A Reluctant Hero

“Aw, gee! Don’t I go to school all day? ’S’nough, without studyin’ all night, I should think!”

“Look at your report-card! You open that book, Henry, and get to work.”

Mr. Potts peered out from his paper at the two—his son, sandy cropped head sulking behind a red “Fifth Reader”; Mrs. Potts, returning to her sewing, a sort of pyramidal calm over her wide forehead and broad bosom. He ducked as his wife’s eyes lifted from the stocking she was darning. For a few minutes there was silence around the red-clothed table, a silence punctuated by hoarse breathings of words from Henry. Then the boy clapped the book on the table.

“There! Read their old bunk. All about a he-ro. Po’try, that’s all it is.”

“Did you read it through?” Mrs. Potts pursed her lips at Henry’s nod. “Then you go on to bed.”

“What hero was it?” Mr. Potts laid down his paper.

“A guy standin’ on a bridge and killin’ everybody.” Henry hitched slowly away, under his mother’s impelling gaze.

“Not Horatius!” Mr. Potts slipped his feet under the table, shoving his chair toward the book.

“Say, you know him, too?” Henry grinned wisely. “It’s all old bunk they give us. I’d just as lief read some good stuff—”

“Henry, it’s learning to read, not what you read.” Mrs. Potts rolled the stockings into a firm ball. “Go on to bed. It’s late.” As the boy shuffled out of the room, she frowned at her husband. “I got all that ironing to do to-morrow. Don’t you begin that book now. There’s the stoves to see to.”

With a pucker between his blue eyes, Mr. Potts stepped into his slippers and went out through the neat kitchen to the coal-shed. When he came back with the scuttle, his wife’s voice assailed him from the bedroom:

“Put newspapers down for the ashes. You spilled them all over last night.”

When he had shaken the stove, let the coals rattle in, and checked it, he gathered up the paper he had spread, blowing at a little heap of ashes that trickled from a corner, and carried the empty scuttle back to the shed. He locked the doors, and tiptoed to the table to turn down the lamp. With a glance toward the door, he touched the book. Moistening a finger, he ran through the pages. There it was—Horatius at the Bridge! He curled one foot up around a thin leg and balanced there, swaying a little, forming the words with his lips. But the dauntless Horatius was interrupted midway by:

“Henry! Put down that book and come to bed! I’ve got to get some sleep.”

His eyes seizing the next line, Henry Potts puffed out the lamp and felt his way to the door. A slight flush appeared at the edges of his sandy mustache at his wife’s, “If you paid half as much heed to business as you do to heroes and such, you’d be something more’n a clerk in Baxter’s to-day.” But he said nothing, and presently lay in the darkness, his arm twitching with the blows of Horatius’s sword.

The next morning Mr. Potts carried in several extra armfuls of wood for the ironing. Since Henry had built up his morning-paper route his father somehow fell heir to the house chores. When Mr. Potts had filled the box, brushed the light snow off the front walk, and left a scuttle of coal by the dining-room stove, he wound his muffler around his neck and struggled into his overcoat. Mrs. Potts, clattering the breakfast-dishes out of the way, stopped to brush a thread from the worn sleeve.

“You’d ought to have a new coat, Henry,” she accused him.

“Soon be spring.” Mr. Potts pulled on his mittens. “Got that insurance to meet next month.”

“It’s always something.” She vanished into the kitchen, Mr. Potts staring after her.

“I’d just as soon make more money if I knew how,” he mumbled.

“Huh? What d’you say?” She stood in the door, polishing a tumbler with swift vigor.

“Did you want anything over town?” He edged toward the door.

“That pound of hamburg I told you to bring. If you see Henry coasting on that hill this noon, you bring him home with you. I don’t want he should coast there.”

Mr. Potts plunged his hands in his pockets and stepped out into the crisp morning. He hurried gingerly along the icy street, stopping once to watch a red-capped boy streak past, “belly-bump,” from the crest of the hill a block above down to the village square below. Mrs. Potts was right; that was a dangerous hill, curving into the main street at its foot like that. He smiled as he picked his way along. The town would have to sprinkle ashes there; take more’n a mother to keep a boy off such a coast!

The cold tickled his nostrils as he crossed at the foot of the hill and turned into the sweep of north wind down the main street. He was glad Baxter’s was just three doors up, next the grocery. On the windows the frost was so thick he could scarcely see the goods he had arranged there Monday. He closed the front door carefully behind him, hung his coat in the corner, and, rubbing his palms together, squinted up the aisle. It was pleasant, alone in the store. Until Mr. Baxter came in, toward noon, he could almost think it was his own business—as Mrs. Potts said it ought to be. He sighed; he couldn’t get her to understand how the trolley-line to the city had dulled trade—a man had to have money—With a clap of his hands he reached for the broom, and marched up the aisle behind a cloud of dust.

Later that morning, as Mr. Potts knelt by a wooden box, checking off goods as he unpacked them, he stopped counting to stare at the label on the “Extra heavy men’s shirts.” “Dragon Brand,” it read.

“Them old heroes had it easy,” he exclaimed. “Killing dragons is nothing! Fighting with a sword!” He brought his fist down on his knee with such force that he lost his balance, and broke his pencil on the edge of the box. He scrambled to his feet, fumbling for a jack-knife. “Always spoiling something, ain’t I?” he asked of the pencil as he whittled it down. The rest of the morning he held himself rigorously to the glorious business of selling thread and oil-cloth and one apron, and of settling the new stock in place on the shelves.

That noon Mr. Baxter was later than usual. When Henry saw him at the door, wiping the frost rime from his beard, he bolted for his coat. Mrs. Potts liked dinner on the dot. Buttoning the coat, he hurried up the street, empty except for the few teams huddled under blankets along the park railing across from the stores. Half-way up the hill he stopped, catching a long, tingling breath, and peering out at the mob of boys that went shouting up the road, dragging a line of bobs. Mrs. Potts had said something about bringing Henry home; he didn’t seem to be in that bunch. She had said something else; as he caught the tail of that fleeting recollection, he wheeled in dismay and started at a trot back down the hill. A pound of hamburg! It was lucky he had remembered it at all!

From the crest of the hill came the warning shout of the boys. He squinted up at them as he crossed the street. Two bobs abreast, a line of them; the hill was a living boy-avalanche. Then behind him came the honk-honk of a heavy motor-truck which had skidded too near a team of horses. There was a scream from some one, a clattering and wrenching as the horses leaped back, and then a rush straight for the corner, frightened nostrils and pounding hoofs making a world of confusion all about Henry Potts for a terrifying second—and those boys flying into it! He flung up one hand with a curious noise in his throat, a staggering “Huh-huh—” and jumped to catch at something, and dangle, toward the ditch—

Henry Potts floated slowly toward a thing stretched under a white counterpane. He must crawl back into that. Slowly, slowly—a grinding of horrible wheels, a clutching of the agony at the very heart of life—Ah! That was better, that numbness. He was in again. Words ran over him.

“Quickly, Mrs. Potts. I think he’s coming to. He may live only a minute.”

Then a hush again, a hush into which he felt presently that he must look, if he could lift those leaden eyelids.

“Why, Maria!” He had never seen his wife’s face so white, with such red eyes. She stared a moment, and with a “Henry!” slumped down to her knees beside the bed. He would have touched her head, but something held his hands rigid. Was there some one else behind him? The doctor, stepping forward to bend over his chest.

“Guess I done something to it—” Then he remembered suddenly that world of madness into which he had hurled himself. “Did the boys get hurt?” he whispered.

Mrs. Potts pulled herself up, her round cheeks quivering.

“Not a boy, Henry,” the doctor said, slowly. “You did a wonderful thing—steering those horses off; the boys swept past—safe.”

“It’s night, eh?” Henry stared at the lamp on the wash-stand. “What’s wrong with me? I ain’t dying, am I? I can’t seem to move.”

The doctor pulled a chair near the bed and sat there, shading his eyes with one hand. “The horses caught you. Paralysis. You are the town’s hero, Henry. And you have given your life.”

“Me? A hero!” Henry’s eyes grew startlingly blue in his gray face. “Pshaw! Maria, don’t cry. ’S all right. If I’m going, we’d ought to see to things—”

“It ain’t pshaw! It’s true!” The color spread from Maria’s eyelids over her face. “Everybody’s been here. Fathers and mothers, the minister—everybody. They say—there ain’t a man could of been so brave—not waiting a second—”

“Anybody would of done it.” But a strange light shone out through the blue eyes. “I ain’t leaving you much. The house—and that insurance—”

“And the memory of his father as a great hero! What more can a man leave?” The doctor rose. “If I could do as much for my boy—” He walked heavily across the room, Henry’s eyes following him.

“Henry, I didn’t mean to plague you, over the books.” Maria bent over him awkwardly. “I didn’t know—”

“That’s all right.” Henry listened to the doctor’s voice out in the next room.

“Henry, come here. Your father has regained consciousness.”

Then a small, sandy-haired boy, with frightened eyes, came reluctantly to the side of the bed.

“Well, old fellow! Take care of your mother, eh?”

“Kiss your father,” whispered Maria, and Henry pecked at the quiet face, and disappeared out of the reach of his father’s eyes.

“I’ll give him this opiate, Mrs. Potts, so he won’t suffer.” The doctor bent over the rigid figure. “Some of the women will stay with you. There’s nothing I can do.”

The heavy lids shut down; Henry could not pry them open. Voices floated past him. Some one was saying—the minister that voice belonged to—“Mrs. Potts, let the beauty of the deed help you bear your burden. We have been talking it over”—here the voice fell until Henry could scarcely follow—“A public funeral, Sunday, from the church—All the townspeople—honor—” Then off and off the voices drifted, thinner, and thinner, until there was only black silence.

* * *

After an eon, within that black silence rested a small kernel of life. It pricked and stirred, swelled into Henry Potts, hero! Slowly he lifted those eyelids, into which all the weight of his body had gathered, and saw across the white counterpane a thin streak of winter sunshine. A woman nodding by the bed gave a little cry; several women hurried into the room.

“Such a start as it gave me!” whispered the first. She laid her hand on the bed, a plump hand with skin tight over the knuckles. “Mr. Potts—my boy was there—on the first bob—” She slipped aside as the doctor hung over the still figure.

“Astonishing vitality!” He nodded over his shoulder, and Henry, lifting his eyes, saw his wife, her hair straggling about her face in desperate untidiness.

“Make Maria lie down and rest.” The terror in her eyes disturbed him. “I’ll have them call you.”

Some one whispered to the doctor, who turned again to look at Henry.

“It can’t harm him. There’s a reporter out there, Henry,” he said, gravely. “He wants to make a big story about you—”

The tall youth who came in then peered at Henry through shell spectacles. “Proud to know you, Mr. Potts. We want to make a front-page story. Just a point or two. What did you think as you jumped for the rein?”

“Didn’t think.” Henry’s smile was apologetic. “Anybody would of done it.” But his eyes, as they followed the young man until he disappeared out of their narrow radius, were eager. What was he saying, there in the hall? “I’ll call up the drug-store, then, the last minute. His death ought to be part of the story, of course.” It would be nice to wait long enough to see that paper. On that thought he dozed off. When he opened his eyes again, he found Maria sitting by his side, her hands rigid in her lap. She leaned toward him.

“You—are there, yet?” Her chin quivered. “The minister’s been here all morning. He had to go—He wanted to tell you—” The muscles of her face contracted spasmodically. “It’s awful—me sitting here tellin’ you—”

“There, Maria! It’s nice to hang on long enough to hear about it.”

“They’re raising a monument subscription for you. Ed Collins started it. His two boys was there. They want to know what you want on it. A sort of motto—”

“A monument!” Henry closed his eyes and opened them quickly. Maria still sat there, watching him with troubled awe. The monument was scarcely more wonderful than that expression on her face.

“Tellin’ what you did—”

“No. Nothin’ but my name. Henry Potts. It wasn’t nothing—what I did.”

“Henry!” She leaned over him, tears running from her contracted eyelids, and kissed him; then rushed out of the room. Her tears were warm on Henry’s cheek. Wishing that some one would wipe them off, he drifted into sleep again.

Later he came floating back. Except for regular breathing somewhere near his bed, the house was quiet; the whispering movement that had filled it earlier in the day had fallen into waiting silence. Night again; the lamp was turned too low; he didn’t like that smoky smell. Something tickled his cheek, and he opened his eyes. Above him hovered little Miss Briggs, the end of the gray fascinator about her throat brushing his face.

“Will I call your wife? She’s lying down a bit?”

“No. I’m all right.” Henry smiled gently. That was her professional tone; she “sat up” with the sick of the village. “No. Miss Briggs—” Henry hesitated. “Was the piece in the paper about it?”

“Two columns on the front sheet!” She straightened her wiry body. “Maria took it up-stairs, but I remember the last sentence. It was beautiful. ‘The eyes of the nation are on that darkened room where lies the man who has met the supreme test of his manhood.’ Then there was something about all fathers and mothers honoring you—”

“Anybody would of done it.” Henry watched for the quick jerk of Miss Briggs’s gray head.

“You was the one,” she said. “You sure you don’t want me to call Maria?”

“Not now.”

She settled herself in her chair, pulling her shawl about her neck.

“The eyes of the nation.” The words wrapped Henry Potts in a warm glory, within which his thoughts gathered slowly. He was the one, he, Henry Potts. They all knew he had done it. A public funeral Sunday! Henry saw the townspeople crowding solemnly into the church, almost smelled the flowers banked under the old oak pulpit. But he had to die to go to that funeral. That was the only difficult part, dying before you gathered the joy of your deed. Horatius hadn’t died, though. He sighed, and then frowned at Miss Briggs’s questioning flutter. A monument, too! He had shown folks, at last. Even Maria! It wasn’t much, what he had done. But folks knew him, now. Not Henry Potts, clerk at Baxter’s. Henry Potts on a monument! A man! Close about him settled the glory, a shining sphere within which he rested.

When, in the early morning, Doctor Washburn tiptoed in, the wrinkles on his face deepened curiously at Henry’s quiet smile.

“You’re a miracle, Henry.” He shook his head. “I gave you an hour—”

Henry heard him, as he pulled on his coat in the hall, talking with Mrs. Potts. They’d better have Baker, the city specialist.

All day, through the door he asked them to leave open, Henry heard the people of the town come in with solemn queries, depart with whispered amazement. Henry Junior’s puzzled face stared in once and was whisked away. Remote, smiling, Henry Potts listened. That smile reflected dimly the bubble of light that inclosed him, a bubble swelling, brightening steadily.

After the specialist had gone, Henry heard the minister again. “So he may linger indefinitely? Hm. Then we can’t go ahead with the arrangements for the funeral. I’ll have to change my sermon.” And Miss Briggs’s sharp voice—was it a trifle sorrowful?—“The roses in this ‘Gates Ajar’ won’t keep, and I don’t suppose the florist would take it back now.” Then the voices moved out into the dining-room, blurring together.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday Henry Potts slept peacefully, woke with his faint smile, listened to the stirring of people in the house. The newspaper was propped on the wash-stand, folded so that his eyes could catch the headlines.

Tuesday Maria sent Henry back to school; she couldn’t keep him quiet any longer, and as there was no telling—Saturday she dragged an old couch in to the foot of the bed. “I might as well sleep here,” she explained, “instead of paying Miss Briggs.”

“You ain’t working too hard?” Henry’s eyes lost their light as they rested on her face, sagging into yellowish folds.

“Work! I don’t mind work!” She stumbled abruptly from the room.

That choking sound—was that a sob? Then the light shone out again in Henry’s eyes; some one was knocking at the rear door, some one to ask again how the hero lingered. His warm glow wrapped him securely. For a moment he wondered about Maria; she wasn’t having an easy time. But he gave up the wondering easily. He had sloughed off that drab Henry Potts, husband. Another moment, now, and everything would be over; she would have a proud memory and comfortable living.

Early the next week the doctor urged her to have a nurse come in. She refused stubbornly, and Henry made no insistence. His needs seemed trivial, few—interruptions, most of them, to the weaving of his brilliant dreams. That same day, as she drew a fresh sheet over him, Henry asked her how many people had been in that morning. “They don’t seem to come—so much—” he finished, a little fearfully.

“The children ask Henry at school,” Maria explained, her hands jerking at the sheet.

“I hadn’t thought of that.” Henry smiled. “Of course.”

The next noon the boy burst into the house with strident voice. Henry heard Maria hush him quickly, and then a door shut off the rest. He asked her about it when she came in with a bowl of broth, but she would say only: “Nothing but some talk. Don’t bother.”

The following day she came into his room with reluctant determination, and sat down heavily by the bed. “I don’t suppose I’d ought to bother you—lying here helpless—but I don’t know where to turn.”

Something in her tone racked through the shining sphere to Henry, far within.

“It’s money,” she said. “That insurance. It’s due next week. I had to take what we’d saved toward it—that specialist—and all—”

“Next week!” Henry sucked in his cheeks, with their ragged growth of sandy beard. “I clean forgot.”

“Mr. Baxter sent your wages down that first week, but he’s got a new man now. I don’t know who to ask. We’ve always got along respectable. There’s Henry’s paper route—but that don’t pay the grocer bill, let alone the doctor or the rest.”

“I clean forgot,” repeated Henry. It was an echo of a former life, an old humiliation, trying to seize him again.

“If I knew where to turn, I wouldn’t of bothered you. But that insurance—if that goes, where’ll we be?” Mrs. Potts stared at Henry, her eyelids reddening. “I thought you’d have to know about it—”

“I’d ought to think about it.” Henry’s eyes left her face, traveled to the streak of winter sun which sprayed across his bed; it crawled a little farther each day. All that money! He hadn’t thought of money. He closed his eyes sharply.

“Henry!” Mrs. Potts’s frightened breathing was close to his face. “I ain’t made you worse? Does something hurt you?”

“No.” Henry looked at her again. “I was just having an idea. Maria”—his voice steadied as he spoke—“there’s that monument subscription. It wouldn’t be exactly charity—if they gave you some of that—for the insurance, would it? Even if it meant—well, not such a good stone?” The words riddled his golden sphere, offering a piece of it in barter.

Maria sank into her chair, hugging her arms against her breast. “There ain’t any.” Her lips shut grimly.

“Any what?”

“Ed Collins started it. And then—his boy told Henry at school—said he felt funny about raising monuments when men weren’t dead yet. The boys said mean things to Henry. He was awful mad. You heard him hollering—yesterday noon.”

“Did they think I ought to die—sooner?” Mr. Potts whispered. All about him lay the ruins of his glory.

“I don’t know. I don’t know!” Mrs. Potts suddenly dropped her head to the bed, her thick shoulders heaving.

“Why, Maria! Don’t, Maria!”

She lifted her face, gulping. “Who even comes to ask about you now? Mrs. Willie, next door—Oh, folks go on, no matter what anybody did, so long’s they ain’t hurt.”

“Maria, don’t take on—” He watched her rub the tears from her eyes. “I’ll think about that insurance.”

She rose wearily. “I shouldn’t of worried you.”

“Maybe I can think of a way. I got time to think. You go have a rest.”

He heard her closing the draught of the stove in the dining-room before she climbed the stairs. When the sound of her heavy feet had ceased, he glanced toward the wash-stand. The newspaper had slipped down out of sight. No matter. He knew the article by heart now. But that wasn’t what he was to think about. He thrust away from him the shadow of doubt as to what lay behind the words.

One hundred and fifteen dollars! If it wasn’t paid! Suddenly his eyes strained wide, staring at the crack which ran across the white ceiling. Then he gave a little grunt, doubling in his lips to moisten them. There must be some other way. After a long interim, when he scarcely breathed, he began to talk to himself, a thin thread of words from his rigid body.

“You’ve been hanging around just to enjoy yourself, old Henry Potts. Bothering folks. Just that one way for you to fix things up. That’d fix everything. An’ if it sort of scares you, letting go—well—go ahead!” He closed his eyes. “Can’t pretend I’m a hero any more,” he muttered. Then he lost himself in a rush of icy blackness. Later his heart stirred slightly. He heard the doctor’s voice across the dark:

“The stimulants won’t take hold. He must have lost courage—to sink this way—”

Courage! The word enticed him back into the light. He was climbing up the side of a great precipice, terrifying, frozen blackness below him, warm light above. Just as he felt his fingers over the edge, he remembered. Clinging there, he heard the doctor: “Quickly, that needle! He’s coming back—” He could have swung himself up into the familiar light. But the other was the only way for Maria and the boy. With a little gasp he loosened his fingers, and dropped.