stantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of to-day buried to-morrow in ooze and slime. The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudo-hospitality, a hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep. The sophistical comfort came in reflected gleams from the decayed furniture, the ragged brocade uphol- 10 stery of a couch and two chairs, a footwide cheap pier glass between two windows, from one or two gilt picture frames and a brass bedstead in a corner. The guest reclined, inert, upon a chair, while the room, confused in speech as though it were an apartment in Babel, tried to discourse to him of its diverse tenantry. diamond in staggering letters the name. "Marie." It seemed that the succession of dwellers in the furnished room had turned in fury-perhaps tempted beyond forbearance by its garish coldness -and wreaked upon it their passions. The furniture was chipped and bruised; the couch, distorted by bursting springs, seemed a horrible monster that had been slain during the stress of some grotesque convulsion. Some more potent upheaval had cloven a great slice from the marble mantel. Each plank in the floor owned its particular cant and shriek as from a separate and individual agony. It seemed incredible that all this malice and injury had been wrought upon the room by those who had called it for a time their home; and 20 yet it may have been the cheated home instinct surviving blindly, the resentful rage at false household gods that had kindled their wrath. A hut that is our Own we can sweep and adorn and cherish. A polychromatic rug like some brilliant-flowered rectangular, tropical islet lay surrounded by a billowy sea of soiled matting. Upon the gray-papered wall were those pictures that pursue the homeless one from house to house -The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's chastely severe outline was inglori- 30 ously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it were some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port-a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine bottle, some stray cards out of a deck. The young tenant in the chair allowed these thoughts to file, softshod, through his mind, while there drifted into the room furnished sounds and furnished scents.. He heard in one room a tittering and incontinent, slack laughter; in others the monologue of a scold, the rattling of dice, a lullaby, and one crying dully; above him a banjo tinkled with spirit. Doors banged somewhere; the elevated trains roared intermittently; a cat yowled miserably upon a back fence. And he breathed the breath of the house-a dank savour effluvium as from underground vaults mingled with the reeking exhalations. of linoleum and mildewed and rotten woodwork. One by one, as the characters of a 40 rather than a smell-a cold, musty cryptograph become explicit, the little signs left by the furnished room's procession of guests developed a significance. The threadbare space in the rug in front of the dresser told that lovely woman had marched in the throng. Tiny finger prints on the wall spoke of little prisoners trying to feel their way to sun and air. A splattered stain, raying like the shadow of a bursting bomb, witnessed where a hurled glass or bottle had splintered with its contents against the wall. Across the pier glass had been scrawled with a Then suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong, sweet odour of mignonette. It came as upon a single buffet of wind with such sureness and fragrance and emphasis 50 that it almost seemed a living visitant. And the man cried aloud: "What, dear?" as if he had been called, and sprang up and faced about. The rich odour clung to him and wrapped him around. He reached out his arms for it, all his senses for the time confused and commingled. How could one be peremptorily called by an odour? Surely it must have been a sound. But, was it not the sound that had touched, that had caressed him? "She has been in this room," he cried, and he sprang to wrest from it a token, for he knew he would recognize the 10 smallest thing that had belonged to her or that she had touched. This enveloping scent of mignonette, the odour that she had loved and made her own -whence came it? colour and love and outstretched arms in the odour of mignonette. Oh, God! whence that odour, and since when have odours had a voice to call? Thus he groped. He burrowed in crevices and corners, and found corks and cigarettes. There he passed in passive contempt. But once he found in a fold of the matting a half-smoked cigar, and this he ground beneath his heel with a green and trenchant oath. He sifted the room from end to end. He found dreary and ignoble small records of many a peripatetic tenant; but of her whom he sought, and who may have lodged there, and whose spirit seemed to hover there, he found no trace. And then he thought of the house He ran from the haunted room downstairs and to a door that showed a crack of light. She came out to his knock. He smothered his excitement as best he could. "Will you tell me, madam," he besought her, "who occupied the room I have before I came?" The room had been but carelessly set in order. Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen hairpins-those discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gen- 20 keeper. der, infinite of mood, and uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of their triumphant lack of identity. Ransacking the drawers of the dresser he came upon a discarded, tiny, ragged handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It was racy and insolent with heliotrope; he hurled it to the floor. In another drawer he found odd buttons, a theatre programme, a pawn- 30 broker's card, two lost marshmallows, a book on the divination of dreams. In the last was a woman's black satin hair-bow, which halted him, poised between ice and fire. But the black satin hair-bow also is femininity's demure, impersonal, common ornament, and tells no tales. And then he traversed the room like a hound on the scent, skimming the 40 walls, considering the corners of the bulging matting on his hands and knees, rummaging mantel and tables, the curtains and hangings, the drunken cabinet in the corner, for a visible sign, unable to perceive that she was there beside, around, against, within, above him, clinging to him, wooing him, calling him so poignantly through the finer senses that even his grosser ones be- 50 came cognisant of the call. Once again he answered loudly: "Yes, dear!" and turned, wild-eyed, to gaze on vacancy, for he could not yet discern form and "Yes, sir. I can tell you again. 'Twas Sprowls and Mooney, as I said. Miss B'retta Sprowls it was in the theatres, but Misses Mooney she was. My house is well known for respectability. The marriage certificate hung, framed, on a nail over "What kind of a lady was Miss Sprowls-in looks, I mean?" "Why, black-haired, sir, short, and stout, with a comical face. They left a week ago Tuesday." "And before they occupied it?" "Why, there was a single gentleman connected with the draying business. He left owing me a week. Before him was Missis Crowder and her two children, that stayed four months; and back of them was old Mr. Doyle, whose sons paid for him. He kept the room six months. That goes back a year, sir, and further I do not remember." He thanked her and crept back to his room. The room was dead. The essence that had vivified it was gone. The perfume of mignonette had departed. In its place was the old, stale odour of mouldy house furniture, of atmosphere in storage. JACK LONDON (1876-1916) 1 ALL GOLD CANYON 1 It was the green heart of the canyon, where the walls swerved back from the rigid plan and relieved their harshness of line by making a little sheltered nook and filling it to the brim with The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. He sat staring at the yellow, singing gaslight. Soon he walked to the bed and began to tear the sheets into strips. With the blade of his knife he drove them tightly into every crevice around windows and door. When all 10 Sweetness and roundness and softness. was snug and taut he turned out the light, turned the gas full on again, and laid himself gratefully upon the bed. 铃 # It was Mrs. McCool's night to go with the can for beer. So she fetched it and sat with Mrs. Purdy in one of those subterranean retreats where housekeepers foregather and the worm. dieth seldom. "I rented out my third floor, back, this evening," said Mrs. Purdy across a fine circle of foam. "A young man took it. He went up to bed two hours ago." 20 Here all things rested. Even the narrow stream ceased its turbulent downrush long enough to form a quiet pool. Knee-deep in the water, with drooping head and half-shut eyes, drowsed a red-coated, many-antlered buck. On one side, beginning at the very lip of the pool, was a tiny meadow, a cool, resilient surface of green that extended to the base of the frowning wall. Beyond the pool a gentle slope of earth ran up and up to meet the opposing wall. Fine grass covered the slope-grass that was spangled with flowers, with here and there patches of "Now, did ye, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am?" color, orange and purple and golden. said Mrs. McCool, with intense admira- Below, the canyon was shut in. There tion. "You do be a wonder for rentin' was no view. The walls leaned torooms of that kind. And did ye tell gether abruptly and the canyon ended him, then?" she concluded in a husky 30 in a chaos of rocks, moss-covered and whisper, laden with mystery. hidden by a green screen of vines and creepers and boughs of trees. Up the canyon, rose far hills and peaks, the big foothills, pine-covered and remote. And far beyond, like clouds upon the border of the sky, towered minarets of white, where the Sierra's eternal snows flashed austerely the blazes of the sun. "Rooms," said Mrs. Purdy, in her furriest tones, "are furnished for to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs. McCool." "Tis right ye are, ma'am; 'tis by renting rooms we kape alive. Ye have the rale sense for business, ma'am. There be many people will rayjict the rentin' of a room if they be tould a suicide has been after dyin' in the bed 40 of it." "As you say, we has our living to be making," remarked Mrs. Purdy. "Yis, ma'am; 'tis true. 'Tis just one wake ago this day I helped ye lay out the third floor, back. A pretty slip of a colleen she was to be killin' herself wid the gas-a swate little face she had, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am." "She'd a-been called handsome, as 50 you say," said Mrs. Purdy, assenting but critical, "but for that mole she had a-growin' by her left eyebrow. Do fill up your glass again, Mrs. McCool." There was no dust in the canyon. The leaves and flowers were clean and virginal. The grass was young velvet. Over the pool three cottonwoods sent their snowy fluffs fluttering down the quiet air. On the slope the blossoms of the wine-wooded manzanita filled the air with springtime odors, while the leaves, wise with experience, were already beginning their vertical twist against the coming aridity of summer. In the open spaces on the slope, beyond the farthest shadow reach of the manzanita, poised the mariposa lilies, like Copyright, The Macmillan Company. ment and content of prosperity, and undisturbed by rumors of far wars. so many flights of jeweled moths suddenly arrested and on the verge of trembling into flight again. Here and The red-coated, many-antlered buck there that woods harlequin, the ma- acknowledged the lordship of the spirit drone, permitting itself to be caught of the place and dozed knee-deep in in the act of changing its pea green the cool, shaded pool. There seemed trunk to madder red, breathed its fra- no flies to vex him, and he was langrance into the air from great clusters guid with rest. Sometimes his ears of waxen bells. Creamy white were moved when the stream awoke and these bells, shaped like lilies of the val- 10 whispered; but they moved lazily, with ley, with the sweetness of perfume that is of the springtime. There was not a sigh of wind. The air was drowsy with its weight of perfume. It was a sweetness that would have been cloying had the air been heavy and humid. But the air was sharp and thin. It was as starlight transmuted into atmosphere, shot through and warmed by sunshine, and 20 flower-drenched with sweetness. An occasional butterfly drifted in and out through the patches of light and shade. And from all about rose the low and sleepy hum of mountain bees-feasting Sybarites that jostled one another good-naturedly at the board, nor found time for rough discourtesy. So quietly did the little stream drip and ripple its way through the canyon that it spoke only in faint and occasional gurgles. The voice of the stream was as a drowsy whisper, ever interrupted by dozings by dozings and silences, ever lifted again in the awakenings. foreknowledge that it was merely the stream grown garrulous at discovery that it had slept. But there came a time when the buck's ears lifted and tensed with swift eagerness for sound. His head was turned down the canyon. His sensitive, quivering nostrils scented the air. His eyes could not pierce the green screen through which the stream rippled away, but to his ears came the voice of a man. It was a steady, monotonous, singsong voice. Once the buck heard the harsh clash of metal upon rock. At the sound he snorted with a sudden start that jerked him through the air from water to meadow, and his feet sank into the young velvet, while he pricked his ears and again scented 30 the air. Then he stole across the tiny meadow, pausing once and again to listen, and faded away out of the canyon like a wraith, soft-footed and without sound. The clash of steel-shod soles against the rocks began to be heard, and the man's voice grew louder. It was raised in a sort of chant and became distinct with nearness, so that the words could be heard: Tu'n around an' tu'n yo' face The motion of all things was a drifting in the heart of the canyon. Sunshine and butterflies drifted in and out among the trees. The hum of the bees 40 and the whisper of the stream were a drifting of sound. And the drifting sound and drifting color seemed to weave together in the making of a delicate and intangible fabric which was the spirit of the place. It was a spirit of peace that was not of death, but of smooth-pulsing life, of quietude that was not silence, of movement that was not action, of repose that was quick 50 coated buck. The green screen was with existence without being violent with struggle and travail. The spirit of the place was the spirit of the peace of the living, somnolent with the ease (D' pow'rs of sin yo' am scornin'!). (Yo' will meet wid d' Lord in d' mornin'!). A sound of scrambling accompanied the song, and the spirit of the place fled away on the heels of the red burst asunder, and a man peered out at the meadow and the pool and the sloping sidehill. He was a deliberate sort of man. He took in the scene with one embracing glance, then ran his eyes over the details to verify the general impression. Then, and not until then, did he open his mouth in vivid and solemn approval: "Smoke of life an' snakes of purgatory! Will you just look at that! Wood an' water an' grass an' a sidehill! A pocket hunter's delight an' a cayuse's paradise! Cool green for 10 tired eyes! Pink pills for pale people ain't in it. A secret pasture for prospectors and a resting place for tired burros, by damn!" hollyhocks, but that smells good to me! Talk about your attar o' roses an' cologne factories! They ain't in it!" He had the habit of soliloquy. His quick-changing facial expressions might tell every thought and mood, but the tongue, perforce, ran hard after, repeating, like a second Boswell. The man lay down on the lip of the pool and drank long and deep of its water. "Tastes good to me," he murmured, lifting his head and gazing across the pool at the sidehill, while he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The sidehill attracted his attention. Still lying on his stomach, he studied the hill formation long and carefully. It was a practised eye that canyon-wall and back and down again. to the edge of the pool. He scrambled to his feet and favored the sidehill with a second survey. He was a sandy-complexioned man in whose face geniality and humor seemed the salient characteristics. It was a mobile face, quick-changing to inward mood and thought. Thinking was in him a visible process. Ideas 20 traveled up the slope to the crumbling chased across his face like wind-flaws across the surface of a lake. His hair, sparse and unkempt of growth, was as indeterminate and colorless as his complexion. It would seem that all the color of his frame had gone into his eyes, for they were startlingly blue. Also, they were laughing and merry eyes, within them much of the naïveté and wonder of the child; and yet, in 30 an unassertive way, they contained. much of calm self-reliance and strength of purpose founded upon self-experience and experience of the world. From out the screen of vines and creepers he flung ahead of him a miner's pick and shovel and gold-pan. Then he crawled out himself into the open. He was clad in faded overalls and black cotton shirt, with hob-nailed 40 brogans on his feet, and on his head a hat whose shapelessness and stains advertised the rough usage of wind and rain and sun and camp smoke. He stood erect, seeing wide-eyed the secrecy of the scene and sensuously inhaling the warm, sweet breath of the canyon garden through nostrils that dilated and quivered with delight. His eyes narrowed to laughing slits of blue, 50 his face wreathed itself in joy, and his mouth curled in a smile as he cried aloud: "Jumping dandelions and happy "Looks good to me," he concluded, picking up his pick and shovel and gold-pan. He crossed the stream below the pool, stepping agilely from stone to stone. Where the sidehill touched the water he dug up a shovelful of dirt and put it into the gold-pan. He squatted down, holding the pan in his two hands, and partly immersing it in the stream. Then he imparted to the pan a deft circular motion that sent the water sluicing in and out through the dirt and gravel. The larger and the lighter particles worked to the surface, and these, by a skillful dipping movement of the pan, he spilled out and over the edge. Occasionally, to expedite matters, he rested the pan and with his fingers raked out the large pebbles and pieces of rock. The contents of the pan diminished rapidly until only fine dirt and the smallest bits of gravel remained. At this stage he began to work very deliberately and carefully. It was fine washing, and he washed fine and finer, with a keen scrutiny and delicate and fastidious touch. At last the pan seemed empty of everything but water; |