Books: Life at High Tide
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12 Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Tiffany Vergon, Sandra Bannatyne,
David Garcia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
LIFE AT HIGH TIDE
Harper's Novelettes
Edited By
William Dean Howells and Henry Mills Alden
CONTENTS:
THE IMMEDIATE JEWEL ........ MARGARET DELAND
"AND ANGELS CAME ........... ANNE O'HAGAN
KEEPERS OF A CHARGE ........ GRACE ELLERY CHANNING
A WORKING BASIS ............ ABBY MEGUIRE ROACH
THE GLASS DOOR ............. MARY TRACY EARLE
ELIZABETH AND DAVIE ........ MURIEL CAMPBELL DYAR
BARNEY DOON, BRAGGART ...... PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS
THE REPARATION ............. EMERY POTTLE
THE YEARLY TRIBUTE ......... ROSINA HUBLEY EMMET
A MATTER OF RIVALRY ........ OCTAVE THANET
PREFACE
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
Thus the poet--and poetry, of the old order at least, always waiting
upon great events, has found in the high-tide flotations of masterful
heroes to fortune themes most flatteringly responsive to its own high
tension.
The writer of fiction has no such afflatus, no such high pitch of
life, as to outward circumstance, in his representation of it, as
the poet has; and therefore his may seem to the academic critic the
lesser art--but it is nearer to the realities of common human existence.
He deals with plain men and women, and the un-majestic moments of their
lives.
"Life at High Tide"--the title selected for this little volume of
short stories, and having a real significance for each of them, which
the reader may find out for himself--does not reflect the poet's
meaning, and, least of all, its easy optimism. In every one of these
stories is presented a critical moment in one individual life--
sometimes, as in "The Glass Door" and in "Elizabeth and Davie,"
in two lives; but it leads not to or away from fortune--it simply
discloses character; also, in situations like those so vividly
depicted in "Keepers of a Charge" and "A Yearly Tribute," the tense
strain of modern circumstance. In all these real instances there are
luminous points of idealism--of an idealism implicit but translucent.
The authors here represented have won exceptional distinction as
short-story writers, and the examples given of their work not only are
typical of the best periodical fiction of a very recent period--all
of them having been published within five years--but illustrate
the distinctive features, as unprecedented in quality as they are
diversified in character, which mark the extreme advance in this
field of literature.
H. M. A.
THE IMMEDIATE JEWEL
BY MARGARET DELAND
"_Good name, in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is_ the immediate jewel of their souls."
--_Othello_.
I
When James Graham, carpenter, enlisted, it was with the assurance that
if he lost his life his grateful country would provide for his widow.
He did lose it, and Mrs. Graham received, in exchange for a husband
and his small earnings, the sum of $12 a month. But when you own your
own very little house, with a dooryard for chickens (and such stray
dogs and cats as quarter themselves upon you), and enough grass for a
cow, and a friendly neighbor to remember your potato-barrel, why, you
can get along--somehow. In Lizzie Graham's case nobody knew just how,
because she was not one of the confidential kind. But certainly there
were days in winter when the house was chilly, and months when fresh
meat was unknown, and years when a new dress was not thought of. This
state of things is not remarkable, taken in connection with an income
of $144 a year, and a New England village where people all do their
own work, so that a woman has no chance to hire out.
All the same, Mrs. Graham was not an object of charity. Had she been
that, she would have been promptly sent to the Poor Farm. No sentimental
consideration of a grateful country would have moved Jonesville to
philanthropy; it sent its paupers to the Poor Farm with prompt common
sense.
When Jonesville's old school-teacher, Mr. Nathaniel May, came wandering
back from the great world, quite penniless, almost blind, and with a
faint mist across his pleasant mind, Jonesville saw nothing for him
but the Poor Farm.... Nathaniel had been away from home for many years;
rumors came back, occasionally, that he was going to make his fortune
by some patent, and Jonesville said that if he did it would be a good
thing for the town, for Nathaniel wasn't one to forget his friends.
"He'll give us a library," said Jonesville, grinning; "Nat was a great
un for books." However, Jonesville was still without its library, when,
one August day, the stage dropped a gentle, forlorn figure at the door
of Dyer's Hotel.
"I'm Nat May," he said; "well, it's good to get home!"
He brought with him, as the sum of his possessions, a dilapidated
leather hand-bag full of strange wheels and little reflectors, and
small, scratched lenses; the poor clothes upon his back; and
twenty-four cents in his pocket. He walked hesitatingly, with one
hand outstretched to feel his way, for he was nearly blind; but he
recognized old friends by their voices, and was full of simple joy
at meeting them.
"I have a very wonderful invention," he said, in his eager voice, his
blind eyes wide and luminous; "and very valuable. But I have not been
financially successful, so far. I shall be, of course. But in the
city no one seemed willing to wait for payment for my board, so the
authorities advised me to come home; and, in fact, assisted me to do
so. But when I finish my invention, I shall have ample means."
Jonesville, lounging on the porch of Dyer's Hotel, grinned, and said,
"That's all right, Nat; you'll be a rich man one of these days!" And
then it tapped its forehead significantly, and whispered, "Too bad!"
and added (with ill-concealed pleasure at finding new misfortune to
talk about) that the Selectmen had told Mr. Dean, the superintendent,
that he could call at Dyer's Hotel--to which Nathaniel, peacefully
and pennilessly, had drifted--and take him out to the Farm.
"Sam Dyer says he'll keep him till next week," Mrs. Butterfield told
Lizzie Graham; "but, course, he can't just let him set down at the
hotel for the rest of his natural life. And Nat May would do it,
you know."
"I believe he would," Lizzie Graham admitted; "he was always kind of
simple that way, willin' to take and willin' to give. Don't you mind
how he used to be always sharin' anything he had? James used to say
Nat never knowed his own things belonged to him."
"Folks like that don't never get rich," Mrs. Butterfield said; "but
there! you like 'em."
The two women were walking down a stony hillside, each with a lard-pail
full of blueberries. It was a hot August afternoon; a northwest wind,
harsh and dry, tore fiercely across the scrub-pines and twinkling
birches of the sun-baked pastures. Lizzie Graham held on to her
sun-bonnet, and stopped in a scrap of shade under a meagre oak to
get breath.
"My! I don't like wind," she said, laughing.
"Let's set down a while," Mrs. Butterfield suggested.
"I'd just as leaves," Lizzie said, and took off her blue sunbonnet and
fanned herself. She was a pretty woman still, though she was nearly
fifty; her hair was russet red, and blew about her forehead in little
curls; her eyes, brown like a brook in shady places, and kind. It was
a mild face, but not weak. Below them the valley shimmered in the
heat; the grass was hot and brittle underfoot; popples bent and twisted
in a scorching wind, and a soft, dark glitter of movement ran through
the pines on the opposite hillside.
"The Farm ain't got a mite of shade round it," Lizzie said; "just sets
there at the crossroads and bakes."
"You was always great for trees," Mrs. Butterfield said; "your house
is too dark for my taste. If I was you, I'd cut down that biggest
ellum."
"Cut it down! Well, I suppose you'll laugh, but them trees are real
kind o' friends. There! I knowed you'd laugh; but I wouldn't cut down
a tree any more 'an I'd--I don't know what!"
"They do darken."
"Some. But only in summer; and then you want 'em to. And the Poor Farm
ain't got a scrap of shade!--I wonder if he feels it, bein' sent there?"
"I ain't seen, him, but Josh, told me he was terrible broke up over it.
Told me he just set and wrung his hands when Hiram Wells told him he'd
got to go. Josh said it was real pitiful. But what can you do? He's
'bout blind; and he ain't just right, either."
"How ain't he just right?"
"Well, you know, Nathaniel was always one of the dreamin' kind; a real
good man, but he wa'n't like folks."
Lizzie nodded.
"And if you remember, he was all the time inventin' things. Well, now
he's got set that he can invent a machine so as you can see the dead.
I mean spirits. Well, of course he's crazy. Josh says he's crazy as a
bluefish. But what's troublin' him now is that he can't finish his
machine. He says that if he goes to the Farm, what with him bein'
blindish and not able to do for himself, that his glasses and
wheels--and dear knows what all that he's got for ghost-seein'--will
get all smashed up. An' I guess he's 'bout right. They're terrible
crowded, Mis' Dean says. Nat allows that if he could stay at Dyer's,
or some place, a couple of months, where he could work, quiet, he'd
make so much money that he'd pay his board ten times over. Crazy. But
then, I can't help bein' sorry for him. Some folks don't mind the
troubles of crazy folks, but I don't know why they ain't as hard to
bear as sensible folks' troubles."
"Harder maybe," Lizzie said.
"Josh said he just set and wrung his hands together, and he says to
Hiram Wells, he says, 'Gimme a month--and I'll finish it. For the
sake,' he says, 'of the blessed dead.' Gave you goose-flesh, Josh
said."
"You can see that he believes in his machine."
"Oh, he's just as sure as he's alive!"
"But why can't he finish it at the Farm? I guess Mis' Dean would give
him a closet to keep it in."
"Closet? Mercy! He's got it all spread out on a table in his room at
the hotel. Them loafers go up and look at it, and bust right out
laughin'. Josh says it's all little wheels and lookin'-glasses, and
they got to be balanced just so. Mis' Dean ain't got a spot he could
have for ten minutes at a time."
They were silent for a few minutes, and then Lizzie Graham said: "Does
he feel bad at bein' a pauper? The Mays was always respectable. Old
Mis' May was real proud."
Mrs. Butterfield ruminated: "Well, he don't like it, course. But he
said (you know he's crazy)--'I am nothin',' he says, 'and my pride is
less than nothin'. But for the sake of the poor Dead, grant me time,'
he says. Ain't it pitiful? Almost makes you feel like lettin' him
wait. But what's the use?"
Lizzie Graham nodded. "But there's people would pay money for one of
them machines--if it worked."
"That's what he said; he said he'd make a pile of money. But he didn't
care about that, except then he could pay board to Dyer, if Dyer'd let
him stay."
"An' won't he?"
"No; and I don't see as he has any call to, any more 'an you or me."
Lizzie Graham plucked at the dry grass at her side. "That's so.
'Tain't one person's chore more 'an another's. But--there! If this
wa'n't Jonesville, I believe I'd let him stay with me till he finishes
up his machine."
"Why, Lizzie Graham!" cried Mrs. Butterfield, "what you talkin' about?
You couldn't do it--you. You ain't got to spare, in the first place.
And anyway, him an unmarried man, and you a widow woman! Besides,
he'll never finish it."
Lizzie's face reddened angrily. "Guess I could have a visitor as well
as anybody."
"Oh, I didn't mean you wouldn't be a good provider," Mrs. Butterfield
said, turning red herself. "I meant folks would talk."
"Folks could find something better to talk about," Lizzie said;
"Jonesville is just nothin' but a nest o' real mean, lyin' gossip!"
"Well, that's so," Mrs. Butterfield agreed, placidly.
Lizzie Graham put on her sunbonnet. "Better be gettin' along," she
said.
Mrs. Butterfield rose ponderously. "And they'd say you was a
spiritualist, too; they'd say you took him to get his ghost-machine
made."
"That's just what I would do," the other answered, sharply. "I ain't a
mite of a spiritualist, and I don't believe in ghosts; but I believe
in bein' kind."
"I believe in keepin' a good name," Mrs. Butterfield said, dryly.
They went on down the windy pasture slope in silence; the mullein
candles blossomed shoulder-high, and from underfoot came the warm,
aromatic scent of sweet-fern. Once they stopped for some more
blueberries, with a desultory word about the heat; then they picked
their way around juniper-bushes, and over great knees of granite, hot
and slippery, and through low, sweet thickets of bay. At the foot of
the hill the shadows were stretching across the road, and the wind was
flagging.
"My, ain't the shade good?" Lizzie said, when they stopped under her
great elm; "I couldn't bear to live where there wa'n't trees."
"There's always shade on one side or another of the Poor Farm,
anyway," Mrs. Butterfield said, "'cept at noon. And then he could set
indoors. It won't be anything so bad, Lizzie. Now don't you get to
worryin' 'bout him;--I know you, Lizzie Graham!" she ended, her eyes
twinkling.
Lizzie took off her sunbonnet again and fanned herself; she looked at
her old neighbor anxiously.
"Say, now, Mis' Butterfield, honest: do you think folks would talk?"
"If you took Nat in and kep' him? Course they would! You know they
would; you know this here town. And no wonder they'd talk. You're a
nice-appearin' woman, Lizzie, yet. No; I ain't one to flatter; you
_be_. And ain't he a man? and a likely man, too, for all he's
crazy. Course they'd talk! Now, Lizzie, don't you get to figgerin' on
this. It's just like you! How many cats have you got on your hands
now? I bet you're feedin' that lame dog yet."
Mrs. Graham laughed, but would not say.
"Nat will get along at the Farm real good, after he gets used to it,"
Mrs. Butterfield went on, coaxingly; "Dean ain't hard. And Mis' Dean's
many a time told me what a good table they set."
"'Tain't the victuals that would trouble Nat May."
"Well, Lizzie, now you promise me you won't think anything more about
him visitin' you?" Mrs. Butterfield looked at her anxiously.
"I guess Jonesville knows me, after I've lived here all my life!"
Lizzie said, evasively.
"Knows you?" Mrs. Butterfield said; "what's that got to do with it?
You know Jonesville; that's more to the point."
"It's a mean place!" Lizzie said, angrily.
"I'm not sayin' it ain't," Mrs. Butterfield agreed. "Well, Lizzie,
you're good, but you ain't real sensible," she ended, affectionately.
Lizzie laughed, and swung her gate shut. She stood leaning on it a
minute, looking after Mrs. Butterfield laboriously climbing the hill,
until the road between its walls of rusty hazel-bushes and its fringe
of joepye-weed and goldenrod turned to the left and the stout, kindly
figure disappeared. The great elm moved softly overhead, and Lizzie
glanced up through its branches, all hung with feathery twigs, at the
deep August sky.
"Jonesville's never talked about _me_!" she said to herself,
proudly. "I mayn't be wealthy, but I got a good name. Course it
wouldn't do to take Nat; but my! ain't it a poor planet where you
can't do a kind act?"
II
Nathaniel May sat in his darkness, brooding over his machine. Since it
had been definitely arranged that he was to go to the Poor Farm, he
did not care how soon he went; there was no need, he told Dyer, to
keep him for the few days which had been promised.
"I had thought," he said, patiently, "that some one would take me in
and help me finish my machine--for the certain profit that I could
promise them. But nobody seems to believe in me," he ended.
"Oh, folks believe in you, all right, Mr. May," Dyer told him; "but
they don't believe in your machine. See?"
Nathaniel's face darkened. "Blind--blind!" he said.
"How did it come on you?" Dyer asked, sympathetically.
"I was not speaking of myself," Nathaniel told him, hopelessly.
There was really no doubt that the poor, gentle mind had staggered
under the weight of hope; but it was hardly more than a deepening of
old vagueness, an intensity of absorbed thought upon unpractical
things. The line between sanity and insanity is sometimes a very faint
one; no one can quite dare to say just when it has been crossed. But
this mild creature had crossed it somewhere in the beginning of his
certainty that he was going to give the world the means of seeing the
unseen. That this great gift should be flung into oblivion, all for
the want, as he believed, of a little time, broke his poor heart. When
Lizzie Graham came to see him, she found him sitting in his twilight,
his elbows on his knees, his head in his long, thin hands. On one
hollow cheek there was a glistening wet streak. He put up a forlornly
trembling hand and wiped it away when he heard her voice.
"Yes; yes, I do recognize it, ma'am," he said; "I can tell voices
better than I used to be able to tell faces. You are Jim Graham's
wife? Yes; yes, Lizzie Graham. Have you heard about me, Lizzie? I am
not going to finish my machine. I am to be sent to the Farm."
"Yes, I heard," she said.
They were in the big, bare office of the hotel. The August sunshine
lay dim upon the dingy window-panes; the walls, stained by years of
smoke and grime, were hidden by yellowing advertisements of reapers
and horse liniments; in the centre was a dirty iron stove. A poor,
gaunt room, but a haven to Nathaniel May, awaiting the end of hope.
"I heard," Lizzie Graham said; she leaned forward and stroked his
hand. "But maybe you can finish it at the Farm, Nathaniel?"
"No," he said, sadly; "no; I know what it's like at the Farm. There is
no room there for anything but bodies. No time for anything but
Death."
"How long would it take you to put it together?" she asked; and Dyer,
who was lounging across his counter, shook his head at her, warningly.
"There ain't nothin' to it, Mrs. Graham," he said, under his breath;
"he's--" He tapped his forehead significantly.
"Oh, man!" Nathaniel cried out, passionately, "you don't know what you
say! Are the souls of the departed 'nothing'? I have it in my
hand--right here in my hand, Lizzie Graham--to give the world the gift
of sight. And they won't give me a crust of bread and a roof over my
head till I can offer it to them!"
"Couldn't somebody put it together for you?" she asked, the tears in
her eyes. "I would try, Nathaniel;--you could explain it to me; I
could come and see you every day, and you could tell me."
His face brightened into a smile. "No, kind woman. Only I can do it. I
can't see very clearly, but there is a glimmer of light, enough to get
it together. But it would take at least two months; at least two
months. The doctor said the light would last, perhaps, three months.
Then I shall be blind. But if I could give eyes to the blind world
before I go into the dark, what matter? What matter, I say?" he cried,
brokenly.
Lizzie was silent. Dyer shook his head, and tapped his forehead again;
then he lounged out from behind his counter, and settled himself in
one of the armchairs outside the office door.
Nathaniel dropped his head upon his breast, and sunk back into his
dreams. The office was very still, except for two bluebottle flies
butting against the ceiling and buzzing up and down the window-panes.
A hot wind wandered in and flapped a mowing-machine poster on the
wall; then dropped, and the room was still again, except that leaf
shadows moved across the square of sunshine on the bare boards by the
open door. When Lizzie got up to go, he did not hear her kind good-by
until she repeated it, touching his shoulder with her friendly hand.
Then he said, hastily, with a faint frown: "Good-by. Good-by." And
sank again into his daze of disappointment.
Lizzie wiped her eyes furtively before she went out upon the hotel
porch; there Dyer, balancing comfortably on two legs of his chair,
detained her with drawling gossip until Hiram Wells came up, and,
lounging against a zinc-sheathed bar between two hitching-posts, added
his opinion upon Nathaniel May's affairs.
"Well, Lizzie, seen any ghosts?" he began.
"I seen somebody that'll be a ghost pretty soon if you send him off to
the Farm," Lizzie said, sharply.
"Well," Hiram said, "I don't see what's to be done--'less some nice,
likely woman comes along and marries him."
Dyer snickered. Lizzie turned very red, and started home down the
elm-shaded street. When she reached her little gray house under its
big tree, she went first into the cow-barn--a crumbling lean-to with a
sagging roof--to see if a sick dog which had found shelter there was
comfortable. It seemed to Lizzie that his bleared eyes should be
washed; and she did this before she went through her kitchen into a
shed-room where she slept. There she sat down in hurried and frowning
preoccupation, resting her elbows on her knees and staring blankly at
the braided mat on the floor. As she sat there her face reddened; and
once she laughed, nervously. "An' me 'most fifty!" she said to
herself....
The next morning she went to see Nathaniel again.
He was up-stairs in a little hot room under the sloping eaves. He was
bending over, straining his poor eyes close to some small wheels and
bands and reflectors arranged on a shaky table. He welcomed her
eagerly, and with all the excitement of conviction plunged at once
into an explanation of his principle. Then suddenly conviction broke
into despair: "I am not to be allowed to finish it!" He gave a quick
sob, like a child. He had forgotten Lizzie's presence.
"Nathaniel," she said, and paused; then began again: "Nathaniel--"
"Who is here? Oh yes: Lizzie Graham. Kind woman; kind woman."
"Nathaniel, you know I ain't got means; I'm real poor,--"
"Are you?" he said, with instant concern. "I am sorry. If I could help
you--if I had anything of my own--or if they will let me finish my
machine; then I shall have all the money I want, and I will help you;
I will give you all you need. I will give to all who ask!" he said,
joyfully; then again, abruptly: "But no; but no; I am not allowed to
finish it."
"Nathaniel, what I was going to say was--I am real poor. I got James's
pension, and our house out on the upper road;--do you mind it--a mite
of a house, with a big elm right by the gate? And woods on the other
side of the road? Real shady and pleasant. And I got eight hens and a
cow;--well, she'll come in in September, and I'll have real good milk
all winter. Maybe this time I could raise the calf, if it's a heifer.
Generally I sell it; but if you--well, it might pay to raise it,
if--we--" Lizzie stammered with embarrassment.
Nathaniel had forgotten her again; his head had fallen forward on his
breast, and he sighed heavily.
"You see, I _am_ poor," Lizzie said; "you wouldn't have comforts."
Nathaniel was silent.
Lizzie laughed, nervously. "Well? Seems queer; but--will you?"
Nathaniel, waking from his troubled dream, said, patiently: "What did
you say? I ask your pardon; I was not listening."
"Why," Lizzie said, her face very red, "I was just saying--if--if you
didn't mind getting married, Nathaniel, you could come and live with me?"
"Married?" he said, vacantly. "To whom?"
"Me," she said.
Nathaniel turned toward her in astonishment. "Married!" he repeated.
"If you lived with me, you could finish the machine; there's an attic
over my house; I guess it's big enough. Only, we'd _have_ to be
married, I'm afraid. Jonesville is a mean place, Nathaniel. We'd have
to be married. But you could finish the machine."
He stood up, trembling, the tears suddenly running down his face.
_"Finish it?"_ he said, in a whisper. "Oh, you are not deceiving
me? You would not deceive me?"
"I don't see why you couldn't finish it," she told him, kindly. "But,
Nathaniel, mind, I am poor. You wouldn't get as good victuals even as
you would at the Farm. And you'd have to marry me, or folks would talk
about me. But you could finish your machine."
Nathaniel lifted his dim eyes to heaven.
III
"Well," said Mrs. Butterfield, "I suppose you know your own business.
But my goodness sakes alive!"
"I just thought I'd tell you," Lizzie said.
"But, Lizzie Graham! you ain't got the means."
"I can feed him."
"There's his clothes; why, my land--"
"I told Hiram Wells that if the town would see to his clothes, I'd do
the rest. They'd have to clothe him if he went to the Farm."
"Well," said Mrs. Butterfield, "I never in all my born days--Lizzie,
now _don't_. My goodness,--I--I ain't got no words! Why, his
victuals--"
"He ain't hearty. Sam Dyer told me he wa'n't hearty."
"Well, then, Sam Dyer had better feed him, 'stid o' puttin' it onto
you!"
Lizzie was silent. Then she said, with a short sigh, "Course if I
could 'a' just taken him in an' kep' him--but you said folks would
talk--"
"Well, I guess so. Course they'd talk--you know this place. You've
always been well thought of in Jonesville, but that would 'a' been the
end of you, far as bein' respectable goes."
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