The Locusts' Years Part 1

The Locusts' Years.

by Mary Helen Fee.

CHAPTER I

When a man has reached the point where he can reflect, with cynical satisfaction, upon the brutality of organized society, and can contemplate unmoved one of its victims; and when the cause of his reflections is a woman not over thirty, whose worth and refinement are obvious to any reader of faces, that man either must possess a coa.r.s.e-grained and cruel nature, or he must be very highly civilized.

No shade of doubt could have entered Judge Alexander Barton's mind as to which of these adjectives applied to him. He would have repudiated the faintest hint that a taint of coa.r.s.eness or cruelty could lie in him. His was one of those eminent political personalities which bubble up from the great caldron of American democracy. He had convictions and principles of a high order. They appeared frequently in the shape of addresses to young men's political and reading clubs, or in a "few remarks" at church socials, where a programme of songs and recitations was followed by the distribution of home-made cakes and candies, and of uninspiriting beverages. It was sometimes remarked of him in that other world which he frequented that his conscientiousness in attending these mild-flavored symposia was the indisputable evidence of his fitness to adorn the roster of the Philippine judiciary. For to whom may we look for an example, if not to the interpreters of the law, whose position vests them with dignity, social and official? From whom may we demand the utterance of lofty principles and of high convictions, if not from the very men whose business it is to punish the unhappy wretches whose actions have declared their principles, expressed or otherwise, of the flimsiest?

Judge Barton was also frequently extolled as the pattern of American democracy, as, indeed, he was. Nothing could have been more catholic than his handshake, nothing more finely measured than the appreciation which it conveyed of the recipient's relation to himself: to the veteran of the Army of the Philippines, it was hearty, and bespoke the comrade in arms; to the struggling young civil-service employee, it was encouraging, and it hinted, ever so delicately, that the inspiration for great ambitions ought to lie in the example of living statesmen; to the clergy and to the members of the Educational Department, who fairly swarm in the Philippines, it was fraternal and spoke confidentially of the tie which linked them in a great work; and to the effervescing spume from the Pacific coast, which is knocking about Manila, loud in vituperation of the change from democratic to bureaucratic society--to that segment of Young America whose disposition to criticise existing inst.i.tutions led to the happy phrase "undesirable citizens"--the Judge's democratic cordiality always embodied a hope that their mutual relations might continue forever harmonious, and it even intimated that no act on his part could make them otherwise.

The cause of the Judge's highly civilized musings was one of those undesirable citizens of the feminine gender; and, if you ask how anything proper in the feminine gender may be cla.s.sed as an undesirable citizen, there can only be cited an opinion from the Judge himself--one of those ex-cathedra sentiments which he held as infallible--that any one who refuses to accept pleasantly a situation which he is powerless to remedy, and who continues a quarrel which is futile and which can result only disastrously to its single champion, that person is, primarily, inefficient, and, secondarily, insane; either of which states is undesirable. Furthermore, there is nothing so repellent to a man as the feminine weakness which enlists his sympathy, and, at the same time, challenges the terms on which it is given. To find the s.h.i.+vering wretch on whom you would bestow an alms repudiating your charity and mutely reproaching you for the condition of things which makes you donor and him recipient--in such a metaphor, perhaps, the Judge might have condensed the musings which a month's illness and the daily opportunity of studying Miss Ponsonby had bred.

The young woman who had received so much of His Honor's valuable consideration did not look a very formidable antagonist in a quarrel with organized society. She stood at an open window of the hospital, gazing down on a convalescent-strewn lawn, where a military band was delighting the sick with a Christmas Eve concert. Her tall figure was very slender--so slender, in fact, as to make it quite evident that the blue cotton nurse's dress which she wore was the survival of a plumper epoch. She was not a beautiful woman, nor was she even a pretty one, though she was far from being ugly. Her eyes were gray and kind, with well arched brows. Her nose was slightly aquiline, with sensitive nostrils. A rather low forehead, a broad mouth, and a shapely head covered with brown hair, were attributes which she shared with any number of women. What particularly marked her was a delicate grace of manner, an emanation of fastidiousness in every glance and movement, a reserve which at times became almost stiffness; in short, a distinction which, in happier circ.u.mstances, might have made her envied, but which in the mixture of a pioneer community served only to isolate her.

For at least two weeks of convalescence, Judge Barton had amused himself with the attempt to determine why Miss Ponsonby's charm and distinction should be a.s.sets of so little practical value to her. His decision was that, in appearance most distinguished, she was singularly lacking in the unconscious self-confidence which usually accompanies distinction; that, a most feminine creature in many respects, she was unfemininely distrustful of her power over men. There was, in her perfectly dignified att.i.tude toward the other s.e.x, and in the absence of all coquetry, a sort of proud abdication of feminine rights. She resigned all a woman's natural claim upon man's emotional nature; and the keen a.n.a.lyst who had studied her so closely fancied that he could detect a repressed challenge of man's superiority. He cla.s.sified her (with a kind of shrugging pity) as one of those women of whom all men speak respectfully and many men admiringly, but who grow old and plain and bitter, unsought among their more frivolous sisters. At the same time, he admitted an attraction which had kept him bidding indirectly for her notice.

Miss Ponsonby's impa.s.sive reserve with men was so wholly a confession, and, at the same time, so proud a disclaimer of the usual meek att.i.tude of unpopular women, that it not only irritated the man who could a.n.a.lyze her, but it provoked his curiosity and led him into attempt after attempt to sting her into speech and unconscious revelations. And whenever he did so and retired, foiled, with the consciousness of having given an unmanly stab to weakness, his man's desire to think well of himself made him put the blame upon her.

On the afternoon of that particular day, Miss Ponsonby's feminine characteristics were in possession. She leaned rather languidly against the window frame, and her bodily fatigue, and a self-conscious forlornness which she strove habitually to conceal, were quite evident. Every movement betrayed the woman pushed beyond her strength; every sensitive, quivering line of her face hinted at emotions rioting under a repressed exterior.

If her very apparent dejection aroused no compunction in the Judge (he being so highly civilized) it evoked an ardent sympathy from the young man in the next bed; for, in those days, not even the potency of a Judge's t.i.tle could have commanded a private room in the hospital. As a next best expedient, Judge Barton had been placed in a small room opening from the main ward, and containing but two beds. The exigencies of an overcrowded surgical ward made it necessary that the second bed should be occupied by a young pearl fisher, with a crushed chest, who had been taken off a wrecked lorcha. His magnificent physique, and the face of a Greek statue, would have lured from a woman a more complimentary description than the term "young ruffian" which Judge Barton had instantly but inaudibly fastened upon him. "Young ruffian"

is perhaps an exaggerated phrase to describe the beauty and insouciance which, in a male, may be qualified by a hat too far on one side. The Judge had never seen Collingwood in his hat, but he divined just the angle which the young man's taste approved.

Collingwood was gradually recovering, but he was still unable to move without the a.s.sistance of a nurse or of one of the Filipino attendants. He had the black hair, the pink and white skin, and, the cameo-cut profile of a Celtic ancestry, modified by his father's union with a woman of Tennessee pioneer stock. His eyes, which should have been the Irishman's blue, were a steadfast brown. His frame was a little more ma.s.sive than his father's had been; the Irishman's blarney had merged into the chaff of the Westerner; but enough of Irish humor remained to lend flavor to the practical, hard-headed sense which he had inherited from the mountaineer side of the family. His speech was cheery and careless, yet shrewd; lacking in polish, yet not uncouth. He was not uneducated, and took an innocent satisfaction in having credentials to show for that fact, being a graduate of a small high-school in one of the Middle States. The Judge had found him a not uninteresting companion, for he was outspoken, a born lover of adventure, and a born money-maker, if the Judge ever knew one.

However, Collingwood himself interested Judge Barton far less than did the growth of an emotion in the young man which the dignitary had covertly watched enlarge from an expansive grat.i.tude to absorbing affection. The "young ruffian" had fallen head over ears in love with a woman whose critical faculties and fastidious instincts might well have shaken the courage of a more pretentious suitor; and he enjoyed the ruffian's usual advantage of being sensitive to material difficulties only. If he felt the distinction in Miss Ponsonby's manner, it was not as something which separated her from him, but as something which made her only more desirable. He mistook her reserve for shyness; her proud detachment, for meekness. He was aflame to seize the woman who not only appealed to his senses, but who stirred ambitions of which he was hardly conscious, and to bear her away from her overtasked life. He wished to play King Cophetua to the beggar maid; and he was saved from appearing supremely ridiculous only by his sincerity and by freedom from all self-consciousness in his desire.

It was so natural that a young ruffian should fall in love with probably the first gentlewoman with whom he had come into frequent a.s.sociation, that the Judge wasted no particular attention on Collingwood's side of the case. What really interested that gentleman was Miss Ponsonby's att.i.tude. For, as he put it to himself, there was a woman with an undeniable personality, engaged in a dumb squabble with society because she could not obtain a recognition of that personality; and the only admirer and partisan she could muster was a young ruffian so far removed from atmospheric influences that he had not recognized that she was a personality; a man who would not have known what was meant by the word. She might have been the young woman who despatches telegrams from the lobby of a first-cla.s.s hotel, so far as Collingwood's a.s.sumption that she belonged to his world was concerned. Her nurse's ap.r.o.n and cap were to him the indisputable evidences of his right to claim her for his friend or for his sweetheart, provided, of course, that the attraction was mutual; and that her taste might be influenced by any other standard than his own, he had no suspicion. Judge Barton had even detected at times the tacit overture for a cla.s.s combination, the a.s.sumption that they of the toilers needed no chance civility from one temporarily thrown into their society. That the situation daily developing under his observant eyes must be humiliating to Miss Ponsonby, Judge Barton had not the least doubt. But he was sufficiently human to hope that the hour of Collingwood's discomfiture (for of that also he had no doubt) might be delayed until he, the Judge, was ready to leave the hospital, and to find some other amus.e.m.e.nt than that of watching a proud woman's struggle with her femininity.

Collingwood, quite unconscious of the Judge's observant eye, lay watching Miss Ponsonby with an alertness which contrasted strangely with his maimed body. There was, in his slightly dilated nostril and in the glow of his eye, the suggestion of a horse which p.r.i.c.ks forward its ears and accelerates its pace as it nears home; and perhaps some latent instinct of domesticity lay at the bottom of the man's rather inexplicable fancy for Miss Ponsonby.

It was inexplicable, not only through the social gulf which actually divided them, but through the fact that she had never been a man's woman, and that all Collingwood's previous attachments had been for the type of woman who is adored by the opposite s.e.x. Miss Ponsonby was not diffident under his advances, nor was she overwhelmed by a man's favor, little as she had enjoyed of it. Attention of a sort she had had, because the position of the relatives who had brought her up was such that any member of their household had to be taken into consideration; but from the time she had left the shelter of their roof, she had received from men an indifference as profound as it was respectful. Collingwood's very open admiration was the first tracery upon a page which was humiliatingly blank.

It had begun--his admiration--on his first night in the hospital, when he lay a bandaged mummy, racked with pain, a mounting fever adding its torments to the closeness of a muggy, tropical night. There were memories of its sufferings mingled with gentle ministrations, of touches soothing to his worn body, of a feeling of helplessness and dependence upon this gentleness, which carried him back to his half-forgotten childhood, and washed, as clean as his school-boy's slate, a philosophy of life acquired in numerous love affairs with the young ladies of hotel lobbies, and of restaurant check stands.

The impression remained overnight and increased by reason of the succession of another nurse, who prided herself upon her jollity, and believed that her patients needed cheering up. Collingwood was in such a condition that jollity was an affront to him. He endured the cheerful lady as best he could, and counted the long hours till four o'clock brought back his madonna.

The word had no part in Collingwood's vocabulary; but it is applicable because it expresses the quality of wors.h.i.+p which he had injected into an otherwise very mundane emotion. Collingwood, who was as innocent as a babe of social traditions, who was an American democrat through and through, and believed that all men are equal, save as the possession of "the price" enables one man to command more of this world's goods than another, was unable to account for the elements in Miss Ponsonby's nature which whetted his desires, by any of the threads which contributed to the fabric of his philosophy; and he explained them by imputing to the lady the rare and peculiar quality of goodness.

Goodness! There you have the weak point in the arch of man's philosophical structure, the thing which at once embodies his highest ideal and his most human distaste, the thing over which he has rhapsodized in poetry, which he has exalted into a theology, and which he has ruthlessly crucified whenever he has met it in the flesh. Collingwood supposed that Miss Ponsonby's delicate rejection of his advances (a rejection qualified by some feeling which a lover's instinct had to interpret to his advantage) originated in goodness, in a final struggle of the etherealized feminine nature before it submitted to its incarnation and became bound in the flesh. He thought the delicate self-restraint with which she met the caprices and fretfulness of her wards was founded on heavenly patience. He imagined that her occasional snubs of Judge Barton were the outcroppings of an inward shrinking from a pa.s.sion to which she could not respond; for, loverlike, he a.s.sumed that all men must feel as he did about his divinity and he could not perceive the undercurrent of patronage in the Judge's not infrequent gallantries, which was like an acid on Miss Ponsonby's quivering nerves.

It was a delicious situation. Judge Barton rubbed his hands in enjoyment of it, and you must admit that he had some justification in the lady's persistent refusal to make the best of his somewhat generous efforts to establish friendly relations. Oh, yes, it was a delicious situation; and the only one element in it which the Judge never suspected was that secret response to the young man's tenderness which the lover himself had divined, which whetted him in spite of studied rebuffs, and which, his alleged democracy notwithstanding, all Judge Barton's cla.s.s instincts would have unhesitatingly p.r.o.nounced unseemly--as, indeed, the young woman herself regarded it.

CHAPTER II

Charlotte Ponsonby continued to lean against the window in an abstraction which registered impressions very much as a flagellant's ecstasy may note the pathway of his torment. The consciousness of her own perturbation made it exceedingly difficult to turn around. She was so unhappy that it seemed the fact must be evident to even a casual observer. She was afraid of a kindly word, or of a mere friendly glance, lest it should break through the self control she had been exerting.

When at length the National Anthem had been played, and lucent amber was fading into early dusk, the nurse had no further excuse for turning her back on the two patients in her ward. She did not glance at them as she moved away, but her quick return with a gla.s.s of milk showed that one of them, at least, was in her thoughts. She offered the refreshment to Collingwood with an explanation, in a dry, professional tone, for its being three minutes late.

He sipped it, looking over the rim with his steadfast brown eyes.

"I'm tired," he said fretfully.

"I suppose you must be. I will move you when you have finished that."

"I wonder," Judge Barton mused, "if nurses do not sometimes feel like saying 'So am I' when we fellows complain of being tired, or nervous, or out of patience."

Miss Ponsonby threw him a smile of recognition for the courtesy of the thought. "Very often they do," she replied, "but that thought would not come in the case of Mr. Collingwood, because he is tired, and we know that he suffers. Nurses seldom think of themselves so long as they can reasonably think of their patients." Her outstretched hand conveyed an intimation to the patient under discussion that he was taking an unusual time to consume a gla.s.s of milk.

Collingwood was not a man to be hurried when he had an object in taking time. He affected not to see her hand, when, in reality, he wanted to caress it; and he continued to sip his milk very slowly indeed.

"Christmas Eve," he said lugubriously, "a b.u.m Christmas if ever there was one."

"Yes," said Judge Barton. "Collingwood has an epoch now in life--a landmark. Hereafter he will cla.s.s all events as before or after the Christmas he spent in hospital."

"Oh, you," Collingwood threw at him, "you can afford to smile. You have plenty of friends. It's not the same with you as with a poor devil like me."

"My dear fellow," expostulated the Judge, "'at night all cats are gray.' Friends do not make a Christmas. When one is away from one's home and family at this season, there are no gradations. Ask Miss Ponsonby."

"Is it true, Miss Ponsonby, what he says?" inquired Collingwood with the air of one appealing to an infallible tribunal.

"I don't know, Mr. Collingwood. Judge Barton must look for his support to someone who has pa.s.sed through both experiences. I have pa.s.sed Christmas away from my family, but I have not pa.s.sed one surrounded by a host of friends."

"Ah, but you understand so much," the Judge murmured. Irritated by her unresponsiveness, he grew almost impertinent. "The keenness of your intelligence is only excelled by your kindness of heart."

Miss Ponsonby's cheek for an instant flew danger signals, but she said nothing. She looked at the Judge a moment and subdued him. Then--

"I do not believe you give me credit for any great kindness of heart,"

she said simply.

"Then must I give you credit for the patience of Job."

"That you may do." She took the gla.s.s from Collingwood, who, after an ineffectual effort to convince himself that it was not empty, yielded it reluctantly.

The Judge, with a delicacy which he practised with almost ceremonial observance, turned on his pillow and gave them the benefit of a wealth of grizzled black hair, covering a ma.s.sive head. He would not intrude upon the act of changing the young man's wearied posture. His excess of delicacy robbed the act of its naturalness, made it seem personal and intimate.

Collingwood felt the nurse's hesitation. His heart thumped in glad triumph. Let her rule her manner as she would, she could not make that service impersonal. He saw her teeth catch her underlip as she bent over him. Her eyes would not meet his, which glued themselves appealingly upon her face. She slipped her arm under him, however, while his own went about her neck.

In spite of her care, and the perfect training of her action, the slight change which she made in his position wrenched a groan from him. Yet as she laid him back and still stooped, drawing her arms from under him, his own clinging arms tightened, and he pressed his lips ardently against the cheek so near his own.