The Open Boat and Other Stories 30 – Crane · Verses Across
Literature · Short Stories
The Open Boat and Other Stories 30Part 1 · Chapter 2
18
Literature · Short Stories
The Open Boat and Other Stories 30
Part 1 · Chapter 2
CraneEnglish
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, from 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 woman 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, were you, 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 lake-side 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 'spose," 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 sad-like; 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 colour in a bonnet and a pose of a head. A buggy was travelling 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 DETAIL
The tiny old lady in the black dress and curious little black bonnet had at first seemed alarmed at the sound made by her feet upon the stone pavements. But later she forgot about it, for she suddenly came into the tempest of the Sixth Avenue shopping district, where from the streams of people and vehicles went up a roar like that from headlong mountain torrents.
She seemed then like a chip that catches, recoils, turns and wheels, a reluctant thing in the clutch of the impetuous river. She hesitated, faltered, debated with herself. Frequently she seemed about to address people; then of a sudden she would evidently lose her courage. Meanwhile the torrent jostled her, swung her this and that way.
At last, however, she saw two young women gazing in at a shop-window. They were well-dressed girls; they wore gowns with enormous sleeves that made them look like full-rigged ships with all sails set. They seemed to have plenty of time; they leisurely scanned the goods in the window. Other people had made the tiny old woman much afraid because obviously they were speeding to keep such tremendously important engagements. She went close to the girls and peered in at the same window. She watched them furtively for a time. Then finally she said--
"Excuse me!"
The girls looked down at this old face with its two large eyes turned towards them.
"Excuse me, can you tell me where I can get any work?"
For an instant the two girls stared. Then they seemed about to exchange a smile, but, at the last moment, they checked it. The tiny old lady's eyes were upon them. She was quaintly serious, silently expectant. She made one marvel that in that face the wrinkles showed no trace of experience, knowledge; they were simply little, soft, innocent creases. As for her glance, it had the trustfulness of ignorance and the candour of babyhood.
"I want to get something to do, because I need the money," she continued since, in their astonishment, they had not replied to her first question. "Of course I'm not strong and I couldn't do very much, but I can sew well; and in a house where there was a good many men folks, I could do all the mending. Do you know any place where they would like me to come?"
The young women did then exchange a smile, but it was a subtle tender smile, the edge of personal grief.
"Well, no, madame," hesitatingly said one of them at last; "I don't think I know any one."
A shade passed over the tiny old lady's face, a shadow of the wing of disappointment.
"Don't you?" she said, with a little struggle to be brave, in her voice.
Then the girl hastily continued--"But if you will give me your address, I may find some one, and if I do, I will surely let you know of it."
The tiny old lady dictated her address, bending over to watch the girl write on a visiting card with a little silver pencil. Then she said--
"I thank you very much." She bowed to them, smiling, and went on down the avenue.
As for the two girls, they walked to the curb and watched this aged figure, small and frail, in its black gown and curious black bonnet. At last, the crowd, the innumerable wagons, intermingling and changing with uproar and riot, suddenly engulfed it.
The Saturday Review--"Mr. Stephen Crane's picture of the effect of actual fighting on a raw regiment is simply unapproached in intimate knowledge and sustained imaginative strength. In the supreme moments of the fight he is possessed by the fiery breath of battle, and finds an inspired utterance that will reach the universal heart of man. This extraordinary book will appeal strongly to the insatiable desire to know the psychology of war--how the sights and sounds, the terrible details of the drama of battle, affect the senses and the soul of man."
St. James's Gazette--"This is not merely a remarkable book; it is a revelation Mr. Crane has laid the War God on the dissecting-table, and exposed his every bone and nerve and sinew and artery to the public gaze."
The Speaker--"Every page is crowded, not merely with incidents such as the war correspondent describes, but with the tragedy of life. The reader sees the battle, not from afar, but from the inside. He hears the laboured breathing of the wearied soldiers, sees the colour rising and falling in their cheeks, and feels at heart as they themselves did in this first act in the tremendous drama which so many people talk about and so few understand.... As a work of art, The Red Badge of Courage deserves high praise. As a moral lesson that mankind still needs, the praise it deserves is higher still."
The Athenæum--"The extraordinary power of imagination is more wonderful than that of Defoe. It is in dialogue that he is at his strongest, for in this the words are used as the soldiers would have used them."
London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
STEPHEN CRANE'S WORKS
THE THIRD VIOLET
Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s.
The Athenæum--"A vividness of portraiture which puts The Third Violet on a high level--higher, we think, than Mr. Crane's very different Maggie, though perhaps lower than The Little Regiment, which is also very different. In his present book Mr. Crane is more the rival of Mr. Henry James than of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. But he is intensely American, which can hardly be said of Mr. Henry James, and it is possible that if he continues in his present line of writing he may be the author who will introduce the United States to the ordinary English world. We have never come across a book that brought certain sections of American society so perfectly before the reader as does The Third Violet. The picture is an extremely pleasant one, and its truth appeals to the English reader, so that the effect of the book is to draw him nearer to his American cousins. The Third Violet incidentally contains the best dog that we have come across in modern fiction. Mr. Crane's dialogue is excellent, and it is dialogue of a type for which neither The Red Badge of Courage nor his other books had prepared us."
The Academy--"By this latest product of his genius our impression of Mr. Crane is confirmed: that for psychological insight, for dramatic intensity, and for potency of phrase he is already in the front rank of English-American writers of fiction, and that he possesses a certain separate quality which places him apart. It is a short story and a slender, but taking it in conjunction with what he has previously given us, there remains, in our judgment, no room for doubt."
The Bookman--"An idyll, and a very pretty one. In The Red Badge of Courage and Maggie there is an intenser force; but in this slighter effort we feel the same directness, the same true reading of the workings of the mind, the same contempt for conventions and clap-trap sentiment."
The Sketch--"There is a strong human interest in it, and a boyish vigour which is refreshing."
The Scotsman--"It is very light, very amusing, and very American. The literary touch is singularly deft and felicitous, the strokes playful but unerring.... The treatment has the distinction which only a vivid imagination, a fine dramatic faculty and an intuitive perception of the deeper things of human nature can give to a book."
Manchester Guardian--"It is invigorating to follow the breezy mountain life up in the pine woods.... The book abounds in those felicitous descriptions and bright dialogues of which Mr. Crane is master.... One more delightful dog is added to the heroes of fiction."
Daily Mail--"We would not for the world have it other than it is.... In its short tantalisingly abrupt chapters, the tale gives the history of a wooing, a history clear, simple, and often sparkling as a rill of spring water."
MAGGIE: A Child of the Streets
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The Literary World--"Contains all the force, all the power, and all the reality which Mr. Crane has proved his pen to possess."
THE BLACK RIDERS: Verse
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London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
