THE JUDGMENT OF MAN
BY
JAMES HOPPER
_Copyright_, 1906, by McClure, Phillips and Company
Reprinted from _Caybigan_ by permission
WE WERE sitting around the big center table in the _sala_ of the "Houseof Guests" in Ilo-Ilo. We were teachers from Occidental Negros. It wasnear Christmas; we had left our stations for the holidays--the cholerahad just swept them and the aftermath was not pleasant tocontemplate--and so we were leaning over the polished _narra_ table,sipping a sweet, false Spanish wine from which we drew, not a convivialspirit, but rather a quiet, reflective gloom. All the shell shutterswere drawn back; we could see the tin-roofed city gleam and crackle withthe heat, and beyond the lithe line of cocoanuts, the iridescent sea,tugging the heart with offer of coolness. But, all of us, we knew thepromise to be Fake, monumental Fake, knew the alluring depths to be hotas corruption, and full of sharks.
Somebody in a monotonous voice was cataloguing the dead, enumeratingthose of us who had been conquered by the climate, by the work, orthrough their own inward flaws. He mentioned Miller with some sort ofdisparaging gesture, and then Carter of Balangilang, who had been verysilent, suddenly burst into speech with singular fury.
"Who are you, to judge him?" he shouted. "Who are you, eh? Who are we,anyway, to judge him?"
Headlong outbursts from Carter were nothing new to us, so we took nooffense. Finally some one said, "Well, he's dead," with that tone thatsignifies final judgment, the last, best, most charitable thing whichcan be said of the man being weighed.
But Carter did not stop there. "You didn't know him, did you?" he asked."You didn't know him; tell me now, _did_ you know him?" He was stillextraordinarily angry.
We did not answer. Really, we knew little of the dead man--exceptingthat he was mean and small, and not worth knowing. He was mean, and hewas a coward; and to us in our uncompromising youth these were just theunpardonable sins. Because of that we had left him alone; yes, come tothink of it, very much alone. And we knew little about him.
"Here, I'll tell you what I know," Carter began again, in a moreconciliatory tone; "I'll tell you everything I know of him." He lit acheroot.
"I first met him right here in Ilo-Ilo. I had crossed over for supplies;he was fresh from Manila and wanted to get over to Bacolod to report tothe Sup. and be assigned to his station. When I saw him he was on the_muelle_, surrounded by an army of bluffing _cargadores_. About twelveof them had managed to get a finger upon his lone carpet-bag while itwas being carried down the gang-plank, and each and all of them wantedto get paid for the job. He was in a horrible pickle; couldn't speak aword of Spanish or Visayan. And the first thing he said when I hadextricated him, thanks to my vituperative knowledge of these sweettongues, was: 'If them niggahs, seh, think Ah'm a-goin' to learn theircussed lingo, they're mahtily mistaken, seh!'
"After that remark, coming straight from the heart, I hardly needed tobe told that he was from the South. He was from Mississippi. He wasgaunt, yellow, malarial, and slovenly. He had 'teached' for twentyyears, he said, but in spite of this there was about him somethingindescribably rural, something of the sod--not the dignity, thesturdiness of it, but rather of the pettiness, the sordidness of it. Itshowed in his dirty, flapping garments, his unlaced shoes, his stubblebeard, in his indecent carelessness in expectorating the tobacco he wasceaselessly chewing. But these, after all, were some of his minortraits. I was soon to get an inkling of one of his major ones--hisprodigious meanness. For when I rushed about and finally found a lorchathat was to sail for Bacolod and asked him to chip in with me onprovisions, he demurred.
"'Ah'd like to git my own, seh,' he said in that decisive drawl of his.
"'All right,' I said cheerfully, and went off and stocked up for two. Myinstinct served me well. When, that evening, Miller walked up thegang-plank, he carried only his carpet-bag, and that was flat andhungry-looking as before. The next morning he shared my provisionscalmly and resolutely, with an air, almost, of conscious duty. Well, letthat go; before another day I was face to face with his other flamingcharacteristic.
"Out of Ilo-Ilo we had contrary winds at first; all night the lorcha--anold grandmother of a craft, full of dry-rot spots as big aswoodpeckers' nests--flapped heavily about on impotent tacks, and whenthe sun rose we found ourselves on the same spot from which we hadwatched its setting. Toward ten o'clock, however, the monsoon veered,and, wing-and-wing, the old boat, creaking in every joint as if she hadthe dengue, grunted her way over flashing combers with a speed thatseemed almost indecent. Then, just as we were getting near enough tocatch the heated glitter of the Bacolod church-dome, to see the goldenthread of beach at the foot of the waving cocoanuts, the wind fell,slap-bang, as suddenly as if God had said hush--and we stuck there,motionless, upon a petrified sea.
"I didn't stamp about and foam at the mouth; I'd been in these climestoo long. As for Miller, he was from Mississippi. We picked out acomparatively clean spot on the deck, near the bow; we lay down on ourbacks and relaxed our beings into infinite patience. We had been thusfor perhaps an hour; I was looking up at a little white cloud thatseemed receding, receding into the blue immensity behind it. Suddenly anoise like thunder roared in my ears. The little cloud gave a great leapback into its place; the roar dwindled into the voice of Miller, inplaintive, disturbed drawl. 'What the deuce are the niggahs doing?' hewas saying.
"And certainly the behavior of that Visayan crew was worthy of question.Huddled quietly at the stern, one after another they were springing overthe rail into the small boat that was dragging behind, and even as Ilooked the last man disappeared with the painter in his hand. At thesame moment I became aware of a strange noise. Down in the bowels ofthe lorcha a weird, gentle commotion was going on, a multitudinous'gluck-gluck' as of many bottles being emptied. A breath of hot, mustyair was sighing out of the hatch. Then the sea about the poop began torise,--to rise slowly, calmly, steadily, like milk in a heated pot.
"'By the powers,' I shouted, 'the old tub is going down!'
"It was true. There, upon the sunlit sea, beneath the serene sky,silently, weirdly, unprovoked, the old boat, as if weary, was sinking inone long sigh of lassitude. And we, of course, were going with it. A fewyards away from the stern-post was the jolly-boat with the crew. Ilooked at them, and in my heart I could not condemn them for their slydeparture; they were all there, _arraiz_, wife, children, and crew, soheaped together that they seemed only a meaningless tangle of arms andlegs and heads; the water was half an inch from the gunwale, and the oneman at the oars, hampered, paralyzed on all sides, was splashinghelplessly while the craft pivoted like a top. There was no anger in myheart, yet I was not absolutely reconciled to the situation. I searchedthe deck with my eyes, then from the jolly-boat the _arraiz_ obliginglyyelled, '_El biroto, el biroto_!'
"And I remembered the rotten little canoe lashed amidships. It didn'ttake us long to get it into the water (the water by that time was veryclose at hand). I went carefully into it first so as to steady it forMiller, and then, both of us at once, we saw that it would hold onlyone. The bottom, a hollowed log, was stanch enough, but the sides, madeof pitched bamboo lattice, were sagging and torn. It would hold onlyone.
"'Well, who is it?' I asked. In my heart there was no craven panic, butneither was there sacrifice. Some vague idea was in my mind, of decidingwho should get the place by some game of chance, tossing up a coin, forinstance.
"But Miller said, 'Ah cain't affawd to take chances, seh; you must gitout.'
"He spoke calmly, with great seriousness, but without undue emphasis--asone enunciating an uncontrovertible natural law. I glanced up into hisface, and it was in harmony with his voice. He didn't seem particularlyscared; he was serious, that's all; his eyes were set in that peculiar,wide-pupiled stare of the man contemplating his own fixed idea.
"'No, seh; Ah cain't affawd it,' he repeated.
"The absurdity of the thing suddenly tingled in me like wine. 'Allright!' I shouted, in a contagion of insanity; '
all right, take thedarned thing!'
"And I got out. I got out and let him step stiffly into the boat, whichI obligingly sent spinning from the lorcha with one long, strong kick.Then I was alone on the deck, which suddenly looked immense, stretchedon all sides, limitless as loneliness itself. A heavy torpor fell fromthe skies and amid this general silence, this immobility, the cabin dooralone seemed to live, live in weird manifestation. It had been leftopen, and now it was swinging and slamming to and fro jerkily, andshuddering from top to bottom. Half in plan, half in mere irritation atthis senseless, incessant jigging, I sprang toward it and with onenervous pull tore it, hinge and all, from the rotten woodwork. I heavedit over the side, went in head first after it, took a few strokes andlay, belly down, upon it. Just then the lorcha began to rise by thehead; the bowsprit went up slowly like a finger pointing solemnly toheaven; then, without a sound, almost instantaneously, the whole fabricdisappeared. Across the now unoccupied space Miller and I rushedsmoothly toward each other, as if drawn by some gigantic magnet; ourcrafts bumped gently, like two savages caressingly rubbing noses; theyswung apart a little and lay side by side, undulating slightly.
"And we remained there, little black specks upon the flashing sea. Twohundred yards away was the lorcha's boat; they had reshuffled themselvesmore advantageously and were pulling slowly toward land. Not twenty feetfrom me Miller sat upright in his canoe as if petrified. I was not sobadly off. The door floated me half out of water, and that was lukewarm,so I knew that I could stand it a long time. What bothered me, though,was that the blamed raft was not long enough; that is, the upper part ofmy body being heavier, it took more door to support it, so that my feetwere projecting beyond the lower edge, and every second or so thenibbling of some imaginary shark sent them flying up into the air inundignified gymnastics. The consoling part of it was that Miller waspaying no notice. He still sat up, rigid, in his canoe, clutching thesides stiffly and looking neither to right nor left. From where I lay Icould see the cords of his neck drawn taut, and his knuckles showingwhite.
"'Why the deuce don't you paddle to shore?' I shouted at length, takinga sudden disgust of the situation.
"He did not turn his head as he answered, 'Ah--Ah,' he stammered, thewords coming hard as hiccoughs out of his throat, 'Ah don't know haow.'
"'Drop the sides of your boat and try,' I suggested.
"He seemed to ponder carefully over this for a while. 'Ah think it'ssafer to stay this-a-way,' he decided finally.
"'But, good Lord, man,' I cried, angry at this calm stupidity, 'ifthat's what you're going to do, you'd better get on this door here andlet me take the boat. I'll paddle ashore and come back for you.'
"He turned his head slowly. He contemplated my raft long, carefully,critically.
"'Ah think Ah'll be safer heyah, seh,' he decided. 'It's a little bit o'old door, and Ah reckon they's a heap of sharks around.'
"After that I had little to say. Given the premises of the man, hisconclusions were unquestionable. And the premises were a selfishness sotranquil, so ingenuous, so fresh, I might say, that I couldn't work upthe proper indignation. It was something so perfect as to challengeadmiration. On the whole, however, it afforded a poor subject forconversation; so we remained there, taciturn, I on my door,half-submerged in the tepid water, my heels flung up over my back, he inhis dugout, rigid, his hands clutching the sides as if he were trying tohold up the craft out of the liquid abyss beneath.
"NOT TWENTY FEET FROM ME MILLER SAT UPRIGHT IN HIS CANOEAS IF PETRIFIED." FROM A PAINTING BY MERLE JOHNSON.]
"And thus we were still when, just as the sun was setting somberly, avelos full of chattering nativespicked us up. They landed us at Bacolod, and Miller left me to report tothe Sup. I departed before sun-up the next morning for my station. Ididn't want to see Miller again.
"But I did. One night he came floundering through my pueblo. It was inthe middle of the rainy season. He wasn't exactly caked with mud;rather, he seemed to ooze it out of every pore. He had been assigned toBinalbagan, ten miles further down. I stared when he told me this.Binalbagan was the worst post on the island, a musty, pestilential holewith a sullenly hostile population, and he--well, inefficiency wasbranded all over him in six-foot letters. I tried to stop him overnight,but he would not do it, and I saw him splash off in the darkness, gaunt,yellow, mournful.
"I saw little of him after that. I was busy establishing newbarrio-schools, which were to give me excuses for long horseback ridesof inspection. I felt his presence down there in that vague way by whichyou are aware of a person behind your back without turning around.Rumors of his doings reached me. He was having a horrible time. On thenight of his arrival he had been invited to dinner by the Presidente, akind old primitive soul, but when he found that he was expected to sitat the table with the family, he had stamped off, indignant, saying thathe didn't eat with no niggers. As I've said before, the town washostile, and this attitude did not help matters much. He couldn't getthe school moneys out of the Tesorero--an unmitigated rascal--but thatdid not make much difference, for he had no pupils anyhow. He couldn'tspeak a word of Spanish; no one in the town, of course, knew anyEnglish--he must have been horribly lonely. He began to wear _camisas_,like the natives. That's always a bad sign. It shows that the man hasdiscovered that there is no one to care how he dresses--that is, thatthere is no longer any public opinion. It indicates something subtlyworse--that the man has ceased looking at himself, that the _I_ hasceased criticising, judging, stiffening up the _me_,--in other words,that there is no longer any conscience. That white suit, I tell you, isa wonderful moral force; the white suit, put on fresh every morning,heavily starched, buttoned up to the chin, is like an armor,ironcladding you against the germ of decay buzzing about you,ceaselessly vigilant for the little vulnerable spot. Miller wore_camisas_, and then he began to go without shoes. I saw that myself. Iwas riding through his pueblo on my way to Dent's, and I passed hisschool. I looked into the open door as my head bobbed by at the heightof the stilt-raised floor. He was in his _camisa_ and barefooted; hislong neck stretched out of the collarless garment with a mournful,stork-like expression. Squatting on the floor were three trouserless,dirt-incrusted boys; he was pointing at a chart standing before theireyes, and all together they were shouting some word that exploded awaydown in their throats in tremendous effort and never seemed to reachtheir lips. I called out and waved my hand as I went by, and when Ilooked back, a hundred yards farther, I saw that he had come out uponthe bamboo platform outside of the door, gaping after me with his chinthrown forward in that mournful, stork-like way--I should have goneback.
"With him, I must say, the _camisa_ did not mean all that I havesuggested, not the sort of degradation of which it is the symbol inother men. The most extravagant imagination could not have linked himwith anything that smacked of romance, romance however sordid. Hisvices, I had sized it, would come rather from an excess of calculationthan from a lack of it. No, that _camisa_ was just a sign of hismeanness, his prodigious meanness. And of that I was soon given anextraordinary example.
"I had with me a young fellow named Ledesma, whom I was training to beassistant _maestro_. He was very bright, thirsty to learn, and extremelycurious of us white men. I don't believe that the actions of one ofthem, for fifty miles around, ever escaped him, and every day he came tome with some talk, some rumor, some gossip about my fellow-exiles whichhe would relate to me with those strange interrogative inflections thathe had brought from his native dialect into English--as if perpetuallyhe were seeking explanation, confirmation. One morning he said to me:'The _maestro_ Miller, he does not eat.'
"'No?' I answered, absent-mindedly.
"'No, he never eats,' he reiterated authoritatively, although thatpeculiar Visayan inflection of which I have spoken gave him the air ofasking a question.
"'Oh, I suppose he does,' I said, carelessly.
"'He does not eat,' he repeated. 'Every one in Binalbagan say so. Sincehe there, he has not bought anything at the store.'
"'His _muchachos_ bring him chicken,' I suggested.
"No, senor; he very funny; he has no _muchachos_; not one _muchacho_ hashe.'
"'Well, he probably has canned provisions sent him.'
"'No, senor; the _cargadores_ they say that never never have theycarried anything for him. He does not eat.'
"'Very well,' I concluded, somewhat amused; 'he does not eat.'
"The boy was silent for a minute, then, 'Senor Maestro,' he asked withsuspicious ingenuousness 'can Americans live without eating?'
"So that I was not able to drop the subject as easily as I wished. Andcoming to a forced consideration of it, I found that my anxiety to do sowas not very beautiful after all. A picture came to me--that of Milleron his bamboo platform before his door, gazing mournfully after me, hischin thrown forward. It did not leave me the day long, and at sundown Isaddled up and trotted off toward Binalbagan.
"I didn't reach the pueblo that night, however. Only a mile from it Iplunged out of the moonlight into the pitch darkness of a hollow lanecutting through Don Jaime's hacienda. Banana palms were growing thick toright and left; the way was narrow and deep--it was a fine place forcutthroats, but that avocation had lost much of its romantic charm fromthe fact that, not three weeks before, an actual cutthroating had takenplace, a Chinese merchant having been boloed by _tusilanes_. Well, I wastrotting through, my right hand somewhat close to my holster, when fromthe right, close, there came a soft, reiterated chopping noise. I pulledup my pony. The sound kept up--a discreet, persistent chopping; then Isaw, up above, the moonlit top of a palm shuddering, though all about itthe others remained motionless, petrified as if of solid silver. It wasa very simple thing after all: some one in there was cutting down a palmto get bananas, an occupation very common in the Philippines, and verypacific, in spite of the ominous air given to it by the gigantic boloused. However, something prompted me to draw the midnight harvester out.
"'Heh, _ladron_, what are you doing there?' I shouted in dialect.
"'There was a most sudden silence. The chopping ceased, the palm stoppedvibrating. A vague form bounded down the lane, right up against myhorse's nose, rolled over, straightened up again, and vanished into thedarkness ahead. Unconsciously I spurred on after it. For a hundred yardsI galloped with nothing in sight. Then I caught a rapid view of thething as it burst through a shaft of moonlight piercing the glade, andit showed as a man, a grotesque figure of a man in loose whitepantaloons. He was frightened, horribly frightened, all hunched up withthe frenzy to escape. An indistinct bundle was on his right shoulder.Like a curtain the dark snapped shut behind him again, but I urged onwith a wild hallo, my blood all a-tingle with the exultation of thechase. I gained--he must have been a lamentable runner, for my poorlittle pony was staggering under my tumultuous weight. I could hear himpant and sob a few yards in advance; then he came into sight, a dim,loping whiteness ahead. Suddenly the bundle left his shoulder; somethingrolled along the ground under my horse's hoofs--and I was standing onmy head in a soft, oozy place. I was mad, furiously mad. I picked myselfup, went back a few yards, and taking my pony by the nose picked _him_up. A touch of his throbbing flanks, however, warned me as I was puttingmy foot into the stirrup. I left him there and thundered on foot downthe lane. I have said I was mad. 'Yip-yip-yah-ah, yip-yip-yah-ah!' Iyelled as I dashed on--a yell I had heard among California cattlemen. Itmust have paralyzed that flying personage, for I gained upon himshockingly. I could hear him pant, a queer, patient panting, a sighrather, a gentle, lamenting sighing, and the white _camisa_ flappedghostily in the darkness. Suddenly he burst out of obscurity, past theplantation, into the glaring moonlight. And I--I stopped short, wentdown on my hands and knees, and crouched back into the shadow. For theman running was Miller; Miller, wild, sobbing, disheveled, his shouldersdrawn up to his ears in terrible weariness, his whole body taut withfear, and scudding, scudding away, low along the ground, his chinforward, mournful as a stork. Soon he was across the luminous space, andthen he disappeared into the darkness on the other side, flopped headfirst into it as if hiding his face in a pillow.
"I returned slowly to my horse. He was standing where I had left him,his four legs far apart in a wide base. Between them was the thing castoff by Miller which had thrown us. I examined it by the light of a boxof matches. It was a bunch of bananas, one of those gigantic clusterswhich can be cut from the palms. I got on my horse and rode back home.
"I didn't go to see him any more. A man who will steal bananas in acountry where they can be bought a dozen for one cent is too mean to beworth visiting. I had another reason, too. It had dawned on me thatMiller probably did not care to see any of us, that he had come down toa mode of life which would not leave him appreciative of confrontationswith past standards. It was almost charity to leave him to himself.
"So I left him to himself, and he lived on in his pestilential littlehole, alone--lived a life more squalid every day. It wasn't at all ahealthy life, you can understand, no healthier physically than morally.After a while I heard that he was looking bad, yellow as a lemon, andthe dengue cracking at his bones. I began to think of going to him afterall, of jerking him out of his rut by force, if necessary, making himrespect the traditions of his race. But just then came that Nicholsaffair, and flaring, his other bad side--his abjectcowardice--reappeared to me. You remember the Nichols thing--boloed inthe dark between my town and Himamaylan. His _muchacho_ had jumped intothe ditch. Afterward he got out and ran back the whole way, fifteenmiles, to my place. I started down there. My idea was to pick up Milleras I passed, then Dent a little further down, find the body, and perhapsindications for White of the constabulary, to whom I had sent amessenger and who could not reach the place till morning. Well, Millerrefused to go. He had caught hold of some rumor of the happening; he wasbarricaded in his hut and was sitting on his bed, a big Colt's revolveracross his knees. He would not go, he said it plainly. 'No, seh; Ahcain't take chances; Ah cain't affawd it.' He said this without muchfire, almost tranquilly, exactly as he had, you remember, at the time ofour shipwreck. It was not so amusing now, however. Here, on land, amidthis swarming, mysterious hostility, at this crisis, it seemed ashocking betrayal of the solidarity that bound all us white men. A redrage took possession of me. I stood there above him and poured outvituperation for five good minutes. I found the most extraordinaryepithets; I lowered my voice and pierced him with venomous thrusts. Hetook it all. He remained seated on his bed, his revolver across hisknees, looking straight at some spot on the floor; whenever I'd becomeparticularly effective he'd merely look harder at the spot, as if forhim it contained something of higher significance--a command, a rule, aprecept--I don't know what, and then he'd say, 'No, Ah cain't; Ah cain'taffawd it.'
"I burst out of there, a-roar like a bombshell. I rode down to Dent; werode down to the place and did--what there was to be done. Miller Inever wanted to see again.
"But I did. Some three weeks later a carrier came to me with a note--apenciled scrawl upon a torn piece of paper. It read:
"'I think I am dying. Can you come see me? 'MILLER.'
"I went down right away. He was dead. He had died there, alone, in hisfilthy little hut, in that God-forsaken pueblo, ten miles from thenearest white man, ten thousand miles from his home.
"I'll always remember our coming in. It was night. It had been rainingfor thirty-six hours, and as we stepped into the unlighted hut, my_muchacho_ and I, right away the floor grew sticky and slimy with themud on our feet, and as we groped about blindly, we seemed ankle-deep insomething greasy and abominable like gore. After a while the boy got atorch outside, and as he flared it I caught sight of Miller on his cot,backed up into one corner. He was sitting upright, staring straightahead and a little down, as if in careful consideration. As I steppedtoward him the pliable bamboo floor undulated; the movement was carriedto him and he began to nod, very gently and gravely. He seemed to besaying: 'No, Ah cain't affawd it.' It was atrocious. Finally I was byhis side and he was again motionless, staring thoughtfully. Then I sawhe
was considering. In his hands, which lay twined on his knees, were alot of little metallic oblongs. I disengaged them. The _muchacho_ drewnearer, and with the torch over my shoulder I examined them. They werephotographs, cheap tintypes. The first was of a woman, a poor being,sagging with overwork, a lamentable baby in her arms. The other pictureswere of children--six of them, boys and girls, of all ages from twelveto three, and under each, in painful chirography, a name waswritten--Lee Miller, Amy Miller, Geraldine Miller, and so on.
"You don't understand, do you? For a moment I didn't. I stared stupidlyat those tintypes, shuffled and reshuffled them; the torch roared in myear. Then, suddenly, understanding came to me, sharp as a pang. He had awife and seven children.
"A simple fact, wasn't it, a commonplace one, almost vulgar, you mightsay. And yet what a change of view produced by it, what a dislocation ofjudgment! I was like a man riding through a strange country, in a storm,at night. It is dark, he cannot see, he has never seen the country, yetas he rides on he begins to picture to himself the surroundings, hisimagination builds for him a landscape--a mountain there, a river here,wind-streaming trees over there--and right away it exists, it _is_, ithas solidity, mass, life. Then suddenly comes a flash of lightning, asecond of light, and he is astounded, absolutely astounded to see thereal landscape different from that indestructible thing that his mindhad built. Thus it was with me. I had judged, oh, I had judged himthoroughly, sized him up to a certainty, and bang, came the flare ofthis new fact, this extremely commonplace fact, and I was all off. Imust begin to judge again, only it would never do that man any good.
"A hundred memories came back to me, glared at me in the illumination ofthat new fact. I remember the _camisa_, the bare feet. I saw him runningdown the lane with his bunch of stolen bananas. I recalled that absurdscene on the waters; I heard him say: 'No, seh; Ah cain't affawd to takechances; Ah cain't affawd it.'
"Of course he couldn't afford it. Think--a wife and seven children!
"That night I went through his papers, putting things in order, and fromevery leaf, every scrap, came corroboration of the new fact. He was oneof those pitiful pedagogues of the rural South, shiftless,half-educated, inefficient. He had never been able to earn much, andhis family had always gently starved. Then had come the chance--thegolden chance--the Philippines and a thousand a year. He had taken thebait, had come ten thousand miles to the spot of his maximum value.Only, things had not gone quite right. Thanks to the beautiful red-tapeof the department, three months had gone before he had received hisfirst month's pay. Then it had come in Mex., and when he had succeededin changing it into gold it had dwindled to sixty dollars. Of course, hehad sent it all back, for even then it would take it six more weeks toreach its destination, and sixty dollars is hardly too much to tide overfive months for a family of eight. These five months had to be caught upin some way, so every month his salary, depreciated ten per cent by thechange, had gone across the waters. He wore _camisas_ and no shoes, hestole bananas. And his value, shoeless, _camisa_-clothed, was sixtydollars a month. He was just so much capital. He had to be careful ofthat capital.
"'Ah cain't affawd to take chances; Ah cain't affawd it.' Of course hecouldn't.
"And so he had fought on blindly, stubbornly, and, at last, with thatpitiful faculty we have, all of us, of defeating our own plans, he hadkilled himself, he had killed the capital, the golden goose.
"Yes, I found confirmation, but, after all, I did not need it. I hadlearned it all; understanding had come to me, swift, sharp, vital as apang, when in the roaring light of the torch I had looked upon the palelittle tintypes, the tintypes of Lee and Amy and Jackson andGeraldine."