Mary Baldwin College - Bluestocking Yearbook (Staunton, VA)

Page 95 text:

(Malice I.ICl ' ; anil l ' ' ii ick came- In us strant, ' fl -, out (if tlic stdniiy iiii lit. ' )iit (if a sidiiuy night these two men canie, and into the (d y ' Sptiuhift, a small and very old saloon in Port La Vaca, lluy drifted. Inside its stuffy taproom were a red-hot stove to warm cold fingers and backs hy and enough hot liquor to loosen silrnt tongues. 1 liad linisli(.-d my rounds among ihe sick, ( iy]), m ' horse, was comfortable in the stable, and 1 was sitting with two or three friends near the stove. There were glasses of toddy at our elbows. Outside the autumn winds moaned, and a mysterious whistling as they raced through the crevices in the leaky old side of the saloon made one think of Pan weirdly piping. We heard the whisk of the winds and the lashings of the rain and the drip, drip, drip of the water in the sloppy comers where there were no winds. I can vision the place now — a knocking somewhere, the sudden bang of a door, the straining of hinges, and above all, the strong sweep, the mad hurtling of the gale high in the air. Inside — warm, yellow comfort. - t this moment the door was flung violently open. . 11 in the room turned. A large man with a chest as thick as a gorilla ' s stood in the doorway. He wore a soft, b ' .ack hat, a mackinaw, and cowhide boots, all shining wet. liehind him : . u through the open door swished the rain and wind. He stood at the door with one hand holding the knob, and slowly took in the room, from face to face, from stove to 1)ar, and from rafters to worn floor. After a pause he stepped into the room with unexpected alacrity and tried to shut the door. P)Ut a second man squeezed through before tiie door was closed. I ' or the first time in any of our lives we saw Galice. There he stood before us, gazing unconcernedly about ; his thick hair matted and dripping wet, falling over his high forehead, over his eyes, much like that of a little Pomeranian chow. . n ill-fitting Prince .Albert coat, heavy with the rain, reached to his shoe tops. Galice followed his companion to the bar and stood behind him. The bar- keeper placed a bottle and glasses on the counter. One of these glasses the big man filled and then, apparently for the first time, as he returned the bottle, noticed that there was a second glass. Two glasses? It was a thick, foggy voice. The attendant indicated Galice with a nod of his head. Galice ? The big man turned slowly around and stared down in disdain at his companion. Gentlemen, to us in the room, that is Galice. Make your bow. Galice — pretty.

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JPrBeg for plues tocking OTorfe Rest Shori Story, offered by Palais Roval. won by Marjorie Duf ' fie. Best Poem, offered by Beverly Book Company, won by Alice Montgomery. Best Kodak Picture, oft ' ered by H. L. Lang Co., won by Alyse Rmnpf. Best Art Work, oft ' ered by Mr. Thomas Hogshead, w in by Lucy Page Coffman.

Page 96 text:

Curiously enough, Galice did, although our attention was directed to huii with such ill-purposed formality. Galice ' s cadaverous face broke into a hundred wrinkles. He bent at the hips like a jack knife, hands to his sides, and swayed his body for an instant. Suddenly he bent down his arms, beat a quick tattoo on the floor with the palms of his hands, and then snapped his legs into the air, wiggled them facetiously and curled back to his feet again. Galice next bowed shortly and impersonally towards each corner of the room, as I used to see actors do when I was younger. The smile, fixed on his face, as if it had crystallized there, gradually faded out, and the wrinkles slowly spread away and disappeared, some- thing like the ripple on the surface of a millpond. ■ And my name ' s Fenwick, concluded the big man. His ruiubling voice shivered us out of our absorption in Galice. Fenwick pronotmced his own name with ponderous dignity, as if he expected us immediately to recognize it. Fenwick filled the second glass. Galice snatched it up much as a cat snatches at a fly. With a glance at Fenwick, it communicated to me both amazement and incredulity, Galice hurried the glass to his blue lips. Fenwick watched him with half closed eyes, and just as the glass touched Galice ' s lips, Fenwick ' s hand de- liberately reached out, grasped the glass, and swept it to be shattered to bits on the bar. The liquor flowed down the front of the counter to the floor. Fenwick drank what was left in his own glass and retired to a chair in the shadows. There wasn ' t any of us in the room who didn ' t involuntarilv crv out at the cheap brutality of the act ; not one who wasn ' t sorry for Galice, yet no one did a thing to help him. He wasn ' t the sort you especially cared to help. If he had been standing on a street corner, begging, you might have dropped a penny in his hat and passed quickly by, but you couldn ' t go to him in the Spendrift, pat him on the shoulder to poultice his humiliation, and buy him another drink. He might have wept on your shoulder, he seemed ready to weep then, as he stood by the bar, looking at the dripping whiskey. His hands opened and shut, feeling, I thought, for the touch of Fenwick ' s throat. lUit he soon shufilled away to a vacant chair by Fenwick. I didn ' t see Galice or I- ' enwick for a number of days after that, but I heard that they were building a shack up the beach, just beyond the settlement. Then, late one afternoon, I paid them a visit, an involuntary one. Over in the west, the sun was sinking behind the horizon and changing the feathers of the clouds from white to orange. You know how splendidly it does it. When the sun disappeared, it left a suggestion of purple along the horizon. My mind always goes ranging around the universe on a crisp day like that, and I found myself within sight of Galice and Fenwick before I realized where I was. They were mending the walls of an extension to their shack.