Conrad Aiken: Mr. Arcularis

Mr. Arcularis stood at the window of his room in the hospital and looked down at the street. There had been a light shower, which had patterned the sidewalks with large drops, but now again the sun was out, blue sky was showing here and there between the swift white clouds, a cold wind was blowing the poplar trees. An itinerant band had stopped before the building and was playing, with violin, harp, and flute, the finale of "Cavalleria Rusticana." Leaning against the window-sill— for he felt extraordinarily weak after his operation— Mr. Arcularis suddenly, listening to the wretched music, felt like crying. He rested the palm of one hand against a cold window pane and stared down at the old man who was blowing the flute, and blinked his eyes. It seemed absurd that he should be so weak, so emotional, so like a child-and especially now that everything was over at last. In spite of all their predictions, in spite, too, of his own dreadful certainty that he was going to die, here he was, as fit as a fiddle-but what a fiddle it was, so out of tune!-with a long life before him. And to begin with, a voyage to England ordered by the doctor. What could be more delightful? Why should he feel sad about it and want to cry like a baby? In a few minutes Harry would arrive with his car to take him to the wharf; in an hour he would be on the sea, in two hours he would see the sunset

behind him, where Boston had been, and his new life would be opening before him. It was many years since he had been abroad. June, the best of the year to come-England, France, the Rhine-how ridiculous that he should already be homesick!

There was a light footstep outside the door, a knock, the door opened, and Harry came in.

"Well, old man, I've come to get you. The old bus actually got here. Are you ready? Here, let me take your arm. You're tottering like an octogenarian!"

Mr. Arcularis submitted gratefully, laughing, and they made the journey slowly along the bleak corridor and down the stairs to the entrance hall. Miss Hoyle, his nurse, was there, and the Matron, and the charming

little assistant with freckles who had helped to prepare him for the operation. Miss Hoyle put out her hand.

"Good-by, Mr. Arcularis," she said, "and bon voyage."

"Good-by, Miss Hoyle, and thank you for everything. You were very kind to me. And I fear I was a nuisance."

The girl with the freckles, too, gave him her hand, smiling. She was very pretty, and it would have been easy to fall in love with her. She reminded him of someone. Who was it? He tried in vain to remember while he said good-by to her and turned to the Matron.

Conrad Aiken: Silent Snow, Secret Snow

Just why it should have happened, or why it should have happened ust when it did,

he could not, of course, possibly have said; nor perhaps would it even have occurred

to him to ask. The thing was above all a secret, something to be precioust concealed

from Mother and Father; and to that very fact it owed an enormous part of its deli-

ciousness. It was like a peculiarly beautiful trinket to be carried unmentioned in

one’s trouser pocket-——a rare stamp, an old coin, a few tiny gold links found trodden

out of shape on the path in the park, a pebble of carnelian, a seashell distinguishable

from all others by an unusual spot or stripe—and, as if it were any one of these, he

carried around with him everywhere a warm and persistent and increasingly beauti-

ful sense of possession. Nor was it only a sense of possession—it was also a sense of

protection. It was as if, in some delightful way, his secret gave him a fortress, a wall

behind which he could retreat into heavenly seclusion. This was almost the first

thing he had noticed about it—apart from the oddness of the thing itself—and it

was this that now again, for the fiftieth time, occurred to him, as he sat in the little

school room. It was the half-hour for geography. Miss Buell was revolving with one

finger, slowly, a huge terrestrial globe which had been placed on her desk. The green

and yellow continents passed and repassed, questions were asked and answered,

and now the little girl in front of him, Deirdre, who had a funny little constellation

of freckles on the back of her neck, exactly like the Big Dipper, was standing up

and telling Miss Buell that the equator was the line that ran round the middle.

Miss Buell’s face, which was old and grayish and kindly, with gray stiff curls

beside the cheeks, and eyes that swam very brightly, like little minnows, behind

thick glasses, wrinkled itself into a complication of amusements.

“Ah! I see. The earth is wearing a belt, or a sash. Or someone drew a line

around it!”

“Oh no—not that—I mean—”

In the general laughter, he did not share, or only a very little. He was thinking

about the Arctic and Antarctic regions, which of course, on the globe, were white.

Miss Buell was now telling them about the tropics, the jungles, the steamy heat of

equatorial swamps, where birds and butterflies, and even the snakes, were like

living jewels. As he listened to these things, he was already, with a pleasant sense of

half—effort, putting his secret between himself and the words. Was it really an effort

at all? For effort implied something voluntary, and perhaps even something one

did not especially want; whereas this was distinctly pleasant, and came almost of its

own accord. All he needed to do was to think of that morning, the first one, and

then of all the others—

But it was all so absurdly simple! It had amounted to so little. It was nothing,

just an idea—and just why it should have become so wonderful, so permanent, was

a mystery—a very pleasant one, to be sure, but also, in an amusing way, foolish.

However, without ceasing to listen to Miss Buell, who had now moved up to the

north temperate zones, he deliberately invited his memory of the first morning. It

was only a moment or two after he had waked up—or perhaps the moment itself.

But was there, to be exact, an exact moment? Was one awake all at once? or was it

gradual? Anyway, it was after he had stretched a lazy hand up toward the headrail,

and yawned, and then relaxed again among his warm covers, all the more grateful

on a December morning, that the thing had happened. Suddenly, for no reason, he

had thought of the postman, he remembered the postman. Perhaps there was

nothing so odd in that. After all, he heard the postman almost every morning of

his life—his heavy boots could be heard clumping round the corner at the top of

the little cobbled hill-street, and then, progressively nearer, progressively louder,

the double knock at each door, the crossings and re—crossings of the street, till

finally the clumsy steps came stumbling across to the very door, and the tremen—

dous knock came which shook the house itself.

Conrad Aiken: Strange Moonlight

It had been a tremendous week—colossal. Its reverberations around him hardly yet slept—his slightest motion or thought made a vast symphony of them, like a breeze in a forest of bells. In the first place, he had filched a volume of Poe’s tales from his mother's bookcase, and had had in consequence a delirious night in inferno. Down, down he had gone with heavy clangs about him, coiling spouts of fire licking dryly at an iron sky, and a strange companion, of protean shape and size, walking and talking beside him. For the most part, this companion seemed to be nothing but a voice and a wingnan enormous jagged black wing, soft and drooping like a bat's; he had noticed veins in it. As for the voice, it had been singularly gentle. If it was mysterious, that was no doubt because he himself was stupid. Certainly it had sounded placid and reasonahle, exactly, in fact, like his father’s explainifig a problem in mathematics; but, though he had noticed the orderly and logical structure, and felt the inevitable approach toward a vast and beautiful or terrible conclusion, the nature and meaning of the conclusion itself always escaped him. It was as

if, always, he had come just too late. When, for example, he had come at last to the black wall that inclosed the infernal city, and seen the arched gate, the voice had certainly said that if he hurried he would see, through the arch, a far, low landscape of extraordinary'wonder. He had hurried, but it haéi been in vain. He had reached the gate, and for the tiniest fraction of an instant he had even glimpsed the wide green of fields and trees, a winding blue ribbon of water, and a gleam of intense light touching to brilliance some far object. But then, before he had time to notice more than that every detail in this fairy landscape seemed to lead toward a single shining solution, a dazzling significance, suddenly the internal rain, streaked fire and rolling smoke, had swept it away. Then the voice had seemed to become ironic. He had failed, and he felt like crying.

He had still, the next morning, felt that he might, if the opportunity offered, see that vision. It was always just round the corner, just at the head of the stairs, just over the next page. But other adventures had intervened. Prize-day, at school, had come upon him as suddenly as a thunderstorm—the ominous hushed gathering of the entire school into one large room, the tense air of expectancy, the solemn speeches, all had reduced him to a state of acute terror. There was something unintelligible and sinister about it. He had, from first to last, a peculiar

physical sensation that something threatened him, and here and there, in the interminable vague speeches, a word seemed to have eyes and to stare at him. His prescience had'been correct—abruptly his name had been called, he had walked unsteadily amid applause to the teacher's desk, had received a small black pasteboard box; and then had cowered in his chair again, with the blood in his temples beating like gongs. When items over, he had literallyr run away—he didn’t stop till he reached the park. There, among the tombstones (the park had once been a graveyard) and trumpet-vines, he sat on the grass and opened the box. He was dazzled. The medal was of gold, and rested on a tiny blue satin cushion. His name was engraved on it—yes, actually cut into thegold; he felt the incisions with his fingernail. It was an experience not wholly to he comprehended. He put the box down in the grass and detached himself from it, lay full length, resting his chin on his wrist, and stared first at a tombstone and then at the small gold object, as if to discover the relation between them. Humming-birds, tombstones, trumpet-vines, and a gold medal. Amazing. He unpinned the medal from its cushion, put the box in his pocket, and walked slowly homeward, carrying the small, live, gleaming thing between fingers and thumb as if it were a bee. This was an experience to be carefully concealed from mother and father. Possibly he would tell Mary and John. . . . Unfortunately, he met his father as he was going in the door, and was thereafter drowned, for a day, in a glory without significance. He felt ashamed, and put the medal away in a drawer, sternly forbidding Mary and John to look at it. Even so, he was horribly conscious of it—its presence there burned him unceasingly. Nothing afforded escape from it, not even sitting under the peach tree and whittling a boat.