The Spread Eagle and Other Stories

G >> Gouverneur Morris >> The Spread Eagle and Other Stories

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16

"I've got to be," said Fitz. "I'm a bank clerk on a two weeks' vacation,
of which the first day is gone."

She was sorry that he was a bank clerk; it had a poor and meagre sound.
It was not for him that she had been trained. She had been made to slave
for herself, and was to make a "continental" marriage with the highest
bidder. Eve's heart had been pretty well schooled out of her, and yet,
before dinner came to an end, she found herself wishing that among the
high bidders might be one very young, like the man at her side, with
eyes as honest, and who, to express admiration, beat about no bushes.

Later, when they said good-by, Fitz said:

"It would be good for me to see you to-morrow."

And she said:

"Would it be good for _me_?" and laughed.

"Yes," he said firmly, "it would."

"Why?" she asked.

"To-morrow at four," said Fitz, "I shall come for you and take you
around the Cliff Walk and tell you."

She made no promise. But the next day, when Fitz called at the cottage
which Mrs. Burton, by scraping and saving these many years, had managed
to take for the season, Eve was at home--and she was alone.

VI

Newport, as a whole, was busy preparing for the national lawn-tennis
championship. There was a prince to be pampered and entertained, and
every night, from the door of some great house or other, a strip of red
carpet protruded, covered by an awning, and the coming and going of
smart carriages on Bellevue Avenue seemed double that of the week
before. But the affair between James Holden--who was nobody knew who,
and came from nobody knew exactly where--and Newport's reigning beauty
held the real centre of the stage.

Beautiful though Eve was, natural and unaffected though she seemed,
people had but to glance at Mrs. Burton's old, hard, humorless, at once
anxious and triumphant face to know that the girl, willing or not, was a
victim prepared for sacrifice. Confessedly poor, obviously extravagant
and luxury-loving, even the rich men who wanted to marry her knew that
Eve must consider purses more than hearts. And they held themselves
cynically off and allowed what was known as "Holden's pipe-dream" to run
its course. It amused those who wanted Eve, those who thought they did,
and all those who loved a spectacle. "He will go back to his desk
presently," said the cynics, "and that will be the end of that." The
hero of the pipe-dream thought this at times himself. Well, if it turned
out that way Eve was not worth having. He believed that she had a heart,
that if her heart were touched she would fling her interests to the
winds and obey its dictates.

What Eve thought during the first few days of Holden's pipe-dream is not
clearly known. She must have been greatly taken with him, or she would
not have allowed him to interfere with her plans for personal
advancement and aggrandizement, to make a monopoly of her society, and
to run his head so violently into a stone wall. After the first few
days, when she realized that she liked to be with him better than with
any one she had ever known, she probably thought--or to that
effect--"I'll just pretend a little--and have it to remember." But she
found herself lying awake at night, wishing that he was rich; and later,
not even wishing, just lying awake and suffering. She had made up her
mind some time since to accept Darius O'Connell before the end of the
season. He had a prodigious fortune, good habits, and a kind Irish way
with him. And she still told herself that it must be O'Connell, and she
lay awake and thought about Fitz and suffered.

Mrs. Burton alone hadn't a kind thought or word for him. Her face
hardened at the mere mention of his name, and sometimes, when she saw a
certain expression that came oftener and oftener into Eve's face, that
callous which served her for a heart turned harder than Nature had made
it, and she saw all her schemes and all her long labors demolished like
a house of cards. Even if Eve flung Fitz aside like an old glove, as
inevitably she must, still Mrs. Burton's schemes would wear a tinge of
failure. The girl had shown that the heart was not entirely educated
out of her, and was frightening her mother. Even if things went no
further, here was partial failure. She had intended to make an
inevitably rising force of Eve, and here at the very outset were
lassitude and a glance aside at false gods.

Fitz was stubbornly resolved to win Eve on his merits or not to win her
at all. He had but to tell her his real name, or his father's, to turn
the balance of the hesitation and doubt; but that, he told himself,
would never, never do. She must turn aside from her training, love him
for himself, and believe, if only for a few hours, that she had thrown
herself away upon poverty and mediocrity, and be happy in it; or else
she must pass him by, and sweep on up the broad, cold stairway of her
own and her mother's ambitions.

But Fitz wanted her so much that he felt he must die if he lost her. And
sometimes he was tempted to tell her of his millions and take her for
better or worse. But he would never know then if she cared for him or
not; he would never know then if she had a real heart and was worth the
having. So he resisted, and his young face had, at times, a grim,
careworn look; and between hope and fear his spirits fell away and he
felt tired and old. People thought of him as an absurd boy in the most
desperate throes of puppy love, and certain ones felt grateful to Eve
Burton for showing them so pretty a bit of sport. Even those very
agreeable people, the Carrols, were disgusted with Fitz, as are all
good people when a guest of the house makes a solemn goose of himself.
But Fitz was not in the least ridiculous to himself, which was
important; and he was not ridiculous to Eve, which was more
important still.

Then, one morning, the whole affair began to look serious even to a
scoffing and cynical world. Darius O'Connell was missed at the Casino
and in the Reading-room; the evening papers announced that he had sailed
for Europe. And Miss Burton, far from appearing anxious or unhappy about
this, had never looked so beautiful or so serene. Some said that
O'Connell had made up his mind that the game was not worth the candle;
others, that he had proposed and had been "sent packing." Among these
latter was Mrs. Burton herself, and it will never be known what words of
abuse she poured upon Eve. If Mrs. Burton deserved punishment she was
receiving all that she deserved. Sick-headaches, despair, a vain, empty
life with its last hopes melting away. Eve--her Eve--her beautiful
daughter had a heart! That was the sum of Mrs. Burton's punishment. For
a while she resisted her fate and fought against it, and then collapsed,
bitter, broken, and old.

But what looked even more serious than O'Connell's removing himself was
the fact that during the match which was to decide the lawn-tennis
championship Eve and her bank clerk did not appear in the Casino
grounds. Here were met all the happy people, in society and all the
unhappy people--even Mrs. Burton's ashen face was noted among those
present--but the reigning belle and her young man were not in the seats
that they had occupied during the preceding days of the tournament; and
people pointed out those empty seats to each other, and smiled and
lifted their eyebrows; and young Tombs, who had been making furious love
to one of the Blackwell twins--for the third tournament in five
years--sighed and whispered to her: "Dolly, did you ever in your life
see two empty seats sitting so close to each other?"

Meanwhile, Fitz and the beauty were strolling along the Cliff Walk in
the bright sunshine, with the cool Atlantic breeze in their faces,
between lawns and gardens on the one side and dancing blue waves upon
the other. Fitz looked pale and careworn. But Eve looked ecstatic. This
was because poor Fitz, on the one hand, was still in the misery of doubt
and uncertainty, and because Eve, on the other, had suddenly made up her
mind and knew almost exactly what was going to happen.

The Cliff Walk belongs to the public, and here and there meanders
irritatingly over some very exclusive millionaire's front lawn. A few
such, unable to endure the sight of strangers, have caused this walk,
where it crosses their properties, to be sunk so that from the windows
of their houses neither the walk itself nor persons walking upon it
can be seen.

Fitz and the beauty were approaching one of these "ha-ha's" into which
the path dipped steeply and from which it rose steeply upon the farther
side. On the left was a blank wall of granite blocks, on the right only
a few thousand miles of blind ocean. It may have been a distant view of
this particular "ha-ha" that had made up Eve's mind for her, for she had
a strong dramatic sense. Or it may have been that her heart alone had
made up her mind, and that the secluded depths of the "ha-ha" had
nothing to do with the matter.

"Jim," she said as they began to descend into the place, "life's only a
moment out of eternity, isn't it?"

"Only a moment, Eve," he said, "a little longer for some than for
others."

"If it's only a moment," she said as they reached the bottom of the
decline, and could only be seen by the blind granite wall and the blind
ocean, "I think it ought to be complete."

"Why, Eve!" he said, his voice breaking and choking. "Honestly?... My
Eve!... Mine!... Look at me.... Is it true?... Are you sure?... Why,
she's sure!... My darling's sure ... all sure."

* * * * *

Later he said: "And you don't care about money, and you've got the
biggest, sweetest heart in all the world. And it's mine, and
mine's yours."

"I can't seem to see anything in any direction," she said, "beyond you."

* * * * *

Later they had to separate, only to meet again at a dinner. Before they
went in they had a word together in a corner.

"I _told_ you," said Fitz, "that my father would understand, and you
said he wouldn't. But he did; his answer came while I was dressing. I
telegraphed: 'I have seen the world,' and the answer was: 'Put a fence
around it.'"

She smiled with delight.

"Eve," he said, "everybody knows that you've taken me. It's in our
faces, I suppose. And they are saying that you are a goose to throw
yourself away on a bank clerk."

"Do you think I care?" she said.

"I know you don't," he said, "but I can't help thanking you for holding
your head so high and looking so happy and so proud."

"Wouldn't you be proud," she said, "to have been brought up to think
that you had no heart, and then to find that, in spite of everything,
you had one that could jump and thump, and love and long, and make
poverty look like paradise?"

"I know what you mean, a little," he said. "Your mother tried to make
you into an Article; my mother tried to make an Englishman of me. And
instead, you turned into an angel, and I was never anything but a
spread eagle."

"Do you know," she said, "I can't help feeling a little sorry for poor
mamma."

"Then," said he, "put your left hand behind your back." She felt him
slide a heavy ring upon her engagement finger. "Show her that, and tell
her that it isn't glass."

Eve couldn't keep from just one covert glance at her ring. The sight of
it almost took her breath away.

Dinner was announced.

"I am frightened," she said; "have I given myself to a djinn?"

"My Eve doesn't know whom she's given herself to," he whispered.

"I don't believe I do," she said.

"You don't," said he.

An immense pride in his father's wealth and his own suddenly surged in
Fitz. He could give her all those things that she had renounced for his
sake, and more, too. But he did not tell her at that time.

The great ruby on the slim hand flashed its message about the festive
board. Some of the best-bred ladies in the land threatened to become
pop-eyed from looking at it.

Mrs. Blackwell, mother of the twins, whispered to Montgomery Stairs:

"That Holden boy seems to have more to him than I had fancied."

But young Tombs whispered to Dolly Blackwell, to whom he had just become
engaged for the third (and last) time in five years: "She isn't thinking
about the ring.... Look at her.... She's listening to music."

* * * * *

Montgomery Stairs (who is not altogether reliable) claims to have seen
Mrs. Burton within five minutes of her learning who her son-in-law-to-be
really was. For, of course, this came out presently and made a profound
sensation. He claims to have seen--from a convenient eyrie--Mrs. Burton
rush out into the little garden behind her cottage; he claims that all
of a sudden she leaped into the air and turned a double somersault, and
that immediately after she ran up and down the paths on her hands; that
then she stood upon her head for nearly five minutes; and that finally
she flung herself down and rolled over and over in a bed of heliotrope.

But then, as is well known, Montgomery Stairs, in the good American
phrase, was one of those who "also ran."

Darius O'Connell sent a cable to Eve from Paris (from Maxim's, I am
afraid, late at night). He said: "Heartiest congratulations and best
wishes. You can fool some of the best people some of the time, but,
thank God, you can't fool all of the best people all of the time." Eve
and Fitz never knew just what he meant.

They spent part of their honeymoon in Cleveland, and every afternoon Eve
sat between Fitz and his father, leaning forward, her elbows on her
knees, and was taught painstakingly, as the crowning gift of those two
simple hearts, to play the game.

There must be one word more. There are people to this day who say that
Eve knew from the beginning who "James Holden" was, and that she played
her cards accordingly. In view of this I fling all caution to the wind,
and in spite of the cold fear that is upon me of being sued for libel, I
tell these ladies--_people_, I mean--that they lie in their teeth.

TARGETS

"On the contrary," said Gardiner, "lightning very often strikes twice in
the same place, and often three times. The so-called all-wise Providence
is still in the experimental stage. My grandmother, for instance,
presented my grandfather with fifteen children: seven live sons and
eight dead daughters. That's when the lightning had fun with itself. And
when the epidemic of ophthalmia broke out in the Straits Settlements,
what class of people do you suppose developed the highest percentage of
total loss of sight in one or both eyes?--why the inmates of the big
asylum for the deaf and dumb in Singapore: twenty per cent of those poor
stricken souls went stone blind. Then what do you think the lightning
did? Set the blooming asylum on fire and burned it to the ground. And
then, I dare say, the elements retired to some region of waste, off in
space somewhere, and sat down and thundered with laughter. But it wasn't
through with the deaf and dumb, and blind, and roofless even then. It
was decided by government, which is the next most irresponsible
instrument to lightning, to transfer the late inmates of the asylum to
a remantled barrack in the salubrious Ceylon hills; and they were put
aboard a ram-shackle, single-screw steamer named the _Nerissa_. She was
wrecked--"

"Coast of Java--in '80, wasn't it?" said Pedder, who has read nothing
but dictionaries and books of black-and-white facts and statistics in
the course of a long life otherwise entirely devoted to misdirected
efforts to defeat Colonel Bogey at golf.

"It was," said Gardiner, "and the lightning was very busy striking. It
drowned off every member of the crew who had any sense of decency; and
of the deaf and dumb passengers selected to be washed ashore a pair who
were also blind. Those saved came to land at a jungly stretch of coast,
dented by a slow-running creek. The crew called the place Quickstep
Inlet because of the panicky and inhuman haste in which they left it."

"Why inhuman?" asked Ludlow.

"Because," said Gardiner, "they only gave about one look at their two
comrades in misfortune who were deaf, and dumb, and blind, and decided
that it was impracticable to attempt to take them along. I suppose they
were right. I suppose it _would_ have been the devil's own job. The
really nasty part was that the crew made a secret of it, and when some
of them, having passed through the Scylla and Charybdis of fright and
fever, and foul water, and wild beasts, reached a settlement they didn't
say a word about the two unfortunates who had been deliberately
abandoned."

"How was it found out then?" Pedder asked.

"Years and years afterward by the ravings in liquor of one of the crew,
and by certain things that I'd like to tell you if you'd be interested."

"Go on," said Ludlow.

"The important thing," said Gardiner, "is that the pair were
deserted--not why they were deserted, or how it was found out that they
had been. And one thing--speaking of lightning and Providence--is very
important. If the pair hadn't been blind, if the asylum hadn't been
burned, if the _Nerissa_ hadn't been wrecked, and if the crew hadn't
deserted them--they would never in this world have had an opportunity to
lift to their lips the cup of human happiness and drink it off.

"The man did not know that he had been deserted. He vaguely understood
that there had been a shipwreck and that he had been washed
ashore--alone, he thought. When he got hungry he began to crawl round
and round with his hands in front of his face feeling for something to
eat, trying and approving of one handful of leaves and spitting out
another. But thirst began to torment him, and then, all of a sudden, he
went souse into the creek that there emptied into the sea. That way of
life went on for several days. And all the while, the woman, just as she
had come ashore, was keeping life going similarly--crawling about,
always near the creek, crossing the beach at low tide to the mud flats
and rooting among the mollusks, and stuffing herself with any kind of
sea-growth that tasted good enough. The two were probably often within a
few feet of each other; and they might have lived out their lives that
way without either of them ever having the least idea that he or she was
not the only human being in that part of the world. But something--pure
accident or some subtle instinct--brought them together. The man was out
crawling with one hand before his face--so was the woman. Their hands
met, and clinched. They remained thus, and trembling, for a long time.
From that time until the day of their death, years and years later, they
never for so much as one moment lost contact with each other.

"Daily they crawled or walked with infinite slowness, hand in hand, or
the arm of one about the waist of the other--neither knowing the look,
the age, the religion or even the color of the other. But I know, from
the only person fitted to judge, that they loved each other tremendously
and spotlessly--these two poor souls alone in that continuous,
soundless, sightless, expressionless night. I know because their baby,
when he grew up, and got away from that place, and learned white man's
talk--told me.

"He left Quickstep Inlet when he was about fifteen years old, naked as
the day he was born; ignorant of everything--who he was or what he was,
or that the world contained anything similar to him. It was some
restless spirit of exploration that smoulders I suppose, in every human
heart, that compelled him to leave the few hundred acres of shore and
wood that were familiar to him. He carried with him upon his bold
journey a roll of bark, resembling birch-bark, upon which he had
scratched with a sharp shell the most meaningless-looking lines, curves,
spirals and gyrations that you can imagine. He will have that roll in
his possession now, I expect, for even when I knew him--when he was
twenty years old, and could talk English pretty nimbly, he could hardly
bear to be separated from it--or, if he let you take one of the sheets
in your hands, he would watch you as a dog watches the person that is
about to give him his dinner. But he ran very little risk of having it
stolen. Nobody wanted it.

"He must have been a gentle savage, with all sorts of decent inherited
instincts, for when I knew him he had already taken kindly to
civilization. At first, of course, they had a bad time with him; they
couldn't talk to him, and when, quite naturally and nonchalantly he
would start in to do the most outrageous things, they had to teach him
better, literally by force. If Pedder weren't such an old stickler for
propriety, I could go more into detail. You needn't look offended, Ped,
you know you are very easily shocked, and that you make it unpleasant
for everybody. He was taken on by the English consul at Teerak, who was
a good fellow, and clothed, and taught to speak English, and, as a
beginning, to work in the garden. Indoor work seemed to have almost the
effect of nauseating him; and houses and closed doors threw him at first
into frenzies of fear, and always made him miserable. It was apparent in
his face, but more in his way of putting up his fists when in doubt,
that he wasn't Dutch nor German nor French. He was probably English,
they thought, but he might have been American, and so they had an
orthodox christening and named him Jonathan Bull. Of course, after he
got the trick of speech, they found out, by putting two and two
together, just about who and what he was; and that he was of English
parentage. But, of course, they had to let the name stand.

"The first thing, he told me, that ever came to him in the way of a
thought was that he was different from his parents--that they couldn't
see, nor hear, nor make a noise as he could. He could remember sitting
comfortably in the mud at low tide and being convulsed with laughter at
his mother's efforts to find a fat mussel that was within a few inches
of her hand. He said that within a small radius his parents had made
paths, by constant peregrinations in search of food, that had become so
familiar to them that they could move hither and thither, hand in hand,
with considerable precision and alacrity. It was one of his earliest
mischievous instincts to place obstacles in those paths, and take a
humorous view of the consequent tumbles.

"The only intercourse that he could have with his parents was, of
course, by sense of touch. And he told me that, whenever they could
catch him, they would kiss him and fondle him. But he didn't like to be
caressed, especially in the daytime. It was different at night when one
became nervous and afraid; then he used to let himself be caught; and he
said that he used to hold hands with his mother until he went to sleep
and that when he awoke it was to find that the clasp still held. It was
a long time before he realized that what to him were whimsical pranks,
were in the nature of tragedies to his parents. If he put a
stumbling-block in one of their paths, it upset the whole fabric of
their daily life, made them feel, I suppose, that they were losing such
faculties as they possessed: memory and the sense of touch--and they
would be obliged either to walk with infinite slowness, or actually to
crawl. And it was long before he realized that things which were
perfectly simple and easy for him, were frightfully difficult for them;
and he said that his first recollection of a tender and gentle feeling
was once when--heaven only knows how--his parents found a nest with eggs
in it--and brought these eggs to him. He realized then something of what
a prize these eggs must have seemed to them--for he had often scrambled
into trees and glutted himself with eggs, whereas, so far as he could
recollect, his parents had never had any at all. He began from that time
on to collect choice tidbits for _them_; and wondered why he had not
done so before. And they rewarded him with caresses and kisses; I
suppose his real reward was his own virtue. Anyway, though very
gradually at first, instinct taught him to be a good son to them.

"The lessons that he learned of life were, first of all, from his
parents, who were always near at hand for study; second, from birds and
animals, there being a pool not far up the creek where even tigers
sometimes came to drink; from occasional monkeys; but mostly, of course,
by intuition and introspection.

"He noticed that birds and animals all had the use of sight and hearing,
and were able to make sounds; and his own forest-trained senses soon
perceived different meanings, and even shades of meaning in certain of
these sounds. The larger animals were not, of course, constantly under
observation, and from tigers, for instance, he learned only the main
principles of tiger-talk--a kind of singsong snuffling purr that means
'get out of the way'; the cringing whine that means the tiger is very
sorry for himself; and two or three of the full-throated roars: the one
expressing rage, the one expressing fear, and the one expressing pained
astonishment. But into the vocabularies of birds he penetrated
very deeply.

"One day, when I had got to know Jonathan rather well, he surprised me
by saying, 'the minute I got the idea, I talked all day long, but it was
years before I thought of writing down what I said, instead of plain
trying to remember. At first, when I'd say something that I wanted to
remember, I'd have to coax my head into remembering the place where I
had said it, near which tree, or which stone on the beach, what had
happened to make me think of saying it, and then, more often than not, I
could repeat it word for word,' Then he showed me the sheets of bark
with the scratches and scrawls and gyrations on them. 'It isn't spelled
writing,' he explained, 'or what they call picture writing. I don't
believe it has enough general principles for me to be able to explain it
as a system, though it has a sort of system to it. If it's like
anything, I think it must be like the way they write down music. It
would be, wouldn't it? Because beasts don't talk with words, they talk
with sounds, and I copycatted my language from beasts and birds,'

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16