Where now? Where after? Where then?
XX
Gant, during these years in which Helen and Luke, the two for whom he felt the deepest affection, were absent a large part of the time, lived a splintered existence at home and at Eliza’s. He feared and hated a lonely life, but habit was deeply rooted in him, and he was unwilling to exchange the well-used comfort of his own home for the bald wintriness of Eliza’s. She did not want him. She fed him willingly enough, but his tirades and his nightly sojourns, both longer and more frequent now that his daughter was absent, annoyed her more than they ever had before.
“You have a place of your own,” she cried fretfully. “Why don’t you stay in it? I don’t want you around making trouble.”
“Send him on,” he moaned bitterly. “Send him on. Over the stones rattle his bones, he’s only a beggar that nobody owns. Ah, Lord! The old dray-horse has had its day. Its race is run. Kick him out: the old cripple can no longer provide them with victuals, and they will throw him on the junk-heap, unnatural and degenerate monsters that they are.”
But he remained at Dixieland as long as there was anyone to listen to him, and to the bleak little group of winter boarders he brought magic. They fed hungrily on all the dramatic gusto with which, lunging back and forth in the big rocker, before the blazing parlor fire, he told and retold the legends of his experience, taking, before their charmed eyes, an incident that had touched him romantically, and embellishing, weaving and building it up. A whole mythology grew up as, goggle-eyed, they listened:
General Fitzhugh Lee, who had reined up before the farmer boy and asked for a drink of water, now tossed off an oaken bucketful, questioned him closely concerning the best roads into Gettysburg, asked if he had seen detachments of the enemy, wrote his name down in a small book, and went off saying to his staff: “That boy will make his mark. It is impossible to defeat an enemy which breeds boys like that.”
The Indians, whom he had passed amicably as he rode out into the New Mexican desert on a burro, seeking the ancient fort, now spurred after him with fell intent and wild scalping whoops. He rode furiously through muttering redskin villages, and found the protection of two cattlemen in the nick of time. The thief who had entered his room at dead of night in New Orleans, and picked up his clothes, and whom he had fought desperately upon the floor, he now pursued naked for seventeen blocks (not five) down Canal Street.
He went several times a week to the moving-picture shows, taking Eugene, and sitting, bent forward in hunched absorption, through two full performances. They came out at ten-thirty or eleven o’clock, on cold ringing pavements, into a world frozen bare—a dead city of closed shops, dressed windows, milliners’ and clothiers’ models posturing with waxen gaiety at congealed silence.
On the Square the slackened fountain dropped a fat spire of freezing water into its thickening rim of ice. In summer, a tall spire blown in blue sheets of spray. When they turned it down it wilted—that was like a fountain, too. No wind blew.
His eyes fixed on the clean concrete walk, Gant strode on, muttering dramatically, composing a narrative of the picture. The cold steel of new sewing-machines glinted in dim light. The Singer building. Tallest in the world. The stitching hum of Eliza’s machine. Needle through your finger before you know it. He winced. They passed the Sluder Building at the corner of the Square and turned left. Gets over $700 a month in officerent from this alone. The window on the corner was filled with rubber syringes and thermos bottles. Drink Coca-Cola. They say he stole the formula from old mountain woman. $50,000,000 now. Rats in the vats. Dope at Wood’s better. Too weak here. He had recently acquired a taste for the beverage and drank four or five glasses a day.
D. Stern had his old shack on that corner twenty years before Fagg bought it. Belonged to Paston estate. Could have bought it for a song. Rich man now. D. moved to North Main now. The Jew’s rich. Fortune out of winnies. They’re hot, they’re hot. In a broken pot. If I had a little time I’d make a little rhyme. Thirteen kids—she had one every year. As broad as she’s long. They all get fat. Everyone works. Sons pay father board. None of mine, I can assure you. The Jews get there.
The hunchback—what did they call him? One of Nature’s Cruel Jests. Ah, Lord! What’s become of old John Bunny? I used to like his pictures. Oh yes. Dead.
That pure look they have, at the end, when he kisses her, mused Eugene. Later—A Warmer Clime. Her long lashes curled down over her wet eyes, she was unable to meet his gaze. The sweet lips trembled with desire as, clasping her in a grip of steel, he bent down over her yielding body and planted hungry kisses on her mouth. When the purple canopy of dawn had been reft asunder by the rays of the invading sun. The Stranger. It wouldn’t do to say the next morning. They have a thick coat of yellow paint all over their face. Meanwhile, in Old England. I wonder what they say to each other. They’re a pretty tough lot, I suppose.
A swift thrust of conviction left him unperturbed. The other was better.
He thought of the Stranger. Steel-gray eyes. A steady face. An eighth of a second faster on the draw than anyone else. Two-gun Bill Hart. Anderson of the Essanay. Strong quiet men.
He clapped his hand against his buttock with a sharp smack and shot the murderous forefinger at an ashcan, a lamppost, and
