Part 22

“What,” she demanded, “will James Saltonstall think?”

That, Epes replied, was of singularly small importance.

The rose flush had returned to her cheeks, her eyes were shining; she was decidedly more attractive than he had admitted. But that, he made up his mind, he’d never tell her. She sipped and sipped from her glass; that in itself was unusual, startling. No, he corrected his impression, it would have been in any other girl of Sumatra’s age, but not in her. The most unexpected, inappropriate things seemed to become her perfectly.

“I don’t want to go,” she added, so long after her other phrase that he almost lost the connection. “We are so different,” Sumatra pointed out; “I hardly ever do what I don’t want to. It’s a good thing for your father I’m not you.”

“It wouldn’t make any difference,” he said, listlessness again falling over him; “in the end it would be the same; you’d stay or go as he said.”

“I would not.”

“Oh, yes, but you would.”

“He couldn’t make me,” she insisted; “not about that. It’s too terribly important.”

Epes became annoyed. “Can’t you understand that, to my father, nothing is important except what he wants?”

“Why argue?” she decided. “After all, I am not you. And yet, even as it is, I believe if I were concerned, which I’m not, I could do what I decided with him.”

He laughed. “Try, and if you are successful, why--why, I’d marry you instead of Annice.”

The flush deepened painfully in her countenance; she regarded him with startled eyes. For a moment there was a ridiculously tense silence; and then, relaxing, she shook her head negatively.

“It wouldn’t be any good; you’d have no regard for me.”

“Regard for you!” he exclaimed. “If you did that I’d think more of you than anything else on earth; more than I did of--of the _Triton_.” His voice, his manner darkened. “But you mustn’t; there’s a lot you don’t understand--my father, first of all. He can be very nasty.”

“I’ve told you before, he’s only a man,” she reminded him. “I shouldn’t be afraid.” Her direct gaze again challenged him, but Epes shook his head dejectedly. Suddenly she laid a hand over his. “I didn’t tear that picture up,” she whispered. Then with a sweep of her arm she finished what had been in her glass, and rose. “Come on, he’s still in the office.”

Epes Calef urged her in careful tones not to be a donkey; he tried, here discreetly, to restrain her; but she went resolutely on, through the front room into the hall. There would be a frightful row, but he couldn’t desert Sumatra. However, in the passage she paused, with her lips against his ear.

“Remember, better than the _Triton_, or it would kill me.”

Ira Calef looked up from his table, frowning slightly as she entered the office, followed by Epes. The elder’s face was as white as marble under the artificial light.

“Why, Sumatra,” he greeted her easily.

Epes tried to step between her and his father--disaster--but she held him back, speaking immediately in a voice as level as, but a little faster than, Ira Calef’s.

“I suppose you think it’s strange to see me here, so late, with Epes; but it is stranger even than you imagine.” She put a hand over Epes Calef’s mouth. “No,” she protested, “you promised to let me speak. Mr. Calef,” said the incredible Sumatra, “perhaps I ought to apologize to Mrs. Calef and you--Epes and I are married.”

Epes’ amazement, which he barely restrained, was no greater than his father’s, but the latter’s was given, for him, full expression.

“Married!” he repeated in a voice slightly and significantly louder than usual. “Why, that is outrageous! Nothing, nothing at all was said to me. My plan was wholly different.”

He rose, beyond the table, with one hand resting beside a paper weight of greenish glass. Epes’ eyes fastened upon this.

“It was, as you might guess, in a hurry,” Sumatra went on; “we decided only today. You must remember that I am as much a Balavan as Annice, and I suit Epes far better; I understand and agree with his ambition.”

The man’s manner was colder than the night.

“What ambition?” he demanded.

“To go to sea, of course.”

“Epes isn’t going to sea,” he instructed her.

“He wasn’t, as your son,” she corrected him; “but married to me, yes.”

“No,” Ira Calef answered in a restrained, bitter temper that yet had the effect of a shout.

“But he is,” Sumatra Balavan retorted. “He is, and now you can’t stop him. It doesn’t matter what you want, I won’t have a husband fastened like a sponge to the earth, and as soft as a sponge.” Her anger, equal with Ira Calef’s, rose.

The room grew quiet. Epes’ attention was still concentrated on the heavy rectangle of glass close by his father’s hand. With a sensation like an enveloping breath of winter air he saw the other’s fingers reach out and close about the paper weight. He hadn’t a second to spare; but Sumatra, too, had seen the instinctive movement on the table.

“I wish you would,” she told the man facing her with a set, icy glare. “I’d have you dropped off the end of Derby Wharf. I’m not your wife or son; there would be no reason for my protecting you, hiding your beastliness from the world. Nothing could be better than having you throw a paper weight at me.”

The shadows under Ira Calef’s eyes, on the deathly pallor of his face, were like black smudges; a shiver passed over his rigidity. His hand drooped; both hands held the edge of the table before him. Epes, in a swift insight brushed with compassion, saw what was in his father’s mind--the huddled light figure crushing the geranium border.

“Get out of here,” the elder said to Sumatra in strained, dry tones. “Go, and take him with you.”

“To sea?” she insisted.

“If there is any salt water in hell.”

But, once more in the hall, she was pitiably shaken.

“What can we do?” she implored Epes, against him.

He reassured her that that was easy enough; a far different, apparently trivial and ill-timed question occupied him.

“Sumatra,” he proceeded, “tonight Annice told me that she had lost the obang, the Calef token. Did you find it?”

“No, Epes,” she replied, “I didn’t find it.” Her voice sank, died. “I didn’t find it, Epes,” she repeated with difficulty. “I couldn’t, very well, could I, when I had stolen it?”

[15] Copyright, 1921, by The Curtis Publishing Company. Copyright, 1923, by Joseph Hergesheimer.

THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE[16]

By WILLIAM C. G. JITRO

(From _The Little Review_)

The low country of the lakes with its flowing blue waters, its sunken gray and yellow earth and low skies, is beautiful; yet there have been thrown down in it cities so mean, so cold, so dingy, and so ugly that in them any beautiful thing is marvelous. The eyes strain away out of the cities over the waters and the still, sandy marshes, or turn up into the fathomless heights of the sky; and again and again in springtime, when small clusters of fruit trees and rose vines bloom here and there in the smoke with robins singing in the new sticky foliage, one seeks such spectacles out to walk near them. As for the cities’ polyglot people, they are so harsh, so cold and silent, and so monotonous both in appearance and in their fierce

## activity, that among them any one only beautiful or charming becomes

precious; a thrilling deed, a noble character, a great love, a deathless faith, or even a passionate hatred, or profound despair is something to set apart, to cherish in the mind, to hoard and love.

For they dream, the people of those gray and far-off cities by the azure floods, as all must do or die; but their dreams are not good or sweet or high or noble.

Once it was evening in winter in a city and the great blue darkness had fallen upon the low plains, the waters, and the frozen marshes; the darkness had grown gray and misty; and after that, as usual within the city, it had become dead, cold, and dingy black. The long misty streets with their feeble pale-blue lamps were dingy; and though many hurrying people, rattling black gasoline motor vehicles, and broken dirty tram-cars passed in them, yet they remained dreary. One of the half dozen very long streets, which lie across the others and meet in the lower center of the city like the spokes of a half-wheel, was dark when I walked into it. It had large furniture shops full of colored lamps; tobacco and shoe shops well lighted up; and Jews’ shops with every sort of cheap glittering merchandise to catch the eyes of the crowd of stupid whites and negroes who occupied this quarter; yet it seemed bleak and dark. The people hurried along silently in the shadows; old snow lay frozen in the dim dirty corners; and the dust was thick. Over the roofs the sky seemed

## particularly black, foggy and cold.

It was night.

For a time there was no sound except those of the vehicles flying over the rough pavement, the pounding tram-cars that passed, and the shoes of the hurrying people; but at last, at intervals above the other sounds there became audible what seemed to be a voice raised in shouting or speaking; and on coming to a place where two mean dark side streets met I found on the pavement of one of them a short, plump, gentle but very earnest and prepossessing negro of forty who was urging upon passers the principles of Jesus’ teaching. He used the inflection and diction of most negroes in this part of the world, but he was neatly dressed and wore a greatcoat, though his head was bare, for he had placed his round black hat against an iron hydrant for the reception of coins. Four or five men who had turned aside from the main street were listening to him; more, however, were going into the half-screened drinking places all about. Besides, the farther side of the street in which he stood contained a row of little dark wooden buildings that held negro brothels.

It was a dusty winter night.

“You men, naow,” the negro was crying in a ringing, pleasing voice, “you got to be good! You got to do as God says! It ain’t gwine do you no good to pray to God if you don’t do as He says! Don’t you go to fightin’ and killin’ and gamblin’ and then pray to God. It ain’t gwine do you no good! First you got to quit yo’ fightin’, quit yo’ killin’, quit yo’ drinkin’, quit yo’ gamblin’, quit yo’ swarin’, quit yo’ whore-mongerin’: God does not wish you to do these things! Then you go to Him and pray! And he’s gwine hear what you say!”

The utterance of these words with such singular force in that stirring melodious voice, and the face and form of this sturdy little man made lovely by joy, faith, and good will, shone in that bleak cold street, it seemed to me, like a work of glittering gold and jewels amid gutter dust.

I drew nearer and listened to him say that he had come there because he had been bidden by God to go among men and preach the Word, not as preached in worldy churches but as the prophets of Israel and the Apostles preached it long ago. Men must be truthful, kindly, abstemious; then all would be well with them. They must understand one another, sympathize with one another, love one another. That was the Word. When all did so, then God’s kingdom would have come on earth. Meantime the few who knew the truth and strove to live by it would, even though they were lonely and cast out, become happy, strong and courageous. Theirs would be a life unattainable by the gross and careless, a life inconceivable by such, yet the life that all men really desired, the life that was man’s heritage.

Aside, as it were, for the assurance of timid children, he illustrated some of the workings of God’s plan. Once a man received God into his heart and was trying earnestly to live according to His will, God would not desert or neglect him either in this world or any other. He himself was but a humble servant bidden to teach and expound the Word. And since he strove to do this, even though he never succeeded as he wished to, yet God had blessed him forty years with health and strength and the means to live. “The servant am worthy of his hire,” God had said, yet so merciful and kind was God that, “Jes’ so long as you try the best you can, He’ll stand by you. Money an’ things is the least, but He’ll see to them too. Ah don’t have to worry. When Ah get out of money He send me means to get some. Ah don’t owe nobody a cent tonight ’cept seventy-five cents fo’ coal, and the man said the’ wasn’t no hurry fo’ that; but Ah’m goin’ to pay him tomorrow night. And this week Ah was down to the Boahd of Public Works and they said they’d put me to work next Wednesday mornin’ shovelin’ up ashes in the alleys. Ah’m gwine be there. So I get on. Kase Ah’m tryin’ to do as God said. He’ll do jes’ the same by you. If you wonder who I am to stand out here and tell you this, Ah’m Brothah Frank Burns, Servant of the Lord, come to preach the Word like ole Isaiah and Jeremiah and ole Jonah--an’ like ole Peter an’ Paul an’ Silas. They said what Ah’m tellin’ you naow! Kase that’s God’s Word that’ll make you happy an’ strong an’ glad!”

Bright earnestness! Steadfast belief! But two grim city policemen, coming through the dark street where the brothels are, making their way swiftly in the gloom, hear the preacher’s voice and raise their heads. They are not patrolling and have not their bludgeons, but one immediately gives the other a package he has been carrying and hurries across the street behind the speaker: a short, burly man, pink-faced and contemptuous, active and strong, with the bold insolence and cruelty of the police. The buttons and silver shield glitter on the breast of his clean blue greatcoat; the forepiece and shield shine on his heavy cap. Without a word he takes the speaker from behind by arm and neck, jerks him violently backward, choking him, and all but throws him to the pavement. “_Here! Here! Here!_” he cries. “What are _you_ doing?”

Startled, the negro tries to keep his feet and twist his head so as to see his assailant. He strives manfully to explain.

“Where’s your _per_mit?” asks the policeman.

“Judge tole me Ah didn’t need to have no _per_mit--”

“Git to hell out of here!”

The negro is thrown forward almost to his knees and flung about. Very firmly he declares: “Ah’ve come here to speak the Word of the Lord like the old prophets in de Bahble. Folks must know this. Judge he tole me--”

At that the policeman fiercely tightens his hold, strikes him on the head with his fist, and hurls him to his knees. The second officer, a taller man, runs in. And the eager crowd that has gathered in the dark during these few minutes of parley closes about to see. Again and again the negro is thrown down, struck, and dragged in the dust. He continues to gasp out his purpose. The dark cold street resounds with the noise of the blows, the scuffle, the negro’s voice, and the feet of newcomers running up to see. At length, tossing along in the dark amid the crowd, the preacher is swept round a corner and pushed roughly past a dark little medical school, a cross street, and a long hospital with a dimly lighted colored statue of the Virgin in a front gable. Over the way are a dark cold little park with bare trees and a waterless basin, and beyond this some old public buildings. The negro’s once neat clothes are twisted, half pulled from him, and covered with dust and mud, the hand of the policeman chokes him, but he continues to declare his purpose. The policeman, gripping him behind, rushes him along; the other follows carrying the round black hat and half entreating, half commanding the curious crowd to keep off and go away. The captive is taken round another corner and in through the dark basement door of a public building. The second policeman follows and closes the door. Then all go away except me.

I wait for a time, and the tallest policeman comes out and goes off. Soon after the burly attacker comes with his parcel and hurries up the street as if to make up lost time. After an interval the little preacher comes himself, alone and somewhat put to rights; goes quietly back around the corner, past the hospital and medical school and the park and on toward the corner where he was taken. But he seems to consider his work for the night done, and does not stop. He picks his way across the street of business and starts off northward as if beginning a long journey. I follow him curiously for two kilometers or more, but at last, concluding from the way in which he looks about when he passes under the street lights that he suspects that he is being followed, I turn off and go my way.

Next night, however, he is at his corner again, with a large crowd about him this time, for it is the gay free night before the Sabbath when the people have their wages for the week. Crowds are entering and leaving the brothels; loud cheery talk sounds everywhere, in the dark and in the cold blue light of the street lamps; and coins fall steadily into the hat by the hydrant. A tall spectacled friend, well dressed in fur cap and greatcoat with fur collar, accompanies the preacher tonight and treats him disdainfully; but just as before, with the same bright earnestness, the little man tells simply of his “mission,” of God’s laws and God’s promises, and urges obedience to God. Without dismay, even with some zest, he speaks of last night: “Let ’em come an’ git me again;” he says, “Ah’ll be right back. They’ll have to carry me though,” he adds quickly. “I ain’t gwine to fight ’em. That’s what makes all the trouble, men, folks always a-fightin’. You boys,” he cries earnestly, “don’t you ever go to fightin’; don’t you ever go off to no war and kill folks. If they try to make you, don’t you care. Let ’em do what they can, but don’t you care. The Lord said, ‘Don’t do it!’ He does not wish you to do it! An’ God’ll look after you. Jes’ you obey Him an’ don’t you worry!”

Introducing his companion, he assures his audience that this is “a splendid speaker,” and listens eagerly to the other’s halting, practiced: “Ah didn’t expect to be called on to speak yeah this evenin’”; and interpolates quick, bright “Amen”s, “Yes, He will”s, and “Bless his Name”s into the exhortation that follows.

That night they were not attacked or molested.

But at a gathering of negroes on a later night I see the same bright strange little man standing unnoticed by himself at one side of the hall, and I go to him and assure him of my sympathy and tell him that I was present the night he was attacked. He passes over that hastily; it was nothing; he has had many such experiences; but when I ask him about himself he answers my questions obligingly, though with some diffidence. He knows nothing of his parents except that before the emancipation one or both were slaves; he has been taught scarcely anything; and has done hard work all his life. In his youth he joined a church and began to preach, but having come soon afterward to see the quality of churches and to be aware of his “mission,” he traveled “north” and began to go about working and preaching. He belongs to no church and disapproves of all alike. He has no property, permitting himself nothing but poverty and labor. Already he is looked down upon as improvident by those who know him. His wife has left him, not relishing her lot with him, for they were forced always to lodge in the poorest parts of the towns they visited. The intolerance and hate of white Americans for negro people made their lives harder than they would otherwise have been. Single rooms near small independent “mission houses,” when there was one that suited, were their temporary homes; and from one such the wife went at last to visit at the town of Nashville in the distant State of Tennessee, and she has not come back. Her intention to do so was vague at her departure. Her husband has suffered a great deal through her desertion and has humbly and pitifully begged her by letter to return, but he has borne her failure to do so and goes on with his work. He is not loved, nor even much liked by anyone, I find later; he and his preaching, his high standards, his belief, his self-reliance and fearlessness, even his good temper, seem disquieting to others, irritating, a bore, something to escape.

During that year he remained in the city by the floods preaching and working at hard manual labor.

But the next winter, well toward the end, there was an epidemic of pneumonia and my little apostle was stricken suddenly and removed to a cheerless public hospital. There, gasping and choking so horribly that it was almost impossible to watch him, he died the night of his arrival. Nothing but a rickety screen of wood and cloth separated him from a score of other sick men when he died. Next night, washed and dressed in his usual neat clothes, with white linen and a gay colored cravat, the beautiful plump little figure lay in a hideous black coffin with tawdry white lining in the little gloomy mission house that he had found somewhere off on the northern edge of the town. Two or three people watched perfunctorily by the body; but though it was almost spring and the day had been wet, the place grew cold as the night waned, and became almost intolerably dismal and horrible.

The next day, when he was buried, was just such another old winter day, really a wet spring day. The low dirty white sky was heavy with the breath of the lakes; the air was thick with rain; and the filthy snow melted in corners and mingled its muddy dirty water with that which dripped in showers from the soaked and swollen black roofs. The motor vehicles, tramcars and the thousands of feet splashed the water onto the morose people, the buildings, and the shop windows. The negro’s wife, not much affected, arrived from Nashville in time to attend the service at the mission house and to go in the cortege to the cemetery.