Half in Shadow

by Mary Elizabeth Counselman

  "Oh DRAT!” cursed Mr. Hapworthy.

  "Where did he go? Can you give me his local address?”

  The elevator man shrugged. ‘"Sorry, sir. He was living here, in the basement with the janitor. Maybe I can get you his home address. He did say something about catching a bus back to the farm...”

  Hours later, accompanied by the doleful-looking retriever in a carrying-case with his luggage, Mr. Hapworthy was on a cross-country bus headed for a little hill-town, just barely on the map at all, called Big Thickety Creek. He alighted at a filling station—which turned out to be the bus station, business section, and residential district of Big Thickety. With some difficulty, he managed to check his luggage and hire a guide, who promised to take him over, the mountain to the Turney’s share-cropped farm, and come, back after him in two hours. During that period, he was confident, he could effect the purchase of the white-feathered ’’death crown” he coveted.

  His hopes soared when the rickety Model-T deposited him at his goal—a sagging two-room cabin in the center of a sparsely-grown cornfield. There was an open "dogtrot,” or hallway, connecting the two rooms. Outside in the packed-clay yard was a rundown well, a gourd-pole for martins (insurance against chicken-hawks, although there were no chickens now clucking around the impoverished-looking place), and a corn-crib whose roof had fallen in.

  Mr. Hapworthy knocked. At once a flock of perhaps nine ragged children swarmed about him out of nowhere, giggling, pulling at his neat knife-creased trousers, or merely staring. One screeched something, -and a thin slattern of a woman came out of the kitchen-room, a bunch of turnip greens which she had been picking over held in one hand like an awkward bouquet. She ducked her head shyly, smoothed back her hair, and said formally:

  "Howdy. Come in and set.” Then: "You sellin’ funeral in-surance? We don’t want none...”

  MR. HAPWORTHY cleared his throat, said he was not selling funeral insurance, and made his way gingerly into the kitchen through a mass of giggling children. The poverty of the place struck him like a blow, though he could see the woman’s pitiful attempts to keep her crowded little home clean and cheerful. The board floor was freshly scrubbed, and there were magazine pictures cut out and tacked on the wall everywhere. All the little girls’ hair had been carefully braided with bows of red calico, and all the little boys’ overalls had been neatly patched.

  Mr. Hapworthy cleared his throat again. He was ill at ease and, never a man to mince words, came directly to the point.

  "Your son Lute,” he began. "I happened to see a... a death crown he was bringing from your... ah... . your mother? I wondered if... ah... you’d cared to sell it. For inclusion in my collection of amulets and charms, to be displayed in the Smithsonian museum after my death. Ah... My last off was two hundred dollars. I’ll make that three hundred, madam, and that’s my last word. What do you say?”

  THE mountain woman was staring at him, trying hard, he saw, to follow his words few of which she could understand. But she did comprehend the words "death crown” and "three hundred dollars.” Light blazed in her thin tired face ail at once, and Mr. Hapworthy saw her eyes sweep over, the gaunt brood of children clustered about her, now quiet with wonder as he spoke.

  "Lord help my time! Three hundred dollars?” the woman whispered. "I never seen more than a hundred, time I got my man’s in-surance. money, poor soul,” she added piously. "Some say he wasn’t no count, but he suited me all right and the chillun... But... Why, I couldn’t sell you no death crown, mister!” she said quietly and with a wistful regret that made Mr. Hapworthy feel more uncomfortable 'than ever. "Why, nawsuh. I don’t say we don’t need the money, right bad. But... I... Paw’s death crown? It wouldn’t be right to sell nothing like that..." She laughed lightly, scatting one of the younger children away from the hot wood, stove. "Lutie come by and brung it a while ago, fore he tuck off to git him another job. In the cotton mill, if he’s lucky. He tole me some feller offered to buy it. We had us a good laugh about that,” she smiled at her guest in complete friendliness. "I reckon,’’ she murmured kindly, "you jest didn’t know what hit was, likely.”

  "Er . , . no. No, I guess I didn’t,” muttered Mr. Hapworthy, completely chastened by the gentle reproof in this starved weary mountain-woman’s eyes. Faced even though she was with a winter of starvation for herself and her children, she evidently had her own standards, and clove to them with a simple integrity.

  He fumbled with his hat; looked here and there to avoid that steady gaze. His eye fell on a large daguerrotype portrait of ah old man. with a gray beard and warm humorous eyes. It was hanging over the stove.

  "That’s, ah... that’s your father?” he mumbled. "The one who... .?” He floundered, making conversation to bridge the silence. "You resemble him a great deal. And your son, Lute. The same eyes..."

  The woman’s expression changed abruptly, all reproof gone. She beamed up at the portrait, then back at Mr. Hapworthy.

  "Yessuh. . That’s Paw. He was a circuit rider. Preached all over these mountings, come rain or shine. A better man never lived—though he like to’ve got hisself unchurched, account of his notions. He had some idee that good, souls could leave Heab’in and come back to earth, if there was something you tuck a fancy to do, to help them that was still livin! Said you didn’ have to set around and play, the harp... My! but he talked real crazy. But he saved many a soul in his day. Anybuddy could talk to him, he was that homey. We knowed there’d be a death crown in his pillow when'he passed on. . : .”

  "Er... yes. Yes. Naturally.” Mr. Hapworthy choked, looking up at the kindly face of the old man in the picture.

  The light was not good—or perhaps it was only smoke from the wood stove that made it hazy. But he could have sworn one of those humorous eyes winked at him a split-second before he glanced away. He kept looking back at the portrait, warmed in a strange way, a little feeling of loneliness that had always haunted him vanishing at sight of it. Where had he seen such a -face before? Oh yes—the Biblical beard; that was it. It reminded him of the pictures of the Disciples on Sunday School cards he had seen as a child. Long ago—when he had believed in a number of things he knew now could not possibly exist. Santa Claus, fairies, angels beside one’s bed...

  All at once Mr. Hapworthy did an impulsive thing, for him..

  Sidling over to a crude kitchen table, he fumbled in his pocket for a moment, took out a wad of bills, and stuffed them behind a coffee can. He moved quickly, and no eyes in the room, except the pictured eyes over the stove, saw his gesture.

  A FEW hours later, riding back toward Washington on the bus, Mr. Hapworthy was annoyed with himself. He had not only failed to acquire the object that he coveted most in the world, but he had given way to a maudlin impulse to help some stupad ignorant people he had never seen before and would certainly never see again.

  There was no good reason, other than sloppy sentiment, why that woman would not sell her treasured "holy sign" for the edification of the American public! Why had he not insisted? He might, indeed, have given her a smooth sales talk about its being her "religious duty,” or some such rot. An illiterate sharecropper would have been easy prey to his collecting ability. But instead... !

  Mr. Hapworthy glared down at his feet, where the retriever lay curled up uncomfortably in his carrying-case. He lifted the lid, patted the silky head fondly to soothe his irritation... and a moment later toppled forward on his face.

  Dimly, through the clutching pain around his heart, he was aware of excited fellow-passengers hovering, over him; of the bus screeching to a stop in some nameless little town; of his being carried into a small dingy hotel. A fat rather pompous doctor was located, who examined him with a great show of concern.

  "Mr... er... Hapworthy? Yes. Are your affairs in order, sir? You were aware of your condition, of course... Who is your next of kin? I’m afraid... ah... this is it."

  "Oh drat!” said Mr. Hapworthy, thoroughly annoyed. Then he shrugged. "Well —I suppose everyone must die sometime
... Yes, my affairs are in order. No relatives. Though you might notify my landlord as soon as possible,” he added thoughtfully. "He’ll want to be arranging for a new tenant. Oh, and I wish you’d ship my dog to him, if you will. He’s very fond of duck-shooting, and Trevo here is a splendid hunter. Myself, I detest killing things.

  "Er... yes.” The doctor fumbled for words for a moment, then: "What is your faith,. sir? You’ll want a pastor, of course.... Or a priest? There’s also a rabbi here in town. I’m a Methodist, myself,” he added stiffly. "But my aunt is a Christian Scientist, if you... ?”

  "Really?” whispered Mr. Hapworthy, drowsily interested through his sedative. "Remarkable creed—that all matter is merely a figment of mortal mind. Ridiculous, of course,” he added chattily. "Though if it’s any comfort to anyone, I’m the very last man to try and arouse logical doubts... No, no," he waved airily. "The Supreme Diety-—if there is one, as all theologies seem to contend—doesn’t know about my sins already, I don’t see why recounting them to some poor overworked. clergyman would change anything. Damned embarrassing custom, anyhow

  THE doctor gasped, and compressed his lips. "Sir,” he said severely, "this is hardly the time for blasphemy. You’re dying, man! Don’t you care what happens to your immortal soul after . .,?”

  "Poppycock,” murmured Mr. Hapworthy pleasantly. "But I would like to have lived a bit longer. My collection isn’t complete... !”

  He sighed crossly, and closed his eyes.

  He never opened them again.

  Lifting him up in readiness to draw the sheet over his face, it was the doctor who felt that peculiar lump in the pillow under the dead man’s head. Assuming that the old fellow had hurriedly hidden his wallet there in his illness, as many travelers are wont to do, the physician ripped open the striped ticking and dug among the. musty gray chicken-feathers with which the pillow was stuffed.

  But what his hand brought out was not a wallet, but a large round ball of feathers, so compactly put together that a pin could scarcely pierce its center nor fumbling fingers tear it apart. Each feather overlaid its mate as neatly as though they had grown that way... But they were not gray feathers like the rest of those in the hotel pillow.

  They were white, pure white, like the feathers of a goose or a Leghorn pullet. Mr. Hapworthy would have recognized that particular ball of downy white, since he had unsuccessfully tried to purchase it for his collection as a curio. He would have understood how, miraculously, it had got in among the dirty Plymouth Rock feathers under his very irreligious head. He also would have understood why...

  And perhaps, lying there in death—quite chastened and amused and happy at being proven so wrong, by someone who had ignored his mind and looked into his heart!— perhaps he did understand.

  The Black Stone Statue

  Directors,

  Museum of Fine Arts,

  Boston, Mass.

  Gentlemen:

  Today I have just received aboard the S. S. Madrigal your most kind cable, praising my work and asking—humbly, as one might ask it of a true genius!—if I would do a statue of myself to be placed among the great in your illustrious museum. Ah, gentlemen, that cablegram was to me the last turn of the screw!

  I despise myself for what I have done in the name of art. Greed for money and acclaim, weariness with poverty and the contempt of my inferiors, hatred for a world that refused to see any merit in my work: these things have driven me to commit a series of strange and terrible crimes.

  In these days I have thought often of suicide as a way out—a coward’s way, leaving me the fame I do not deserve. But since receiving your cablegram, lauding me for what I am not and never could be, I am determined to write this letter for the world to read. It will explain everything. And having written it, I shall then atone for my sin in (to you, perhaps) a horribly ironic manner but (to me) one that is most fitting.

  Let me go back to that miserable sleet-lashed afternoon as I came into the hall of Mrs. Bates’s rooming-house—a crawling, filthy hovel for the poverty-stricken, like myself, who were too proud to go on relief. When I stumbled in, drenched and dizzy with hunger, our landlady’s ample figure was blocking the hallway. She was arguing with a tall, shabbily dressed young man whose face I was certain I had seen somewhere before.

  "Just a week,” his deep, pleasant voice was beseeching the old harridan. "I’ll pay you double at the end of that time, just as soon as I can put over a deal I have in mind.”

  I paused, staring at him covertly while I shook the sleet from my hat-brim. Fine gray eyes met mine across the landlady’s head—haggard now, and overbright with suppressed excitement. There was strength, character, in that face under its stubble of mahogany-brown beard. There was, too, a firm set to the man’s shoulders and beautifully formed head. Here, I told myself, was someone who had lived all his life with dangerous adventure, someone whose clean-cut features, even under that growth of beard, seemed vaguely familiar to my sculptor’s-eye for detail.

  "Not one day, no sirred” Mrs. Bates had folded her arms stubbornly. A week’s rent in advance, or ye don’t step foot into one o’ my rooms!”

  On impulse I moved forward, digging into my pocket. I smiled at the young man and thrust almost my last two dollars into the landlady’s hand. Smirking, she bobbed off and left me alone with the stranger.

  "You shouldn’t have done that,” he sighed, and gripped my hand hard. "Thanks, old man. I’ll repay you next week, though. Next week,” he whispered, and his eyes took on a glow of anticipation, "I’ll write you a check for a thousand dollars. Two thousand!”

  He laughed delightedly at my quizzical expression and plunged out into the storm again, whistling.

  In that moment his identity struck me like a blow. Paul Kennicott—the young aviator whose picture had been on the front page of every newspaper in the country a few months ago! His plane had crashed somewhere in the Brazilian wilds, and the nation mourned him and his co-pilot for dead. Why was he sneaking back into New York like a criminal— penniless, almost hysterical with excitement, with an air of secrecy about him— to hide himself here in the slum district?

  I climbed the rickety stairs to my shabby room and was plying the chisel half-heartedly on my Dancing Group, when suddenly I became aware of a peculiar buzzing sound, like an angry bee shut up in a jar. I slapped my ears several times, annoyed, believing the noise to be in my own head. But it kept on, growing louder by the moment.

  It seemed to come from the hall; and simultaneously I heard the stair-steps creak just outside my room.

  Striding to the door, I jerked it open— to see Paul Kennicott tiptoeing up the stairs in stealthy haste. He started violently at sight of me and attempted to hide under his coat an odd black box he was carrying.

  But it was too large: almost two feet square, roughly fashioned of wood and the canvas off an airplane wing. But this was not immediately apparent, for the whole thing seemed to be covered with a coat of shiny black enamel. When it bumped against the balustrade, however, it gave a solid metallic sound, unlike cloth-covered wood. That humming noise, I was sharply aware, came from inside the box.

  I stepped out into the hall and stood blocking the passage rather grimly.

  "Look here,” I snapped. "I know who you are, Kennicott, but I don’t know why you’re hiding out like this. What’s it all about? You’ll tell me, or I’ll turn you over to the police!”

  Panic leaped into his eyes. They pleaded with me silently for an instant, and then we heard the plodding footsteps of Mrs. Bates come upstairs.

  "Who’s got that radio?” her querulous voice preceded her. "I hear it hum-min’! Get it right out of here if you don’t wanta pay me extry for the ’lectricity it’s burnin’.”

  "Oh, ye gods!” Kennicott groaned frantically. "Stall her! Don’t let that gabby old fool find out about this—it’ll ruin everything! Help me, and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

  He darted past me without waiting for my answer and slammed the door after him. The droni
ng noise subsided and then was swiftly muffled so that it was no longer audible.

  Mrs. Bates puffed up the stairs and eyed me accusingly. "So it’s you that’s got that radio? I told you the day you come------”

  "All right,” I said, pretending annoyance. "I’ve turned it off, and anyhow it goes out tomorrow. I was just keeping it for a friend.”

  "Eh? Well-------” She eyed me sourly,

  then sniffed and went on back downstairs, muttering under her breath.

  I strode to Kennicott’s door and rapped softly. A key grated in the lock and I was admitted by my wild-eyed neighbor. On the bed, muffled by pillows, lay the black box humming softly on a shrill note.

  "I n—n n—ng—ng!” it went, exactly like a radio tuned to a station that is temporarily off the air.

  Curiosity was gnawing at my vitals. Impatiently I watched Kennicott striding up and down the little attic room, striking one fist against the other palm.

  "Well?” I demanded.

  And with obvious reluctance, in a voice jerky with excitement, he began to unfold the secret of the thing inside that onyx-like box. I sat on the bed beside it, my eyes riveted on Kennicott's face, spellbound by what he was saying. plane,” he began, "was demolished. We made a forced landing in the center of a dense jungle. If you know Brazil at all, you’ll know what it was like. Trees, trees, trees! Crawling insects as big as your fist. A hot sickening smell of rotting vegetation, and now and then the screech of some animal or bird eerie enough to make your hair stand on end. We cracked up right in the middle of nowhere.

  "I crawled out of the wreckage with only a sprained wrist and a few minor cuts, but McCrea—my co-pilot, you know—got a broken leg and a couple of bashed ribs. He was in a bad way, poor devil! Fat little guy, bald, scared of women, and always cracking wise about something. A swell sport.”

  The aviator’s face convulsed briefly, and he stared at the box on the bed beside me with a peculiar expression of loathing.