Mortimer was our pretense to exalted learning in South Kenton. He knew several languages and had a tremendous library. He was an encyclopedia of knowledge and misinformation. If he did not know the answer to a question he never let anyone suspect it, though his ignorance could be detected in an increased pompousness and severity. There was something rather pathetic about the man, though he would have been enraged had anyone remarked on it.
One day there occurred something that had in it deep significance, the key to all of Dan Hendricks’ character, though I was too young then to know it. Perhaps Mortimer guessed it, for he was not dull, and perhaps that was the reason he was always more gentle with Dan after that.
Dan had the run of Mortimer’s house and was forever borrowing books from the schoolmaster’s library. I did not know that for a long time, for children are not concerned with books. I was compelled to remain after school one afternoon, and Dan remained also, waiting for me, for we walked the same way home. Dan sat on his bench across the room, reading with a sort of steady fierceness. I scratched on a slate wet with my own tears. Then Dan carried his book to Mortimer, who was frowningly reading on his platform.
“What does this mean, Mr. Rugby, sir?” he asked. “This: ‘Ma guarda e passa.’ It’s in this book. It’s a foreign language. I expect.”
Mortimer took the book with impatient dignity and stared at the words. He cleared his throat, and the jaundiced tint of his complexion became touched with pinkish brown. It was evident that he was having difficulty in translating. Then he handed the book back to Dan loftily. “It means,” he said, “‘Look and pass.’”
Dan looked dreamily at the book. “Look and pass,” he repeated vaguely.
Mortimer passed his hand rapidly over his face, and swung his foot.
“Well, boy, do you know what that means?”
Dan seemed to ponder. All at once his face looked old, much older than Mr. Rugby’s, though the latter’s hair was turning whiter every month, and wore the half-petulant, half-bellicose expression of those who remark the passage of the years resentfully.
“Yes, sir, I think I do,” replied Dan thoughtfully. His grimy finger moved over the words in the book. “‘Look and pass.’ Maybe it don’t—doesn’t—mean the same thing to everybody, but to me it seems like it means—being born and living and dying. You—you just sort of—look and pass. That’s all you can ever do in life. It don’t matter if you work or don’t work, or amount to anything, or don’t amount to anything, or run about like you had a fever, or just set. None of us can do more than that: look and pass.”
I remember now the peculiar quality of silence that followed his words, as though everything pondered them, the dusty schoolroom with the rows of shabby and disordered benches, the sun at the window, the bright shining of the sky outside, and the deep October coloring of the wide country under it. Mortimer Rugby seemed to ponder it. He had started to draw his hand over his face again in his old, nervous, impatient gesture, but the hand never completed its journey. It lay as if violently arrested over the lower part of his face, hiding his mouth and chin but leaving the restless and pathetic fierceness of his eyes glinting out over it. For a long time the silence continued.
Mortimer’s foot had stopped its incessant and gentle swinging, like a pendulum halted in its arc. He cleared his throat; he had difficulty in clearing it properly, for the harsh sound rent the silence several times before he could speak. I was surprised at the muffled quality of his voice.
“Well, Dan. If folks thought that all the time, kept it in mind, it would paralyze everything, y’see. Folks would realize nothing was worth trying for, or doing. We’d all just ‘set,’ as you say. But what about ambition, ideals, justice, trying to right wrong things, trying to make beauty out of ugliness?”
Dan smiled faintly. Again I was impressed by the fact that he looked older than Mortimer, who waited for the boy’s next words with a kind of humble anxiety.
“It don’t—doesn’t seem to change it, sir,” he said, as though he groped for the proper words. “Julius Caesar or Napoleon, Galileo or Darwin, Goethe or Shakespeare; all they could do was come, look, and comment on things, and then pass. Failure or success: they don’t mean anything. You can’t get any closer to life than a bug can, and when you’re dead you have done just what the bug did, get born, look at something you can’t understand, and pass —die.”
A man’s ambition and inherent passions are not always in exact ratio to his endowments. I know now that the zeal and the devotion and the aspirations of a Shakespeare had burned madly in our poor and mediocre Mortimer Rugby, that his comprehension of beauty and splendor had not been less because he had been able to cast only a poor and shabby shadow on paper. I know now that he must have suffered subjectively all his life, because his fingers and tongue had no finenesses, because he had been compelled to stare mutely at eternities and emit only a despairing squawk as he had tried to join in the terrible symphony. He had looked at colossuses standing in the ruck of time, hating himself for his little stature, but reverencing the pedestals on which he had been unable to climb. In this, he was much unlike our present-day artists who cast mud on the pediments they can never stand upon. And I think now that his poor and bewildered spirit was comforted by Dan’s words, that peace came to him, that he felt himself a spectator among the gods who are themselves only spectators.
He was silent again for a long time after Dan had spoken. His hand dropped from his face, and it showed itself naked, stripped of little affectations and dignities that he had worn to shield himself against others. I think there were tears in his eyes, for they were suddenly filmed and obscure, as though he wept internally even while he was comforted.
He stood up and laid his hand on Dan’s shoulder. He tried to speak, but did not. He began to pat Dan’s shoulder inarticulately, over and over. Then he picked up his hat and strode out of the room on his long and wavering black legs.
I was amazed at my sudden release. I had not understood the conversation. Dan was always saying queer things. I shouted and threw my slate across the room, and leapt up.
“Old Daddy-long-legs must’ve got a bellyache!” I exclaimed. “Guess I can get out of here now. Looks like he forgot us.”
“I expect he did,” said Dan mildly.
We walked home together under the brilliant blue of the October sky. Maples burned scarlet on the hillsides; zinnias and asters clustered violently in every white-fenced garden that we passed. The very air burned, and tingled with poured light; the wind smelled spicy and exciting. We raced along the roads on carpets of hot dust, rejoicing in the heat of the sun on our faces even though we knew that winter was coming. Along the quiet streets the painted trees were motionless; we pulled a surreptitious apple or two that hung over the sun-hot stone walls. The last breath of summer seemed more exciting, more delightful to us, than July and August. It was as though we were stealing grapes in a vineyard, with the pickers close behind us.
Dan had been taking lessons from Mrs. Faire for nearly four years now; today was Thursday, so we stopped in at the little white house under its great trees. The grass was already brown, but still warm to our feet, and as we went up the flagged walk, colored leaves fell from the fading trees and crackled under our step.
To our dismay we discovered that Mrs. Bingham, Livy’s mother, was calling on Sarah Faire, accompanied by Mrs. Burnett and Mrs. Knowles. I never did like Livy’s mother, who was a tall woman with a decided attitude and a prim and bigoted manner of speaking. She always looked as though she expected you to say something indecent, and often, indeed, she prompted hapless wretches to say appalling things which they had never intended to say and perhaps had never even thought. She sat there in Mrs. Faire’s gay little parlor, stiff in black mohair, holding a white handkerchief as she always did, as though preparing to put it to her lips in horror. She had a preening motion to her head, as if what she had said recently covered all matters, and any dissent would put the dissenter in a contemptible position. Mrs
. Knowles was a bright little body, and her red merino dress seemed to add a sharper brightness to her small, pert face. Mrs. Burnett was constantly aware of her position in the village as the mayor’s wife; she was a dull, stout clod of a woman with all the meanness and malicious impudence of her kind. She curried favor in spite of her airs; there was something cringing even in her haughtiness, something defensive in the cold and lightlessness of her pale eyes. She could not seem to forget that she had been only a hired girl in her youth, and that the unexpected and fortunate death of a miserly uncle had been the only thing that had turned the poor but ambitious eyes of Sam Burnett upon her.
Sarah looked subdued as she always did in the condescending company of the great ladies, though I know now that this was sheer hypocrisy and she was only gently amused. I also know that despite Mrs. Bingham’s bigotry and stupidity and Mrs. Burnett’s vicious malice, Sarah really did not dislike them the way she disliked Mrs. Knowles. She could hold her own with them, with her sweetness, deference, and eagerness to please. But in the face of Mrs. Knowles’s sharp pertness and intelligence and briskness she felt too feminine, too useless and ignorant. Mrs. Knowles made her feel untidy and planless, a sort of little painted butterfly who had no real use in a utilitarian world. She knew that Mrs. Knowles had contempt for her gentle femininity, that she watched all her graceful little ways with amusedly lifted brows and knowing slyness. Mrs. Knowles had a mind of her own, spoke of men with casual indulgence, and despised female wiles. In these times she would have been an active clubwoman, a businesswoman with men working hatingly under her. She was far in advance of her times, and because of her lack of charm, (though she was handsome in a wholesome and masculine way) she had never had a suitor after her harried husband’s death.
Sarah caught sight of our dismayed faces at one of the parlor windows, and she laughed at us gaily.
“Come in, boys,” she called. “No one’s going to eat you.”
We came in, shuffling our feet. The ladies looked at us with the frank annoyance most adults feel in the presence of adolescents. Sarah laughed and then looked grave.
“I’m sorry, Dan, but I can’t give you your lesson today,” she said with real regret.
“That’s all right, ma’am,” he mumbled. His face was red.
“But you must stay and have some cake and coffee,” said Sarah eagerly. She never talked to us children as an adult, but as one of us, and she gave us the same courtesy which she gave those of her own age. “Bee’s out in the kitchen now, cutting the cake.”
I wanted the cake, and the coffee smelled overwhelmingly attractive as its odor curled insinuatingly into the little parlor. I tugged at Dan’s arm.
“If you don’t mind, Mis’ Faire, we’ll eat in the kitchen,” I said. Sarah looked hurt; I knew it was not mere affectation. But Mrs. Bingham waved her handkerchief dismissingly.
“Run along, boys,” she said loftily. We went into the warm bareness and brightness of the big kitchen. Bee was there, cutting cake as her mother had said. It was still warm, and, bursting with raisins, it smelled spicy. She glanced up at us as we came in and smiled her secret smile. She looked oddly like her mother as she stood at the white table, and Dan stared at her as though seeing her for the first time. She and Dan were nearly of an age, about sixteen, then, and she had all the gracefulness and prettiness of early girlhood. She really had beauty, I must admit that, with her bright hair and clear skin and lovely figure which all the bunches and buttons of the period could not hide.
“Your ma said we could have some cake and coffee out here, Bee,” I said. I spoke boldly as I always spoke to Beatrice, for she made me feel inferior and uncouth as she did almost all of us.
She shrugged. “Well, don’t drink all the coffee and eat up all the cake,” she replied. “We’ve got to have some for supper.” Her voice was light like her mother’s, but did not have its music or tender inflections. She carried a tray out of the room, her shoulders set contemptuously. She had not looked at Dan directly; it were as though she had been unaware of his presence.
In spite of Beatrice, I ate immensely of the cake and drank two cups of coffee. The cream stood clotted in its little yellow pitcher, and I scraped it out with enjoyment. I liked the contrast of the blue plates against the red tablecloth; I basked in the warmth of the brightly polished range.
But Dan scarcely ate anything. He looked abstracted, and rolled a crumb of cake between his thumb and forefinger. He seemed to be listening; now I know that he was listening to Sarah’s sweet laugh and happy voice. When Beatrice came back into the kitchen, moving with her silent correctness, he started.
“Ma says she wants you two to come into the parlor, if you’ve finished,” she said indifferently. We shoved back our chairs; we had no desire to go into that room, but I think that Dan would have gone into a lion’s den for a glimpse of Sarah.
The ladies were standing up, pulling on their gloves. They glanced at us severely and with absent disapproval, which seems to be the stock expression of adults in the presence of youth. Sarah put her hand on Dan’s arm, and he looked at it as though bemused. It was such a little white hand, with needle marks roughening the fingers.
“Mrs. Bingham wants me to make you come to church, Dan,” she said affectionately. “I’ve told her how good you are at music, and she thinks I ought to be a good influence on you. So, I’ve just about promised her that you will come to church next Sunday with Bee and me.”
I expected instant revolt, but to my amazement Dan nodded silently. He would have done more than that to please Sarah.
Mrs. Bingham breathed deeply through her nose. “There, you see, Sarah, you were all wrong,” she said severely. “Of course the boy will come. He needs Christian instruction and training.”
Sarah said nothing; she continued to smile, and now she patted Dan’s arm. But in spite of the smile her eyes were a little sad.
We stayed for a few moments after the ladies had gone.
Sarah still seemed uneasy. She acted as though she felt that in some way she had betrayed Dan.
“You don’t have to go to church if you don’t want to, Dan,” she insisted.
“But I do want to go—with you,” he answered almost with the indulgence he would give a child. Still she did not seem satisfied.
“I never took church, nor religion, to be very important,” she said gravely. “I go because folks expect me to. Not that I really care whether they like what I do or not, but it makes them happier for me to do like them, so it isn’t very much for me to do.”
“Besides, go to church, be respectable, and your friends’ll see to it that you are comfortable,” said Bee. She spoke so rarely that when she did speak it was as though an alien voice had suddenly intruded itself, and it startled us. We stared at her, blinking. She was smiling, and her pretty white teeth glinted between her lips. Her eyes glinted also, their brown flecked with dancing amber sparks of malice. Upon her whole face sparkled the sharpness of her intelligence, in which there was something gnomish and cunning. It was as if she understood all our obscure and fumbling hypocrisies and weaknesses, and found them acidly amusing.
“Oh, Bee, you mustn’t say that!” murmured Sarah uneasily. The old shadow crept back over her face. “We don’t do right things or kind things just to have people approve of us, or to get them to do nice things for us.”
“Don’t you?” Bee’s voice was light and mockingly surprised. She turned to Dan and myself; we were both abjectly uncomfortable, which no doubt she well knew. “I don’t know about you, Jim; you’re a sort of lumbering calf, but Dan, here, reads quite a lot. I suppose you’ve read Vanity Fair, Dan.”
“Yes.” he mumbled. Bee laughed.
“Doesn’t Mama remind you of Amelia, who could never find anything wrong with anyone, and who used to substitute a dimple or a blush for reason? Poor Amelia. But still, I think she got too much for what she was; Becky Sharp was really badly abused.”
I know now that she thought of herself as another Becky
Sharp, and conducted herself accordingly; Bee, too, was ruthless, amused, cynical, and avaricious. But Becky Sharp had had her moments of kindness and hard sympathy; Bee never had such moments.
Sarah, though she had not understood much of Bee’s words, looked downcast and a little shrunken. But Bee was in a flush of high spirits, the first I had ever seen in her.
There was something elated and eerie about her rare good tempers, something gloating and incomprehensible to simpler organisms. If she made an amusing sally, and we laughed, I felt that she laughed at us and not with us, that she found something ridiculous in our slow gestures and less complicated minds. When psychoanalysis began to afflict the world, Livy asked me if there could have been some “complex” or “repression” or “inhibition” in Bee. But by that time I had had many years experience in doctoring sick minds and sick bodies, and I knew there was nothing sick about Bee’s brain or body. If she was abnormal, so is a rattlesnake abnormal. Both are healthy specimens of their type. It is the comfortable custom for people to say that an evil thing is abnormal; but an evil thing or man or woman is just as rounded and complete in characteristics of its type as in a more normal creature. And I will say this for Bee: if the world were peopled by her type, there might be few loyalties and fewer kindnesses, very small compassion and smaller mercy, but there would be no superstitions, no monstrous ideals, no “righteous” wars. Perhaps a world composed of such as she might be a little interesting, at any rate.
“You are young yet, Bee,” said Sarah hesitatingly, with the darkness in her eyes again. “You don’t understand that folks at heart are all scared, scared of life and mysteries and all the things they can’t understand. So they all bunch up like cattle huddled together, frightened, in a barnyard, and they like to feel the warm hides of their own kind pressing against them. It sort of gives them a feeling that they are safe from all those strange things outside the barnyard. But when someone comes along, and laughs at their scaredness, and threatens to open the gate so that all those strange things outside can rush in on the poor beasts, why, they start to mill around and snort and stamp, and they might hurt that someone with their frightened stamping. So you see, it don’t hurt to pretend, at least, that you are just as scared as they are, and press yourself up against them, and pretend to believe as they believe. It’s just kind of human, and sympathetic, and pitiful.”