The pillar of sand

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LIBRARY

THE GIFT OF ,

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Chapter I

Mrs. Mandell's house was .a place of peace. From the restlessness of the modern world, people passed through its doors into the lavender-scented quiet of by-gone years. The house was the true and dignified expression of its owner's nature; of her instinctive refinement, and. of an intellectual fastidiousness that was sweetened by* charity.

There was an air of spaciousness about it that made one instinctively draw long, satisfying breaths. The walls, everywhere, were hung with old, beautiful, glowing pictures before each of which one could stop, and be happier for stopping. The chairs seemed to hold, still, the impression of the honest gentlemen and the beautiful ladies who for generations had sat there in erect and dignified repose. There were marvellous old clocks, which had chimed the hours of their going out and their coming in, of their dining, and of their dying. It was a house where lingered the ghosts of a stately past, communing with the one who had inherited their grace and their dignity. For they had left her not only their possessions but themselves, since only by one who was a new flowering of themselves, a modern expression of their splendid old ideals, could their possessions, the outward manifestation of their own loveliness of character, be held in the honour which was their due. The house was beautiful, aristocratic in the best sense, but it was not un-American. Nor was it merely a survival of an elder time, but rather a forecast of a truer, finer America r 1 - a country emancipated from jts restlessness, its materialism, daring once more to admit as its own what really was its own, its past, finding there much of the spiritual for which it was vaguely seeking, and through it able to grasp the old ideals and to make them a part of its life.

It was on a warm afternoon in May that Mrs. Mandell sat in her library, drinking tea with her friend, Mrs. Warren. They were talking about Hugh Brandon.

" He might at least do something to earn a living," Mrs. Warren said decisively. "They are charming people, the Brandons, but poor, my dear, really quite desperately poor. Since the days of old Major Brandon there has not been a successful man In the family. He left a good, bulky package of bonds in the safe but even bonds melt away, you know. My husband used to say :of the Brandons that when two bonds matured Cyril — that's Hugh's grandfather — used to buy one new one to propitiate the ghost of the Major and a cashmere shawl to propitiate his wife. And quite naturally when one's income is cut in half sufficiently often one finally discovers the problem of ^existence to be difficult. May I have another cup of tea, my dear? " Mrs. Mandell took the cup and nervously refilled it. "You take cream, I know, and one lump? No, two is it? I never remember. People are so different about their tea. And as to Hugh Brandon — Don't you think you are a little hard on him, Bessie? Remember that he is only twenty-three."

' Twenty-three, my dear, is quite time for him to be getting down to serious work."

" But he only graduated from college last year. He took honours, you know."

" Then he ought to be doing something with them — if there is anything one can db with such things. My boys never took honours but they married nice girls and they're good men. They don't write poetry and they're not beautiful to look at, like Hugh, but they have made a place for themselves and that's more than Hugh will ever do." Mrs. Warren put her cup on the table and settled herself comfortably in her broad, soft armchair. She seemed to belong there. She was a large woman, with rolls of delicate pink fat on her neck and wrists.

She had still, although she was seventy years old, the most exquisite complexion of any woman in Boston. The fading of her colour, instead of leaving her encased in wrinkled brown leather, had made her skin almost translucent, a pale, clear honey colour over which lingered persistently the rosy bloom of youth. She loved ruffles and no imported styles could banish her billowy skirts and her soft bows. " It is useless to try to disguise my body," she once said. " All I can do is to embellish God's handiwork." She filled the chair and her dress frothed up around her, a mass of chiffon as light as sea foam.

Mrs. Mandell, a few years younger, was small, and dark, and nervous. Her hands moved with the quickness of mice among the tea-cups. Her right shoulder twitched as she talked. She thought the best of almost every one, believed every pathetic story, no matter how improbable. And yet, where her emotions .were not concerned, she was a wise counsellor. She had never been known to desert a friend. In the matter of Hugh Brandon, her nephew, her sympathy was very keen and she rummaged her mind eagerly for excuses with which to defend him. "I know," she said, "that so far the boy has not exerted himself very strenuously on the material side of things but he has certainly done well intellectually and all he learns now will stand him in good stead finally. More men who graduate with honours, I am told, do well in after life than those who merely skim through college. After this year Hugh will go to work and his year in the Graduate School will surely help him."

" You don't know what you are talking about, my dear," Mrs. Warren put in. " This year for him is mere intellectual debauch."

" Why, Bessie, how can you? "

" I don't know how I can, but I certainly can. The browsing about among pleasant books while some one else pays the bills — I'm sure poor Evelyn Brandon can't do it — is morally degrading — yes, degrading is the word because it's what I mean. That boy has no idea of the difference between work and play. He imagines there will always be some one to pay his way, and there won't be. At least I hope not."

" He may marry a rich girl."

" That's the danger, since he's good looking. I believe it's the looks that take in even you, my dear, who ought to be old enough to see beneath the surface. But you are as susceptible as a girl of eighteen. When that boy does something I shall have more respect for his handsome face."

" He has published a volume of poems."

" Yes — and what did the reviews say of them ? ' As slim as the volume that held them,' I remember, and ' as pale as its covers.' That was the trouble. They were charming, but mere trifles, jeux d' esprit. They weren't even worked over. They came without effort — otherwise they would not have come at all. And with the publisher he had a friend at court."

" The first edition was sold out. The public must have liked them."

" The first edition was sold out — a very small one — but have you heard that another edition is forthcoming? I haven't. It isn't the first edition that the public buys. It's the second. This being Boston, there are Brandon friends and relatives enough to dispose of a good many copies. Didn't you hear it often last winter — ' Have you seen dear Hugh's poems? A sweet little volume. You must buy one to encourage him.' I had three given me at Christmas and I gave away several myself to people who had to have a little more than a card and not quite a real present. Christmas, and Evelyn Brandon's sympathetic friends sold those poems."

Mrs. Mandell darted across the room to lower the window-shade a fraction of an inch. " The reflection from the river is very bright at this time in the afternoon," she said. " I thought it might bother you. What you say about Hugh's poems is true, I suppose, in a way. The edition was small, but as to the public buying them — well, American!* don't read poetry in these days."

" Not that kind, certainly," Mrs. Warren assented. " And there never have been many who read verse that has watered milk instead of blood in its veins. We want something to rouse us in these days. Hugh is too soothing. It is pleasant to know that the ' nightingale sang to his love in the grey-green shade,' but after all nightingales aren't very vital except when they typify something that is. Hugh's verse begins and ends with the pleasant, tinkling sound of itself — and it rather makes one think the author a tinkling sort of person. I hope he isn't, really. I haven't seen him for months."

" You will soon. He's coming to tea. He ought to be here now. I hope you don't mind."

"Mind? No, why should I? He is always pleasant to look at and he talks decently — full of proper sentiments. It is only in retrospect that he is so irritating. Did you know that Francis Evans had been made president of the Botolph Trust Company? There is a real man, — and not more than thirty-two or three. He impresses every one with his power."

" I suppose he must have it," Mrs. Mandell said, a little irritably. " But he tires me. I have the highest respect for him. I like his people — yes, they're boring, but good. And he must be able, of course. He's not a type I like, nevertheless. I know I am wrong, but it always seems to me as though he must spend his time devising schemes to impress people with his ability."

" Not with business men. They look only at results. You are unfair to him now, my dear, as you thought I was to Hugh. Here's the boy, probably. Wasn't that the bell?"

" I do hope you'll be kind to him, Bessie. Remember he is only a boy." Mrs. Mandell got up and then sat down again. Her eyes sparkled with excitement.

" Be calm, my dear," Mrs. Warren said, laughing. " Remember that you are nearer seventy than seventeen."

And then Hugh came through the door. " Hullo, Aunt Edith," he cried, kissing Mrs. Mandell on both cheeks. " Oh, how d'ye do, Mrs. Warren. I didn't see you."

" And yet I'm said to be a very visible person," she responded, holding out her hand.

" Visible always in a charming way," he said, " and not nearly often enough for our pleasure."

" No flattery, Hugh. That never leads a man very far. It's too French."

" I should not dare to flatter you, Mrs. Warren. You are too quick to see through any sham." " Yes," she answered, " I am."

"How is your mother, dear?" Mrs. Mandell asked quickly. She was pouring his tea, and almost spilling it in her endeavour to watch him, to be polite to Mrs. Warren, and to manage the cups at the same time.

" She's well, thank you, for her. You know mother takes life pretty hard. The little things annoy her."

" She's had trouble, Hugh," Mrs. Warren said. " And you are all she has now to take care of her. Her happiness depends on you." She really had no sympathy at all for Evelyn Brandon's querulousness.

" You may be sure that Hugh is a devoted son, Bessie," Mrs. Mandell said with some asperity.

" I try to do my duty, Mrs. Warren," the young man added, flushing as he spoke. " I always get in twice a week to see her but we are very busy in Cambridge."

" Is the ' we ' editorial? " she asked quickly. Hugh blushed more deeply. " No, I meant with the other fellows. I'm not writing anything just now — ■ nothing to speak of, I mean. I've been helping some of the fellows with the lyrics for the Pudding Play. They didn't seem to have any poet in

IO the class — at least none whose knowledge of rhymes went beyond cat and bat."

" And studying, too, I hope. Writing lyrics will never bring in the bread and butter. I want you to be a success, my boy, worthy of your name and all that sort of thing. Study might help, though I admit I don't see how unless you are going to teach, like Reggie Turner."

" My family have never been very successful in the money line," he said ruefully.

" All the more reason why you should be. They have always been gentlemen and a gentleman, at least according to my somewhat old-fashioned ideas, never shirks. Having delivered myself of which platitude," she added, smiling, " I must go home. Don't coddle him, Edith, and don't let him flatter you."

She sailed from the room, her voluminous draperies giving an extraordinary effect of lightness. With all her weight she stepped softly. It was one of the many lessons she had learned from her mother, and those who knew her realised that her mother had been a great lady.

" She's the most unsympathetic person I know," Hugh said, throwing himself into a chair. " You don't expect any one who looks so pleasant to be so disagreeable. I'm sure she would criticise God Almighty behind His back."

1 1

"Hugh!" Mrs. Mandell protested. "At least be fair. Mrs. Warren has a sharp tongue. She has no sympathy with inefficient people and does not want you to be one of them. But she never says behind a person's back what she would not say to his face."

" She's a gossip."

'Yes, if that means a woman fond of talking about people. But she is never malicious — or seldom. What she said of you and to you was meant for your good."

" Oh, good Lord, Aunt Edith! " He jumped to his feet and crossing the room poked viciously at the fire. " I wish people would find something better to do than to discuss what is and what isn't good for me. You are the only one who seems to have any idea that I am old enough to decide for myself. Other people think that just because I work hard at something different from what Francis Evans and unimaginative people like him take up that I must be idling away my time. It's no joke, I tell you, to write verse that amounts to anything. And it's lonely work, too. There is some incentive to hustle when one's in the stock-market, surrounded by crowds of yelling men, all of them trying to get ahead of you. It's quite another matter to sit down alone in your room at night with a locked door and try to catch the phantoms that float in the air, and then to put them on paper so that others can see them, too."

Mrs. Mandell watched him a little sadly. He was leaning on the mantelpiece, his head resting against his arms, staring into the fire. It was a sensitive face, imaginative, but without a trace of effeminacy. The features were large but regular, without any suggestion of haste or of coarseness in the moulding. The eyes were blue, almost childlike in their expression except when Hugh was excited. Then they sparkled, or grew eloquent, or sad, following his mood as inevitably as his shadow followed his body.

" You can understand it, can't you, Aunt Edith " he asked, straightening to his full six feet.

" Yes," she answered slowly, " I can. But do you lock the door, and keep it locked? "

Hugh hesitated. " No," he said at last slowly, " I do not. All I said a moment ago was hot air. It was defending a theory, not a practice, and if it had been true I shouldn't have talked about it." He pulled up a chair and sitting beside her, took her hand in his. She did not look at him now. Her eyes were misty. " That's why I came to see you, Aunt Edith, to talk about it. I haven't been fair to you."

She stopped him with a gesture. " We won't talk. about that side of it, please."

" But we must. Haven't you given me the money to go through college ? I owe it to you to make the best of myself — and I haven't done it."

" You owe it to yourself, Hugh, and to your mother — and to me, yes, as to all your friends, but because of the love I have given you — not the money."

" You make it very hard for me, Aunt Edith."

" It can never be easy to admit failure — no, not that — you are too young to know the word. To know that you have disappointed your friends is what I mean. Do you want to tell me about it?"

" There is very little to tell," he answered after a minute. " I have simply neglected my opportunities. And more than that I have failed in what I tried to do because I was not strong enough to be myself. There was not a single good thing in that book of verses."

She looked at him then, her eyes full of sympathy. " You wrong yourself there, Hugh. The verses were not great, but you are very young. What troubled me was that I felt they might have been better."

"They were not original."

She drew away with a little gasping cry. ' You don't mean — "

" No, no," he said. " Not as bad as that. I was saturated with poetry and other people's melody came without my knowing it. Do you remember the one about the dead girl, the one that began ' A red, red rose, On a bosom of snows ' ? " She nodded. " Well, last night I was playing cards late and Reggie Turner came into the room. He is very clever and he was drunk. He made fun of every one, and when he came to me he began to recite my verses, all mixed up, of .course, and along with them the poems they resembled. The one I just spoke of I remember particularly, and then he said line after line of Shelley — ' Arethusa arose, from her couch of snows ' — you remember." Mrs. Mandell nodded. " Well, the fellows all shouted, but they were embarrassed, too. It evidently wasn't new to them. I felt like a thief."

" But you didn't consciously copy."

" No, of course not, but that doesn't make it any better. I ought to have known that the verse was all inspired by the good work of other men, not by the gods. I rushed into print and now I regret it — bitterly."

" Does all this affect the course you are taking now? "

" It does, because I am simply soaking up more of other people's music and I haven't strength of mind enough to transmute it into a music of my own. What is more, as I said, I don't know enough. I haven't ideas that will rouse people. I only know a little of books, nothing of life."

" What are you going to do? "

" Resign from college immediately, as the first thing."

"Are you sure that is wise, Hugh?" she asked anxiously. " Isn't it better to make good where you have begun? Is that your only reason for leaving?"

He hesitated a moment and his eyes fell. " No," he said, in a low voice. " That is not all, Aunt Edith. I am in debt; I must go to work."

" In debt? " she questioned. " Didn't you have enough to pay your bills? "

He turned awa,y from her. " I gambled the money away."

She cried out. " Oh, no, my boy ! You couldn't have done that. You must have thought of your mother."

" I thought of nothing except my own pleasure," he said bitterly. " I have never thought of anything else. Now I am going to work. I saw Francis Evans this morning. He is going to take me into the Botolph Trust Company. I hate him, because he is cold-hearted and calculating and painfully sure of himself. I don't know what he wants of me. But he evidently thinks he can use me somehow. I am going to do my best for him at any

rate."

Mrs. Mandell got up from her chair and put her hands on the young man's shoulders. Still he did not look at her. " Do it, Hugh," she said earnestly. " Make people believe in you. Never let the drudgery of it break you — and at the same time hold fast to the dreams, to the enthusiasms, my boy. You want to be a poet. Be one. When you begin to help your mother pay for the comforts that make her life endurable, then you will see with a broader vision. We will forget the past and pin our faith to the future. There will be no failure, no weakness there."

" I don't know," he cried. " I am weak — but with you behind me, Aunt Edith, I should be a cad not to make good." Then, at last, he looked at her and took courage at the hope that shone from her eyes.

Chapter II

Hugh went directly to his room in Cambridge, where he packed his books and clothes. For his dinner he ate some biscuits and drank a bottle of beer, both left over from a game of a few nights previous. He wrote one or two notes, including his formal resignation from the Graduate School and one to Francis Evans saying that he should appear, ready for work, on the following Monday. Then, intolerably lonely, he made for his club.

The only people there were four Seniors playing bridge. Hugh threw himself into a Morris chair next the table to watch. " Hullo, Hughie," one of them said negligently ; " haven't seen you for days. What's the matter — work or whooping cough?"

" Neither," he answered gruffly. " I'm posted, so I can't charge things here, and — ■ oh, just generally sick of life."

" You shouldn't have missed that trick, Mack," Harold Innes said. " You'll make me sick of life in a minute, and one like that's enough. Hard luck, Hughie. Forget about being a poet and you'll be more cheerful. It's your play, Denny."

Hugh watched the hand go out. When Mack was shuffling, he said shortly, " I'm going to — "

" Going to what ? Quit the poetry ? You mustn't do that, really, you know. The literary reputation of the University depends on you. We expect you to be the founder of another New England School, if that's what they call a bunch of writers."

" No, no," Harold cried. " Hugh would tell you that he couldn't found a school until he'd found himself. Wasn't there some such complaint as that in the late little lavender lispings ? — ■ the poem, you know, about how you were hunting for your muse in the ' bare, blank sky,' and for your soul in ' the tumultuous waters.' I read all the poems conscientiously because they weren't prescribed in any course."

" Shut up," Hugh shouted at him. " I know as well as you what drivel the stuff was. Haven't I just told -you I am going to drop it? "

" So you did, rather ambiguously," Mack put in. " And now stop talking. A fellow can't play bridge with a lot of chatter going on. Shall I buy you a drink to fill your mouth? "

" Don't be insulting," Hugh answered. " I've a few pennies in my pocket to buy myself one if I want it." He pulled himself up from his chair and wandered out of the room.

" Don't get a grouch," some one called after him, but he paid no attention. Downstairs a fire was snapping in the living-room fireplace and Hugh threw himself on the long sofa in front of it. He felt acutely that the evening marked the end of a chapter. Much that seemed of the utmost importance looked now, in perspective, useless and mean. He had been proud of making the Varsity crew, proud beyond measure to stroke a winning boat. He had secretly gloried in his own popularity, not vainly, but in whole-hearted delight in the fact that so many found him worth liking, worth admiring. Perhaps more than anything else, though he never showed it, had he been proud to be a first group scholar. But now ! Sensitive as he was, he realised with a kind of impotent rage the changed attitude of his friends. They were no less cordial, outwardly. They still trooped into his room of an evening to drink his beer and smoke his cigarettes. But he knew it was the food they came for, not as formerly, to be with him, to hear him talk, to think, each to himself, how splendid it was to have him for a friend. It was only when the satisfaction faded that Hugh knew it had once been there. He had lost all simplicity of outlook. And most of all, perhaps, did he recognise the futility of his success in scholarship. At the time that, at least, had seemed to have solid worth, but now he saw it as it was, in line with all his other honours, something that had come to him without effort. His mind had worked easily, quickly, superficially. He had enjoyed the work because it was not really work at all, but only another kind of play. Never had he vigorously and consistently exerted his mind. He remembered now, with painful acuteness, the times when he had been satisfied with results a little less good than his best, because his best meant the giving up of some pleasure.

" It's been all a miserable failure," he said to himself — " from beginning to end a failure. And will it ever be anything else? Hasn't this eternal coddling sapped all the sound stuff there is in me? "

He lay flat on the sofa, his face turned toward the fire, that slowly burned itself out. He felt flabby, mentally and physically. The idea of the office on Monday, of the grind of real work among uncongenial men, appalled him. He wondered, with a kind of deep-lying irritation what Francis Evans wanted of him. That, too, had been easy — the finding of a place. Perhaps if he had been refused again and again he might have been less hasty in his decision. Perhaps it was foolish to leave college. But then the debts! It was all a miserable tangle however you looked at it.

He heard the outer door of the Club House slam, but did not move, even when two or three fellows came into the room. " Hullo, who's the dead man? " he heard some one say.

They stamped across the room and stood between him and the fire. " Hughie Brandon again," one said, laughing. " Funny how poetry and drink go hand in hand."

" Nonsense," Reggie Turner's voice broke in. " That's a bad metaphor. Drink has no hands — it's all throat. And poetry — well, it's — "

" All piffle."

" Not at all," Reggie said. " You disturb me with your interruptions. Poetry, according to the dead man here, is disembodied passion, but as he has no idea what passion is he can't possibly realise that to disembody it is to kill it. Poetry, my dear friends, is — "

" Oh, shut up, Reggie," Hugh shouted, sitting up. " You're drunk as usual, and when you're that way you do talk rot without ceasing."

" But I'm not that way, as you politely put it. I'm rehearsing. Next year I intend to give a course in English poetry in the History Department — I mean the other way round — to give, in that Department, a course, and so forth. Now you must listen, Hughie. This is serious. The aim of the historian is to explode our childish beliefs. For example, the Plymouth Rock isn't the Plymouth Rock.

Mr. Washington never gave George a hatchet for Christmas. You must have documentary evidence of any fact. Among Mr. Washington's papers is no receipted bill for a child's hatchet. That's a negative proof. Samuel Bottomless Inanity got his Ph.D. for spending sixteen years examining the accounts of all the hardware firms in and near Virginia. He discovered no record of a child's hatchet being sold to the Grandfather of his Country. No record at all, I tell you. Another negative proof, and you all know that two negatives make a positive. So there you are! George Washington, granted that his father was an honest man, couldn't possibly have had a hatchet."

" Idiot ! " Hugh said, smiling in spite of himself. " What has that to do with poetry? "

" Nothing, dear man. Don't get impatient. It is simply an illustration of the inspiring methods of my department. As to poetry — the game is to prove that it isn't or at least that it wasn't written by its author. Shakespeare is already disposed of. Bacon has gobbled him and he was a statesman, not a poet. I think that I can certainly prove some other interesting items — for example, that Benjamin Franklin wrote The Eve of St. Agnes, and that John Wesley penned Don Juan in his hours of idleness."