THE PROSAIC HERO

Evening Star, Issue 20058, 26 December 1928, Page 3

THE PROSAIC HERO

A SHORT STORY. By Minnik J. Hktnoujs. [All Ricms Rksruvet).] Mrs Clnrk, who was' the oldest resident of Elm street, was watching the | Brown children from her front bed I room window upstairs. Little George Brown, the oldest, a cherub of tex, had attached a fine cord to a kitten’s leg. It was a strange kitten which ho had ! found in the stret, and, it was oxI treinciy anxious, to get away. George : would lot it run to the end of the cord i and then pull it back, its meows rising ! wild and mournful. The cord cut .the kitten’s log, and little George laughed i uproariously. I ‘Mrs Clark threw up tho window, and was about to call vigorously to tho playful Brown children when Mr Benny Garter came along. He picked up the kitten, cut the cord with his pocket knife, and put the trembling little animal into his coat pocket. Then Benny spoke to little George, with a note" of reproof in his mild voice. “You ought, not to do that,” said he. “ Don’t you know that? ” “Aw,” said George defiantly, “what business is it of yours?” “ How would you like it if some big fellow did that to you and made your log bleed? ” said Benny. “Aw. my lather’s lick him,” said George. “ You give mo my cat.” “ I’m going to take it home and care its ' leg,” said Bonny, moving away. Little George skipped to the I middle of the street., where he would J be ready to dodge inside Ids own gate, i and, standing poised for flight, called scornfully: “Aw, you’re a line one, you are I Let your wife support you. Let your wife go to work while you stay at homo and do the cooking. You’re a great one to preach, you are! ” I Benny turned, and little George fled Benny walked on, a little more quickly than usual, his broad shoulders a little more rounded than usual, his head sunk a little lower on his chest, his whole large body slumped down in n curious way, as if instinctively it wanted to sink into tho ground. He entered his own gate a few stops , farther on, and vanished from sight ! among tho great lilac bushes which 1 bordered the path to his front door. I Mrs Clark lowered her window with ’ unnecessary energy and went down to the kitchen to get tho G o’clock dinner for her husband and three sons. Her 1 cheeks were flushed, and her eyes ' sparkled angrily. She rattled tho pans I more than she needed to, and turned on tho tap with a vigour that Hooded tho sink. When tho family were seated at the table her oldest son broke tho ice. “ What’s the matter, ma? ” ho inquired. '.Then Mrs Clark, red and voluble with righteous indignation, told the story. “ That little fiend of a Brown hoy,” she concluded, “ his parents will have tlioir troubles with him yet, you’ll sec. But it’s their own fault. He’s heard them say those tilings about Benny Cartel;, and lie was just repeating what he’s heard at homo. Boor Bonny! ” And a tear stood on her Hushed ! cheek. | Mrs Clark was a stout, sunshiny, warm-hearted little woman who would work her fingers: to tho bone for those she loved. But she had a temper which was apt to flame out suddenly, and when it flamed out it lot no guilty man escape. Anything resembling injustice or cruelty threw her into a rage, and at these times her Family were accustomed to step softly and wait till the clouds rolled by. Tier oldest son, however, was now at a school of technical engineering in London, and at an age when ho knew more than his mother or father, and more than he would himself later on. Ho rushed in where his father feared to tread. “ Why, ma,” said he, with ineffable superiority, “ are you crying? Crying over that Ben Carter? Why, everybody says just what the lb-own kid did. He’s the disgrace of Elm street, He ought to move away and live among people of his own class.” “ Oil, had lie? ” inquired Airs Clark politely, and heA tone was d- -gei-ons. " I’d like to know if Ben Carter hasn’t got a right to live in this street? He’s lived lien; longer than anyone else, excepting me. I’m sorry he isn’t good enough for yon to associate with. He’s good enough for me.” Her oldest chocked the play of Ids knife and fork and surveyed his mother in grieved surprise. “ Why, yon seem to think more of him than yon do of me,” ho blurted. “ Ho isn’t as conceited as yon are,” said his mother calmly. “ Maybe lie was once, but he’s had it taken out of him. You may get.it taken out of yon yet. Yon think you’re going to open the world like an oyster shell. Maybe yon will, and maybe yon won’t. I can remember when he was just as young and confident and hopeful as you are, and just as smart. .Because you’ve got a father to pay your bills I and have yon educated doesn’t make | yon any smarter than he was natur--1 ally. Yon may get your comedown ■ later in life, as he did. Yon may even i live to see . your wife supporting yon, just as your mother washes your clothes and cooks your food for you now. • I don’t know what call you have to look' down on Benny so much. I don’t know why it’s so much worse to let a wpfe work for you than a mother.” Arthur got up and flung away from the table. “ YouTI be sorry for this," he shot back as he went. “ You’ll bo coming round to beg my pardon, as yon always do.” “ The one that's in the right can afford to beg pardon,” said Airs Clark magnificently. But as she washed her dishes that night her temper died away into sadness and shame. She knew she would have to do just what her son had said. Her soft heart would never carry out tho dictates of her hot temper.. She could nob endure to Jive in unpleasantness with her family or friends, and the poor lady was always eating humble pie after some outburst which' had seemed entirely justifiable at the time. She went and sat in tho side porch in the dusk and looked over at the Carter house longingly. She _ wanted to go over, but she was afraid. She thought of taking over a cake she had baked that day, on the pretext that she wished them to sample a new recipe. Hut she was afraid they would know it for sympathy and resent A. The smell of the great masses of lilac in the Carter garden came to her out of the slow-dropping spring dusk and made her sad. She could remember tho day Benny’s father planted those lilacs, when she was ii little girl, more than forty years before. With the weird, revivifying power of odours the frangrance called up every detail of tho day. This had been ail open country than. When her parents moved tip hero and built this house people- in tho village wondered why they moved out in tho country to live Elui street was only a bit of country

road, Tiio Carter House was tho ojilv oiio anywhere about. 'lho village bwt grown "slo*!/, homo by-, house, but ii’nvay? in eii.r-i direction#, Having the two bn>'sssalone uudt-: the elms that. IJo/mv Carter « gro-Cgrandluther hivl e.'ianlA.l idjng bo oh shuts ol t aft roiKt. SW had car*Wl Hency in her arms whorl ho was a baby. Then they had gone to school together. down to the village two railed away, He a Hteje boy in tlo infant do** when .•.ho was a big girl in tko high school. , All that farm land about there hau ones beongod to the Carter lamiiy. If they hud kept it till now, when it was selling for building plots, Benny would bo n rich man.. Hut bis grandfather hud died young, leaving a sickly wife and young children. The widow sold the fur re for a low thousands, and Had to use the money to live on. Onlv the little old farmhouse had come down to Benny's father. Ho nad routed u fow holds, kept a few cows, and ran a little milk wagon to the village all his life. They had thought it wax a great stop up tor .Bcnnv wlien, ut fifteen, lig got. a job in a 'big city oliice. How proud and happy he was going oft to town every morning and coming back at night! lo was almost the iirst of tho Fairfield boys to begin to go to business in tho city. How bis mind was wrapped 11 P * n work! How be told every detail of it at home, bow proud his parents had boon of him, and with what pride his mother dwelt upon his connection with tho big (inn! The childish “ Beamy ” dropped out of use; it was “ Hon ” now. He had a chance to rise now, his lather said-. Ho had a future before him. Vi ho knew hut what ho might bo a partner some day? The oid people died, and Honiiy, with tlio pa the tic. loneliness of an only child who has nobody lelt alter bis parents are gone, married almost immediately. Mrs° Clark had not quite known whether to like bis wile at first or no*;. She was a Londoner born, a cool, sellpossessed product, of tho city, who bad been one oi tho fitty or more shorthand typists in the big (inn’s office. Her hair was red as fire, and her eyes a steely palo blue, proclaimed her a young person who would stand no nonsense and was amply able to take care of herself. As the years went on she always seemed to stay a girl, tho obstinate crimson hair defied the grey, her step remained light and springy, she became one of those curious modern women who may ho thirty-two and unmarried or forty-two and a grandmother. .Mrs Claris had decided after a time to like her. Tho girl was so perfectly devoted to Honny, and made such a good home for him. Quito ignorant el housekeeping when she married, she astonished Mrs Clark by the precision and accuracy with which she learned to run the house and do the cooking. She applied the same rule to housework that she did to typing a letter. There was one correct way to do it, and after she learned it she did it that way every time. She wont to Mrs Clark I rody lor instruction and information, and it pleased tho older woman, who had nr» daughter, to thus pass on. tho great traditions of homo making which women have preserved and developed from the cave upward. Tile Carter house had never been so well kept. Hen had never been so .spruce, and happy and comfortable. Hen’s wife had no children, and her maternal instincts poured out upon her husband. It was almost amusing to see how so small and slight a creature mothered one so big and solid as Hen. Those light eyes of hers, cold and steely for individuals of whom she had her suspicions, veiled and noncommittal for strangers, friendly . to friends, became blue pools of melting tenderness for. Hen alone. “ And I don’t wonder she loves him,” mused Mrs Clark. “ 1 never saw two persons bettor fitted to supply the qualities the other hadn’t got. lion is retiring and diffident, without a bit of push and confidence in himself, and she’s got check enough for two. She’s nervous and highly-strung and suspicious, and Hen is calm and patient and affectionate He’s calmed her down and made her human and womanly since he married her. They’re more in love with each other now than they were tho day they were married," So the years had gone on, and in the midst of them Elm street was suddenly transformed into a prosperous residential London suburb. The tube, railway unexpectedly threw out a branch, and tho lino passed within three short streets of Elm street. A station was built there, and named Elm stret. Elm street became choice territory, because of its stately old trees and its nearness' to the now station, Oliice men, managers, .heads of departments, all sorts of high-class and prosperous crowded oft the train at Elm street in over-increas-ing numbers. For them the little, new, smart suburban villas, with all improvements and a patch ot lawn in front, could not go up fast enough. The Clark and Carter houses looked old and plain beside tho new ones; hut, on the other hand, the new-comers looked dreadfully new and bare beside the old-timers, ■ bowored in their roses, wisteria, and fruit trees. It was right in tire midst of all this rampant now prosperity that the awful thing happened at the Carter house. Hon stopped going to work. Twentyfive years he had been going into the city to the same firm. Then he stopped. He made no explanation, not even to Mrs Clark, who had always been more like an older sister , to him than anything else. Hen’s red-headed wife explained, however, and volubly. It was Hen’s eyes, she said. They had given out. They couldn’t stand the office work any more, and tho oculist advised him to let them rest a. few months. So she was going to take a job a little while until he was able to go back to work. Mrs Carter was now somewhere ;n her early thirties, slim and high-stop-ping. She seemed to have no trouble in getting a job. In fact, braced by her early knowledge of business, and her later knowledge of house-keeping in all its branches, she wont! .straight into the office of tho first firm that endeavoured to place a tireless cooker on tho market, and quickly became its most accomplished saleswoman and demonstrator. As a matter of fact, she told Mrs Clark she earned five times ns much a,s in the old days before her marriage: and tho Carter house seemed to suffer no reduction of means. Six mornings a week, rain or shine, saw the red-headed woman emerge from the Carter gate with precisely time enough to reach the station, on the Mat-form of which she carried herself with cool self-possession, and smart, in her perfectly correct business costume of golden brown or, navy bine, her defiant rod head held calmly aloft as if she owned the place. i A year or more went hy, and slie kept it up. Benny got no new ;ob. People were calling him ‘‘ Benny again now. When people give a diminutive like that to a grown man, : it- means either rhnt they fire vciv fond of him or slightly contenipti-ns. It made Mrs Clark very angry when sue found that tho new settlors in Elm street looked down on Benny Car tor. They sneered at the fiction of his eyes. Just n plain case of living on his «ifo. Tho new comers were all smart, I smug, well-paid people, living pretty well up to the limit of their means. Mrs Clark did nob fully understand

! them. Her husband had a littlo shop j down in Fairfield. To her old-iashioned j notions, a man who had a little busi--1 ness of his own was- a grade higher np 1 than the man who worked tor somebody else. But these now people seemed to look down on a little shop in Fairfield. They scorned to grade a man by the size' of tho firm or the eminence of tho man ho worked tor To ho a cog in some great wheel of business, a peg in some vast edifice 1 of finance, seemed their horizon in life. | They were a cold-hearted lot, too, according to -Mrs Clark’s notion. They ' neither expected nor proffered ncigh- ■ hourly services or kindness, 'they had not one shade of sympathy For the man who was down. They wanted him to get. out of their sight and not- trouble them. If ho stayed, like Benny Carter, they considered him an oflence. Hcimy’s dish washing and housekeeping wore a sneer and a byword in Elm street. Arthur Clark’s 'statement was true. The Brown hopeful had merely repeated what all the older people had said. “ Benny Carter the disgrace ol Elm sti'cc! ! ” repeated Mrs Clark fiercely to herself in the dark. “ Why, he's the most faithful, affectionate man that, j over lived. He never did a_ thing that wasn’t good and straight in his life. What—what could have happened to him to make him slump down so? Why, in the two years since lie left the firm he’s aged ton years. Hut they can’t sneer at his garden, anyway,” she mused. It was true. Benny’s garden was the only tiling about him that Elm street did not laugh at. Ehu street had a great fad for gardens. Each spring saw a renaissance of garden fever. 'The men lugged home tools and seeds and lengths of hose and young plants, and after dinner in the long May twilight they dug and hoed and planted elaborated beds. But with June days their fervour lagged, and in July and August the gardens grew weedy and forlorn, and their wives wore bujdng vegetables from tho greengrocer. But Bonny Carter’s garden was a wonder. They had to acknowledge it. Such beans and peas, such tomatoes and blackberries ns he took off that patch of ground; such crisp, white celery lasting far into tho winter; it was the amazement of all Elm street. Mrs Clark always praised his garden exhaustively. “ Why, those three great lazy boys of mine all put together can’t make such a garden. 1 never saw such a man. How do yon do it, Benny? ” Benny looked pleased. It was the only way anybody seemed able to bring a look, of pleasure to his lace nowa-days-—to praise his garden. On Saturday night _ Mr Brown’s brother came over in his big touring car and took the Brown family away to stay overnight at his place in Llewelyn Bark. Tho cook was left alone. She was a new cook from a West End registry office. Tho Browns had been rejoicing that a real, professional cook with a seemingly exhaustible had been willing to go to tlie country. 'They revelled in a new and unique salad and a novel and alluring dessert every day; and Mr Brown Lad missed several trains one morning because of tho cnticinguess of her muffins, which had caused him to linger, gorging 1 "niself. They Touched wood every time they spoke of her, and wondered how long they could keen her. 1 The cook, having no friends in Fairfield, naturally was a little lonely come Saturday night, with the family all away. So she sent out for a large, cold bottle, proverbial solace of the professional cook, notoriously indifferent to the consumption of the food amid which she spends her life. Had tho. Browns seen her late that evening they would hate understood why they had been able to obtain so superidr am art : £t for their humble menage. Anyway, some time in tho small hour.'; Elm street was awakened Horn its (iucormia- slumbers hy the 'Fairfield j lire brigade, which clattered into tiro I

street and endeavoured to quench the fire which was burning np the Brown house. Somebody telephoned to Mr Brown at his brother’s house, and the big car came rushing over with Mr and Mrs Brown. Thu abstemious cook was seated in a corner of tho yard, where the firemen had placed'her, owlishly surveying tho scene. And even as the Browns leaped from tho car, little George, who, everyone supposed- had gone with tho family, appeared at an upper window. As a groan rose from the crowd, a big man dashed into the house. There were no (ire escapes in Fairfield. When Benny Carter appeared at thu window, they had a blanket beneath, and were shouting to George to, jump but tho child was too frightened to do so. Garter seized him and tossed him clear of tho burning wall into the blanket, where he bounced like a rubber hall, perfectly unharmed. Tho man at tho window turned hack, hut there was a sheet of roaring flames behind him, and as ho climbed on tho window sill to jump the wall of the upper storey crumbled and caved inward with Carter upon it. Firemen sprang in, and at the risk of their own lives dragged him from the burning mass, and as they laid him on the grass, a woman with her dressing-gown dropping open and showing the nightgown beneath, came running wildly over the wet grass and gathered his poor burned head to her bosom. As she touched him she grew quieter. “Benny,” she said, “you aren’t dead, Benny? Yon hear me, Benny? Speak to Kit, Benny. Oh, where’s his heart? " She thrust her hand inside Ids shirt and felt for heartbeats. Then she laid him down on the grass, lifted np his heavy hands and crossed them on his breast, “ He’s dead,” she said in a dreadful way. “ He’s dead. Are you satisfied now? ” She faced the crowd. “ Are you satisfied now, yon Elm street people? You despised him, didn’t you? Are you satisfied now that lie was a man? The disgrace of Elm street. Well, Elm street won’t have any disgrace now. “ They fired him,” she went on dully, accusingly. “ After twenty-five years they fired him. He was forty. They said he was too old. They wanted a young follow in his place. It took the heart out of him. Ho tried to get another job, but he hadn't any heart to ask for it, and everywhere they said lie was too old. 1 could got a job. It was no trouble to me. I’m built for that Sort of thing. And he made my homo for me; he made my life. We had such a happy home, and such a happy life. But yon had to despise him because lie couldn’t make money, and he knew it. Wo wore going to have a little -farm. That’s what lie was fitted for. But we couldn’t self the house. Nobody would buy it; it was too old. But wo would have sold it in time, and’ then we would have gone away out of your sight to our little farm. Oh, Benny, oh, Bonny ” —she spoke in dreadful gasps —“ wo’il never have that little ■farm now. Oh, my dear, you’ll never meet me at the station again with the umbrella when it rains." She broke into pitiful wailing under her sorrow. “ And to die,” she sobbed, “ for . rat Brown boy that said the meanest things to him! ” 'Die doctor, who had been kneeling over the body in the grass, reached up and grasped her arm, ■ “ Mrs Carter,” he said clearly, “ he’s alive! ”