The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (129 page)

The doctor made a weary gesture. “He saved my boy’s life.”

“Yes,” said the judge, swiftly—”yes, I know!”

“And what am I to do?” said Trescott, his eyes suddenly lighting like an outburst from smouldering peat. “What am I to do? He gave himself for — for Jimmie. What am I to do for him?”

The judge abased himself completely before these words. He lowered his eyes for a moment. He picked at his cucumbers.

Presently he braced himself straightly in his chair. “He will be your creation, you understand. He is purely your creation. Nature has very evidently given him up. He is dead. You are restoring him to life. You are making him, and he will be a monster, and with no mind.

“He will be what you like, judge,” cried Trescott, in sudden, polite fury. “He will be anything, but, by God! he saved my boy.”

The judge interrupted in a voice trembling with emotion: “Trescott! Trescott! Don’t I know?”

Trescott had subsided to a sullen mood. “Yes, you know,” he answered, acidly; “but you don’t know all about your own boy being saved from death.” This was a perfectly childish allusion to the judge’s bachelorhood. Trescott knew that the remark was infantile, but he seemed to take desperate delight in it.

But it passed the judge completely. It was not his spot.

“I am puzzled,” said he, in profound thought. “I don’t know what to say.”

Trescott had become repentant. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate what you say, judge. But—”

“Of course!” responded the judge, quickly. “Of course.”

“It—” began Trescott.

“Of course,” said the judge.

In silence they resumed their dinner.

“Well,” said the judge, ultimately, “it is hard for a man to know what to do.”

“It is,” said the doctor, fervidly.

There was another silence. It was broken by the judge:

“Look here, Trescott; I don’t want you to think—”

“No, certainly not,” answered the doctor, earnestly.

“Well, I don’t want you to think I would say anything to — It was only that I thought that I might be able to suggest to you that — perhaps — the affair was a little dubious.”

With an appearance of suddenly disclosing his real mental perturbation, the doctor said: “Well, what would you do? Would you kill him?” he asked, abruptly and sternly.

“Trescott, you fool,” said the old man, gently.

“Oh, well, I know, judge, but then—” He turned red, and spoke with new violence: “Say, he saved my boy — do you see? He saved my boy.”

“You bet he did,” cried the judge, with enthusiasm. “You bet he did.” And they remained for a time gazing at each other, their faces illuminated with memories of a certain deed.

After another silence, the judge said, “It is hard for a man to know what to do.”

XII

Late one evening Trescott, returning from a professional call, paused his buggy at the Hagenthorpe gate. He tied the mare to the old tin-covered post, and entered the house. Ultimately he appeared with a companion — a man who walked slowly and carefully, as if he were learning. He was wrapped to the heels in an old-fashioned ulster. They entered the buggy and drove away.

After a silence only broken by the swift and musical humming of the wheels on the smooth road, Trescott spoke. “Henry,” he said, “I’ve got you a home here with old Alek Williams. You will have everything you want to eat and a good place to sleep, and I hope you will get along there all right. I will pay all your expenses, and come to see you as often as I can. If you don’t get along, I want you to let me know as soon as possible, and then we will do what we can to make it better.”

The dark figure at the doctor’s side answered with a cheerful laugh. “These buggy wheels don’ look like I washed ’em yesterday, docteh,” he said.

Trescott hesitated for a moment, and then went on insistently, “I am taking you to Alek Williams, Henry, and I—”

The figure chuckled again. “No, ‘deed! No, seh! Alek Williams don’ know a hoss! ‘Deed he don’t. He don’ know a hoss from a pig.” The laugh that followed was like the rattle of pebbles.

Trescott turned and looked sternly and coldly at the dim form in the gloom from the buggy-top. “Henry,” he said, “I didn’t say anything about horses. I was saying—”

“Hoss? Hoss?” said the quavering voice from these near shadows. “Hoss? ‘Deed I don’ know all erbout a boss! ‘Deed I don’t.” There was a satirical chuckle.

At the end of three miles the mare slackened and the doctor leaned forward, peering, while holding tight reins. The wheels of the buggy bumped often over out-cropping bowlders. A window shone forth, a simple square of topaz on a great black hill-side. Four dogs charged the buggy with ferocity, and when it did not promptly retreat, they circled courageously around the flanks, baying. A door opened near the window in the hill-side, and a man came and stood on a beach of yellow light.

“Yah! yah! You Roveh! You Susie! Come yah! Come yah this minit!”

Trescott called across the dark sea of grass, “Hello, Alek!”

“Hello!”

“Come down here and show me where to drive.”

The man plunged from the beach into the surf, and Trescott could then only trace his course by the fervid and polite ejaculations of a host who was somewhere approaching. Presently Williams took the mare by the head, and uttering cries of welcome and scolding the swarming dogs, led the equipage towards the lights. When they halted at the door and Trescott was climbing out, Williams cried, “Will she stand, docteh?”

“She’ll stand all right, but you better hold her for a minute. Now, Henry.” The doctor turned and held both arms to the dark figure. It crawled to him painfully like a man going down a ladder. Williams took the mare away to be tied to a little tree, and when he returned he found them awaiting him in the gloom beyond the rays from the door.

He burst out then like a siphon pressed by a nervous thumb. “Hennery! Hennery, ma ol’ frien’. Well, if I ain’ glade. If I ain’ glade!”

Trescott had taken the silent shape by the arm and led it forward into the full revelation of the light. “Well, now, Alek, you can take Henry and put him to bed, and in the morning I will—”

Near the end of this sentence old Williams had come front to front with Johnson. He gasped for a second, and then yelled the yell of a man stabbed in the heart.

For a fraction of a moment Trescott seemed to be looking for epithets. Then he roared: “You old black chump! You old black — Shut up! Shut up! Do you hear?”

Williams obeyed instantly in the matter of his screams, but he continued in a lowered voice: “Ma Lode amassy! Who’d ever think? Ma Lode amassy!”

Trescott spoke again in the manner of a commander of a battalion. “Alek!”

The old negro again surrendered, but to himself he repeated in a whisper, “Ma Lode!” He was aghast and trembling.

As these three points of widening shadows approached the golden doorway a hale old negress appeared there, bowing. “Good-evenin’, docteh! Good-evenin’! Come in! come in!” She had evidently just retired from a tempestuous struggle to place the room in order, but she was now bowing rapidly. She made the effort of a person swimming.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Mary,” said Trescott, entering. “I’ve brought Henry for you to take care of, and all you’ve got to do is to carry out what I tell you.” Learning that he was not followed, he faced the door, and said, “Come in, Henry.”

Johnson entered. “Whee!” shrieked Mrs. Williams. She almost achieved a back somersault. Six young members of the tribe of Williams made a simultaneous plunge for a position behind the stove, and formed a wailing heap.

XIII

“You know very well that you and your family lived usually on less than three dollars a week, and now that Dr. Trescott pays you five dollars a week for Johnson’s board, you live like millionaires. You haven’t done a stroke of work since Johnson began to board with you — everybody knows that — and so what are you kicking about?”

The judge sat in his chair on the porch, fondling his cane, and gazing down at old Williams, who stood under the lilac-bushes. “Yes, I know, jedge,” said the negro, wagging his head in a puzzled manner. “Tain’t like as if I didn’t ‘preciate what the docteh done, but — but — well, yeh see, jedge,” he added, gaining a new impetus, “it’s — it’s hard wuk. This ol’ man nev’ did wuk so hard. Lode, no.”

“Don’t talk such nonsense, Alek,” spoke the judge, sharply. “You have never really worked in your life — anyhow, enough to support a family of sparrows, and now when you are in a more prosperous condition than ever before, you come around talking like an old fool.”

The negro began to scratch his head. “Yeh see, jedge,” he said at last, “my ol’ ‘ooman she cain’t ‘ceive no lady callahs, nohow.”

“Hang lady callers’” said the judge, irascibly. “If you have flour in the barrel and meat in the pot, your wife can get along without receiving lady callers, can’t she?”

“But they won’t come ainyhow, jedge,” replied Williams, with an air of still deeper stupefaction. “Noner ma wife’s frien’s ner noner ma frien’s ‘ll come near ma res’dence.”

“Well, let them stay home if they are such silly people.”

The old negro seemed to be seeking a way to elude this argument, but evidently finding none, he was about to shuffle meekly off. He halted, however. “Jedge,” said he, “ma ol’ ‘ooman’s near driv’ abstracted.”

“Your old woman is an idiot,” responded the judge.

Williams came very close and peered solemnly through a branch of lilac. “Judge,” he whispered, “the chillens.”

“What about them?”

Dropping his voice to funereal depths, Williams said, “They — they cain’t eat.”

“Can’t eat!” scoffed the judge, loudly. “Can’t eat! You must think I am as big an old fool as you are. Can’t eat — the little rascals! What’s to prevent them from eating?”

In answer, Williams said, with mournful emphasis, “Hennery.” Moved with a kind of satisfaction at his tragic use of the name, he remained staring at the judge for a sign of its effect.

The judge made a gesture of irritation. “Come, now, you old scoundrel, don’t beat around the bush any more. What are you up to? What do you want? Speak out like a man, and don’t give me any more of this tiresome rigamarole.”