Chapter IV: Part 4

She smiled, and I decided I had been quite wrong in thinking her tone peremptory. “I’m Barbara Haggerwells. I’m looking for a Mr Backmaker”—she glanced at a slip of paper—“a Hodgins M Backmaker who evidently uses this as an accommodation address.”

“I’m Hodge Backmaker,” I muttered in despair. “I—I work here.” I was conscious of not having shaved that morning, that my pants and jacket did not match, that my shirt was not clean.

I suppose I expected her to say nastily, So I see! or the usual, It must be fascinating! Instead she said, “I wonder if youve run across _The Properties of X_ by Whitehead? Ive been trying to get a copy for a long time.”

“Uh—I.... Is it a mystery story?” “I’m afraid not. It’s a book on mathematics by a mathematician very much out of favor. It’s hard to find, I suppose because the author is bolder than he is tactful.”

So naturally and easily she led me away from my embarrassment and into talking of books, relieving me of self-consciousness and some of the mortification in being exposed at my humble job by the “representative” of the telegram. I admitted deficient knowledge of mathematics and ignorance of Mr Whitehead though I maintained, accurately, that the book was not in stock, while she assured me that only a specialist would have heard of so obscure a theoretician. This made me ask, with the awe one feels for an expert in an alien field, if she were a mathematician, to which she replied, “Heavens, no. I’m a physicist. But mathematics is my tool.”

I looked at her with respect. Anyone, I thought, can read a few books and set himself up as an historian; to be a physicist means genuine learning. And I doubted she was much older than I.

She said abruptly, “My father is interested in knowing something about you.”

I acknowledged this with something between a nod and a bow. She had been examining and gauging me for the past half hour. “Your father is Thomas Haggerwells?”

“Haggerwells of Haggershaven,” she confirmed, as though explaining everything. There was pride in her voice and a hint of superciliousness.

“I’m dreadfully sorry, Miss Haggerwells, but I’m afraid I’m as ignorant of Haggershaven as of mathematics.”

“I thought you said you’d been reading history. Odd youve come upon no reference to the Haven in the records of the past seventy-five years.”

I shook my head helplessly. “I suppose my reading has been scattered.” Her look indicated agreement but not absolution. “Haggershaven is a college?”

“No. Haggershaven is ... Haggershaven.” She resumed her equanimity, her air of smiling tolerance. “It’s hardly a college since it has no student body nor faculty. Rather, both are one at the haven. Anyone admitted is a scholar or potential scholar anxious to devote himself to learning. I mean for its own sake. Not many are acceptable.”

She need hardly have added this; it seemed obvious I could not be one of the elect, even if I hadnt offended her by never having heard of Haggershaven. I knew I couldnt pass the most lenient of entrance examinations to ordinary colleges, much less to the dedicated place she represented.

“There arent any formal requirements for fellowship,” she went on, “beyond the undertaking to work to full capacity, to pool all knowledge and hold back none from scholars anywhere, to contribute economically to the Haven in accordance with decisions of the majority of fellows, and to vote on questions without consideration of personal gain. There! That certainly sounds like the stuffiest manifesto delivered this year.”

“It sounds too good to be true.”

“Oh, it’s true enough.” She moved close and I caught the scent of her hair and skin. “But there’s another side. The haven is neither wealthy nor endowed. We have to earn our living. The fellows draw no stipend; they have food, clothes, shelter, whatever books and materials they need—no unessentials. We often have to leave our own individual work to do manual labor to bring in food or money for all.”

“Ive read of such communities,” I said enthusiastically. “I thought they’d all disappeared fifty or sixty years ago.”

“Have you and did you?” she asked contemptuously. “Youll be surprised to learn that Haggershaven is neither Owenite nor Fourierist. We are not fanatics nor saviors. We don’t live in phalansteries, practice group marriage or vegetarianism. Our organization is expedient, subject to revision, not doctrinaire. Contribution to the common stock is voluntary and we are not concerned with each other’s private lives.”

“I beg your pardon, Miss Haggerwells. I didnt mean to annoy you.”

“It’s all right. Perhaps I’m touchy; all my life Ive seen the squinty suspiciousness of the farmers all around, sure we were up to something immoral, or at least illegal. Youve no idea what a prickly armor you build around yourself when you know that every yokel is cackling, ‘There goes one of them; I bet they ...’ whatever unconventional practice their imaginations can conceive at the moment. And the parallel distrust of the respectable schools. Detachedly, the haven may indeed be a refuge for misfits, but is it necessarily wrong not to fit into the civilization around us?”

“I’m prejudiced. I certainly havent fitted in myself.”

She didnt answer and I felt I had gone too far in daring an impulsive identification. Awkwardness made me blurt out further, “Do you ... do you think there’s any chance Haggershaven would accept me?” Whatever reserve I’d tried to maintain deserted me; my voice expressed only childish longing.

“I couldnt say,” she answered primly. “Acceptance or rejection depends entirely on the vote of the whole fellowship. All I’m here to offer is train fare. Neither you nor the haven is bound.”

“I’m perfectly willing to be bound,” I said fervently.

“You may not be so rash after a few weeks.”

I was about to reply when Little Aggie—so called to distinguish her from Fat Aggie who was in much the same trade, but more successful—came in. Little Aggie supplemented her nocturnal earnings around Astor Place by begging in the same neighborhood during the day.

“Sorry, Aggie,” I said; “Mr Tyss didnt leave anything for you.”

“Maybe the lady would help a poor working girl down on her luck,” she suggested, coming close. “My, that’s a pretty outfit you have. Looks like real silk, too.”

Barbara Haggerwells drew away with anger and loathing on her face. “No,” she refused sharply. “No, nothing!” She turned to me. “I must be going. I’ll leave you to entertain your friend.”

“Oh, I’ll go,” said Little Aggie cheerfully, “no need to get in an uproar. Bye-bye.”

I was frankly puzzled; the puritanical reaction didnt seem consistent. I would have expected condescending amusement, disdainful tolerance or even haughty annoyance, but not this furious aversion. “I’m sorry Little Aggie bothered you. She’s really not a wicked character and she does have a hard time getting along.”

“I’m sure you must enjoy her company immensely. I’m sorry we can’t offer similar attractions at the haven.”

Apparently she thought my relations with Aggie were professional. Even so her attitude was odd. I could hardly flatter myself she was interested in me as a man, yet her flare-up seemed to indicate jealousy, a strange kind of jealousy, perhaps like the sensuality I attributed to her, as though the mere presence of another woman was an affront.

“Please don’t go yet. For one thing—” I cast around for something to hold her till I could restore a more favorable impression. “—for one thing you havent told me how Haggershaven happened to get my application.”

She gave me a cold, angry look. “Even though we’re supposed to be cranks, orthodox educators often turn such letters over to us. After all, they may want to apply themselves someday.”

The picture this suddenly presented, of a serene academic life which was not so serene and secure after all, but prepared for a way to escape if necessary, was startling to me. I had taken it for granted that our colleges, even though they were far inferior to those of other countries, were stable and sheltered.

When I expressed something of this, she laughed. “Hardly. The colleges have not only decayed, they have decayed faster than other institutions. They are mere hollow shells, ruined ornaments of the past. Instructors spy on each other to curry favor with the trustees and assure themselves of reappointment when the faculty is out periodically. Loyalty is the touchstone, but no one knows any more what the object of loyalty is supposed to be. Certainly it is no longer toward learning, for that is the least of their concerns.”

She slowly allowed herself to be coaxed back into her previous mood, and again we talked of books. And now I thought there was a new warmth in her voice and glance, as though she had won some kind of victory, but how or over whom there was no indication.

When she left I hoped she was not too prejudiced against me. For myself I readily admitted it would be easy enough to want her—if one were not afraid of the humiliations it was in her nature to inflict.

_10._ _THE HOLDUP_

This time I didnt offer Tyss two weeks’ notice. “Well Hodgins, I made all the appropriate valedictory remarks on a previous occasion, so I’ll not repeat them, except to say the precision of the script is extraordinary.”

It seemed to me he was saying in a roundabout way that everything was for the best. For the first time I saw Tyss as slightly pathetic rather than sinister; extreme pessimism and vulgar optimism evidently met, like his circular time. I smiled indulgently and thanked him sincerely for all his kindness.

In 1944 almost a hundred years had passed since New York and eastern Pennsylvania were first linked in a railroad network, yet I don’t suppose my journey differed much in speed or comfort from one which might have been taken by Granpa Hodgins’ father. The steam ferry carried me across the Hudson to Jersey. I had heard there were only financial, not technical obstacles to a bridge or tunnel. If the English and French could burrow under the Channel, as they had early in the century, and the Japanese complete their great tube beneath the Korea Strait, it was hard to see why a lesser work here was dismissed as the impractical suggestion of dreamers who believed the cost would be saved in a few years by running trains directly to Manhattan.

Nor was the ferry the only antique survival on the trip. The cars were all ancient, obvious discards from Confederate or British American lines. Flat wheels were common; the wornout locomotives dragged them protestingly over the wobbly rails and uneven roadbed. First class passengers sat on napless plush or grease-glazed straw seats; second class passengers stood in the aisles or on the platforms; third class rode the roofs—safe enough at the low speed except for sudden jerks or jolts.

There were so many different lines, each jealous of exclusive rights of way, that the traveler hardly got used to his particular car before he had to snatch up his baggage and hustle for the connecting train, which might be on the same track or at the same sooty depot, but was more likely to be a mile away. Even the adjective “connecting” was often ironical for it was not unusual to find time-tables arranged so a departure preceded an arrival by minutes, necessitating a stopover of anywhere from one hour to twelve.

If anything could have quieted my excitement on the trip it was the view through the dirt-sprayed windows. “Fruitless” and “unfulfilled” were the words coming oftenest to my mind. I had forgotten during the past six years just how desolate villages and towns could look when their jerrybuilt structures were sunk in apathetic age without even the false rejuvenation of newer jerrybuilding. I had forgotten the mildewed appearance of tenant farmhouses, the unconvincing attempt to appear businesslike of false-fronted stores with clutters of hopeless merchandise in their dim windows, or the inadequate bluff of factories too small for any satisfactory production.

Once away from New York it was clear how atypical the city was in its air of activity and usefulness. The countryside through which the tracks ran, between fields and pastures or down the center of main streets, should have been the industrial heart of a country bustling and vigorous. Instead one saw potentialities denied, projects withered, poverty and dilapidation.

We crossed the Susquehanna on an old, old stone bridge that made one think of Meade’s valiant men, bloodily bandaged many of them, somnambulistically marching northward, helpless and hopeless after the Confederate triumph at Gettysburg, their only thought to escape Jeb Stuart’s pursuing cavalry. Indeed, every square mile now carried on its surface an almost visible weight of historical memories.

York seemed old, gray and crabbed in the afternoon, but when I got off the train there I was too agitated with the prospect of being soon at Haggershaven to take any strong impression of the town. I inquired the way, and the surly response confirmed Barbara Haggerwells’ statement of local animosity. The distance, if my informant was accurate, was a matter of some ten miles.

I started off down the highway, building and demolishing daydreams, thinking of Tyss and Tirzah, Enfandin and Miss Haggerwells, trying to picture her father and the fellows of the haven and for the thousandth time marshaling arguments for my acceptance in the face of scornful scrutiny. The early October sun was setting on the rich red and yellow leaves of the maples and oaks; I knew the air would become chilly before long, but exertion kept me warm. I counted on arriving at the haven in plenty of time to introduce myself before bedtime.

Less than a mile out of town the highway assumed the familiar aspect of the roads around Wappinger Falls and Poughkeepsie: rutted, wavering, with deep, unexpected holes. The stone or rail fences on either side enclosed harvested cornfields, the broken stalks a dull brass with copper-colored pumpkins scattered through them. But the fences were in poor repair and the oft-mended wooden covered bridges over the creeks all had signs, DANGEROUS, Travel At Your Own Risk.

There were few to share the highway with me: a farmer with an empty wagon, urging his team on and giving me a churlish glance instead of an invitation to ride; a horseman on an elegant chestnut picking his course carefully among the chuckholes, and a few tramps, each bent on his solitary way, at once defensive and aggressive. The condition of the bridges accounted for the absence of minibiles. However, just about twilight a closed carriage, complete with coachman and footman on the box, rolled haughtily by, stood for a moment outlined atop the slope up which I was trudging and then disappeared down the other side.

I paid little attention except—remembering my boyhood and my father’s smithy—to visualize automatically the coachman pulling back on the reins and the footman thrusting forward with the brake as they eased the horses downward. So when I heard first a shout and then feminine screams my instant conclusion was that the carriage had overturned on the treacherous downgrade, broken an axle, or otherwise suffered calamity.

My responsive burst of speed had almost carried me to the top when I heard the shots. First one, like the barking of an uncertain dog, followed by a volley, as though the pack were unleashed.

I ran to the side of the road, close to the field, where I could see with less chance of being seen. Already the dusk was playing tricks, distorting the shape of some objects and momentarily hiding others. It could not however falsify the scene in the gully below. Four men on horseback covered the carriage with drawn revolvers; a fifth, pistol also in hand, had dismounted. His horse, reins hanging down, was peacefully investigating the roadside weeds.

None of them attempted to stop the terrified rearing of the carriage team. Only their position, strung across the road, prevented a runaway. I could not see the footman, but the coachman, one hand still clutching the reins, was sprawled backward with his foot caught against the dashboard and his head hanging down over the wheel.

The door on the far side was swung open. I thought for a moment the passengers had managed to escape. However as the unmounted highwayman advanced, waving his pistol, the other door opened and a man and two women descended into the roadway. Slowly edging forward I could now plainly hear the gang’s obscene whistles at sight of the women.

“Well boys, here’s something to warm up a cold night. Hang on to them while I see what the mister has in his pockets.”

The gentleman stepped in front, and with a slight accent said, “Take the girl by all means. She is but a peasant, a servant, and may afford you amusement. But the lady is my wife; I will pay you a good ransom for her and myself. I am Don Jaime Escobar y Gallegos, attached to the Spanish legation.”

One of the men on horseback said, “Well now, that’s real kind of you, Don High-me. We might have taken you up on that, was you an American. But we can’t afford no company of Spanish Marines coming looking for us, so I guess we’ll have to pass up the ransom and settle for whatever youve got handy. And Missus Don and the hired girl. Don’t worry about her being a peasant; we’ll treat her and the madam exactly the same.”

“Madre de Dios,” screamed the lady. “Mercy!”

“It will be a good ransom,” said the Spaniard, “and I give you my word my government will not bother you.”

“Sorry, chum,” returned the gangster. “You foreigners have a nasty habit of interfering with our domestic institutions and hanging men who make a living this way. Just can’t trust you.”

The man on foot took a step forward. The nearest rider swung the maid up before him and another horseman reached for her mistress. Again she screamed; her husband brushed the hand aside and put his wife behind him. At that the gangster raised his pistol and shot twice. The man and woman dropped to the ground. The maid shrieked till her captor covered her mouth.

“Now what did you want to do that for? Cutting our woman supply in half that way?”

“Sorry. Mighty damn sorry. These things always happen to me.”

Meanwhile another of the gang slid off his horse and the two went through the dead, stripping them of jewelry and whatever articles of clothing caught their fancy before searching the luggage and the coach itself for valuables. By the time they had finished it was fully dark and I had crept to within a few feet of them, crouching reasonably secure and practically invisible while they debated what to do with the horses. One faction was in favor of taking them along for spare mounts; the other, arguing that they were too easily identifiable, for cutting them out and turning them loose. The second group prevailing, they at last galloped away.

A sudden thrashing in the cornstalks just beyond the fence startled me into rigidity. Something which might be human stumbled and crawled toward the carriage, snuffling and moaning, to throw itself down by the prostrate bodies, its anguished noises growing more high-pitched and chilling.

I was certain this must be a passenger who had jumped from the off-side of the carriage at the start of the holdup, but whether man or woman it was impossible to tell. I moved forward gingerly, but somehow I must have betrayed my presence, for the creature, with a terrified groan, slumped inertly.

My hands told me it was a woman I raised from the ground and the smell of her was the smell of a young girl. “Don’t be afraid, Miss,” I tried to reassure her; “I’m a friend.”

I could hardly leave the girl lying in the road, nor did I feel equal to carrying her to Haggershaven which I reckoned must be about six miles further. I tried shaking her, rubbing her hands, murmuring encouragement, all the while wishing the moon would come up, feeling somehow it would be easier to revive her in the moonlight.

“Miss,” I urged, “get up. You can’t stay here—they may come back.” Had I reached her? She stirred, whimpering with strange, muffled sounds. I dragged her to her knees and managed to get her arm over my shoulder. “Get up,” I repeated. “Get on your feet.”

She moaned. I pulled her upright and adjusted my hold. Supporting her around the waist and impeded by my valise, I began an ungraceful, shuffling march. I could only guess at how much time had been taken up by the holdup and how slow our progress would be. It didnt seem likely we could get to Haggershaven before midnight, an awkward hour to explain the company of a strange girl. The possibility of leaving her at a hospitable farmhouse was remote; no isolated rural family in times like these would open their door with anything but deep suspicion or a shotgun blast.

We had made perhaps a mile, a slow and arduous one, when the moon rose at last. It was full and bright, and showed my companion to be even younger than I had thought. The light fell on masses of curling hair, wildly disarrayed about a face unnaturally pale and lifeless yet extraordinarily beautiful. Her eyes were closed in a sort of troubled sleep, and she continued to moan, though at less frequent intervals.

I had just decided to stop for a moment’s rest when we came upon one of the horses. The clumsily cut traces trailing behind him had caught on the stump of a broken sapling. Though still trembling he was over the worst of his fright; after patting and soothing him I got us onto his back and we proceeded in more comfortable if still not too dignified fashion.

It wasnt hard to find Haggershaven; the sideroad to it was well kept and far smoother than the highway. We passed between what looked to be freshly plowed fields and came to a fair sized group of buildings, in some of which I was pleased to see lighted windows. The girl had still not spoken; her eyes remained closed and she moaned occasionally.

Dogs warned of our approach. From a dark doorway a figure came forward with a rifle under his arm. “Who is it?”

“Hodge Backmaker. Ive got a girl here who was in a holdup. She’s had a bad shock.”

“All right,” he said, “let me hitch the horse. Then I’ll help you with the girl. My name’s Dorn. Asa Dorn.”

I slid off and lifted the girl down. “I couldnt leave her in the road,” I offered in inane apology.

“I’ll water and feed the horse after. Let’s go into the main kitchen; it’s warm there. Here,” he addressed the girl, “take my arm.”

She made no response and I half carried her, with Dorn trying helpfully to share her weight. The building through which we led her was obviously an old farmhouse, enlarged and remodelled a number of times. Gaslights of a strange pattern, brighter than any I’d ever seen, revealed Asa Dorn as perhaps thirty with very broad shoulders and very long arms, and a dark, rather melancholy face. “There’s a gang been operating around here,” he informed me; “tried to shake the haven down for a contribution. That’s why I was on guard with the gun. Must be the same bunch.”

We bustled our charge into a chair before a big fieldstone fireplace which gave the large room its look of welcome, though the even heat came from sets of steampipes under the windows. “Should we give her some soup? Or tea? Or shall I get Barbara or one of the other women?”

His fluttering brushed the outside of my mind. Here in the light I instinctively expected to see some faint color in the girl’s cheeks or hands, but there was none. She looked no more than sixteen, perhaps because she was severely dressed in some school uniform. Her hair, which had merely been a disordered frame for her face in the moonlight, now showed itself as deeply black, hanging in thick, soft curls around her shoulders. Her features, which seemed made to reflect emotions—full, mobile lips, faintly slanted eyes, high nostrils—were instead impassive, devoid of vitality, and this unnatural quiescence was heightened by the dark eyes, now wide open and expressionless. Her mouth moved slowly, as though to form words, but nothing came forth except the faintest of guttural sounds.

“She’s trying to say something.” I leaned forward as though by sympathetic magic to help the muscles which seemed to respond with such difficulty.

“Why,” exclaimed Dorn, “she’s ... dumb!”

She looked agonizedly toward him. I patted her arm helplessly.

“I’ll go get—” he began.

A door opened and Barbara Haggerwells blinked at us. “I thought I heard someone ride up, Ace. Do you suppose....” Then she caught sight of the girl. Her face set in those lines of strange anger I had seen in the bookstore.

“Miss Haggerwells—” “Barbara—” Dorn and I spoke together. Either she did not hear us or we made no impression. She faced me in offended outrage. “Really, Mr Backmaker, I thought I’d explained there were no facilities here for this sort of thing.”

“You misunderstand,” I said, “I happened—” Dorn broke in. “Barbara, she’s been in a holdup. She’s dumb....”

Fury made her ugly. “Is that an additional attraction?”

“Miss Haggerwells,” I tried again, “you don’t understand—” “I think I understand very well. Dumb or not, get the slut out of here! Get her out right now, I say!”

“Barbara, youre not listening—” She continued to face me, her back to him. “I should have remembered you were a ladies’ man, Mr Self-taught Backmaker. No doubt you imagined Haggershaven to be some obscene liberty hall. Well, it isnt! You’d be wasting any further time you spent here. Get out!”

_11._ _OF HAGGERSHAVEN_

I suppose—recalling the inexplicable scene with Little Aggie—I was less astonished by her frenzy than I might have been. Besides, her rage and misunderstanding were anticlimactic after the succession of excitements I had been through that day. Instead of amazement I felt only uneasiness and tired annoyance.

Dorn steered Barbara out of the room with a combination of persuasion and gentle force disguised as solicitous soothing, leaving the girl and me alone. “Well,” I said, “well....”

The large eyes regarded me helplessly.

“Well, youve certainly caused me a lot of trouble....”

Dorn returned with two women, one middleaged, the other slightly younger, who flowed around the girl like soapy water, effectually sealing her away from all further masculine blunders, uttering little bubbly clucks and sudsy comfortings.

“Overwork, Backmaker,” Dorn mumbled. “Barbara’s been overworking terribly. You mustnt think—”

“I don’t,” I said. “I’m just sorry she couldnt be made to realize what actually happened.”

“Hypersensitive; things that wouldnt ordinarily ... it’s overwork. Youve no idea. She wears herself out. Practically no nerves left.”

His face, pleading for understanding, looked even more melancholy than before. I felt sorry for him and slightly superior; at the moment at least I didnt have to apologize for any female unpredictability. “OK, OK; there doesnt seem to be any great harm done. And the girl appears to be in good hands now.”

“Oh she is,” he answered with evident relief at dropping the subject of Barbara’s behavior. “I don’t think there’s anything more we can do for her now; in fact I’d say we’re only in the way. How about meeting Mr Haggerwells now?”

“Why not?” The last episode had doubtless finished me for good so far as Barbara was concerned; whatever neutral report she might have given her father originally could now be counted on for a damning revision. I might as well put a nonchalant face on matters before returning to the world outside Haggershaven.

Thomas Haggerwells, large-boned like his daughter, with the ginger hair faded, and a florid, handsome complexion, made me welcome. “Historian ay, Backmaker? Delighted. Combination of art and science; Clio, most enigmatic of the muses. The ever-changing past, ay?”

“I’m afraid I’m no historian yet, Mr Haggerwells. I’d like to be one. If Haggershaven will let me be part of it.”

He patted me on the shoulder. “The fellows will do what they can, Backmaker; you can trust them.”

“That’s right,” said Dorn cheerfully; “you look strong as an ox and historians can be kept happy with books and a few old papers.”

“Ace is our cynic,” explained Mr Haggerwells; “very useful antidote to some of our soaring spirits.” He looked absently around and then said abruptly, “Ace, Barbara is quite upset.”

I thought this extreme understatement, but Dorn merely nodded. “Misunderstanding, Mr H.”

“So I gathered.” He gave a short, selfconscious laugh. “In fact that’s all I did gather. She said something about a woman....”

“Girl, Mr H, just a girl.” He gave a quick outline of what had happened, glossing over Barbara’s hysterical welcome.

“I see. Quite an adventure in the best tradition, ay Backmaker? And the victims killed in cold blood; makes you wonder about civilization. Savagery all around us.” He began pacing the flowered carpet. “Naturally we must help the poor creature. Shocking, quite shocking. But how can I explain to Barbara? She ... she came to me,” he said half proudly, half apprehensively. “I wouldnt want to fail her; I hardly know....” He pulled himself together. “Excuse me, Backmaker. My daughter is high-strung. I fear I’m allowing concern to interfere with our conversation.”

“Not at all, sir,” I said. “I’m very tired; if you’ll excuse me....”

“Of course, of course,” he answered gratefully. “Ace will show you your room. Sleep well—we’ll talk more tomorrow. And Ace—come back here afterward, will you?”

Barbara Haggerwells had both Dorn and her father well cowed, I thought as I lay awake. Clearly she could brook not even the suspicion of rivalry, even when it was entirely imaginary. It would be rather frightening to be her father, or—as I suspected Ace might be—her lover, and subject to her tyrannical dominance.

But it was neither Barbara nor overstimulation from the full day which caused my insomnia. A torment, successfully suppressed for hours, invaded me. Connecting the trip of the Escobars—“attached to the Spanish legation”—with the counterfeit pesetas was pure fantasy. But what is logic? I could not argue myself into reasonableness. I could not quench my feeling of responsibility with ridicule nor convincingly charge myself with perverse conceit in magnifying my trivial errands into accountability for all that flowed from the Grand Army—for much which might have flowed from the Grand Army. Guilty men cannot sleep because they feel guilty. It is the feeling, not the abstract guilt which keeps them awake.

Nor could I pride myself on my chivalry in rescuing distressed maidens. I had only done what was unavoidable, grudgingly, without warmth or charity. There was no point in being aggrieved by Barbara’s misinterpretation with its disastrous consequences to my ambitions. I had not freely chosen to help; I had no right to resent a catastrophe which should properly have followed a righteous choice.

At last I slept, only to dream Barbara Haggerwells was a great fish pursuing me over endless roads on which my feet bogged in clinging, tenacious mud. Opening my mouth to shout for help was useless; nothing came forth but a croak which sounded faintly like my mother’s favorite “Gumption!”

In the clear autumn morning my notions of the night dwindled, even if they failed to disappear entirely. By the time I was dressed Ace Dorn showed up; we went to the kitchen where Ace introduced me to a middleaged man, Hiro Agati, whose close-cut stiff black hair stood perfectly and symmetrically erect all over his head.

“Dr Agati’s a chemist,” remarked Ace, “condemned to be head chef for a while on account of being too good a cook.”

“Believe that,” said Agati, “and you’ll believe anything. Truth is they always pick on chemists for hard work. Physicists like Ace never soil their hands. Well, so long as you can’t eat with the common folk, what’ll you have, eggs or eggs?”

Agati was the first Oriental I’d ever seen. The great anti-Chinese massacres of the 1890’s, which generously included Japanese and indeed all with any sign of the epicanthic eyefold, had left few Asians to have descendants in the United States. I’m afraid I stared at him more than was polite, but he was evidently used to such rudeness for he paid no attention.

“They finally got the girl to sleep,” Ace informed me. “Had to give her opium. No report yet this morning.”

“Oh,” I said lamely, conscious I should have asked after her without waiting for him to volunteer the news. “Oh. Do you suppose we’ll find out who she is?”

“Mr H telegraphed the sheriff first thing. It’ll all depend how interested he is, and that’s not likely to be very. What’s to drink, Hiro?”

“Imitation tea, made from dried weeds; imitation coffee made from burnt barley. Which’ll you have?”

I didnt see why he stressed the imitation; genuine tea and coffee were drunk only by the very rich. Most people preferred “tea” because it was less obnoxious than the counterfeit coffee. Perversely, I said, “Coffee please.”

He set a large cup of brown liquid before me which had a tantalizing fragrance quite different from that given off by the beverage I was used to. I added milk and tasted, aware he was watching my reaction.

“Why,” I exclaimed, “this is different. I never had anything like it in my life. It’s wonderful.”

“C eight H ten O two,” said Agati with an elaborate air of indifference. “Synthetic. Specialty of the house.”

“So chemists are good for something after all,” remarked Ace.

“Give us a chance,” said Agati; “we could make beef out of wood and silk out of sand.”

“Youre a physicist like B—like Miss Haggerwells?” I asked Ace.

“I’m a physicist, but not like Barbara. No one is. She’s a genius. A great creative genius.”

“Chemists create,” said Agati sourly; “physicists sit and think about the universe.”

“Like Archimedes,” said Ace.

* * * * *

How shall I write of Haggershaven as my eyes first saw it twenty-two years ago? Of the rolling acres of rich plowed land, interrupted here and there by stone outcroppings worn smooth and round by time, and trees in woodlots or standing alone strong and unperturbed? Of the main building, grown by fits and starts from the original farmhouse into a great, rambling eccentricity stopping short of monstrosity only by its complete innocence of pretense? Shall I describe the two dormitories, severely functional, escaping harshness because they had not been built by carpenters and though sturdy enough, betrayed the amateur touch in every line? Or the cottages and apartments, two, four, at most six rooms, for the married fellows and their families? These were scattered all over, some so avid for privacy that one could pass unknowing within feet of the concealing trees or shrubbery, others bold in the sunshine on knolls or in hollows.

I could tell of the small shops, the miniature laboratories, the inadequate observatory, the heterogeneous assortment of books which was both less and more than a library, the dozens of outbuildings. But these things were not the haven. They were merely the least of its possessions. For Haggershaven was not a material place at all, but a spiritual freedom. Its limits were only the limits of what its fellows could do or think or inquire. It was circumscribed only by the outside world, not by internal rules and taboos, competition or curriculum.

Most of this I could see for myself, much of it was explained by Ace. “But how can you afford the time to take me all around this way?” I asked; “I must be interfering with your own work.”

He grinned. “This is my period to be guide, counselor and friend to those whove strayed in here, wittingly or un. Don’t worry, after youre a fellow youll get told off for all the jobs, from shoveling manure to gilding weathercocks.”

I sighed. “The chances of my getting to be a fellow are minus nothing. Especially after last night.”

He didnt pretend to misunderstand. “Barbara’ll come out of it. She’s not always that way. As her father says, she’s high-strung, and she’s been working madly. And to tell the truth,” he went on in a burst of frankness, “she really doesnt get on too well with other women. She has a masculine mind.”

I have often noticed that men not strikingly brilliant themselves attribute masculine minds to intelligent women on the consoling assumption that feminine minds are normally inferior. Ace however was manifestly innocent of any attempt to patronize.

“Anyway,” he concluded, “she has only one vote.”

I didnt know whether to take this as a pledge of support or mere politeness. “Isnt it wasteful, assigning a chemist like Dr Agati to kitchen work? Or isnt he a good chemist?”

“Just about the best there is. His artificial tea and coffee would bring a fortune to the haven if there were a profitable market; even as it is it’ll bring a good piece of change. Wasteful? What would you have us do, hire cooks and servants?”

“Theyre cheap enough.”

“Or frightfully expensive. Specialization, the division of labor, is certainly not cheap in anything but dollars and cents, and not always then. And it’s unquestionably wasteful in terms of equality. And I don’t think there’s anyone at the haven who isn’t an egalitarian.”

“But you do specialize and divide labor. Don’t tell me you swap your physics for Agati’s chemistry.”

“In a way we do. Of course I don’t set up as an experimenter, any more than he does as a speculator. But there have been plenty of times Ive worked under his direction when he needed an assistant who didnt know anything but had a strong back.”

“All right,” I said; “but I still don’t see why you can’t hire a cook and some dishwashers.”

“Where would our equality be then? What would happen to our fellowship?”

Haggershaven’s history, which I got little by little, was more than a link with the past; it was a possible hint of what might have been if the War of Southron Independence had not interrupted the American pattern. Barbara’s great-great-grandfather, Herbert Haggerwells, had been a Confederate major from North Carolina who, as conquerors sometimes do, had fallen in love with the then fat Pennsylvania countryside. After the war he had put everything—not much by Southron standards, but a fortune in depreciated, soon to be repudiated, United States greenbacks—into the farm which later formed the nucleus of Haggershaven. Then he married a local girl and transformed himself into a Northerner.

Until I became too accustomed to notice it anymore I used to stare at his portrait in the library, picturing in idle fancy a possible meeting on the battlefield between this aristocratic gentleman with his curling mustache and daggerlike imperial and my own plebian Granpa Hodgins. But the chance of their ever having come face to face was much more than doubtful; I, who had studied both their likenesses, was the only link between them.

“Hard looking character, ay?” commented Ace. “This was painted when he was mellow; imagine him twenty years earlier. Pistols cocked and Juvenal or Horace or Seneca in the saddlebags.”

“He was a cavalry officer, then?”

“I don’t know. Don’t think so as a matter of fact. Saddlebags was just my artistic touch. They say he was a holy terror; discipline and all that—it sort of goes with a man on horseback. And the old Roman boys are pure deduction; he was that type. Patronized several writers and artists; you know: ‘Drop down to my estate and stay a while’ and they stayed five or ten years.”

But it was Major Haggerwells’ son who, seeing the deterioration of Northern colleges, had invited a few restive scholars to make their home with him. They were free to pursue their studies under an elastic arrangement which permitted them to be selfsupporting through work on the farm.

Thomas Haggerwells’ father had organized the scheme further, attracting a larger number of schoolmen who contributed greatly to the material progress of the haven. They patented inventions, marketless at home, which brought regular royalties from more industrialized countries. Agronomists improved the haven’s crops and took in a steady income from seed. Chemists found ways of utilizing otherwise wasted byproducts; proceeds from scholarly works—and one more popular than scholarly—added to the funds. In his will, Volney Haggerwells left the properties to the fellowship.

I suppose I expected there would be some uniformity, some basic type characterizing the fellows. Not that Barbara, or Ace, or Hiro Agati resembled a stereotype at any point, any more than I did myself, but then I was not one of the elect nor likely to be. Even after I had met more than half of them the notion persisted that there must be some stamp on them proclaiming what they were.

Yet as I wandered about the haven, alone or with Ace, the people I met were quite diverse, more so by far than in the everyday world. There were the ebullient and the glum, the talkative and the laconic, the bustling and the slow-moving. Some were part of a family, others lived ascetically, withdrawn from the pleasures of the flesh.

In the end I realized there was, if not a similarity, a strong bond. The fellows, conventional or eccentric, passionate or reserved, were all earnest, purposeful and, despite individual variations, tenacious. They were, though I hesitate to use so emotional a word, dedicated. The cruel struggle and suspicion, the frantic endeavor to improve one’s own financial, social, or political standing by maiming or destroying someone else intent on the same endeavor was either unknown or so subdued as to be imperceptible at the haven. Disagreements and jealousies existed, but they were different in kind rather than in degree from those to which I had been accustomed all my life. The pervasive fears which fostered the latter, the same fears which made lotteries and indenture frantic gambles to escape the wretchedness of life, could not circulate in the security of the haven.

After the scene at my arrival, I didnt see Barbara again for some ten days. Even then it was but a glimpse, caught as she hurried in one direction and I sauntered in another. She threw me a single frigid glance and went on. Later, I was talking with Mr Haggerwells, who had proved to be not quite an amateur of history but more than a dabbler, when, without knocking, she burst into the room.

“Father, I—” Then she caught sight of me. “Sorry. I didnt know you were entertaining.”

His tone was that of one found in a guilty act. “Come in, come in, Barbara. Backmaker is after all something of a protégé of yours. Urania, you know—if one may stretch the ascription a bit—encouraging Clio.”

“Really, Father!” She was regal. Wounded, scornful, but majestic. “I’m sure I don’t know enough about self-taught pundits to sponsor them. It seems too bad they have to waste your time—”

He flushed. “Please, Barbara. You must, you really must control....”

Her disapproval became open anger. “Must I? Must I? And stand by while every pretentious swindler usurps your attention? Oh, I don’t ask for any special favors as your daughter; I know too well I have none coming. But I should think at least the consideration due a fellow of the haven would prompt ordinary courtesy even where no natural affection exists!”

“Barbara, please.... Oh, my dear girl, how can you ...?”

But she was gone, leaving him distressed and me puzzled. Not at her lack of restraint but at her accusation that he lacked a father’s love for her. Nothing was clearer than his pride in her or his protective, baffled tenderness. It did not seem possible so willful a misunderstanding could be maintained.

“You can’t judge Barbara by ordinary standards,” insisted Ace uncomfortably, when I told him what had happened.

“I’m not judging her by any standards or at all,” I said; “I just don’t see how anyone could get things so wrong.”

“She.... Her nature needs sympathy. Lots of it. She’s never had the understanding and encouragement she ought to have.”

“It looks the other way around to me.”

“That’s because you don’t know the background. She’s always been lonely. From childhood. Her mother was impatient of children and never found time for her.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Why ... she told me, of course.”

“And you believed her. Without corroborative evidence. Is that what’s called the scientific attitude?”

He stopped stock-still. “Look here, Backmaker—” a moment before I had been Hodge to him—“Look here, Backmaker, I’m damned tired of all the things people say about Barbara; the jeers and sneers and gossip by people who just aren’t good enough to breathe the same air with her, much less have the faintest notion of her mind and spirit—” “Come off it, Ace,” I interrupted. “I havent got anything against Barbara. The shoe is on the other foot. Tell her I’m all right, will you? Don’t waste time trying to convince me; I’m just trying to get along.”

It was clear, not only from the slips which evaded Ace’s guard, but from less restrained remarks by other fellows, that Barbara’s tortured jealousy was a fixture of her character. She had created feuds, slandered and reviled fellows who had been guilty of nothing except trying to interest her father in some project in which she herself was not concerned. I learned much more also, much Ace had no desire to convey. But he was a poor hand at concealing anything, and it was clear he was helplessly subject to her, but without the usual kindly anesthetic of illusion. I guessed he had enjoyed her favors, but she evidently didnt bother to hide the fact that the privilege was not exclusive; perhaps indeed she insisted on his knowing. I gathered she was a fiercely moral polyandrist, demanding absolute fidelity without offering the slightest hope of reciprocal singlemindedness.

_12._ _MORE OF HAGGERSHAVEN_

Among the fellows was an Oliver Midbin, a student of what he chose to call the new and revolutionary science of Emotional Pathology. Tall and thin, with an incongruous little potbelly like an enlarged and far-slipped adamsapple, he pounced on me as a ready-made and captive audience for his theories.

“Now this case of pseudo-aphonia—” “He means the dumb girl,” explained Ace, aside.

“Nonsense. Dumbness is not even the statement of a symptom, but a very imperfect description. Pseudo-aphonia. Purely of an emotional nature. Of course if you take her to some medical quack he’ll convince himself and you and certainly her that there’s an impairment, or degeneration, or atrophy of the vocal cords—”

“I’m not the girl’s guardian, Mr Midbin—” “Doctor. Philosophiae, Göttingen. Trivial matter.”

“Excuse me, Dr Midbin. Anyway, I’m not her guardian so I’m not taking her anywhere. But, just as a theoretical question, suppose examination did reveal physical damage?”

He appeared delighted, and rubbed his hands together. “Oh, it would. I assure you it would. These fellows always find what theyre looking for. If your disposition is sour theyll find warts on your duodenum. In a postmortem. In a postmortem. Whereas Emotional Pathology deals with the sour disposition and lets the warts, if any, take care of themselves. Matter is a function of the mind. People are dumb or blind or deaf for a purpose. Now what purpose can the girl have for muteness?”

“No conversation?” I suggested. I didnt doubt Midbin was an authority, but his manner made flippancy almost irresistible.

“I shall find out,” he said firmly. “This is bound to be a simpler maladjustment than Barbara’s—”

“Aw, come on,” protested Ace.

“Nonsense, Dorn; obscurantic nonsense. Reticence is a necessary ingredient of those medical ethics by which the quacks conceal incompetence. Mumbo jumbo to keep the layman from asking annoying questions. Priestly, not scientific approach. Art and mystery of phlebotomy. Don’t hold back knowledge; publish it to the world.”

“I think Barbara wouldnt want her private thoughts published to the world. You have to draw the line somewhere.”

Midbin put his head on one side and looked at Ace as though he were difficult to see. “Now that’s interesting, Dorn,” he said; “I wonder what turns a seeker after knowledge into a censor.”

“Are you going to start exploring my emotional pathology now?”

“Not interesting enough; not nearly interesting enough. Diagnosis while you wait; treatment in a few easy instalments. Barbara now—there’s a really beautiful case. Beautiful case; years of treatment and little sign of improvement. Of course she wouldnt want her thoughts known. Why? Because she’s happy with her hatred for her dead mother. Shocking to Mrs Grundy; doubly ditto to Mister. Exaggerated possessiveness toward her father makes her miserable. Thoughts known, misery ventilated: shame, condemnation, fie, fie. Her fantasy—” “Midbin!”

“Her fantasy of going back to childhood (fascinating; adult employs infantile time-sequence, infantile magic, infantile hatreds) in order to injure her mother is a sick notion she cherishes the way a dog licks a wound. But without analogous therapy. Ventilate it. Ventilate it. Now this girl’s case is bound to be simpler. Younger if nothing else. And nice, overt symptoms. Bring her around tomorrow and we’ll begin.”

“Me?” I asked.

“Who else? Youre the only one she doesnt seem to distrust.”

It was annoying to have the girl’s puppylike devotion observed and commented on. I realized she saw me as the only connection, however tenuous, with a normal past; I had assumed she would turn naturally after a few days to the women who took such open pleasure in fussing over her affliction. However she merely suffered their attentions; no matter how I tried to avoid her she sought me out, running to me with muted cries which should have been touching but were only painful.

Mr Haggerwells’ telegram to the sheriff’s office at York had brought the reply that a deputy sheriff would visit the haven “when time permitted.” He had also telegraphed the Spanish legation who answered they knew no other Escobars than Don Jaime and his wife. The girl might be a servant or a stranger; it was no concern of His Most Catholic Majesty.

The school uniform made it unlikely she was a servant but beyond this, little was deducible. She did not respond to questions in either Spanish or English, and it was impossible to tell if she understood their meaning, for her blank expression remained unchanged. When offered pencil and paper she handled them curiously, then let them slide to the floor.

I wondered briefly if perhaps her intelligence was slightly subnormal, but this was met by a firm, even belligerent denial from Midbin, whose conclusion was confirmed, at least in my opinion, by her apparently excellent coordination, her personal neatness and fastidiousness which were far more delicate than any I’d been accustomed to.

Midbin’s method of treatment smacked of the mystical. His subjects were supposed to relax on a couch and say whatever came into their minds. At least this was the clearest part of the explanation he gave when I rebelliously escorted the girl to his “office,” a large, bare room decorated only by some old European calendars by the popular academician, Picasso. The couch was a cot which Midbin himself used more conventionally at night.

“All right,” I said; “just how are you going to manage?”

“Convince her everything’s all right and I’m not going to hurt her.”

“Sure,” I agreed. “Sure. Only: how?”

He gave me one of his head-on-shoulder looks and turned to the girl who waited apathetically, with downcast eyes. “You lie down,” he suggested.

“Me? I’m not dumb.”

“Pretend you are. Lie down, close your eyes, say the first thing on your tongue. Without stopping to think about it.”

“How can I say anything if I’m pretending to be dumb?” Grudgingly I complied, fancying a faint look of curiosity passing over the too-placid face. “‘No man bathes twice in the same stream,’” I muttered.

He made me repeat the performance several times, then by pantomime urged her to imitate me. It was doubtful if she understood; in the end we nudged her gently into the required position. There was no question of relaxation; she lay there warily, tense and stiff even with her eyes closed.

The whole business was so manifestly useless and absurd, to say nothing of being undignified, that I was tempted to walk out on it. Only ignoble calculation on Midbin’s voting for my acceptance in the haven kept me there.

Looking at the form stretched out so rigidly, I could not but admit again that the girl was beautiful. But the admission was dispassionate; the beauty was abstract and neutral, the lovely young lines evoked no lust. I felt only vexation because her plight kept me from the wonders of Haggershaven.

“What good can this possibly do?” I burst out after ten fruitless minutes. “Youre trying to find out why she can’t talk and she can’t talk to tell you why she can’t talk.”

“Science explores all methods of approach,” Midbin answered loftily; “I’m searching for a technique which will reach her. Bring her back tomorrow.”