
began at sixty and rose to a little under three times that amount!
Eight thousand dollars, wrung from their lives at the price of
every joy, every alleviation, everything that could make the world
barely tolerable.
Every summer Raymond had a two-weeks' holiday, which he spent at
Middleborough with some relatives of his father's. He had the
pronounced love of the sea that is usual with those born and bred
in seaport towns. His earliest memories went back to great deep-
water ships, their jib-booms poking into the second-story windows
of the city front, their decks hoarsely melodious with the yo-
heave-yo of straining seamen. The smell of tar, the sight of
enormous anchors impending above the narrow street, the lofty
masts piercing the sky in a tangle of ropes and blocks, the exotic
cargoes mountains high--all moved him like a poem. He knew no
pleasure like that of sailing his cousin's sloop; he loved every
plank of her dainty hull; it was to him a privilege to lay his
hand to any task appertaining to her, however humble or hard. To
calk, to paint, to polish brasswork; to pump out bilge; to set up
the rigging; to sit cross-legged and patch sails; and, best of
all, to put her lee rail under in a spanking breeze and race her
seaward against the mimic fleet--Ah, how swiftly those bright
days passed, how bitter was the parting and the return, all too
soon, to the dingy offices of the railroad.
It never occurred to him to think his own lot hard, or to contrast
himself with other men of his age, who at forty-two were mostly
substantial members of society, with interests, obligations,
responsibilities, to which he himself was an utter stranger. Under
the iron bondage of his mother he had remained a child. To
displease her seemed the worst thing that could befall him; to win
her commendation filled him with content. But there were times,
guiltily remembered and put by with shame, when he longed for
something more from life; when the sight of a beautiful woman on
the street reminded him of his own loneliness and isolation; when
he was overcome with a sudden surging sense that he was an
outsider in the midst of these teeming thousands, unloved and old,
without friends or hope or future to look forward to. He would
reproach himself for such lawless repining, for such disloyalty to
his mother. Was not her case worse than his? Did she not lecture
him on the duty of cheerfulness, she the invalid, racked with
pains, with nerves, who practised so pitifully what she preached?
The tears would come to his eyes. No, he would not ask the
impossible; he would go his way, brave and uncomplaining, and let
the empty years roll over his head without a murmur against fate.
But the years, apparently so void, were screening a strange and
undreamed-of part for him to play. The Spaniards, a vague, almost
legendary people, as remote from Raymond's life as the Assamese or
the cliff-dwellers of New Mexico, began to take on a concrete
character, and were suddenly discovered to be the enemies of the
human race. Raymond grew accustomed to the sight of Cuban flags,
at first so unfamiliar, and then, later, so touching in their
significance. Newspaper pictures of Gomez and Garcia were tacked
on the homely walls of barber-shops, in railroad shops, in grubby
offices and cargo elevators, and with them savage caricatures of a
person called Weyler, and referring bitterly to other persons (who
seemed in a bad way) called the reconcentrados. Raymond wondered
what it was all about; bought books to elucidate the matter; took
fire with indignation and resentment. Then came the Maine affair;
the suspense of seventy million people eager to avenge their dead;
the decision of the court of inquiry; the emergency vote; the
preparation for war. Raymond watched it all with a curious
detachment. He never realised that it could have anything
personally to do with him. The long days in the auditor's
department went on undisturbed for all that the country was arming
and the State governors were calling out their quotas of men. Two
of his associates quitted their desks and changed their black
coats for army blue. Raymond admired them; envied them; but it
never occurred to him to ask why they should go and he should
stay. It was natural for him to stay; it was inevitable; he was as
much a part of the office as the office floor.
One afternoon, going home on the Elevated, he overheard two men
talking.
"I don't know what we'll do," said one.
"Oh, there are lots of men," said the other.
"Men, yes--but no sailors," said the first.
"That's right," said the other.
"We are at our wits' end to man the new ships," said the first.
"What did you total up to-day?" said the other.
His companion shrugged his shoulders.
"Eighty applicants, and seven taken," he said.
"And those foreigners?"
"All but two!"
"There's danger in that kind of thing!"
"Yes, indeed, but what can you do?"
The words rang in Raymond's head. That night he hardly slept. He
was in the throes of making a tremendous resolution, he who, for
forty years, had been tied to his mother's apron string. Making it
of his own volition, unprompted, at the behest of no one save,
perhaps, the man in the car, asserting at last his manhood in
defiance of the subjection that had never come home to him until
that moment. He rose in the morning, pale and determined. He felt
a hypocrite through and through as his mother commented on his
looks and grew anxious as he pushed away his untasted breakfast.
It came over him afresh how good she was, how tender. He did not
love her less because his great purpose had been taken. He knew
how she would suffer, and the thought of it racked his heart; he
was tempted to take her into his confidence, but dared not,
distrusting his own powers of resistance were she to say no. So he
kissed her instead, with greater warmth than usual, and left the
house with misty eyes.
He got an extension of the noon hour and hurried down to the naval
recruiting office. It was doing a brisk business in turning away
applicants, and from the bottom of the line Raymond was not kept
waiting long before he attained the top; and from thence in his
turn was led into an inner office. He was briefly examined as to
his sea experience. Could he box the compass? He could. Could he
make a long splice? He could. What was meant by the monkey-gaff of
a full-rigged ship? He told them. What was his reason in wanting
to join the Navy? Because he thought he'd like to do something for
his country. Very good; turn him over to the doctor; next! Then
the doctor weighed him, looked at his teeth, hit him in the chest,
listened to his heart, thumped and questioned him, and then passed
him on to a third person to be enrolled.
When George Raymond emerged into the open air it was as a full A B
in the service of the United States
This announcement at the office made an extraordinary sensation.
Men he hardly knew shook hands with him and clapped him on the
back. He was taken upstairs to be impressively informed that his
position would be held open for him. On every side he saw kindling
faces, smiling glances of approbation, the quick passing of the
news in whispers. He had suddenly risen from obscurity to become
part of the War; the heir of a wonderful and possibly tragic
future; a patriot; a hero! It was a bewildering experience and not
without its charm. He was surprised to find himself still the same
man.
The scene at home was less enthusiastic. It was even mortifying,
and Georgie, as his mother invariably called him, had to endure a
storm of sarcasm and reproaches. The old woman's ardent patriotism
stopped short at giving up her son. It was the duty of others to
fight, Georgie's to stay at home with his mother. He let her talk
herself out, saying little, but regarding her with a grave, kind
obstinacy. Then she broke down, weeping and clinging to him.
Somehow, though he could hardly explain it to himself, the
relation between the two underwent a change. He left that house
the unquestioned master of himself, the acknowledged head of that
tiny household; he had won, and his victory instead of abating by
a hair's-breadth his mother's love for him had drawn the pair
closer to each other than ever before. Though she had no
articulate conception of it Georgie had risen enormously in his
mother's respect. The woman had given way to the man, and the
eternal fitness of things had been vindicated.
Her tenderness and devotion were redoubled. Never had there been
such a son in the history of the world. She relaxed her economies
in order to buy him little delicacies, such as sardines and
pickles; and when soon after his enlistment his uniform came home
she spread it on her bed and cried, and then sank on her knees,
passionately kissing the coarse serge. In the limitation of her
horizon she could see but a single figure. It was Georgie's
country, Georgie's President, Georgie's fleet, Georgie's righteous
quarrel in the cause of stifled freedom. To her, it was Georgie's
war with Spain.
He was drafted aboard the Dixie, where, within a week of his
joining, he was promoted to be one of the four quartermasters. So
much older than the majority of his comrades, quick, alert,
obedient, and responsible, he was naturally amongst the first
chosen for what are called leading seamen. Never was a man more in
his element than George Raymond. He shook down into naval life
like one born to it. The sea was in his blood, and his translation
from the auditor's department to the deck of a fighting ship
seemed to him like one of those happy dreams when one pinches
himself to try and confirm the impossible. Metaphorically
speaking, he was always pinching himself and contrasting the
monotonous past with the glorious and animated present. The change
told in his manner, in the tilt of his head, in his fearless eyes
and straighter back. It comes natural to heroes to protrude their
chests and walk upon air; and it is pardonable, indeed, in war
time, when each feels himself responsible for a fraction of his
country's honour.
"Georgie, you are positively becoming handsome," said his mother.
Amongst Raymond's comrades on the Dixie was a youngster of twenty-
one, named Howard Quintan. Something attracted him in the boy, and
he went out of his way to make things smooth for him aboard. The
liking was no less cordially returned, and the two became fast
friends. One day, when they were both given liberty together,
Howard insisted on taking him to his own home.
"The folks want to know you," he said. "They naturally think a
heap of you because I do, and I've told them how good you've been
and all that."
"Oh, rubbish!" said Raymond, though he was inwardly pleased. At
the time they were walking up Fifth Avenue, both in uniform, with
their caps on one side, sailor fashion, and their wide trousers
flapping about their ankles. People looked at them kindly as they
passed, for the shadow of the war lay on everyone and all hearts
went out to the men who were to uphold the flag. Raymond was
flattered and yet somewhat overcome by the attention his companion
and he excited.
"Let's get out of this, Quint," he said. "I can't walk straight
when people look at me like that. Don't you feel kind of givey-
givey at the knees with all those pretty girls loving us in
advance?"
"Oh, that's what I like!" said Quintan. "I never got a glance when
I used to sport a silk hat. Besides, here we are at the old
stand!"
Raymond regarded him with blank surprise as they turned aside and
up the steps of one of the houses.
"Land's sake!" he exclaimed; "you don't mean to say you live in a
place like this? Here?" he added, with an intonation that caused
Howard to burst out laughing.
The young fellow pushed by the footman that admitted them and ran
up the stairs three steps at a time. Raymond followed more slowly,
dazed by the splendour he saw about him, and feeling horribly
embarrassed and deserted. He halted on the stairs as he saw
Quintan throw his arms about a tall, stately, magnificently
dressed woman and kiss her boisterously; and he was in two minds
whether or not to slink down again and disappear, when his
companion called out to him to hurry up.
"Mother, this is Mr. Raymond," he said. "He's the best friend I
have on the Dixie, and you're to be awfully good to him!"
Mrs. Quintan graciously gave him her hand and said something about
his kindness to her boy. Raymond was too stricken to speak and was
thankful for the semi-darkness that hid his face. Mrs. Quintan
continued softly, in the same sweet and overpowering manner, to
purr her gratitude and try to put him at his ease. Raymond would
have been a happy man could he have sunk though the parquetry
floor. He trembled as he was led into the drawing-room, where
another gracious and overpowering creature rose to receive them.
"My aunt, Miss Christine Latimer," said Howard.
She was younger than Mrs. Quintan; a tall, fair woman of middle
age, with a fine figure, hair streaked with grey, and the remains
of what had once been extreme beauty. Her voice was the sweetest
Raymond had ever listened to, and his shyness and agitation wore
off as she began to speak to him. He was left a long while alone
with her, for Howard and his mother withdrew, excusing themselves
on the score of private matters. Christine Latimer was touched by
the forlorn quartermaster, who, in his nervousness, gripped his
chair with clenched hands and started when he was asked a
question. She soon got him past this stage of their acquaintance,
and, leading him on by gentle gradations to talk about himself,
even learned his whole story, and that in so unobtrusive a fashion
that he was hardly aware of his having told it to her.
"I am speaking to you as though I had known you all my life," he
said in an artless compliment. "I hope it is not very forward of
me. It is your fault for being so kind and good."
He was ecstatic when he left the house with Quintan.
"I didn't know there were such women in the world," he said. "So
noble, so winning and high-bred. It makes you understand history
to meet people like that. Mary Queen of Scots, Marie Antoinette
and all those, you know--they must have been like that. I--I could
understand a man dying for Miss Latimer!"
"Oh, she's all right, my aunt!" said Quintan. "She was a
tremendous beauty once, and even now she's what I'd call a
devilish handsome woman. And the grand manner, it isn't everybody
that likes it, but I do. It's a little old-fashioned nowadays,
but, by Jove, it still tells."
"I wonder that such a splendid woman should have remained
unmarried," said Raymond. He stuck an instant on the word
unmarried. It seemed almost common to apply to such a princess.
"She had an early love affair that turned out badly," said
Quintan. "I don't know what went wrong, but anyway it didn't work.
Then, when my father died, she came to live with us and help bring
us up--you see there are two more of us in the family--and I am
told she refused some good matches just on account of us kids. It
makes me feel guilty sometimes to think of it."
"Why guilty?" asked Raymond.
"Because none of us were worth it, old chap," said Quintan.
"I'm sure she never thought so," observed Raymond.
"My aunt's rather an unusual woman," said Quintan. "She has
voluntarily played second fiddle all her life; and, between you
and me, you know, my mother's a bit of a tyrant, and not always
easy to get along with--so it wasn't so simple a game as it looks."
Raymond was shocked at this way of putting the matter.
"You mean she sacrificed the best years of her life for you," he
said stiffly.
"Women are like that--good women," said Quintan. "Catch a man being
such a fool--looking at it generally, you know--me apart. She had
a tidy little fortune from her father, and might have had a yard
of her own to play in, but our little baby hands held her tight."
Raymond regarded his companion's hands. They were large and red,
and rough with the hard work on board the Dixie; regarded them
respectfully, almost with awe, for had they not restrained that
glorious being in the full tide of her youth and beauty!
"Now it's too late," said Quintan.
"What do you mean by too late?" asked the quartermaster.
"Well, she's passed forty," said Quintan. "The babies have grown
up, and the selfish beasts are striking out for themselves. Her
occupation's gone, and she's left plante la. Worse than that, my
mother, who never bothered two cents about us then, now loves us
to distraction. And, when all's said, you know, it's natural to
like your mother best!"
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