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Men, Women, and Boats

S >> Stephen Crane >> Men, Women, and Boats




They fell and soared and soared and fell in this manner until they knew
that to live without each other would be a wandering in deserts. They
had grown so intent upon the uncertainties, the variations, the
guessings of their affair that the world had become but a huge
immaterial background. In time of peace their smiles were soft and
prayerful, caresses confided to the air. In time of war, their youthful
hearts, capable of profound agony, were wrung by the intricate emotions
of doubt. They were the victims of the dread angel of affectionate
speculation that forces the brain endlessly on roads that lead nowhere.

At night, the problem of whether she loved him confronted the young man
like a spectre, looming as high as a hill and telling him not to delude
himself. Upon the following day, this battle of the night displayed
itself in the renewed fervor of his glances and in their increased
number. Whenever he thought he could detect that she too was suffering,
he felt a thrill of joy.

But there came a time when the young man looked back upon these
contortions with contempt. He believed then that he had imagined his
pain. This came about when the redoubtable Stimson marched forward to
participate.

"This has got to stop," Stimson had said to himself, as he stood and
watched them. They had grown careless of the light world that clattered
about them; they were become so engrossed in their personal drama that
the language of their eyes was almost as obvious as gestures. And
Stimson, through his keenness, his wonderful, infallible penetration,
suddenly came into possession of these obvious facts. "Well, of all the
nerves," he said, regarding with a new interest the young man upon the
perch.

He was a resolute man. He never hesitated to grapple with a crisis. He
decided to overturn everything at once, for, although small, he was very
fierce and impetuous. He resolved to crush this dreaming.

He strode over to the silvered netting. "Say, you want to quit your
everlasting grinning at that idiot," he said, grimly.

The girl cast down her eyes and made a little heap of quarters into a
stack. She was unable to withstand the terrible scrutiny of her small
and fierce father.

Stimson turned from his daughter and went to a spot beneath the
platform. He fixed his eyes upon the young man and said--

"I've been speakin' to Lizzie. You better attend strictly to your own
business or there'll be a new man here next week." It was as if he had
blazed away with a shotgun. The young man reeled upon his perch. At last
he in a measure regained his composure and managed to stammer: "A--all
right, sir." He knew that denials would be futile with the terrible
Stimson. He agitatedly began to rattle the rings in the basket, and
pretend that he was obliged to count them or inspect them in some way.
He, too, was unable to face the great Stimson.

For a moment, Stimson stood in fine satisfaction and gloated over the
effect of his threat.

"I've fixed them," he said complacently, and went out to smoke a cigar
and revel in himself. Through his mind went the proud reflection that
people who came in contact with his granite will usually ended in quick
and abject submission.


II

One evening, a week after Stimson had indulged in the proud reflection
that people who came in contact with his granite will usually ended in
quick and abject submission, a young feminine friend of the girl behind
the silvered netting came to her there and asked her to walk on the
beach after "Stimson's Mammoth Merry-Go-Round" was closed for the night.
The girl assented with a nod.

The young man upon the perch holding the rings saw this nod and judged
its meaning. Into his mind came an idea of defeating the watchfulness of
the redoubtable Stimson. When the Merry-Go-Round was closed and the two
girls started for the beach, he wandered off aimlessly in another
direction, but he kept them in view, and as soon as he was assured that
he had escaped the vigilance of Stimson, he followed them.

The electric lights on the beach made a broad band of tremoring light,
extending parallel to the sea, and upon the wide walk there slowly
paraded a great crowd, intermingling, intertwining, sometimes colliding.
In the darkness stretched the vast purple expanse of the ocean, and the
deep indigo sky above was peopled with yellow stars. Occasionally out
upon the water a whirling mass of froth suddenly flashed into view, like
a great ghostly robe appearing, and then vanished, leaving the sea in
its darkness, whence came those bass tones of the water's unknown
emotion. A wind, cool, reminiscent of the wave wastes, made the women
hold their wraps about their throats, and caused the men to grip the
rims of their straw hats. It carried the noise of the band in the
pavilion in gusts. Sometimes people unable to hear the music glanced up
at the pavilion and were reassured upon beholding the distant leader
still gesticulating and bobbing, and the other members of the band with
their lips glued to their instruments. High in the sky soared an
unassuming moon, faintly silver.

For a time the young man was afraid to approach the two girls; he
followed them at a distance and called himself a coward. At last,
however, he saw them stop on the outer edge of the crowd and stand
silently listening to the voices of the sea. When he came to where they
stood, he was trembling in his agitation. They had not seen him.

"Lizzie," he began. "I----"

The girl wheeled instantly and put her hand to her throat.

"Oh, Frank, how you frightened me," she said--inevitably.

"Well, you know, I--I----" he stuttered.

But the other girl was one of those beings who are born to attend at
tragedies. She had for love a reverence, an admiration that was greater
the more that she contemplated the fact that she knew nothing of it.
This couple, with their emotions, awed her and made her humbly wish that
she might be destined to be of some service to them. She was very
homely.

When the young man faltered before them, she, in her sympathy, actually
over-estimated the crisis, and felt that he might fall dying at their
feet. Shyly, but with courage, she marched to the rescue.

"Won't you come and walk on the beach with us?" she said.

The young man gave her a glance of deep gratitude which was not without
the patronage which a man in his condition naturally feels for one who
pities it. The three walked on.

Finally, the being who was born to attend at this tragedy said that she
wished to sit down and gaze at the sea, alone.

They politely urged her to walk on with them, but she was obstinate. She
wished to gaze at the sea, alone. The young man swore to himself that he
would be her friend until he died.

And so the two young lovers went on without her. They turned once to
look at her.

"Jennie's awful nice," said the girl.

"You bet she is," replied the young man, ardently.

They were silent for a little time.

At last the girl said--

"You were angry at me yesterday."

"No, I wasn't."

"Yes, you were, too. You wouldn't look at me once all day."

"No, I wasn't angry. I was only putting on."

Though she had, of course, known it, this confession seemed to make her
very indignant. She flashed a resentful glance at him.

"Oh, you were, indeed?" she said with a great air.

For a few minutes she was so haughty with him that he loved her to
madness. And directly this poem, which stuck at his lips, came forth
lamely in fragments.

When they walked back toward the other girl and saw the patience of her
attitude, their hearts swelled in a patronizing and secondary tenderness
for her.

They were very happy. If they had been miserable they would have charged
this fairy scene of the night with a criminal heartlessness; but as they
were joyous, they vaguely wondered how the purple sea, the yellow stars,
the changing crowds under the electric lights could be so phlegmatic and
stolid.

They walked home by the lakeside way, and out upon the water those gay
paper lanterns, flashing, fleeting, and careering, sang to them, sang a
chorus of red and violet, and green and gold; a song of mystic bands of
the future.

One day, when business paused during a dull sultry afternoon, Stimson
went up town. Upon his return, he found that the popcorn man, from his
stand over in a corner, was keeping an eye upon the cashier's cage, and
that nobody at all was attending to the wooden arm and the iron rings.
He strode forward like a sergeant of grenadiers.

"Where in thunder is Lizzie?" he demanded, a cloud of rage in his eyes.

The popcorn man, although associated long with Stimson, had never got
over being dazed.

"They've--they've--gone round to th'--th'--house," he said with
difficulty, as if he had just been stunned.

"Whose house?" snapped Stimson.

"Your--your house, I s'pose," said the popcorn man.

Stimson marched round to his home. Kingly denunciations surged, already
formulated, to the tip of his tongue, and he bided the moment when his
anger could fall upon the heads of that pair of children. He found his
wife convulsive and in tears.

"Where's Lizzie?"

And then she burst forth--"Oh--John--John--they've run away, I know they
have. They drove by here not three minutes ago. They must have done it
on purpose to bid me good-bye, for Lizzie waved her hand sadlike; and
then, before I could get out to ask where they were going or what, Frank
whipped up the horse."

Stimson gave vent to a dreadful roar.

"Get my revolver--get a hack--get my revolver, do you hear--what the
devil--" His voice became incoherent.

He had always ordered his wife about as if she were a battalion of
infantry, and despite her misery, the training of years forced her to
spring mechanically to obey; but suddenly she turned to him with a
shrill appeal.

"Oh, John--not--the--revolver."

"Confound it, let go of me!" he roared again, and shook her from him.

He ran hatless upon the street. There were a multitude of hacks at the
summer resort, but it was ages to him before he could find one. Then he
charged it like a bull.

"Uptown!" he yelled, as he tumbled into the rear seat.

The hackman thought of severed arteries. His galloping horse distanced a
large number of citizens who had been running to find what caused such
contortions by the little hatless man.

It chanced as the bouncing hack went along near the lake, Stimson gazed
across the calm grey expanse and recognized a color in a bonnet and a
pose of a head. A buggy was traveling along a highway that led to
Sorington. Stimson bellowed--"There--there--there they are--in that
buggy."

The hackman became inspired with the full knowledge of the situation. He
struck a delirious blow with the whip. His mouth expanded in a grin of
excitement and joy. It came to pass that this old vehicle, with its
drowsy horse and its dusty-eyed and tranquil driver, seemed suddenly to
awaken, to become animated and fleet. The horse ceased to ruminate on
his state, his air of reflection vanished. He became intent upon his
aged legs and spread them in quaint and ridiculous devices for speed.
The driver, his eyes shining, sat critically in his seat. He watched
each motion of this rattling machine down before him. He resembled an
engineer. He used the whip with judgment and deliberation as the
engineer would have used coal or oil. The horse clacked swiftly upon the
macadam, the wheels hummed, the body of the vehicle wheezed and groaned.

Stimson, in the rear seat, was erect in that impassive attitude that
comes sometimes to the furious man when he is obliged to leave the
battle to others. Frequently, however, the tempest in his breast came to
his face and he howled--

"Go it--go it--you're gaining; pound 'im! Thump the life out of 'im; hit
'im hard, you fool!" His hand grasped the rod that supported the
carriage top, and it was clenched so that the nails were faintly blue.

Ahead, that other carriage had been flying with speed, as from
realization of the menace in the rear. It bowled away rapidly, drawn by
the eager spirit of a young and modern horse. Stimson could see the
buggy-top bobbing, bobbing. That little pane, like an eye, was a
derision to him. Once he leaned forward and bawled angry sentences. He
began to feel impotent; his whole expedition was a tottering of an old
man upon a trail of birds. A sense of age made him choke again with
wrath. That other vehicle, that was youth, with youth's pace; it was
swift-flying with the hope of dreams. He began to comprehend those two
children ahead of him, and he knew a sudden and strange awe, because he
understood the power of their young blood, the power to fly strongly
into the future and feel and hope again, even at that time when his
bones must be laid in the earth. The dust rose easily from the hot road
and stifled the nostrils of Stimson.

The highway vanished far away in a point with a suggestion of
intolerable length. The other vehicle was becoming so small that Stimson
could no longer see the derisive eye.

At last the hackman drew rein to his horse and turned to look at
Stimson.

"No use, I guess," he said.

Stimson made a gesture of acquiescence, rage, despair. As the hackman
turned his dripping horse about, Stimson sank back with the astonishment
and grief of a man who has been defied by the universe. He had been in a
great perspiration, and now his bald head felt cool and uncomfortable.
He put up his hand with a sudden recollection that he had forgotten his
hat.

At last he made a gesture. It meant that at any rate he was not
responsible.




A TENT IN AGONY


A SULLIVAN COUNTY TALE

Four men once came to a wet place in the roadless forest to fish. They
pitched their tent fair upon the brow of a pine-clothed ridge of riven
rocks whence a bowlder could be made to crash through the brush and
whirl past the trees to the lake below. On fragrant hemlock boughs they
slept the sleep of unsuccessful fishermen, for upon the lake alternately
the sun made them lazy and the rain made them wet. Finally they ate the
last bit of bacon and smoked and burned the last fearful and wonderful
hoecake.

Immediately a little man volunteered to stay and hold the camp while the
remaining three should go the Sullivan county miles to a farmhouse for
supplies. They gazed at him dismally. "There's only one of you--the
devil make a twin," they said in parting malediction, and disappeared
down the hill in the known direction of a distant cabin. When it came
night and the hemlocks began to sob they had not returned. The little
man sat close to his companion, the campfire, and encouraged it with
logs. He puffed fiercely at a heavy built brier, and regarded a thousand
shadows which were about to assault him. Suddenly he heard the approach
of the unknown, crackling the twigs and rustling the dead leaves. The
little man arose slowly to his feet, his clothes refused to fit his
back, his pipe dropped from his mouth, his knees smote each other.
"Hah!" he bellowed hoarsely in menace. A growl replied and a bear paced
into the light of the fire. The little man supported himself upon a
sapling and regarded his visitor.

The bear was evidently a veteran and a fighter, for the black of his
coat had become tawny with age. There was confidence in his gait and
arrogance in his small, twinkling eye. He rolled back his lips and
disclosed his white teeth. The fire magnified the red of his mouth. The
little man had never before confronted the terrible and he could not
wrest it from his breast. "Hah!" he roared. The bear interpreted this as
the challenge of a gladiator. He approached warily. As he came near, the
boots of fear were suddenly upon the little man's feet. He cried out and
then darted around the campfire. "Ho!" said the bear to himself, "this
thing won't fight--it runs. Well, suppose I catch it." So upon his
features there fixed the animal look of going--somewhere. He started
intensely around the campfire. The little man shrieked and ran
furiously. Twice around they went.

The hand of heaven sometimes falls heavily upon the righteous. The bear
gained.

In desperation the little man flew into the tent. The bear stopped and
sniffed at the entrance. He scented the scent of many men. Finally he
ventured in.

The little man crouched in a distant corner. The bear advanced,
creeping, his blood burning, his hair erect, his jowls dripping. The
little man yelled and rustled clumsily under the flap at the end of the
tent. The bear snarled awfully and made a jump and a grab at his
disappearing game. The little man, now without the tent, felt a
tremendous paw grab his coat tails. He squirmed and wriggled out of his
coat like a schoolboy in the hands of an avenger. The bear bowled
triumphantly and jerked the coat into the tent and took two bites, a
punch and a hug before he, discovered his man was not in it. Then he
grew not very angry, for a bear on a spree is not a black-haired pirate.
He is merely a hoodlum. He lay down on his back, took the coat on his
four paws and began to play uproariously with it. The most appalling,
blood-curdling whoops and yells came to where the little man was crying
in a treetop and froze his blood. He moaned a little speech meant for a
prayer and clung convulsively to the bending branches. He gazed with
tearful wistfulness at where his comrade, the campfire, was giving dying
flickers and crackles. Finally, there was a roar from the tent which
eclipsed all roars; a snarl which it seemed would shake the stolid
silence of the mountain and cause it to shrug its granite shoulders. The
little man quaked and shrivelled to a grip and a pair of eyes. In the
glow of the embers he saw the white tent quiver and fall with a crash.
The bear's merry play had disturbed the center pole and brought a chaos
of canvas upon his head.

Now the little man became the witness of a mighty scene. The tent began
to flounder. It took flopping strides in the direction of the lake.
Marvellous sounds came from within--rips and tears, and great groans and
pants. The little man went into giggling hysterics.

The entangled monster failed to extricate himself before he had walloped
the tent frenziedly to the edge of the mountain. So it came to pass that
three men, clambering up the hill with bundles and baskets, saw their
tent approaching. It seemed to them like a white-robed phantom pursued
by hornets. Its moans riffled the hemlock twigs.

The three men dropped their bundles and scurried to one side, their eyes
gleaming with fear. The canvas avalanche swept past them. They leaned,
faint and dumb, against trees and listened, their blood stagnant. Below
them it struck the base of a great pine tree, where it writhed and
struggled. The three watched its convolutions a moment and then started
terrifically for the top of the hill. As they disappeared, the bear cut
loose with a mighty effort. He cast one dishevelled and agonized look at
the white thing, and then started wildly for the inner recesses of the
forest.

The three fear-stricken individuals ran to the rebuilt fire. The little
man reposed by it calmly smoking. They sprang at him and overwhelmed him
with interrogations. He contemplated darkness and took a long, pompous
puff. "There's only one of me--and the devil made a twin," he said.




FOUR MEN IN A CAVE


LIKEWISE FOUR QUEENS, AND A SULLIVAN COUNTY HERMIT

The moon rested for a moment on the top of a tall pine on a hill.

The little man was standing in front of the campfire making orations to
his companions.

"We can tell a great tale when we get back to the city if we investigate
this thing," said he, in conclusion.

They were won.

The little man was determined to explore a cave, because its black mouth
had gaped at him. The four men took a lighted pine-knot and clambered
over boulders down a hill. In a thicket on the mountainside lay a little
tilted hole. At its side they halted.

"Well?" said the little man.

They fought for last place and the little man was overwhelmed. He tried
to struggle from under by crying that if the fat, pudgy man came after,
he would be corked. But he finally administered a cursing over his
shoulder and crawled into the hole. His companions gingerly followed.

A passage, the floor of damp clay and pebbles, the walls slimy, green-
mossed, and dripping, sloped downward. In the cave atmosphere the
torches became studies in red blaze and black smoke.

"Ho!" cried the little man, stifled and bedraggled, "let's go back." His
companions were not brave. They were last. The next one to the little
man pushed him on, so the little man said sulphurous words and
cautiously continued his crawl.

Things that hung seemed to be on the wet, uneven ceiling, ready to drop
upon the men's bare necks. Under their hands the clammy floor seemed
alive and writhing. When the little man endeavored to stand erect the
ceiling forced him down. Knobs and points came out and punched him. His
clothes were wet and mud-covered, and his eyes, nearly blinded by smoke,
tried to pierce the darkness always before his torch.

"Oh, I say, you fellows, let's go back," cried he. At that moment he
caught the gleam of trembling light in the blurred shadows before him.

"Ho!" he said, "here's another way out."

The passage turned abruptly. The little man put one hand around the
corner, but it touched nothing. He investigated and discovered that the
little corridor took a sudden dip down a hill. At the bottom shone a
yellow light.

The little man wriggled painfully about, and descended feet in advance.
The others followed his plan. All picked their way with anxious care.
The traitorous rocks rolled from beneath the little man's feet and
roared thunderously below him, lesser stone loosened by the men above
him, hit him on the back. He gained seemingly firm foothold, and,
turning halfway about, swore redly at his companions for dolts and
careless fools. The pudgy man sat, puffing and perspiring, high in the
rear of the procession. The fumes and smoke from four pine-knots were in
his blood. Cinders and sparks lay thick in his eyes and hair. The pause
of the little man angered him.

"Go on, you fool!" he shouted. "Poor, painted man, you are afraid."

"Ho!" said the little man. "Come down here and go on yourself,
imbecile!"

The pudgy man vibrated with passion. He leaned downward. "Idiot--"

He was interrupted by one of his feet which flew out and crashed into
the man in front of and below. It is not well to quarrel upon a slippery
incline, when the unknown is below. The fat man, having lost the support
of one pillar-like foot, lurched forward. His body smote the next man,
who hurtled into the next man. Then they all fell upon the cursing
little man.

They slid in a body down over the slippery, slimy floor of the passage.
The stone avenue must have wibble-wobbled with the rush of this ball of
tangled men and strangled cries. The torches went out with the combined
assault upon the little man. The adventurers whirled to the unknown in
darkness. The little man felt that he was pitching to death, but even in
his convolutions he bit and scratched at his companions, for he was
satisfied that it was their fault. The swirling mass went some twenty
feet, and lit upon a level, dry place in a strong, yellow light of
candles. It dissolved and became eyes.

The four men lay in a heap upon the floor of a grey chamber. A small
fire smoldered in the corner, the smoke disappearing in a crack. In
another corner was a bed of faded hemlock boughs and two blankets.
Cooking utensils and clothes lay about, with boxes and a barrel.

Of these things the four men took small cognisance. The pudgy man did
not curse the little man, nor did the little man swear, in the abstract.
Eight widened eyes were fixed upon the center of the room of rocks.

A great, gray stone, cut squarely, like an altar, sat in the middle of
the floor. Over it burned three candles, in swaying tin cups hung from
the ceiling. Before it, with what seemed to be a small volume clasped in
his yellow fingers, stood a man. He was an infinitely sallow person in
the brown-checked shirt of the ploughs and cows. The rest of his apparel
was boots. A long grey beard dangled from his chin. He fixed glinting,
fiery eyes upon the heap of men, and remained motionless. Fascinated,
their tongues cleaving, their blood cold, they arose to their feet. The
gleaming glance of the recluse swept slowly over the group until it
found the face of the little man. There it stayed and burned.

The little man shrivelled and crumpled as the dried leaf under the
glass.

Finally, the recluse slowly, deeply spoke. It was a true voice from a
cave, cold, solemn, and damp.

"It's your ante," he said.

"What?" said the little man.

The hermit tilted his beard and laughed a laugh that was either the
chatter of a banshee in a storm or the rattle of pebbles in a tin box.
His visitors' flesh seemed ready to drop from their bones.

They huddled together and cast fearful eyes over their shoulders. They
whispered.

"A vampire!" said one.

"A ghoul!" said another.

"A Druid before the sacrifice," murmured another.

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