Strange Yesterday (20 page)

7

T
HE
brownish, mild, retiring woman whom John Preswick had made his wife, bore him a child a year after they were married, and he observed with intense disappointment that it was a girl. But before another year had gone past, she made a second attempt, and this time the result was a boy, a midget, red thing, with brown hair and fawn-colored eyes; and, in a sense of the completest fulfillment, he bestowed upon it the name of John Preswick, feeling even then the stirrings of immortality within him. Michael Brian was the godfather, and young John Preswick broke him, so that the little aging man took him to his heart and spoilt him far more thoroughly than John Preswick himself might have.

And after that, the years passed, as years will, and the two men grew older, while young John Preswick emerged from his swaddling clothes and began to investigate the ways of locomotion and speech.

They grew older, and their wealth increased, and they became what are known as powers in the financial world, and they were able to bribe legislators and to swing projects. And their interests expanded, and their wealth grew, and they were pointed out as kings of finance. And they left their homes for other homes that were marvelously ornate and spacious.

But still they would sit together on what was now a large if architecturally grotesque portico, and they would smoke their pipes and speak of days that were. For though they had become powers, and though they traveled, and though they had servants and luxuries beyond reason, they never came again to the heights of Darien, where the fever walks, but where the jungle is tall and splendid, and where there are birds out of dreams, and strange cries. And there was a beach once, in a bay called Chorrera, near the mouth of the Rio Caimito, where they had dragged from the sand a hulk of a forgotten boat with which they had made their fortune.

And back from the beach there was jungle.

They would smoke their pipes, and the smoke would curl upward and about their heads, attempting, factitiously, for it was obviously futile, to conceal the change that had come over their features. But beneath the smoke, John Preswick was old, his face long and yellow and hollow below the cheeks and under the eyes; his heavy mustache was gray; his hair was gray, too, and so sparse that he had to comb it sidewise to cover his skull. And Michael Brian, a dozen years older than John Preswick, was a wizened dwarf with wrinkle-encased blue eyes, with an almost toothless mouth. They would sit and smoke….

Sometimes John Preswick would remember; and then he would be in a garden where tables were set upon flagstones, where pink blooms nodded in gay profusion, where such a scent went into the air as was a drug upon the nostrils of the sanest. And he would smile as he thought of the business-like New York lawyer, who had been tricked, by the odor of flowers and the humming of insects, into paying more than it could possibly have been worth. As he had done a hundred times before, he would relate the tale to Michael Brian, who would invariably nod, blinking his little eyes in approval.

But lately, as he thought more of the garden, he did not smile quite so easily, for he could almost hear the humming of insects and almost catch the fragrance of pink blooms. Again he would doze, and he would be back—

He would be back there, gazing to the Steer's Head, black and rather grand against the setting sun. And he would turn his gaze to take in the fire-washed fields, the stone fences, with their long, bizarre shadows, and the little house with its high, narrow white portico.

He thought, John Preswick, that if he had a turn for architecture or description, he would reproduce that same little house; but wistfully he thought of it, for he knew that house was not made to be reproduced.

So as the years fell away, they dozed and dreamed and smoked more and more; and they became old men.

Then one morning a servant came from the house of Michael Brian, came to John Preswick, and said, in a low voice, that during the night his master had died in bed. And that was in the year of eighteen hundred and seventy-nine.

Rousing his weary body, John Preswick put on a suit of dark clothes, took his stick, called snappishly for his carriage, and went to Michael Brian. They had laid the little man out on his bed, and they had dressed him and had shaven his face. When John Preswick entered the room, he waved the others out, closed the door, and went over to the bed. He was fired, and he pulled a chair to the bed, that he might rest himself, thinking that Michael would know of his rheumatism and understand. For Michael was a quick one to take offense.

For a long while he sat there, leaning thoughtfully upon his stick, sometimes glancing sidewise to the dead man, most of the time staring at the floor, a faint and quizzical smile over his lips.

“Michael,” he said, “we were both of us canny men—too canny.”

With his stick he traced upon the floor, thinking as he did so: “Here is Panama City—come north through the gulf. We are at Point Mala, and this spot is Naos Island. In again to the coast, and you are at Point Batelo and then Venando. And from there—follow me, Michael Brian—it is but fourteen miles to the Bay of Chorrera.”

He smiled, and he nodded at Michael Brian. He was not saddened, but he was wistful; he thought that perhaps Michael Brian might have enjoyed sitting in the little garden at one of the tables, and that there the two of them might have dipped into tall bumpers of ale—such ale as they did not have in California.

Into his mind flashed the picture of the beach where the boat had been, and of the naked, pot-bellied Indians straining at the ropes, and of the voyage north, when the men lay as cattle upon the deck—of the room where he had wakened and found Michael Brian.

He was not saddened; he almost envied Michael Brian. But he was wistful.

Going to leave, he paused at the door to the room, looked back, and waved a hand. “A gentle voyage—Michael,” he said in a voice strangely tender.

Very softly, as though he feared to disturb a sleeping man, he closed the door behind him. His yellow face was like a grotesque mask, and the smile that still clung about his lips had divorced itself from the rest of his countenance.

Though he knew there was no reason for it—after that, he lingered in life, for he was a wealthy man, and it was his business to live while he might. And if he were to be taken ill, there was always a staff of meddling and officious doctors buzzing about him, like flies over a carcass. He saw his son become a boy, and the boy become a man. He saw him handed a diploma at college, and he saw him step up to the pulpit to take a wife. And he saw, in due time, that wife bear him a boy child, whom they called, in the way of many generations, John Preswick.

The older John Preswick was seventy-eight years of age when the boy was born, and his son, who was the father of the child, was a man in middle age, prosperous, managing dexterously what his father had given him, dull perhaps, but with the look of a magnate about him. But to the old man the grandson was new life, and he fondled him upon his knee, and crooned over him, and thought of how wonderful it was that three John Pres-wicks should exist together, and what a wonderful arranger was nature, or God, or whatever it might be that brought about these things.

Then in the year nineteen hundred and seven the older John Preswick died.

PART IV

1915–1930

STEER'S HEAD

STEER'S HEAD

1

W
HETHER
it was a sudden squall of wind, or whether he had dreamed and allowed his body to press back against the rudder, John Preswick never really knew. He saw the boom pass over his head, and then he was in the water, the keel of his boat striking off a ruddy, slanting sun that hung out at the edge of the bay.

Holding to the side of his boat, he looked about him. Far off a sail bobbed, and beyond that a streamer of smoke slid out from an ocean-going vessel. An incredible, lonesome silence hung over the water; it was as though the bay had purposely cleared itself for the evening. Thinking to himself that it was something of a pity he could swim so well, he climbed onto the keel of the overturned boat and sat there, slapping the water off his wet shirt. If there were no one around by sundown who could give him a tow, he would have to swim in to shore. It was nearly a mile.

“It is a pity,” he reflected to himself, “that I was not drowned or something of that sort. It is a pity I can swim at all.”

And he almost smiled as he thought of what Lucille Croyden, seeing them bring in his dead, water-soaked body, would say. It was not at all difficult for him to picture it. Lucille would be visiting his mother. Perhaps her husband would be with her. In spite of herself, she would miss him; and upon questioning his mother, would discover that he had taken his boat out on the bay. She would be a little anxious, just as his mother always was when he took out the boat. But his own slim strength belied the weakness of his mother; she would never quite trust to it.

Lucille Croyden would remain later than usual—perhaps over night—and always she would look towards the door. Then a car would slide up the driveway, and some men would step out with a basket, or whatever they carried bodies in, and Lucille Croyden would know—almost instinctively. He bathed in the glow of his self-pity.

The sun slanted lower. Shaking his head, he brushed back his wet hair. There was something in the way the sun struck off the water, that reminded him of Mrs. Croyden—a sparkle of gold or red.

She had known his mother for years, and him too—being almost a part of the Preswick family. Curious, but she more than any other had repeated the story of his grandfather. She had known all the figures of myth: John Preswick, Michael Brian, and others. She had even known of Steer's Head. She had said that some day he would go back there—and that then he would forget her and other things.

But she seemed to be omniscient, with her calm, lovely smile—how he had adored her for that! And very curiously—this he could not understand—she had loved him. He was not much more than half her age.

There was a brief, quiet moment when she gave him everything, and then, that half-smile about her lips, she had said there are things one must forget and things one desires to forget.

Strange Lucille Croyden. He was seventeen; if he had loved only her, it was because she was so much bound up in his life. But it was his first love affair, his first tragedy. Now it was quite over, and that he could not understand. There was one thing she had said—that some day he would discover a place called Steer's Horn, and then she and the rest would shimmer and fade. But that was no more than his grandfather's endless tale. He had heard it himself.

But Steer's Horn—that place near Charleston—

The thought was wild and whimsical, and he nursed it back and forth, rocking himself on the keel of his overturned boat. “If I were to be drowned,” he mused …

His father was dead. It would hurt his mother; but the passion of self-pity killed the thought. Lucille Croyden, who would not conceive of him alive, would love his memory. Then—anticlimax. He would come back. His story would be perfectly logical. He had been picked up by a fishing boat bound out.

It was all a new adventure, this dying for a day or two. He smiled as he slid into the water.

The air was warm, and he swam slowly and easily. When he stepped out of the water at Isabel Point, the sun was setting. As he walked along the tracks toward Berkeley, a cool evening breeze cut his wet shirt and ducks to him, combining with the heat of his body to dry them. He was a-thrill with the adventure now. Twenty dollars in a waterproof purse in his pocket gave him confidence.

In Berkeley he found a cheap lodging house on the bay. He had never been to such a place before, and he would have preferred a decent and clean hotel. But he was known too well in most of Berkeley. The landlady, regarding him curiously, almost with antagonism, led him to a small, grayish room. He did not bother to raise the soiled sheets, but threw himself as he was upon the bed. Almost instantly he was asleep.

Early in the morning, he left the place. In the city he bought himself a jacket and a pair of shoes to replace his sandles. The sun was warm, and he sat for a while in the park, half dozing. He bought a bag of apples and munched them for his lunch. Then he took a car for Oakland.

He strolled about until the front of a restaurant attracted him. He went in and fed himself upon steak, potatoes, peas, and bread and butter. Then he felt pleasantly full and happy. A good moving picture, he considered, would just top the day. This was life without care or responsibility.

The theater was dark and close. Sinking low in his seat, he lost himself in the picture. As he went out, he recalled that he had made no provision for sleeping that night. He would have gone straight to a hotel had he not thought of the newspapers. And he decided that he had been very much of an ass in not buying one up to now.

Of course—it was on the front page. And he made himself comfortable on the curb beneath a street lamp to read it. It said, in substance, that the overturned catboat of John Preswick, heir to the Preswick fortune, had been found in the bay off point Isabel, and that though some hope was held out, he was believed drowned—

He paused there and allowed himself a soft laugh. And then his mood changed. Delighted as he was with the results, he pitied himself almost as much as he imagined Lucille Croyden would. He read on—

“Upon receiving the news, Mrs. Preswick, the boy's mother, suffered a severe heart attack. She died at nine o'clock.”

Shaking his head slowly and uncomprehendingly, he stared at it. But no. That surely was no part of the story. He read it again.

Hardly could he realize it. Leaning his head upon his hand, he stared at the loose folds of the paper.

There was a wild impulse to be home, to get there, to see her, see her quickly. Starting to his feet, he sank back against the lamp-post and sobbed. It was no use. Of course it was no use. He had done the thing, and now it was over.