The Open Boat and Other Stories
staring at the vendor. There was evidently a great debate in his
mind. His infant intellect had defined this Italian. The latter was
undoubtedly a man who would eat babes that provoked him. And the alarm
in the babe when this monarch had turned his newspaper brought vividly
before him the consequences if he were detected. But at this moment the
vendor gave a blissful grunt, and tilting his chair against a wall,
closed his eyes. His paper dropped unheeded.
The babe ceased his scrutiny and again raised his hand. It was
moved with supreme caution toward the fruit. The fingers were bent,
claw-like, in the manner of great heart-shaking greed. Once he stopped
and chattered convulsively, because the vendor moved in his sleep. The
babe, with his eyes still upon the Italian, again put forth his hand,
and the rapacious fingers closed over a round bulb.
And it was written that the Italian should at this moment open his
eyes. He glared at the babe a fierce question. Thereupon the babe
thrust the round bulb behind him, and with a face expressive of the
deepest guilt, began a wild but elaborate series of gestures declaring
his innocence. The Italian howled. He sprang to his feet, and with
three steps overtook the babe. He whirled him fiercely, and took from
the little fingers a lemon.
AN ELOQUENCE OF GRIEF
The windows were high and saintly, of the shape that is found in
churches. From time to time a policeman at the door spoke sharply to
some incoming person. "Take your hat off!" He displayed in his voice
the horror of a priest when the sanctity of a chapel is defied or
forgotten. The court-room was crowded with people who sloped back
comfortably in their chairs, regarding with undeviating glances the
procession and its attendant and guardian policemen that moved slowly
inside the spear-topped railing. All persons connected with a case went
close to the magistrate's desk before a word was spoken in the matter,
and then their voices were toned to the ordinary talking strength. The
crowd in the court-room could not hear a sentence; they could merely
see shifting figures, men that gestured quietly, women that sometimes
raised an eager eloquent arm. They could not always see the judge,
although they were able to estimate his location by the tall stands
surmounted by white globes that were at either hand of him. And so
those who had come for curiosity's sweet sake wore an air of being in
wait for a cry of anguish, some loud painful protestation that would
bring the proper thrill to their jaded, world-weary nerves--wires that
refused to vibrate for ordinary affairs.
Inside the railing the court officers shuffled the various groups with
speed and skill; and behind the desk the magistrate patiently toiled
his way through mazes of wonderful testimony.
In a corner of this space, devoted to those who had business before
the judge, an officer in plain clothes stood with a girl that wept
constantly. None seemed to notice the girl, and there was no reason why
she should be noticed, if the curious in the body of the court-room
were not interested in the devastation which tears bring upon some
complexions. Her tears seemed to burn like acid, and they left fierce
pink marks on her face. Occasionally the girl looked across the room,
where two well-dressed young women and a man stood waiting with the
serenity of people who are not concerned as to the interior fittings of
a jail.
The business of the court progressed, and presently the girl, the
officer, and the well-dressed contingent stood before the judge.
Thereupon two lawyers engaged in some preliminary fire-wheels, which
were endured generally in silence. The girl, it appeared, was accused
of stealing fifty dollars' worth of silk clothing from the room of one
of the well-dressed women. She had been a servant in the house.
In a clear way, and with none of the ferocity that an accuser often
exhibits in a police-court, calmly and moderately, the two young women
gave their testimony. Behind them stood their escort, always mute.
His part, evidently, was to furnish the dignity, and he furnished it
heavily, almost massively.
When they had finished, the girl told her part. She had full, almost
Afric, lips, and they had turned quite white. The lawyer for the others
asked some questions, which he did--be it said, in passing--with the
air of a man throwing flower-pots at a stone house.
It was a short case and soon finished. At the end of it the judge said
that, considering the evidence, he would have to commit the girl for
trial. Instantly the quick-eyed court officer began to clear the way
for the next case. The well-dressed women and their escort turned one
way and the girl turned another, toward a door with an austere arch
leading into a stone-paved passage. Then it was that a great cry rang
through the court-room, the cry of this girl who believed that she was
lost.
The loungers, many of them, underwent a spasmodic movement as if they
had been knived. The court officers rallied quickly. The girl fell back
opportunely for the arms of one of them, and her wild heels clicked
twice on the floor. "I am innocent! Oh, I am innocent!"
People pity those who need none, and the guilty sob alone; but innocent
or guilty, this girl's scream described such a profound depth of
woe--it was so graphic of grief, that it slit with a dagger's sweep the
curtain of common-place, and disclosed the gloom-shrouded spectre that
sat in the young girl's heart so plainly, in so universal a tone of the
mind, that a man heard expressed some far-off midnight terror of his
own thought.
The cries died away down the stone-paved passage. A patrol-man leaned
one arm composedly on the railing, and down below him stood an aged,
almost toothless wanderer, tottering and grinning.
"Plase, yer honer," said the old man as the time arrived for him to
speak, "if ye'll lave me go this time, I've niver been dhrunk befoor,
sir."
A court officer lifted his hand to hide a smile.
THE AUCTION
Some said that Ferguson gave up sailoring because he was tired of the
sea. Some said that it was because he loved a woman. In truth it was
because he was tired of the sea and because he loved a woman.
He saw the woman once, and immediately she became for him the symbol
of all things unconnected with the sea. He did not trouble to look
again at the grey old goddess, the muttering slave of the moon. Her
splendours, her treacheries, her smiles, her rages, her vanities, were
no longer on his mind. He took heels after a little human being, and
the woman made his thought spin at all times like a top; whereas the
ocean had only made him think when he was on watch.
He developed a grin for the power of the sea, and, in derision, he
wanted to sell the red and green parrot which had sailed four voyages
with him. The woman, however, had a sentiment concerning the bird's
plumage, and she commanded Ferguson to keep it in order, as it
happened, that she might forget to put food in its cage.
The parrot did not attend the wedding. It stayed at home and
blasphemed at a stock of furniture, bought on the installment plan, and
arrayed for the reception of the bride and groom.
As a sailor, Ferguson had suffered the acute hankering for port; and
being now always in port, he tried to force life to become an endless
picnic. He was not an example of diligent and peaceful citizenship.
Ablution became difficult in the little apartment, because Ferguson
kept the wash-basin filled with ice and bottles of beer: and so,
finally, the dealer in second-hand furniture agreed to auction the
household goods on commission. Owing to an exceedingly liberal
definition of a term, the parrot and cage were included. "On the
level?" cried the parrot, "On the level? On the level? On the level?"
On the way to the sale, Ferguson's wife spoke hopefully. "You can't
tell, Jim," she said. "Perhaps some of 'em will get to biddin', and we
might get almost as much as we paid for the things."
The auction room was in a cellar. It was crowded with people and with
house furniture; so that as the auctioneer's assistant moved from one
piece to another he caused a great shuffling. There was an astounding
number of old women in curious bonnets. The rickety stairway was
thronged with men who wished to smoke and be free from the old women.
Two lamps made all the faces appear yellow as parchment. Incidentally
they could impart a lustre of value to very poor furniture.
The auctioneer was a fat, shrewd-looking individual, who seemed also to
be a great bully. The assistant was the most imperturbable of beings,
moving with the dignity of an image on rollers. As the Fergusons
forced their way down the stair-way, the assistant roared: "Number
twenty-one!"
"Number twenty-one!" cried the auctioneer. "Number twenty-one! A fine
new handsome bureau! Two dollars? Two dollars is bid! Two and a half!
Two and a half! Three? Three is bid. Four! Four dollars! A fine new
handsome bureau at four dollars! Four dollars! Four dollars! F-o-u-r
d-o-l-l-a-r-s! Sold at four dollars."
"On the level?" cried the parrot, muffled somewhere among furniture and
carpets. "On the level? On the level?" Every one tittered.
Mrs. Ferguson had turned pale, and gripped her husband's arm. "Jim! Did
you hear? The bureau--four dollars--"
Ferguson glowered at her with the swift brutality of a man afraid of a
scene. "Shut up, can't you!"
Mrs. Ferguson took a seat upon the steps; and hidden there by the thick
ranks of men, she began to softly sob. Through her tears appeared
the yellowish mist of the lamplight, streaming about the monstrous
shadows of the spectators. From time to time these latter whispered
eagerly: "See, that went cheap!" In fact when anything was bought at a
particularly low price, a murmur of admiration arose for the successful
bidder.
The bedstead was sold for two dollars, the mattresses and springs
for one dollar and sixty cents. This figure seemed to go through the
woman's heart. There was derision in the sound of it. She bowed her
head in her hands. "Oh, God, a dollar-sixty! Oh, God, a dollar-sixty!"
The parrot was evidently under heaps of carpet, but the dauntless bird
still raised the cry, "On the level?"
Some of the men near Mrs. Ferguson moved timidly away upon hearing her
low sobs. They perfectly understood that a woman in tears is formidable.
The shrill voice went like a hammer, beat and beat, upon the woman's
heart. An odour of varnish, of the dust of old carpets, assailed her
and seemed to possess a sinister meaning. The golden haze from the two
lamps was an atmosphere of shame, sorrow, greed. But it was when the
parrot called that a terror of the place and of the eyes of the people
arose in her so strongly that she could not have lifted her head any
more than if her neck had been of iron.
At last came the parrot's turn. The assistant fumbled until he found
the ring of the cage, and the bird was drawn into view. It adjusted its
feathers calmly and cast a rolling wicked eye over the crowd.
"Oh, the good ship Sarah sailed the seas,
And the wind it blew all day--"
This was the part of a ballad which Ferguson had tried to teach it.
With a singular audacity and scorn, the parrot bawled these lines at
the auctioneer as if it considered them to bear some particular insult.
The throng in the cellar burst into laughter. The auctioneer attempted
to start the bidding, and the parrot interrupted with a repetition
of the lines. It swaggered to and fro on its perch, and gazed at the
faces of the crowd, with so much rowdy understanding and derision that
even the auctioneer could not confront it. The auction was brought to a
halt; a wild hilarity developed, and every one gave jeering advice.