Enkidoodle

Maw lined the home-made box herself with soft old quilts, and washed and dressed her dead herself in his faded outlawed wedding clothes. And on a morning soft and sweet, with a hint of rain in the air, they rode down in the farm wagon to the south field together--Paw and Maw and Luke--with big Tom walking beside the aged knobby horse's head.

Abel Gazzam, a neighbor, had seen to the grave; and in due course the little cavalcade reached the appointed spot inside the snake fence--a quiet place in a corner, under a graybeard elm. As Maw had said, it was "a pleasant place for Paw to lay in."

There were some old neighbors out in their own rigs, and Uncle Clem had brought his family up in his car, with a proper wreath; and Reverend Kearns came up and--declining all lien on the broilers--read the burial service, and spoke a little about poor Paw. But it wasn't a funeral, no how. No supper; no condolence; no viewing "the remains"--not even a handshake! Maw didn't even look at her old friends, riding back home between Tom and Luke, with her head fiercely high in the air.

A dull depression settled on Luke's heart. It was all up with the Hayneses now. They had saved Paw from charity with their home-made burial; but what had it availed? They might as well have gone the whole figure. Everybody knew! There wasn't any comeback for a thing like this. They were just nobodies--the social pariahs of the district.

Somehow, after the fashion of other years, they got their meager crops in--turnips, potatoes and Hubbard squashes put up in the vegetable cellar; oats cradled; corn husked; the buckwheat ready for the mill; even Tom's crooked furrows for the spring sowings made. Somehow, Maw helping like a man and Tom obeying like a docile child, they took toll of their summer. And suddenly September was at their heels--and then the equinox.

It seemed to Luke that it had never rained so much before. Brown vapor rose eternally from the valley flats; the hilltops lay lost entirely in clotted murk. By periods hard rains, like showers of steel darts, beat on the soaking earth. Gypsy gales of wind went ricocheting among the farm buildings, setting the shingles to snapping and singing; the windows moaned and rattled. The sourest weather the boy could remember!

And on the worst day of all they got the news. Out of the mail box in the lane Luke got it--going down under an old rubber cape in a steady blinding pour. It got all damp--the letter, foreign postmark, stamp and all--by the time he put it into Maw's hand.

It was a double letter--or so one judged, first opening it. There was another inside, complete, sealed, and addressed in Nat's hand; but one must read the paper inclosed with it first--that was obvious. It was just a strip, queer, official looking, with a few lines typed upon it and a black heading that sprang out at one strangely. They read it together--or tried to. At first they got no sense from it. Paris--from clear off in France--and then the words below--and Maw's name at the top, just like the address on the newspaper:

MRS. JERE HAYNES, Stony Brook, New York.

It was for Maw all right. Then quite suddenly the words came clear through the blur:

MRS. JERE HAYNES, Stony Brook, New York.

_Dear Madam_: We regret to inform you that the official _communiqué_ for September sixth contains the tidings that the writer of the enclosed letter, Nathaniel Haynes, of Stony Brook, New York, U. S. A., was killed while on duty as an ambulance driver in the Sector of Verdun, and has been buried in that region. Further details will follow.

The American Ambulance, Paris.

Even when she realized, Maw never cried out. She sat wetting her lips oddly, looking at the words that had come like evil birds across the wide spaces of earth. It was Luke who remembered the other letter:

"_My dear kind folks--Father, Mother and Brothers_: I guess I dare call you that when I get far enough away from you. Perhaps you won't mind when I tell you my news.

"Well we came over from England last Thursday and struck into our contract here. Things was going pretty good; but you might guess yours truly couldn't stand the dead end of things. I bet Maw's guessed already. Well sir it's that roving streak in me I guess. Never could stick to nothing steady. It got me bad when I got here any how.

"To cut it short I throwed up my job with the firm yesterday and have volunteered as an Ambulance driver. Nothing but glory; but I'm going to like it fine! They're short-handed anyhow and a fellow likes to help what he can. Wish I could send a little money; but it took all I had to outfit me. Had to cough up eight bucks for a suit of underclothes. What do you know about that?

"You can write me in care of the Ambulance, Paris.

"Now Maw don't worry! I'm not going to fight. I did try to get into the Foreign Legion but had no chance. I'm all right. Think of me as a nice little Red Cross boy and the Wise Willie on the gas wagon. And won't I have the hot stuff to make old Luke's eyes pop out! Hope Paw's legs are better. And Maw have a kiss on me. Mebbe you folks think I don't appreciate you. If I was any good at writing I'd tell you different.

"Your Son and Brother, "NAT HAYNES."

The worst of it all was about Maw's not crying--just sitting there staring at the fire, or where the fire had been when the wood had died out of neglect. It's not in reason that a woman shouldn't cry, Luke felt. He tried some words of comfort:

"He's safe, anyhow, Maw--'member that! That's a whole lot too. Didn't always know that, times he was rollin' round so over here. You worried a whole lot about him, you know."

But Maw didn't answer. She seldom spoke at all--moved about as little as possible. When she had put out food for him and Tom she always went back to her corner and stared into the fire. Luke had to bring a plate to her and coax her to eat. Even the day Uncle Clem and Aunt Mollie came up she did not notice them. Only once she spoke of Nat to Luke.

"You loved him the most, didn't ye, Maw?" he asked timidly one dreary evening.

She answered in a sort of dull surprise.

"Why, lad, he was my first!" she said; and after a bit as though to herself: "His head was that round and shiny when he was a little fellow it was like to a little round apple. I mind, before he ever come, I bought me a cap fur him over to Rockville, with a blue bow onto it. He looked awful smart an' pretty in it."

Sometimes in the night Luke, sleeping ill and thinking long, lay and listened for possible sounds from Maw's room. Perhaps she cried in the nights. If she only would--it would help break the tension for them all. But he never heard anything but the rain--steadily, miserably beating on the sodden shingles overhead.

* * *

It was only Luke who watched the mail box now. One morning his journey to it bore fruit. No sting any longer; no fear in the thick foreign letter he carried.

"It'll tell ye all's to it, I bet!" he said eagerly.

Maw seemed scarcely interested. It was Luke who broke the seal and read it aloud.

It was written from the Ambulance Headquarters, in Paris--written by a man of rare insight, of fine and delicate perception. All that Nat's family might have wished to learn he sought to tell them. He had himself investigated Nat's story and he gave it all fully and freely. He spoke in praise of Nat; of his friendly associations with the Ambulance men; of his good nature and cheerful spirits; his popularity and ready willingness to serve. People, one felt, had loved Nat over there.

He wrote of the preliminary duties in Paris, the preparations--of Nat's final going to join one of the three sections working round Verdun. It wasn't easy work that waited for Nat there. It was a stiff contract guiding the little ambulance over the shell-rutted roads, with deftness and precision, to those distant dressing stations where the hurt soldiers waited for him. It was a picture that thrilled Luke and made his pulses tingle--the blackness of the nights; the rumble of moving artillery and troops; the flash of starlights; the distant crackling of rifle fire; the steady thunder of heavy guns.

And the shells! It was mighty close they swept to a fellow, whistling, shrieking, low overhead; falling to tear out great gouges in the earth. It was enough to wreck one's nerve utterly; but the fellows that drove were all nerve. Just part of the day's work to them! And that was Nat too. Nat hadn't known what fear was--he'd eaten it alive. The adventurer in him had gone out to meet it joyously.

Nat was only on his third trip when tragedy had come to him. He and a companion were seeking a dressing station in the cellar of a little ruined house in an obscure French village, when a shell had burst right at their feet, so to speak. That was all. Simple as that. Nat was dead instantly and his companion--oh, Nat was really the lucky one....

Luke had to stop for a little time. One couldn't go on at once before a thing like that.... When he did, it was to leave behind the darkness, the shell-torn houses, the bruised earth, the racked and mutilated humans.... Reading on, it was like emerging from Hades into a great Peace.

* * *

"I wish it were possible to convey to you, my dear Mrs. Haynes, some impression of the moving and beautiful ceremony with which your son was laid to rest on the morning of September ninth, in the little village of Aucourt. Imagine a warm, sunny, late-summer day, and a village street sloping up a hillside, filled with soldiers in faded, dusty blue, and American Ambulance drivers in khaki.

"In the open door of one of the houses, the front of which was covered with the tri-color of France, the coffin was placed, wrapped in a great French flag, and covered with flowers and wreaths sent by the various American sections. At the head a small American flag was placed, on which was pinned the _Croix de Guerre_--a gold star on a red-and-green ribbon--a tribute from the army general to the boy who gave his life for France.

"A priest, with six soldier attendants, led the procession from the courtyard. Six more soldiers bore the coffin, the Americans and representatives of the army branches following, bearing wreaths. After these came the General of the Army Corps, with a group of officers, and a detachment of soldiers with arms reversed. At the foot of the hill a second detachment fell in and joined them....

"The scene was unforgettable, beautiful and impressive. In the little church a choir of soldiers sang and a soldier-priest played the organ, while the Chaplain of the Army Division held the burial service. The chaplain's sermon I have asked to have reproduced and sent to you, together with other effects of your son's....

"The chaplain spoke most beautifully and at length, telling very tenderly what it meant to the French people that an American should give his life while trying to help them in the hour of their extremity. The name of this chaplain is Henri Deligny, _Aumônier Militaire_, Ambulance 16-27, Sector 112; and he was assisted by the permanent curé of the little church, Abbé Blondelle, who wishes me to assure you that he will guard most reverently your son's grave, and be there to receive you when the day may come that you shall wish to visit it.

"After leaving the church the procession marched to the military cemetery, where your son's body was laid beside the hundreds of others who have died for France. Both the lieutenant and general here paid tributes of appreciation, which I will have sent to you. The general, various officers of the army, and ambulance assisted in the last rites....

"I have brought back and will send you the _Croix de Guerre_...."

* * *

Oh, but you couldn't read any further--for the great lump of pride in your throat, the thick mist of tears in your eyes. A sob escaped the boy. He looked over at Maw and saw the miraculous. Maw was awake at last and crying--a new-fledged pulsating Maw emerged from the brown chrysalis of her sorrows.

"Oh, Maw!... Our Nat!... All that--that--funeral!... Some funeral, Maw!" The boy choked.

"My Nat!" Maw was saying. "Buried like a king!... Like a King o' France!" She clasped her hands tightly.

It was like some beautiful fantasy. A Haynes--the despised and rejected of earth--borne to his last home with such pomp and ceremony!

"There never was nothin' like it heard of round here, Maw.... If folks could only know--"

She lifted her head as at a challenge.

"Why, they're goin' to know, Luke--for I'm goin' to tell 'em. Folks that have talked behind Nat's back--folks that have pitied us--when they see this--like a King o' France!" she repeated softly. "I'm goin' down to town to-day, Luke."

It was dusk when Maw came back; dusk of a clear day, with a rosy sunset off behind the hills. Luke opened the door for her and he saw that she had brought some of the sun along in with her--its colors in her worn face; its peace in her eyes. She was the same, yet somehow new. Even the tilt of her crazy old bonnet could not detract from a strange new dignity that clothed her.

She did not speak at once, going over to warm her gloveless hands at the stove, and staring up at the Grampaw Peel plate; then:

"When it comes--my Nat's medal--it's goin' to set right up here, 'stead o' this old thing--an' the letters and the sermons in my shell box I got on my weddin' trip.... Lawyer Ritchie told me to-day what it means, the name o' that medal--Cross o' War! It's a decoration fur soldiers and earned by bravery."

She paused; then broke out suddenly:

"I b'en a fool, settin' here grievin'. My Nat was a hero, an' I never knew it!... A hero's folks hadn't ought to cry. It's a thing too big for that. Come here, you little Luke! Maw hain't b'en real good to you an' Tommy lately. You're gittin' all white an' peaked. Too much frettin' 'bout Nat. You an' me's got to stop it, I tell you. Folks round here ain't goin' to let us fret--"

"Folks! Maw!" The words burst from the boy's heart. "Did they find out?... You showed it to 'em? Uncle Clem--"

Maw sniffed.

"Clem! Oh, he was real took aback; but he don't count in on this--not big enough." Then triumph hastened her story. "It's the big ones that's mixin' into this, Lukey. Seems like they'd heard somethin' a spell back in one o' the county papers, an' we didn't know.... Anyhow, when I first got into town I met Judge Geer. He had me right into his office in Masonic Hall 'fore I could git my breath almost--had me settin' in his private room, an' sent his stenugifer out fur a cup o' cawfee fur me. He had me give him the letter to read, an' asked dare he make some copies. The stenugifer took 'em like lightnin', right there.

"The judge had a hard time of it, coughin' an' blowin' over that letter. He's goin' to send some copies to the New York papers right off. He took me acrost the hall and interduced me to Lawyer Ritchie. Lawyer Ritchie, he read the letter too. 'A hero!' they called Nat; an' me 'A hero's mother!'

"'We ain't goin' to forgit this, Mis' Haynes,' Lawyer Ritchie said. 'This here whole town's proud o' your Nat.'... My land! I couldn't sense it all!... Me, Delia Haynes, gettin' her hand wrung, 'count o' anything Nat'd b'en doin', by the big bugs round town! Judge Geer, he fetched 'em all out o' their offices--Slade, the supervisor, and Fuller Brothers, and old Sumner Pratt--an' all! An' Ben Watson asked could he have a copy to put in the _Bi-weekly_. It's goin' to take the whole front page, with an editor'al inside. He said the Rockville Center News'd most likely copy it too.

"I was like in a dream!... All I'd aimed to do was to let some o' them folks know that those people acrost the ocean had thought well of our Nat, an' here they was breakin' their necks to git in on it too!... Goin' down the street they was more of it. Lu Shiffer run right out o' the hardware store an' left the nails he was weighin' to shake hands with me; and Jem Brand came; and Lan'lord Peters come out o' the Valley House an' spoke to me.... I felt awful public. An' Jim Beckonridge come out of the Emporium to shake too.

"'I ain't seen you down in town fur quite a spell,' he sez. 'How are you all up there to the farm?... Want to say I'm real proud o' Nat--a boy from round here!' he sez.... Old Beckonridge, that was always wantin' to arrest Nat fur takin' his chestnuts or foolin' down in the store!

"I just let 'em drift--seein' they had it all fixed fur me. All along the street they come an' spoke to me. Mame Parmlee, that ain't b'en able to see me fur three years, left off sweepin' her porch an' come down an' shook my hand, an' cried about it; an' that stylish Mis' Willowby, that's president o' the Civil Club, followed me all over the Square and asked dare she read a copy o' the letter an' tell about Nat to the schoolhouse next Wednesday.

"It seems Judge Geer had gone out an' spread it broadcast that I was in town, for they followed me everywhere. Next thing I run into Reverend Kearns and Reverend Higby, huntin' me hard. They both had one idee.

"'We wanted to have a memor'al service to the churches 'bout Nat,' they sez; 'then it come over us that it was the town's affair really. So, Mis' Haynes,' they sez, 'we want you should share this thing with us. You mustn't be selfish. You gotta give us a little part in it too. Are you willin'?'"

"It knocked me dumb--me givin' anybody anything! Well, to finish, they's to be a big public service in the Town Hall on Friday. They'll have it all flags--French ones, an' our'n too. An' the ministers'll preach; an' Judge Geer'll tell Nat's story an' speak about him; an' the Ladies' Guild'll serve a big hot supper, because they'll probably be hundreds out; an' they'll read the letters an' have prayers for our Nat!" She faltered a moment. "An' we'll be there too--you an' me an' Tom--settin' in the seat o' honor, right up front!... It'll be the greatest funeral service this town's ever seen, Luke."

Maw's face was crimson with emotion.

"An' Uncle Clem an' Aunt Mollie--"

"Oh--them!" Maw came back to earth and smiled tolerantly. "They was real sharp to be in it too. Mollie took me into the parlor an' fetched a glass o' wine to stren'then me up." Maw mused a moment; then spoke with a touch of patronage: "I'm goin' to knit Clem some new socks this winter. He says he can't git none like the oldtime wool ones; an' the market floors are cold. Clem's done what he could, an' I'll be real glad to help him out.... Oh, I asked 'em to come an' set with us at the service--S'norta too. I allowed we could manage to spare 'em the room."

She dreamed again, launched on a sea of glory; then roused to her final triumph:

"But that's only part, Luke. The best's comin'. Jim Beckonridge wants you to go down an' see him. 'That lame boy o' yours,' he sez, 'was in here a spell ago with some notion about raisin' bees an' buckwheat together, an' gittin' a city market fur buckwheat honey. Slipped my mind,' he sez, 'till I heard what Nat'd done; an' then it all come back. City party this summer had the same notion an' was lookin' out for a likely place to invest some cash in. You send that boy down an' we'll talk it over. Shouldn't wonder if he'd get some backin'. I calculate I might help him, myself,' he sez, 'I b'en thinkin' of it too.'... Don't seem like it could hardly be true."

"Oh, Maw!" Luke's pulses were leaping wildly. Buckwheat honey was the dear dream of many a long hour's wistful meditation. "If we could--I could study up about it an' send away fur printed books. We could make some money--"

But Maw had not yet finished.

"An' they's some about Tom, too, Luke! That young Doctor Wells down there--he's on'y b'en there a year--he come right up, an' spoke to me, in the midst of several. 'I want to talk about your boy,' he sez. 'I've wanted to fur some time, but didn't like to make bold; but now seem's as good a time as any.' 'They're all talkin' of him,' I sez. 'Well,' he sez, 'I don't mean the dead, but the livin' boy--the one folks calls Big Tom. I've heard his story, an' I got a good look over him down here in the store a while ago. Woman'--he sez it jest like that--'if that big boy o' your'n had a little operation, he'd be as good as any.'

"I answered him patient, an' told him what ailed Tom an' why he couldn't be no different--jest what old Doc Andrews told us--that they was a little piece o' bone druv deep into his skull that time he fell. He spoke real vi'lent then. 'But--my Lord!--woman,' he sez, 'that's what I'm talkin' about. If we jack up that bone'--trepannin', he called it too--'his brains'd git to be like anybody else's.' Told me he wants fur us to let him look after it. Won't cost anything unless we want. They's a hospital to Rockville would tend to it, an' glad to--when we git ready.... My poor Tommy!... Don't seem's if it could be true."

Her face softened, and she broke up suddenly.

"I got good boys all round," she wept. "I always said it; an' now folks know."

* * *

Luke lay on the old settle, thinking. In the air-tight stove the hickory fagots crackled, with jeweled color-play. On the other side Tom sat whittling silently--Tom, who would presently whittle no more, but rise to be a man.

It was incredible! Incredible that the old place might some day shake off its shackles of poverty and be organized for a decent struggle with life! Incredible that Maw--stepping briskly about getting the supper--should be singing!

Already the room seemed filled and warmed with the odors of prosperity and self-respect. Maw had put a red geranium on the table; there was the crispy fragrance of frying salt pork and soda biscuit in the air.

These the Hayneses! These people, with hope and self-esteem once more in their hearts! These people, with a new, a unique place in the community's respect! It was all like a beautiful miracle; and, thinking of its maker, Luke choked suddenly and gulped.

There was a moist spot on the old Mexican hairless right under his eyes; but it had been made by tears of pride, not sorrow. Maw was right! A hero's folks hadn't ought to cry. And he wouldn't. Nat was better off than ever--safe and honored. He had trod the path of glory. A line out of the boy's old Reader sprang to his mind: "The paths of glory lead but to the grave." Oh, but it wasn't true! Nat's path led to life--to hope; to help for all of them, for Nat's own. In his death, if not in his life, he had rehabilitated them. And Nat--who loved them--would look down and call it good.

In spite of himself the boy sobbed, visioning his brother's face.

"Oh, Nat!" he whispered. "I knew you'd do it! I always said you'd do somethin' big for us all."

CHING, CHING, CHINAMAN[20]

[Note 20: Copyright, 1917, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1918, by Wilbur Daniel Steele.]

BY WILBUR DANIEL STEELE

From _The Pictorial Review_

How gaily we used to chant it over Yen Sin's scow when I was a boy on Urkey water-front, and how unfailingly it brought the minister charging down upon us. I can see him now, just as he used to burst upon our vision from the wharf lane, face paper-white, eyes warm with a holy wrath, lips moving uncontrollably. And I can hear his voice trembling at our heels as we scuttled off:

"For shame, lads! Christ died for him, lads! For shame! Shame!"

And looking back I can see him there on the wharf above the scow, hands hanging, shoulders falling together, brooding over the unredeemed.

Minister Malden had seen "the field" in a day of his surging youth--seen it, and no more. He had seen it from the deck of the steamer by which he had come out, and by which he had now to return, since his seminary bride had fallen sick on the voyage. He perceived the teeming harbor clogged with junks and house-boats, the muddy river, an artery out of the heart of darkness, the fantastic, colored shore-lines, the vast, dull drone of heathendom stirring in his ears, the temple gongs calling blindly to the blind, the alluring and incomprehensible accents of the boatmen's tongue which he was to have made his own and lightened with the fierce sweet name of the Cross--and now could not.

Poor young Minister Malden, he turned his face away. He gave up "the field" for the bride, and when the bride went out in mid-ocean, he had neither bride nor field. He drifted back to New England, somehow or other, and found Yen Sin.

He found another bride too; Minister Malden was human. It was a mercy of justice, folks said, when Widow Gibbs got a man like Minister Malden. Heaven knows she had had bad enough luck with Gibbs, a sallow devil of a whaler who never did a fine act in his life till he went down with his vessel and all hands in the Arctic one year and left Sympathy Gibbs sitting alone in the Pillar House on Lovett's Court, pretty, plump, and rather well-to-do as Urkey goes.

Everybody in the island was glad enough when those two undertook to mend each other's blasted life--everybody but Mate Snow. He had been thinking of Sympathy Gibbs himself, they said; and they said he stood behind the prescription screen in his drug-store far into the night, after the betrothal was given out in Center Church, his eyes half-closed, his thin lips bluish white, and hell-fire smouldering out of sight in him. And they said Mate was the kind that never forget. That was what made it so queer.

It seems to me that I must remember the time when the minister lived in the Pillar House with Sympathy Gibbs.

Back there in the mists of youth I seem to see them walking home together after the Sunday morning preaching, arm in arm and full of a sedate joy; turning in between the tubbed box-trees at Lovett's Court, loitering for a moment to gaze out over the smooth harbor and nod to the stragglers of the congregation before they entered the big green door flanked by the lilac panes.

Perhaps it was told me. There can be no question, though, that I remember the night when Minister Malden came home from the Infield Conference, a father of two days' standing. Urkey village made a festival of that homecoming to the tiny daughter he had never seen, and to Sympathy Gibbs, weak and waiting and radiant. Yes, I remember.

We were all at the landing, making a racket. The minister looked ill when he came over the packet's side, followed by Mate Snow, who had gone to Conference with him as lay delegate from Center Church. Our welcome touched him in a strange and shocking way; he staggered and would have fallen had it not been for Mate's quick hand. He had not a word to say to us; he walked up the shore street between the wondering lines till he came to the Pillar House, and there he stood for a moment, silhouetted against the open door, a drooping, hunted figure, afraid to go in.

We saw his shadow later, moving uncertainly across the shades in the upper chamber where Sympathy Gibbs lay with her baby, his hand lifted once with the fingers crooked in mysterious agony. Some one started a hymn in the street below and people took it up, bawling desperately for comfort to their souls. Mate Snow didn't sing. He stood motionless between the box-trees, staring up at the lighted window shades, as if waiting. By-and-by Minister Malden came down the steps, and moving away beside him like a drunken man, went to live in the two rooms over the drugstore. And that was the beginning of it.

* * *

Folks said Mate Snow was not the kind to forget an injury, and yet it was Mate who stood behind the minister through those first days of shock and scandal, who out-faced the congregation with his stubborn, tight lips, and who shut off the whisperings of the Dorcas Guild with the sentence which was destined to become a sort of formula on his tongue through the ensuing years:

"You don't know what's wrong, and neither do I; but we can all see the man's a saint, can't we?"

"But the woman?" some still persisted.

"Sympathy Gibbs? You ought to know Sympathy Gibbs by this time."

And if there was a faint curling at the corners of his lips, they were all too dull to wonder at it. As for me, the boy, I took the changing phenomena of life pretty well for granted, and wasted little of my golden time speculating about such things. But as I look back now on the blunt end of those Urkey days, I seem to see Minister Malden growing smaller as he comes nearer, and Mate Snow growing larger--Mate Snow browbeating the congregation with a more and more menacing righteousness--Minister Malden, in his protecting shadow, leaner, grayer, his eyes burning with an ever fiercer zeal, escaping Center Church and slipping away to redeem the Chinaman.

"There is more joy in heaven over one sinner," was his inspiration, his justification, and, I suspect, his blessed opiate.

But it must have been hard on Yen Sin. I remember him now, a steam-blurred silhouette, earlier than the earliest, later than the latest, swaying over his tubs and sad-irons in the shanty on the stranded scow by Pickett's wharf, dreaming perhaps of the populous rivers of his birth, or of the rats he ate, or of the opium he smoked at dead of night, or of those weird, heathen idols before which he bowed down his shining head--familiar and inscrutable alien.

An evening comes back to me when I sat in Yen Sin's shop and waited for my first "stand up" collar to be ironed, listening with a kind of awe to the tide making up the flats, muffled and unfamiliar, and inhaling the perfume compounded of steam, soap, hot linen, rats, opium, tea, idols and what-not peculiar to Yen Sin's shop and to a thousand lone shops in a thousand lone villages scattered across the mainland. When the precious collar was at last in my hands, still limp and hot from its ordeal, Yen Sin hung over me in the yellow nimbus of the lamp, smiling at my wonder. I stared with a growing distrust at the flock of tiny bird-scratches inked on the band.

"What," I demanded suspiciously, "is _that_?"

"Lat's Mista You," he said, nodding his head and summoning another hundred of wrinkles to his damp, polished face.

"That ain't my name. You don't know my name," I accused him.

"Mista Yen Sin gottee name, allee light."

The thing fascinated me, like a serpent.

"Whose name is _that_, then?" I demanded, pointing to a collar on the counter between us. The band was half-covered with the cryptic characters, done finely and as if with the loving hand of an artist.

Yen Sin held it up before his eyes in the full glow of the lamp. His face seemed incredibly old; not senile, like our white-beards mumbling on the wharves, but as if it had been a long, long time in the making and was still young. I thought he had forgotten me, he was so engrossed in his handiwork.

"Lat colla?" he mused by-and-by. "Lat's Mista Minista, boy."

"Mister Minister _Malden_?"

And there both of us stared a little, for there was a voice at the door.

"Yes? Yes? What is it?"

Minister Malden stood with his head and shoulders bent, wary of the low door-frame, and his eyes blinking in the new light. I am sure he did not see me on the bench; he was looking at Yen Sin.

"How is it with you to-night, my brother?"

The Chinaman straightened up and faced him, grave, watchful.

"Fine," he said. "Mista Yen Sin fine. Mista Minista fine, yes?"

He bowed and motioned his visitor to a rocker, upholstered with a worn piece of Axminster and a bit of yellow silk with half a dragon on it. The ceremony, one could see, was not new. Vanishing into the further mysteries of the rear, he brought out a bowl of tea, steaming, a small dish of heathenish things, nuts perhaps, or preserves, deposited the offering on the minister's pointed knees, and retired behind the counter to watch and wait.

An amazing change came over the minister. Accustomed to seeing him gentle, shrinking, illusively non-resisting, I scarcely knew this white flame of a man, burning over the tea-bowl!

"You are kind to me," he cried, "and yet your heart is not touched. I would give up my life gladly, brother, if I could only go up to the Throne and say to Jesus, 'Behold, Lord, Thy son, Yen Sin, kneeling at the foot of the Cross. Thou gavest me the power, Lord, and the glory is thine!' If I could say that, brother, I--I--"

His voice trailed off, though his lips continued to move uncertainly. His face was transfigured, his eyes filmed with dreams. He was looking beyond Yen Sin now, and on the lost yellow millions. The tea, untasted, smoked upward into his face, an insidious, narcotic cloud. I can think of him now as he sat there, wresting out of his easeless years one moment of those seminary dreams; the color of far-away, the sweet shock of the alien and the bizarre, the enormous odds, the Game. The walls of Yen Sin's shop were the margins of the world, and for a moment the missionary lived.

"He would soften your heart," he murmured. "In a wondrous way. Have you never thought, Yen Sin, 'I would like to be a good man'?"

The other spread his right hand across his breast.

"Mista Yen Sin velly humble dog. Mista Yen Sin no good. Mista Yen Sin's head on le glound. Mista Yen Sin velly good man. Washy colla fine."

It was evidently an old point, an established score for the heathen.

"Yes, I must say, you do do your work. I've brought you that collar for five years now, and it still seems new." The minister's face fell a little. Yen Sin continued grave and alert.

"And Mista Matee Snow, yes? His colla allee same like new, yes?"

"Yes, I must say!" The other shook himself. "But it's not that, brother. We're all of us wicked, Yen Sin, and unless we--"

"Mista Minista wickee?"

For a moment the minister's eyes seemed fascinated by the Chinaman's; pain whitened his face.

"All of us," he murmured uncertainly, "are weak. The best among us sins in a day enough to blacken eternity. And unless we believe, and have faith in the Divine Mercy of the Father, and confess--confession--" His voice grew stronger and into it crept the rapt note of one whose auditor is within. "Confession! A sin confessed is no longer a sin. The word spoken out of the broken and contrite heart makes all things right. If one but had faith in that! If--if one had Faith!"

The life went out of his voice, the fire died in his eyes, his fingers drooped on the tea-bowl. The Chinaman's clock was striking the half after seven. He stared at the floor, haggard with guilt.

"Dear me, I'm late for prayer-meeting again. Snow will be looking for me."

I slipped out behind him, glad enough of Urkey's raw air after that close chamber of mysteries. I avoided the wharf-lane, however, more than a little scared by this sudden new aspect of the Minister, and got myself out to the shore street by Miah White's yard and the grocery porch, and there I found myself face to face with Mate Snow. That frightened me still more, for the light from Henny's Notions' window was shining oddly in his eyes.

"You're lookin' for the minister," I stammered, ducking my head.

He stopped and stared down at me, tapping a sole on the cobbles.

"What's this? What's this?"

"He--he says you'd be lookin' for 'im, an' I seen 'im to the Chinaman's an' he's comin' right there, honest he is, Mr. Snow."

"Oh! So? I'd be looking for him, would I?"

"Y--y--yessir."

I sank down on the grocery steps and studied my toes.

"He was _there_, though!" I protested in desperation, when we had been waiting in vain for a long quarter-hour. The dark monitor lifted his chin from his collar and looked at his watch.

"It's hard," I heard him sigh, as he turned away down Lovett's Court, where Center Church blossomed with its prayer-meeting lamps. Shadows of the uneasy flock moved across the windows; Emsy Nickerson, in his trustee's black, peered out of the door into the dubious night, and beyond him in the bright vestry Aunt Nickerson made a little spot of color, agitated, nursing formless despairs, an artist in vague dreads.

I was near enough, at the church steps, to hear what Mate told them.

"I'll lead to-night. He's gone out in the back-country to pray alone."

Aunt Nickerson wept quietly, peeping from the corners of her eyes. Reverent awe struggled with an old rebellion in Emsy's face, and in others as they came crowding. The trustee broke out bitterly:

"Miah White's took to the bottle again, along o' him. If only he'd do his prayin' at Miah's house a spell, 'stead o' the back-country--"

"There was a back-country in Judea," Mate cried him down. "And some one prayed there, not one night, but forty nights and days!"

What a far cry it was from the thwarted lover behind the prescription screen, fanning the flames of hell-fire through the night, to the Seer thundering in the vestry--had there been any there with heads enough to wonder at it.

It happened from time to time, this mysterious retreat into the moors, more frequently as the Infield Conference drew on and the hollows deepened in the minister's cheeks and his eyes shone brighter with foreboding. Nor was this the first time the back-country had been mentioned in the same breath with the Wilderness of Judea. I can remember our Miss Beedie, in Sunday School, lifting her eyes and sighing at the first verse of the fourth chapter of the Book of Luke.

And to-night, while I crept off tingling through the dark of Lovett's Court, he was in the Wilderness again, and I had seen him last.

I brought up by one of the tubbed box-trees and peered in at the Pillar House with a new wonder. I was so used to it there, dead on the outside and living on the inside, that I had never learned to think of it as a strange thing. Perhaps a dozen times I had seen little Hope Gibbs (they still said "Gibbs") playing quietly among the lilacs in the back yard. It was always at dusk when the shadows were long there, and she a shadow among them, so unobtrusive and far away. As for her mother, no one ever saw Sympathy Gibbs.

Crouching by the box-tree, I found myself wondering what they were doing in there, Sympathy Gibbs and the little girl; whether they were sleeping, or whether they were sitting in the dark, thinking, or whispering about the husband and father who was neither husband nor father, or whether, in some remote chamber, there might not be a lamp or a candle burning.

The dead hush of the place oppressed me. I turned my head to look back at the comfortable, bumbling devotion of Center Church, and this is what I saw there.

The door was still open, a blank, bright rectangle giving into the deserted vestry, and it was against this mat of light that I spied Minister Malden's head and shoulders thrust furtively, as he peeped in and seemed to harken to the muffled unison of the prayer.

You may imagine me startled enough at that, but what of my emotion when, having peeped and listened and reassured himself for a dozen seconds, Minister Malden turned and came softly down the Court toward the gate and the box-trees and me, a furtive silhouette against the door-light, his face turned back over one shoulder.

I couldn't bolt; he was too close for that. The wonder was that he failed to see me, for he stopped within two yards of where I cowered in the shadow and stood for a long time gazing in between the trees at the pillared porch, and I could hear his breathing, uneven and laborious, as though he had been running or fighting. Once I thought he struck out at something with a vicious fist. Then his trouble was gone, between two winks, and he was gone too, up the walk and up the steps, without any to-do about it. I don't know whether he tapped on the door or not. It was open directly. I caught a passing glimpse of Sympathy Gibbs in the black aperture; the door closed on them both, and the Pillar House was dead again.

Now this was an odd way for Minister Malden to fast and pray in the Wilderness--odd enough, one would say, to keep me waiting there a while to see what would come of it all. But it didn't. I had had enough of mysteries for one Summer's night, or at any rate I had enough by the time I got my short legs, full tilt, into the shore street. For I had caught a fleeting glimpse, on the way, of a watcher in the shadow behind the _other_ box-tree--Yen Sin, the heathen, with a surprised eyeball slanting at me over one shoulder.

* * *

Among the most impressive of the phenomena of life, as noted in my thirteenth year, is the amazing way in which a community can change while one is away from it a month. Urkey village at the beginning of my 'teens seemed to me much the same Urkey village upon which I had first opened my eyes. And then I went to make a visit with my uncle Orville Means in Gillyport, just across the Sound, and when I came back on the packet I could assure myself with all the somber satisfaction of the returning exile that I would scarcely have known the old place.

Gramma Pilot's cow had been poisoned. There had been a fire in the Selectmen's room at Town Hall. Amber Matheson had left Mrs. Wharf's Millinery and set up for herself, opposite the Eastern School. And Mate Snow, all of a sudden, had bought the old Pons house, on the hill hanging high over the town, and gone to live there. With a leap, and as it were behind my back, he sat there dominating the village and the harbor and the island--our Great Man.

He took Minister Malden with him, naturally, out of the two rooms over the store, into one room in the third story of the house on the hill--where Sympathy Gibbs could see him if she chose to look that way, as frankly and ignominiously a dependent as any baron's chaplain in the Golden Days.

"She'd have done better with Mate, after all," folks began to say.

But of all the changes in the village, the most momentous to me was the change in Yen Sin. I don't know why it should have been I, out of all the Urkey youth, who went to the Chinaman's; perhaps it was the spiritual itch left from that first adventure on the scow. At any rate, I had fallen into a habit of dropping in at the cabin, and not always with a collar to do.

I had succeeded in worming out of him the meaning of that first set of bird-scratches on my collar-band--"The boy who throws clam-shells"--and of a second and more elaborate writing--"The boy who is courageous in the face of all the water of the ocean, yet trembles before so much of it as may be poured in a wash-basin." There came a third inscription in time, but of that he would not tell me, nor of Mate Snow's, nor the minister's. It was a queer library he had, those fine-written collars of Urkey village.

He had been growing feebler so long and so gradually that I had made nothing of it. Once, I remember, it struck me queer that he wasn't working so hard as he had used to. Still earliest of all and latest of all, he would sometimes leave his iron cooling on the board now and stand for minutes of the precious day, dreaming out of the harbor window. When the sun was sinking, the shaft through the window bathed his head and his lean neck with a quality almost barbaric, and for a moment in the gloom made by the bright pencil, the new, raw things of Urkey faded out, leaving him alone in his ancient and ordered civilization, a little wistful, I think, and perhaps a little frightened, as a child waking from a long, dreaming sleep, to find his mother gone.

He had begun to talk about China, too, and the river where he was born. And I made nothing of it, it came on so gradually, day by day. Then I went away, as I have said, and came back again. I dropped in at the scow the second day after the packet brought me home.

"Hello, there!" I cried, peeping over the counter, "I got a collar for you to--to--" I began to stumble. "Mr. Yen Sin, dear me, what's the matter of you?"

"Mista Yen Sin fine," he said in a strengthless voice, smiling and nodding from the couch where he lay, half propped up by a gorgeous, faded cushion. "Mista Yen Sin go back China way pletty quick now, yes."

"Honest?"

He made no further answer, but took up the collar I had brought.

"You been gone Gillypo't, yes? You take colla China boy, yes?"

"Yessir!"

"He pletty nice man, Sam Low, yes?"

"Oh, you know him, then? Oh, he's all right, Yen Sin."

It was growing dark outside, and colder, with a rising wind from landward to seaward against the tide. A sense of something odd and wrong came over me; it was a moment before I could make it out. The fire was dead in the stove for the first time in memory and the Vestal irons were cold. Yen Sin asked me to light the lamp. In the waxing yellow glow he turned his eyes to mine, and mine were big.

"You know Mista God?" he questioned.

"Oh, yes," I answered soberly. "Yes, indeed."

"Mista God allee same like Mista Yen Sin, yes?"

I felt myself paling at his blasphemy, and thought of lightning.

"Mista God," he went on in the same speculative tone, "Mista God know allee bad things, allee same like Mista Yen Sin, yes?"

"Where is the minister?" I demanded in desperation.

"Mista Yen Sin likee see Mista Minista." When he added, with a transparent hand fluttering over his heart: "Like see pletty quick now," I seemed to fathom for the first time what was happening to him.

"Wait," I cried, too full of awe to know what I said. "Wait, wait, Yen Sin. I'll fetch 'im."

It was dark outside, the sky overcast, and the wind beginning to moan a high note across the roofs as it swept in from the moors and out again over the graying waters. In the shore street my eyes chanced upon the light of Center Church, and I remembered that it was meeting-night.

* * *

There was only a handful of worshippers that evening, but a thousand could have had no more eyes it seemed to me as I tiptoed down the aisle with the scandalized pad-pad of Emsy Nickerson's pursuing soles behind my back. Confusion seized me; I started to run, and had come almost up to Mister Malden before I had wit enough to discover that it wasn't Minister Malden at all, but Mate Snow in the pulpit, standing with an open hymn-book in one hand and staring down at me with grim, inquiring eyes. After a time I managed to stammer:

"The Chinaman, you know--he's goin' to die--the minister--"

Then I fled, dodging Emsy's legs. Confused voices followed me; Aunt Nickerson's full of a nameless horror; Mate Snow's, thundering: "Brother Hemans, you will please continue the meeting. I will go and see what I can do. But your prayers are needed here."

Poor Minister Malden! His hour had struck--the hour so long awaited--and now it was Mate Snow who should go to answer it. Perhaps the night had something to do with it, and the melancholy disaster of the wind. Perhaps it was the look of Mate Snow's back as he passed me, panting on the steps, his head bowed with his solemn and triumphant stewardship. But all of a sudden I hated him, this righteous man. He had so many things, and Minister Malden had nothing--nothing but the Chinaman's soul--and he was going to try and get that too.

I had to find Minister Malden, and right away. But where _was_ he, and on prayer-meeting night too? My mind skipped back. The "Wilderness."

I was already ducking along the Court to reconnoiter the Pillar House, black and silent beyond the box-trees. And then I put my hands in my pockets, my ardor dimmed by the look of that vacant, staring face. What was I, a boy of thirteen, against that house? I could knock at the door, to be sure, as the minister had done that other night. Yes; but when I stood, soft-footed, on the porch, the thought that Sympathy Gibbs might open it suddenly and find me there sent the hands back again into the sanctuary of my pockets. What did I know of her? What did any one know of her? To be confronted by her, suddenly, in the dark behind a green door--I tiptoed down the steps.

If only there were a cranny of light somewhere in the dead place! I began to prowl around the yard, feeling adventurous enough, you may believe, for no boy had ever scouted that bit of Urkey land before. And I did find a light, beneath a drawn shade in the rear. Approaching as stealthily as a red Indian, I put one large, round eye to the aperture.

If I had expected a melodramatic tableau, I was disappointed. I had always figured the inside of the Pillar House as full of treasures, for they told tales of the old whaler's wealth. My prying eyes found it bare, like a deserted house gutted by seasons of tramps. A little fire of twigs and a broken butter-box on the hearth made a pathetic shift at domestic cheer. Minister Malden sat at one side of it, his back to me, his face half-buried in his hands. Little Hope Gibbs played quietly on the floor, building pig-pens with a box of matches, a sober, fire-lined shade. Sympathy Gibbs was not in the picture, but I heard her voice after a moment, coming out from an invisible corner.

"How much do you want this time, Will?"

"Want?" There was an anguished protest in the man's cry.

"Need, then." The voice was softer.

The minister's face dropped back in his hands, and after a moment the words came out between his tight fingers, hardly to be heard.

"Five hundred dollars, Sympathy."

I thought there was a gasp from the corner, suppressed. I caught the sound of a drawer pulled open and the vague rustling of skirts as the woman moved about. Her voice was as even as death itself.

"Here it is, Will. It brings us to the end, Will. God knows where it will come from next time."

"It--it--you mean--" An indefinable horror ran though the minister's voice, and I could see the cords shining on the hands which gripped the chair-arms. "Next time--next year--" His eyes were fixed on the child at his feet. "God knows where it will come from. Perhaps--before another time--something will happen. Dear little Hope--little girl!"

The child's eyes turned with a preoccupied wonder as the man's hand touched her hair; then went back to the alluring pattern of the matches.

Sympathy Gibbs spoke once more.

"I've found out who holds the mortgage, Will. Mr. Dow told me."

His hand slid from Hope's hair and hung in the air. During the momentary hush his head, half-turned, seemed to wait in a praying suspense.

"It's Mate Snow," the voice went on. The man covered his face.

"Thank God!" he said. I thought he shivered. "Then it's all--all right," he sighed after a moment. "I was afraid it might be somebody who would--who might make trouble." He took out a handkerchief and touched his forehead with it. "Thank--God!"

"Why do you thank God?" A weariness, like anger, touched her words.

"Why? Why do I thank God?" He faced her, wondering. "Because he has given me a strong man to be my friend and stand behind me. Because Mate Snow, who might have hated me, has--"

"Has sucked the life out of you!" It came out of the corner like a blade. "Yes, yes, he has sucked the life out of you in his hate, and thrown the dry shell of you to me; and that makes him feel good on his hill there. No, no, no; I'm going to say it now. Has he ever tried to find out what was wrong with us? No. He didn't need to. Why? Because no matter what it was, we were given over into his hands, body and soul. And now it's Mate Snow who is the big man of this island, and it's the minister that eats the crumbs that fall from his table, and folks pity you and honor him because he's so good to you, and--"

_And this was Urkey village, and night, and Yen Sin was dying._

"And he's down to the Chinaman's _now_!" I screamed, walking out of my dream. "An' the Chinaman's dyin' an' wants the minister, an' Mate Snow he got there first."

The light went out in the room; I heard a chair knocked over, and then Minister Malden's voice: "God forgive me! God forgive me!"

I ran, sprawling headlong through the shrubs.

Out in the dark of Lovett's Court I found people all about me, the congregation, let out, hobbling and skipping and jostling shoreward, a curious rout. Others were there, not of the church; Kibby Baker, the atheist, who had heard the news through the church window where he peeped at the worshipers; Miah White's brother, the ship-calker, summoned by his sister; a score of others, herding down the dark wind. At the shore street, folks were coming from the Westward. It was strange to see them all and to think it was only a heathen dying.

Or, perhaps, it wasn't so strange, when one remembered Minister Malden coming down the years with that light in his eyes, building his slow edifice, like one in Israel prophesying the coming of the Messiah.

I shall never forget the picture I saw that night from the deck of the Chinaman's scow. The water here in the lee was as smooth as black glass, save for the little ground-swell that rocked the outer end of the craft. The tide was rising; the grounded end would soon be swimming. There were others on the deck with me, and more on the dock overhead, their faces picked out against the sky by the faint irradiations from the lighted shanty beneath. And over and behind it all ran the tumult of the elements; behind it the sea, where it picked up on the Bight out there beyond our eyes; above it the wind, scouring the channels of the crowded roofs and flinging out to meet the waters, like a ravening and disastrous bride.

Mate Snow stood by the counter in the little cabin, his close-cropped head almost to the beams, his voice, dry austere, summoning the Chinaman to repentance. "Verily, if a man be not born again, he shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." His eyes skipped to the door.

"And to be born again," he went on with a hint of haste, "you must confess, Yen Sin, and have faith. That is enough. The outer and inner manifestations--confession and faith."

"Me, Mista Yen Sin--confessee?"

A curious and shocking change had come over the Chinaman in the little time I had been away. He lay quite motionless on his couch, with a bit of silken tapestry behind his head, like a heathen halo protecting him at last. He was more alive than he had been, precisely because the life had gone out of him, and he was no longer bothered with it. His face was a mask, transparent and curiously luminous, and there for the first time I saw the emotion of humor, which is another name for perception.

His unclouded eyes found me by the door and he moved a hand in a vague gesture. I went, walking stiff-legged, awe mingling with self-importance.

"Mista Boy, please," he whispered in my ear. "The collas on the shelf theah. Led paypah--"

Wondering, I took them down and piled them on the couch beside him, one after another, little bundles done up carefully in flaring tissue with black characters inked on them.

"That one!" he whispered, and I undid the one under his finger, discovering half a dozen collars, coiled with their long imprisonment.

"And that one, and that one--"

They covered his legs and rose about his thin shoulders, those treasured soiled collars of his, gleaming under the lamp like the funeral-pyre of some fantastic potentate. Nothing was heard in the room save the faint crackling of the paper, and after a moment Lem Pigeon murmuring in amazement to his neighbor, over in a corner.

"Look a-there, will ye? He's got my collar with the blood spot onto it where the Lisbon woman's husband hit me that time down to New Bedford. What ye make o' that now?"

Yen Sin lifted his eyes to Mate Snow's hanging over him in wonder.

"Mista Matee Snow confessee, yes?"

There was a moment of shocked silence while our great man stared at Yen Sin. He took his weight from the counter and stood up straight.

"I confess my sins to God," he said.

The other moved a fluttering hand over his collars. "Mista Yen Sin allee same like Mista God, yes."

In the hush I heard news of the blasphemy whispering from lip to lip, out the door and up the awe-struck dock. Mate Snow lifted a hand.

"Stop!" he cried. "Yen Sin, you are standing in the Valley of the Shadow of Death--"

"Mista Matee Snow wickee man? No? Yes? Mista Matee Snow confessee?"

The Chinaman was making a game of his death-bed, and even the dullest caught the challenge. Mate Snow understood. The yellow man had asked him with the divine clarity of the last day either to play the game or not to play the game. And Mate Snow wanted something enough to play.

"Yes," he murmured, "I am weak. All flesh is weak." He faltered, and his brow was corded with the labor of memory. It is hard for a good man to summon up sins enough to make a decent confession; nearly always they fall back in the end upon the same worn and respectable category.

"I confess to the sin of pride," he pronounced slowly. "And to good deeds and kind acts undone; to moments of harshness and impatience--"

"Mista Matee Snow confessee?" Yen Sin shook a weary protest at the cheater wasting the precious moments with words. Mate Snow lifted his eyes, and I saw his face whiten and a pearl of sweat form on his forehead. A hush filled the close cave of light, a waiting silence, oppressive and struck with a new expectancy. Little sounds on the dock above became important--young Gilman Pilot's voice, cautioning: "Here, best take my hand on that ladder, Mr. Malden. Last rung's carried away."

It was curious to see Mate Snow's face at that; it was as if one read the moving history of years in it as he leaned over the counter and touched the dying man's breast with a passion strange in him.

"I will tell you how wicked I am, Yen Sin. Three years ago I did Ginny Silva out of seventy dollars wages in the bogs; and if he's here tonight I'll pay him the last cent of it. And--and--" He appealed for mercy to the Chinaman's unshaken eyes. Then, hearing the minister on the deck behind, he cast in the desperate sop of truth. "And--_and I have coveted my neighbor's wife_!"

It was now that Minister Malden cried from the doorway: "That is nothing, Yen Sin--_nothing_--when you think of _me_!"

You may laugh. But just then, in that rocking death-chamber, with the sea and the dark and the wind, no one laughed. Except Yen Sin, perhaps; he may have smiled, though the mask of his features did not move. Minister Malden stepped into the room, and his face was like new ivory.

"Look at me! I have wanted to bring your soul to Christ before I died. That is white, but all the rest of me is black. I have lived a lie; I have broken a law of God; to cover that I have broken another, another--"

His voice hung in the air, filled with a strange horror of itself. The Chinaman fingered his collars. Without our consent or our understanding, he had done the thing which had so shocked us when he said it with his lips; the heathen sat in judgment, weighing the sins of our little world.

"Yes?" he seemed to murmur. "And then?"

The minister's eyes widened; pain lifted him on his toes.

"I am an adulterer," he cried. "And my child is a--a--bastard. Her mother's husband, Joshua Gibbs, didn't go down with his vessel after all. He was alive when I married her. He is alive today, a wanderer. He learned of things and sent me a letter; it found me at the Infield Conference the day before I came home that time to see my baby. Since that day it has seemed to me that I would suffer the eternity of the damned rather than that that stain should mar my child's life, and in the blackness of my heart I have believed that it wouldn't if it weren't known. I have kept him quiet; I have hushed up the truth. I have paid him money, leaving it for him where he wrote me to leave it. I have gone hungry and ragged to satisfy him. I have begged my living of a friend. I have drained the life of the woman I love. And yet he is never content. And I have betrayed even _him_. For he forbade me to see his wife ever again, or even to know the child I had begotten, and I have gone to them, in secret, by night. I have sinned not alone against God, but against the devil. I have sinned against--_everything_!"

* * *

The fire which had swept him on left him now of a sudden, his arms hung down at his sides, his head drooped. It was Mate Snow who broke the silence, falling back a step, as if he had been struck.

"God forgive me," he said in awe. "And _I_ have kept you here. _You_! To preach the word of God to these people. God forgive me!"

"I think Mista God laugh, yes."

Yen Sin wasn't laughing himself; he was looking at his collars. Mate Snow shrugged his shoulders fiercely, impatient of the interruption.

"I have kept you here," he pursued bitterly, "for the good of my own soul, which would have liked to drive you away. I have kept you here, even when you wanted to go away--"

"Little mousie want to go away. Little cat say, 'no--no.'" Yen Sin's head turned slowly and he spoke on to the bit of yellow silk, his words clear and powerless as a voice in a dream. "No--no, Mousie, stay with little cat. Good little cat. Like see little mousie jump. Little cat!"

Mate Snow wheeled on him, and I saw a queer sight on his face for an instant; the gray wrinkles of age. My cousin Duncan was there, constable of Urkey village, and he saw it too and came a step out of his corner. It was all over in a wink; Mate Snow lifted his shoulders with a sigh, as much as to say: "You can see how far gone the poor fellow is."

The Chinaman, careless of the little by-play, went on.

"Mista Sam Kow nice China fella. Mista Minista go to Mista Sam Kow in Infield, washy colla. Mista Yen Sin lite a letta to Mista Sam Kow, on Mista Minista colla-band. See? Mista Sam Kow lite a letta back on colla-band. See?"

We saw--that the yellow man was no longer talking at random, but slowly, with his eyes on the collar he held in his hand, like a scholar in his closet, perusing the occult pages of a chronicle.

"Mista Sam Kow say: 'This man go night-time in Chestnut Stleet; pickee out letta undah sidewalk, stickee money-bag undah sidewalk, cly, shivah, makee allee same like sick fella. Walkee all lound town allee night. Allee same like Chlistian dlunk man. No sleepee. That's all--Sam Kow.' Mista Yen Sin keepee colla when Mista Minista come back; give new colla: one, two, five, seven time; Mista Minista say: 'You washy colla fine, Yen Sin: this colla, allee same like new.' Mista Matee Snow, his colla allee same like new, too--"

* * *

Something happened so suddenly that none of us knew what was going on. But there was my cousin Duncan standing by the counter, his arm and shoulder still thrust forward with the blow he had given; and there was our great man of the hill flung back against the wall with a haggard grimace set on his face.

"No, you don't!" Duncan growled, his voice shivering a little with excitement. "No, you don't, Mate!"

Mate Snow screamed, and his curse was like the end of the world in Urkey island.

"Curse you! The man's a thief, I tell you. He's stolen my property! I demand my property--those collars there in his hand now. You're constable, you say. Well, I want my--"

He let himself down on the bench, as if the strength had left his knees.

"He's going to tell you lies," he cried. "He's making fools of you all with his--his--Duncan, boy! Don't listen to the black liar. He's going to try and make out 'twas _me_ put the letter under the walk in Chestnut Street, up there to Infield; that it was _me_, all these years, that went back and got out money he put there. _Me! Mate Snow._ Duncan, boy; he's going to tell you a low, black-hearted lie!"

"_How do you know?_" That was all my cousin Duncan said.

To the dying man, nothing made much difference. It was as if he had only paused to gather his failing breath, and when he spoke his tone was the same, detached, dispassionate, with a ghost of humor running through it.

"How many times?" He counted the collars with a finger tip. "One two, tlee, six, seven time. Seven yeahs. Too bad. Any time Mista Minista wantee confessee, Mista God makee allee light. Mista Yen Sin allee same like Mista God. Wait. Wait. Wait. Laugh. Cly inside!"

Mate Snow was leaning forward on the bench in a queer, lazy attitude, his face buried in his hands and his elbows propped on his knees. But no one looked at him, for Minister Malden was speaking in the voice of one risen from the dead, his eyes blinking at the Chinaman's lamp.

"Then you mean--you mean that he--isn't alive? After all? That he wasn't alive--_then_? You mean it was all a--a kind of a--_joke_? I--I--Oh, Mate! _Mate Snow!_"

It was queer to see him turning with his news to his traditional protector. It had been too sudden; his brain had been so taken up with the naked miracle that Gibbs was not alive that all the rest of it, the drawn-out and devious revenge of the druggist, had somehow failed to get into him as yet.

"Mate Snow!" he cried, running over to the sagging figure. "Did you hear, Mate? Eh? It isn't true! It was all a--a joke, Mate!" He shook Snow's shoulder with a pleading ecstasy. "It's been a mistake, Mate, and I am--she is--little Hope is--"

He fell back a step, letting the man lop over suddenly on his doubled knees, and stared blankly at a tiny drug-phial, uncorked and empty, rolling away across the floor. He passed a slow hand across his eyes. "Why--why--I--I'm afraid Mate is--isn't very--well."

Urkey had held its tongue too long. Now it was that the dam gave way and the torrent came whirling down and a hundred voices were lifted. Crowds and shadows distracted the light. One cried. "The man's dead, you fools; can't you see?" A dozen took it up and it ran out and away along the rumbling dock. "Doctor!" another bawled. "He's drank poison! Where's the doctor at?" And that, too, went out, and a faint shout answered from somewhere shoreward that the doctor was out at Si Pilot's place and Miah White was after him, astraddle of the tar-wagon horse. Through it all I can remember Aunt Nickerson's wail continuing, undaunted and unquenchable, "God save our souls! God save our souls!"

And then, following the instinct of the frightened pack, they were all gone of a sudden, carrying the dead man to meet the doctor. I would have gone, too, and I had gotten as far as the door at their heels, when I paused to look back at the Chinaman.

He lay so still over there on the couch--the thought came to me that he, too, was dead. And of a sudden, leaning there on the door-frame, the phantom years trooped back to me, and I saw the man for the first time moving through them--a lone, far outpost of the thing he knew, one yellow man against ten thousand whites, unshaken, unappalled, facing the odds, working so early, so late, day after day and year after year, and smiling a little, perhaps, as he peeped behind the scenes of the thing which we call civilization. Yes, cry as he might inside, he must have smiled outside, sometimes, through those years of terror, at the sight of Minister Malden shrinking at the shadow of the ghost of something that was nothing, to vanish at a touch of light.

And now his foreign service was ended; his post was to be relieved; and he could go wherever he wanted to go.

Not quite yet. He had been dreaming, that was all. His eyes opened, and rested, not on me, but to the right of me. Then I saw for the first time that I wasn't alone in the room with him after all, but that Minister Malden was standing there, where he had stood through all the din like a little boy struck dumb before a sudden Christmas tree.

And like a little boy, he went red and white and began to stammer.

"I--I--Yen Sin--" He held his breath a moment. Then it came out all together. "_I'll run and fetch them--both!_" With that he was past me, out of the door and up the ladder, and I heard his light feet drumming on the dock, bearing such news as never was.

* * *

The Chinaman's eyes had come to me now, and there was a queer light in them that I couldn't understand. An adventure beyond my little comprehension was taking shape behind them, and all I knew enough to do was to sneak around behind the counter and take hold of one of his fingers and shake it up and down, like one man taking a day's leave of another. His eyes thanked me for my violence; then they were back again to their mysterious speculations. An overweening excitement gathered in them. He frightened me. Quite abruptly, as if an unexpected reservoir of energy had been tapped, the dying man lifted on an elbow and slid one leg over the edge of the couch. Then he glanced at me with an air almost furtive.

"Boy," he whispered. "Run quick gettee Mista Minista, yes."

"But he's coming _himself_," I protested. "You better lay back."

"Mista Yen Sin askee _please_! Please, boy."

What was there for me to do? I ran. Once on the dock above, misgivings assailed me. I was too young, and the night was too appalling. I had forgotten the wind, down in the cabin, but in the open here I felt its weight. It grew all the while; its voice drowned the world now, and there was spindrift through it, picked from the back shore of the island and flung all the way across. Objects were lost in it; ghostly things, shore lights, fish-houses, piers, strained seaward. I heard the packet's singing masts at the next wharf, but I saw no packet. The ponderous scow below me became a thing of life and light, an eager bird fluttering at its bonds and calling to the wide spaces. To my bewildered eyes it seemed to move--it _was_ moving, shaking off the heavy hands of bondage, joining itself with the wind. I got down on my knees of a sudden and peered at the deck.

"_Yen Sin!_" I screamed. "_What you doin' out there?_"

I saw him dimly in the open air outside his door, fumbling and fumbling at something. This was his great adventure, the thing that had gleamed in his eyes and had tapped that unguessed reservoir of strength. His voice crept back to me, harassed by the wind,

"This velly funny countly, Mista Boy. Mista Yen Sin go back China way."

His bow-line was fast to an iron ring on the wharf. I wanted to hold him back, and I clutched at the rope with my hands as if my little strength were something against that freed thing. The line came up to me easily, cast off from the scow at the other end.

He was waning. His window and door and the little fan-light before the door were all I could see now, and even that pattern blurred and became uncertain and ghostly on the mat of the night. He was clear of the wharves now, and the wind had him--sailing China way--so peaceful, so dreamless, surrounded by his tell-tale cargo of Urkey's unwashed collars.

* * *

I don't know how long it was I crouched there on the timbers, staring out into the havoc of that black night, and listening to the hungry clamor of the Bight. I must have been crying for the minister, over and over, without knowing it, for when my cousin Duncan's hand fell on my shoulder and I started up half out of my wits, he pointed a finger toward the outer edge of the wharf.

And there they were in a little close group, Sympathy Gibbs standing straight with the child in her arms, and Minister Malden down on his knees. There were many people on the pier, all with their eyes to sea, all except Sympathy Gibbs; hers were up-shore, where Mate Snow lay in state on his own counter, all his sweet revenge behind him and gone.

I thought little Hope was asleep in the swathing shawl, till I saw the dark round spots of her eyes. If it was a strange night for the others, it was stranger still to her.

The wind and the rain beat on Minister Malden's bended back. He loved it that way. The missionary was praying for the soul of the heathen.

NONE SO BLIND[21]

BY MARY SYNON

From _Harper's Magazine_.

We were listening to Leila Burton's music--her husband, and Dick Allport, and I--with the throb of London beating under us like the surge of an ocean in anger, when there rose above the smooth harmonies of the piano and the pulsing roar of the night a sound more poignant than them both, the quavering melody of a street girl's song.

Through the purpling twilight of that St. John's Eve I had been drifting in dreams while Leila had gone from golden splendors of chords which reflected the glow on westward-fronting windows into somber symphonies which had seemed to make vocal the turbulent soul of the city--for Dick Allport and I were topping the structure of that house of life that was to shelter the love we had long been cherishing. With Leila playing in that art which had dowered her with fame, I was visioning the glory of such love as she and Standish Burton gave each other while I watched Dick, sensing rather than seeing the dearness of him as he gave to the mounting climaxes the tense interest he always tendered to Leila's music.

I had known, before I came to love Dick Allport, other loves and other lovers. Because I had followed will-o'-the-wisps of fancy through marshes of sentiment I could appreciate the more the truth of that flame which he and I had lighted for our guidance on the road. A moody boy he had been when I first met him, full of a boy's high chivalry and of a boy's dark despairs. A moody man he had become in the years that had denied him the material success toward which he had striven; but something in the patience of his efforts, something in the fineness of his struggle had endeared him to me as no triumph could have done. Because he needed me, because I had come to believe that I meant to him belief in the ultimate good of living, as well as belief in womanhood, I cherished in my soul that love of him which yearned over him even as it longed for him.

Watching him in the dusk while he lounged in that concentrated quiet of attention, I went on piling the bricks of that wide house of happiness we should enter together; and, although I could see him but dimly, so well did I know every line of his face that I could fancy the little smile that quivered around his lips and that shone from the depths of his eyes as Leila played the measures we both loved. I must have been smiling in answer when the song of the girl outside rose high.

Not until that alien sound struck athwart the power and beauty of the spell did I come to know how high I had builded my castles; but the knocking at the gate toppled down the dreams as Leila swept a discord over the keyboard and crossed to the open window.

In the dusk, as she flung back the heavy curtains, I could see the bulk of Brompton Oratory set behind the houses like the looming back-drop of a painted scene. Nearer, in front of a tall house across the way, stood the singer, a thin girl whose shadowy presence seemed animated by a curious bravery. In a nasal, plaintive voice she was singing the words of a ballad of love and of loving that London, as only London can, had made curiously its own that season. The insistence of her plea--for she sang as if she cried out her life's longing, sang as if she called on the passing crowd not for alms, but for understanding--made her for the moment, before she faded back into oblivion, an artist, voicing the heartache and the heartbreak of womankind; and the artist in Leila Burton responded to the thrill.

Until the ending of the song she stood silent in front of the window, unconscious of the fact that she, and not the scene beyond her, held the center of the stage. Not for her beauty, although at times Leila Burton gave the impression of being exquisitely lovely, was she remarkable, but rather for that receptive attitude that made her an inspired listener. In me, who had known her for but a little while, she awakened my deepest and drowsiest ambition, the desire to express in pictures the light and the shade of the London I knew. With her I could feel the power, and the glory, and the fear, and the terror of the city as I never did at other times. It was not alone that she was all things to all men; it was that she led men and women who knew her to the summits of their aspirations.

Even Standish Burton, big, sullen man that he was, immersed in his engineering problems, responded to his wife's spiritual charm with a readiness that always aroused in Dick and myself an admiration for him that our other knowledge of him did not justify. He was, aside from his relationship to Leila, a man whose hardness suggested a bitter knowledge of dark ways of life. Now, crouched down in the depths of his chair, he kept watching Leila with a gaze of smouldering adoration, revealing that love for her which had been strong enough to break down those barriers which she had erected in the years while he had worked for her in Jacob's bondage. In her he seemed to be discovering, all over again, the vestal to tend the fires of his faith.

Dick Allport, too, bending forward over the table on which his hands fell clenched, was studying Leila with an inscrutable stare that seemed to be of query. I was wondering what it meant, wondering the more because my failure to understand its meaning hung another veil between my vision and my shrine of belief in the fullness of love, when the song outside came to an end and Leila turned back to us.

Her look, winging its way to Standish, lighted her face even beyond the glow from the lamps which she switched on. For an instant his heavy countenance flared into brightness. Dick Allport sighed almost imperceptibly as he turned to me. I had a feeling that such a fire as the Burtons kindled for each other should have sprung up in the moment between Dick and me, for we had fought and labored and struggled for our love as Standish and Leila had never needed to battle. Because of our constancy I expected something better than the serene affectionateness that shone in Dick's smile. I wanted such stormy passion of devotion as Burton gave to Leila, such love as I, remembering a night of years ago, knew that Dick could give. It was the old desire of earth, spoken in the street girl's song, that surged in me until I could have cried out in my longing for the soul of the sacrament whose substance I had been given; but the knowledge that we were, the four of us, conventional people in a conventional setting locked my heart as it locked my lips until I could mirror the ease with which Leila bore herself.

"I have been thinking," she said, lightly, "that I should like to be a street singer for a night. If only a piano were not so cumbersome, I should go out and play into the ears of the city the thing that girl put into her song."

"Why not?" I asked her, "It would be an adventure, and life has too few adventures."

"It might have too many," Dick said.

"Not for Leila," Standish declared. "Life's for her a quest of joy."

"That's it," Dick interposed. "Her adventures have all been joyous."

"But they haven't," Leila insisted. "I'm no spoiled darling of the gods. I've been poor, poor as that girl out there. I've had heartaches, and disappointments, and misfortunes."

"Not vital ones," Dick declared. "You've never had a knock-out blow."

"She doesn't know what one is," Standish laughed, but there sounded a ruefulness in his laughter that told of the kind of blow he must once have suffered to bring that note in his voice. Standish Burton took life lightly, except where Leila was concerned. His manner now indicated, almost mysteriously, that something threatened his harbor of peace, but the regard Leila gave to him proved that the threat of impending danger had not come to her.

"Oh, but I do know," she persisted.

"Vicariously," I suggested. "All artists do."

"No, actually," she said.

"You're wrong," said Standish. "You're the sort of woman whom the world saves from its own cruelties."

There was something so essentially true in his appraisal of his wife that the certainty covered the banality of his statement and kept Dick and myself in agreement with him. Leila Burton, exquisitely remote from all things commonplace, was unquestionably a woman to be protected. Without envy--since my own way had its compensations in full measure--I admitted it.

"I think that you must have forgotten, if you ever knew," she said, "how I struggled here in London for the little recognition I have won."